“Well,” he said, “I told you I’d be coming to see you.”
Simon nodded pleasantly.
“It was nice of you to make it so soon, Claud,” he murmured. “And what do you think is going to win the Derby?”
He knew as well as the Chief Commissioner himself that Mr Teal would never have called on him to enjoy small talk and racing gossip, but it was not his business to make the first move. A faint smile of humorous challenge stayed on his lips, and under the light of that smile Teal rummaged in his pockets and pulled out a folded sheet of paper.
“Do you know anything about that?” he asked.
Simon took the sheet and flattened it out. It was his own note-heading, and there was certainly no surprise for him in the words which were written on it, but he read the document through obligingly.
The Rt. Hon. Leo Farwill,
384, Hanover Square,
London, W.I.
Dear Sir,
As you have probably been informed, I have in my possession a volume of unique international interest in which your own distinguished name happens to be mentioned.
I have decided to sell this volume, in sections, for the benefit of the Simon Templar Foundation, which I am founding. This foundation will exist for the purpose of giving financial and other assistance to the needy families of men who were killed or deprived of their livelihood in the last war, to the care of the incurably crippled wounded, and to the endowment of any approved cause which is working to prevent a repetition of that outbreak of criminal insanity.
The price to you, of the section in which your name appears, is £200,000, and, knowing your interest in literature, I am sure you will decide that the price is reasonable—particularly as the Simon Templar Foundation will in its way work towards the promise of “a land fit for heroes to live in” with which you once urged men to military service, death, and disablement, and which circumstances (always, of course, beyond your control) have since made you unable to fulfil.
In expecting your cheque to reach me before next Saturday midnight, I am, I feel sure, my dear honourable Leo, only anticipating your own natural urgent desire to benefit such a deserving charity.
Yours faithfully,
Simon Templar.
“Very lucid and attractive, I think,” said the Saint politely. “What about it?”
Teal took the letter back from him.
“It’s signed with your name, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Certainly,” said the Saint.
“And it’s in your handwriting?”
“Beyond a doubt.”
“So that it looks very much as if you wrote it.”
Simon nodded.
“That Sherlock Holmes brain of yours goes straight to the point, Claud,” he said. “Faced with such keen deductive evidence, I can’t deceive you. I did write it.”
Teal folded the letter again and put it back in his pocket. His mouth settled into a relentless line. With any other man than the one who faced him, he would have reckoned the interview practically over, but he had crossed swords with the Saint too often ever to believe that of any interview—had seen too many deadly thrusts picked up like the clumsy lunges of an amateur on the rapier-like brilliance of the Saint’s brain, and tossed aside with a smile that was more deadly than any riposte. But the thrust had to be made.
“I suppose you know that’s blackmail,” Teal said flatly.
The Saint frowned slightly.
“Demanding money with menaces?” he asked.
“If you want the technical charge,” Teal said stubbornly, “yes.”
And it came—the cool flick of the rapier that carried his point wide and aimless.
“Where,” asked the Saint puzzledly, “are the menaces?”
Teal swallowed an obstruction in his throat. The game was beginning all over again—the futile hammering of his best blades on a stone wall that was as impalpable as ether, the foredoomed pursuit of the brigand who was easier to locate than any other lawbreaker in London, and who was more elusive than a will-o’-the-wisp even when he was most visible in the flesh. All the wrath that curdled his milk of human kindness was back in the detective at that moment, all the righteous anger against the injustice of his fate, but he had to keep it bottled up in his straining chest.
“The menaces are in the letter,” he said bluntly.
Simon stroked his chin in a rendering of ingenuous perplexity that acted on Teal’s blood-pressure like a dose of strychnine.
“I may be prejudiced,” he remarked, “but I didn’t see them. It seemed a very respectable appeal to me, except for a certain unconventional familiarity at the end, where Leo’s Christian name was used—but these are free and easy days. Otherwise I thought it was a model of restrained and touching eloquence. I have a book, of which it occurs to me that Leo might like to buy the section in which his name appears—you know what publicity-hounds most of these politicians are. Therefore I offer to sell it to him, which I’m sure must be strictly legal.”
“Mr Farwill’s statement,” retorted Teal, “is that the part of the book you’re referring to is nothing but a collection of libellous lies.”
Simon raised his eyebrows.
“He must have a guilty conscience,” he murmured. “But you can’t put me in jail for that. I didn’t say anything in my letter to give him that impression. I defy you to find one threat, one word of abuse, one questionable insinuation. The whole epistle,” Simon said modestly, “is couched in the most flattering and even obsequious terms. In expecting his cheque to reach me before next Saturday midnight, I am, I feel sure, only anticipating his own natural urgent desire to benefit such a deserving charity. Leo may have turned out to be not quite the eager philanthropist I took him for,” said the Saint regretfully, “but I still hope he’ll see the light of godliness in the end, and I don’t see what you’ve got to do with it, Claud.”
Mr Teal gulped in a breath that hurt him as it went down his windpipe.
“Oh, you don’t, don’t you?” he bit out.
“I’m afraid I don’t, Claud,” said the Saint. “Leo may have been caught in a hysterical moment, but other blokes have had the identical letter without feeling that way about it. Look at this.”
He picked up a slip of tinted paper from beside the coffee-pot, and held it out so that the detective could read the words. It was a cheque on the City & Continental Bank, dated that day, and it was made out for two hundred thousand pounds.
“Sir Barclay Edingham came here at half-past-nine to give me that—he was in such a hurry to do his share. Major-General Sir Humbolt Quipp blew in at half-past-ten—he grumbled and thundered a bit about the price, but he’s gone away again to think it over, and I’m sure he’ll pay it in the end. The other contributors will be coming through in the next day or two, and I wouldn’t mind betting that Leo will be one of them as soon as he comes out of his tantrum. You ought to have another talk with him, Claud—it might help him to see the path of duty.”
“Never you mind what I ought to do,” Teal said hotly. His baby-blue eyes, with all the sleepiness knocked out of them, were goggling like young balloons at the cheque which Simon was dangling under his nose, as if his brain had flatly refused to believe their message and they had swollen to twice their normal size with proper indignation at the insult. With a genuine physical effort he averted them from the astounding figures. “Sir Barclay Edingham gave you that?” he repeated incredulously.
Simon inclined his head.
“And he was glad to. Sir Barclay Edingham has a very keen appreciation of literature. The pages I sold him are now his most treasured possession, and you couldn’t buy them off him for twice as much as he gave me.”
He folded the cheque carefully, and put it away in his wallet, and the detective straightened up.
“Where is this book?” he demanded.
The Saint’s eyebrows shifted again fractionally. It was a gesture that Teal knew better than any other of the Saint’s bar one, and that almost
imperceptible change of alignment carried more meaning than a thousand words of description could convey.
“It’s in England,” he answered.
“That’s good,” said Teal grimly, “because I want to see it.”
The Saint picked up a cigarette, spun it into the air, and caught it in his mouth without moving his head. He snapped a flame from his lighter and blew out a long feather of smoke.
“Do you?” he murmured interestedly.
“Yes, I do!” barked the detective. “And I mean to see it before I go. I mayn’t be much of a critic, but I’ll soon find out whether this literary work is worth two hundred thousand pounds a chapter. I’ll get my own ideas about whether it’s libellous. Now, are you going to show me that book or am I going to look for it?”
“Where’s your search-warrant?” inquired Simon imperturbably.
Teal gritted his teeth.
“I don’t need a search-warrant. You’re a suspected person—”
“Only in your wicked suspicious mind, Claud. And I’m telling you that you do need a search-warrant. Or, if you’re going to take my home apart without one, you need three or four strong men with you. Because if you try to do it yourself, I shall pick you up by the scruff of your neck and the seat of your pants and throw you over the Ritz, and there’s no magistrate in England who could give you a comeback!”
The Saint was smiling, but Mr Teal had no illusions about that smile. It was not a smile of simple-hearted bonhomie and goodwill towards policemen. It was a smile that could have been worn by no one but that lean dangerous privateer who was never more dangerous than when he smiled.
And Mr Teal knew that he hadn’t got a leg to stand on. The Saint had tied him in a knot again. There were no menaces, no threats of any kind, in the letter with which the Honourable Leo Farwill had gone to Scotland Yard—it was a pleasant polite epistle with no unlawful insinuations whatsoever, and any fairly clever advocate could have convinced a normally half-witted jury that the suspicions attached to it arose from nothing but the notorious Simon Templar’s signature at the end. And without a definite charge of blackmail, there were no grounds at all for demanding an inspection of the literary work on which the whole case hinged.
Mr Teal knew all these things as well as anyone—and knew also that, in spite of the strictly legal appearances, no man had ever given the Saint two hundred thousand pounds except as the reward of some devilish and unlawful cunning that had been born in that gay unscrupulous brain. He knew all these things as well as he knew his own birthday, but they did not cheer him. And Simon Templar’s forefinger went out and tapped him on the stomach in the Saintly gesture that Mr Teal knew and hated best of all.
“You’re too full of naughty ideas and uncharitable thoughts these days,” said the Saint. “I was hoping that after I’d been away for a bit you might have got over them, but it seems as if you haven’t. You’re having one of your relapses into detectivosis, Claud, and it offends me. You stand there with your great stomach wobbling—”
“It doesn’t wobble!” yapped the detective furiously.
“It wobbles when I poke it with my finger,” said the Saint coldly, and proceeded to demonstrate.
Teal struck his hand aside.
“Now listen,” he brayed. “You may be able to twist the law around to suit yourself for a while—”
“I can twist the law around to suit myself as long as I like,” said the Saint cheerfully, “and when I fall down on it, it will be soon enough for you to come and see me again. Now you’ve completely spoiled my breakfast, and I’ve got an important appointment in ten minutes, so I can’t stop to play with you anymore. Drop in again next time you wake up, and I’ll have some more to say to you.”
Chief Inspector Teal settled his bowler hat. The wrath and righteous indignation were steaming together under his waistcoat, but with a terrific effort he recovered his pose of torpid weariness.
“I’ll have some more to say to you,” he replied curtly, “and it’ll keep you out of trouble for several years.”
“Let me know when you’re ready,” murmured the Saint, and opened the door for him with old-world courtesy.
A couple of minutes later, with his wide-brimmed felt hat tipped challengingly over his right eye, he was knocking at the door of the adjoining apartment.
“Come along, Hoppy,” he said. “We’ve left it late enough already—and I can’t afford to miss this date.”
Mr Uniatz put down a bottle of whisky regretfully and took up his hat. They left the building by the entrance in Stratton Street, and as they came out onto the pavement a shabby and ancient touring car pulled away from the kerb and went past. Simon felt as if a gust of wind plucked at his swashbuckling headgear and carried it spinning: the crack that went with the gust of wind might have been only one of the many backfires that a big city hears every hour.
6
Simon collected his hat and dusted it thoughtfully. The bullet hole made a neat puncture in the centre of the crown—the only mistake in the aim had been the elevation.
The attack surprised him seriously. He had allowed himself to believe that during his possession of Her Wedding Secret his life at least was safer than it had ever been—that while the opposition would go to any lengths to obtain that classic work, they would be extraordinarily solicitous about his own bodily health. He turned to Mr Uniatz, and had a sudden spasm of alarm when he saw that enterprising warrior standing out on the edge of the sidewalk with an automatic waving towards the retreating car. Simon made a grab at the gun and whipped it under his coat.
“You everlasting fathead!” he said. “Where the blazes d’you think you are?”
Mr Uniatz scratched his head and looked around him.
“I t’ink we’re in Stratton Street, boss,” he said anxiously. “Ain’t dat right? I can’t seem to find my way around dis town. Why ja grab de Betsy off of me? I could of plugged dat guy easy.”
The Saint sighed. By some miracle the street had been practically deserted, and no one appeared to have noticed the brief flourish of gangland armaments.
“Because if you’d plugged that guy you’d have had us both in the hoosegow before you knew what had happened, you poor sap,” he said tersely, and slipped the lethal weapon cautiously back into its owner’s pocket. “Now keep that Betsy of yours buttoned up until I tell you to let it out—and try to remember which side of the Atlantic you’re on, will you?”
They walked round to the garage where Simon kept his car, with Mr Uniatz preserving a silence of injured perplexity. The ways of the old world were strange to him, and his brain had never been geared to lightning adaptability. If one guy could take a shot at another guy and get away with it, but the other guy couldn’t take a shot back at the first guy without being clapped in the hoosegow, what the hell sort of country was this England, for God’s sake?
There was just no percentage in trying to hold down a racket in those parts, reflected Hoppy Uniatz, and laboured over the subtleties of this sociological observation for twenty minutes, while Simon Templar whisked the huge purring Hirondel through the traffic to the south-west.
Simon had a different problem to ponder, and he was inclined to share it.
“Tell me, Hoppy,” he said. “Suppose a bloke had some papers that he was blackmailing you with—papers that would be the end of you if they ever came out. Suppose he’d got your signed confession to a murder, or something like that. What would you do about it?”
Mr Uniatz rubbed his nose.
“Dat’s easy, boss. I’d bump de guy off, sure.”
“I’m afraid you would,” said the Saint. “But suppose you did bump him off—those papers would still be around somewhere, and you wouldn’t know who was going to get hold of them next.”
This had not occurred to Mr Uniatz. He frowned gloomily for a while, and then he brightened again as the solution struck him like a ray of sunshine.
“Why, boss,” he said, “I know what I’d do. After I’d bumped him off, I’
d look for de papers.”
“And where would you look for them?” asked the Saint.
“In de guy’s pocket,” said Mr Uniatz promptly.
“And suppose they weren’t there?”
Hoppy sighed. The corrugations of worried thought returned to his brow. Thinking had never been his greatest talent—it was one of the very few things that were capable of hurting his head.
Simon shot the Hirondel between a lorry and an omnibus with the breadth of a finger to spare on either side, and tried to assist.
“I mean, Hoppy,” he said, “you might have thought, ‘Suppose I bump this guy off. Suppose he isn’t carrying the papers in his pocket. Well, when a guy’s bumped off, one of the first things the cops want to know is who did it. And one of the ways of finding that out is to find out who might have had a reason to do it. And one of the ways of finding that out is to go through his letters and anything else like that you can get hold of.’ So if you’d thought all that out, Hoppy, you might have decided that if you bumped him off the cops might get hold of the papers, and that wouldn’t be too healthy for you.”
Mr Uniatz ruminated over this point for two or three miles, and finally he shrugged.
“I dunno,” he said. “It looks like we better not bump off dis guy, at dat. Whadda you t’ink, boss?”
Simon realised that he would have to be content with his own surmises, which were somewhat disturbing. He had been prepared to bank heavily on his immunity from death, if not from organised discomfort, so long as the ungodly were in doubt about the concurrent fate of Her Wedding Secret, but the recent episode was a considerable discouragement to his faith. Leaving aside the possibility that Lord Iveldown had gone completely and recklessly berserk, it meant that the ungodly were developing either a satanic cunning or a denseness of cranium equalled only by that of Hoppy Uniatz.
The Saint in London (The Saint Series) Page 5
