The Saint in Action (The Saint Series) Page 23

  The film world still didn’t really know what was happening. Beatrice Avery had been afraid to tell even her employers about the threats she had received, for fear that the Z-Man would promptly carry out his hideous promise. Irene Cromwell and Sheila Ireland had each received one message from the Z-Man, and had been similarly terrorised to silence. Only Patricia’s blunt statement that the Saint had found their photographs in Raddon’s pocket had made them unseal their lips after she had got them to St. George’s Hill.

  Simon could well understand why he had never heard of the Z-Man before. Even in the film world the name was only rumoured, and then rumoured with scepticism. These three girls were the only ones who knew it, apart from Mercia Landon, who was dead, and the actress who had fled to Italy.

  For once in his life he spent a restless night, impatient for the chance of further developments the next day, and he walked into Chief Inspector Teal’s office at what for him was the fantastic hour of eleven o’clock in the morning.

  “I thought you never got up before the streets were aired,” said the detective.

  “I put on some woolly underwear this morning and chanced it,” said the Saint briefly. “What do you know?”

  Mr Teal drew a memorandum towards him.

  “We’ve checked up on that address you gave me. I think you’re right, Saint. There’s no such person as Otto Zeidelmann. It’s just a name. He’s had the office about three or four months.”

  “His occupation dates from about the time Mercia Landon died,” said Simon, nodding. “Anything else?”

  “He never went there in the daytime, apparently,” answered the detective. “Always after dark. Hardly anybody can remember seeing him. The postman can’t remember delivering any letters, and we didn’t find a fingerprint anywhere.”

  “You wouldn’t,” said the Saint. “A wily bird like him would be just as likely to walk about naked as go out without his gloves. But talking about fingerprints, what’s the report on that gun—which, by the way, is mine.”

  Mr Teal opened a drawer, produced the automatic, and pushed it across the desk. Chewing rhythmically, he also handed the Saint a card on which were full-face and profile photographs of one Nathan Everill.

  “Know him?”

  “My old college chum, Andy Gump—otherwise known as Mr Raddon,” said the Saint at once. “So he has got a police record. I thought as much. What do we know about him?”

  “Not very much. He’s not one of the regulars.” Teal consulted his memorandum, although he probably knew it by heart already. “He’s only been through our hands once, and that was in 1933. From 1928 to 1933 he was private secretary to Hubert Sentinel, the film producer, and then he started making copies of Mr Sentinel’s signature and writing them on Mr Sentinel’s cheques. One day Mr Sentinel noticed something wrong with his bank balance, and when he went to ask his secretary about it, his secretary was on his way to Dover. He was sent up for three years.”

  “What’s he been doing since he came out?”

  “He reported in the usual way, and as far as we knew he was going quite straight,” replied Mr Teal. “He was doing some freelance writing, I think. We’ve lost track of him during the last five or six months—”

  “He’s got a new job—as the Z-Man’s assistant,” said the Saint. “And, by the Lord, he’s the very man for it! He knows the inside of the film business, and he must hate every kind of screen personality, from producers downwards, like nobody’s business. It’s a perfect set-up…Have you seen Sentinel?”

  “I’m seeing him this afternoon—he probably knows a lot more about Everill than we do. But you aren’t usually interested in the small fry, are you?”

  “When the small fry is in the shape of a sprat, yes,” answered the Saint, rising elegantly to his feet. “You see, Claud, old dear, there might be a mackerel cruising about in the neighbouring waters…That’s a good idea of yours. I think I’ll push along and see Comrade Sentinel myself.”

  The detective’s jaw dropped.

  “Hey, wait a minute!” he yapped. “You can’t—”

  “Can’t I?” drawled the Saint, with his head round the door. “And what sort of a crime is it to go and have a chat with a film producer? Maybe my face is the face the world has been waiting for.”

  He was gone before Teal could think of a reply.

  Mr Hubert Sentinel, the grand panjandrum of Sentinel Films, was not an aristocrat by birth, or even a Conservative by conviction, but even he might have been slightly upset if he had heard himself referred to as “Comrade Sentinel.” For he was considered a coming man in the British film industry, and obtaining an entry into his Presence was about as easy as getting into Hitler’s mountain chalet with one fist clenched and a red flag in the other.

  But the Saint accomplished the apparently impossible at the first attempt. He simply enclosed his card in a sealed envelope with a request that it should be immediately delivered to Mr Sentinel, and he waited exactly two minutes.

  Mr Sentinel was in conference. He took one look at the card, and during the next half-minute one matinée idol, one prominent author, two script writers, a famous director, and a covey of yes-men were swept out of the office like leaves before an autumn gale. When Simon Templar was admitted, Mr Hubert Sentinel was alone, and Mr Sentinel was looking at the back of the Saint’s card. On it were pencilled the words: Re the Z-Man.

  “Take a pew, Mr Templar,” he said, pushing forward a cigar-box and inspecting his visitor out of bright and observant eyes. “I’ve heard about you, of course.”

  “Who hasn’t?” murmured the Saint modestly.

  He accepted a cigar, carefully clipped the end, lighted it, and emitted a fragrant cloud of blue smoke. It was merely an example of that theatrical timing which so pleased the Saint’s heart. Sentinel waited restively, turning a pencil between his fingers. He was a thin, bald-headed man with a bird-like face and an air of inexhaustible nervous vitality.

  “If it had been anyone else, I should have thought it was some crank with a bee in his bonnet,” he said. “We get a lot of them around here. But you—are you going to tell me that there’s anything in these rumours?”

  “There’s everything in them,” said the Saint deliberately. “They happen to be true. The Z-Man is as real a person as you are.”

  The producer stared at him. “But why do you come to me?”

  “For the very important reason that you once employed a man named Nathan Everill,” answered the Saint directly. “I’m hoping you’ll be able to tell me something useful about him.”

  “Good God, you’re not suggesting that Everill is the Z-Man, are you?” asked the other incredulously. “He’s such a poor specimen—a chinless, weak-minded fool—”

  “But you employed him as your secretary for five years.”

  “That’s true,” confessed Sentinel hesitantly. “He was efficient enough—too damned efficient, as a matter of fact. But he always had a weak streak in him, and it came out in the end. He forged my name to some cheques—perhaps you know about that…But Everill! It doesn’t seem possible—”

  The Saint shook his head.

  “I didn’t say he was the Z-Man. But I know that he’s very closely connected with him. So if you can help me to locate Everill, you’ll probably help me to get to close quarters with the Z-Man himself. And he interests me a lot.”

  “If you can get him, Templar, you’ll not only earn my gratitude, but the gratitude of the whole film business,” said Hubert Sentinel, rising to his feet and pacing up and down with undisguised agitation. “If he’s a real person, at least that gives us something to fight. Up to now, he’s just been a name that people have tried to stick on to something they couldn’t explain any other way. But when we see our stars having mysterious breakdowns just when pictures are in their last scenes—getting hysterical over something you can’t make them talk about—well, we have to put it down to something.”

  “Then you’ve had trouble yourself?”

  “I don’t k
now whether it’s a coincidence or not,” replied Sentinel carefully. “I’ll only say that my production of Vanity Fair is held up while Mary Donne is recovering from a slight indisposition. She has said nothing to me, and I have said nothing to her. But that doesn’t prevent me from thinking. As for the rest, Mr Templar, I believe I can tell you a great deal about Everill.” He sat down again and rubbed his chin in earnest concentration. “You know, I’ve got some ideas of my own about the Z-Man. Can you tell me just what your interest in him is?”

  “I have various interests,” said the Saint, leaning back and making a series of perfect smoke-rings. “The Z-Man must have collected a fair amount of boodle already, and that’s always interesting. I take it that if 1 got rid of him, nobody would mind me helping myself to a reward. And then, I don’t like his line of business. I think it would be rather a good idea if he was put out of the way—for keeps.”

  “Unless he puts you out of the way first,” suggested the producer grimly. “If he’s the sort of man he seems to be—”

  The Saint shrugged.

  “That’s all in the game.”

  The other smiled appreciatively.

  “I sincerely hope it won’t be in your game,” he said. “As for Everill—what do you want to know?”

  “Anything you can remember. Anything that might give me a lead. What his tastes are, his amusements—his favourite haunts—his habits—why he started forging cheques—”

  “Well, I suppose he’s an extravagant little devil—wants to live like a rich playboy, and so on. I suppose that’s why he had to increase his income. He was trying to run one of my actresses, and he couldn’t keep pace with her. She had a big future ahead of her, and she knew it—”

  It was as if the Saint’s ears had closed up suddenly, so that he scarcely heard any more. All his senses seemed to have been arrested except the sense of sight, and that one filled his brain to the exclusion of everything else. He was staring at Hubert Sentinel’s hands, watching the thin, nervous fingers twiddling the pencil they held—and remembering another pair of hands…

  The astounding import of it drummed through his head like the thunder of mighty waterfalls. It jeered at his credulity, and yet he knew that he must be right. It all fitted in—even if the revelation made him feel as if his mind had been hauled loose from its moorings. He sat in a kind of daze, until a knock on the door brought him back to life.

  Sentinel’s secretary put her head in the door.

  “Chief Inspector Teal is here, Mr Sentinel,” she said.

  “Oh yes.” Sentinel stopped in the middle of a sentence. He explained, “Mr Teal made an appointment with me—is he interested in Everill too?”

  “Very much,” said the Saint. “In fact, I was stealing a march on him. If there’s another way I can go out—”

  Sentinel stood up.

  “Of course—my secretary will show you. I wish we could have a longer talk, Mr Templar. The police are admirable in their way, but in a situation like this—” He seemed to come to a snap decision. “Look here, could you dine with me tonight?”

  “I’d be delighted,” said the Saint thoughtfully.

  “That’s splendid. And then we can go into this thoroughly without any interruptions.” Sentinel held out his hand. “Will you come back here at six? I’ll drive you out myself—I live out at Bushey Park.”

  Simon nodded.

  “I’ll be here,” he said.

  He went back to Cornwall House with his head still buzzing, and for a long time he paced up and down the living-room, smoking an interminable chain of cigarettes and scattering a trail of ash behind him on the carpet. At lunch-time he called Patricia.

  “I’ve met a bird called Hubert Sentinel, and I think I know who the Z-Man is,” he said. “I’m having dinner with him tonight.”

  He heard her gasp of amazement. “But, boy, you can’t—”

  “Listen,” he said. “You and Hoppy are going to be busy. I’ve got a lot more for you.”

  He talked for ten minutes that left her stunned, and gave her comprehensive instructions.

  Six o’clock was striking when he re-entered Sentinel’s office, and the producer took down his hat at once. A large Rolls-Royce was parked outside the studio, and Sentinel himself took the wheel.

  “How did you get on with Scotland Yard?” Simon inquired, as they purred through the gates.

  Sentinel shifted his cigar.

  “I had to give him a certain amount of information, but I didn’t say anything about your visit. I noticed that he kept looking at the cigarettes in the ash-tray, though, so perhaps he was trying to spot your brand.”

  “Poor old Claud,” said the Saint. “He still keeps on reading Sherlock Holmes!”

  Little more was said on the swift, northward run, but the Saint was not ungrateful for the silence. He had plenty to keep his mind occupied. He sat smoking, busy with his own thoughts.

  The evening was cold and pitch black by the time they had left the outer suburbs behind and the Rolls turned its long nose into a private driveway. There were thick trees on either side, and after a hundred yards, before there was any sign of the house, Sentinel slowed down to take a sharp curve. As though they had materialised out of the fourth dimension, two figures jumped on the car’s running-boards, one on either side. The Saint could see, dimly in the reflection of the headlights, the bloated figure and bespectacled, bearded face of the man who had swung open the driving door.

  “You vill stop der car, please.”

  “Vell, vell, vell!” said the Saint mildly. “This is certainly great stuff.”

  His hand was reaching round for his automatic, but by this time his own door had opened, and the car had jerked to a standstill, for both Mr Sentinel’s feet had instinctively trodden hard on the pedals. The cold rim of an automatic inserted itself affectionately into the back of Simon Templar’s neck.

  “Move one finger and you’re dead,” said Mr Raddon unimaginatively.

  “Brother, unless you’re very careful you’ll drive that thing out through my Adam’s apple.” Simon complained.

  “What the devil does this mean?” spluttered Sentinel angrily, and he suddenly revved up the engine. “Look out, Templar!” he shouted. “I’m going to drive on.”

  The automatic that was held only a foot from Sentinel’s head thudded down, and the film magnate slumped over the wheel.

  “Step out, Saint,” ordered Raddon.

  The Saint stepped. He always knew instinctively when to resist and when not to resist. As his feet trod on hard gravel the gross figure came round the back of the car like some evil monster of the night, and gloved hands went rapidly over the Saint and deprived him of his gun. Then he was told to walk forward. Almost at once he was brought to a halt against the rear of a small delivery van parked in the darkness under a tree with its doors open. A sudden violent shove from behind sent him pitching headlong into it, and the doors slammed behind him with a heavy crash. In another moment the engine roared to life, and the truck lurched forward.

  10

  Simon had one compensation. The opposition had not waited to search him thoroughly or to bind his wrists and ankles in the approved style. The truck was evidently considered to be secure enough as a temporary prison. Which, in fact, it was. When the Saint heaved against the closed doors he soon came to the conclusion that they were sufficiently strong to hold him in for some time. Wherefore, with his characteristic philosophy, he made himself as comfortable as he could and set out to relieve the tedium of the journey with a cigarette. At least he had gone into the trap with his eyes open, so he had no valid grounds for whining.

  He judged that the truck had driven through a hidden path between the trees and had then bumped across a field. After that it had gained a road, and now it was bowling along more smoothly. The journey proved to be comparatively short. Within ten or fifteen minutes there was no longer any sound of other traffic, and the road surface over which the truck was travelling became more rutty and u
neven. Then, with a giddy swing to the near side, the truck left the road again, and ran evenly for a few seconds on a level drive before it stopped. For a little while it backed and manoeuvred, and then the sound of the engine died away. There was a slight delay, in which he heard occasional murmurs of voices without being able to detect any recognisable words. It was just possible that a red carpet was being laid down for him, but somehow he doubted it. Then there was a rattle at the doors, and they were flung open. Three powerful electric flashlights blazed on him.

  “If I make the slightest resistance, I suppose I shall be converted into a colander?” Simon remarked calmly. “I’m just trying to save you the trouble of giving the customary warnings—”

  “Get out,” Raddon’s voice ordered shortly.

  Simon obeyed. He was unable to see much of his surroundings, for the truck had been backed up against a crumbling stone doorway, and the torchlights were so concentrated on him that practically everything else was in black shadow.

  Two of the men closed in on him as his feet touched the ground, ramming their guns into his sides. He was thrust on through the doorway into what seemed to be a bare and damp and uninhabited hall, and halted with his face to one bleak stone wall. Then, while a gun was still held against his spine, swift and efficient hands went over him again. His pockets were completely emptied, even to his cigarette-case, his automatic lighter, and his loose change, and one of the investigating hands felt along his sleeve and removed the knife strapped to his forearm. After the demonstration he had given in Bryerby House, thought the Saint, that was only to be expected, but he would have been happier if it had been overlooked as it had been so many times before.

  “So!” came the Z-Man’s sneering voice. “The knife, it voss somewhere, und it we find. Goot! Mit throwings you are through!”

  “You’ve got beyond the Dennis stage now, brother,” said the Saint appreciatively, although he was now without a weapon of any kind. “I can only assume that you must have been reading the Katzenjammer Kids.”