Mr. Herbert Parstone was not playing golf, because he had a bad cold; and he was in his office when the Saint called. The name on the card that was sent in to him was unfamiliar, but Mr. Parstone never refused to see anyone who was kind enough to walk into his parlour.
He was a short ginger-haired man with the kind of stomach without which no morning coat and gold watch-chain can be seen to their best advantage; and the redness of his nose was not entirely due to his temporary affliction.
"Mr. Teblar?" he said, with great but obstructed geniality. "Please sit dowd. I dode thig I've had the pleasure to beetig you before, have I?"
"I don't think so," said the Saint pleasantly. "But any real pleasure is worth waiting for." He took the precious volume which he was carrying from under his arm, and held it up. "Did you publish this?"
Mr. Parstone looked at it.
"Yes," he said, "that is one of our publicashuds. A bost excelledd ad ibportad book, if I bay perbid byself to say so. A book, I bight say, which answers problebs which are dear to every wud of us today."
"It will certainly have some problems to answer," said the Saint; "and I expect they'll be dear enough. Do you know the name of the principal character in this book? Do you know who this biography is alleged to be about?"
"Biography?" stammered Mr. Parstone, blinking at the cover. "The book is a dovel. A work of fickshud. It is clearly explaid——"
"The book is supposed to be a biography," said the Saint "And do you know the name of the principal character?"
Mr. Parstone's brow creased with thought.
"Pridcipal character?" he repeated. "Led be see, led be see. I ought to dough, oughtud I?" He blew his nose several times, sniffed, sighed, and spread out his hand uncertainly. "Iddn it abazing?" he said. "The dabe was od the tip of by tug, but dow I card rebember id."
"The name is Simon Templar," said the Saint grimly; and Mr. Parstone sat up.
"What?" he ejaculated.
Simon opened the book and showed him the name in plain print. Then he took it away to a chair and lighted a cigarette.
"Rather rude of you, wasn't it?" he murmured.
"Well, by dear Bister Teblar," said Parstone winningly. "I trust you are dot thinkig that any uncomblibendary referedds was intended. Far frob id. These rebarkable coidcidedces will happud. Ad yet it is dot every yug bad of your age who fides his dabe preserved for posterity id such a work as that.
The hero of that book, as I rebember him, was a fellow of outstaddig charb——"
"He was a low criminal," said the Saint virtuously. "Your memory is failing you, Herbert. Let me read you some of the best passages."
He turned to a page he had marked.
"Listen to this, Herbert," he said. " 'Simon Templar was never particular about how he made money, so long as he made it. The drug traffic was only one of his many sources of income, and his conscience was never touched by the thought of the hundreds of lives he ruined by his insatiable avarice. Once, in a night club, he pointed out to me a fine and beautiful girl on whose lovely face the ravages of dope were already beginning to make their mark. "I've had two thousand pounds from her since I started her on the stuff," he said gloatingly, "and I'll have five thousand more before it kills her." 1 could multiply instances of that kind by the score, and refrain only from fear of nauseating my readers. Sufficient, at least, has already been said to show what an unspeakable ruffian was this man who called himself the Saint.' "
However hard it might have been for Mr. Parstone to place the name of Simon Templar, he was by no means ignorant of the Saint. His watery eyes popped halfway out of their sockets, and his jaw hardened at the same time.
"So you're the Saind?" he said.
"Of course," murmured Simon.
"Id your very own words, a low cribidal——"
Simon shook his head.
"Oh, no, Herbert," he said. "By no means as low as that. My reputation may be bad, but it's only rumour. You may whisper it to your friends, but the law doesn't allow you to put it in writing. That's libel. And you couldn't even get Chief Inspector Teal to testify that my record would justify anything like the language this book of yours has used about me. My sins were always fairly idealistic and devoted to the squashing of beetles like yourself—not to trading in drugs and grinding the faces of the poor. But you haven't heard anything like the whole of it. Listen to some more."
He turned to another selected passage.
" 'The Saint'," he read, " 'always seemed to derive a peculiar malicious pleasure from robbing and swindling those who could least afford to lose. To my dying day, I shall be haunted by the memory of the fiendish glee which distorted his face when he told me that he had stolen five pounds from a woman with seven children, who had scraped and saved for months to get the money together. He accepted the money from her as a fee for trying to trace the grave of her father, who had been reported "missing" in 1917. Of course he never made any attempt to carry out his share of the bargain. He played this cruel trick on several occasions, and always with the same sadistic pleasure, which I believe meant jar more to him than the actual cash which he derived from it.' "
"Is that id the book too?" asked Parstone hoarsely.
"Naturally," said the Saint. "That's what I'm reading it from. And there are lots more interesting things. Look here.'The bogus companies floated by Templar, in which thousands upon thousands of widows and orphans were deprived——' "
"Wait!" interrupted Parstone tremblingly. "This is terrible—a terrible coidcideds. The book will be withdrawd at wuds. Hardly eddywud will have had tibe to read it. Ad if eddy sball cobbensation I cad give——"
Simon closed his book with a smile and laid it on Mr. Parstone's desk.
"Shall we say fifty thousand pounds?" he suggested affably.
Mr. Parstone's face reddened to the verge of an apoplectic stroke, and he brought up his handkerchief with shaking hands.
"How buch?" he whispered.
"Fifty thousand pounds," repeated the Saint. "After all, that's a very small amount of damages to ask for a libel like this. If the case has to go to court, I think it will be admitted that never in the whole history of modern law has such a colossal libel been put on paper. If there is any crime under the sun of which I'm not accused in that book, I'll sit down right now and eat it. And there are three hundred and twenty pages of it—eighty thousand words of continuous and unbridled insult. For a thing like that, Herbert, I think fifty thousand pounds is pretty cheap."
"You could'n get it," said Parstone harshly. "It's the author's liability ——"
"I know that clause," answered the Saint coolly, "and you may be interested to know that it has no legal value whatever. In a successful libel action, the author, printer, and publisher are joint tort-feasors, and none of them can indemnify the other. Ask your solicitor. As a matter of fact," he added prophetically, "I don't expect I shall be able to recover anything from the author, anyway. Authors are usually broke. But you are both the printer and publisher, and I'm sure I can collect from you."
Mr. Parstone stared at him with blanched lips.
"But fifty thousad pouds is ibpossible," he whined. "It would ruid be!"
"That's what I mean to do, dear old bird," said the Saint gently. "You've gone on swindling a lot of harmless idiots for too long already, and now I want you to see what it feels like when it happens to you."
He stood up, and collected his hat.
"I'll leave you the book," he said, "in case you want to entertain yourself some more. But I've got another copy; and if I don't receive your cheque by the first post on Friday morning it will go straight to my solicitors. And you can'tt kid yourself about what that will mean."
For a long time after he had gone Mr. Herbert Parstone sat quivering in his chair. And then he reached out for the book and began to skim through its pages. And with every page his livid face went greyer. There was no doubt about it. Simon Templar had spoken the truth. The book was the most monumental libel that
could ever have found its way into print. Parstone's brain reeled before the accumulation of calumnies which it unfolded.
His furious ringing of the bell brought his secretary running.
"Fide me that proof-reader!" he howled. "Fide be the dab fool who passed this book!" He flung the volume on to the floor at her feet. "Sed hib to be at wuds! I'll show bib. I'll bake hib suffer. By God, I'll——"
The other things that Mr. Parstone said he would do cannot be recorded in such a respectable publication as this.
His secretary picked up the book and looked at the title.
"Mr. Timmins left yesterday—he was the man you fired four months ago," she said; but even then Mr. Parstone was no wiser.
VIII
The Noble Sportsman
It would be difficult to imagine two more ill-assorted guests at a country house party than Simon Templar and Chief Inspector Teal. The Saint, of course, was in his element. He roared up the drive in his big cream and red sports car and a huge camel-hair coat as if he had been doing that sort of thing for half his life, which he had. But Mr. Teal, driving up in the ancient and rickety station taxi, and alighting cumbrously in his neat serge suit and bowler hat, fitted less successfully into the picture. He looked more like a builder's foreman who had called to take measurements for a new bathroom, which he was not.
But that they should have been members of the same house party at all was the most outstanding freak of circumstance; and it was only natural that one of them should take the first possible opportunity to inquire into the motives of the other.
Mr. Teal came into the Saint's room while Simon was dressing for dinner, and the Saint looked him over with some awe.
"I see you've got a new tie," he murmured. "Did your old one come undone?"
The detective ran a finger round the inside of his collar, which fitted as if he had bought it when he was several years younger and measured less than eighteen inches around the neck.
"How long have you known Lord Yearleigh?" he asked bluntly.
"I've met him a few times," said the Saint casually.
He appeared to be speaking the truth; and Mr. Teal was not greatly surprised—the Saint had a habit of being acquainted with the most unlikely people. But Teal's curiosity was not fully satisfied.
"I suppose you're here for the same reason as I am," he said.
"More or less, I take it," answered Simon. "Do you think Yearleigh will be murdered?"
"You've seen the anonymous letters he's been receiving?"
"Some of 'em. But lots of people get anonymous threatening letters without getting a Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard sent down as a private pet."
"They aren't all M.P.'s, younger sons of dukes, and well-known influential men," said the detective rather cynically. "What do you think about it?"
"If he is murdered, I hope it's exciting," said the Saint callously. "Poison is so dull. A hail of machine-gun bullets through the library window would be rather diverting, though. . . . What are you getting at, Claud—are you trying to steal my act or are you looking for an alliance?"
Mr. Teal unwrapped a wafer of chewing gum and stuck it in his mouth, and watched the Saint fixing buttons in a white waistcoat with a stolid air of detachment that he was far from feeling. It was sometimes hard for him to remember that that debonair young brigand with the dangerous mouth and humorous blue eyes had personally murdered many men, beyond all practical doubt but equally beyond all possibility of legal proof; and he found it hard to remember then. But nevertheless he remembered it. And the fact that those men had never died without sound reason did not ease his mind—the Saint had a disconcerting habit of assassinating men whose pollution of the universe was invisible to anyone else until he unmasked it.
"I'd like to know why you were invited," said Mr. Teal.
Simon Templar put on his waistcoat, brushed his tuxedo, and put that on also. He stood in front of the dressing-table, lighting a cigarette.
"If I suggested that Yearleigh may have thought that I'd be more use than a policeman, you wouldn't be flattered," he remarked. "So why worry about suspecting me until he really is dead? I suppose you've already locked up the silver and had the jewels removed to the bank, so I don't see how I can bother you any other way."
They went downstairs together, with Chief Inspector Teal macerating his spearmint in gloomy silence. If the Saint had not been a fellow-guest he would have taken his responsibilities less seriously; and yet he was unable to justify any suspicion that the Saint was against him. He knew nothing about his host which might have inspired the Saint to take an unlawful interest in his expectation of life.
The public, and what was generally known of the private, life of Lord Thornton Yearleigh was so far above reproach that it was sometimes held up as a model for others. He was a man of about sixty-five with a vigour that was envied by men who were twenty-five years his junior, a big-built natural athlete with snow-white hair that seemed absurdly premature as a crown for his clear ruddy complexion and erect carriage. At sixty-five, he was a scratch golfer, a first-class tennis player, a splendid horseman, and a polo player of considerable skill. In those other specialised pastimes which in England are particularly dignified with the name of "sport," hunting, shooting, and fishing, his name was a by-word. He swam in the sea throughout the winter, made occasional published comments on the decadence of modern youth, could always be depended on to quote 'mens sana in corpore sano' at the right moment, and generally stood as the living personification of those robust and brainless spartan ideals of cold baths and cricket which have contributed so much to England's share in the cultural progress of the world. He was a jovial and widely popular figure; and although he was certainly a member of the House of Commons, the Saint had not yet been known to murder a politician for that crime alone— even if he had often been known to express a desire to do so.
There was, of course, no reason at all why the prospective assassin should have been a member of the party; but his reflections on the Saint's character had started a train of thought in the detective's mind, and he found himself weighing up the other guests speculatively during dinner.
The discussion turned on the private bill which Yearleigh was to introduce, with the approval of the Government, when Parliament reassembled during the following week; and Teal, who would have no strong views on the subject until his daily newspaper told him what he ought to think, found that his role of obscure listener gave him an excellent chance to study the characters of the others who took part.
"I shouldn't be surprised if that bill if mine had something to do with these letters I've been getting," said Yearleigh."Those damned Communists are capable of anything. If they only took some exercise and got some fresh air they'd work all that nonsense out of their systems. Young Maurice is a bit that way himself," he added slyly.
Maurice Vould flushed slightly. He was about thirty-five, thin and spectacled and somewhat untidy, with a curiously transparent ivory skin that was the exact antithesis of Yearleigh's weather-beaten complexion. He was, Teal had already ascertained, a cousin of Lady Yearleigh's; he had a private income of about £800 a year, and devoted his time to writing poems and essays which a very limited public acclaimed as being of unusual worth.
"I admit that I believe in the divine right of mankind to earn a decent wage, to have enough food to eat and a decent house to live in, and to be free to live his life without interference," he said in a rather pleasant quiet voice. "If that is, Communism, I suppose I'm a Communist."
"But presumably you wouldn't include armed attack by a foreign power under your heading of interference," said a man on the opposite side of the table.
He was a sleek well-nourished man with heavy sallow cheeks and a small diamond set in the ring on his third finger; and Teal knew that he was Sir Bruno Walmar, the chairman and presiding genius of the Walmar Oil Corporation and all its hundred subsidiaries. His voice was as harsh as his appearance was smooth, with an aggressive dom
ineering quality to it which did not so much offer argument as defy it; but the voice did not silence Vould.
"That isn't the only concern of Yearleigh's bill," he said.
The Right Honourable Mark Ormer, War Minister in the reigning Government, scratched the centre of his grey moustache in the rather old-maidish gesture which the cartoonist had made familiar to everyone in England, and said: "The National Preparedness Bill merely requires a certain amount of military training to be included in the education of every British boy, so that if his services should be needed in the defence of his country in after life, he should be qualified to play his part without delay. No other eventuality has been envisaged."
"How can you say that no other eventuality has been envisaged?" asked Vould quietly. "You take a boy and teach him the rudiments of killing as if they were a desirable thing to know. You give him a uniform to wear and impress upon him the fact that he is a fighting man in the making. You make him shoot blank cartridges at other boys, and treat the whole pantomime as a good joke. You create a man who will instinctively answer a call to arms whenever the call is made; and how can you sit there tonight and say that you know exactly and only in what circumstances somebody will start to shout the call ?"
"I think we can depend on the temperament of the English people to be sure of that," said Ormer indulgently.
"I think you can also depend on the hysteria of most mobs when their professional politicians wave a flag," answered Maurice Vould. "There probably was a time when people fought to defend their countries, but now they have to fight to save the faces of their politicians and the bank balances of their business men."
13 The Saint Intervenes (Boodle) Page 11
