Featuring the Saint s-5 Page 7

  He stumbled mechanically towards the side table where bottle and glasses were set out, but the bottle was nearly empty. Savagely he jabbed at the bell and waited an impatient half-minute; but no one answered. Cursing, he staggered to the door and opened it.

  "Fitch!" he bawled.

  Still there was no answer. The house was as silent as a tomb. Trembling with terror of he knew not what, Lemuel reeled down the hall and flung open the door of the servants' quarters. There was no one in sight.

  On the table, he saw an orange envelope with a buff slip beside it. Impelled by an unaccountable premonition, he picked up the form and read: Come at once. I want you.

  Ellen.

  Fitch was already on his way to Rye. The Saint was thorough.

  As Lemuel crumpled the telegram with furious hands, the bee seemed to be roaring directly over his head.

  Simon Templar gazed thoughtfully at the sky.

  "Cloudy," he remarked thoughtfully. "The weather forecasts said it would be cloudy to-day, and for once they're right."

  Teal looked back over his shoulder.

  "That aëroplane's flying pretty low," he said.

  "Owing to cloud," said the Saint; and the detective glanced at him quickly.

  "What's the big idea, Saint?" he demanded.

  Simon smiled.

  "I've been getting rather tired of answering that question lately," he said.

  They had reached a clump of trees at the edge of the wide lawn, a couple of hundred yards away from the house; and here the Saint stopped. Both the men turned.

  The aëroplane was certainly low-it was flying under five hundred feet, and the racket of its engine was deafening.

  "I know your habits," said Teal sourly. "If you weren't here with me, Saint, I'd be inclined to think you were up there- getting ready to do some illegal bombing practice." He was watching the aëroplane with screwed-up eyes, while he took a fresh purchase on his gum; and then he added suddenly: "Do any of the other guys in your gang fly?"

  "There ain't no gang," said the Saint, "and you ought to know it. They broke up long ago."

  "I wouldn't put it above you to have recruited another," said Teal.

  Simon leaned against a tree. His hand, groping in a hollow in the trunk, found a tiny switch. He took the lever lightly between his finger and thumb. He laughed, softly and lazily, and Teal faced round.

  "What's the big idea?" he demanded again. "I don't know what it is, but you're playing some funny game. What did you fetch me out here to tell me?"

  "Nothing much," answered the Saint slowly. "I just thought--"

  But what he thought was not destined to be known. For all at once there came a titanic roar of sound, that was nothing like the roar of the aëroplane's engine-a shattering detonation that rocked the ground under their feet and hurled them bodily backwards with the hurricane force of its breath.

  "Good God!"

  Teal's voice came faintly through the buzzing in the Saint's ears.

  Simon was scrambling rockily to his feet.

  "Something seems to have bust, old watermelon."

  "F-ZXKA," Teal was muttering. "F-ZXKA; F-ZXKA--"

  "Ease up, old dear!" Simon took the detective by the shoulder. "It's all over. Nothing to rave about."

  "I'm not raving," snarled Teal. "But I've got the number of that machine--"

  He was starting off across the lawn, and the Saint followed. But there was nothing that they or anyone else could do, for Francis Lemuel's house was nothing but a great mound of rubble under a mushroom canopy of smoke and settling dust, through which the first tongues of flame were starting to lick up towards the dark clouds. And the aëroplane was dwindling into the mists towards the north.

  Teal surveyed the ruin; and then he looked round at the crowd that was pattering up the road.

  "You're arrested, Saint," he said curtly; and Simon shrugged.

  They drove to Tenterden in the Saint's car, and from there Teal put a call through to headquarters.

  "F-ZXKA," he said. "Warn all stations and aërodromes. Take the crew, whatever excuse they try to put up, and hold them till I come."

  "That's the stuff," said the Saint approvingly; and Teal was so far moved as to bare his teeth.

  "This is where you get what's coming to you," he said.

  It was not Teal's fault that the prophecy was not fulfilled.

  Simon drove him back to London with a police guard in the back of the car; and Teal was met almost on the doorstep of Scotland Yard with the news that the aëroplane had landed at Croydon. The prisoners, said the message, had put up a most audacious bluff; they were being sent to headquarters in a police car.

  "Good!" said Teal grimly; and went through to Cannon Row Police Station to charge the Saint with wilful murder.

  "That's what you've got to prove," said the Saint, when the charge was read over to him. "No-I won't trouble my solicitor. I shall be out in an hour."

  "In eight weeks you'll be dead," said the detective.

  He had recovered some of his old pose of agonized boredom; and half an hour later he needed it all, for the police car arrived from Croydon as the newspaper vans started to pour out of E.C. 4, with the printers' ink still damp on the first news of the outrage of Tenterden.

  Two prisoners were hustled into Teal's office-a philosophical gentleman in flying overalls, and a very agitated gentleman with striped cashmere trousers and white spats showing under his leather coat.

  "It is an atrrrrocity!" exploded the agitated gentleman. "I vill complain myself to ze Prime Ministair! Imbecile! Your poliss, zey say I am arrrrest-zey insult me-zey mock zem-selves of vat I say-zey trreat me like I vas a crriminal-me! But you shall pay--"

  "And who are you pretending to be?" asked Teal, lethargically unwrapping a fresh wafer of his favourite sweetmeat.

  "Me? You do not know me? You do not know Boileau--"

  Teal did not.

  "Take that fungus off his face," he ordered, "and let's see what he really looks like."

  Two constables had to pinion the arms of a raving maniac while a third gave the agitated gentleman's beard a sharp tug. But the beard failed to part company with its foundations; and, on closer examination, it proved to be the genuine home-grown article.

  Teal blinked as the agitated gentleman, released, danced in front of his desk, semaphoring with frantic arms.

  "Nom d' un nom! You are not content viz insult me, you must attack me, you must pull me ze beard! Aaaaah!"

  Words failed the man. He reeled against the desk, clawing at his temples.

  Teal ran a finger round the inside of his collar, which seemed to have suddenly become tight.

  Then the philosophical gentleman in overalls spoke.

  " 'E 'as say true, m'sieu. 'E is M. Boileau, ze French Finance Minister, 'oo come ovair for confer--"

  Teal signed to one of the constables.

  "Better ring up the Embassy and see if someone can come over and identify him," he said.

  "Merde alors!" screamed the agitated gentleman. "I vill not vait! I demand to be release!"

  "I'm afraid you'll have to be identified, sir," said Teal unhappily.

  And identified M. Boileau was, in due course, by a semi-hysterical official from the Embassy; and Teal spent the most uncomfortable half-hour of his life trying to explain the mistake.

  He was a limp wreck when the indignation meeting finally broke up; and the telephoned report of the explosives expert who had been sent down to Tenterden did not improve Teal's temper.

  "It was a big aërial bomb-we've found some bits of the casing. We didn't find much of Lemuel. . . ."

  "Could it have been fired by a timing device?"

  "There's no trace of anything like that, sir. Of course, if there had been, it might have been blown to bits."

  "Could it have been fired electrically?"

  "I haven't found any wires yet, sir. My men are still digging round the wreckage. On the other hand, sir, if it comes to that, it might have been fired by r
adio, and if it was radio we shan't find anything at all."

  Teal had his inspiration some hours too late.

  "You'd better search the grounds," he said, and gave exact instructions.

  "Certainly, sir. But what about the aëroplane that went over?"

  "That," said Teal heavily, "contained the French Minister of Finance, on his way to a reparations conference."

  "Well, it couldn't have been him," said the expert sagely, and Teal felt like murder.

  A few days later the Saint called on Stella Dornford. He had not seen her since the morning when he dropped her on his way to Jermyn Street, and she had not communicated with him in any way.

  "You must think me a little rotter," she said. "It seems such a feeble excuse to say I've been too busy to think of anything--"

  "I think it's the best excuse in the world," said the Saint.

  He pointed to the ring on her finger.

  "When?"

  "Ten days ago. I-I took your advice, you see. . . ."

  Simon laughed.

  " 'To those about to marry,' " he quoted softly. "Well, you must come round to a celebratory supper, and bring the Beloved. And Uncle Simon will tell you all about married life."

  "Why, are you married?"

  He shook his head. For a moment the dancing blue eyes were quiet and wistful. And then the old mocking mirth came back to them.

  "That's why I'll be able to tell you so much about it," he said.

  Presently the girl said: "I've told Dick how much we owe you. I'll never forget it. I don't know how to thank you--"

  The Saint smiled, and put his hands on her shoulders.

  "Don't you?" he said.

  Chapter 2

  1

  THE WONDERFUL WAR The Republic of Pasala lies near the northward base of the Yucatan peninsula in Central America. It has an area of about 10,000 square miles, or roughly the size of England from the Tweed to a line drawn from Liverpool to Hull. Population, about 18,000. Imports, erratic. Exports, equally erratic, and consisting (when the population can be stirred to the necessary labour) of maize, rice, sugar-cane, mahogany, and-oil.

  "You can hurry up and warble all you know about this oil, Archie," said Simon Templar briskly, half an hour after he landed at Santa Miranda. "And you can leave out your adventures among the seńoritas. I want to get this settled-I've got a date back in England for the end of May, and that doesn't give me a lot of time here."

  Mr. Archibald Sheridan stirred slothfully in his long chair and took a pull at a whisky-and-soda in which ice clinked seductively.

  "You've had it all in my letters and cables," he said. "But I'll just run through it again to connect it up. It goes like this. Three years ago almost to the day, a Scots mining engineer named McAndrew went prospecting round the hills about fifty miles inland. Everyone said he was crazy-till he came back six months later with samples from his feeler borings. He said he'd struck one of the richest deposits that ever gushed- and it was only a hundred feet below the surface. He got a concession-chiefly because the authorities still couldn't believe his story-staked his claim, cabled for his daughter to come over and join him, and settled down to feel rich and wait for the plant he'd ordered to be shipped over from New Orleans."

  "Did the girl come?" asked Templar.

  "She's right here," answered Sheridan. "But you told me to leave the women out of it. She doesn't really come into the story anyway. The man who does come in is a half-caste bum from God knows where, name of Shannet. Apparently Shannet had been sponging and beachcombing here for months before McAndrew arrived. Everyone was down on him, and so McAndrew, being one of these quixotic idiots, joined up with him. He even took him into partnership, just to defy public opinion; and, anyhow, he was wanting help, and Shannet had some sort of qualifications. The two of them went up into the interior to take a look at the claim. Shannet came back, but McAndrew didn't. Shannet said a snake got him."

  Simon Templar reached for another cigarette.

  "Personally, I say that snake's name was Shannet," remarked Archie Sheridan quietly. "Lilla-McAndrew's daughter-said the same thing. Particularly when Shannet produced a written agreement signed by McAndrew and him self, in which it was arranged that if either partner should die, all rights in the claim should pass to the other partner. Lilla swore that McAndrew, who'd always thought first of her, would never have signed such a document, and she got a look at it and said the signature was forged. Shannet replied that McAndrew was getting over a bout of malaria when he signed it, and his hand was rather shaky. The girl carried it right to the court of what passes for justice here, fighting like a hero, but Shannet had too big a pull with the judge, and she lost her case. I arrived just after her appeal was turned down."

  "What about McAndrew's body?"

  "Shannet said he buried it by the trail; but the jungle trails here are worse than any maze that was ever invented, and you can almost see the stuff grow. The grave could quite reasonably be lost in a week. Shannet said he couldn't find it again. I took a trip that way myself, but it wasn't any use. All I got out of it was a bullet through a perfectly good hat from some sniper in the background-Shannet for a fiver."

  "After which," suggested Simon Templar thoughtfully, "Shannet found he couldn't run the show alone, and sold out to our dear friend in London, Master Hugo Campard, shark, swindler, general blackguard, and promoter of unlimited dud companies--"

  "Who perpetrated the first sound company of his career, Pasala Oil Products, on the strength of it," Sheridan completed. "Shares not for public issue, and sixty percent of them held by himself."

  Simon Templar took his cigarette from his mouth and blew a long, thin streamer of smoke into the sunlight.

  "So that's what I've come over to deal with, Archibald?" he murmured. "Well, well, well! . . . Taken by and large, it looks like a diverting holiday. Carol a brief psalm about things political, son."

  "Just about twice as crooked as anything else south of the United States border," said Sheridan. "The man who matters isn't the President. He's under the thumb of what they call the Minister of the Interior, who finds it much more convenient and much safer to stay in the background-they never assassinate Ministers of the Interior, apparently, but Presidents are fair game. And this man-Manuel Conception de Villega is his poetic label-is right under the wing of Shannet, and is likely to stay there as long as Shannet's money lasts."

  The Saint rose and lounged over to the veranda rail. At that hour (which was just after midday) the thermometer stood at a hundred and two in the shade, and the Saint had provided himself suitably with white ducks. The dazzling whiteness of them would have put snow to shame; and he wore them, as might have been expected of him, with the most cool and careless elegance in the world. He looked as if he would have found an inferno chilly. His dark hair was brushed smoothly back; his lean face was tanned to a healthy brown; altogether he must have been the most dashing and immaculate sight that Santa Miranda had set eyes on for many years.

  Sheridan was in despair before that vision of unruffled perfection. His hair was tousled, his white ducks looked some what limp with the heat, and his pleasantly ugly face was moist.

  "What about the rest of the white, or near-white, inhabitants?" inquired the Saint.

  "A two-fisted, rip-roaring giant of a red-headed Irishman named Kelly," was the reply. "His wife-that's two. Lilla McAndrew, who's staying with them-I wouldn't let her put up at the filthy hotel in the town any longer-three. Four and five, a couple of traders, more or less permanently drunk and not worth considering. Six-Shannet. That's the lot."

  The Saint turned away and gazed down the hillside. From where he stood, on the veranda of Sheridan's bungalow, he could look down onto the roofs of Santa Miranda-the cluster of white buildings in the Moorish style which formed the centre, and the fringe of adobe huts on the outskirts. Left and right of him, on the hill above the town, were other bungalows. Beyond the town was the sea.

  The Saint studied the view for a time in silenc
e; then he turned round again.

  "We seem to be onto the goods," he remarked. "Shannet, the small fish, but an undoubted murderer-and, through him, our real man, Campard. I had a hunch I shouldn't be wasting your time when I sent you out here as soon as I heard Campard was backing Pasala Oil Products. But I never guessed P.O.P. would be real till I got your first cable. Now we're on a truly classy piece of velvet. It all looks too easy."

  "Easy?" queried Sheridan skeptically. "I'm glad you think it's easy. With Shannet's claim established, and the concession in writing at Campard's London office, and Lilla McAndrew's petition dismissed, and Shannet twiddling the government, the army, the police, and the rest of the bunch, down to the last office boy, round and round his little finger with the money he gets from Campard-and the man calls it easy. Oh, take him away!"

  The Saint's hand drove even deeper into his pockets. Tall and trim and athletic, he stood with his feet astride, swaying gently from his toes, with the Saintly smile flickering faintly round his mouth and a little dancing devil of mischief rousing in his blue eyes.

  "I said easy," he drawled.

  Sheridan buried his face in his hands.

  "Go and put your head in the ice bucket," he pleaded. "Of course, it's the sun. You're not used to it-I forgot that."

  "How big is the army?"

  "There's a standing army of about five hundred, commanded by seventeen generals, twenty-five colonels, and about fifty minor officers. And if your head hurts, just lie down, close the eyes, and relax. It'll be quite all right in an hour or two."

  "Artillery?"

  "Three pieces, carried by mules. If you'd like some aspirin--"

  "Navy?"

  "One converted tug, with 5.9 quick-firer and crew of seven, commanded by two admirals. I don't think you ought to talk now. I'll put up the hammock for you, if you like, and you can sleep for an hour before lunch."

  "Police force?"

  "There are eleven constables in Santa Miranda, under three superintendents. And in future I shouldn't have any whisky before sundown."

  The Saint smiled.