Alias The Saint s-6 Page 9

  Then he went down the steps.

  He found the tool box in a moment. And then, with loving care, he proceeded to remove the nuts .that secured the offside front wheel. . . .

  Two minutes later, with the wheel-brace stowed away again as he had found it, and the nuts in his pocket, he was sauntering leisurely homewards, humming to the stars.

  4

  The saint was in his bath when Inspector Teal arrived in Upper Berkeley Mews the next morning; but he presented himself in a few moments arrayed in a superb pair of crepe-de-Chine pajamas and a dressing gown that would have made the rainbow look like something left over from a sale of secondhand mourning.

  Mr. Teal eyed him with awe.

  "Where did you hire that outfit?" he inquired.

  Simon took a cigarette.

  "Have you come here to exchange genial back-chat," he murmured, "or is it business? I have an awful suspicion that it's business."

  "It is business," said Mr. Teal.

  "Sorry," said the Saint, "my office hours are twelve noon to midday."

  Teal shifted his gum across to the east side of his mouth.

  "What's your grouse against Hallin?" he asked. "Hallin? Who's Hallin? Two attches."

  "Miles Hallins car was wrecked last night," said Teal deliberately.

  The Saint raised his eyebrows.

  "Really? Was he drunk, or did he lend the divisional surgeon a fiver?"

  "The offside front wheel of his car came off when he was driving down Park Lane," said Teal patiently. "He was driving pretty fast, and he swerved into a taxi. He ought to have been killed."

  "Wasn't he?" said the Saint.

  "He wasn't. What have you got to say about it?"

  "Well, I think it's a great pity."

  "A great pity he wasn't killed?"

  "Yes. Probably he wanted to die. He's been trying to long enough, hasn't he? , . . And yet it mightn't have been his fault. That's the worst of these cheap cars. They fall apart if you sneeze in them. Of course, he might have had a cold. Do you think he had a cold?" asked the Saint earnestly.

  The detective closed his eyes.

  "When Hallin looked at the car," Teal explained, "he found that someone had removed the nuts that ought to have been keeping the wheel on."

  The Saint smoothed his hair.

  "Well, really, dear old broccolo," he drawled, with a pained expression, "is that all you've come to see me about? Are you going to make a habit of coming to me to air your woes about everything that happens in London? You know, I'm awfully afraid you're getting into the way of thinking I'm some sort of criminal. Teal, you must not think that of me!"

  "I know all about last night," Teal replied, without altering his weary tone. "I've already seen Perry."

  "And what did Perry tell you?"

  "He told me you said you were going to kill Hallin."

  "Beer, beer!--I mean, dear, dear!" said the Saint. "Of course he was a bit squiffy--"

  Teal's eyes opened with a suddenness that was almost startling.

  "See here. Templar," he said, "it's time you and me had a straight talk."

  "I beg your pardon?" said the Saint.

  "You and I," said Teal testily. "I knowwe've had a lot of scraps in the past, and I know a lot of funny things have happened since then. I don't grudge you your success. In your way, you've helped me a lot; but at the same time you've caused disturbances. I know you've had a pardon, and we don't want to bother you if we can help it, but you've got to do your share. That show of yours down at Tenterden, for instance--that wasn't quite fair, was it?"

  "It wasn't," said the Saint generously. "But I'm afraid it appealed to roy perverted, sense of humour."

  Mr. Teal rose ponderously.

  "Then do I take it you're going on as before?"

  "I'm afraid you do," said the Saint. "For the present, anyway. You see, I've got rather a down on Miles Hallin. He killed a friend of mine the other day."

  "He what?"

  "At Brooklands. Since you're making so many inquiries about funny things that happen to cars, why don't you investigate that crash? I don't know if there was enough left of Teddy Everest to make an investigation profitable; but if it could be done, I expect you'd find that he was thoroughly doped when he got into that car. I expect you'd find, if you were a very clever investigator--or a very clever clairvoyant, like I am--that the dope took effect while they were driving, Teddy just went to sleep. Then it would be quite an easy matter for an expert driver like Hallin to crash the car without hurting himself. And, of course, it could always catch fire."

  Teal looked at him curiously.

  "Is that the truth?" he asked.

  "No," said the Saint. "I'm just making it up to amuse you. Good morning."

  He felt annoyed with Chief Inspector Teal that day. He felt annoyed with a lot of things--the story in general, and Miles Hallin in particular. There were many things that were capable of annoying the Saint in just that way; and when Mr. Teal had departed the Saint sat down and smoked three cigarettes with entirely unnecessary violence.

  Patricia Holm, coming in just after the third of these cigarettes had been hurled through the open window, read his mood at once.

  "What is it this time?" she asked.

  Simon broke a match into small pieces as if it had done him a grievous injury.

  "Teal, Nigel Perry, Miles Hallin," he answered, comprehensively. "Also, an old joke about death,"

  It was some time before she secured a coherent explanation. The incidents of the night before she had already heard; but he had stated them without adornment, and his manner had encouraged the postponement of questions. Now he told her, in the same blunt manner, about Teal's visit; but she had to wait until after lunch, when the coffee cups were in front of them and the Saint was gently circulating a minute quantity of Napoleon brandy around the bowl of an enormous glass, before she could get him to expound his grievance.

  "When I first spoke about Miles Hallin--you remember?--you thought I was raving. I don't want to lay on any of the 'I told you so' stuff; but now you know what you do know, I want you to try and appreciate my point. I know you'll say what anyone else would say--that the whole thing simply boils down to the most unholy fluke. I'm saying it doesn't. The point is that I'm going back far beyond that share business--even beyond poor old Teddy. I'm going back to Nigel's brother, and that little story of the great open spaces that I've heard so much about. I tell you, this just confirms what I thought about that."

  "You didn't say you thought anything about it," Patricia remarked.

  "I wasn't asking to be called a fool," said the Saint. "I knew that as things stood I had rather less chance of convincing any sane person than I'd have of climbing the Matterhorn with my hands tied behind me and an elephant in each pocket. But you ought to see the joke now. What would you say was the most eccentric thing about a man who could not die?"

  Patricia smiled at him patiently.

  "I shouldn't know what to say," she answered truthfully.

  "Why," said the Saint, with a kind of vast impatience, "what else should be the most eccentric thing about him but the fact that he can die, and always could? Don't you understand that whatever jokes people make about death, they never make that kind of joke? There are impossibilities that are freakish and funny,-and impossibilities that are freakish and unfunny; pigs with wings belong to the first kind, but men who cannot die belong to the second kind. Now, what could induce a man to pursue that second kind of joke with such a terrible eagerness?"

  The girl shrugged.

  "It's beyond me, Simon."

  "The answer," said the Saint, "is that he knew it wasn't true. Because he'd once looked death in the face--slow and deliberate death, not the kind that comes with a rush. And he found he was afraid of it."

  "Then that story about Nigel's brother--"

  "Perhaps we shall never know the truth of it. But I'm as certain as I've ever been about anything that the story we're told isn't the truth. I'm certain tha
t that was the time when Miles Hallin discovered, not that he could not die, but that he couldn't bear to die. And he saved his life at the expense of his partner."

  "But he's risked his life so often since--"

  "I wonder how much of that is the unvarnished truth--how much he engineered, and how much he adorned his stories so as to give the impression he wanted to give? , . . Because I think Miles Hallin is a man in terror. Once, he yielded to his fear; and after that his fear became the keynote of his life, which a fear will become if you yield to it. And he found another fear--the fear of being found out. He was afraid of his own legend. He had to bolster it up, he had to pile miracle upon miracle--only to make one miracle seem possible. He had to risk losing his life in order to save it."

  "But why should he have killed Teddy?-"

  The Saint took another cigarette. He gazed across the restaurant with eyes that saw other things.

  "One fear breeds another," he said. "All things in a man's mind are linked up. If one cog slips, the whole machine is altered. If you will cheat at cards, you will cheat at snakes-and-laddders. Hallin cheated for life; it was quite natural that he should cheat for love. Because Nigel was Moyna's favourite, Hallin had to try and take away the one little thing that gave Nigel a chance. Because Teddy could have discovered the swindle, he killed Teddy. His fear drove him on, as it will keep on driving him on: it's the most ruthless master a man can have. Now, because he saw me with Teddy at Basingstoke, and then saw me last night leaving Nigel's, he will try to kill me. If he thought Nigel believed me, he would try to kill Nigel--that's why I had to tell the story in such a way that I know Nigel wouldn't believe it Even now, Hallin is wondering...."

  "But if Nigel had given up the shares without suspecting anything, and then they'd soared up as Teddy said they would--"

  "What would that have mattered?"

  "Nigel would have known."

  "Known what? Hallin would have said that he sold the shares for the best price he could get, and Nigel would never have thought that it might be a lie. . . . But now--do you remember how I said I wanted to make Hallin live?"

  "Yes."

  "That was the test--before I knew any of this. I wanted to see what would happen to him if he put aside his joke. I wanted to know what he. would be like if he became an ordinary mortal man--a man to whom death might not be a terror:, but to whom death was still no joke. And now I know,"

  With her chin on her hands, Patricia regarded him. Not as she had regarded him when he had spoken of Miles Hallin before; but with a seriousness that wore a smile.

  "I shall never get to the end of your mind, lad,'' she said; and the Saint grinned.

  "At the moment," he murmured, "I'm enjoying my brandy."

  And he actually did forget Miles Hallin for the rest of that afternoon and evening; for Simon Templar had the gift of taking life as it came--when once he knew from what quarter it might be coming.

  His impatience disappeared. It seemed as if that talk over the coffee and brandy had cleared the air for him. He knew that trouble was coming; but that was nothing unusual. He could meet all the trouble in the world with a real enjoyment, now that he had purged his mind of the kind of puzzle that for him was gloom and groping and unalloyed Gehenna. Even the reflection that Miles Hallin had still failed to die did not depress him. He had not loosened that wheel in high hopes of a swift and catastrophic denouement, for he had known how slight was the chance that the wheel would elect to part company with the car at the very moment when Hallin was treading the accelerator flat down to the flooring; the thing had been done on the spur of the moment, more in mischief than anything else, just to pep up the party's future. And it would certainly do that.

  As for Teal, and Teal's horrific warnings of what would happen if the Saint should again attract the attention of the law--those were the merest details. They simply made the practical problem more amusing....

  So the Saint, over his brandy, swung over to a contentment as genuine and as illogical as his earlier impatience had been, and was happy for the rest of that day, and nearly died that night.

  He had danced with Patricia at the May Fair, and he had thought that Patricia looked particularly beautiful; and so presently they strolled home arm in arm through the cool lamplit streets, talking intently and abstractedly about certain things that are nobody's business. And the Saint was saying something or other, or it may have been Patricia who was saying something or other, as they crossed Berkeley Square, but whoever it was never finished the speech.

  Some instinct made the Saint look round, and he saw the lights of a car behind them swerve suddenly. An ordinary sight enough, perhaps, on the face of it; but he knew by the same instinct that it was not ordinary. It may have been that he had not forgotten Miles Hallin so completely, after all.

  He stopped in his stride, and stooped; and Patricia felt herself swept up in his arms. There was a lamp-post close behind them, and the Saint leaped for it. He heard the screech of brakes and tires before he dared to look round; even then he was in time to see the pillar that sheltered him bend like a reed before the impact of the car; and he moved again, this time to one side, like lightning, as the iron column snapped at the base and came crashing down to the pavement.

  Then there was a shout somewhere, and a sound of running feet; and the mutter of the car stopped.

  Quietly the Saint set Patricia down again.

  "How very unfortunate," he remarked. "Dearie, dearie me! ... Mr. Miles Hallin, giving evidence, stated that his nerves had been badly shaken by his smash at Brooklands. His license was suspended for six months."

  A constable and half a dozen ordinary citizens were rapidly congregating around the wreckage; and an unholy glitter came into the Saint's eyes.

  "Pardon me one moment, old darling," he murmured; and Patricia found herself standing alone.

  But she reached the crowd in time to hear most of his contribution to the entertainment.

  "Scandalous, I call it," the Saint was saying, in a voice that trembled--possibly with righteous indignation. Or possibly not. "I shall write to the Times. A positive outrage. . . . Yes, of course you can have my name and address. I shall be delighted to give evidence. . . . The streets aren't safe . . . murderous fools who ought to be in an asylum . . . Probably only just learned to drive . . . Disgraceful . . . disgusting . . . ought to be shot. . . mannerless hogs....

  It was some time before the policeiman was able to sooth him; and he faded out of the picture still fuming vitriolically, to the accompaniment of a gobble of applause from the assembled populace.

  And a few minutes later he was leaning helplessly against the door of his flat, his ribs aching and the tears streaming down his cheeks, while Patricia implored him wildly to open the door and take his hilarity into decent seclusion.

  "Oh, but it was too beautiful, sweetheart!" he sobbed weakly, as at last he staggered into the sitting room. "If I'd missed that chance I could never have looked myself in the face again. Did you see Miles?"

  "I did."

  "He couldn't say a word, He didn't dare to let on that he knew me. He just had to take it all. Pat, I ask you, can life hold any more?"

  Half an hour later, when he was sprawled elegantly over an armchair, with a tankard of beer in one hand and the last cigarette of the evening in the other, she ventured to ask the obvious question.

  "He was waiting for us, of course?" she asked; and the Saint nodded.

  "My prophetic report of the police-court proceedings would still have been correct," he drawled. "Miles Hallin has come to life."

  He did not add that he could have prophesied with equal assurance that Chief Inspector Teal would not again be invited to participate in the argument--not by Miles Hallin, anyway. But he knew quite well that either Miles Hallin or Simon Templar would have to die before the argument was settled; and it would have to be settled soon.

  5

  Nevertheless, teal did participate again; and it may be said that his next intrusion was entire
ly his own idea.

  He arrived in Upper Berkeley Mews the very next evening; and the Saint, who had seen him pass the window, opened the door before Teal's finger had reached the bell.

  "This is an unexpected pleasure," Simon murmured cordially, as he propelled the detective into the sitting room. "Still, you needn't bother to tell me why you've come. A tram was stolen from Tooting last night, and you want to know if I did it. Six piebald therms are missing from the Gaslight & Coke Company's stable, and you want to know if I've got them. A seventeen-horse-power saveloy entered for the St. Leger has been stricken with glanders, and you want to know--"

  "I didn't say so," observed Mr. Teal--heatedly, for him.

  Never mind," said the Saint peaceably. ""We won't press the point. But you must admit that we're seeing a lot of you these days." He inspected the detective's waterline with a reflective eye. "I believe you've become a secret Glaxo drinker," he said reproachfully.

  Teal gravitated towards a chair.

  "I heard about your show last night," he said.

  Simon smiled vaguely.

  "You hear of everything, old dear," he remarked; and Teal nodded seriously.

  "It's my business," he said.

  He put a finger in his mouth and hitched his chewing gum into a quiet backwater; and then he leaned forward, his pudgy hands resting on his knees, and his baby blue eyes unusually wide awake.

  "Will you try not to stall. Templar--just for a few minutes?"

  The Saint looked at him thoughtfully; Then took a cigarette and sat down in the chair opposite.

  "Sure," he said.

  "I wonder if you'd even do something more that that?"

  "Namely?"

  "I wonder if you'd give me a straight line bout Miles Hallin--and no fooling."

  "I offered you one yesterday," said the Saint, "and you wouldn't listen."

  Teal nodded, shifting his feet.

  "I know. But the situation wasn't quite the same. Since then I've heard about that accident last night. And that mayn't mean anything to anyone but you and me--but you've got to include me."

  "Have I?"