Read The Saint Closes the Case for Free Online

gently on his thumb-nail
and lighted it with slow and exaggerated deliberation. In such
pregnant silences of irrelevant pantomime he always waited for the seeds he had sown to germinate spontaneously in the brains of his audience.
    Conway spoke first.
    “If there should be another war—— ”
    “Who is waiting for a chance to make
war?” asked Norman Kent.
    The Saint picked up a selection of the papers
he had been reading before they came, and passed them over. Page
after page was scarred with blue pencillings. He had marked many strangely
separated things—a proclamation of Mussolini, the speech of a French delegate
before the League of Nations, the story of a break in the Oil Trust
involving the rearrangement of two hundred million pounds of capital, the
announcement of a colossal merger of chemical interests, the latest move ments of
warships, the story of an outbreak of rioting in India, the story
of an inspired bull raid on the steel market, and much else that he had
found of amazing significance, even down to the arrest of an English tourist
hailing from Man chester and rejoicing in the name of Pinheedle, for
punching the nose of a policeman in Wiesbaden. Roger Conway and Norman Kent
read, and were incredulous.
    “But people would never stand for another
war so soon,” said Conway. “Every country is disarming—— ”
    “Bluffing with everything they know, and
hoping that one day somebody’ll be taken in,” said the Saint. “And
every na tion scared stiff of the rest, and ready to arm again at
any no tice. The people never make or want a war—it’s sprung on them by the statesmen with the
business interests behind them, and
somebody writes a ‘We-Don’t-Want-to-Lose-You-but-We- Think-you-Ought-to-Go’ song for the brass bands to
play, and millions of poor fools go out and die like heroes without ever being quite sure what it’s all about. It’s
happened before. Why shouldn’t it happen again?”
    “People,” said Norman Kent,
“may have learnt their les son.”
    Simon swept an impatient gesture.
    “Do people learn lessons like that so
easily? The men who could teach them are a past generation now. How many are
left who are young enough to convince our generation? And even if we
are on the crest of a wave of literature about the horrors of war, do
you think that cuts any ice? I tell you, I’ve listened till I’m
tired to people of our own age discussing those books and
plays—and I know they cut no ice at all. It’d be a miracle if they
did. The mind of a healthy young man is too optimistic. It
leaps to the faintest hint of glory, and finds it so easy to forget
whole seas of ghastliness. And I’ll tell you more. …”
    And he told them of what he had heard from
Barney Ma lone.
    “I’ve given you the facts,” he
said. “Now, suppose you saw a man rushing down the street with a contorted
face, scream ing his head off, foaming at the mouth, and brandishing a large
knife dripping with blood. If you like to be a fool, you can tell
yourself that it’s conceivable that his face is contorted because
he’s trying to swallow a bad egg, he’s screaming be cause someone has
trodden on his pet corn, he’s foaming at the mouth because
he’s just eaten a cake of soap, and he’s just killed a chicken for
dinner and is tearing off to tell his aunt all about it. On the other hand,
it’s simpler and safer to assume that he’s a homicidal maniac. In the same
way, if you like to be fools, and refuse to see a complete story in what spells a complete story to me,
you can go home.”
    Roger Conway swung one leg over the arm of
his chair and rubbed
his chin reflectively.
    “I suppose,” he said, “our job
is to find Tiny Tim and see that he doesn’t pinch the invention while the
Cabinet are still deciding what they’re going to do about it?”
    The Saint shook his head.
    For once, Roger Conway, who had always been
nearest to the Saint in all things, had failed to divine his
leader’s train of