The Saint in London (The Saint Series) Page 2

  “Who is that man?” she asked.

  “His name is Templar,” said her neighbour, who knew everything. “And you mark my words, there’s something queer about him. I shouldn’t be surprised if he was a sort of gangster.”

  “He looks like a…a sort of cavalier,” said Miss Tinwiddle timidly.

  “Pish!” said her companion testily, and returned to the grim task of trying to convince a cynical Customs officer that twenty-four silk dresses would have been a beggarly allowance even for a week-end traveller.

  At the end of the shed, Detective-Sergeant Harry Jepson of the Southampton CID said to Police Constable Ernest Potts, “You see the tall fellow in the grey tweeds coming this way? Handsome devil, isn’t he? Well, you’d better remember that face.”

  “Who is he?” asked Police Constable Potts.

  “That,” said Sergeant Jepson, “is Mr Simon Templar, alias the Saint, and you aren’t likely to see a smarter crook than him in your time. At least, I hope not. He’s committed every blooming crime there is from murder downwards, and he’ll tell you so himself, but nobody’s ever been able to hang a thing on him. And to look at him you’d think he had a conscience like a new-born babe.”

  In which utterance Detective-Sergeant Harry Jepson was as close to eternal truth as he was ever likely to get; for the Saint had never been sure that he had a conscience at all, but if he had one there was certainly nothing on it. He looked the two officers shamelessly in the eye as he approached, and as he strolled past them his right hand waved a quizzical salute that had no regard whatever for the affronted majesty of the law.

  “D’you ever hear of such blooming sauce?” demanded Mr Jepson indignantly.

  But Simon Templar, who was called the Saint, neither heard nor cared. He stood on the railroad platform, tapping a cigarette on a thin platinum case, and panned a thoughtful and quietly vigilant eye along the whole length of the train. He was expecting somebody to meet him, but he knew that it would not be anyone whose welcome would be friendly, and he had the additional disadvantage of not even being able to guess what the welcomer might look like. The Saint’s vocation was trouble, but he had contrived to stay alive for thirty-two years only because of an unceasing devotion to the business of divining where the trouble would come from, and meeting it on his toes.

  “Wantcher luggidge in the van, sir?” asked the porter who was wheeling his barrow.

  The Saint’s gaze travelled round to measure up two suitcases and a wardrobe trunk.

  “I think so, George,” he murmured. “I shouldn’t be able to run very far with that load, should I?”

  He took over his small overnight bag, and saw the rest of his impedimenta registered through to his apartment on Piccadilly. He was still carrying the black book under his arm, and it occurred to him that there were more convenient forms of camouflage for it than the slung raincoat by which it was temporarily hidden. He paused at the bookstall and glanced over the volumes of fiction offered for the entertainment of the traveller. In the circumstances, his choice had to be dictated by size rather than subject-matter.

  “I’ll take this,” he said brazenly and the assistant’s eyes bulged slightly as he paid over three half-crowns for a copy of an opus entitled Her Wedding Secret.

  A signpost adjoining the bookstall invited gentlemen to enter and make themselves at home, and the Saint drifted through with his purchase. No other gentlemen were availing themselves of the Southern Railway’s hospitality at the time, and it was the work of a moment to slip the intriguing jacket from the volume he had just bought and transfer it to the black book from under his arm, where it fitted quite comfortably. He pitched the unknown lady’s wedding secret dextrously through the skylight, and went out again with the newly-jacketed black book conspicuously flaunted in his hand—no one who had been watching him would have had any reason to suspect that there had been any change in the contents of that artistically suggestive wrapper.

  There were several minutes left before the train was due to leave, and the Saint strolled unhurriedly along the platform with his bag, as though selecting a carriage. If the welcomer or welcomers that he expected were there, he wanted to help them in every possible way. He covered the whole length of the train before he turned back, and then made his choice of an empty smoker. Pushing his suitcase up onto the rack, and dumping his raincoat and book on a corner seat, he leaned out of the window and slid another idly thoughtful glance over the scene.

  A military-looking man of about forty-five, with a strongly aquiline nose, and a black guardee moustache came slowly down the platform. He passed the window without looking round, walked on a little way, and turned. He stood there for a while, teetering toe to heel and gazing vacantly over the gallery of posters plastered on the opposite wall; then he came back, past the Saint’s window again, circumnavigated a farewell party congregated outside the next carriage and did the same thing on the other side.

  The Saint’s cool blue eyes never once looked directly at him; his brown keen-cut face never changed its expression from one of languid patience, but he had seen every movement of the military-looking man’s manoeuvres. And Simon Templar knew, beyond a shadow of doubt, that this was at least one of the welcomers whom he had been expecting.

  Along the train came a bustle of belated activity, the banging of doors, the scream of the guard’s whistle. Simon remained in his window, finishing his cigarette, and saw the military-looking man climb into an adjoining compartment. The engine let out a hiss of steam, and the platform began to slip back under his eyes.

  Simon dropped his cigarette and settled back into his corner. He turned the pages of the black book in its new wrapper, refreshing his memory. The action was more automatic than deliberate, only different in degree from a nervous person’s gesture in twiddling his thumbs while waiting on tenterhooks for some anticipated event to happen. The Saint already knew almost every line of that amazing volume by heart—he had had plenty of time to study it from cover to cover on the voyage over. The odds were about fifty to one that the military-looking man was mentioned somewhere in its pages, but it was rather difficult to decide, out of the available names, which one he was most likely to bear.

  The conductor came round and collected tickets, and then fifteen minutes passed before the door of the Saint’s compartment slid back again. Simon closed his book and looked up with exactly the conventional nuance of irritated curiosity which darkens the distinguished features of the railroad passenger who has contrived to secure a compartment to himself and who finds his privacy illegitimately invaded at the last moment, but the military-looking man put his back to the door and stared at him with a grimness that was by no means conventional.

  “Come on,” he said grimly. “Give me that book!”

  “What, this?” said the Saint in innocent surprise, raising Her Wedding Secret. “You’re welcome to it when I’ve finished, brother, but I hardly think it’s in your line. I’ve only got to the part where she discovers that the man she has married is a barbarian lover—”

  The intruder pushed the unoffending volume roughly aside.

  “I don’t mean that,” he said shortly. “You know perfectly well what book I mean.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t,” said the Saint.

  “And you know perfectly well,” continued the intruder, “what I’m going to do to you if I don’t get it.”

  Simon shook his head.

  “I can’t guess that one either,” he remarked mildly. “What is it—slap my wrist and tell me to stand in the corner?”

  The man’s mouth was working under his moustache. He came further into the compartment, past the Saint, and jerked a small automatic from his pocket. It was an almost pathetically amateurish movement—Simon could have forestalled it easily, but he wanted to see how far the other would go.

  “Very well,” grated the man. “I’ll have to take it myself. Put ’em up!”

  “Up what?” asked the Saint, doing his best to understand.

  �
�Put your hands up. And don’t think of any more of that funny stuff, or you’ll be sorry for it.”

  Simon put his hands up lazily. His bag was on the rack directly over his head, and the handle was within an inch of his fingers.

  “I suppose the keepers will be along to collect you in a minute, old fruit?” he drawled. “Or do you fancy yourself as a sort of highwayman?”

  “Now listen, you,” came the snarling answer. “I’m going to allow you five seconds to give me that book. If I haven’t got it in that time, I’m going to shoot. I’ll start counting now. One…two…”

  There was a crazy red glare in the intruder’s eyes, and although the gun was shaking unsteadily, something told Simon that he had permitted the melodrama to go far enough.

  “You know all the rules, don’t you, brother?” he said gently, and his fingers grasped the handle of his bag and hurled it full into the other’s face.

  The man reeled back with the force of the impact, and went crashing against the outside door. It flew open under his weight, and the Saint’s blue eyes turned to sudden ice as he realised that it could not have been properly latched when he got in. For one awful instant the man’s fingers clawed at the frame, and then with a choking gasp he was gone, and there was only the drab streaked wall of the cutting roaring by the door…

  Simon’s hand reached up instinctively towards the communication cord. And then it drew back.

  The intruder, whoever he was, had asked for it: he had taken his own chances. And although Simon Templar had only done what was justified in self-defence, he knew his own reputation at Scotland Yard too well to believe for a moment that it would be a brief and simple task to impress that fact upon the suspicious hostility of the CID. To stop the train would achieve nothing more helpful than his own immediate arrest, and of all the things which might happen to him while he had that black book in his possession, an interlude behind bars in Brixton Prison was the least exhilarating.

  He caught the swinging door and closed it again, and then restored his suitcase to the rack. The unknown casualty’s gun had gone out with him—there was no other evidence that he had ever entered the compartment.

  The Saint lighted a cigarette and sat down again, listening to the rhythmic thrum and rattle of the wheels pounding over the metals towards London. There was nothing unusual about the fact that he was expecting trouble when he returned to Europe, or even about the fact that a fair sample of that trouble should have greeted him within such a short time of setting foot in England.

  But it was perhaps more unusual that the particular trouble he was expecting could not be blamed on any fault of his. And the queerest thing of all was that everything should hinge around the black book on his knee which was the legacy of Rayt Marius—the strangest and deadliest gift that any man ever received.

  2

  He was one of the first passengers to alight from the train at Waterloo, with his raincoat slung over his shoulder and the book in his hand, but he did not take the first available taxi. He allowed six to go by him, and boarded the seventh after taking a good look at it.

  “Hyde Park Corner,” he directed it clearly, and watched the traffic out of the rear window as they drove away.

  Another taxi swung in behind them, and he noted the number.

  Five minutes later he looked again, and it was still there. Simon pressed the button of the telephone.

  “Turn right round at Hyde Park Corner and go back the way we’ve come,” he said.

  He waited a short time after his instructions had been carried out, and looked back for the third time. The other taxi was plugging patiently along three yards behind, and the Saint’s teeth gleamed in a thin smile. Coincidence of destination was one thing, but coincidence of such a radical change of direction as he had ordered his driver to carry out was quite another matter.

  “Now we’ll go through the Green Park and up St. James’s Street,” he said through the telephone.

  The driver was so moved that he opened the door an inch and performed incredible contortions to yell back through it.

  “Wot is this?” he demanded. “A game of ’ide-and-seek?”

  “You have no idea,” said the Saint.

  The apartment he was heading for was in the north side of Piccadilly, overlooking the Green Park. It was only one of many addresses that he had had at various times, to several of which he still owned the keys, but it was the one which had been prepared for his return, and he had no intention of being prevented from going there. The only question was how the shadowing party was to be shaken off.

  As they ran up St. James’s Street he looked at the meter and counted off the necessary change to pay the fare with a substantial tip. When the next frame light reddened against them he stretched a long arm through the window and thrust the money into the driver’s hand.

  “I shall be leaving you any minute now, Alphonse,” he said. “But don’t let that stop you. Keep right on your way, and don’t look back till you get to Hyde Park Corner. And have a bob on Samovar for the Derby.”

  He had the door on the latch as they passed the Ritz, and his steel-blue eyes were watching the traffic intently. Three buses were taking on passengers at the stop just west of the hotel, and as they went past the leader was edging out into the stream. Simon looked back and saw it cut out close behind him, baulking the following taxi, and that was his chance. In a flash he was out of his cab, dropping nimbly to the road, and the red side of the bus thundered by a couple of inches from his shoulder. It hid him perfectly from whoever was trailing him in the other cab, which was trying to pass the obstruction and catch up again, and he stood on the sidewalk and watched the whole futile procession trundling away westwards with a relentless zeal that brought an irresponsible twinkle of sheer urchin mischief into his eyes.

  A few minutes later he was sauntering into his apartment building and nodding cheerily to the janitor.

  “Anybody called while I’ve been away, Sam?” he asked, as if he had only been away for a week-end.

  Sam Outrell’s beam of delight gave way to a troubled gravity. He looked furtively about him.

  “There was two detectives here the other day, sir,” he said.

  The Saint frowned at him thoughtfully for a moment. Although Sam Outrell was nominally employed by the management of the building, he was on Simon Templar’s private pay-roll as well, but no stipend could have bought the look of almost dog-like devotion with which he waited anxiously for the Saint’s reaction. Simon looked up at him again and smiled.

  “I expect they were the birds I hired to try and find a collar-stud that went down the waste pipe,” he said, and went whistling on his way to the lift.

  He let himself into his apartment noiselessly. There were sounds of someone moving about in the living-room, and he only stopped to throw his hat and coat onto a chair before he went through and opened the second door.

  “Hullo, Pat,” he said softly. “I thought you’d be here.”

  Across the room, a tall slender girl with fair golden hair gazed at him with eyes as blue as his own. There was the grace of a pagan goddess in the way she stood, caught in surprise as she was by the sound of his voice, and the reward of all journeys in the quiver of her red lips.

  “So you have come back,” she said.

  “After many adventures,” said the Saint, and took her into his arms.

  She turned away presently, keeping his arm round her, and showed him the table.

  “I got in a bottle of your favourite sherry,” she said rather breathlessly, “in case you came.”

  “In case!” said the Saint.

  “Well, after you wired me not to meet you at Southampton—”

  He laughed, a quiet lilt of laughter that had rung in her memory for many weeks.

  “Darling, that was because I was expecting another deputation of welcome at the same time, and it might have spoilt the fun for both of us. The deputation was there, too—but you shall hear about that presently.”

&nbs
p; He filled the two glasses which stood beside the bottle and carried one of them over to an armchair. Over the rim of his glass he regarded her, freshening the portrait which he had carried with him ever since he went away. So much had happened to him, so many things had touched him and passed on into the illimitable emptiness of time, but not one line of her had changed. She was the same as she had been on the day when he first met her, the same as she had been through all the lawless adventures that they had shared since she threw in her lot irrevocably with his. She looked at him in the same way.

  “You’re older,” she said quietly.

  He smiled.

  “I haven’t been on a picnic.”

  “And there’s something about you that tells me you aren’t on a picnic even now.”

  He sipped the golden nectar from his glass and delved for a cigarette. When she said that he was older she could not have pointed to a grey hair or a new line on his face to prove her statement. And at that moment she felt that the clock might well have been put back five years. The fine sunburnt devil-may-care face, the face of a born outlaw, was in some subtle way more keenly etched than ever by the indefinable inward light that came to it when trouble loomed up in his buccaneering path. She knew him so well that the lazy quirk of the unscrupulous freebooter’s mouth told a story of its own, and even the whimsical smile that lurked on in his eyes could not deceive her.

  “It isn’t my fault if you develop these psychic powers, old sweetheart,” he said.

  “It’s your fault if you can’t even stay out of trouble for a week now and again,” she said, and sat on the arm of his chair.

  He shook his head, and took one of her hands.

  “I tried to, Pat, but it just wasn’t meant to happen. A wicked ogre with a black guardee moustache hopped through a window and said ‘Boo!’ and my halo blew off. If I wanted to, I could blame it all on you.”