Kane glared at him with bloodshot eyes.
“Who made a mistake?” he rasped. “That pal of his—that Yankee thug—came out just now. After Yestering. He tried to hit me with the butt of his gun—did it, too. Laid me out. When I woke up I was lying in the hall—and he’d got away!”
9
Simon Templar wriggled his cramped limbs into the most comfortable position he could find, and tried to doze. There was really nothing to encourage him in this relaxation, for even the most ascetic of mortals might find it difficult to fall into a peaceful sleep while lying on a hard floor with his hands tied behind his back, and the mental serenity which might have made these physical discomforts tolerable was noticeably lacking. The Saint scratched an itching part of his nose by rubbing it against the edge of the carpet, and contemplated the inscrutable capriciousness of Life.
Six hours ago he had been on the very point of removing himself from under the aim of a thunderbolt with masterly adroitness and aplomb. Five and three-quarter hours ago he might have been in complete control of the situation, with Jeffroll and the Four Horsemen sitting in eager humility at his feet while he planned and ordered their counter-attack with crisp and inspiring efficiency. But during that vital quarter of an hour things had gang, as they had with Robert Burns’ immortal mouse, distressingly agley.
They had, fairly enough, given him a chance to explain the conduct of Mr Uniatz, but for once in his life the Saint felt as if he had been hit below the belt. He had been swatted with the full force of the sort of situation which he had himself so often used on Chief Inspector Teal, of Scotland Yard, and he admitted the poetic justice of the reversal without enjoying it any the more for that.
“The damn fool must have gone off his rocker,” was the only thing he had honestly been able to say, and even now, five hours and three quarters later, he could think of no other explanation. The psychological motivations of Hoppy’s mind remained, as they always had been, shrouded in the impenetrable darkness of the Styx. Down in the forest of Mr Uniatz’s fog bound brain, something occasionally stirred, and only God Almighty could predict what would develop from one of those rare bewildering feats of cerebral peristalsis.
Simon tried to derive some consolation from the fact that he was not dead yet.
On the other hand, he wasn’t far off it. Major Portmore, in his bluff healthy way, had been the first to advocate a resumption of threats of violence, but he had been overruled. At least their previous conversation had done something to shake the meeting’s confidence in itself, and to restore a tendency to sober and judicial thinking. And Julia Trafford’s letter remained as one unshaken scrap of evidence in the Saint’s favour. Jeffroll was sure it wasn’t a forgery, and Voss admitted that to call it a forgery would have postulated an almost unbelievable amount of foresight and cunning on the Saint’s part. Weems said, “Oh, absolutely. But—” and continued to stare vacuously at his fingernails. Kane, with his head still bloody and aching from the impact of the butt of Hoppy’s Betsy on his temple, was pardonably inclined to side with Portmore, but Jeffroll had lost some of the fire which had temporarily wiped out his natural self. During the argument a little information came out. The big moment, it appeared, was actually scheduled for that very night: everything had been done, the work finished, everything prepared, and Yestering in his lawful capacity of a solicitor had visited the prison the previous afternoon to warn his client. The Saint listened quietly, co-ordinating what he heard, and his veins tingled. It was too late for the hotel confederacy to turn back, and they would gain nothing by doing so. Luck had timed his arrival at the Clevely Arms on the very peak of eventfulness, but whether that luck was good or bad seemed to be highly doubtful.
“What’s the use of finding out where Julia is?” Jeffroll summed up the situation. “Even if we knew we were getting the truth. Garthwait told us what’d happen if we tried to get her back, and I believe he’d be capable of it. I’d rather lose everything than risk that.”
“What about the police?” Portmore suggested awkwardly, but the innkeeper shook his head.
“Garthwait’s threat would still hold good—he’d be all the more vicious. Besides, if they got him, he’d be sure to let out the rest of it, just for revenge. That’d mean we should all suffer. There’s no need for all of you to be sacrificed—oh, I know you’re going to say you don’t care, but I wouldn’t allow it. No. We can still go on, and get Julia back in exchange for B. W.… And after that, if we’ve still got this fellow, we may be able to drive another bargain in exchange for him.”
His grim hurt eyes turned back to the Saint with a sober implacable resentment that was perhaps more terrible than his first frantic passion, and Simon Templar remembered that look, and Kane’s significant grunt of acquiescence, during all those hours in which he had nothing else to do but estimate his own nebulous prospects of survival.
They had at least allowed him to eat—a plate of cold meat and somewhat withered-looking salad had been brought to him at two o’clock. His hands had been untied, but Kane and Portmore—Portmore re-possessed of his shot-gun—had stood over him while he ate it. The Saint had no doubt that Portmore would have had a fatal accident with the gun—“not knowing it was loaded”—if he had made any attempt to escape, and he saved his strength for a better opportunity. Neither of the men spoke a word while he was eating, and for once Simon had no time to spare on polishing the lines of backchat with which he would ordinarily have amused himself in goading his jailers to the verge of homicide—he was wise enough to know that homicide must be already close enough to the forefront of their minds. After the meal was finished, his wrists were bound again, and he was left to resume his uncomfortable contemplations.
Rolling over on his back and squinting up, he could watch time creeping round the face of the clock on the mantelpiece. Five o’clock went to six, six to seven, seven to eight. From time to time he experimented with different schemes for releasing himself, but the wire with which he had been bound was strong and efficiently tied, and his movements only served to tighten it till it cut into his flesh. He would cheerfully have given a hundred pounds for a cigarette, and another hundred for a tankard of beer. Eight o’clock crawled on to nine. He began to suffer another acute physical discomfort which had always been romantically ignored in all the stories he had read about people who were tied up and kept prisoner for prolonged periods…
It was past ten o’clock when his captors returned. They wore the shabby trousers and drab shirts in which he had first met them, but the whiteness of their arms no longer puzzled him, for there is no sunshine underground.
Jeffroll went over to the door of the big built-in safe and unlocked it. He turned a switch, and an electric bulb lit up inside. There were no shelves behind the door, but where the shelves should have been he saw a black emptiness and the first rung of a ladder. The Saint was not startled, for that was what he had more or less guessed last night. Even the electric light did not surprise him; he had been putting the final touches to his theory when he looked for the cable that tapped the cross-country grid, and he was sure that the stolen current provided heavier labour besides surreptitious lighting.
The innkeeper turned back and inspected his wrists and ankles again to reassure himself that the Saint was still securely trussed.
“For the last time, will you tell us the truth?” he asked, and there was a hoarseness in his voice that seemed to be resisting a temptation to turn the demand into an appeal.
“I’ve told you the truth,” said the Saint angrily, “and I can’t alter it. I’m sorry for you, but you hurt my feelings and I hate being tied up. When I get out of here I’m afraid I shall have to charge you a lot of money for all the fun you’ve had out of being such a blithering fathead.”
“If you get out,” said Portmore unpleasantly.
He was carrying a long coil of flex and a couple of sticks of dynamite, and these things answered yet another of the few remaining questions in the Saint’s mind. To blow up
the tunnel after work was done would effectively solve the problem of delaying pursuit and hampering the tracing of the rescuers while they extended their flying start to really useful dimensions.
The men passed through the steel door and went down the ladder, disappearing one by one. Presently they had all gone, but the safe door was left open and the electric light burned dimly at the top of the dark shaft.
Simon twisted again at his bonds, gritting his teeth at the self-inflicted torture. After a while he felt his hands throbbing and going numb as the tightening metal cut off the circulation, but still he was no nearer to freedom. And no kindly accident had placed a pair of wire-cutters within his reach. He lay back at last breathlessly, and considered his fate as calmly as he could. Julia Trafford, who might have helped him, was kidnapped; Hoppy Uniatz had vanished on the trail of some crazy and incomprehensible inspiration. Nobody else knew where he was. Barring one of those miracles on which his career had already made so many arrogant demands, he could look ahead and see the doors opening for his last and most adventurous journey.
How soon would it be time to go?
Probably there would still be a little more work for the men who had gone into the tunnel to do, a few final preparations to make for the triumphal moment. By this time it was twenty minutes to eleven. Between then and midnight it would happen almost certainly. He watched the minute hand crawl maddeningly up the dial of the clock, begin to drop equally slowly down the other side…
Somebody walked with distinctly audible caution down the passage and stopped outside the door, breathing loudly. The handle rattled faintly, but the door had been locked on the inside when Jeffroll and company came in. There was a brief pause, and then a strident whisper grated through the panels.
“Is dat you, boss?”
“Good old Hoppy!” gasped the Saint joyfully.
10
He was not altogether without the power of movement: humping himself inelegantly across the floor like a sort of caterpillar he was able to reach the door, and then, on his knees in front of it, he managed to detach the key with his teeth and push it under the door with his feet. Hoppy unlocked the door and stood beaming down at him like a schoolboy who has come home with a prize.
“Hi,” said Mr Uniatz, in comradely greeting.
He stepped forward and untied the Saint as casually as he would have offered him a light for a cigarette, and it only needed this casualness to remind Simon that this complacently grinning bonehead was, after all, the cause of more than half the trouble.
“Where the bloody hell have you been?” he demanded, with an ominous cooling off of his first grateful enthusiasm.
Mr Uniatz blinked at him reproachfully, like a dog who has proudly laid a fresh-killed rat at his master’s feet, only to receive a clout over the ear. Something, Mr Uniatz began to suspect, seemed to have come between him and the Boss. The perfect harmony which had hitherto bound them together, their zusammengehörigkeitsgefühl, as the Germans so succinctly put it, seemed to have come unstuck.
“Well, boss, I listen outside de door,” he said, with a generous attempt to clear up the entire misunderstanding in a sentence.
“Outside what door?” asked the Saint patiently.
“Outside dis door here,” said Mr Uniatz, no less patiently—he felt that for the first time in their acquaintanceship his deity, the boss, was found wanting in rudimentary intelligence. “I hear de udder guys have got de snatch on Julia, an’ you told me dis mornin’ de attorney was in de racket. So when de guy comes out I bean de guy wit’ my Betsy an’ go after de guy,” explained Mr Uniatz, making everything translucently clear.
Fortunately the Saint had inside information which enabled him to distinguish one guy from another, but this was about as much as he did understand.
“Let me get this straight,” he said. “When I came in here, you followed and listened outside the door?”
“Yes, boss.”
“And nobody caught you at it?”
“I didn’t t’ink about dat, boss,” said Hoppy worriedly, as if he feared that he might yet be caught in that past act of eavesdropping.
The Saint wiped his forehead. He could remember himself wishing that he could listen outside that door, and discarding the idea as hopelessly impracticable, but a fool had ambled in where a Saint had certainly feared to tread.
“And you heard about Julia being kidnapped?”
“Yes, boss.”
“You got steamed up about it, and pushed off to give somebody the works.”
“Well, boss—”
“And then the lawyer came out.”
“Yeah. He came t’ru de dinin’-room. I go after him, an’ de udder guy tries to stop me, so I bean him wit’ my Betsy.”
“And then what?”
“De lawyer is gettin’ into his heap, an’ he don’t know I beaned de udder guy. So I climb up in de rumble seat, an’ we hit de grit.”
Simon nodded, chafing his hands to ease the pain of returning circulation.
“Where did you go?”
“I dunno, boss. Foist we go down to de harbour, an’ dis guy gets in a boat an’ blows off. I can’t find anudder boat to follow him, an’ I guess he’d of seen me comin’ on de water anyhow, so I sit in de car an’ wait. He goes off to a yacht outside an’ goes on board. He stays on de yacht t’ree-four hours, an’ I begin t’inkin’ he ain’t comin’ back my way. I gotta toist like nobody’s business, an’ de fishin’ guys start lookin’ at me an’ one of ’em comes up an’ asks if I want to rent a boat. After a bit de guy comes back from de yacht, an’ I duck in de rumble an’ we screw. We go maybe six miles, an’ he turns in de drive of a house dat’s got a board outside For Sale. Maybe de house is for sale at dat, because I take a gander t’ru de windows an’ it ain’t got no foinitchure inside. De red-haired guy is inside wit’ a coupla gophers, an’ I go in t’ru de door, which is not locked, an’ dey lamp my Betsy an’ stick ’em up.”
“They didn’t try to shoot it out with you?”
“Say, when I get a hist on a guy he don’t have no chance to shoot it out,” said Hoppy indignantly. “So I pull deir teet’—lookit, I got de rods here.” He fished about in his pockets and produced an assortment of weapons which explained the curious bulges that Simon had noticed on his person. “Well, I say, ‘What youse guys done wit’ Julia?’ Dey don’t say nut’n.”
“So what?”
Mr Uniatz scratched his head.
“Well, boss, I give dem a message.”
Simon’s fingers had recovered sufficiently for him to be able to get out a cigarette. He lighted it without interrupting—it seemed better not to inquire too closely into the methods of persuasion to which an old-timer like Hoppy Uniatz would naturally have turned to squeeze information out of reluctant mouths.
“I have to work a long time,” said Mr. Uniatz hesitantly. “But after a bit, when I get started on de lawyer, he squawks.”
The Saint’s irritation had subsided again. He was hanging on Hoppy’s narrative with a growing ecstasy of excitement.
“You’ve found out where Julia is?”
“Yes, boss,” said Mr Uniatz sheepishly. “She’s upstairs in dis empty house all de time—all I gotta do is go an’ look for her.”
Simon stared at him for a moment, and then he leaned back and went limp with silent laughter. There was something so climactically cosmic about the picture he saw that it was some time before he could trust his voice again.
“What did you do then—apologize for troubling them?”
“Well, boss, I put ’em all in de flivver an’ we come back here. I send Julia up to her room when I come in, an’ look for you. De udder guys are still tied up outside.”
The Saint got up and walked silently about the room. The time was racing away now, but he expected to hear the warning explosion of Portmore’s dynamite before the rescue party returned, and he wanted to get everything worked out before the final showdown.
“Did you find out anything els
e while you were giving these guys your—er—message?” he asked.
“Yeah,” said Mr Uniatz, not without pride. “I finished de job.”
He told everything that he had learnt, and Simon listened to him and filled in all the gaps in his own knowledge. The last details of the most amazing plot he had ever stumbled upon fell into place, and he knew the extent of his own sublime good fortune.
“Did you get hold of this chequebook?” he asked, and Hoppy produced it.
He also took over two of the automatics which Hoppy had brought back with him as trophies, and carefully checked the loading of both of them before he put them away, one in each side pocket of his coat. Then he lighted himself another cigarette, and he was smiling. He punched Hoppy thoughtfully in the stomach.
“Next time I make any rude remarks about your brain, I hope you’ll hang something on my chin,” he said. “All the boodle in this party belongs to you, and I hope you won’t spend it on riotous living. Now shove off and keep an eye on the birds outside while I’m busy. Recite some of your poetry to them and cheer them up.”
There was no need for him to go down into the tunnel, but he was curious to see the amazing work that Jeffroll & Co. had done, with his own eyes. The ladder inside the safe door took him down through a short shaft into a broad natural cave, and at once he saw how circumstances had helped the rescuers with their undertaking. Some subterranean river, long since dried up, had done half their work for them, but even so he had to admire the thoroughness with which they had carried on that prehistoric excavation.
On the other side of the cavern, which was lighted at intervals by bulbs slung from the low roof, he saw a hydraulic lift at the foot of another shaft that disappeared vertically upwards into darkness, and he guessed that this was the route by which the excavated earth was removed. At the top of this shaft he knew, without looking for it, that he would have found the door cunningly concealed in the timberings and plaster of the outside wall of the inn through which the soil was tipped out into the lorry that stood in the garage close up to that very wall. Running away from the lift into the depths of the cave was a pair of rusty lines professionally laid on sleepers. A small mine truck stood on the rails close to the lift; that was how the earth was brought up from the head of the tunnel, and it would be the explanation of the strange rumblings underground which had troubled Julia Trafford and brought him on to the trail of the mystery.
The Saint Goes On (The Saint Series) Page 23
