Enter the Saint (3 page)

There was a short silence, during which the Saint blew monotonously regular smoke-rings towards the ceiling. “Now I’ll tell you something,” he said. “I’ve made all the enquiries I need to make about you. I know your family history for two generations back, your early life, your school record- everything. I know enough to judge that you don’t belong where you are now. For one thing, I know you’re engaged to a rather nice girl, and she’s worried about you. She doesn’t know anything, but she suspects. And you’re worried. You’re not as quiet and comfortable in this crime racket as you’d like to make out. You weren’t cut out for a bad man. Isn’t that true?”

“True enough,” Stannard said flatly. “I’d give anything to be out of it.”

“And you’re straight about this girl-Gwen Chandler?”

“Straight as a die. Honest, Templar! But what can I do? If I drop Hayn’s crowd, I shan’t have a cent. Besides, I don’t know that they’d let me drop out. I owe money. When I was at Cambridge, I lost a small fortune-for me-in Hayn’s gambling rooms, and he’s got I O U’s of mine for close on a thousand. I’ve been extravagant-I’ve run up bills everywhere. You can’t imagine how badly in the cart I am!”

“On the contrary, son,” said the Saint calmly, “I’ve a very good guess about that. That’s why you’re here now. I wanted an agent inside Hayn’s gang, and I ran through the whole deck before I chose you.” He rose from his chair and took a turn up and down the room. Stannard waited, and presently the Saint stopped abruptly. “You’re all right,” he said.

Stannard frowned. “Meaning?”

“Meaning I’m going to trust you. I’m going to take you in with me for this campaign. I’ll get you enough out of it to square off your debts, and at the end of it I’ll find you a job. You’ll keep in with Hayn, but you’ll be working for me. And you’ll give me your word of honour that you’ll go straight for the rest of your life. That’s my offer. What about it?”

The Saint leant against the mantelpiece languidly enough, but there had been nothing languid about his crisp incisive sentences. Thinking it over afterwards, it seemed to Stannard that the whole thing had been done in a few minutes, and he was left to marvel at the extraordinary force of personality which in such a short time could override the prejudice of years and rekindle a spark of decency that had been as good as dead. But at the instant, Stannard could not analyze his feelings.

“I’m giving you a chance to get out and make good,” the Saint went on. “I’m not doing it in the dark. I believe you when you say you’d be glad of a chance to make a fresh start. I believe there’s the makings of a decent man in you. Anyway, I’ll take a risk on it. I won’t even threaten you, though I could, by telling you what I shall do to you if you double-cross me. I just ask you a fair question, and I want your answer now.”

Stannard got to his feet. “There’s only one answer,” he said, and held out his hand.

The Saint took it in a firm grip. “Now I’ll tell you exactly where you stand,” he said.

He did so, speaking in curt sentences as before. His earlier grimness had relaxed somewhat, for when the Saint did anything he never did it by halves, and now he spoke to Stannard as a friend and an ally. He had his reward in the eager attention with which the youngster followed his discourse. He told him everything that there was any need for him to know.

“You’ve got to think of everything, and then a heap, if you’re going to come out of this with a whole skin,” Simon concluded, with some of his former sternness. “The game I’m on isn’t the kind they play in nurseries. I’m on it because I just can’t live happily ever after. I’ve had enough adventures to fill a dozen books, but instead of satisfying me they’ve only left me with a bigger appetite. If I had to live the ordinary kind of safe, civilized life, I’d die of boredom. Risks are food and drink to me. You may be different. If you are, I’m sorry about it, but I can’t help it. I need some help in this, and you’re going to give it to me; but it wouldn’t be fair to let you whale in without showing you what you are up against. Your bunch of bad hats aren’t childish enemies. Before you’re through, London’s likely to be just about as healthy for you as the Cannibal Islands are for a nice plump missionary. Get me?”

Stannard intimated that he had got him.

“Then I’ll give you your orders for the immediate future,” said the Saint. He did so, in detail, and had everything repeated over to him twice before he was convinced that there would be no mistake and that nothing would be forgotten. “From now on, I want you to keep away from me till I give you the all-clear,” he ended up. “If the Snake’s anywhere round, I shan’t last long in Danny’s, and it’s essential to keep you out of suspicion for as long as possible. So this’ll be our last open meeting for some time, but you can communicate by telephone-as long as you make sure nobody can hear you.”

“Right you are, Saint,” said Stannard.

Simon Templar flicked a cigarette into his mouth and reached for the matches. The other had a queer transient feeling of unreality. It seemed fantastic that he should be associated with such a project as that into which the Saint had initiated him. It seemed equally fantastic that the Saint should have conceived it and brought it into being. That cool, casual young man, with his faultless clothes, his clipped and slangy speech, and his quick, clear smile-he ought to have been lounging his amiable, easygoing way through a round of tennis and cricket and cocktail-parties and dances, instead of…

And yet it remained credible-it was even, with every passing second, becoming almost an article of the reawakened Stannard’s new faith. The Saint’s spell was unique. There was a certain quiet assurance about his bearing, a certain steely quality that came sometimes into his blue eyes, a certain indefinable air of strength and recklessness and quixotic bravado, that made the whole fantastic notion acceptable. And Stannard had not even the advantage of knowing anything about the last eight years of the Saint’s hell-for-leather career-eight years of gay buccaneering which, even allowing for exaggeration, made him out to be a man of no ordinary or drawing-room toughness… .

The Saint lighted his cigarette, and held out his hand to terminate the interview; and the corners of his mouth were twitching to his irresistible smile. “So long, son,” he said. “And good hunting!”

“Same to you,” said Stannard warmly.

The Saint clapped him on the shoulder. “I know you won’t let me down,” he said. “There’s lots of good in you, and I guess I’ve found some of it. You’ll put out all right. I’m going to see that you do. Watch me!”

But before he left, Stannard got a query off his chest. “Didn’t you say there were five of you?”

His hands in his pockets, teetering gently on his heels, the Saint favoured Stannard with his most Saintly smile. “I did,” he drawled. “Four little Saints and Papa. I am the Holy Smoke. As for the other four, they are like the Great White Woolly Wugga-Wugga on the plains of Astrakhan.”

Stannard gaped at him. “What does that mean?” he demanded.

“I ask you, sweet child,” answered the Saint, with that exasperatingly seraphic smile still on his lips, “has anyone ever seen a Great White Woolly Wugga-Wugga on the plains of Astrakhan? Sleep on it, my cherub-it will keep your mind from impure thoughts.”

Chapter V
TO ALL official intents and purposes, the proprietor and leading light of Mr. Edgar Hayn’s night club in Soho was the man after whom it was named-Danny Trask. Danny was short and dumpy, a lazy little tub of a man, with a round red face, a sparse head of fair hair, and a thin sandy moustache. His pale eyes were deeply embedded in the creases of their fleshy lids; and when he smiled-which was often, and usually for no apparent reason-they vanished altogether in a corrugating mesh of wrinkles.

His intelligence was not very great. Nevertheless, he had discovered quite early in life that there was a comfortable living to be made in the profession of “dummy”-a job which calls for not startling intellectual gifts-and Danny had accordingly made that his vocation ever since. As a figure-head, he was all that could have been desired, for he was unobtrusive and easily satisfied. He had a type of mind common to his class of lawbreaker. As long as his salary-which was not small-was paid regularly, he never complained, showed no ambition to join his employer on a more equal basis of division of profits, and, if anything went wrong, kept his mouth shut and deputized for his principal in one of his Majesty’s prisons without a murmur. Danny’s fees for a term of imprisonment were a flat rate of ten pounds a week, with an extra charge of two pounds a week for “hard.” The astuteness of the C.I.D. and the carelessness of one or two of his previous employers had made this quite a profitable proposition for Danny.

He had visions of retiring one day, and ending his life in comparative luxury, when his savings had reached a sufficiently large figure; but this hope had received several set-backs of late. He had been in Mr. Hayn’s service for four years, and Mr. Hayn’s uncanny skill at avoiding the attentions of the police were becoming a thorn in the side of Danny Trask. When Danny was not in “stir,” the most he could command was a paltry seven pounds a week, and living expenses had to be paid out of this instead of out of the pocket of the Government. Danny felt that he had a personal grievance against Mr. Hayn on this account.

The club theoretically opened at 6 p.m., but the food was not good, and most of its members preferred to dine elsewhere. The first arrivals usually began to drift in about 10 p.m., but things never began to get exciting before 11 o’clock. Danny spent the hours between 6 o’clock and the commencement of the fun sitting in his shirt-sleeves in his little cubicle by the entrance, sucking a foul old briar and tentatively selecting the next day’s losers from an evening paper. He was incapable of feeling bored-his mind had never reached the stage of development where it could appreciate the idea of activity and inactivity. It had never been active, so it didn’t see any difference.

He was engaged in this pleasant pursuit towards 8 o’clock on a certain evening when Jerry Stannard arrived. “Has Mr. Hayn come in yet, Danny?”

Danny made a pencil note of the number of pounds which he had laboriously calculated that Wilco would have in hand over Man of Kent in the Lingfield Plate, folded his paper, and looked up. “He don’t usually come in till late, Mr. Stannard,” he said. “No, he ain’t here now.”

Danny’s utterances always contrived to put the cart before the horse. If he had wanted to give you a vivid description of a deathbed scene, he would have inevitably started with the funeral.

“Oh, it’s all right-he’s expecting me,” said Stannard. “When he arrives you can tell him I’m at the bar.” He was plainly agitated. While he was talking, he never stopped fiddling with his signet ring; and Danny, whose shrewd glances missed very little, noticed that his tie was limp and crooked, as if it had been subjected to the clumsy wrestling of shaky fingers.

“Right you are, sir.”

It was none of Danny’s business, anyway.

“Oh-and before I forget…”

“Sir?”

“A Mr. Templar will be here later. He’s O.K. Send down for me when he arrives, and I’ll sign him in.”

“Very good, sir.” Danny returned to his study of equine form, and Stannard passed on. He went through the lounge which occupied the ground floor, and turned down the stairs at the end. Facing these stairs, behind a convenient curtain, was a secret door in the panelling, electrically operated, which was controlled by a button on the desk in Hayn’s private office. This door, when opened, disclosed a flight of stairs running upwards. These stairs communicated with the upstairs rooms which were one of the most profitable features of the club, for in those rooms chemin-de-fer, poker, and trente-et-quarante were played every night with the sky for a limit.

Hayn’s office was at the foot of the downward flight. He had personally supervised the installation of an ingenious system of mirrors by means of which, with the aid of a large sound-proof window let into the wall at one end of the office, without leaving his seat, he was able to inspect everyone who passed through the lounge above. Moreover, when the secret door swung open in response to the pressure of his finger on the control button, a further system of mirrors panelled up the flight of stairs gave him a view right up the stairway itself and round the landing into the gaming rooms. Mr. Hayn was a man with a cunning turn of mind, and he was preëminently cautious.

Outside the office, in the basement, was the dance floor, surrounded with tables, but only two couples were dining there. At the far end was the dais on which the orchestra played, and at the other end, under the stairs, was the tiny bar. Stannard turned in there, and roused the white-coated barman from his perusal of La Vie Parisienne. “I don’t know what would meet the case,” he said, “but I want something steep in corpse-revivers.”

The man looked him over for a moment with an expert eye, then busied himself with the filling of a prescription. The result certainly had a kick in it. Stannard was downing it when Hayn came in.

The big man was looking pale and tired, and there were shadows under his eyes. He nodded curtly to Jerry. “I’ll be with you in a minute,” he said. “Just going to get a wash.”

It was not like Mr. Hayn, who ordinarily specialized in the boisterous hail-fellow-well-met method of address, and Stannard watched him go thoughtfully.

Braddon, who had remained outside, followed Hayn into the office. “Who’s the boy friend?” he asked, taking a chair.

“Stannard?” Hayn was skimming through the letters that waited on his desk. “An ordinary young fool. He lost eight hundred upstairs in his first couple of months. Heaven knows how much he owes outside-he’d lost a packet before I started lending him money.”

Braddon searched through his pocket for a cigar, and found one. He bit off the end, and spat. “Got expectations? Rich papa who’ll come across?”

“No. But he’s got the clothes, he’d pass anywhere. I was using him.”

“Was?”

Hayn was frowningly examining the postmark on one of his letters. “I suppose I shall still,” he said. “Don’t bother me-this artistic hijacker’s got me all ends up. But he’s got a fiancee-I’ve only recently seen her. I like her.”