The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint) Page 7

  Mr. Teal faced the Saint with a certain grimness. His round pink face was rather more flushed than usual, and his baby-blue eyes were creased up into the merest slits, through which pinpoints of red danger lights glinted like scattering embers. He knew that he had taken a chance in coming to that house at all, and the squad he had brought with him multiplied his potential regrets by more factors than he cared to think about. If this was one of the Saint's practical jokes, Chief Inspector Teal would never hear the last of it. The whole C.I.D. would laugh itself sick-there were still giggles circulating over the gramophone-record incident -and the assistant commissioner's sniff would flay him till he wanted to find a quiet place to die. And yet he had had no choice. If he was told about a murder he had to go out and investigate it, and his private doubts did not count.

  "Well?" he barked.

  "Fairly," said the Saint. "I see you brought the homicide squad."

  Teal nodded briefly.

  "I gathered from what you told me that a murder had been committed. Is that the case?"

  "There are certainly some dead bodies parked about the house," admitted the Saint candidly. "In fact, the place is making a great start as a morgue. If you're interested --"

  "Where are these bodies?"

  Simon gestured impressively heavenwards.

  "Upstairs-at least, so far as the mortal clay is con­cerned, Eustace."

  "We'll go up and see them."

  Curtly Teal gave his orders to the silent squad. One man was left in the hall, and Patricia stayed with him. The others, who included a fingerprint expert with a little black bag, and a photographer burdened with camera and folding tripod, followed behind. They went on a tour that made every member of it stare more incredulously from stage to stage, until the culminating revelation left their eyeballs bulging as if they were watching the finale of a Grand Guignol drama coming true under their noses.

  CHAPTER IX CHIEF INSPECTOR TEAL twiddled his pudgy fingers on his knees and studied the Saint's face soberly, digesting what he had heard.

  "So after that you allowed this man Jones to kidnap Miss Holm so that you could follow him and find out his address?" he murmured; and the Saint nodded.

  "That's about it. Can you blame me? The guy Jones was obviously a menace to the community that we ought to know more about, and it was the only way. I hadn't the faintest idea at that time what his graft was, but I figured that anything which included wilful murder in its programme must be worth looking into. I was all bubbling over with beans after that bust I told you about-talking of busts, Claud, if you ever go to the Folies Bergčre --"

  "Yes, yes," interrupted the detective brusquely. "I want you to tell me exactly what happened when you got here."

  "Well, naturally I had to break into the house. I went up to the first floor and heard Jones talking to Miss Holm in the room where he'd taken her. I hid in another room when he came out to get her some food; then I went and spoke to Miss Holm through the door -which Brother J. had remembered to lock. We exchanged some bright remarks about the weather and the Test Match prospects, and then I carried on with the exploration. On the way I found that King's Messenger. Then Jones came upstairs again, and I lay low for quite a while, cautious like. After a time I got tired standing about, and I went in search of him. I came up outside this laboratory door and listened. That's when I heard what it was all about. Jones was just wheedling what sounded like the last details of the process out of Quell-the science I know wouldn't cover a pinhead, but Jones seemed quite happy about it."

  "Can you remember any part of what you heard?"

  "Not a thing that'd make sense-except the out­standing bit about the gold. Quell was making gold, there's not a doubt about it. You can see it for yourself. I gathered that Jones had told the old man some yarn about saving England from going off the gold standard -manufacturing an enormous quantity of the stuff under the auspices of the Secret Service, and unloading it quietly in a way that'd put new life into the Bank of England-and Quell, who probably wasn't so wise to the ways of crime as he was to the habits of electrons and atoms, had fallen for it like a dove. Anyway, Jones was happy."

  "And then?"

  "There was a frightful yell. I've never heard anything like it. I burst in-the door wasn't locked-and saw the professor doing a last kick beside that machine. Jones must have pushed him onto it in cold blood. The old man had told him everything he wanted to know, and made him a lot of specimen gold as well, and Jones hadn't any further use for him. Jones heard me come in, and spun round, pulling a gun. He tripped over the professor's legs and put out a hand to save himself- then he saw his hand was going on the machine, and he pulled it away. He fell on his shoulder, and it burned him just the same. I suppose the current jiggered his muscles like it does on those electric machines, and he went on shooting all round the place for a second or two."

  Teal looked round at the fingerprint expert, who was busy at the bench.

  "Have you done those shells?" he asked.

  "Just finished, sir."

  Simon raised his eyebrows.

  "What's the idea?" he inquired.

  "I don't know whether you've thought of wearing gloves when you're loading a gun," said the detective blandly; and the Saint did not smile.

  He allowed the expert to take impressions of his fingertips on a special block, and waited while the man squinted at them through a magnifying glass and checked them against the marks which he had developed on the spent cartridge cases which had been picked up. Teal went over to his side and stood there with a kind of mountainous placidity which was not the most convincing thing Simon Templar had ever seen.

  "There's no similarity, sir," pronounced the expert at length, and a glimmer of blank disbelief crossed the detective's round face.

  "Are you sure?"

  "It's quite obvious, sir. The prints are of totally different types. You can see for yourself. The prints on the shells are spirals, and this gentleman's prints --"

  "Don't call him 'this gentleman,' " snapped the detective. "This is Simon Templar, known as the Saint -and you know it too."

  "Why not try Jones's fingerprints?" suggested the Saint mildly. "It seems simpler than suspecting me automatically. I've told you-I'm not in this party. That's why I sent for you."

  Teal regarded the two contorted bodies thoughtfully. The photographer had finished his work, and he was packing his exposed plates away in a satchel. The de­tective took a step forward.

  " I should take a lot of care, if I were you," murmured the Saint. "I'd hate you to have an accident, and I suppose the juice is still functioning."

  They went round the room circumspectly. Someone discovered a collection of switches, and reversed them. A likely-looking terminal was disconnected by a man who donned rubber gloves for the purpose. Finally they approached the dome again, and one of the men tossed bits of wire onto it from various angles. Nothing happened; and eventually Teal knelt down and tried to detach the gun from the dead man's hand. He remained alive, but it took the efforts of two other men to unlock the terrific clutch of the dead man's fingers.

  Teal straightened up and clicked out the magazine, "Two shots here." He jerked the sliding jacket. "One in the breech. . . . We picked up four shells, and four shots have been fired in this room." Teal turned the figures over in his head as if he loathed them. The chagrin showed on his face; and Simon Templar relaxed gently. It was the one risk that he had to take-if Jones's gun had contained more shells it would have been a tougher proposition, but seven was a possible load. "You're lucky," Teal said venomously.

  He turned the gun over in his hand, and suddenly he stiffened.

  "What's that?"

  He displayed a thin silvery scratch on the blue-black steel, and Simon gazed at the mark along with the other detectives.

  "It looks as if it had hit something," said one of them.

  "I'll say it does," grunted Mr. Teal.

  He crawled round the room on his hands and knees, studying the bullet scars that had a
lready been dis­covered. One of them occupied him for some time, and he called over one of the other men to join him. There was a low-voiced colloquy; and then Teal rose again and dusted the knees of his trousers. He faced the Saint again.

  "That shot there was a ricochet," he said, "and it could have come off Jones's gun."

  "Shooting round corners and hitting itself?" drawled the Saint mildly. "You know, you're a genius-or rather Jones must have been. That's an invention that's been wanted for years. Damned useful thing in a tight corner, Claud-you aim one way, and the bullet comes back and hits the man standing behind you --"

  ''I don't think that was it," said the detective short-windedly. "What kind of gun are you carrying these days?"

  Simon spread out his hands.

  "You know I haven't got a license."

  "Never mind. We'll just look you over."

  The Saint shrugged resignedly and held out his arms. Teal frisked him twice, efficiently, and found nothing. He turned to the odd man.

  "You'd better get busy and dig out all the bullets. We'll be able to tell from the marks of the rifling whether they were all fired from the same gun."

  A trickle of something like ice-cold water fluttered down Simon Templar's spine. That was the one possibility that he had overlooked-the one inspiration he had not expected the plump detective to produce. He hadn't even thought that Teal's suspicions would have worked so hard. That gramophone record must have scored a deeper hit than he anticipated-deeper perhaps than he had ever wanted it to be. It must have taken something that had rubbed salt viciously into an old and stubbornly unhealed wound to kindle an animosity that would drive itself so far in the attempt to pin guilt on a quarter where there was so much prima-facie innocence.

  But the Saint schooled himself to a careless shrug. The least trace of expression would have been fatal. He had never acted with such intensity in his life as he did at that moment, keeping unruffled his air of rather bored protest. He knew that Teal was watching him with the eyes of a lynx, with his rather soft mouth compressed into a narrow line which symbolized that unlooked-for streak of malice.

  "I can't help it if you want to waste time making a damned fool of yourself," he said wearily. "If there's a scratch on that gun it's probably there because Jones did happen to bang it on something. If there's a ricco anywhere, it's probably one that bounced off some of the apparatus-there's any amount of solid metal about, and I told you how Jones was thrashing around when the current got him. Why go trying to fix some­thing on me?"

  "Only because I'm curious," said the detective in­flexibly. "You've had quite a lot of jokes at our expense, so I'm sure you won't mind us having a little harmless fun at yours."

  Simon took out his cigarette case.

  "Am I to consider myself under arrest-is that the idea?"

  "Not yet," said Teal, with a vague note of menace sticking out of the way he said it.

  "No? Well, I'm just interested. This is the first time in my life I ever behaved like a respectable citizen and gave you your break according to the rules, and I'm glad to know how you take it. It'll save me doing any­thing so damned daft again."

  Teal stripped the wrapping from a wafer of spearmint with a sort of hard-strung gusto.

  "I hope you'll have the opportunity of doing it again," he said. "But this looks like the kind of case that would have interested you in other ways. and I shouldn't be doing my duty if I took everything for granted."

  Simon looked at him.

  "You're wrong," he said soberly. "I tell you, Teal, when I saw that guy Jones dying, all that went through my mind in a flash. Before he killed Quell-before I came through the door-I'd heard enough to know what it meant. I knew I could have taken him prisoner, made him work the process for me-had all the wealth I wanted. You know what one can do with a bit of persuasion. I could have taken him away from this house and left everything as it was-Quell and the King's Messenger mightn't have been found for weeks, and there'd have been nothing in the world to show that I'd ever been near the place. I could have done in real earnest what Jones was trying to kid Quell he was doing. I could have manufactured gold until I'd built up a balance in the Bank of England that would have been the sensation of the century. I could have played fairy godmother in a way that would have made me safe forever from your well-meant persecutions, Claud. I could have paid off the national debt with one check- my own free gift to Great Britain. With love and kisses from the Saint. Think of it! I could have named my own price. I might have been dictator-and then there might have been some more sense in the laws of this nit-witted community than there is now. Certainly you'd never have dared to touch me so long as I lived -there'd have been a revolution if you'd tried it. Simon Templar-the man who abolished income tax. My God, Teal, I don't think anyone's ever been able to dream a miracle like that and see it within his reach!"

  "Well?"

  Teal was chewing steadily, but his eyes were fixed on the Saint's face with a stolid attentiveness that had not been there before. Something in the Saint's speech com­manded the respect that he was unwilling to give-it was drawn from him in spite of himself. Simon's sin­cerity was starkly irresistible.

  "You know what happened. I passed up the idea. And I don't mind telling you, Claud, quite honestly, that if Jones hadn't died as he did, I should have killed him. There you are. You can use that as evidence against me if you like, because this time I haven't a thing on my conscience-just for once."

  "What made you pass up the idea?" asked Teal.

  Simon took the cigarette from his mouth, and an­swered with an utter frankness that could have been nothing but the truth.

  "It would have made life too damned dull!"

  Teal scratched his chin and stared at the toecap of one shoe. The odd man had finished digging out bullets: he dropped them into a matchbox and stood by, listen­ing like the others.

  "You know me, Claud," said the Saint. "I was just tempted-just in imagination-for that second or two while I watched Jones die and his bullets were crashing round me. And I saw what a deadly frost it would have been. No more danger-no more risk-no more duels with Scotland Yard-no more of your very jolly back-chat and bloody officiousness as per this evening. Claud, I'd have died of boredom. So I gave you your break. I left everything as it was, and phoned you straight away. There was no need to, but that's what I did. Jones was dead of his own accord, and I'd nothing to be afraid of. I haven't even touched an ounce of the gold-it's there for you to take away, and I suppose if the Quell family's extinct the government will get it and I won't even be offered a rebate on my income tax. But naturally, like the poor dumb boobs you are, you have to sweat blood trying to make me a murderer the one time in my life I'm innocent. Why, you sap, if I'd wanted to get away with anything --"

  "It's a pity you couldn't have saved Jones and done what you thought of all the same," said Teal; and the change in his manner was so marked that the Saint smiled. "It might have done the country some good."

  Simon drew at his cigarette and hunched his shoulders.

  "Why the hell should I bother? The country's got its salvation in its own hands. While a nation that's always boasting about its outstanding brilliance can put up with a collection of licensing laws, defense-of-the-realm acts, seaside councillors, Lambeth conven­tions, sweepstake laws, Sunday-observance acts, and one fatuity after another that's nailed on it by a bunch of blathering maiden aunts and pimply hypocrites, and can't make up its knock-kneed mind to get rid of 'em and let some fresh air and common sense into its life-when they can't do anything but dither over things that an infant in arms would know its own mind about -how the devil can they expect to solve bigger prob­lems ? And why the blazes should I take any trouble to save them from the necessity of thinking for themselves . . . ? Now for heaven's sake make up your mind whether you want to arrest me or not, because if you don't I'd like to go home to bed."

  "All right," said Teal. "You can go."

  The Saint held out his hand.

  "Tha
nks," he said. "I'm sorry about that gramo­phone record. Maybe we can get on better in the future -if we're both very good."

  "I'll believe that of you when I see it," said Teal; but he smiled.

  Simon pushed his way through the knot of waiting men to the door.

  At the foot of the stairs the detective who had been left with Patricia barred his way. Teal looked over the gallery rail and spoke down.

  "It's all right, Peters," he said. "Mr. Templar and Miss Holm can go."

  Simon opened the front door and turned to wave the detective a debonair good-bye. They went out to where the Saint had left his car, and Simon lighted another cigarette and waited in silence for the engine to warm. Presently he let in the clutch and they slid away south­wards for home.

  "Was it all right?" asked Patricia.

  "Just," said the Saint. "But I don't want such a narrow squeak again for many years. There was one vital piece of evidence I'd overlooked, and Teal thought of it. I had to think fast-and play for my life. But I collared the evidence as I went out, and they'll never be able to make a case without it. And do you know, Pat?-Claud Eustace ended up by really believing me."

  "What did you tell him?"

  "Very, very nearly the whole truth," said the Saint, and hummed softly to himself for a long while.

  He drove home by a roundabout route that took them over Westminster Bridge. In the middle of the bridge he dipped into his pocket and flung something sideways, far out over the parapet.

  It was a small box that weighed heavily and rattled.

  Back at Scotland Yard, a puzzled detective sergeant turned his coat inside out for the second time.

  "I could have sworn I put the matchbox with those bullets in my pocket, sir," he said. "I must have left it on the bench or something. Shall I go back and fetch it?"

  "Never mind," said Mr. Teal. "We shan't be needing it."

  PART II THE MAN FROM ST. LOUIS