"Don't mention it," said the Saint affably.
He turned the pages of an enormous notebook.
" 'Interviewed Luis Cartaro. Diamond rings and Marcel wave. Query—Do Pimples Make Good Mothers? Said——'
Sorry, wrong page. . . . Here we are: 'Memo. See Wilfred Garniman and ask the big—ask him about scorpions. 28 Mallaby Road, Harrow'. That's right, isn't it?"
"That's my name and address," said .Garniman shortly. "But I have still to learn the reason for this—er—"
"Visit," supplied the Saint. He was certainly feeling helpful this morning.
He closed his book and returned it to his pocket.
"As a matter of fact," he said, "we heard that the Saint was interested in you."
He was not even looking at Garniman as he spoke. But the mirror over the mantelpiece was in the tail of his eyes, and thus he saw the other's hands, which were clasped behind his back, close and unclose—once.
"The Saint?" said Garniman. "Really—"
"Are you sure I'm not detaining you?" asked the Saint, suddenly very brisk and solicitous. "If your staff will be anxious . . ."
"My staff can wait a few minutes."
"That's very good of you. But if we telephoned them——"
"I assure you—that is quite unnecessary."
"I shouldn't like to think of your office being disorganised——"
"You need not trouble," said Garniman. He moved across the room. "Will you smoke?"
"Thanks," said the Saint.
He had just taken the first puff from a cigarette when Garniman turned round with a carved ebony box in his hand.
"Oh," said Mr. Garniman, a trifle blankly.
"Not at all," said the Saint, who was never embarrassed. "Have one of mine?"
He extended his case, but Garniman shook his head.
"I never smoke during the day. Would it be too early to offer you a drink?"
"I'm afraid so—much too late," agreed Simon blandly.
Garniman returned the ebony box to the side table from which he had taken it. Then he swung round abruptly.
"Well?" he demanded. "What's the idea?"
The Saint appeared perplexed.
"What's what idea?" he inquired innocently.
Garniman's eyebrows came down a little.
"What's all this about scorpions——and the Saint?"
"According to the Saint ——"
"I don't understand you. I thought the Saint had disappeared long ago."
"Then you were grievously in error, dear heart," murmured Simon Templar coolly. "Because I am myself the Saint."
He lounged against a book-case, smiling and debonair, and his lazy blue eyes rested mockingly on the other's pale plump face.
"And I'm afraid you're the Scorpion, Wilfred," he said.
For a moment Mr. Garniman stood quite still. And then he shrugged.
"I believe I read in the newspapers that you had been pardoned and had retired from business," he said, "so I suppose it would be useless for me to communicate your confession to the police. As for this scorpion that you have referred to several times——"
"Yourself," the Saint corrected him gently, and Garniman shrugged again.
"Whatever delusion you are suffering from "
"Not a delusion, Wilfred."
"It is immaterial to me what you call it."
The Saint seemed to lounge even more languidly, his hands deep in his pockets, a thoughtful and reckless smile playing lightly about his lips.
"I call it a fact," he said softly. "And you will keep your hands away from that bell until I've finished talking. . . . You are the Scorpion, Wilfred, and you're probably the most successful blackmailer of the age. I grant you that—your technique is novel and thorough. But blackmail is a nasty crime. Your ingenuity has already driven two men to suicide. That was stupid of them, but it was also very naughty of you. In fact, it would really give me great pleasure to peg you in your front garden and push this highly desirable residence over on top of you; but for one thing I've promised to reserve you for the hangman and for another thing I've got my income tax to pay, so——Excuse me one moment."
Something like a flying chip of frozen quicksilver flashed across the room and plonked crisply into the wooden panel around the bell-push towards which Garniman's fingers were sidling. It actually passed between his second and third fingers, so that he felt the swift chill of its passage and snatched his hand away as if it had received an electric shock. But the Saint continued his languid propping up of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and he did not appear to have moved.
"Just do what you're told, Wilfred, and everything will be quite all right—but I've got lots more of them there missiles packed in my pants," murmured the Saint soothingly, warningly, and untruthfully—though Mr. Garniman had no means of perceiving this last adverb. "What was I saying? . . . Oh yes. I have my income tax to pay——"
Garniman took a sudden step forward, and his lips twisted in a snarl.
"Look here——"
"Where?" asked the Saint excitedly.
Mr. Garniman swallowed. The Saint heard him distinctly.
"You thrust yourself in here under a false name—you behave like a raving lunatic—then you make the most wild and fantastic accusations—you——"
"Throw knives about the place——"
"What the devil," bellowed Mr. Garniman, "do you mean by it?"
"Sir," suggested the Saint mildly.
"What the devil," bellowed Mr. Garniman, "do you mean— 'sir'?"
"Thank you," said the Saint.
Mr. Garniman glared. "What the——"
"O.K.," said the Saint pleasantly. "I heard you the second time. So long as you go on calling me 'sir', I shall know that everything is perfectly respectable and polite. And now we've lost the place again. Half a minute. . . . Here we are: 'I have my income tax to pay'— "
"Will you get out at once," asked Garniman, rather quietly, "or must I send for the police?"
Simon considered the question.
"I should send for the police," he suggested at length.
He hitched himself off the book-case and sauntered leisurely across the room. He detached his little knife from the bell panel, tested the point delicately on his thumb, and restored the weapon to the sheath under his left sleeve; and Wilfred Garniman watched him without speaking. And then the Saint turned.
"Certainly—I should send for the police," he drawled. "They will be interested. It's quite true that I had a pardon for some old offences; but whether I've gone out of business, or whether I'm simply just a little cleverer than Chief Inspector Teal, is a point that is often debated at Scotland Yard. I think that any light you could throw on the problem would be welcomed."
Garniman was still silent; and the Saint looked at him, and laughed caressingly.
"On the other hand—if you're bright enough to see a few objections to that idea—you might prefer to push quietly on to your beautiful office and think over some of the other things I've said. Particularly those pregnant words about my income tax."
"Is that all you have to say?" asked Garniman, in the same low voice; and the Saint nodded.
"It'll do for now," he said lightly. "And since you seem to have decided against the police, I think I'll beetle off and concentrate on the method by which you're going to be induced to contribute to the Inland Revenue."
The slightest glitter of expression came to Wilfred Garniman's eyes for a moment, and was gone again. He walked to the door and opened it.
"I'm obliged," he said.
"After you, dear old reed-warbler," said the Saint courteously.
He permitted Garniman to precede him out of the room, and stood in the hall adjusting the piratical slant of his hat.
"I presume we shall meet again?" Garniman remarked.
His tone was level and conversational. And the Saint smiled.
"You might even bet on it," he said.
"Then—au revoir."
Th
e Saint tilted back his hat and watched the other turn on his heels and go up the stairs.
Then he opened the door and stepped out; and the heavy ornamental stone flower-pot that began to gravitate earthwards at the same moment actually flicked the brim of his Stetson before it split thunderously on the flagged path an inch behind his right heel.
Simon revolved slowly, his hands still in his pockets, and cocked an eyebrow at the debris; and then he strolled back under the porch and applied his forefinger to the bell.
Presently the maid answered the door.
"I think Mr. Garniman has dropped the aspidistra," he murmured chattily, and resumed, his interrupted exit before the bulging eyes of an audience of one.
Chapter VIII
"But what on earth," asked Patricia helplessly, "was the point of that?"
"It was an exercise in tact," said the Saint modestly.
The girl stared.
"If I could only see it," she begun; and then the Saint laughed.
"You will, old darling," he said.
He leaned back and lighted another cigarette.
"Mr. Wilfred Garniman," he remarked, "is a surprisingly intelligent sort of cove. There was very little nonsense—and most of what there was was my own free gift to the nation. I grant you he added to his present charge-sheet by offering me a cigarette and then a drink; but that's only because, as I've told you before, he's an amateur. I'm afraid he's been reading too many thrillers, and they've put ideas into his head. But on the really important point he was most professionally bright. The way the calm suddenly broke out in the middle of the storm was quite astonishing to watch."
"And by this time," said Patricia, "he's probably going on being calm a couple of hundred miles away."
Simon shook his head.
"Not Wilfred," he said confidently. "Except when he's loosing off six-shooters and throwing architecture about, Wilfred is a really first-class amateur. And he is so rapid on the uptake that if he fell off the fortieth floor of the Empire Building he would be sitting on the roof before he knew what had happened. Without any assistance from me, he divined that I had no intention of calling in the police. So he knew he wasn't very much worse off than he was before."
"Why?"
"He may be an amateur, as I keep telling you, but he's efficient. Long before his house started to fall to pieces on me, he'd begun to make friendly attempts to bump me off. That was because he'd surveyed all the risks before he started in business, and he figured that his graft was exactly the kind of graft that would make me sit up and take notice. In which he was darned right. I just breezed in and proved it to him. He told me himself that he was unmarried; I wasn't able to get him to tell me anything about his lawful affairs, but the butcher told me that he was supposed to be 'something in the City'—so I acquired two items of information. I also verified his home address, which was the most important thing; and I impressed him with my own brilliance and charm of personality, which was the next most important. I played the perfect clown, because that's the way these situations always get me, but in the intervals between laughs I did everything that I set out to do. And he knew it—as I meant him to."
"And what happens next?"
"The private war will go on," said the Saint comfortably.
His deductions, as usual, were precisely true; but there was one twist in the affairs of Wilfred Garniman of which he did not know, and if he had known of it he might not have taken life quite so easily as he did for the next few days. That is just possible.
On the morning of that first interview, he had hung around in the middle distances of Mallaby Road with intent to increase his store of information; but Mr. Garniman had driven off to his righteous labours in a car which the Saint knew at a glance it would be useless to attempt to follow in a taxi. On the second morning, the Saint decorated the same middle distances at the wheel of his own car, but a traffic jam at Marble Arch baulked him of his quarry. On the third morning he tried again, and collected two punctures in the first half-mile; and when he got out to inspect the damage he found sharp steel spikes strewn all over the road. Then, fearing that four consecutive seven-o'clock breakfasts might affect his health, the Saint stayed in bed on the fourth morning and did some thinking.
One error in his own technique he perceived quite clearly.
"If I'd sleuthed him on the first morning, and postponed the backchat till the second, I should have been a bright lad," he said. "My genius seems to have gone off the boil."
That something of the sort had happened was also evidenced by the fact that during those four days the problem of evolving a really agile method of inducing Mr. Garniman to part with a proportion of his ill-gotten gains continued to elude him.
Chief Inspector Teal heard the whole story when he called in on the evening of that fourth day to make inquiries, and was almost offensive.
The Saint sat at his desk after the detective had gone, and contemplated the net result of his ninety-six hours' cerebration moodily. This consisted of a twelve-line epilogue to the Epic History of Charles.
His will was read. His father learned
Charles wished his body to be burned
With huge heroic flames of fire
Upon a Roman funeral pyre.
But Charles's pa, sole legatee,
Averse to such publicity,
Thought that his bidding might be done
Without disturbing anyone,
And, in a highly touching scene,
Cremated him at Kensal Green.
And so Charles has his little shrine
With cavalier and concubine.
Simon Templar scowled sombrely at the sheet for some time; and then, with a sudden impatience, he heaved the inkpot out of the window and stood up.
"Pat," he said, "I feel that the time is ripe for us to push into a really wicked night club and drown our sorrows in iced ginger-beer."
The girl closed her book and smiled at him.
"Where shall we go?" she asked; and then the Saint suddenly shot across the room as if he had been touched with a hot iron.
"Holy Pete!" he yelled. "Pat—old sweetheart—old angel——"
Patricia blinked at him.
"My dear old lad——"
"Hell to all dear old lads!" cried the Saint recklessly.
He took her by the arms, swung her bodily out of her chair, put her down, rumpled her hair, and kissed her.
"Paddle on," he commanded breathlessly. "Go on—go and have a bath—dress—undress—glue your face on—anything. Sew a gun into the cami-whatnots, find a butterfly net—and let's go!"
"But what's the excitement about?"
"We're going entomo-botanising. We're going to prowl around the West End fishing for beetles. We're going to look at every night club in London—I'm a member of them all. If we don't catch anything, it won't be my fault. We're going to knock the L out of London and use it to tie the Home Secretary's ears together. The voice of the flatfooted periwinkle shall be heard in the land——"
He was still burbling foolishly when Patricia fled; but when she returned he was resplendent in Gents' Evening Wear and wielding a cocktail-shaker with a wild exuberance that made her almost giddy to watch.
"For heaven's sake," she said, catching his arm, "pull yourself together and tell me something!"
"Sure," said the Saint daftly. "That nightie of yours is a dream. Or is it meant to be a dress? You can never tell, with these long skirts. And I don't want to be personal, but are you sure you haven't forgotten to put on the back or posterior part? I can see all your spine. Not that I mind, but . . .Talking of swine—spine—there was a very fine specimen at the Embassy the other night. Must have measured at least thirty-two inches from snout to——They say the man who landed it played it for three weeks. Ordinarily trout line and gaff, you know. . . ."
Patricia Holm was almost hysterical by the time they reached the Carlton, where the Saint had decided to dine. And it was not until he had ordered an extravagant d
inner, with appropriate wines, that she was able to make him listen to a sober question. And then he became the picture of innocent amazement.
"But didn't you get me?" he asked. "Hadn't you figured it out for yourself? I thought you were there long ago. Have you forgotten my little exploit at the Bird's Nest? Who d'you think paid for that bit of coloured mosquito-net you're wearing? Who bought these studs I'm wearing? Who, if it comes to that, is standing us this six-course indigestion? . . . Well, some people might say it was Montgomery Bird, but personally——"
The girl gasped. "You mean that other man at the Bird's Nest was the Scorpion?"
"Who else? . . . But I never rumbled to it till tonight! I told you he was busy putting the black on Montgomery when Teal and I butted in. I overheard the whole conversation, and I was certainly curious. I made a mental note at the time to investigate that bearded battleship, but it never came into my head that it must have been Wilfred himself—I'm damned if I know why!"
Patricia nodded.
"I'd forgotten to think of it myself," she said.
"And I must have been fast asleep the whole time! Of course it was the Scorpion—and his graft's a bigger one than I ever dreamed. He's got organisation, that guy. He probably has his finger in half the wicked pies that are being cooked in this big city. If he was on to Montgomery, there's no reason why he shouldn't have got on to a dozen others that you and I can think of; and he'll be drawing his percentage from the whole bunch. I grant you I put Montgomery out of business, but ——"
"If you're right," said Patricia, "and the Scorpion hasn't done a bunk, we may find him anywhere."
"Tonight," said the Saint. "Or, if not tonight, some other night. And I'm prepared to keep on looking. But my income tax has got to be paid tomorrow, and so I want the reunion to be tonight."
"Have you got an idea?"
"I've got a dozen," said the Saint. "And one of them says that Wilfred is going to have an Evening!"
His brain had suddenly picked up its stride again. In a few minutes he had sketched out a plan of campaign as slick and agile as anything his fertile genius had ever devised. And once again he was proved a true prophet, though the proceedings took a slight twist which he had not foreseen.
The Saint vs Scotland Yard (The Holy Terror) Page 5
