He took a pull at his ale and frowned at the table.
Roger said: "It seems to me that-all we've got to do now is to get on the phone to Claud Eustace and fetch him along. There's Sonia in that house — we couldn't have the gang more red-handed."
"And we troop along to the pen with them, and take our sentences like little heroes?"
"Not necessarily. We could watch the show from a safe distance."
"And Marius?"
"He's stung again."
The Saint sighed.
"Roger, old dear, if you'd got no roof to your mouth, you'd raise your hat every time you hiccoughed," he remarked disparagingly. "Are we going to be content with simply jarring Marius off his trolley and leaving it at that—leaving him to get busy again as soon as he likes? There's no evidence in the wide world to connect him up with Saltham. All that bright scheme of yours would mean would be that his game would be temporarily on the blink. And there's money in it. Big money. We don't know how much, but we'd be safe enough putting it in the seven-figure bracket. D'you think he'd give the gate to all that capital and preliminary carving and prospective gravy just because we'd trodden on his toes?"
"He'd have to start all over again—"
"And so should we, Roger—just as it happened a few months back. And that isn't good enough. Not by a mile. Besides," said the Saint dreamily, "Rayt Marius and I have a personal argument to settle, and I think—I think, honey-bunch—that that's one of the most important points of all, in this game. ..."
Conway shrugged.
"Then—what?"
"I guess we might tool over to Saltham and get ready to beat up this house party."
Roger fingered an unlighted cigarette.
"I suppose we might," he said.
The Saint laughed and stood up.
"There seems to be an attack of respectability coming over you, my Roger," he murmured. "First you talk about fetching in the police, and then you have the everlasting crust to sit there in a beer-sodden stupor and suppose we might waltz into as good a scrap as the Lord is ever likely to stage-manage for us. There's only one cure for that disease, sweetheart—and that's what we're going after now. Long before dark, Marius himself and a reinforcement of lambs are certain to be steaming into Saltham, all stoked up and sizzling at the safety valve, and the resulting ballet ought to be a real contribution to the gaiety of nations. So hurry up and shoot the rest of that ale through your face, sonny boy, and let's go!"
3
THEY WENT. ...
Not that it was the kind of departure of which Roger Conway approved. In spite of all the training which the Saint had put into him, Roger's remained a cautious and deliberate temperament. He had no peace of mind about haring after trouble with an armoury composed of precious little more than a sublime faith in Providence and a practised agility at soaking people under the jaw. He liked to consider. He liked to weigh pro and con. He liked to get his hooks onto a complete detail map of the campaign proposed, with all important landmarks underlined in red ink. He liked all sorts of things that never seemed to come his way when he was in the Saint's company. And he usually seemed to be tottering through the greater part of their divers adventures in a kind of lobster-supper dream, feeling like a man who is compelled to run a race for his life along a delirious precipice on a dark night in a gale of wind and a pea-soup fog. But always in that nightmare the Saint's fantastic optimism led him on, dancing ahead like a will-o'-the-wisp, trailing him dizzily behind into hell-for-leather audacities which Roger, in the more leisured days that followed, would remember in a cold sweat.
And yet he suffered it all. The Saint was just that sort of man. There was a glamour, a magnificent recklessness, a medieval splendor about him that no one with red blood in his veins could have resisted. In him there was nothing small, nothing half-hearted: he gave all that he had to everything that he did, and made his most casual foolishness heroic.
"Who cares?" drawled the Saint, with his lean brown hands seeming merely to caress the wheels of the Hirondel, and his mad, mocking eyes lazily skimming the road that hurtled towards them at seventy miles an hour. "Who cares if a whole army corps of the heathen comes woofling into Saltham to-night, even with a detachment of some of our old friends in support—the Black Wolves, for instance, or the Snake's Boys, or the Tiger Cubs, or even a brigade of the crown prince's own household cavalary—old Uncle Rayt Marius an' all? For it seems years since we had what you might call a one hundred per cent rodeo, Roger, and I feel that unless we get moving again pretty soon we shall be growing barnacles behind the ears."
Roger said nothing. He had nothing to say. And the big car roared out into the east.
The sun had long since set, and now the twilight was closing down with the suddenness of the season. As the dusk became dangerous for their speed, Simon touched a switch, and the tremendous twin headlights slashed a blazing pathway for them through the darkness.
They drove on in silence; and Roger Conway, strangely soothed by the swift rush of wind and the deep-chested drone of the open exhaust, sank into a hazy reverie. And he remembered a brown-eyed slip of a girl, sweet and fresh from her bath, in a jade-green gown, who was called America's loveliest lady, and who had sat in a sunny room with him that morning and eaten bacon and eggs. Also he remembered the way she and the Saint had spoken together, and how far away and unattainable they had seemed in their communion, and how little the Saint would say afterwards. He was quiet. ...
And then, it seemed only a few minutes later, Simon was rousing him with a hand on his shoulder; and Roger struggled upright and saw that it was now quite dark, and the sky was brilliant with stars.
"Your cue, son," said the Saint. "The last signpost gave us three miles to Saltham. Where do we go from here?"
"Right on over the next crossroads, old boy . . . . " Roger picked up his bearings mechanically. "Carry on ... and bear left here. . . . Sharp right just beyond that gate, and left again almost immediately. ... I should watch this corner—it's a brute. . . . Now stand by to fork right in about half a mile, and the house is about another four hundred yards farther on."
The Saint's foot groped across the floor and kicked over the cut-out control, and the thunder of their passage was suddenly hushed to a murmuring whisper that made figures on the speedometer seem grotesque. The Saint had never been prone to hide any of his lights under a bushel, and in the matter of racing automobiles particularly he had cyclonic tastes; but his saving quality was that of knowing precisely when and where to get off.
"We won't tell the world we're on our way till we've given the lie of the land a brisk double-O," he remarked. "Let's see—where does this comic chemin trail to after it's gone past the baronial hall?"
"It works round the grounds until it comes out onto the cliffs," Roger answered. "Then it runs along by the sea and dips down into the village nearly a mile away."
"Any idea how big these grounds are?"
"Oh, large! . . . I could give you a better idea of the size if I knew how much space an acre takes up."
"Parkland, or what?"
"Trees all around the edge and gardens around the house—as far as I could see. But part of it's park—you could play a couple of cricket matches on it. ... The gates are just round this bend on your right now."
"O.K., big boy. ..."
The Saint eased up the accelerator and glanced at the gates as the Hirondel drifted past. They were tall and broad and massive, fashioned in wrought iron in an antique style; far beyond them, at the end of a long straight drive, he could see the silhouette of a gabled roof against the stars, with one tiny square of window alight in the black shadow. . . . Maybe Sonia Delmar was there. . . . And he looked the other way, and saw the grim line of Roger's mouth.