12 The Saint in London (The Misfortunes of Mr Teal)

by Leslie Charteris

  "That's five hundred pounds," said Pargo, writing figures with a half-inch stub of pencil on a soiled scrap of paper.

  "I haven't got five hundred pounds on me," said the Saint.

  The man grinned like a rat.

  "Nor have any of us," he said. "But you will have after tomorrow."

  Simon was impressed without being pleased. He had watched Jeddy rake up a stack of chips that must have represented about three thousand pounds at that rate of exchange, without any sign of emotion; and Mr. Jeddy was a man whose spiritual niche in the Buddy-can-you-spare-a-dime class was as obvious as the fact that he had not shaved for three days.

  The others were not vastly different. Their physical aspects ranged from the bearded and faintly odorous burliness of Mr. Petrowitz to the rat-faced and yellow-toothed scrawniness of Mr. Pargo; but all of them had the same dominant characteristic in common. It was a characteristic with which the Saint had become most familiar on the west side of the Atlantic, although it was confined to no single race or nationality; a characteristic which Hoppy Uniatz, who couldn't have spelt the word to save his life, would have been the first to recognize: the peculiar cold lifelessness of the eye which brands the natural killer. But there are grades in killers, just as there are in singers; and the men in that cellar were not in the grand-opera class, the class that collects diamonds and expensive limousines. They were men who did their stuff at street corners and in dingy alleys, for a chance coin or two; the crude hacks of their profession. And they were the men whom Renway had inspired with so much confidence in the certainty of his scheme that they were calmly gambling their hypothetical profits in hundred-pound units.

  God alone knew how Renway had gathered them together--neither the Saint nor Teal ever found out. But they constituted six more amazing eye-openers for the Saint to add to his phenomenally growing collection--six stony-faced witnesses to the fact that Sir Hugo Renway, whom Simon Templar would never have credited with the ability to lead anything more piratical than a pompous secession from the Conservative Party, had found the trick of organizing what might have been one of the most astounding robberies in the history of crime.

  The men took him for granted. Their conversation, when they spoke at all, was grumbling, low-voiced, monosyllabic. They asked Simon no questions, and he had a sure intuition that they would have been surprised and hostile if he had asked them any. The business for which they were collected there was never mentioned--either it had already been discussed so much that there was nothing left to say on the subject, or they were too fettered by habitual suspicion for any discussion to have a chance of getting under way. Simon decided that in addition to being the ugliest, they were also the dullest assortment of thugs he had ever come across.

  The man who had been reading the newspaper put it down and added himself to the increasing company of sleepers, and Simon reached out for the opportunity of getting acquainted with the latest lurid accounts of his own entirely mythical activities. They were more or less what he would have expected; but there was a subheading with the words "Scotland Yard Active" which made him smile. Scotland Yard was certainly active-- by that hour, it must have been hopping about like a young and healthy flea---but he would have given much to see their faces if they could have been miraculously enabled to find him at that moment.

  As it turned out, that pleasure, or a representative part of it, was not to cost him anything.

  "Put those damn lights out," a voice from one of the beds growled at last; and Simon stretched himself out on a hard mattress and continued his meditations in the dark, while the choral symphony of snores gained new and individual artistes around him. After a while he fell asleep himself.

  When he woke up the lights were on again, and men were pulling on their coats and gulping cups of hot tea. One by one they began to slouch off into the tunnel; and Simon splashed cold water on his face from a basin and joined in the general move with a reawakening of vitality. A glance at his watch showed him that it was half-past four, but it might have been morning or afternoon for all the sense of time he had left. When he came up the creaking stairladder into the billiard room, however, he saw that it was still dark. Renway, in a light overcoat, was standing close to the panel watching the men as they emerged: he beckoned the Saint with a slight backward tilt of his head.

  "How are you getting on?" he asked.

  Simon glanced at the last two men as they stum-bled through the panel and followed their com-panions across the room and out by the more conventional door.

  "I have been in more hilarious company," he murmured.

  Renway did not appear to hear his answer--the impression was that his interest in Mr. Tombs's social progress was merely formal. He did something to the woodwork at the level of his shoulder, and the secret panel closed with a slight click.

  "You'd better know some more about our arrangements," he said.

  They went out of the house by the same route as they had finally come in the previous morning. The file of men who had preceded them was al-ready trudging southwards over the rough grass as if on a journey that had become familiar by routine--the Saint saw the little dabs of light thrown by their electric torches bobbing over the turf. A pale strip of silver in the east promised an early dawn, and the cool sweetness of the air as indescribably delicious after the acrid frowstiness of the cellar. Renway produced a flashlight of his own and walked in flat-footed taciturnity. They reached the edge of the cliffs and started down a narrow zigzag path. Halfway down it, the Saint suddenly missed the dancing patches of torchlight ahead: he was wondering whether to make any comment when Renway touched his arm and halted.

  "This way."

  The oval imprint of Renway's flashlight flickered over the dark spludge of a shrub growing in a cleft beside the path: suddenly Renway's own silhouette appeared in the shrinking circle of light, and Simon realized that the Treasury official was going down on all fours and beginning to wriggle into the bush, presenting a well-rounded posterior which might have proved an irresistible and fatal temptation to an aggrieved ex-service civil servant. The Saint, however, having suffered no especial unkindness from the government, followed him dutifully in the same manner and discovered that he could stand upright again on the other side of the opening in the cliff. At the same time he saw the torches of the other men again, heading downwards into the dark as if on a long stairway.

  Thirty feet lower down the steps levelled off into an uneven floor. Simon saw the gleam of dark waters in the light of Renway's torch and realized that he was at the foot of a huge natural cave. The lights of the other men were clustered a few yards away--Simon heard a clunk of wood and metal and the soft plash of an oar.

  "The only other way to the sea is under water," Renway explained, his thin voice echoing hollowly. "You can see it at low neap tides, but at this time of year it's always covered."

  It was on the tip of the Saint's tongue to make some facetious remark about submarines when Renway lifted his torch a little, and Simon saw a shining black whaleback of steel curving out of the water a couple of dozen feet from where they stood, and knew that his flippancy could only have seemed ridiculous beside the truth.

  "Did you catch that with a rod and line?" he asked, after a considerable silence.

  "It was ostensibly purchased by a French film company six months ago," Renway said prosaically.

  "And who's going to run it?"

  "Petrowitz--he was a U-boat officer during the war. The rest of the crew had to be trained. It was more difficult to obtain torpedoes--in case anything should come to the rescue which was too big for you to drive off, you understand. But we succeeded."

  The Saint put his hands in his pockets. His face was chiselled bronze masked by the dark.

  "I get it," he said softly. "The gold is taken on board that little beauty. And then you go down to the bottom and nobody ever sees you any more.

  And then when you turn up again somewhere in South America------"

  "We come back here," said
Renway. "There are certain reasons why this is one of the last places where anyone would ever expect to find us."

  Simon admitted it. From Renway's point of view, it must have loomed out as one of the most cunning certainties of crime. And the Saint was quite cold-bloodedly aware that if he failed to separate himself from the picnic in time, it would still be true.

  The party of men in the rowboat had reached the submarine and were climbing out.

  "My information is that the gold will be leaving Croydon about eight o'clock," Renway said in a matter-of-fact tone. "Perhaps you'd like to check over your aeroplane--there are one or two things I want to talk over with Petrowitz."

  The Saint did not want to check over any aeroplane, but there was something else he very much wanted to do. He found his way back up the stairway with Renway's torch and wriggled out again through the hole in the cliff--the last glimpse he had of that strange scene was the lights glinting on the water far below him and the shadows moving over the dull sheen of the submarine's arched back. Renway had certainly spared no effort or expense to provide all the most modern and sensational accessories of melodrama, he reflected as he retraced his tracks to the house, what with electrified wire fences, stolen aeroplanes landing by night, bombs, secret panels, caves, submarines, and unshaven desperadoes; but he found the actuality less humorous than he would have found the same recital in a book. Simon had long had a theory that the most dangerous criminal would be a man who helped himself to some of the vast fund of daring ingenuity expended upon his problems by hordes of detective-story writers; and Sir Hugo Renway's establishment looked more like a detective story come to life than anything the Saint, had ever seen.

  The dawn was lightening as he found his way into the library and went directly to the safe. He knelt down in front of it and unrolled a neat leather wallet which he took from a pocket in his voluminous flying coat--the instruments in that wallet were the latest and most ingenious in the world, and would in themselves have been sufficient to earn him a long term of imprisonment, without any other evidence, if Mr. Teal had caught him with them. The safe was also one of the latest and most useful models, but it was at a grave disadvantage. Being an inanimate object, it couldn't change its methods of defense so nimbly as the Saint could vary his attack. Besides which, the Saint was prepared to boast that he could make any professional peterman look like a two-year-old infant playing with a rubber crowbar when it came to safe-opening. He worked with unhurried speed and had the door open in twenty minutes; and then he carefully rolled up his kit and put it away again before he turned to an examination of the interior.

  He had already charted out enough evidence within the thirty-acre confines of March House to have hanged a regiment, but there were still one or two important items missing. He found one useful article very quickly, in a small heap of correspondence on one of the shelves--it was a letter which in itself was no evidence of anything, but it was addressed to Sir Hugo Renway and signed by Manuel Enrique. Simon put it away in his pocket and went on with his search. He opened a japanned deed box and found it crammed with banknotes and bearer bonds: that was not evidence at all, but it was the sort of thing which Simon Templar was always pleased to find, and he was just tipping it out when he heard the rattle of the door handle behind him.

  The Saint moved like a cat touched with a high-voltage wire. In what seemed like one connected movement, he scooped the bundle of currency and bonds into his pocket, shoved the deed box back on its shelf, swung the door of the safe, and leapt behind the nearest set of curtains; and then Renway came into the room.

  He walked straight across to the safe, fishing out the key from his waistcoat pocket; but the door opened as soon as he touched the handle, and he froze into an instant's dreadful immobility. Then he fell on his knees and dragged out the empty deed box. . . .

  Simon stepped quietly out from behind the curtains, so that he was between Renway and the door.

  "Don't cry, Mother Hubbard," he said.

  IX

  RENWAY got to his feet and looked down the barrel of the Saint's gun. His face was pasty, but the lipless gash of a mouth was almost inhumanly steady.

  "Oh, it's you," he whispered.

  "It is I," said the Saint, with impeccable grammar. "Come here, Hugo--I want to see what you've got on you."

  He plunged his left hand swiftly and dexterously into the other's inner breast pocket and found the second thing he had been looking for. It was a cheap pocket diary, and he knew without examining it that it was the one on which his forged trade-marks had been drawn. Renway must have been insanely confident of his immunity from suspicion to keep it on him.

  "What ho," drawled Simon contentedly. "Stand back again, Hugo, while I see if you've been compromising yourself."

  He stepped back himself and barely had time

  to feel the foot of the man behind him under his heel before a brawny arm shot over his shoulder and grasped his gun wrist in a grip like a twisting Clamp of iron. Simon started to turn, but in the next split second another brawny arm whipped round his neck and pinned him.

  The wrenching hand on his wrist forced him to drop his gun--it had begun to twist too long before he began resisting. Then he let himself go completely limp, while his left hand felt for the knees of the man behind him. His arm locked round them and he heaved himself backwards with a sudden jerk of his thighs. They fell heavily together, and the grips on his wrist and neck were broken. Simon squirmed over, put a knee in the man's stomach, and sprang up and away; and then he saw that Renway had snatched up the automatic and was covering him.

  Simon Templar, who knew the difference between certain death and a sporting chance, put up his hands quickly.

  "Okay, boys," he said. "Now you think of a game."

  Renway's forefinger weighed on the trigger.

  "You fool!" he said almost peevishly.

  "Admitted," said the Saint. "Nobody ought to walk backwards without eyes in the back of his Head."

  Renway had also picked up the diary, which Simon had dropped in the struggle. He put it back in his pocket.

  The Saint's brain was turning over so fast that he could almost hear it hum. He still had Enrique's letter--and the bundle of cash. There was still no reason for Renway to suspect him of anything more than ordinary stealing: his taking of the diary was not necessarily suspicious. And Simon understood very clearly that if Renway suspected him of anything more than ordinary stealing, he could, barring outrageous luck, only leave March House in one position. Which would be depressingly and irrevocably horizontal.

  Even then, there might be no alternative attitude; but it was worth trying. Simon had a stubborn desire to hang onto that incriminating letter as long as possible. He took out the sheaf of bonds and banknotes and threw them on the desk.

  "There's the rest of it," he said cynically. "Shall we call it quits?"

  Renway's squinting eyes wandered over him.

  "Do you always expect to clear yourself so easily?" he asked, like a schoolmaster.

  "Not always," said the Saint. "But you can't very well hand me over to the police this time, can you? I know too much about you."

  In the next moment he knew he had made a mistake. Renway's convergent gaze turned Petrowitz, who was massaging his stomach tenderly.

  "He knows too much," Renway repeated.

  "I suppose there's no chance of letting bygones be bygones and still letting me fly that aeroplane?" Simon asked shrewdly.

  The nervous twitch which he had seen before went over Renway's body, but the thin mouth only tightened with it.

  "None at all, Mr. Tombs."

  "I was afraid so," said the Saint.

  "Let me take him," Petrowitz broke in with his thick gruff voice. "I will tie iron bars to his legs and fire him through one of the torpedo tubes. He will not talk after that."

  Renway considered the suggestion and shook his head.

  "None of the others must know. Any doubt or fear in their minds may be dangerous. He can go ba
ck into the cellar. Afterwards, he can take the same journey as Enrique."

  Probably for much the same offense, Simon thought grimly; but he smiled.

  "That's very sweet of you, Hugo," he remarked; and the other looked at him.

  "I hope you will continue to be satisfied."

  He might have been going to say more, but at that moment the telephone began to ring. Renway sat down at the desk.

  "Hullo. . . . Yes. . . . Yes, speaking." He drew a memorandum block towards him and took up a pencil from a glass tray. With the gun close to his hand, he jotted down letters and figures. "Yes. G-EZQX. At seven. . . . Yes. . . . Thank you." He sat for a little while staring at the pad, as if memorizing his note and rearranging his plans. Then he pressed the switch of a microphone which stood on the desk beside the ordinary post-office instrument. "Kellard?" he said. "There is a change of time. Have the Hawker outside and warmed up by seven o'clock."

  He picked up the automatic again and rose from the desk.

  "They're leaving an hour earlier," he said, speaking to Petrowitz. "We haven't any time to waste."

  The other man rubbed his beard. "You will be flying yourself?"

  "Yes," said Renway, as if defying contradiction. He motioned with his gun towards the door. "Petrowitz will lead the way, Mr. Tombs."

  Simon felt that he was getting quite familiar with the billiard room, and almost suggested that the three of them should put aside their differences and stop for a game; but Renway had the secret panel open as soon as the Saint reached it. With the two men watching him, Simon went down the shaky wooden stair and heard the spring door close behind him.

  He sat down on the bottom step, took out his cigarette case, and computed that if all the cellars in which he had been imprisoned as an adjunct or preliminary to murder had been dug one underneath the other, they would have provided the shaft of a diametric subway between England and the Antipodes. But his jailers had not always been so generous as to push him into the intestines of the earth without searching him; and his blue eyes were thoughtful as he took out his portable burgling kit again. Renway must have been going to pieces rapidly, to have overlooked such an obvious precaution as that; but that meant, if anything, that for a few mad hours he would be more dangerous than before. The attack on the gold plane would still be made, Simon realized, unless he got out in time to stop it. It was not until some minutes after he had started work on the door that he discovered that the panel which concealed it was backed by a solid plate of case-hardened steel. . . .