The Saint and the Happy Highwayman s-21 Page 6

  The Elmford Riviera was the latest and most ambitious public work which the administration had undertaken up to that date. It was to be the crowning achievement in Sam Purdell's long list of benevolences towards his beloved citizens.

  A whole two miles of the riverbank had been acquired by the city and converted into a pleasure park which the sponsors of the scheme claimed would rival anything of its kind ever attempted in the state. At one end of it a beautiful casino had been erected where the citizens of Elmford might gorge themselves with food, deafen themselves with three orchestras and dance in tightly wedged ecstasy till feet gave way. At the other end was to be provided a children's playground, staffed with trained attendants, where the infants of Elmford might be left to bawl their heads off under the most expert and scientific supervision while their elders stopped to enjoy the adult amenities of the place. Behind the riverside drive, a concession had been arranged for an amusement park in which the populace could be shaken to pieces on roller coasters, whirled off revolving discs, thrown about in barrels, skittered over the falls and generally enjoy all the other elaborate forms of discomfort which help to make the modern seeker after relaxation so contemptuous of the unimaginative makeshift tortures which less enlightened souls had to get along with in medieval days. On the bank of the river itself, thousands of tons of sand had been imported to create an artificial beach where droves of holiday-makers could be herded together to blister and steam themselves into blissful imitations of the well-boiled prawn. It was, in fact, to be a place where Elm-ford might suffer all the horrors of Coney Island without the added torture of getting there.

  And in the centre of this Elysian esplanade there was to be a monument to the man whose unquenchable devotion to the community had presented it with this last and most delightful blessing.

  Sam Purdell had been modestly diffident about the monument, but Mr Eisenfeld had insisted on it.

  "You gotta have a monument, Sam," he had said. "The town owes it to you. Why, here you've been working for them all these years; and if you passed on tomorrow," said Mr Eisenfeld, with his voice quivering at the mere thought of such a calamity, "what would there be to show for all you've done?"

  "There's the Purdell Highway," said Sam deprecatingly, "the Purdell Suspension Bridge, the Purdell----"

  "That's nothing," said Mr Eisenfeld largely. "Those are just names. Why, in ten years after you die they won't mean any more than Grant or--or Pocahontas. What you oughta have is a monument of your own. Something with an inscription on it. I'll get the architect to design one."

  The monument had duly been designed--a sort o'f square, tapering tower eighty feet high, crowned by an eagle with outspread wings, on the base of which was to be a great marble plaque on which the beneficence and public-spiritedness of Samuel Purdell would be recorded for all time. It was about the details of the construction of this monument that Mr Eisenfeld had come to confer with the mayor.

  "The thing is, Sam," he explained, "if this monument is gonna last, we gotta make it solid. They got the outside all built up now; but they say if we're gonna do the job properly, we got to fill it up with cement."

  "That '11 take an awful lot of cement, Al," Sam objected dubiously, casting an eye over the plans; but Mr Eisenfeld's generosity was not to be balked.

  "Well, what if it does? If the job's worth doin' at all, it's worth doin' properly. If you won't think of yourself, think of the city. Why, if we let this thing stay hollow and after a year or two it began to fall down, think what people from out of town would say."

  "What would they say?" asked Mr Purdell obtusely.

  His adviser shuddered.

  "They'd say this was such a cheap place we couldn't even afford to put up a decent monument for our mayor. You wouldn't like people to say a thing like that about us, would you, Sam?"

  The mayor thought it over.

  "Okay, Al," he said at length. "Okay. But I don't deserve it, really I don't."

  Simon Templar would have agreed that the mayor had done nothing to deserve any more elaborate monument than a neat tombstone in some quiet worm cafeteria. But at that moment his knowledge of Elmford's politics was not so complete as it was very shortly to become.

  When he saw Molly Provost slip the little automatic out of her bag he thought that the bullet was destined for the mayor; and in theory he approved. He had an engaging callousness about the value of political lives which, if universally shared, would make democracy an enchantingly simple business. But there were two policemen on motorcycles waiting to escort the mayoral car into the city, and the life of a good-looking girl struck him as being a matter for more serious consideration. He felt that if she were really determined to solve all of Elmford's political problems by shooting the mayor in the duodenum, she should at least be persuaded to do it on some other occasion when she would have a better chance of getting away with it. Wherefore the Saint moved very quickly, so that his lean brown hand closed over hers just at the moment when she touched the trigger and turned the bullet down into the ground.

  Neither Sam Purdell nor Al Eisenfeld, who were climbing into the car at that moment, even so much as looked around; and the motorcycle escort mercifully joined with them in instinctively attributing the detonation to the backfire of a passing truck.

  It was such a small gun that the Saint's hand easily covered it; and he held the gun and her hand together in a viselike grip, smiling as if he were just greeting an-old acquaintance, until the wail of the sirens died away.

  "Have you got a license to shoot mayors?" he inquired severely.

  She had a small pale face which under" a skillfully applied layer of cosmetics might have taken on a bright doll-like prettiness; but it was not like that yet. But he had a sudden illuminating vision of her face as it might have been, painted and powdered, with shaved eyebrows and blackened eyelashes, subtly hardened. It was a type which he had seen often enough before, which he could recognize at once. Some of them he had seen happily married, bringing up adoring families; others . . . For some reason the Saint thought that this girl ought not to be one of those others.

  Then he felt her arm go limp, and took the gun out of her unresisting hand. He put it away in his pocket.

  "Come for a walk," he said.

  She shrugged dully.

  "All right."

  He took her arm and led her down the block. Around the corner, out of sight of the mayor's house, he opened the door of the first of a line of parked cars. She got in resignedly. As he let in the clutch and the car slipped away under the pull of a smoothly whispering engine, she buried her face in her hands and sobbed silently.

  The Saint let her have it out. He drove on thoughtfully, with a cigarette clipped between his lips, until the taller buildings of the business section rose up around them. In a quiet turning off one of the main streets of the town, he stopped the car outside a small restaurant and opened the door on her side to let her out.

  She dabbed her eyes and straightened her hat mechanically. As she looked around and realized where they were, she stopped with one foot on the running board.

  "What have you brought me here for?" she asked stupidly.

  "For lunch," said the Saint calmly. "If you feel like eating. For a drink, if you don't. For a chat, anyhow."

  She looked at him with fear and puzzlement still in her eyes.

  "You needn't do that," she said steadily. "You can take me straight to the police station. We might as well get it over with."

  He shook his head.

  "Do you really want to go to a police station?" he drawled. "I'm not so fond of them myself, and usually they aren't very fond of me. Wouldn't you rather have a drink?"

  Suddenly she realized that the smile with which he was looking down at her wasn't a bit like the grimiy triumphant smile which a detective should have worn. Nor, when she looked more closely, was there anything else about him that quite matched her idea of what a detective would be like. It grieves the chronicler to record that her first impression
was that he was too good-looking. But that was how she saw him. His tanned face was cut in a mould of rather reckless humour which didn't seem to fit in at all with the stodgy and prosaic backgrounds of the law. He was tall, and he looked strong--her right hand still ached from the steel grip of his fingers--but it was a supple kind of strength that had no connection with mere bulk. Also he wore his clothes with a gay and careless kind of elegance which no sober police chief could have approved. The twinkle in his eyes was wholly friendly.

  "Do you mean you didn't arrest me just now?" she asked uncertainly.

  "I never arrested anybody in my life," said the Saint cheerfully. "In fact, when they shoot politicians I usually give them medals. Come on in and let's talk."

  Over a couple of martinis he explained himself further.

  "My dear, I think it was an excellent scheme, on general principles. But the execution wasn't so good. When you've had as much experience in bumping people off as I have, you'll realize that it's no time to do it when a couple of cops are parked at the curb a few yards away. I suppose you realize that they would have got you just about ten seconds after you created a vacancy for a new mayor?"

  She was still staring at him rather blankly.

  "I wasn't trying to do anything to the mayor," she said. "It was Al Eisenfeld I was going to shoot, and I wouldn't have cared if they did get me afterwards."

  The Saint frowned.

  "You mean the seedy gigolo sort of bird who was with the mayor?"

  She nodded.

  "He's the real boss of the town. The mayor is just a figurehead."

  "Other people don't seem to think he's as dumb as he looks," Simon remarked.

  "They don't know. There's nothing wrong with Pur-dell, but Eisenfeld----"

  "Maybe you have inside information," said the Saint.

  She looked at him over her clenched fists, dry-eyed and defiant.

  "If there were any justice in the world Al Eisenfeld would be executed."

  The Saint raised his eyebrows and she read the thought in his mind and met it with cynical denial.

  "Oh no--not in that way. There's no murder charge that anyone could bring against him. You couldn't bring any legal evidence in any court of law that he'd ever done any physical harm to anyone that I ever heard of. But I know that he is a murderer. He murdered my father."

  And the Saint waited without interruption. The story came tumbling out in a tangle of words that bit into his brain with a burden of meaning that was one of the most profound and illuminating surprises that he had known for some considerable time. It was so easy to talk to him that before long he knew nearly as much as she did herself. He was such an easy and understanding listener that somehow it never seemed strange to her until afterwards that she had been pouring out so much to a man she had known for less than an hour. Perhaps it was not such an extraordinary story as such stories go --perhaps many people would have shrugged it away as one of the commonplace tragedies of a hard-boiled world.

  "This fellow Schmidt was a pal of Eisenfeld's. So they tried to make Dad lay off him. Dad wouldn't listen to them. He was Police Commissioner before this administration came in and he'd never listened to any politicians in his life. He always said that he went into the force as an honest man, and he was going to stay that way. So when they found they couldn't keep him quiet, they framed him. They made out that he was behind practically every racket in the town. They did it cleverly enough. Dad knew they'd got him. He knew the game too well to be able to kid himself. He was booked to be thrown out of the force in disgrace-- probably sent to jail as well. How could he hope to clear himself? The evidence which he had collected against Schmidt was in the District Attorney's office, but when Dad tried to bring that up they said that the safe had been burgled and it was gone. They even turned it around to make it look as if Dad had got rid of the evidence himself--the very thing he had told them he would never agree to do, so--I suppose he took the only way out that he could see. I suppose you'd say he was a coward to do it, but how could you ever know what he must have been suffering?"

  "When was this?" asked the Saint quietly.

  "Last night. He--shot himself. With his police gun. The shot woke me up. I--found him. I suppose I must have gone mad too. I haven't slept since then--how could I ? This morning I made up my mind. I came out to do the only thing that was left. I didn't care what happened to myself after that." She broke off helplessly. "Oh, I must have been crazy! But I couldn't think of anything else. Why should he be able to get away with it? Why should he?" she sobbed.

  "Don't worry," said the Saint quietly. "He won't."

  He spoke with a quiet and matter-of-fact certainty which was more than a mere conventional encouragement. It made her look at him with a perplexity which she had been able to forget while he made her talk to him reawakening in her gaze. For the first time since they had sat down, it seemed, she was able to remember that she still knew nothing about him; that he was no more than a sympathetic stranger who had loorned up unheralded and unintroduced out of the fog which had still not completely cleared from her mind.

  "Of course you aren't a detective," she said childishly. "I'd have recognized you if you were; but if you aren't, what are you?"

  He smiled.

  "I'm the guy who gives all the detectives something to work for," he said. "I'm the source of more aches in the heads of the ungodly than I should like to boast about. I am Trouble, Incorporated--President Simon Templar, at your service. They call me the Saint."

  "What does that mean?" she asked helplessly.

  In the ordinary way Simon Templar, who had no spontaneous modesty bred into his composition, would have felt a slight twinge of disappointment that his reputation had not preceded him even to that out-of-the-way corner of the American continent; but he realized that there was no legitimate reason why she should have reacted more dramatically to the revelation of his identity, and for once he was not excessively discontented to remain unrecognized. There were practical disadvantages to the indulgence of this human weakness for publicity which, at that particular moment and in that particular town, he was prepared to do without. He shook his head with the same lazy grin that was so extraordinarily comforting and clear-sighted.

  "Nothing that you need worry about," he said. "Just write me down as a bloke who never could mind his own business, and give me some more of the inside dope about Al."

  "There isn't a lot more to tell you," she said. "I think I've already given you almost everything I know."

  "Doesn't anyone else in the town know it?"

  "Hardly anybody. There are one or two people who guess how things really are, but if they tried to argue about it they'd only get laughed at. He's clever enough to have everybody believing that he's just Sam Purdell's mouthpiece; but it's the other way around. Sam Purdell really is dumb. He doesn't know what it's all about. He thinks of nothing but his highways and parks and bridges, and he honestly believes that he's only doing the best he can for the city. He doesn't get any graft out of it. Al gets all that; and he's clever enough to work it so that everybody thinks he's innocent and Sam Purdell is the really smart guy who's getting all the money out of it--even the Board of Aldermen think so. Dad used to talk to me about all his cases and he found out a lot about Eisenfeld while he was investigating this man Schmidt. He'd have gone after Eisenfeld himself next--if he'd been able to keep going. Perhaps Eisenfeld knew it and that made him more vicious."

  "He didn't have any evidence against Eisenfeld?"

  "Only a little. Hardly anything if you're talking about legal evidence, but he knew plenty of things he might have proven if he had been given time. That's how it is, anyway."

  The Saint lighted a cigarette and gazed at her thoughtfully through a stream of smoke.

  "You understood a lot more than I did, Molly," he murmured. "But it's a great idea . . . And the more I think of it, the more I think you must be right."

  He let his mind play around with the situation for a moment. Maybe he was t
oo subtle himself, but there was something about that fundamental master stroke of Mr Eisenfeld's cunning that appealed to his incorrigible sense of the artistry of corruption. To be the power behind the scenes while some lifelike figurehead stood up to receive the rotten eggs was just ordinary astuteness. But to choose for that figurehead a man w ho was so honest and stupid that it would take an earthquake to make him realize what was going on, and whose honest stupidity might appear to less simple-minded inquirers as an impudent disguise for double-dyed villainy--that indicated a quality of guile to which Simon Templar raised an appreciative hat. But his admiration of Mr Eisenfeld's ingenuity was purely theoretical.

  He made a note of the girl's address.

  "I'll keep the gun," he said before they parted. "You won't be needing it, and I shouldn't like you to lose your head again when I wasn't around to interfere." His blue eyes held her for a moment with quiet confidence. "Al Eisenfcld is going to be dealt with--I promise you that."

  It was one of his many mysteries that the fantastic promise failed to rouse her to utter incredulity. Afterwards she would be incredulous, after he had fulfilled the promise even more so; but while she listened at that moment there was a spell about him which made all miracles seem possible.

  "What can you do?" she asked, in the blind but indescribably inspiring belief that there must be some magic which he could achieve.

  "I have my methods," said the Saint. "I stopped off here anyhow because I was interested in the stories I'd heard about this town, and we'll just call it lucky that I happened to be out trying to take a look at the mayor when you had your brainstorm. Just do one thing for me. Whatever happens, don't tell a living soul about this lunch. Forget that you ever met me or heard of me. Let me do the remembering."

  Mr Eisenfeld's memory was less retentive. When he came home a few nights later, he had completely forgotten the fleeting squirm of uneasiness which the reference to the Saint in the Elmford News had given him. He had almost as completely forgotten his late Police Commissioner; although when he did remember him, it was with a feeling of pleasant satisfaction that he had been so easily got rid of. Already he had selected another occupant for that conveniently vacated office, who he was assured would prove more amenable to reason. And that night he was expecting another visitor whose mission would give him an almost equal satisfaction.