The Saint versus Scotland Yard (The Saint Series) Page 2

  To the two men, wheeling round at the sound of his voice like a pair of marionettes whose control wires have got mixed up with a dynamo, it seemed as if he had appeared out of the fourth dimension. Just for an instant. And then they saw the open door of the capacious cupboard behind him.

  “Pass right down the car, gents,” he murmured, encouragingly.

  He crossed the room. He appeared to cross it slowly, but that, again, was an illusion. He had reached the two men before either of them could move. His left hand shot out and fastened on the lapels of the bearded man’s coat—and the bearded man vanished. It was the most startling thing that Mr Montgomery Bird had ever seen, but the Saint did not seem to be aware that he was multiplying miracles with an easy grace that would have made a Grand Lama look like a third-rate three-card man. He calmly pulled the sliding mirror back into place, and turned round again.

  “No—not you, Montgomery,” he drawled. “We may want you again this evening. Back-pedal, comrade.”

  His arm telescoped languidly outwards, and the hand at the end of it seized the retreating Mr Bird by one ear, fetching him up with a jerk that made him squeak in muted anguish.

  Simon steered him firmly but rapidly towards the open cupboard.

  “You can cool off in there,” he said, and the next sensations that impinged upon Montgomery Bird’s delirious consciousness consisted of a lot of darkness and the sound of a key turning in the cupboard lock.

  The Saint straightened his coat and returned to the centre of the room.

  He sat down in Mr Bird’s chair, put his feet on Mr Bird’s desk, lighted one of Mr Bird’s cigars, and gazed at the ceiling with an expression of indescribable beatitude on his face, and it was thus that Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal found him.

  Some seconds passed before the detective recovered the use of his voice, but when he had done this, he made up for lost time.

  “What,” he snarled, “the blankety blank blanking blank-blanked blank—”

  “Hush,” said the Saint.

  “Why?” snarled Teal, not unreasonably.

  Simon held up his hand.

  “Listen.”

  There was a moment’s silence, and then Teal’s glare re-calorified.

  “What am I supposed to be listening to?” he demanded violently, and the Saint beamed at him.

  “Down in the forest something stirred—it was only the note of a bird,” he explained sweetly.

  The detective centralised his jaw with a visible effort.

  “Is Montgomery Bird another of your fancy names?” he inquired, with a certain lusciousness. “Because, if it is—”

  “Yes, old dear?”

  “If it is,” said Chief Inspector Teal grimly, “you’re going to see the inside of a prison at last.”

  Simon regarded him imperturbably.

  “On what charge?”

  “You’re going to get as long as I can get you for allowing drinks to be sold in your club after hours—”

  “And then—?”

  The detective’s eyes narrowed.

  “What do you mean?”

  Simon flourished Mr Bird’s cigar airily.

  “I always understood that the police were pretty bone-headed,” he remarked genially, “but I never knew before that they’d been reduced to employing Chief Inspectors for ordinary drinking raids.”

  Teal said nothing.

  “On the other hand, a dope raid is quite a different matter,” said the Saint.

  He smiled at the detective’s sudden stillness, and stood up, knocking an inch of ash from his cigar.

  “I must be toddling along,” he murmured. “If you really want to find some dope, and you’ve any time to spare after you’ve finished cleaning up the bar, you ought to try locking the door of this room and pulling up bits of wainscoting. The third and fifth sections—I can’t tell you which wall. Oh, and if you want Montgomery, he’s simmering down in the Frigidaire…See you again soon.”

  He patted the crown of Mr Teal’s bowler hat affectionately, and was gone before the detective had completely grasped what was happening.

  The Saint could make those well-oiled exits when he chose, and he chose to make one then, for he was a fundamentally tactful man. Also, he had in one pocket an envelope purporting to contain one hundred pounds, and in another pocket the entire contents of Mr Montgomery Bird’s official safe, and at such times the Saint did not care to be detained.

  CHAPTER 2

  Simon Templar pushed back his plate.

  “Today,” he announced, “I have reaped the first-fruits of virtue.”

  He raised the letter he had received, and adjusted an imaginary pair of pince-nez. Patricia waited expectantly. The Saint read:

  “Dear Mr Templar,

  Having come across a copy of your book “The Pirate” and having nothing to do I sat down to read it. Well, the impression it gave me was that you are a writer with no sense of proportion. The reader’s sympathy owing to the faulty setting of the first chapter naturally goes all the way with Kerrigan, even though he is a crook. It is not surprising that this book has not gone to a second edition. You do not evidently understand the mentality of an English reading public. If instead of Mario you had selected for your hero an Englishman or an American, you would have written a fairly readable and a passable tale—but a lousy Dago who works himself out of impossible difficulties and situations is too much. It is not convincing. It does not appeal. In a word it is puerile.

  “I fancy you yourself must have a fair amount of Dago blood in you—”

  He stopped, and Patricia Holm looked at him puzzledly.

  “Well?” she prompted.

  “There is no more,” explained the Saint. “No address—no signature—no closing peroration—nothing. Apparently words failed him. At that point he probably uttered a short sharp yelp of intolerable agony, and began to chew pieces out of the furniture. We may never know his fate. Possibly, in some distant asylum—”

  He elaborated on his theory.

  During a brief spell of virtue some time before, the Saint had beguiled himself with the writing of a novel. Moreover, he had actually succeeded in finding a home for it, and the adventures of Mario, a super-brigand of South America, could be purchased at any bookstall for three half-crowns. And the letter that he had just read was part of his reward.

  Another part of the reward had commenced six months previously.

  “Nor is this all,” said the Saint, taking another document from the table. “The following billet-doux appears to close some entertaining correspondence:

  Previous applications for payment of the under-mentioned instalment for the year 1931–1932, due from you on the 1st day January, 1932, having been made to you without effect, Personal Demand is now made for payment, and I Hereby Give You Final Notice that if the amount be not paid or remitted to me at the above address within Seven Days from this date, steps will be taken for recovery by Distraint, with costs.

  Lionel Delborn, Collector.

  In spite of the gloomy prognostications of the anonymous critic, The Pirate had not passed utterly unnoticed in the spate of sensational fiction. The Intelligence Department (“A beautiful name for them,” said the Saint) of the Inland Revenue had observed its appearance, had consulted their records, and had discovered that the author, the notorious Simon Templar, was not registered as a contributor towards the expensive extravagances whereby a modern boobocracy does its share in encouraging the survival of the fattest. The Saint’s views about his liabilities in this cause were not invited: he simply received an assessment which presumed his income to be six thousand pounds per annum, and he was invited to appeal against it if he thought fit. The Saint thought fit, and declared that the assessment was bad in law, erroneous in principle, excessive in amount, and malicious in intent. The discussion that followed was lengthy and diverting; the Saint, conducting his own case with remarkable forensic ability and eloquence, pleaded that he was a charitable institution and therefore not tax
able.

  “If,” said the Saint, in his persuasive way, “you will look up the delightful words of Lord Macnaghten, in Income Tax Commissioners v. Pemsel, 1891, A.C. at p. 583, you will find that charitable purposes are there defined in four principal divisions, of which the fourth is ‘trusts for purposes beneficial to the community, not falling under any of the preceding heads.’ I am simply and comprehensively beneficial to the community, which the face of the third Commissioner from the left definitely is not.”

  We find from the published record of the proceedings that he was overruled, and the epistle he had just quoted was final and conclusive proof of the fact.

  “And that,” said the Saint, gazing at the formidable red lettering gloomily, “is what I get for a lifetime of philanthropy and self-denial.”

  “I suppose you’ll have to pay,” said Patricia.

  “Someone will,” said the Saint significantly.

  He propped the printed buff envelope that had accompanied the Final Demand against the coffee-pot, and his eyes rested on it for a space with a gentle thoughtfulness—amazingly clear, devil-may-care blue eyes with a growing glimmer of mischief lurking somewhere behind the lazily drooping lids.

  And slowly the old Saintly smile came to his lips as he contemplated the address.

  “Someone will have to pay,” repeated the Saint thoughtfully, and Patricia Holm sighed, for she knew the signs.

  And suddenly the Saint stood up, with his swift soft laugh, and took the Final Demand and the envelope over to the fireplace. On the wall close by hung a plain block calendar, and on the mantelpiece lay an old Corsican stiletto. “Che la mia ferita sia mortale,” said the inscription on the blade.

  The Saint rapidly flicked over the pages of the calendar and tore out the sheet which showed in solid red figures the day on which Mr Lionel Delborn’s patience would expire. He placed the sheet on top of the other papers, and with one quick thrust he drove the stiletto through the collection and speared it deep into the panelled overmantel.

  “Lest we forget,” he said, and turned with another laugh to smile seraphically into Patricia’s outraged face. “I just wasn’t born to be respectable, lass, and that’s all there is to it. And the time has come for us to remember the old days.”

  As a matter of fact, he had made that decision two full weeks before, and Patricia had known it, but not until then had he made his open declaration of war.

  At eight o’clock that evening he was sallying forth in quest of an evening’s innocent amusement, and a car that had been standing in the darkness at the end of the cul-de-sac of Upper Berkeley Mews suddenly switched on its headlights and roared towards him. The Saint leapt back and fell on his face in the doorway, and he heard the plop of a silenced gun and the thud of a bullet burying itself in the woodwork above his head. He slid out into the mews again as the car went past, and fired twice as it swung into Berkeley Square, but he could not tell whether he did any damage.

  He returned to brush his clothes, and then continued calmly on his way, and when he met Patricia later he did not think it necessary to mention the incident that had delayed him. But it was the third time since the episode chez Bird that the Scorpion had tried to kill him, and no one knew better than Simon Templar that it would not be the last attempt.

  CHAPTER 3

  For some days past, the well-peeled eye might at intervals have observed a cadaverous and lantern-jawed individual protruding about six and a half feet upwards from the cobbled paving of Upper Berkeley Mews. Simon Templar, having that sort of eye, had in fact noticed the apparition on its first and in all its subsequent visits, and anyone less well-informed than himself might pardonably have suspected some connection between the lanky boulevardier and the recent disturbances of the peace. Simon Templar, however, was not deceived.

  “That,” he said once, in answer to Patricia’s question, “is Mr Harold Garrot, better known as Long Harry. He is a moderately proficient burglar, and we have met before, but not professionally. He is trying to make up his mind to come and tell me something, and one of these days he will take the plunge.”

  The Saint’s deductions were vindicated twenty-four hours after the last firework display.

  Simon was alone. The continued political activities of a certain newspaper proprietor had driven him to verse, and he was covering a sheet of foolscap with the beginning of a minor epic expressing his own views on the subject:

  Charles Charleston Charlemagne St Charles

  Was wont to utter fearful snarls

  When by professors he was pressed

  To note how England had progressed

  Since the galumptious, gory days

  Immortalised in Shakespeare’s plays.

  For him, no Transatlantic flights,

  Ford motor-cars, electric lights,

  Or radios at less than cost

  Could compensate for what he lost

  By chancing to coagulate

  About five hundred years too late.

  Born in the only days for him

  He would have swung a sword with vim,

  Grown ginger whiskers on his face,

  And mastered, with a knobbly mace,

  Men who wore hauberks on their chests

  Instead of little woolen vests.

  And drank strong wine among his peers

  Instead of pale synthetic beers.

  At this point, the trend of his inspiration led the Saint on a brief excursion to the barrel in one corner of the room. He replenished his tankard, drank deeply, and continued:

  Had he not reason to be glum

  When born in nineteen umpty-um?

  And there, for the moment, he stuck, and he was cogitating the possible developments of the next stanza when he was interrupted by the zing! of the front door bell.

  As he stepped out into the hall, he glanced up through the fanlight above the door at the mirror that was cunningly fixed to the underneath of the hanging lantern outside. He recognised the caller at once, and opened the door without hesitation.

  “Come in, Harry,” invited the Saint cordially, and led the way back to the sitting-room. “I was busy with a work of art that is going to make Milton look like a distant relative of the gargle, but I can spare you a few minutes.”

  Long Harry glanced at the sheet half-covered with the Saint’s neat handwriting.

  “Poetry, Mr Templar? We used to learn poetry at school,” he said reminiscently.

  Simon looked at him thoughtfully for two or three seconds, and then he beamed.

  “Harry, you hit the nail on the head. For that suggestion, I pray that your shadow may always be jointed at the elbows. Excuse me one moment.”

  He plumped himself back in his chair and wrote at speed. Then he cleared his throat, and read aloud:

  “Eton and Oxford failed to floor

  The spirit of the warrior;

  Though ragged and bullied, teased and hissed,

  Charles stayed a Medievalist;

  And even when his worldly Pa

  (Regarding him with nausea)

  Condemned him to the dismal cares

  Of sordid trade in stocks and shares,

  Charles, in top-hat and Jaeger drawers,

  Clung like a limpet to his Cause,

  Believing, in a kind of trance,

  That one day he would have his Chance.”

  He laid the sheet down reverently.

  “A mere pastime for me, but I believe Milton used to sweat blood over it,” he remarked complacently. “Soda or water, Harry?”

  “Neat, please, Mr Templar.”

  Simon brought over the glass of Highland cream, and Long Harry sipped it, and crossed and uncrossed his legs awkwardly.

  “I hope you don’t mind my coming to see you, sir,” he ventured at last.

  “Not at all,” responded the Saint heartily. “Always glad to see any Eton boys here. What’s the trouble?”

  Long Harry fidgeted, twiddling his fingers and corrugating his brow. He was the typica
l “old lag,” or habitual criminal, which is to say that outside of business hours he was a perfectly ordinary man of slightly less than average intelligence and rather more than average cunning. On this occasion he was plainly and ordinarily ill at ease, and the Saint surmised that he had only begun to solve his worries when he mustered up the courage to give that single, brief, and symptomatic ring at the front door bell.

  Simon lighted a cigarette and waited impassively, and presently his patience reaped its harvest.

  “I wondered—I thought maybe I could tell you something that might interest you, Mr Templar.”

  “Sure.” The Saint allowed a thin jet of smoke to trickle through his lips, and continued to wait.

  “It’s about…it’s about the Scorpion, Mr Templar.”

  Instantaneously the Saint’s eyes narrowed, the merest fraction of a millimetre, and the inhalation that he drew from his cigarette was long and deep and slow. And then the stare that he swivelled round in the direction of Long Harry was wide blue innocence itself.

  “What Scorpion?” he inquired blandly.

  Long Harry frowned.

  “I thought you’d’ve known about the Scorpion, of course, Mr Templar, you being—”

  “Yeah?”

  Simon drawled out the prompting diphthong in a honeyed slither up a gently persuasive G-string, and Long Harry shuffled his feet uncomfortably.

  “Well, you remember what you used to be, Mr Templar. There wasn’t much you didn’t know in those days.”

  “Oh, yes—once upon a time. But now—”

  “Last time we met, sir—”

  The Saint’s features relaxed, and he smiled.

  “Forget it, Harold,” he advised quietly. “I’m now a respectable citizen. I was a respectable citizen the last time we met, and I haven’t changed. You may tell me anything you like, Harry—as one respectable citizen to another—but I’d recommend you to forget the interview as you step over the front door mat. I shall do the same—it’s safer.”

  Long Harry nodded.

  “If you forget it, sir, it’ll be safer for me,” he said seriously.

  “I have a hopeless memory,” said the Saint carefully. “I’ve already forgotten your name. In another minute, I shan’t be sure that you’re here at all. Now shoot the dope, son.”