The Saint Meets his Match (The Saint Series) Page 13

  Essenden spoke: “Is everything quite clear?”

  He looked round the small circle of faces, and the owners of the faces gazed back at him complacently. “Snake” Ganning inclined his head on the end of his long neck and answered for them all, in his soft, sibilant voice.

  “Everything’s quite clear.”

  “I can’t tell you how they’ll come in,” said Essenden. “I do know that there are only two of them. If I know anything about them, I should say they’d probably walk up to the front door and ring the bell. But they may not. I’ve worked out the posts I’ve given you in different parts of the house so that each one of you will easily be able to cover his share of the ground-floor rooms. There are alarms everywhere, and you will all be in touch with one another. The man you will deal with as you like. The girl you will bring to me.”

  It was the fourth or fifth time that Lord Essenden had repeated similar instructions in his fussy and hesitant way, and the Snake’s sunken black eyes regarded their employer with a certain contempt.

  “We heard you,” he said.

  “All right.”

  Essenden fidgeted with his tie, and looked at his watch for the twentieth time.

  “I think you’d better go to your posts,” he said.

  Ganning rose, uncoiling his long length like a slowed-up jack-in-the-box.

  “C’mon,” he said.

  Arne and Keld rose to follow him, but Red Harver sat where he was. Ganning tapped him on the shoulder.

  “C’mon, Beef.”

  Harver rose slowly, without looking round. His eyes were fixed intently on something behind Essenden. Behind Essenden was a window, with the heavy curtains drawn.

  The others, looking curiously at Harver, grasped what he was staring at, and followed his gaze. But they saw nothing. Essenden himself turned, with an abrupt jumpy movement. Then he turned round again.

  “What’s the matter, Harver?” he croaked.

  Harver’s huge arm and fist shot out, pointing.

  “Did you shut that window?” he demanded.

  “Of course I did,” said Essenden. “You saw me shut it.”

  “You shut it properly?”

  “Of course I did,” repeated Essenden.

  Harver pushed the table out of his path with a sweep of one arm.

  “Well, if it hasn’t blown open,” he said, “somebody’s opened it. I’ve just seen those curtains move!”

  He stood in the centre of the group, a red-headed giant, and the others instinctively checked their breath.

  Essenden shifted away.

  Ganning’s right hand sidled round to his hip pocket, and “Flash” Arne buttoned his coat deliberately.

  Harver stepped cautiously forward on tip-toe.

  The stealthy movement ended in a quick rush. Harver’s huge, ape-like arms gathered up all the curtains in one wide sweep, and he held something in the enveloping folds of the curtains like a fish in a net.

  He carried his whole capture bodily back into the centre of the room, tearing the curtains down as if they had been held with thin cotton. There he threw the bundle down, and stood back while the intruder struggled into view.

  “Well, who are you?” barked Essenden feebly, from the outskirts of the group.

  The man on the floor pulled his cap off his eyes and blinked dazedly about him. He was not a beautiful sight. The suit he wore was stained and dusty. Portions of a pair of vividly striped socks were visible between the frayed ends of his trousers and the tops of a pair of muddy boots. Round his neck, presumably as a substitute for shirt and collar and tie, he wore a red choker. His cap was very purple. It appeared to be several days since he had last shaved, and a black shield obscuring one eye gave his face a sinister and unsavoury appearance. And when he spoke he whined.

  “I wasn’t doin’ no ’arm, guvnor.”

  Harver reached out one ham-like hand to the man’s collar and yanked him to his feet.

  “What’s your name?” he demanded.

  “George,” said the burglar miserably.

  “George what?”

  “Albert George.”

  Harver shook his prisoner like a rat.

  “And what were you doing there?”

  “Oh, lay off him, Red,” said Ganning. “He’s nothing to do with this.”

  Essenden came closer.

  “We don’t know that,” he said. “This might be one of her tricks. Anyway, even if he isn’t anything to do with it, he may have heard us talking.”

  Harver shook the captive again.

  “How much did you hear?” he snarled.

  A look of fear came into the eyes of Albert George.

  “I didn’t ’ear nuffin’, s’welp me, I didn’t.”

  “Liar!” said “Flash” Arne delicately.

  “S’welp me,” wailed the prisoner, “I didn’t ’ear nuffin’.”

  Harver chuckled throatily.

  “I’ll s’welp you,” he said, “if you don’t remember something. Who told you to come here?”

  “S’welp me—”

  Harver drove his fist into the man’s chest, sending him reeling back against the wall.

  “I promised I’d s’welp you,” he said, “and I have. Now, are you going to talk?”

  He followed up his victim with measured, ponderous strides, and the slighter man cowered back. Arne and Keld and Ganning stood watching dispassionately. The prisoner shrank away, his face contorted with terror. And as Harver came within striking distance again and his fist went back for another blow, Albert George voiced a sharp, shrill yelp of panic.

  “S’welp me!”

  He ducked frantically, and Harver’s fist smashed shatteringly into the wall. George scuttled into a corner and crouched there, but Harver turned like an enraged bull and came after him.

  “I’ll talk,” screamed the prisoner. “Don’t hit me again—”

  Harver seemed about to refuse the offer, but Essenden put himself between the two men.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “There’ll be time for that later. We’ll hear what he’s got to say.”

  Albert George huddled against the wall.

  “It’s a cop,” he said, between breaths that came in labouring gasps. “But it wasn’t my idea. It was a bloke I met this morning in Seven Dials. ’E told me there was a man ’e wanted beaten up, name of Essenden. Is one of you gents Mr Essenden?”

  “Go on,” growled Harver.

  “There was a lot of money for it, and ’e said there wasn’t no risk. I’d just got to open a winder on the ground floor, an’ get in. ’E told me where the alarms was, an’ ’e drew me a plan of the ’ouse, an’ ’e marked the bedroom, an’ ’e says, ‘You just go in that room and slosh ’im one, an’ I’ll be waitin’ for yer at the Lodge gates wiv a car to tyke yer back to London.’ ”

  “He said he’d be waiting at the Lodge gates with a car?”

  Albert George swallowed.

  “Yus. What’s the time? ’E said ’e’d be there at ten o’clock.”

  “What was this man’s name?”

  “I dunno. ’E was a toff. All dressed up, ’e was, like ’im.” He pointed to “Flash” Arne.

  “Was there anyone with him?”

  “Yus. There was a woman with ’im. She was a toff, too. She’ll be in the car, too—she said she would.”

  Ganning took his hand away from his hip pocket.

  “Well, that ought to be easy,” he said. He looked at Essenden. “Guess we’d better go down and fetch them in.”

  Essenden nodded. He could hardly believe his good fortune.

  “You’d better all go,” he said. “They may be armed. Here, tie this man up first.”

  He took a length of cord out of a drawer and brought it over. Harver seized the prisoner’s arms and twisted them roughly behind him. Keld performed the roping with a practised hand. The prisoner was then dropped into a corner like a sack of coals.

  “He won’t get out of that in a hurry,” said Matt Keld.

 
Ganning hitched himself round the table.

  “C’mon,” he said.

  The four men trailed out through the French windows.

  Lord Essenden, left alone, went and helped himself again from the decanter. This time it seemed that Fate had played right into his hand. Jill Trelawney was clever—he admitted that—but, for once, he had been cleverer. He gazed contemplatively at the unkempt figure which lay huddled in the corner, just where it had been dropped. It struck him that the Saint had showed an astounding lack of discrimination in sending such a man to “slosh him one.”

  He was at a loss to divine completely what might be the object of these attacks. It was not so long ago that he had been severely beaten up at the instigation of Jill Trelawney by a member of the Donnell gang. Here, apparently, yet another tough had been hired for the same purpose. From her point of view he could see nothing that these attacks might achieve. But, from his point of view, he had to admit that the prospect of being beaten up and sent to hospital at regular intervals was, in a general way, discouraging. He still carried a fresh pink scar on his forehead as a memento of the last occasion, and it burned with reminiscent hatred whenever he thought of Jill Trelawney.

  He put down the glass, and wiped his lips on a silk handkerchief. Albert George lay huddled in the corner, his chin drooped upon his chest, and his whole pose one of lifeless resignation. Essenden went over and stirred him with the toe of a patent-leather shoe.

  “How much were you getting for this?” he barked, and the shaky staccato of his voice was an indication of the strain of anxiety that was racking his mind.

  The man looked up at him with one furtive eye.

  “’Undred quid,” he said, and lapsed again into his stupor.

  Essenden went back and poured another two fingers of whisky into his glass. A hundred pounds was a large sum of money to pay for a bashing. There were many men available, he knew, who would undertake such a task for much less, and if this seedy, down-at-heel specimen was being paid a hundred quid for the job, Harry Donnell must have picked up at least twice that amount. Of course, there were varying rates for these affairs. A man can be put in hospital for a week for a fairly reasonable charge. More is asked for breaking a limb, and correspondingly more for breaking two limbs. These facts are very well known in some circles of which Lord Essenden had more than once touched the fringe. Even so…

  Even so, that night’s incident was but another confirmation of the fact that Jill Trelawney was at no loss for funds to carry on her campaign. So much the police had already observed, when her previous exploits at the head of the Angels of Doom had set them by the ears and roused screams of condemnation for their inefficiency from a hysterical Press. And if the Angels of Doom were dispersed, and Jill Trelawney was herself a hunted criminal with a price on her head and the shadow of the gallows on her path, it seemed that she was still able to keep control of the finances which had made her such a formidable outlaw in the past. Of course, the Saint was with her now, and the Saint’s resources were popularly believed to be inexhaustible. And there was also the minor detail of the two hundred thousand-odd francs that had disappeared in Paris.

  The memory of Paris produced an unpleasant feeling of emptiness in the pit of his stomach, and he sent a gulp of whisky down to anaesthetise the void. For the wallet and notebook which had been taken from him at the same time, and the contents of which either Jill Trelawney or the Saint had successfully decoded, contained scraps of information which, adroitly pieced together and studiously followed up, were not incapable of bringing his own name into dangerously close connection with a traffic upon which the law frowns in a most unfriendly way, and which it can, without difficulty, be moved to punish with five years’ penal servitude.

  He glanced at his watch again, wondering how much longer it would be before his men returned. And at that moment he heard a bell ring somewhere in the depths of the house.

  He was so keyed up that the sudden disturbance of the silence, faint as it was, made his hand jerk so that some of the liquor in his glass splashed onto the carpet at his feet. He put the glass down carefully, and touched the heavy metallic shape in his jacket pocket to reassure himself. Then, half-hesitantly, and uncertain of the impulse which prompted him to go and investigate, he went out into the dark hall. As he switched on the lights, the summons was repeated.

  He opened the door.

  Jill Trelawney stood on the threshold, straight and slim in a plain tweed travelling costume, with her own soft hair, freed from the black wig that had so effectively baulked Chief Inspector Teal’s celebrated memory, peeping from under the small brown hat that framed her exquisite face. At the sight of Essenden her eyes gave no more than the most cursory flicker of recognition.

  “Good evening,” she said quietly.

  He stepped back falteringly, perplexed, but without hesitation she swept past him into the hall, and, with the world reeling about his ears, he turned to close the door.

  It has been said that she swept past him into the hall. That, in fact, was Lord Essenden’s own impression, but actually she was almost on his heels—close enough to press into the small of his back something round and hard which he knew could only be one thing—and when she spoke her voice came from a point close behind his ear.

  “Put them up,” she commanded, in the same quiet tone in which she had said “Good evening.”

  Lord Essenden put them up. His brain seemed to have gone dead—and must, he knew now, have gone dead at least two minutes ago.

  She saw the light beyond the door of a room farther down the hall and urged him towards it. He led on, helplessly, his hands held high above his head, back into the room he had just left.

  In the centre of the room she stopped him and flung a glance over her shoulder at the bound figure in the corner.

  “Hullo, Saint!” she said.

  2

  Simon Templar smiled with his lips and his one visible eye.

  “Hullo, Jill!” he murmured. “And how have you been keeping all these years?”

  The girl backed towards him, still covering Essenden with her little gun, and there was a knife in her left hand. The Saint turned over, and Jill stooped and hacked swiftly and accurately at the cords that held him. In a moment he was free, scrambling to his feet and stretching himself.

  “That’s better,” he remarked. “Brother Matthew has efficient but violent ideas on the subject of roping people. Pull the knots as tight as you can without breaking the rope—that’s Matthew. Very sound, but uncomfortable for the victim. However, here we are…”

  He was dusting his coat. It was really a very respectable coat, when he brushed off the shabbiness which he had applied with French chalk. The enormous boots, removed, disclosed a neat pair of shoes worn beneath them. The horribly striped socks were dummies, which he unbuttoned and put in his pocket. The red choker, removed also, proved that the impression it conveyed at first sight was false: he actually wore shirt, collar, and tie underneath it, and all three were quietly elegant. Before Essenden’s staring eyes, he slipped off the very purple cap and the eye-shade, wiped the blue make-up from his chin with his handkerchief, and so ceased to bear the slightest resemblance to Albert George.

  “An ingenious device,” he said, “to divide the enemy’s camp. But not, to tell the truth, original. None the less useful for that.”

  “Did you have any trouble?” asked Jill.

  “Not much. Just one rough man. He hit me once, which was tiresome, and he hit the wall once, which must have hurt him quite a lot. Otherwise, no damage was done. And the whole bunch went off to look for the car like four maggots in search of a green cheese.”

  Essenden, standing back against the wall with Jill Trelawney’s automatic centred unwaveringly on his waistcoat, knew fear. There was a gun in his own pocket, but he dared not reach for it. The girl had never taken her eyes off him for more than a fleeting second, and the expression in those eyes told him that her finger was itching on the trigger.


  He realised that he had been criminally careless. Even when he saw her outside the front door, he had not been alarmed—so insanely blinded had he been by the story of Albert George. He knew that his four guards would return in a few moments; he was sure also that, whatever she meant to do, she would not do it while he could convince her that so long as she held her hand she had the chance of getting the information his advertisement had offered; he had meant to play up that offer—it was his trump card in an emergency, and he had been convinced that as long as he held that card he could be in no real danger. But the unmasking of Albert George—the revelation that there was not only Jill Trelawney, but also Simon Templar, to cope with—that had upset Essenden’s confident equilibrium.

  There was something rather horrible about a shifting flicker of snapping nerves in the eyes of such a fussy and foolish-looking little man.

  The grimly brilliant scheme that he had elaborated was toppling down like a house of cards…

  But Jill Trelawney only laughed.

  “Now we have our talk, don’t we?” she said, and Lord Essenden seemed to shiver—but that might have been due to nothing but the draught from the French windows which his guards had left ajar when they went out…

  By the windows stood the Saint.

  “The boys are coming back,” he said. “This time, I think, a gun might save trouble.”

  He stepped over to Essenden, lifted the automatic from Essenden’s pocket, and retired to the cover of a bookcase which projected in such a way that it would hide him from the view of anyone entering by the windows.

  “And if you’ll just take Essenden for a walk,” he drawled, “I’ll give you a yodel when the collection is complete. It’s a bit late in the year, but you might find some mistletoe somewhere—”

  “O.K., Big Boy.”

  Simon watched Essenden removed, and leaned back against the wall with the peer’s gun swinging lightly in his hand.

  Voices spoke outside the windows. The voice of Red Harver, booming above the others, said, “A plant, that’s what it was—”