Even then, there might be no alternative attitude; but it was worth trying. Simon had a stubborn desire to hang onto that incriminating letter as long as possible. He took out the sheaf of bonds and banknotes and threw them on the desk.
"There's the rest of it," he said cynically. "Shall we call it quits?"
Renway's squinting eyes wandered over him.
"Do you always expect to clear yourself so easily?" he asked, like a schoolmaster.
"Not always," said the Saint. "But you can't very well hand me over to the police this time, can you? I know too much about you."
In the next moment he knew he had made a mistake. Renway's convergent gaze turned Petrowitz, who was massaging his stomach tenderly.
"He knows too much," Renway repeated.
"I suppose there's no chance of letting bygones be bygones and still letting me fly that aeroplane?" Simon asked shrewdly.
The nervous twitch which he had seen before went over Renway's body, but the thin mouth only tightened with it.
"None at all, Mr. Tombs."
"I was afraid so," said the Saint.
"Let me take him," Petrowitz broke in with his thick gruff voice. "I will tie iron bars to his legs and fire him through one of the torpedo tubes. He will not talk after that."
Renway considered the suggestion and shook his head.
"None of the others must know. Any doubt or fear in their minds may be dangerous. He can go back into the cellar. Afterwards, he can take the same journey as Enrique."
Probably for much the same offense, Simon thought grimly; but he smiled.
"That's very sweet of you, Hugo," he remarked; and the other looked at him.
"I hope you will continue to be satisfied."
He might have been going to say more, but at that moment the telephone began to ring. Renway sat down at the desk.
"Hullo… Yes… Yes, speaking." He drew a memorandum block towards him and took up a pencil from a glass tray. With the gun close to his hand, he jotted down letters and figures. "Yes. G-EZQX. At seven… Yes… Thank you." He sat for a little while staring at the pad, as if memorizing his note and rearranging his plans. Then he pressed the switch of a microphone which stood on the desk beside the ordinary post-office instrument. "Kellard?" he said. "There is a change of time. Have the Hawker outside and warmed up by seven o'clock."
He picked up the automatic again and rose from the desk.
"They're leaving an hour earlier," he said, speaking to Petrowitz. "We haven't any time to waste."
The other man rubbed his beard. "You will be flying yourself?"
"Yes," said Renway, as if defying contradiction. He motioned with his gun towards the door. "Petrowitz will lead the way, Mr. Tombs."
Simon felt that he was getting quite familiar with the billiard room, and almost suggested that the three of them should put aside their differences and stop for a game; but Renway had the secret panel open as soon as the Saint reached it. With the two men watching him, Simon went down the shaky wooden stair and heard the spring door close behind him.
He sat down on the bottom step, took out his cigarette case, and computed that if all the cellars in which he had been imprisoned as an adjunct or preliminary to murder had been dug one underneath the other, they would have provided the shaft of a diametric subway between England and the Antipodes. But his jailers had not always been so generous as to push him into the intestines of the earth without searching him; and his blue eyes were thoughtful as he took out his portable burgling kit again. Renway must have been going to pieces rapidly, to have overlooked such an obvious precaution as that; but that meant, if anything, that for a few mad hours he would be more dangerous than before. The attack on the gold plane would still be made, Simon realized, unless he got out in time to stop it. It was not until some minutes after he had started work on the door that he discovered that the panel which concealed it was backed by a solid plate of case-hardened steel…
It was a quarter past six by his wrist watch when he started work; it was five minutes past seven when he got out. He had to dig his way through twelve inches of solid brick with a small screwdriver before he could get the claw of his telescopic jemmy behind the steel panel and break the lock inwards. Anyone who had come that way must have heard him; but in that respect his luck held flawlessly. Probably neither Renway nor Petrowitz had a doubt in their minds that the tempered steel plate would be enough to hold him.
He was tired and sweating when he got out, and his knuckles were raw in several places from accidental blows against the brickwork which they had suffered unnoticed in his desperate haste; but he could not stop. He raced down the long corridor and found his way through the house to the library. Nobody crossed his path. Renway had said that the regular servants would all be away, and the gang were probably busy at their appointed stations; but if anyone had attempted to hinder him, Simon with his bare hands would have had something fast and savage to say to the interference. He burst recklessly into the library and looked out of the French windows in time to see the grey shape of the Hawker pursuit plane skimming across the far field like a bullet and lofting airily over the trees at the end.
Simon lighted another cigarette very quietly and watched the grey ship climbing swiftly into the clear morning sky. If there was something cold clutching at his heart, if he was tasting the sourest narrowness of defeat, no sign of it could have been read on the tanned outline of his face.
After a second or two he sat down at the desk and picked up the telephone.
"Croydon 2720," he called, remembering the number of the aerodrome.
The reply came back very quickly:
"I'm sorry — the line is out of order."
"Then get me Croydon police station."
"I'm afraid we can't get through to Croydon at all. All the lines seem to have gone wrong."
Simon bit his lip.
"Can you get me Scotland Yard?"
He knew the answer to that inquiry also, even before he heard it, and realized that even at that stage of the proceedings he had underestimated Sir Hugo Renway. There would be no means of establishing rapid communication with any vital spot for some hours — that was because something might have gone wrong with the duplicate wireless arrangements, or one of the possible rescue ships might have managed to transmit a message.
The Saint blew perfect smoke rings at the ceiling and stared at the opposite wall. There was only one other wild solution. He had no time to try any other avenues. There would first be the business of establishing his bona fides, then of convincing an impenetrably skeptical audience, then of getting word through by personal messenger to a suitable headquarters — and the transport plane would be over the Channel long before that. But he remembered Renway's final decision — "None of the others must know" — and touched the switch of the table microphone.
"Kellard?" he said. "This is Tombs. Get my machine out and warmed up right away."
"Yessir," said the mechanic, without audible surprise; and Simon Templar felt as if a great load had been lifted from his shoulders.
Probably he still had no chance, probably he Was still taking a path to death as certain as that Which he would have trodden if he had stayed in the cellar; but it was something to attempt — something to do.
Of course, there was a radio station on the premises. Renway had said so. But undoubtedly it was well hidden. He might spend half an hour and more looking for it…