"Probably he's mistaken you for somebody else," said Mr. Immelbern, appearing to sulk.
The Colonel turned away from him and marched back to the table, with Mr. Immelbern following him glumly.
"Well, that's settled, by Gad," he said breezily. "If you've finished your drink, my dear fellow, we'll get along at once."
They went in a taxi to the Colonel's apartment, a small suite at the lower end of Clarges Street. Uppingdon burbled on with engaging geniality, but Mr. Immelbern kept his mouth tightly closed and wore the look of a man suffering from toothache.
"How about some caviar sandwiches and a bottle of wine ?" suggested the Colonel. "I can fix those up myself. Or if you'd prefer something more substantial, I can easily get it sent in."
"Caviar sandwiches will do for me," murmured Simon accommodatingly.
There was plenty of caviar, and some excellent sherry to pass the time while the Colonel was preparing the sandwiches. The wine was impeccable, and the quantity apparently unlimited. Under its soothing influence even the morose Mr. Immelbern seemed to thaw slightly, although towards the end of the meal he kept looking at his watch and comparing it anxiously with the clock on the mantelpiece. At a quarter to two he caught his partner's eye in one of the rare lulls in the Colonel's meandering flow of reminiscence.
"Well, Sir George," he said grimly, "if you can spare the time now——"
"Of course," said the Colonel brightly.
Mr. Immelbern looked at their guest, and hesitated again.
"Er—to deal with our business."
Simon put down his glass and rose quickly.
"I'll leave you to it," he said pleasantly. "Really, I've imposed on you quite long enough."
"Sit down, my dear chap, sit down," commanded the Colonel testily. "Dammit, Sidney, your suspicions are becoming ridiculous. If you go on in this way I shall begin to believe you suffer from delusions of persecution. I've already told you that Mr. Templar is an old friend of mine, by Gad, and it's an insult to a guest in my house to suggest that you can't trust him. Anything we have to discuss can be said in front of him."
"But think, Sir George. Think of the risk!"
"Nonsense," snorted the Colonel. "It's all in your imagination. In fact"—the idea suddenly appeared to strike him— "I'm damned if I don't tell him what it's all about."
Mr. Immelbern opened his mouth, closed it again, and sank back wearily without speaking. His attitude implied that he had already exhausted himself in vain appeals to an obvious lunatic, and he was beginning to realise that it was of no avail. He could do no more.
"It's like this, my dear chap," said the Colonel, ignoring him. "All that this mystery amounts to—all that Immelbern here is so frightened of telling you—is that we are professional gamblers. We back racehorses."
"That isn't all of it," contradicted Mr. Immelbern sullenly.
"Well, we have certain advantages. I, in my social life, am very friendly with a large number of racehorse owners. Mr. Immelbern is friendly with trainers and jockeys. Between the two of us, we sometimes have infallible information, the result of piecing together everything we hear from various sources, of times when the result of a certain race has positively been arranged. Then all we have to do is to make our bets and collect the money. That happens to be our business this afternoon. We have an absolutely certain winner for the two o'clock race at Sandown Park, and in a few minutes we shall be backing it."
Mr. Immelbern dosed his eyes as if he could endure no more.
"That seems quite harmless," said Templar.
"Of course it is," agreed the Colonel. "What Immelbern is so frightened of is that somebody will discover what we're doing—I mean that it might come to the knowledge of some of our friends who are owners or trainers or jockeys, and then our sources of information would be cut off. But, by Gad, I insist on the privilege of being allowed to know when I can trust my own friends."
"Well, I won't give you away," Simon told him obligingly.
The Colonel turned to Immelbern triumphantly.
"There you are! So there's no need whatever for our little party to break up yet, unless Mr. Templar has an engagement. Our business will be done in a few minutes. By Gad, damme, I think you owe Mr. Templar an apology!"
Mr. Immelbern sighed, stared at his finger-nails for a while in grumpy silence, and consulted his watch again.
"It's nearly five to two," he said. "How much can we get on?"
"About a thousand, I think," said the Colonel judiciously.
Mr. Immelbern got up and went to the telephone, where he dialed a number.
"This is Immelbern," he said, in the voice of a martyr responding to the roll-call for the all-in lion-wrestling event. "I want two hundred pounds on Greenfly."
He heard his bet repeated, pressed down the hook, and dialed again.
"We have to spread it around to try and keep the starting price from shortening," explained the Colonel.
Simon Templar nodded, and leaned back with his eyes half-closed, listening to the click and tinkle of the dial and Immelbern's afflicted voice. Five times the process was repeated, and during the giving of the fifth order Uppingdon interrupted again.
"Make it two-fifty this time, Sidney," he said.
Mr. Immelbern said: "Just a moment, will you hold on?" to the transmitter, covered it with his hand, and turned aggrievedly.
"I thought you said a thousand. That makes a thousand and fifty."
"Well, I thought Mr. Templar might like to have fifty on." Simon hesitated.
"That's about all I've got on me," he said.
"Don't let that bother you, my dear boy," boomed Colonel Uppingdon. "Your credit's good with me, and I feel that I owe you something to compensate for what you've put up with. Make it a hundred if you like."
"But Sir George!" wailed Mr. Immelbern.
"Dammit, will you stop whining 'But Sir George!'?" exploded the Colonel. "That settles it. Make it three hundred—-that will be a hundred on for Mr. Templar. And if the horse doesn't win, I'll stand the loss myself."
A somewhat strained silence prevailed after the last bet had been made. Mr. Immelbern sat down again and chewed the unlighted end of a cigar in morbid meditations. The Colonel twiddled his thumbs as if the embarrassment of these recurrent disputes was hard to shake off. Simon Templar lighted a cigarette and smoked calmly.
"Have you been doing this long?" he inquired. "For about two years," said the Colonel. "By Gad, though, we've made money at it. Only about one horse in ten that we back doesn't romp home, and most of 'em are at good prices. Sometimes our money does get back to the course and spoil the price, but I'd rather have a winner at evens than a loser at ten to one any day. Why, I remember one race meeting we had at Delhi. That was the year when old Stubby Featherstone dropped his cap in the Ganges—he was the fella who got killed at Cambrai. . . ."
He launched off on another wandering reminiscence, and Simon listened to him with polite attention. He had some thinking to do, and he was grateful for the gallant Colonel's willingness to take all the strain of conversation away from him. Mr. Immelbern chewed his cigar in chronic pessimism until half an hour had passed; and then he glanced at his watch again, started up, and broke into the middle of one of his host's rambling sentences.
"The result ought to be through by now," he said abruptly. "Shall we go out and get a paper?"
Simon stood up unhurriedly. He had done his thinking.
"Let me go," he suggested.
"That's awfully good of you, my dear boy. Mr. Immelbern would have gone. Never mind, by Gad. Go out and see how much you've won. I'll open another bottle. Damme, we must have a drink on this, by Gad!"
Simon grinned and sauntered out; and as the door dosed behind him the eyes of the two partners met.
"Next time you say 'damme' or 'by Gad,' George," said Mr. Immelbern, "I will knock your block off, so help me. Why don't you get some new ideas?"
But by that time Lieut-Colonel Sir George Up
pingdon was beyond taking offence.
"We've got him," he said gleefully.
"I hope so," said Mr. Immelbern, more cautiously.
"I know what I'm talking about, Sid," said the Colonel stubbornly. "He's a serious young fellow, one of these conservative chaps like myself—but that's the best kind. None of this dashing around, keeping up with the times, going off like a firework and fizzling out like a pricked balloon. I'll bet you anything you like, in another hour he'll be looking around for a thousand pounds to give us to put on tomorrow's certainty. His kind starts slowly, but it goes a lot further than any of you fussy Smart Alecs."
Mr. Immelbern made a rude noise.
Simon Templar bought a Star at Devonshire House and turned without anxiety to the stop press. Greenfly had won the two o'clock at five to one.
As he strolled back towards Clarges Street he was smiling. It was a peculiarly ecstatic sort of smile; and as a matter of fact he had volunteered to go out and buy the paper, even though he knew what the result would be as certainly as Messrs. Uppingdon and Immelbern knew it, for the sole and sufficient reason that he wanted to give that smile the freedom of his face and let it walk around. To have been compelled to sit around any longer in Uppingdon's apartment and sustain the necessary mask of gravity and sober interest without a breathing spell would have sprained every muscle within six inches of his mouth.
"Hullo, Saint," said a familiar sleepy voice beside him.
A hand touched his arm, and he turned quickly to see a big baby-faced man in a bowler hat of unfashionable shape, whose jaws moved rhythmically like those of a ruminating cow.
"Hush," said the Saint. "Somebody might hear."
"Is there anybody left who doesn't know?" asked Chief Inspector Teal sardonically.
Simon Templar nodded.
"Strange as it may seem, there is. Believe it or not, Claud Eustace, somewhere in this great city—I wouldn't tell you where, for anything—there are left two trusting souls who don't even recognise my name. They have just come down from their hermits' caves in the mountains of Ladbroke Grove, and they haven't yet heard the news. The Robin Hood of modern crime," said the Saint oratorically, "the scourge of the ungodly, the defender of the faith—what are the newspaper headlines?—has come back to raise hell over the length and breadth of England—and they don't know."
"You look much too happy," said the detective suspiciously. "Who are these fellows?"
"Their names are Uppingdon and Immelbern, if you want to know—and you've probably met them before. They have special information about racehorses, and I am playing my usual role of the Sucker who does not Suck too long. At the moment they owe me five hundred quid."
Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal's baby blue eyes looked him over thoughtfully. And in Chief Inspector Teal's mind there were no illusions. He did not share the ignorance of Messrs. Uppingdon and Immelbern. He had known the Saint for many years, and he had heard that he was back. He knew that there was going to be a fresh outbreak of buccaneering through the fringes of London's underworld, exactly as there had been so many times before; he knew that the feud between them was going to start again, the endless battle between the gay outlaw and the guardian of the Law; and he knew that his troubles were at the beginning of a new lease of life. And yet one of his rare smiles touched his mouth for a fleeting instant.
"See that they pay you," he said, and went on his portly and lethargic way.
Simon Templar went back to the apartment on Clarges Street. Uppingdon let him in; and even the melancholy Mr. Immelbern was moved to jump up as they entered the living-room.
"Did it win?" they chorused.
The Saint held out the paper. It was seized, snatched from hand to hand, and lowered reverently while an exchange of rapturous glances took place across its columns.
"At five to one," breathed Lieut.-Colonel Uppingdon.
"Five thousand quid," whispered Mr. Immelbern.
"The seventh winner in succession."
"Eighty thousand quid in four weeks."
The Colonel turned to Simon.
"What a pity you only had a hundred pounds on," he said, momentarily crestfallen. Then the solution struck him, and he brightened. "But how ridiculous! We can easily put that right. On our next coup, you shall be an equal partner. Immelbern, be silent! I have put up with enough interference from you. Templar, my dear boy, if you care to come in with me next time—"
The Saint shook his head.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't mind a small gamble now and again, but for business I only bet on certainties."
"But this is a certainty!" cried the Colonel.
Simon frowned.
"Nothing," he said gravely, "is a certainty until you know the result. A horse may drop dead, or fall down, or be disqualified. The risk may be small, but it exists. I eliminate it." He gazed at them suddenly with a sober intensity which almost held them spellbound. "It sounds silly," he said, "but I happen to be psychic."
The two men stared back at him.
"Wha—what?" stammered the Colonel.
"What does that mean?" demanded Mr. Immelbern, more grossly.
"I am clairvoyant," said the Saint simply. "I can foretell the future. For instance, I can look over the list of runners in a newspaper and close my eyes, and suddenly I'll see the winners printed out in my mind, just as if I was looking at the evening edition. I don't know how it's done. It's a gift. My mother had it."
The two men were gaping at him dubiously. They were incredulous, wondering if they were missing a joke and ought to laugh politely; and yet something in the Saint's voice and the slight uncanny widening of his eyes sent a cold supernatural draught creeping up their spines.
"Haw!" ejaculated the Colonel uncertainly, feeling that he was called upon to make some sound; and the Saint smiled distantly.
He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece.
"Let me show you. I wasn't going to make any bets today, but since I've started I may as well go on."
He picked up his lunch edition, which he had been reading in the Palace Royal lounge, and studied the racing card on the back page. Then he put down the paper and covered his eyes. For several seconds there was a breathless silence, while he stood there with his head in his hands, swaying slightly, in an attitude of terrific concentration.
Again the supernatural shiver went over the two partners; and then the Saint straightened up suddenly, opened his eyes, and rushed to the telephone.
He dialed his number rather slowly. He had watched the movements of Mr. Immelbern's fingers closely, on every one of that gentleman's five calls; and his keen ears had listened and calculated every click of the returning dial. It would not be his fault if he got the wrong number.
The receiver at the other end of the line was lifted. The voice spoke.
"Baby Face," it said hollowly.
Simon Templar drew a deep breath, and a gigantic grin of bliss deployed itself over his inside. But outwardly he did not bat an eyelid.
"Two hundred pounds on Baby Face for Mr. Templar," he said; and the partners were too absorbed with other things to notice that he spoke in a very fair imitation of Mr. Immelbern's deep rumble.
He turned back to them, smiling.
"Baby Face," he said, with the quietness of absolute certitude, "will win the three o'clock race at Sandown Park."
Lieut.-Colonel Uppingdon fingered his superb white moustachios.
"By Gad!" he said.
Half an hour later the three of them went out together for a newspaper. Baby Face had won—at ten to one.
"Haw!" said the Colonel, blinking at the result rather dazedly.
On the face of Mr. Immelbern was a look of almost superstitious awe. It is difficult to convey what was in his mind at that moment. Throughout his life he had dreamed of such things. Horseflesh was the one true love of his unromantic soul. The fashions of Newmarket ruled his clothes, the scent of stables hung around him like a subtle perfume; he might, in prosperous times
, have been a rich man in his illegal way, if all his private profits had not inevitably gravitated on to the backs of unsuccessful horses as fast as they came into his pocket. And in the secret daydreams which coil through even the most phlegmatic bosom had always been the wild impossible idea that if by some miracle he could have the privilege of reading the next day's results every day for a week, he could make himself a fortune that would free him for the rest of his life from the sordid labours of the confidence game and give him the leisure to perfect that infallible racing system with which he had been experimenting ever since adolescence.
And now the miracle had come to pass, in the person of that debonair and affluent young man who did not even seem to realise the potential millions which lay in his strange gift.
"Can you do that every day?" he asked huskily.
"Oh, yes," said the Saint.
"In every race?" said Mr. Immelbern hoarsely.
"Why not?" said the Saint. "It makes racing rather a bore, really, and you soon get tired of drawing in the money."
Mr. Immelbern gulped. He could not conceive what it felt like to get tired of drawing in money. He felt stunned.
"Well," said the Saint casually, "I'd better be buzzing along——"
At the sound of those words something came over Lieut-Colonel Sir George Uppingdon. It was, in its way, the turning of a worm. He had suffered much. The gibes of Mr. Immelbern still rankled in his sedate aristocratic breast. And Mr. Immelbern was still goggling in a half-witted daze—he who had boasted almost naggingly of his accessibility to new ideas.
Lieut.-Colonel Sir George Uppingdon took the Saint's arm, gently but very firmly.
"Just a minute, my dear boy," he said, rolling the words succulently round his tongue. "We must not be old-fashioned. We must move with the times. This psychic gift of yours is truly remarkable. There's a fortune in it. Damme, if somebody threw a purse into Irnmelbern's lap, he'd be asking me what it was. Thank God, I'm not so dense as that, by Gad. My dear Mr. Templar, my dear boy, you must—I positively insist—you must come back to my rooms and talk about what you're going to do with this gift of yours. By Gad!"
Mr. Immelbern did not come out of his trance until halfway through the bargaining that followed.
13 The Saint Intervenes (Boodle) Page 2
