Catch the Saint (12 page)

“I think your idea
was quite a good one: I’ll just knock on the
door.”

“But—”

“Could you be quiet a minute, please? I
see better when I’m
not listening.”

For a long time he studied
every detail of the house, the loca
tion of its front
door, its windows, the placement of its chimney,
the
slant of the roof, the way the big trees crowded up to it
from the rear. He could see that certain upstairs windows showed up
differently from others in the light of the lowering sun.

When all this information
was photographically recorded in his
brain, he turned
to Julie, smiled suddenly, and said, “Not a twit
to
be seen.”

“What can I
do?” Julie asked seriously.

“About what?”

“About tonight. I’m
coming along to help.”

“No you’re not,”
said the Saint firmly.

“He’s
my
brother!”
she flared.

“Don’t worry,”
he said, making her stroll at a leisurely pace with him through the woods.
“You’ll have plenty to do. My ob
ject is to get
your brother and the Rembrandt safely out of that farmhouse. Then I’ll send him
to the Golden Fleece, where you’ll
be waiting for him.
You then contact the local police, Adrian can
explain
how he was kidnapped, and the Dorset constabulary
can
round up the casualties from the farmhouse.”

“Casualties?”
she objected. “How do you know
you
won’t be a
casualty?”

He took her by the arm
and steered her back down the hill to
wards his car.

“Just let me worry
about my end of it,” he said. “Yours is to be
waiting for your brother and call the local cops. But when you
call them don’t mention Caffin or Pargit.”

“Whyever not?”

“I don’t want to
risk them skinning out. Now listen to this carefully: Get the police to arrange
transportation for you and
Adrian to London. Tell
them there are some urgent angles to this
which
you’ll only discuss with Chief Inspector Teal at Scotland Yard. Then, but only
then, when you see him, first thing tomorrow morning, tell him about Pargit
and Caffin.”

“Why not tell them
right away?”

“Because our brave
bobbies have been known to bungle and
let people escape.
I have not.”

“Oh,” said
Julie, and went with him docilely to the car.

CHAPTER 9

Only from very close by
was it possible to detect slivers of light
at
several of the upstairs windows of the old farmhouse. Simon
Templar gave no such careless hints of his own presence in that
moonless night. In dark clothing, he was one moment a tree
trunk, another moment a section of crumbling wall, the next
moment an indistinguishable part of the house itself.

Having reached the house
after leaving certain equipment at
the base of the
nearest trees, he made his way soundlessly round
the
side of the building, and then to the front. The softly chirping
night gave no warning sign of the approaching commotion.

The first to feel its
impact was one Alfonso “Sleepy” Trocadero
,
Caffin’s most exotic import, who liked napping in the afternoon who was
therefore well suited for beginning the first half of
the
night watch at 10 p.m. If indeed it is accurate to say that Al
fonso felt anything. He was sitting stolidly in the darkness behind
the locked door of the farmhouse, contemplating the vast
vacan
cies of his moustachioed skull, when there were six
knocks—
three fast, three slow.

It was the correct signal,
and it was proper that it should come
at night. There
was no telephone at the farmhouse, and mes
sengers,
supplies, or reinforcements from London could be expected to arrive in just
this way.

Unsuspecting, Alfonso
hauled his generously nourished bulk from the chair, turned a key, threw a
bolt, and opened the door a little. Seeing no one immediately, he cautiously
poked his head outside. It was then that he might have felt something if the
light
of his nervous system had not been extinguished so
suddenly that
there was no time even for a signal to
race from the back of his neck to his brain.

When he rejoined the
world, he was no longer at the still un-
alarmed farmhouse. He
was lying on his back in the woods,
looking
up at stars beyond the treetops, at the patient face of a
man in dark clothing, and at the point of his own
flick knife.
This eight-inch blade
was such a part of his personality that his
first automatic reaction was to confirm that his pocket was really
empty. But his arm would not move. He was so
thoroughly
trussed up that he could
move nothing but his head, and he did not care to move it when he saw the look
in his captor’s eyes,
which seemed
almost to glow in the night.

“Now, friend,”
the man with the dagger said, “there are certain
things
I want to hear from you and certain things I don’t want to hear. I have very
delicate ears, and anything louder than a whis
per
tends to make me very nervous.”

“Who are you?”
Alfonso stammered.

The point of the knife
moved closer to the tip of his nose.

“I also dislike
hearing questions,” the other told him. “I like
asking them, though, and nothing pleases me more than
hearing
correct answers. If you tell me something, and I find
out you were
a naughty boy and didn’t tell me the
truth, I’m going to give this
little toy of yours back
to you in a location you won’t enjoy. Now,
how
many people are in that house besides you?”

He pressed the point of
the knife against the bulbous end of Alfonso’s nose much more gently, he was
sure, than Alfonso had used it against his own victims, but firmly enough to
produce immediate co-operation.

“Ah—three,” said
Alfonso.

“Does that include
the painter?”

“Painter?”

The knife, which had eased
away, renewed its pressure.

“Is there a painter
in there? An artist, painting a picture?”

“Yes.”

“And two guards
besides you?”

“Yes.”

The Saint had waited after
dropping Alfonso to see if another
head would appear at the front door, or
if an alarm would be
raised. Neither had
happened. If the door-guard’s absence was
discovered, no harm would be done; it might even bring another
of Caffin’s gang outside to expose himself to the
Saint’s atten
tions. Meanwhile, Simon
had been able to enter the lower floor of
the house and make certain preparations before taking Alfonso
off to the woods.

“They’re upstairs,
right?” Simon continued. “I want to know
which
window belongs to the room where the painter is.”

He propped his captive up
against a tree trunk so that he could see the farmhouse and give a detailed
description of the arrange
ments on the second
floor. When Simon was satisfied, he dragged
the
big man farther into the copse and tied him securely to a sap
ling.

“One more question:
Is anybody else supposed to come out
here
tonight?”

“I don’t know.
Nobody say.” Simon knotted a gag over his prisoner’s mouth.
“Okay—why not catch up on your beauty sleep,” he suggested
. “But if you should feel the temptation to try to make any
noise, I want you to know that I’ll be the one who’ll come and
give you a very sharp answer.”

“Nng,” said
Alfonso.

Simon had been intrigued
with the possibilities of the farm-
house’s chimney ever since he had first
started planning his attack
. It rose at the
end of the house where the trees of the encroaching
woods leaned most closely towards the building,
had
the place been regularly
inhabited, no owner would have allowed s
uch intimacies between the branches and his roof. As it was, t
he trees furnished a perfect means for the Saint
to climb to the t
op of the house.
With Adrian a potential hostage inside, he had
to avoid any form of
assault that might endanger the artist or
make
him a getaway hostage for his guards.

Simon picked up a knapsack from the ground
where he had
left it twenty minutes before,
and was just easing the straps over
his
arms when he heard inappropriate sounds in the woods be
hind him: a
stealthy crunching of fallen leaves and twigs, and
then suddenly a short sharp cry, gasps, and a thrashing in the
copse’s dry debris.

The knapsack was
instantly back on the ground. The Saint
moved
as swiftly and silently through the trees as a cloud’s
shadow.
There must be no warning for those in the farmhouse,
no
use of the pistol in his shoulder holster. In his hand was the
switch knife of the man he had captured. He never slowed
down.
A figure was stumbling from the spot where Simon’s
captive
was tied. A moment later the figure was locked
around the throat
by an arm as strong and hard as steel, while the dagger
prom
ised worse to come.

“Peace,
brother,” whispered the Saint. “One squawk and
you’re dead.”

Even as he spoke, certain
not unpleasant sensations conveyed by the body he was holding told him that he
had used the wrong
gender.

“Sister?” he
corrected.

“Simon?” croaked
Julie, as he eased the pressure of his arm on
her
throat.

“Don’t talk out
loud!”

“Simon, there’s a
man there, on the ground! I fell over him.”

“I know. I left him
there.”

Simon then indulged in
some colourful comments on the intellectual shortcomings of damsels who should
have been left in dis
tress, and what this one
thought she was doing here tripping over
his
playmates in the dark.

“I’m sorry. I wanted
to help. I had to know what was happen
ing
to you and Adrian.”

“What did you do—take
a taxi?”

“I borrowed a
bicycle. Actually, I stole it from outside the bar,
but—”

“I don’t have time to
hear about it now,” Simon told her
grimly.
“You may be endangering your brother’s life. Stay out
here; see
that this gorilla doesn’t get loose or make any noise.
Do not panic and run for the police no matter what you think is
happening. Wait here for Adrian.” She started
to open her
mouth. “And keep
quiet!”

He about-faced and went
quickly back to the tree where he had
left his knapsack.
Moments later he was high up among the branches. For a man of his agility and
strength it was simple to
use even those unstable and yielding supports
to swing to the
roof of the house.

His soft-soled shoes made
no sound on the slates. He made his way up the gentle incline to the chimney,
whose exterior outlines
traced a way to a
fireplace on the ground floor. First he secured
one
end of a long rope round the chimney and coiled the re
mainder
at his feet. Then he opened his knapsack and took out a plastic bag containing
a sizeable bundle of rags soaked in oil. He
spilled gasoline from a
small bottle on to some of the rags, ignited them one by one, and dropped them
down the chimney.

When a thick column of
black smoke began to rise between him
and the night sky,
he stuffed the knapsack into the chimney’s m
outh
and waited. What could be more alarming to those en-tru
sted
with the care of a priceless Rembrandt than the threat of fir
e? Simon did not think he would have to wait very long.
In about five minutes he heard men’s voices coming muffled th
rough the windows just below him. Grasping the rope, he e
dged down to the rim of the roof.

“Alf? Alf?” someone was shouting.

The time was almost here,
and the Saint’s timing would have to be perfect. He used the rope in
mountain-climber style, using it to s
upport himself as
he went down over the eave and leaned out in
to the darkness with
his feet braced against the stone side of the h
ouse. The first guard to go down looking for the source of the sm
oke would hopefully get the full benefit of the
surprise that
the Saint had set up for
him earlier on the stairs
…
a strand of wire stretched just below knee level
between the railings and the
wall.