Alias the Saint (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  Stenning’s mouth twisted.

  “And how do you think you’re going to make me sign?”

  “Moral persuasion,” said the Saint. “Reinforced, if necessary, by physical. Take your pen and follow the dotted lines.”

  Stenning laughed.

  “You’re mad!,” he said.

  “Absolutely,” agreed the Saint, cordially. “Sign, please.”

  Stenning sneered.

  “I refuse.”

  “Right,” said the Saint. “If you maintain your refusal, I shall be compelled to inflict divers unpleasant forms of physical violence on your person. But before I start, I’ll tell you something. Anything I can do to you may not make you sign. But if my methods of persuasion fail to convince you, I have one argument up my sleeve. Do what you’re told, and I’ll fade out of the picture and say nothing. Without my assistance the firm of Vanney will probably be seriously handicapped, but I can’t help that. I’ll get out, and nothing will be said. But don’t sign, and the firm of Vanney will be shown up within an hour. Teal’s on to you already, but if he’s got to make his own way he can’t get going in time to stop your getaway—if you’re quick enough. But if I help him, there’ll be a nasty cold cell waiting for you, Stenning.”

  Stenning sat down. He seemed to be enjoying the joke.

  “Templar,” he said, “that one’s too old for me. I know the game as well as you do, and I tell you it won’t work. There are two things to stop your squealing. One is that if you squeal you’ll be in the same boat with the rest of us. The other is that even if you squeal, that won’t make me sign.”

  “Granted,” said the Saint. “There are two answers to that. One is that I planned this little meeting, and everything is plotted out on my time-table to the last minute. Within one hour Teal could have all the evidence he needs, and I can be away and out on the high seas. Can you say the same?”

  Stenning made no answer.

  “The second,” said the Saint, “is that even if putting you away for at least ten years’ penal servitude won’t make you pay Miss Marlowe back that money, it’ll be the least I can do for her by way of compensation. I’ll do it cheerfully—don’t make any mistake about that, Beautiful.”

  The other showed his teeth.

  “You rat!” he snarled.

  “Your name,” said the Saint calmly, “is Mug.” It is my distressing duty to have to tell you that you’ve been had. Your leg has been pulled to such an extent that if you wanted to pose for your portrait with one foot in the grave and the other kicking the cobwebs off the roof of the Chrysler Building, it would have to be a damned deep grave.” The Saint smiled with a beautifully cherubic magnificence.

  Stenning sat quite still.

  “You seem,” said the Saint, “to have thought that I’d change my habits for your especial benefit. And that was your gravest error. It wasn’t so very long ago, when I was travelling round the wilds of South America, that I met Arthur Wylie. A good soul, but talkative when he had absorbed the best pan of a bottle of whisky. That’s how I learnt all about your fake death. Wylie told me how Connell and Long Harry raked up Red Mulligan for you—who, most fortunately for your purposes, had just decided to die, and who, still more considerately, had contrived to end up his useless days with much the same build as yourself. I came back with your dossiers all locked up in the trunk marked ‘Not Wanted on Voyage’—and then you had to let me in. And I know everything that’s happened in this firm since I joined it. Long Harry’s sphere of usefulness passed over, but he was dangerous. He didn’t know much, but he might have guessed a lot. You framed him for a job in Bayswater, but it wasn’t your fault that the man didn’t die and so put Harry out of the way for ever. Connell stayed in the partnership, but he was always a danger. Because he’s a mug, it took him some time to realise how important he was. But you know as well as I do that he was starting to realise that he held the whip hand; and what’s more, he had started to put the screw on, feeling his way. You disposed of that—by fixing him for a job in Battersea. That time, you made no mistake about the murder. After that, I expect you felt safer, because if Connell started to get any more uppish you would have a very good way of putting him back in his place.”

  Stenning remained motionless in his chair, hunched up. His face had gone pale, and in that set, pallid mask, his eyes glowed with hate. The Saint, lounging against the table, went on speaking in the same calm, level tones.

  “You were clever,” he admitted. “You even realised that since Harry was out and was known to be looking for Connell, Harry might be pulled in by mistake for the Battersea job. Knowing your man, you sent Harry money, and, as you expected, he got very tight on it, and was arrested, thereby establishing his alibi beyond all dispute. In fact, the whole show was a really brilliant piece of work, but you went off the rails badly when you began to think you were sitting pretty with the Saint playing a hand in the game. Did you really think I’d changed my habits so much, dear heart, as to want to share the profits in any swindle with anyone—particularly with a flop-eared simoleon-toad like you? Now sign!”

  “You’re a fool!” said Stenning harshly. “Even if you made me sign, I could still stop the cheque.”

  “You couldn’t,” said the Saint. “Being a thoughtful sort of bird, I shall take care to put you in a place where you won’t have a chance of stopping it until it has been paid.”

  “And even then,” said Stenning, “I could recover the money, because my signature was obtained under duress.”

  The Saint smiled beatifically.

  “You’ll have a job proving it,” he murmured. “In any case, it won’t be necessary, because you’re going to sign that cheque voluntarily.”

  “Am I?”

  “You certainly are,” said the Saint. “Because if you don’t sign it voluntarily, I shall now proceed to beat you up.”

  Stenning came to his feet again.

  “You’re going to beat me up, are you?”

  “I am,” drawled Simon, with a certain enthusiasm. “And it will be no ordinary beating-up. I’m an expert in the beating-up game, and I may mention that the mercy of a knock-out does not figure in my programme until—oh, well beyond the thirtieth round. It will be painful for you, and I’m afraid your face will be rather crudely damaged; but unfortunately I haven’t any more subtle instruments of torture than my fists.”

  Stenning came round the table, and the Saint, who was unarmed but prepared for a display of armoury, divined the next move in the game before Stenning’s hand had reached his hip-pocket. The toe of his right shoe caught the big man on the wrist as the automatic came into sight, and the force of the kick was shattering.

  The Saint fell to the floor a second after the gun, and his legs flailing round in a scissors motion, knocked Stenning’s feet from under him. Stenning went down with a crash, but Simon was up again in an instant with the automatic in his hand. He slipped it into his hip-pocket, and shed his coat as Stenning scrambled up again.

  “The show devolves on me now—what?” he murmured. “That wrist of yours won’t help you a lot.”

  The next instant Stenning was upon him.

  It was not a pretty fight to watch, nor would any boxing referee have allowed it to continue for more than three seconds. Simon Templar was giving at least three stone away, and he was not prepared to take chances. The encounter lasted nine minutes by the clock, and at the end of that period Stenning went to the floor for the eleventh time and stayed there.

  “Up, Jenkins!” encouraged the Saint. “You’re not nearly out yet, so it’s no good shamming. The only Queensberry rule we haven’t broken yet is the one which forbids rolling about on the floor fighting, but if you don’t come up again quickly I’ll break that rule, too.”

  Stenning came to a sitting position.

  “I’ll sign,” he gasped.

  The Saint took him by the collar, yanked him to his feet, and pushed him into a chair.

  “Here’s your pen, and here are the cheques,” he sa
id briskly. “Get on with it, because I’m in a hurry. And mind you don’t drip blood all over them, because the bank might ask questions.”

  12

  Simon examined the signatures, folded the cheques carefully, and put them in his pocket. His hair was tousled and his shirt torn, but he was breathing quite regularly. He felt ready to begin again any time, and in spirits he was completely unruffled.

  “While I think of it, there’s one thing more. Take your pen, and write as I dictate. ‘I, James Arthur Vanney, formerly known as Stenning, hereby confess—’

  “I refuse! You damned double-crosser—”

  “I don’t,” said the Saint, “want any more unpleasantness. But if you’re going to be obstinate—”

  He took a step forward, and Stenning, seeing the look on his face, drew a clean sheet of paper hurriedly towards him.

  The Saint dictated, and Stenning wrote, and when the confession was completed and signed, the Saint read it through carefully and stowed it away in his wallet.

  “Now for Connell,” he remarked. “Where is he, Stenning?”

  The limp mess at the table buried its pulped face in its hands.

  “You may as well know now—he’s with Miss Marlowe.”

  “And where’s that?”

  “Downstairs. There are vaults under the building that I never told you about. The only way into them is from this flat. I had a private lift put in—I was going to use the cellars to hide in if the police got on to us and there was no time to make a bolt for it. Connell was putting the screw on—he said he must have the girl, and I helped him take her. They’re down there now.”

  Simon took the automatic from his pocket, and thumbed back the safety catch.

  “If anything’s happened to her,” he said, “you’re certainly going to collect a bullet, my pet. Where is this lift?”

  Stenning gestured weakly towards the wall.

  “Press the panel next to that picture,” he said.

  Simon did so. The panel slipped back a fraction of an inch at his touch, and he waited. For a few moments it seemed as if nothing was going to happen. There was no sound, but then a piece of panelling swung open with a click, and in front of him was a small lift. He stepped in, and the panelling closed behind him automatically.

  In the wall of the lift were two switches. He tried one without result, but when he clicked over the other the lift began to move downwards.

  Presently it stopped. In front of him was a gap in the shaft, hardly distinguishable in the darkness. He stepped out and then he was able to see better.

  A runnel ran to left and right of him. The paving, walls and ceiling were of stone, and the passage lost itself in darkness at either end. But a little way down to his right there was a space in the wall from which a faint light came. That must have been a branch tunnel, and since light came from it, it seemed as if his search would not have to be a long one. He began to creep towards it, moving as silently as possible over the flags, but he had hardly taken two steps before a low hum from behind him made him swing round. He saw the lift by which he had just descended commencing to move upwards, and for an instant he weighed up in his mind the possibility of reaching it and checking its ascent; but the idea was no sooner formulated than it was discarded. That was Stenning, of course—he should have knocked him out completely, or tied him up—but it was too late to think of that now. For a moment again he thought of retracing his steps and waiting for Stenning to arrive, but before he could figure out the pros and cons of that scheme it was driven out of his head by a scream that shrilled and echoed hollowly down the passage.

  He leapt towards the turning from which the light came. Another shorter tunnel stretched before him, dimly lighted by two flickering gas jets. At the end it appeared to open into a room so brightly lighted that at that point the gas jets must have given place to electricity. He could see a chair and the end of a table—nothing else—but it was the only place from which the scream could have come.

  Simon Templar was inside the room in a matter of seconds.

  Pamela Marlowe was there, and so was Connell. Connell was holding her in his great arms. Pamela was struggling, but she was a child in Connell’s terrific embrace. The Saint never took in more than the bare details of the scene. His hand gripped Connell’s collar, and literally bounced the man off his feet.

  “Connell, my man,” said the Saint pleasantly, “that will be all from you.”

  Connell’s fist came up like lightning; but Simon was even quicker, and the big man went sprawling against the wall from a mule-kick of a punch that carried every ounce of the Saint’s weight and strength behind it.

  Connell reeled and nearly fell. Then he came catapulting back to reply, like a jack-in-the-box. The Saint side-stepped coolly, and landed an uppercut that started at his knees and travelled skywards with detonating force to impact smashingly on the point of Connell’s jaw; and Connell went down like a log.

  “The conventional situation at last, Pamela,” said the Saint sadly, and he was just in time to catch her with his arm as she staggered.

  In those few merry moments he had forgotten everything else, and he was brought back to reality with a jar that sent a stream of cold air whistling down his spine.

  The sound was slight—no more than a subdued rattle that told of a lock being turned home. But the Saint heard it and whipped round—a few seconds too late.

  What had been an unguarded way out back into the tunnel was now barred by a solid iron gate, and on the other side of the gate was Stenning—Stenning leaning weakly against the wall, with his face smashed to a jelly, and his coat spattered with blood, but Stenning vindictive and triumphant.

  “Now will you squeal, Templar?” he croaked.

  The Saint made no answer.

  The nearest gas jet was directly over Stenning’s head. Stenning reached up one hand, and the flame was extinguished. A faint hissing sound could be heard.

  “Do you know what I’ve done, Templar?” asked Stenning shrilly.

  The Saint’s left arm was round the girl. With his right hand he was fumbling behind him.

  But Stenning was taking no notice. Forcing his tortured body to obedience by the exercise of a tremendous effort of will, he was reeling back down the corridor, lurching from side to side like a drunken man, keeping himself erect half the time by resting against the wall, but dragging himself, somehow, to the other end of the corridor and the second gas jet. He reached it.

  “Shall I tell you what I’ve done, Saint?” Stenning’s voice came booming hollowly down the tunnel, and as he spoke his hand went up and found the tap he sought.

  Simon knew then that the man was mad.

  The last gas jet went out, and the hissing sound became louder. The only light in the corridor now was that which came from the electric bulb in the room in which Simon and the girl were imprisoned.

  “I have turned on the gas,” said Stenning.

  And he laughed—a harsh, strident, demoniacal laugh. He was still laughing when the Saint shot him dead.

  “The late lamented,” murmured the Saint calmly.

  After the shot the silence that followed was so unbroken that Simon could hear his own breathing. Stenning would never speak again, and Connell was out for a long time.

  Slowly the Saint returned Stenning’s automatic to his hip pocket. It was no use now. One glance at the massive lock on the barred gate, which went from the floor to the top of the tunnel arch, told him that any attempt to shoot away the fastening would be wasted. Besides, with the gas continuing to escape, even the flash of a pistol would be enough to blow them all up.

  He felt quite unperturbed. A tight corner like that never bothered him in his life, though he knew how thin his chances were.

  He had thought that the girl had fainted, but he saw that her eyes were open. Even so, he did not let go of her.

  “Sorry about this, old dear,” said the Saint quietly.

  She nodded.

  “I understand,” she said.<
br />
  “They took you when I was away, of course,” he said. “Something seems to have gone wrong with this conventional situation. Remind me to write to The Times about it when we get out.”

  He told her of the cheques he had made Stenning sign, and took one of them out of his pocket to show her.

  “It may be of some use to your heirs and legatees—if you’ve made a will,” he said cheerfully.

  She looked up at him, steady-eyed, and it was not only that he was holding her, but she was holding on to him. At that moment, it seemed the most natural thing to do.

  “Is there no hope?” she asked; and the gaiety of the old, reckless, Saintly smile was as swift and natural as ever.

  “There’s always hope,” said the Saint. “Somehow or other I’m the most unsuccessful corpse that ever lived. Listen. I’d planned out everything I was going to do today. I wrote a complete account of everything I knew about Vanney—or Stenning, as he really was—and what I proposed to do about him, and left it at a District Messenger office, addressed to Teal.

  They were to send it straight round to him at one o’clock, unless I cancelled the order by telephone. The motor-boat is at Gravesend, as I ordered it, and by one o’clock, if anything unforeseen had gone wrong, I should have been miles away. What we’ve got to consider is whether we’re likely to last long enough to give Teal time to get on the job. The gas will spread; it’ll have to fill all the cellars. I don’t know how big they are, but it will creep up all the same.”