“Dammit, if you want to commit suicide, must you come and do it here?”
“Suicide?” repeated the Saint vaguely. “I hadn’t—”
“Pish!” squawked the professor.
He snatched up a loose length of wire and tossed it on to the dome on which Simon had been preparing to rest himself. There was a momentary crackle of hot blue flame—and the wire ceased to resemble anything like wire. It simply trickled down the side of the dome in the shape of a few incandescent drops of molten metal, and Simon Templar mopped his brow.
He retreated towards the clear space around the door with some alacrity.
“Thanks very much, professor,” he remarked. “Have you any more firework effects like that?”
“Bah!” croaked the professor huffily.
He went back to his bench and wiped his hands on a piece of rag, with every symptom of a society welfare worker removing the contamination of an afternoon with the deserving poor.
“Is there anything else you want to know?” he barked, and the Saint braced himself for the shot that had to be taken in the dark.
“When are we going to see some gold?”
The professor seemed on the verge of an outburst beside which his former demonstrations would pale into polite tea-table chatter. And then with a tremendous effort he controlled himself. He addressed the Saint with the dreadfully laboured restraint of a doting mother taking an interest in the precocities of a rival parent’s prodigy and thinking what an abominable little beast he is.
“When you can use your eyes. When you can get some glasses powerful enough to show you something smaller than a haystack. Or else when you can improve on my methods and make gold run out of the bathroom tap. That’s when.” The old man stalked across to a cupboard and flung it open. “There. Look again. Try to see it. Borrow a microscope if you have to. But for heaven’s sake, young man”—the quavering voice lost some of its self-control and rose two shrill notes—“for heaven’s sake, don’t utter any more blithering idiocies like that in my laboratory.”
Simon stared into the cupboard.
He had never dreamed of seeing wealth like that concentrated in tangible form under his eyes. From floor to ceiling the cupboard was stacked high with it—great glittering yellow ingots the size of bricks reflecting the lamplight in one soaring block of tawny sleekness like the realisation of a miser’s dream. The sight of it dazed him. There must have been over a million pounds’ worth of the metal heaped carelessly into that tall rectangular cavity in the wall. And back and forth across his memory flashed the inane repetition of the dying young roué in Paris: “He says Binks can make gold…”
The professor’s cracked voice broke in on him through a kind of fog.
“Well? Can you see it? Have you found your eyes at last? Eh? Does it begin to satisfy you?”
Simon had to fight for the smooth use of his tongue.
“Naturally, that’s…er…very satisfactory, Dr Quell, but—”
“Very satisfactory. I should think so.” The professor snorted. “Half a hundredweight every hour. Very satisfactory. Faugh! You’re a fool—that’s what you are. Dammit, if the rest of the Secret Service are as thick-headed as you, I don’t know why the country should bother to have a Secret Service.”
The Saint stood very still.
But he felt as if a light-bomb had exploded inside him. The mystery was opening out before his eyes with a suddenness that could only be compared with an explosion. The detached items of it whirled around like scattered aircraft in the beam of a searchlight, and fell luminously into formation with a precision that was uncanny. Everything fitted in its place: the murder of Brian Quell, the King’s Messenger who lay dead in an adjoining room, the man who could make gold…the man called “Binks”—a queer nickname to be given to such a brilliant and irritable old magician by his dissolute young brother! And that last mordant reference to the Secret Service: an idea that was worthy of the genius of Mr Jones—so much simpler, so much more ingenious and effective than the obvious and hackneyed alternative of threats and torture…Most astounding of all, the proof that the essential pivot of the thing was true. Sylvester Quell—“Binks”—could make gold. He had made it—hundredweights of it. He was making more.
Simon heard him grousing on in the same cracked querulous voice.
“I don’t know why I came here. I could have done better in my own laboratory. Look after me, eh? With the intelligence you’ve got, you couldn’t look after yourself. What use d’you think you are? Why don’t you go away and let me do my work? You’re worse than that other man, with his stupid questions and his school-room tests. Does he think I don’t know real gold when I make it?”
It was all quite clear to the Saint. The only question left was how he should act. He could give very little time now to arguments and discussions—escape from that house had become one of the paramount considerations of his life, a thing more vitally important than he had ever thought it could be.
His hand went back to his pocket, his thumb feeling around for the safety-catch of his automatic and pressing it gently out of engagement. Under straight dark brows the blue Saintly eyes centred on Quell like spear-points.
“Of course not, professor. But about the notes of your process—”
He was so intent on the scientist that the movement of the door behind him missed his ears. The crack of an automatic fired at close quarters battered and stung his ear-drums, and the bullet plucked at his coat. Somehow he was untouched—it is much easier to miss with an automatic than any inexperienced person would believe, and perhaps Mr Jones’s haste made him snatch at the pull-off. The Saint spun round and fired from his pocket; his nerves were steadier, and he scored where he meant to score—on the gun in the big man’s hand. The weapon dropped to the floor, and Simon stepped closer.
“Keep still.”
The big man’s face was twisted with fury. Behind him, Simon heard Quell’s shrill whine.
“What does this mean, sir? Eh? Dammit—”
The Saint smiled.
“I’m afraid you’ve been taken in, professor. Our friend no more belongs to the Secret Service—”
“Than you do!” The big man’s voice snarled in viciously. His fists were clenched and his eyes murderous—only the Saint’s gun held him where he stood. “This is one of the men I warned you about, professor—he’s trying to steal your secret, that’s what it means! The damned traitor!—if I could only get my hands on him…For God’s sake why don’t you do something? He’s probably one of the gang that killed your brother—”
“Stop that!”
The Saint’s voice cracked through the room like a blade of lightning, but he saw where the big man’s desperate clatter of words was leading to a fraction of a second too late. Quell leapt at him suddenly with a kind of sob, before Simon had time to turn. The professor’s skinny hand wrestled with his gun wrist and hate-crazed talons clawed at his throat. Simon stumbled sideways under the berserk fury of the scientist’s onslaught, and his aim on the man called Jones was hopelessly lost. They swayed together in the corner. Quell’s hysterical breathing hissed and moaned horribly in the Saint’s ears, and over the demented man’s shoulder he saw Jones stooping with his left hand for the fallen gun.
The Saint saw certain and relentless death blazing across his path like an express train. With a savage gathering of all his muscles he shook the professor off and sent him reeling back like a rag doll. Quell’s dreadful shriek rang in his ears as Simon leapt across the dividing space and kicked away the automatic that the big man’s fingers were within an inch of touching.
The gun clanged heavily into a piece of metal on the far side of the room, and Simon caught the big man by one lapel of his coat and spun him round. The Saint’s gun rammed into the big man’s ribs with a brutal forcefulness that made the other wince.
“Don’t try that again.”
Simon’s whisper floated into the other’s ears with an arctic gentleness that could not have been dr
iven deeper home by a hundred megaphones. It carried a rasping huskiness of meaning that only a fool could have mistaken. And Mr Jones was no fool. He stood frozen into stone, but the sweat stood out in glistening beads on his forehead.
The Saint flashed one glance sideways, and saw what Mr Jones had seen first.
Sylvester Quell was sitting on the floor with his back to the shining dome-like contrivance that Simon had seen in action. One hand still rested on the dome, as if by some kind of spastic attraction, exactly as it had involuntarily gone out to save himself when the Saint’s frantic struggle sent him stumbling back against the machine, but the hand was stiff and curiously blackened. The professor’s upturned face was twisted in a hideous grin…Whilst Simon looked, the head slipped sideways and lolled over on one shoulder…
7
A twitch of expression tensed over the face of the man who called himself Jones. His eyebrows were drawn down at the bridge of his nose, and strained upwards at the outside corners; the eyes under them were swollen and bloodshot.
“You killed him,” he rasped.
“I’m afraid I did,” said the Saint. “An unfortunate result of my efforts at self-defence—for which you were entirely responsible.”
“You’ll have a job to prove it.”
The Saint’s gentlest smile plucked for an instant at thin-drawn lips.
“I don’t know whether I shall try.”
He grasped the big man’s shoulder suddenly and whirled him half round again, driving him back towards the door.
“Move on, comrade.”
“Where are you going?”
“Downstairs, I’ve got a friend of mine waiting with claustrophobia, and I guess she’s been locked up long enough for one day. And if she couldn’t eat all those sausages I might find a home for one.”
They went down the stairs step by step, in a kind of tango style that would have been humorous to anyone who was insensitive to the deadly tension of it. But Simon Templar was giving no more chances. His forefinger was curled tightly over the trigger for every foot of the way, and the big man kept pace with him in a silence that prickled with malignant vigilance. They came to the door of the room below, and the Saint stopped.
“Open it.”
The big man obeyed, turning the lock with a key which he took from his trouser pocket. Simon kicked the door wider.
“This way, Pat.”
He waited on the landing while the girl came out, never shifting his eyes from the big man’s venomous stillness. Patricia touched his sleeve, and he smiled.
“Simon—then it wasn’t you. I heard…”
“That scream?” Simon slipped an arm round her and held her for a moment. “Why—did you think my voice was as bad as that, old darling?…No, but it wasn’t brother Jones either, which is a pity.”
“Then who was it?”
“It was Dr Quell. Pat, we’ve struck something a little tougher than I expected, and it hasn’t turned out too well. This is just once in our lives that Claud Eustace will be useful. Once upon a time we might have handled it alone, but I think I promised to be careful.”
He looked at his prisoner.
“I want your telephone,” he said.
The big man hesitated, and Simon’s gun screwed in his ribs.
“C’mon. You can have indigestion afterwards.” Simon released the girl. “And that reminds me—if you did leave one of those sausages…”
Again they descended step by step towards the hall, with the Saint using his free hand to feed himself in a manner that is rarely practised in the best circles. The telephone was in the hall, on a small table by the front door, and Simon turned his gun over to Patricia and walked across to it, chewing. He leaned a chair against the door and sat in it. The dial buzzed and clicked.
“Hullo…I want Chief Inspector Teal…Yeah—and nobody else. Simon Templar speaking. And make it snappy!”
The big man took a step towards him, his face yellow and his hands working. And immediately the girl’s finger took up the slack of the trigger. It was an almost imperceptible movement, but Mr Jones saw it, and the steady deliberateness of it was more significant than anything that had entered his imagination since the gun changed hands. He halted abruptly, and the Saint grinned.
“Hullo. Is that you, Claud?…Well, I want you—Yeah—for the first time in my life I’ll be glad to see you. Come right over, and bring as many friends as you like…I can’t tell you on the phone, but I promise it’ll be worth the trip. There’s any amount of dead bodies in the house, and…Well, I suppose I can find out for you. Hold on.”
He clamped a hand over the mouthpiece and looked across the table.
“What’s the address, Jones?”
“You’d better go on finding out,” retorted the big man sullenly.
“Sure.” The Saint’s smile was angelic. “I’ll find out. I’ll go to the street corner and see. And before I go I’ll just kick you once round the hall—just to see my legs are functioning.”
He lounged round the table, and their eyes met.
“This is two hundred and eight Meadowbrook Road,” said the man grimly.
“Thanks a lot.” Simon dropped into his chair again and picked up the telephone. “Two-o-eight, Meadowbrook Road, Hampstead—I’ll be here when you come—O.K., Eustace.”
He rose.
“Let’s climb stairs again,” he said brightly.
He took over the gun and shepherded the party aloft. The show had to be seen through, and his telephone call to Chief Inspector Teal had set a time limit on the action that could not be altered. It was a far cry from that deserted house to the hotel in Paris where Brian Quell had died, and yet Simon knew that he was watching the end of a coherent chain of circumstances that had moved with the inscrutable remorselessness of a Greek tragedy. Fate had thrust him into the story again and again, as if resolved that there should be no possibility of a failure in the link that bore his name, and it was ordained that he should write the end of the story in his own way.
The laboratory upstairs stood wide open. Simon pushed the big man in, and followed closely behind. Patricia Holm came last: she saw the professor huddled back against his machine with his face still distorted in the ghastly grimace that the death-agony of high-voltage electricity had stamped into his features, and bit her lip. But she said nothing. Her questioning eyes searched the Saint’s countenance of carved brown granite, and Simon backed away a little from his captive and locked the door behind him.
“We haven’t a lot of time, Jones,” he remarked quietly, and the big man’s lips snarled.
“That’s your fault.”
“Doubtless. But there it is. Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal is on his way, and we have one or two things to settle before he comes. Before we start, may I congratulate you?”
“I don’t want any congratulations.”
“Never mind, you deserve them.” The Saint fished out his cigarette case with his left hand. Quite naturally he extracted and lighted a cigarette, and stole a glance at his wrist-watch while he did so. His brain worked like a taxi-meter, weighing out miles and minutes. “I think I’ve got everything taped but you can check me up if I go wrong anywhere. Somehow or other—we won’t speculate how—you got to know that Dr Quell had just perfected a perfectly sound commercial method of transmuting metals. It’s been done already on a small scale, but the expense of the process ruled it right out as a get-rich-quick proposition. Quell had worked along a new line, and made it a financial cinch.”
“You must have had a long talk with him,” said the big man sardonically.
“I did…However—your next move, of course, was to get the process for yourself. You’re really interesting, Jones—you work on such original lines. Where the ordinary crook would have tried to capture the professor and torture him, you thought of subtler methods. You heard of Quell’s brother, a good-for-nothing idler who was always drunk and usually broke. You went over to Paris and tried to get him in with you, figuring that he coul
d get Sylvester’s confidence when no one else could. But Brian Quell had a streak of honesty in him that you hadn’t reckoned with. He turned you down—and then he knew too much. You couldn’t risk him remembering you when he sobered up. So you shot him. I was there. A rotten shot, Jones—just like the one you took at me this evening, or that other one last night. Gun work is a gift, brother, and you simply haven’t got it.”
The big man said nothing.
“You knew I knew something about Brian Quell’s murder, so you tried to get me. That talk about an ‘envoy’ of yours was the bunk—you were playing the hand alone, because you knew there wasn’t a crook on earth who could be trusted on a thing as big as this.” The Saint never paused in his analysis, but his eyes were riveted to the prisoner’s face, and he would have known at once if his shot in the dark went astray. Not the faintest change of expression answered him, and he knew he was right. Jones was alone. “By the way, I suppose you wouldn’t like to tell me exactly how you knew something had gone wrong in Paris?”
“If you want to know, I thought I heard someone move in the corridor outside, and I went out to make sure. The door blew shut behind me, on an automatic lock. I had to stand outside and listen. Then someone really did come along the passage—”
“And you had to beat it.” Simon nodded. “But I don’t think you rang me up this morning just to make out how much I heard. What you wanted was to hear my voice, so that you could imitate it.”
“He did it perfectly,” said Patricia.
The Saint smiled genially.
“You see, Jones. If you couldn’t have made your fortune as a gun artist, you might have had a swell career as a ventriloquist. But you wouldn’t have it. You wanted to be a Master Mind, and that’s where the sawdust came out. My dear old borzoi, did you think we’d never heard of that taxi joke before? Did you think poor little Patricia with all her experience of sin, was falling for a gag like that? Jones, that was very silly of you—quite irreparably silly. We’ve let you have your little joke just because it seemed the easiest way to get a close-up of your beautiful whiskers. If you’d left us your address before you rang off this morning we’d have been saved the trouble but as it was—”
The Saint and Mr. Teal (The Saint Series) Page 6
