13 The Saint Intervenes (Boodle)
Leslie Charteris
THE
SAINT
INTERVENES
LESLIE CHARTERIS
MB
A MACFADDEN-BARTELL BOOK
TO
H. H. GIBSON
Many years ago I resolved that you were one of the first people I must dedicate a book to. But time slips by, and it's sadly easy to lose touch with someone who lives hundreds of miles away. So this comes very late, but I hope not too late; because even though this may be a bad book, if 1 hadn't come tinder your guidance many years ago it would probably have been very much worse.
THIS IS THE COMPLETE TEXT OF THE HARDCOVER EDITION
A MACFADDEN BOOK .... 1966
MACFADDEN BOOKS are published by
Macfadden-Bartell Corporation
205 East 42nd Street, New York, New York, 10017
This story was originally published in England under the title Boodle.
Copyright, 1934, by Leslie Charteris. All rights reserved. Published by arrangement with Doubleday & Company, Inc. Printed in the U.S.A.
CONTENTS
I The Ingenuous Colonel
II The Unfortunate Financier
III The Newdick Helicopter
IV The Prince of Cherkessia
V The Treasure of Turk's Lane
VI The Sleepless Knight
VII The Uncritical Publisher
VIII The Noble Sportsman
IX The Damsel in Distress
X The Loving Brothers
XI The Tall Timber
XII The Art Photographer
XIII The Man Who Liked Toys
XIV The Mixture as Before
The villains in this book are entirely imaginary, and have no relation to any living person.
I
The Ingenuous Colonel
Lieut.-Colonel Sir George Uppingdon, it must be admitted, was not a genuine knight; neither, as a matter of fact, was he a genuine colonel. This is not to say that he thought that sandbags contained the material for mixing trench mortar, or that an observation post was a species of flagpole on which inquisitive brigadiers hung at half-mast; but his military experience was certainly limited to a brief period during the latter days of the war when conscription had gathered him up and set him to the uncongenial task of peeling potatoes at Aldershot.
Apart from that not inglorious interlude of strengthening the stomachs of the marching armies, his career had been far less impressive than the name he passed under seemed to indicate. Pentonville had housed him on one occasion, and he had also taken one short holiday at Maidstone. Nevertheless, although the expensive public school which had taught him his practical arithmetic had long since erased his name from its register of alumni, he had never lost his well-educated and aristocratic bearing, and with the passing of time had added to them a magnificent pair of white moustachios which were almost as valuable to him in his career.
A slight tinge of the old-fashioned conservatism which characterised his style of dress clung equally limpet-like to the processes of his mind.
"These new-fangled stunts are all very well," he said doggedly. "But what happens to them? You work them once, and they receive a great deal of publicity, and then you can never use them again. How many of them will last as long as our tried and proved old friends?"
His companion on that occasion, an equally talented Mr. Sidney Immelbern—whose real name, as it happens, was Sidney Immelbern—regarded him gloomily.
"That's the trouble with you, George," he said. "It's the one thing which has kept you back from real greatness. You can't get it into your head that we've got to move with the times."
"It has also kept me out of a great deal of trouble," said the Colonel sedately. "If I remember rightly, Sid, when you last moved with the times, it was to Wormwood Scrubs."
Mr. Immelbern frowned. There were seasons when he felt that George Uppingdon's gentlemanly bearing had no real foundations of good taste.
"Well," he retorted, "your methods haven't made us millionaires. Here it's nearly two months since we made a click, and we only got eight hundred from that Australian at Brighton."
Mr. Irnmelbern's terse statement being irrefutable, a long and somewhat melancholy silence settled down upon the partnership.
Even by the elastic standards of the world in which they moved, it was an unusual combination. Mr. Sidney Immelbern had none of the Colonel's distinguished style—he was a stocky man with an unrefined and slightly oriental face, who affected check tweeds of more than dashing noisiness and had an appropriate air of smelling faintly of stables. But they had worked excellently together in the past, and only in such rare but human excesses of recrimination as that which has just been recorded did they fail to share a sublime confidence that their team technique would shine undimmed in brilliance through the future, as and when the opportunity arose.
The unfortunate part was that the opportunity did not arise. For close upon eight weeks it had eluded them with a relentlessness which savoured of actual malice. True, there had been an American at the Savoy who had seemed a hopeful proposition, but he had turned out to be one of those curious people who sincerely disapprove of gambling on principle; an equally promising leather merchant from Leicester had been recalled home by an ailing wife a few hours before they would have made their kill. The profession of confidence man requires capital—he must maintain a good appearance, invest lavishly in food and wine, and be able to wait for his profits. It was not surprising that Messrs. Uppingdon and Immelbern should watch the dwindling of their resources with alarm, and at times give way to moments of spleen which in more prosperous days would never have smirched their mutual friendship.
But with almost sadistic glee their opportunity continued to elude them. The lounge of the Palace Royal Hotel, where they sat sipping their expensive drinks, was a scene of life and gaiety; but the spirit of the place was not reflected in their faces. Among the lunch-time cocktail crowd of big business men, young well-groomed men, and all their chosen women, there appeared not one lonely soul with the unmistakable air of a forlorn stranger in the city whom they might tactfully accost, woo from his glum solitude with lunch and friendship, and in due course mulct of a contribution to their exchequer proportionate to his means. Fortune, they felt, had deserted them for ever. Nobody loved them.
"It is," admitted Lieut.-Colonel Uppingdon, breaking the silence, "pretty bloody."
"It is," concurred Mr. Immelbern, and suddenly scowled at him. "What's that?" he added.
Somewhat vaguely, the Colonel was inclining his head. But the remarkable point was that he was not looking at Mr. Immelbern.
"What is what?" he inquired, making sure of his ground.
"What's that you're staring at with that silly look on your face?" said Mr. Immelbern testily.
"That young fellow who just came in," explained the Colonel. "He seemed to know me."
Mr. Immelbern glanced over the room. The only man whom he was able to bring within the limits of his partner's rather unsatisfactory description was just then sitting down at a table by himself a few places away—a lean and somehow dangerous-looking young man with a keen tanned face and very clear blue eyes. Instinctively Mr. Immelbern groped around for his hat.
"D'you mean he's a fellow you swindled once?" he demanded hastily.
Uppingdon shook his head.
"Oh, no. I'm positive about that. Besides, he smiled at me quite pleasantly. But I can't remember him at all."
Mr. Immelbern relaxed slowly. He looked at the young man again with diminished apprehension. And gradually, decisively, a certain simple deduction registered itself in his practis
ed mind.
The young man had money. There was no deception about that. Everything about him pointed unobtrusively but unequivocally towards that one cardinal fact. His clothes, immaculately kept, had the unostentatious seal of Savile Row on every stitch of them. His silk shirt had the cachet of St. James's. His shoes, brightly polished and unspotted by the stains of traffic, could never have been anything but bespoke. He had just given his order to the waiter, and while he waited for it to arrive he was selecting a cigarette from a thin case which to the lay eye might have been silver, but which Mr. Immelbern knew beyond all doubt was platinum.
There are forms of instinct which soar beyond all physical explanations into the clear realms of clairvoyance. The homing pigeon wings its way across sightless space to the old roost. The Arabian camel finds the water-hole, and the pig detects the subterranean truffle. Even thus was the clairvoyance of Mr. Immelbern.
If there was one thing on earth which he could track down it was money. The affinity of the pigeon for its roost, the camel for the water-hole, the pig for the truffle, were as nothing to the affinity of Mr. Immelbern for dough. He was in tune with it. Its subtle emanations floated through the ether and impinged on psychic aerials in his system which operated on a super-heterodyne circuit. And while he looked at the young man who seemed to know Lieut.-Colonel Uppingdon that circuit was oscillating over all its valves. He summarised his conclusions with an explicit economy of verbiage which La Bruyère could not have pruned by a single syllable.
"He's rich," said Mr. Immelbern.
"I wish I could remember where I met him," said the Colonel, frowning over his own train of thought. "I hate to forget a face."
"You doddering old fool!" snarled Mr. Immelbern, smiling at him affectionately. "What do I care about your memory? The point is that he's rich, and he seemed to recognise you. Well, that saves a lot of trouble, doesn't it?"
The Colonel turned towards him and blinked.
"What do you mean?"
"Will you never wake up?" moaned Mr. Immelbern, extending his cigarette-case with every appearance of affability. "Here you've been sitting whining and moping for half an hour because we don't get a chance to make a click, and when a chance does come along you can't see it. What do I care where you met the man? What do I care if you never met him? He nodded to you, and he's sitting two yards away— and you ask me what I mean!"
The Colonel frowned at him for a moment. He was, as we have explained, a born conservative. He never allowed himself to be carried away. He deliberated. He calculated. He explored. He would, but for the ever-present stimulus of Mr. Immelbern, have done as little as any other conservative.
But gradually the frown faded, and a dignified smile took its place.
"There may be something in what you say, Sid," he conceded.
"Go on," ordered Mr. Immelbern crudely. "Hop it. And try to wake your ideas up a bit. If somebody threw a purse into your lap, you'd be asking me what it was."
Lieut.-Colonel Uppingdon gave him an aristocratically withering look, and rose sedately from the table. He went over to where the young man sat and coughed discreetly.
"Excuse me, sir," he said, and the young man looked up from his idle study of the afternoon's runners at Sandown Park. "You must have thought me a trifle rude just now."
"Not at all," said the young man amiably. "I thought you were busy and didn't want to be bothered. How are things these days, George?"
The Colonel suppressed a start. The use of his Christian name implied an intimacy that was almost alarming, but the young man's pleasant features still struck no responsive chord in his memory.
"To tell you the truth," he said, "I'm afraid my eyes are not as good as they were. I didn't recognise you until you had gone by. Dear me! How long is it since I saw you last?"
The young man thought for a moment.
"Was it at Biarritz in 1929?"
"Of course!" exclaimed Uppingdon delightedly—he had never been to Biarritz in his life. "By Gad, how the times does fly! I never thought I should have to ask when I last saw you, my dear——"
He broke off short, and an expression of shocked dismay overspread his face.
"Good Gad!" he blurted. "You'll begin to think there's something the matter with me. Have you ever had a lapse of memory like that? I had your name on the tip of my tongue —I was just going to say it—and it slipped off! Wait—don't help me—didn't it begin with H?"
"I'm afraid not," said the young man pleasantly.
"Not either of your names?" pursued the Colonel hopefully.
"No."
"Then it must have been J."
"No."
"I mean T."
The young man nodded. Uppingdon took heart.
"Let me see. Tom—Thomson—Travers—Terrington——"
The other smiled.
"I'd better save you the trouble. Templar's the name— Simon Templar."
Uppingdon put a hand to his head.
"I knew it!" He was certain that he had never met anyone named Simon Templar. "How stupid of me! My dear chap, I hardly know how to apologise. Damned bad form, not even being able to remember a fellow's name. Look here, you must give me a chance to put it right. What about joining us for a drink? Or are you waiting for somebody?"
Simon Templar shook his head.
"No—I just dropped in."
"Splendid!" said the Colonel. "Splendid! Perfectly splendid !" He seized the young man's arm and led him across to where Mr. Immelbern waited. "By Gad, what a perfectly splendid coincidence. Simon, you must meet Mr. Immelbern. Sidney, this is an old friend of mine, Mr. Templar. By Gad!"
Simon found himself ushered into the best chair, his drink paid for, his health proposed and drunk with every symptom of cordiality.
"By Gad!" said the Colonel, mopping his brow and beaming.
"Quite a coincidence, Mr. Templar," remarked Immelbern, absorbing the word into his vocabulary.
"Coincidence is a marvellous thing," said the Colonel. "I remember when I was in Allahabad with the West Nottinghams, they had a quartermaster whose wife's name was Ellen. As a matter of fact, he wasn't really our quartermaster—we borrowed him from the Southwest Kents. Rotten regiment, the Southwest Kents. Old General Plushbottom was with them before he was thrown out of the service. His name wasn't really Plushbottom, but we called him Old General Plushbottom. The whole thing was a frightful scandal. He had a fight with a subaltern on the parade-ground at Poona—as a matter of fact, it was almost on the very spot where Reggie Carfew dropped dead of heart failure the day after his wife ran away with a bank clerk. And the extraordinary thing was that her name was Ellen too."
"Extraordinary," agreed the young man.
"Extraordinary!" concurred Mr. Immelbern, and trod viciously on Uppingdon's toe under the table.
"That was a marvellous trip we had on the Bremen—I mean to Biarritz—wasn't it?" said the Colonel, wincing.
Simon Templar smiled.
"We had some good parties, didn't we?"
"By Gad! And the casino!"
"The Heliopolis!"
"The races!" said the Colonel, seizing his cue almost too smartly, and moving his feet quickly out of range of Mr. Immelbern's heavy heel.
Mr. Immelbern gave an elaborate start. He pulled a watch from his waistcoat pocket and looked at it accusingly.
"By the way, Sir George," he interrupted with a faintly conspiratorial air. "I don't want to put you out at all, but it's getting a bit late."
"Late?" repeated the Colonel, frowning at him.
"You know," said Mr. Immelbern mysteriously.
"Oh," said the Colonel, grasping the point.
Mr. Immelbern turned to Simon.
"I'm really not being rude, Mr. Templar," he explained, "but Sir George has important business to attend to this afternoon, and I had to remind him about it. Really, Sir George, don't think I'm butting in, but it goes at two o'clock, and if we're going to get any lunch——"
&nb
sp; "But that's outrageous!" protested the Colonel indignantly. "I've only just brought Mr. Templar over to our table, and you're suggesting that I should rush off and leave him!"
"Please don't bother about me," said Simon hastily. "If you have business to do——"
"My dear chap, I insist on bothering. The whole idea is absurd. I've put far too great a strain on your good nature already. This is preposterous. You must certainly join us in another drink. And in lunch. It's the very least I can do."
Mr. Immelbern did not look happy. He gave the impression of a man torn between politeness and frantic necessity, frustrated by having to talk in riddles, and perhaps pardonably exasperated by the obtuseness of his companion.
"But really, Sir George——"
"That's enough," said the Colonel, raising his hand. "I refuse to listen to anything more. Mr. Templar is an old friend of mine, and my guarantee should be good enough for you. And as far as you are concerned, my dear chap," he added, turning to Simon, "if you are not already engaged for lunch, I won't hear any other excuse."
Simon shrugged.
"It's very good of you. But if I'm in the way——"
"That," said the Colonel pontifically, "will do." He consulted his watch, drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the table for a moment, and said: "The very thing! We'll go right along to my rooms, and I'll have some lunch served there. Then Mr. Immelbern and I can do our business as well without being rushed about."
"But Sir George!" said Immelbern imploringly. "Won't you listen to reason ? Look here, can I speak to you alone for a minute? Mr. Templar will excuse us."
He grabbed the spluttering Colonel by the arm and dragged him away almost by main force. They retreated to the other end of the lounge.
"We'll get him," said the Colonel, gesticulating furiously.
"I know," said Mr. Immelbern, beating his fist on the palm of his hand. "That is, if you don't scare him off with that imitation of a colonel. That stuff's so old-fashioned it makes me want to cry. Have you found out who he is?"
"No. I don't even recognise his name."
13 The Saint Intervenes (Boodle) Page 1
