11 The Brighter Buccaneer

by Leslie Charteris

  Max had done some thinking overnight. He was not expect­ing to -be interviewed by Mr. Teal, but he had his own ideas on the subject that the detective raised.

  "What of it?"

  "We want to get the Saint, Kemmler. You might be able to help us. Why not tell me some more about it?"

  Max Kemmler grinned.

  "Sure. Then you know just why the Saint's interested in me, and I can take the rap with him. That dick at the next table ought to have listened some more-then he could have told you I was warned about that one. No, thanks, Teal! The Saint and me are just buddies together, and he called me to ask me to a party. I'm not saying he mightn't get out of line sometime, but I can look after that. He might kind of meet with an acci­dent."

  It was not the first time that Teal had been met with a similar lack of enthusiasm, and he knew the meaning of the word "no" when it was pushed up to him in a certain way. He departed heavily; and Simon Templar, who was sipping a Dry Sack within view of the vestibule, watched him go.

  "You might think Claud Eustace really wanted to arrest me," he remarked, as the detective's broad back passed through the doors.

  His companion, a young man with the air of a gentlemanly prize-fighter, smiled sympathetically. His position was privi­leged, for it was not many weeks since the Saint's cheerful dis­regard for the ordinances of the law had lifted him out of a singularly embarrassing situation with a slickness that savoured of sorcery. After all, when you have been youthfully and fool­ishly guilty of embezzling a large sum of money from your employers in order to try and recoup the losses of an equally youthful and foolish speculation, and a cheque for the missing amount is slipped into your hands by a perfect stranger, you are naturally inclined to see that stranger's indiscretions in an unusual light.

  "I wish I had your life," said the young man-his name was Peter Quentin, and he was still very young.

  "Brother," said the Saint good-humouredly, "if you had my life you'd have to have my death, which will probably be a sticky one without wreaths. Max Kemmler is a tough egg all right, and you never know."

  Peter Quentin stretched out his legs with a wry grimace.

  "I don't know that it isn't worth it. Here am I, an A1 prop­osition to any insurance company, simply wasting everything I've got with no prospect of ever doing anything else. You saved me from getting pushed in the clink, but of course there was no hope of my keeping any job. They were very nice and friendly when I confessed and paid in your cheque, but they gave me the air all the same. You can't help seeing their point of view. Once I'd done a thing like that I was a risk to the company, and next time they mightn't have been so lucky. The result is that I'm one of the great unemployed, and no dole either. If I ever manage to get another job, I shall have to consider myself well off if I'm allowed to sit at an office desk for two hundred and seventy days out of the year, while I get fat and pasty and dream about the pension that'll be no use to me when I'm sixty."

  "Instead of which you want to go on a bread-and-water diet for a ten-years' sentence," said the Saint. "I'm a bad example to you, Peter. You ought to meet a girl who'll put all that out of your head."

  He really meant what he said. If he refused even to consider his own advice, it was because the perilous charms of the life that he had long ago chosen for his own had woven a spell about him that nothing could break. They were his meat and drink, the wine that made unromantic days worth living, his salute to buccaneers who had had better worlds to conquer. He knew no other life.

  Max Kemmler was less poetic about it. He was in the game for what he could get, and he wanted to get it quickly. Teal's visit to him that morning had brought home to him another danger that that accidentally eavesdropping plain-clothes man in the restaurant had thrown across his path. Whatever else the police knew or did not know, they now had the soundest possible reason to believe that Max Kemmler's holiday in Eng­land had turned towards profitable business; for nothing else could provide a satisfactory reason for the Saint's interest. His croupier had warned him of that, and Max was taking the warning to heart. The pickings had been good while they lasted, but the time had come for him to be moving.

  There was big play at the club that night. Max Kemmler inspired it, putting forth all the bonhomie that he could call upon to encourage his patrons to lose their shirts and like it. He ordered in half a dozen cases of Bollinger, and invited the guests to help themselves. He had never worked so hard in his life before, but he saw the results of it when the club closed down at four in the morning and the weary staff counted over the takings. The boule table had had a skinner, and money had changed hands so fast in the chemin-de-fer parties that the management's ten per cent commission had broken all pre­vious records. Max Kemmler found himself with a comfort­ingly large wad of crumpled notes to put away. He slapped his croupiers boisterously on the back and opened the last bot­tle of champagne for them.

  "Same time again tomorrow, boys," he said when he took his leave. "If there's any more jack to come out of this racket, we'll have it."

  As a matter of fact, he had no intention of reappearing on the morrow, or on any subsequent day. The croupiers were due to collect their week's salary the following evening, but that consideration did not influence him. His holiday venture had been even more remunerative than he had hoped, and he was going while the going was good.

  Back at the Savoy he added the wad of notes from his pocket to an even larger wad which came from a sealed envelope which he kept in the hotel safe, and slept with his booty under his pillow.

  During his stay in London he had made the acquaintance of a passport specialist. His passage was booked back to Montreal on the Empress of Britain, which sailed the next afternoon, and a brand-new Canadian passport established his identity as Max Harford, grain-dealer, of Calgary.

  He was finishing a sketchy breakfast in his dressing-gown the next morning, when his chief croupier called. Kemmler had a mind to send back a message that he was out, but thought better of it. The croupier would never have come to his hotel unless there was something urgent to tell him, and Max re­called what he had been told about the Saint with a twinge of vague uneasiness.

  "What's the trouble, major?" he asked curtly, when the man was shown in.

  The other glanced around at the display of strapped and bulging luggage.

  "Are you going away, Mr. Kemmler?"

  "Just changing my address, that's all," said Kemmler bluffly."This place is a little too near the high spots-there's always half a dozen gumshoes snooping around looking for con-men and I don't like it. It ain't healthy. I'm moving over to a quiet little joint in Bloomsbury, where I don't have to see so many policemen."

  "I think you're wise." The croupier sat on the bed and brushed his hat nervously. "Mr. Kemmler-I thought I ought to come and see you at once. Something has happened."

  Kemmler looked at his watch.

  "Something's always happening in this busy world," he said with a hearty obtuseness which did not quite carry conviction. "Let's hear about it."

  "Well, Mr. Kemmler-I don't quite know how to tell you. It was after we closed down this morning-I was on my way home -"

  He broke off with a start as the telephone bell jangled insist­ently through the room. Kemmler grinned at him emptily, and picked up the receiver.

  "Is that you, Kemmler?" said the somnolent voice, in which a thin thread of excitement was perceptible. "Listen-I'm going to give you a shock, but whatever I say you must not give the slightest indication of what I'm talking about. Don't jump, and don't say anything except 'Yes' or 'No.' "

  "Yeah?"

  "This is Chief Inspector Teal speaking. Have you got a man with you now?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "I thought so. That's Simon Templar-the Saint. I just saw him go into the hotel. Never mind if you think you know him. That's his favourite trick. We heard he was planning to hold you up, and we want to get him red-handed. Now what about that idea I mentioned yesterday?"

  Kemmler looked round in
conspicuously. It was difficult to keep the incredulity out of his eyes. The appearance of his most trusted croupier failed to correspond with the description he had heard of the Saint in any respect except that of height and build. Then he saw that the Anglo-Indian complexion could be a simple concoction of grease-paint, the hardness of the features and the moustache and eyebrows an elementary problem in make-up.

  The croupier was strolling around the bed, and Kemmler could scarcely control himself as he saw the man touch the pillow underneath which the envelope of notes still lay.

  "Well?"

  Kemmler fought out a battle with himself of which nothing showed on his face. The Saint's right hand was resting in a side pocket of his coat-there was nothing in that ordinary fact to disturb most people, but to Max Kemmler it had a particular and deadly significance. And his own gun was under the pillow with the money-he had been caught like the veriest green­horn.

  "What about it?" he demanded as calmly as he could.

  "We want to get him," the detective said. "If he's in your room already you can't do a thing. Why not be sensible? You're sailing on the Empress of Britain today, and that suits us. We'll turn a blind eye on your new passport. We won't even ask why the Saint wants to rob you. All we ask is for you to help us get that man."

  Max Kemmler swallowed. That knowledge of his secret plans was only the second blow that had come to him. He was a tough guy in any circumstances, but he knew when the dice were loaded against him. He was in a cleft stick. The fact that he had promised himself the pleasure of giving the Saint an unwholesome surprise if they ever met didn't enter into it.

  "What shall I do?" he asked.

  "Let him get on with it. Let him stick you up. Don't fight or anything. I'll have a squad of men outside your door in thirty seconds."

  "Okay," said Max Kemmler expressionlessly. "I'll see to it."

  He put down the receiver and looked into the muzzle of Simon Templar's automatic. With the detective's warning still ringing in his ears, he let his mouth fall open in well-simulated astonishment and wrath.

  "What the hell --"

  "Spare my virginal ears," said the Saint gently. "It's been swell helping you to rake in the berries, Max, but this is where the game ends. Stick your hands right up and feel your chest expand!"

  He turned over the pillow and put Kemmler's gun in a spare pocket. The envelope of notes went into another. Max Kemmler watched the disappearance of his wealth with a livid face of fury that he could hardly control. If he had not re­ceived that telephone call he would have leapt at the Saint and chanced it.

  Simon smiled at him benevolently.

  "I'm afraid we'll have to see that you don't raise an alarm," he said. "Would you mind turning around?"

  Max Kemmler turned reluctantly. He was not prepared for the next thing that happened to him, and it is doubtful whether even Chief Inspector Teal could have induced him to submit meekly to it if he had. Fortunately he was given no option. A reverse gun-butt struck him vimfully and scientifi­cally on the occiput, and he collapsed in a limp heap.

  When he woke up a page-boy was shaking him by the shoulder and his head was splitting with the worst headache that he had ever experienced.

  "Is your luggage ready to go, Mr. Kemmler?"

  Kemmler glared at the boy for a few seconds in silence. Then recollection returned to him, and he staggered up with a hoarse profanity.

  He dashed to the door and flung it open. The corridor was deserted.

  "Where's that guy who was here a minute ago? Where are the cops?" he shouted, and the bellhop gasped at him uncom­prehendingly.

  "I don't know, sir."

  Max Kemmler flung him aside and grabbed the telephone. In a few seconds he was through to Scotland Yard-and Chief Inspector Teal.

  "Say, you, what the hell's the idea? What is it, huh? The grand double-cross? Where are those dicks who were going to be waiting for the Saint outside my door? What've you done with 'em?"

  "I don't understand you, Kemmler," said Mr. Teal coldly. "Will you tell me exactly what's happened?"

  "The Saint's been here. You know it. You phoned me and told me. You told me to let him stick me up-give him everything he wanted-you wouldn't let me put up a fight-you said you'd be waiting for him outside the door and catch him red-handed --"

  Kemmler babbled on for a while longer; and then gradually his tale petered out incoherently as he realized just how thor­oughly he had been fooled. When the detective came to inter­view him Kemmler apologized and said he must have been drunk, which nobody believed.

  But it seemed as if the police didn't know anything about his passage on the Empress of Britain after all. It was Max Kemmler's only consolation.

  The Bad Baron

  "IN these days of strenuous competition," said the Saint, "it's an extraordinarily comforting thing to know you're at the top of your profession-unchallenged, undismayed, and wholly beautiful."

  His audience listened to him with a very fair simulation of reverence-Patricia Holm because she had heard similar mod­est statements so often before that she was beginning to be­lieve them, Peter Quentin because he was the very latest recruit to the cause of Saintly lawlessness and the game was still new and exciting.

  They had met together at the Mayfair for a cocktail; and the fact that Simon Templar's remark was not strictly true did nothing to spoil the prospect of an innocent evening's amuse­ment.

  For the Saint certainly had a rival; and of recent days a combination of that rival's boundless energy and Simon Tem­plar's cautious self-effacement had placed another name in the position in the headlines which had once been regularly booked for the Saint. Newspapers screamed his exploits from their bills; music-hall comedians gagged about him; detectives tore their hair and endured the scathing criticisms of the Press and their superiors with as much fortitude as they could call on; and owners of valuable jewellery hurriedly deposited their valuables in safes and found a new interest in patent burglar alarms.

  For jewels were the specialty of the man who was known as "The Fox"-there was very little else known about him. He burst upon the public in a racket of sensational banner lines when he held up Lady Palfrey's charity ball at Grosvener House single-handed, and got clear away with nearly thirty thousand pounds' worth of display pieces. The clamour aroused by that exploit had scarcely passed its peak when he raided Sir Barnabay Gerrald's house in Berkeley Square and took a four-thousand-pound pearl necklace from a wall safe in the library while the Gerralds were entertaining a distin­guished company to dinner in the next room. He opened and ransacked a Bond Street jeweller's strong-room the very next night at a cost to the insurance underwriters of over twenty thousand pounds. Within a week he was the topic of every conversation: Disarmament Conferences were relegated to obscure corners of the news sheets, and even Wimbledon took second place.

  All three coups showed traces of careful preliminary spade-work. It was obvious that the Fox had mapped out every move in advance, and that the headlines were merely proclaiming the results of a scheme of operations that had been maturing perhaps for years. It was equally obvious to surmise that the crimes which had already been committed were not the begin­ning and the end of the campaign. News editors (who rarely possess valuable jewels) seized on the Fox as a Heavensent gift in a flat season; and the Fox worked for them with a sense of news value that was something like the answer to their blasphemous prayers. He entered Mrs. Wilbur G. Tully's suite at the Dorchester and removed her jewel-case with everything that it contained while she was in the bathroom and her maid had been decoyed away on a false errand. Mrs. Tully sobbingly told the reporters that there was only one thing which never could be replaced-a diamond-and-amethyst pendant valued at a mere two hundred pounds, a legacy from her mother, for which she was prepared to offer a reward of twice its value. It was returned to her through the post the next morning, with a typewritten expression of the Fox's sincere apologies. The news editors bought cigars and wallowed in their Hour. They hadn't anything
as good as that since the Saint appeared to go out of business, and they made the most of it.

  It was even suggested that the Fox might be the once noto­rious Saint in a new guise; and Simon Templar received a visit from Chief Inspector Teal.

  "For once I'm not guilty, Claud," said the Saint, with con­siderable sadness; and the detective knew him well enough to believe him.

  Simon had his private opinions about the Fox. The incident of Mrs. Tully's ancestral pendant did not appeal to him; he bore no actual ill-will towards Mrs. Tully, but the very prompt return of the article struck him as being a very ostentatious gesture to the gallery of a kind in which he had never in­dulged. Perhaps he was prejudiced. There is very little room for friendly rivalry in the paths of crime; and the Saint had his own human egotisms.

  The fame of the Fox was brought home to him that evening through another line.

  "There's a man who's asking for trouble," said Peter Quen­tin.

  He pointed to a copy of the Evening News as it lay open on the table between the glasses. Simon leaned sideways and scanned it lazily.

  THE MAN WHO IS NOT AFRAID OF BURGLARS Three times attacked-three times the winner NO QUARTER!

  BARON VON DORTVENN is one visitor to London who is not likely to spend any sleepless nights on account of the wave of crime with which the police are trying in vain to cope.

  He has come to England to look after the bracelet of Charlemagne, which he is lending to the International Jewellery Exhibition which opens on Monday.

  The famous bracelet is a massive circle of gold four inches wide and thickly encrusted with rubies. It weighs eight pounds, and is virtually priceless.

  At present it is locked in the drawer of an ordinary desk at the house in Campden Hill which the Baron has rented for a short season. He takes it with him wherever he goes. It has been in the care of his family for five centuries, and the Baron regards it as a mascot.

  Baron von Dortvenn scorns the precautions which would be taken by most people who found themselves in charge of such a priceless heirloom.