14 The Saint Goes On Page 19

  There remained the locked door of Jeffroll's private office, and he thought he could cope with this. Curiously enough it gave him an unaccountable difficulty, and he had been working on it for a couple of minutes before he discovered that the thing that was obstructing his skeleton key was another key left in the lock on the inside.

  He changed his instrument for a pair of thin-nosed pliers and turned the key quite easily, but with even greater caution. A key on the inside of a locked room, except in fictional murder mysteries, vouches for someone on the inside to turn it; and yet he could not see so much as a glimmer of light in the cracks between the old badly-fitting oak door and its frame.

  Then, as he took up the pressure of the latch with delicately practised fingers, he heard a limp sort of dragging scuff of movement which no normal ambusher would have made, and a grunting moan of sterterously exhaled breath which removed the last of his hesitation.

  The nape of his neck prickled, but he went in boldly-he had an intuitive certainty of what he would find there, and he did not gasp when the beam of his torch shone full into the dilated eyes of the man with ginger hair.

  VI SIMON swept his flashlight round in a quick survey of the rest of the room. There was no other visible exit than the door which he had just opened, unless the door of a large built-in safe in another wall concealed unconventional secrets. There was a desk with a swivel chair behind it, a typewriter on a side table, a filing cabinet, a shelf littered with books and papers, an armchair, and a few faded and nondescript prints on the walls-the conventional furnishings of a small country hotel office. He had no doubt that some of these superficially innocuous fittings might repay closer investigation, but he turned back to the ginger-haired man as a more obvious feature of interest.

  "Do you do this for fun, or are you practising a vaudeville act?" he murmured pleasantly.

  The other made no answer, for the very good reason that his mouth was blocked by an amateurish but effective gag. Nor, as he might well have been tempted to do, did he get up and make another attempt to destroy the symmetry of the Saint's face, because the lengths of wire bound tightly about his wrists and ankles made any such hearty greeting impossible.

  Simon enjoyed the sound of his own voice, but in those circumstances he was prepared to be generous. He squatted down and loosened the gag sufficiently to remove one of Gingerhead's disadvantages, but not so thoroughly that it could not be speedily replaced if necessary. When the cloth was pulled down he saw that the man's mouth was twitching with fear.

  "What are you going to do?"

  Simon tilted up his flashlight to show his own face.

  "What would you do to a bloke who was very rude to you and spilt your drink?" he asked.

  The man licked his lips.

  "I didn't mean to do that. I lost my temper. I didn't know-------"

  "What didn't you know?"

  "I didn't know you were-one of them. You've got to let me out. You can't do anything to me. There's a law in this country-------"

  Simon thought quickly, and came to a decision.

  "Let you out, Ginger Whiskers? You're a bit of an optimist, aren't you?"

  "I could make it worth your while," said the other feverishly. His voice was not harsh and domineering now, but its quavering terror was perhaps more unpleasant. "I'll give you anything you like-a thousand, two thousand-------"

  "Go on."

  "Five thousand"

  The Saint clicked his tongue reproachfully.

  "Ten thousand pounds," said the man shakily. "I'll give you ten thousand pounds to let me go!"

  "This is getting interesting," drawled the Saint. "Have you got all this money in your pocket?"

  "I can get it for you." The man dropped his voice lower, although neither of them had spoken far above a whisper.

  The Saint sighed.

  "Sorry, brother, but this is a cash business."

  "You could have it first thing in the morning-before that, if you wanted it."

  "Where is it coming from?" asked the Saint, with calculated scepticism. "Will you do down into the village and hold out your hat, or are you going to burgle the bank?"

  "I know where I can get it. I've got to meet a man- to-night!"

  "Where are you going to meet him?"

  The man glared at him silently, with narrowing eyes; but Simon stuck to his point.

  "Let me go and meet this man," he said slowly. "If hell pay ten thousand quid to save your life, I'll come back and see about it."

  "How do I know you will?"

  "You don't," Simon admitted sadly. "But you can take it from me that unless I do see this bird and his money I'm not going to do anything for you. And then the uncertainty would be so much more trying. Instead of wondering whether I was going to help you or not, you'd only be able to wonder whether you were going to be buried alive under the public bar or fed to the congers off Larkstone Point."

  He kept his light focused on the ginger-haired man's blotched puffy face, and read everything that was going on in the mind behind it.

  "He'll be waiting on the road to Axminster, exactly three miles from Seaton," came the reply at length. "He'll do anything to get me out. For God's sake, hurry!"

  Simon doubted whether God would really be deeply concerned, but he allowed the invocation to pass unchallenged. He bent forward and replaced the gag as it had been when he came in, and switched out his light on the ginger-haired man's mutely terrified eyes.

  "If they have fed you to the congers when I get back, I'll go fishing," he murmured kindly.

  He left the office on this encouraging note, and let himself out into the back yard by the door at the end of the kitchen passage. The garage doors had been left open, and after a second's hesitation he began to manoeuvre his car out of its place by hand. It was a task that taxed all his strength, but he preferred the hard work to the risk of starting the engine where it might be heard by someone in the hotel. Fortunately the garage was built on a slight slope, and after a good deal of straining and perspiration he manhandled the big Hirondel into a position where he could get in behind the wheel and coast out of the yard and down the hill until it was safe to touch the self-starter. At the first corner he turned round, and sent the great purring monster droning back up the grade towards the Seaton Road. He was well on his way before he remembered that he had not even waited to tell Hoppy Uniatz where he was going.

  There was something else which he had forgotten, but he did not recall that until much later.

  He was conscious of a deep and solemn exhilaration. The sublime good fortune that was always spreading itself so prodigally over all his adventures showed no signs of shirking its responsibilities. Destiny was still doing its stuff. One got a letter, one went somewhere, one exchanged a few lines of affable badinage with a selection of mysterious blokes, one dotted an ugly sinner on the button, and forthwith the wheels began to go round. It might have been a coincidence that he had had cause to smite Ginger Whiskers so early in the proceedings; but from then on everything had unwound like clockwork. The presence of Ginger Whiskers, bound and gagged, in that locked office, was only part of the machinery -obviously, when Jeffroll had come out and seen him slumbering peacefully and harmlessly on the floor, the opportunity to put him away must have seemed far too good to miss. Simon would have grabbed at it himself, and he guessed that that decision was the cause of the message which had summoned the Four Horsemen from the dining-room and broken up their friendly exchange of compliments. Everything, up to that point, was clear: the mystery of what it was all about remained. But the eccentric philanthropist who was willing to pay ten thousand pounds for the life of a blister like Ginger-head might offer some more hints on that subject.

  He understood the ginger-haired man's psychology to three places of decimals. Whatever the outcome of this interview might be, the waiting accomplice would at least learn what had happened to his confederate; and Ginger Whiskers was doubtless banking far more heavily on the advantages of getting this message t
hrough than on the Saint's desire to help him. If their positions had been reversed, the Saint would have gambled on the same horse. But before that bet was decided he hoped to become much wiser himself-he had forgotten that in certain circles he was one of the best-known men in England.

  The trip meter on the dash was just turning over the third mile from Seaton when he picked up a red light stationary by the side of the road. As his headlights drew nearer to it he saw that it was the rear light of a small saloon of a popular make. He dimmed his lights and pulled in just in front of it; and a man came up, walking with quick jerky steps. "Is that you, Garthwait?"

  Simon gathered that this was the name by which Ginger was known to the police. He hunched his shoulders and tried to remember Garthwait's rasping voice. "Yes."

  The light of a powerful torch was flashed on his face, and he heard the unknown man's hissing breath.

  "At least," he said quickly, "Garthwait sent me"

  "Mr. Simon Templar, isn't it?" said the other gently. "I know your face quite well."

  For a moment the Saint almost recanted his views on the lavish publicity which the newspapers had given to some of his exploits, although for many years that disreputable fame had been one of his most modest vanities. But he smiled.

  "You do know your way around, don't you, dear old bird?" he remarked.

  "That is my business," said the other dryly, as if he was making a very subtle joke. "Please keep your hands on the steering wheel, where I can see them. I've got you covered, my friend, and I could shoot you long before you could reach your gun."

  His voice had a dusty pedantic quality which was the last intonation Simon Templar would ever have expected from a man who spoke of unlawful armaments and sudden death with so much self-possession.

  "You're welcome," said the Saint amiably. "My life is insured, and I'm considered to be an A. 1 risk. I wish I could say the same for Comrade Garthwait. There seems to be some sort of idea that he would be Good for Contented Congers; but he said you'd pay ten thousand pounds to keep him on dry land, and I thought it might be worth looking into. I suppose love is blind, but what you can see in a wall-eyed wart like that"

  "Where is Garthwait?"

  "When I saw him last, he was gagged up and tied together with wire, meditating about the After Life." "Where was this?" "In the Old House." "The hotel?"

  "Oh, no," said the Saint carefully. "It was too risky to keep him there. Don't you know the Old House?"

  The man behind the flashlight did not pursue the subject. "And he told you I'd give you ten thousand pounds to let him out?"

  "That's what he said. I'm afraid I thought he was a bit optimistic at the time, but I didn't like to discourage him.

  After all, when there's so much money at stake"

  "How do you know that?" asked the other sharply. The Saint smiled. "Garthwait told me." "Did he tell you about last night's job?" "Yes, he told me that, too," answered Simon coolly, and knew in the next instant that he had made a fatal mistake- the man he was talking to was as alive to all the tricks of the trade as he was himself.

  "That's interesting," said the dry stilted voice, "because there was never any such thing as 'last night's job.' You had better get out of that car, Mr. Templar. If Garthwait is really in danger, it would doubtless be diminished if your friends knew that you were in a similar predicament."

  Simon thought very swiftly. He had set out cheerfully to try his luck, and the luck had gypped him very neatly. At the same time, he couldn't let it have everything its own way. In a kindly and impartial spirit, he reviewed the pros and cons of the not so philanthropic philanthropist's suggestion for continuing the game, and decided that it lacked any really boisterous humour.

  He had not stopped his engine when he stopped the car, but it was throttled down to a mere whisper which might not have forced itself upon the philanthropist's attention. While he appeared to deliberate whether he should obey or not, he made a rapid deduction from the flashlight of the probable position of the man behind it. Then, with a faint shrug, he opened the door.

  The light moved out of the way, towards the rear of the car, as he had expected. Turning as if to get out, his left hand found the switch which controlled the car's lights; he had already flipped the car into gear, and his feet were resting on the clutch and accelerator pedals. In one concerted movement he snapped out every light against which he might have been silhouetted, roused the engine to a sudden roar of power, and banged in the clutch.

  Something crashed deafeningly behind him and left his ears singing; and then he was crouched low over the steering wheel, swerving away up the road with the seat pressing forcefully into his back under the urge of the Hirondel's terrific power. The open door slammed into latch in the slipstream: his ears caught the thin shred of another more vicious slam behind him that might have been an echo of the door and was not, and his teeth flashed in a Saintly smile before he whirled round the next corner and was out of range.

  He was still smiling when he ran down the hill into Lark-stone and cut his engine before swinging round to glide up to the garage beside the inn. Even after that minor miscalculation he remained the blithest of optimists-he hadn't once caught sight of the face of the man to whom he had spoken, but he would know that dry pedantic voice anywhere, and he had found men before with less to identify them than that.

  He had his next surprise when he turned his wheels towards the garage and prepared to repeat his earlier strenuous performance by manhandling the car back into its berth, for as his dimmed lights panned round he saw that he had an unobstructed run in. The lorry that had blocked his way before, which Jeffroll had told him was out of action with a broken propeller-shaft, had vanished.

  VII So had Garthwait-he discovered that when he went indoors and opened the door of the manager's office. The mere fact that the door opened without any manipulation reminded him that he had not turned the key from the outside when he left; and then he remembered that he had also left behind the pliers with which he had turned it in the first place-they were still lying on the floor where Garthwait had been, and he recollected that he had put them down when he loosened the gag and had forgotten to pick them up again. The pliers, like most similar instruments, were also wire-cutters; and there were four severed strands of wire lying near them to show how they had been used.

  For a man who had made so many mistakes in one night, the Saint went to bed very light-heartedly. He heard the same queer subterranean rumbling twice more before he fell asleep, but he did not allow it to disturb his rest.

  The faithful Mr. Uniatz had been snoring serenely in his chair when Simon turned in, and he was still snoring on the same majestic note when the Saint woke up. He leapt up like a startled hippopotamus when the Saint shook him; and then he blinked sheepishly and lowered his gun.

  "Sorry, boss ... I guess I must of fell asleep."

  "After all, a brain like yours must rest sometimes," said the Saint handsomely.

  It was eight o'clock, and the morning was clear and bright. Sitting squeezed up in the diminutive bath of the hotel's one rudimentary bathroom, he told the story of his night's adventure in carelessly effervescent sentences-at least, the tale bubbled on exuberantly enough, in the flamboyant inconsequential idiom which was his own inimitable language, until he noticed that his audience was not following him with all the rapt breathlessness which he felt his narrative deserved. He stopped, and regarded Mr. Uniatz speculatively. Mr. Uniatz coughed.

  "Boss," said Mr. Uniatz, waking out of his reverie as if the whole tedious business of noises in the night, gagged men in locked rooms, pedagogues with pop-guns, and disappearing lorries had now been satisfactorily disposed of, and the meeting was free to pass on to more spiritual pursuits-"what rhymes wit' 'goil'?"

  " 'Boil,'" suggested the Saint, after a moment's poetic reflection.

  Mr. Uniatz pondered the idea for a while, his lips moving as if in silent prayer. Then he shook his head dubiously.

  "I dunno, boss-it don't sou
nd quite right."

  "What doesn't sound quite right?"

  "Dis voice of mine."

  "I shouldn't let that prey on my mind, Hoppy," said the Saint encouragingly, although he was finding the train of thought more and more obscure. "After all, you can't have everything. Maybe Caruso wasn't so hot with a Roscoe."

  Hoppy Uniatz frowned.

  "I don't mean de verse I talk wit', boss; I mean de voice I'm makin' up when I fall asleep last night. It starts dis way: "You're so beautiful, you're like a rose, I'm tellin' ya, an' I'm a guy who knows: Your eyes are like de shinin' stars, Dey remind me of my Ma's; I t'ink you are a swell kind of goil"

  He hesitated.

  "I bet a neck like yours never had a berl,"

  he concluded, scratching his head. "It don't sound right, somehow, but I never had no practice makin' up pomes."

  Simon dried and dressed himself in stunned silence.

  He strolled out into the road in the strengthening sunshine, and found his steps leading him almost automatically down towards the harbour, although he had no need of the walk to sharpen his appetite for breakfast. Down on the quay he found a blue-jerseyed old salt smoking his pipe on a bollard and gazing out to sea with the faraway bright blue eye which is popularly supposed to express the sailor's unquenchable yearning for the great open waters, but which can actually be quenched with the most perfunctory dilution of water. It was a very conventional politeness to exchange good mornings, easy enough to pass on to some more explicit appreciations of the weather, and from there to a broader discussion of life in those parts. The man had the easy garrulousness of his kind, and perhaps he also scented a future customer for fishing expeditions.