“I see,” said the Saint.
He saw much more than Mr Croon told him, but he did not say so.
“This two thousand pounds,” said Mr Croon, “represents about one-fifth of the cost of the trip, and in order to complete his arrangements my friend is prepared to offer a quarter of his profits to anyone who will go into partnership with him. As he expects to make at least ten thousand pounds, you will see that there are not many speculations which offer such a liberal return.”
If there was one role which Simon Templar could play better than any other, it was that of the kind of man whom financial consultants of every size and species dream that they may meet one day before they die. Mr Croon’s heart warmed towards him as Simon laid on the touches of his self-created character with a master’s brush.
“A very charming man,” thought the Saint as he paused on the pavement outside the building which housed Mr Croon’s offices.
Since at various stages of the interview Mr Croon’s effusive bonhomie had fairly bubbled with invitations to lunch with Mr Croon, dine with Mr Croon, shoot with Mr Croon, watch Mr Croon’s horses win at Goodwood with Mr Croon, and spend weekends with Mr Croon at Mr Croon’s house on the river, the character which Simon Templar had been playing might have thought that the line of the Saint’s lips was unduly cynical, but Simon was only thinking of his own mission in life.
He stood there with his walking-stick swinging gently in his fingers, gazing at the very commonplace street scene with thoughtful blue eyes, and became aware that a young man with the physique of a pugilist was standing at his shoulder. Simon waited.
“Have you been to see Croon?” demanded the young man suddenly.
Simon looked round with a slight smile.
“Why ask?” he murmured. “You were outside Croon’s room when I came out, and you followed me down the stairs.”
“I just wondered.”
The young man had a pleasantly ugly face with crinkly grey eyes that would have liked to be friendly, but he was very plainly nervous.
“Are you interested in bootlegging?” asked the Saint, and the young man stared at him grimly.
“Listen. I don’t know if you’re trying to be funny, but I’m not. I’m probably going to be arrested this afternoon. In the last month I’ve lost about five thousand pounds in Croon’s schemes—and the money wasn’t mine to lose. You can think what you like. I went up there to bash his face in before they get me, and I’m going back now for that same reason. But I saw you come out, and you didn’t look like a crook. I thought I’d give you a word of warning. You can take it or leave it. Goodbye.”
He turned off abruptly into the building, but Simon reached out and caught him by the elbow.
“Why not come and have some lunch first?” he suggested. “And let Croon have his. It’ll be so much more fun punching him in the stomach when it’s full of food.”
He waved away the young man’s objections and excuses without listening to them, hailed a taxi, and bundled him in. It was the kind of opportunity that the Saint lived for, and he would have had his way if he was compelled to kidnap his guest for the occasion. They lunched at a quiet restaurant in Soho, and in the persuasive warmth of half a litre of Chianti and the Saint’s irresistible personality the young man told him what he knew of Mr Melford Croon.
“I suppose I was a complete idiot—that’s all. I met Croon through a man I used to see in the place where I always had lunch. It didn’t occur to me that it was all a put-up job, and I thought Croon was all right. I was fed to the teeth with sitting about in an office copying figures from one book to another, and Croon’s stunts looked like a way out. I put three thousand quid into his Universal Albion Film Company: it was only on paper, and the way Croon talked about it made me think I’d never really be called on for the money. They were going to rent the World Features studio at Teddington—the place is still on the market. When the Universal Albion went smash I had to find the money, and the only way I could get it was to borrow it out of the firm. Croon put the idea into my head, but—oh, hell! It’s easy enough to see how things have happened after the damage is done.”
He had borrowed another two thousand pounds—without the cashier’s knowledge—in the hope of retrieving the first loss. It had gone into a cargo of liquor destined for the thirsty States. Six weeks later Mr Croon broke the news to him that the coastal patrols had captured the ship.
“And that’s what’ll happen to any other fool who puts money into Croon’s bootlegging,” said the young man bitterly. “He’ll be told that the ship’s sunk, or captured, or caught fire, or grown wings and flown away. He’ll never see his money back. My God—to think of that slimy swab trying to be a bootlegger! Why, he told me once that the very sight of a ship made him feel sick, and he wouldn’t cross the Channel for a thousand pounds.”
“What are you going to do about it?” asked the Saint, and the young man shrugged.
“Go back and try to make him wish he’d never been born—as I told you. They’re having an audit today at the office, and they can’t help finding out what I’ve done. I stayed away—said I was ill. That’s all there is to do.”
Simon took out his cheque-book and wrote a cheque for five thousand pounds.
“Whom shall I make it payable to?” he inquired, and his guest’s eyes widened.
“My name’s Peter Quentin. But I don’t want any of your damned—”
“My dear chap, I shouldn’t dream of offering you charity.” Simon blotted the pink slip and scaled it across the table. “This little chat has been worth every penny of it. Besides, you don’t want to go to penal servitude at your age. It isn’t healthy. Now be a good fellow and dash back to your office—square things up as well as you can—”
The young man was staring at the name which was scribbled in the bottom right-hand corner of the paper.
“Is that name Simon Templar?”
The Saint nodded.
“You see, I shall get it all back,” he said.
He went home with two definite conclusions as the result of his day’s work and expenses: first, that Mr Melford Croon was in every way as undesirable a citizen as he had thought, and second, that Mr Melford Croon’s contribution to the funds of righteousness was long overdue. Mr Croon’s account was, in fact, exactly five thousand pounds overdrawn, and that state of affairs could not be allowed to continue.
Nevertheless, it took the Saint twenty-four hours of intensive thought to devise a poetic retribution, and when the solution came to him it was so simple that he had to laugh.
Mr Croon went down to his house on the river for the weekend. He invariably spent his weekends there in the summer, driving out of London on the Friday evening and refreshing himself from his labours with three happy days of rural peace.
Mr Croon had an unexpected appetite for simple beauty and the works of nature: he was rarely so contented as when he was lying out in a deckchair and spotless white flannels, directing his gardener’s efforts at the flower-beds, or sipping an iced whisky-and-soda on his balcony while he watched supple young athletes propelling punts up and down the stream.
This weekend was intended to be no exception to his usual custom. He arrived at Marlow in time for dinner, and prepared for an early night in anticipation of the tireless revels of a mixed company of his friends who were due to join him the next day. It was scarcely eleven o’clock when he dismissed his servant and mixed himself a final drink before going to bed.
He heard the front door bell ring, and rose from his armchair grudgingly. He had no idea who could be calling on him at that hour, and when he opened the door and found that there was no one visible outside he was even more annoyed.
He returned to the sitting room, and gulped down the remainder of his nightcap without noticing the bitter tang that had not been there when he poured it out. The taste came into his mouth after the liquid had been swallowed, and he grimaced. He started to walk towards the door, and the room spun round. He felt himself falling help
lessly before he could cry out.
When he woke up, his first impression was that he had been buried alive. He was lying on a hard, narrow surface, with one shoulder squeezed up against a wall on his left, and the ceiling seemed to be only a few inches above his head. Then his sight cleared a little, and he made out that he was in a bunk in a tiny unventilated compartment lighted by a single circular window. He struggled up on one elbow, and groaned. His head was one reeling whirligig of aches, and he felt horribly sick.
Painfully he forced his mind back to his last period of consciousness. He remembered pouring out that last whisky-and-soda—the ring at the front door—the bitter taste in the glass…Then nothing but an infinity of empty blackness…How long had he been unconscious? A day? Two days? A week? He had no means of telling.
With an agonizing effort he dragged himself off the bunk and staggered across the floor. It reared and swayed sickeningly under him, so that he could hardly keep his balance. His stomach was somersaulting nauseatingly inside him. Somehow he got over to the one round window: the pane was frosted over, but outside he could hear the splash of water and the shriek of wind. The explanation dawned on him dully—he was in a ship!
Mr Croon’s knees gave way under him, and he sank moaning to the floor. A spasm of sickness left him gasping in a clammy sweat. The air was stiflingly close, and there was a smell of oil in it which made it almost unbreathable. Stupidly, unbelievingly, he felt the floor vibrating to the distant rhythm of the engines. A ship! He’d been drugged—kidnapped—shanghaied! Even while he tried to convince himself that it could not be true, the floor heaved up again with the awful deliberateness of a seventh wave, and Mr Croon heaved up with it…
He never knew how he managed to crawl to the door between the paroxysms of torment that racked him with every movement of the vessel. After what seemed like hours he reached it, and found strength to try the handle. The door failed to budge. It was locked. He was a prisoner—and he was going to die. If he could have opened the door he would have crawled up to the deck and thrown himself into the sea. It would have been better than dying of that dreadful nausea that racked his whole body and made his head swim as if it were being spun round on the axle of a dynamo.
He rolled on the floor and sobbed with helpless misery. In another hour of that weather he’d be dead. If he could have found a weapon he would have killed himself. He had never been able to stand the slightest movement of the water—and now he was a prisoner in a ship that must have been riding one of the worst storms in the history of navigation. The hopelessness of his position made him scream suddenly—scream like a trapped hare—before the ship slumped suckingly down into the trough of another seventh wave and left his stomach on the crest of it.
Minutes later—it seemed like centuries—a key turned in the locked door, and a man came in. Through the bilious yellow mists that swirled over his eyes, Mr Croon saw that he was tall and wiry, with a salt-tanned face and far-sighted, twinkling blue eyes. His double-breasted jacket carried lines of dingy gold braid, and he balanced himself easily against the rolling of the vessel.
“Why, Mr Croon—what’s the matter?”
“I’m sick,” sobbed Croon, and proceeded to prove it.
The officer picked him up and laid him on the bunk.
“Bless you, sir, this isn’t anything to speak of. Just a bit of a blow—and quite a gentle one for the Atlantic.”
Croon gasped feebly.
“Did you say the Atlantic?”
“Yes, sir. The Atlantic is the ocean we are on now, sir, and it’ll be the same ocean all the way to Boston.”
“I can’t go to Boston,” said Croon pathetically. I’m going to die.”
The officer pulled out a pipe and stuffed it with black tobacco. A cloud of rank smoke added itself to the smell of oil that was contributing to Croon’s wretchedness.
“Lord, sir, you’re not going to die!” said the officer cheerfully. “People who aren’t used to it often get like this for the first two or three days. Though I must say, sir, you’ve taken a long time to wake up. I’ve never known a man be so long sleeping it off. That must have been a very good farewell party you had, sir.”
“Damn you!” groaned the sick man weakly. I wasn’t drunk—I was drugged!”
The officer’s mouth fell open.
“Drugged, Mr Croon?”
“Yes, drugged!” The ship rolled on its beam ends, and Croon gave himself up for a full minute to his anguish. “Oh, don’t argue about it! Take me home!”
“Well, sir, I’m afraid that’s—”
“Fetch me the captain!”
“I am the captain, sir. Captain Bourne. You seem to have forgotten, sir. This is the Christabel Jane, eighteen hours out of Liverpool with a cargo of spirits for the United States. We don’t usually take passengers, sir, but seeing that you were a friend of the owner, and you wanted to make the trip, why, of course we found you a berth.”
Croon buried his face in his hands.
He had no more questions to ask. The main details of the conspiracy were plain enough. One of his victims had turned on him for revenge—or perhaps several of them had banded together for the purpose. He had been threatened often before. And somehow his terror of the sea had become known. It was poetic justice—to shanghai him on board a bootlegging ship and force him to take the journey of which he had cheated their investments.
“How much will you take to turn back?” he asked, and Captain Bourne shook his head.
“You still don’t seem to understand, sir. There’s ten thousand pounds’ worth of spirits on board—at least, they’ll be worth ten thousand pounds if we get them across safely—and I’d lose my job if I—”
“Damn your job!” said Melford Croon.
With trembling fingers he pulled out a cheque-book and fountain-pen. He scrawled a cheque for fifteen thousand pounds and held it out.
“Here you are. I’ll buy your cargo. Give the owner his money and keep the change. Keep the cargo. I’ll buy your whole damned ship. But take me back. D’you understand? Take me back—”
The ship lurched under him again, and he choked. When the convulsion was over the captain had gone.
Presently a white-coated steward entered with a cup of steaming beef-tea. Croon looked at it and shuddered.
“Take it away,” he wailed.
“The captain sent me with it, sir,” explained the steward. “You must try to drink it, sir. It’s the best thing in the world for the way you’re feeling. Really, sir, you’ll feel quite different after you’ve had it.”
Croon put out a white, flabby hand. He managed to take a gulp of the hot soup, then another. It had a slightly bitter taste which seemed familiar. The cabin swam round him again, more dizzily than before, and his eyes closed in merciful drowsiness.
He opened them in his own bedroom. His servant was drawing back the curtains, and the sun was streaming in at the windows.
The memory of his nightmare made him feel sick again, and he clenched his teeth and swallowed desperately. But the floor underneath was quite steady. And then he remembered something else, and struggled up in the bed with an effort which threatened to overpower him with renewed nausea.
“Give me my cheque-book,” he rasped. “Quick—out of my coat pocket—”
He opened it frantically and stared at a blank counterfoil with his face growing haggard.
“What’s today?” he asked.
“This is Saturday, sir,” answered the surprised valet.
“What time?”
“Eleven o’clock, sir. You said I wasn’t to call you—”
But Mr Melford Croon was clawing for the telephone at his bedside. In a few seconds he was through to his bank in London. They told him that his cheque had been cashed at ten.
Mr Croon lay back on the pillows and tried to think out how it could have been done.
He even went so far as to tell his incredible story to Scotland Yard, though he was not by nature inclined to attract the attention o
f the police. A methodical search was made in Lloyd’s Register, but no mention of a ship called the Christabel Jane could be found.
Which was not surprising, for Christabel Jane was the name temporarily bestowed by Simon Templar on a dilapidated Thames tug which had wallowed very convincingly for a few hours in the gigantic tank at the World Features studio at Teddington for the filming of storm scenes at sea, which would undoubtedly have been a great asset to Mr Croon’s Universal Albion Film Company if the negotiations for the lease had been successful.
THE OWNERS’ HANDICAP
“The art of crime,” said Simon Templar, carefully mayonnaising a section of fruite à la gelée, “is to be versatile. Repetition breeds contempt—and promotion for flat-footed oafs from Scotland Yard. I assure you, Pat, I have never felt the slightest urge to be the means of helping any detective on his upward climb. Therefore we soak bucket-shops one week and bootleggers the next, and poor old Chief Inspector Teal never knows where he is.”
Patricia Holm fingered the stem of her wineglass with a far-away smile. Perhaps the smile was a trifle wistful. Perhaps it wasn’t. You never knew. But she had been the Saint’s partner in outlawry long enough to know what any such oratorical opening as that portended, and she smiled.
“It dawns upon me,” said the Saint, “that our talents have not yet been applied to the crooked angles of the Sport of Kings.”
“I don’t know,” said Patricia mildly. “After picking the winner of the Derby with a pin, and the winner of the Oaks with a pack of cards—”
Simon waved away the argument.
“You may think,” he remarked, “that we came here to celebrate. But we didn’t. Not exactly. We came here to feast our eyes on the celebrations of a brace of lads of the village who always tap the champagne here when they’ve brought off a coup. Let me introduce you. They’re sitting at the corner table behind me on your right.”
The Brighter Buccaneer (The Saint Series) Page 4
