The Saint Plays with Fire (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  Hanging over them, on the door handle, was a card inscribed with hand-painted letters:

  THESE ANIMALS ARE

  THE PROPERTY OF

  Mr KANE LUKER

  PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH

  4

  Simon Templar was having breakfast in Cornwall House when a call on the telephone from the watchful Sam Outrell at his post in the lobby heralded the arrival of Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal a few seconds before the doorbell sounded under his pudgy finger.

  Simon went to the door himself. The visitation was no surprise to him—as a matter of fact, he had been fatalistically expecting it for some hours. But he allowed his eyebrows to go up in genial surprise when the opening door revealed Teal’s freshly laundered face like a harvest moon under a squarely planted bowler hat.

  “Hail to thee, blithe spirit,” he greeted the detective breezily. “I was wondering where you’d been hiding all these days. Come in and tell me all the news.”

  Teal came in like an advancing tank. There was an aura of portentous somnolence about him, as if he found the whole world so boring that it was hardly worthwhile to keep awake. Simon knew the signs like the geography of his own home. When Chief Inspector Teal looked as if he might easily fall asleep in a standing position at any moment, it meant that he had something more than usually heavy weighing on his mind, and on this particular morning it was not insuperably difficult for the Saint to guess what that load was. But his manner was seraphically conscience-free as he steered the detective into the living-room.

  “Have some breakfast,” he suggested convivially.

  “I had my breakfast at breakfast time,” Teal said with dignity.

  He stood rather stiffly and sluggishly, holding his sedate black derby over his navel.

  Simon lifted his shoulders in regret.

  “There are times when you have an almost suburban smugness,” he said deploringly. “Never mind. You’ll excuse me if I go on with mine, won’t you? Sit down, Claud. Take off your boots and make yourself at home. Why should these little things come between us?”

  Teal sank heavily into a chair.

  “I suppose you were up late last night,” he said ponderously. “Is that why you’re having breakfast so late this morning?”

  “I don’t know.” The Saint punctured his second egg. “That wouldn’t be a bad excuse, but why should I make excuses?” The Saint waved his fork oratorically. “One of the many troubles of this cockeyed age is the glorification of false virtues. The bank clerk gets up early because he has to. And consequently dozens of fortunate people who don’t need to get up early drag themselves out of bed at insanitary hours because it makes them feel as virtuous as a bank clerk. Instead of aspiring towards freedom and emancipation, we make a virtue of assuming unnecessary restrictions. A man spends his life working to the position where he doesn’t have to get to the office at nine o’clock, and then he boasts that he still gets up at seven-thirty every morning. Well, then, what was he working for? Why didn’t he save his energy and remain a clerk? You might build an indictment of all our accepted values on that. Poor men nibble a crust of bread because that’s all they’ve got, and millionaires go on a diet of dry crusts and soda-water—”

  “What were you doing last night?” asked the detective implacably.

  Simon looked shocked.

  “Really, Claud! Have you no discretion? Or have you by any chance become a gossip writer?”

  “I just want to know where you were last night,” Teal said immovably. “I know you’ve got one of your usual alibis, but I’d like to hear it. And then perhaps you’ll tell me why you did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “I wish I did. It sounds so intriguing.”

  “What were you doing last night?”

  Simon buttered a slice of toast.

  “So far as I recollect, I spent a classically blameless evening. An archbishop could have followed in my footsteps without getting a single speck of mud on his reverend gaiters. Preceded by massed choirs in white surplices, and marshalled by a fatigue party from the Salvation Army.”

  “Let me tell you some of the things you did,” Teal interrupted stolidly. “You dined at the Berkeley with Lady Valerie Woodchester. She left at about half past ten, and you went to the Café Royal. You got back here towards twelve-fifteen, and at five minutes past one you went out again. Your friends Quentin and Uniatz were with you, and you were careful to see that you weren’t followed. At twenty-five minutes past two Miss Holm left here in another of your cars, and she was also very careful to see that she wasn’t followed. At four-thirty this morning you came in alone. I want to know what you were doing between one-five and four-thirty.”

  “What a man you are, Claud!” said the Saint with admiration. “Nothing is hidden from you. Your house must be full of little birds.”

  “It’s my business to know what people like you are doing.”

  “You know,” said the Saint in an injured tone, “I believe you must have been having me watched. I don’t call that very friendly of you. Have you lost your old faith in me?”

  “What were you doing between one-five and four-thirty this morning?” Teal repeated tigerishly.

  The Saint stirred his coffee with an air of shy discomfort.

  “I really didn’t want you to know about that,” he confessed. “You see, much as I love you, you’re always the professional policeman, and you have to take such a morbidly legal view of things. The fact is, Peter and Hoppy and I decided that we didn’t feel tired, so we pushed off to a little club we wot of where they haven’t any respect for the licensing laws, and we stayed there hardening our arteries and talking to loose women until nearly dawn.”

  “What’s the name of this club?”

  “That’s just what I can’t tell you, Claud. You see my point. If you knew where it was you’d feel you had to do something about closing it down, because any place in London where one might have a good time has to be closed down. And that would be a pity, because it’s quite a cheery little spot now, and these places always become so dismal when they get infested with disguised policemen snooping for evidence and leaving the smell of Lifebuoy Soap in their wake—”

  “All right,” Teal said with frightful restraint. “That’s your story. And now suppose you tell me about those men you painted red, white, and blue and left outside Luker’s house.”

  The Saint put his coffee cup down. He wore the incredulous and appalled expression of a Presbyterian Elder who has been accused of operating an illicit still.

  “Painted?” he said hollowly.

  “Yes.”

  “Red, white, and blue?”

  “Yes.”

  “Outside Luker’s house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who were these men?”

  “You know as well as I do. Their names are Bravache, Pietri, and Dumaire.”

  The Saint shook his head with great concern.

  “Somebody must have been pulling your leg, Claud,” he said. “I simply can’t imagine myself doing a thing like that, even after a night at the place where I was. Did anybody see me paint them and leave them outside Luker’s house? Do they say I painted them?”

  Mr Teal unwrapped a springboard of spearmint with wearily deliberate fingers, as if he were undressing himself for bed after a hard day. He had already spent a bad hour in dire anticipation of this interview, and his forebodings had not been disappointed. But he had to go through with it. For an hour he had been preparing himself, wrestling with his soul, facing in prospect all the gibes and banter and infuriating mockery that he knew he would have to endure, drilling himself to the fulfilment of the vow that he would be calm, that he would be rock-like and masterful, that for this one lone historic occasion he would not let the Saint get under his skin and cut the suspenders of his self-control, as the Saint had done with fateful facility so often in the past, and the soul of Claud Eustace Teal had emerged tried and tempered
from the annealing fires. Or nearly. He would triumph in the ordeal even though blood oozed from his pores.

  “No,” he said. “Nobody saw you do it. The men don’t say it was you. They say they don’t know who it was. But I know it was you!”

  “Do you?” At that moment the Saint was as sleek as a seal. “What makes you think so?”

  “I know it because Luker was one of the guests at that country house fire that you were meddling in, where John Kennet was killed, and I should think of you in connection with anything that happened to Luker now. Besides that, two of those men are Frenchmen. When I saw you at that place where Ralph Windlay was murdered, you read me two cuttings from French newspapers and talked about something called the Sons of France. Red, white, and blue are the French national colours. Painting those men like that and leaving them outside Luker’s doorstep is just the sort of thing I’d expect of you. There’s one connecting link all the way through—and you’re it! “

  Simon regarded him like a spot on the carpet.

  “And that’s your evidence, is it?”

  Teal swallowed, but he nodded stubbornly.

  “That’s it.”

  “That’s the collection of barefaced balderdash that’s supposed to authorise you to take me into custody and lug me off to Vine Street. That’s the immortal excretion of the best brains of Scotland Yard. Or have I misjudged you, Claud? Have you taken a pill and woken up to find you’ve got a genius for publicity? You’ll certainly get a bale of it over this. Let’s go on with it. What will the charge be? Wait a minute, I can see it all—‘That he did feloniously and with malice aforethought assault the complainants with an unlawful instrument, to wit, a paintbrush—’ ”

  “Did I say that?” asked Mr Teal.

  It was quite a moment for Mr Teal. For the first time that he could remember he stopped the Saint short.

  The Saint looked at him in wary surmise. A hundred disjointed ideas rocketed through his head, but they all arrived by devious paths at the same mark. And that was something compared with which a seven-headed dragon pirouetting on its tail would have been a perfectly commonplace phenomenon.

  “Do you mean,” he said foggily, “that you didn’t come here to arrest me?”

  “You ought to know enough about the law to know that I can’t do anything if these men won’t make a complaint.”

  Simon felt a trifle light-headed.

  “You didn’t come here to congratulate me, by any chance?”

  “No.”

  “And you didn’t come here for breakfast?”

  “No.”

  “Well, what the devil did you come for?”

  “I thought you might like to tell me something about it,” Teal said woodenly. “What is all this about, and what has Luker got to do with it?”

  The Saint reached for a cigarette.

  “Quite apart from the fact that I don’t see why I should be supposed to know—haven’t you thought of asking him?”

  “I have asked him. He said he’d never seen these men before, and they say they’ve never heard of him.”

  The Saint lighted his cigarette. He leaned back in his chair and stretched out his legs under the table.

  “Then it certainly does look very mysterious,” he said, but his blue eyes were quiet and searching.

  Chief Inspector Teal turned his venerable bowler on his blue serge knees. He had got his spearmint nicely into condition now—a plastic nugget; malleable and yet resistant, still flavorous, crisp without being crumbly, glutinous without adhesion, obedient to the capricious patterning of his mobile tongue working in conjunction with the clockwork reciprocation of his teeth, polymorphous, ductile. It was a great comfort to him. He would have been lost without it. What he had to do was not easy.

  “I know,” he said. “That’s why I came to see you. I thought you might be able to give me a lead.”

  The Saint stared at him for several moments in a silence of gull-winged eyebrows and wide absorbent eyes, while that cataclysmic statement sank through the diverse layers of his comprehension.

  “Well, I will be a cynocephalic mandrill scratching my blue bottom on the ramparts of Timbuctoo,” he said finally. “Or am I one already? I thought I’d seen every kind and sample of human nerve in my time, but this is the last immortal syllable. You treat me as a suspicious character; you habitually accuse me of every crime that’s committed in England that you’re too thick-headed to solve; you threaten me three times a week with penal servitude and bodily violence; you persecute me at every conceivable opportunity; you disturb my slumbers and hound me at my own breakfast table; and then you have the unmitigated gall to sit there, with your great waistcoat full of stomach, and ask me to help you!”

  It was a bitter draught for Mr Teal to get past his uvula, but he managed it, even though his gorge threatened to suffocate him. Perhaps it was one of the most prodigious victories of self-discipline that he had ever achieved in his life.

  “That’s what I want,” he said, with a superhuman effort of carelessness that made him look as if he was about to lapse into an apoplectic coma. “Why should we go on fighting each other? We’re both really out for the same thing, and this is a case where we could work together and you could save yourself getting into trouble as well. I’ll be quite frank with you. I remembered everything you said at Windlay’s place, and I made some inquiries on my own responsibility. I’ve seen a verbatim report of the Kennet inquest, and I’ve talked with one of the reporters who was there. I agree with you that it was conducted in a very unsatisfactory way. I put it to the Chief Commissioner that we ought to consider reopening the case. He agreed with me then, but yesterday evening he told me I’d better drop it. I’m pretty sure there’s pressure being put on him to leave well alone—the kind of pressure he can’t afford to ignore. But I don’t like dropping cases. If there’s anything fishy about this it ought to come out. Now, you said something to me about the Sons of France, didn’t you?”

  “I may have mentioned them,” Simon admitted cautiously. “But—”

  Chief Inspector Teal suddenly opened his baby-blue eyes, and they were not bored or comatose or stupid, but unexpectedly clear and penetrating in the round placidity of his face.

  “Well, that’s why I came to see you. You may have something that puts the whole puzzle together. Bravache and Dumaire are Frenchmen.” Mr Teal paused. He fashioned his gum once into the shape of a spindle, and then clamped his teeth destructively down on it. “And I happen to have found out that John Kennet was a member of the Sons of France,” he said.

  CHAPTER SIX:

  HOW MR FAIRWEATHER OPENED HIS MOUTH AND MR UNIATZ PUT HIS FOOT IN IT

  1

  “Kennet was a member of the Sons of France?” Simon repeated. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. His mother was French, and he was brought up with French as a second language. He spoke it perfectly. I told you I’d been making inquiries. I’ve established the fact that he joined the Sons of France six months ago under the name of Jean de la Paix. Incidentally, he was also a member of the French Communist Party.” Teal went on watching the Saint, searchingly, and with a glint of malice. “I thought you’d have known that.”

  The Saint blew a geometrically faultless smoke-ring across the table. His face was tranquilly uncommunicative, relieved from blankness only by a faint inscrutable smile, but behind the mask his brain was running like a dynamo.

  “I might have guessed,” he said.

  “Did you?”

  “I’m a good guesser…‘Jean de la Paix’, too—he had a sense of humour after all. And guts. For a registered member of the French Communist Party to join the Sons of France at all was guts, and he must have got further than just joining. That would only be another reason why he had to be cremated.”

  “What was the first reason?”

  Simon looked down at his fingernails.

  “You want to know a great deal,” he said, and looked up again.

  “Of course I do.”


  “Well, so do I.” The Saint thought for a while, and made up his mind. “All right, Claud. You asked for it, and you can have it. For about the first time in my life I’ll be perfectly frank with you. It’d be worthwhile if it only meant that I could get on with my job without having to cope with all your suspicions and persecutions as well as my own troubles. But I don’t suppose it’ll do any good, because as usual you probably won’t believe me—You see, Claud, the fact is that I don’t know any more than you do.”

  Teal’s face darkened.

  “I didn’t come here to waste my time—”

  “And I don’t want you to waste mine. I told you, you wouldn’t believe me. But there it is. I don’t know any more than you do. The only difference is that not being a policeman I haven’t got so many great open spaces in my brain to start with, so I don’t need to know so much.”

  Mr Teal’s spearmint, under the systematic massage of his molars, became in turn a sphere, an hour-glass, and something like a short-handled frying pan.

  “Go on,” he said lethargically. “Make allowances for my stupidity, and tell me how much I know.”

  “As you like. Let’s start with Comrade Luker. As you know, he is the current top tycoon of the arms racket.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Comrades Fairweather and Sangore are his stooges in a couple of British armaments firms which he controls.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Call them what you like, and they’re still his stooges. Between them, those three are running a combine that practically constitutes a monopoly of the arms industry in this country. Their only job is manufacturing engines and instruments and gadgets that kill people, and the only way they can make good money is in having a good demand for their products. I shall also ask you to grasp the idea that one customer’s money will buy as much champagne and caviar as another’s, whoever he wants to kill. But under the laws we suffer from, there’s nothing criminal in any of that—nothing that you could take any professional interest in. If a man gets drunk and kills somebody with his car, it’s your job to put him in jail, but if he organises the killing of several thousand people they make him an earl, and it’s your job to stop the traffic when he wants to cross the street. The technical name for that is civilisation. Correct?”