But he did not know. He opened the door three inches, checked up the pleasantly familiar features that surrounded Monty Hayward's small and sanitary moustache, and pulled him through. Then he slid the bolts cautiously into their sockets and filtered back into the sitting room with his cigarette tilting buoyantly up between his lips.
"What-ho, troops!" he murmured breezily. "And how do we all feel after our culture physique?"
"I don't think I want to talk to you," said Monty. "You're not nice to know."
The Saint's eyebrows slanted at him mockingly.
"Scarface Al Hayward will now tell us about his collection of early Woolworth porcelain," he drawled. " 'I never wanted a drag in politics or any other racket,' says Scarface Al. 'Art is the only thing that counts a damn with me. Why can't you guys ever leave me alone?' "
Monty laughed, operating the Saint's cigarette case with one hand and a siphon with the other.
"Surely. But still—this sort of thing's all very well for you, old sportsman, seeing as how you've chosen to make it your job; but why d'you want to boot me into it?"
"My dear chap, I thought it would be good for your liver. Besides, you can run awfully fast."
Monty plugged a cushion at him and went over and sat on the arm of the chair which Patricia had taken.
"Do you allow him to do this sort of thing, Pat?" he asked.
"What sort of thing?" inquired the girl blandly.
"Why—inveigling respectable editors into free fights and kidnappings and what not Haven't you noticed what he's been doing all night? He goes around throwing people into rivers— he grabs people off the streets and runs away with them—he lets his pals be chased all over Europe by hordes of heathen policemen, while he goes and hides—and then he stands around here as happy as a dog with a new flea and can't see anything to apologize for. Is that the way you let him behave?"
"Yes," said Patricia imperturbably.
The Saint picked up a glass and hitched himself onto the table. He blew Patricia a kiss and looked at Monty Hayward thoughtfully.
"Seriously, old lad," he said, "we owe you no small hand. You drew the fire like a blinkin' hero—just as if you'd been trained to it from the kindergarten. But I'm damned sorry if you feel you've been landed in a place where you ought not to be. There's no one I'd rather have with me in a spot of good clean fun, but if you really hear the call of the old hymn book and hassock——"
Monty flicked ash into the fireplace.
"It's not the hymn book and hassock, you fathead—it's the Consolidated Press. As I told you at dinner, I've done a week's job in a couple of days, so I reckon I've earned five days' holiday. But that's not going to help me a lot if at the end of those five days I'm just beginning a fifteen-year stretch in some beastly German clink. . . . Anyway, what's happened to Stanislaus?"
Simon jerked a thumb towards the bedroom door.
"I dumped him out of the way. When he comes to, he's going to throw a heap of light on some dark subjects. I was waiting for you to arrive before I did anything to speed up his awakening, so that you could join the interested audience." He stood up and crushed his cigarette end into an ash tray. "And in the circumstances, Monty, that seems to be the very next item on the programme. We'll get together and hear Stanislaus give tongue, and then we'll have a little more idea of the scheme of events and prizes in this here rodeo."
Monty nodded.
"That seems a fairly sound notion," he said.
The Saint went over and opened the communicating door. He had taken two steps into the room when he felt a distinct draught of cold air fanning his face; and then his eyes had attuned themselves to the darkness, and he saw the rectangle of starlight where the window was. He stepped back without a sound, and his hand caught Monty's fingers on the electric light switch.
"Not for just a moment, old dear," he said quietly. "That was the mistake Pat made."
He vanished into the gloom; and in a little while Monty heard a faint metallic rattle and saw the Saint's figure silhouetted against the oblong of dim light. Simon was dosing the window carefully—and Simon knew quite well that that window had already been closed when he dropped Stanislaus on the bed and handcuffed him there. But the Saint was perfectly calm about it. He drew the curtains across the window, and turned; and his voice spoke evenly out of the dark.
"The notion was very sound, Monty—very sound indeed," he said. "Only it was a little late. You can put the light on now."
Light came, drenching down in a sudden blazing flood from the central panel in the ceiling and the alabaster-shaded brackets along the walls. It quenched itself in the deep green curtains and the priceless carpet that had been fitted to a queen's bedchamber, and lay whitely over the spotless linen of the carved oak bed. In the middle of that snowy expanse, the little man looked queerly black and twisted.
The ivory hilt of a stiletto stood out starkly from the stained cloth of his shirt, and his upturned eyes were wide and staring. Even as they looked at him, his right hand sagged lower over the side of the bed, and the attaché case that dangled from his wrist settled on the floor with a dull thud.
II. HOW SIMON TEMPLAR WAS UNREPENTANT,
AND THE PARTY WAS CONSIDERABLY
PEPPED UP
SIMON unlocked the handcuffs and dropped them into his pocket. He was far too accustomed to the sight of sudden and violent death to be disturbed in any conventional way by what had happened; but even so, a parade of ghostly icicles was crawling down his spine. Death that struck so swiftly and mercilessly was just a little more than he had expected to encounter so early in the festivities. It was a threat and a challenge that could not be misunderstood.
"How did it happen?" Patricia asked, breaking the silence in its sixth second; and the Saint smiled.
"In the simplest possible way," he said. "A member of the ungodly trailed us home, and let himself in here while we were gargling in the next room. Whoever he was, his sleuthing form is alpha plus—I was keeping one ear pricked for him all the way, and I never heard a thing. But if you ask me the reason why Stanislaus was bumped, that'll want a bit more thinking over."
The actual physical demise of the little man left him unmoved. They had not known each other long enough to become devoted comrades; and it was doubtful, in any case, whether the little man would ever have been inclined to permit such an affection to burgeon in his breast. The Saint, whose assessment of character was intuitive and instantaneous, judged him to be a bloke whose passing would leave the world singularly unbereaved.
And yet that same unimportant murder wrote a sentence into the story which the Saint could read in any language.
Across the bed, his clear blue gaze levelled into the eyes of Monty Hayward with a glimmer of new mockery, and that reckless half smile still rested on his lips. Onto his last speech he tacked one crackling question:
"Anyone say I wasn't right?"
"Right about what?" Monty snapped.
"About abducting Stanislaus," came the Saint's crisp reply. "You both thought I was crazy—thought I was jumping to conclusions, and jumping a damned sight too far. But since there was nothing else you could do, you gave the jump a trial. Now tell me I haven't given you the goods!"
Monty shrugged.
"The goods are there all right," he said. "But what are we supposed to do with them?"
"Get on with what's left of our sound notion," said the Saint. "Carry on finding out as much as we can about Stanislaus— then we may have some more to talk about."
Already he was examining the little man's attaché case. His first glance showed him that the leather had been half ripped away, doubtless by some other sharp instrument in the hands of the recent visitor; and then he saw what was inside, and grasped the reason for the bag's extraordinary weight. The little attaché case was nothing but a flimsy camouflage: inside it was a blued steel box, and it was to this box itself that the chain was riveted through a neat circular hole cut in the leather covering. A couple of shrewd slits with a penknife fetched the covering away altogether, and the metal box was comprehensively revealed—one of the compactest and solidest little portable safes that the Saint had ever seen.