The Saint Plays with Fire (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  “By the way,” she said very casually, “I think I’m going to be married soon.”

  “Quite right too,” he approved. “A healthy good-looking girl like you ought to get married. Who’s the unlucky man?”

  “Don Knightley—Captain Knightley. You remember him, don’t you? He rescued me from the fire.”

  “So he did.” The Saint laughed quietly, but it was a rather thoughtful kind of laugh. “Dammit, that was less than a month ago.”

  “Is that all?” she said. “It seems ever so much longer than that. Just think—only a month ago everything was ordinary, if you know what I mean, John and Ralph and Luker were alive, and General Sangore…Why do you think General Sangore shot himself?”

  “I suppose he thought it was the best way out for him,” said the Saint soberly. “Probably he wasn’t so far wrong, at that. Anyway, let’s drink to him.”

  He raised his glass.

  She looked at him curiously.

  “It’s funny that you should do that,” she said.

  “Is it? I don’t think so. We shouldn’t be having this drink together now if it hadn’t been for him.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t you? I thought perhaps you might. But haven’t you ever wondered why all those policemen poured into that cellar in the nick of time, just like the last instalment of a Pearl White serial?”

  “Well, I heard what Senappe said. He got a message from you—”

  “How do you think he got it?”

  “I don’t know. I never really thought about it. But I suppose you did one of those frightfully clever things that you’re famous for and got it to him somehow. Anyway your friend Peter and that Mr Uniatz were there, so I knew everything was all right, and all I can say is I thought it was pretty mean of you to keep it up your sleeve and let me go through that perfectly paralysing emotional orgy—”

  “I didn’t put you through any emotional orgy,” he said steadily. “You see, I never sent anybody any message.”

  She stared at him.

  “You never—”

  “Of course not. If you think a bit, you’ll see that I never had the chance to.”

  “Then—”

  “Sangore sent it.”

  Her face was blank almost to incredulity.

  “But—”

  “I know all the ‘buts,’ darling. And I don’t suppose I shall ever know much more. I can only imagine that when Luker told the others exactly what was meant to happen to us, and even had the nerve to tell Sangore that we were being stored at Bledford Manor—that’s where we spent half the night, if you didn’t know it—it was a bit too much even for Sangore to swallow. The Old School Tie rose up and pointed accusing fingers at him, if you can follow the metaphor.”

  The Saint’s flippancy was only in his words. His voice was not flippant, and his eyes were very clear and unlaughing.

  “Anyway, I only know what happened. Sangore rang up Peter at the Raphael that night. It must have been some time after we were taken away from Bledford. He told him what had happened to us, and where we were being taken, and what was going to happen to us, and all about the secret way into the Sons of France’s headquarters, through the back of a cheap café a couple of blocks away. And he told him all about the plot against Chaulage and the rest of it, and gave him enough dope to make the police sit up and take notice. It was Sangore who told him to go to the Prefecture. It was about the one thing that convinced Peter that the whole thing wasn’t a trap. Peter was in a pretty tough spot, but he knew that he couldn’t hope to take over that headquarters with just Hoppy and Orace to help him, and he figured that if Sangore really wanted him to go to the police there must be something in it. So he took his chance. Fortunately it wasn’t too hard to make the Prefecture sit up, partly because a few rumours of a coup d’état had been leaking out and bothering them, and partly because Senappe doesn’t like the Sons of France at all and he’d just been praying for a break like that. The only other thing Sangore did was to make Peter swear that he’d report the message as having come from me and leave Sangore himself right out of it. As far as I can make out, the old boy must have shot himself as soon as he rang off. I suppose he knew that he was in for it after that, anyway, and he preferred to go out without any mud on him. That’s why none of us ever said anything. But I think you ought to know.” He touched the lapel of his coat. “I suppose, in a sort of way, he’s the one who really ought to have worn this.”

  She looked at the narrow red ribbon in his buttonhole, and could not say anything just then.

  The Saint gazed at the pale straw-tinted wine in his glass, and lived again through unforgettable hours, not all of them only his own. And he felt a restlessness for which there was no accounting. It was hard to believe that that chapter had been finally closed. So much had been done, but for how long would there be peace?…

  “Anyway,” he said abruptly, “here’s luck.”

  “I saw in the paper that Colonel Marteau and a lot of others are going to be tried next week,” she said at last. “You don’t think they’ll get off, do you?”

  He shook his head.

  “They haven’t a hope. The French are very practical in these matters. Luckily I didn’t quite kill that bloke who was going to do the assassination, and they got a statement out of him before he slid off…It’s a pity they couldn’t get anything definite on Fairweather, though. I hate to think of him being the only one to get away with it, even if he was the least important of the lot.”

  “I think you’re very vindictive,” she said. “There’s no harm in Algy, really. I’ve still got quite a soft spot for him.”

  “Maybe I’ll try to develop some sort of spot for him myself,” said the Saint meditatively. “Let’s not bother about him now. Tell me more about your marriage.”

  She frowned.

  “What do you want to know about it? You don’t object or anything, do you?”

  “Not at the moment. I’m only waiting to see my solicitor and find out what chance I’ll have of suing you for breach of promise. I’ve still got the evidence, you know, and I think it must have been Reginald who told the newspapers—anyway, they all printed it, and I shall have a lot of questions to answer if you jilt me.”

  She looked at him rather sadly.

  “I mean, you aren’t really entitled to object, are you? It isn’t as if you wanted to marry me yourself, or anything like that.”

  “Of course I want to marry you myself. But since your heart belongs to another I shall be a strong silent man and keep a stiff upper lip and—”

  “I wouldn’t marry you, anyway,” she said. “I admit you did rather steal my girlish heart away at one time, but after that night when everything happened I decided I just couldn’t stand the pace. After all, spending one’s whole time being lugged about and threatened with floggings and firing squads and being generally manhandled isn’t much of a life for a girl, is it? All the same, I hope you’ll come and see me after I’m married, whenever you aren’t doing anything in particular. I mean, there must be some evenings now and again when you haven’t got a gang of desperadoes after you, and Don will be away quite a bit, you know.”

  “I think you ought to make him very happy,” Simon remarked, a little sardonically.

  She gazed at him, wide-eyed and innocent.

  “Why, naturally I shall. After all, nobody wants an unhappy man moping about the place. I think I’ll have him made a general in a few years.”

  “Just like that,” said the Saint. “And how will you set about it?”

  She shrugged.

  “It oughtn’t to be very difficult. I mean, I know all the right people, and he knows all the right people, and he’s rather stupid in the right sort of way, and I’m rather clever, and if a man’s stupid in the right sort of way, and his wife’s rather clever, and they both know the right people, it isn’t very difficult for him to be made a general.”

  Simon regarded her with honest Admiration.

  �
��You know, I’m beginning to believe you really are clever,” he said. “And if he’s as stupid as you think he is—in the right sort of way, of course—I’m sure you’ll make him very happy.”

  He ordered another drink and considered her speculatively.

  “Have you by any chance started making him happy by allowing him to buy you that nice bit of fur?” he asked.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “I bought this myself with my own hard-earned money.”

  Simon sat up with impudently interrogative eyebrows.

  “What hard-earned money?”

  “The money from my memoirs,” she said simply. “You see, I thought it would be a good idea to write my memoirs and sell them to one of the Sunday papers. They’d have been awfully thrilling, with all about you and Luker and Algy and everybody and all our adventures, and I thought they’d be a great success. I told Algy about it, and he thought so too. In fact, he offered to buy them from me himself.”

  “Oh, did he?” said the Saint. “And how much did he give you for them?”

  “He’s given me ten thousand so far,” she said artlessly, “but I expect he’ll give me quite a generous wedding present as well. It’s saved me a lot of trouble, too, because he doesn’t actually want me to write them just yet, and I must say I wasn’t actually looking forward to that because my spelling is lousy.”

  For several moments the Saint glared at her speechlessly.

  “Damn you, young woman,” he exploded. “Do you realise that Algy was my only chance of collecting any boodle out of this party? And after all I’ve done for you, you have the nerve to step in and knock him off under my nose!”

  “I don’t know about that,” she said diffidently. “After all, I did find him first.”

  Simon Templar surrendered. He lay back and laughed helplessly.

  “You win,” he said. “You know, I’m beginning to think that Luker and Marteau and Company made a pretty clean getaway after all. If they’d been at large, they’d probably have found that they’d fallen into the arms of a monster that would have made them suffer a lot more. Algy is the really unlucky guy.”

  She lowered her eyes demurely.

  “If by monster you mean me, I can tell you that there are quite a lot of men who wouldn’t consider themselves a bit unlucky to fall into my arms.”

  “The trouble is,” said the Saint, “I’m afraid I could almost be one of them.”

  PUBLICATION HISTORY

  A condensed version of this story was first published in the May 1938 edition of Cosmopolitan magazine under the title Prelude for War. A UK serialisation of the story started in Answers magazine the following month and ran past the July debut of the hardback novel.

  Reviewers loved it, with one reviewer commenting that “The Saint goes on and on and on—and seems to get better; each time…Here is something to tingle your nerves with its vicarious dangers and excitement. And Mr Charteris is not slow to smack Nazism, Fascism and Dictatorship quite resoundingly. Swell!”

  It was Triangle Books—again—who were responsible for the change of title, christening the book The Saint Plays with Fire for its July 1942 reprint with Hodder & Stoughton, using the title from the 1950s onwards.

  The book was quickly banned in Italy and Germany, which objected to its antifascist undertones. It may well have been the inspiration for a note that Charteris’s first biographer, W. O. G. Lofts, would find some thirty years later. He reported that “…the Nazi Party had a list of famous people to ‘dispose of’ once victory was complete. No. 1 was Winston Churchill and way down on the list was Leslie Charteris…” The book was finally published in Italy in 1974.

  Foreign translations eventually materialised; the Hungarians were first off the mark, with Lesújt az Angyal in 1941, and the French published the book under the title Le Saint joue…et gagne once the war was over in 1946. A Dutch edition appeared under the title Pro en contra èn de Saint in 1950.

  The novel was adapted by John Kruse for The Saint with Roger Moore, airing under title of “The Saint Plays with Fire” and first broadcast on Thursday, 28 November 1963. The episode, which is generally considered one of the best from the show’s long run, featured Joseph Fürst as Kane Luker, and Justine Lord as Lady Valerie; it was directed by the show’s producer, Robert S. Baker.

  The novel was also adapted by Neville Teller for BBC Radio 4. It was one of three dramatizations and starred Paul Rhys as the Saint, first airing in the summer of 1995.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  “I’m mad enough to believe in romance. And I’m sick and tired of this age—tired of the miserable little mildewed things that people racked their brains about, and wrote books about, and called life. I wanted something more elementary and honest—battle, murder, sudden death, with plenty of good beer and damsels in distress, and a complete callousness about blipping the ungodly over the beezer. It mayn’t be life as we know it, but it ought to be.”

  —Leslie Charteris in a 1935 BBC radio interview

  Leslie Charteris was born Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin in Singapore on 12 May 1907.

  He was the son of a Chinese doctor and his English wife, who’d met in London a few years earlier. Young Leslie found friends hard to come by in colonial Singapore. The English children had been told not to play with Eurasians, and the Chinese children had been told not to play with Europeans. Leslie was caught in between and took refuge in reading.

  “I read a great many good books and enjoyed them because nobody had told me that they were classics. I also read a great many bad books which nobody told me not to read…I read a great many popular scientific articles and acquired from them an astonishing amount of general knowledge before I discovered that this acquisition was supposed to be a chore.”1

  One of his favourite things to read was a magazine called Chums. “The Best and Brightest Paper for Boys” (if you believe the adverts) was a monthly paper full of swashbuckling adventure stories aimed at boys, encouraging them to be honourable and moral and perhaps even “upright citizens with furled umbrellas.”2 Undoubtedly these types of stories would influence his later work.

  When his parents split up shortly after the end of World War I, Charteris accompanied his mother and brother back to England, where he was sent to Rossall School in Fleetwood, Lancashire. Rossall was then a very stereotypical English public school, and it struggled to cope with this multilingual mixed-race boy just into his teens who’d already seen more of the world than many of his peers would see in their lifetimes. He was an outsider.

  He left Rossall in 1924. Keen to pursue a creative career, he decided to study art in Paris—after all, that was where the great artists went—but soon found that the life of a literally starving artist didn’t appeal. He continued writing, firing off speculative stories to magazines, and it was the sale of a short story to Windsor Magazine that saved him from penury.

  He returned to London in 1925, as his parents—particularly his father—wanted him to become a lawyer, and he was sent to study law at Cambridge University. In the mid-1920s, Cambridge was full of Bright Young Things—aristocrats and bohemians somewhat typified in the Evelyn Waugh novel Vile Bodies—and again the mixed-race Bowyer-Yin found that he didn’t fit in. He was an outsider who preferred to make his own way in the world and wasn’t one of the privileged upper class. It didn’t help that he found his studies boring and decided it was more fun contemplating ways to circumvent the law. This inspired him to write a novel, and when publishers Ward Lock & Co. offered him a three-book deal on the strength of it, he abandoned his studies to pursue a writing career.

  When his father learnt of this, he was not impressed, as he considered writers to be “rogues and vagabonds.” Charteris would later recall that “I wanted to be a writer, he wanted me to become a lawyer. I was stubborn, he said I would end up in the gutter. So I left home. Later on, when I had a little success, we were reconciled by letter, but I never saw him again.”3

  X Esquire, his first novel, appeared in April 1927.
The lead character, X Esquire, is a mysterious hero, hunting down and killing the businessmen trying to wipe out Britain by distributing quantities of free poisoned cigarettes. His second novel, The White Rider, was published the following spring, and in one memorable scene shows the hero chasing after his damsel in distress, only for him to overtake the villains, leap into their car…and promptly faint.

  These two plot highlights may go some way to explaining Charteris’s comment on Meet—the Tiger!, published in September 1928, that “it was only the third book I’d written, and the best, I would say, for it was that the first two were even worse.”4

  Twenty-one-year-old authors are naturally self-critical. Despite reasonably good reviews, the Saint didn’t set the world on fire, and Charteris moved on to a new hero for his next book. This was The Bandit, an adventure story featuring Ramon Francisco De Castilla y Espronceda Manrique, published in the summer of 1929 after its serialisation in the Empire News, a now long-forgotten Sunday newspaper. But sales of The Bandit were less than impressive, and Charteris began to question his choice of career. It was all very well writing—but if nobody wants to read what you write, what’s the point?

  “I had to succeed, because before me loomed the only alternative, the dreadful penalty of failure…the routine office hours, the five-day week…the lethal assimilation into the ranks of honest, hard-working, conformist, God-fearing pillars of the community.”5

  However his fortunes—and the Saint’s—were about to change. In late 1928, Leslie had met Monty Haydon, a London-based editor who was looking for writers to pen stories for his new paper, The Thriller—“The Paper with a Thousand Thrills.” Charteris later recalled that “he said he was starting a new magazine, had read one of my books and would like some stories from me. I couldn’t have been more grateful, both from the point of view of vanity and finance!”6

  The paper launched in early 1929, and Leslie’s first work, “The Story of a Dead Man,” featuring Jimmy Traill, appeared in issue 4 (published on 2 March 1929). That was followed just over a month later with “The Secret of Beacon Inn,” starring Rameses “Pip” Smith. At the same time, Leslie finished writing another non-Saint novel, Daredevil, which would be published in late 1929. Storm Arden was the hero; more notably, the book saw the first introduction of a Scotland Yard inspector by the name of Claud Eustace Teal.