14 The Saint Goes On Page 13

  "It's getting together. ... To kill Mrs. Ellshaw just because she'd come to see me wasn't such a good motive. I was flattering myself a bit. But she'd always have to talk-to some one. Suppose it was the two young gennelmen that she did for? That's the sort of coincidence that happens. When Ellshaw had to disappear, who could have foreseen that his wife might go to work for someone who knew the bloke who . . . Wait for it again. . . . Yes, they knew Kenneth. And Kenneth never said whether he'd heard of Ellshaw-never had a chance to. ... My God, I'd forgotten that piece of organisation!"

  Ripwell's pleasant face was hardening uncertainly.

  "What are you driving at? If you're suggesting that Kenneth is a murderer"

  "Murderer?" The Saint came up with a start, half dazed, out of the trance in which he had been letting his thoughts race on aloud, without making any effort to dictate their destination. "I never said that. ButGod, am I getting this untied?"

  "I don't know what you mean," persisted Ripwell hoarsely.

  Simon swung back to the bed and dropped his hands on the old man's shoulders.

  "Don't worry," he said gently. "I'm sorry-I didn't mean to scare you. Even now, I'm not quite sure what I do mean. But I'll look after things. And I'll be right back."

  He pressed Ripwell quietly back on the pillows and went out quickly, making for the stairs with an exuberant stride that almost bowled Martin Irelock off the landing.

  "What's the excitement?" demanded the secretary.

  "I've got some more ideas." Simon kept hold of the arm which he had clutched to save Irelock from taking the worst of the spill. "Are you busy?"

  "No-I was just making sure that your room's all right."

  "Then come downstairs again. I want to talk to you."

  He did not release the arm until they were downstairs in the living-room. The french casement was ajar, the half-drawn curtains stirring in the draught. Simon took out his cigarette-case.

  "Where's Teal?"

  "I don't know. Oldwood's man just arrived-I expect he's showing him round."

  The Saint put a cigarette between his lips and took a match from the ash-stand, stroking it alight with his thumbnail.

  "I've remembered something that may interest you," he said. "An interesting scientific fact. If you have a sample of fresh blood, it's possible to analyse its type and get an exact mathematical ratio of probabilities that it came from some particular person."

  Irelock blinked.

  "Is it really? That's interesting."

  "I said it was interesting. How does it appeal to you?"

  The secretary picked up the whisky decanter mechanically, and poured splashes into the three glasses on the tray. All the splashes did not go into the glasses.

  "I don't know-why should it appeal to me particularly?"

  "Because," answered the Saint deliberately, "I've an idea that if I asked Teal to have the blood on Ken's handkerchief analysed, and then we took a sample of your blood from that graze on your arm, we'd find that the odds were that it was your blood!"

  "What do you-----"

  "What do I mean? I'm always hearing that question. I mean that I told you and Teal just now that I'd got a fact, and this is it. There was only one shot fired in the front of the house. It scratched your wrist-low down. This handkerchief was in Kenneth's breast pocket. I noticed it. While it's possible that you may have gone out of the door with your hands shoulder high, it's damned unlikely; and therefore I didn't quite see how a bullet that passed you about the level of your hips could have hit Ken in the chest, unless the warrior who fired it was lying at your feet-which again is unlikely."

  Irelock's knuckles showed white where he gripped his glass, and for a second or two he made no reply. Then, with an imperceptible shrug, he looked back at the Saint, tight-lipped.

  "All right," he said, with a nod of grim resignation. "You've seen through it. I'm afraid I should make a rotten criminal. It was my blood."

  "How come?"

  Irelock grimaced ruefully.

  "Teal suspected it."

  "You mean to tell me that Ken ran away?"

  "Yes."

  Simon drew smoke from his cigarette and trickled it through his nostrils.

  "Go on."

  "That's about all I know. I don't know why. I could see a silhouette of the car against the headlights when they were switched on, and there was only one man in it. I found the handkerchief while I was pretending to help you to look for him, and I wiped it on my arm and dropped it back on the drive. I suppose it was a silly thing to do, but the only thing I could think of was how to try and cover him up-to make it look as if he hadn't run away."

  There was no doubt that he was speaking the truth, but Simon drove on at him relentlessly.

  "Why should you think he wanted covering up?" "Why else should he want to run away? Besides, you must have seen that there was something on his mind all the evening-I saw you looking at him. I don't know what it was. But he's always been wild. I've tried to help him. Lord Ripwell would probably have disinherited him more than once if I hadn't been able to get him out of some of his scrapes." "Such as?"

  "Oh, the usual wild things that a fellow like that does. He gambles. And he drinks too much."

  "Gets obstreperous when he's tight, does he?" "Yes. You wouldn't think it of him, but he does. When he's drunk he'd pick a fight with anybody, but when he's sober he'd run away from a mouse."

  "Could he have killed anyone when he was drunk?" Irelock stared at him with horror. "Good Lord-you don't think that?"

  "I don't know what I think," said the Saint impatiently. "I'm just trying to sort things out. Ripwell hasn't disinherited him yet, has he? Well, who'd make the biggest profit out of Rip-well's death? . . . But even that hasn't anything to do with the rest of it. There are two mysteries tangled up, and I'm trying to make them tie. The hell with it!"

  He picked up a glass and subsided with it into a chair, frowning savagely. Odd loose ends out of the tangle kept on linking up and matching, tantalising him with a deceptive hope that the rest of the pattern was just about to follow on and fall neatly into place; but at the climax there was always one clashing colour, some shape or other that did not fit. Somewhere in the web there must be a thin tortuous thread that would hold it all together, but the thread was always dancing just beyond his grasp.

  "If-if you're not quite sure," Irelock was saying hesitantly, "have you got to say anything to Teal? I mean, unless Lord Ripwell-unless everybody's got to know that Kenneth funked..."

  He broke off at the sound of a footstep on the path outside, but his bright eyes continued the appeal. Simon moved his head noncommittally, but he had no immediate intention of making Chief Inspector Teal a free gift of the wear and tear on his own valuable grey matter.

  "I've posted the constable outside, under the bedroom window," said the detective, and looked at the glass which Irelock was offering him. "No, thank you-fat men didn't ought to drink. It's had for the heart. The doctor hasn't been able to get hold of a nurse yet, so we'd better take it in turns to sit up."

  Irelock nodded, and took the first sip at his highball.

  "I don't mind taking the-----"

  His voice wrenched into a ghastly retching sound, and they stared at him in momentary paralysis. And then, as Simon started to his feet, he lurched forward and knocked the glass spinning out of the Saint's hand with a convulsive sweep of his arm.

  "For God's sake!" he gasped. "Don't drink. . .. Poison!"

  VII SIMON sprang forward and caught him before Teal's lumbering movement in the same direction had more than started, but Irelock flung him off with demented energy and went staggering to the window. They heard him vomiting painfully outside.

  "Get on the 'phone for a doctor," snapped the Saint, as he dashed after him.

  Irelock reeled into his arms in the darkness.

  "Get me back," he panted huskily. "May be-all right.. . . Get . . . mustard and water", Simon brought him back into the room and laid him down on the sofa-he wa
s curiously black about the eyes and the perspiration was streaming off him. Teal came in with the emetic almost at once, having gone out and found it on his own initiative; and there was a further period of unpleasantness. . . .

  "All right-thanks."

  Irelock lay back at last with a groan. His breathing was still laboured, but the spasmodic twitching of his limbs was reduced to a faint trembling.

  "I'm feeling--better. . . . Think we-got rid of it-in time. . . . That would have been-another mystery-for you!"

  To Simon Templar there was no mystery. His glance flashed from the whisky decanter to the still open French door through which Teal had come in, and he looked up to find Mr. Teal's somnolent eyes following the same route. His gaze crystallised thoughtfully.

  "While you were outside posting your cop under the window, Claud Eustace! Is that organisation and is that nerve, or what is it?"

  He took up the untouched glass which Mr. Teal had declined, and moistened his mouth from it, holding the liquid only for a moment. There was a distinctive sweet oily taste in it which might have passed unnoticed under the sharper bite of the spirit unless he had been looking for it, and he retained a definition of the savour in his memory after he had spat out the sip.

  Teal's eyes were wide open.

  "Then they still can't be far away," he said.

  The Saint's lips stirred in an infinitesimal reckless smile.

  "One day you'll be a detective after all, Claud," he murmured. Teal was starting to move ponderously towards the window, but Simon passed him with his long easy stride and stopped him. "But I'm afraid you'll never be a night hunter. Let me go out."

  "What can you do?" asked Teal suspiciously.

  "I can't arrest him," Simon admitted. "But I can be a good dog and bring you the bone. We missed a trick last time- crashing out like a mob of blasted red-faced fox-hunting squires after a poacher. You wouldn't catch anyone but a damn fool that way, on a dark night like this. But I know the game. I'll go out and be as invisible as a worm, and if anyone steps inside these grounds again I'll get him. And I think somebody will be coming!"

  The detective hesitated. His memories of the Assistant Commissioner floated bogeyly across his imagination; the memory of all the deceptions he had suffered from the Saint narrowed his eyes. But he knew as well as anyone what amazing things Simon Templar could do in the dark, and he knew his own limitations.

  "If you do catch anyone, will you promise to bring him in?"

  "He's yours," said the Saint tersely; but he made a mental reservation about the exact time at which that transfer of property would come into effect.

  He went out alone, dissolving noiselessly into the night like a wandering shadow. From the blackness outside the window he watched Teal using the telephone, and presently saw the lights of a car drive up and stop outside the gate. The doctor walked up the short drive and was challenged on his way by the police guard; and Simon took that opportunity of introducing himself.

  "This is a funny business, sir, isn't it?" said the constable, when the doctor had gone on into the house.

  He was a middle-aged beefy man who kept shaking himself down uncomfortably in his plain clothes, as if he had been wearing a uniform too long to feel thoroughly at home in any other garb. He would probably continue to wear a uniform for the rest of his life, but it was no less probable that he was quite contented with the prospect.

  Simon strolled back with him to his post, and gave him a cigarette. He did not expect the man he was waiting for to enter the grounds for a little while.

  "Kidnapped 'is lordship's son, too, didn't they? said the policeman. "Now, why should they want to do that?"

  The question was put more or less in rhetorical appeal to some unspecified oracle, rather than as one demanding a direct answer; and the Saint did not immediately attempt to answer it.

  "I suppose you know Lord Ripwell fairly well," he said, "Well, so-and-so," said the constable, puffing, "Must be about five year now, sir- ever since 'e bought the house." "I shouldn't think he'd be an easy man to extort money from."

  "I wouldn't like to be the man to try it. Mind you, 'is lordship's known to be a generous gentleman-do anything for a fellow oo's out of luck, if he's asked properly. But not the kind you could force anything out of. No, sir. Why I remember in my time what 'appened to a chap oo tried to blackmail 'im."

  The stillness of the Saint's eyes could not be seen in the dark.

  "Somebody tried to blackmail him once, did they?" he said quietly "Yes, sir. It wasn't nothing much they 'ad to blackmail 'im with, but you can see for yourself 'is lordship must've been quite a lad in 'is time, and some people are that narrow-minded they don't expect a man to be even 'uman." There was a sympathetic note in the constable's voice which hinted that he himself could modestly claim, in his own time to have been Quite A Lad. "Anyway, all 'is lordship did was to get the Inspector up and 'ave him listen to some of this talk. And then, when he could 'ave 'ad the fellow sent to prison, he wouldn't even prosecute 'im."

  "No?"

  "Wouldn't even make a charge. 'I don't want to, be vindictive,' he says. 'The silly ass 'as had a good fright,' he says, 'and now you let him go. You can see he's just some down-and-out idiot oo thought 'e could make some easy money.' And in the end I believe 'e gave the chap 'is fare back to London."

  "Who was this fellow?" Simon asked.

  "I dunno. Said 'is name was Smith, like most of 'em do when they're first caught. We never had no chance to find out oo he really was, on account of Ms lordship not prosecuting him, but 'e did look pretty down and out. Seedy little chap with a great red nose on 'im like a stop light."

  The doctor came out and returned to his car-Simon heard his parting conversation with Teal at the door, and gathered that Martin Irelock was in no danger. The hum of the car died away; and Simon gave the talkative guard another cigarette and faded back into the dark to resume his own prowling.

  His brain was becoming congested with new things to think about. So an attempt had been made to extort money from Ripwell. He was confirmed in his own estimate of the prospects of the hopeful extorter, but apparently the aspirant himself had required to be convinced by experience. There was something about the anecdote as he felt it which gave him a distinct impression of a trial balloon. Someone had wanted first-hand knowledge of Lord Ripwell's reaction to such an attempt; and the constable's brief description of the aspiring blackmailer had one prominent feature in common with the elusive Mr. Ellshaw. Curiously enough, in spite of the increased congestion of ideas, the Saint felt that the mystery was gradually becoming less mysterious. . . .

  He moved round the house as soundlessly as a hunting cat. As Chief Inspector Teal knew and admitted, queer things, almost incredible things, happened to Simon Templar when he got out in the dark-things which would never have been believed by the uninitiated observer who had only seen him in his sophisticated moods. He could leave his immaculately dressed, languidly bantering sophistication behind him in a room, and go out to become an integral part of the wild. He could go out and move through the night with the supple smoothness of a panther, without rustling a blade of grass under his feet, merging himself into minute scraps of shadow like a jungle animal, feeling his way uncannily between invisible obstructions, using strange faculties of scent and hearing with such weird certainty that those who knew him best, when they thought about it, sometimes wondered if the roots of all his amazing outlawry might not be found threading down into the deeps of this queer primitive instinct.

  No living man could have seen or heard him as he passed on his silent tour, summarising the square lights of windows in the black cube of the house. Lord Ripwell's lighted window, under which the police guard stood, was on one side. A bulb burned faintly in the hall, at the front, facing closely on to the road. The dully luminous colour of curtains on the other side marked the living-room which he had left not long ago. At the back of the house, where the Thames margined the grounds, he could see one red-shaded lamp in an upstair
s window- presumably that was Irelock's room, for he had gathered that the only domestic servant employed at the cottage was a daily woman who had gone home immediately after dinner. Chief Inspector Teal must have been keeping watch downstairs with a dwindling supply of spearmint; and Simon wondered whether he had been jarred enough out of his principles to take over Lord Ripwell's revolver and the ammunition, to wait with him for the sudden death that would surely stalk through that place again before morning.

  He came down to the water's edge and sat with his back to a tree, as motionless as if he had been one of its own roots. Surely, he knew, the death would come; but whether it would successfully claim a victim depended largely upon him. There was a smooth speed about every move of the case which appealed to him: it was cut and thrust, parry and riposte-a. series of lightning adjustments and counter-moves which he could appreciate for its intrinsic qualities even while he was still fumbling for the connecting link that held it all together. The poison which had found its way into the whisky less than an hour ago belonged to the same scheme of things. He could recall its peculiar sweet oily taste on his tongue, and he thought he knew what it was. The symptoms which Martin Irelock had shown corroborated it. Very few men would have known that it was poisonous at all. How should an illiterate little racetrain rat like Ellshaw have known it?

  A mosquito zoomed into his ear with a vicious ping, and one of his thighs began to itch; but still he did not move. At other times in his life he had lain out like that, immobile as a carved outcrop of rock, combing the dark with keyed-up senses as delicate as those of any savage, when the first man whose nerves had cracked under the unearthly strain would have paid for the microscopic easing of a cramped muscle with his life. That utter relaxation of every expectant sinew, the supersensitive isolation of every faculty from all disturbances except those which he was waiting for, had become so automatic that he used no conscious effort to achieve it. And in that way, without even turning his head, he became aware of the black ghost of a canoe that was drifting soundlessly down the stream towards the place where he sat.