"Step right in and join the merry throng, Hairy Harold," murmured Simon; and Mossiter obeyed, the Saint speeding him on his way.
That Johnny Anworth, having started forward with the idea of taking the Saint in the rear, should have been directly in the trajectory of his chief, was unfortunate for both parties. Simon smiled beatifically upon them, and allowed them to regain their feet under their own power.
"You wait, Templar!" Mossiter snarled; and the Saint nodded encouragingly.
"Were you starving, too?" he asked.
There was some bad language-so bad that the Saint, who was perhaps unduly sensitive about these things, found it best to bind and gag both his prisoners.
"When you decide to talk, you can wag your ears," he said.
There was a gas fire in the sitting room, and this the Saint lighted, although the night was already torrid enough. In front of the burners, with ponderous deliberation, he set an ornamental poker to heat.
The two men watched with bulging eyes.
Simon finished his cigarette; and then he solemnly tested the temperature of the poker, holding it near his cheek as a laundryman tests an iron.
"Do you sing your song, Baldy?" he inquired-so mildly that Mossiter, who had an imagination, understood quite clearly that his own limits of bluff were likely to be reached long before the Saint's.
The story came with some profane trimmings which need not be recorded.
"It was Lemuel. We were to cosh you, and take your girl away. Lemuel said he knew for certain you'd got a lot of money hidden away, and we were going to make you pay it all over-while we held the girl to keep you quiet. We were going shares in whatever we got-- What are you doing?"
"Phoning for the police," said the Saint calmly. "You must not commit burglary-particularly with guns."
The law arrived in ten minutes in the shape of a couple of men from Vine Street; but before they came the Saint had made some things painfully plain.
"I'd guessed what you told me, but I always like to be sure. And let me tell you, you pair of second-hand sewer-skunks, that that sort of game doesn't appeal to me. Personally, I expect the most strenuous efforts to be made to bump me off -I'd be disappointed if they weren't-but my girl friends are in baulk. Get that. And if at any time the idea should come back to you that that would be a good way of getting at me- forget it. Because I promise you that anyone who starts that stuff on me is going for a long ride, and he'll die in a way that'll make him wish he'd never been born. Think that over while you're carving rocks on the Moor!"
Then the police came and took them away. They said nothing then, and went down for three years without speaking.
But the Saint was a thoughtful man at breakfast the next morning.
In the old days, Patricia Holm had shared his immunity. Now that his was gone, her own went also. The knowledge of her existence, and what she might be assumed to mean to the Saint, was free to anyone who took the trouble to watch him. The plan of campaign that the facts suggested was obvious; the only wonder was that it had not been tried before. For one thing, of course, the number of the Saint's enemies whose minds would take that groove was limited, and the number who would be capable of actually travelling along the groove was more limited still-but the idea must not be allowed to grow. And Lemuel had lost much-he would have a long memory.
"I don't think he's a useful citizen," concluded the Saint, out of the blue; and Patricia Holm looked up blankly from her newspaper.
"Who's that?"
"Uncle Francis."
Then she heard of the nocturnal visitors.
"He doesn't know that all the money I took off him has gone to Queen Charlotte's Hospital-a most suitable charity -less only our regular ten-percent fee for collection," said the Saint. "And if I told him, I don't think he'd believe me. As long as he's at large, he'll be thinking of his lost fortune-and you. And, as I said, I don't think he's a useful citizen."
"What can you do?" she asked.
Simon smiled at her. He really thought that she grew more beautiful every day.
"Sweetheart," he said, "you're the only good thing this rolling stone's collected out of all the world. And there's only one logical thing to do."
But he left her to guess what that was; he had not worked out the details himself at that moment. He knew that Francis Lemuel owned a large country house standing in its own spacious grounds just outside Tenterden, and the next day he learned that Lemuel had established himself there-"to re cover from a severe nervous collapse," the newspaper informed him-but it was not for another two days, when another item of news came his way, that the Saint had his inspiration for the manner in which Francis Lemuel should die.
9
I shall call on Wednesday at 3 p.m. You will be at home.
Francis Lemuel stared at the curt note, and the little sketch that served for signature, with blurring eyes. Minutes passed before he was able to reach shakily for the decanter-his breakfast was left untasted on the table.
An hour later, reckless of consequences, he was speaking on the telephone to Scotland Yard.
At the same time Simon Templar was speaking to Patricia Holm, what time he carefully marmaladed a thin slice of brown bread and a thick slice of butter.
"There are three indoor servants at Tenterden-a butler and a cook, man and wife, and the valet. The rest of the staff have been fired, and half the house is shut up-I guess Francis is finding it necessary to pull in his horns a bit. The butler and cook have a half-day off on Wednesday. The valet has his half-day on Thursday, but he has a girl at Rye. He has asked her to marry him, and she has promised to give her answer when she sees him next-which will, of course, be on Thursday. He has had a row with Lemuel, and is thinking of giving notice."
"How do you know all this?" asked Patricia. "Don't tell me you deduced it from the mud on the under-gardener's boots, because I shan't believe you."
"I won't," said the Saint generously. "If you want to know, I saw all that last part in writing. The valet is an energetic correspondent. Sometimes he goes to bed and leaves a letter half finished, and he's a sound sleeper."
"You've been inside Lemuel's house?"
"These last three nights. The burglar alarms are absolutely childish."
"So that's why you've been sleeping all day, and looking so dissipated!"
Simon shook his head.
"Not 'dissipated,'" he said. " 'Intellectual' is the word you want."
She looked at him thoughtfully.
"What's the game, lad?"
"Is your memory so short, old Pat? Why, what should the game be but wilful murder?"
Patricia came round the table and put her hands on his shoulders.
"Don't do it, Saint! It's not worth it."
"It is." He took her hands and kissed them, smiling a little. "Darling, I have hunches, and my hunches are always right. I know that the world won't be safe for democracy as long as Francis continues to fester in it. Now listen, and don't argue. As soon as you're dressed, you will disguise yourself as an elderly charwoman about to visit a consumptive aunt at Rye. At Rye you will proceed to the post office and send a telegram which I've written out for you-here." He took the form from his pocket, and pressed it into her hand. "You will then move on to Tenterden." He gave an exact description of a certain spot, and of an instrument which she would find there. "If you observe a crowd and a certain amount of wreckage in the offing, don't get excited. They won't be near where you've got to go. Collect the gadget and et ceteras, and push them into the bag you'll have with you. . . . Then, returning to the blinkin' railway station, you will leap into the first train in which you see a carriage that you can have all to yourself, and in that you will remove your flimsy disguise, disembark as your own sweet self at the next stop, catch the first train back to town, and meet me for dinner at the Embassy at eight. Is that clear?"