Prelude For War s-19

by Leslie Charteris

  The Saint's patience came to an explosive end. He took hold of the woman by her raw beefy elbows and removed her from the window.

  "Pardon me, madam," he said in a voice that the booking clerk was meant to hear. "I'm a police officer, and I'm busy."

  He stuck his head down to the pigeonhole from which sixpenny excursion tickets are doled out at English railway stations with more grudging condescension than thousand-pound notes are passed out at the Bank of England.

  "That young lady who was here just before your last customer," he said. "Where did she want to go to?"

  Fortunately the clerk had a long memory.

  "Anford, sir."

  "Give me a ticket there—first class."

  Simon slid money under the grille and turned away, grab­bing up his ticket. He shoved past the gaping queue and col­lared a porter who was mooning by.

  "Which is the next train to Anford, and where does it go from?" he snapped.

  "Anford, sir?"

  "Yes. Anford."

  "Anford," said the porter, digesting the name. "Anford."

  "Anford," said the Saint gutturally.

  "Anford," said the porter, keeping his end up without any sign of fatigue. "Where would that be, sir?"

  "It would be in Wiltshire. You change at Marlborough."

  "Ar, Marlborough." The porter scratched his head. "Marlborough. Marlborough. Then it's a Marlborough train you'd be wanting, sir."

  Simon overcame a fearful impulse to assault him.

  "Yes. I could manage with a Marlborough train."

  "There's one just leaving from platform six," said the man laboriously, as though a dark secret were being dragged out of him, "but I dunno as how you'd have time to catch that one——"

  The Saint left him to be his own audience. He was off like a bolt out of a crossbow, plunging along towards an ancient smoky board that did its best not to reveal the whereabouts of platform six. And while he was on his way he was trying to place this new and unexpected destina­tion of Lady Valerie's. Was she going there because she was at Paddington and it was the first place that came into her head? Or was she subtle enough to think that it was the last place where she would be looked for? Or had she some positive purpose? Or ...

  Something seemed to go off like a silent bomb inside the Saint's chest. The concussion threw his heart off its beat, squeezed all the air out of his lungs; his legs felt as if the marrow had been sucked out of the bones. He kept on walk­ing through nothing but sheer muscular automatism.

  There was one thing he had forgotten, and he had almost walked straight into it.

  A burly man in a dark suit was pacing bovinely past the entrance to the platform, methodically scanning the faces of all the passengers who came within his view. He had the trade marks of Scotland Yard stamped all over him, and Simon could have picked him out of a crowd at five hundred yards if he had not been too preoccupied to look for him. As it was, another dozen steps would have planted him squarely on the man's shinily booted toes.

  The alarm had gone out in earnest. A searingly vengeful Chief Inspector Teal had covered every exit from London that it was in his power to cover. No doubt there were the same burly bovine men at every station in the metropolis. The Saint hadn't a snowflake's hope in hell of boarding the train that Lady Valerie had taken. He would be lucky enough to get out of Paddington without irons on his wrists.

  VII

  How Simon Templar Conversed with

  Sundry Persons, and Police-Constable

  Reginald Congratulated Him

  SIMON KEPT ON WALKING. How he managed it was one of those unsung victories of mind over matter; but he kept on. His steps remained outwardly unchanged, and to all ordi­nary appearances he was still only one of the undistinguished members of the crowd who scurried to and fro like well-trained movie extras providing background atmosphere for the picture of any busy terminus. None of them knew how easy it would have been for him to turn and run like a hunted fox.

  But that would have singled him out at once. His only hope was to retain the anonymity which had so far given him divine protection. Quietly, evenly, without a trace of excitement, the Saint walked on, turning in a gradual curve that took him imperceptibly further away from the watching detective and finally reversed his direction entirely without ever including an abrupt movement that would have caught anyone's eye. Icy needles danced over his skin, but he com­pleted the manoeuvre without a tremor. He knew that the detective had seen him and was looking at him; as he headed back towards the nearest exit, he could feel the man's eyes boring into the back of his neck. . . .

  God who in His infinite wisdom has ordained that all respectable English citizens shall go for their holidays to the same places at the same time chose that moment to let a fresh horde of tourists loose in the station. Hot, sun blis­tered, multitudinous, clutching their bags and parcels and souvenirs and progeny, they swarmed around the Saint and swallowed him up. Simon had never been glad of such in­undations before, but he was so grateful for that one that he could have embraced each individual member of the motley mob. He let himself be carried along by the spate of human­ity, and it held him in its midst and swept him through the exit he had been making for, and the rearguard jammed in the doors behind him with a hearty unanimity that could scarcely have impeded pursuit more effectively if it had been organized.

  Simon did not wait to see what happened. Perhaps the detective who had seen him was still not certain of his identification; perhaps he had at last made up his mind and was even then trying to struggle through the crowd; but in either event the Saint had no desire to linger. As soon as he was outside he set off at the speed of a racing walker, and felt as if he only began to breathe again when he had crossed Eastbourne Terrace with no sounds of a hue and cry behind him.

  His taxi driver was still optimistically waiting, and he opened the nearest door as he saw the Saint approach.

  Simon smiled and shook his head.

  "Sorry," he said, "but I just came to tell you you needn't wait any more."

  "Orl right, guv'nor."

  The driver looked dejected.

  Simon tucked a ten-shilling note into the front of his coat.

  "On your way. And have a drink with me when they open."

  "That I will, guv'nor," said the man less glumly. "And I 'opes I see you again."

  The Saint stood on hot bricks until the cab turned the next corner and passed out of sight.

  Then he got into the driving seat of the Daimler.

  It was his own car, anyway, although the taxi driver might not have appreciated that. And by the grace of good angels it was a car that he had always used for various nefarious purposes, and therefore it had been registered in a number of different names but never in his own. It was one car whose number plates the mobile police would not be watching for. Perhaps more cogently than any of those things, it was the only car at his immediate disposal. It was not what he would have chosen for what he had to do, but he could not choose.

  Lady Valerie had left the keys in the switch and the engine was nicely warm. The Saint was away in four sec­onds after his taxi disappeared.

  And on a trip like he had to make every second was vital. And he had to waste precious scores of them, feeling his way westwards out of London by devious and unfre­quented back streets. The same dogged efficiency that had covered the railway stations was sure to have stationed watchers on the main traffic arteries leading out of London, but the labyrinthine ways of London and its suburbs are so many that it would have been impossible to cover every outlet. And Simon Templar had an encyclopedic memory for maps that would have staggered a professional cartog­rapher. It was a gift that he had developed and disciplined for years against just such contingencies as this. He drove through back streets and suburban avenues and afterwards through country lanes, and did not join a main road until he came into Bracknell.

  Then he gave the Daimler its head to the last mile an hour that could be squeezed out of it.

&nbs
p; He drove with one eye on the road and the other switch­ing between the speedometer and the dashboard clock. To race an express train in the Hirondel was nothing, but to attempt it in that sedate and dowager-worthy limousine was something else. Mathematically it came out to be simply and flatly impossible. But Anford was a one-horse village on an antiquated single-track branch line over which trains shuttled back and forth with no great respect for time­tables and never at even official intervals of less than an hour. The odds were all against Lady Valerie catching an immediate connection; and that uncertain margin of delay at Marlborough was all that the Saint could hope to race against.

  A few days ago he had taken the Hirondel from Anford to London in an hour and twenty-five minutes. Risking his neck at least once in every two miles, he stopped the Daimler at Anford Station in three minutes under two hours.

  He jumped out and went in.

  It took him a little while to find a timetable. Eventually he located one, pasted to a board on the wall and smudged and roughened with the trails of many grubby fingers that had painstakingly traced routes across its closely printed acreage before him. With difficulty he analyzed the eye-aching maze of figures with which railway companies strive so nobly to preserve the secret of their schedules. The train which Lady Valerie had caught should have reached Marlborough thirty-five minutes ago; and there was a connection to Anford listed for three minutes later.

  Simon searched the deserted premises and presently found the stationmaster weeding his garden.

  "When does the next train from Marlborough get in?" he asked.

  "The nex' train, sur? Urse been in already."

  "What's that?"

  The stationmaster pounced on a weed.

  "I said, urse been in already."

  "I mean the train that left Marlborough at four o'clock."

  "Urse been in."

  "But it couldn't!" protested the Saint. "It's never done that trip in forty minutes in its life!"

  The stationmaster bristled.

  "Well, urse done it today," he stated with justifiable pride.

  "What time did it get in?"

  "I dunno."

  "But surely——"

  "No, I dunno. It was five minutes ago be the clock, but the clock ain't been keepin' sich good time since we took the bird's nest outen ur."

  "Thank you," said the Saint shakily.

  "You're welcome, sur," said the stationmaster graciously, and resumed his weeding.

  The Saint ploughed back through the station on what seemed to be lengthening into an endless pilgrimage. In the station yard he found a new arrival, in the shape of an auto­mobile of venerable aspect against which leaned a no less venerable man in a peaked cap with a clay pipe stuck through the fringe of a moustache that almost hid his chin. Simon went up to him and seized him joyfully.

  "Did you just pick up a young lady here—a dark pretty girl in a light-blue suit?"

  The man cupped a hand to one ear.

  "Pardon?"

  Simon repeated his question.

  The driver sucked his pipe, producing a liquid whistling noise.

  "Old lady goin' on fifty, would that be?"

  "I said a young lady—about twenty-five."

  "I 'ad a young lady larst week——"

  "No, today."

  "No, Thursday."

  "Today."

  The man shook his head.

  "No, I ain't seen 'er. Where does she live?"

  "I want to know where she went to," bawled the Saint. "She got here on the last train. She may have taken a cab, or somebody may have met her. Did you see her?"

  "No, I didn't see 'er. Mebbe Charlie seed 'er."

  "Who's Charlie?"

  "Yus."

  'Who's Charlie?"

  "There ain't no need to shout at me," said the driver resentfully. "I can 'ear perfickly well. Charlie 'as the other taxi around 'ere. This 'll be 'im comin' along now."

  A noise like a threshing machine had arisen in the dis­tance. It grew louder. With a clatter like a dozen milk cans being shaken together in an iron box another venerable automobile rolled into the yard, came to a halt with a final explosion like a pistol shot and stood there with its nose steaming.

  "Oi," said the Saint's informant. "Charlie."

  A very long man peeled himself out of the second cab and came over. He had two large front teeth like a rabbit, and one of his eyes stared at the bridge of his nose.

  "Gennelman tryin' to find a lady," explained the man with the clay pipe.

  "A dark pretty girl, about twenty-five, in a light-blue suit," Simon repeated.

  "Hgh," said the long man. "I haw her."

  "You saw her?"

  "Hgh. Hungh hook her hu Hanghuh."

  "You took her to Anford?" said the Saint, straining for the interpretation.

  "Hgh."

  "Where did you go?"

  "Hanghuh."

  "I mean, what part of Anford?"

  "Hh Hohungh Hleeh."

  "I'm sorry," said the Saint, with desperate courtesy. "I didn't quite catch——"

  "Hh Hohungh Hleeh." .

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Hh Hohungh Hleeh."

  "Oh yes. You mean——"

  "Hh Hohungh Hleeh," said the long man, with some asperity.

  Simon felt the sweat coming out on the palms of his hands.

  "Can you tell me where that is?"

  "Hingh Hanghuh."

  Simon looked imploringly at his first friend.

  "You carn't miss it," said the man through his curtain of white whisker. "Straight through the market place, an' it's on yer left."

  Simon clapped a hand to his head.

  "Good God," he said. "You mean the Golden Fleece?"

  "Haingh hagh hogh I heengh hehhigh hu?" demanded the long man scornfully.

  The Saint smote them both on the back together.

  "You two beauties," he said rapturously. "Why did the goblins ever let you go?"

  He picked up the nearest hand, slapped money into it and started back for the Daimler at a run. For the first time since the beginning of that long feverish ordeal he felt that there was music in his soul again. Even the Daimler seemed to throw off its sedateness and fly like a bird over the short winding road that led from Anford Station into the town.

  In its way, the Golden Fleece was such an obvious desti­nation that he had not even considered it. And now again he wondered what was in Lady Valerie's mind.

  But wondering was only a pastime when he was within reach of knowledge. He parked the Daimler around the next turning beyond the hotel, where it would not be too obviously in view, and walked back. At that lifeless hour before the English inn is permitted by law to recommence its function for the evening, the lobby and lounge of the hotel were empty. There was not even any sign of tenancy at the office. He moved quietly over to the desk and looked at the register. The last signature on the page said "Valerie Woodchester" in a big round scrawl. In the column beside it had been entered a room number: 6.

  Simon flitted up the stairs. There was no one to question him. He moved along the upper corridor in effortless silence until he came to a door on which was painted the figure 6. When he saw it it was like Parsifal coming to the end of his journey. He stood for several seconds outside, not mov­ing, not even breathing, simply listening with ears keyed to hypernormal receptiveness. The only sounds they could catch were occasional almost inaudible rustlings beyond the door. He took a quick catlike step forward, grasped the handle and turned it smoothly, and went into the room.

  Lady Valerie looked up at him from a couch on the far side of the room with her face blurring into a blank oval of dumbfounded amazement.

  Simon locked the door and stood with his back to it.

  "Darling," he said reproachfully, but with the lilt of rapture still playing havoc with the evenness of his voice, "what was the matter with our hospitality?"

  2

  The room was one of those quainte dormitoryes which have always made th
e English country hotel so attractive to discriminating travellers. It was principally furnished with a gigantic imitation-oak wardrobe; an imitation mahogany dressing table with a tilting mirror; a black-enamelled iron bedstead with brass knobs on it; and a marble-topped washstand bearing a china basin with a china jug standing in it, a soap dish with no soap and a vase for toothbrushes. Under the marble slab were cupboard doors concealing unmentionable utensils, and under them stood a large china slop pail. The pattern on the wallpaper had apparently been designed to depict one of the wilder horti­cultural experiments of Mr Luther Burbank, in which purple tulips grew on the central stems of bright green cabbages, the whole crop being tied together with trailing coils and bows of pink and blue ribbon. The dimensions of the room were so cunningly contrived that a slender person of normal agility could, with the exercise of reason­able care, just manage to find a path between them without having to bark his shins or stub his toes on any particular piece of furniture. Even so, there was no more than barely sufficient room to contain the chintz-covered armchair in which Lady Valerie was sitting and behind which she had unsuccessfully tried to stuff away the sheaf of papers that she had been perusing when the Saint came in.

  Simon's satiric eye rested on the ends of documents that still protruded.

  "If you'd told us you wanted something to read," he said, "we could have lent you some good books."

  He leaned against the door, clothed in magnificent assur­ance, as if he had been conversationally breaking the ice with an old friend from whom he was sure to receive a cor­dial welcome.

  He got it. The stunned astonishment dissolved out of her face and a broad schoolgirlish grin spread over her mouth.

  "Well, I'm damned!" she said. "Aren't you marvellous? How on earth did you know I was here?"

  He grinned in return. After all that he had been through to find her he couldn't help it.

  "Haven't you heard about me?" he said. "I do these tricks for my living."

  "Of course," she said. "I always knew you were supposed to be frightfully clever, but I didn't really believe you were as clever as all that. . . . Oh well, we live and learn, and anyhow you haven't got it all your own way. I think I was pretty clever myself, the way I got away from your house. I worked it all out before I went to bed last night. Don't you think it was clever of me?"