The Saint might have been able to accomplish the apparently impossible before, but he would literally have to perform a miracle if he was to open the vaults of the Vandrick National Bank. For that was where her diamond necklace lay that night and where it had lain ever since he paid his first call on her. The string she had been wearing ever since was a first-class imitation, worth about fifty dollars. That was her answer to all the fanfaronading and commotion — a precaution so obvious and elementary that no one else in the world seemed to have thought of it, so flawless and unassailable that the Saint's boast was exploded before he even began, so supremely ridiculously simple that it would make the whole earth quake with laughter when the story broke.
Even so, ratcheted notch after notch by the lurking fear of a fiasco, tension crept up on her as the time went by without a sign of the Saint's elegant slender figure and tantalizing blue eyes. He was not there for the dinner or the following speeches, nor did he show up during the interval while some of the tables were being whisked away from the main ballroom to make room for the dancing. The dancing started without him, went on through long-drawn expectancy while impatient questions leapt at the countess spasmodically from time to time like shots from ambush.
"He'll come," she insisted monotonously, while news photographers roamed restively about with their fingers aching on the triggers of their flashlights.
At midnight the Saint arrived.
No one knew how he got in; no one had seen him before; but suddenly he was there.
The only announcement of his arrival was when the music stopped abruptly in the middle of a bar. Not all at once, but gradually, in little groups, the dancers shuffled to stillness, became frozen to the floor as the first instinctive turning of eyes towards the orchestra platform steered other eyes in the same direction.
He stood in the centre of the dais, in front of the microphone. No one had a moment's doubt that it was the Saint, although his face was masked. The easy poise of his athletic figure in the faultlessly tailored evening clothes was enough introduction, combined with the careless confidence with which he stood there, as if he had been a polished master of ceremonies preparing to make a routine announcement. The two guns he held, one in each hand, their muzzles shifting slightly over the crowd, seemed a perfectly natural part of his costume.
"May I interrupt for a moment, ladies and gentlemen?" he said.
He spoke quietly but the loud-speakers made his voice audible in every corner of the room. Nobody moved or made any answer. His question was rather superfluous. He had interrupted, and everyone's ears were strained for what he had to say.
"This is a holdup," he went on in the same easy conversational tone. "You've all been expecting it, so none of you should have heart failure. Until I've finished, none of you may leave the room — a friend of mine is at the other end of the hall to help to see that this order is carried out."
A sea of heads screwed round to where a shorter stockier man in evening clothes that seemed too tight for him, stood blocking the far entrance, also masked and also with two guns in his hands.
"So long as you all do exactly what you're told, I promise that nobody will get hurt. You two" — one of his guns flicked towards the countess' bodyguards, who were standing stiff-fingered where they had been caught when they saw him — "come over here. Turn your backs, take out your guns slowly and drop them on the floor."
His voice was still quiet and matter-of-fact but both the men obeyed like automatons.
"Okay. Now turn round again and kick them towards me… That's fine. You can stay where you are, and don't try to be heroes if you want to live to boast about it."
A smile touched his lips under the mask. He pocketed one of his guns and picked up a black gladstone bag from the dais and tossed it out on to the floor. Then he put a cigarette between his lips and lighted it with a match flicked on the thumbnail of the same hand.
"The holdup will now proceed," he remarked affably. "The line forms on the right, and that means everybody except the waiters. Each of you will put a contribution in the bag as you pass by. Lady Instock, that's a nice pair of earrings… "
Amazed, giggling, white-faced, surly, incredulous, according to their different characters, the procession began to file by and drop different articles into the bag under his directions. There was nothing much else that they could do. Each of them felt that gently waving gun centred on his own body, balancing its bark of death against the first sign of resistance. To one red-faced man who started to bluster, a waiter said tremulously: "Better do what he says. Tink of all da ladies. Anybody might get hit if he start shooting." His wife shed a pearl necklace and hustled him by. Most of the gathering had the same idea. Anyone who had tried to be a hero would probably have been mobbed by a dozen others who had no wish to die for his glory. Nobody really thought much beyond that. This wasn't what they had expected, but they couldn't analyze their reactions. Their brains were too numbed to think very much.
Two brains were not numbed. One of them belonged to the chairman who had lost his glasses, adding dim-sightedness to his other failings."From where he stood he couldn't distinguish anything as small as a mask or a gun but somebody seemed to be standing up on the platform and was probably making a speech. The chairman nodded from time to time with an expression of polite interest, thinking busily about the new corn plaster that somebody had recommended to him. The other active brain belonged to the Countess Jannowicz but there seemed to be nothing useful that she could do with it. There was no encouraging feeling of enterprise to be perceived in the guests around her, no warm inducement to believe that they would respond to courageous leadership.
"Can't you see he's bluffing?" she demanded in a hoarse bleat. "He wouldn't dare to shoot!"
"I should be terrified," murmured the Saint imperturbably, without moving his eyes from the passing line. "Madam, that looks like a very fine emerald ring… "
Something inside the countess seemed to be clutching at her stomach and shaking it up and down. She had taken care to leave her own jewels in a safe place, but it hadn't occurred to her to give the same advice to her guests. And now the Saint was robbing them under her nose — almost under her own roof. Social positions had been shattered overnight on slighter grounds.
She grabbed the arm of a waiter who was standing near.
"Send for the police, you fool!" she snarled.
He looked at her and drew down the corners of his mouth in what might have been a smile or a sneer, or both, but he made no movement.
Nobody made any movement except as the Saint directed. The countess felt as if she were in a nightmare. It was amazing to her that the holdup could have continued so long without interruption — without some waiter opening a service door and seeing what was going on, or someone outside in the hotel noticing the curious quietness and giving the alarm. But the ballroom might have been spirited away on to a desert island.
The last of the obedient procession passed by the Saint and left its contribution in the bag and joined the silent staring throng of those who had already contributed. Only the chairman and the countess had not moved — the chairman because he hadn't heard a word and didn't know what was going on.
The Saint looked at her across the room.
"I've been saving Countess Jannowicz to the last," he said, "because she's the star turn that you've all been waiting for. Will you step up now, Countess?"