The Happy Highwayman (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  Simon Templar steadied himself on one of the scaffold poles and stared down into the square black mould of the monument, but there was nothing that he could see, and the silence was unbroken. After a while his fingers let go the gun, and a moment later the thud of its burying itself in the wet cement at the bottom of the shaft echoed hollowly back to him.

  Presently he climbed up to the chute from which the monument was being filled. He found a great mound of sacks of cement stacked beside it ready for use, and, after a little more search, a hose conveniently arranged to provide water. He was busy for three hours before he decided that he had done enough…

  “And knowing that these thoughts are beating in all our hearts,” boomed the voice of the Distinguished Personage through eight loudspeakers, “it will always be my proudest memory that I had the privilege of unveiling this eternal testimonial to the man who has devoted his life to the service of his people—the Mayor, whom we all know and love so well, Sam Purdell!”

  The flag which covered the carved inscription on the base of the Purdell Memorial fluttered down. A burst of well-organised cheering volleyed from three thousand throats. Cameramen dashed forward with clicking shutters. The bandmaster raised his baton. The brass and wood winds inflated their lungs. A small urchin close to the platform swallowed a lump of toffee, choked, and began to cry…The strains of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” blasted throbbingly through the afternoon air.

  Then, to the accompaniment of a fresh howl of cheering, Sam Purdell stepped to the microphone. He wiped his eyes and swallowed once or twice before he spoke.

  “My friends,” he said, “this ain’t—isn’t a time when I would ask you to listen to a speech. There isn’t—ain’t anything I can think of worthy of this honour you have done me. I can only repeat the promise which you’ve all heard me make before—that so long as I am an Alderman of Elmford I shall do everything in my power to make it a place you can be proud to live in.”

  The cheers followed his car as he drove away accompanied by his round perspiring wife and his round perspiring daughters. Mrs Purdell clutched his hand in a warm moist grip.

  “That was such a beautiful speech you made, Sam,” she said, a little tearfully.

  Sam Purdell shook his head. Ever since the still unsolved mystery of his partner’s disappearance, he had had one secret sorrow.

  “I wish Al could have been there,” he said.

  THE BENEVOLENT BURGLARY

  “Louis Umbert?” Simon Templar repeated vaguely. “I don’t know…I think I read something about him in a newspaper some time ago, but I’m blowed if I can remember what it was. I can’t keep track of every small-time crook in creation. What’s he been doing?”

  “I just thought you might know something about him,” Chief Inspector Teal answered evasively.

  He sat on the edge of a chair and turned his bowler hat in his pudgy hands, looking almost comically like an elephantine edition of an office-boy trying to put over a new excuse for taking an afternoon off. He glowered ferociously around the sunny room in which Simon was calmly continuing to eat breakfast, and racked his brain for inspiration to keep the interview going.

  For the truth was that Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal had not called on the Saint for information about Mr Louis Umbert. Or anybody else in the same category. He had a highly efficient Records Office at his disposal down at Scotland Yard, which was maintained for the sole purpose of answering questions like that. The name was simply an excuse that he had grabbed out of his head while he was on his way up in the lift. Because there was really only one lawbreaker about whom Teal needed to go to Simon Templar for information—and that was the Saint himself.

  Not that even that was likely to be very profitable, either, but Teal couldn’t help it. He made the pilgrimage in the same spirit as a man who had lived under the shadow of a volcano that had been quiescent for some time might climb up to peep into the crater, with the fond hope that it might be good enough to tell him when and how it next intended to erupt. He knew he was only making a fool of himself, but that was only part of the cross he had to bear. There were times when, however hard he tried to master them, the thoughts of all the lawless mischief which that tireless buccaneer might be cooking up in secret filled his mind with such horrific nightmares that he had to do something about them or explode. The trouble was that the only thing he could think of doing was to go and have another look at the Saint in person, as if he hoped that he would be lucky enough to arrive at the very moment when Simon had decided to write out his plans on a large board and wear them round his neck. The knowledge of his own futility raised Mr Teal’s blood pressure to the point that actively endangered his health, but he could no more have kept himself away from the Saint’s apartment, when one of those fits of morbid uneasiness seized him, than he could have danced in a ballet.

  He stuck a piece of chewing gum into his mouth and bit on it with massive violence, knowing perfectly well that the Saint knew exactly what was the matter with him, and that the Saint was probably trying politely not to laugh out loud. His smouldering eyes swivelled back to the Saint with belligerent defiance. If he caught so much as the shadow of a grin on that infernally handsome face…

  But the Saint was grinning. He wasn’t paying any particular attention to Teal at all. He was reading his newspaper again, and Teal heard him murmur, “Well, isn’t that interesting?”

  “Isn’t what interesting?” growled the detective aggressively.

  Simon folded the sheet.

  “I see that the public is invited to an exhibition of Mr Elliott Vascoe’s art treasures at Mr Vascoe’s house in Hammersmith. Admission will be five shillings, and all the proceeds will go to charity. The exhibition will be opened by Princess Eunice of Greece.”

  Teal stiffened. He had the dizzy sense of unreality that would overwhelm a man who had been day-dreaming about what he would do if his uncle suddenly died and left him a million pounds, if a man walked straight into his office and said, “Your uncle died and left you a million pounds.”

  “Were you thinking of taking over any of those art treasures?” he inquired menacingly. “Because if you were—”

  “I’ve often thought about it,” said the Saint shamelessly. “I think it’s a crime for Vascoe to have so many of them. He doesn’t know any more about art than a cow in a field, but he’s got enough dough to buy anything his advisers tell him is worth buying, and it gives him something to swank about. It would be an act of virtue to take over his collection, but I suppose you wouldn’t see it that way.”

  Mr Teal’s brow blackened. He could hardly believe his ears, and if he had stopped to think he wouldn’t have believed them. He didn’t stop.

  “No, I wouldn’t!” he squeaked. “Now get this, Saint. You can get away with just so much of your line and no more. You’re going to leave Vascoe’s exhibition alone, or by heavens—”

  “Of course I’m going to leave it alone,” said the Saint mildly. “My paths are the paths of righteousness, and my ways are the ways of peace. You know me, Claud. Vascoe will get what’s coming to him in due time, but who am I to take it upon myself to dish it out?”

  “You said—”

  “I said that I’d often thought about taking over some of his art treasures. But is it a crime to think? If it was, there’d be more criminals than you could build jails for. Pass the marmalade. And try not to look so disappointed.” The mockery in Simon’s blue eyes was bright enough now for even Teal to realize that the Saint was deliberately taking him over the jumps once again. “Anyone might think you wanted me to turn into a crook—and is that the right attitude for a policeman to have?”

  Between Simon Templar and Mr Elliot Vascoe, millionaire and self-styled art connoisseur, no love at all was lost. Simon disliked Vascoe on principle, because he disliked all fat loud-mouthed parvenus who took care to obtain great publicity for their charitable works while they practised all kinds of small meannesses on their employees. Vascoe hated the Saint bec
ause Simon had once happened to witness a motor accident in which Vascoe was driving and a child was injured, and Vascoe had made the mistake of offering Simon a hundred pounds to forget what he had seen. That grievous error had not only failed to save Mr Vascoe a penny of the fines and damages which he was subsequently compelled to pay, but it had earned him a punch on the nose which he need not otherwise have suffered.

  Vascoe had made his money quickly, and the curse of the nouveau riche had fallen upon him. Himself debarred forever from the possibility of being a gentleman, either by birth or breeding or native temperament, he had made up for it by carrying snobbery to new and rarely unequalled heights. Besides works of art, he collected titles: for high-sounding names, and all the more obvious trappings of nobility, he had an almost fawning adoration. Therefore he provided lavish entertainment for any undiscriminating notables whom he could lure into his house with the attractions of his Parisian chef and his very excellent wine cellar, and contrived to get his name bracketed with those who were more discriminating by angling for them with the bait of charity, which it was difficult for them to refuse.

  In a great many ways, Mr Elliot Vascoe was the type of man whose excessive wealth would have been a natural target for one of the Saint’s raids on those undesirable citizens whom he included in the comprehensive and descriptive classification of “the ungodly,” but the truth is that up till then the Saint had never been interested enough to do anything about it. There were many other undesirable citizens whose unpleasantness was no less immune from the cumbersome interference of the Law, but whose villainies were on a larger scale and whose continued putrescence was a more blatant challenge to the Saint’s self-appointed mission of justice. With so much egregiously inviting material living ready to hand, it was perhaps natural that Simon should feel himself entitled to pick and choose, should tend to be what some critics might have called a trifle finicky in his selection of the specimens of ungodliness to be bopped on the bazook. He couldn’t use all of them, much as he would have liked to.

  But in Simon Templar’s impulsive life there was a factor of Destiny that was always taking such decisions out of his hands. Anyone with a less sublime faith in his guiding star might have called it coincidence, but to the Saint that word was merely a chicken-hearted half-truth. Certain things were ordained, and when the signs pointed there was no turning back.

  Two days after Teal’s warning, he was speeding back to the city after an afternoon’s swimming and basking in the sun at the Oaklands Park Pool, when he saw a small coupé of rather ancient vintage standing by the roadside. The bonnet of the coupé was open, and a young man was very busy with the engine; he seemed to be considerably flustered, and from the quantity of oil on his face and forearms the success of his efforts seemed to bear no relation to the amount of energy he had put into them. Near the car stood a remarkably pretty girl, and she was what really caught the Saint’s eye. She seemed distressed and frightened, twisting her hands nervously together and looking as if she was on the verge of tears.

  Simon had flashed past before he realized that he knew her—he had met her at a dance some weeks before. His distaste for Mr Elliot Vascoe did not apply to Vascoe’s slim, auburn-haired daughter, whom Simon would have been prepared to put forward in any company as a triumphant refutation of the theories of heredity. He jammed on his brakes and backed up to the breakdown.

  “Hullo, Meryl,” he said. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “If you can make this Chinese washing machine go,” said the young man, raising his smeared face from the bowels of the engine, “you are not only a better man than I am, but I expect you can invent linotypes in your sleep.”

  “This is Mr Fulton—Mr Templar.” The girl made the introduction with breathless haste. “We’ve been here for three-quarters of an hour—”

  The Saint started to get out.

  “I never was much of a mechanic,” he murmured. “But if I can unscrew anything or screw anything up…”

  “That wouldn’t be any good—Bill knows everything about cars, and he’s already taken it to pieces twice.” The girl’s voice was shaky with dawning hope. “But if you could take me home yourself…I’ve simply got to be back before seven! Do you think you could do it?”

  Her tone was so frantic that she made it sound like a matter of life and death.

  Simon glanced at his watch, and at the milometer on the dashboard. It would be about fifteen miles to Hammersmith, and it was less than twenty minutes to seven.

  “I can try,” he said, and turned to Fulton. “What about you—will you come on this death-defying ride?”

  Fulton shook his head. He was a few years older than the girl, and Simon liked the clean-cut good looks of him.

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “You try to get Meryl back. I’m going to make this prehistoric wreck move under its own steam if I stay here all night.”

  Meryl Vascoe was already in the Saint’s car, and Simon returned to the wheel with a grin and a shrug. For a little while he was completely occupied with finding out just how high an unlawful speed he could make through traffic. When the Saint set out to do some fast travelling it was a hair-raising performance, but Meryl Vascoe’s hair was fortunately raise-proof. She spent some minutes repairing various imperceptible details of her almost flawless face, and then she touched his knee anxiously.

  “When we get there, just put me down at the corner,” she said. “I’ll run the rest of the way. You see, if Father saw you drive up to the door he’d be sure to ask questions.”

  “What are you doing with that scoundrel?” Simon said melodramatically. “Don’t you know that he can’t be trusted with a decent woman?”

  She laughed.

  “That isn’t what I’m worried about,” she said. “Though I don’t suppose he’d be very enthusiastic about our being together—I haven’t forgotten what a scene we had about that dance where you picked me up and took me off to the Café de Paris for the rest of the night. But the point is that I don’t want him to know that I’ve been out driving at all.”

  “Why not?” asked the Saint, reasonably. “The sun is shining. London is beginning to develop its summer smell. What could you do that would be better and healthier than taking a day in the country?”

  She looked at him guardedly, hesitating.

  “Well—then I ought to have gone out in my own car, with one of the chauffeurs. But he’d be furious if he knew I’d been out with Bill Fulton, so when I went out this afternoon I told him that I was going shopping with an old school friend.”

  Simon groaned.

  “That old school friend—she does work long hours,” he protested. “I should have thought you could have invented something better than that. However, I take it that Papa doesn’t like Bill Fulton, and you do, so you meet him on the quiet. That’s sensible enough. But what’s your father got against him? He looked good enough to me. Does he wash, or something?”

  “You don’t have to insult my father when I’m listening,” she said stiffly, and then, in another moment, the emotions inside overcame her loyalty. “I suppose it’s because Bill isn’t rich and hasn’t got a title or anything…And then there’s the Comte de Beaucroix—”

  Simon swerved the car dizzily under the arm of a police man who was trying to hold them up.

  “Who?” he demanded.

  “The Comte de Beaucroix—he’s staying with us just now. He had to go and see some lawyers this afternoon, but he’ll be back for dinner, and if I’m not home and dressed when they ring the gong, Father’ll have a fit.”

  “Poor little rich girl,” said the Saint sympathetically. “So you have to dash home to play hostess to another of your father’s expensive phonies.”

  “Oh, no, this one’s perfectly genuine. He’s quite nice, really, only he’s so wet. But Father’s been caught too often before. He got hold of this Count’s passport and took it down to the French Consulate, and they said it was quite all right.”

  “The idea bei
ng,” Simon commented shrewdly, “that Papa doesn’t want any comebacks after he’s made you the Countess de Beaucroix.”

  She didn’t answer at once, and Simon himself was busy with the task of passing a truck on the wrong side, whizzing over a crossing while the lights changed from amber to red, and making a skidding turn under the nose of a taxi at the next red light. But there was something about him that had always had an uncanny knack of unlocking other people’s conventional reserves, and besides, they had once danced together and talked much delightful nonsense while all the conventional inhabitants of London slept.

  She found herself saying: “You see, all Bill’s got is his radio business, and he’s invented a new valve that’s going to make him a fortune but I got Father to lend him the five thousand pounds Bill needed to develop it. Father gave him the money, but he made Bill sign a sort of mortgage that gave Father the right to take his invention away from him if the money isn’t paid back. Now Father says that if Bill tries to marry me he’ll foreclose, and Bill wouldn’t have anything left. I know how Bill’s getting on, and I know if he only has a few months more he’ll be able to pay Father back ten times over.”

  “Can’t you wait those few months?” asked the Saint. “If Bill’s on to something as good as that—”

  She shook her head.

  “But Father says that if I don’t marry the Comte de Beaucroix as soon as he asks me to—and I know he’s going to—he’ll foreclose on Bill anyway, and Bill won’t get a penny for all his work.” Her voice broke, and when Simon glanced at her quickly he saw the shine of tears in her eyes. “Bill doesn’t know—if you tell him, I’ll kill you! But he can’t understand what’s the matter with me. And I…I…” Her lovely face tightened with a strange bitterness. “I always thought these things only happened in pictures,” she said huskily. “How can any man be like that?”