06 Alias the Saint

"That's what I want to know," remarked the Saint. "We'll ask Miles. He'll be coming back to inspect the body. Shut your faces, and douse those glims!"

The lights went but one by one, and darkness and silence settled upon the group. Without a sound the Saint stepped to one side. He rested his torch on a high boulder and kept his finger on the switch.

Then he heard Hallin.

At least, he heard the faint soft crunch of stones, a tiny rustle of leaves... He could see nothing. It was an eerie business, listening to that stealthy approach, But the Saint's nerves were like ice.

A match flared suddenly, only a few yards away. Hallin was searching the ground.

Then the Saint switched on his light. He caught Hallin in the beam, and left the light lying on the rock. The Saint himself stepped carefully away from it.

"Hullo," said the Saint unctuously.

Hallin stood rooted to the ground. The match burned down to his fingers and he dropped it.

Then his hand jerked round through his pocket. ...

"Rotten," said the Saint calmly; and his voice merged in the rattle of another shot.

From a little distance away two more lights sprang up from the darkness and centred upon Hallin. The man twisted round in the blaze, and fired again--three times. One of the lights went out. The other fell, and went out on the ground as the bulb broke. Hallin whipped round again. He sighted rapidly, and his bullet smashed the Saint's torch where it lay.

"Teal, did he get you?"

The Saint stepped swiftly across the blackness and Teal's voice answered at his shoulder, "No, but he got Mason."

The Saint's fingers touched Teal's coat, so lightly that the detective could have felt nothing. They crept down Teal's steeve, jumped the hand, and closed upon the torch....

"Thanks," said the Saint. "See you later."

He jerked at the torch as he spoke, and got it away. The detective made a grab at him; but Simon slipped away with a laugh. He could hear Hallin blundering through the darkness, and he followed the noise as best he could. Behind him was another blundering noise, and a shout from Teal; but the Saint was not waiting.

Simon went on in the dark. He had eyes like a cat, anyway; and, in the circumstances, there might be peculiar dangers about a light. ... Then it occurred to him that there might be other live wires about, and he had no urge to die that way. He stopped abruptly.

At the same time he found that he could no longer hear Hallin. On his right he heard a muffled purl-? ing of water; behind him Teal was still stumbling sulphurously through the gloom, hopelessly lost. The detective must have been striking matches, but Simon could not see them. A rise of ground must have cut them off.

Warily the Saint felt around for another boulder, and switched on his torch as he had done before. The result startled him. Hallin's face showed up instantly in the glare, pale and twisted, scarcely a yard away; then Hallin's hand with the gun; beyond Hallin, the ground simply ceased....

"Precious," said the Saint, "I have been looking forward to this."

He hurled himself full length, in a magnificent standing tackle; his arms twined around Hallin's knees. Over his head, the automatic banged once, but the light did not go out. Then they crashed down together.

The Saint let go, and writhed up like an eel. He caught Hallin's right wrist, and smashed the hand against a stone. The gun dropped.

Simon snatched it up, scrambling to his feet as he did so; and one sweep of his arm sent the weapon spinning far out into the gulf.

The Saint laughed, standing up in the light.

"In the name of Teddy Everest," he said, "this is our party. Get up, Miles Hallin, you dog!"

8

Hallin got up. He was shorter than the Saint by three or four inches, but twice as heavy in the bone, with tremendous arms and shoulders. And he came in like a charging buffalo.

Simon sidestepped the first rush with cool precision, and shot in a crisp left that caught Hallin between the eyes with a smack like a snapped stick;

but Hallin simply turned, blinking, and came again.

The Saint whistled softly through his teeth.

He really wasn't used to people taking those punches quite so stoically. When he hit a man like that, it was usually the beginning of the end of the fight; but Hallin was pushing up his plate tor a second helping as if he liked the diet. Well, maybe the light was bad, thought the Saint; and accurate timing made a lot of difference. . . . And again he sidestepped, exactly as before, and felt the blow which he landed jolt right up his arm; but this time he collected a smashing drive to the ribs in return. It hurt him; but Hallin didn't seem to be hurt. . . .

The Saint whistled even more softly.

So there was something in Hallin, after all. The man fought in a crouch that made scoring difficult. His arms covered his body, and he kept his chin well down in his chest; he wasn't easy. . . .