Saint Intervenes (27 page)

“Well,
have you bought your Brazilian Timber Bond?”
asked Monty Hayward a
day or two later.

Simon
grinned and looked out of the window—he was
down at the country
house in Surrey which he had recently
bought for a week-end retreat.

“I’ve got two acres
here,” he murmured. “We might look
around
for somebody to give us sixty quid to plant some
more trees in it.”

“The
really brilliant part of it,” said Monty, filling his
pipe,
“is that this bloke proposes to pay out all the profit in
a lump in
ten years’ time; but until then he doesn’t undertake
to pay anything. So
if he’s been working this stunt for four
years now, as it says
in the book, he’s still got another five
years clear to go on
selling his bonds before any of the bond
holders has a right to
come round and say: ‘Oi, what about
my three hundred quid?’ Unless some
nosey parker makes a
special trip into the middle of Brazil and
comes back and
says there aren’t any pine trees growing in those parts,
or he’s
seen the concession and it’s just a large swamp with a few
blades of
grass and a lot of mosquitoes buzzing about, I don’t see how he can help
getting away with a fortune if he finds
enough mugs.”

The Saint
lighted a cigarette.

“There’s
nothing to stop him taking it in,” he remarked
gently, “but
he’s still got to get away with it.”

Mr. Sumner
Journ would have seen nothing novel in the
qualification. Since
the first day when he began those prac
tical surveys of the
sucker birth-rate, the problem of finally
getting away with it,
accompanied by his moustache and his
plunder, had never been entirely absent
from his thoughts,
although he had taken considerable pains to steer a course
which would keep him outside the reach of the Law. But the
collapse
of South American Mineralogical Investments, Ltd.,
had brought him
within unpleasantly close range of danger,
and about the
ultimate fate of Brazilian Timber Bonds he
had no illusions.

Simon
Templar would have found nothing psychologically
contradictory in the
fact that a man who, cultivating the
world’s most original moustache with
microscopic perfection
of detail, had overlooked the fundamental
point that a mous
tache should be visible, should, when creating a Timber
Company,
have overlooked the prime essential that the one
thing which a Timber
Company must possess, its
sine qua
non,
so to
speak, is timber. Mr. Journ had compiled his in
ducements with
unlimited care from encyclopedias and the information supplied by genuine
timber-producing firms, cal
culating the investors’ potential profits
according to a mathe
matical system of his own; the only thing he
had omitted to
do was to provide himself with the requisite land for
affor
estation. He had selected his site from an atlas, and had im
mediately
forgotten all the other necessary steps towards
securing a title to
it.

In the
circumstances, it was only natural that Mr. Sumner
Journ, telling tall
stories about timber, should remember that
the day was coming
when he himself would have to set out,
metaphorically at
least, in the direction of the tall timber
which is the
fugitive’s traditional refuge; but he reckoned
that the profit would
be worth it.

The only
point on which he was a trifle hazy, as other such
schemers have been before him, was the
precise moment at
which the getaway ought to
be made; and it was with a sud
den sinking of heart that he heard the
name of the man who
called to see him at his
office on a certain afternoon.

“Inspector Tombs?” he
said with a rather pallid heartiness.
“I
think I have met you somewhere before.”

“I’m
the C. I. D. Inspector in this division,” said the visitor
blandly.

Mr. Journ
nodded. He knew now where he had seen his
caller before—it was
the man who had been talking to Chief
Inspector Teal in Swallow Street when
he went by a few
days ago, and who had stared at him so intently.

Mr. Journ
opened a drawer and took out a box of
cigars with unsteady hands.

“What
can I do for you, Inspector?” he asked.

Somewhat
to his surprise, Inspector Tombs willingly helped
himself to a handful,
and sat down in an armchair.

“You
can give me money,” said Inspector Tombs brazenly;
and the wild leaping of Sumner
Journ’s heart died down to a painful throbbing.

“For
one of your charities, perhaps? Well, I have never
been miserly——
”

The Saint shook his head.

“For
me,” he said flatly. “The Yard has asked us to keep
an eye on
you, and I think you need a friend in this manor.
Chuck the bluffing,
Journ—I’m here for business.”

Sumner
Journ was silent for a moment; but he was not
thinking of resuming
the bluff. That wouldn’t help. He had
to thank his stars that his first
police visitor was a man who
so clearly and straightforwardly understood the value of hard
cash.

“How
much do you want?” he asked.

“Two
hundred pounds,” was the calm reply.

Mr. Journ
put up a hand and twirled one of the tiny horns of his wee moustache with the
tip of his finger and thumb. His hard brown eyes studied Inspector Tombs
unwinkingly.

“That’s
a lot of money,”
 
he said with an
effort.

“What
I can tell you is worth it,” Simon told him grimly.

Mr. Journ
hesitated for a short time longer, and then he
took out a
cheque-book and dipped his pen in the inkwell.

“Make
it out to Bearer,” said the Saint, who in spite of
his morbid
affection for the cognomen of “Tombs” had not yet thought it worth
while opening a bank account in that
name.

Journ
completed the cheque, blotted it, and passed it
across the desk. In
his mind he was wondering if it was the
fee for Destiny’s
warning: if Scotland Yard had asked the local division to “keep an eye on
him,” it was a sufficient
hint that his activities had not passed
unnoticed, and a sug
gestion that further inquiries might be
expected to follow. He had not thought that it would happen so soon; but since
it had
happened, he felt a leaden heaviness at the pit of his
stomach and a
restless anxiety that arose from something
more than a mere natural
resentment at being forced to pay
petty blackmail to a dishonest
detective. And yet, so great
was his seasoning of confidence that even then
he was not
anticipating any urgent danger.

“Well,
what can you tell me?” he said.

Simon put
the cheque away.

“The
tip is to get out,” he said bluntly; and Mr. Journ
went white.

“Wha-what?”
he stammered.

“You
shouldn’t complain,” said the Saint callously. “You’ve
been going
for four years, and you must have made a packet.
Now we’re on to you.
When I tell you to get out, I mean it.
The Yard didn’t ask
us to keep an eye on you. What they did
was to send an order
through for a raid this afternoon. Chief Inspector Teal is coming down himself
at four o’clock to take
charge of it. That’s worth two hundred pounds
to know,
isn’t it?”

He stood
up.

“You’ve
got about an hour to clear out—you’d better make
the most of it,”
he said.

For several
minutes after the detective had gone Mr. Journ
was in a daze. It was
the first time that the consequences of
his actions had loomed
up in his vision as glaring realities.
Arrest—police
court—remand—the Old Bailey—penal servi
tude—the whole gamut
of a crash, he had known about in
the abstract like everyone else; but
his self-confident imagination had never paused to put himself in the leading
role. The
sudden realisation of what had crept up upon him struck
him
like a blow in the solar plexus. He sat trembling in his chair, gasping
like a stranded fish, feeling his knee-joints melting
like butter in a
frightful paralysis of panic. Whenever he had
visualized the end
before, it had never been like this: it had
been on a date of his
own choosing, after he had made all
his plans in unhurried comfort, when
he could pack up and
beat his trail for the tall timber as calmly
as if he had been
going off on a legitimate business trip, without fear
of
interference. This catastrophe pouncing on him out of a
clear sky
scattered his thoughts like dry leaves in a gale.

And then he
got a grip on himself. The getaway still had
to be made. He still
had an hour—and the banks were open. If he could keep his head, think quickly,
act and plan as he
had never had to do before, he might still make the
grade.

“I’m
feeling a bit washed out,” he told his secretary; and
certainly
he looked it. “I think I’ll go home.”

He went
out and hailed a taxi, half expecting to feel a
heavy hand drop on his
shoulder even as he climbed in.

It was
getting late, and he had several things to do. He had
been so sure that his
Brazilian Timber Bonds had a long lease
of life ahead of them
that he had not yet given any urgent
thought to the business of shifting
his profits out of the coun
try. At the first bank where he called he
presented a cheque whose size pushed up the cashier’s eyebrows.

“This
will practically close your account, Mr. Journ,” he
said.

“It
won’t be out for long,” Journ told him, with all the
nonchalance
he could muster. “I’m putting through a rather
big deal this
afternoon, and I’ve got to work in cash.”

He stopped
at two other banks, where he had accounts in
different names; and
also at a safe-deposit, where his box
yielded him a thick wad of various
European currencies.
When he had finished, his brief-bag was
bulging with more
than sixty thousand pounds in negotiable cash.

He climbed
back into his taxi and drove to his apartment near Baker Street. There would
not be much time for pack
ing, he reflected, studying his watch
feverishly; but he must
pick up his passport, and as many everyday
necessities as he could cram into a valise in five minutes would be a help. The
taxi stopped; and Mr. Journ opened the door and prepared to jump out;
but before he could do so a man appeared at
the opening and
plunged in on top of him, practically throw-
ing him back on to the
seat. Sumner Journ’s heart leaped
sickeningly into his mouth; and then
he recognised the dark
piratical features of “Inspector Tombs.”

“Whasser
matter?” Journ got out hoarsely.

“You
can’t go in there,” rapped the Saint. “Teal’s on his
way. Put
the raid forward half an hour. They’re looking for
you.” He opened the driver’s
partition. “South Kensington
Station,”
he ordered. “And step on it!”

The taxi
moved on again, and Mr. Journ stared wildly
out of the windows. A uniformed constable
chanced to cross
the street behind them
towards his door. He sank back in terror; and Simon closed the partition and
settled into the
other corner.

“But what am I going to
do?” quavered Journ. “My pass
port’s
in there!”

“It
wouldn’t be any use to you,” said the Saint tersely. “We
know you’ve got one, and we
know what name it’s in. They’ll
be watching
for you at all the ports. You’d never get through.”

“But
where can I go?” Journ almost sobbed.

Simon
lighted a cigarette and looked at him.

“Have
you got any more money?”

“Yes.”
Sumner Journ saw his companion’s keen blue eyes
fixed on the swollen
brief-bag which he was clutching on his
knees, and added
belatedly: “A little.”