Enter the Saint by Leslie Charteris Page A

that versatile gentleman for a moment longer than was absolutely necessary. But if anything was going to be done, Stannard had got to do it himself.
    With a savage resolution, he telephoned to a garage where he was known. While he waited, he scribbled a note for Tremayne in which he described the whole series of events and stated his intentions. It was time wasted, but he was not to know that.
    When the car arrived, he dismissed the mechanic who had brought it round, and drove to Hurley.
    He knew how to handle cars-it was one of his few really useful accomplishments. And he sent the Buick blazing west with his foot flat down on the accelerator for practically every yard of the way.
    Even so it was nearly five o’clock when he arrived there and then he realized a difficulty. There were a lot of houses at Hurley, and he had no idea where Hayn’s house, might be. Nor had the post office, nor the nearest police.
    Stannard, in the circumstances, dared not press his enquiries too closely. The only hope left to him was that he might be able to glean some information from a villager, for he was forced to conclude that Hayn tenanted his county seat under another name. With this forlorn hope in view, he made his way to the Bell Inn, and it was there that he met a surprising piece of good fortune.
    As he pulled up outside, a man came out, and the man hailed him. “Thank the Lord you’re here,” said Roger Conway without preface. “Come inside and have a drink.”
    “Who are you?” asked a mystified Jerry Stannard.
    “You don’t know me, but I know you,” answered the man. “I’m one of the Saint’s haloes.”
    He listened with a grave face to Stannard’s story.
    “There’s been a hitch somewhere,” he said, when Jerry had finished. “The Saint kept you in the dark because he was afraid your natural indignation might run away with you. Hayn had designs on your girl friend-you might have guessed that. The Saint pinched a letter of Hayn’s to Chastel-Hayn’s man abroad-in which, among other things, Edgar described his plot for getting hold of Gwen. I suppose he wanted to be congratulated on his ingenuity. The rough idea was to plant some cocaine on Gwen in a present of powder and things from Laserre, fake a police raid, and pretend to square the police for her. Then, if she believed the police were after you and her-Hayn was banking on making her afraid that you were also involved-he thought it would be easy to get her away with him.”
    “And the Saint wasn’t doing anything to stop that?” demanded Jerry, white-lipped.
    “Half-a-minute! The Saint couldn’t attend to it himself, having other things to deal with, but he put the man Tremayne, you were supposed to have met at the Splendide, on the job. Tremayne was to get hold of Gwen before Hayn arrived, and tell her the story-we were assuming that you hadn’t told her anything-and then bring her along to the Splendide and join up with you. The two of you were then to take Gwen down by car to the Saint’s bungalow at Maidenhead and stay down there till the trouble had blown over.”
    The boy was gnawing his finger-nails. He had more time to think over the situation on the drive down, and Conway’s story had only confirmed his own deductions. The vista of consequences that it opened up was appalling.
    “What’s the Saint been doing all this time?”
    “That’s another longish story,” Conway answered. “He’d got Hayn’s check for five figures and that made the risk bigger. There was only one way to settle it.” Roger Conway briefly described the Saint’s employing of the four spoof Cherubs. “After that was found out, Simon reckoned Hayn would think the gang business was all bluff, and he’d calculate there was only the Saint against himself. Therefore he wouldn’t be afraid to try on his scheme about Gwen, even though he knew the Saint knew it, because the Saint was going to be out of the way. Anyhow, Hayn’s choice was between getting rid of the