The Saint in London (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 Zoë Sharp

  Preface from the Pan Books 1971 paperback

  Introduction to “The Simon Templar Foundation” from The First Saint Omnibus (Hodder & Stoughton, 1939)

  Historical note to “The Higher Finance” first published in The Saint Mystery Magazine (USA), October 1965

  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: 9781477842713

  ISBN-10: 1477842713

  Cover design by David Drummond, www.salamanderhill.com

  To

  Toots and Joanne

  Who have been helping for years

  CONTENTS

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  FOREWORD TO THE NEW EDITION

  PREFACE

  THE SIMON TEMPLAR FOUNDATION

  INTRODUCTION

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  THE HIGHER FINANCE

  A HISTORICAL NOTE…

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  THE ART OF ALIBI

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  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

  My treasured copy of The Misfortunes of Mr Teal—the original title of The Saint in London—sits open on my desk as I write this. It was the very first crime novel I can remember reading, given to me by my grandmother in 1979. I see from the faded inscription that she, in her turn, received it in 1941. So, you could say I have a very long-standing affection for the Saint stories in general, and for this book in particular.

  If my copy ever possessed a dust jacket, I don’t recall the look of it. The Hodder & Stoughton fabric binding is foxed, frayed, and faded to a delicate salmon pink, just as the pages have yellowed and darkened along the edges. But if ever there was a fire, it’s probably the first thing I’d rescue.

  They say the biggest journeys anyone can make are inside their own head. Well, the three novellas contained in this book started me off on my imaginative travels, and I’ve become a frequent flyer ever since. The Saint stories opened my eyes not only to crime fiction, but also to the possibility that the hero didn’t always have to be the policeman or the private eye. There was something so fresh and so right about Simon Templar, the Saint—the Robin Hood of the twentieth century. It’s hard to believe that Leslie Charteris tried out five different standalone characters before settling on Simon Templar as his series mainstay.

  The Robin Hood nomenclature is never more apt than in the first of the stories presented here—“The Simon Templar Foundation,” first seen in 1934 as “The Book of Fate.” This is a classic tale of taking from the rich and giving to the poor, throwing in double-cross and subterfuge, so that by the end of it the wealthy men being robbed are desperate to give their money away. Also thrown in is a huge dollop of the merciless baiting of Detective Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal of Scotland Yard that gave this 1934 collection its original name. The book was re-titled The Saint in England in the 1941 edition from Sun Dial Press, and Hodder & Stoughton themselves changed the title to the one you see here—The Saint in London—in 1942.

  Right from the opening line of the first story, I knew here was a character I was going to love. Debonair, charming, and handsome, as well as lethal, ruthless, and cheerfully firmly planted on the wrong side of the law. “The Saint had never been sure that he had a conscience at all, but if he had one there was certainly nothing on it.”

  The Saint’s tendency to rescue damsels in distress is the starting point for the second story, “The Higher Finance,” which first appeared as “On the Night of the 13th!” in 1934—in the same month as the first story. It demonstrates the innate humour present in all the Saint books and stories, the natural wit and elegant prose that still makes them such a joy to read today. Add in counterfeiting, intrigue surrounding a reclusive millionaire, a long-term prisoner, and a stalking danger that even Simon Templar, with his undoubted skills, doesn’t fancy tackling unarmed and you have all the ingredients for a rip-roaring tale.

  Finally, we come to “The Art of Alibi.” This first appeared a month after the other two stories, in March 1934, as “After the Murder…” This is one of my favourites, concerning a killer’s attempt to pass himself off as the Saint. No way is Simon Templar going to stand by idly while the imposter completes his grand plan, and the neat way the Saint infiltrates the gang, dropping his Tiger Moth practically into the garden of his quarry on a dead stick, is wonderful.

  The story mixes some great aerial dog-fighting scenes with even more devilish mockery of the unfortunate Mr Teal. Oh, and it also brings up the Saint’s car, a scarlet Hirondel capable of over seventy miles an hour. And let me tell you that driving at speeds in excess of a mile a minute was hellish quick i
n the 1930s! It took years before I discovered, to my utter disappointment, that Leslie Charteris had invented the vehicle for the books, and so I would never see one in the steel.

  The surrounding characters, such as the Saint’s major-domo, Orace, and his gangster pal sidekick, Hoppy Uniatz, are all highly entertaining, but the one who stands out head and shoulders above the rest is the Saint’s girlfriend, Patricia Holm. Looking back, there is probably a hint of Patricia in the ancestry of my own series heroine, Charlie Fox. Patricia is courageous and quick thinking—certainly a match for the Saint in smartness and cool. And she is perfectly capable of carrying out a bit of minor larceny on his behalf when the occasion demands. Who could ask for more?

  Reading The Misfortunes of Mr Teal again I can admit that, yes, it has become dated, but that was always the case for me. After all, it was already over forty years old when I first turned the opening page. I found the attitudes and opinions a lot less biased and jarring than in many other works of fiction from that era, and the author’s light, sure touch is always a delight. I still believe that when they adapted Fleming’s James Bond for the big screen, they added more than a pinch of Simon Templar’s style and wise-cracking humour into the mix.

  It’s my humble opinion that the Saint canon deserves to be at least as well-known as Bond, and in its original form rather than via the TV series or movies. They so often seemed to turn him into some kind of wet private eye. He was a criminal, with a jaunty attitude and a fast draw, able to talk, fight, shoot, drive, or fly his way out of trouble—and right back into it again.

  I hope you enjoy this edition of The Saint in London as much as I did the original version, all those years ago. It was truly one of the inspirations of my writing career.

  Long may Simon Templar rule!

  —Zoë Sharp

  PREFACE

  Just as a gown of Madame Pompadour would appeal to the average woman as a gorgeous and glamorous costume, whereas she would regard a five-year-old dress as merely unfashionable and probably frumpish, so there comes a period in the life of a book before it becomes a historical romance when it seems merely a bit dated and out of line with the reader’s subconscious standards of realism. And the more deceptively close it may be in style to the contemporary, the greater must be the reader’s irritation or perplexity when he suddenly comes upon some feature which clashes with his background of present-day assumptions. He doesn’t expect D’Artagnan to call the other Musketeers on the telephone, but he does have to perform an abrupt mental adjustment when a character in apparently modern dress can’t think of a quicker way to get from London to New York than on the newest and fastest ship.

  This is the awkward stage in which many of the early Saint books are caught today, including the present volume. But since publishers and readers seem to agree fairly unanimously that these books should still be reprinted, I feel that it may be in order to preface them with a word of warning before some unwary newcomer stubs his toe on an anachronism.

  I must make the point, therefore, that this book was published before Adolf Hitler came to power even in Germany, and ask you to remember for a moment (if you are ancient enough) how much the world has changed since then.

  Thus in the first story, you will realize that the World War referred to is the one which ended in 1918, and that for a considerable time thereafter the “Merchants of Death” theme was much more popular and plausible than it has since become.

  In the second story, you will appreciate that the description of a London nightclub, among other things, though fair enough at the time when it was written, bears absolutely no relation to the kind of pleasure dome that can be found in London today.

  And in the third story, you will recall that aviation in 1934 was a very long way behind what you have since come to accept as normal, so that the climax will not seem as incredible and absurd as it obviously would be if visualized in terms of the latest jet planes.

  If you can mate those concessions, and if you have a still unsatisfied curiosity about some of the Saint’s earlier exploits, I think you may not be badly entertained, and in a more light-hearted vein than could easily be achieved against the oppressive background of the kinds of conflict that we have to live with now.

  —Leslie Charteris (1971)

  THE SIMON TEMPLAR FOUNDATION

  INTRODUCTION

  Every hero of a continued series that I can think of has had a stooge. Sherlock Holmes had his Watson, Raffles had his Bunny, and their army of modern imitations is much too numerous to catalog. Nor am I even sure that Watson and Bunny are entitled to be cited as the originators of a fashion; for I seem to remember that Sancho Panza was stooging for Don Quixote a few centuries before either of those gentleman were thought of.

  Since it is not too easy to believe that so many writers, who in various other ways have exhibited positive symptoms of originality, should by some strange coincidence have accidentally imitated each other in this one respect with such remarkable unanimity, I am forced to wonder whether this whole idea of stoogeship or stoogery may not betray the functioning of some fundamental law which none of them was consciously aware of, some cosmic canon to which all heroes of crime stories are subject, whether they like it or not. It is much too glib to argue that the slow-wittedness, jitteriness, and conventionality which seem to be the common denominators of these stooges provide a perfect contrast with which to show off the brilliance, the audacity, and the dazzling personalities of their heroes. I am hard to convince, for instance, that Mr A J Raffles, with a nice jail sentence waiting for him at the first mistake, would have persistently entrusted his fate to a man like Bunny for no better reason than that it made it easier for Mr E W Hornung to write stories about him.

  Now I suppose this is no place for developing theories, and so I am just passing that one on to anybody who wants to play with it. I can, however, contribute one item of solid fact towards a study of the subject.

  The Saint started his literary career, and cheerfully sailed through eleven volumes of it, without any Sancho Panza. It is true that he was introduced in the first book with a slightly eccentric servant named Orace, who as a matter of fact is still with him, but Orace was never prominent enough to be called a stooge in this sense. It is also true that during several of his earlier adventures in London the Saint was assisted by a small set of amiable young men, some of whom he still mobilises occasionally. But one of them was killed, and all the others got married off when their turn came and at least partially retired from active service, without in any way crippling the Saint’s progress.

  The story ahead of you, therefore, can only be a belated but inexorable fulfillment of this form of destiny which I was suggesting. For in it was introduced a character who has been with the Saint ever since, and whom it seems impossible for the Saint ever again to be permanently without.

  I hereby cross my heart and swear that I never deliberately created him and manoeuvred him into this role. He arrived exactly as he is shown arriving here, without any premeditation whatsoever. He grew on to the Saint exactly as you can see him growing. And directly after the story was published, there was a public yell for more of him.

  The yell was unnecessary. By the time it became audible, he was already in the middle of another of the Saint’s adventures. The encore led automatically to a third appearance. After that, there was nothing more to yell about. It was obvious, and accepted as obvious, that he was a fixture. He is so obviously a fixture still, that the circumstances of his introduction may already be growing a little dim in memory. That is why I knew that this collection of stories simply had to include the first published appearance of our friend Mr Hoppy Uniatz.

  —Leslie Charteris (1939)

  From The First Saint Omnibus (Hodder & Stoughton)

  1

  There was nothing unusual about the fact that when Simon Templar landed in England he was expecting trouble. Trouble was his chosen vocation; the last ten years of his life had held enough of it to sat
isfy a couple of dozen ordinary men for three or four lifetimes, and it would have been surprising if after so many hectic events he had contemplated a future of rustic quietude, enlivened by nothing more thrilling than wild gambles on the laying abilities of leghorns. But it was perhaps more unusual that the particular trouble which he was expecting on this occasion could not be blamed on any fault of his.

  He came down the gangway of the Transylvania with a light step in the summer sunlight, with a soft grey hat canted rakishly over one eye, and a raincoat slung carelessly over his shoulder. There was death in his pocket and peril of an even deadlier kind under his arm, but he faced the Customs officer across his well-labelled luggage with an easy smile, and ran a humorous glance down the list of dutiable and prohibited articles presented for his inspection.

  “Yes,” he said, “I’m carrying large quantities of silk, perfume, wines, spirits, tobacco, cut flowers, watches, embroidery, eggs, typewriters, and explosives. I also have some opium and a couple of howitzers—”

  “You don’t have to be funny about it anyway,” grunted the official, and scrawled the cryptic hieroglyphics that passed him through with his two guns into England.

  He sauntered on through the bleak echoing shed, waving casual adieus to his acquaintances of the voyage. An American banker from Ohio, who had lost three thousand dollars to him over the poker-table, buttonholed him without malice.

  “See you look me up next time you’re in Wapakoneta,” he said.

  “I won’t forget,” Simon answered gravely.

  There was a girl with raven hair and deep grey eyes. She was very good to look upon, and Simon had sat out with her on the boat deck under the moon.

  “Perhaps you’ll be coming to Sacramento one day,” she said.

  “Maybe I will,” he said with a quick smile, and the deep grey eyes followed him rather wistfully out of sight.

  Other eyes followed the tall lean figure as it swung by, and carried their own pictures of the brown fighting face and the smile that touched the strong reckless mouth and the gay blue eyes. They belonged to a Miss Gertrude Tinwiddle, who had been seasick all the way over, and who would never have been taken onto the boat deck anyhow.