The Saint Closes the Case Read Free

woman in the civilised world, came
the end of a clearly defined chapter in his history.
    The sensation died down, as the most amazing
sensations will die down for lack of re-stimulation. In an
open letter which was published in every newspaper throughout Europe, the Crown
Prince offered his thanks to the unknown, and promised that the debt should not
be forgotten if at any time the Saint should stand in need of help from
high places. The British Government followed almost immediately with the
offer of a free pardon for all past offences on condition that the Saint
revealed himself and took an oath to turn his energy and ingenuity into
more legitimate channels. The only answer was a considered letter of
acknowledgment and regretful refusal, posted simultaneously to all the leading
news-agencies.
    “Unfortunately,” wrote the Saint,
“I am convinced, and my friends with me, that for us to disband at the
very moment when our campaign is beginning to justify itself in the
crime statistics of London—and (which is even more important) in those more subtle offences
against the moral code about which there can
be no statistics—would be an act of indefensible cowardice on my part. We cannot be tempted by the mere promise of safety for ourselves to betray the
motive which brought us together. The
game is more than the player of the game.
… Also, speaking for myself, I should find a respect able life intolerably dull. It isn’t easy to get
out of the rut these days: you have to
be a rebel, and you’re more likely to end
up in Wormwood Scrubs than Westminster Abbey. But I believe, as I have never believed anything before,
that I am on the right road. The
things of value are the common, primitive
things. Justice is good—when it’s done fanatically. Fighting is good—when the thing you fight for is simple
and sane and you love it. And danger
is good—it wakes you up, and makes you live ten times more keenly. And
vulgar swashbuckling may easily be the best of all—because it stands for a magnificent belief in all those things, a superb
faith in the glamour that civilisation
is trying to sneer at as a delusion and
a snare. … As long as the ludicrous laws of this country
refuse me these, I shall continue to set those laws at defiance. The pleasure of applying my own treatment to the
human sores whose persistent
festering offends me is one which I will not be denied… .”
    And yet, strangely enough, an eagerly
expectant public waited in vain for the Saint to follow up this astonishing
man ifesto. But day after day went by, and still he held his hand; so that
those who had walked softly, wondering when the un canny omniscience of
the Unknown would find them out, began to lift up their heads again and boast
themselves with increasing assurance, saying that the Saint was afraid.
    A fortnight grew into a month, and the Saint
was rapidly passing into something like a dim legend of bygone ages.
    And then, one afternoon in June, yelling
newsboys spread a special edition of the Evening Record through the
streets of London, and men and women stood in impatient arid excited groups on the pavements and read the most astounding story of the
Saint that had ever been given to the Press.
    It was the story that is told again here, as
it has already been retold, by now, half a hundred times. But now it is taken
from a different and more intimate angle, and some details are shown
which have not been told before.
    It is the story of how Simon Templar, known
to many as the Saint (plausibly from his initials, but more probably
from his saintly way of doing the most unsaintly things), came by chance upon
a thread which led him to the most amazing ad venture of his
career. And it is also the story of Norman Kent, who was his friend,
and how at one moment in that adventure he held the fate of
two nations, if not of all Europe, in his hands; how he
accounted for that stewardship; and how, one quiet summer evening,
in a house by the Thames, with no