“You’re very brave,” said Annette, seeing more than Hoppy Uniatz would ever be capable of seeing.
Patricia laughed shortly, and put an arm round her.
“My dear, if you’d known the Saint as long as I have, you’d have given up worrying. I’ve seen him get people out of messes that would make yours look like a flea-bite. I’ve seen him get himself out of far worse trouble than anything I think he’s in now. The man’s simply made that way…”
She might have been going to say more, but she didn’t; for at that moment a bell rang faintly at the back of the house. Annette looked up at her quickly, and for a second even Mr Uniatz forgot that he was grasping a bottle of Bourbon which was as yet only half empty. But Patricia shook her head with a very tiny smile.
“Simon wouldn’t ring,” she said.
They listened, and heard Orace’s dot-and-carry footfalls crossing the hall. The front door opened, and there was a sound of other feet treading over the threshold. A voice could be heard inquiring for Mr Templar.
“Mr Templar ain’t ’ere,” Orace said brusquely.
“We’ll wait for him,” stated the voice imperturbably.
“Like ’ell you will,” retorted Orace’s most belligerent accents. “You’ll wait ahtside on the bleedin’ doorstep, that’s wot you’ll do—”
There were the sounds of a scuffle, and Mr Uniatz, who understood one thing if there was nothing else he understood, gave a surprising demonstration of his right to his nickname. He hopped out of his chair with a leap which an athletic grasshopper might have envied, reaching for his hip. Patricia caught the other girl by the arm.
“Through the bookcase—quick!” she ordered. “Hoppy, leave the door shut, or we can’t open this one.”
She bundled Annette through the secret panel, saw that it was properly closed, and grabbed Hoppy’s wrist as he snatched at the door-handle again.
“Put that gun away, you idiot,” she said. “That’ll only make things worse.”
Hoppy’s jaw fell open aggrievedly.
“But say—”
“Don’t say,” snapped Patricia, in a venomous whisper. “Get the darn thing back in your pocket and leave this to me.”
She thrust him aside and opened the door herself. Outside in the hall, Orace was engaging in a heroic but one-sided wrestling match in the arms of Chief Inspector Teal and another detective. As she emerged, one of his boots landed effectively on Mr Teal’s right shin, and drew a yelp of anguish in response. Patricia’s cool voice cut across the brawl like a blade of honey. “Good evening…er…gentlemen,” she said.
The struggle abated slightly, and Orace’s purple face screwed round out of the tangle with its walrus moustache whiffling.
“Sorl right, miss,” he panted valiantly. “You jus’ wait till I’ve kicked these plurry perishers down the thunderin’ ’ill—”
“I’m afraid they’d only come back again,” said Patricia regretfully. “They’re like black beetles—once you’ve got them in the house, you can’t get rid of them. Take a rest, Orace, and let me talk to them. How are you, Mr Teal?”
Mr Teal glared pinkly at Orace and shook him off. He picked up his bowler hat, which had been dislodged from his head during the melee and had subsequently been somewhat trampled on, and glared at Orace again. He appeared to have some difficulty in controlling his voice.
“Good evening, Miss Holm,” he said at last, breathing deeply and detaching his eyes from Orace’s stormy countenance with obvious difficulty. “I have a search-warrant—”
“You must be collecting them,” murmured Patricia sweetly. “Come in and tell me what it’s all about this time.”
She turned and went back into the study, and Mr Teal and his satellite followed. Mr Teal’s eyes discovered Mr Uniatz, and transferred their smouldering malevolence to him. It is a regrettable fact that Mr Teal’s soul was not at that moment overflowing with courtesy and goodwill towards men, and Mr Uniatz had crossed his path on another unfortunate occasion.
“I’ve seen you before,” Teal said abruptly. “Who are you?”
“Tim Vickery,” replied Hoppy promptly, with an air of triumph.
“Yes?” barked the detective. “You’re the forger, eh?”
There was something so consistently unfriendly in his china-blue gaze that Hoppy reached around nervously for the whisky bottle. He had been let down. This was not what the Saint had told him. He had to think, and that always gave him a pain somewhere between his ears.
“I ain’t no forger, boss,” he protested. “I’m a fairy.”
“You’re what?” blared the detective.
“A bootlegger,” said Mr Uniatz, gulping hastily. “I mean, de udder business is my perfession. I got an accent like a nightingale…”
Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal grabbed at the scattering fragments of his temper with both hands. If only he could master the art of remaining tranquil under the goad of that peculiar form of baiting in which not only the Saint indulged, but which seemed to infect all his associates like a malignant disease, he might yet be able to score for Law and Order the deciding point in that ancient feud. He had missed points before by letting insult and injury get under his skin—the Saint’s malicious wit had stung him, ragged him, baited him, rattled him, tied him up in a series of clove-hitches, and stood him on his head and rolled him over again, till he had no more chance of victory than a mad bull would have had against an agile hornet.
But this man in front of him, whose calloused throat apparently allowed whisky to flow through it like milk, was not the Saint. The style of badinage might be similar—in fact, it is interesting to record that to Teal’s overwrought imagination, the style was almost identical—but the man behind it could not conceivably be the same. In any one century, two men like the Saint could not plausibly have been born. The earth could not have survived it.
And Mr Teal had a point to make. The man with the whisky bottle had given it to him, open-handed. It was a point which annihilated all the routine plans he had made for that raid on which he had barely started to embark—a point so free and brazen that Mr Teal’s respiratory system went haywire at the sight of it.
“Your name’s Vickery, is it?” he said, in the nearest he could get to his normal sleepy voice, and Mr Uniatz, after an appealing glance at Patricia, nodded dumbly. “Then why is it,” Teal flung at him suddenly, “that when Miss Holm tried to ring you up a quarter of an hour ago, she was told that you were in bed and asleep?”
Mr Uniatz opened his mouth, and, finding that nothing at all would come out of it, decided to put something in and hope for the best. He pushed the neck of the whisky bottle between his teeth and swallowed feverishly, and Patricia spoke for him.
“That was a mistake,” she explained. “Mr Vickery came in just a minute or two after I telephoned.”
“Dat’s right, boss,” agreed Mr Uniatz, grasping the point with an injudicious speed which trickled a couple of gills of good alcohol wastefully down his tie. “A minute or two after she telephones, I came in.”
Mr Teal gazed at him balefully.
“Then why is it,” he rasped, “that the man I had waiting outside the front gate while I was at the telephone exchange didn’t see you?”
“I come in de back door,” said Hoppy brightly.
“And the man I had at the back door didn’t see you either,” said Chief Inspector Teal.
Hoppy Uniatz sank down into the nearest chair, and tacitly retired from the competition. His brow was ploughed into furrows of honest effort, but he was out of the race. He had a resentful feeling that he was being fouled, and the referee wasn’t doing anything about it. He had done his best, but that wasn’t no use if a guy didn’t get a break.
“It sounds even funnier,” Mr Teal said trenchantly, “when I tell you that another Tim Vickery was pulled in for questioning just before I left London, and he hasn’t been let out yet.” His sharp glittering eyes between the pink creases of fat went back to Patricia Holm. “I’ll be
interested to have a look at this third Tim Vickery, who’s asleep at Hawk Lodge,” he said. “But if the Saint isn’t here, I can make a good guess who he’s going to be!”
“You do your guessing,” answered Patricia, as the Saint would have answered, but her heart was thumping.
“I’ll do more than that,” said the detective grimly.
He turned on his heel and waddled out of the room, and his silent companion followed him. Patricia went after them to the front door. There was a police car standing in the drive, and Teal stopped beside it and called two names. After a slight interval, two large overcoated men materialised out of the dark.
“You two stay here,” commanded Teal. “Inside the house. Don’t let anyone out who’s inside, or anyone else who comes in while I’m away—on any excuse. I’ll be back shortly.”
He climbed in, and his taciturn equerry took the wheel. In another moment the police car was scrunching down the drive, carrying Claud Eustace Teal on his ill-omened way.
9
Ivar Nordsten was dead. He must have been dead even before Simon Templar snatched his automatic away from under the lashing, tearing claws of the panther and sent two slugs through its heart at point-blank range. He lay on the shining oak close to the door, a curiously twisted and mangled shape which was not pleasant to look at. The maddened beast that had turned on him had wreaked its vengeance with fiendish speed, but it had not wrought neatly…
The Saint straightened up, cold-eyed, and looked across at Erik. The man was staring motionlessly at the black glossy body of the dead panther, and at the still and crumpled remains of Ivar Nordsten, and the dull glazed sightlessness had been wiped out of his eyes. His throat was working mutely, and the tears were raining down the yellow parchment of his cheeks.
Footsteps were coming across the hall, and Simon remembered the three shots which had been fired. It was not impossible that they might have been mistaken for cracks of the whip, but the end of the panther’s savage snarling had begun a sudden deep silence which would demand some explanation. With a quick deliberate movement Simon opened the door and stood behind it. He raised his voice in a muffled imitation of Nordsten’s. “Trusaneff!”
The butler’s footsteps entered the room. The Saint saw him come into view and stop to stare at the man Erik. Very gently he pushed the door to behind the unsuspecting man, reversed his gun, and struck crisply with the butt…
Then he completed the closing of the door, and took out his cigarette-case. For the moment, there was no reason why he shouldn’t. Certainly, the battle-scarred gladiator with the passionate interest in antirrhinums remained, together with Heaven knew how many more of Nordsten’s curious staff, but to all outward appearances Ivar Nordsten was closeted with his butler, and there was no cause for anyone else to be inquisitive. In fact, Simon had already gathered that inquisitiveness was not a vice in which Nordsten’s retainers had ever been encouraged.
He lighted a cigarette and looked again at the financier’s erstwhile prisoner.
“Erik,” he said quietly.
The man did not move, and Simon walked across and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Erik,” he repeated, and the man’s tear-streaked face turned helplessly.
“Was Ivar your brother?”
“Yes.”
The Saint nodded silently, and turned away. He went over to the desk and sat in the chair behind it, smoking thoughtfully. The demise of Ivar Nordsten meant nothing to him personally—it was all very unfortunate, and must have annoyed Ivar a good deal, but Simon was dispassionately unable to feel that the amenities of the world had suffered an irreparable loss. He had it to thank for something else, which was the shock that had probably saved Erik’s reason. Equally well, perhaps, it might have struck the final blow at that pitifully tottering brain, but it had not. The man who had looked at him and answered his question just now was not the quivering half-crazed wretch who had looked up into the beam of his flashlight out of that medieval dungeon under the floor: it was a man to whom sanity was coming back, who understood death and illogical grief—who would presently talk, and answer other questions. And there would be questions enough to answer.
Simon was too sensible to try to hurry the return. When his cigarette was finished he got up and found his torch, and went down into the pit. It was only a small brick-lined cellar, with no other outlet, about twelve feet square. There was a rusty iron bedstead in one corner, and a small table beside it. On the table were a couple of plates on which were the remains of some food, and the table-top was spotted with blobs of candle-wax. Under the table there was an earthenware jar of water and an enamel mug. A small grating high up in one wall spoke for some kind of ventilating system, a gutter along one side for some kind of drainage, but the filth and smell were indescribable. The Saint was thankful to get out again.
When he returned to the library he found that Erik had taken down one of the curtains to cover up the body of his brother. The man was sitting in a chair with his head in his hands, but he looked up quite sanely as the Saint’s feet trod on the parquet.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid I didn’t understand you just now.”
Simon smiled faintly, and went for his cigarette-case again.
“I don’t blame you, brother,” he said. “If I’d spent two years in that rat-hole, I guess I should have been a bit scatty myself.”
The man nodded. His eyes roved involuntarily to the huddled heap under the rich curtain, and returned to the Saint’s face.
“He was always clever,” he said, as if reciting an explanation which had been distilled through his mind so often during those dreadful years of darkness that nothing was left for the starkest essence, pruned to the barest minimum of words, to be spoken without apology or preface. “But he only counted results. They justified the means. His monopoly was built up on trickery and ruthlessness. But he was thorough. He was ready to be found out. That’s why he kept me—down there. If necessary, there was to be a tragic accident. Ivar Nordsten would be killed by his panther. But I was to have been the body, and he had another identity to step into.”
“Did he hate you very much?”
“I don’t think so. He had no reason to. But he had a kink. I was the perfect instrument for his scheme, and so he was ready to use me. Nothing counted against his own power and success.”
It was more or less a confirmation of the amazing theory which the Saint had built up in his own mind. But there was one other thing he had to know.
“What is supposed to have happened to you?” he asked.
“My sailing boat capsized in Sogne Fjord. I was supposed to be in it, but my body was never found. Ivar told me.”
The Saint smoked for a minute or two, gazing at the ceiling, and then he said, “What are you going to do now?”
Erik shrugged weakly.
“How do I know? I’ve had no time to think. I’ve been dead for two years. All this…”
The gesture of his hands concluded what he could not put into words, but the Saint understood. He nodded sympathetically, but he was about to make an answer when the telephone bell rang.
Simon’s eyes settled into blue pools of quiet, and he put the cigarette to his lips again rather slowly in a moment’s passive hesitation. And then, with an infinitesimal reckless steadying of his lips, he stretched out a lazy arm and lifted the instrument from its rack.
“Hullo,” said a girl’s voice. “Can I speak to—”
“Pat!” The Saint straightened up suddenly, and smiled. “I was wondering why I hadn’t heard from you.”
“I tried to get through twice before, but—”
“I guessed it, old darling,” said the Saint quickly. He had detected the faint tremor of strain in her voice, and his eyes had gone hard again. “Never mind that just now, lass. I’ve got no end of news for you, but I think you’ve got some for me. Let’s have it.”
“Teal’s been here,” she said. “He’s on his way to Hawk Lodge right now. Are you
all right, boy?”
He laughed, and his laughter held all of the hell-for-leather lilt which rustled through it most blithely when trouble was racing towards him like a charging buffalo.
“I’m fine,” he said. “But after I’ve seen Claud Eustace, I’ll be sitting on top of the world. Get the whisky away from Hoppy, sweetheart, and hide it somewhere for me. I’ll be seein’ ya!”
He dropped the microphone back on its perch and stood up, crushing his cigarette into an ashtray, seventy-four inches of him, lean and dynamic and unconquerable, with a dancing light shifting across devil-may-care blue eyes.
“Listen, Erik,” he said, standing in front of the man who looked so much like Nordsten, “a little while ago I tried to tell you who I was. Do you think you can take it in now?”
The man nodded.
“I’m Simon Templar. They call me the Saint. If it was only two years ago when Ivar put you away, you must have heard of me.”
The other’s quick gasp was sufficient answer, and the Saint swept on, with all the mad persuasion which he could command in his voice, crowding every gift of inspired personality which the gods had given him into the task of carrying away the man who looked like Nordsten on the stride of his own impetuous decision.
“I’m here because I pretended to be a man named Vickery. I pretended to be Vickery because Ivar wanted him for some mysterious job, and I wanted to find out what it was. I heard about that from Vickery’s sister, because I got her away last night in London after she’d been arrested by the police. If I hadn’t butted in here, Ivar wouldn’t have rushed into your murder without a proper stage setting: he wouldn’t have been killed, but you would. If you like to look at it that way, you’re free and alive at this moment for the very same reason that the police are on their way here to arrest me now.”
“I don’t understand it altogether, even yet,” Erik Nordsten said huskily. “But I know I must owe you more than I can ever repay.”
“That’s all you need to understand for the next half-hour,” said the Saint. “And even then you’re wrong. You can repay it—and repay yourself as well.”
The Saint in London (The Saint Series) Page 15
