“A tall dark gentleman with glasses—is that him?”
“That’s him,” agreed Mr Tanfold glibly, and learned, as he had hoped, that Mr Tombs was a regular and solitary patron of the bar.
It did not take him much longer to discover that Mr Tombs’s father was an exceedingly rich and exceedingly pious citizen of Melbourne, a loud noise in the Chamber of Commerce, an only slightly smaller noise in the local government, and an indefatigable guardian of public morality. He also gathered that Mr Tombs, besides carrying on his father’s business, was expected to carry on his moralizing activities also, and that this latter inheritance was much less acceptable to Mr Tombs, Jr., than it should have been to a thoroughly well-brought-up young man. The soul of Sebastian Tombs II, it appeared, yearned for naughtier things: the panting of the psalmist’s heart after the water-brooks, seemingly, was positively as no pant at all compared with the panting of the heart of Tombs fils after those spicy improprieties on which it was the devoted hobby of Tombs père to bring down all the weight of public indignation. The barman knew this because the younger Tombs had sought his advice on the subject of wild-oat sowing in London, and had confessed himself sadly disappointed with the limited range of fields available to the casual sower. He was, in fact, living only for the day when the business which had brought him to England would be over, and he would be free to continue his search for sin in Paris.
Mr Tanfold did not rub his hands gloatingly, but he ordered another drink, and when it had been served he laid a five-pound note on the bar.
“You needn’t bother about the change,” he said, “if you’d like to do me a small favour.”
The barman looked at the money, and picked it up. The only other customers at the bar at that moment were two men at the other end of the room, who were out of earshot.
“What can I do, sir?” he asked.
Mr Tanfold put a card on the counter—it bore the name of a firm of private inquiry agents who existed only in his imagination.
“I’ve been engaged to make some inquiries about this fellow,” he said. “Will you point him out to me when he comes in? I’d like you to introduce us. Tell him I’m another lonely Australian, and ask if he’d like to meet me—that’s all I want.”
The barman hesitated for a second, and then folded the note and put it in his pocket with a cynical nod. Mr Tombs meant nothing to him, and five pounds was five pounds.
“That ought to be easy enough, sir,” he said. “He usually gets here about this time. What name do I say?”
It was, as a matter of fact, almost ridiculously simple—so simple that it never occurred to Mr Tanfold to wonder why. To him, it was only an ordinary tribute to the perfection of his routine—it is an illuminating sidelight on the vanity of “clever” criminals that none of Simon Templar’s multitudinous victims had ever paused to wonder whether perhaps someone else might not be able to duplicate their brilliantly applied psychology, and do it just a little better than they did.
Mr Tombs came in at half past six. After he had had a drink and glanced at an evening paper, the barman whispered to him. He looked at Mr Tanfold. He left his stool and walked over. Mr Tanfold beamed. The barman performed the requisite ceremony. “What’ll you have?” said Mr Tombs. “This is with me,” said Mr Tanfold.
It was as easy as that.
“Cheerio,” said Mr Tombs.
“Here’s luck,” said Mr Tanfold.
“Lousy weather,” said Mr Tombs, finishing his drink at the second gulp.
“Well,” said Mr Tanfold, “London isn’t much of a place to be in at any time.”
The blue eyes of Mr Tombs, behind their horn-rimmed spectacles, focused on him with a sudden dawn of interest. Actually, Simon was assuring himself that any man born of woman could really look as unsavoury as Mr Tanfold and still remain immune to beetle-paste. In this he had some justification, for Mr Gilbert Tanfold was a small and somewhat fleshy man with a loose lower lip and a tendency to pimples, and his natty clothes and the mauve shirts which he affected did not improve his appearance, though no doubt he believed they did. But the only expression which Mr Tanfold discerned was that which might have stirred the features of a weeping Israelite by the waters of Babylon who perceived a fellow exile drawing nigh to hang his harp on an adjacent tree.
“You’ve found that too, have you?” said Mr Tombs, with the morbid satisfaction of a hospital patient discovering an equally serious case in the next bed.
“I’ve found it for the last six months,” said Mr Tanfold firmly. “And I’m still finding it. No fun to be had anywhere. Everything’s too damn respectable. I hope I’m not shocking you—”
“Not a bit,” said Mr Tombs. “Let’s have another drink.”
“This is with me,” said Mr Tanfold.
The drinks were set up, raised, and swallowed.
“I’m not respectable,” said Mr Tanfold candidly. “I like a bit of fun. You know what I mean,” Mr Tanfold winked—a contortion of his face which left no indecency unsuggested. “Like you can get in Paris, if you know where to look for it.”
“I know,” said Mr Tombs hungrily. “Have you been there?”
“Have I been there!” said Mr Tanfold.
Considering the point later, the Saint was inclined to doubt whether Mr Tanfold had been there, for the stories he was able to tell of his adventures in the Gay City were far more lurid than anything else of its kind which the Saint had ever heard—and Simon Templar reckoned that he knew Paris from the Champs-Élysées to the fortifs. Nevertheless, they served to pass the time very congenially until half past seven, when Mr Tanfold suggested that they might have dinner together and afterwards pool their resources in The quest for “a bit of fun.”
“I’ve been here a bit longer than you,” said Mr Tanfold generously, “so perhaps I’ve found a few places you haven’t come across.”
It was a very good dinner washed down with liberal quantities of liquid, for Mr Tanfold was rather proud of the hardness of his head. As the wine flowed, his guest’s tongue loosened—but there, again, it had never occurred to Mr Tanfold that a tongue might be loosened simply because its owner was anxious that no effort should be spared to give its host all the information which he wanted to hear.
“If my father knew I’d been to Paris, I’m perfectly certain he’d disinherit me,” Mr Tombs revealed. “But he won’t know. He thinks I’m sailing from Tilbury, but I’m going to have a week in Paris and catch the boat at Marseilles. He thinks Paris is a sort of waiting-room for hell. But he’s like that about any place where you can have a good time. And five years ago he disowned a younger brother of mine just because he’d been seen at a night club with a girl who was considered a bit fast. Wouldn’t listen to any excuses—just threw him out of the house and out of the business, and hasn’t even mentioned his name since. That’s the sort of puritan he is.”
Mr Tanfold made sympathetic noises with his tongue, while the area of flesh under the front of his mauve shirt which might by some stretch of imagination have been described as his bosom warmed with the glowing ecstasy of a dog sighting a new and hitherto undreamed-of lamp-post.
“When are you making this trip to Paris, old man?” he asked enviously.
“At the end of next week, I hope,” said the unregenerate scion of the house of Tombs. “It all depends on how soon I can get my business finished. I’ve got to go to Birmingham on Friday to see some manufacturers, worse luck—and that’ll probably be even deadlier than London.”
Mr Tanfold’s head hooked forward on his neck, and his eyes expanded.
“Birmingham?” he ejaculated. “Well, I’m damned! What a coincidence!”
“What is?”
“Why, your going to Birmingham. And you think it’s a deadly place! Haven’t you ever heard of Gilbert Tanfold?”
Mr Tombs nodded.
“Sells pictures, doesn’t he? Yes, I’ve had some of ’em. I didn’t think they were so hot.”
Mr Tanfold was so happy that this aspe
rsion on his Art glanced off him like a pea off a tortoise.
“You can’t have had any of his good ones,” he said. “He keeps those for people he knows personally. I met him last week, and he showed me pictures…” Mr Tanfold went into details which eclipsed even his adventures in Paris. “The coincidence is,” he wound up, “that I’ve got an invitation to go to Birmingham on Friday myself and visit his studio.”
Mr Tombs swallowed so that his Adam’s apple jiggered up and down.
“Gosh,” he said jealously, “that ought to be interesting. I wish I had your luck.”
Tanfold’s face lengthened commiseratingly, as if the thought that his new-found friend would be unable to share his good fortune had taken away all his enthusiasm for the project. And then, as if the solution had only just struck him, he brightened again.
“But why shouldn’t you?” he demanded. “I said we’d pool our resources, and I ought to be able to arrange it. Now, suppose we go to Birmingham together—that is, if you don’t think I’m thrusting myself on you too much—”
And that part also was absurdly easy, so that Mr Gilbert Tanfold returned to his more modest hotel much later that night with his heart singing the happy song of a vulture diving on a particularly fruity morsel of carrion. He had not even had to devise any pretext to induce the simple Tombs to travel to Birmingham—Mr Tombs had already planned the trip in his itinerary with a thoughtfulness which almost suggested that he had foreseen Mr Tanfold’s need. And yet, once again, this obvious explanation never occurred seriously to Gilbert Tanfold. He preferred to believe in miracles wrought for his benefit by a kindly Providence, which was a disastrous error for him to make.
The rest of his preparations proceeded with the same smoothness of routine. They went to Birmingham together on the Friday, and kept the steward busy on the Pullman throughout the journey. In Birmingham they had lunch together, diluted with more liquor. By the time they were ready for their visit to the studios of G. Tanfold & Co., Mr Tanfold estimated that his companion was in an ideal condition to enjoy his experience. On arrival they were informed, most unveraciously, that urgent business had called Mr Tanfold himself to London, but he had arranged that they should have the free run of the premises. The entertainment offered, it is sufficient to record, was one in which Mr Tanfold believed he had surpassed himself as an impresario of impropriety.
Mr Tombs, with remarkable fortune, was able to conclude his business on the Saturday morning, and returned to London on the Sunday. He announced his intention of leaving for Paris on the Tuesday, and they parted with mutual expressions of goodwill. Mr Tanfold said that he himself would return to London on Monday, and they arranged to lunch together on that day and go on to paint the town red.
When Mr Tanfold arrived at the Palace Royal Hotel a little before one o’clock on Monday, however, he did not have the air of a man who was getting set to experiment with what could be done with a pot of red paint and the metropolitan skyline. Laying his hat and stick on the table and pulling off his lavender-tinted gloves in Mr Tombs’s suite, he was laconically unresponsive to the younger Tombs’s effusive cries of welcome.
“Look here, Tombs,” he said bluntly, when he had straightened his heliotrope tie, “there’s something you’d better know.”
“Tell me all, dear old wombat,” said Mr Tombs, who appeared to have acquired some of the frothier mannerisms of the city during his visit. “What have you done?”
“I haven’t introduced myself properly,” said his guest brazenly. “I am Gilbert Tanfold.”
For a moment the antipodean Tomblet seemed taken aback, and then he grinned good-humouredly.
“Well, you certainly spruced me, Gilbert,” he said. “What a joke! So it was really your own studio we went to!”
“Yes,” said Mr Tanfold grimly, “it was my own studio.”
Mr Tombs grinned again. He made remarks about Mr Tanfold’s unparalleled sense of humour in terms which were clearly designed to be flattering, but which were too biological in trend to be acceptable in mixed company. Mr Tanfold, however, was not there to be flattered. He cut his host short with a flick of one well-manicured hand.
“Let’s talk business,” he said shortly. “I’ve got a photograph that was taken of you while you were at the studio.”
Mr Tombs’s expression wavered uncertainly, and it may be mentioned that that waver was not the least difficult of the facial exercises which the Saint had had to go through during his acquaintance with Mr Tanfold. For the expression which was at that moment spreading itself across Simon Templar’s inside was a wholly different affair, which would have made the traditional Cheshire cat look like a mask of melancholy: even then, he had not outgrown the urchin glee of watching the feet of the ungodly planting themselves firmly on the banana-skin of doom.
Nevertheless, outwardly he wavered.
“Photograph?” he repeated.
Mr Tanfold drew out his wallet, extracted a photograph therefrom, and handed it over. The Saint stared at it, and beheld his own unmistakable likeness, except for the horn-rimmed spectacles which were not a normal part of his attire, wrapped in a most undignified grapple with a damsel whose clothing set up its own standard of the irreducible minimum of diaphanous underwear.
“Good Lord!” he gasped. “When was this taken?”
“You ought to remember,” said Mr Tanfold, polishing his fingernails on his coat lapel.
“But…but…” The first dim inkling of the perils of the picture which he held seemed to dawn on Mr Tombs, and he choked. “But this was an accident! You remember, Tanfold. They wanted her to sit on top of a step-ladder—they asked me to help her up—and I only caught her when she slipped—”
“I know,” said Mr Tanfold. “But nobody else does. You’re the mug, Tombs. That photograph wouldn’t look so good in a Melbourne paper, would it? With a caption saying, ‘Son of prominent Melbourne businessman “holding the baby” at artists’ revel in Paris’—or something like that.”
Mr Tombs swallowed.
“But I can explain it all,” he protested. “It was—”
“Your father wouldn’t listen to any explanations when your younger brother made a mistake, would he?” said Tanfold. “Besides, what were you doing in that studio at all? Take a look at where you are, Tombs, and get down to business. I’m here to sell you the negative of that picture—at a price.”
The Saint’s mouth opened.
“But that…that’s blackmail!” he gasped.
“It doesn’t bother me what you call it,” Tanfold said smugly. “There’s the position, and I want five thousand pounds to let you out of it.”
Simon’s eyes narrowed.
“Well, perhaps this’ll bother you,” he said, and a fist like a chunk of stone shot over and sent Tanfold sprawling into the opposite corner of the room. Mr Tombs unbuttoned his coat. “Get up and come back for some more, you lousy crook,” he invited.
Tanfold wiped his smashed lip with his handkerchief, and spat out a tooth. His small eyes went black and evil, but he did not get up.
“Just for that, it’ll cost you ten thousand,” he said viciously. “That stuff won’t help you, you damn fool. Whatever you do, you won’t get the negative back that way.”
“It gives me a lot of fun, anyhow,” said the Saint coldly. “And I only wish your miserable body could stand up to more of it.”
He picked Mr Tanfold up by the front of his mauve shirt with one hand, and slammed him back into the corner again with the other, and then he dropped into a chair by the table, pushed Mr Tanfold’s hat and stick on to the floor, and took out a cheque-book and a fountain pen. He made out the cheque with some care, and dropped that also on the floor.
“There’s your money,” he said, and watched the trembling Mr Tanfold pick it up. “Now you can get out.”
Mr Tanfold had more things to say, but caught a glimpse of the unholy light in Mr Tombs’s mild blue eyes, and changed his mind in the nick of time. He gathered up his hat and stick and go
t out.
In one of the washrooms of the hotel he repaired some of the damage that had been done to his natty appearance, and reflected malevolently that Mr Tombs was somewhat optimistic if he thought he was going to secure his negative for a paltry ten thousand pounds after what had happened. In a day or two he would make a further demand—but this time he would take the precaution of doing it by telephone. With a photograph like that in his possession, Mr Tanfold could see nothing to stop him bleeding his victim to the verge of suicide, and he was venomously prepared to do it.
He looked at the cheque again. It was made payable to Bearer, and was drawn on a bank in Berkeley Street. Ten minutes later he was passing it through the grille.
“Do you mind waiting a few moments, sir?” said the cashier. “I don’t know whether we have enough currency to meet this without sending out.”
Mr Tanfold took a chair and waited, continuing his spiteful thoughts.
He waited five minutes. He waited ten minutes. Then he went to the counter again.
“We’re a bit short on cash, sir,” explained the cashier, “and it turns out that the bank we usually borrow from is a bit short too. We’ve sent a man to another branch, and he ought to be back any minute now.”
A few moments later the clerk beckoned him.
“Would you step into the manager’s office, sir?” he asked. “We don’t like passing such a large sum as ten thousand pounds over the counter. I’ll give it to you in there, if you don’t mind.”
Still unsuspecting, Mr Tanfold stepped in the direction indicated. And the first person he saw in the office was the younger Tombs.
Mr Tanfold stopped dead, and his heart missed several beats. A wild instinct urged him to turn and flee, but the strength seemed to have ebbed out of his legs. It would have availed him nothing, anyway, for the courteous clerk had slipped from behind the counter and followed him—and he was a healthy young heavyweight who looked as if he would have been more at home on a football field than behind the grille of a cashier’s desk.
The Saint Intervenes (The Saint Series) Page 18
