by Otto Penzler
ALTHOUGH HE OFTEN ACTS as a detective, Simon Templar, better known as the Saint, is an adventurer, a romantic hero who works outside the law and has grand fun doing it. Like so many crooks in literature, he is imbued with the spirit of Robin Hood, who suggests that it is perfectly all right to steal, so long as it is from someone with wealth. Most of the more than forty books about the Saint are collections of short stories or novellas and, in the majority of tales, he is on the shady side of the street while also functioning as a detective. Unconstricted by being an official policeman, he steps outside the law to retrieve money or treasure that may not have been procured in an honorable fashion, either to restore it to its proper owner or to enrich himself. “Maybe I am a crook,” Templar says once, “but in between times I’m something more. In my simple way I am a kind of justice.”
In addition to the many books about the Saint, there were ten films about him, mainly starring George Sanders or Louis Hayward, as well as a comic strip, several radio series that ran for much of the 1940s, and a television series starring Roger Moore that was an international success with one hundred eighteen episodes.
Leslie Charteris (1907–1993), the creator of the phenomenally successful and much-loved character, was born in Singapore, lived in England for many years, and became an American citizen in 1946.
“The Man Who Liked Toys” was first published in the September 1933 issue of American Magazine. It included neither Simon Templar nor Inspector Teal, however, and was rewritten for its first book publication in Boodle (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1934); it was published in the United States as The Saint Intervenes (New York, Doubleday, 1934). The story was adapted for The Saint radio series on the Columbia Broadcasting System in 1945 with Brian Aherne as Templar. It also served as the basis for an episode of Moore’s television series.
LESLIE CHARTERIS
CHIEF INSPECTOR Claud Eustace Teal rested his pudgy elbows on the table and unfolded the pink wrapping from a fresh wafer of chewing gum.
“That’s all there was to it,” he said. “And that’s the way it always is. You get an idea, you spread a net out among the stool pigeons, and you catch a man. Then you do a lot of dull routine work to build up the evidence. That’s how a real detective does his job; and that’s the way Sherlock Holmes would have had to do it if he’d worked at Scotland Yard.”
Simon Templar grinned amiably, and beckoned a waiter for the bill. The orchestra yawned and went into another dance number; but the floor show had been over for half an hour, and Dora’s Curfew was hurrying the drinks off the tables. It was two o’clock in the morning, and a fair proportion of the patrons of the Palace Royal had some work to think of before the next midnight.
“Maybe you’re right, Claud,” said the Saint mildly.
“I know I’m right,” said Mr. Teal, in his drowsy voice. And then, as Simon pushed a fiver onto the plate, he chuckled. “But I know you like pulling our legs about it, too.”
They steered their way round the tables and up the stairs to the hotel lobby. It was another of those rare occasions when Mr. Teal had been able to enjoy the Saint’s company without any lurking uneasiness about the outcome. For some weeks his life had been comparatively peaceful. No hints of further Saintly lawlessness had come to his ears; and at such times he admitted to himself, with a trace of genuine surprise, that there were few things which entertained him more than a social evening with the gay buccaneer who had set Scotland Yard more mysteries than they would ever solve.
“Drop in and see me next time I’m working on a case, Saint,” Teal said in the lobby, with a truly staggering generosity for which the wine must have been partly responsible. “You’ll see for yourself how we really do it.”
“I’d like to,” said the Saint; and if there was the trace of a smile in his eyes when he said it, it was entirely without malice.
He settled his soft hat on his smooth dark head and glanced round the lobby with the vague aimlessness which ordinarily precedes a parting at that hour. A little group of three men had discharged themselves from a nearby lift and were moving boisterously and a trifle unsteadily towards the main entrance. Two of them were hatted and over-coated—a tallish man with a thin line of black moustache, and a tubby red-faced man with rimless spectacles. The third member of the party, who appeared to be the host, was a flabby flat-footed man of about fifty-five with a round bald head and a rather bulbous nose that would have persuaded any observant onlooker to expect that he would have drunk more than the others, which in fact he obviously had. All of them had the dishevelled and rather tragically ridiculous air of Captains of Industry who have gone off duty for the evening.
“That’s Lewis Enstone—the chap with the nose,” said Teal, who knew everyone. “He might have been one of the biggest men in the City if he could have kept off the bottle.”
“And the other two?” asked the Saint incuriously, because he already knew.
“Just a couple of smaller men in the same game. Abe Costello—that’s the tall one—and Jules Hammel.” Mr. Teal chewed meditatively on his spearmint. “If anything ever happens to them, I shall want to know where you were at the time,” he added warningly.
“I shan’t know anything about it,” said the Saint piously.
He lighted a cigarette and watched the trio of celebrators disinterestedly. Hammel and Costello he knew something about from the untimely reincarnation of Mr. Titus Oates; but the more sozzled member of the party was new to him.
“You do unnerstan’, boys, don’t you?” Enstone was articulating pathetically, with his arms spread around the shoulders of his guests in an affectionate manner which contributed helpfully towards his support. “It’s jus’ business. I’m not hard-hearted. I’m kind to my wife an’ children an’ everything, God bless ’em. An’ any time I can do anything for either of you—why, you jus’ lemme know.”
“That’s awfully good of you, old man,” said Hammel, with the blurry-eyed solemnity of his condition.
“Less have lunch together on Tuesday,” suggested Costello. “We might be able to talk about something that’d interest you.”
“Right,” said Enstone dimly. “Lush Tooshday. Hic.”
“An’ don’t forget the kids,” said Hammel confidentially.
Enstone giggled.
“I shouldn’t forget that!” In obscurely elaborate pantomime, he closed his fist with his forefinger extended and his thumb cocked vertically upwards, and aimed the forefinger between Hammel’s eyes. “Shtick ’em up!” he commanded gravely, and at once relapsed into further merriment, in which his guests joined somewhat hysterically.
The group separated at the entrance amid much handshaking and back-slapping and alcoholic laughter; and Lewis Enstone wended his way back with cautious and preoccupied steps towards the lift. Mr. Teal took a fresh bite on his gum and tightened his mouth disgustedly.
“Is he staying here?” asked the Saint.
“He lives here,” said the detective. “He’s lived here even when we knew for a fact that he hadn’t got a penny to his name. Why, I remember once——”
He launched into a lengthy anecdote which had all the vitality of personal bitterness in the telling. Simon Templar, listening with the half of one well-trained ear that would prick up into instant attention if the story took any twist that might provide the germ of an adventure, but would remain intently passive if it didn’t, smoked his cigarette and gazed abstractedly into space. His mind had that gift of complete division; and he had another job on hand to think about. Somewhere in the course of the story he gathered that Mr. Teal had once lost some money on the Stock Exchange over some shares in which Enstone was speculating; but there was nothing much about that misfortune to attract his interest, and the detective’s mood of disparaging reminiscence was as good an opportunity as any other for him to plot out a few details of the campaign against his latest quarry.
“… So I lost half my money, and I’ve kept the rest of it in gilt-edged stuff ever since,” concluded Mr. Teal rancorously; and Simon t
ook the last inhalation from his cigarette and dropped the stub into an ashtray.
“Thanks for the tip, Claud,” he said lightly. “I gather that next time I murder somebody you’d like me to make it a financier.”
Teal grunted, and hitched his coat round.
“I shouldn’t like you to murder anybody,” he said, from his heart. “Now I’ve got to go home—I have to get up in the morning.”
They walked towards the street doors. On their left they passed the information desk; and beside the desk had been standing a couple of bored and sleepy page-boys. Simon had observed them and their sleepiness as casually as he had observed the colour of the carpet, but all at once he realised that their sleepiness had vanished. He had a sudden queer sensitiveness of suppressed excitement; and then one of the boys said something loud enough to be overheard which stopped Teal in his tracks and turned him round abruptly.
“What’s that?” he demanded.
“It’s Mr. Enstone, sir. He just shot himself.”
Mr. Teal scowled. To the newspapers it would be a surprise and a front-page sensation: to him it was a surprise and a potential menace to his night’s rest if he butted into any responsibility. Then he shrugged.
“I’d better have a look,” he said, and introduced himself.
There was a scurry to lead him towards the lift. Mr. Teal ambled bulkily into the nearest car, and quite brazenly the Saint followed him. He had, after all, been kindly invited to “drop in” the next time the plump detective was handling a case.… Teal put his hands in his pockets and stared in mountainous drowsiness at the downward-flying shaft. Simon studiously avoided his eye, and had a pleasant shock when the detective addressed him almost genially.
“I always thought there was something fishy about that fellow. Did he look as if he’d anything to shoot himself about, except the head that was waiting for him when he woke up?”
It was as if the decease of any financier, however caused, was a benison upon the earth for which Mr. Teal could not help being secretly and quite immorally grateful. That was the subtle impression he gave of his private feelings; but the rest of him was impenetrable stolidity and aloofness. He dismissed the escort of page-boys and strode to the door of the millionaire’s suite. It was closed and silent. Teal knocked on it authoritatively, and after a moment it opened six inches and disclosed a pale agitated face. Teal introduced himself again and the door opened wider, enlarging the agitated face into the unmistakable full-length portrait of an assistant hotel manager. Simon followed the detective in, endeavouring to look equally official.
“This will be a terrible scandal, Inspector,” said the assistant manager.
Teal looked at him woodenly.
“Were you here when it happened?”
“No. I was downstairs, in my office——”
Teal collected the information, and ploughed past him. On the right, another door opened off the generous lobby; and through it could be seen another elderly man whose equally pale face and air of suppressed agitation bore a certain general similarity and also a self-contained superiority to the first. Even without his sober black coat and striped trousers, grey side-whiskers and passive hands, he would have stamped himself as something more cosmic than the assistant manager of an hotel—the assistant manager of a man.
“Who are you?” asked Teal.
“I am Fowler, sir. Mr. Enstone’s valet.”
“Were you here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where is Mr. Enstone?”
“In the bedroom, sir.”
They moved back across the lobby, with the assistant manager assuming the lead. Teal stopped. “Will you be in your office if I want you?” he asked, with great politeness; and the assistant manager seemed to disappear from the scene even before the door of the suite closed behind him.
Lewis Enstone was dead. He lay on his back beside the bed, with his head half rolled over to one side, in such a way that both the entrance and the exit of the bullet which had killed him could be seen. It had been fired squarely into his right eye, leaving the ugly trail which only a heavy-calibre bullet fired at close range can leave.… The gun lay under the fingers of his right hand.
“Thumb on the trigger,” Teal noted aloud.
He sat on the edge of the bed, pulling on a pair of gloves, pink-faced and unemotional. Simon observed the room. An ordinary, very tidy bedroom, barren of anything unusual except the subdued costliness of furnishing. Two windows, both shut and fastened. On a table in one corner, the only sign of disorder, the remains of a carelessly-opened parcel. Brown paper, ends of string, a plain cardboard box—empty. The millionaire had gone no further towards undressing than loosening his tie and undoing his collar.
“What happened?” asked Mr. Teal.
“Mr. Enstone had had friends to dinner, sir,” explained Fowler. “A Mr. Costello——”
“I know that. What happened when he came back from seeing them off?”
“He went straight to bed, sir.”
“Was this door open?”
“At first, sir. I asked Mr. Enstone about the morning, and he told me to call him at eight. I then asked him whether he wished me to assist him to undress, and he gave me to understand that he did not. He closed the door, and I went back to the sitting-room.”
“Did you leave that door open?”
“Yes, sir. I was doing a little clearing up. Then I heard the shot, sir.”
“Do you know any reason why Mr. Enstone should have shot himself?”
“On the contrary, sir—I understood that his recent speculations had been highly successful.”
Teal nodded.
“Where is his wife?”
“Mrs. Enstone and the children have been in Madeira, sir. We are expecting them home tomorrow.”
“What was in that parcel, Fowler?” ventured the Saint.
The valet glanced at the table.
“I don’t know, sir. I believe it must have been left by one of Mr. Enstone’s guests. I noticed it on the dining-table when I brought in their coats, and Mr. Enstone came back for it on his return and took it into the bedroom with him.”
“You didn’t hear anything said about it?”
“No, sir. I was not present after coffee had been served—I understood that the gentlemen had private business to discuss.”
“What are you getting at?” Mr. Teal asked seriously.
The Saint smiled apologetically; and being nearest the door, went out to open it as a second knocking disturbed the silence, and let in a grey-haired man with a black bag. While the police surgeon was making his preliminary examination, he drifted into the sitting-room. The relics of a convivial dinner were all there—cigar-butts in the coffee cups, stains of spilt wine on the cloth, crumbs and ash everywhere, the stale smell of food and smoke hanging in the air—but those things did not interest him. He was not quite sure what would have interested him; but he wandered rather vacantly round the room, gazing introspectively at the prints of character which a long tenancy leaves even on anything so characterless as an hotel apartment. There were pictures on the walls and the side tables, mostly enlarged snapshots revealing Lewis Enstone relaxing in the bosom of his family, which amused Simon for some time. On one of the side tables he found a curious object. It was a small wooden plate on which half a dozen wooden fowls stood in a circle. Their necks were pivoted at the base, and underneath the plate were six short strings joined to the necks and knotted together some distance further down where they were all attached at the same point to a wooden ball. It was these strings, and the weight of the ball at their lower ends, which kept the birds’ heads raised; and Simon discovered that when he moved the plate so that the ball swung round in a circle underneath, thus tightening and slackening each string in turn, the fowls mounted on the plate pecked vigorously in rotation at an invisible and apparently inexhaustible supply of corn, in a most ingenious mechanical display of gluttony.
He was still playing thoughtfully with the toy when he disc
overed Mr. Teal standing beside him. The detective’s round pink face wore a look of almost comical incredulity.
“Is that how you spend your spare time?” he demanded.
“I think it’s rather clever,” said the Saint soberly. He put the toy down, and blinked at Fowler. “Does it belong to one of the children?”
“Mr. Enstone brought it home with him this evening, sir, to give to Miss Annabel tomorrow,” said the valet. “He was always picking up things like that. He was a very devoted father, sir.”
Mr. Teal chewed for a moment; and then he said: “Have you finished? I’m going home.”
Simon nodded pacifically, and accompanied him to the lift. As they went down he asked: “Did you find anything?”
Teal blinked.
“What did you expect me to find?”
“I thought the police were always believed to have a Clue,” murmured the Saint innocently.
“Enstone committed suicide,” said Teal flatly. “What sort of clues do you want?”
“Why did he commit suicide?” asked the Saint, almost childishly.
Teal ruminated meditatively for a while, without answering. If anyone else had started such a discussion he would have been openly derisive. The same impulse was stirring him then; but he restrained himself. He knew Simon Templar’s wicked sense of humour, but he also knew that sometimes the Saint was most worth listening to when he sounded most absurd.
“Call me up in the morning,” said Mr. Teal at length, “and I may be able to tell you.”
Simon Templar went home and slept fitfully. Lewis Enstone had shot himself—it seemed an obvious fact. The windows had been closed and fastened, and any complicated trick of fastening them from the outside and escaping up or down a rope ladder was ruled out by the bare two or three seconds that could have elapsed between the sound of the shot and the valet rushing in. But Fowler himself might.… Why not suicide, anyway? But the Saint could run over every word and gesture and expression of the leave-taking which he himself had witnessed in the hotel lobby, and none of it carried even a hint of suicide. The only oddity about it had been the queer inexplicable piece of pantomime—the fist clenched, with the forefinger extended and the thumb cocked up in crude symbolism of a gun—the abstruse joke which had dissolved Enstone into a fit of inanely delighted giggling, with the hearty approval of his guests.… The psychological problem fascinated him. It muddled itself up with a litter of brown paper and a cardboard box, a wooden plate of pecking chickens, photographs … and the tangle kaleidoscoped through his dreams in a thousand different convolutions until morning.
