Catch the Saint (4 page)

“Will you at least
tell him for me that I’m worried about him,
but
I believe in him, and I’ll be thinking about him?”

He smiled.

“I think I can manage
that.” He came round the desk and walked with her to the door. There he
paused and touched her
arm. His smoothly
modulated voice was stern. “Miss Norcombe,
I
hope you realise that what I’ve said to you isn’t just a polite request for
your co-operation. I have to warn you that if you say
anything
at all about this to anyone beyond this door, it will con
stitute a breach of the Official Secrets Act and make you
liable
to immediate arrest. Do you understand that? And don’t tele
phone me or come here again.”

Something about the words
“beyond
this door”
and
“liable to
immediate
arrest”
seemed so dramatically weighty that
she felt
smothered by them.

“Yes,” she
murmured. “I do understand.”

“Good day, then. And
thank you very much for your co-opera
tion. Don’t get in
touch with us, remember.”

As the door to room 405
closed behind her, Julie felt sure that
her
legs would never carry her to the lift. She felt lost, bewildered,
and on the verge of panic. The adventure of London, which was
to have meant a whole new life, had turned into a
nightmare.

But by the time she
actually turned the key in the door of her
brother’s
flat again she was experiencing a new feeling, one that
she had not known before in her life. Defiance would have
been
too strong a word for it. Determination had a role in
it; so did
curiosity, and courage. More than
anything else it was simply a
desire not to run away.
She suddenly found, without actually hav
ing
made a decision, that she was not packing her bags, but had
bolted the door behind her and begun making a systematic
search of every drawer, shelf, and cupboard in the place.

Long before that, “Mr
Fawkes” and his secretary had de
parted Mr Fawkes’s
office in what would have impressed an ob
server,
had there been an observer, as unseemly haste for so
dignified
a bureaucrat. “Mr Fawkes’s” words, as he and his red-
haired companion descended in the lift, would have seemed even
stranger:

“Well, precious, I
did that rather well, I think.”
Precious nodded.
“You should have been an actor.”

“I am an actor. I’m
sure she was completely convinced.”

“I’m sure she was,” the redhead
responded. “The only thing that worried me was that she’d ask questions
until somebody
came back from lunch and
found us there.”

“It was beginning to
worry me, rather. But I imagine that
Whitehall luncheons
tend to run behind schedule. I still don’t ob
serve
any mad stampede for the filing cabinets and the dicta
phones.”

He said his last words as the lift reached
ground floor and
opened its doors. The
place was relatively deserted. With his curvacious accomplice at his side, the
tall man walked briskly through the lobby. The commissionaire glanced at them
without
interest or recognition.
Outside, in the warm air, the erstwhile
official adjusted his bowler hat and breathed deeply with a smile of
appreciation both of the beautiful summer day and of his own
success.

“There’s still one
real question,” the girl said to him. “Do you
think she’ll really keep quiet?”

“Oh, I think so.
She’s got several good reasons for keeping her mouth shut. And if she doesn’t,
she’ll damn well wish she
was
in the gentle clutches of the Special Branch. I would not
like
to see what our friends would do to her if she
spoiled things at
this point.”

CHAPTER 3

As he paused before the
window of the Leonardo Galleries,
Simon Templar
might easily have been taken for an art lover of casual quest for some addition
to his collection. Not only was he in the most suitable Mayfair setting, but he
also had the inoffen
sively arrogant air of a
connoisseur, and he wore the clothes of a
person
who has both the taste and the money to patronise a
tailor
whose clientele includes an impressive number of princes,
tycoons, and film stars. His trousers and sport jacket had the
same costly simplicity as the white-painted fluted wood and
gold-
lettered glass of the fa
ç
ade before which he was standing.

But if anyone looked at
him more closely—as several ladies
did in passing—it
is very possible that they would have sensed
something
incongruous in his appearance. He had none of the
pallid
softness of a typical rich city-dweller. There was certainly
nothing of
the aesthete in his movements or bearing. The deep
tan of his complexion accented the intense, aerial blue of his
eyes; there was not an ounce of excess weight on
his body, which
despite its entirely
natural relaxation gave an impression of con
taining the pent-up strength of a drawn longbow. An observer might have
guessed that this magnetically handsome Londoner, if he was a Londoner, had
just returned from a safari in Africa,
or
had spent the English winter playing polo in South America.

The safari theory might
have appealed the most, because this
man had such an air
of the hunter about him—a quiet but con
tinuously
alert watchfulness which gave the impression that even
here
in sedate Mayfair lions might wait round any corner.

One observer in the street
near the Leonardo Galleries on this
particular early
afternoon did not have to guess at the identity
or
occupation of the lean, tall man who seemed momentarily ab
sorbed in studying the art dealers’ display. The observer, who
was as plump
and soft as the observed was sinewy, knew the other man’s name, several of his
aliases, and a great deal about
his past
activities. For the observer was Chief Inspector Claud
Eustace Teal of Scotland Yard, and it was his
business to know as
many facts as
possible about anyone relevantly connected with
the world of crime and its borderlands of illegality. In Chief In
spector Claud Teal’s territory, lions of a sort
might really lurk at
Mayfair crossings, and the most perfectly tailored
gentleman
might be a hunter far more deadly
than any member—or leader
—of a
Nairobi-based shooting party.

Mr. Teal was feeling
pleased with himself for having remained
undetected
by the man across the road. It was an unusual experi
ence for him to be a
step ahead of this particular individual; it
was
so unusual as to be a rarity akin to the invasion of Hyde Park
by grazing giraffes. Mr. Teal, like a habitual
loser in the stock
market determined to grab his first small profit
before it fades, decided
to make his
move—as his prey moved a step nearer the
entrance door of the art gallery and looked as if he might go
through it at any moment.

The detective wanted to say
something clever when he sur
prised his victim. As his blue-suited form
bobbed like a bubble
through the traffic, he
tried to think of something superior to
“Boo!” or “Surprise!” or “Reach for the
sky!” He did not want to say anything too threatening for fear of
triggering his quarry’s
notoriously swiff and accurate reflexes of
self-preservation and finding his own rotund body suddenly sprawled on the
pavement.

But Chief Inspector Teal
need not have worried, either about
the wit of his
lines or his physical fate. No sooner had he gained
the
other side of the street and stealthily approached to within two yards of the
other man’s back, than without looking round
his supposed prey sang
out in an embarrassingly full voice:

“Hail, Claudius
Eustacious, Conqueror of Soho, Emperor of
the
Embankment!”

“Templar,” Teal
said, “keep quiet!”

He said it in a choked
voice, as if by constricting his own
throat he might do
the same to the other man’s vocal cords.

“Such modesty,
Claud,” said the Saint, still without turning to
look
at him. “Don’t you want all these people to appreciate your innumerable
exploits in defending them against the barbarian hordes? I’m surprised that
London didn’t invite you to hold a triumphal procession long ago.”

Teal, when flustered, was
not good at repartee. Perhaps it was
not his greatest
gift at any time.

“Don’t go into that
gallery until I’ve talked to you,” he said.

Now the Saint faced him, his blue eyes
confident, laughing.

“You seem to have
taken personal charge of everyone, Claud.
I
felt sorry for you standing over there in the shade, but now that
you’ve come over to the sunny side of the street it hasn’t done
your disposition a bit of good. How about a drink? Would that
help?”

“I’m not looking for
any help from you for anything—” Teal
stopped
because the Saint was moving closer to the entrance of
the
Leonardo Galleries. “I’ve asked you not to go into that shop
until I’ve talked to you,” he repeated in a fierce tone, which
worked wonders with his subordinates but in this case
produced
only amusement.

“Why are you so
obsessed with my stepping into this picture
palace,
Claud? Don’t alarm yourself. I’d have gone in five or ten
minutes ago except that I knew you’d follow me, and I didn’t
want to embarrass you by luring you out of your natural
culture-less element. I thought the sudden transition into the midst of all
that art might prove too much for your undernourished soul.”
He peered intensely at the detective. “You do have
one, don’t
you?”

“What?” Teal
asked.

“A soul.”

Teal groped in his
pockets until he found a packet of chewing
gum. Extracting a stick,
he peeled the paper away, and as he
spoke he
used it as a pointer, for emphasis: “I have an idea
what you’re doing hanging around his place,”
he said, “and I
know that this
isn’t the first time you’ve been here.”

Simon looked guiltily
through the window into the gallery’s
lush interior.

“You won’t tell my
mother, will you?”

“We’ve had a
peaceful time lately, with you occupied else
where,
and I don’t want you stirring up trouble where there
doesn’t
need to be any.”

The detective was waving
the bare powdery stick of gum in
the Saint’s face, and
Simon drew back slightly and said: “Do you
intend
to do anything useful with that?”

Teal popped it into his
mouth and jawed it defiantly.

“I’m not here to stir up trouble with you,
either. I just don’t
want you to start
it.”

“How could I resist
that graceful speech?” Simon said. “I’m
genuinely
touched. Let’s drink to a new era of peace and har
mony.
Luckily there’s a pub just round the corner.”

He took Mr Teal’s arm and
hustled him along the pavement. The inspector held back and protested.

“Fat men didn’t
ought to drink—”

“Think of it as a
late lunch,” said the Saint cheerfully. “On a
hot day like this, who would take solid food so early in the after
noon?”

Chief Inspector Teal almost refused to go,
merely on the
principle that he should
automatically resist anything that Simon
Templar wanted him to do. For the man who had been looking
into the Leonardo Galleries was that very Simon
Templar who
had upset Mr Teal’s
applecarts with such embarrassing frequency
and efficiency in the name
of a Robin-Hood standard of be
haviour which
the inspector felt was completely out of keeping
with the integrity of British justice. Mr Teal also had strictly
personal reasons for not appreciating the Saint’s
individualistic
ethics, beneficial to humanity’s more honest members
though
they might be in the long run. It was
not fair that he, Chief
Inspector
Teal, should have to operate within the confines of
the legal code and in consequence be made to look
silly by a
privateer who could
invent his own rules as he went along. But
on this occasion Teal had been on his feet for a long time, it
was an exceptionally hot day, and if he had to
endure the un
pleasant experience of
a confrontation with the Saint, it might
as well be in comfort and with refreshment.