The Saint Plays with Fire (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  “You daren’t do it!” said Bravache whitely. “The Sons of France will make you pay for my death a hundred times!”

  Dumaire’s face was yellow with fear.

  Simon took him by the scruff of the neck and heaved him over to the window. He parted the curtains and pointed downwards.

  “I suppose you came here in a car,” he said, “Which of those cars is yours?”

  The man shook like a leaf but did not answer.

  Simon turned him round and hit him in the face. He held him by the lapels of his coat and brought him back to the window.

  “Which of those cars is yours?”

  “That one,” blubbered Dumaire.

  It was a small black sedan, far more suitable for the transport of unwilling passengers than the open Hirondel.

  Simon released his informant, who tottered and almost fell when the Saint’s supporting grip was removed. The Saint lighted another cigarette and spoke to Peter.

  “You can use their car. Take them to Upper Berkeley Mews.”

  He looked up to find Hoppy Uniatz’s questioning eyes upon him. There were times when Mr Uniatz had a tendency to fidget, and these times were usually when he felt that a very obvious and elementary move had been delayed too long. It was not that he was a naturally impatient man, but he liked to see things disposed of in the order of their importance. Now he grasped hopefully for the relief of the problem that was uppermost in his mind.

  “Is dat where we give dem de woiks, boss?”

  “That’s where you give them the works,” said the Saint. “Will you come outside for a minute, Peter?”

  He took Peter out into the hall and gave him more detailed instructions.

  “Did you hear enough while you were waiting to convince you that I haven’t been raving?” he said.

  “I always knew you couldn’t be,” Peter said sombrely, “because you sounded so much as if you were. I’m damned if I know how you do it, but it always seems to be the way.”

  “You’ll see it through?”

  “No,” said Peter. “I’m going home to my mother.” His face was serious, in spite of the way he spoke. “But aren’t you taking an unnecessary risk with Bravache and friend? Of course, I’m not so bloodthirsty as Hoppy—”

  The Saint drew at his cigarette.

  “I know, old lad. Maybe I am a fool. But I don’t see myself as a gangster. Do it the way I told you. And when you’ve finished, bring Hoppy back here and let him pick up the Hirondel and drive it down to Weybridge. You can stay in town and wait for developments—I expect there’ll be plenty of them. Okay?”

  “Okay, chief.”

  Simon’s hand lay on Peter’s shoulder, and they went back into the living-room together. The Saint’s new sureness was like a steel blade, balanced and deadly.

  3

  “You can’t do this!” babbled Bravache. Little specks of saliva sprayed from his mouth with his words. “It is a crime! You will be punished—hanged. You cannot commit murder in cold blood. Surely you can’t do that!” His manner changed, became fawning, wheedling. “Look, you are a gentleman. You could not kill a defenceless man any more than I could. You have misunderstood my leetle joke. It was only to frighten you—”

  “Put some tape on his mouth, Hoppy,” ordered the Saint with cold distaste.

  Pietri and Dumaire were gagged in the same way, and the three men were pushed on out of the flat and crowded into the lift. Simon left them with Peter and Hoppy in the foyer of the building while he went out to reconnoitre the car. It was nearly half past two by his watch, and the street was as still and lifeless as a graveyard. The Saint’s rubber-soled shoes woke no echoes as they moved to their destination. There was a man dozing at the wheel of the small black sedan, and he started to rouse as the Saint opened the door beside him, but he was still not fully awake when the Saint’s left hand reached in and took hold of him by the front of his coat and yanked him out like a puppy.

  “Have you tried this for insomnia?” asked the Saint conversationally, and brought up his right hand in a smashing uppercut.

  The man’s teeth clicked together, his knees gave, he buckled forward without a sound, and Simon let him fall. He went back to the entrance of the building.

  “All clear,” he said in a low voice. “Make it snappy.”

  He led the way back to the black sedan and picked up his sleeping patient. There was a board fence on the opposite side of the road, above which rose the naked girders of another new apartment building under construction. Simon applied scientific leverage, and the patient rose into the air and disappeared from view. There was a dull thud in the darkness beyond.

  Simon crossed the road again. The loading of freight had been completed with professional briskness while he was away. Already Peter Quentin was at the wheel, and Hoppy Uniatz, sitting crookedly beside him in the other seat, was covering the three men who were bundled together in the back. The engine whirred under the starter.

  Simon looked in at the prisoners, and particularly at the staring cringing eyes of Bravache.

  “It won’t hurt much, Major,” he said, “and you ought to be proud to be a martyr for the flag…On your way, boys.”

  He stood and watched the receding tail light of the car until it turned the corner at the end of the street, and then he strolled slowly back to the entrance of the building. He waited there less than five minutes before a dark Daimler limousine swept into the street and drew up in front of the door.

  The Saint leaned in the open window beside the driver and kissed her.

  “What’s been happening?” asked Patricia.

  In a few sentences he let her know as much as he knew himself, and while he was speaking he rummaged in the nearest side pocket of the car. He found what he was looking for—a blue chauffeur’s cap—and set it at an angle on her curly head.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said.

  When he re-entered the flat, Lady Valerie Woodchester was dressed. She came out of the bedroom carrying a small valise.

  “What’s happened to everyone?” she asked in surprise.

  “Peter and Hoppy have removed the exhibits,” he said irrepressibly. “They’ll get what’s coming to them somewhere else. We didn’t want to make any more mess for you here.”

  The edges of pearly teeth showed on her under lip.

  “Could you call me a taxi?”

  “I could do better. I sent for one of my more ducal cars, and it’s waiting outside now. You won’t mind if I see you as far as the Carlton, will you? I don’t want you to be put to the trouble of having to call me out again tonight.”

  For a moment he thought she was going to lose her temper, and almost hoped that she would. But she turned her back on him and sailed out into the corridor without a word, He followed her into the elevator, and they rode down in supercharged silence. At the door, he helped her into the Daimler and settled himself beside her. The car moved off.

  They drove a couple of blocks without a word being spoken. Lady Valerie stared moodily out of the window on her side, scowling and biting her lips. The Saint was bubbling inside.

  “A penny for them,” he said at last.

  She turned on him with sudden fury and looked him wrathfully up and down.

  “You make me sick!” she flared.

  The Saint’s eyebrows rose one reproachful notch.

  “Me?” he protested aggrievedly. “But why, at the moment? What have I done now?”

  She shook her shoulders fretfully.

  “Oh…nothing,” she said. “I’m fed up, that’s all.”

  “I’m sorry,” said the Saint gravely. “Perhaps you’ve had a dull evening. You ought to get about more—go places, and meet people, and see things. It makes a tremendous difference.”

  “You think you’re very funny, don’t you?” she flashed. “You and your blonde girlfriend—the world’s pet hero and heroine!” She paused, savouring the sting of her own acid. “She is nice looking—I’ll give her that,” she went on grud
gingly. “But I just wish she’d never been born…Oh, well, perhaps we can’t all be heroines, but there’s no reason why the rest of us shouldn’t have a pretty decent time. You’ll be a bit fed up with yourself when Algy and Luker get those papers, won’t you?”

  “Are you quite sure you aren’t going to give them to me?” he said.

  She laughed.

  “I suppose you think I ought to give them to you for saving my life,” she jeered extravagantly. “With tears of gratitude streaming down my cheeks, I should stammer, ‘Here they are—take them.’ That’s why you make me sick. You go about the place rescuing people and being the Robin Hood of modern crime, and then you go back to your blonde girlfriend and have a grand time being told how wonderful you are. So you may be, but it just makes me sick.”

  “Well, if you feel sick, don’t keep on talking about it—be sick,” said the Saint hospitably. “Don’t worry about the car—we can always have it cleaned.”

  She gave him a withering glare and turned ostentatiously away. She seemed to want to make it quite clear that his conversation was beneath her contempt, and that even to endure his company was a martyrdom. She huddled as far away from him as the width of the seat permitted, and resumed her pent-up scowling out of the window.

  The Saint devoted himself to the tranquil enjoyment of his cigarette, and waited contentedly for the climax which he knew must come before long.

  It came after another five minutes.

  All at once her eyes, fixed vacantly on the window, froze into a strange expression. She sat bolt upright.

  “Here,” she blurted. “What the…Where are we going? This isn’t the way to the Carlton!”

  Obviously it wasn’t; they were down at the Chelsea end of the Embankment, heading west.

  “Have you noticed that already?” said the Saint imperturbably. “How observant you are, darling. Now I suppose I can’t keep my secret any longer. The fact is, I’m not taking you to the Carlton.”

  She caught her breath.

  “You…you’re not taking me to the Carlton? But I want to go to the Carlton! Take me there at once! Tell the chauffeur to turn round—”

  She leaned forward and tried to hammer on the glass partition. Quite effortlessly, the Saint pushed her back.

  “Shut up,” he said calmly, “You make me sick.”

  “W-what?” she said.

  She stared at him with solemn wide-open eyes as if he were some strange monster that she was seeing for the first time.

  “It’s no use both of us being sick,” he pointed out reasonably. “It would be a deafening duet.”

  “I don’t know what good you think that is going to do you,” she said haughtily. “If you think you’re going to protect me, or anything like that—”

  “Protect you?” he said, with bland incomprehension. “Who…me? Darling, that would never enter my head. I know you can look after yourself. But I want to take care of you for my own sake. You see, it wouldn’t suit me at all if you sold those papers to Fairweather or Luker. I want them too much myself. So I just want to keep an eye on you until I get them.”

  “You…you mean you’re kidnapping me?” she got out incredulously.

  But somehow she did not sound quite so indignant.

  “That’s the idea,” he said equably. “And it’s my duty to tell you that if you try to scream or kick up any sort of fuss, I shall have to take steps to stop you. Quite gentle steps, of course. I shall just knock you cold.”

  “Oh!” She said.

  She was sitting up very straight, one hand on the seat beside her, the other clutching the armrest at her side. Simon lounged at ease in his own corner, but he was watching her like a hawk, and his hands were ready for instant action. He had no wish to use violence, but he would have no compunction about it if it became necessary. He was fighting for something bigger than stereotyped chivalry, something bigger than the incidental hurt of any individual. He was the point of a million bayonets.

  For a long moment she went on staring at him, and there was something in her face that he could not understand.

  Then her muscles relaxed and she sank limply back.

  “I think you’re an unspeakable cad,” she said.

  “I am,” said the Saint cheerfully. “And I fairly wallow in it.”

  Her mouth moved slightly, so that by the dim light of passing streetlamps it almost looked for one fleeting moment as though she were trying to stifle a smile. He reached over to crush his cigarette in the ashtray, so as to glance at her more closely, but she moved further away from him, and the expression on her face was surly and disdainful. He lay back and stretched out his legs and appeared to go to sleep.

  But he was awake and vigilant for every minute of the drive, while the car whispered out of Putney and out on to the Portsmouth Road and down the long hill into Kingston. They went on to Hampton Court, and turned off over the bridge along the road by Hurst Park; in Walton they turned right again, and a few miles later they turned under a brick archway into what seemed like a dense wood. A few more turns, and the car swung into a circular drive and swept its headlights across the front of a big weather-tiled house set in a grove of tall pines and silver birches.

  They pulled up with a crunch of gravel, and Simon opened the door.

  “Here we are, darling,” he said. “This is my nearest country seat. Thirty minutes from London if you don’t worry about speed cops, and you might as well be in the middle of the New Forest. You’ll like the air, too—it has oxygen in it.”

  He picked up her valise and stepped out. As she got out after him, she saw Patricia coming round the front of the car, pulling off her gloves, and her face went stony.

  The Saint waved a casual hand.

  “You remember Pat, don’t you?” he murmured. “The girl with the wardrobe you liked so much. She’ll chaperone you while you’re here, and see that you have most of the things you want. Come along up, and I’ll show you your quarters.

  He led the way into the house, handing over the valise to Orace, who was standing on the steps. Without saying a word, Lady Valerie followed him up the broad oak staircase.

  Upstairs, at the end of one wing, there was a self-contained suite consisting of sitting-room, bedroom, and bathroom. Simon indicated it all with a generous gesture.

  “You couldn’t do better at the Carlton,” he said. “The windows don’t open, and they’re made of unbreakable glass, but it’s all air-conditioned, so you’ll be quite comfortable. And any time you get tired of the view, you’ve only got to tell me where that cloakroom ticket is, and I’ll take you straight back to London.”

  Orace put down the valise and went out again with his peculiar strutting limp.

  Lady Valerie turned round in a quick circle and stood in front of the Saint. Her face was blazing.

  “You,” she said incoherently. “You…”

  She took a swift step forward and struck at him with her open hand. His cheek stung with the slap. Instinctively he grasped her wrist and held it, but she struggled in his arms like a wildcat, wriggling and kicking at his shins.

  “Oh!” she sobbed. “I…I hate you!”

  “You break my heart,” said the Saint. “I thought it was the dawn of love.”

  She took a lot of holding; her slim body was strongly built, and her muscles were in excellent condition. In the struggle her hair had become disordered, and her breath came quickly between parted lips that were too close to his for serenity.

  The Saint smiled, and kissed her.

  She stopped struggling. Her breasts were tight against him; her lips were moist and desirous under his. One of her arms slid behind his neck.

  The kiss lasted for some time. Then he put his hands on her shoulders and moved gently away.

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I didn’t really mean to force my vile attentions on you, but you asked for it.”

  “Did I?” she said.

  She turned away from him towards a mirror, and began to pat her hair into
place.

  “You are a cad, aren’t you?” she said.

  Her eyes, seen in the mirror, held the same baffling expression that had puzzled him in the car, but now there was mockery with it. Her lips were stirred by a little smile of almost devilish satisfaction. She had a pleased air of feeling that she had done something very clever.

  “I think you’re a dangerous woman,” he said with profound conviction.

  She yawned delicately, and rubbed her eyes like a sleepy kitten.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “Anyway, I’m too tired to argue. But you’ll have to go on being nice to me now, won’t you? I mean, what would Patricia do if I told her?”

  “She’d write your name on the wall,” said the Saint, “where we keep all the others. We’re making a mural of them.”

  “Would she? Well, don’t forget that I know what you’ve done with Bravache and those other men. When they’ve been bumped off, or whatever you call it, I shan’t want you to get hanged for it if I go on liking you.”

  The Saint was grinning as he went out and locked the door. It was the first piece of unalloyed fun that had enriched the day.

  At four that morning a young policeman on his beat noticed a suspicious cluster of shapes in a doorway in Grosvenor Square. He flashed his light on them and saw that they were the bodies of three men, with adhesive tape over their mouths and their hands fastened somehow behind them, sprawled against the door in grotesque attitudes. They were stripped to the waist and horrid red stains were smeared across their torsos.

  Blood!…The young policeman’s heart skipped a beat. In a confused vision, he saw himself gaining fame and promotion for unravelling a sensational murder mystery, becoming in rapid succession an Inspector, a Superintendent, and a Chief Commissioner.

  He ran up the steps, and as he did so he became aware of a pungent odour that seemed oddly familiar. Then one of the bodies moved painfully, and he saw that they were not dead. Their bulging eyes blinked at his light, and strange nasal grunts came from them. And as he bent over them he discovered the reason for the red stains that had taken his breath away, and at the same time located the source of that hauntingly familiar perfume. It was paint. From brow to waist they were painted in zebra stripes of gaudy red and blue, with equal strips of their own white skins showing in between to complete the pattern. The decorative scheme had even been carried over the tops of their heads, which had been shaved for the purpose to the smoothness of billiard balls.