The Saint leaned back in his chair.
“At eight ack emma on Saturday morning, yesterday,” he said, “a party of us breakfasted here together. That is a ceremony which we observe religiously on every fourth anniversary of the death of Sir Richard Arkwright. After breakfast, we walk out in straw hats and football boots, and go and sail paper boats in the Round Pond. That’s part of the ceremony.”
“Yes?” prompted the torpid Mr Teal.
“At this breakfast,” said the Saint, “there were present Mr Conway and Miss Aldo, who aren’t here today to answer for themselves, and also those whom you see repeating the performance this morning—Miss Patricia Holm and Mr Richard Tremayne. Orace served us. You ask them if that isn’t true.”
“I see,” said Mr Teal, as if he didn’t see at all.
“Therefore,” said the Saint speciously, “we couldn’t possibly have been in Exeter at nine o’clock on Saturday morning, which I understand is the time when the mysterious policeman removed the swag from the police station with a forged order.”
“How did you know about that?” asked Teal, quickly for him. “About what?”
“About the policeman taking the diamonds.”
“Why,” said the Saint indignantly, “I never said anything about a policeman or about the diamonds. Did I, Pat?…Did I, Dicky?…Did I, Orace?.…”
Solemnly the three persons appealed to shook their heads.
“There!” said the Saint. “You must be dreaming, Teal!”
Very slowly, Chief Inspector Teal inclined his head.
“I see,” he said, in his monumentally tired way, “I see. The technical name for that is an alibi.”
“Do we call it a day, Teal?” said the Saint insinuatingly.
Mr Teal’s jaws continued to oscillate rhythmically, and his round head had not stopped nodding. He seemed, as he always did at such moments, on the point of falling off to sleep from sheer boredom.
“It’s a day,” said Mr Teal wearily. “It’s a day.”
THE LAWLESS LADY
1
For a lawbreaker, in the midst of his lawbreaking, to be attempting at the same time to carry on a feud with a Chief Inspector of Police, might be called heroically quixotic. It might equally well be called pure blame-foolishness of the most suicidal variety—according to the way you look at these things.
Simon Templar found it vastly entertaining.
Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal, of the Criminal Investigation Department, New Scotland Yard, that great detective (and he was nearly as great in mere bulk as he was in reputation) found it an interesting novelty.
Teal was reputed to have the longest memory of any man at the Yard. It was said, perhaps with some exaggeration, that if the Records Office happened to be totally destroyed by fire, Teal could personally have rewritten the entire dossier of every criminal therein recorded, methods, habits, haunts, and notable idiosyncrasies completely included—and added thereto a rough but reliable sketch of every set of fingerprints therewith connected. Certainly, he had a long memory.
He distinctly remembered a mysterious policeman, whom an enterprising journalist called the Policeman with Wings, who was strangely reincarnated some time after the originator and (normal) patentee of the idea had departed to Heaven—or some other place beginning with the same letter—on top of a pile of dynamite, thereby depriving Teal of the pleasure of handing over to his Commissioner fifty thousand pounds’ worth of diamonds which had been lost for seven years.
Mr Teal suspected—not without reason—that Simon Templar’s fertile brain had given birth to the dénouement of that gentle jest. And Mr Teal’s memory was long.
Therefore the secret activities of the Saint came to be somewhat hampered by a number of massive gentlemen in bowler hats, who took to patrolling Brook Street in relays like members of a Scottish clan mounting guard over the spot where their chieftain is sure he had dropped a sixpence.
The day arrived when Simon Templar tired of this gloomy spectacle, and, having nothing else to do, armed himself with a stout stick and sallied forth for a walk, looking as furtive and conspiratorial as he knew how.
He was as fit as a fiddle, and shouting for exercise. He walked westward through London, and crossed the Thames by Putney Bridge. He left Kingston behind him. Continuing south-west, he took Esher and Cobham in his stride. He walked fast, enjoying himself. Not until he reached Ripley did he pause, and there he swung into a convenient hostel towards six o’clock, after twenty-three brisk miles had been spurned by his Veldtschoen.
The afternoon had been sunny and warm. Simon knocked back a couple of pints of beer as if he felt he had earned every drop of them, smoked a couple of cigarettes, and then started back to the road with a refreshed spring in his step.
On his way out, in another bar, he saw a man with a very red face. The man had a bowler hat on the seat beside him, and he appeared to be melting steadily into a large spotted handkerchief.
Simon approached him like an old friend.
“Are you ready to go on?” he asked. I’m making for Guildford next. From there, I make for Winchester, where I shall have dinner, and I expect to sleep in Southampton tonight. At six-thirty tomorrow morning I start for Liverpool, via Land’s End. Near Manchester, I expect to murder a mulatto gas-fitter with a false nose. After which, if you care to follow me to John o’ Groats—”
The rest of the conversation was conducted on one side at least, in language which might have made a New York stevedore feel slightly shocked.
Simon passed on with a pained expression, and went on his way.
A mile further on, he slowed his pace to a stroll, and was satisfied that Red Face was no longer bringing up the rear. Shortly afterwards, a blue sports saloon swept past him with a rush and stopped a few yards away. As he reached it, a girl leaned out, and Simon greeted her with a smile.
“Hullo, Pat darling,” he said. “Let’s go and have a cocktail and some dinner.”
He climbed in, and Patricia Holm let in the clutch. “How’s the market in bowler hats?” she asked.
“Weakening,” murmured the Saint. “Weakening, old dear. The bulls weren’t equal to the strain. Let’s change the subject. Why are you so beautiful, Pat?”
She flung him a dazzling smile.
“Probably,” she said, “because I find I’m still in love with you—after a whole year. And you’re still in love with me. The combination’s enough to make anyone beautiful.”
It was late when they got back to London.
At the flat in Brook Street, Roger Conway and Dicky Tremayne were drinking the Saint’s beer.
“There was some for you,” said Roger, “only we drank it in case it went flat.”
“Thoughtful of you,” said the Saint.
He calmly annexed Mr Conway’s tankard, and sank into a chair.
“Well, soaks,” he remarked, “how was the English countryside looking this afternoon?”
“I took the North Road,” said Roger. “My little Mary’s lamb petered out at St. Alban’s, and Dicky picked me up just beyond. Twenty-one miles by the clock—in five hours forty-five minutes Fahrenheit. How’s that?”
“Out,” said the Saint, “I did twenty-three miles in five and a half hours dead. My sleuth was removed to hospital on an asbestos stretcher, and when they tried to revive him with brandy he burst into flames. We shall hear more of this.”
Nevertheless, the following morning, Orace, bringing in his master’s early tea, reported that a fresh detachment of bowler hats had arrived in Brook Street, and the Saint had to devote his ingenuity to thinking out other means of evading their vigilance.
In the next fortnight, the Saint sent nine thousand pounds to charity, and Inspector Teal, who knew that to obtain that money the Saint must have “Persuaded” someone to write him a cheque for ten thousand pounds, from which had been deducted the ten per cent commission which the Saint always claimed according to his rules, was annoyed. His squad, interrogated, were unable to ma
ke any suggestions as to the source of the gift. No, Simon Templar had done nothing suspicious. No, he had not been seen visiting or associating with any suspicious characters. No, he—
“You’re as much use as so many sick headaches, said Teal unkindly. In fact, less use. You can stop watching that house. It’s obviously a waste of your time—not,” he added sweetly, “that the Department has missed you.”
The climax came a few days later, when a cocaine smuggler whom Teal had been watching for months was at last caught with the goods as he stepped ashore at Dover. Teal, “Acting on information received,” snapped the bracelets on his wrists in the Customs House, and personally accompanied his prisoner on the train to London, sitting alone in a reserved compartment with his captive.
He did not know that Simon Templar was on the train until they were fifteen minutes out of Victoria Station, when the Saint calmly walked in and hailed him joyfully.
“Can you read?” asked Teal.
“No,” said the Saint.
Teal pointed to the red labels pasted on the windows.
“R-E-S-E-R-V-E-D,” he spelt out. “Do you know the word?”
“No,” said the Saint.
He sat down, after one curious glance at the man at Teal’s side, and produced a gold cigarette-case.
“I believe I owe you an apology for walking one of your men off his feet a while ago,” he said. “Really, I think you asked for it, but I’m told you’re sore. Can’t we kiss and be friends?”
“No,” said Teal.
“Have a cigarette?”
“I don’t smoke cigarettes.”
“A cigar, then?”
Teal turned warily.
“I’ve had some of your jokes,” he said. “Does this one explode, or is it the kind that blows soot all over your face when you light it?”
Simon handed over the weed. It was unmistakably excellent. Teal wavered and bit off the end absent-mindedly.
“Maybe I was unreasonable,” he conceded, puffing. “But you asked for something before I ever did. And one day you’ll get it. See this bright boy?”
He aimed his cigar at the prisoner, and the Saint nodded.
“I’ve been after him for the best part of a year. And he’s had plenty of laughs off me before I got him. Now it’s my turn. It’ll be the same with you. I can wait. One day you’ll go too far, you’ll make a mistake, and—”
“I know that man,” said the Saint.
He looked across the compartment with cold eyes.
“He is a blackmailer and a dealer in drugs. His name is Cyril Farrast, and he is thirty-two years old. He had one previous conviction.”
Teal was surprised, but he concealed it by lowering his eyelids sleepily. He always looked most bored when he was most interested.
“I know all that,” he said. “But how do you know?”
“I’ve been looking for him,” said the Saint simply, and the man stared. “Even now, I still want him. Not for the dope business—I see you’re going to take care of that—but for a girl in Yorkshire. There are thousands of stories like it, but this one happened to come to my notice. He’ll recognize her name—but does he know who I am?”
“I’ll introduce you,” said Teal, and turned to his captive. “Cyril, this is Mr Simon Templar. You’ve heard of him. He’s known as the Saint.”
The man shrank away in horror, and Simon grinned gently.
“Oh, no,” he drawled. “That’s only Teal’s nasty suspicious mind.…But if I were the Saint, I should want you, Cyril Farrast, because of Elsa Gordon, who committed suicide eleven days ago. I ought to kill you, but Teal has told me to be good. So, instead—”
Farrast was white to the lips. His mouth moved, but no sound came. Then—
“It’s a lie!” he screamed. “You can’t touch me—”
Teal pushed him roughly back, and faced the Saint.
“Templar, if you think you’re going to do anything funny—”
“I’m sure of it.” Simon glanced at his watch. “That cigar, for instance, is due to function about now. No explosives, no soot. A much better joke than that.…”
Teal was holding the cigar, staring at it. He felt very weak. His head seemed to have been aching for a long time.
With a sudden convulsive effort he pitched the cigar through the window, and his hand began to reach round to his hip-pocket. Then he sprawled limply sideways.
A porter woke him at Victoria.
That night there were warrants out for the arrest of Simon Templar and all his friends. But the flat in Brook Street was shut up, and the janitor stated that the owners had gone away for a week—destination unknown.
The Press was not informed. Teal had his pride.
Three days later, a large coffin, labelled “Fragile—Handle Carelessly—Any Old Side Up,” was delivered at New Scotland Yard, addressed to Chief Inspector Teal. When examined, it was heard to tick loudly, and the explosives experts opened it at dead of night in some trepidation in the middle of Hyde Park.
They found a large alarm clock—and Cyril Farrast.
He was bound hand and foot, and gagged. And his bare back showed that he had been terribly flogged.
Also in the coffin was a slip of paper bearing the sign of the Saint. And in a box, carefully preserved in tissue paper and corrugated cardboard, was a cigar.
When Teal arrived home that night he found Simon Templar patiently waiting on his doorstep.
“I got your cigar,” Teal said grimly.
“Smoke it,” said the Saint. “It’s a good one. If you fancy the brand, I’ll mail you the rest of the box tomorrow.”
“Come in,” said Teal.
He led the way, and the Saint followed. In the tiny sitting-room, Teal unwrapped the cigar, and the Saint lighted a cigarette.
“Also,” said Teal, “I’ve got a warrant for your arrest.”
“And no case to use it on,” said Simon. “You’ve got your man back.”
“You flogged him.”
“He’s the only man who can bring that charge against me. You can’t.”
“If you steal something and send it back, that doesn’t dispose of the charge of theft—if we care to prosecute.”
“But you wouldn’t,” smiled the Saint, watching Teal light the cigar. “Frankly, now, between ourselves, would it be worth it? I notice the papers haven’t said anything about the affair. That was wise of you. But if you charged me, you couldn’t keep it out of the papers. And all England would be laughing over the story of how the great Claud Eustace Teal”—the detective winced—“was caught on the bend with the old, old doped cigar. Honestly—wouldn’t it be better to call it a day?”
Teal frowned, looking straight at the smiling young man before him.
From the hour of his first meeting with the Saint, Teal had recognized an indefinable superiority. It lay in nothing that the Saint did or said. It was simply there. Simon Templar was not common clay, and Teal, who was of the good red earth earthy, realized the fact without resentment.
“Seriously, then, Templar,” said Teal, “don’t you see the hole you put me in? You took Farrast away and flogged him—that remains. And he saw you talking to me in the train. If he liked, he could say in Court that we were secretly aiding and abetting you. The police are in the limelight just now, and a lot of the mud would stick.”
“Farrast is dumb,” answered Simon. “I promise you that. Because I told him that if he breathed a word of what had happened, I should find him and kill him. And he believes it. You see, I appreciated your difficulty.”
Teal could think fast. He nodded.
“You win again,” he said. “I think the Commissioner’ll pass it—this once—since you’ve sent the man back. But another time—”
“I never repeat myself,” said the Saint. “That’s why you’ll never catch me. But thanks, all the same.”
He picked up his hat, but he turned back at the door.
“By the way—has this affair, on top of the diamonds, put you
in bad with the Commissioner?”
“I won’t deny it.”
The Saint looked at the ceiling.
“I’d like to put that right,” he said. “Now, there’s a receiver of stolen goods living in Notting Hill, named Albert Handers. Most of the big stuff passes through his hands, and I know you’ve been wanting him for a longish while.”
Teal started. “How the deuce—”
“Never mind that. If you really want to smooth down the Commissioner, you’ll wait for Handers at Croydon Aerodrome tomorrow morning, when he proposes to fly to Amsterdam with the proceeds of the Asheton robbery. The diamonds will be sewn into the carrying handle of his valise. I wonder you’ve never thought of that, the times you’ve stopped him and searched him…Night-night, sonny boy!”
He was gone before the plump detective could stop him, and that night the Saint slept again in Brook Street.
But the information which the Saint had given came from Dicky Tremayne, another of the gang, and it signalled the beginning of the end of a coup to which Tremayne had devoted a year of patient preparation.
2
Dicky Tremayne walked into the Saint’s flat late one night, and found the Saint in pyjamas. Dicky Tremayne was able to walk in at any hour, because, like Roger Conway, he had his own key. Dicky Tremayne said, “Saint, I feel I’m going to fall in love.”
The Saint slewed round, raising his eyes to heaven.
“What—not again?” he protested.
“Again,” snapped Dicky. “It’s an infernal nuisance, but there you are. A man must do something.”
Simon put away his book and reached for a cigarette from the box that stood conveniently open on the table at his elbow.
“Burn it,” said Simon, “I always thought Archie Sheridan was bad enough. Till he went and got married, I used to spend my spare time wondering why he never got landed. But since you came out of your hermitage, and we let you go and live unchaperoned in Paris—”
“I know,” snapped Dicky. “I can’t help it. But it may be serious this time.”
Enter the Saint (The Saint Series) Page 18
