Call for the Saint (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 Peter Lovesey

  Introduction to “The Masked Angel” originally published in The Second Saint Omnibus (1951)

  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: 9781477842867

  ISBN-10: 1477842861

  Cover design by David Drummond, www.salamanderhill.com

  CONTENTS

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  FOREWORD TO THE NEW EDITION

  THE KING OF THE BEGGARS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  THE MASKED ANGEL

  INTRODUCTION

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  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

  I have Adolf Hitler to thank for my introduction to the Saint. In 1944 our home in suburban London was destroyed by a V1 flying bomb. I was eight and had just discovered the magic of reading, but understandably my cash-strapped parents now had other priorities than buying books—priorities such as putting a roof over our heads and food on our plates. I don’t know how many months passed—to me it seemed years—before my father came home with two second-hand volumes donated, I think, by the Women’s Voluntary Service. The titles weren’t promising. One was The Life of Sir Edward Marshall Hall and the other Alias the Saint. With my limited vocabulary I took “Alias” to be the name of some biblical figure beatified by the Pope, uplifting, no doubt, but not my idea of a good read. Marshall Hall’s life sounded marginally more promising and I opened this one first. It proved to be a gripping account of the career of a great barrister who was involved in many of the most colourful murder trials of the early twentieth century: the Brides in the Bath, the Green Bicycle Case, the Camden Town Murder, Madame Fahmy, and Seddon the poisoner. There was even a chapter on Dr Crippen, who unwisely rejected Marshall Hall’s line of defence. My reading improved overnight and I re-read the book several times before deciding I really should move on. With no great optimism, I turned to the book about the Saint and had my Road to Damascus moment. Simon Templar was emphatically not the saint I’d expected.

  People often ask writers about books that influenced them. I can trace my own interest in crime writing to those two books. One opened my eyes to the sinister drama of the real thing and the other to the joys to be had from fiction. Soon I was seeking out everything I could find by Leslie Charteris.

  So when I was asked all these years later to write the introduction to Call for the Saint, I was delighted to accept, but I confess to having qualms as to whether the Saint of my youth might disappoint after such a long interval. No chance. The two stories in this volume, “The King of the Beggars” and “The Masked Angel,” which I must have read in about 1948 when I was twelve, have held up well. By comparison, the best-selling modern writing of the same genre is colourless stuff. The appeal of the strong hero or heroine who operates outside the law has lasted into the present century and shows no sign of flagging. It sells more books than when the Saint was created in 1928. But there is a formulaic feel to much of the modern output. It’s written to pull in the greatest possible number of readers, using words of few syllables, short sentences, tough language, and glib expertise about firearms, drugs, and fast cars. “How do you think I feel?” one of the top names said in a Sunday Times interview. “I have to write this shit.”

  With Leslie Charteris, there’s joy in the writing. Returning to it, I’m as captivated as I was more than sixty years ago. There must have been plenty that went over my head as a boy, because he makes few concessions to the uneducated reader. Of Hoppy Uniatz, the Saint’s sidekick, we are told, “The small globule of protoplasm that lurked within his rock-bound skull, serving the nominal function of a brain, piloted his anthropoidal body exclusively along paths of action, primitive and direct, unencumbered by any subtleties of thought or teleological considerations.” You won’t find a sentence like that in a modern paperback. Nor will you find references to Cerberus, stygian gloom, François Villon, and rococo perspectives. At Rossall School and, briefly, Kings College, Cambridge, and through his own reading, the creator of the Saint forged a style that was as polished as it was playful. The breadth of his vocabulary demonstrates that popular writing doesn’t need to be dumbed down for the dim-witted reader. Mainly for me the pleasure of the books is that they are a breeze. The Saint is consistently optimistic and confident. There’s never a suspicion that he’ll lose his cool. Even in a professional boxing match (and there’s a big one in these pages) you don’t doubt his ability. I’ll say no more about that. Call for the Saint shows Simon Templar at the top of his form. Some of the wit could have come from Wodehouse and so
me from Runyon.

  In 1992, the Crime Writers’ Association decided to present Leslie Charteris with the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger, an honour previously bestowed on Eric Ambler, P.D. James, John le Carré, Dick Francis, and Ruth Rendell. For me, as chairman, this was a kind of fulfilment. For Leslie, it could have been an ordeal. “At my age (eighty-four),” he wrote back to me, “it calls for considerable audacity to promise to do anything so far as eight months ahead, but I will take a chance and say that if I am alive and kicking on May 7 next year I shall be most humbly happy to accept the honour which you have so unexpectedly offered me.” His health was deteriorating, but he rose brilliantly to the occasion. As tall, suave, and good-looking as his famous creation, he held a press conference and answered questions with wry comments about the cars he had owned and his pearl-fishing and his days as a professional bridge-player. When questioned about an alleged affair with Jean Harlow he switched the subject neatly to Marlene Dietrich. He lightly dismissed the writing of all the novels. Everyone who was present at the House of Lords that May evening will recall his modesty and wit when he accepted the Diamond Dagger, a speech rendered without notes, just the help of a few G&Ts. “I suppose I can now put the letters DD after my name,” he joked. “I might be confused with Doctors of Divinity, though my studies of saints were rather less reputable.”

  He died the following year, aged eighty-five. In Who’s Who, his recreations were listed as “eating, drinking, horse-racing and loafing.” Ellery Queen wrote in 1947, the year before Call for the Saint appeared, “The Saint exists—there’s no doubt of that. But the truth, the real truth, is staggeringly simple: the Saint is not Simon Templar—he is Leslie Charteris.”

  —Peter Lovesey

  THE KING OF THE BEGGARS

  1

  “Sins of commission,” said Simon Templar darkly, “are very bad for the victim. But sins of omission are usually worse for the criminal.”

  The only perceptible response was a faint ping as a BB shot ricochetted from an imitation Sèvres vase which had been thoughtfully placed in a corner. Hoppy Uniatz shrugged shoulders that would not have disgraced a gorilla, popped another BB in his mouth, and expelled it in the wake of its predecessor, with better aim. This time the ping was followed by a faint rattle.

  “Bull’s-eye,” he announced proudly. “I’m getting better.”

  “That,” said the Saint, “depends on what field of endeavour you’re talking about.”

  Mr Uniatz felt no offence. His speed and accuracy on the draw might be highly regarded in some circles, but he had never claimed to compete in tournaments of subtlety. Anything the Saint said was okay with him.

  He had not yet even wondered why they had stayed in Chicago for three days without any disclosed objective. In the dim abyss of what must perfunctorily be called Hoppy’s mind was some vague idea that they were hiding out, though he could not quite understand why. Murder, arson, and burglary had not figured in the Saint’s recent activities, which in itself was an unusual circumstance.

  However, Mr Uniatz had spent some time in Chicago before, and he still found it difficult to walk along State Street without instinctively ducking whenever he saw brass buttons. If Simon Templar chose to remain in this hotel suite, there were probably reasons. Hoppy’s only objection was that he would have liked to kill time at the burlesque show three blocks south, but since this didn’t seem to be in the cards, he had bought himself a bagful of BB shot and was taking a simple childlike pleasure in practising oral marksmanship.

  Meanwhile the Saint sat by the window with a pair of high-powered binoculars in his hand, staring from time to time through the lenses at the street below. Mr Uniatz did not understand this either, but he had no wish to seem uncooperative on that account.

  “Boss,” he said, “maybe I should take a toin wit’ de peepers.”

  Simon lowered the glasses again.

  “And just what would you look for?” he inquired interestedly.

  “I dunno, boss,” confessed Mr Uniatz. “But I could look.”

  “You’re such a help to me,” said the Saint.

  Strange emotions chased themselves across Hoppy’s unprepossessing face, not unlike those of a man who has been butted in the midriff by an invisible goat. His mouth hung open, and his small eyes had a stricken expression.

  The Saint had a momentary qualm of conscience. Perhaps his sarcasm had been unduly harsh. He hastened to soften the affront to an unprecedented sensitivity.

  “No kidding,” he said. “I’m going to have plenty for you to do, soon enough.”

  “Boss,” Mr Uniatz said anxiously, “I think I swallered a BB.”

  Simon sighed.

  “I don’t think it’ll hurt you. Anyone who’s eaten as much canned heat as you have shouldn’t worry about the ingestion of a tiny globule of lead.”

  “Yeah,” Hoppy said blankly. “Well, watch me make another bull’s-eye.”

  Reassured, he popped another BB in his mouth and expelled it at the vase.

  Simon picked up the binoculars again. Outside, the traffic hummed past dimly, ten stories below. From the distance came the muted roar of the Elevated. For several seconds he focused on the street intently.

  Then he said, “You might as well keep up with the play. We were talking about sins of omission, and have you noticed that woman across the street, near the alley?”

  “De witch? Chees, what a bag,” Mr Uniatz said. “Sure I seen her. I drop a coin in her cup every time I go by.” He grimaced. “When I get dat old, I hope I drop dead foist.”

  “So she’s a professional beggar. But she’s only been there two days. There was a blind man on that corner before. What do you think happened to him?”

  “Maybe he ain’t so blind, at dat. He gets a load of her and beats it.”

  The Saint shook his head.

  “She’s been committing sins, Hoppy.”

  “At her age?”

  “Sins of omission. She’s never on her corner at night. And she wasn’t there Saturday afternoon.”

  “Okay. Maybe she gets tired.”

  “Beggars don’t get tired at the most profitable homes,” Simon said. “It’s the theatre crowds that pay off. I’m wondering why she’s never around when she’d have a chance to get some real moola.”

  Hoppy had a flash of perspicacity.

  “Is dat why we been hanging around her?”

  “I’ve been waiting for something. I don’t know what, but…I think this is it!”

  The Saint was suddenly standing up, dropping the binoculars into a chair which seemed to have ejected him with a spontaneous convulsion of its springs. He was out of the apartment before Hoppy could decide what to do with the BB in his mouth.

  This problem, proved far too difficult for snap judgment. Hoppy was still rolling the shot on his tongue when he joined the Saint at the elevator.

  “This is the first time I’ve regretted being ten stories up,” Simon said, leaning heavily on the button. His eyes were no longer lazy; they were blue flames. “Hoppy, I’m going to walk down. You take the elevator. If you win the race, find out why that beggar woman just went up the alley with a man who looked exactly as if he had a gun in her back.”

  “But—” Mr Uniatz began, and closed his mouth as the Saint whipped out of sight through a door marked “STAIRWAY.” He made sure that his Betsy was with him, in Betsy’s comfortable leather nest under his coat. But he still kept the last BB on his tongue. A guy never knew when he might need ammunition.

  2

  Simon Templar turned into the alley and was instantly alone in improbable isolation. Two blocks away, on Michigan Boulevard, sleek cars were tooling along their traffic lanes, and people were strolling on the sidewalks, safe and secure, because dozens of casual eyes were flicking past them. But as he turned the corner that world dropped into another dimension, forcing remembrance of itself only by the roar of traffic coming in from behind him and before him, yet at the same time made even more remote by t
he knowledge that the sound of a shot would probably go unheard in Chicago’s noisy morning song. And in the backwater where he had landed there was nothing but the old woman, the gunman, and himself.

  The man was backed up against a wall, rubbing his eyes furiously with his left hand, while his right waved a heavy automatic jerkily before him. The beggar woman was holding a gun, too, but her finger was not on the trigger. She seemed to be trying to get close enough to grab the automatic from the man’s grip. Her rags flapped grotesquely as she jigged about with surprising agility for a woman who had previously seemed to be crippled by a combination of rheumatism, arthritis, and senility.

  A whiff of something sharp and acrid stung the Saint’s nostrils. He recognised ammonia, and instantly realised why the gunman was scrubbing so frantically at his eyes. But the advantage of an ammonia gun is to disarm the enemy through surprise. The cursing gentleman with the automatic was not yet disarmed, and at any moment he was just as likely to start shooting at random.

  The Saint stopped running, side-stepped silently, and came on again on his toes. He took two quick steps forward and brought the edge of his hand down sharply on the gunman’s wrist, and the automatic clattered to the ground. The Saint’s swooping movement was almost continuous, and when he straightened he had the butt of the automatic cuddled into his palm. He listened for a moment.

  “What language!” he remarked reprovingly. “You’re liable to bite your tongue, Junior.”

  He batted the gunman lightly on the chin with his automatic, and the resultant inarticulate mouthings seemed to prove that the Saint’s warning had been justified.

  The beggar woman looked like a puppet whose strings had stopped moving. Her dirt-rimmed eyes glared at the Saint in indecision, and her puffy features twisted unpleasantly. And yet as the Saint gazed at her he felt the stirring of a preposterous intuition.

  “What’s eatin’ de old witch?” Mr Uniatz demanded from somewhere in the background. “No ya don’t!” He deftly intercepted the woman as she made a dart for safety. “Not wit’out ya broomstick ya don’t make no getaway. Gimme dat rod.”