Prelude For War s-19

by Leslie Charteris

  The Saint lay completely back and closed his eyes, because he could think of nothing else to do.

  And she had the nerve to sit down beside him and kiss him.

  And then the constable was pumping his limp hand and saying: "Well sir, may I 'ave the honour of being the first to congratulate you."

  "You may, Reginald," said the Saint feebly. "Indeed you may. And for all I know, you may be the last."

  "Well, I dunno," said the sergeant, harping on his theme."I suppose in that case all we can do is take a statement an' let both of you go."

  "I'll take it down," said the constable.

  He rummaged eagerly in his pocket and pulled out sheets of official foolscap. With his tongue protruding, he wrote laboriously at dictation.

  " 'My name is Lady Valerie Woodchester. ... I was not kidnapped by Mr Simon Templar. I am in love with him. We have eloped together. ... I eloped in secret because we did not wish any fuss. . . .' Will you sign your name 'ere, miss?"

  Lady Valerie signed.

  "Mr Templar 'd better sign it, too," said the sergeant gloomily.

  The Saint drew a deep breath, but he could say nothing. He took the pen and wrote his name with a steady hand.

  The sergeant read over the sheet, folded it, and put it in his pocket.

  "Well," he said despondently, "that's all we can do. Will you be stayin' 'ere for some time, sir ?"

  "No," said the Saint definitely. "We were only spending a few hours before we went on to Southampton to catch a boat." He got up. "We'll go out with you."

  They went out. The constable carried Lady Valerie's tiny valise. Simon paid the bill for her room at the desk. They left the hotel.

  Simon steered the cortege along the street to the side turning where he had parked the Daimler. If Lady Valerie was surprised to see it she gave no sign. He opened the near-side door and ushered her in with ceremonial courtesy. Just then he was too full of thoughts for words. He went round the car and got into the driving seat.

  The constable leaned in at the window.

  "Good-bye, sir," he said jovially. "And I 'opes all your troubles are little ones."

  "So do I," said the Saint, from the bottom of his heart, and let in the clutch.

  The sergeant and the constable stood and watched him go. Simon saw them receding in the driving mirror. The sergeant looked vaguely frustrated, as if he still thought he ought to have done something else even though he couldn't think of anything else he could have done. The constable looked as if he wished he had had a handful of confetti in his pocket.

  Simon drove out of town and took the cross-country road that led towards Amesbury. His emotions were approxi­mately those of a shell that has just been fired out of a gun. He had been shot into space with one terrific explosion, and now he was sailing along with the fateful knowledge that there was another almighty bang waiting at the other end of the journey. The old proverbial voyagings between fry­ing pans and fires seemed like comparatively pale and peace­ful transitions to him. He drove very carefully, as if the car had been made out of glass.

  Lady Valerie snuggled up against him.

  "Are you happy, darling?" she said.

  "Beloved," said the Saint chokily, "I'm so happy that I could wring your neck."

  "Don't you appreciate what I've done for you?"

  "Every bit of it," he said, with superhuman moderation. "So much so that if I'd had the least idea what was in your mind——"

  "Where shall we go for our honeymoon?"

  Simon nursed the car round a corner like an old lady wheeling her granddaughter's pram.

  "Listen," he said, "I don't particularly care where you go for our honeymoon so long as it's no place where I'm going. If you have any sense, which is getting more-doubtful every minute, you'll travel like smoke for the next few days and put the biggest distance you can between yourself and London; and you won't send your friends any picture post-cards on the way to let them know where you are."

  Her lips trembled slightly.

  "I see," she said. "You . . . you've had all you want from me, and now you just want to get rid of me. Well, I've been too clever for you this time. I'm not going to be got rid of."

  "Do you want to die young?" demanded the Saint exas­peratedly. "Don't you see that I'm going to be much too busy to look after you ? For Pete's sake, have a little sense. I'll let you off at Southampton, where there are lots of boats going to nice places like New Zealand and so forth."

  "And what are you going to do after you've ditched me ?" she asked sulkily. "I suppose you'll go dashing back to your blonde girl friend and tell her how clever you are."

  "I don't have to tell her," said the Saint. "She knows."

  "Well, you're not as clever as all that," flared the girl in open mutiny. "You heard what I told those two police­men. You didn't deny it then—anything was all right with you so long as it helped you to get away. You—you signed your name to it. And I won't be ditched. If you try to get rid of me now I—I'll sue you for breach of promise!"

  Simon steadied himself. Now that the impending thun­derstorm had broken, exactly as he had been nerving him­self for it, he almost felt better.

  "No jury would give you a farthing damages, sweet­heart," he said. "As a matter of fact, they'd probably give me a reward for letting you out of an agreement to marry me."

  "Oh, would they? Well, we'll see. It's all very well for you to go around breaking thousands of hearts and pushing around all the women you meet like a little Hitler bossing his tame dummies in the Reichstag——"

  The car rocked with a force that flung her away from him.

  The Saint straightened it up again anyhow. He let go the wheel and thumped his fists on it like a lunatic.

  He yodelled. His face was transfigured.

  "My God," he yelled, "how did you think of it? Of course that's what it was. That's the answer. The Reichstag!"

  She gaped at him, rubbing a bruised elbow where it had hit the door in that wild swerve.

  "What's the matter?" she asked blankly. "Have you gone pots or something?"

  "The Reichstag!" he whooped deliriously. "Don't you see? That's what Kennet wrote on that bit of paper. REMEMBER THE REICHSTAG!"

  He was so dazed with understanding that he had not noticed a big black Packard which had crept up behind them, was hardly aware when it pulled out in the narrow road and raced level with the crawling Daimler. Almost unconsciously he swung in to let it pass.

  Lady Valerie looked back over her shoulder and sud­denly screamed. With a quick panicky movement she turned and grabbed at the steering wheel and twisted it sharply. From the overtaking car came the crisp high-pitched crack of a gun, and the windscreen splintered in front of Simon's eyes. Then the Daimler lurched madly as its near-side wheels slithered and plunged into a gully at the side of the road. The bank that rose up from there to the bordering hedge seemed to loom directly ahead. Simon felt himself hurled forward helplessly in his seat; the steering wheel struck him a violent blow in the chest and knocked the wind out of him; then he rose into the air as if deprived of weight. Something struck him a fearful blow on the top of the head. Bright lights whirled dizzily before his eyes and faded into a blackening mist of unconsciousness.

  VIII

  How Kane Luker Called a Conference,

  and Simon Templar Answered Him

  OBEYING an urgent and peremptory summons, Mr Algernon Sidney Fairweather, Brigadier-General Sir Robert Sangore and Lady Sangore, arrived at Luker's house a little before seven o'clock that evening. They were perturbed and nerv­ous, and their emotions expressed themselves in various individual ways during the ten minutes that Luker kept them waiting in his study.

  Nervousness made General Sangore, if possible, a little more military. He tugged at his moustache and frowned out fiercely from under bristling white eyebrows; his speech had a throaty brusqueness that made his every utterance sound like a severe official reprimand.

  "Infernal nerve the feller has," he rumbled. "Orderi
ng us about as if we hadn't anything else to do but wait on him. Harrumph! I had a good mind to tell him I was too busy to come."

  Lady Sangore was very cold and superior. Her face, which had always borne a close resemblance to that of a horse, became even more superciliously equine. She sat in an even more primly upright attitude than her corsets normally obliged her to maintain, bulging her noble bosom like a pouter pigeon and tilting her nose back as if there were an unpleasant odour under it.

  "Yes, you were busy," she said. "You were going to the club, weren't you? Much too busy to attend to business. Ha!" The word "ha" does not do justice to the snort of an irate dragon, but the limited phonetics of the English alphabet will produce nothing better. "You'd better stop being so busy and get your wits about you. Something must be seriously wrong or Mr Luker wouldn't have sent for you like this."

  Fairweather twittered. He fidgeted with his hands and shuffled his feet and wriggled; there seemed to be an itch in his muscles that would not let him settle down.

  "I don't like it," he moaned. "I don't like it at all. Luker is ... Really, I can't understand him at all these days. His behaviour was most peculiar when I told him about the wire I had from Lady Valerie this afternoon. He didn't even sympathize at all with what I went through with that man Templar and that boorish detective. He asked me a few questions and took the wire and rushed off and left me alone in his drawing room, and I just sat there until he sent the butler to tell me to go away and wait till I heard from him."

  "I can't think why men get so excited about that girl," said Lady Sangore disparagingly, stabbing her husband, with a basilisk eye.

  The general cleared his throat.

  "Really, Gwendolyn! You surely don't suspect——"

  "I suspect nothing," said Lady Sangore freezingly. "I merely keep my eyes open. I know what men are."

  She seemed to have made a unique anthropological dis­covery.

  Fairweather leaned forward, glancing around him fur­tively as if he feared being overheard.

  "There's something I—I must tell you before he comes," he said in a stage whisper. "We ... I mean, there's good reason to suspect that Lady Valerie is working with that man Templar against our interests, and unless something is done at once the position may become serious."

  "So that's what it is," said Lady Sangore magisterially. "And what's Mr Luker going to do about it? The girl ought to be whipped, that's what I've always said."

  Fairweather dropped his voice even lower.

  "Last night he—he practically told me he meant to have both of them murdered."

  "Good God !" exclaimed General Sangore in a scanda­lized voice. "But that's ridiculous—absurd! Why, she belongs to one of the best families in England!" He glared about him indignantly. "It's that bounder Templar who's led her astray. He ought to be severely dealt with. Dammit, if I'd ever had him in my regiment . . ."

  He broke off as Luker appeared in the doorway.

  Luker stood there for a moment and looked at them one by one. He did not seem in the least disturbed. Perhaps a faint flicker of surprise crossed his face when he saw that Lady Sangore was present, but he made no comment. His dark, well-tailored suit fitted him like a cloth covering squeezed over a marble figure; he looked harder and stonier than ever, as though he would wear it out from the inside. His square rugged features had the insensitive strength of the same stone.

  He moved deliberately across the room to his enormous desk, sat down in the swivel chair behind it and faced them with almost taunting expectancy. They looked at each other and avoided his eyes, subdued in spite of themselves into hoping that somebody else would give them a lead.

  General Sangore was the first to let himself go.

  "What's this story of Fairweather's that you're planning to murder Lady Valerie Woodchester ?" he blurted out.

  Luker inclined his head unimpressionably.

  "So you have heard? That will save some explanations. Yes, it has become very necessary that she and Templar should be eliminated. That is why I sent for you this eve­ning."

  "Well, if you think we're going to take part in any damned murder plots, you're damned well mistaken," stated General Sangore hotly. "I never heard of such—such infer­nal impudence in my life!"

  He glanced at his wife as if for approval. Lady Sangore's lips were tightly compressed; her eyes were glittering.

  "That girl ought to be well whipped," she repeated.

  Luker stroked his chin thoughtfully. His manner was mild and patient. He spoke in the calm and reasonable tone of a man who states facts that cannot be disputed.

  "I fear that whipping would scarcely be sufficient," he remarked. "We are not playing schoolroom games. Let me remind you of the circumstances. All of you are aware, I believe, that the French patriots have planned a coup d'etat for tomorrow which if it is resisted may lead to a Fascist revolution."

  His gaze passed questioningly over them and arrived last at Fairweather. Fairweather dithered.

  "Yes . . . That is, I may have heard rumours of it. I know nothing about it officially."

  "During this change of governments a number of people will quite definitely be killed," said Luker cold-bloodedly. "Would you call that a murder plot?"

  "Of course not," boomed the general authoritatively. "That's quite a different matter. That's political. It's the same as war. Anyhow, as Fairweather says, we don't know anything about it—not officially."

  "If the plot should fail, and if all the details should be discovered, I'm afraid we could not plead our official ignor­ance," Luker replied smoothly. "You see, before he was killed young Kennet gave certain papers to Lady Valerie. You know what was among them. She placed these docu­ments, unread, in a cloakroom—from what has happened since it seems likely that they were at Paddington. If we could have recovered them it would have been all right; even if she had seen the one vital thing, I don't think she would have understood. I tried to make arrangements to deal with her and Templar last night, but those arrangements miscar­ried. Templar then appears to have kidnapped her. She escaped, returned to London and presumably recovered the papers from where she had left them. From the telegram Fairweather showed me I suspected she might have gone to Anford. I sent two men down in a fast car. They reported to me by telephone that she was at the Golden Fleece and that Templar had arrived soon after her."

  "Probably they arranged to meet there," put in Lady Sangore. "I always knew she was a hussy. Whatever hap­pens to her, she's brought it on herself."

  "That thought will doubtless console her greatly," Luker observed. "However, Fairweather had meanwhile been stupid enough to show Lady Valerie's telegram to a detective who was with him when it arrived. Much later Scotland Yard apparently also guessed, or discovered, that she had taken a train to Anford. They must have telephoned the Anford police, because two officers arrived at the Golden Fleece and went upstairs. I don't know what Templar told them, and I don't think he can have said anything about the documents which by that time he must have read, because not long afterwards the officers came out with Templar and Lady Valerie, all apparently on the most friendly terms, and allowed them to get into a car and drive away. My men overtook them on the road, carrying out my orders to recover the papers, to capture Templar and Lady Valerie alive if possible and to hold them until I gave instructions how they were to be disposed of."

  There was a stricken silence while Luker's point forced itself home. This time Fairweather was the first to regain his voice.

  "But—but—for goodness sake, Luker, really, you can't murder a girl!"

  "Why not?" Luker inquired blandly.

  Sangore appeared to grope in darkness for an answer.

  "It . . . Well, dammit, man—it simply isn't done," he ;aid feebly.

  Luker laughed. There was nothing hearty about his laughter. It was a silent, terrifying performance, as if a stone image had quaked with unholy mockery.

  "You gentlemen of England, with your pettifogging con­ventions and your arrogant rig
hteousness and your old school ties; you whitewashed dummies," he sneered. "You don't care what dirty work is done so long as you don't have to know about it 'officially'; you don't care how many people are murdered so long as you can call it warfare, or dignify it with the adjective 'political.' You don't mind helping to start a civil war in France, in which it's quite certain that numbers of girls will be killed, do you?"

  "I tell you that's different," stormed the general. "Why —why, we've had civil wars in England!"

  He said it as if that fact proved that civil wars must be all right.

  "Very well," Luker went on. "And you didn't object to murdering Kennet and Windlay, did you ?"

  Fairweather said hoarsely: "We had nothing to do with that. In fact, I told you ——"

  Lady Sangore's face looked flabby. The powder cracked on her cheeks as her mouth worked. She stammered: "You —you—I never knew——"

  "No doubt, like the others, you attributed those deaths to divine intervention," said Luker sarcastically. "I'm sorry to disillusion you. I gave orders for Windlay to be killed. I strangled Kennet myself and started the fire under his room. Your husband and Fairweather knew I was going to do it; you yourself guessed. Therefore at this moment you are all of you already accessories to the crime of murder unless you at once communicate your knowledge to the police. Of course if you do that you may find it hard to explain your silence at the inquest, but the telephone is here on my desk if any of you would care to use it."

  Nobody moved. None of them spoke. A paralysis of futility seemed to have taken hold of them, and Luker seemed to gloat over their strangulation. He gave them plenty of time to absorb the consciousness of their own moral impotence while his own rocklike impassivity seemed to deepen with his contempt.