The Saint, in parting, had suggested the slop-pail. But Roger had discovered something better than that—a hefty broken chair-leg, apparently used to switch off the electric light without getting out of bed. His fingers closed upon it lovingly.
6
“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” drawled the Saint, ten minutes later, “but your manageress is wandering about in the line of retreat looking like a flat tyre, and I didn’t dare let her see me. Roger, you’ve blighted her young life. I know she’ll never smile again.”
Conway pointed his chair-leg at the bed.
“He sleeps.”
“After laying his egg?”
“He spilled a certain amount of beans. It ought to be enough to work on.”
“Let’s see what you’ve got—as the actress said to the bishop,” murmured Simon. “Half a sec—we’ll have some light on the subject.”
He felt for the socket, extracted the bulb from his pocket, and adjusted it. Roger switched it on.
The Saint inspected Mr Dyson with interest.
“Do you think he’ll die?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“A pity,” said the Saint. “It means we’ll have the trouble of roping him up. Make yourself look decent, and go out and find some string. You can talk while I tie.”
Roger removed the choker and replaced his collar while the Saint employed spit-and-polish methods, with a handkerchief, to his face. Then Roger snooped off on his errand.
He met Miss Cocker in the corridor.
“I’ve been looking for you, Mr Conway,” said the lady ominously. “Where have you been all this time?”
“If I told you,” said Roger truthfully, “you’d be shocked. What’s the trouble?”
“A gentleman’s been complaining about the noise.”
“Let him complain.”
“He’s wanting to leave at once.”
“Don’t stop him. Are the sandwiches and beer ready?”
“They’ve been waiting half an hour. But, Mr Conway—”
“Tell the little fellows to be patient. I shan’t be long now.”
He stalked away before the manageress could find her voice. But the woman was waiting for him when he came back, after a few minutes, with a couple of fathoms of stout cord in his pocket.
“Mr Conway—”
“Miss Cocker.”
“I’m not used to being treated like this, I’m not, really. I think you must be drunk yourself. I’m used to respectable hotels, I am, and I never heard of such goings on, I didn’t—”
“Miss Cocker,” said Roger kindly, “take my advice and go and look for a nice respectable hotel. Because I’m turning this one into a high-class roadside gin palace, from which people will be removed, roaring drunk, in the small hours of every morning. Bye-bye, ole geranium.”
He entered the porter’s room and closed the door in her face.
The Saint looked up with his quick smile.
“Domestic strife?” he queried.
“I’m used to respectable hotels, I am, and I never heard of such goings on, I didn’t.”
“And you always such a nice quiet gentleman, Mr Conway!”
“It’s the only way to carry it on—to pretend I’m canned. Tomorrow I shall have to see her and apologize profusely. Here’s your string.”
The Saint took the cord and bent to his task with practised efficiency, while Roger described the interview with Mr Dyson. Simon listened intently, but his memory was baulked by the name of Sleat. It had a vague familiar ring about it, but nothing more.
“Spider Sleat,” he repeated. “Can’t place it. How many men are there supposed to be on the moor?”
“I didn’t find that out.”
“There’s only the two of us. Dicky Tremayne took his car for a golfing tour in Scotland, and I don’t know where to find him. I sent Pat and Norman off to join Terry’s yachting party at Cowes.”
“You wouldn’t drag her into it, anyway.”
“There wouldn’t be time if I wanted to. No, my seraph—you and I must tackle this alone, and damn the odds. There’s one idea…”
“What’s that?”
The Saint completed his last knot, tested it, and stepped back. He faced Roger.
“I hate to do it,” he said, “but it’s the most practical scheme. I know Teal’s private phone number, and he’ll probably be at home now. I’ll ask if the name of Sleat means anything to him. Teal’s got the longest memory of any man at the Yard. That means I’ll have to tell him I’m on the tail of the Policeman with Wings.”
“Then he’ll get on the phone to the police round here—”
“He won’t. You don’t know the CID like I do. They’re as jealous as a mother at a baby show, and they think rather less of the country police than a Rolls chauffeur thinks of a Ford. I’ll tell Teal to come down himself by the first train in the morning to collect the specimens, and he won’t say a word to a soul. Now, filter out again and remove your manageress. Take her away to a quiet place and talk to her. Apologize now, if you like, instead of tomorrow morning. But give me a clear quarter of an hour to get that trunk call through.”
Roger nodded.
“I’ll see to it. But that only gives us tonight and half tomorrow.”
“It’ll be enough—to get Whiskers, find out the secret of this home, and act accordingly. We’ve got to make this a hurry order. Off you go, son.”
“Right. Where shall I meet you?”
“Betty’s room—in about half an hour. Now skate!”
Roger skated.
He found the manageress spluttering about the hall, steered her into the office, and spent a desperate twenty minutes with her. He got out at last, minus his dignity, but still blessed with a manageress, and made his way up the stairs.
Of all the Saint’s little band, Roger Conway had always been Simon’s especial friend. There were many men scattered over the world who held Simon Templar in a reverence bordering on idolatry; there were as many, if not more, in whose aid the Saint would not have stopped at any of the crimes in the calendar, but between Roger and the Saint was a greater bond than any of these. And Roger considered…
The Saint gave his ultimate affection to two people only—one man and one girl. The man was Roger Conway. The girl was Patricia Holm. She was the cream in his coffee. And those three, like the Three Musketeers, had come together out of infinitely diverse worlds—and stuck.
And Roger considered, soberly for him, because he realized that the girl he had seen, in sleep only that afternoon, and she almost a stranger, had moved him far more than it is safe for a man to be moved. Suppose she came to make a fourth inseparable, would the bonds that held the rest of them together hold as firmly? It was a fantastic castle to build in the air, but he had been moved, and he knew it.
Therefore he considered, in that brief breathing-space, and came to the girl’s room in a subdued mood.
She was powdering her nose.
“Hullo, Roger darling,” she said. “How are you?”
“I’m very fit,” said Roger. “How are you?”
Commonplace. But comforting. He lighted a cigarette, and sat down on the bed where he could see her face in the dressing-table mirror.
They talked. He described, for the second time, the Dyson episode—and other matters. She said she thought it was clever of him to think of carrying her up the stairs as if she were teasing and he ragging. Roger preened himself visibly. She looked nicer with her eyes open, he thought.
“Your friend’s very nice,” she said.
“Who—the Saint?”
“Is that what you call him? He said his name was Simon.”
“Everyone calls him the Saint.”
“He’s a sheik.”
Roger eased up on the preening.
She was plainly frightened by her adventure, but he thought she bore up remarkably well. Her nerves were palpably fluttered, but there was no hint of hysterics in her voice. She explained the doping.
“I was driving, and I felt something prick my leg. He showed me a pin sticking out of the upholstery, and said it must have been that. But a minute or so later I began to feel horribly dizzy, and I had to stop the car. My leg seemed to have swollen up and gone numb. That’s all I remember until I woke up here and found Simon—or the Saint—sitting in the armchair. He made me put my head under the cold tap, and then he made me lie down again and told me all about it.”
The minutes seemed to fly. She sat down beside him, and he took her hand absent-mindedly and went on talking. She didn’t seem to mind—he recalled that afterwards. But he had hardly got started when he was interrupted by a gentle tap on the door, and Simon Templar came in.
Roger was acutely conscious of his eccentric garb, for he was still wearing his police trousers with his ordinary coat, and his face was still somewhat soiled from the Saint’s improvised make-up. Roger felt depressingly unlike a sheik, and the Saint was as offensively sleek and Savile Row and patent-leather as a man can possibly be.
“Sorry to have to barge in like this, boys and girls,” he said breezily, “but I thought you ought to know that I’ve had a heart-to-heart chat with Teal over the long-distance wire—and worked the trick. He’ll be at Exeter tomorrow afternoon to stand us a drink and remove the exhibits. But there’ll be no sleep for the just between now and then, Roger!”
“Did you find out about Sleat?”
“And how.” The Saint swung round to the girl. “Tell me, old dear—when did Uncle Sebastian start building that house?”
“I can tell you exactly,” said Betty, “because it was a week before my birthday. I was staying with him in Torquay, and he took me over to see the foundations being dug.”
“You, all legs and pigtails, on your holidays,” said the Saint. “I know. And when is this birthday?”
“The third of August.”
“Five days ago—and to think you didn’t invite us to the party! But a week before that would be the twenty-seventh of July, seven years ago, makes it 1922…Roger, my archangel, it’s too good to be true!”
“Why?”
“Because on the fifth of July, 1922, Harry Sleat, known as Spider Sleat, was arrested at Southampton. On the first of August, 1922, he was convicted at the Old Bailey and sent down for seven years for busting the strong-room of the Presidential and getting away at Plymouth with fifty thousand pounds’ worth of diamonds that were on their way over to America. All that from the marvellous memory of our one and only Claud Eustace Teal.”
Roger forgot his clothes in the absorption of this cataract of facts. But his mind seized instantly on one clear idea.
“They never found the diamonds?”
“Never in all these days. But Whiskers was on the loose with the sparklers before Uncle Sebastian started to build his house. And Whiskers was in this district before they nobbled him—he must have been. And Whiskers, being an insubordinate convict, had to serve almost his full term. He came out on the eighth of June. What’s he do first?”
Roger leapt into the breach, momentarily oblivious of the bewildered girl.
“He tries to buy the house. Then, when Uncle won’t sell, he tries to scare him out. Then, when Uncle won’t be scared, he kidnaps Uncle and follows through with kidnapping Betty—”
“Because Betty is Uncle’s heir, and if Uncle merely vanishes the house goes to Betty—”
“So that Whiskers has to pinch them both, force them to sign a deed of sale dated some weeks before their disappearance—”
“And kill them—or otherwise keep them out of the way—while he takes possession, disinters the loot, and slithers off in the general direction of the tall timber. Roger, my pet, we’re next to the goods this time!”
The girl was staring blankly at them.
“I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about,” she said.
The Saint slapped his thigh.
“But it’s marvellous!” he cried. “It’s the maddest, merriest story that ever brought the roof down. Think of it! Whiskers, having got clean away with his fifty thousand quids’ worth of crystallized carbon, with the dicks hard on his heels, comes upon a field in the dead of night, and buries the diamonds deep down.”
Roger chipped in: “Then they catch him—”
“And he goes to jail quite cheerfully, knowing where he can find his fortune when he comes out. And he comes out, all ready to make a splash and enjoy himself—and finds somebody’s bought his field and built a house on top of the treasure. Oh baby! Can you beat it?”
The girl gasped. It was a perfect story. As an explanation of the whole mystery, it was the only possible one that was convincing at the same time—and even then it read like the creation of some imaginative novelist’s brain. It wanted some digesting.
But the two men before her seemed to find it sufficiently accredited. The Saint, hands on hips, was shaking with silent laughter. Roger, always less effervescent by nature than the Saint, was grinning delightedly.
“It sounds good,” he said.
“It’s the caterpillar’s spats! Now, this is where we take the springboard for the high dive. Is there provender ready for the troops?”
“Yes.”
“Load it up in the Desurio. We’ll park most of it at Betty’s for future reference on the way over, and just take what we need for supper to drink in the car as we go along. We’ll leave the Morris, because the police’ll be looking for it. You and Betty can go out quite openly, and I’ll sneak along to the best bathroom—that’s the one looking out on to the garage drive, isn’t it?—and drop out of the window and meet you there.”
“What about Dyson? We can’t leave him in the porter’s room.”
“Toddle along and give him another clip over the ear. Then he won’t yelp or struggle, and you can carry him out to the car. We’ll take him with us. I couldn’t bear to be parted from Dismal Desmond, even for an hour.”
“I ought to be able to do that,” said Conway. “There’s a door leading into the garden right opposite the porter’s room, and it’s dark enough now for no one to notice, if I’m quick.”
“That’s fine! Betty, old sweetheart—”
The Saint’s rattling volley of instructions was cut short as if by the turning off of a tap. He turned to the dazed girl with his most winning smile.
“Betty, old sweetheart, will you do it?”
“What do you want me to do?” she asked dazedly. “I’ve hardly understood a word of what you’ve been saying.”
The Saint seemed wilted by her denseness. Unused (as in his sober moments he was always ready to confess) to the less mercurial habits of ordinary folk, he was invariably taken aback by anyone showing the least surprise at anything he did or said. The limitations of the ordinary person’s outlook on life were to him a never-ending source of hurt puzzlement.
“My dear old peach-blossom—”
Roger, who was of a commoner humanity, and who knew by his own experience what a shock a first meeting with Simon Templar in such a mood could be, intervened sympathetically.
“Leave this to me, old boy.”
In language less picturesquely volcanic than the Saint would have employed, but language nevertheless infinitely more intelligible to a lay audience, he summarized the main features of the situation and what he knew of the plot, while the Saint listened with undisguised admiration. Simon had never ceased to admire and envy, without being able to imitate, Roger’s gift for meeting every known species of human life on its own ground. People had to adapt themselves to the Saint; Roger was able to adapt himself to people.
He explained, and the girl understood. Then he came to the Saint’s question, and he could see an automatic refusal starting to her lips.
The Saint stepped in again—but in this he was sure of himself. He had his own particular brand of parlour tricks, had Simon Templar.
“Betty, darling—”
This time it was Roger who listened in envious admiration.
It would b
e useless to attempt to record what the Saint said. The bare words, bereft of the magical charm of voice which the Saint could assume on occasion with such deadly ease, would appear banal, if not ridiculous. But the Saint spoke. He was pleading; he was friendly; he was masterful; he was confidential; he was flippant; he was romantic; he was impudent. And change followed effortless change with a crazily kaleidoscopic speed that would have left any girl battered into submission—and probably mazily wondering why she submitted.
And it was all done in a few minutes, and the girl was looking at him with wide eyes and saying, “Do you really think I ought to do it?”
“I really do,” said the Saint, as if the fate of worlds depended on it.
She hesitated, looked helplessly at Roger. Then—
“All right,” she said. “I’ll go. But I don’t mind telling you I’m terrified. Honestly. After this evening—”
“That’s a good girl,” said the Saint, and brazenly hugged her.
Roger felt morosely pleased that he was shortly going to be able to give Mr Dyson another clip over the ear. Anyone else would have done equally well, but if it had to be Mr Dyson…
7
“That,” said the Saint, “should be the place.”
He lay full length in the long damp grass, peering over the crest of a convenient hummock at the house.
When you have as extensive a wardrobe as the Saint’s, you can afford to maltreat a Savile Row poem in light grey fresco by stretching it out full length in long damp grass. Roger Conway, mindful of the dignity of his police uniform, contented himself with sinking to a squatting position. The girl was a little way behind them.
They could see the cottage, a stumpy black bulk in the moonlight, with two windows sharply cut out in yellow luminance. The sky was as clear as a bowl of dark glass, and in spite of Mr Dyson’s confident assurance, the fragment of moon that rode low down in the sky had been less help to them in their journey than the stars. A mile out, just off the road, the Desurio was parked with all its lights out.
The Saint squirmed down a little so that the flame of his match would not be visible to any watchers outside the cottage, and lighted a cigarette in his cupped hands.
Enter the Saint (The Saint Series) Page 14
