“Well?” Simon prompted him gently.
“I don’t know anything much. I’ve told you—”
“Have you traded with the High Fence before?”
“Yes.” Sunny Jim sat hunched in his chair, shrugging his shoulder gingerly in an occasional effort to reassure himself that the joints were still articulating. The words dragged reluctantly through his mouth. “That’s how I know. I wanted to know who the High Fence was. I sent him some stuff once, and waited outside the address to see who picked it up. I saw who took it. I started to tail him, but then I got picked up by a split, and I lost him while we were talking.”
“But?”
“I saw him again the next day, by accident. In this restaurant.”
“The Kosy Korner?”
Fasson nodded, and licked his lips.
“Can I have a drink?” he asked hoarsely.
The Saint made a sign to Hoppy, who abandoned his futile attempt to drain non-existent dregs out of the bottle from which Simon had refilled his glass, and left the room. The Saint’s cool blue eyes did not leave Sunny Jim’s face.
“And what happened there?”
Fasson got out of his chair and limped around the table, rubbing his head dazedly.
“This fellow shoved the packet in the pocket of an overcoat that was hanging on the rail—”
At that moment he was beside the empty bottle which Mr Uniatz had put down, and for once Simon Templar’s understanding was a fraction of a second slow. He did not clearly comprehend what was happening until the neck of the bottle was clutched in Sunny Jim’s fist, swinging up and spinning away from the hand with vicious speed.
With an instinct that was swifter than any reasoned understanding, he ducked his head and felt the cold graze of the glass stroking past his ear before it splintered on the wall behind him with an explosive smash, but that automatic movement of self-preservation lost him a vital second of time. He rolled off the table and leapt for the door, only to have it slammed in his face, and when he had wrenched it open again Sunny Jim’s footsteps were clattering wildly down the second flight of stairs.
Sunny Jim Fasson tore out into the narrow street and started to run down towards the bright lights of the main thoroughfare. He didn’t know exactly where he was going, but he knew that his one broad object was to remove himself as quickly as possible from the city where so many deadly things had begun to happen in one evening. Chance had given him one infinitesimal spark of knowledge that he should not have possessed, normal psychology had tempted him to use it in the purchase of his freedom when Chief Inspector Teal had called, but he had not thought of the retribution. Of what had happened since that brain-dulling bullet grazed across his head he preferred not to think, but he had a foggy idea that whichever way he turned in that perilous tangle would lead him into new dangers. He had had one warning that day. To be killed for squealing, to be tortured and perhaps killed for not squealing—he saw nothing but trouble in every prospect that was offered to him, except the one primitive remedy of frantic flight. He stumbled into the King’s Road with his chest heaving, and hesitated on the corner in a moment’s ghastly indecision…A motor-cycle with a particularly noisy exhaust had started up behind him, but he did not think to look round. It seemed to backfire twice in quick succession, and a tearing shattering agony beside which Hoppy Uniatz’s third degree was a fleabite crashed into his back and sent him sprawling blindly forward into the gutter…
Simon Templar stood in the half-open doorway and saw the motor-cycle whip round the corner and vanish with its engine roaring. He was aware that Hoppy Uniatz was breathing heavily down his neck, making strange grunting noises in an ecstasy of impatience to get past him.
“Lemme go after him an’ give him de woiks, boss,” he was pleading. “I’ll get him, sure.”
The Saint’s fingers were still curled over the butt of his own gun, which he had not had time to draw.
“You’re too late, Hoppy,” he said quietly. “He’s got the works.”
He stepped back into the hall and moved aside to let Mr Uniatz look out. A small crowd was gathering round the spread-eagled shape on the corner, and the wail of a police whistle drifted faintly over the rumble of untroubled traffic. Simon closed the door again.
“So ya had him on de spot,” said Mr Uniatz, with proper admiration. “Chees, boss, you got it all on de top storey. Howja know he was gonna take a powder?”
“I didn’t,” said the Saint evenly, and went back up the stairs to Patricia.
He knew of nobody who would mourn the passing of Sunny Jim for long, and his own regret for the untimely accident was as sincere as anyone’s.
“We’ll be moving, kid,” he said. “Sunny Jim has clocked out.”
“Did you shoot him?”
He shook his head.
“That was the mistake Hoppy made. But I hadn’t any reason to. There was a bloke waiting outside on a motor-bike, and he got him—it may have been the High Fence himself. I thought this address was our own secret, but somebody else seems to have got on to it. So we’ll move on.” He lighted another cigarette and trickled an airy feather of smoke through his lips, while Hoppy came plodding up to join them, and she saw that his blue eyes were as bright and cold as steel. “We’ve lost our insurance policy, old dear. But there may be something better than an insurance policy at the Kosy Korner, and I’m going to find out what it is if I eat there till I’m poisoned!”
5
Of the millions of people who read of the vanishing and double murder of Sunny Jim Fasson at their breakfast-tables the next morning—the ingredients of the case were sensational enough to give it a place on the front page of every newspaper that had a front page—a certain Mr Clive Enderby was not the least perturbed.
Nobody who saw him going to his office that morning would have thought it. Nobody who looked at him with a cynical eye would have suspected him of ever being perturbed about anything. Nobody would have suspected him of thinking about anything. Pottering down the steps of his old-fashioned apartment in Ladbroke Grove, he looked like a typical middle-aged British businessman.
He was rather thin and long-faced, a little stooped about the shoulders, a little flat about the feet, a little under-exercised about the stomach. These things were not positive characteristics, but rather vague and diffident tendencies: to have been positive about anything would have been bad form, a vulgar demonstration in which only temperamental foreigners (a subhuman species) indulged. He wore a respectable bowler hat, and although it was clear and warm, a dark overcoat and brown kid gloves, because the calendar had not yet announced the official advent of summer. He rode to Holborn Circus on a bus, ingesting his current opinions on every subject under the sun from the Morning Post. No one would have believed that under the crown of that respectable and unemphatic derby he held the key to a riddle that was working Scotland Yard into a lather of exasperation.
From Holborn Circus he walked to Hatton Garden. His office was on the third floor of a sombre building just off that most un-horticultural preserve, where the greatest jewel business in the world is conducted by nondescript men at street corners and over the tables of adjacent cafés and public houses. It consisted of no more than a couple of shabby unpretentious rooms, but a surprising volume of trade in precious stones passed through it. For three hours Mr Enderby was fully occupied, in his slow-moving way, poring over an accumulation of letters and cables from all parts of the world, and dictating stodgy replies to his unattractive secretary, who could have coped efficiently with two hundred and fifty words a minute, but in Mr Enderby’s, employment had never been strained to a higher average than ten.
At a quarter past twelve he had a telephone call.
“Where are you lunching?” asked the voice.
Mr Enderby showed no surprise or puzzlement at being bluntly addressed with such a question by a caller who did not even announce his identity.
“I thought of going to the Kosy Korner again,” he said primly.
> He had a voice rather like an apologetic frog.
“That’ll do,” said the receiver, after a moment’s thought, and a click terminated the conversation without further ceremony.
Mr Enderby put down the telephone and ponderously finished dictating the letter in which he had been interrupted. He got up, put on his bowler hat and his superfluous overcoat, and went out. On his way through Hatton Garden he stopped and bought two stones from an acquaintance on the pavement, wrapping them in bits of tissue-paper and tucking them away in his waistcoat pocket.
The Kosy Korner is one of those glorified tea-rooms run by impoverished dowagers of stupendous refinement with which the central areas of London are infested. At the time when Mr Enderby arrived there, it was already well filled with an assortment of business men, clerks, stenographers, and shop assistants, all apparently yearning after a spot of Kosiness to stimulate their digestion of that exquisite roast beef and boiled cabbage which has made English cooking famous among gourmets the world over. Mr Enderby filtered through the mob to a groaning coat-rack already laden with the outer garments of other customers, where he parked his bowler hat and overcoat. He sat in a vacant chair and ate his meal as if it were a necessary evil, a dull routine business of stoking his interior with the essential fuel for continued functioning, reading the Morning Post between mouthfuls and paying no attention to anyone else in the place. He washed the repast down with a cup of tea, folded his paper, paid his bill, pushed two coppers under the plate, and got up. He took down his hat from the rack and sorted out his overcoat. There was a small parcel in one side pocket, as he felt when he fished out his gloves, which had not been there when he hung up the coat, but even this did not make him register any surprise. He did not even take it out to see what it was.
Back in his office, Mr Enderby spoke to his secretary.
“I had a large order at lunch for some stones to go to America,” he said. “They will have to catch the Oceanic tomorrow. Will you ring up the insurance company and make the usual arrangements?”
While she was at the telephone, he broke open the parcel from his overcoat pocket and spilled a small handful of diamonds on to his blotter. He looked at them for a moment, and then turned to the safe behind his desk. It was a comparatively new one of the very latest design, a huge gleaming hulk of steel which would have seemed more at home in a bank vault than in that dingy room. He set the two combinations, turned a key in the lock, and swung back the massive door. There was nothing on the shelves but a couple of cheap cardboard boxes. He took them out and tipped their contents on to the blotter also, submerging the first sprinkle of diamonds which he had put down. A solid heaped cone of glittering wealth, diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, and rubies, iridescent with all the colours of the rainbow, winked up at him.
“That will be all right, Mr Enderby,” said his secretary. “They’re sending a man round right away.”
Mr Enderby nodded, and dragged his eyes away from the pile of jewels to glance at the cheap tin clock on the mantelpiece. He was not, as we have seen, very interested in food, but for more years than he could remember he had had a passionate interest in drink. And the hour had not yet struck when such Satanic temptations are officially removed from a nation which would otherwise be certain to spend all its afternoons in drunken debauchery.
“I must leave you to pack them up and attend to the formalities, Miss Weagle,” he said. “I have—er—another appointment.”
Miss Weagle’s stoat-like face did not move a single impolite muscle, although she had listened to a similar ritual every working day for the past five years, and knew perfectly well where Mr Enderby’s appointment would be kept. She was not even surprised that he should leave such a collection of gems in her care, for the casualness with which diamond traders handle huge fortunes in stones is only incredible to the layman.
“Very well, Mr Enderby. What is the value of the shipment?”
“Twenty-seven thousand six hundred and fifty pounds,” replied Mr Enderby, after an almost imperceptible deliberation, and he knew his business so well that the most expert and laborious valuation could not have disputed his snap assessment by more than a five-pound note.
He put on his bowler hat and overcoat again, and paddled thirstily out to the streets, mumbling an apology to the red-faced walrus-moustached man whom he had to squeeze past at the top of the narrow stairs, and the walrus-moustached man gazed after him with thoughtful blue eyes which would have seemed incongruously keen and clear if Mr Enderby had noticed them.
The Saint went back across the landing as Mr Enderby’s footsteps died away, and knocked on the door of the office.
“I’m from the insurance company,” he said, when Miss Weagle had let him in.
“About the jewels?”
“Yes.”
With his walrus moustache and air of disillusioned melancholy, he reminded Miss Weagle of her mother.
“You’ve been quick,” she said, making conversation when she ought to have been making love.
“I was out on a job, and I had to ring up the office from just round the corner, so they told me to come along,” Simon explained, wiping his whiskers on his sleeve. He had spent three hours putting on that ragged growth, and every hair was so carefully planted that its falsehood could not have been detected at much closer quarters than he was ever likely to get to with Miss Weagle. He glanced at the little heap of gems, which Miss Weagle had been packing into another cardboard box lined with cotton-wool, “Are these them?” he asked.
Miss Weagle admitted coyly that those were them. Simon surveyed them disinterestedly, scratching his chin.
“If you’ll just finish packing them up, miss,” he said, “I’ll take ’em along now.”
“Take them along?” she repeated in surprise.
“Yes, miss. It’s a new rule. Everything of this kind that we cover has to be examined and sealed in our office, and sent off from there. It’s on account of all these insurance frauds they’ve been having lately.”
The illicit passion which Miss Weagle seemed to have been conceiving for him appeared to wane.
“Mr Enderby has been dealing with your firm for a long time,” she began with some asperity.
“I know, miss, but the firm can’t make one rule for one customer and another for another. It’s just a formality as far as you’re concerned, but them’s my orders. I’m a new man in this district, and I can’t afford to take a chance on my own responsibility. I’ll give you a receipt for ’em, and they’re covered from the moment they leave your hands.”
He sat down at the desk and wrote out the receipt on a blank sheet of paper, licking his pencil between every word. The Saint was an incomparable artist in characterization at any time, but he had rarely practised his art under such a steady tension as he did then, for he had no means of knowing how soon the real insurance company’s agent would arrive, or how long Mr Enderby’s appointment would keep him. But he completed the performance without a trace of hurry, and watched Miss Weagle tucking a layer of tissue over the last row of jewels.
“The value is twenty-seven thousand six hundred and fifty pounds,” she said coldly.
“I’ll make a note of it, miss,” said the Saint, and did so.
She finished packing the box, and he picked it up. He still had to get away with it.
“You doing anything particular next Saturday?” he asked, gazing at her with a hint of wistfulness.
“The idea?” said Miss Weagle haughtily.
“Do you like Greta Garbo?”
This was different.
“Oh,” said Miss Weagle.
She wriggled. Simon had rarely witnessed such a revolting spectacle.
“Meet me at Piccadilly Circus at half-past one,” he said.
“All right.”
Simon stuffed the box into one of the pockets of his sober and unimaginative black suit, and went to the door. From the door, he blew a juicy kiss through the fringe of fungus which overhung his mouth, and departed with
a wink that left her giggling kittenishly—and he was out of the building before she even looked at the receipt he had left behind, and discovered that his signature was undecipherable and there was no insurance company whatever mentioned on it…
It was not by any means the most brilliant and dashing robbery that the Saint had ever committed, but it had a pure outrageous perfection of coincidence that atoned for all its shortcomings in the way of gore. And he knew, without the slightest diminution of the scapegrace beatitude that was performing a hilarious massage over his insides, that nothing on earth could have been more scientifically calculated to fan up the flames of vengeance on every side of him than what he had just done.
What he may not have foreseen was the speed with which the inevitable vengeance would move towards him.
Still wearing his deep-sea moustache and melancholy exterior, he walked west to New Oxford Street and entered a business stationer’s. He bought a roll of gummed paper tape, with which he made a secure parcel of Mr Enderby’s brown cardboard box, and a penny label which he addressed to Joshua Pond, Esq., Poste Restante, Harwich. Then he went to the nearest post office and entrusted twenty-seven thousand six hundred and fifty pounds to the care of Her Majesty’s mails.
Two hours later he crossed Piccadilly from the Green Park underground station, and a vision of slim fair-haired loveliness turned round from a shop window as he swung in towards her.
“Were you waiting for somebody?” he asked gravely. Her eyes, as blue as his own, smiled at him uncertainly.
“I was waiting for a bold bad brigand called the Saint, who doesn’t know how to keep out of trouble. Have you seen him?”
“I believe I saw somebody like him sipping a glass of warm milk at a meeting of the World Federation for Encouraging Kindness to Cockroaches,” he said solemnly. “Good-looking fellow with a halo. Is that the guy?”
The Saint Goes On (The Saint Series) Page 5
