Authors: Leslie Charteris
He showed no
signs of activity, and it seemed very possible
that he had a fractured skull; but just to be on the safe side
Simon gave his head another vigorous thump on the
ground
as he straightened himself up.
Then he was feeling his way along the paved walk that led
away from the shelter, accustoming his eyes to the light of
the
stars and half a moon, while he heard the
two girls stumbling up behind him.
Suddenly ahead of him there was a quickened heavy move
ment, and he had a fleeting glimpse of
a tall angular silhouette
against
the infinitesimally lighter tint of the sky, only a scrap
of a second before the beam of a
flashlight stabbed at him like a spear and barely missed him as he eeled off
into the shrubbery that bordered the path. The tall man came running down
the wedge of his own light, not making
much sound, and
switched
it off a moment before he came level with the Saint;
and at that point Simon moved in on him without any
sound
at all, his left arm
sliding around the man’s neck from be
hind and locking his larynx in the crook of his elbow,
cutting off voice and breath together while he spoke in the man’s ear.
“You
can save this for me too, bud,” he said; and then he
turned the man deftly around and hit
him with the blade
of his
hand just at the base of the septum, and threw him
aside into the bushes as the girls reached him.
They threaded
through winding walks, down into a sunken
garden
and across it and out again, and then they came
around a clump of trees and the house was there, looming
large
and sedate in the dark and seeming aloof and asleep with
the heavy blackout curtains drawn. They ran around
it; and
on the drive in front,
gleaming faintly in the dim moonlight,
Simon
saw Madeline Gray’s car where he had parked it when
he arrived.
He opened the door and she almost fell in; and then An
drea Quennel was beside him.
Her face was a pale blur in the darkness close to him.
“You must tell me,” she said with a kind of blank despera
tion. “What is this all about?”
He was glad that she couldn’t see the involuntary mask that
hardened over his face. There were so
many things that per
haps ought to
have been said, so many things that it was im
possible
to say.
“I’m going to try like hell to let your father tell you him
self,” he said.
Then he slid in behind the wheel and slammed the door be
fore she could ask any more, and
touched the starter and
whipped
the car away like a racehorse from the gate, leaving
her where she stood.
It was a help that he had driven himself there, and that he
had a memory for landmarks and a sense
of direction that a
homing
pigeon could have envied. In a matter of seconds he was on to the coastal road,
past Compo Beach and winding
along the edge of the marshes at the estuary of the Saugatuck.
Then inland a little way, and then
wrenching the car around
to the left to speed over the bridge across the wider part of the
inlet; then to the right again,
northwards, to slow down a
little, reluctantly, as they skimmed the edge of the town of
Westport, and catch a green light and
speed up again on the
road
that follows the west bank of the river and comes in a
mile and a half to the Merritt Parkway.
They
were nearly at the Parkway when Madeline said:
“Wouldn’t it have been better to have
phoned?”
“They’d have been standing right over him when he an
swered the phone—if they let him answer
at all. And they
may be
only just arriving now.”
“But
the police——
”
He
shook his head.
“With
all the things I’d have to explain and convince them
of, and then to get them moving fast enough? No. It’s
the
same as our trip from
Washington. Only worse. But this time
perhaps we won’t be too late.”
She
sat tense and still, leaning forward a little, as if by that
she could help the car to make more
speed.
“Have we any chance?”
“We’re trying.”
And they were on the Parkway, the speedometer needle
climbing to eighty and eight-five and
creeping on, yet with
the
Saint’s fingers effortless and almost caressing on the wheel,
driving with one hand only while the
other pressed the electric
lighter
and shook a cigarette out of Devan’s pack and set it
between his lips.
Presently
she said, as if because any kind of conversation was
better than listening to the same ceaseless
clock-tick of terror:
“How
much does Andrea know?”
“I
think she’s fairly dumb,” he said in the same way. “Devan said she
was dumb. They just used her. And so did I. As I told
you, in Washington I eventually tried to let her think
she’d
taken me in, because she
might be a useful contact. And she
was.”
“But now you know why she asked you over there tonight.”
“I know why she asked me in the first place. They had a story for
her, and they must have known from past experi
ence that she shouldn’t be hard to sell. Maybe she
never has
been quite so monumentally
dumb, but she knew how to leave
her brain alone. It was the easiest defence of her own kind of
Social Stability … Only, as it
worked out this evening, I
invited
myself.”
“And
she let you walk into it.”
“She knew that I knew what I was walking into. She tried
to stop me last night, when I didn’t
know. She may have fig
ured that I had all the right cards up my sleeve, or else I
wouldn’t want to walk in. She may have
changed sides again,
and
been glad to see me sticking my neck out. It might have
been vengeance, or it might have been
her kind of help; or she
might
have just put her brain to sleep again. I wouldn’t know.
She must have done a lot of odd things
in her life that you
couldn’t explain in ten-year-old language.”
“Only
she fell in love with you,” Madeline said. “I’ve heard
all your story, and I’ve seen her.”
The Saint let cigarette smoke trail away from his lips, and
kept his eyes on the unfolding road.
“I didn’t make her do that.” He was cold and apart in a way
that she had never felt from him
before. “She saved our lives
tonight, whether she knew it or not, and whatever she meant
to do. Don’t ever forget
that.” There were some things that it
was almost impossible to put together in words.
“I’m afraid
nothing is going to be easy
for her now.”
And they were past Talmadge Hill, swooping down and up
long easy switchbacks, the engine
humming to the perfection
of
its power, the tires hissing on the roadbed and the wind
ruffling at the windows, almost as if they were flying, the
sense
of speed lulled by the smoothness of
his driving and the isola
tion of the
darkness around them, with only the road to see ahead and the tail lights of
other cars being overtaken like
crawling
glowworms and fluttering angrily for an instant as
they were passed and
then being lost in silence behind.
He
thought, this was one time when he didn’t give a damn
if the whole Highway Patrol was out after him, and
just because of that there wouldn’t be a single one of them in the
country. And there wasn’t.
And then they were near the turning he had to take, and
suddenly he recognised it, and crammed
on the brakes and
spun the
wheel and spurred the engine, and they were scream
ing around and bucking through a break in the highway
divi
sion, right under the lights of some
inoffensive voyager in the other lane who probably lost two pounds of weight
and a year’s
growth on the spot, while the
Saint balanced the car against
its own
rolling momentum like a tightrope walker and dived it into the twisting lane
that led towards Calvin Gray’s home.
It was only then
that she said: “Have you got a gun or any
thing?”
“I borrowed one from Karl. He owed me something,” he
said, and didn’t bother to explain
about Karl.
And
then they were nearing the entrance of Gray’s estate,
and he killed the engine and cut the lights and
coasted the
car to a stop a few yards
short of the stone gateway.
He got out and said “This way,” and drew her out through
the same door, and closed it again
without a sound, and they
went
quickly in up the drive and past the house, as softly as
he could lead her. There was a great
silence all around them
now, with even the undertones of their own traveling wiped
out; and he realised that for miles his
ears had been keyed for
the sound that he dreaded and that he must have heard, the concussion
of unnatural thunder and the blaze of unnatural lightning that would have said
finallv that they were too late.
And
it still might come at any instant, but so far it hadn’t, and
the only light was the faint
untroubled silver of the moon.
He only took her so far because he wanted to be sure that he found the
right path; and then they found it, and he knew
exactly where he was, and he stopped for a second to
halt her.
“You wait here. Lie down, and be
quiet.”
“I want to
go with you.”
“You
couldn’t do anything. And you’d make more noise
than I will. And if anything happens, somebody has
to tell the
story.”
His lips touched her face, and he was gone, and he had
scarcelv paused at all.
And so perhaps
this was the end of all stories; and if it was,
there could have been worse ones.
He
came like a shadow to the door of the laboratory building, and turned the
handle without a sound with his left hand
while his right slid the borrowed revolver out of his
pocket.
His nerves were spidery
threads of ice, and time stood still around him like a universe that had run
down.
He thought then, in a crazy disassociation, that it would
be strange to die that way, because
you would never even
know you died. You wouldn’t even have time to hear or feel
anything. There would be some sort of
silent and insensate
shock
that would take the inside of your mind and blot it out,
like the putting out of a light and a
great hand that picked
you up and wiped you away. One instant you would be there,
and the next instant you wouldn’t be
there, but it wouldn’t
mean anything,
because you wouldn’t be there to know.
Through the tiny
hall, as he went in, he could see all of them
by
the long bench where the rubber apparatus was set up.
He could see Hobart Quennel, balanced and absorbed
in
watching, and Walter Devan standing
a little back with one
hand in the
side pocket of his coat, and Calvin Gray’s thin
hands adjusting themselves around a large glass flask of straw-
colored liquid to pick it up.
The
Saint stood in the doorway with his gun leveled, and tried to launch his voice
on the air like a feather, mostly so
that it would steal into the ears of Calvin Gray without
any
shock that might
precipitate disaster.
“I’m sorry, boys,” he said, “but this is the end of the
line.
Please keep still and put your hands up very
slowly.”
He saw Quennel and Devan start to turn towards him. and then begin to
obey when they saw what he held in his hand.
But he was really hardly noticing them at all. His
eyes were
on Calvin Gray; and he felt
as though he had stopped breathi
ng
a long time ago.
It was a slightly cosmic thing that he had reckoned without
the scientific temperament and the
contempt of familiarity.
Calvin
Gray settled the flask back on the table as if it had
been a soft-shelled egg, and dusted off his hands.