Prelude for War (30 page)

He dug into his hip pocket
and dragged out a pair of
handcuffs as he lurched
across towards the Saint.

“Come on,” he
said in a voice that could scarcely be
recognized
as his own. “You can write the rest of it down
in
Vine Street.”

Simon watched him approach
while he thought faster
than he had ever done since
this story began. Why and how Valerie Woodchester had escaped and what
momentous
consequences that escape might bring
after it were ques
tions that had to be crushed out of the
activity of his mind.
They could be dealt with
afterwards; unless he forgot them now, there would be no useful afterwards in
which to deal
with them.

This was a time when his fluent tongue would be
no more
use to him—he might as well have
tried to argue Niagara
to a
standstill. From where he stood he could have reached
a gun, but that would have been almost as useless.
It would certainly have cowed Fairweather; but the paroxysm of cold
rage that was propelling Teal across the floor
would have
kept him walking straight
on into it until it blasted him
down.
And the Saint knew that he would never be capable
of using a gun on Claud Eustace Teal for anything
more
than a bluff. Equally beyond
doubt, he knew that he would
never be
capable of letting himself be handcuffed and taken
to Vine Street without knowing how he was going to
get
out again.

He said: “Wait a
minute, Claud. You win. I’ll give you
Lady Valerie.”

It was the only thing he
could have said that the detective
would even have
heard. It stopped Teal a yard from him,
with
the handcuffs held out.

“Where is she?”

Simon gazed at him with a
sad wistful smile.

“It’s been a good
long scrap and a lot of fun, hasn’t it,
Claud?”
he said. “But I suppose you were bound to come
out
on top in the end… . Oh well, let’s make a clean
sheet
of it while we’re at it. Hoppy was getting excited
about
nothing. Lady Valerie hasn’t got away. I took her
away
myself, only I didn’t have time to tell him. She’s here
in this apartment now, only about half-a-dozen yards away
from you.”

Teal gawped at him.

“Here?”

“Yes. You didn’t think
of that, did you? Well, you’ll
find her perfectly safe
and sound, without even a speck of
powder brushed off
her nose.”

“Where?”

“Come through the
bedroom and I’ll show you.”

He turned away with an air
of stoical resolution and
sauntered steadily towards
the door. Teal followed on his
heels. Fairweather grasped
his umbrella and followed Teal.
As they entered the room,
where the bed was still disor
dered from the Saint’s
recent rising, Simon said: “You’ve always suspected that I had a
collection of secret passages
and things here. You were
pretty close to the mark, too.
This ought to amuse
you.”

He indicated the door to
one side of the bed.

Teal jerked it open. It
revealed the interior of a big
built-in cupboard in which
an assortment of suits from the
Saint’s unlimited wardrobe
hung on a long rail like a file
of thin soldiers.

The Saint sat dejectedly on
the side of the bed.

“Just push the wall at
the end and it opens,” he said
listlessly.

Teal shoved himself grimly
in, shouldering the rank of
suits aside. Fairweather
stepped up to the door and peered
in after him.

What happened next was a
succession of startling events
of which Mr Fairweather’s
subsequent recollections were
inclined to be confused.
It seemed to him that without any
warning the back of
his collar and the seat of his pants
were seized by the grappling mechanism
of a kind of bimanual
travelling crane. He
rose from the ground and moved
forward
without any effort of his own into the interior
of the cupboard, letting out a thin plaintive squeal as he did
so. Then his advancing abdomen collided with
breath
taking violence with the
unyielding posterior of Chief
Inspector
Teal; the cupboard door slammed behind him;
the light overhead went out; darkness descended; there
was the sound of a key turning in the lock; and
after
that there was as much empty
and unhelpful silence as
Teal’s
sporadic sputtering of inspired profanity left room
for.
…

Simon Templar moved
swiftly out of the bedroom and
locked that door also after
him.

Now he was in it up to the
neck, but he felt only an
exuberant elation. As soon
as Teal and Fairweather got
out, which they must do in
a comparatively short time, he
would be a hunted man with
all the nation-wide networks
of the law spread out to
catch him; but he only felt as if
a burden had been
taken off his shoulders. He had lived like that in the old days, when every
man’s hand was against him
and death or ignominious
defeat waited for him around
every carelessly turned
corner, and in those days he had known life at its keenest rapture, with a
fullness that men who led safe humdrum existences could never know. Now at
least the issues were clean cut and unevadable. Perhaps
he had been respectable for too long… .

The telephone was ringing
again. He picked it up.

“Hi, boss,” said
Mr Uniatz plaintively. “We got cut
off.”

“We didn’t,” said
the Saint tersely. “That was your old
friend
Claud Eustace Teal you were talking to.”

There was a long silence.

“Did I hear what you
said, boss?”

“I hope so.”

“You mean he hears
what I said about de goil?”

“Yes.”

“But I ask him is he
you and he says he is,” complained
Hoppy,
as if appalled by this revelation of the depths of
perfidy
to which a human being could sink.

Words rose to Simon’s
lips—short Anglo-Saxon words,
colourful and expressive.
But what was the use? Dull thud
ding noises reminiscent of
an enraged crocodile lashing its
tail in a wooden crate
reached him through the walls. His time was short.

“Never mind,” he
said. “It’s done now. Let me talk to
Patricia.”

“She ain’t got back
yet, boss. She goes out in de baby
car just now to buy
some more scotch, and she is out when dis happens.”

“When did it
happen?”

“Just two-t’ree
minutes back, boss. It’s like dis. I am taking lunch up to de wren, and when I
go in she says
‘Lookit, de rug is boining.’ It is
boining, at dat. I go out for de extinguisher and squoit it on de fire, and
when I have been squoiting it for some time I see de broad has
beat it.”

“I suppose you’d left
the door open for her.”

“I dunno, boss,”
said Mr Uniatz aggrievedly. He seemed
to feel that Lady
Valerie had taken an unfair advantage
of him.
“Anyway, de door is open and she has hung it on de limb. I beat it
downstairs and I hear a car going off outside, and when I open de door she is
lamming out of
here wit’ your Daimler. So I call you
up,” said Mr Uniatz,
conscientiously completing
his narrative.

Simon opened his cigarette
case on the telephone table.

“All right,” he
said crisply. “Now listen. Hell is going to
pop
over this party, and it’s going to pop at you. You’d
better
get out from under. Stick around till Patricia gets
back,
and tell her what’s happened. Then pile yourself and O
race
into the pram and tell her to take you to the station. Buy tickets to
Southampton and make enough fuss about it
so
they’ll remember you at the booking office. Come out the
other side of the station with the next crop of passengers,
walk back to Brooklands, get out the old kite and fly over
to Heston. Peter will be there waiting for you. Do just what he tells
you. Have you got it?”

“Ya mean we all do
dis act?”

“Yes. All three of
you. Teal will trace your call as soon
as
he gets back into action, and Weybridge will be no place
for any of you to be seen alive in. You can take the scotch
with you, so you won’t be hungry. Happy landings.”

“Okay, boss.”

Simon put his finger on
the contact breaker.

He lifted it again and
lighted a cigarette while he dialled
the number of Peter
Quentin’s apartment. The dull thud
ding behind him
seemed louder and splintering noises were
beginning
to blend with it. The Saint blew smoke rings.

“Peter? … Good
boy. This is Simon… . Nothing,
except that a small
flock of balloons have gone up… .
No, but they will.
In other words, Claud Eustace was here
this
morning to sing his theme song, as we expected; and
meanwhile
our protegee has pulled the bung. Hoppy rang
up
to tell me about it, and Teal took the call.”

There was a pause while
Peter assimilated this.

“Which police station
are you speaking from, old boy?”
he inquired
cautiously, at last.

“None of them yet.
But I expect they’ll all be inviting
me as soon as Teal
gets out of the wardrobe where I’ve
got him warming up
at the moment. And they won’t leave
you out,
either.”

“As soon as——
”

Peter’s voice sounded
faint and expiring.

The Saint grinned.

“Yes. Now listen, old
son. Pat and Hoppy and Orace will
be on their way to
Heston with the Monospar at any
moment. I’ve told them to
pick you up there. Get on your way and don’t leave any tracks behind you. You
can take
off at once and hop to Deauville; take
the train to Paris,
and I’ll get in touch with you later at
the Hotel Raphael.”

There was another pause.

“That’s all very
well,” said Peter, “but suppose I don’t
feel
like going abroad?”

“Think how it would
broaden your mind,” said the Saint.
“Don’t
be heroic, Peter. I’ll be harder to catch on my own,
and
there’s nothing for you to do here. I shan’t be staying
long myself. I’ve got a pretty sound idea that the last act
of this ‘ere thrilling mellerdrammer takes place in Paris,
and I may want you there. I’ll be seeing you.”

He rang off before Peter
could answer again.

The thundering in the next
room was louder still; it could
only be a matter of seconds
now before the wardrobe door
gave way. But the Saint
stayed to refill his cigarette case
before he went out
and caught a descending lift that
dropped him swiftly
to the basement garage.

He was debonair and
unhurried as he stepped into the
Hirondel and woke the
engine; the fighting vitality that was
lilting
recklessly through every cell in his body found an
outlet
only in the sapphire alertness of his eyes and the
dynamic
economy of his movements and the ghost of an
unrepentant
smile that lurked in the corners of his mouth.
. .
. There was the same taxi parked by the curb at the
top
of the ramp, the same miniature sports car with the
driver
reading a newspaper spread over the wheel; this
time
Simon had no Sam Outrell in a following car to help
him,
but he was unconcerned. He shot past them and turned
into
Half Moon Street, heading north; in the mirror over
the windshield he saw
them coming after him. Simon worked
his way
into Park Lane, cruised up it until he saw a break
of no more than half-a-dozen yards in the stream of
traffic
pounding down towards him,
then he swung the wheel and
sent the
Hirondel screeching through the gap towards the
pavement on the wrong side of the road. The cataract of vehicles swerved
wildly out to avoid him, flowed on past
him with curses and straining brakes, effectively barring
the path of his pursuers. Simon bumped the curb,
straight
ened up and crawled round
the next corner into Mount
Street. A
couple of instants later he was whirling away with
gathering speed, to zigzag
round four more
consecutive
corners and obliterate the
last clue to his direction in the
rabbit
warren of Mayfair.