The Brighter Buccaneer (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  He held up a small drop earring, and as he turned his head Simon recognized him as a solitary diner from a table adjoining his own.

  “Oh!” The girl sat up, biting her lip. “Thank you—thank you so much—”

  “Il n’y a pas de quoi, madame,” said the man happily. “I see it fall and I run after you, but always you’re too quick. Now it’s all right. I am content. Madame, you permit me to say you a brave woman? I also saw everysing. Zat Baron—”

  All at once the girl hid her face in her hands.

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” she said chokingly. “You’re all so sweet…Oh, my God! If only I could kill him! He deserves to be killed. He deserves to lose his beastly bracelet. I’d steal it myself—”

  “Ah, but then you would be in prison, madame—”

  “Oh, it’d be easy enough. It’s on the ground floor—you’d only have to break open the desk. He doesn’t believe in burglar-alarms. He’s so sure of himself. But I’d show him. I’d make him pay!”

  She turned away to the corner and sobbed hysterically.

  Simon glanced at the little Frenchman.

  “Elle se trouvera mieux chez elle,” he said, and the other nodded sympathetically and closed the door.

  The taxi drew away in a wedge of traffic and turned up Regent Street. Simon sat back in his corner and let the girl have her cry. It was the best possible thing for her, and he could have said nothing helpful.

  They had a practically clear run through to St John’s Wood, and the girl recovered a little as they neared their destination. She wiped her eyes and took out a microscopic powder-puff, with the unalterable vanity of women.

  “You must think I’m a fool,” she said, as the taxi slowed up. “Perhaps I am. But no one else can understand.”

  “I don’t mind,” said the Saint.

  The cab stopped, and he leaned across her to open the door. Her face was within two inches of his, and the Saint required all adventures to be complete. In his philosophy, knight-errantry had its own time-honoured rewards.

  His lips touched hers unexpectedly, and then in a flash, with a soft laugh, he was out of the taxi. She walked past him and went up the steps of the house without looking back.

  Simon rode back jubilantly to the Piccadilly, and found his lady and Peter Quentin patiently ordering more coffee. The Baron had already left.

  “I saw you leaving with the blonde Venus,” said Peter enviously. “How on earth did you work it?”

  “Is this a new romance?” smiled Patricia.

  “You want to be careful of these barons,” said Peter. “Next thing you know, you’ll have a couple of his pals clicking their heels at you and inviting you to meet him in Hyde Park at dawn.”

  The Saint calmly annexed Peter Quentin’s liqueur and tilted his chair backwards. Over the rim of his glass he exchanged bows with the chivalrous Frenchman at the adjoining table, who was paying his bill and preparing to leave, and then he surveyed the other two with a lazily reckless glint in his eye that could have only one meaning.

  “Let’s go home,” he said.

  They sauntered in silence down Piccadilly to the block where the Saint’s flat was situated, and there the Saint doffed his hat with a flourish, and kissed Patricia’s hand.

  “Lady, be good. Peter and I have a date to watch the moon rising over the Warrington waterworks.”

  In the same silence two immaculately dressed young men sauntered on to the garage where the Saint kept his car. Nothing was said until one of them was at the wheel, with the other beside him, and the great silver Hirondel was humming smoothly past Hyde Park Corner. Then the fair-haired one spoke.

  “Campden Hill, I suppose?”

  “You said it,” murmured the Saint. “Baron von Dortvenn has asked for it once too often.”

  He drove slowly past the house for which Baron von Dortvenn had exchanged the schloss that was doubtless his more natural background. It was a gaunt Victorian edifice, standing apart from the adjacent houses in what for London was an unusually large garden surrounded by a six-foot brick wall topped by iron spikes. As far as the Saint could see, it was in darkness, but he was not really concerned to know whether the Baron had come home or whether he had passed on to seek a more amenable candidate for his favours in one of the few night clubs that the police had not yet closed down. Simon Templar was out for justice, and he could not find his opportunity too soon.

  Twenty yards beyond the house he disengaged the gear lever and swung himself out onto the running-board while the car was coasting to a standstill. It was then only half-past-eleven, but the road was temporarily deserted.

  “Turn the bus round, Peter, and pretend to be tinkering with the engine. Hop back into it at the first sounds of any excitement, and be on your toes for a quick getaway. I know it’s bad technique to plunge into a burglary without getting the lie of the land first, but I shall sleep like a child tonight if I have the bracelet of Charlemagne under my mattress.”

  “You aren’t going in alone,” said Peter Quentin firmly.

  He had the door on his side of the car open, but the Saint caught his shoulder.

  “I am, old lad. I’m not making a fully-fledged felon of you sooner than I can help—and if we were both inside there’d be no one to cover the retreat if the Baron’s as hot as he tells the world.”

  His tone forbade argument. There was a quietly metallic timbre in it that would have told any listener that this was the Saint’s own private picnic. And the Saint smiled. He punched Peter Quentin gently in the biceps, and was gone.

  The big iron gates that gave entrance to the garden were locked—he discovered that at the first touch. He went on a few yards and hooked his fingers over the top of the wall. One quick springy heave, and he was on top of the wall, clambering gingerly over the spikes. As he did so he glanced towards the house, and saw a wisp of black shadow detach itself from the neighbourhood of a ground-floor window and flit soundlessly across a strip of lawn into the cover of a clump of laurels.

  The Saint dropped inside the garden on his toes, and stood there, swiftly knotting a handkerchief over the lower part of his face. The set of his lips was a trifle grim. Someone else was also on the job that night—he had only just arrived in time.

  He slipped along the side of a hedge towards the spot where the black shadow had disappeared, but he had underrated the first intruder’s power of silent movement. There was a sudden scuff of shoes on the turf behind him, and the Saint swerved and ducked like lightning. Something whizzed past his head and struck his shoulder a numbing blow: he shot out an arm and grabbed hold of a coat, jerking his assailant towards him. His left hand felt for the man’s throat.

  It was all over very quickly, without any noise. Simon lowered the unconscious man to the ground, and flashed the dimmed beam of a tiny pocket torch on his face. A black mask covered it—Simon whipped it off and saw the sallow face of the Frenchman who had followed him with the unfortunate girl’s earring.

  The Saint snapped off his flashlight and straightened up with his mouth pursed in a noiseless whistle that widened into a smile. Verily, he was having a night out…

  He glided across the lawn to the nearest window, feeling around for the catch with a thin knife-blade. In three seconds it gave way, and he slid up the sash and climbed nimbly over the sill. His feet actually landed on the baronial desk. The top drawer was locked: he squeezed a fine steel claw in above the lock and levered adroitly. The drawer burst open with a crash, and the beam of his torch probed its interior. Almost the first thing he saw was a heavy circlet of dull yellow, which caught the light from a hundred crimson facets studded over its surface. Simon picked it up and shoved it into his pocket. Its great weight dragged his coat all over on one side.

  And at that moment all the lights in the room went on.

  The Saint whirled round.

  He looked into the single black eye of an automatic held in the hand of Baron von Dortvenn himself. On either side of the Baron was a heavily-built,
hard-faced man.

  “So you’re the Fox?” said the Baron genially.

  Simon thanked heaven for the handkerchief that covered his face. The two hard-faced men were advancing towards him, and one of them jingled a pair of handcuffs.

  “On the contrary,” said the Saint, “I’m the Bishop of Bootle and Upper Tooting.”

  He held out his wrists resignedly. For a moment the man with the handcuffs was between him and the Baron’s automatic, and the Saint took his chance. His left whizzed round in a terrific hook that smacked cleanly to its mark on the side of the man’s jaw, and Simon leapt onto the desk. He went through the window in a flying dive, somersaulted over his hands, and was on his feet again in an instant.

  He sprinted across the lawn and went over the wall like a cat. A whistle screamed into the night behind him, and he saw Peter Quentin tumble into the car as he jumped down to the pavement. Simon stepped onto the running-board as the Hirondel streaked past, and fell over the side into the seat beside the driver.

  “Give her the gun,” he ordered briefly, “and dodge as you’ve never dodged before. I think they’ll be after us.”

  “What happened?” asked Peter Quentin, and the Saint unfastened the handkerchief from his face and grinned.

  “It looks like they were waiting for someone,” he said.

  It took twenty minutes of brilliant driving to satisfy the Saint that they were safe from any possible pursuit. On the way Simon took the heavy jewelled armlet from his pocket and gazed at it lovingly under one of the dash-board lamps.

  “That’s one thing the Fox didn’t put over,” he said cryptically.

  He was breakfasting off bacon and eggs the next morning at eleven o’clock when Peter Quentin walked in. Peter carried a morning paper, which he tossed into the Saint’s lap.

  “There’s something for your ‘Oh, yeah?’ album,” he said grimly.

  Simon poured out a cup of coffee.

  “What is it—some more intelligent utterances by Cabinet Ministers?”

  “You’d better read it,” said Peter. “It looks as if several people made mistakes last night.”

  Simon Templar picked up the paper and started at the double-column splash.

  THE FOX CAPTURED

  CID WAKES UP

  BRILLIANT COUP IN KENSINGTON

  ONE OF THE CLEVEREST STRATEGEMS in the history of criminal detection achieved its object at eleven-thirty last night with the arrest of Jean-Baptiste Arvaille, alleged to be the famous jewel thief known as “The Fox.”

  Arvaille will be charged at the police court this morning with a series of audacious robberies totalling over fifty thousand pounds.

  It will be told how Inspector Henderson, of Scotland Yard, assisted by a woman member of the Special Branch, posed as “Baron von Dortvenn” and baited the trap with a mythical “bracelet of Charlemagne” which he was stated to have brought to England for the International Jewellery Exhibition.

  The plot owes much of its success to the cooperation of the Press, which gave the fullest possible publicity to the “Baron’s” arrival.

  It was stated in this newspaper yesterday that the “bracelet of Charlemagne” was a circle of solid gold thickly encrusted with rubies.

  In actual fact it is made of lead, thinly plated with gold, and the stones in it are worthless imitations. Workmen sworn to secrecy created it specially for Inspector Henderson’s use.

  Simon Templar read through the whole detailed story. After which he was speechless for some time.

  And then he smiled.

  “Oh, well,” he said, “it isn’t everyone who can say he’s kissed a woman policeman.”

  THE BRASS

  “Have another drink,” said Sir Ambrose Grange.

  He was a man with a lot to say, but that was his theme song. He had used it so many times during the course of that evening that Simon Templar had begun to wonder whether Sir Ambrose imagined he had invented a new and extraordinarily subtle philosophy, and was patiently plugging it at intervals until his audience grasped the point. It bobbed up along the line of his conversation like vitamins in a food reformer’s menu. Tapping resources which seemed inexhaustible, he delved into the kit-bag of memory for reminiscences and into his trouser pockets for the price of beer, and the Saint obliged him by absorbing both with equal courtesy.

  “Yes, sir,” resumed Sir Ambrose, when their glasses had been refilled. “Business is business. That is my motto, and it always will be. If you happen to know that something is valuable, and the other fellow doesn’t, you have every right to buy it from him at his price without disclosing your knowledge. He gets what he thinks is a fair price, you get your profit, and you’re both satisfied. Isn’t that what goes on every day on the Stock Exchange? If you receive inside information that certain shares are going to rise, you buy as many as you can.

  You probably never meet the man who sells them to you, but that doesn’t alter the fact of what you’re doing. You’re deliberately taking advantage of your knowledge to purchase something for a fraction of its value, and it never occurs to you that you ought to tell the seller that if he held on to his shares for another week he could make all the profit for himself.”

  “Quite,” murmured the Saint politely.

  “And so,” said Sir Ambrose, patting the Saint’s knee impressively with his flabby hand, “when I heard that the path of the new by-pass road cut straight through the middle of that old widow’s property, what did I do? Did I go to her and say, madam, in another week or two you’ll be able to put your own price on this house, and any bank or building society would be glad to lend you enough to pay off this instalment of the mortgage? Why, if I’d done anything like that I should have been a fool, sir—a sentimental old fool. Of course I didn’t. It was the old geezer’s own fault if she was too stupid and doddering to know what was going on around her. I simply foreclosed at once, and in three weeks I’d sold her house for fifteen times as much as I gave her for it. That’s business.” Sir Ambrose chortled wheezily over the recollection. “By Gad, you should have seen the old trout’s face when she heard about it. And was she rude? By Gad, if words could break bones I should be wheeling myself about in an invalid chair still. But that kind of thing doesn’t worry me!…Have another drink.”

  “Have one with me,” suggested the Saint half-heartedly, but Sir Ambrose waved the invitation aside.

  “No, sir. I never allow a young man to pay for my drinks. Have a good time with me. The same again?”

  Simon nodded, and lighted a cigarette while Sir Ambrose toddled over to the bar. He was a pompous and rather tubby little man, with a waxed moustache that matched his silver-grey spats, and a well-wined complexion that matched the carnation in his button-hole, and the Saint did not like him. In fact, running over a lengthy list of gentlemen of whom he had gravely disapproved, Simon Templar found it difficult to name anyone whom he had felt less inclined to take into his bosom with vows of eternal brotherhood.

  He disliked Sir Ambrose no less heartily because he had known him less than a couple of hours. With an idle evening to spend by himself, the Saint had sailed out into the West End to pass it as entertainingly as he could. He had no plans whatever, but his faith in the beneficence of the gods was sublime. Thus he had gone in search of adventure before, and he had rarely been disappointed. To him, the teeming thousands of assorted souls who jostled through the sky-sign area on a Saturday night were so many oysters who might be opened by a man with the clairvoyant eye and delicate touch which the Saint claimed for his genius. It was a business of drifting where the whim guided him, following an impulse and hoping that it might lead to an interest, taking a chance and not caring if it failed.

  In just that spirit of careless optimism he had wandered into a small hotel in a quiet street behind the Strand and discovered an almost deserted bar where he could imbibe a glass of ale while seeking inspiration for his next move. And it was there that a casual remark about the weather had floated him into the acquaintance o
f Sir Ambrose Grange. It was only a matter of minutes after that before Sir Ambrose, having presented his card, pulled out the opening chord of his theme song and said, “Have a drink?”

  Simon had a drink. Even before the state of the weather arose as an introduction, he had felt a professional curiosity to know whether anybody could be quite as unsavoury a bore as Sir Ambrose looked. And he had not been disappointed. Within five minutes Sir Ambrose had him sitting in a corner listening to the details of an ingenious trick he had invented as a boy at school for swindling his contemporaries out of their weekly ration of toffee. Within ten minutes Sir Ambrose was leading on to a description of the smart deals on a larger scale which had built up his comfortable fortune. He seemed to have had several drinks on his own before he started intoning his chorus to the Saint. The effects of them had been to make him loquacious and confidential, but they had not added to his charm. And the more cordially Simon learned to detest him, the more intently Simon listened—for it had dawned on the Saint that perhaps his evening was being well spent.

  Sir Ambrose returned with steps that could have been steadier, and slopped over some of the beer as he deposited their glasses on the table. He sat down again and leaned back with a sigh of large-waisted well-being.

  “Yes, sir,” he resumed tirelessly. “Sentiment is no good. My uncle was sentimental, and what did it do for him?”

  Not having known Sir Ambrose’s uncle, Simon found the question unanswerable.

  “It made him a pest to his heirs,” said Sir Ambrose, solving the riddle. “That’s what it did. Not that he left much for us to inherit—a beggarly ten thousand odd was all that he managed to keep out of the hands of the parasites who traded on his soft heart. But what did he do with it?”

  Once again the Saint was nonplussed. Sir Ambrose, however, did not really require assistance.

  “Look at this,” he said.

  He dragged a small brass image out of his pocket and set it up on the table between the glasses. Simon glanced at it, and recognized it at once. It was one of those pyramidal figures of a seated Buddha, miniatures of the gigantic statue at Kamakura, which find their place in every tourists’ curio shop from Karachi to Yokohama.