Garniman was still silent, and the Saint looked at him, and laughed caressingly.
“On the other hand—if you’re bright enough to see a few objections to that idea—you might prefer to push quietly on to your beautiful office and think over some of the other things I’ve said. Particularly those pregnant words about my income tax.”
“Is that all you have to say?” asked Garniman, in the same low voice, and the Saint nodded.
“It’ll do for now,” he said lightly. “And since you seem to have decided against the police, I think I’ll beetle off and concentrate on the method by which you’re going to be induced to contribute to the Inland Revenue.”
The slightest glitter of expression came to Wilfred Garniman’s eyes for a moment, and was gone again. He walked to the door and opened it.
“I’m obliged,” he said.
“After you, dear old reed-warbler,” said the Saint courteously.
He permitted Garniman to precede him out of the room, and stood in the hall adjusting the piratical slant of his hat.
“I presume we shall meet again?” Garniman remarked.
His tone was level and conversational. And the Saint smiled.
“You might even bet on it,” he said.
“Then— au revoir.”
The Saint tilted back his hat and watched the other turn on his heels and go up the stairs.
Then he opened the door and stepped out, and the heavy ornamental stone flower-pot that began to gravitate earthwards at the same moment actually nicked the brim of his Stetson before it split thunderously on the flagged path an inch behind his right heel.
Simon revolved slowly, his hands still in his pockets, and cocked an eyebrow at the debris, and then he strolled back under the porch and applied his forefinger to the bell.
Presently the maid answered the door.
“I think Mr Garniman has dropped the aspidistra,” he murmured chattily, and resumed his interrupted exit before the bulging eyes of an audience of one.
CHAPTER 8
“But what on earth,” asked Patricia helplessly, “was the point of that?”
“It was an exercise in tact,” said the Saint modestly.
The girl stared.
“If I could only see it,” she began, and then the Saint laughed.
“You will, old darling,” he said.
He leaned back and lighted another cigarette.
“Mr Wilfred Garniman,” he remarked, “is a surprisingly intelligent sort of cove. There was very little nonsense—and most of what there was was my own free gift to the nation. I grant you he added to his present charge-sheet by offering me a cigarette and then a drink, but that’s only because, as I’ve told you before, he’s an amateur. I’m afraid he’s been reading too many thrillers, and they’ve put ideas into his head. But on the really important point he was most professionally bright. The way the calm suddenly broke out in the middle of the storm was quite astonishing to watch.”
“And by this time,” said Patricia, “he’s probably going on being calm a couple of hundred miles away.”
Simon shook his head.
“Not Wilfred,” he said confidently. “Except when he’s loosing off six-shooters and throwing architecture about, Wilfred is a really first-class amateur. And he is so rapid on the uptake that if he fell off the fortieth floor of the Empire Building he would be sitting on the roof before he knew what had happened. Without any assistance from me, he divined that I had no intention of calling in the police. So he knew he wasn’t very much worse off than he was before.”
“Why?”
“He may be an amateur, as I keep telling you, but he’s efficient. Long before his house started to fall to pieces on me, he’d begun to make friendly attempts to bump me off. That was because he’d surveyed all the risks before he started in business, and he figured that his graft was exactly the kind of graft that would make me sit up and take notice. In which he was darned right. I just breezed in and proved it to him. He told me himself that he was unmarried; I wasn’t able to get him to tell me anything about his lawful affairs, but the butcher told me that he was supposed to be ‘something in the City’—so I acquired two items of information. I also verified his home address, which was the most important thing, and I impressed him with my own brilliance and charm of personality, which was the next most important. I played the perfect clown, because that’s the way these situations always get me, but in the intervals between laughs I did everything that I set out to do. And he knew it—as I meant him to.”
“And what happens next?”
“The private war will go on,” said the Saint comfortably.
His deductions, as usual, were precisely true, but there was one twist in the affairs of Wilfred Garniman of which he did not know, and if he had known of it he might not have taken life quite so easily as he did for the next few days. That is just possible.
On the morning of that first interview, he had hung around in the middle distances of Mallaby Road with intent to increase his store of information, but Mr Garniman had driven off to his righteous labours in a car which the Saint knew at a glance it would be useless to attempt to follow in a taxi. On the second morning, the Saint decorated the same middle distances at the wheel of his own car, but a traffic jam at Marble Arch baulked him of his quarry. On the third morning he tried again, and collected two punctures in the first half-mile, and when he got out to inspect the damage he found sharp steel spikes strewn all over the road. Then, fearing that four consecutive seven-o’clock breakfasts might affect his health, the Saint stayed in bed on the fourth morning and did some thinking.
One error in his own technique he perceived quite clearly.
“If I’d sleuthed him on the first morning, and postponed the backchat till the second, I should have been a bright lad,” he said. “My genius seems to have gone off the boil.”
That something of the sort had happened was also evidenced by the fact that during those four days the problem of evolving a really agile method of inducing Mr Garniman to part with a proportion of his ill-gotten gains continued to elude him.
Chief Inspector Teal heard the whole story when he called in on the evening of that fourth day to make inquiries, and was almost offensive.
The Saint sat at his desk after the detective had gone, and contemplated the net result of his ninety-six hours’ cerebration moodily. This consisted of a twelve-line epilogue to the Epic History of Charles.
His will was read. His father learned
Charles wished his body to be burned.
With huge heroic flames of fire
Upon a Roman funeral pyre.
But Charles’s pa, sole legatee,
Averse to such publicity,
Thought that, his bidding might be done
Without disturbing anyone,
And, in a highly touching scene,
Cremated him at Kensal Green.
And so Charles has his little shrine
With cavalier and concubine.
Simon Templar scowled sombrely at the sheet for some time, and then, with a sudden impatience, he heaved the inkpot out of the window and stood up.
“Pat,” he said, “I feel that the time is ripe for us to push into a really wicked night club and drown our sorrows in iced ginger-beer.”
The girl closed her book and smiled at him.
“Where shall we go?” she asked, and then the Saint suddenly shot across the room as if he had been touched with a hot iron.
“Holy Pete!” he yelled. “Pat—old sweetheart—old angel—”
Patricia blinked at him.
“My dear old lad—”
“Hell to all dear old lads!” cried the Saint recklessly.
He took her by the arms, swung her bodily out of her chair, put her down, rumpled her hair, and kissed her.
“Paddle on,” he commanded breathlessly. “Go on—go and have a bath—dress—undress—glue your face on—anything. Sew a gun into the cami-whatnots, find a butterfly net�
�and let’s go!”
“But what’s the excitement about?”
“We’re going entomo-botanising. We’re going to prowl around the West End fishing for beetles. We’re going to look at every night club in London—I’m a member of them all. If we don’t catch anything, it won’t be my fault. We’re going to knock the L out of London and use it to tie the Home Secretary’s ears together. The voice of the flatfooted periwinkle shall be heard in the land—”
He was still burbling foolishly when Patricia fled, but when she returned he was resplendent in Gents’ Evening Wear and wielding a cocktail-shaker with a wild exuberance that made her almost giddy to watch.
“For Heaven’s sake,” she said, catching his arm, “pull yourself together and tell me something!”
“Sure,” said the Saint daftly. “That nightie of yours is a dream. Or is it meant to be a dress? You can never tell, with these long skirts. And I don’t want to be personal, but are you sure you haven’t forgotten to put on the back or posterior part? I can see all your spine. Not that I mind, but…Talking of swine—spine—there was a very fine specimen at the Embassy the other night. Must have measured at least thirty-two inches from snout to—They say the man who landed it played it for three weeks. Ordinarily trout line and gaff, you know…”
Patricia Holm was almost hysterical by the time they reached the Carlton, where the Saint had decided to dine. And it was not until he had ordered an extravagant dinner, with appropriate wines, that she was able to make him listen to a sober question. And then he became the picture of innocent amazement.
“But didn’t you get me?” he asked. “Hadn’t you figured it out for yourself? I thought you were there long ago. Have you forgotten my little exploit at the Bird’s Nest? Who d’you think paid for that bit of coloured mosquito-net you’re wearing? Who bought these studs I’m wearing? Who, if it comes to that, is standing us this six-course indigestion?…Well, some people might say it was Montgomery Bird, but personally—”
The girl gasped. “You mean that other man at the Bird’s Nest was the Scorpion?”
“Who else?…But I never rumbled to it till tonight! I told you he was busy putting the black on Montgomery when Teal and I butted in. I overheard the whole conversation, and I was certainly curious. I made a mental note at the time to investigate that bearded battleship, but it never came into my head that it must have been Wilfred himself—I’m damned if I know why!”
Patricia nodded.
“I’d forgotten to think of it myself,” she said.
“And I must have been fast asleep the whole time! Of course it was the Scorpion—and his graft’s a bigger one than I ever dreamed. He’s got organisation, that guy. He probably has his finger in half the wicked pies that are being cooked in this big city. If he was on to Montgomery, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t have got on to a dozen others that you and I can think of, and he’ll be drawing his percentage from the whole bunch. I grant you I put Montgomery out of business, but—”
“If you’re right,” said Patricia, “and the Scorpion hasn’t done a bunk, we may find him anywhere.”
“Tonight,” said the Saint. “Or, if not tonight, some other night. And I’m prepared to keep on looking. But my income tax has got to be paid tomorrow, and so I want the reunion to be tonight.”
“Have you got an idea?”
“I’ve got a dozen,” said the Saint. “And one of them says that Wilfred is going to have an Evening!”
His brain had suddenly picked up its stride again. In a few minutes he had sketched out a plan of campaign as slick and agile as anything his fertile genius had ever devised. And once again he was proved a true prophet, though the proceedings took a slight twist which he had not foreseen.
For at a quarter past eleven they ran Wilfred Garniman to earth at the Golden Apple Club. And Wilfred Garniman certainly had an Evening.
He was standing at the door of the ballroom, sardonically surveying the clientèle, when a girl walked in and stopped beside him. He glanced round at her almost without thinking. Having done which, he stayed glancing—and thought a lot.
She was young, slim, fair-haired, and exquisite. Even Wilfred Garniman knew that. His rather tired eyes, taking in other details of her appearance, recognised the simple perfection of a fifty-guinea gown. And her face was utterly innocent of guile—Wilfred Garniman had a shrewd perception of these things also. She scanned the crowd anxiously, as though looking for someone, and in due course it became apparent that the someone was not present. Wilfred Garniman was the last man she looked at. Their glances met, and held for some seconds, and then the faintest ripple of a smile touched her lips.
And exactly one hour later, Simon Templar was ringing the bell at 28, Mallaby Road, Harrow.
He was not expecting a reply, but he always liked to be sure of his ground. He waited ten minutes, ringing the bell at intervals, and then he went in by a ground-floor window. It took him straight into Mr Garniman’s study. And there, after carefully drawing the curtains, the Saint was busy for some time. For thirty-five minutes by his watch, to be exact.
And then he sat down in a chair and lighted a cigarette.
“Somewhere,” he murmured thoughtfully, “there is a catch in this.”
For the net result of a systematic and expert search had panned out at precisely nil.
And this the Saint was not expecting. Before he left the Carlton, he had propounded one theory with all the force of an incontestable fact.
“Wilfred may have decided to take my intrusion calmly, and trust that he’ll be able to put me out of the way before I managed to strafe him good and proper, but he’d never leave himself without at least one line of retreat. And that implies being able to take his booty with him. He’d never have put it in a bank, because there’d always be the chance that someone might notice things and get curious. It will have been in a safe deposit, but it won’t be there now.”
Somewhere or other—somewhere within Wilfred Garniman’s easy reach—there was a large quantity of good solid cash, ready and willing to be converted into all manner of music by anyone who picked it up and offered it a change of address. It might have been actually on Wilfred Garniman’s person, but the Saint didn’t think so. He had decided that it would most probably be somewhere in the house at Harrow, and as he drove out there he had prepared to save time by considering the potential hiding-places in advance. He had thought of many, and discarded them one by one, for various reasons, and his final judgment had led him unhesitatingly into the very room where he had spent thirty-five fruitless minutes…and where he was now getting set to spend some more.
“This is the Scorpion’s sacred lair,” he figured, “and Wilfred wouldn’t let himself forget it. He’d play it up to himself for all it was worth. It’s the inner sanctum of the great ruthless organisation that doesn’t exist. He’d sit in that chair in the evenings—at that desk—there—thinking what a wonderful man he was. And he’d look at whatever innocent bit of interior decoration hides his secret cache, and gloat over the letters and dossiers that he’s got hidden there, and the money they’ve brought in or are going to bring in—the fat, slimy, wallowing slug…”
Again his eyes travelled slowly round the room. The plainly papered walls could have hidden nothing, except behind the pictures, and he had tried every one of those. Dummy books he had ruled out at once, for a servant may always take down a book, but he had tested the back of every shelf—and found nothing. The whole floor was carpeted, and he gave that no more than a glance: his analysis of Wilfred Garniman’s august meditations did not harmonise with the vision of the same gentleman crawling about on his hands and knees. And every drawer of the desk was already unlocked, and not one of them contained anything of compromising interest.
And that appeared to exhaust the possibilities. He stared speculatively at the fireplace—but he had done that before. It ignored the exterior architecture of the building and was a plain modern affair of blue tiles and tin, and it would have bee
n difficult to work any grisly gadgets into its bluntly bourgeois lines. Or, it appeared, into the lines of anything else in that room.
“Which,” said the Saint drowsily, “is absurd.”
There remained of course, Wilfred Garniman’s bedroom—the Saint had long since listed that as the only feasible alternative. But, somehow, he didn’t like it. Plunder and pink poplin pyjamas didn’t seem a psychologically satisfactory combination—particularly when the pyjamas must be presumed to surround something like Wilfred Garniman must have looked like without his Old Harrovian tie. The idea did not ring a bell. And yet, if the boodle and etceteral appurtenances thereof and howsoever were not in the bedroom, they must be in the study—some blistered whereabouts or what not…
“Which,” burbled the Saint, “is absluly posrous…”
The situation seemed less and less annoying…It really didn’t matter very much…Wilfred Garniman, if one came to think of it, was even fatter than Teal…and one made allowances for detectives…Teal was fat, and Long Harry was long, and Patricia played around with Scorpions; which was all very odd and amusing, but nothing to get worked up about before breakfast, old dear…
CHAPTER 9
Somewhere in the infinite darkness appeared a tiny speck of white. It came hurtling towards him, and as it came it grew larger and whiter and more terrible, until it seemed as if it must smash and smother and pulp him into the squashed wreckage of the whole universe at his back. He let out a yell, and the upper half of the great white sky fell back like a shutter, sending a sudden blaze of dazzling light into his eyes. The lower bit of white touched his nose and mouth damply, and an acrid stinging smell stabbed right up into the top of his head and trickled down his throat like a thin stream of condensed fire. He gasped, coughed, choked—and saw Wilfred Garniman.
“Hullo, old toad,” said the Saint weakly.
He breathed deeply, fanning out of his nasal passages the fiery tingle of the restorative that Garniman had made him inhale. His head cleared magically, so completely that for a few moments it felt as if a cold wind had blown clean through it, and the dazzle of the light dimmed out of his eyes. But he looked down, and saw that his wrists and ankles were securely bound.
The Saint versus Scotland Yard (The Saint Series) Page 6
