Alias the Saint (The Saint Series) Page 6

  “Because,” said Pamela Marlowe calmly, “I never send them.”

  Simon regarded her seriously.

  “This is very like insubordination,” he said. “However, I suppose you know best. Let’s change the subject. Have you got any more complaints to make against the firm?”

  “I did remember something the other day,” she admitted.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “What did Mr Teal mean by talking about Mr Vanney making childish attempts to kill him?” she asked, and Simon put down his pen and leaned back comfortably.

  “Owing to the recent boom in detective fiction,” he explained elaborately, “the public have come to regard it as essential that their detectives should lead dangerous lives, in imminent peril of crafty assassination. To meet the popular demand, the proprietors of the leading newspapers have been compelled to organize private squads of thugs, who at intervals attempt the life of a well-known detective and thereby provide headlines for the front page. The detectives, of course, being public servants, take all this in good part, but they do insist on a certain standard of efficiency about the murders, and when the attempt is below par they feel annoyed. Naturally, any self-respecting detective would object to being killed in any of the crude, old-fashioned ways.”

  Pamela Marlowe went back to her table, slammed back the typewriter carriage, rattled in a sheet of paper, and began to pound away with unnecessary violence.

  Simon Templar signed the letter with a flourish, blotted it, and flicked it into the tray on his desk. Then he leaned back, lighted a cigarette, and proceeded to smoke meditatively.

  “Pamela,” he said presently, “you seem to be annoyed.”

  “I am,” she said.

  Simon took his feet off the table suddenly and smiled. It has already been mentioned that he had a most engaging smile. He left his chair and came and stood beside her.

  “Pamela,” he said, holding out his hand, “let’s call it a day.”

  “Very well, Mr Templar,” said Pamela, and went on with her work.

  Simon looked at the hand she had studiously ignored, sighed, and returned to his desk.

  After that he did no more work, and spent his idle moments with his feet on the table, smoking innumerable cigarettes, and staring at the ceiling with a frown indicative of furious cerebration.

  He had lunch that day with two friends, and the conversation was not particularly inspiring. It was not until the end of the meal that he chose to liven things up.

  Then he pushed away his plate, lighted a cigarette, and blew out a long stream of smoke.

  “Boys,” he said, “we have fortified ourselves with an excellent lunch. Our friend Connell has demonstrated a hidden talent for chefery which has been a delightful surprise, and the brandy is on the sideboard in case any of you want bracing up another notch. Help yourselves if you think you need it, because I’ve got a shock for you.”

  He paused, inhaling comfortably.

  Connell accepted the suggestion, but the other man did not move.

  “The first point,” said the Saint, settling himself, “is that now is the time for all bad men and blue to realise that this party is likely to break up without notice.”

  The other two said nothing. Clearly, the Saint had only voiced their own thoughts.

  “The second point,” Simon went on, “is that, after all the trouble we’ve taken, we should go down to history as a set of prize pikers if we beat it now. The boodle should all be in within a week, and if we can only keep our nerve and hang on, we’ve got a sporting chance of scooping the kitty. The pool isn’t as large as it might have been, but that’s not our fault. We’re being rushed on the last lap, and we’ve got to make the best of it.”

  He blew two smoke rings and watched them float upwards.

  “Maybe you haven’t realised how short our time’s getting,” he said. “Teal’s on to us—that’s a cert. He caught us all nicely on the hop the other day over that Melbourne inquiry. I had to let it go through because if I’d tried to stall him off it’d only have made him hotter and it wouldn’t have made any difference in the long run. It was only a matter of turning a suspicion into a certainty. Teal knows that Vanney’s a fake, as far as his Australian career is concerned anyway, but that’s not a crime in itself. But there are one or two other things.”

  The Saint stood up. He had taken over the chairmanship of the meeting quite naturally.

  “There’s been some funny stuff about Connell and Long Harry, and it’s new on me. Harry was shopped for busting a house in Bayswater. Anyway, Harry said he was shopped, and he said it in a way that makes me want to believe him. He’s just out of Pentonville, and he thinks Connell shopped him, and he’s looking for Connell. And Teal told me the other day that Connell was wanted for a job in Battersea. Now, I know Connell didn’t do that job. Therefore Connell’s been framed, too. Now, what’s the point of all this framing business?”

  He looked straight at Connell, and Connell growled.

  “Harry must have shopped me,” he said.

  “Get that idea right out of your head, son,” advised the Saint. “Teal knew Harry thought you’d shopped him in Bayswater, and the first thing he’d think of would be that Harry might have tried to return the compliment and shop you. Teal must have had something to make him quite certain that Harry didn’t do the Battersea job, or else he’d have had Harry inside in a brace of shakes.”

  Simon canted up his cigarette between his lips, and set his hands deep in his trouser pockets.

  “Even that,” he remarked, “is no particular affair of mine. I just put it up to you to think over in your spare time. But the last two points are personal. First of all, this business of trying to bump off Teal has got to stop. I don’t know how it was arranged, but Teal said it had been tried, and Teal doesn’t bluff that way. I should particularly object to Teal being bumped off. If Teal passed on to his harp, I should have nothing left to live for. Get that. If Teal makes any more complaints of that sort, Simon Templar goes out of this partnership at once.”

  The other two said nothing, but the Saint had not been expecting a reply. He passed on.

  “Finally,” he said, “any monkeying about with Miss Marlowe will also stop. I’ve let you off once, James Arthur Vanney; but I don’t know if I made it quite plain then, that the next time it happens you will not be let off. That’s all.”

  The bearded man came to his feet slowly.

  “Are you running this show by yourself?” he asked.

  “At the moment—and in this matter—yes,” said the Saint.

  James Arthur Vanney turned to the third member of the party.

  “And what have you got to say?” he demanded.

  “I agree with Templar. It’s too dangerous.”

  The bearded man’s fist came down on the table with a crash.

  “And I say,” he blustered, “that if either of you interfere with my private dealings with that girl, I’ll quit the show!”

  The third man got to his feet also.

  “And if you quit the show,” he said quietly, “I might have a little tale to tell Inspector Teal about the mysterious Mr Vanney.”

  The bearded man looked round, savage-eyed.

  “If it comes to telling tales,” he said, “I guess I could tell as many as anyone. You wouldn’t dare risk it.”

  Simon flicked his cigarette into the fireplace.

  “Nor would you dare risk it, my man,” he said smoothly. “Think it over, and while you’re thinking just remember that it isn’t only old fat Teal you’ve got to be afraid of. I might get you first.”

  The Saint’s tone was perfectly quiet, but he never took his gaze off the other’s face, and the bearded man saw murder in his eyes.

  9

  Mr Teal had discovered long ago that he was the plaything of a peculiar destiny. Whenever he was engaged on a big case, when once the preliminary trifling and ferreting about was done, things had a habit with him of moving with well-oiled precision an
d alarming swiftness. Mr Teal, in his leisure moments, attributed to this fact his ponderous and somnolent disposition—for, he pointed out, nobody less stolidly constituted could have stood the strain.

  It was so with the Vanney case.

  There came a day when Mr Teal felt that he had disposed of every detail of the preliminary investigation, and there was nothing left for him to do but to sit down and wait for the other side to make a move which would provide him with a way out of this temporary impasse.

  He said as much to the Chief Commissioner, Sir Brodie Smethurst, and the Assistant Commissioner, Mr William Kennedy, at a private conference which lasted until the small hours of the morning; and they agreed with him, for the Criminal Investigation Department is jealous of its reputation. Evidence upon which a layman would act without hesitation is sifted and contemplated with a suspicious and cautious eye, for Scotland Yard prefers to bide its time and take no action until the possibility of failure has been brought down to an irreducible minimum. The net is spread, and it is spread so effectively that only a genius could find a way out of it. There have been geniuses in the history of crime, but they are rare, and the police routine is not designed to cope with them.

  “I think I’ve got Vanney’s where I want them,” said Teal. “If I have, they’re safe anyway. I’d rather not risk making a fool of myself and the Department by acting before I’ve got all the threads in my hands and I can afford to lay a thousand to one on getting my conviction.”

  “What’s their graft at the moment?” asked Kennedy, and Chief Inspector Teal produced several typewritten sheets of paper which he handed over for perusal.

  “That’s a confidential report from Stanforth and Watson,” he said. “Stanforth and Watson are handling a lot of Vanney’s business. They’ve had their doubts about it for some time, and when I started making inquiries they wanted to chuck it up altogether. I asked them to carry on to help us, and promised we’d see everything was all right for them when it came to the show-down. Eventually they agreed. You will find all the particulars here—it’s the old bucket-shop game, but done more brilliantly than it’s been done for years. Stenning was the last expert we had, and this is in the old tradition. But this time he’s come back with some new trimmings on the old game. He’s not going after the chicken food—the mug punters with a few pounds to throw away here and there. He’s got a graft that’s specially made up to attract the big men—the men who are nearly as crooked as he is himself. Wads of money have come in to him from every corner of Europe.”

  “Is it like the Saint to be mixed up with a game like that?” asked Smethurst, and Teal nodded.

  “It’s just about his mark. The technique may be Stenning, but the basic idea is pure Saint. The only thing that’s puzzling me is why the Saint should have bothered to go in with Stenning at all, instead of carrying the whole thing through on his own.”

  The Chief Commissioner looked up from the report.

  “It’s very reminiscent of Stenning.”

  Teal nodded.

  “It’s Stenning to the life,” he said.

  “He died right on his cue, that man,” put in Kennedy.

  “He did,” said Teal grimly. “It suited some people I could mention—down to the ground. I’ve got a feeling that if Stenning came to life again it’d mean a lot of trouble for the firm of Vanney.”

  He left the Commissioner’s house at Regent’s Park as the clocks were striking three, and drove away in his miniature car towards his own modest lodgings near Victoria.

  The grotesqueness of the association of his mammoth bulk with that microscopic

  automobile had never struck him, but a more practical argument against it was forced upon his notice ten minutes later.

  Piccadilly at that hour was almost deserted, and Mr, Teal, in defiance of all speed limits, betrayed his satisfaction with the way the Vanney case was going, by allowing the lightness of his heart to manifest itself in the heaviness of his foot on the accelerator. He was doing nearly thirty-five miles an hour when he came level with the Ritz, but even so, a big limousine purred up level and passed him effortlessly.

  The detective had been guilty of allowing his thoughts to wander, and he was brought rudely back to earth by a sudden vision of the big car steering in to the kerb directly across his front wings.

  Faced with the alternative of crashing into the side of the car in front, Teal wrenched the steering round to the left, forgetting that he had no more than two feet of road on that side in which to manoeuvre. He realised his mistake as he saw the columns which carry the front of the hotel over the pavement to the edge of the road leaping towards him. He tried to swing the car round again; but it was too late, and in an instant the near front wheel touched the kerb and the steering wheel was wrenched out of his hand. The car piled itself up against the stone wall with a crash.

  Shakily, Teal picked himself up out of the road, where the force of the collision had hurled him. By some miracle he was unhurt, though his car was a wreck. The car which had caused the accident was vanishing in the direction of Hyde Park Corner; but the tail light was out, and it was impossible to see the number.

  He saw his car removed, with difficulty, to a nearby garage, and went home in a taxi. It was not the first time that an attempt had been made on his life, and he was inclined to take these things philosophically. But on this occasion he was annoyed, for the accident, and the consequent necessary arrangements for the disposal of the ruins, had deprived him of two hours’ sleep.

  The next morning, however, found him in a good temper—for his escape of the night before seemed to him, by all precedent, to mean that the case was entering on its last hectic stages—and he was almost cordial to the long-suffering Sergeant Barrow.

  “I think most of the facts about Vanney’s are taped out now,” said Teal. “I’ve made a list of them in chronological order, and the list spells something to me.”

  He took a small notebook from his waistcoat pocket, marked a place with his thumb, and handed it over.

  “Take a look at that.”

  Sergeant Barrow read the neatly tabulated entry:

  1928 July

  Connell and Mulligan disappeared.

  1928 August

  Stenning killed.

  1930 April

  House commissioned for Vanney

  1929 June

  Vanney arrived from Melbourne, took possession of house, and opened the firm of Vanney.

  “You seem to connect Vanney up with Stenning,” remarked Barrow, when he had finished, and Inspector Teal closed his eyes and smiled beatifically.

  “I didn’t do that,” he replied. “Stenning did it himself.”

  The next development came some hours later.

  Teal had returned to his office after dinner, and he was still working at ten o’clock, when a messenger entered.

  “There’s a question through from C Division,” said the man. “Connell’s been seen in Soho tonight, and they want to know whether they’re to pull him in or tail him, or what.”

  “Tail him till I arrive,” said Teal briskly, “I’ve got an idea.”

  He spent twenty minutes in another room, and when he emerged the change in his appearance was amazing. The modern detective does not rely on such crude disguises as false beards. Instead, he pins his faith to the creation of atmosphere. In a certain room at New Scotland Yard is kept a file of photographs of representative men of different trades, and the minutest details of their habits and characteristics are chronicled.

  Teal, suiting his disguise to the frame-work on which he had to build, had adopted the character of a shady racecourse hanger-on. He changed his sober blue serge suit for a loud check, hung a massive watch chain across his middle, selected spats, and put them on over a pair of pointed yellowish shoes. On each hand he put a ring, and he fixed a diamond pin in the wrong part of a flashy tie. To his face he did little—a skilful darkening of the eyebrows, a broadening of the face by the insertion in the mouth of rubber
pads designed for that purpose, and the attachment of a bristly moustache, was sufficient.

  Regretfully he discarded his chewing gum, and put four cigars in a pocket of his

  waistcoat. He took a bowler hat of the wrong kind, a pair of lemon-coloured gloves, and a silver-knobbed ebony walking-stick, and inspected the ensemble in a full-length mirror. Certainly he was transformed.

  At Marlborough Street Police Station he was told that the last report from the men who were keeping track of Connell had placed him in a public-house in Shaftesbury Avenue. Arriving there, Teal was met by a detective who told him that their man had moved on to a night club.

  The other detective was lounging against the side of a taxi-cab outside, talking to the driver. The sign he gave Teal would have been unnoticed by a casual observer, but it was enough. Teal went in. He had no difficulty in this, for in his pocket was a collection of membership cards which would have gained him admittance to any night club in London.

  He saw his man as soon as he entered the room and established himself in a corner a few tables away.

  Sipping the drink which was brought him, he watched Connell covertly.

  Connell was there without any attempt at disguise. Gathered together at his table were three or four men whose appearances were decidedly against them. Two of them Teal recognised. There was the usual leavening of “dancing partners.”

  The party was a hilarious one, and Connell was leading every outburst of merriment. Every drink was on him—one round had hardly arrived before he was shouting for another—and he paid for them from a huge roll of Bank of England notes.

  “Drink up!” he shouted at intervals. “I’m on a good thing, and this is my night out.”

  Teal watched for an hour, and when the party quieted down into a sodden stupor he judged that it was his turn to take a hand.

  Taking a pencil and an envelope from his pocket, he scribbled a note: “If you want to make some more easy money, don’t say anything to anybody, but follow me out of here.”