The Saint Abroad: The Art Collectors/ the Persistent Patriots (27 page)

“I know he doesn’t. You’d best come back
tomorrow.”

“I’m telling you it’s urgent,” Simon
said angrily. “The
Prime Minister’s life literally may depend on
it.”

Only then did the guard look particularly
interested.

“I’ll call his secretary, then,” he
said.

“No,” Simon insisted.

“Why not? I’ll do it now.”

Simon looked desperately toward the lighted
windows on
the ground floor of the big house. Behind him the driver
of the car
was saying a puzzled good night. He turned his
car back in the
direction from which he had come and drove
away.

The sound of a shot cracked out through the
night from
one of the rooms of Nagawi House. The guard stiffened
and
then started running toward the front door. Lights flashed
on inside
the house. Simon grabbed Mary’s hand and hurried
with her around the
corner of the wall away from the gate.

“Where are we going?” she gasped. “They haven’t
shot
Tom, have they?”

“I’m going over the wall, and you should
know whether
they’ve shot Tom or not.”

“I don’t know! It was just …”

“I believe you. Listen. Get away from here. Catch a taxi
and check in at the Hilton—you can say you missed
your la
st train home, since you’ve got no luggage. Stay in your
room until I contact you. All right?”

“All right.”

“Good girl. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

They were next to the wall at its nearest distance to the
house, in a sort of alleyway between it and the
next building.
Simon stepped back, and
then with a light leap he caught
the
top of the wall and swung his body up and over it.

On the inside, he set off at a run toward the rear of the
house. That area was lighted only by a single
diffuse flood
light, and no one
seemed to be keeping watch. With the
night
guard to testify that he had been at the front gate
when the shot was fired, he had no fear of being
accused
of having anything to do
with that, and now he only wanted
to
get to the scene of shooting as fast as possible. He remembered the location
of the Prime Minister’s study, which was near a corner of the building opposite
the side on which
he had entered the
grounds.

When he reached the study windows he heard
excited
voices
inside. One of the windows was open, its curtains
stirring in the cold night air. Simon, in the light which came from the
room, looked at the wet, soft earth along the side of
the house. The only footprints were his own.

He hoisted himself up on the windowsill and
vaulted into
the
study.

The effect on the people already there was
dramatic in
the extreme. Anne Liskard, who was in her nightgown,
screamed.
A half-dressed manservant fell back against the
entrance door. Todd
and Stewart, in pajamas and dressing
gowns, froze and gaped. Another man,
in a suit, had his
hand on the telephone.

The only member of the tableau who did not
react was
Thomas
Liskard. He was seated in his large chair with his
head on the desk. In one of his hands was a pistol. Blood
covered one side of his head and stained the
blotter where
it lay.

“What are you doing here?” Stewart
demanded of the
Saint in a shocked voice.

“I was at the gate when I heard the
shot, so I got here as soon as I could—over the wall and around the house.
I thought
I might catch somebody trying to run away.”

“You’ll have some explaining to do
yourself,” Todd said.
“But he shot himself. There was nobody to
run away.”

Anne Liskard had been sobbing as Simon
entered, but
now she broke in frantically. “Why doesn’t somebody
do
something?”

“We can’t do much, really,” Todd
replied in a lower voice.
“He’s dead.”

Simon was bending over Liskard. Below the
hand which
held the gun was a scrawled note.

“There’s no other way for me.”

The Saint touched Liskard’s wrist. The man
who was
dressed, who turned out to be the secretary, was dialing a
number on
the telephone.

“Get away from him,” Stewart
snapped, coming toward
the Saint.

Simon straightened up and addressed the
secretary.

“Who are you calling?”

“The police, of course.”

“Make it an ambulance,” said the
Saint. “The Prime
Minister is still alive.”

11

The Saint’s words had almost as electric an effect as his
entrance into the study had had. Anne Liskard
gave a sharp
cry and ran to her
husband. The men stared.

“Better not touch him,” Simon said.
“The sooner a doctor
gets to him the better.”

The secretary called for an ambulance, and
set about herd
ing out the lesser members of the staff.

“Are you sure?” asked Todd, the
Foreign Minister. “He
doesn’t seem to be breathing.”

“Try his pulse,” Simon said.

The others, satisfied that Liskard was alive,
broke into a
babble of conversation.

“Call Chief Inspector Teal of Scotland
Yard,” Simon said to the secretary. “He knows I’ve been working with
Liskard
on a problem of his. He’ll want to know about this, I’m
sure. I’m
surprised you haven’t heard from him already this
evening.”

“We have,” the secretary said. “I took a call from
him to
Mr Liskard about twenty minutes ago.
I’m to monitor calls,
you know, and
take notes. It seems the police had just picked
up a man named Peterson, who was suspected of being in on
some scheme about the Prime Minister.”

“Who else knew about the call?”
Simon asked.

“Todd and I were saying good night to him in his room
when the call was put through,” Stewart
said. “But really—
you’re taking
a lot on yourself, questioning us as if we
were …”

“The Prime Minister asked me yesterday
evening to help
him,” Simon replied. “He’ll confirm that if he’s
able.”

“But why would he do this?” Stewart
wanted to know.

“It’s my fault!” Anne Liskard
blurted suddenly. “He and
I had a scene tonight, when we were alone,
and I wouldn’t
listen to any explanations from him, or forgive him. I
…”

“He’d hardly kill himself over a family
quarrel,” Stewart
said gently.

“It was more than that,” the woman
said. “You’ll all
know anyway. The newspapers know. There were
letters …
from Tom to
…
another
woman.” Her voice broke, and then
she went on. “Somebody sent some of
them to me, with a
note saying others were
going to the newspapers. Tom asked
me
to keep it quiet, but I
…
I lost my temper, of course.
I told him this was the end of his career.”

She began to cry, and sank down into a
chair. The secretary,
meanwhile, had completed his call to Scotland
Yard. He
went to the hall to speak to members of the delegation
and
staff who were being kept from the study by some senior
member of
the group.

“In any case,” Todd said heavily,
“it does seem to be the
end of his career.” He picked up a stack
of papers near
Liskard’s elbow. “These apparently are photostats of
the
letters. Just the first one’s enough to …”

He broke off, with a glance at the Prime
Minister’s wife.

“But the papers would think twice about
printing that kind
of thing, unless they had absolute proof that it wasn’t
forged,”
Simon said. “And I don’t mind saying this next in
front of Mrs Liskard, since it ought to make her feel better. When you think of
it, honestly, what sort of shocking news is it
when a man, even a
man in politics, got himself involved in a
personal entanglement
of this kind?”

“It could ruin him politically,”
Todd insisted. “Especially
at this point.”

“I’ve heard those sorts of rumors about
almost every head
of state in the world,” Simon said, “and I’m
sure I’m not
the only citizen who hears them. Something like this
actually
might be good for a man in Liskard’s place. People are
more sympathetic with the
victim of a blackmail plot than
they are
disgusted with a man who shows some manly weak
nesses.”

A siren was approaching, growing louder
along the street
in front of Nagawi House.

“Well what exactly is your point?”
Stewart asked.

“That we keep all this quiet—about the
letters?” Todd
speculated dubiously.

“I’m suggesting that there’s much more
to this supposed
blackmail
plot than we seem to be assuming,” the Saint
answered. “It never made a lot of sense anyway. Now it’s
coming clearer what’s really going on.”

“What?” Stewart asked.

A still partially unbuttoned butler let
himself back into
the room.

“The ambulance is here. They’re on their
way in.”

The next ten minutes were taken up with the
removal of
Liskard on a stretcher to the ambulance. At the end of
that
time, as the ambulance was pulling out of the drive, its blue
light
spinning above the driver’s compartment, a police car
with a similar
spinning light pulled in the other side. Simon, who was standing on the steps
of the house with the others,
watched expectantly as the rotund form of
Chief Inspector
Teal
evacuated itself from the car and puffed heavily up to
the group. As he was about to speak, Teal’s eyes fell on the
Saint and his preparatory air of self-importance
collapsed to a
semblance of mere controlled dignity.

“I’m sorry to hear about this,” he
said to Liskard’s country
men in general. “Where did it
happen?”

They led the way through the house, and Teal
spoke to
Simon.

“I got your message, and we found
Peterson at Mary
Bannerman’s apartment. But now it looks as if he wasn’t
any threat
at all—and you’re going to have a lot to explain.”
Teal’s pink
face grew almost tomato colored as he strode
along the hallway.
“While we were wasting our time there—”

“Somebody else shot Liskard,”
Simon supplied. “But Peter
son is in on it. You weren’t wasting your
time—for once.”

Teal faced him at the study door.

“Shot Liskard? He shot himself, didn’t
he?”

“No,” Simon said. “He wasn’t
the type. Much too level
headed to be thrown this far by a lot of old
love letters.
And
besides, he has a sense of duty. He wouldn’t just bow
out and let his country fall into chaos.”

“This way,” Todd said.

Teal went into the, study, received a
complete rundown
on events, and looked over the evidence. When he had ex
amined the gun, the blotter,
the furniture, the suicide note,
and the
photostats, he pondered the situation as he stood
in the center of the room with his thumbs hooked
in the belt
of his capacious dark blue
coat.

“Pity he was moved,” he grumbled.
“If there’s any doubt
about the question of suicide …”

“That’s true,” Simon said
thoughtfully. “We could have
let him bleed to death so as to keep
the evidence tidy.”

“What do you mean, doubt?” Anne
Liskard asked.

She had regained control of herself and was
showing more
poise and energy than Simon had seen in her since their
first
meeting.

“Mr Templar here seems to believe your
husband may
have been shot,” Teal said.

Simon nodded. Teal’s assistants, Stewart, and
Anne Liskard
looked toward the desk as he spoke.