Featuring the Saint (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  An hour later, reckless of consequences, he was speaking on the telephone to Scotland Yard.

  At the same time Simon Templar was speaking to Patricia Holm, what time he carefully marmaladed a thin slice of brown bread and a thick slice of butter.

  “There are three indoor servants at Tenterden—a butler and a cook, man and wife, and the valet. The rest of the staff have been fired, and half the house is shut up—I guess Francis is finding it necessary to pull in his horns a bit. The butler and cook have a half-day off on Wednesday. The valet has his half-day on Thursday, but he has a girl at Rye. He has asked her to marry him, and she has promised to give her answer when she sees him next—which will, of course, be on Thursday. He has had a row with Lemuel, and is thinking of giving notice.”

  “How do you know all this?” asked Patricia. “Don’t tell me you deduced it from the mud on the under-gardener’s boots, because I shan’t believe you.”

  “I won’t,” said the Saint generously. “If you want to know, I saw all that last part in writing. The valet is an energetic correspondent. Sometimes he goes to bed and leaves a letter half-finished, and he’s a sound sleeper.”

  “You’ve been inside Lemuel’s house?”

  “These last three nights. The burglar alarms are absolutely childish.”

  “So that’s why you’ve been sleeping all day, and looking so dissipated!”

  Simon shook his head. “Not ‘dissipated,’” he said. “‘Intellectual’ is the word you want.”

  She looked at him thoughtfully. “What’s the game, lad?”

  “Is your memory so short, old Pat? Why, what should the game be but wilful murder?”

  Patricia came round the table and put her hands on his shoulders. “Don’t do it, Saint! It’s not worth it.”

  “It is.” He took her hands and kissed them, smiling a little. “Darling, I have hunches, and my hunches are always right. I know that the world won’t be safe for democracy as long as Francis continues to fester in it. Now listen, and don’t argue. As soon as you’re dressed, you will disguise yourself as an elderly charwoman about to visit a consumptive aunt at Rye. At Rye you will proceed to the post office and send a telegram which I’ve written out for you…here.” He took the form from his pocket, and pressed it into her hand. “You will then move on to Tenterden.”

  He gave an exact description of a certain spot, and of an instrument which she would find there. “If you observe a crowd and a certain amount of wreckage in the offing, don’t get excited. They won’t be near where you’ve got to go. Collect the gadget and et ceteras, and push them into the bag you’ll have with you…Then, returning to the blinkin’ Bahnhof, you will leap into the first train in which you see a carriage that you can have all to yourself, and in that you will remove your flimsy disguise, disembark as your own sweet self at the next stop, catch the first train back to Town, and meet me for dinner at the Embassy at eight. Is that clear?”

  She opened the telegraph form, and read it. “But what’s the idea?”

  “To clear the air, darling.”

  “But…”

  “Uncle Francis?…I’ve worked that out rather brilliantly. The time has gone by, sweetheart, when I could bounce in and bump off objectionable characters as and when the spirit moved. Too much is known about me—and robbery may be a matter for the robbed, but murder is a matter for the Lore. But I think this execution ought to meet the case. Besides, it will annoy Teal—Teal’s been a bit uppish lately.”

  There was no doubt that his mind was made up, yet it was not without misgivings that Patricia departed on her mission. But she went, for she knew the moods in which the Saint was inflexible.

  It was exactly three o’clock when the Saint, a trim and superbly immaculate and rather rakish figure, climbed out of his car at the end of Lemuel’s drive, and sauntered up to the house.

  “Dear old Francis!” The Saint was at his most debonair as he entered the celebrated impresario’s library. “And how’s trade?”

  “Sit down, Templar.”

  The voice was so different from Lemuel’s old sonorous joviality that the Saint knew that the story of “a severe nervous collapse” was not a great exaggeration. Lemuel’s hand was unsteady as he replaced his cigar between his teeth.

  “And what do you want now?”

  “Just a little chat, my cherub,” said the Saint.

  He lighted a cigarette, and his eyes roved casually round the room. He remarked a tiny scrap of pink paper screwed up in an ash-tray, and a tall Chinese screen in one corner, and a slow smile of satisfaction expanded within him—deep within him. Lemuel saw nothing.

  “It’s a long time since we last opened our hearts to each other, honeybunch,” said the Saint, sinking back lazily into the cushions, “and you must have so much to tell me. Have you been a good boy? No more cocaine, or little girls, or anything like that?”

  “I don’t know what you mean. If you’ve come here to try to blackmail me…”

  “Dear, dear! Blackmail? What’s that, Francis? Or shall I call you Frank?”

  “You can call me what you like.”

  Simon shook his head. “I don’t want to be actually rude,” he said. “Let it go at Frank. I once knew another man, a very successful scavenger, named Frank, who slipped in a sewer, and sank. This was after a spree; ever afterwards he was teetotal—but, oh, how unpleasant he smelt. Any relation of yours?”

  Lemuel came closer. His face looked pale and bloated; there was a beastly fury in his eyes. “Now listen to me, Templar. You’ve already robbed me once…”

  “When?”

  “D’you have to bluff when there isn’t an audience? D’you deny that you’re the Saint?”

  “On the contrary,” murmured Simon calmly. “I’m proud of it. But when have I robbed you?”

  For a moment Lemuel looked as if he would choke. Then, “What have you come for now?” he demanded.

  Simon seemed to sink even deeper into his chair, and he watched the smoke curling up from his cigarette with abstracted eyes.

  “Suppose,” he said lazily, “just suppose we had all the congregation out in the limelight. Wouldn’t that make it seem more matey?”

  “What d’you mean?”

  Lemuel’s voice cracked on the question.

  “Well,” said Simon, closing his eyes, with a truly sanctimonious smile hovering on his lips, “I really do hate talking to people I can’t see. And it must be frightfully uncomfortable for Claud Eustace, hiding behind that screen over there.”

  “I don’t understand…”

  “Do you understand, Claud?” drawled the Saint, and Chief-Inspector Claud Eustace Teal answered wearily that he understood.

  He emerged mountainously, and stood looking down at the Saint with a certain admiration in his bovine countenance.

  “And how did you know I was there?”

  Simon waved a languid hand towards the table. Teal, following the gesture, saw the ash-tray, and the discarded pink overcoat of the gum which he was even then chewing, and groaned.

  “Wrigley,” sighed the Saint, succinctly.

  Then Lemuel turned on the detective, snarling. “What the hell did you want to come out for?”

  “Chiefly because there wasn’t much point in staying where I was, Mr Lemuel,” replied Teal tiredly.

  Simon chuckled.

  “It’s as much your fault as his, Francis, old coyote,” he said. “If you must try to pull that old gag on me, you want to go into strict training. A man in your condition can’t hope to put it over…Oh, Francis! To think you thought I’d bite that bit of cheese—and land myself in good and proper, with Teal taking frantic notes behind the whatnot! You must take care not to go sitting in any damp grass, Francis—you might get brain fever.”

  “Anyway,” said Teal, “it was a good idea.”

  “It was a rotten idea,” said the Saint disparagingly. “And always has been. But I knew it was ten to one it would be tried—I knew it when I sent that note to Francis. I’m
glad you came, Claud—I really did want you here.”

  “Why?” Lemuel cut in. His face was tense and drawn.

  “Inspector, you know this man’s character…”

  “I do,” said Teal somnolently. “That’s the trouble.”

  “He came here to try to blackmail me, and he’d have done it if he hadn’t discovered you. Now he’s going to try to get out of it on one of his bluffs…”

  “No,” said the Saint, and he said it in such a way that there was a sudden silence.

  And, in the stillness, with his eyes still closed, the Saint listened. His powers of hearing were abnormally acute: he heard the sound he was waiting for when neither of the other two could hear anything—and even to him it was like nothing more than the humming of a distant bee.

  And then he opened his eyes. It was like the unmasking of two clear blue lights in the keen brown face, and the eyes were not jesting at all. He stood up.

  “As you said—you know me, Teal,” he remarked. “Now I’ll tell you what you don’t know about Francis Lemuel. The first thing is that he’s at the head of the dope ring you’ve been trying to get at for years. I don’t know how he used to bring the stuff into the country, but I do know that when I was his private pilot, a little while ago, he came back from Berlin one time with enough snow in his grip to build a ski-slope round the Equator…”

  “It’s a lie! By God, you’ll answer for that, Templar…”

  “Now I come to think of it,” murmured Teal, “how do you know his real name?”

  Simon laughed softly. The humming of the bee was not so distant now—the other two could have heard it easily, if they had listened.

  “Don’t haze the accused,” he said gently. “He’ll get all hot and bothered if you start to cross-examine him. Besides, the charge isn’t finished. There’s another matter, concerning a girl named Stella Dornford—and several others whose names I couldn’t give you, for all I know…”

  “Another lie!”

  Teal turned heavy eyes on the man. “You’re a great clairvoyant,” he said, judicially.

  “At this man’s request,” said the Saint quietly, “I flew Stella Dornford over to Berlin. She was supposed to be going to a cabaret engagement with a man called Jacob Einsmann. The place I took her to was not a cabaret—I needn’t mention what it was. The Berlin police will corroborate that…”

  Lemuel grated, “They want you for the murder of Einsmann…”

  “I doubt it,” said the Saint. “I certainly shot him, but it shouldn’t be hard to prove self-defence.” The bee was very much closer. And the Saint turned to Teal. “I have one other thing to say,” he added, “for your ears alone.”

  “I have a right to hear it,” barked Lemuel shakily. “Inspector…”

  “Naturally you’ll hear it, Mr. Lemuel,” said Teal soothingly. “But if Mr. Templar insists on telling me alone, that’s his affair. If you’ll excuse us a moment…”

  Lemuel watched them go, gripping the table for support. Presently, through the French windows, he saw them strolling across the lawn, side by side. The air was now full of the drone of the bee, but he did not notice it.

  He stumbled mechanically towards the side-table where bottle and glasses were set out, but the bottle was nearly empty. Savagely he jabbed at the bell, and waited an impatient half-minute, but no one answered. Cursing, he staggered to the door and opened it. “Fitch!” he bawled.

  Still there was no answer. The house was as silent as a tomb. Trembling with terror of he knew not what, Lemuel reeled down the hall and flung open the door of the servants’ quarters. There was no one in sight.

  On the table, he saw an orange envelope with a buff slip beside it. Impelled by an unaccountable premonition, he picked up the form and read.

  Come at once. I want you. Eileen.

  Fitch was already on his way to Rye. The Saint was thorough.

  As Lemuel crumpled the telegram with furious hands, the bee seemed to be roaring directly over his head.

  10

  Simon Templar gazed thoughtfully at the sky.

  “Cloudy,” he remarked thoughtfully. “The weather forecasts said it would be cloudy today, and for once they’re right.”

  Teal looked back over his shoulder.

  “That aeroplane’s flying pretty low,” he said.

  “Owing to cloud,” said the Saint, and the detective glanced at him quickly.

  “What’s the big idea, Saint?” he demanded.

  Simon smiled.

  “I’ve been getting rather tired of answering that question lately,” he said.

  They had reached a clump of trees at the edge of the wide lawn, a couple of hundred yards away from the house, and here the Saint stopped. Both the men turned.

  The aeroplane was certainly low—it was flying under five hundred feet, and the racket of its engine was deafening.

  “I know your habits,” said Teal sourly. “If you weren’t here with me, Saint, I’d be inclined to think you were up there—getting ready to do some illegal bombing practice.” He was watching the aeroplane with screwed-up eyes, while he took a fresh purchase on his gum, and then he added suddenly, “Do any of the other guys in your gang fly?”

  “There ain’t no gang,” said the Saint, “and you ought to know it. They broke up long ago.”

  “I wouldn’t put it above you to have recruited another,” said Teal.

  Simon leaned against a tree. His hand, groping in a hollow in the trunk, found a tiny switch. He took the lever lightly between his finger and thumb. He laughed, softly and lazily, and Teal faced round.

  “What’s the big idea?” he demanded again. “I don’t know what it is, but you’re playing some funny game. What did you fetch me out here to tell me?”

  “Nothing much,” answered the Saint slowly, “I just thought…”

  But what he thought was not destined to be known. For all at once there came a titanic roar of sound that was nothing like the roar of the aeroplane’s engine—a shattering detonation that rocked the ground under their feet and hurled them bodily backwards with the hurricane force of its breath.

  “Good God!”

  Teal’s voice came faintly through the buzzing in the Saint’s ears. Simon was scrambling rockily to his feet.

  “Something seems to have bust, old water-melon…”

  “F-ZXKA,” Teal was muttering. “F-ZXKA; F-ZXKA…”

  “Ease up, old dear!” Simon took the detective by the shoulder. “It’s all over. Nothing to rave about.”

  “I’m not raving,” snarled Teal. “But I’ve got the number of that machine…”

  He was starting off across the lawn, and the Saint followed. But there was nothing that they or anyone else could do, for Francis Lemuel’s house was nothing but a great mound of rubble under a mushroom canopy of smoke and settling dust, through which the first tongues of flame were starting to lick up towards the dark clouds. And the aeroplane was dwindling into the mists towards the north.

  Teal surveyed the ruin and then he looked round at the crowd that was pattering up the road.

  “You’re arrested, Saint,” he said curtly, and Simon shrugged.

  They drove to Tenterden in the Saint’s car, and from there Teal put a call through to headquarters.

  “F-ZXKA,” he said. “Warn all stations and aerodromes. Take the crew, whatever excuse they try to put up, and hold them till I come.”

  “That’s the stuff,” said the Saint approvingly, and Teal was so far moved as to bare his teeth.

  “This is where you get what’s coming to you,” he said.

  It was not Teal’s fault that the prophecy was not fulfilled.

  Simon drove him back to London with a police guard in the back of the car and Teal was met almost on the doorstep of Scotland Yard with the news that the aeroplane had landed at Croydon. The prisoners, said the message, had put up a most audacious bluff; they were being sent to headquarters in a police car.

  “Good!” said Teal grimly, and went th
rough to Cannon Row Police Station to charge the Saint with wilful murder.

  “That’s what you’ve got to prove,” said the Saint, when the charge was read over to him. “No—I won’t trouble my solicitor. I shall be out in an hour.”

  “In eight weeks you’ll be dead,” said the detective.

  He had recovered some of his old pose of agonised boredom, and half an hour later he needed it all, for the police car arrived from Croydon as the newspaper vans started to pour out of E.C.4 with the printers’ ink still damp on the first news of the outrage at Tenterden.

  Two prisoners were hustled into Teal’s office—a philosophical gentleman in flying overalls, and a very agitated gentleman with striped cashmere trousers and white spats showing under his leather coat.

  “It is an atrrrrocity!” exploded the agitated gentleman. “I vill complain myself to ze Prime Ministair! Imbecile! Your poliss, zey say I am arrrrest—zey insult me—zey mock zemselves of vat I say—zey trreat me like I vas a criminal—me! But you shall pay…”

  “And who are you pretending to be?” asked Teal, lethargically unwrapping a fresh wafer of his favourite sweetmeat.

  “Me? You do not know me? You do not know Boileau…” Teal did not.

  “Take that fungus off his face,” he ordered, “and let’s see what he really looks like.”

  Two constables had to pinion the arms of a raving maniac while a third gave the agitated gentleman’s beard a sharp tug.

  But the beard failed to part company with its foundations, and, on closer examination, it proved to be the genuine home-grown article.

  Teal blinked as the agitated gentleman, released, danced in front of his desk, semaphoring with frantic arms.

  “Nom d’un nom! You are not content viz insult me, you must attack me, you must pull me ze beard! Aaaaah!”

  Words failed the man. He reeled against the desk, clawing at his temples.

  Teal ran a finger round the inside of his collar, which seemed to have suddenly become tight.

  Then the philosophical gentleman in overalls spoke.

  “’E ’as say true, m’sieu. ’E is M. Boileau, ze French Finance Minister, ’oo come ovair for confer…”