The Saint and Mr. Teal: Formerly Called "Once More the Saint" (3 page)

“Make yourself at home, Claud,” he murmured. “There’s a new packet of gum in the sitting room, and I’ll be with you in two minutes.”

He joined the detective punctually to a second, dusting some wood shavings from his trousers, and there was nothing whatever in his manner to indicate that he could anticipate any unpleasantness. He found Teal clasping his bowler hat across his stomach and gazing morosely at an unopened package of Wrigley’s Three Star which sat up sedately in the middle of the table.

“I just came in,” said the detective, “to tell you I liked your alibi.”

“That was friendly of you,” said the Saint calmly.

“What do you know about Lormer?”

Simon lighted a cigarette.

“Nothing except that he’s a receiver of stolen goods, an occasional blackmailer, and a generally septic specimen of humanity. He’s quite a small fish, but he’s very nasty. Why?”

Teal ignored the question. He shifted a wad of gum meditatively round his mouth, and then swept the Saint’s face with unexpectedly searching eyes. “Your alibi is good enough,” he said, “but I’m still hoping to learn some more about your friends. You used work with four of ‘em, didn’t you? I’ve often wondered how they all managed to reform so quickly.”

The Saint smiled gently.

“Still the same old gang theory?” he drawled. “If I didn’t know your playful ways so well, Claud, I’d be offended. It’s not complimentary. You must find it hard to believe that so many remarkable qualities can be concentrated under one birth certificate, but as time goes on you may get used to the idea. I was quite a prodigy as a child. From the day when I stole the corsets off my old nannie —”

“If you’re getting another gang together, or raking up the old lot,” Teal said decisively, “we’ll soon know all about it. What about that girl who used to be with you-Miss Holm, wasn’t it ? What’s her alibi ?”

“Does she want one? I expect it could be arranged.”

“I expect it could. She landed at Croydon the day before we found you at Newhaven. I’ve only just learned that. Lormer never saw the man who knocked him out and emptied his safe, so just in case it wasn’t a man at all —”

“I think you’re on the wrong line,” said the Saint genially. “After all, even a defective-detective-has got to consider probabilities. In the old days, before all this vulgar publicity, I could put my trade mark on every genuine article; but you must admit that times have changed. Now that every half-wit in the British Isles knows who I am, is it likely that if I contemplated any crimes I’d be such a fool as to draw Saints all over ‘em ? D’you think you could make any jury believe it? I’ve got a reputation, Claud. I may be wicked, but I’m not waffy. It’s obvious that some low crook is trying to push his stuff onto me.”

Teal hitched himself ponderously out of his chair.

“I had thought of that argument,” he said; and then, abruptly: “What’s your next job going to be?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” said the Saint coolly.“Whatever it is, it’ll be a corker. I feel that I could do with some good headlines.”

“Do you think you’re playing the game?”

Simon looked at the detective thoughtfully.

“I suppose my exploits don’t improve your standing with the commissioner. Isn’t that it?”

The detective nodded.

“You make it very difficult for us,” he said.

He could have said a lot more. Pride kept it back stubbornly behind his official detachment, but the sober glance which he gave the Saint was as near to a confession as he dared to go. It was not in his nature to ask favours of any man.

“I’ll have to see what I can do,” said the Saint.

He ushered Teal courteously to the door, and opened it to see a slim, fair-haired vision of a girl walking up the road towards them. Teal watched her approach with narrowed and expressionless eyes.

The girl reached the door and smiled at him sweetly.

“Good-morning,” she said.

“Good-morning,” said Teal acridly.

He settled his hat and stepped brusquely past her; and Simon Templar closed the front door and caught the girl in his arms.

“Pat, old darling,” he said, “I feel that life has begun all over again. With you around, and Claud Eustace dropping in every other day to have words … If we could only find someone to murder it’d just be perfect!”

Patricia Holm walked into the sitting room and pulled off her hat. She helped herself to a cigarette from his case and surveyed him with a little smile.

“Don’t you think there might be a closed season for Teals ? I’ll never forget how it was when we left England. I hated you, boy-the way you baited him.”

“It’s a rough game,” said the Saint quietly. “But I haven’t baited him this time-not yet. The trouble is that the assistant commissioner holds poor old Claud personally responsible for our brilliance. It was a brain wave of yours to raid Lormer directly you found I was in clink, but that alibi won’t work twice. And Teal’s just building up a real case. We’ll have to be very careful. Anyway, we won’t murder anyone in public….”

When the Saint went out that afternoon he carried a conspicuously large white envelope in his hand. At the corner of the cul-de-sac there was a big man patiently manicuring his nails with a pocketknife. Simon posted his envelope in full view of the watcher, and afterwards suffered himself to be painstakingly shadowed through a harmless shopping expedition in the West End.

Late that night a certain Mr. Ronald Nilder, whose agency for vaudeville artistes was not above suspicion, received a brief letter in a large white envelope. It stated quite simply that unless he made a five-figure donation to the Actors’ Orphanage within the week his relatives might easily suffer an irreparable bereavement; and it was signed with the Saint’s trade mark. Mr. Nilder, a public-spirited citizen, immediately rang up the police. Chief Inspector Teal saw him, and later had another interview with the assistant commissioner.

“Templar posted a large white envelope yesterday,” he said, “but we can’t prove it was the one Nilder received. If I know anything about the Saint, Nilder will get a follow-up message in a day or two, and we may be able to catch Templar red-handed.”

His diagnosis of Saintly psychology proved to be even shrewder than he knew.

For the next couple of days Simon was busy with the work of adding to the comfortable furnishings of his house a selection of electrical devices of his own invention. They were of a type that he had never expected to find included in the fixtures and fittings of any ordinary domicile, but he considered them eminently necessary to his safety and peace of mind. He employed no workmen, for workmen are no less inclined to gossip than anyone else, and the kind of installations which were the Saint’s specialty would have been a fruitful source of conversation to anyone. Wherefore the Saint worked energetically alone, and considered his job well done when at the end of it there were no signs of his activity to be found without a very close investigation. The watcher at the end of the cul-de-sac manicured his ceaselessly, and had many enjoyable walks at the
Saint’s heels whenever Simon went out. Simon christened him Fido, and became resigned to him as a permanent feature of the landscape. It was near the end of the week when Simon emerged from his front door with another conspicuously large white envelope similar to the first tucked under his arm; and the plain-clothes man, who had definite instructions, closed his penknife with a snap and stepped forward as the Saint came abreast of him.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said punctiliously. “May I have a look at your letter ?”

The Saint stared at him.

“And who might you be?”

“I’m a police officer,” said the man firmly.

“Then why are you wearing an Old Etonian tie?” asked the Saint.

He allowed the envelope to be taken out of his hand. It was addressed to Mr. Ronald Nilder, and the detective ripped it open. Inside he found a flexible gramophone disk, and somewhat to his amazement the label in the centre bore the name of Chief Inspector Teal.

“You’d better come along with me,” said the detective.

They went in a taxi to Walton Street police station; and there, after some delay, a gramophone was produced and the record solemnly mounted on the turntable.

The plain-clothes man, the divisional inspector, the sergeant on duty, and two constables gathered round to listen. Chief Inspector Teal had already been called on the telephone, and the transmitter was placed close to the gramophone for a limited broadcast. Someone set the needle in its groove and started it off.

“Hullo, everybody,” said the disk, in a cracked voice. “This is Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal speaking from Scotland Yard. The subject of my lecture today is ‘How to Catch Criminals Red-Handed’-a subject on which my experience must be almost unique. From the day when I captured Jack the Ripper to the day when I arrested the Saint, my career has been nothing but a series of historic triumphs. Armed with a bottle of red ink and my three faithful red herrings, Metro, Goldwyn, and Mayer, I have never failed to reduce my hands to the requisite colour. Although for many years I suffered from bad legs, eczema, boils, halitosis, superfluous hair, and bunions —”

Simon gave Patricia a graphic account of the incident when he met her at lunchtime.

“It was not Teal-baiting,” he insisted. “It was a little deed of kindness-a little act of love. After all, is it right that Claud should be encouraged to prod his nose into my private correspondence? If we let him run amok like that, one day he might go too far. We have warned him off for his own good.”

They celebrated suitably; and it was late that night when they returned home for a final plate of bacon and eggs before calling it a day. Simon paid off the taxi in Queen’s Gate, and they walked up to the house together. The watcher at the corner of the road had gone–the Saint had not expected that Teal would urge him to stay on after that home-made gramophone record had been played.

It was so soon after he had finished installing his electric safety devices that Simon had not even started to anticipate results from them-they were provided for the more strenuous days which he hoped to enjoy before very long-when his return became more widely known and many more guilty consciences began to ask themselves whether their subterranean industries might prosper better if Simon Templar were removed from the catalogue of risks which no insurance company would cover. He had the front-door key in his hand before he remembered that the latest product of his defense genius was now in full working order. Quite casually he slid up a small metal panel under the knocker; and then his face went keen and hard. A tiny bulb set in the woodwork under the panel was glowing red.

Simon dropped the shutter over it again and drew Patricia aside.

“We’ve had a visitor,” he said. “I didn’t think the fun would begin quite so soon.”

There was nothing to show whether the visitor had taken his departure. Only one thing was certain-that someone or something had passed across the barrage of invisible alarms that Simon had arranged to cover every door and window in the place. The visitor might have left, but Simon was not disposed to bet on it.

He stood well to the side of the doorway, sheltered by the solid brickwork of the wall, while he reached round and slipped his key soundlessly into the lock at arm’s length. Still keeping out of sight, he pushed the door softly back and felt under the jamb for the electric light switch. There was a flicker of fire and a deafening report; and then the light came on and Simon leapt through into the hall. He heard a patter of feet and the slam of a door, and raced through the kitchen to the back entrance on the mews. He got the door open in time to see a running figure fling itself into the back of an open car which was already speeding towards the street, and a second shot came from it before it turned out of the mews. The bullet flew wide and smacked into the wall; and Simon grinned gently and went back to Patricia Holm.

“There’s one gunman in London who loses his nerve rather easily, which is just as well for us,” he remarked. “But I wonder who it was?”

Curiously enough, he had almost forgotten the man named Jones, who had done such an unfriendly thing to Brian Quell that night in Paris.

CHAPTER IV
THERE were no further demonstrations of disapproval that night, although the Saint paid particular attention to the setting of his gadgets before he went to bed, and slept with one ear cocked. He came down to breakfast late the next morning, and was confronted by a shining little cylinder of brass in the middle of his plate. For a moment he stared at it puzzledly, and then he laughed.

“A souvenir?” he murmured, and Patricia nodded.

“I found it in the hall, and I thought you might like to put it in your museum.”

Simon spread his napkin cheerfully.

“More ‘Weapons I Have Not Been Killed With’?” he suggested. “There must be quite a trunkful of them.” He reached out a hand towards the cartridge case, and then drew it back. “Wait a minute-just how did you pick this thing up ?”

“Why-I don’t know. I —”

“Surely you can remember. Think for a minute. I want you to show me exactly how you took hold of it, how you handled it, everything that happened to it between the time when you saw it on the carpet and the time when it reached this plate… . No-don’t touch it again. Use a cigarette.”

The girl took up the cigarette endways between her thumb and forefinger.

“That’s all I did,” she said. “I had the plate in my other hand, and I brought it straight in. Why do you want to know ?”

“Because all clever criminals wear gloves when they open safes, but very few of them wear gloves when they’re loading a gun.” Simon picked up the shell delicately in his handkerchief, rubbed the base carefully where the girl’s thumb had touched it, and dropped it into an empty matchbox. “Thanks to your fastidious handling, we probably have here some excellent finger-prints of a rotten marksman-and one never knows when they might come in handy.”

He turned to a plate of sizzling bacon and eggs with the profound gusto of a man who has slept like a child and woken up like a lion. Patricia allowed him to eat and skim through his morning paper in peace. Whatever schemes and theories were floating through his mercurial imagination, he would never have expounded them before his own chosen time; and she knew better than to try and drag them out of him before he had dealt satisfactorily with his fast.