12 The Saint in London (The Misfortunes of Mr Teal)

"You don't only need a pilot," said the Saint mechanically. "You need a proper fighting ship, with geared machine guns and all the rest of it."

"There is one," said Renway. "I took it from Hawker's factory last night. It's one of a new flight they're building for the Moravian government. The one I took had been out on range tests, and the guns were still fitted. I also took three spare drums of ammunition. I flew it over here myself--it was the first night landing I've ever made."

It had not been a particularly clean one, Simon remembered; and then he saw the continual tensing and twitching of Renway's hands and suddenly understood much more.

There had been a pilot; but he had--met with an accident. And yet the plot in which he had a vital role could not be given up. Therefore it had grown in Renway's mind to the dimensions of an obsession, until the point had been reached where it loomed up as the needle's eye of an insanely conceived salvation. Although Enrique was dead, the aeroplane had still been stolen: Renway had flown it himself, and the ordeal of that untutored night flight had cut into the marrow of his nerves. Still the goal could not be given up. The new pilot arrived at the crisis of an eight-hour sleepless nightmare of strain--a solution, an escape, a straw which he could grapple even while preserving the delusion that he was a superman irresistibly turning a chance tool to his need. Simon recalled Renway's abrupt defiant plunge into the subject after that long awkward silence, and hypothesis merged into certainty. It was queer, he reflected, how that superman complex, that delusion of being able to enslave human instruments body and soul by the power of a hypnotic personality which usually existed only in the paranoiac's own grandiose imagination, had been the downfall of so many promising criminals.

"You did that?" said the Saint, in a tone which contained exactly the right blend of incredulous admiration and sober awe.

"Of course."

Simon put out his cigarette and helped himself to a second.

"That's a beginning," he said. "But the pilots will be armed--they're in touch with the shore by radio all the way------"

"What is the good of that?" asked Renway calmly. "The conditions aren't the same as they would be in war time. They aren't really expecting to be attacked. They see another aeroplane overtaking them, that's all--there's always plenty of traffic on that route, and they wouldn't think anything of it. Then you dive. With your experience, they'd be an easy target. It ought to be finished in a couple of bursts--long before they could wireless any alarm to the shore. And as soon as their wireless stops, I shall carry on with their report. I have a short-wave transmitter installed in this house, and I have a record of every signal that's been sent out by cross-Channel aircraft for the last month. I know all the codes. The shore stations will never know what's happened until the aeroplane fails to arrive."

The Saint blew out a flick of smoke and kept his eyes on Renway's pale complacent face. It was dawning on him that if Renway was a lunatic, he was the victim of a very thorough and methodical kind of madness.

"There isn't only traffic in the air." he said.

"There's also shipping. Suppose a ship sees wha' happens?"

Renway made a gesture of impatience.

"My good fellow, you're going over ground that I covered two months ago. I could raise more objections than you know yourself. For instance, all the time the aeroplane is over the Channel, there will be special motorboats cruising off the French and English coasts. One or more of them may possibly reach the scene. It will be part of your job to keep them at a distance by machine-gun fire from the air until all the gold has been secured."

"How do you propose to do that?" persisted the Saint. "You can't lift ten tons of gold out of a wrecked aeroplane in five minutes."

A sudden sly look hooded Renway's eyes.

"That has also been arranged," he said.

He refilled his glass and drank again, sucking in his lips after the drink. As if wondering whether he had betrayed too much already, he said: "You need only be concerned with your own share in the proceedings. Do you feel like taking a part?"

Simon thought for a moment and nodded.

"I'm your man," he said.

Renway remained looking at him for a while longer, and the Saint fancied he could almost see the man's nerves relaxing in the sedative glow of conquest.

"In that case, I shall not need to send for my chauffeur."

"What about my machine?" asked the Saint.

"You can keep it here until you require it again. I have plenty of accommodation, and one of my mechanics can find out the cause of your trouble and put it right."

For a second the Saint's eyes chilled, for no mechanic would take long to discover that there was nothing whatever the matter with the machine in which he had landed. But he answered easily enough:

"That's very good of you."