“Cocktail at the Bruton at a quarter to one,” he murmured, and drifted out again.
By that time, which was 10:44 precisely, if that matters a damn to anyone, the floating population of Upper Berkeley Mews had increased by one conspicuous unit, but that did not surprise the Saint. Such things had happened before, they were part of the inevitable paraphernalia of the attacks of virulent detectivosis which periodically afflicted the ponderous lucubrations of Chief Inspector Teal, and after the brief but comprehensive exchanges of pleasantries earlier that morning, Simon Templar would have been more disappointed than otherwise if he had seen no symptoms of a fresh outbreak of the disease.
Simon was not perturbed…He raised his hat politely to the sleuth, was cut dead, and remained unperturbed…And he sauntered imperturbably westwards through the smaller streets of Mayfair until, in one of the very smallest streets, he was able to collar the one and only visible taxi, in which he drove away, fluttering his handkerchief out of the window, and leaving a fuming plain-clothes man standing on the kerb glaring frantically around for another cab in which to continue the chase—and finding none.
At the Dover Street corner of Piccadilly, he paid off the driver and strolled back to the Piccadilly entrance of the Berkeley. It still wanted a few minutes to eleven, but the reception clerk, spurred on perhaps by the Saint’s departing purposefulness, had a doctor already waiting for him.
Simon conducted the move to the patient’s room himself, and had his first shock when he helped to remove the man’s shirt.
He looked at what he saw in silence for some seconds, and then the doctor, who had also looked, turned to him with his ruddy face gone a shade paler.
“I was told that your friend had had an accident,” he said bluntly, and the Saint nodded.
“Something unpleasant has certainly happened to him. Will you go on with your examination?”
He lighted a cigarette and went over to the window, where he stood gazing thoughtfully down into Berkeley Street until the doctor rejoined him.
“Your friend seems to have been given an injection of scopolamine and morphia—you have probably heard of ‘twilight sleep.’ His other injuries you’ve seen for yourself—I haven’t found any more.”
The Saint nodded.
“I gave him the injection myself. He should be waking up soon—he had rather less than one-hundredth of a grain of scopolamine. Will you want to move him to a nursing-home?”
“I don’t think that will be necessary, unless he wishes it himself, Mr—”
“Travers.”
“Mr Travers. He should have a nurse, of course—”
“I can get one.”
The doctor inclined his head.
Then he removed his pince-nez and looked the Saint directly in the eyes.
“I presume you know how your friend received his injuries?” he said.
“I can guess.” The Saint flicked a short cylinder of ash from his cigarette. “I should say that he had been beaten with a raw-hide whip, and that persuasion by hot irons had also been applied.”
The doctor put his finger-tips together and blinked.
“You must admit, Mr Travers, that the circumstances are—er—somewhat unusual.”
“You could say all that twice, and no one would accuse you of exaggerating,” assented the Saint, with conviction. “But if that fact is bothering your professional conscience, I can only say that I’m as much in the dark as you are. The accident story was just to satisfy the birds below. As a matter of fact, I found our friend lying by the roadside in the small hours of this morning, and I sort of took charge. Doubtless the mystery will be cleared up in due course.”
“Naturally, you have communicated with the police.”
“I’ve already interviewed one detective, and I’m sure he’s doing everything he can,” said the Saint veraciously. He opened the door, and propelled the doctor decisively along the corridor. “Will you want to see the patient today?”
“I hardly think it will be necessary, Mr Travers. His dressing should be changed tonight—the nurse will see to that. I’ll come in tomorrow morning—”
“Thanks very much. I shall expect you at the same time. Good-bye.”
Simon shook the doctor warmly by the hand, swept him briskly into the waiting elevator, and watched him sink downwards out of view.
Then he went back to the room, poured out a glass of water, and sat down in a chair by the bedside. The patient was sleeping easily, and Simon, after a glance at his watch, prepared to await the natural working-off of the drug.
A quarter of an hour later he was extinguishing a cigarette when the patient stirred and groaned. A thin hand crawled up to the bare throat, and the man’s head rolled sideways with his eyelids flickering. As Simon bent over him, a husky whisper of a word came through the relaxed lips.
“Acqua…”
“Sure thing, brother.” Simon propped up the man’s head and put the glass to his mouth.
“Mille grazie.”
“Prego.”
Presently the man sank back again. And then his eyes opened, and focused on the Saint.
For a number of seconds there was not the faintest glimmer of understanding in the eyes: they stared at and through their object like the eyes of a blind man. And then, slowly, they widened into round pools of shuddering horror, and the Italian shrank away with a thin cry rattling in his throat.
Simon gripped his arm and smiled.
“Non tema. Sono un amico.”
It was some time before he was able to calm the man into a dully incredulous quietness, but he won belief before he had finished, and at last the Italian sank back among the pillows and was silent.
Simon mopped his brow and fished out his cigarette-case.
And then the man spoke again, still weakly, but in a different voice.
“Quanti ne abbiamo quest’ oggi?”
“Eil due ottobre.”
There was a pause.
“Vuol favorire di dirmi il suo nome?”
“Templar—Simon Templar.”
There was another pause. And then the man rolled over and looked at the Saint again. And he spoke in almost perfect English.
“I have heard of you. You were called—”
“Many things. But that was a long time ago.”
“How did you find me?”
“Well—I rather think that you found me.”
The Italian passed a hand across his eyes.
“I remember now. I was running. I fell down. Someone caught me…” Suddenly he clutched the Saint’s wrist. “Did you see—him?”
“Your gentleman friend?” murmured Simon lightly. “Sure I did. He also saw me, but not soon enough. Yes, we certainly met.”
The grip of the trembling fingers loosened slowly, and the man lay still, breathing jerkily through his nose.
“Voglia scusarmi,” he said at length. “Mi vergogno.”
“Non ne val la pena.”
“It is as if I had awoken from a terrible dream. Even now—” The Italian looked down at the bandages that swathed the whole of the upper part of his body, and shivered uncontrollably. “Did you put on these?” he asked.
“No—a doctor did that.”
The man looked round the room.
“And this—?”
“This is the Berkeley Hotel, London.”
The Italian nodded. He swallowed painfully, and Simon refilled his glass and passed it back. Another silence fell, which grew so long that the Saint wondered if his patient had fallen asleep again. He rose stealthily to his feet, and the Italian roused and caught his sleeve.
“Wait.” The words came quite quietly and sanely. “I must talk to you.”
“Sure.” Simon smiled down at the man. “But do you want to do it now? Hadn’t you better rest for a bit—maybe have something to eat—”
The Italian shook his head.
“Afterwards. Will you sit down again?”
And Simon Templar sat down.
An
d he listened, almost without movement, while the minute hand of his watch voyaged unobserved once round the dial. He listened in a perfect trance of concentration, while the short precise sentences of the Italian’s story slid into the atmosphere and built themselves up into a shape that he had never even dreamed of.
It was past one o’clock when he walked slowly down the stairs with the inside story of one of the most stupendous crimes in history whirling round in his brain like the armature of a high-powered dynamo.
Wrapped up in the rumination of what he had heard, he passed out like a sleep-walker into Berkeley Street. And it so happened that in his abstraction he almost cannoned into a man who was at that moment walking down towards Piccadilly. He stepped aside with a muttered apology, absent-mindedly registering a kind of panoramic impression of a brilliantly purple suit, lemon-coloured gloves, a gold-mounted cane, a lavender shirt, spotted tie, and—
Just for an instant the Saint’s gaze rested on the man’s face. And then they were past each other, without a flicker of recognition, without the batting of an eyelid. But the Saint knew…
He knew that that savagely arrogant face, like a mask of black marble, was like no other black face that he had ever seen in his life before that morning. And he knew, with the same certainty, that the eyes in the black face had recognised him in the same moment as he had recognised them—and with no more betrayal of their knowledge. And as he wandered up into Berkeley Square, and the portals of the Bruton Club received him, he knew, though he had not looked back, that the black eyes were still behind him, and had seen where he went.
CHAPTER 4
But the smile with which the Saint greeted Patricia was as gay and carefree a smile as she had ever seen.
“I should like,” said the Saint, sinking into an armchair, “three large double Martinis in a big glass. Just to line my stomach. After which, I shall be able to deal respectfully with a thirst which can only be satisfactorily slaked by two gallons of bitter beer.”
“You will have one Martini, and then we’ll have some lunch,” said Patricia, and the Saint sighed.
“You have no soul,” he complained.
Patricia put her magazine under the table.
“What’s new, boy?” she asked.
“About Beppo?…Well, a whole heap of things are new about Beppo. I can tell you this, for instance: Beppo is no smaller a guy than the Duke of Fortezza, and he is the acting President of the Bank of Italy.”
“He’s—what?”
“He’s the acting President of the Bank of Italy—and that’s not the half of it. Pat, old girl, I told you at the start that there was some gay game being played, and, by the Lord, it’s as gay a game as we may ever find!” Simon signed the chit on the waiter’s tray with a flourish and settled back again, surveying his drink dreamily. “Remember reading in some paper recently that the Bank of Italy were preparing to put out an entirely new and original line of paper currency?” he asked.
“I saw something about it.”
“It was so. The contract was placed with Crosby Dorman, one of our biggest printing firms—they do the thin cash and postal issues of half a dozen odd little countries. Beppo put the deal through. A while ago he brought over the plates and gave the order, and one week back he came on his second trip to take delivery of three million pounds’ worth of coloured paper in a tin-lined box.”
“And then?”
“I’ll tell you what then. One whole extra million pounds’ worth of mazuma is ordered, and that printing goes into a separate box. Ordered on official notepaper, too, with Beppo’s own signature in the south-east corner. And meanwhile Beppo is indisposed. The first crate of spondulix departs in the golden galleon without him, completely surrounded by soldiers, secret service agents, and general detectives, all armed to the teeth and beyond. Another of those nice letters apologises for Beppo’s absence, and instructs the guard to carry on; a third letter explains the circumstances, ditto and ditto, to the Bank—”
Patricia sat up.
“And the box is empty?”
“The box is packed tight under a hydraulic press, stiff to the sealing-wax with the genuine articles as per invoice.”
“But—”
“But obviously. That box had got to go through. The new issue had to spread itself out. It’s been on the market three days already. And the ground bait is now laid for the big haul—the second box, containing approximately one million hundred-lire bills convertible into equivalent sterling on sight. And the whole board of the Bank of Italy, the complete staff of cashiers, office-boys, and outside porters, the entire vigilance society of soldiers, secret service agents, and general detectives, all armed to the teeth and beyond, are as innocent of the existence of that million as the unborn daughter of the Caliph’s washerwoman.”
The girl looked at him with startled eyes.
“And do you mean Beppo was in this?”
“Does it seem that way?” Simon Templar swivelled round towards her with one eyebrow inquisitorially cocked and a long wisp of smoke trailing through his lips. “I wish you could have seen him…Sure he’s in it. They turned him over to the Negro Spiritual, and let that big black swine pet him till he signed. If I told you what they’d done to him you wouldn’t be in such a hurry for your lunch.” For a moment the Saint’s lips thinned fractionally. “He’s just shot to pieces, and when you see him you’ll know why. Sure, that bunch are like brothers to Beppo!”
Patricia sat in a thoughtful silence, and the Saint emptied his glass.
Then she said, “Who are this bunch?”
Simon slithered his cigarette round to the corner of his mouth.
“Well, the actual bunch are mostly miscellaneous, as you might say,” he answered. “But the big noise seems to be a bird named Kuzela, whom we haven’t met before but whom I’m going to meet darn soon.”
“And this money—”
“Is being delivered to Kuzela’s men today.” The Saint glanced at his watch. “Has been, by now. And within twenty-four hours parcels of it will be burning the sky over to his agents in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and Madrid. Within the week it will be gravitating back to him through the same channels—big bouncing wads of it, translated into authentic wads of francs, marks, pesetas—while one million perfectly genuine hundred-lire bills whose numbers were never in the catalogue are drifting home to a Bank of Italy that will be wondering whether the whole world is falling to pieces round its ears…Do you get me, Pat?”
The clear blue eyes rested on her face with the twist of mocking hell-for-leather delight that she knew so well, and she asked her next question almost mechanically. “Is it your party?”
“It is, old Pat. And not a question asked. No living soul must ever know—there’d be a panic on the international exchanges if a word of it leaked out. But every single one of those extra million bills has got to be taken by hand and led gently back to Beppo’s tender care—and the man who’s going to do it is ready for his lunch.”
And lunch it was without further comment, for the Saint was like that…But about his latest meeting with the Negro Spiritual he did not find it necessary to say anything at all—for, again, the Saint was that way…And after lunch, when Patricia was ordering coffee in the lounge, yet another incident which the Saint was inclined to regard as strictly private and personal clicked into its appointed socket in the energetic history of that day.
Simon had gone out to telephone a modest tenner on a horse for the 3:30, and was on his way back through the hall when a porter stopped him.
“Excuse me, sir, but did you come here from the Berkeley?”
The Saint fetched his right foot up alongside his left and lowered his brows one millimetre.
“Yeah—I have been in there this morning.”
“A coloured gentleman brought these for you, sir. He said he saw you drop them as you came out of the hotel, but he lost you in the crowd while he was picking them up. And then, as he was walking through Lansdowne Passage, he happened to
look up and see you at one of the windows, so he brought them in. From the description he gave me it seemed as if it must have been you, sir—”
“Oh, it was certainly me.”
The Saint, who had never owned a pair of lemon-coloured gloves in his life, accepted the specimens gingerly, folded them, and slipped them into his pocket.
“Funny coincidence, sir, wasn’t it?” said the porter chattily. “Him happening to pass by, and you happening to be in the window at that time.”
“Quite remarkable,” agreed the Saint gravely, recalling the care he had taken to avoid all windows, and, turning back, he retired rapidly to a remote sanctuary.
There he unfolded the gloves in an empty washbasin, contriving to work them cautiously inside out with his fountain pen in one hand and his propelling pencil in the other.
He had not the vaguest idea what kind of creeping West African frightfulness might be waiting for him in those citron-hued misdemeanours, but he was certainly a trifle surprised when he saw what fell out of the first glove that he tackled.
It was simply a thin splinter of wood, painted at both ends, and stained with some dark stain.
For a moment or two he looked at it expressionlessly.
Then he picked it up between two matches and stowed it carefully in his cigarette-case.
He turned his attention to the second glove, and extracted from it a soiled scrap of paper. He read:
If you will come to 85, Vandemeer Avenue, Hampstead, at midnight tonight, we may be able to reach some mutually satisfactory agreement. Otherwise, I fear that the consequences of your interference may be infinitely regrettable.
K.
Simon Templar held the message at arm’s length, well up to the light, and gazed at it wall-eyed.
“And whales do so lay eggs,” he articulated at last, when he could find a voice sufficiently impregnated with emotion.
And then he laughed and went back to Patricia.
“If Monday’s Child comes home, you shall have a new hat,” he said, and the girl smiled.
“What else happens before that?” she asked.
The Saint versus Scotland Yard (The Saint Series) Page 10
