Saint Errant (The Saint Series) Page 2

  “Shall we?” said the Saint.

  The girl gathered up her gloves and bag. Simon stood up quickly to pull the table away from in front of her. He trod heavily on the waiter’s toes, overbalanced him backwards, and caught him again dexterously as he was on the point of descending, like Newton’s apple, on the bald head of a customer in the next row. Somewhere in the course of the acrobatics the well-filled wallet traveled from the waiter’s pocket to the Saint’s own.

  “Mille pardons,” murmured the Saint, patting the anguished man soothingly on the shoulder, and sauntered after the girl.

  There was a taxi crawling by, and they climbed in.

  “I’m free till twelve, stranger,” said the girl.

  She pulled off her hat and leaned far back on the cushions, with one slim silken leg stretched out to rest a toe on the folding seat in front. The passing lights picked up her face in almost breathless perfection, and let it sink back reluctantly into shadow.

  “And then do you have to hurry home before the clock strikes, and only leave a glass slipper for a souvenir?”

  “No,” she said, “I have to burgle a house.”

  There was an omelet. She had never dreamed of anything so delicate, wrapped in a gossamer skin, so richly red-gold inside, so different in every way from the dry coagulation of half-scrambled eggs which passes under the same name in so many places.

  “There’s a trick in it,” she said with a sigh, when it was finished.

  “Of course there is,” said the Saint. “It’s one of the higher mysteries of life, only to be revealed to the pure in heart after many ordeals and battles and much traveling.”

  She accepted a cigarette from his case, dipped it in the flame of his lighter. Across the table the gray eyes looked into his with the serene intimacy which must come with the sharing of any sensuous pleasure, even eating. She said, “I’m glad I met you, stranger. You take things very calmly, and you don’t ask awkward questions.”

  In the course of his career the Saint had taken a good many things calmly enough, but he could not remember having heard it accounted unto him for righteousness before.

  He perceived that he had fallen into the error of attaching himself too much to the viewpoint of his bereaved victims.

  “The questions may come later,” he said. “We burglars aren’t easily startled.”

  She let a trail of smoke rise and disintegrate towards the ceiling.

  “I’m going to talk to you, stranger,” she said quietly. “A girl likes to talk, and nothing about this evening is real. We never met before and we shan’t meet again. This is an interlude that doesn’t count, except for remembrance.”

  “Is there a dragon in it?”

  “There’s a Robber Baron. Have you ever heard of Burt Northwade?”

  Simon had. His knowledge of unlovable characters, in and out of prison, was very nearly unique.

  He knew Northwade for one of the more unpleasant products of World War I, a man who had successfully conceived the notion of selling inferior bootlaces to the Allied armies for three times their cost, and had gained for himself much wealth by that patriotic service. The Northwade business, subsequently built up to almost monopolistic proportions, was still welding together the uppers of half the world, but Northwade himself had retired a couple of years ago to his native Canada and a mansion in Westmount, leaving the female part of his family to pursue its strenuous climb through the social gradings of New York.

  “Yes, I’ve heard of Northwade. One of these monuments of other people’s industry, isn’t he?”

  “He’s also my uncle,” said the girl. “I’m Judith Northwade.” Simon Templar hadn’t blushed since he was eight years old. Also he considered that his remark was very nearly a compliment compared with what he would probably have said to Burt Northwade’s face, had that undesirable industrialist been present.

  “You have our sympathy,” he said coolly.

  “My father’s a professor of engineering at Toronto,” said the girl. “You’ve probably never heard of him. You couldn’t have two brothers who were more different. They’ve always been like that. Northwade only wanted to make money. My father never wanted it. He’s just a quiet, kind, completely ordinary man—almost a child outside his work. They both started at the bottom, and they both got what they wanted. Northwade made the money; my father worked his way through school, went on to Toronto University on a scholarship, and got to where he is now. The thing that came between them was my mother. Northwade wanted her, too, but she just happened to prefer Dad.” The Saint nodded.

  “It wasn’t Dad’s fault,” she said, “but Uncle Burt never forgave him. I don’t think he was really jealous—maybe he wasn’t really in love at all—but he’d come on something that money and success alone couldn’t buy, and his vanity never got over it. Oh, he didn’t say anything outright; he’s always been friendly—too friendly—but Dad, who wouldn’t suspect a cannibal who was weighing him, never thought anything of it. I could see. I tried to tell him, but he wouldn’t believe me. He even helped Uncle Burt to make more money—he’s a clever inventor, too, and during the war he designed a machine that would put tags on laces twice as quickly as the old way, or something like that. I think Uncle Burt gave him fifty dollars for it.” She smiled a little. “It’s beginning to sound like a detective story, isn’t it?”

  “It has begun,” said the Saint, “but I like those stories.”

  She finished her glass of Château Olivier.

  “It’s going to sound more like that, but it’s just one of those stories that are happening every day. For the last eighteen months or so Dad’s been working on an infinitely variable gear for automobiles. Do you know what that means? It means that you’ll just drive your car on the accelerator and brake, and whatever it’s doing, up hills or down, or in traffic or anywhere, without even an automatic gear change, the engine’ll always be working at its maximum efficiency—that sounds rather technical, but I’m so used to hearing Dad talk that I’ve got that way myself. Anyway, it’s far in advance of anything that’s been done in that line so far. There’s a fortune in it already, but it wasn’t good enough for Dad. He wanted to be sure that it was beyond any improvement. Three months ago he’d spent every penny he’d saved on his experiments. Then he went to Uncle Burt for help.”

  The Saint’s mind moved in certain channels with the speed and precision of infinite experience. He took up his cigarette again and regarded her steadily over it.

  “Northwade helped him, of course,” he said.

  “Uncle Burt lent him five thousand dollars. On a nominal security—purely nominal. And with a few legal documents—just as a matter of form. I expect you can guess what that means.”

  “I could try.”

  “The plans of the gear are in Uncle Burt’s safe, over in Westmount—all the results of Dad’s work up till now. And there’s a paper with them which says that all rights in them belong to Burt Northwade—with no time limit specified. It was supposed to be until the loan was repaid, but the contract doesn’t say so. Dad hasn’t any mind for legal trickeries, and he signed the papers while I was away. I didn’t know about it till it was too late.”

  “One gathers,” said the Saint composedly, “that this is the house you propose to burgle.”

  She gazed at him without flinching, gray eyes frank and resolute, even with that strain of wistful loneliness in them.

  “Listen, stranger,” she said softly. “This is still the game of Let’s Pretend, isn’t it? Pretending that this evening is right outside the world. Because that’s the only reason why I’m telling you all this. I’m going to burgle Uncle Burt’s house, if I can. I’m going to try and get hold of his keys and open his safe and take those papers away, including the contract Dad signed. Dad hasn’t any hope of paying back that five thousand dollars. And Uncle Burt knows it. He’s practically completed arrangements to sell the gear to Ford. There’s no legal way of stopping him. It’s one of those cases where possession is nine point
s of the law. If we had that contract back, as well as the plans, Uncle Burt would never have the face to go into a court and publish the terms of it, which he’d have to do if he wanted to make any claim. Do you think I’m quite mad?”

  “Only a little.”

  She turned the stem of her wineglass between her fingers, looking at him quietly.

  “Maybe I am. But have you ever heard of the Saint?”

  “The Robin Hood of Modern Crime?” murmured Simon, with only the faintest lift of an eyebrow for expression.

  “I think it’s the sort of thing he’d do,” she said. “It’s justice, even if it’s against the law. I wish I could meet him. He’d understand. I think he’d say it was worth taking a chance on. You’re very understanding, too, stranger. You’ve listened to me awfully patiently, and it’s helped a lot. And now you shall talk about anything else you like, and will you please forget it all?”

  Simon Templar smiled.

  He poured out the last of the wine, and took up his glass. Over the rim of it his clear blue eyes raked the girl with a cavalier challenge that matched his devil-may-care smile and the mocking slant of his brows. His face was alight suddenly.

  “I don’t propose to forget, Judith,” he said. “I am the Saint, and the safe hasn’t been made that I can’t open. Nor has anything else been thought of that I can’t do. We’ll go to Westmount together!”

  “This is the place,” said the girl.

  Simon switched off the engine and let the car coast to a stop under the lee of the hedge. It was her car—she had been prepared for that. She had telephoned from the restaurant and it had been fueled and waiting for them at the garage.

  Burt Northwade’s home, an unwieldy mansion in the Napoleonic style, stood on a slight rise of ground some distance back from the road, in the center of its extensive and pleasant grounds.

  Rising to sit on the door of the convertible, with one foot on the seat, Simon could see the solid rectangle of its upper part painted in dull black on a smudged gray-blue sky. He felt that he knew every corner of it as if he had lived there for years, from the descriptions she had given him and the rough plans she had drawn on the back of the menu, familiarizing him with the configurations of rooms and corridors while their coffee grew cold and neither of them cared. That had been a time of delight shared in adventure which he would always like to remember, but now it was over, and the adventure went on.

  It was a night without moon or stars, and yet not utterly dark; perfect for the purpose. She saw the clean-cut lines of his face, recklessly etched in the burst of light as he kindled a cigarette.

  “I still don’t know why you should do this for me,” she said.

  “Because it’s a game after my own heart,” he answered. “Northwade is a bird I’ve had ideas of my own about for some time. And as for our present object—well, no one could have thought of a story that would have been more likely to fetch me a thousand miles to see it through.”

  “I feel I ought to be coming with you.”

  He drew smoke into his lungs, and with it the sweet smell of green leaves.

  “This sort of thing is my job, and I’ve had more practice than you.”

  “But suppose Uncle Burt wakes up.”

  “I shall immediately hypnotize him so that he falls into a deep sleep again.”

  “Or suppose the servants catch you.”

  “I shall tie them up in bundles of three and heave them into the outer darkness.”

  “But suppose you are caught?”

  He laughed.

  “It’ll be a sign that the end of the world is at hand. But don’t worry. Even if that happens it’ll cause a certain amount of commotion, and if you hear it I shall expect you to drive rapidly away and await the end in some other province. I shall tell them I came out here on roller skates. It’s not your burglary any more—it’s mine.”

  He swung his immaculately tailored legs over the side and dropped lightly to the road, and without another word he was gone, melting into the obscurity like a ghost.

  He walked up the turf path beside the drive with the quick confidence of a cat. No lights showed in any of the front windows as he approached, but he made a careful circle of the house for complete certainty. His eyes adjusted themselves to the gloom with the ease of long habit, and he moved without rustling a blade of grass under his feet.

  The ground floor was a rugged facade of raised arches and pilasters broken by tall gaunt windows, with a pair of carved oak doors in the middle that would have given way to nothing short of a battering-ram, but it is an axiom of housebreaking that those buildings whose fronts look most like fortresses are most likely to defend their postern gates with a card saying “No Admittance.” In this case, there was an open pantry window six feet above the ground. Simon squeezed up through the aperture, and lowered himself gently over the shelves of viands on the inside.

  He passed through into the kitchen. With the help of a tiny pocket flashlight he located the main switchboard and removed all the fuses, burying them in a sack of potatoes. If by any chance there should be an accident, the garrison of the house would be more handicapped by a lack of lights than he would. Then he made his way down the main hall and unbarred, unbolted, unchained, and unlocked the great oak portals. Simon Templar owed much of his freedom to a trained eye for emergency exits, and he carried on the good work by opening a pair of windows in the library before he gave a thought to the safe.

  The girl had described its location accurately. It was built into one wall, behind a small bookcase which opened away from it like a door, and Simon held his flashlight on it for just three seconds before he decided that it was one of those situations in which neither a bent hairpin nor a can opener would be adequate.

  He slid cheerfully back into the hall and stepped soundlessly up the broad staircase. A large selection of burglarious tools was not part of his usual traveling equipment, but that shortcoming had rarely troubled him. It was another axiom of his philosophy that non-combination safes have keys, that most keys are in the possession of the owners of the safes, and, therefore, that the plodding felon who finds it necessary to pack nitroglycerin and oxyacetylene blowpipes in his overnight bag is usually deficient in strategic genius. Burt Northwade was sleeping soundly enough, with his mouth open, and a reassuring drone issuing from the region of his adenoids, but even if he had been awake it is doubtful whether he would have heard the opening of his bedroom door, or sensed one movement of the sensitive hands that lifted a bunch of keys from his dressing table and detached an even more probable one from the chain around his neck.

  Simon went down the stairs again like a ghost. It was the key from the chain which turned the lock, and the heavy steel door swung back at a touch with the smooth acquiescence that even Simon Templar could never feel without a thrill. He propped his flashlight over one instep so that its light filled the interior of the safe, and went to work with quick white-gloved hands. Once he heard a board crack overhead and froze into seconds of granite immobility, but he knew that he had made no noise, and presently he went on.

  The plans were dissected into a thick roll of sheets tied up with tape; the specifications were packed in a long fat envelope with “Pegasus Variable Gear” roughly scrawled on it—that, he had been told, was the name which had been provisionally given to the invention—and a short epic on legal paper was enclosed with them. There were also some letters from various automobile manufacturers.

  The Saint was so busily engaged for the next ten minutes, and so absorbed in his labors, that he missed certain faint sounds which might otherwise have reached his ears. The first hint of danger came just as he had finished, in the shape of a cautious scuffle of feet on the terrace outside, and a hoarse whisper which was so unexpected that he raised his head almost incredulously.

  Then his eyes dropped half instinctively to the safe which he had just closed. He saw something that he had not noticed before—a flat leaden tube which rose a bare inch from the floor and disappeared in
to the crack under the lowest hinge, an obvious conduit for alarm wires. The girl had told him that there were no alarms, but that was one which Northwade had probably preferred to keep secret, and it had taken the Saint off his guard.

  The narrow beam of the flashlight snapped out like a silent explosion. Simon leapt through the blackness to the windows, slammed them together, and secured the catch. He was knotting a handkerchief over the lower part of his face as he crossed the room again. In the darkness his hand closed on the doorknob, turned it stealthily; at the same time his fingers stretched downwards, and could feel no key in the lock. It looked as if it might be a tight corner, a crisp and merry getaway while it lasted, but those were the moments when the Saint’s brain worked at its swiftest.

  He opened the door with a quick jerk and took one step into the hall. On his right, covering the retreat to the back of the house, stood an outsize butler in a nightshirt with a rolling pin clutched in one hand. On his left, barring the way to the front door, was a wiry youth in trousers and undershirt. A little way up the stairs stood Burt Northwade himself, with a candle in one hand and a young cannon of a revolver in the other. The Saint’s most reckless fighting smile touched his lips under the concealing handkerchief.

  “Bon soir, messieurs,” he murmured politely. “It appears that you were not expecting me. I am accustomed to being received in formal dress. I regret that I cannot accept you in this attire.”

  He stepped back rapidly through the door, closing it after him. The butler and the wiry youth took a few seconds to recover, then they made a concerted dash for the door. They burst in together, followed by Burt Northwade with the candle. The spectacle of a completely deserted library was the last thing they were expecting, and it pulled them up short with bulging eyes.

  In an abruptly contrasting silence, the night shirted butler returned to life. He tiptoed gingerly forward, and peered with a majestic air behind and under a large settee in a far corner of the room. The wiry youth, inspired by his example, made a dash to the nearest window curtains and pulled them wide apart, disclosing a large area of glass with the round goggling faces of two other servants pressed against it from the outside, like startled fish in an aquarium. Burt Northwade discreetly remained a scant yard inside the doorway with his sputtering candle held helpfully aloft.