Teal signed to one of the constables.
“Better ring up the Embassy and see if someone can come over and identify him,” he said.
“Merde alors!” screamed the agitated gentleman. “I vill not vait! I demand to be release!”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to be identified, sir,” said Teal unhappily.
And identified M. Boileau was, in due course, by a semi-hysterical official from the Embassy and Teal spent the most uncomfortable half-hour of his life trying to explain the mistake.
He was a limp wreck when the indignation meeting finally broke up and the telephoned report of the explosives expert who had been sent down to Tenterden did not improve Teal’s temper.
“It was a big aerial bomb—we’ve found some bits of the casing. We didn’t find much of Lemuel…”
“Could it have been fired by a timing device?”
“There’s no trace of anything like that, sir. Of course, if there had been, it might have been blown to bits.”
“Could it have been fired electrically?”
“I haven’t found any wires yet, sir. My men are still digging round the wreckage. On the other hand, sir, if it comes to that, it might have been fired by radio, and if it was radio we shan’t find anything at all.”
Teal had his inspiration some hours too late.
“You’d better search the grounds,” he said, and gave exact instructions.
“Certainly, sir. But what about the aeroplane that went over?”
“That,” said Teal heavily, “contained the French Minister of Finance, on his way to a reparations conference.”
“Well, it couldn’t have been him,” said the expert sagely, and Teal felt like murder.
A few days later the Saint called on Stella Dornford. He had not seen her since the morning when he dropped her on his way to Jermyn Street, and she had not communicated with him in any way.
“You must think me a little rotter,” she said. “It seems such a feeble excuse to say I’ve been too busy to think of any thing…”
“I think it’s the best excuse in the world,” said the Saint.
He pointed to the ring on her finger. “When?”
“Ten days ago. I—I took your advice, you see…”
Simon laughed. “‘To those about to marry,’” he quoted softly. “Well, you must come round to a celebratory supper, and bring the Beloved. And Uncle Simon will tell you all about married life.”
“Why, are you married?”
He shook his head. For a moment the dancing blue eyes were quiet and wistful. And then the old mocking mirth came back to them.
“That’s why I’ll be able to tell you so much about it,” he said.
Presently the girl said, “I’ve told Dick how much we owe you. I’ll never forget it. I don’t know how to thank you…”
The Saint smiled, and put his hands on her shoulders.
“Don’t you?” he said.
THE WONDERFUL WAR
INTRODUCTION
At various points in the chronicle of the Saint’s exploits there are vague references to his adventures in the far corners of the earth. This particular story, however, is the only one of its kind which is completely on record, and his followers have mentioned it often enough to convince me that it is one of their favourite recollections of his early days. The Saint himself derives so much obvious fun from it that I am bound to believe that it must still be one of his most enjoyable memories. I suppose that one of the so-called “comic opera” South American republics has at one time or another been almost every man’s imaginative playground, and it is only to be expected that Simon Templar would have used such a setting for one of his most riotous escapades.
—Leslie Charteris (1939)
1
The Republic of Pasala lies near the northward base of the Yucatan peninsula in Central America. It has an area of about 10,000 square miles, or roughly the size of England from the Tweed to a line drawn from Liverpool to Hull. Population, about 18,000. Imports, erratic. Exports, equally erratic, and consisting (when the population can be stirred to the necessary labour) of maize, rice, sugar-cane, mahogany, and—oil.
“You can hurry up and warble all you know about this oil, Archie,” said Simon Templar briskly, half an hour after he landed at Santa Miranda. “And you can leave out your adventures among the Señoritas. I want to get this settled—I’ve got a date back in England for the end of May, and that doesn’t give me a lot of time here.”
Mr. Archibald Sheridan stirred slothfully in his long chair and took a pull at a whisky-and-soda in which ice clinked seductively.
“You’ve had it all in my letters and cables,” he said. “But I’ll just run through it again to connect it up. It goes like this. Three years ago almost to the day, a Scots mining engineer named McAndrew went prospecting round the hills about fifty miles inland. Everyone said he was crazy—till he came back six months later with samples from his feeler borings. He said he’d struck one of the richest deposits that ever gushed—and it was only a hundred feet below the surface. He got a concession—chiefly because the authorities still couldn’t believe his story—staked his claim, cabled for his daughter to come over and join him, and settled down to feel rich and wait for the plant he’d ordered to be shipped over from New Orleans.”
“Did the girl come?” asked Templar.
“She’s right here,” answered Sheridan. “But you told me to leave the women out of it. She doesn’t really come into the story anyway. The man who does come in is a half-caste bum from God knows where, name of Shannet. Apparently Shannet had been sponging and beachcombing here for months before McAndrew arrived. Everyone was down on him, and so McAndrew, being one of these quixotic idiots, joined up with him. He even took him into partnership, just to defy public opinion, and, anyhow, he was wanting help, and Shannet had some sort of qualifications. The two of them went up into the interior to take a look at the claim. Shannet came back, but McAndrew didn’t. Shannet said a snake got him.”
Simon Templar reached for another cigarette.
“Personally, I say that snake’s name was Shannet,” remarked Archie Sheridan quietly. “Lilla—McAndrew’s daughter—said the same thing. Particularly when Shannet produced a written agreement signed by McAndrew and himself, in which it was arranged that if either partner should die, all rights in the claim should pass to the other partner. Lilla swore that McAndrew, who’d always thought first of her, would never have signed such a document, and she got a look at it and said the signature was forged. Shannet replied that McAndrew was getting over a bout of malaria when he signed it, and his hand was rather shaky. The girl carried it right to the court of what passes for justice here, fighting like a hero, but Shannet had too big a pull with the judge, and she lost her case. I arrived just after her appeal was turned down.”
“What about McAndrew’s body?”
“Shannet said he buried it by the trail, but the jungle trails here are worse than any maze that was ever invented, and you can almost see the stuff grow. The grave could quite reasonably be lost in a week. Shannet said he couldn’t find it again. I took a trip that way myself, but it wasn’t any use. All I got out of it was a bullet through a perfectly good hat from some sniper in the background—Shannet for a fiver.”
“After which,” suggested Simon Templar thoughtfully, “Shannet found he couldn’t run the show alone, and sold out to our dear friend in London, Master Hugo Campard, shark, swindler, general blackguard, and promoter of unlimited dud companies…”
“Who perpetrated the first sound company of his career, Pasala Oil Products, on the strength of it,” Sheridan completed. “Shares not for public issue, and sixty per cent, of them held by himself.”
Simon Templar took his cigarette from his mouth and blew a long, thin streamer of smoke into the sunlight.
“So that’s what I’ve come over to deal with, Archibald?” he murmured. “Well, well, well I…Taken by and large, it looks like a diverting holid
ay. Carol a brief psalm about things political, son.”
“Just about twice as crooked as anything south of the United States border,” said Sheridan. “The man who matters isn’t the President. He’s under the thumb of what they call the Minister for the Interior, who finds it much more convenient and much safer to stay in the background—they never assassinate Ministers for the Interior, apparently, but Presidents are fair game. And this man—Manuel Concepcion de Villega is his poetic label—is right under the wing of Shannet, and is likely to stay there as long as Shannet’s money lasts.”
The Saint rose and lounged over to the verandah rail. At that hour (which was just after midday) the thermometer stood at a hundred and two in the shade, and the Saint had provided himself suitably with white ducks. The dazzling whiteness of them would have put snow to shame, and he wore them, as might have been expected of him, with the most cool and careless elegance in the world. He looked as if he would have found an inferno chilly. His dark hair was brushed smoothly back; his lean face was tanned to a healthy brown; altogether he must have been the most dashing and immaculate sight that Santa Miranda had set eyes on for many years.
Sheridan was in despair before that vision of unruffled perfection. His hair was tousled, his white ducks looked somewhat limp with the heat, and his pleasantly ugly face was moist.
“What about the rest of the white, or near-white, inhabitants?” inquired the Saint.
“A two-fisted, rip-roaring giant of a red-headed Irishman named Kelly,” was the reply. “His wife—that’s two. Lilla McAndrew, who’s staying with them—I wouldn’t let her put up at the filthy hotel in the town any longer—three. Four and five, a couple of traders, more or less permanently drunk and not worth considering. Six—Shannet. That’s the lot.”
The Saint turned away and gazed down the hillside. From where he stood, on the verandah of Sheridan’s bungalow, he could look down on to the roofs of Santa Miranda—the cluster of white buildings in the Moorish style which formed the centre, and the fringe of adobe huts on the outskirts. Left and right of him, on the hill above the town, were other bungalows. Beyond the town was the sea.
The Saint studied the view for a time in silence, then he turned round again.
“We seem to be on to the goods,” he remarked. “Shannet, the small fish, but an undoubted murderer—and, through him, our real man, Campard. I had a hunch I shouldn’t be wasting your time when I sent you out here as soon as I heard Campard was backing Pasala Oil Products. But I never guessed P.O.P. would be real till I got your first cable. Now we’re on a truly classy piece of velvet. It all looks too easy.”
“Easy?” queried Sheridan sceptically. “I’m glad you think it’s easy. With Shannet’s claim established, and the concession in writing at Campard’s London office, and Lilla McAndrew’s petition dismissed, and Shannet twiddling the Government, the Army, the police, and the rest of the bunch, down to the last office-boy, round and round his little finger with the money he gets from Campard—and the man calls it easy. Oh, take him away!”
The Saint’s hands drove even deeper into his pockets. Tall and trim and athletic, he stood with his feet astride, swaying gently from his toes, with the Saintly smile flickering faintly round his mouth and a little dancing devil of mischief rousing in his blue eyes.
“I said easy,” he drawled.
Sheridan buried his face in his hands.
“Go and put your head in the ice-bucket,” he pleaded. “Of course, it’s the sun. You’re not used to it—I forgot that.”
“How big is the Army?”
“There’s a standing army of about five hundred, commanded by seventeen generals, twenty-five colonels, and about fifty minor officers. And if your head hurts, just lie down, close the eyes, and relax. It’ll be quite all right in an hour or two.”
“Artillery?”
“Three pieces, carried by mules. If you’d like some aspirin…”
“Navy?”
“One converted tug, with 5-9 quick-firer and crew of seven, commanded by two admirals. I don’t think you ought to talk now. I’ll put up the hammock for you, if you like, and you can sleep for an hour before lunch.”
“Police force?”
“There are eleven constables in Santa Miranda, under three superintendents. And in future I shouldn’t have any whisky before sundown.”
The Saint smiled.
“I’m probably more used to the sun than you are,” he said. “This is merely common sense. What’s the key to the situation? The Government. Right. We don’t propose to waste any of our good money bribing them—and if we did, they’d double-cross us. Therefore they must be removed by force. And at once, because I can’t stay long. Long live the Revolution!”
“Quite,” agreed Sheridan helplessly. “And the Revolutionary Army? This State is the only one in South America that’s never had a revolution—because nobody’s ever had enough energy to start one.”
The Saint fished for his cigarette-case.
“We are the Revolutionary Army,” he said. “I ask you to remember that we march on our stomachs. So we’ll just have another drink, and then some lunch, and then we’ll wander along and try to enlist the mad Irishman. If we three can’t make rings round six hundred and fifteen comic-opera dagoes, I’m going to retire from the fighting game and take up knitting and fancy needlework!”
2
“My dear soul,” the Saint was still arguing persuasively at the close of the meal, “it’s so simple. The man who manages the Government of this two-by-four backyard is the man who holds the fate of Pasala Oil Products in his hands. At present Shannet is the bright boy who manages the Government, and the master of P.O.P. is accordingly walking around under the Shannet hat. We’ll go one better. We won’t merely manage the Government. We’ll be the Government. And Pop is ours to play hell with as we like. Could anything be more straightforward? As the actress said when the bishop showed her his pass-book.”
“Go on,” encouraged Sheridan weakly. “Don’t bother about my feelings.”
“As the actress said to the bishop shortly afterwards,” murmured the Saint. “Blessed old Archie, it’s obvious that three months in this enervating climate and the society of Lilla McAndrew have brought your energy down to the level of that of the natives you spoke of so contemptuously just now. I grant you it’s sudden, but it’s the only way. Before I knew the whole story I thought it would be good enough if we held up the post office and sent Campard a spoof cable purporting to come from Shannet, telling him the Government had been kicked out, the concession revoked, and the only thing to do was to sell out his Pop holdings as quickly as possible. What time our old friend Roger, back in London, snaps up the shares, discreetly, as fast as they come on the market.”
“Why won’t that work now?”
“You’re forgetting the girl,” said Templar. “This oil is really her property, so it isn’t good enough just to make Campard unload at a loss and sell back to him at a premium when the rumour of revolution is exploded. The concession has really got to be revoked. Therefore I propose to eliminate the present Government, and make Kelly, your mad Irishman, the new Minister of the Interior. That is, unless you’d take the job.”
“No, thanks,” said Sheridan generously. “It’s not quite in my line. Pass me up.”
The Saint lighted a cigarette.
“In that case Kelly is elected unanimously,” he remarked with charming simplicity. “So the only thing left to decide is how we start the trouble. I’ve been in South American revolutions before, but they’ve always been well under way by the time I arrived. The technique of starting the blamed things was rather missed out of my education. What does one do? Does one simply wade into the Presidential Palace, chant ’Time, gentlemen, please!’ in the ear of his Illustrious Excellency, and invite him to close the door as he goes out? Or what?”
“What, probably,” said Sheridan. “That would be as safe as anything. I might get you reprieved on the grounds of insanity.”
The Saint sighed. “You aren’t helpful, Beautiful Archibald.”
“If you’d settle down to talk seriously…”
“I am serious.”
Sheridan stared. Then, “Is that straight, Saint?” he demanded.
“From the horse’s mouth,” the Saint assured him solemnly. “Even as the crowd flieth before the pubs open. Sweet cherub, did you really think I was wasting precious time with pure pickled onions?”
Sheridan looked at him. There was another flippant rejoinder on the tip of Archie Sheridan’s tongue, but somehow it was never uttered.
The Saint was smiling. It was a mocking smile, but that was for Sheridan’s incredulity. It was not the sort of smile that accompanies a test of the elasticity of a leg. And in the Saint’s eyes was a light that wasn’t entirely humorous.
Archie Sheridan, with a cigarette in his mouth, fumbling for matches, realised that he had mistaken the shadow for the substance. The Saint wasn’t making fun of revolutions. It was just that his sense of humour was too big to let him plan even a revolution without seeing the funny side of the show.
Sheridan got a match to his cigarette.
“Well?” prompted the Saint.
“I think you’re pots, bats, and bees,” he said. “But if you’re set on that kind of suicide—lead on. Archibald will be at your elbow with the bombs. You didn’t forget the bombs?”
The Saint grinned. “I had to leave them behind,” he replied lightly. “They wouldn’t fit into my sponge-bag. Seriously, now, where and how do you think we should start the trouble?”
They were sitting opposite one another at Sheridan’s bare mahogany dining-table, and at the Saint’s back was the open door leading out on to the verandah and commanding an uninterrupted view of the approach to the bungalow.
“Start the thing here and now and anyhow you like,” said Sheridan, and he was looking past the Saint’s shoulder towards the verandah steps.
Featuring the Saint (The Saint Series) Page 8
