The Saint versus Scotland Yard (The Saint Series) Page 20

  He must have slept very soundly, for the sound of a stealthy rustle only half roused him. Then he heard a click, and he was wide awake.

  He opened his eyes and glanced round the room. There was enough light for him to see that there was no unusual shadow anywhere. He looked at his watch, and saw that it was nearly seven o’clock in the morning. For some moments he lay still, gazing at the indicator panel on the opposite wall. An ingenious system of invisible alarms connected up with that panel from every part of the house, and it was impossible for anyone to move about inside No. 7, Upper Berkeley Mews at night without every yard of his progress being charted by winking little coloured bulbs on the panel. But not one bulb was flickering, and the auxiliary buzzer under the Saint’s pillow was silent.

  Simon frowned puzzledly, wondering if his imagination had deceived him. And then a breath-taking duet of inspirations whirled into his brain, and he wriggled noiselessly from between the sheets.

  He pushed the pier-glass aside, and touched a switch that illuminated the secret passage. Right at his feet, he saw a charred match-end lying on the felt matting, and his lips tightened. He sped down the corridor, and entered the end house. In front of him, the door of a cupboard, and its false back communicating with the bathroom in 104, Berkeley Square, were both wide open, and he remembered that he had left them ajar behind him on the previous night, in his haste to get home and resume the feud with Chief Inspector Teal. The bathroom door was also ajar; he slipped through it, and emerged on the landing. A tiny glow of light farther down the stairs caught his eye, and vanished immediately.

  Then he established a second link between the two parts of the duet that had brought him to where he was and wished he had delayed the chase while he picked up his gun. He crept downwards, and saw a shadow that moved.

  “Stay where you are,” he rapped. “I’ve got you covered!”

  The shadow leapt away, and Simon hurled himself after it. He was still four steps behind when he sprang through the air and landed on the man’s shoulders. They crashed down together, rolled down the remaining treads, and reached the bottom with a bump. The Saint groped for a strangle-hold. He had found it with one hand when he saw a dull gleam of steel in the light of a street lamp that flung a faint nimbus of rays through the transom above the front door. He squirmed aside, and the point ripped his pyjamas and thudded into the floor. Then a bony knee picked up into his stomach, and he gasped and went limp with agony. The front door banged while he lay there twisting helplessly.

  It was ten minutes before he was able to stagger to his feet and go on a tour of investigation. Down in the basement, he found the cellar door wide open. A hole big enough for a man’s arm to pass through had been carved out of it a foot above the massive bolt, and the flagstones were littered with chips of wood. Simon realised that he had been incredibly careless.

  He returned to his bedroom and looked at the coat he had been wearing. It had been moved from where he had thrown it down—that had been the cause of the soft rustling that had first disturbed his slumbers. A further investigation showed that Perrigo’s passport and tickets were missing from the pocket where Simon had left them. This was no worse than the Saint had expected.

  Aching, he went back to bed and slept again. And this time he dreamed a dream.

  He was running up the wrong side of a narrow moving stairway. Patricia was in front of him, and he couldn’t go fast enough; he had to keep pushing her. He wanted to get past her and catch Perrigo, who was dancing about just out of his grasp. Perrigo was dressed something like an organ-grinder’s monkey, in a ridiculous straw hat, a tail coat, and a pair of white flannel trousers. There was an enormous diamond necklace over his collar, and he jeered and grimaced, and bawled, “Not in these trousers.” Then the scene changed, and Teal came riding by on a giraffe, wearing a pair of plus fours, and he also said, “Not in these trousers.”

  Then the Saint woke up, and saw that it was half-past eight. He jumped out of bed, lighted a cigarette, and made for the bathroom. He soaped his face and shaved, haunted by his dream for some reason that he could not nail down, and he was wallowing in bath salts when the interpretation of it flashed upon him with an aptness that made him erupt out of the water with an almighty splash.

  Ten minutes later, gorgeously apparelled in his new spring suit, he tore down the stairs and found bacon and eggs on the table and Patricia reading a newspaper.

  “Perrigo has left us,” he said.

  The girl looked up with startled eyes, but Simon was laughing.

  “He’s left us, but I know where he’s gone,” said the Saint. “He collected his papers before he went. I forgot that he carried a knife, and locked him up without fanning him—he spent the night digging his way through the door, and came through here for his passport in the early morning. I was just too slow to catch him. We’ll meet him again on the boat train—it leaves at ten o’clock.”

  “How do you know he’ll be on it?”

  “If he didn’t mean to do that, why did he come back for his ticket? No—I know exactly what’s in his head. He knows that he’s only got one way out, now that he’s bereaved of Isadore, and he’s going to try to make the grade. He’s made up his mind that I’m not helping the police, and he’s going to take his chance on a straight duck with me—and I’ll bet he’ll park himself in the most crowded compartment he can find, just to give himself the turn of the odds. And I’ll say some more; I know where those diamonds are now!”

  “Have you got them?”

  “Not yet. But up at Isadore’s I spotted that Perrigo’s costume was assorted. I thought he’d changed coats with Frankie Hormer, and I went over his jacket twice before Teal buzzed in. Naturally, I didn’t find anything. I must have been half-witted. It wasn’t coats he’d swapped—it was trousers. Those diamonds are sewn up somewhere in Bertie’s leg draperies!”

  Patricia came over to the table.

  “Have you thought any more about Teal?” she asked.

  Simon strode across to a book-case and took down a small leather-bound volume. There were months of painstaking work in its unassuming compass—names, addresses, personal data, means of approach, sources of evidence, all the laboriously perfected groundwork that enabled the Saint’s raids upon the underworld to be carried through so smoothly and made their meteoric audacity possible.

  “Pat,” said the Saint, “I’m going to make Teal a great man. It may be extravagant, but what the hell? Can you have the whole earth for ten cents? This party has already cost us our home, our prize alibi, and one of our shrewdest counter-attacks—but who cares? Let’s finish the thing in style. I’m the cleverest man in the world. Can’t I find six more homes, work out fourteen bigger and better alibis, and invent seventy-nine more stratagems and spoils? Can’t I fill two more books like this if I want to?”

  Patricia put her arms round his neck.

  “Are you going to give Teal that book?”

  The Saint nodded. He was radiant.

  “I’m going to steal Perrigo’s pants, Claud Eustace is going to smile again, and you and I are going away together.”

  CHAPTER 9

  The Saint was in a thaumaturgical mood. He performed a minor sorcery on a Pullman attendant that materialised seats where none had been before, and ensconced himself with the air of a wizard taking his ease. After a couple of meditative cigarettes, he produced a pencil and commenced a metrical composition in the margins of the wine list.

  He was still scribbling with unalloyed enthusiasm when Patricia got up and went for a walk down the train. She was away for several minutes, and when she returned, the Saint looked up and deliberately disregarded the confusion in her eyes.

  “Give ear,” he said. “This is the Ballad of the Bold Bad Man, another Precautionary Tale:

  Daniel Dinwiddie Gigsworth-Glue

  Was warranted by those who knew

  To be a perfect paragon

  With or without his trousers on;

  An upright man (the Figworts
are

  Peerlessly perpendicular)

  Staunch to the old morality,

  Who would have rather died than be

  Observed at Slumpton-under-Slop

  In bathing drawers without the top.”

  “Simon,” said the girl, “Perrigo isn’t on the train.” The Saint put down his pencil.

  “He is, old darling. I saw him when we boarded it at Waterloo, and I think he saw me.”

  “But I’ve looked in every carriage—”

  “Did you take everyone’s finger-prints?”

  “A man like Perrigo wouldn’t find it easy to disguise himself.”

  Simon smiled.

  “Disguises are tricky things,” he said. “It isn’t the false whiskers and the putty nose that get you down—it’s the little details. Did I ever tell you about a friend of mine who thought he’d get the inside dope about Chelsea? He bought a pink shirt and a velvet coat, grew a large semicircular beard, rented a studio, and changed his name to Prinnlovcwz, and he had a great time until one day they caught him in an artist’s colourman’s trying to buy a tube of Golder’s Green…Now you must hear some more about Daniel:

  How lovely, oh, how luminous

  His spotless virtue seemed to us

  Who sat among the cherubim

  Reserving Daniel’s pew for him!

  Impossible to indispose,

  His honour, shining like his nose,

  Blazed through an age of sin and strife

  The beacon of a blameless life…

  And then he fell…

  The Tempter, who

  Was mortified by Daniel Glue,

  Played his last evil card, and Dan

  Who like a perfect gentleman,

  Had scorned strong drink and wicked oaths

  And blondes with pink silk underclothes,

  Bought (Oh, we saw the angels weep!)

  A ticket in the Irish Sweep.”

  Patricia reached across the table and captured the Saint’s hands.

  “Simon, I won’t be out of it! Where is Perrigo?”

  “If you talk much louder, he’ll hear you.”

  “He isn’t in this coach!”

  “He’s in the next one.”

  The girl stared.

  “What does he look like?”

  Simon smiled, lighting a cigarette.

  “He’s chosen the simplest and nearly the most effective disguise there is. He’s got himself up as a very fair imitation of our old pal the Negro Spiritual.” The Saint looked at her with merry eyes. “He’s done it well, too, but I spotted him at once. Hence my parable. Did you ever see a nigger with light yellow eyes? They may exist, but I’ve never met one. There used to be a blue-eyed Sikh in Hong Kong who became quite famous, but that’s the only similar freak I’ve met. So when I got a glimpse of those eyes I took another peek at the face—and Perrigo it was. Remember him now?”

  Patricia nodded breathlessly.

  “Why couldn’t I see it?” she exclaimed.

  “You’ve got to have a brain for that sort of thing,” said the Saint modestly.

  “But—yes, I remember now—the carriage he’s in is full—”

  “And you’re wondering how I’m going to get his trousers off him? Well, the problem certainly has its interesting angles. How does one steal a man’s trousers on a crowded train? You mayn’t believe it, but I see difficulties about that myself.”

  An official came down the train, checking up visas and issuing embarkation vouchers, Simon obtained a couple of passes, and smoked thoughtfully for some minutes. And then he laughed and stood up.

  “Why worry?” he wanted to know. “I’ve thought of a much better thing to do. One of my really wonderful inspirations.”

  “What’s that?”

  Simon tapped her on the shoulder.

  “I’m going to beguile the time by baiting Bertie,” he said, with immense solemnity. “C’mon!”

  He hurtled off in his volcanic way, with a long-striding swing of impetuous limbs, as if a gale of wind swept him on.

  And Patricia Holm was smiling as she ran to catch him up—the unfathomable and infinitely tender smile of all the women who have been doomed to love romantic men. For she knew the Saint better than he knew himself. He could not grow old. Oh, yes, he would grow in years, would feel more deeply, would think more deeply, would endeavour with spasmodic soberness to fall in line with the common facts of life, but the mainsprings of his character could not change. He would deceive himself, but he would never deceive her. Even now, she knew what was in his mind. He was trying to brace himself to march down the road that all his friends had taken. He was daring himself to take up the glove that the High Gods had thrown at his feet, and to take it up as he would have taken up any other challenge—with a laugh and a flourish, and the sound of trumpets in his ears. And already she knew how she would answer him.

  She came up behind him and caught his elbow.

  “But is this going to help you, lad?”

  “It will amuse me,” said the Saint. “And it’s an act of piety. It’s our sacred duty to see that Bertie has a journey he’ll never forget. I shall open the ball by trying to touch him for a subscription to the funds of the Society for Distributing Woollen Vests to the Patriarchs of the Upper Dogsboddi. Speaking emotionally and in a loud voice I shall wax eloquent on the work that has already been done among his black brothers, and invite him to make a contribution. If he does, we’ll go and drink it and think up something else. If he doesn’t, you’ll barge in and ask him for his autograph. Address him as Al Jolson, and ask him to sing something. After that—”

  “After that,” said Patricia firmly, “he’ll pull the communication cord, and we shall both be thrown off the train. Lead on, boy!”

  Simon nodded, and went to the door of the compartment he had marked down.

  And there he stopped, statuesquely, while the skyward-slanting cigarette between his lips sank slowly through the arc of a circle and ended up at a comically contrasting droop.

  After a few seconds, Patricia stepped to his side and also looked into the compartment. And the Saint took the cigarette from his mouth and exhaled smoke in a long expiring whistle.

  Perrigo was gone.

  There wasn’t a doubt about that. The corner seat that he had occupied was as innocent of human habitation as any corner seat has ever been since George Stephenson hitched up his wagons and went rioting down to Stockton-upon-Tees. If not more so. As for the other seats, they were occupied respectively by a portly matron with a wart on her chin, a small boy in a sailor suit, and a thin-flanked female with pimples and a camouflaged copy of The Well of Loneliness, into none of whom could Gunner Perrigo by any conceivable miracle of make-up have transformed himself…Those were the irrefutable facts about the scene, pithily and systematically recorded, and the longer one looked at them, the more gratuitously grisly they became.

  Simon singed the inoffensive air with a line of oratory that would have scorched the hide of a salamander. He did it as if his heart was in the job, which it was. Carefully and comprehensively, he covered every aspect and detail of the situation with a calorific lavishness of imagery that would have warmed the cockles of a sergeant-major’s heart. Nobody and nothing, however remotely connected with the incident, was left outside the wide embrace of his oration. He started with the paleolithic progenitors of the said George Stephenson, and worked steadily down to the back teeth of Isadore Elberman’s grandchildren. At which point Patricia interrupted him.

  “He might be having a wash or something,” she said.

  “Yeah!” The Saint was scathing. “Sure, he might be having a wash. And he took his bag with him in case the flies laid eggs on it. Did you notice that bag? I did. It was brand-new—hadn’t a scratch on it. He’d been doing some early morning shopping before he caught the train, hustling up some kit for the voyage. All his own stuff was at Isadore’s, and he wouldn’t risk going back there. And his bag’s gone!”

  The embarkation officer pa
ssed them, and opened the door of the compartment.

  “Miss Lovedew?” The pimply female acknowledged it. “Your papers are quite in order—”

  Simon took Patricia’s arm and steered her gently away.

  “Her name is Lovedew,” he said sepulchrally. “Let us go and find somewhere to die.”

  They tottered a few steps down the corridor, and then Patricia said, “He must be still on the train! We haven’t slowed up once since we started, and he couldn’t have jumped off without breaking his neck—”

  The Saint gripped her hands.

  “You’re right!” he whooped. “Pat, you’re damn right! I said you wanted a brain for this sort of thing. Bertie must be on the train still, and if he’s on the train we’ll find him—if we have to take the whole outfit to pieces. Now, you go that way and I’ll go this way, and you keep your eyes peeled. And if you see a man with a huge tufted beard, you take hold of it and give it a good pull!”

  “Right-o, Saint!”

  “Then let’s go!”

  He went flying down the alley, lurching from side to side from the rocking of the train, and contriving to light another cigarette as he went.

  He did his share thoroughly. In the space of ten minutes he reviewed a selection of passengers so variegated that his brain began to reel. Before his eyes passed an array of physiognomies that would have made Cesare Lombroso chirrup ecstatically and reach for his tape-measure. Americans of all shapes and sizes, Englishmen in plus fours, flannel bags, and natty suitings, male children, female children, ambiguous children, large women, small women, three cosmopolitan millionaires—one fat, one thin, one sozzled—three cosmopolitan millionaires’ wives—ditto, but shuffled—a novelist, an actor, a politician, four Parsees, three Hindus, two Chinese, and a wild man from Borneo. Simon Templar inspected every one of them who could by any stretch of imagination have come within the frame of the picture, and acquired sufficient data to write three books or six hundred and eighty-seven modern novels. But he did not find Gunner Perrigo.