The Saint Goes West (The Saint Series) Page 7

  “However, there was one other snag. A little more prospecting showed that aside from the business of busting up the stream, your operations were going to be dangerously close to the Circle Y—in fact, some of the richest deposits were across their border. So the Circle Y had to be taken over. Of course it had to be done in a phony way—they mustn’t know about the cinnabar, partly because you didn’t want to have to pay that much more for the place, but most importantly because nobody at all must know that there’s cinnabar here and a mine ready to produce. That’s why you had to murder Frank Morland not long ago, and one of our cowboys tonight—because they could have seen you moving machinery and asked questions or talked about it.”

  “Murder is a very unpleasant word, Mr Templar,” said Julius, and suddenly in his lisping way he was almost jovial. “Why not call it…er…liquidation of enemy agents to prevent vital information?”

  “I prefer calling it murder,” said the Saint, no less amiably. “It’s such a help to clear thinking. Murder to conceal grand larceny.”

  The black scowl darkened over Valmon’s rigid smile.

  “What larceny?”

  “Larceny of a large quantity of quicksilver from the people of the United States.” The Saint smiled. “I made a check of your title in the County Records Office this afternoon. I found that when this ranch was first homesteaded, the Government specifically excluded certain mineral rights from the patent granted. The same on the Circle Y. Mercury was just one of the mineral rights reserved by Uncle Sam.”

  “I am learning to admire your thoroughness more and more every moment,” said Julius ingratiatingly, but for the first time there was the faintest strain in the smooth surface of his indulgent superiority.

  Simon Templar caught it without an outward sign, but his pulses moved into a sharper tempo of tentative delight. This might have been it—the break that he had been waiting for, the first hint of a crevice into which a wedge might be driven that might split the trap wide open. He pressed at it with the nerveless restraint of a master cutter attacking a priceless diamond.

  “It was just routine,” he said modestly. “But you certainly have stirred yourselves into a pot of soup, haven’t you? You go around murdering people—and you might have gotten by with it once, but tonight was too often: I was able to prove that tonight’s job wasn’t an accident, and that throws doubt on Frank Morland’s accident, and all the boys are going to remember it and talk about it. You’re trying to start up an illegal mine, and they’re going to talk about that too—”

  “You told them about that?”

  “Naturally,” Simon lied. “Did you think I’d be dumb enough to come over here and keep it a secret, so that you’d have nobody to knock off but me?”

  “But a little while ago you said that you really only understood everything after you came here tonight.”

  Because he was the Saint, Simon didn’t even flip a muscle, though it seemed to him that his heart stopped for an instant.

  “That was just on corroborative evidence—did all my guessing long ago,” he said smoothly, and went on quickly: “So you’ll never be safe unless you can wipe out the whole personnel of the Circle Y with no questions asked—which is going to be quite a problem, even for you…And then on top of all that you had to kidnap Papa Don Morland, which is a Federal rap all by itself. A bad break, Ludwig—very bad. And my poor little brain can’t see what good you ever hoped it would do you. You might possibly be able to force him to sign the ranch over to dear Maxie or some other stooge of yours—”

  “I beg your pardon,” interrupted Dr Julius humbly.

  “By all means.”

  “You should be more precise in your use of the conditional. Let us at least face facts, and admit that we have already persuaded Mr Morland to give us his signature.”

  The Saint’s eyes turned colder, and Julius smiled.

  “Really, we weren’t very brutal,” he said. “Only just enough to make him psychologically receptive. Then I told him in considerable detail about all the things that would happen to his beautiful daughter if he was obstinate, and he signed almost at once.”

  “You mean he believed you?”

  “I can be very convincing, especially when I don’t have to bluff. As a matter of fact—”

  The wall telephone broke in with a tinny stutter, and for some reason everything else went quiet.

  Eberhardt answered it. He put the receiver to his ear and then took it away again and looked at Julius.

  “Pardon me,” said Julius punctiliously, and went to the instrument.

  He spent most of the time listening, with an occasional monosyllable of acknowledgment. It was not long. Then he spoke one sentence in German, which the Saint understood perfectly, and hung up the receiver and came back. He seemed even pinker and shinier and squirmily complacent than before.

  “As a matter of fact,” he resumed, as if there had been no interruption, “Miss Morland is with us already. Party Member Nagel has just brought her in. You knew him, I understand, as ‘Nails.’ ”

  8

  Time crawled over the Saint’s head—long-drawn-out intense dissected months of it, it seemed. He stood absolutely motionless, like a statue, through a crawling eternity, and this was solely because he knew that the slightest movement he made would betray him. He had to wait until his muscles and nerves linked themselves up again, as they would have to do after an unwarned smash on the head.

  Actually it could only have been very few seconds, and Dr Julius was still facing him with that smug and pseudo-deferential leer.

  The Saint said, “You’re fairly thorough yourself, aren’t you, Ludwig?”

  “After all, it was a rather obvious precaution, to make sure that we had at least one friend in your camp.”

  “The famous fifth-column technique, in fact.”

  Julius almost giggled in happy agreement.

  “And incidentally, Mr Templar, of course it makes one less of your men who will have to be convinced of how absurd the theories are which you have been scattering around.”

  “I was working that out.”

  “While it does make it easy for me to have a very important private talk with Miss Morland.”

  The Saint’s gaze was a caress of ice.

  “Dear Ludwig,” he said, very gently, “I hope you won’t be brutal with her. Because if you are, if I have to come back from the grave to do it, I swear that I’ll cut a hole in your stomach and pull your guts out inch by inch and roast them over a slow fire.”

  Julius cocked his head on one side like a bird.

  “You’re quite fond of her, aren’t you?”

  “A mind like yours wouldn’t understand it, but I am.”

  “Then that should be helpful…In fact, it gives me a most amusing idea. Let us go down to the house for a little while.”

  He turned and went to the door, with Valmon following him. At once Neumann and Eberhardt closed in behind the Saint and forced him after them.

  There was no chance to make a break for it. Even after the dim light inside the mill, the moonlight outside was still bright enough for him to have been a certain notch on Neumann’s Tommy gun before he had run half a dozen yards. Valmon and Julius were already getting into the front of the station wagon. Eberhardt opened the door to the back, and went around to the other side to cover him from there. It was all handled as efficiently as if they had had their training in the old-time gang wars of Chicago—which, Simon reflected, was perfectly probable.

  Valmon drove in silence to the ranch house, and stopped. Neumann and Eberhardt got out, one on each side again. The Saint followed. They moved a little way from the car.

  Julius said to Neumann, “Bring Morland here.”

  Eberhardt, standing a little behind the Saint, touched the small of his back with his revolver to remind him that he was still helpless.

  The Saint looked around. They were standing near a corral fence. There were other cars parked a little way off, and among them he reco
gnised his own Buick. So there was probably no doubt that Julius was telling the truth about Jean having been taken. And in another moment Simon had his final proof, when he saw her come to the window of a lighted room with Nails looming behind her. He seemed to be about to drag her back, but Julius called to him with sudden volume, for the window was some distance off: “Let her stay there.”

  Neumann came back from the direction of one of the other buildings with another man in overalls. They were half leading and half dragging Morland between them.

  “Tie him to the fence,” said Julius.

  There were ropes around Morland’s arms already, and the two men deftly rearranged them so that his arm were spread out along the fence and bound down by the wrists, his body bent slightly forwards to conform with the height. The head­lamps of the station wagon, which had been left on, illuminated the scene. He twisted his head around and looked up at the Saint with a grey hopelessness that was incapable of even properly rendering surprise.

  Simon was aware that Julius had left his side for a moment, but he was back now. He had a three-foot whip in his soft hands, running its supple length affectionately through his fingers.

  “I’m not anxious to be too unkind to Miss Morland,” he said syrupily. “But it is necessary for Mr Morland to receive a little extra discipline. To be exact, his sentence is ten lashes. I am going to ask you to administer them.”

  ‘What the hell,” asked the Saint, involuntarily and incredulously, “do you think I am?”

  Julius had so obviously been expecting such an answer that he scarcely paused for it. “There is, of course, an alternative,” he admitted. “Miss Morland herself may need some…er…psychological conditioning. I was hoping that this would be sufficient. But if you object, it can be applied to her direct. She can be brought out here, and stripped. And then she can be beaten by Neumann. Neumann is quite an expert—he was a guard in Dachau for a time. She would have to receive one hundred lashes: ten for every one which you refused to give her father. The choice is entirely up to you.”

  Simon stared at him.

  Julius held out the quirt.

  “You mustn’t keep us waiting too long, Mr Templar.”

  His voice was wheedling, succulent, with a kind of obscene eagerness in it.

  Mechanically Simon took the whip. He looked at Julius, at the distant lighted window with the girl’s silhouette in it, at Don Morland. He had a sense of frightful unreality contending with inescapable belief, much as an intelligent savage might have had on first listening to a radio. It was impossible, but it could not be denied. Julius was absolutely capable of making good his threat. There was no answer to it. And the gun in Eberhardt’s hand prodded him in the back again.

  “Let’s talk this over,” said the Saint stupidly.

  “Afterwards, if you like. But you must do what I tell you. Otherwise I shall send for Miss Morland at once.”

  Don Morland spoke, his voice desperate but clear.

  “Please do what he tells you. Please. Please.”

  Simon stepped forward like an automaton into the harsh glare of the headlights. The whip whistled as he raised it. He hit Morland once across the shoulders. There was no strength in his arm.

  “One,” counted Julius contentedly. “But you must try to make it look more convincing—otherwise I shall still have to let Neumann demonstrate on Miss Morland. However, we will count that as a first attempt. There are still ninety lashes that you can save Miss Morland.”

  It was a nightmare, a Grand Guignol horror that made the Saint feel as if black clouds were creeping into his mind. His arm rose and fell, quickly, because he knew that in a flogging the pause and waiting between blows while the curling agony of each stroke sinks into the flesh is half the torture. He put everything that he knew of control and timing into the job of seeming to throw all his weight into every blow, and pulling his arm at the last fraction of an inch to let it land as lightly as possible, always trying to land on a loose fold of Morland’s shirt that would make the maximum noise while it helped to cushion the shock.

  Even so, he must have hurt the old man. He couldn’t tell how much. He hoped that most of Morland’s writhing and groaning was in co-operation with him, to make it look good. He would a thousand times rather have been flogged himself. But that was not the alternative. He could see Jean Morland there, the red bars creeping up her white skin, and red beads swelling and trickling down to criss-cross them in a ghastly network, Neumann’s powerful muscles bunching and stretching, Eberhardt’s hungry black eyes and damp pink mouth…

  “…ten,” said Julius.

  Simon stepped back and threw down the whip. He felt sick. The inside of his head was numb and throbbing, as if he had taken a terrific pounding in the ring.

  “A little hasty and unskilful,” went on that sugary voice. “Neumann would have done much better. But it will do.”

  “I only hope,” said the Saint, “the practice will come in handy when I have the chance to do the same to you.”

  Julius sniggered delightedly.

  He turned to Neumann.

  “Take him back.”

  Simon felt for his pack of cigarettes. There were only two left in it. He chose one with exaggerated care. For once in his life, his hands were unsteady.

  Neumann and the other man were untying Morland and dragging him away. There was no one to be seen in the lighted window any more. Julius was speaking to Valmon.

  “I shall leave you to begin explaining things to Miss Morland, while I finish with Mr Templar. Eberhardt and I can take care of him…You will not need to make any apologies for what Mr Templar has just done. You understand? Mr Templar is one of our best allies.”

  Into Valmon’s dark face came a thin thread of white, the spreading gleam of his teeth.

  “I get it.”

  He waited while Simon was steered into the back seat of the station wagon. Julius took the wheel. Eberhardt sat in the middle seat, facing around, the barrel of the Magnum resting on the back and trained on the centre of Simon’s chest.

  There was an idea in the Saint’s head, a picture that he was trying to round out, but his brain still couldn’t quite get hold of it. He sat back and tried to chase the fogs out of his mind.

  When they stopped at the side door of the mill again, the disembarking was as efficient as before, even though Neumann was not there. Julius covered one side of the car, to forestall any break in that direction. Eberhardt backed out the other door and made the Saint follow him out. They entered the building in loose procession—Simon first, Eberhardt on his heels, and Julius a little behind. Once again, under the light, Simon was told to turn around. Eberhardt had stepped to one side of the door, and the Saint faced Julius. The Komissar of Supply had an automatic in his hand now, and it was clear that he knew how to use it. He stood just far enough away to be out of reach of any sudden spring.

  “Now, my dear Saint,” he said, and it was the first time he had used that name, “I hope you are quite satisfied with my thoroughness.”

  The Saint was conscious of his pulses, and they were as steady as perfectly balanced reciprocating motors again. He glanced at the dwindling cigarette between his fingers, and the smoke went up from it as cleanly cut as a vein in marble. His mind was clear and cool—as cool as a Himalayan stream.

  “No,” he said regretfully. “No, Ludwig, I’m afraid I’m not.”

  “You will tell me why?”

  “You’ve had a nice little excursion at my expense. I admit it. And I suppose it was a great moment of triumph for your sadistic little maggoty soul. But it hasn’t changed a thing since we left here.”

  “Please go on.”

  “You’ve made Morland sign something. All right. But there are still five people who are going to fight it, whatever it is—unless you can get away with killing us all. Which, as I said, is liable to attract some attention. You may have a conniving sheriff in your pocket, but I expect most of us have got friends and relatives here and there, and someone i
s going to get some publicity for it that even he can’t stop. Then—”

  “Let me answer your points as you make them. Frank Morland’s death has already been disposed of—officially. I have seen a report of the inquest. As for this cowboy tonight—you proclaimed a theory. It was a rather nebulous one, and the men you spoke to aren’t too imaginative. Remember that they still accept Nagel as one of themselves. After he talks to them some more, I think they will soon stop worrying.”

  “And will they forget about your secret mercury mine?”

  “Yes,” said Julius. “Because you never told them.”

  Simon looked at him steadily.

  “It’s your neck,” he remarked. “You risk it.”

  “There really isn’t any risk. In the first place, you contradicted yourself when we were talking—you remember? Then, I’ve spoken to Nagel since then. He said nothing about it. If you had divulged anything so important, he would certainly have mentioned it. I confess that you had me bothered for a moment, but now I’m completely unconcerned.”

  The Saint shrugged.

  “If you want to draw to an inside straight, I can’t stop you. But there’s still Morland.”

  “What about him?”

  “Whatever you’ve made him sign, he’ll repudiate it as soon as you turn him loose. Therefore you can’t turn him loose. But if you kill him, that’ll be a third mysterious death, and even Nails is going to have a tough time talking that one off. On the other hand, you can’t hold him for ever, or his daughter either. Not in this country. Sooner or later—”

  Julius smiled.

  “Pardon me again,” he said, “but there is no question of holding Mr Morland in this country.”

  It seemed to Simon that a frozen cataract had exploded over his head. The chill of it went down into his bones like a distilled essence from the immemorial bleakness of the dark side of the moon…He wondered how he could ever have been so naive.

  “Now you go on,” he said.