11 The Brighter Buccaneer Page 12

  "Very well, brother. There's no compulsion at all. Any state­ment you like to make will be made of your own free will." He drew one of the man's bared feet closer to his little fire. "If you change your mind," he remarked genially, "you need only make one of those eloquent gurgling noises of yours, and I ex­pect I shall understand."

  It was only five minutes before the required gurgling noise came through the gag. But after the gag had been taken out it was another five minutes before the red-faced prisoner's speech became coherent enough to be useful.

  Simon left him there, and met Teal in the hotel at half past seven. "The treaty is pushed under the carpet in Whipple­thwaite's study," he said.

  The detective's pose of mountainous sleepiness failed him for once in his life. "As near as that?" he ejaculated. "Good Lord!"

  The Saint nodded. "I don't think you'll have to worry your heads about whether he'll prosecute," he said. "The man's mentally deficient-I thought so from the beginning. And my special treatment hasn't improved his balance a lot ...

  "As a general rule, problems in detection bore me stiff-it's so much more entertaining to commit the crime yourself-but this one had its interesting points. A man who could hate a harmless ass like that enough to try and ruin him in such an elaborate way is a bit of a museum specimen. You know, Claud, I've been thinking about those brilliant ideas you say policemen get sometimes; it strikes me that the only thing you want --"

  "Tell me about it when I come back," said Teal, looking at his watch. "I'd better see Whipplethwaite at once and get it over with."

  "Give him my love," drawled the Saint, dipping his nose into the pint of beer which the detective had bought for him. "He'll get his satisfaction all right when you arrest Vallance."

  The detective stood stock still and stared at him with an owl-like face. "Arrest who?" he stammered.

  "Mr. Spencer Vallance-the bloke who put insomnia tablets in Whipplethwaite's dyspepsia bottle at lunch-time, nipped up to Whipplethwaite's room for the key, opened the safe, replaced the key, and then staggered out of the study bellowing that he'd been sandbagged. The bloke I've just been having words with," said the Saint. -- Teal leaned back rather limply against the bar.

  "Good Lord alive, Templar"

  "You meant well, Claud," said the Saint kindly. "And it was quite easy really. The only difficult part was that insomnia-tablet business. But I figured that the culprit might want to make quite sure that Joseph would be sleeping soundly when he buzzed up for the key, and the method was just an idea of mine. Then I saw that Joseph's insomnia dope was white, while his indigestion muck was light grey, and I guessed he must have been short-sighted to fall for the change-over.

  "When I looked up at the house it was quite obvious that if anyone could climb down that flying buttress, someone else could just as easily climb up. That's why I was going to say something about your brilliant police ideas."

  The Saint patted the detective consolingly on the back. "Policemen are swell so long as they plod along in their methodical way and sort out facts-they catch people that way quite often. But directly they get on to a really puzzling case, and for some reason it strikes them that they ought to be Great Detectives just for once-they fall down with the gooseberries. I've noticed those symptoms of detectivosis in you before, Claud. You ought to keep a tighter hand on yourself."

  "How long have you known it wasn't Whipplethwaite?" asked Teal.

  "Oh, for months," said the Saint calmly. "But when your elephantine hints conjured up the vision of Joseph creeping stealthily down from the balcony upon his foe, couldn't you see a sort of grisly grotesqueness about it? I could. To stage a crime so that another man would naturally be suspected re­quires a certain warped efficiency of brain. To think for a mo­ment that Joseph could have produced a scheme like that was the sort of brilliant idea that only a policeman in your condi­tion would get. How on earth could Joseph have worked all that out?"

  The Saint smiled blandly. "He's only a politician."

  The Unpopular Landlord

  THERE were periods in Simon Templar's eventful life when that insatiable wanderlust which had many times sent him half-way round the world on fantastic quests that somehow never materialised in quite the way they had been intended to, invaded even his busy life in London. He became bored with looking out on to the same street scene from his windows every day, or he saw some other domicile on the market which appealed to his catholic taste in residences, or else he moved be­cause he thought that too long an interval of stability would weaken his resistance to regular hours and Times-reading and other low forms of human activity. At these periods he would change his address with such frequency that his friends des­paired of ever establishing contact with him again. It was one of the few aimless things he did; and it never provided any exciting sequels-except on this one historic occasion which the chronicler has to record.

  Simon Templar awoke on this particular morning with that familiar feeling of restlessness upon him; and, having nothing else of importance to distract him that day, he sallied forth to interview an estate agent. This interviewing of estate agents is a business that is quite sufficient to discourage any migratory urges which may afflict the average man; but Simon Templar had become inured to it over the course of years. He sought out the offices of Messrs. Potham & Spode, obtained the services of Mr. Potham, and prepared to be patient.

  Mr. Potham was a thin, angular man with grey hair, gold-rimmed spectacles, and a face that receded in progressive stages from his eyebrows to the base of his neck. He was a harmless man enough, kind to his children and faithful to his wife, a man whose income tax returns were invariably honest to the uttermost farthing; but twenty years of his profession had had their inevitable effect.

  "I want," said the Saint distinctly, "an unfurnished non-serv­ice flat, facing south or west, with four large rooms, and a good, open outlook, at not more than five hundred a year."

  Mr. Potham rummaged through a large file, and eventually, with an air of triumph, drew forth a sheet.

  "Now here," he said, "I think we have the very thing you're looking for. No. 101, Park Lane: one bedroom, one reception-room --"

  "Making four rooms," murmured the Saint patiently.

  Mr. Potham peered at him over the rims of his glasses and sighed. He replaced the sheet carefully, and drew forth an­other.

  "Now this," he said, "seems to suit all your requirements. There are two bed, two reception, kitchen and bath; and the rent is extremely moderate. Our client is actually paying fifteen hundred a year, exclusive of rates; but in order to secure a quick let he is ready to pass on the lease at the very reasonable rent of twelve hundred --"

  "I said five hundred," murmured the Saint.

  Mr. Potham turned back to his file with a hurt expression.

  "Now here, Mr. Templar," he said, "we have No. 27, Cloudesley Street, Berkeley Square --"

  "Which faces north," murmured the Saint.

  "Does it?" said Mr. Potham in some pain.

  "I'm afraid it does," said the Saint ruthlessly. "All the odd numbers in Cloudesley Street do."

  Mr. Potham put back the sheet with the air of an adoring mother removing her offspring from the vicinity of some stran­ger who had wantonly smacked it. He searched through his file for some time before he produced his next offering.

  "Well, Mr. Templar," he said, adjusting his spectacles rather nervously, "I have here a very charming service flat --"

  Simon Templar knew from bitter experience that this proc­ess could be prolonged almost indefinitely; but that day he had one or two helpful ideas.

  "I saw a flat to let as I came along here-just round the cor­ner, in David Square," he said. "It looked like the sort of thing I'm wanting, from the outside."

  "David Square?" repeated Mr. Potham, frowning. "I don't think I know of anything there."

  "It had a Potham and Spode board hung out," said the Saint relentlessly "Perhaps Spode hung it up one dark night when you weren't looking."
/>   "David Square!" re-echoed Mr. Potham, like a forsaken bass in an oratorio. "David Square!" He polished his spectacles agitatedly, burrowed into his file again, and presently looked up over his gold rims. "Would that be No. 17?"

  "I think it would."

  Mr. Potham extracted the page of particulars and leaned back, gazing at the Saint with a certain tinge of pity.

  "There is a flat to let at No. 17, David Square," he admitted in a hushed voice, as if he were reluctantly discussing a skele­ton in his family cupboard. "It is one of Major Bellingford Smart's buildings."

  He made this announcement as though he expected the Saint to recoil from it with a cry of horror, and looked disap­pointed when the cry did not come. But the Saint pricked up his ears. Mr. Potham's tone, and the name of Bellingford Smart, touched a dim chord of memory in his mind; and never in his life had one of those chords led the Saint astray. Some­where, some time, he knew that he had heard the name of Bellingford Smart before, and it had not been in a complimen­tary reference.

  "What's the matter with that?" he asked coolly. "Is he a leper or something?"

  Mr. Potham smoothed down the sheet on his blotter with elaborate precision.

  "Major Bellingford Smart," he said judiciously, "is not a landlord with whose property we are anxious to deal. We have it on our books, since he sends us particulars; but we don't offer it unless we are specially asked for it."

  "But what does he do?" persisted the Saint.

  "He is-ah-somewhat difficult to get on with," replied Mr. Potham cautiously.

  More than that his discretion would not permit him to say; but the Saint's appetite was far from satisfied. In fact, Simon Templar was so intrigued with the unpopularity of Major Bellingford Smart that he took his leave of Mr. Potham rather abruptly, leaving that discreet gentleman gaping in some astonishment at a virginal pad of Orders to View on which he had not been given a chance to inscribe any addresses for the Saint's inspection.

  Simon Templar was not actively in search of trouble at that time. His hours of meditation, as a matter of fact, were almost exclusively occupied with the problem of devising for himself an effective means of entering the town house of the Countess of Albury (widow of Albury's Peerless Pickles) whose display of diamonds at a recent public function had impressed him as being a potential contribution to his Old Age Pension that he could not conscientiously pass by. But one of those sudden impulses of his had decided that the time was ripe for knowing more about Major Bellingford Smart; and in such a mood as that, a comparatively straightforward proposition like the Countess of Albury's diamonds had to take second place.

  Simon went along to a more modern real estate agency than the honourable firm of Potham & Spode, one of those marble-pillared, super-card-index billeting offices where human habita­tions are shot at you over the counter like sausages in a cafe­teria; and there an exquisitely-dressed young man with a dou­ble-breasted waistcoat and impossibly patent-leather hair, who looked as if he could have been nothing less than the second son of a duke or an ex-motor-salesman, was more communica­tive than Mr. Potham had been. It is also worthy of note that the exquisite young man thought that he was volunteering the information quite spontaneously, as a matter of interest to an old friend of his youth; for the Saint's tact and guile could be positively Machiavellian when he chose.

  "It's rather difficult to say exactly what is the matter with Bellingford Smart. He seems to be one of these sneaking swine who gets pleasure out of taking advantage of their position in petty ways. As far as his tenants are concerned, he keeps to the letter of his leases and makes himself as nasty as possible within those limits. There are lots of ways a landlord can make life unbearable for you if he wants to, as you probably know. The people he likes to get into his flats are lonely widows and elderly spinisters-they're easy meat for him."

  "But I don't see what good that does him," said the Saint puzzledly. "He's only getting himself a bad name --"

  "I had one of his late tenants in here the other day-she told me that she'd just paid him five hundred pounds to release her. She couldn't stand it any longer, and she couldn't get out any other way. If he does that often, I suppose it must pay him."

  "But he's making it more and more difficult to let his flats, isn't he?"

  The exquisite young man shrugged.

  "All the agencies know him-we refuse to handle his stuff at all, and we aren't the only ones. But there are plenty of pro­spective tenants who've never heard of him. He advertises his flats and lets them himself whenever he can, and then the ten­ants don't find out their mistake till it's too late. It must seem amazing to you that anything like that can go on in this neigh­bourhood; but his petty persecutions are all quite legal, and nobody seems to be able to do anything about it."

  "I see," said the Saint softly.

  The solution of the mystery, now that he knew it, struck him as being one of the most original, and at the same time one of the meanest and most contemptible, forms of blackmail that he had ever heard of; and the fact that it skulked along under the cover of the law made it twice as sickening. He had no doubt that it was all true-even the worthiest of estate agents are not in the habit of turning down commissions without the strongest possible grounds, and Major Bellingford Smart's nastiness appeared to be common knowledge in the profession. There were some forms of unpleasantness that filled the Saint with an utter loathing, and the meanness of Major Bellingford Smart was one of them. Simon had an en­tirely immoral respect for the wholehearted criminal who gam­bled his liberty on the success of his enterprises, but a livelihood that was gained principally by bullying and swindling fat-headed old women turned his stomach.

  "He has quite a lot of property around here," the exquisite young man was informing him. "He buys up houses and con­verts them into flats. You'll see what sort of a man he is when I tell you that while his conversions are being carried out it's his habit to hire a room in the neighbourhood from which he can overlook the site, and he prowls around there at odd times with a pair of field-glasses to see if he can catch his workmen slacking. Once he saw a couple of men having a cup of tea in the afternoon, and went around and fired them on the spot."

  "Isn't there anything he doesn't sink to?" asked the Saint.

  "I can't think of it," said the exquisite young man slan­derously. "A few months ago he had a porter at 17, David Square who'd stayed with him eleven years-I can't think why. The porter's wife acted as a sort of housekeeper, and their daughter was employed in the Major's own flat as a maid. You can imagine what a man like that must be like to work for, and this daughter soon found she couldn't stick it. She tried to give notice, and Smart told her that if she left him her father and mother would be fired out into the street-the porter was an old man of well over sixty. The girl tried to stay on, but at last she had to run away. The first the porter and his wife knew about it was when Smart sent for them and gave them a month's notice. And at the end of the month they duly were fired out, with Smart still owing them three weeks' wages which they tried for weeks to get out of him until the son of one of the tenants went round and saw Smart and damned well made him pay up under the threat of putting his own solicitors on the job. The porter died shortly afterwards. I expect it all sounds incredible, but it's quite true."

  Simon departed with a sheaf of Orders to View which he destroyed as soon as he got outside, and walked round very thoughtfully in the direction of David Square. And the more he thought of it, the more poisonous and utterly septic the personality of Major Bellingford Smart loomed in his con­sciousness. It occurred to the Saint, with a certain honest re­gret, that the calls of his own breezy buccaneering had lately taken his thoughts too far from that unlawful justice which had once made his name a terror more salutary than the Law to those who sinned secretly in tortuous ways that the Law could not touch. And it was very pleasant to think that the old life was still open to him . . .

  With those thoughts he sauntered up the steps of No. 17, where he was stopped b
y a uniformed porter who looked more like a prison warder-which, as a matter of fact, he had once been.

  "Can you tell me anything about this flat that's to let here?" Simon inquired, and the man's manner changed.

  "You'd better see Major Bellingford Smart, sir. Will you step this way?"

  Simon was led round to an extraordinary gloomy and untidy office on the ground floor, where a man who was writing at a desk littered with dust-smothered papers rose and nodded to him.

  "You want to see the flat, Mr.-er --"

  "Bourne," supplied the Saint. "Captain Bourne."

  "Well, Captain Bourne," said the Major dubiously, "I hardly know whether it would be likely to suit you. As a matter of fact --"

  "It doesn't have to suit me," said the Saint expansively. "I'm inquiring about it for my mother. She's a widow, you know, and she isn't very strong. Can't go walking around London all day looking at flats. I have to go back to India myself at the end of the week, and I very much wanted to see the old lady fixed up before I sailed."

  "Ah," said the Major, more enthusiastically, "that alters the situation. I was going to say that this flat would be quite ideal for an old lady living alone."

  Simon was astounded once again at the proven simplicity of womankind. Major Bellingford Smart's transparent sliminess fairly assaulted him with nausea. He was a man of about forty-five, with black hair, closely set eyes, and a certain stiff-necked poise to his head that gave him a slightly sinister appearance when he moved. It seemed almost unbelievable that anyone could ever have been taken in by such an obvious excrescence; but the fact remained that many victims had undoubtedly fallen into his net.

  "Would you like to see it?" suggested the Major.

  Simon registered a mental biographical note that Belling­ford Smart's military rank must have been won well out of sight of the firing line. If that Major had ever gone into action he would certainly have perished from a mysterious bullet in the back-such accidents have happened to unpopular officers before.

  The Saint said that he would like to see the fiat, and Bel­lingford Smart personally escorted him up to it. It was not at all a bad flat, with good large rooms overlooking the green oasis of the square; and Simon was unable to find fault with it. This was nice for him; for he would have offered no criticism even if the roof had been leaking and the wainscoting had been perforated with rat-holes till it looked like a colander.