Saint Intervenes (19 page)

His furious
ringing of the bell brought his secre
tary running.

“Fide
me that proof-reader!” he howled. “Fide be the dab
fool who
passed this book!” He flung the volume on to the
floor at her feet.
“Sed hib to be at wuds! I’ll show bib. I’ll
bake hib suffer. By
God, I’ll——
”

The other
things that Mr. Parstone said he would do can
not be recorded in
such a respectable publication as this.

His
secretary picked up the book and looked at the title.

“Mr.
Timmins left yesterday—he was the man you fired four months ago,” she
said; but even then Mr. Parstone was
no wiser.

VIII

The Noble
Sportsman

It would be
difficult to imagine two more ill-assorted guests
at a country house party than Simon
Templar and Chief In
spector Teal. The
Saint, of course, was in his element. He
roared up the drive in his big cream and red sports car and
a huge camel-hair coat as if he had been doing
that sort of
thing for half his life,
which he had. But Mr. Teal, driving
up
in the ancient and rickety station taxi, and alighting cumbrously
in his neat serge suit and bowler hat, fitted
less
successfully into the picture.
He looked more like a builder’s
foreman
who had called to take measurements for a new
bathroom, which he was not.

But that
they should have been members of the same
house party at all was
the most outstanding freak of circumstance; and it was only natural that one
of them should
take the first possible opportunity to inquire into the
motives of the other.

Mr. Teal
came into the Saint’s room while Simon was
dressing for dinner,
and the Saint looked him over with some
awe.

“I see
you’ve got a new tie,” he murmured. “Did your old
one come undone?”

The
detective ran a finger round the inside of his collar,
which fitted as if he
had bought it when he was several
years younger and measured less than eighteen inches around
the neck.

“How
long have you known Lord Yearleigh?” he asked
bluntly.

“I’ve
met him a few times,” said the Saint casually.

He
appeared to be speaking the truth; and Mr. Teal was
not greatly
surprised—the Saint had a habit of being acquaint
ed with the most
unlikely people. But Teal’s curiosity was not
fully satisfied.

“I
suppose you’re here for the same reason as I am,” he said.

“More
or less, I take it,” answered Simon. “Do you think
Yearleigh
will be murdered?”

“You’ve
seen the anonymous letters he’s been receiving?”

“Some
of ‘em. But lots of people get anonymous threatening
letters without
getting a Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard
sent down as a
private pet.”

“They aren’t all M.P.‘s,
younger sons of dukes, and well-
known
influential men,” said the detective rather cynically.
“What do you think about it?”

“If
he is murdered, I hope it’s exciting,” said the Saint
callously. “Poison is so
dull. A hail of machine-gun bullets
through
the library window would be rather diverting, though.
… What are you getting at, Claud—are you trying
to steal
my act or are you looking
for an alliance?”

Mr. Teal
unwrapped a wafer of chewing gum and stuck
it in his mouth, and
watched the Saint fixing buttons in a
white waistcoat with a stolid air of
detachment that he was
far from feeling. It was sometimes hard for
him to re
member that that debonair young brigand with the
dangerous
mouth and humorous blue eyes had personally murdered
many
men, beyond
all practical doubt but equally beyond all possibility of legal proof; and he
found it hard to remember then.
But
nevertheless he remembered it. And the fact that those
men had never died without sound reason did not
ease his mind—the Saint had a disconcerting habit of assassinating
men whose pollution of the universe was invisible
to any
one else until he unmasked it.

“I’d
like to know why you were invited,” said Mr. Teal.

Simon
Templar put on his waistcoat, brushed his tuxedo,
and put that on also. He stood in front of
the dressing-table,
lighting a cigarette.

“If I
suggested that Yearleigh may have thought that I’d
be more use than a
policeman, you wouldn’t be flattered,”
he remarked. “So
why worry about suspecting me until he
really is dead? I
suppose you’ve already locked up the silver
and had the jewels
removed to the bank, so I don’t see how
I can bother you any
other way.”

They went
downstairs together, with Chief Inspector Teal
macerating his
spearmint in gloomy silence. If the Saint had
not been a fellow-guest he would have
taken his responsibili
ties less seriously;
and yet he was unable to justify any sus
picion that the Saint was
against him. He knew nothing about
his host
which might have inspired the Saint to take an un
lawful interest in his expectation of life.

The public,
and what was generally known of the private,
life of Lord Thornton
Yearleigh was so far above reproach that it was sometimes held up as a model
for others. He was
a man of about sixty-five with a vigour that was envied by
men who were twenty-five years his junior, a big-built natural
athlete
with snow-white hair that seemed absurdly premature as a crown for his clear
ruddy complexion and erect carriage.
At sixty-five, he was a scratch
golfer, a first-class tennis player,
a splendid horseman, and a polo player
of considerable skill.
In those other specialised pastimes which in
England are
particularly dignified with the name of “sport,”
hunting,
shooting, and fishing, his name was a by-word. He swam in
the sea
throughout the winter, made occasional published com
ments on the decadence of modern youth,
could always be
depended on to quote
‘mens
sana in corpore sano’
at the
right
moment, and generally stood as the living personifica
tion of those
robust and brainless spartan ideals of cold baths
and cricket which have contributed so much to England’s
share in the cultural progress of the world. He was
a jovial
and widely popular figure; and although he was certainly a
member of the House of Commons, the Saint had not
yet
been known to murder a politician
for that crime alone—
even if he had
often been known to express a desire to do so.

There was,
of course, no reason at all why the prospective
assassin should have
been a member of the party; but his
reflections on the Saint’s character
had started a train of
thought in the detective’s mind, and he found
himself weigh
ing up the other guests speculatively during dinner.

The
discussion turned on the private bill which Yearleigh
was to introduce,
with the approval of the Government, when Parliament reassembled during the
following week; and Teal,
who would have no strong views on the subject
until his
daily newspaper told him what he ought to think, found
that his role of obscure listener gave him an excellent chance to
study the
characters of the others who took part.

“I
shouldn’t be surprised if that bill if mine had something
to do with
these letters I’ve been getting,” said Yearleigh.
“Those damned
Communists are capable of anything. If they
only took some
exercise and got some fresh air they’d work
all that nonsense out
of their systems. Young Maurice is a
bit that way himself,” he added
slyly.

Maurice Vould flushed slightly.
He was about thirty-five,
thin and
spectacled and somewhat untidy, with a curiously
transparent ivory skin that was the exact antithesis of Yearleigh’s
weather-beaten complexion. He was, Teal had
already
ascertained, a cousin of Lady Yearleigh’s; he had a private
income of about £800 a year, and devoted his time
to writing
poems and essays which a very limited public acclaimed as
being of unusual worth.

“I
admit that I believe in the divine right of mankind
to earn a decent
wage, to have enough food to eat and a
decent house to live
in, and to be free to live his life without
interference,”
he said in a rather pleasant quiet voice. “If
that is, Communism, I
suppose I’m a Communist.”

“But
presumably you wouldn’t include armed attack by a
foreign power under
your heading of interference,” said a
man on the opposite
side of the table.

He was a
sleek well-nourished man with heavy sallow
cheeks and a small
diamond set in the ring on his third
finger; and Teal knew that he was Sir
Bruno Walmar, the
chairman and presiding genius of the Walmar Oil Corpora
tion and
all its hundred subsidiaries. His voice was as harsh
as his appearance
was smooth, with an aggressive domineering
quality to it which
did not so much offer argument as defy it; but the voice did not silence Vould.

“That
isn’t the only concern of Yearleigh’s bill,” he said.

The Right Honourable Mark
Ormer, War Minister in the
reigning
Government, scratched the centre of his grey mous
tache in the rather old-maidish gesture which the
cartoonist
had made familiar to
everyone in England, and said: “The
National Preparedness Bill merely requires a certain amount
of
military training to be included in the education of every
British boy, so that if his services should be
needed in the
defence of his country
in after life, he should be qualified
to
play his part without delay. No other eventuality has
been envisaged.”

“How
can you say that no other eventuality has been en
visaged?” asked
Vould quietly. “You take a boy and teach
him the rudiments of
killing as if they were a desirable thing
to know. You give him
a uniform to wear and impress upon
him the fact that he is a fighting man
in the making. You m
ake him shoot blank cartridges at other boys, and treat
the
whole pantomime as a good joke. You create a man who
will
instinctively answer a call to arms whenever the call is
made; and
how can you sit there tonight and say that you
know exactly and only
in what circumstances somebody will
start to shout the call ?”

“I
think we can depend on the temperament of the Eng
lish people to be
sure of that,” said Ormer indulgently.

“I
think you can also depend on the hysteria of most mobs
when their
professional politicians wave a flag,” answered
Maurice Vould.
“There probably was a time when people fought to defend their countries,
but now they have to fight
to save the faces of their politicians and the
bank balances
of their business men.”

“Stuff
and nonsense!” interjected Lord Yearleigh heartily.
“Englishmen
have got too much sense. A bit of military
training is good for a
boy. Teaches him discipline. Besides, you can’t stop people fighting—healthy
people—with that watery pacifist talk. It’s human nature.”

“Like
killing your next-door neighbour because you want
to steal his lawn
mower,” said Vould gently. “That’s an
other primitive
instinct which human nature hasn’t been able
to eradicate.”

Yearleigh
gave a snort of impatience; and Sir Bruno Wal
mar rubbed his smooth
hands over each other and said in his rasping voice: “I suppose you were a
conscientious objector
during the last war, Mr. Vould?”

“I’m
sorry to disappoint you,” said Vould, with a pale
smile, “but I
was enjoying the experience of inhaling poison gas when I was sixteen years
old. While you, Ormer, were making patriotic speeches, and you, Walmar, were
making
money. That’s the difference between us. I’ve seen a war,
and so I
know what it’s like; and I’ve also lived long enough
after it to know how
much good it does.”