The Saint versus Scotland Yard (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 Matt Lynn

  Preface from early editions of The Saint Versus Scotland Yard

  Introduction to “The Million Pound Day” from The First Saint Omnibus (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: 9781477842676

  ISBN-10: 1477842675

  Cover design by David Drummond, www.salamanderhill.com

  To Pauline

  For Happy Days

  CONTENTS

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  FOREWORD TO THE NEW EDITION

  PREFACE: BETWEEN OURSELVES, BY LESLIE CHARTERIS

  THE INLAND REVENUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  THE MILLION POUND DAY

  INTRODUCTION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  THE MELANCHOLY JOURNEY OF MR TEAL

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  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

  You can debate endlessly what makes the Saint such an enduring character. Partly it is the energy and wit of Leslie Charteris’s writing: the stories take off at a hundred miles an hour and speed up after that. Partly because in their mixture of gadgets and exotic locations, the stories introduced a new world to readers still stuck in an old one. But for me, it is because Simon Templar was essentially a cowboy—someone who was outside the law and outside the usual confines of society, and yet who was still a hero, righting wrongs, even if it was on his own terms.

  The Saint Versus Scotland Yard is one of the books in which that comes through most clearly. And nowhere more so than in the novella “The Inland Revenue.”

  Every writer has had his or her brushes with the Revenue. It is in the nature of the work. You get paid irregularly, often with quite large sums (followed disappointingly by very small ones), and often from a whole host of different countries, each with their own tax codes. Writers by their nature are not very good at keeping records, or bothering themselves with the details of their tax returns. Whether Leslie Charteris ever spent one of those tedious days sorting through his paperwork with a pedantic tax inspector, I don’t know. I imagine he did, and whilst trying to remember whether that two hundred pounds was from Australia or Spain in 1929 or 1930, he hatched the plot for the novella “The Inland Revenue.”

  It is classic Saint. It turns out that Templar has written a novel, and now the Revenue is chasing him for the taxes owed on it. He doesn’t have the cash. Of course, the Saint can’t actually defeat Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs: that would be beyond even his powers. Instead, he hatches a cunning plan to lay his hands on the money by capturing a notorious blackmailer. It is an audacious tale, brilliantly told.

  The two other stories are just as good. In “The Million Pound Day” Templar uncovers a plot to undermine a new Italian currency (a plot device that a writer might well be able to resurrect if the euro collapses). And in “The Melancholy Journey of Mr Teal” Templar sets himself the goal of amassing one hundred thousand dollars in his bank account, enough, he reckons, for him to retire (things clearly cost less in 1932 when the book was published). Both of them are a master class in concise, impactful storytelling.

  Charteris was an amazingly consistent writer. He knocked out dozens of books, and there is hardly a dud among them. But these stories from his 1930s heyday are among the best, perfect for new and old fans alike.

  —Matt Lynn

  PREFACE:

  BETWEEN OURSELVES, BY LESLIE CHARTERIS

  Now that the last line of this, the eighth book about the Saint, has been written and blotted and passed on to its fate, I begin to wonder whether anyone has realised why I should have carried on with him so long.

  Eight books, comprising some twenty adventures of the same character, is a pretty impressive sequence. I am not sure if it has yet broken the record for fictional biographies, but I’m quite sure that it’s going to. For there is going to be more.

  And why?

  Because, in spite of the wrath of The Gotherington Gazette and Argus, and the patronising paragraphs of The Tarsus (Tennessee) Tribune, I sincerely believe that those eight books were well worth writing, and that the next eight will be even better.

  Personally, I like the Saint—but maybe I’m prejudiced.

  He is my protest against the miserable half-heartedness of these days. To him you may say—as has always been said to me—“One day you will settle down. One day you’ll lose this you
thful impetuosity and impatience, and settle down to a normal life. It is one of the things that happen.” But he will not believe you. Because it will not be true.

  This rubbing off of corners, this settling down, this normal life! You have tried so hard to make Youth believe you, with your specious arguments about civilisation, your weight of pot-bellied disapproval, your cheap and facile sneers!

  You have taken the wine and the laughter,

  The pride and the grace of days.

  You tried to make me believe you when I was younger, but I knew better. And so you shall not shake the faith of anyone who reads a line of mine.

  You are surprised? You are slightly shocked that any writer of mere “thrillers” should have the impertinence to take himself seriously?

  I am sorry for you.

  But you may still read of the Saint. He will at least entertain you. For his philosophy—and mine—is happy. You will be bored with no dreary introspections about death and doom, as in the works of your dyspeptic little Russians. You will not find him gloating interminably over the pimples on his immortal soul, as do the characters of your septic little scribblers in Bloomsbury.

  Of course, if you will only admit into the sacred realms of “literature” those adventure stories in which the fighting is done with swords and the travelling on horseback, I can only amuse your idle moments. But even that is worthwhile. I shall be a breath of fresh air to you, and it will do you a lot of good.

  Or are you of our own mettle?

  Then come with us. And if your faith is weakening, if you have begun to believe the lies or fear the mockery of the fools who have never been young, the Saint and I will inspire you.

  We will go out and find more and more adventures. We will swagger and swashbuckle and laugh at the half-hearted. We will boast and sing and throw our weight about. We will put the paltry little things to derision, and dare to be angry about the things that are truly evil. And we shall refuse to grow old.

  Being wise, we shall not rail against the days into which we have been born. We shall see stumbling blocks, but we shall find them dragons meet for our steel. And we shall not mourn the trappings and accoutrements of fancy dress. What have they to do with us? Men wore cloaks and ruffles because they were the fashionable things to wear, but it was the way they wore them. Men rode horses because they had nothing else to ride, but it was the way they rode. Men fought with swords because they knew no better weapons, but it was the way they fought. So it shall be with us.

  We shall learn that romance lies not in the things we do, but in the way we do them. We shall discover that catching a bus can be no less of an adventure than capturing a galleon, and that if a man loves a lady he need not weep because the pillion of his motor-cycle is not the saddlebow of an Arab steed. We shall find that love and hate can still be more than empty words. We shall speak with fire in our eyes and in our voices, and which of us will care whether we are discussing the destiny of nations or the destination of the Ashes? For we shall know that nothing else counts beside the vision.

  Hasta la vista, companeros valientes! Y vayan con Dios!

  THE INLAND REVENUE

  CHAPTER 1

  Before the world at large had heard even one lonely rumour about the gentleman who called himself, among other things, the Scorpion, there were men who knew him in secret. They knew him only as the Scorpion, and by no other name, and where he came from and where he lived were facts that certain of them would have given much to learn.

  It is merely a matter of history that one of these men had an unassailable legal right to the name of Montgomery Bird, which everyone will agree was a very jolly sort of name for a bloke to have.

  Mr Montgomery Bird was a slim and very dapper little man, and although it is true he wore striped spats there were even more unpleasant things about him which were not so noticeable but which it is the chronicler’s painful duty to record. He was, for instance, the sole proprietor of a night club officially entitled the Eyrie, but better and perhaps more appropriately known as the Bird’s Nest, which was a very low night club. And in this club, on a certain evening, he interviewed the Scorpion.

  That Simon Templar happened to be present was almost accidental.

  Simon Templar, in fact, having for some time past cherished a purely business-like interest in the affairs of Mr Montgomery Bird, had decided that the time was ripe for that interest to bear its fruit.

  The means by which he became a member of the Eyrie are not known. Simon Templar had his own private ways of doing these things. It is enough that he was able to enter the premises unchallenged. He was saluted by the doorkeeper, climbed the steep stairs to the converted loft in which the Eyrie had its being, collected and returned the welcoming smile of the girl at the reception desk, delivered his hat into the keeping of a liveried flunkey, and passed on unquestioned. Outside the glass doors that separated the supper-room from the lounge he paused for a moment, lighting a cigarette, while his eyes wandered lazily over the crowd. He already knew that Mr Bird was in the habit of spending the evening among his guests, and he just wanted to make sure about that particular evening. He made sure, but his subsequent and consequent movements were forced to diverge slightly from schedule, as will be seen.

  Mr Bird had met the Scorpion before. When a waiter came through and informed him that a gentleman who would give no name was asking to speak to him, Mr Bird showed no surprise. He went out to the reception desk, nodded curtly to the visitor, signed him under the name of J. N. Jones, and led the way into his private office without comment.

  He walked to his desk, and there he stopped and turned.

  “What is it now?” he asked shortly, and the visitor shrugged his broad shoulders.

  “Must I explain?”

  Mr Bird sat down in his swivel chair, rested his right ankle on his left knee, and leaned back. The fingers of one carefully manicured hand played a restless tattoo on the desk.

  “You had a hundred pounds only last week,” he said.

  “And since then you have probably made at least three hundred,” replied the visitor calmly.

  He sat on the arm of another chair, and his right hand remained in the pocket of his overcoat. Mr Bird, gazing at the pocket, raised one cynical eyebrow.

  “You look after yourself well.”

  “An elementary precaution.”

  “Or an elementary bluff.”

  The visitor shook his head.

  “You might test it—if you are tired of life.”

  Mr Bird smiled, stroking his small moustache.

  “With that—and your false beard and smoked glasses—you’re an excellent imitation of a blackguard,” he said.

  “The point is not up for discussion,” said the visitor smoothly. “Let us confine ourselves to the object of my presence here. Must I repeat that I know you to be a trader in illicit drugs? In this very room, probably, there is enough material evidence to send you to penal servitude for five years. The police, unaided, might search for it in vain. The secret of your ingenious little hiding-place under the floor in that corner might defy their best efforts. They do not know that it will only open when the door of this room is locked and the third and fifth sections of the wainscoting on that wall are slid upwards. But suppose they were anonymously informed—”

  “And then found nothing there,” said Montgomery Bird, with equal suavity.

  “There would still be other suggestions that I could make,” said the visitor.

  He stood up abruptly.

  “I hope you understand me,” he said. “Your offences are no concern of mine, but they would be a great concern of yours if you were placed in the dock to answer for them. They are also too profitable for you to be ready to abandon them—yet. You will therefore pay me one hundred pounds a week for as long as I choose to demand it. Is that sufficiently plain?”

  “You—”

  Montgomery Bird came out of his chair with a rush.

  The bearded man was not disturbed. Only hi
s right hand, in his overcoat pocket, moved slightly.

  “My—er—elementary bluff is still waiting your investigation,” he said dispassionately, and the other stopped dead.

  With his head thrust a little forward, he stared into the tinted lenses that masked the big man’s eyes.

  “One day I’ll get you—you—swine.”

  “And until that day, you will continue to pay me one hundred pounds a week, my dear Mr Bird,” came the gentle response. “Your next contribution is already due. If it is not troubling you too much—”

  He did not bother to complete the sentence. He simply waited.

  Bird went back to the desk and opened a drawer. He took out an envelope and threw it on the blotter.

  “Thank you,” said the visitor.

  His fingers had just touched the envelope when the shrill scream of a bell froze him into immobility. It was not an ordinary bell. It had a vociferous viciousness about it that stung the eardrums—something like the magnified buzzing of an infuriated wasp.

  “What is that?”

  “My private alarm.”

  Bird glanced at the illuminated clock on the mantelpiece, and the visitor, following the glance, saw that the dial had turned red.

  “A police raid?”

  “Yes.”

  The big man picked up the envelope and thrust it into his pocket.

  “You will get me out of here,” he said.

  Only a keen ear would have noticed the least fraying of the edges of his measured accents, but Montgomery Bird noticed it, and looked at him curiously.

  “If I didn’t—”

  “You would be foolish—very foolish,” said the visitor quietly.

  Bird moved back, with murderous eyes. Set in one wall was a large mirror; he put his hands to the frame of it and pushed it bodily sideways in invisible grooves, revealing a dark rectangular opening.

  And it was at that moment that Simon Templar, for his own inscrutable reasons, tired of his voluntary exile.

  “Stand clear of the lift gates, please,” he murmured.