"A crook lying to save his skin! Do you think that his word will have any weight? With a reputation like his——"
"Oh, but he hasn't got to rely on his reputation alone, comrade. There is a very important bit of corroborative what's-it, or circumstantial how's-your-father."
"And what might that be?"
"I'll tell you that later," said the Saint, "if you remind me. But for the present I'm just fascinated to hear what fairy tale you think you're going to tell about that fiver."
"Do you really think you'll be able to use that against me?"
"I do."
"Let me tell you," said Cullis, "that you're going to be disappointed. There's one thing you seem to have forgotten, but I remember it quite well. Waldstein himself, under the name of Stephen Weald, was at one time a member of Trelawney's precious gang. Did you know that?"
"I did."
"Then," said Cullis deliberately, "what is more natural than that you should have in your possession a five-pound note which can be traced back to Waldstein's account?"
The Saint looked at him. And the Saint smiled, and shook his head.
"Not good enough," he said. "That might possibly be made to account for this note which I've got here; but will it account for the others which can probably still be found somewhere among your belongings?"
"Which you could have planted there."
"That excuse didn't save Sir Francis Trelawney," said the Saint, cold as a judge. "Why should you think it will save you?"
Their eyes met for a long while, and then Cullis took a slow step forward. His face had become a mask of granite.
"I see," he said again, very slowly.
"So glad you appreciate the point," said the Saint. "It is going to be a bit awkward for you, isn't it? But it ought to go a long way towards clearing Sir Francis Trelawney's name."
"And who," said Cullis, in the same soft voice, "is going to make a search of my possessions before I have time to get those notes out of the way?"
And the Saint smiled again, rocking gently on his heels.
"Thank you," he said, "for admitting that you have got the other notes."
"And suppose I admit it," said Cullis calmly. "You've still got to answer my question. Who's going to make that search—and prove anything?"
"I might arrange it," said the Saint. And he said it so quietly and naturally that it was hard to read any blind bluff into the words.
Cullis looked closely at him, and a little pulse began to beat in Cullis's forehead.
"There's something funny about you, Simon Templar——"
"We are amused," said the Saint politely.
"But perhaps," said Cullis, "even you couldn't have prophesied what was going to happen to you when you'd told me that story."
"Tell me."
"You're a dangerous criminal, and your accomplice is wanted for murder. Seeing that the game's up, you're going to make one last desperate effort to beat me and get away. And in self-defense I shall have to shoot you—-"
"Just like you had to shoot Gugliemi," said the Saint, almost in a whisper; and Cullis went white to the lips.
Then the mask-like features contorted suddenly.
"How did you know that?"
"I am a clairvoyant," said the Saint easily.
"And yet," said Cullis, "the trick is still good enough——"
"Not quite good enough," said the Saint. And there was a sudden swift urgency in his voice, for at that moment he saw death staring him in the face—death in Cullis's pale blue eyes, and death in the twist of Cullis's lips, and death quivering in Cullis's right hand. "Not quite good enough. Because there's one more instalment to my story—and you'd better hear it before you shoot!"
For a moment he thought that Cullis would shoot and chance the consequences, and he loosened his muscles for a desperate leap. And the assistant commissioner's pose slackened by a fraction.
"I'll hear what you have to say. But you needn't expect to get away with another bluff like the one Trelawney put over last night."
"And it was such a good bluff, too," said the Saint sadly, with one eyebrow cocked at the assistant commissioner's bandaged thumb. '
And then he smiled into Cullis's eyes.
"But we don't need to use bluff any more," he said. "I'm strong for having everything in its right place, and the place for bluff has gone by, Cullis."
"Get on!"
"I am a brilliantly clever man," said the Saint, in his airy way, "and picnics like this are sitting rabbits to me. I worked this one out for your special benefit, and you've enjoyed it so much, too. . . . You see, it would have been perfectly easy to bump you off, but that wasn't all we wanted. Waldstein and Essenden had been bounced too rapidly, and we weren't making the same error over you. We wanted to hear you sing to us here before you passed on to join the herald angels; but we quite appreciated that we weren't a sufficient audience. Jill and I are simple souls whom the world has used hardly, and Duodecimo is another piece of shop-soiled driftwood on the sea of life—"
"Cut the cackle," rasped Cullis, with a new venom in his voice. "If you're just trying to gain time——"
"I'm unbosoming in my own style, brother," said the Saint plaintively. "Give me a break. And now where was I? ... Oh, yes. Duodecimo is another piece of shop-soiled driftwood on the——"
"I'll give you three minutes more. If you've got anything to say——"
"O. K., Algernon. Then let's put it that your word would probably outweigh anything that Jill or I or Duodecimo could say. So there had to be a witness who couldn't be challenged. And who could be a more ideal witness than the chief commissioner himself?"
The Saint saw Cullis's eyes narrow down to mere pin points, and laughed again.
"I went to the chief commissioner. I borrowed his own house. We came down here this evening and set the stage very carefully. Those bullet holes which you saw in the door upstairs were placed there three hours ago by special permission of the proprietor. The bars on the window were installed this afternoon and chopped about while you were travelling down. I personally staged the scene, wrote the dialogue, and produced the soul-stirring drama now drawing to its close—and all in one rehearsal. A microphone behind that picture of an indecently exposed lady throwing geraniums at a nightingale has been picking up all your winged words and relaying them, if not to all stations, at least to one—with a sergeant sitting on his Pitman diploma at the other end and taking them all down. Another connection upstairs gave up the personal lowdown on every word of your recent backchat with Duodecimo—which would have been enough to hang you by itself. But we are thorough. We didn't even stop there. Half a minute after you heard the front door slam behind the chief commissioner just now, he was creeping in through the back door and sprinting up the back stairs to hear some more of the story from his private broadcasting station. No, I shouldn't even shoot now, Cullis, because I think I heard Auntie Ethel coming back——"
Cullis heard the rattle of the door behind him, and spun round.
The chief commissioner stood on the threshold. And now he showed no signs of the injury which had at first impressed his assistant. His bearing was erect, he no longer clutched his shoulder, and there was a glitter in his eyes which had nothing to do with anything he had said to Cullis before he left.
Also, there was an automatic in his hand.
"I heard you," he said; and Cullis stepped back a pace.
Cullis still held a gun in his hand, but it hung loose at his side, and he knew that the least movement would be fatal. He stood quite still, and the chief commissioner went on speaking.
"You ought to know," he said, "that I've been watching you for some time. I think I first had my suspicions when those papers were taken from the Records Office; and then the Saint came to me with a story which I couldn't ignore, fantastic though it was."
"You believed a crook?" said Cullis scornfully.
"For my own reasons," said the commissioner. "He was, perhaps, something more than an
ordinary crook when he came to me, and I was able to believe him when I shouldn't have believed anyone else in his place. Even you should admit that the Saint has a certain reputation. There was a warrant out for his arrest at the time." The commissioner's lips twitched. "It was one of many that have been wasted on him. But he placed himself unreservedly in my hands, and it seems as if the result has justified us."
Cullis looked around him, and saw that Simon Templar also held a gun; and Jill Trelawney was sitting up on the sofa, mopping at her blouse with a handkerchief.
"Only red ink," explained the Saint sweetly.
Cullis stood like a man carved in stone.
And then he nodded slowly, and the ghost of a smile twitched at his mouth.
"I needn't bother to deny anything," he said quietly. "It's all quite clear. But it was a clever piece of work on your part to get the story from my own mouth as you have done."
He looked the chief commissioner in the eyes.
"You may as well hear it in full," he said. "I framed Sir Francis Trelawney under your very nose. Waldstein and Essenden were the leaders of the combine that Trelawney was out to smash, and I was strapped at the time. They offered big money, and I came in with them. Trelawney was dangerous. In another month or so he'd probably have had them, if he'd been able to keep on. The only thing to do was to get him out of the way, and we fixed that up between us. It wasn't so difficult as it might have been, because he was always a man who worked on his own. We knew that if once he was discredited, no one else would be able to take up his work at the point where he left off. I paved the way by writing that warning about the raid on his typewriter. Then I telephoned the message which was supposed to have come from you, which sent him over to Paris and helped us to catch him out at Waldstein's hotel. After that, the rest was easy. I had Waldstein's money in my pocket when I opened his strong box in front of you, and I'd practised that little conjuring trick for weeks. It wasn't very difficult. The notes came out of his box in front of your very eyes, and there was nothing he could say about that. Later on, Waldstein, under one of his aliases, joined up with the girl to keep her out of mischief. He called himself lucky when he met her on the boat coming over from New York to start the work of the Angels. . . . The trouble started when the Saint came after me—when my house was burgled and my desk broken open last night."
"I heard about that," said the chief commissioner.
Cullis nodded.
"From the Saint, I suppose? Well, it was a neat piece of work, although it was the girl who did it. Even before that I'd decided that Jill Trelawney was getting too dangerous, and sent Gugliemi out after her; but he turned against me, as you know. Even when my desk was opened, I didn't think anything had been taken, and when you told me to come down here I thought I'd got a chance."
"Until Templar showed you that five-pound note?" murmured the chief.
"Quite right. ... Is there anything else you want to know?"
"I don't think so."
Cullis's eyes shifted round the room.
"But there's one thing I should like to know," he said.
"What's that?"
"When the Saint came to you with that story, why should you have taken any more notice of it than if anyone else had brought it to you?"
A dry smile touched the commissioner's lips.
"Because I happen to know him well," he said. "When he got his pardon, I coaxed him into the Secret Service to keep him from getting into more trouble. His methods have always been rather eccentric, but they're effective. Some time ago he got an idea that there was something more in the Trelawney business than ever came out, and I let him take up the case in his own way. He's been working at it in his own way ever since: his police appointment was only part of the job, and his very irregular resignation was only another part."
There was one person who was more surprised than Cullis, and that was Jill Trelawney.
"You, Saint?"
"When we first met," said the Saint sadly, "I told you I'd reformed, but you wouldn't believe me. And in the last few days I seem to have done nothing but talk to you about my respectable friend. Let me introduce you—Sir Hamilton Dorn, Chief Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis, commonly known as Auntie Ethel. Pleased to have you meet each other."
Sir Hamilton bowed slightly.
"I never was the hell of a policeman," said the Saint apologetically. "Scotland Yard will probably survive without me—though I can't help thinking I might have pepped them up a heap if I'd stayed on."
For that one moment Simon Templar was the central figure, and there was not an eye on Cullis. And then the Saint, out of the tail of his eye, saw Cullis's right hand leap up, and shouted a warning even as he turned. But his voice was drowned by the roar of Cullis's automatic, and he saw the chief commissioner's gun drop to the floor, and saw a red stain suddenly splashed on the chief commissioner's wrist.
He raised his own gun, but the hammer clicked on a dud cartridge, and he threw himself down on the floor as Cullis's automatic barked again.
He heard the bullet sing over his head and smack into the wall behind him with a tinkle of glass from a smashed picture, and spun his legs round in a flailing semicircle that aimed at Cullis's ankles. Even so, he did not see how Cullis could possibly miss with his next shot. . . .
He missed his kick ... but he had forgotten Jill Trelawney. As he scrambled up, he saw both her hands locked upon Cullis's wrist, and Cullis's third shot went up into the ceiling. Then he himself also had hold of the wrist, and he twisted at it savagely. The gun went to the floor, and the Saint kicked it away.
He did not see Cullis snatch up the bronze statuette from the table behind him, but if he had not turned his head—more by intuition than by calculation—it would certainly have cracked his skull. As it was, the glancing blow half stunned him and sent him reeling, with his hold on Cullis's wrist broken. Jill had let the man go as soon as the Saint grappled with him.
As he climbed dizzily to his feet, with his head singing, and wiped the blood out of his eyes, he saw the chief commissioner groping blasphemously for one of the fallen guns with his sound left hand—saw the open French windows, and Jill Trelawney vanishing through them.
"Come back, you fool!" yelled the Saint huskily.
But she could not have heard him. She was gone, and he followed, staggering.
There was a patter of footsteps down the gravel path along the side of the house, and he saw her white blouse as a pale blur in the darkness.
He caught her up at the corner of the house, and, standing beside her, saw Cullis turning through the garden gate.
Then he started to run again, for he knew that if Cullis turned again at the next corner, as he would be likely to do, he would stumble straight upon the chief commissioner's car, which had been left standing there with the lights out.
And Cullis turned that way. Whether it was simply that he wanted to get clear of the principal road and attempt to shake off pursuit in the darkness and more open country, or whether it was that the luck which had been with him so long was disposed to help him yet a little while longer, could never be known. But he did come upon the car, and he was flinging himself into the driving seat as Simon turned the corner after him. An instant later the self-starter brought the engine to life, and the car was starting to move as the Saint flung himself at the luggage grid.
He hung there for a few seconds, getting his last resources of nerve and muscle together. He was still dazed, practically knocked out on his feet, after the murderous blow that he had taken on his head. And the blood that persisted in trickling into his eyes from a shallow scalp wound half blinded him. But he held on.
And then he pulled himself together and moved again. It had to be done, for his hold was precarious, and he could not have kept it for much longer in the state he was in. And by that time the car was travelling at forty miles an hour, and a slip, a fall in the road, would very easily have put an end to the adventure in quite a different
way from which he had intended.
He got his hands over the furled top, hauled himself up, and tumbled over onto the cushions of the back seat.
With a sigh of relief, he eased his aching muscles; and for a while he lay there, dead beat, hardly able to move. His head felt as if it were splitting, and crimson specks danced in a grey haze before his eyes.
But the car drove on. The driver, intent only on the road that showed up ahead in the blaze of the headlights, never noticed his arrival.
Gradually the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach passed off. He was still weary from his reckless effort, but his brain was clearing. He mopped at his forehead with his handkerchief and opened his eyes.
Then he pulled himself up onto his knees. As his eyes came over the level of the front seat, the blaze of another pair of headlights that were racing over the road towards them flooded into his eyes.
"There's no more speed limit," said the Saint unhappily, in Cullis's ear, "but you're still breaking it, and I shall have to arrest you, Cullis, really I shall. Driving to the danger of the public, that's what you're doing——"
As Cullis heard his voice the car swerved perilously, and then straightened up again.
"At least," said Cullis over his shoulder, "I'll take you with me."
Simon took him by the throat, but Cullis's hands still clutched the steering wheel rigidly.
The oncoming car was less than twenty yards away. In any other circumstances, with the road to themselves, Simon might have been able to shoot Cullis, or even simply hit him over the back of the head with the butt of his gun, and trust to being able to keep the car straight while he clambered over and pushed the man out of the way and took the wheel. But there and then there was no chance to do that. In another second or two they would smash head on into the other car. ...
Cullis's intention was obvious.
With a desperate wrench the Saint rammed Cullis's face down between the spokes of the steering wheel; and for a moment the car was out of control. Then, pushing Cullis sideways, Simon grabbed the wheel and wrenched the car round.
The oncoming headlights blazed straight into his eyes, hurtling towards them. The driver of the other car swerved, but he could hardly manoeuvre on that narrow road, and there was no time for him to pull up.
The Saint Meets His Match (She was a Lady) Page 22
