“Just what do you think is funny?” Simon enquired.
“That’s what I’m asking you,” said Teal.
“All over England,” said the Saint accusingly, “stately homes are being burgled, payrolls and bullion are being hijacked, safe deposits and bank vaults are being blown—and you want to sit here and swap funny stories. As a public-spirited citizen, I can’t help you to goof off like this.”
He started to get up.
“Wait,” Teal said. “You’ve got no reason to keep vital information to yourself. And if you’re thinking you can pull one of your tricks and get some money out of Liskard by teaming up against him with his old girlfriend, you’re out of your head. Pull any of your Robin Hood stuff with an important man like that, and you’ll…”
“Oh, I see, Claud,” said the Saint. “I see it all. You’ve got it figured out, have you?”
“I have,” Teal said proudly. “You may as well give up your little scheme right now.”
Simon leaned forward and placed a long finger firmly against Teal’s fat paunch.
“And you listen to me, old plum pudding,” he said affectionately, prodding with the finger. “You’re on the wrong track as usual. Yes, there is something going on, but no, I won’t tell you what it is. Because if I did, you’d jump in with all your three flat left feet and bungle it. Let’s just get this straight, though. We’re both on the same side. I’m no more anxious for Liskard to get in trouble than you are, and if you’ll lay off I may be able to keep him out of it. Lay off Mary Bannerman, too, unless you want to foul things up so badly that you’ll be knocked back down to giving breathalyser tests to nursemaids pushing baby buggies in the park. Is that clear?”
The Saint’s final emphasis with his finger was so forceful that Teal choked on his chewing gum.
“You haven’t done anything yet,” the detective said sullenly. “If you do, I’ll be waiting.”
“That will give you more sleepless nights than it will me,” Simon told him. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a date.”
He got out onto the cobblestones, and looked at the van and shook his head.
“I’m a little surprised,” he said. “This seems so crude, even for you.”
“You don’t think we’d have it repainted just for your benefit, do you?” Teal said, with injured indignation.
“I guess you’re right,” Simon said. “An ice cream truck in winter would scare off any crook with a better brain than yours. But in these days of government economy, think how much you could save on prison maintenance by never catching anyone.”
7
The Saint drove his car on an elusive route through side streets guaranteed to lose Mister Snowball, and then hurried on to Belfort Close, which was in the neighborhood of Maida Vale.
The short street, with the decrepit antiquity of its brick façades, was like a score of other streets in northwest London. Beyond the turning circle at the end of the cul-de-sac was a rusty iron fence with a gate sagging from the cumulative weight of generations of swinging children. The churchyard, an old one, was shadowed by trees and populated by a pygmy army of squat tombstones. Simon could see only dark outlines. The feeble lamps of Belfort Close behind him were made doubly ineffective by the misty night.
Someone with a rather unreal sense of melodrama had chosen the setting, if not the mists. The Saint, with his flashlight in hand, moved without particular stealth into the stoney darkness. If he had wanted to come on stage secretly he would not have chosen the entry planned for him by the telephone caller. But his object was not to surprise anybody, but to be surprised himself. Only in that way would he stand much chance of getting to the truth about Liskard’s enemy.
“Come into my parlor, said the fly to the spider,” he murmured to himself.
If he had tried to capture the blackmailer he might only have frightened him away. And if, as seemed more than likely, there was more than one person involved, the capturing of one might lead to the immediate release of Liskard’s letters to the papers.
The lights of an automobile swung through the trees of the churchyard. Simon turned. A taxi was pulling into the circle at the end of Belfort Close and a man was getting out. The Saint could see only that he was tall and quite thin, even frail. The taxi left, and the man came into the churchyard. Simon aimed the flashlight at the stranger’s face and turned it on when he was within twenty feet.
“Good evening,” Simon said.
The man held a hand in front of his face until the light was switched off. Even so the Saint got a look at him, and he was unfamiliar.
“You’re Simon Templar?” the man asked.
“What if I say I’m not?”
“I’ve come to talk business,” said the thin man irritably. “Do you want me to leave?”
“Yes, but I’ll have to put personal feelings aside for the moment. What’s your deal?”
“Twenty-five thousand pounds for the return of certain letters,” the man answered curtly.
“Very expensive,” the Saint said mildly.
“It should be worth it to Liskard.”
Most men would not have noticed the almost imperceptible change in the blackmailer’s carriage. He was scarcely more than a silhouette, but Simon sensed the sudden rise in tension.
“Do you have any proof that you have the letters?” Simon asked.
He moved closer to the man, until he was within striking distance.
“I’ll give you one,” the blackmailer said.
He reached into his pocket and produced an envelope. The Saint moved to take it, and then suddenly shifted his weight and jabbed his flashlight straight into the man’s ribs. In the same motion he whirled and confronted the man he knew would be just behind him. His eyes were accustomed to the darkness how, and he could see the second man’s heavy-featured face and the wadded white cloth he was holding forward in one hand.
The Saint reached a quick decision. Obviously if there were two men involved, it was unlikely that the plot against Liskard was based on a simple desire for revenge on Mary Bannerman’s part. Whether the demand for twenty-five thousand pounds had been genuine or a mere ruse to hold the Saint’s attention, there was very possibly a wider membership in the scheme than had gathered together in the churchyard.
Simon decided—since his assailant was not about to use a knife or gun—to let himself be captured. He lunged at the thug behind him, took a glancing blow on his shoulder, and slipped to his knees. Immediately the thin man and his hefty friend pounced, and Simon held his breath and went quickly limp as the chloroformed cloth was pressed against his face.
“Easy,” muttered the hefty one.
“These chaps live on their reputations,” the thin one concurred. “Let’s get him out to the car.”
The Saint held his breath again as he was given a precautionary second dose of the anesthetic. Then the men picked up his apparently unconscious body and hurried with it to the side of the churchyard opposite Belfort Close. Simon could not open his eyes more than a crack, but he saw that he was being taken to a very ordinary black car parked on a deserted lane. His porters put him into the back seat, and the thin one sat next to him.
“Get rid of that rag,” the thin one said.
“How long will it keep him under?” the other asked.
He tossed the cloth away and slipped into the driver’s seat.
“Long enough,” the thin one said. “If anybody asks, we just say he’s drunk.”
“Keep his head down until we’re out of town.”
The car jerked and moved away. Simon kept track of the turns, and presently recognized Harrow Road as they turned into and headed west in the bright lights and heavy traffic. Another amateurish move.
The thin man chuckled, looking at Simon slumped in the other corner.
“So much for the Saint. How to lose your halo in one easy lesson.”
The hefty one gave a hoarse laugh.
“Right. Jeff’s going to think it’s too good to be tr
ue.”
That name was all Simon needed and had been waiting for, but he had scarcely hoped to have his answer so soon.
“It is too good to be true,” he said quietly.
The thin man jumped as if the door handle had suddenly spoken to him. The driver jerked his head around and almost swerved into the opposite line of traffic. Simon’s right arm swept out and encircled the thin man’s neck, locking it in a crushing hold.
“Stop!” the thin man croaked. “Do something!”
They were coming to a red light. The driver was groping in his jacket pocket, probably for a cosh. At the same time he was looking desperately for some way to turn into a side street, but he was hemmed in by cars piling up at the traffic signal. Simon simply gave the thin man’s neck one last crack, which it would take a first-class osteopath to unstiffen, let him topple half conscious and gasping onto the floor, and stepped as casually out of the car as if he had been leaving a cab.
A policeman on the busy corner gave him a disapproving look as he strode across the inner line of traffic to the sidewalk and turned to wave goodbye to the driver.
“Sorry,” Simon said sincerely to the policeman, “but with traffic the way it is these days it’s almost quicker to walk.”
Simon caught a taxi back to his car at Belfort Close. The time was seven-fifty. He could still make it to Mary Bannerman’s apartment for his dinner date in less than a quarter of an hour.
As he drove, theories raced through his head. There was still no evidence that the girl was knowingly involved. Her boyfriend Jeff Peterson could easily have taken the Liskard letters without her knowing that he had the slightest interest in them. Maybe Peterson had engineered the robbery of her apartment in order to take her mind away from the possibility that the letters had had any special importance to the thieves. The motive could involve anything from politics to purely commercial considerations. Still, the oddity of the approach to Liskard, the somehow amateurish approach to monetary blackmail and the lack of demand for money or concessions of any other kind, left a great many questions still to be answered.
One was answered as Simon drove cautiously to the corner of Mary Bannerman’s block. As he was about to turn, almost on the stroke of eight, she came out of the front door with Jeff Peterson, holding his arm, wearing a cocktail dress. Peterson wore a suit instead of the turtle-necked sweater in which Simon had seen him before.
“Going out to celebrate?” the Saint asked silently.
He pushed down the accelerator of his car and sped past the intersection. He circled the block and parked. Judging from their clothes, the happy couple were going to be amusing themselves rather than indulging in nefarious activities which would make them worth following. Simon thought he could learn much more by a visit to Mary Bannerman’s apartment while she was out. He walked around to the building’s front door and climbed the stairs to her flat.
As he made short work of her lock—whose type he had noted when he was there before—he thought over her role in the situation. The fact that she had been leaving with Peterson did not prove conclusively that she was in on the entire plot, but it seemed to rule out any presumption of her total innocence. If she had only decided to stand the Saint up, she would surely have left earlier, so as not to risk running into him as she was leaving and he was arriving. It seemed irrefutable that she had known for some time that Simon Templar was not going to be able to keep his date with her, and that she could safely and openly go out with Peterson without any chance of complications.
The lock submitted easily, and Simon stepped into the flat. A table lamp had been left on. The bed was still rumpled, the teddy bear still in place. The rooms smelled of the last sweet flurry of female departure: bubble bath, talcum powder, perfume.
The Saint put Venus out of his mind and tried to concentrate on Mars. The sooner he brought this little war in which he had become involved to a conclusion, the sooner he could be enjoying himself—if not with Mary Bannerman, with someone like her in all the ways that really counted.
He walked straight to the shelf on which the girl had claimed she had left Liskard’s correspondence. There, where she had left it, was the white envelope which had fallen to the floor when Simon had visited her the previous evening. In it were keys, just as she had said, but one was not designed for her wardrobes or for any other domestic stronghold. It was attached to a metal circle with “Victoria 571” stamped into it. Simon recognized it immediately as the key to a baggage locker at Victoria Station.
Before he left Mary Bannerman’s flat he made a systematic search of her property and found that her teddy bear seemed to be stuffed with nothing more interesting than cotton, that she had a talent for eliciting torrid letters from men other than Thomas Liskard, and that she did, indeed, seem to be a bit short in the fur and jewel department for such a successful girl with so many rich friends.
Unfortunately, there was no evidence of any interest in Thomas Liskard on her part, or on that of her pen pals. The Saint was going to have to make another trip through the cold foggy night.
8
The trip to Victoria Station and back to Mary Bannerman’s flat could have taken considerably less time if the Saint had not decided to have a peaceful dinner on the way. At Victoria he went directly to the baggage lockers—banks of large metal doors along one wall of a corridor—and found number 571. The key he had brought with him opened it, and there inside was one large brown leather suitcase. Without hesitation he took the bag, closed the locker, and walked like any busy and purposeful citizen out into the street.
He doubted that any of Mary’s associates were keeping watch over the locker, but it was quite possible that one of Chief Inspector Teal’s minions had been assigned to keep watch over the Saint. For that reason he took a devious course away from the station area, making quite certain that nobody was following him. Then he parked three blocks from the apartment house where Mary Bannerman lived, left his car, and walked the rest of the way carrying the suitcase. As he had anticipated, the door of her flat was still unlocked, as he had left it, and she had not come home. He went inside, latched the door behind him, and put the suitcase on the bed.
The bag was not locked. Simon flipped the catches and opened the lid. There in a thick wrapping of mink and silver fox was a modest Ali Baba’s treasure of jeweled trinkets of all shapes and sizes. Whatever Mary Bannerman had done to deserve all that, she apparently had done very well. The Saint’s experienced eye told him that the quality of the whole lot was quite high, and a closer inspection confirmed that all of it appeared to be her own. Her name was sewn onto the linings of the coats and her initials were engraved on much of the jewelry.
But much more interesting to Simon was the fact that what he had most hoped to find was not there. The suitcase contained only jewels and furs: there were no letters from Thomas Liskard.
Still, things were looking up. He had a lever and he had a place to apply its pressure—or would have, as soon as Mary Bannerman came home. Simon poured himself a glass of Benedictine from the well-stocked liquor cabinet, left the lights and furniture as they had been before he came, and went into the sleeping alcove and drew the concealing curtains tightly together. Then, with the suitcase opened beside him, and a selection of glossy magazines to pass the time, he propped himself up on the bed next to the teddy bear and sipped his Benedictine and waited.
About an hour later Mary Bannerman came home. To Simon’s surprise, Jeff Peterson did not come in with her. There were no voices to be heard through the closed curtains, and only one set of footsteps. She moved about her living room humming dance music to herself, completely unsuspecting of the surprise that waited in her bed. She ran some water in the kitchen, then, unzipping the back of her black cocktail dress with one hand she threw open the curtains that hid her sleeping alcove with the other.
Her reaction to the tableau of Saint, suitcase, and teddy bear was worthy of a Mack Sennett classic. She froze, stopped unzipping, opened her mouth, and she s
eemed to have difficulty keeping her eyes in their sockets.
“Ho, ho, ho,” said the Saint. “Won’t you sit on Father Christmas’s knee? He’s brought you some lovely toys.”
Mary Bannerman at first seemed more likely to collapse than to sit on anybody’s knee, but the first shock wore off. She closed her mouth and removed a trembling hand from the zipper on her dress.
“Speechless?” Simon asked.
She tried not to see the suitcase of jewels and furs.
“What are you doing here?” she managed to say.
“Keeping our dinner date.” He looked at his watch. “You’re a little late. Three and a half hours, to be exact.”
“I…couldn’t make it.”
Simon swung his legs off the bed and stood up. His tone became more brittle.
“You thought I couldn’t make it, more likely.”
She shook her head feebly. Then she seemed to pull her thoughts together a little and realized she had a right to take the offensive.
“What are you doing here?”
Simon waved a hand at the suitcase.
“I not only steal from the rich and give to the poor, I return stolen property to lovely young girls…in return for small favors, of course.”
She could no longer keep herself from looking at the contents of the suitcase. Her brief spell of bravado was past. Her face looked frightened and young, and she seemed to be on the verge of tears. She sat on the edge of the bed as if her legs would no longer hold her up.
“What are you going to do?” she asked tremulously.
“First, I’ll listen.”
“To what?”
“To glamorous Mary Bannerman’s true life story…of how she lost her baubles and found them again.”
She sighed.
“All right. I ran into debt. I needed money, so I invented the robbery to collect insurance money.”
“Reasonable enough. And then?”
“I couldn’t keep the things here, of course, or tell anybody else, so I checked them at Victoria Station.”
The Saint Abroad Page 14
