The Saint vs Scotland Yard (The Holy Terror) Read online

  The footfalls were so soft that he was not surprised that he had not heard them before. At the moment when he picked them up they could only have been a few yards away, and to anyone less keen of hearing they would still have been inaudi­ble. But the Saint heard them—heard the long-striding ghostly sureness of them padding over the macadam—and a second tingle of eerie understanding crawled over his scalp and glis­saded down his spine like a needle-spray of ice-cold water. For the feet that made those sounds were human, but the feet were bare. . . .

  And the man turned the corner.

  Simon saw him as clearly as he had seen the first—more clearly.

  He stood huge and straight in the opening of the lane, gazing ahead into the darkness. The wan light in the sky fell evenly across the broad black primitive-featured face, and stippled glistening silver high-lights on the gigantic ebony limbs. Except for a loosely knotted loin-cloth he was naked, and the gleaming surfaces of his tremendous chest shifted rhythmically to the mighty movements of his breathing. And the third and last thrill of comprehension slithered clammily into the small of the Saint's back as he saw all these things—as he saw the savage ruthlessness of purpose behind the mere physical pres­ence of that magnificent brute-man, sensed the primeval lust of cruelty in the parting of the thick lips and the glitter of the eyes. Almost he seemed to smell the sickly stench of rotting jungles seeping its fetid breath into the clean cold air of that English dawn, swelling in hot stifling waves about the figure of the pursuing beast that had taken the continents and the centuries in its bare-foot loping stride.

  And while Simon watched, fascinated, the eyes of the negro fell on the sprawling figure that lay in the middle of the lane, and he stepped forward with a snarl of a beast rumbling in his throat.

  And it was then that the Saint, with an effort which was as much physical as mental, tore from his mind the steely tenta­cles of the hypnotic spell that had held him paralysed for those few seconds—and also moved.

  "Good morning," spoke the Saint politely, but that was the last polite speech he made that day. No one who had ever heard him talk had any illusions about the Saint's opinion of Simon Templar's physical prowess, and no one who had ever seen him fight had ever seriously questioned the accuracy of those opinions; but this was the kind of occasion on which the Saint knew that the paths of glory lead but to the grave. Which may help to explain why, after that single preliminary concession to the requirements of his manual of etiquette, he heaved the volume over the horizon and proceeded to lapse from grace in no uncertain manner.

  After all, that encyclopedia of all the social virtues, though it had some cheering and helpful suggestions to offer on the subject of addressing letters to archdeacons, placing Grand Lamas in the correct relation of precedence to Herzegovinian Grossherzöge, and declining invitations to open bazaars in aid of Homes for Ichthyotic Vulcaniser's Mates, had never even envisaged such a situation as that which was then up for inspection; and the Saint figured that the rules allowed him a free hand.

  The negro, crouching in the attitude in which the Saint's gentle voice had frozen him, was straining his eyes into the darkness. And out of that darkness, like a human cannon-ball, the Saint came at him.

  He came in a weird kind of twisting leap that shot him out of the obscurity with no less startling a suddenness than if he had at that instant materialised out of the fourth dimension. And the negro simply had no time to do anything about it. For that suddenness was positively the only intangible quality about the movement. It had, for instance, a very tangible momentum, which must have been one of the most painfully concrete things that the victim of it had ever encountered. That momentum started from the five toes of the Saint's left foot; it rippled up his left calf, surged up his left thigh, and gathered to itself a final wave of power from the big muscles of his hips. And then, in that twisting action of his body, it was swung on into another channel: it travelled down the tautening fibres of his right leg, gathering new force in every inch of its progress, and came right out at the end of his shoe with all the smashing violence of a ten-ton stream of water cramped down into the finest nozzle of a garden hose. And at the very instant when every molecule of shattering velocity and weight was concentrated in the point of that right shoe, the point impacted precisely in the geometrical centre of the negro's stomach.

  If there had been a football at that point of impact, a rag of shredded leather might reasonably have been expected to come to earth somewhere north of the Aberdeen Providential So­ciety Buildings. And the effect upon the human target, co­lossus though it was, was just as devastating, even if a trifle less spectacular.

  Simon heard the juicy whuck! of his shoe making contact, and saw the man travel three feet backwards as if he had been caught in the full fairway of a high-speed hydraulic battering-ram. The wheezy phe-e-ew of electrically emptied lungs merged into the synchronised sound effects, and ended in a little grunt­ing cough. And then the negro seemed to dissolve on to the roadway like a statue of sculptured butter caught in the blast of a superheated furnace. . . .

  Simon jerked open one of the rear doors of the car, picked the bearded man lightly off the ground, heaved him upon the cushions, and slammed the door again.

  Five seconds later he was behind the wheel, and the self-starter was whirring over the cold engine.

  The headlights carved a blazing chunk of luminance out of the dimness as he touched a switch, and he saw the negro bucking up on to his hands and knees. He let in the clutch, and the car jerked away with a spluttering exhaust. One run­ning-board rustled in the long grass of the banking as he lashed through the narrow gap; and then he was spinning round into the wide main road.

  Ten yards ahead, in the full beam of the headlights a uni­formed constable tumbled off his bicycle and ran to the middle of the road with outstretched hands; and Simon almost gasped.

  Instantaneously he realised that the scream which had woken him must have been audible for some considerable distance—the policeman's attitude could not more clearly have indicated a curiosity which the Saint was at that moment instinctively disinclined to meet.

  He eased up, and the constable guilelessly fell around to the side of the car.

  And then the Saint revved up his engine, let in the clutch again with a bang, and went roaring on through the dawn with the policeman's shout tattered to futile fragments in the wind behind him.

  Chapter II

  It was full daylight when he turned into Upper Berke­ley Mews and stopped before his own front door, and the door opened even before he had switched off the engine.

  "Hullo, boy!" said Patricia. "I wasn't expecting you for another hour."

  "Neither was I," said the Saint.

  He kissed her lightly on the lips, and stood there with his cap tilted rakishly to the back of his head and his leather coat swinging back from wide square shoulders, peeling off his gloves and smiling one of his most cryptic smiles.

  "I've brought you a new pet," he said.

  He twitched open the door behind him, and she peered puzzledly into the back of the car. The passenger was still unconscious, lolling back like a limb mummy in the travelling rug which the Saint had tucked round him, his white face turned blankly to the roof.

  "But—who is he?"

  "I haven't the faintest idea," said the Saint blandly. "But for the purposes of convenient reference I have christened him Beppo. His shirt has a Milan tab on it—Sherlock Holmes himself could deduce no more. And up to the present, he hasn't been sufficiently compos to offer any information."

  Patricia Holm looked into his face, and saw the battle glint in his eye and a ghost of Saintliness flickering in the corners of his smile, and tilted her sweet fair head.

  "Have you been in some more trouble?"

  "It was rather a one-sided affair," said the Saint modestly. "Sambo never had a break—and I didn't mean him to have one, either. But the Queensberry Rules were strictly observed. There was no hitting below belts, which were worn loosely round
the ankles——"

  "Who's this you're talking about now?"

  "Again, we are without information. But again for the pur­poses of convenient reference, you may call him His Beatitude the Negro Spiritual. And now listen."

  Simon took her shoulders and swung her round.

  "Somewhere between Basingstoke and Wintney," he said, "there's a gay game being played that's going to interest us a lot. And I came into it as a perfectly innocent party, for once in my life—but I haven't got time to tell you about it now. The big point at the moment is that a cop who arrived two minutes too late to be useful got my number. With Beppo in the back, I couldn't stop to hold converse with him, and you can bet he's jumped to the worst conclusions. In which he's damned right, but not in the way he thinks he is. There was a phone box twenty yards away, and unless the Negro Spiritual strangled him first he's referred my number to London most of an hour ago, and Teal will be snorting down a hot scent as soon as they can get him out of bed. Now, all you've got to know is this: I've just arrived, and I'm in my bath. Tell the glad news to anyone who rings up and anyone who calls; and if it's a call, hang a towel out of the window."

  "But where are you going?"

  "The Berkeley—to park the patient. I just dropped in to give you your cue." Simon Templar drew the end of a ciga­rette red, and snapped his lighter shut again. "And I'll be right back," he said, and wormed in behind the wheel.

  A matter of seconds later the big car was in Berkeley Street, and he was pushing through the revolving doors of the hotel.

  "Friend of mine had a bit of a car smash," he rapped at a sleepy reception clerk. "I wanna room for him now, and a doctor at eleven. Will you send a coupla men out to carry him in? Car at the door."

  "One four eight," said the clerk, without batting an eyelid.

  Simon saw the unconscious man carried upstairs, shot half-crowns into the hands of the men who performed the trans­portation, and closed the door on them.

  Then he whipped from his pocket a thin nickelled case which he had brought from a pocket in the car. He snapped the neck of a small glass phial and drew up the colourless fluid it contained into the barrel of a hypodermic syringe. His latest protégé was still sleeping the sleep of sheer exhaustion, but Simon had no guarantee of how long that sleep would last. He proceeded to provide that guarantee himself, stabbing the nee­dle into a limp arm and pressing home the plunger until the complete dose had been administered.

  Then he closed and locked the door behind him and went quickly down the stairs.

  Below, the reception clerk stopped him. "What name shall I register, sir?"

  "Teal," said the Saint, with a wry flick of humour. "Mr. C. E. Teal. He'll sign your book later."

  "Yes, sir. . . . Er—has Mr. Teal no luggage, sir?" "Nope." A new ten-pound note drifted down to the desk. "On account," said the Saint. "And see that the doctor's wait­ing here for me at eleven, or I'll take the roof off your hotel and crown you with it."

  He pulled his cap sideways and went back to his car. As he turned into Upper Berkeley Mews for the second time, he saw that his first homecoming had only just been soon enough. But that did not surprise him, for he had figured out his chances on that schedule almost to a second. A warning blink of white from an upper window caught his expectant eye at once, and he locked the wheel hard over and pulled up broadside on across the mews. In a flash he was out of his seat unlocking a pair of garage doors right at the street end of the mews, and in another second or two the car was hissing back into that garage with the cut-out firmly closed.

  The Saint, without advertising the fact, had recently become the owner of one complete side of Upper Berkeley Mews, and he was in process of making some interesting structural altera­tions to that block of real estate of which the London County Council had not been informed and about which the District Surveyor had not even been consulted. The great work was not yet by any means completed, but even now it was capable of serving part of its purposes.

  Simon went up a ladder into the bare empty room above. In one corner a hole had been roughly knocked through the wall; he went through it into another similar room, and on the far side of this was another hole in a wall; thus he passed in quick succession through numbers 1, 3, and 5, until the last plunge through the last hole and a curtain beyond it brought him into No. 7 and his own bedroom.

  His tie was already off and his shirt unbuttoned by that time, and he tore off the rest of his clothes in little more than the time it took him to stroll through to the bathroom. And the bath was already full—filled long ago by Patricia.

  "Thinks of everything!' sighed the Saint, with a wide grin of pure delight.

  He slid into the bath like an otter, head and all, and came out of it almost in the same movement with a mighty splash, tweaking the plug out of the waste pipe as he did so. In another couple of seconds he was hauling himself into an enormously woolly blue bath-robe and grabbing a towel . . . and he went paddling down the stairs with his feet kicking about in a pair of gorgeously dilapidated moccasins, humming the hum of a man with a copper-plated liver and not one solitary little baby sin upon his conscience.

  And thus he rolled into the sitting-room.

  "Sorry to have kept you waiting, old dear," he murmured; and Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal rose from an arm­chair and surveyed him heavily.

  "Good morning," said Mr. Teal.

  "Beautiful, isn't it?" agreed the Saint affably.

  Patricia was smoking a cigarette in another chair. She should, according to the book of etiquette, have been beguil­ing the visitor's wait with some vivacious topical chatter; but the Saint, who was sensitive to atmosphere, had perceived nothing but a glutinously expanding silence as he entered the room. The perception failed to disturb him. He lifted the silver cover from a plate of bacon and eggs, and sniffed appre­ciatively. "You don't mind if I eat, do you, Claud?" he mur­mured.

  The detective swallowed. If he had never been required to interview the Saint on business, he could have enjoyed a tolera­bly placid life. He was not by nature an excitable man, but these interviews never seemed to take the course which he in­tended them to take.

  "Where were you last night?" he blurted.

  "In Cornwall," said the Saint. "Charming county—full of area. Know it?"

  "What time did you leave?"

  "Nine-fifty-two pip."

  "Did anybody see you go?"

  "Everyone who had stayed the course observed my departure," said the Saint carefully. "A few of the male popula­tion had retired hurt a little earlier, and others were still enthusiastic but already blind. Apart from seven who had been ruled out earlier in the week by an epidemic of measles—"

  "And where were you between ten and five minutes to five this morning?"

  "I was on my way."

  "Were you anywhere near Wintney?"

  "That would be about it."

  "Notice anything peculiar around there?"

  Simon wrinkled his brow.

  "I recall the scene distinctly. It was the hour before the dawn. The sleeping earth, still spell-bound by the magic of night, lay quiet beneath the paling skies. Over the peaceful scene brooded the expectant hush of all the mornings since the beginning of these days. The whole world, like a bride listening for the footfall of her lover, or a breakfast sausage hoping against hope——"

  The movement with which Teal clamped a battered piece of spearmint between his molars was one of sheer ferocity.

  "Now listen," he snarled. "Near Wintney, between ten and five minutes to five this morning, a Hirondel with your num­ber-plates on it was called on to stop by a police officer—-and it drove straight past him!"

  Simon nodded.

  "Sure, that was me," he said innocently. "I was in a hurry. D'you mean I'm going to be summoned?"

  "I mean more than that. Shortly before you came past, the constable heard a scream——"

  Simon nodded again.

  "Sure, I heard it too. Weird noises owls make sometimes. Did
he want me to hold his hand?"

  "That was no owl screaming—"

  "Yeah? You were there as well, were you?"

  "I've got the constable's telephoned report—"

  "You can find a use for it." The Saint opened his mouth, inserted egg, bacon, and buttered toast in suitable proportions, and stood up. "And now you listen, Claud Eustace." He tapped the detective's stomach with his forefinger. "Have you got a warrant to come round and cross-examine me at this ungodly hour of the morning-—or any other hour, for that matter?"

  "It's part of my duty "

  "It's part of the blunt end of the pig of the aunt of the gardener. Let that pass for a minute. Is there one single crime that even your pop-eyed imagination can think of to charge me with? There is not. But we understand the functioning of your so-called brain. Some loutish cop thought he heard some­one scream in Hampshire this morning, and because I happened to be passing through the same county you think I must have had something to do with it. If somebody tells you that a dud shilling has been found in a slot machine in Blackpool, the first thing you want to know is whether I was within a hundred miles of the spot within six months of the event. A drowned man is fished out of the ocean at Boston, and if you hear a rumour that I was staying beside the same ocean at Biarritz two years before——"

  "I never—"

  "You invariably. And now get another earful. You haven't a search-warrant, but we'll excuse that. Would you like to go upstairs and run through my wardrobe and see if you can find any bloodstains on my clothes? Because you're welcome. Would you like to push into the garage and take a look at my car and see if you can find a body under the back seat? Shove on. Make yourself absolutely at home. But digest this first." Again that dictatorial forefinger impressed its point on the preliminary concavity of the detective's waistcoat. "Make that search—accept my invitation—and if you can't find anything to justify it, you're going to wish your father had died a bachelor, which he may have done for all I know. You're becoming a nuisance, Claud, and I'm telling you that this is where you get off. Give me the small half of less than a quarter of a break, and I'm going to roast the hell out of you. I'm going to send you up to the sky on one big balloon; and when you come down you're not going to bounce—you're going to spread your­self out so flat that a shortsighted man will not be able to see you sideways. Got it?"