12 The Saint in London (The Misfortunes of Mr Teal) Read online

  He came in polishing his pince-nez and took up a position with his back to the fireplace.

  "Sit down, Mr. Templar," he said brusquely and turned to Nassen. "I take it that you failed to find what you were looking for?"

  The detective nodded.

  "We turned the place inside out, your Lordship, but there wasn't a sign of it. He might have sewn it up inside a matttress or in the upholstery of a i:hair, but I don't think he would have had time."

  "Quite," muttered Lord Iveldown. "Quite." He took off his pince-nez, polished them again, and looked at the Saint. "This is a serious matter, Mr. Templar," he said. "Very serious."

  "Apparently," agreed the Saint blandly. "Apparently."

  Lord Iveldown cleared his throat and wagged his head once or twice.

  "That is why I have been obliged to adopt extraordinary measures to deal with it," he said.

  "Such as sending along a couple of fake detectives to turn my rooms inside out?" suggested the Saint languidly.

  Lord Iveldown started, peered down at him, and coughed.

  "Ah-hum," he said. "You knew they were--ah --fakes?"

  "My good ass," said the Saint, lounging more snugly in his armchair, "I knew that the Metropolitan Police had lowered itself a lot by enlisting Public School men and what not, but I couldn't quite believe that it had sunk so low as to make inspectors out of herbaceous borders like Snowdrop over there. Besides, I'm never arrested by ordinary inspectors--Chief Inspector Teal himself always comes to see me."

  "Then why did you allow Nassen to bring you here?"

  "Because I figured I might as well take a gander at you and hear what you had to say. The gander," Simon admitted frankly, "is not quite the greatest thrill I've had since I met Dietrich."

  Lord Iveldown cleared his throat again and expanded his stomach, clasping his hands behind his back under his coat tails and rocking slightly in the manner of a schoolmaster preparing to deal with a grave breach of the Public School Code.

  "Mr. Templar," he said heavily, "this is a serious matter. A very serious matter. A matter, I might say, of the utmost gravity. You have in your possession a volume which contains certain--ah-- statements and--ah--suggestions concerning me-- statements and suggestions which, I need scarcely add, are wholly without foundation------"

  "As, for instance," said the Saint gently, "the statement or suggestion that when you were Undersecretary of State for War you placed an order for thirty thousand Lewis guns with a firm whose tender was sixty per cent, higher than any other, and enlarged your own bank balance immediately afterwards."

  "Gross and damnable falsehoods," persisted Lord Iveldown more loudly.

  "As, for instance," said the Saint, even more gently, "the gross and damnable falsehood that you accepted on behalf of the government a consignment of one million gas masks which technical experts had already condemned in the strongest language as worse than useless------"

  "Foul and calumnious imputations," boomed Lord Iveldown in a trembling voice, "which can easily be refuted, but which if published would nevertheless to some degree smirch a name which hitherto has not been without honour in the annals of this nation. It was only for that reason, and not because I feared that my public and private life could not stand the light of any inquiry whatever that might be directed into it, that I consented to --ah--grant you this interview."

  Simon nodded.

  "Since your synthetic detectives had failed to steal that book from me," he murmured, "it was-- ah--remarkably gracious of you."

  His sardonic blue eyes, levelled over the shaft of a cigarette that slanted from between his lips like the barrel of a gun, bored into Lord Iveldown with a light of cold appraisal which made the nobleman shift his feet awkwardly.

  "It was an extraordinary situation," repeated his lordship in a resonant voice, "which necessitated extraordinary measures." He cleared his throat, adjusted his pince-nez, and rocked on his heels again. "Mr. Templar," he said, "let us not beat about the bush any longer. For purely personal reasons--merely, you understand, because I desire to keep my name free from common gossip--I desire to suppress these base insinuations which happen to have come into your possession; and for that reason I have accorded you this personal interview in order to ascertain what--ah--value you would place on this volume."

  "That's rather nice of you," said the Saint guardedly. "If, for example," said Lord Iveldown throatily,

  "a settlement of, shall we say--ah--two thousand pounds------"

  He broke off at that point because suddenly the Saint had begun to laugh. It was a very quiet, very self-contained laugh--a laugh that somehow made the blood in Lord Iveldown's hardened arteries run colder as he heard it. If there was any humour in the laugh, it did not reach the Saint's eyes.

  "If you'd mentioned two hundred thousand," said the Saint coolly, "you would have been right on my figure."

  There was a long terrific silence in which the mere rustle of a coat sleeve would have sounded like the crash of doom. Many seconds went by before Lord Iveldown's dry cough broke the stillness like a rattle of musketry.

  "How much did you say?" he articulated hoarsely.

  "I said two hundred thousand pounds."

  Those arctic blue eyes had never shifted from Lord Iveldown's faintly empurpled face. Their glacial gaze seemed to go through him with the cold sting of a rapier blade--seemed to strip away all his bulwarks of pomposity like tissue, and hold the naked soul of the man quivering on the point like a grub on a pin.

  "But that," said Lord Iveldown tremblingly, "--that's impossible! That's blackmail!"

  "I'm afraid it is," said the Saint.

  "You sit there, before witnesses------"

  "Before all the witnesses you like to bring in. I don't want you to miss the idea, your Lordship.] Witnesses don't make any difference. In any ordinary case--yes. If I were only threatening to advertise your illicit love affairs, or anything like that, you could bring me to justice and your own name would quite rightly be suppressed. But in a case like this even the chief commissioner couldn't guarantee you immunity. This isn't just ordinary naughtiness. This is high treason."

  Simon tapped the ash from his cigarette and blew a smoke ring towards the ceiling; and once again his relentless eyes went back to Lord Ivel-down's face. Nassen and the other detective, staring at the Saint in sullen silence, felt as if an icy wind blew through the room and goosefleshed their skin in spite of the warmth of the evening. The bantering buffoon who had goaded them to the verge of apoplexy had vanished as though he had never existed, and another man spoke with the same voice.

  "The book you're talking about," said the Saint, in the same level dispassionate tones, "is a legacy to me, as you know, from Rayt Marius. And you know what made him a millionaire. His money was made from war and the instruments of war. All those amazing millions--the millions out of which you and others like you were paid, Lord Iveldown--were the wages of death and destruction and wholesale murder. They were coined out of blood and dishonour and famine and the agony of peaceful nations. Men--and women and children, too--were killed and tortured and maimed to find that money--the money out of which you were paid, Lord Iveldown."

  Lord Iveldown licked his lips and Gpened his mouth to speak. But that clear ruthless voice went on, cleaving like a sword through his futile attempt at expostulation:

  "Since I have that book, I had to find a use for it. And I think my idea is a good one. I am organizing the Simon Templar Foundation, which will be started with a capital of one million pounds-- of which your contribution will be a fifth. The foundation will be devoted to the care and comfort of men maimed and crippled in war, to helping the wives and children of men killed in war, and to the endowment of any cause which has a chance of doing something to promote peace in the future. You must agree that the retribution is just."

  Iveldown's bluff had gone. He seemed to have shrunk, and he was not teetering pompously on the hearth any more. His blotched face was working, and his small eyes had lost all
their dominance-- I hey were the mean shifty eyes of a man who was horribly afraid.

  "You're mad!" he said, and his voice cracked. "I can't listen to anything like that. I won't listen to it! You'll change your tune before you leave here, by God! Nassen------"

  The two detectives started forward, roused abruptly from their trance; and in the eyes of the Rose of Peckham particularly Simon saw the

  dawn of a sudden vengeful joy. He smiled and moved his raincoat a little to uncover the gun in his hand.

  "Not just now, Snowdrop," he said smoothly, and the two men stopped. "I have a date, and you've kept me too long already. A little later, I think, you'll get your chance." His gaze roved back to Lord Iveldown's sickly features, on which the fear was curdling to a terrible impotent malevolence; and the Saintly smile touched his lips again for a moment. "I shall expect that two hundre( thousand pounds by Saturday midnight," he said. "I haven't the least doubt that you'll do your best to kill me before then, but I'm equally sure that you won't succeed. And I think you will pay your share. . . ."

  IV

  Simon Templar was not a light sleeper, by the ordinary definition. Neither was he a heavy one. He slept like a cat, with the complete and perfect relaxation of a wild animal, but with the same wild animal's gift of rousing into instant wakeful-ness at the slightest sound which might require investigation. A howling thunderstorm would not have made him stir, but the stealthy slither of a cautiously opened drawer brought him out of a dreamless untroubled slumber into tingling con-sciousness.

  The first outward sign of awakening touched nothing more than his eyelids--it was a trick he had learned many years ago, and it had saved his life more than once. His body remained still and passive, and even a man standing close beside his bed could have detected no change in the regular rate of his breathing. He lay staring into the dark, with his ears strained to pick up and locate the next infinitesimal repetition of the noise which had awaked him.

  After a few seconds he heard it again, a sound of the identical quality but from a different source --the faint scuff of a rubber sole moving over the carpet in his living room. The actual volume of sound was hardly greater than a mouse might have . made, but it brought him out of bed in a swift writhing movement that made no sound in response.

  And thereafter the blackness of the bedroom swallowed him up like a ghost. His bare feet crossed the floor without the faintest whisper of disturbance, and his fingers closed on the doorknob as surely as if he could have seen it. He turned the knob without a rattle and moved noiselessly across the hall.

  The door of the living room was ajar--he could see the blackness ahead of him broken by a vague nimbus of light that glowed from the gap and shifted its position erratically. He came up to the door softly and looked in.

  The silhouette of a man showed against the darkened beam of an electric torch with the aid of which he was silently and systematically going through the contents of the desk; and the Saint showed his teeth for a moment as he sidled through the doorway and closed the door soundlessly behind him. His fingers found the switch beside the door, and he spoke at the same time.

  "Good-morrow, Algernon," he murmured.

  The man swung round in the sudden blaze of light. At the very moment when he started to turn, Simon saw the gun in his hand, and thanked his immoral deities that he had not removed his fingers too promptly from the switch. In a split second he had clicked the lever up again, and the darkness fell again with blinding intensity after that one dazzling instant of luminance.

  The Saint's voice floated once more out of the blackness.

  "So you pack a rod, do you, Algernon? You must know that rods aren't allowed in this re-spectable city. I shall have to speak to you severely about that presently, Algernon--really I shall."

  The beam of the intruder's torch stabbed out again, printing a white circle of light on the door; but Simon was not inside the circle. The Saint had no rooted fear of being cold-bloodedly shot down in that apartment--the chances of a clean getaway for the shooter were too remote--but he had a very sound knowledge of what a startled burglar, amateur Or professional, may do in a moment of panic; and what had been visible of the intruder's masked face as he spun round had not been tender or sentimental.

  Simon heard the man's heavy breathing as the ray of the flashlight moved to left and right of the door and then began with a wilder haste to dance over the other quarters of the room. For the space of about half a minute it was a game of deadly hide-and-seek: the door appeared to be unguarded, but something told the intruder that he would be walking into a trap if he attempted to make a dash for liberty that way. At the end of that time his nerve broke and he plunged desperately for the only visible path of escape, and in so doing found that his suspicions had been almost clairvoyantly accurate.

  A weight of teaklike bone and muscle landed on his back with a catlike spring; steel fingers fastened on his gun hand, and another equally strong hand closed round his throat, driving him remorselessly to the floor. They wrestled voicelessly on the carpet, but not for long. Simon got the gun away without a single shot being fired and flung himself clear of his opponent with an acrobatic twist of his body. Then he found his way to the switch and turned on the lights again.

  The burglar looked up at him from the floor, breathing painfully; and Simon permitted the muzzle of the captured gun to settle into a steady aim on the centre of the man's tightly tailored torso.

  "You look miserable, Algernon," he remarked affably. "But you couldn't expect to have all the fun to yourself, could you? Come on, my lad--take that old sock off your head and let's see how your face is put together."

  The man did not answer or obey, and Simon stepped forward and whipped off the mask with a deft flick of his hand.

  Having done which, he remained absolutely motionless for several ticks of the clock.

  And then, softly, helplessly, he started to laugh.

  "Suffering snakes," he wailed. "If it isn't good old Hoppy Uniatz!"

  "For cryin' out loud," gasped Mr. Uniatz. "If it ain't de Saint!"

  "You haven't forgotten that time when you took a dive through the window of Rudy's joint on Mott Street?"

  "Say, an' dat night you shot up Angie Paletta an' Russ Kovari on Amsterdam Avenue."

  "And you got crowned with a chair and locked in the attic--you remember that?"

  Mr. Uniatz fingered his neck gingerly, as though the aches in it brought back memories.

  "Say," he protested aggrievedly, "whaddaya t'ink I got for a memory--a sieve?" He beamed again, reminiscently; and then another thought overcast his homely features with a shadow of retrospective alarm. "An' I might of killed you!" he said in an awed voice.

  The Saint smiled.

  "If I'd known it was you, I mightn't have thought this gun was quite so funny," he admitted. "Well, well, well, Hoppy--this is a long way from little old New York. What brings you here?"

  Mr. Uniatz scrambled up from the floor and scratched his head.

  "Well, boss," he said, "t'ings never were de same after prohibition went out, over dere. I bummed around fer a while, but I couldn't get in de money. Den I hoid dey was room fer guys like me to start up in London, so I come over. But hell, boss, dese Limeys dunno what it's all about, fer God's sake. Why, I asks one mob over here what about gettin' a coupla typewriters, an' dey t'ink I'm nuts." Mr. Uniatz frowned for a moment, as if the incapability of the English criminal to appreciate the sovereign uses of machine guns was still preying on his mind. "I guess I must of been given a bum steer," he said.

  Simon nodded sympathetically and strolled across to the table for a cigarette. He had known Hoppy Uniatz many years ago as a seventh-rate gunman of the classical Bowery breed and had never been able to regard him with the same distaste as he viewed other hoodlums of the same species. Hoppy's outstanding charm was a skull of almost phenomenal thickness, which, while it had protected his brain from fatal injury on several occasions, had by its disproportionate density of bone left so little s
pace for the development of grey matter that he had been doomed from the beginning to linger in the very lowest ranks even of that unintellectual profession; but at the same time it lent to Hoppy's character a magnificent simplicity which the Saint found irresistible. Simon could understand that Hoppy might easily have been lured across the Atlantic by exaggerated rumours of an outbreak of armed banditry in London; but that was not all he wanted to know.

  "My heart bleeds for you, Hoppy," he murmured. "But what made you think I had anything worth stealing?"

  "Well, boss," explained MY. Uniatz apologetically, "it's like dis. I get interdooced to a guy who knows annudder guy who's bein' blackmailed, an' dis guy wants me to get back whatever it is he's bein' blackmailed wit' an' maybe bump off de guy who's got it. So I'm told to rent an apartment here, an' I got de one next door to you--it's a swell apartment, wit' a bathroom an' everyt'ing. Dat's how I'm able to come in de building wit'out de janitor stoppin' me an' askin' who I wanna see.''

  Simon blew out a thoughtful streamer of smoke --he had overlooked that method of slipping through his defenses.

  "Didn't they tell you my name?" he asked.

  "Sure. But all dey tell me is it's a Mr. Templar, When I hear it, I feel somehow I oughta remember de name," said Mr. Uniatz, generously forgetting the indignation with which he had received a recent aspersion on his memory, "but I never knew it was you. Honest, Saint, if I'd of known it was you, it'd of been ixnay on de job, for mine. Ya wouldn't believe anyt'ing else, woujja, boss?"

  The Saint shook his head.

  "You know, Hoppy," he said slowly, "I don't think I would."

  An idea was germinating in his mind--one of those sublimely fantastic ideas that sometimes came to him, an idea whose gorgeous simplicity, even in embryo, brought the ghost of a truly Saintly smile back to his lips. He forgot his interrupted beauty sleep.

  "Could you do with a drink, old man?" he asked.