The Saint Intervenes (The Saint Series) Read online

  THE ADVENTURES OF THE SAINT

  Enter the Saint (1930), The Saint Closes the Case (1930), The Avenging Saint (1930), Featuring the Saint (1931), Alias the Saint (1931), The Saint Meets His Match (1931), The Saint Versus Scotland Yard (1932), The Saint’s Getaway (1932), The Saint and Mr Teal (1933), The Brighter Buccaneer (1933), The Saint in London (1934), The Saint Intervenes (1934), The Saint Goes On (1934), The Saint in New York (1935), Saint Overboard (1936), The Saint in Action (1937), The Saint Bids Diamonds (1937), The Saint Plays with Fire (1938), Follow the Saint (1938), The Happy Highwayman (1939), The Saint in Miami (1940), The Saint Goes West (1942), The Saint Steps In (1943), The Saint on Guard (1944), The Saint Sees It Through (1946), Call for the Saint (1948), Saint Errant (1948), The Saint in Europe (1953), The Saint on the Spanish Main (1955), The Saint Around the World (1956), Thanks to the Saint (1957), Señor Saint (1958), Saint to the Rescue (1959), Trust the Saint (1962), The Saint in the Sun (1963), Vendetta for the Saint (1964), The Saint on TV (1968), The Saint Returns (1968), The Saint and the Fiction Makers (1968), The Saint Abroad (1969), The Saint in Pursuit (1970), The Saint and the People Importers (1971), Catch the Saint (1975), The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace (1976), Send for the Saint (1977), The Saint in Trouble (1978), The Saint and the Templar Treasure (1978), Count On the Saint (1980), Salvage for the Saint (1983)

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2014 Interfund (London) Ltd.

  Foreword © 2014 Brad Mengel

  Introduction to “The Unfortunate Financier” originally published in The First Saint Omnibus (Hodder & Stoughton, October 1939)

  Introductory quote to “The Newdick Helicopter” originally published in “Instead of the Saint VIII” (The Saint Mystery Magazine, December 1965)

  Introduction to “The Sleepless Knight” originally published in The First Saint Omnibus (Hodder & Stoughton, October 1939)

  Publication History and Author Biography © 2014 Ian Dickerson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  ISBN-13: 9781477842720

  ISBN-10: 1477842721

  Cover design by David Drummond, www.salamanderhill.com

  To H. H. Gibson,

  Many years ago I resolved that you were one of the first people I must dedicate a book to. But time slips by, and it’s sadly easy to lose touch with someone who lives hundreds of miles away. So this comes very late, but I hope not too late; because even though this may be a bad book, if I hadn’t come under your guidance many years ago it would probably have been very much worse.

  CONTENTS

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  FOREWORD TO THE NEW EDITION

  THE INGENUOUS COLONEL

  THE UNFORTUNATE FINANCIER

  INTRODUCTION

  “The secret of…

  THE NEWDICK HELICOPTER

  A WORD…

  “I’m afraid,” said…

  THE PRINCE OF CHERKESSIA

  THE TREASURE OF TURK’S LANE

  THE SLEEPLESS KNIGHT

  INTRODUCTION

  If a great…

  THE UNCRITICAL PUBLISHER

  THE NOBLE SPORTSMAN

  THE DAMSEL IN DISTRESS

  THE LOVING BROTHERS

  THE TALL TIMBER

  THE ART PHOTOGRAPHER

  THE MAN WHO LIKED TOYS

  THE MIXTURE AS BEFORE

  PUBLICATION HISTORY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  WATCH FOR THE SIGN OF THE SAINT!

  THE SAINT CLUB

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  The text of this book has been preserved from the original edition and includes vocabulary, grammar, style, and punctuation that might differ from modern publishing practices. Every care has been taken to preserve the author’s tone and meaning, allowing only minimal changes to punctuation and wording to ensure a fluent experience for modern readers.

  FOREWORD TO THE NEW EDITION

  “What’s boodle?” you may ask yourself if you have picked up this volume of the adventures of Simon Templar, better known as the Saint. Looking at my handy dictionary, boodle is a term meaning loot, booty, or treasure. Well if that’s the case this book is full of boodle. The Saint stories are some of the great adventure stories of all time. Boodle (later retitled The Saint Intervenes) is a collection of fourteen short stories where the Saint intervenes in fourteen crimes, sometimes helping the police, other times helping those the police cannot help.

  The writings of Leslie Charteris have been a big influence on me and not just as a writer. The Saint showed me it was possible to fight crime and have a sense of humour. I remember a scene in one of the first Saint books I read where Simon and his merry men were hunting for an unknown criminal mastermind. Most writers would have made the hero refer to the unknown criminal as X, but Leslie Charteris and the Saint don’t work that way. No, the mystery villain was referred to as Pongo. It was this unconventional thinking that I loved and try to bring to my own writing and my own personal life. It was that attitude that I was trying to express when I got my first (and so far only) tattoo. It’s on my right arm and is the Saint stick figure—the same stick figure that once appeared at the end of each Saint book with the note, “Watch for the sign of the Saint, he will be back.”

  That’s the mark of a great character: you know that he will be back in some form or another. The Saint appeared in books and short stories, in comics, on the radio and film and TV. The last official appearance of a character called the Saint was the 1997 film starring Val Kilmer and the novelisation by Burl Barer. That character was very different from the one that appeared in the book you are reading. Barer also wrote an all-new adventure of the classic Saint at the same time called Capture the Saint. And now there’s a new TV show starring Adam Rayner in production.

  If I look closely I can see the Saint’s influence everywhere. There is a whole subgenre of gentleman adventurers with names like The Falcon, The Toff, The Baron, Captain Satan, and The Angel who were all inspired by the Saint. Even James Bond was influenced by Simon Templar.

  In the world of paperback originals of the 1970s we have series like The Arrow, about a disgraced police officer who now steals from criminals, and The Decoy, about a former thief who investigates crimes for kicks. Both of these characters seem to have some Saintly DNA. The plot of the movie Death Wish 3 is completely based on The Saint in New York.

  In the TV series White Collar, Neil Caffrey and FBI agent Peter Burke provide a fresh twist on the relationship between Simon Templar and Scotland Yard Inspector Claud Eustace Teal (a relationship portrayed beautifully in this book’s “The Man Who Liked Toys”). Nate Ford and his team in the TV series Leverage recreate the Saint’s knack for outconning various conmen (see “The Ingenuous Colonel” and “The Mixture as Before” amongst others in this volume). The Pretender TV series is about a man who takes revenge on people who abuse their power and authority, something the Saint was known to undertake on occasion (see “The Sleepless Knight”).

  I could continue on with shows, books, comics, and movies that all owe a debt to Leslie Charteris and the Saint, but none of them really capture the magic of the original stories. Simon Templar is an amazing character—a modern
day Robin Hood, a buccaneer relieving the ungodly of their ill-gotten boodle with a smile on his face and a quip on his lips. The Saint has an attitude towards life that never fails to lift my spirits.

  So read on and enjoy. Trust me, this book is full of boodle.

  —Brad Mengel (2014)

  THE INGENUOUS COLONEL

  Lieutenant-Colonel Sir George Uppingdon, it must be admitted, was not a genuine knight; neither, as a matter of fact, was he a genuine colonel. This is not to say that he thought that sandbags contained the material for making mortar shells, or that an observation post was a species of flagpole on which inquisitive generals hung at half-mast. But his military experience was certainly limited to a brief period during the latter days of the war when conscription had gathered him up and set him to the uncongenial task of peeling potatoes at Aldershot.

  Apart from that not inglorious interlude of strengthening the stomachs of the marching armies, his career had been far less impressive than the name he passed under seemed to indicate. Pentonville had housed him on one occasion, and he had also taken one short holiday at Maidstone.

  Nevertheless, although the expensive public school which had taught him his practical arithmetic had long since erased his name from its register of alumni, he had never lost his well-educated and aristocratic bearing, and with the passing of time had added to it a magnificent pair of white moustachios which were almost as valuable to him in his career.

  A slight tinge of the old-fashioned conservatism which characterized his style of dress clung equally limpet-like to the processes of his mind.

  “These new-fangled stunts are all very well,” he said doggedly. “But what happens to them? You work them once, and they receive a great deal of publicity, and then you can never use them again. How many of them will last as long as our tried and proved old friends?”

  His companion on that occasion, an equally talented Mr Sidney Immelbern—whose real name, as it happens, was Sidney Immelbern—regarded him gloomily.

  “That’s the trouble with you, George,” he said. “It’s the one thing which has kept you back from real greatness. You can’t get it into your head that we’ve got to move with the times.”

  “It has also kept me out of a great deal of trouble,” said the Colonel sedately. “If I remember rightly, Sid, when you last moved with the times, it was to Wormwood Scrubs.”

  Mr Immelbern frowned. There were seasons when he felt that George Uppingdon’s gentlemanly bearing had no real foundations of good taste.

  “Well,” he retorted, “your methods haven’t made us millionaires. Here it’s nearly two months since we made a touch, and we only got eight hundred from that Australian at Brighton.”

  Mr Immelbern’s terse statement being irrefutable, a long and somewhat melancholy silence settled down upon the partnership.

  Even by the elastic standards of the world in which they moved, it was an unusual combination. Mr Sidney Immelbern had none of the Colonel’s distinguished style—he was a stocky man with an unrefined and slightly oriental face, who affected check tweeds of more than dashing noisiness and had an appropriate air of smelling faintly of stables.

  But they had worked excellently together in the past, and only in such rare but human excesses of recrimination as that which has just been recorded did they fail to share a sublime confidence that their team technique would shine undimmed in brilliance through the future, as and when the opportunity arose.

  The unfortunate part was that the opportunity did not arise. For close upon eight weeks it had eluded them with a relentlessness which savoured of actual malice. True, there had been an American at the Savoy who had seemed a hopeful proposition, but he had turned out to be one of those curious people who sincerely disapprove of gambling on principle, and an equally promising leather merchant from Leicester had been recalled home by an ailing wife a few hours before they would have made their kill.

  The profession of confidence man requires capital—he must maintain a good appearance, invest lavishly in food and wine, and be able to wait for his profits. It was not surprising that Messrs Uppingdon and Immelbern should watch the dwindling of their resources with alarm, and at times give way to moments of spleen which in more prosperous days would never have smirched their mutual friendship.

  But with almost sadistic glee their opportunity continued to elude them. The lounge of the Palace Royal Hotel, where they sat sipping their expensive drinks, was a scene of life and gaiety, but the spirit of the place was not reflected in their faces. Among the lunch-time cocktail crowd of big business men, young well-groomed men, and all their chosen women, there appeared not one lonely soul with the unmistakable air of a forlorn stranger in the city whom they might tactfully accost, woo from his glum solitude with lunch and friendship, and in due course mulct of a contribution to their exchequer proportionate to his means. Fortune, they felt, had deserted them for ever. Nobody loved them.

  “It is,” admitted Lieutenant-Colonel Uppingdon, breaking the silence, “pretty bloody.”

  “It is,” concurred Mr Immelbern, and suddenly scowled at him. “What’s that?” he added.

  Somewhat vaguely, the Colonel was inclining his head. But the remarkable point was that he was not looking at Mr Immelbern.

  “What is what?” he inquired, making sure of his ground.

  “What’s that you’re staring at with that silly look on your face?” said Mr Immelbern testily.

  “That young fellow who just came in,” explained the Colonel. “He seemed to know me.”Mr Immelbern glanced over the room. The only man whom he was able to bring within the limits of his partner’s rather unsatisfactory description was just then sitting down at a table by himself a few places away—a lean and somehow dangerous-looking young man with a keen tanned face and very clear blue eyes. Instinctively Mr Immelbern groped around for his hat.

  “D’you mean he’s a fellow you swindled once?” he demanded hastily.

  Uppingdon shook his head. “Oh, no. I’m positive about that. Besides, he smiled at me quite pleasantly. But I can’t remember him at all.”

  Mr Immelbern relaxed slowly. He looked at the young man again with diminished apprehension. And gradually, decisively, a certain simple deduction registered itself in his practised mind.

  The young man had money. There was no deception about that. Everything about him pointed unobtrusively but unequivocally towards that one cardinal fact. His clothes, immaculately kept, had the unostentatious seal of Savile Row on every stitch of them. His silk shirt had the cachet of St. James’s. His shoes, brightly polished and unspotted by the stains of traffic, could never have been anything but custom made.

  He had just given his order to the waiter, and while he waited for it to arrive he was selecting a cigarette from a thin case which to the lay eye might have been silver, but which Mr Immelbern knew beyond all doubt was platinum.

  There are forms of instinct which soar beyond all physical explanations into the clear realms of clairvoyance. The homing pigeon wings its way across sightless space to the old roost. The Arabian camel finds the water-hole, and the pig detects the subterranean truffle. Even thus was the clairvoyance of Mr Immelbern.

  If there was one thing on earth which he could track down it was money. The affinity of the pigeon for its roost, the camel for the water-hole, the pig for the truffle, were as nothing to the affinity of Mr Immelbern for dough. He was in tune with it. Its subtle emanations floated through the ether and impinged on psychic antennae in his system which operated on a superheterodyne circuit.

  And while he looked at the young man who seemed to know Lieutenant-Colonel Uppingdon, that circuit was oscillating over all its tubes. He summarized his conclusions with an explicit economy of verbiage which Le Bruyère could not have pruned by a single syllable.

  “He’s rich,” said Mr Immelbern.

  “I wish I could remember where I met him,” said the Colonel, frowning over his own train of thought. “I hate to forget a face.”

&nb
sp; “You doddering old fool!” snarled Mr Immelbern, smiling at him affectionately. “What do I care about your memory? The point is that he’s rich, and he seemed to recognize you. Well, that saves a lot of trouble, doesn’t it?”

  The Colonel turned towards him and blinked. “What do you mean?”

  “Will you never wake up?” moaned Mr Immelbern, extending his cigarette-case with every appearance of affability. “Here you’ve been sitting whining and moping for half an hour because we don’t get a chance to make a touch, and when a chance does come along you can’t see it. What do I care where you met the man? What do I care if you never met him? He nodded to you, and he’s sitting two yards away—and you ask me what I mean!”

  The Colonel frowned at him for a moment. He was, as we have explained, a born traditionalist. He never allowed himself to be carried away. He deliberated. He calculated. He explored. He would, but for the ever-present stimulus of Mr Immelbern, have done as little as any other traditionalist.

  But gradually the frown faded, and a dignified smile took its place. “There may be something in what you say, Sid,” he conceded.

  “Go on,” ordered Mr Immelbern crudely. “Hop it. And try to wake your ideas up a bit. If somebody threw a purse into your lap, you’d be asking me what it was.”

  Lieutenant-Colonel Uppingdon gave him an aristocratically withering look, and rose sedately from the table. He went over to where the young man sat and coughed discreetly.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he said, and the young man looked up from his idle study of the afternoon’s runners at Sandown Park. “You must have thought me a trifle rude just now.”

  “Not at all,” said the young man amiably. “I thought you were busy and didn’t want to be bothered. How are things these days, George?”

  The Colonel suppressed a start. The use of his Christian name implied an intimacy that was almost alarming, but the young man’s pleasant features still struck no responsive chord in his memory.