The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint) Page 2

  "Happy days," drawled the Saint, "are here again. Teal, in another minute you'll have me crying."

  "You shouldn't have much to cry about," said the detective aggressively. "There's some excuse for the sneak thief who goes on pulling five-pound jobs. He hasn't a chance to retire. You ought to have made a pretty good pile by this time --"

  "About a quarter of a million," said the Saint modestly. "I admit it sounds a lot, but look at Rockefeller. He could spend that much every day."

  "You've had a good run. I won't complain about it. You've done me some good turns on your way, and the commissioner is willing to set that in your favour. Why not give the game a rest ?"

  The bantering blue eyes were surveying Teal steadily all the time he was speaking. Their expression was almost seraphic in its innocence-only the most captious critic, or the most overwrought inferiority complex, could have found anything to complain about in their elaborate sobriety. The Saint's face wore the register of a rapt student of theology absorbing wisdom from an archbishop.

  And yet Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal felt his mouth drying up in spite of the soothing stimulus of spearmint. He had the numbing sensation of fatuity of a man who has embarked on a funny story in the hope of salvaging an extempore after-dinner speech that has been falling progressively flatter with every sentence, and who realizes in the middle of it that it is not going to get a laugh. His own ears began to wince painfully at the awful dampness of the platitudes that were drooling inexplicably out of his own mouth. His voice sounded like the bleat of a lost sheep crying in the wilderness. He wished he had sent someone else to Newhaven.

  "Let me know the worst," said the Saint. "What are you leading up to? Is the government proposing to offer me a pension and a seat in the House of Lords if I'll retire?"

  "It isn't. It's offering you ten years' free board and lodging at Parkhurst if you don't. I shouldn't want you to make any mistake about it. If you think you're --"

  Simon waved his hand.

  "If you're not careful you'll be repeating yourself, Claud," he murmured. "Let me make the point for you. So long as I carry on like a little gentleman and go to Sunday school every week, your lordships will leave me alone. But if I should get back any of my naughty old ideas-if anyone sort of died suddenly while I was around, or some half-witted policeman lost sight of a packet of illicit diamonds and wanted to blame it on me-then it'll be the ambition of every dick in England to lead me straight to the Old Bailey. The long-suffering police of this great country are on their mettle. Britain has awoken. The Great Empire on which the sun never sets --"

  "That's enough of that," yapped the detective.

  He had not intended to yap. He should have spoken in a trenchant and paralyzing baritone, a voice ringing with power and determination. Something went wrong with his larynx at the crucial moment.

  He glared savagely at the Saint.

  "I'd like to know your views," he said.

  Simon Templar stood up. There were seventy-four steel inches of him, a long, lazy uncoiling of easy strength and fighting vitality tapering down from wide, square shoulders. The keen, tanned face of a cavalier smiled down at Teal.

  "Do you really want them, Claud?"

  "That's what I'm here for."

  "Then if you want the news straight from the stable, I think that speech of yours would be a knockout at the Mothers' Union." The Saint spread out his arms. "I can just see those kindly, wrinkled faces lighting up with the radiant dawn of a new hope-the tired souls wakening again to beauty --"

  "Is that all you've got to say?"

  "Very nearly, Claud. You see, your proposition doesn't tempt me. Even if it had included the pension and the peerage, I don't think I should have succumbed. It would make life so dull. I can't expect you to see my point, but there it is."

  Teal also got to his feet, under the raking twinkle of those very clear blue eyes. There was something in their mockery which he had never understood, which perhaps he would never understand. And against that something which he could not understand, his jaw tightened up in grim belligerence.

  "Very well," he said. "You'll be sorry."

  "I doubt it," said the Saint.

  On the way back to London, Teal thought of many more brilliant speeches which he could have made, but he had not made any of them. He returned to Scot­land Yard in a mood of undiluted acid, which the sar­castic comments of the assistant commissioner did nothing to mellow.

  "To tell you the truth, sir, I never expected any­thing else," Teal said seriously. "The Saint's outside our province, and he always has been. I never imagined anyone could make me believe in the sort of story-book Raffles who goes in for crime for the fun of the thing, but in this case it's true. I've had it out with Templar before-privately. The plain fact is that he's in the game with a few highfalutin' ideas about a justice above the law, and a lot of superfluous energy that he's got to get rid of somehow. If we put a psychologist on to him," expounded the detective, who had been reading Freud, "we should be told he'd got an Oedipus Complex. He has to break tke law just because it if the law. If we made it illegal to go to church, he'd be heading a revivalist movement inside the week."

  The commissioner accepted the exposition with his characteristic sniff.

  "I don't anticipate that the Home Secretary will approve of that method of curtailing the Saint's activi­ties," he said. "Failing the adoption of your interesting scheme, I shall hold you personally responsible for Templar's behaviour."

  It was an unsatisfactory day for Mr. Teal from every conceivable angle, for he was in the act of putting on his hat preparatory to leaving Scotland House that night when a report was brought to him which made his baby-blue eyes open wide with sheer incredulous disgust.

  He read the typewritten sheet three times before he had fully absorbed all the implications of it, and then he grabbed the telephone and put through a sulphurous call to the department responsible.

  "Why the devil didn't you send me this report before?" he demanded.

  "We only received it half an hour ago, sir," explained the offending clerk. "You know what these country police are."

  Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal slammed back the receiver and kept his opinion of those country police to himself. He knew very well what they were. The jealousy that exists between the provincial C.I.D.'s and Scotland Yard is familiar to anyone even remotely connected with matters of criminal investigation: on the whole, Teal could have considered himself fortunate in that the provincial office concerned had condescended to communicate with him at all on its own initiative, instead of leaving him to learn the news from a late evening paper.

  He sat on in his tiny office for another hour, staring at the message which had filtered the last ray of sunshine out of his day. It informed him that a certain Mr. Wolseley Lormer had been held up in broad daylight in his office at Southend that afternoon and robbed of close on two thousand pounds by an intruder whom he never even saw. It would not have been a particularly remarkable crime by any standards if the caretaker who discovered the outrage had not also discovered a crude haloed figure chalked on the outer door of Mr. Lormer's suite. And the one immutable fact which Chief Inspec­tor Teal could add to the information given him was that at the very time when the robbery was committed the Saint was safely locked up in Newhaven police station-and Mr. Teal was talking to him.

  CHAPTER III ONE of the charms of London, as against those of more up-to-date and scientific cities, is the multitude of queer little unscientific dwellings which may be found by the experienced explorer who wanders a mere hundred yards out of the broad regular thoroughfares and pries into the secrets of dilapidated alleys and unpromising courtyards. At some time in the more recent history of the city there must have been many adventurous souls who felt the urge to escape from the creeping development of modern steam-heated apart­ments planned with Euclidean exactitude and geo­metrically barren of all individuality. Wherever a few rooms with an eccentric entrance could be linked up and made c
omfortable, a home was established which in the days when there came a boom in such places was to repay a staggering percentage to the originality of its creators.

  With his infallible instinct for these things, Simon Templar had unearthed this very type of ideal home within a matter of hours after he returned to London.

  His old stronghold in Upper Berkeley Mews, which he had fitted up years ago with all the expensive gadgets essential to a twentieth-century robber baron, had been the centre of an undue amount of official curiosity just before he embarked on his last hurried trip abroad. It no longer had any ingenious secrets to conceal from the inquisitive hostility of Scotland Yard; and the Saint felt in the mood for a change of scene. He found a suit­able change in a quiet cul-de-sac off the lower end of Queen's Gate, that broad tree-lined avenue which would be a perfect counterpart of the most Parisian boulevard if its taxis and inhabitants were less antique and moth-eaten. The home of his choice was actually situated in a mews which ran across the end of the cul-de-sac like the cross-bar of a T, but some earlier tenant had arranged to combine respectability with a garage on the premises, and had cut a street door and windows through the blank wall that closed the cul-de-sac, so that the Saint's new home was actually an attractive little two-storied cottage that faced squarely down between the houses, while the garage and mews aspect was discreetly hidden at the rear. It was almost per­fectly adapted to the Saint's eccentric circumstances and strategic requirements; and it is a notable fact that he was able to shift so much lead out of the pants of the estate agents concerned that he was fully installed in his new premises within forty-eight hours of finding that they were to let, which anyone who has ever had anything to do with London estate agents will agree was no mean piece of lead-shifting.

  Simon was personally supervising the unpacking of some complicated electrical apparatus when Mr. Teal found him at home on the third day. He had not noti­fied his change of address, and it had taken Mr. Teal some time to locate him; but the Saint's welcome was ingenuous cordiality itself.

  "Make yourself at home, Claud," he murmured. "There's a new packet of gum in the sitting room, and I'll be with you in two minutes."

  He joined the detective punctually to a second, dusting some wood shavings from his trousers, and there was nothing whatever in his manner to indicate that he could anticipate any unpleasantness. He found Teal clasping his bowler hat across his stomach and gazing morosely at an unopened package of Wrigley's Three Star which sat up sedately in the middle of the table.

  "I just came in," said the detective, "to tell you I liked your alibi."

  "That was friendly of you," said the Saint calmly.

  "What do you know about Lormer?"

  Simon lighted a cigarette.

  "Nothing except that he's a receiver of stolen goods, an occasional blackmailer, and a generally septic speci­men of humanity. He's quite a small fish, but he's very nasty. Why?"

  Teal ignored the question. He shifted a wad of gum meditatively round his mouth, and then swept the Saint's face with unexpectedly searching eyes. "Your alibi is good enough," he said, "but I'm still hoping to learn some more about your friends. You used work with four of 'em, didn't you? I've often won­dered how they all managed to reform so quickly."

  The Saint smiled gently.

  "Still the same old gang theory?" he drawled. "If I didn't know your playful ways so well, Claud, I'd be offended. It's not complimentary. You must find it hard to believe that so many remarkable qualities can be concentrated under one birth certificate, but as time goes on you may get used to the idea. I was quite a prodigy as a child. From the day when I stole the corsets off my old nannie --"

  "If you're getting another gang together, or raking up the old lot," Teal said decisively, "we'll soon know all about it. What about that girl who used to be with you-Miss Holm, wasn't it ? What's her alibi ?"

  "Does she want one? I expect it could be arranged."

  "I expect it could. She landed at Croydon the day before we found you at Newhaven. I've only just learned that. Lormer never saw the man who knocked him out and emptied his safe, so just in case it wasn't a man at all --"

  "I think you're on the wrong line," said the Saint genially. "After all, even a defective-detective-has got to consider probabilities. In the old days, before all this vulgar publicity, I could put my trade mark on every genuine article; but you must admit that times have changed. Now that every half-wit in the British Isles knows who I am, is it likely that if I contemplated any crimes I'd be such a fool as to draw Saints all over 'em ? D'you think you could make any jury believe it? I've got a reputation, Claud. I may be wicked, but I'm not waffy. It's obvious that some low crook is trying to push his stuff onto me."

  Teal hitched himself ponderously out of his chair.

  "I had thought of that argument," he said; and then, abruptly: "What's your next job going to be?"

  "I haven't decided yet," said the Saint coolly."Whatever it is, it'll be a corker. I feel that I could do with some good headlines."

  "Do you think you're playing the game?"

  Simon looked at the detective thoughtfully.

  "I suppose my exploits don't improve your standing with the commissioner. Isn't that it?"

  The detective nodded.

  "You make it very difficult for us," he said.

  He could have said a lot more. Pride kept it back stubbornly behind his official detachment, but the sober glance which he gave the Saint was as near to a confession as he dared to go. It was not in his nature to ask favours of any man.

  "I'll have to see what I can do," said the Saint.

  He ushered Teal courteously to the door, and opened it to see a slim, fair-haired vision of a girl walking up the road towards them. Teal watched her approach with narrowed and expressionless eyes.

  The girl reached the door and smiled at him sweetly.

  "Good-morning," she said.

  "Good-morning," said Teal acridly.

  He settled his hat and stepped brusquely past her; and Simon Templar closed the front door and caught the girl in his arms.

  "Pat, old darling," he said, "I feel that life has begun all over again. With you around, and Claud Eustace dropping in every other day to have words ... If we could only find someone to murder it'd just be perfect!"

  Patricia Holm walked into the sitting room and pulled off her hat. She helped herself to a cigarette from his case and surveyed him with a little smile.

  "Don't you think there might be a closed season for Teals ? I'll never forget how it was when we left England. I hated you, boy-the way you baited him."

  "It's a rough game," said the Saint quietly. "But I haven't baited him this time-not yet. The trouble is that the assistant commissioner holds poor old Claud personally responsible for our brilliance. It was a brain wave of yours to raid Lormer directly you found I was in clink, but that alibi won't work twice. And Teal's just building up a real case. We'll have to be very care­ful. Anyway, we won't murder anyone in public...."

  When the Saint went out that afternoon he carried a conspicuously large white envelope in his hand. At the corner of the cul-de-sac there was a big man pa­tiently manicuring his nails with a pocketknife. Simon posted his envelope in full view of the watcher, and afterwards suffered himself to be painstakingly shad­owed through a harmless shopping expedition in the West End.

  Late that night a certain Mr. Ronald Nilder, whose agency for vaudeville artistes was not above suspicion, received a brief letter in a large white envelope. It stated quite simply that unless he made a five-figure donation to the Actors' Orphanage within the week his relatives might easily suffer an irreparable bereavement; and it was signed with the Saint's trade mark. Mr. Nilder, a public-spirited citizen, immediately rang up the police. Chief Inspector Teal saw him, and later had another interview with the assistant commissioner.

  "Templar posted a large white envelope yesterday," he said, "but we can't prove it was the one Nilder received. If I know anything about the Saint, Nilde
r will get a follow-up message in a day or two, and we may be able to catch Templar red-handed."

  His diagnosis of Saintly psychology proved to be even shrewder than he knew.

  For the next couple of days Simon was busy with the work of adding to the comfortable furnishings of his house a selection of electrical devices of his own in­vention. They were of a type that he had never expected to find included in the fixtures and fittings of any ordinary domicile, but he considered them eminently necessary to his safety and peace of mind. He employed no workmen, for workmen are no less inclined to gossip than anyone else, and the kind of installations which were the Saint's specialty would have been a fruitful source of conversation to anyone. Wherefore the Saint worked energetically alone, and considered his job well done when at the end of it there were no signs of his activity to be found without a very close investigation. The watcher at the end of the cul-de-sac manicured his ceaselessly, and had many enjoyable walks at the Saint's heels whenever Simon went out. Simon christened him Fido, and became resigned to him as a permanent feature of the landscape. It was near the end of the week when Simon emerged from his front door with another conspicuously large white envelope similar to the first tucked under his arm; and the plain-clothes man, who had definite instructions, closed his penknife with a snap and stepped forward as the Saint came abreast of him.

  "Excuse me, sir," he said punctiliously. "May I have a look at your letter ?"

  The Saint stared at him.

  "And who might you be?"

  "I'm a police officer," said the man firmly.

  "Then why are you wearing an Old Etonian tie?" asked the Saint.

  He allowed the envelope to be taken out of his hand. It was addressed to Mr. Ronald Nilder, and the detec­tive ripped it open. Inside he found a flexible gramo­phone disk, and somewhat to his amazement the label in the centre bore the name of Chief Inspector Teal.