She was still staring at him. The new atmosphere that had crept into his personality from the moment of his first swipe at Donnell’s jaw had grown up like the strengthening light of an incredible dawn, and the intervening interlude had merely provided circumstances to shape its course without altering its temper in the least. And the gun that she had been levelling at him half the time had made no difference at all.
“Aren’t you going to try to arrest me?” she asked, with a faint rasp of contempt laid like the thinnest veneer on the bewildering beginnings of preposterous understanding that lay beneath.
And Simon Templar smiled at her.
“Arrest you for ferreting out and bumping off the bloke I’ve been wanting to get at myself for years? Jill, darling, you have some odd ideas about me!…But there really is a posse around this time—they’re waiting at the other end of that there rat’s hole, with the Assistant Commissioner himself in command, and you wouldn’t have a hope in hell of getting through alone. D’you mind if I take over the artillery a moment?”
He detached the automatic from her unresisting hand, dropped it into his pocket, and swept her smoothly through the open door of the dummy cupboard. It was all done so calmly and quietly, with such an effortless ease of mastery, that all the strength seemed to ebb out of her. It was impossible to resist or even question him: she suffered herself to be steered down the stairs without a word.
“On the other hand,” said the Saint, as if there had been no interruption between that remark and the conclusion of his last speech, “you’ll have to consider yourself temporarily under arrest, otherwise there might be a spot of trouble which we shouldn’t be in a position to deal with effectively.”
She made no answer. In the same bewildered silence she found herself at the junction of the two forks in the tunnel; they took the left-hand fork this time, and went on for about a hundred yards before the light of the last electric bulb was lost behind them and they found themselves in darkness. She heard the crackle of the Saint’s lighter, and saw another flight of steps on the right.
“Up here.”
He took her arm and swung her round the turning and up the stairs. At the top, what appeared to be a blank wall faced them; the Saint’s lighter went out as they reached it, and she heard him fumbling with something in the dark. Then a crack of light sprang into existence before her, widening rapidly, and she felt fresh air on her face as the Saint’s figure silhouetted itself in the gap.
“Easy all,” came the Saint’s imperturbable accents, and she followed him through the opening to find the Assistant Commissioner putting away his gun.
They had stepped into a poorly-furnished cellar; besides Cullis there were a couple of plain-clothes detectives and four uniformed policemen crowded into it.
“The first capture,” said the Saint, taking the girl’s arm again. “I laid out Donnell and Weald, but I couldn’t bring them along with me. You’ll find them in the house, if you get there quick enough—the rest of Donnell’s boys were chipping bits out of the door when we left.”
Cullis nodded, and the uniformed men filed through the opening in the wall. The plain-clothes men hesitated, but the Saint signalled them on.
“I’ll take Trelawney myself—my share of this job is over.”
As the detectives disappeared, the Saint opened the door and let Jill Trelawney out into a small bare hall. Cullis followed. Outside, a taxi was waiting and Simon pushed the girl in.
Then he turned to the Commissioner.
“You might find it entertaining to take a toddle up that tunnel yourself,” he said. “There’s something amusing in the room at the other end which the boys should be discovering about now. Oh, and you might give my love to Claud Eustace next time you see him. Tell him I always was the greatest detective of you all—the joke should make him scream.”
Cullis nodded.
“Are you taking her to the station?”
“I am,” said the Saint truthfully, and closed the door.
And then the Saint settled back and lighted another cigarette as the taxi drew away from the kerb.
“We’ve just time to catch the next train to town with eighty seconds to spare,” he remarked, and the girl turned to him with the nearest thing to a straightforward smile that he had seen on her lips yet.
“And after that?”
“I know a place near London where the train slows up to a walking pace. We can step off there, and the synthetic sleuths who will be infesting Paddington by the time the train gets in can wait for us as long as they like.”
She met his eyes steadily.
“You mean that?”
“But of course!” said the Saint. “And you can ask me anything else you want to know. This is the end of my career as a policeman. I never thought the hell of a lot of the job, anyhow. I suppose you’re wondering why?”
She nodded.
“I suppose I am.”
“Well, I butted into this party more or less by way of a joke. A joke and a promise, Jill, which I may tell you about one day. Or maybe I won’t. Whether you were right or wrong had nothing to do with it at all, but from what the late lamented Weald was saying when I crashed his sheik stuff it seems you’re right, and that really has got something to do with the flowers that bloom in the spring.”
There was another silence. She accepted a cigarette from his case, and a light.
Presently she said, “And after we leave the train?”
“Somewhere in this wide world,” said the Saint, “there’s a bloke by the name of Essenden. He is going to Paris tomorrow, and so are we.”
CHAPTER FIVE:
HOW LORD ESSENDEN WAS PEEVED AND SIMON TEMPLAR RECEIVED A VISITOR
1
Now, once upon a time Lord Essenden had fired a revolver at Simon Templar with intent to qualify him for a pair of wings and a white nightie. Simon bore Lord Essenden no malice for that, for the Saint was a philosopher, and he was philosophically ready to admit that on that occasion he had been in the act of forcing open Lord Essenden’s desk with a burglarious instrument, to wit, a jemmy, so that Lord Essenden might philosophically be held to have been within his rights. Besides, the bullet had missed him by a yard.
No, Simon Templar’s interest in Essenden, and particularly in Essenden’s trips to Paris, had always been commonplace and practical. Simon, having once upon a time watched and pried into Lord Essenden’s affairs conscientiously and devotedly for some months, knew that Essenden, on his return from every visit he paid to Paris (and these visits were more frequent than the visits of a respectably married peer should rightly have been), was wont to pay large numbers of French francs into his bank in London. And the Saint, who had been younger than he was at this time, knew that Englishmen who are able to pay large numbers of French francs into their London banks when they return from a short visit to Paris are curiosities, and collecting curiosities was the Saint’s vocation.
So Simon Templar and Jill Trelawney went to Paris and stayed two days at the Crillon in the Place de la Concorde, which they chose because Lord Essenden chose it. Also, during those two days the Saint held no conversation with Lord Essenden beyond once begging his pardon for treading on his toes in the lift.
It was during the forty-ninth hour of their residence at the Crillon that Simon learnt that Essenden was leaving by the early train next morning.
His room was on the same floor as Essenden’s. He retired to it when Essenden retired, bidding the peer an affable good night in the corridor, for that night the Saint had met Essenden in the bar and relaxed his aloofness. In fact, they had drunk whisky together. This without any reference to their previous encounter. On that occasion the Saint had been masked, and now, meeting Essenden in more propitious circumstances, he had no wish to rake up a stale quarrel.
So they drank whisky together, which was a dangerous thing for anyone to do with Simon Templar, and retired at the same hour. Simon undressed, put on pyjamas and a dressing-gown, and gave Essenden an hour
and a half in which to feel the full and final benefit of the whisky. Then he sauntered down the corridor to Essenden’s room, knocked, received no answer, sauntered in, and found the peer sleeping peacefully. Essenden had not even troubled to undress. The Saint regarded him sadly, covered him tenderly with the quilt, and went out again some minutes later, closing the door behind him.
And that was really all that happened on that trip to Paris which is of importance for the purposes of this chronicle; for on the next day Lord Essenden duly went back to London, and he went with a tale of woe that took him straight to an old acquaintance.
Mr Assistant Commissioner Cullis, of Scotland Yard, disliked having to interview casual callers. Whenever it was possible, he evaded the job. To secure an appointment to see him was, to a private individual, a virtual impossibility. Cullis would decide that the affair in question was either so unimportant that it could be adequately dealt with by a subordinate, or so important that it could only be adequately coped with by the Chief Commissioner, for he was by nature a retiring man. In this retirement he was helped by his rank; in the days when he had been a more humble Superintendent, it had not been so easy to avoid personal contact with the general public.
To this rule, however, there were certain exceptions, of which Lord Essenden was one.
Lord Essenden could obtain audience with Mr Assistant Commissioner Cullis at almost any hour, for Essenden was an important man, and had occupied a seat on more than one Royal Commission. Indeed, it was largely due to Essenden that Mr Cullis held his present appointment. Essenden could not be denied. And so, when Essenden came to Scotland Yard that evening, demanding converse with Mr Cullis, on a day when Mr Cullis was feeling more than usually unfriendly towards the whole wide world, he was received at once, when a Prime Minister might have been turned away unsatisfied.
He came in, a fussy little man with a melancholy moustache, and said, without preface, “Cullis, the Angels of Doom are back.”
He had spoken before he saw Teal, who was also present, stolidly macerating chicle beside the Commissioner’s desk.
“What Angels of Doom?” asked Cullis sourly.
Essenden frowned.
“Who is this gentleman, Cullis?” he inquired. He appeared to hesitate over the word “gentleman.”
“Chief Inspector Teal, who has taken charge of the case.”
Cullis performed the necessary introduction briefly, and Essenden fidgeted into a chair without offering to shake hands.
“What angels of what doom?” repeated Cullis.
“Don’t be difficult,” said Essenden pettishly. “You know what I mean. Jill Trelawney’s gang—”
“There never has been a gang,” said Cullis. “Trelawney and Weald and Pinky Budd were the only Angels of Doom. Three people can’t be called a gang.”
“There were others—”
“To do the dirty work. But they weren’t anything.”
Essenden drummed his finger-tips on the desk in an irritating tattoo.
“You know what I mean,” he repeated. “Jill Trelawney’s back, then—if you like that better. And so is the Saint.”
“Where?”
“I came back from Paris yesterday—”
“And I went to Brixton last night,” said Cullis annoyingly. “We do travel about, don’t we? But what’s that got to do with it?”
“The Saint was in Paris—and Trelawney was with him.”
“That’s better. You actually saw them?”
“Not exactly—”
Cullis bit the end off a cigar with appalling restraint.
“Either you saw her or you didn’t,” he said. “Or do you mean you were drunk?”
“I’d had a few drinks,” Essenden admitted. “Fellow I met in the bar. He must have been the Saint—I can see it all now. I’m certain I drank more than whisky. Anyway, I can only remember getting to my room, and then—I simply passed out. The next thing I knew was that the valet was bringing in my breakfast, and I was lying on the bed fully dressed. I don’t know what the man must have thought.”
“I do,” said Cullis.
“Anyhow,” said Essenden, “they’d taken a couple of hundred thousand francs off me—and a notebook and wallet as well, which were far more important!”
Cullis sat up abruptly.
“What’s that mean?” he demanded.
“It was all written up in code, of course—”
“What was written up in code?”
“Some accounts—and some addresses. Nothing to do with anything in England, though.”
The Assistant Commissioner leaned back again.
“Someone’s certainly interested in you,” he remarked.
“I’ve told you that before,” said Essenden peevishly. “But you never do anything about it.”
“I’ve offered you police protection.”
“I’ve had police protection, and one of your men was on guard outside my house the night I found a man breaking open my desk. That’s all your police protection is worth!”
Cullis tugged at his moustache.
“Still,” he said, “there’s nothing to connect the Saint with that burglary, any more than there’s anything to connect either him or Trelawney with your—er—accident in Paris.”
Essenden fumbled in his pocket and produced a sheet of paper. He laid it on the desk beneath Cullis’s eyes.
“What about that?” he asked.
Cullis looked at a little drawing that was already familiar to him—a childish sketch of a little skeleton man with a symbolical halo woven round his head. But beside this figure there was another such as neither Cullis nor Teal had even seen before in that context—a figure that wore a skirt and no halo. And under these drawings were three words: “April the First.”
“What about that?” asked Essenden again.
Teal raised his sleepy eyes to the calendar on the wall.
“A week next Friday,” he said. “Are you superstitious?”
Essenden was pardonably annoyed.
“If you’re supposed to be in charge of this case, Mr Teal,” he said testily, “I don’t think much of the way you do your job. Is this the way you train your men to work, Cullis?”
“I didn’t train him,” said Cullis patiently. “April the first is All Fools’ Day, isn’t it?”
“I don’t see the joke.”
“It may be explained to you,” said Cullis.
He stood up with a business-like air, meaning that, so far as he was concerned, the interview had served its purpose. As a matter of fact, this story was a mere variation on a theme which Cullis was already finding wearisome. He had heard too much in a similar strain of late to be impressed by this repetition, although he was far from under-estimating its significance. But he could not discuss that with Essenden, for there was something about Lord Essenden which sometimes made Cullis think seriously of murder.
“Let me know of any developments,” he said with curt finality.
Lord Essenden, it should be understood, though important enough to be able to secure interviews with the Assistant Commissioner, was not important enough to be able to dictate the course which any interview should take, and this fact was always a thorn in Essenden’s vanity.
“You treat it all very lightly,” he complained weakly. “I do think you might make some sort of effort, Cullis.”
“Every policeman in England is looking for Simon Templar and Jill Trelawney,” said the Assistant Commissioner. “If and when we find them they will be arrested and tried. We can’t do more than that. Write down your story and give it to Sergeant Berryman downstairs on your way out, and we’ll see that it’s added to the dossier. Good evening.”
“I tell you, Cullis, I’m scared—”
Cullis nodded.
“They certainly seem to have it in for you,” he said. “I wonder why? Good evening!”
Essenden felt his hand vigorously shaken, and then he found himself in the stone corridor outside, blinking at a closed door.
He went downstairs and wrote out his formal report, as he had been directed, but with a querulous lack of restraint which spoilt the product as a literary effort. Then he drove to his club and dined and wined himself well before he returned to his waiting car and directed a cold and sleepy chauffeur to take him home.
“Home” was on the borders of Oxfordshire, for Essenden preferred to live away from the social life of London. Lady Essenden had objections to this misanthropy, of which Lord Essenden took no notice. In his way, he was almost as retiring a character as Mr Cullis.
Through all that drive home, Lord Essenden sat uncomfortably upright in one corner of his car, sucking the knob of his umbrella and pondering unpleasant thoughts.
It was after midnight when he arrived, and the footman who opened the door informed him that Lady Essenden had gone to bed with a headache two hours earlier.
Essenden nodded and handed over his hat and coat. In exchange, he received one solitary letter, and the handwriting on the envelope was so familiar that he carried it to his study to open behind a locked door. The letter contained in the envelope was not so surprising to him as it would have been a month before.
Have a look at the safe behind the dummy row in your book-case.
And underneath were the replicas of the two drawings that he had seen before.
Essenden struck a match and watched the paper curl and blacken in an ash-tray. Then, with perfectly impassive fatalism, he went to the book-case and slid back the panel which on one shelf replaced a row of books. He had no anxiety about any of the papers there, for since the first burglary he had transferred every important document in his house to a safer place.
He opened the safe, and looked at the notebook he had lost in Paris.
Thoughtfully he flicked through the pages.
Every entry had been decoded, and the interpretation written neatly in between the lines.
Essenden studied the book for some minutes, and then he dropped it into his pocket and began to pace the room with short bustling strides.
The notebook had not been in the safe when he arrived back from Paris that afternoon. He knew that, for he had deposited some correspondence there before he left again to interview the Commissioner. And yet, to be delivered that night, the letter which told him to look in the safe must have been posted early that morning. And early that morning Jill Trelawney and the Saint were in Paris—and the letter was postmarked in London. There was something terrifying about the ruthless assurance which emerged from the linking of those two facts.
The Saint Meets his Match (The Saint Series) Page 9
