The Saint Steps In (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  He hung up, and went back to face Madeline Gray’s unspoken questions.

  He shook his head.

  “Just one of those things,” he said.

  He sat down again, and Mrs Cook retired reluctantly into the kitchen.

  Simon faced the girl across the table. He picked up his knife and fork and made a fresh start on his meal before he said any more.

  “Let’s get our chins up and take it,” he said. “You have got something to worry about. But we’re going to try and do things about it. So far, the Ungodly have had practically all the initiative. Now we’ve got to have some of our own.”

  “But who are the…the Ungodly? If we only knew—”

  That was as much as he needed. He talked, ramblingly and glibly, while he finished his plate, and then through coffee and cigarettes while the girl picked at the omelette that Mrs Cook brought in to her. He discussed all the dramatis personae again, and an assortment of speculations about them. He said absolutely nothing that was new or worth recording here, but it sounded good at the time. And gradually he saw a trace of colour creep into her face, and a shade of expression stir in her occasional replies, as he forced her mind to move and coaxed her with infinite subtlety out of the supine listlessness that had threatened to lock her in a stupor of inert despair. She even ate most of the omelette.

  So that an hour later she was smoking a cigarette and listening to him quite actively, while he was saying, “There’s one thing you’ll notice about this. Every single person we’ve mentioned has been a good solid citizen with lots of background—except, perhaps, the quaint little Angert body. There hasn’t been one grunt of a guttural accent, or one hint of the good old Gestapo clumping around in its great big boots. And yet if all these things have been going on, that’d be the first automatic thing to look for. Now, if the Awful Aryans have got any—”

  He stopped talking at the change in her face. But she was not looking at him. Her eyes were directed past his shoulder, towards the window behind him.

  “Simon,” she said, “I saw somebody moving out there among the trees, towards the laboratory. And it looked like someone I know.”

  2

  The Saint turned and looked, but he could see nothing now—only a fragment of a roof and a glimpse of white walls between layers of leafy branches.

  “A friend of yours?” he said sharply.

  “No. It looked like Karl.”

  “And who’s Karl?”

  “He was Daddy’s assistant for a while, until we let him go.”

  “Where did he come from?”

  “He was a refugee from somewhere—Czechoslovakia, I think. But he speaks perfect English. He was raised here, and then he went home after he was grown up, but he didn’t like it so much so he came back.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Oh, about a month ago. I mean when he left…But it’s funny, I was thinking about him last night.”

  The Saint was still watching through the window, but he had seen no movement.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Well, it seems silly, but…one of those men who tried to kidnap me last week—the tall one—there was something about his eyes, and the way he carried himself. It reminded me of someone. I couldn’t think who it was, and it was bothering me. When I woke up this morning it came to me in a flash. He reminded me of Karl.”

  “That,” said the Saint, “is really interesting.”

  He turned and glanced at her again. She was still looking past him, half frowning, perplexed and uncertain of herself.

  “What was the rest of his name?” he asked.

  “Morgen.”

  Simon put out his cigarette.

  “I think,” he said, “it might be fun to talk to Comrade Morgen.”

  She stood up when he did and started to go with him, but he checked her with a hand on her arm.

  “No, darling,” he said. “For one thing, I’d rather surprise him. For another thing, if it really is Karl, and not just Karl on your mind, there may be a little horseplay when we meet. And lastly, I’d rather keep you out of sight as much as possible—for all purposes. In fact, I don’t even want you to answer the telephone again. And if anyone does call except your father, tell Mrs Cook to say you’re still in Washington.” He smiled at her confusion. “You forget that at this moment the Ungodly don’t know where you are. And the longer that lasts, the longer it’ll be before I have to worry about your health again.”

  He went out of the house, crossed the driveway, and moved off among the trees.

  The laboratory was on the other side of the house and in the opposite direction from the way he set off, and he made a wide circle to approach it from the far side—the side from which no intruder would be expecting an interruption.

  His feet made no sound on the grass, and he slipped through shrubbery and woodland with the phantom stealth of an Indian scout. He had an instinct for cover and terrain that was faultless and effortless: not once after he merged into the landscape was he exposed from any angle from which he could anticipate being watched for.

  And under the cool efficiency of his movements he could feel a faint tingle along his veins that was his prescience of the disintegration of inaction and the promise of pursuit and fight. If Madeline Gray hadn’t imagined what she saw, and there actually was an uninvited visitor out there, he would certainly be an interesting character to hold converse with—wherever he came from. And if the visitor really was a man with the dubious name and history of Karl Morgen, he might be the one missing quantity that Simon had just been idly complaining about. If, wildly and gorgeously beyond that, he crowned everything by proving to be one of the frustrated kidnappers of the night before—then indeed there would be moments of great joy in store. Anything so perfect as that seemed almost too much to expect, and yet, if even a fraction of those exquisite possibilities came true, it would still be more than enough to justify the tentative rapture that was stealing along the Saint’s relaxed and tranquil nerves. He had always hated fighting in the dark, waiting to be shot at, the whole negative and passive rigmarole of puzzling and guessing and weighing of abstractions: if there was an end of that now, even for a little while, it would be a beautiful interlude…

  Towards the end of his excursion, a tall cypress hedge offered perfect invisibility. He went along the edge of a field of oat hay for a hundred yards, and squeezed through another gap in the hedge into the concealment of a clump of rhododendron bushes. The laboratory building was so close then that he could see the roof over the top of his shelter.

  Working around to the limit of his cover, he was finally able to sight one of the windows through the thinning fringe of leaves.

  He saw more than the window. He saw through it. And all the inside of him became blissfully quiet as he saw that at least a part of his prayers had been granted.

  There was a man in the laboratory.

  And more than that, it wasn’t just any man.

  Simon couldn’t see any details clearly in the darker interior, but he was able to distinguish a rough triangle of solid colour where the lower part of the man’s face should have been. Perhaps that crude disguise even helped the identification, by repeating a remembered pattern. The man’s silhouette was clear enough. He looked tall, and the outlines and carriage of his broad square shoulders were freshly etched on the Saint’s memory.

  It was one of the ambitious abductors of Washington.

  “So after all,” said the Saint reverently, to his immortal soul, “sanctity does have its rewards.”

  The man seemed to be searching, methodically and without haste, as if he felt reasonably confident that he was not likely to be disturbed. Simon drew back, and circled the other way around the rhododendrons, towards the corner of the building. The cover grew very low towards the corner, but by going flat on his stomach he was able to come up against the next wall, which had no windows in it. A few strides took him to a second corner; then he had to travel on his toes and fingertips again, stre
tched low like a lizard, to pass well below the front windows. Then he was at the door.

  As he was rising, he paused when his eye reached the level of the keyhole. He could see through the tiny hall, and framed directly beyond it the man stood at one of the work-benches, facing towards him and studying something in a test tube.

  Simon waited.

  Presently the man put down the test tube and moved away, passing out of sight into another part of the laboratory.

  The Saint straightened up.

  He took the gun out of his shoulder holster and thumbed off the safety-catch with his right hand while his left turned the door handle and eased the door open. The hinges revolved without a creak. He crossed the hallway in three soundless steps, and stood just inside the laboratory.

  “Hullo, Karl,” he said softly.

  3

  The man whirled at his voice, and then stood rigidly as the Saint moved his automatic very slightly to draw attention to its place in the conference.

  “Looking for something?” Simon inquired politely.

  The man didn’t answer. Above the fold of the handkerchief that crossed his nose, his eyes were cold and ugly. The Saint had no more doubt whatever about one part of his identification. He wouldn’t forget those eyes. They were the kind that didn’t like anybody, and wanted to show it. They were the kind of eyes that the Saint loved to be disliked by.

  “Suppose you take the awning off your kisser,” Simon suggested, “and let’s really get acquainted.”

  The man finally spoke.

  “Suppose I don’t.”

  If there had been any doubt left, it would have ended then. That hoarse cavernous voice was recorded in the Saint’s memory as accurately as the eyes.

  “If you don’t,” Simon said, definitely, “I’ll just have to shoot it off. Like this.”

  The gun in his hand coughed once, a crisp bark of power that slammed the eardrums, and the bullet ruffled the cloth over one of the man’s ears before it spanged into the wall behind him. The man ducked after the bullet had gone by, and felt the side of his head with an incredulous hand. His forehead was three shades paler.

  “Please,” said the Saint.

  He was not particularly concerned about noise any more. The windows were closed, and they were far enough from the house to be alone even for shooting purposes.

  The man put his hands slowly up and untied the handkerchief behind the back of his head, revealing the rest of his face. He had a short beak of a nose and a square bony chin, and the mouth between them was thin and bracketed with deep vertical wrinkles. And the Saint knew him that way, too.

  He had been a silent member of Frank Imberline’s entourage at the Shoreham the night before.

  He certainly got around.

  One of his hands was moving self-consciously towards his pocket with the crumpled handkerchief, and the Saint said gently, “No, brother. Just hold it. Because if you tried a fast draw I might have to kill you, and then we wouldn’t be able to talk without a medium, and I’m fresh out of mediums.”

  The movement stopped, and Simon smiled again.

  “That’s better. Now will you turn around?” The man obeyed. “Now walk backwards towards me.”

  The man shuffled back, dragging his feet reluctantly. When he was still six feet away, the Saint took two noiseless strides to meet him. Without changing his grip on his gun, he brought up his right hand and smashed the butt down on the back of the man’s head. The man’s knees buckled, and he fell forward on to his hands. Simon trod hard on the small of his back and flattened him. Then he came down on him with his knees.

  He dropped his gun into a side pocket, grasped the lapels of the man’s coat, and hauled it back over the man’s shoulders to the level of his elbows. In a few lightning movements he emptied the man’s pockets. He got a short-barrelled revolver from one hip, and a blackjack from the other. The other pockets yielded very little—a ten-dollar bill, some small change, a car key, one of those pocket-knives that open up into the equivalent of a small chest of tools, and a thin wallet.

  Simon gathered up the revolver, the blackjack, the knife, and the wallet, and retreated with them to the nearest work-bench. He put the revolver and the knife in another of his pockets. Then he took out his own automatic again and kept it in his hand. He sat side-saddle on the bench while he emptied the wallet. It contained three new twenty dollar bills, a couple of stamps, the stub of a Pullman ticket, a draft card with a 4-F classification and a New York driving licence.

  Both the draft card and the driving licence bore the name of Karl Morgen.

  “Karl,” said the Saint softly, “it was certainly nice of you to drop in.”

  The man on the floor groaned and struggled to get his head off the ground.

  Simon Templar fished out a cigarette and then a book of matches. He thumbed one of the matches over until he could rub the head on the striking pad one-handed. His eyes and his gun stayed watchfully on his prisoner. And all of him was awake with a great and splendiferous serenity.

  If there could have been anything better than a hundred per cent, fulfilment of the wildest possibilities he had dreamed of, he had been modest enough not to ask for it.

  He could get along very beautifully with this much…Karl Morgen. A man who had something to do with Imberline. A man who could be used for kidnapping. A man who had once worked for Calvin Gray. A man of very questionable antecedents. A man who might tie many curious things together. All combined in one blessed bountiful bonanza.

  The Saint exhaled smoke and regarded him almost affectionately.

  He said, “Get up.”

  Morgen had his head off the ground. He got his elbows under him and hunched his back.

  Then he gathered in his long legs. Somehow he got himself together and crawled up off the floor. He stood unsteadily, clutching the end of the work-bench for support.

  “Karl,” said the Saint, “you used to work here.”

  “So what?”

  “Why did you come back?”

  The man’s eyes were unflinchingly malevolent.

  “That’s none of your business, bud.”

  “Oh, but it is. Where were you last night?”

  Morgen took his time, then he said, “In Washington.”

  “So you were. You were in the dining-room of the Shoreham with Frank Imberline.”

  “That’s no crime.”

  “We got a bit crowded, and you slipped a note in my pocket.”

  “I did not.”

  “The note said ‘Mind your own business.’”

  “Why don’t you do that, bud?”

  The Saint was still patient.

  “Where were you after that?”

  Again that deliberate pause. This wasn’t a man who panicked. He thought all around what he was going to say before he said it.

  “I was with a friend. Playin’ cards.”

  “You were with a friend. But you weren’t playing cards. You were trying to kidnap Miss Gray. That was when we met again.”

  “You’ll have to prove that, bud.”

  “Both Miss Gray and I are ready to identify you.”

  “And my friends will say we were playin’ cards.”

  “Quite a while after that,” Simon continued unperturbed, “did you by any chance take a long shot at me through my window at the Shoreham?”

  “No.”

  Simon inhaled thoughtfully.

  “No, maybe that wasn’t you. That was probably your chunky friend.” He glanced down at the Pullman stub for a moment. “You came up on the sleeper last night, so you’d have been headed for the station by that time.”

  “It’s a free country.”

  “I didn’t think you’d be a guy who appreciated free countries.”

  The other went on looking at him with his mouth clamped shut and his eyes hard with hate.

  “I hope you know just what sort of a spot you’re in,” said the Saint carefully. “Kidnapping has been a federal rap for quite a while now, and I
don’t imagine you’d be very happy about having a lot of G-men move in on your life. On top of that, I catch you breaking in here—”

  “I didn’t break anything. The door was unlocked.”

  “That doesn’t make any difference. And you know it. You were carrying concealed weapons—”

  “Only because you say so.”

  “And just how do you explain being here?”

  “I left a coupla books,” Morgen said slowly. “I forgot them when I was packin’. I came back to get them.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the house and ask for them?”

  “I didn’t want to make any trouble. I just thought I could find them and take them away.”

  Simon shook his head judicially.

  “It’s a lovely story, Karl. The FBI will have lots of fun with it.”

  “Go ahead. Tell them.”

  “Aren’t you afraid they might be a little rough with you?”

  “Why don’t you turn me in and find out?”

  “Because,” said the Saint, “I want to talk to you myself first.”

  The man licked his lips, standing very stiffly, and still holding on to the work-bench with big bony hands.

  “I don’t want to talk to you, bud.”

  “But you don’t have any choice,” Simon pointed out mildly. “And I’ve got a whole lot of questions I want answered. I want to know who gave you that note to put in my pocket at the Shoreham. I want to know who hired you to put the arm on Madeline Gray. I want to know who you’re working for, in a general way. I want to know where Calvin Gray is right now.”

  “You better ask somebody who can tell you.”

  “And who’s that?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  The Saint smiled very faintly.

  “Tough guy, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “So am I,” Simon said, rather diffidently. “I’m sure you know who I am. And I expect you’ve heard about me before. I’m a pretty tough guy too, Karl. I could have quite a good time getting rough with you.”

  “Yeah? When do you start?”

  “You don’t want to play?”

  “No, bud.”

  The smile didn’t leave the Saint’s lips.