He thought, this was one time when he didn't give a damn if the whole Highway Patrol was out after him, and just because of that there wouldn't be a single one of them in the country. And there wasn't.
And then they were near the turning he had to take, and suddenly he recognised it, and crammed on the brakes and spun the wheel and spurred the engine, and they were screaming around and bucking through a break in the highway division, right under the lights of some inoffensive voyager in the other lane who probably lost two pounds of weight and a year's growth on the spot, while the Saint balanced the car against its own rolling momentum like a tightrope walker and dived it into the twisting lane that led towards Calvin Gray's home.
It was only then that she said: "Have you got a gun or anything?"
"I borrowed one from Karl. He owed me something," he said, and didn't bother to explain about Karl.
And then they were nearing the entrance of Gray's estate, and he killed the engine and cut the lights and coasted the car to a stop a few yards short of the stone gateway.
He got out and said "This way," and drew her out through the same door, and closed it again without a sound, and they went quickly in up the drive and past the house, as softly as he could lead her. There was a great silence all around them now, with even the undertones of their own traveling wiped out; and he realised that for miles his ears had been keyed for the sound that he dreaded and that he must have heard, the concussion of unnatural thunder and the blaze of unnatural lightning that would have said finally that they were too late. And it still might come at any instant, but so far it hadn't, and the only light was the faint untroubled silver of the moon.
He only took her so far because he wanted to be sure that he found the right path; and then they found it, and he knew exactly where he was, and he stopped for a second to halt her. "You wait here. Lie down, and be quiet."
"I want to go with you."
"You couldn't do anything. And you'd make more noise than I will. And if anything happens, somebody has to tell the story."
His lips touched her face, and he was gone, and he had scarcely paused at all.
And so perhaps this was the end of all stories; and if it was, there could have been worse ones.
He came like a shadow to the door of the laboratory building, and turned the handle without a sound with his left hand while his right slid the borrowed revolver out of his pocket. His nerves were spidery threads of ice, and time stood still around him like a universe that had run down.
He thought then, in a crazy disassociation, that it would be strange to die that way, because you would never even know you died. You wouldn't even have time to hear or feel anything. There would be some sort of silent and insensate shock that would take the inside of your mind and blot it out, like the putting out of a light and a great hand that picked you up and wiped you away. One instant you would be there, and the next instant you wouldn't be there, but it wouldn't mean anything, because you wouldn't be there to know.
Through the tiny hall, as he went in, he could see all of them by the long bench where the rubber apparatus was set up. He could see Hobart Quennel, balanced and absorbed in watching, and Walter Devan standing a little back with one hand in the side pocket of his coat, and Calvin Gray's thin hands adjusting themselves around a large glass flask of straw-colored liquid to pick it up.
The Saint stood in the doorway with his gun leveled, and tried to launch his voice on the air like a feather, mostly so that it would steal into the ears of Calvin Gray without any shock that might precipitate disaster.
"I'm sorry, boys," he said, "but this is the end of the line. Please keep still and put your hands up very slowly."
He saw Quennel and Devan start to turn towards him. and then begin to obey when they saw what he held in his hand. But he was really hardly noticing them at all. His eyes were on Calvin Gray; and he felt as though he had stopped breathing a long time ago.
It was a slightly cosmic thing that he had reckoned without the scientific temperament and the contempt of familiarity.
Calvin Gray settled the flask back on the table as if it had been a soft-shelled egg, and dusted off his hands.
"I'm glad you didn't startle me," he said. "That thing is full of nitroglycerin, and I was just going to drop it"
7. How Simon Templar went on his way
Jetterick, the FBI man, tried to straighten a limp cigarette and said: "One thing that puzzles me is how Gray could put a bowl of soup like that together with Quennel watching him. If Quennel was a chemist himself once—"
"So far as I know," said the Saint, "he only worked in a drug store. He got out of that racket very soon to be a business man. And there were a lot of unlabeled bottles in the laboratory — I'd noticed that before. Gray, and his daughter knew what they were, but nobody else did. And one solution looks like a lot of others, at a glance. And Quennel was just interested in what he was being told… Anyhow, it doesn't matter a lot now. It didn't quite come to that."
"What about Quennel's daughter?" Jetterick asked.
Simon Templar looked out of the window into the dark.
"See what her story is, and I'll confirm it where I can." His voice was scrupulously commonplace — perhaps too scrupulously. "You can say that she must have been in a tough spot, trying to be loyal to her father and at the same time trying to follow… some other influences. But she did try in her way to keep me out of that Imberline setup. I don't think you can make her an accessory to that. I don't think she ever knew that Imberline was booked for the big voyage. Probably Quennel arid Devan didn't even know it then. But she overheard just enough, and she'd assimilated enough general background, to be sure that the Savoy Plaza could be an unhealthy joint for me to go home to… And she did let us out tonight — otherwise none of us would be talking now… You'll do what the book tells you; but I'd like to see her come out as well as she can."
And he remembered her lips and her eyes and her white shoulders, and all of her asking impossible things.
Jetterick's taciturn stare took its time over him.
"If your evidence holds up, it'll be quite a case."
"It'll hold up. And it will be quite a case. Quennel got to be a damn brilliant lawyer in his day, but he'll have to be more than brilliant to laugh this one off… I'm glad it was this way instead of the other, for more reasons than one. A little fresh air on the subject won't do any harm at all." The Saint stood up. "I'll go back to New Haven with you and help you fill in the picture. And somewhere along the line I've got to call a guy named Hamilton, who's going to be sore as a hangnail if he has to get this story out of his morning paper."
"Come over any time tomorrow," said Jetterick accommodatingly. "You've been through a hell of a lot, and I guess you could do with a rest."
"Let's do it tonight," said the Saint quietly.
He emptied an ashtray into the fireplace, and settled his coat; and it was as if everything began again.
He said: "There's still a war going on, and I don't know enough about tomorrow."
He went out and found Calvin Gray, and said goodnight to him; but Madeline followed him out to the car.
"You will be coming back, won't you?" she said.
"Very soon, I hope."
He had so many meanings in his mind that he couldn't help which one she chose from his voice. He sat beside the FBI man and gazed steadily ahead as the lane swam tortuously at them and swallowed them again. He wanted to believe that he might be going back there some day. There was no harm in hoping.