06 Alias the Saint

He lighted a cigarette and paced the room feverishly, refusing to talk. Raxel, Crantor, and Basher Tope had gone--he did not have to search the inn to know that. And the ship had gone. Looking out of the window, he could see nothing but blackness. Nowhere on the sea was visible anything like a ship's lights. But then they'd had a long start while he was sapping under that cellar door.

And now he knew exactly what the Professor's scheme was, and the magnitude of it took his breath away.

He wasted only a few minutes in coming to a decision; and then, with Duncarry to help him,, he went round to the garage and examined the dilapidated Hildebrand. It had not been touched-- but, of course, Raxel could not have foreseen that the Saint would be in a position to use it. Anyway, it didn't look up to much, as cars went, and Simon eyed it disparagingly.

"Now, why did I ever think it might be a comic stunt to arrive here in this ruin?" he wanted to know.

But certainly that car was the only vehicle which would take him out of Llancoed that night, for there would be no trains running .from a one-horse village like that, at that hour.

"Where are you making for?" asked Duncarry, as Simon let in the clutch and the car moved off with a deafening rattle.

"Gloucester," said the Saint briefly. "And Hildebrand is going to touch the ground in spots, like he's never skipped before. Now get down on your knees in front of the dashboard. Dun, and pray that nothing busts!"

Duncarry pulled his nose.

"This show will be all over before I even know what it's about," he said. "I've followed you right from the beginning without asking a single question, and I've never beefed about it. I've waltzed around looking villainous--left to starve--and you haven't heard me complain. But now--"

"Know anything about the Megantic, son?" asked the Saint; and Duncarry, who was an earnest student of the newspapers, nodded.

"Sure--she's carrying another instalment of your War Debt over to the States. Just a few million pounds' worth of gold," he said, and the Saint's eyebrows moved slowly northwards.

It was the one item of information that he lacked, and the revelation made his hair curl. "Up-to-date piracy," he had diagnosed without revving his brain up to any point where it would have been liable to seize, but that the subject of the piracy should be such a colossal sum, in the shape of such an easily negotiable metal, was a factor of which he had never dreamed.

And then he laughed.

"There's nothing much for you to know, old dear," he drawled. "It's only that the Professor has arranged to lift that little flock of ingots on the way."

Duncarry revolved his long-nosed face towards the Saint, and inhaled sibilantly.

"What's that?" he demanded.

"Exactly what I told you," murmured Simon, and passed on what he had seen and what he had overheard.

Now that he had all the threads in his hands, this did not take him long. Mysteries are long and complicated, but facts are always plain and to the point.

"The Professor has a few million cubic feet of compressed poison gas in his heavy luggage for the benefit of the strong-room guards. I'll bet any money he also has a cabin in a good strategic position for conferring the same benefit. There is also a quantity of tear gas to deal with minor disturbances. That's what they were manufacturing when I butted in--I got a whiff of it, and the mystery literally made me burst into tears. Crantor will come up in the ship we saw to take off the boodle. I can guess that, though I can't tell you how it's going to be arranged."

"And what do we do about it?" asked Duncarry, and the Saint grimaced.

"That depends upon the efficacy

If anything can be deduced from subsequent events, Duncarry was no mean intercessor. Or perhaps the Saint's magnificent luck was working overtime. At least it is a simple fact that they covered the eighty-five miles to Gloucester without a mishap, though it took them nearly five hours.

It was three o'clock on the Wednesday morning when the Saint entered the police station in Gloucester, and by some means best known to himself succeeded in so startling the sleepy night shift that they allowed him to use the official telephone for a call to Chief Inspector Teal's private address.

And the means by which he convinced Chief Inspector Teal that he was not trying to be funny may also never be known. But he passed on Teal's parting words to Duncarry verbatim.

"Leave this end to me," Teal had said, and for once in his life his voice was not at all drowsy. "I'll get through to the police at Portsmouth and tell them to be looking out for you; and after that I'll get on to the Admiralty, and make sure that they'll have everything ready for you when you arrive. You'll see the thing through yourself--it's hopelessly illegal, but I'm afraid you've earned the job."

"Does that mean we're temporary policemen?" inquired Duncarry, when the speech had been reported; and Simon Templar nodded.

"I guess it does."