The Saint and Mr. Teal: Formerly Called "Once More the Saint" (7 page)

“Open it.”

The big man obeyed, turning the lock with a key which he took from his trouser pocket. Simon kicked the door wider.

“This way, Pat.”

He waited on the landing while the girl came out, never shifting his eyes from the big man’s venomous stillness. Patricia touched his sleeve, and he smiled. “Simon-then it wasn’t you I heard… .”

“That scream?” Simon slipped an arm round her and held her for a moment. “Why-did you think my voice was as bad as that, old darling? … No, but it wasn’t brother Jones either, which is a pity.”

“Then who was it?”

“It was Dr. Quell. Pat, we’ve struck something a little tougher than I expected, and it hasn’t turned out too well. This is just once in our lives that Claud Eustace will be useful. Once upon a time we might have handled it alone, but I think I promised to be careful.”

He looked at his prisoner.

“I want your telephone,” he said.

The big man hesitated, and Simon’s gun screwed in his ribs.

“C’mon. You can have indigestion afterwards.” Simon released the girl. “And that reminds me-if you did leave one of those sausages …”

Again they descended step by step towards the hall, with the Saint using his free hand to feed himself in a manner that is rarely practised in the best circles.

The telephone was in the hall, on a small table by the front door; and Simon turned his gun over to Patricia and walked across to it, chewing. He leaned a chair against the door and sat in it. The dial buzzed and clicked.

“Hullo. … I want Chief Inspector Teal… . Yeah- and nobody else. Simon Templar speaking. And make it snappy!”

The big man took a step towards him, his face yellow and his hands working. And immediately the girl’s finger took up the slack of the trigger. It was an almost imperceptible movement; but Mr. Jones saw it, and the steady deliberateness of it was more significant than anything that had entered his imagination since the gun changed hands. He halted abruptly; and the Saint grinned.

“Hullo. Is that you, Claud ?… Well, I want you… . Yeah-for the first time in my life I’ll be glad to see you. Come right over, and bring as many friends as you like. … I can’t tell you on the phone, but I promise it’ll be worth the trip. There’s any amount of dead bodies in the house, and … Well, I suppose I can find out for you. Hold on.”

He clamped a hand over the mouthpiece and looked across the table.

“What’s the address, Jones?”

“You’d better go on finding out,” retorted the big man sullenly.

“Sure.” The Saint’s smile was angelic. “I’ll find out. I’ll go to the street corner and see. And before I go I’ll just kick you once round the hall-just to see my legs are functioning.”

He lounged round the table, and their eyes met.

“This is 208, Meadowbrook Road,” said the man grimly.

“Thanks a lot.” Simon dropped into his chair again and picked up the telephone. “Two-o-eight, Meadow-brook Road, Hampstead-I’ll be here when you come… . O.K., Eustace.”

He rose.

“Let’s climb stairs again,” he said brightly.

He took over the gun and shepherded the party aloft. The show had to be seen through, and his telephone call to Chief Inspector Teal had set a time limit on the action that could not be altered. It was a far cry from that deserted house to the hotel in Paris where Brian Quell had died, and yet Simon knew that he was watching the end of a coherent chain of circumstances that had moved with the inscrutable remorselessness of a Greek tragedy. Fate had thrust him into the story again and again, as if resolved that there should be no possibility of a failure in the link that bore his name; and it was ordained that he should write the end of the story in his own way.

The laboratory upstairs stood wide open. Simon pushed the big man in and followed closely behind. Patricia Holm came last: she saw the professor huddled back against his machine with his face still distorted the ghastly grimace that the death agony of high-voltage electricity had stamped into his features, and bit her lip. But she said nothing. Her questioning eyes searched the Saint’s countenance of carved brown granite; and Simon backed away a little from his captive and locked the door behind him.

“We haven’t a lot of time, Jones,” he remarked queitly; and the big man’s lips snarled.

“That’s your fault.”

“Doubtless. But there it is. Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal is on his way, and we have one or two things to settle before he comes. Before we start, may I congratulate you?”

“I don’t want any congratulations.”

“Never mind. You deserve them.” The Saint fished out his cigarette case with his left hand. Quite naturally he extracted and lighted a cigarette, and stole a glance at his wrist watch while he did so. His brain worked like a taximeter, weighing out miles and minutes. “I think I’ve got everything taped, but you can check me up if I go wrong anywhere. Somehow or other-we won’t speculate how-you got to know that Dr. Quell had just perfected a perfectly sound commercial method of transmuting metals. It’s been done already, on a small scale, but the expense of the process ruled it right out as a get-rich-quick proposition. Quell had worked along a new line, and made it a financial cinch.”

“You must have had a long talk with him,” said the big man sardonically.

“I did… . However-your next move, of course, was to get the process for yourself. You’re really interesting, Jones-you work on such original lines. Where the ordinary crook would have tried to capture the professor and torture him, you thought of subtler methods. You heard of Quell’s brother, a good-for-nothing idler who was always drunk and usually broke. You went over to Paris and tried to get him in with you, figuring that he could get Sylvester’s confidence when no one else could. But Brian Quell had a streak of honesty in him that you hadn’t reckoned with. He turned you down-and then he knew too much. You couldn’t risk him remembering you when he sobered up. So you shot him. I was there. A rotten shot, Jones-just like the one you took at me this evening, or that other one last night. Gunwork is a gift, brother, and you simply haven’t got it.”

The big man said nothing.

“You knew I knew something about Brian Quell’s murder, so you tried to get me. That talk about an ‘envoy’ of yours was the bunk-you were playing the hand alone, because you knew there wasn’t a crook on earth who could be trusted on a thing as big as this.” The Saint never paused in his analysis; but his eyes were riveted to the prisoner’s face, and he would have known at once if his shot in the dark went astray. Not the faintest change of expression answered him, and he knew he was right. Jones was alone. “By the way, I suppose you wouldn’t like to tell me exactly how you knew something had gone wrong in Paris ?”

“If you want to know, I thought I heard someone move in the corridor outside, and I went out to make sure. The door blew shut behind me, on an automatic lock. I had to stand outside and listen. Then someone really did come along the passage —”

“And you had to beat it,” Simon nodded. “But I don’t think you rang me up this morning just to make out how much I heard. What you wanted was to hear my voice, so that you could imitate it.”

“He did it perfectly,” said Patricia.

The Saint smiled genially.

“You see, Jones? If you couldn’t have made your fortune as a gun artist, you might have had a swell career as a ventriloquist. But you wouldn’t have it. You wanted to be a Master Mind, and that’s where the sawdust came out. My dear old borzoi, did you think we’d never heard of that taxi joke before ? Did you think poor little Patricia, with all her experience of sin, was falling for a gag like that? Jones, that was very silly of you-quite irreparably silly. We let you have your little joke just because it seemed the easiest way to get a close-up of your beautiful whiskers. If you’d left us your address before you rang off this morning we’d have been saved the trouble, but as it was —”

“Well, what are you getting at?” grated the big man..

“Just checking up,” said the Saint equably. “So you know how we got here. And I found that King’s Messenger in the other room-that’s what first confirmed what we were up against. Anyone making gold is one of the things the Secret Service sits and waits for all year round: one day the discovery is going to be genuine, and the first news of it would send the international exchanges crazy. There’d be the most frightful panic in history, and any government has got to be watching for it. That King’s Messenger had the news- you were lucky to get him.”

The big man was silent again, but his face was pale and pasty.

“Two murders, Jones, that were your very own handiwork,” said the Saint. “And then-the professor. Accidental, of course. But very unfortunate. Because it means that you’re the only man left alive who knows this tremendous secret.”

Simon actually looked away. But he had no idea what he looked at. The whole of his faculties were concentrated on the features which were still pinned in the borders of his field of vision, watching with every sense in his body for the answer to the question that he could not possibly ask. That one thing had to be known before anything else could be done, and there was only one way to know it. He bluffed, as he had bluffed once before, without a tremor of his voice or a flicker of his eyes. …

And the most expressive thing about the big man’s expression was that it did not change. The big man took the Saint’s casual assertion into his store of knowledge without the slightest symptom of surprise. It signified nothing more to him than one more superfluous blow on the head of a nail that was already driven deep enough. He glared at the Saint, and the gun in the Saint’s hand, without any movement beyond a mechanical moistening of his lips, intent only on watching for the chance to fight that seemed infinitely improbable… . And the Saint tapped the ash from his cigarette and looked at the big man again.

“I got nearly everything out of Dr. Quell before you interrupted us,” he said, clinching the assertion for utter certainty. “It was clever of you to wheedle Quell’s process out of him bit by bit - and very useful that you had enough scientific knowledge to understand it. I suppose Quell’s sphere of service was running out about this time, anyway - you’d have got rid of him yourself even if there’d been no accident. A very sound and prudent policy for a Master Mind, Jones, but just a shade too dangerous when the scheme springs a leak like me.”

“Cut it short,” snarled the big man. “What more d’you want? The gold’s there-“

“Yes, the gold’s certainly there,” said the Saint dispassionately. “And in about ten minutes the police will be here to gape at it. I’m afraid that can’t be helped. I’d like to get rich quick myself, but I’ve realized tonight that there’s one way of doing it which is too dangerous for any man to tackle. And you don’t realize it, Jones - that’s the trouble. So we can’t take any risks.”

“No?”

“No.” Simon gazed at the big man with eyes that were very clear, and hard as polished flints. “You see, that secret’s too big a thing to be left with you. There’s too much dynamite tied up in it. And yet the police couldn’t do anything worth a damn. They’re bound by the law, and it’s just possible you might beat a murder rap. I don’t know how the evidence might look in front of a jury; and of course my reputation’s rather shopsoiled, and you may be a member of parliament for all I know… . Are you following me, Jones? The police couldn’t make you part with your secret —”

“Neither could you.”

“Have your own way. As it happens, I’m not trying. But with a reputation like mine it’d be bad business for me to shoot you. On the other hand, there could always be another accident-before the police arrived.”

The man called Jones stood with his arms hanging loosely at his sides, staring at the Saint unblinkingly. In those last few minutes he had gone suddenly quiet: the snarl had faded out of his voice and left a more restrained level of grim interrogation. His chin was sunken tensely on his powerful chest, and under the thick black eyebrows his eyes were focussing on the Saint with the stony brightness of brown marbles.

He hunched his muscular shoulders abruptly-it was the only movement he made.

“Is that a threat?” he asked.

“No.” Simon was just as quiet. “It’s a promise. When the police arrive they’re going to find that there’s been another accident. And the fact will be that you, Jones, also fell against that machine.”

CHAPTER VIII
THE BIG MAN leapt forward as he finished speaking. Simon knew that that was coming-he was ready and waiting for it. There was no other way about it; and he had been prepared for it ever since one question had been answered. He had never intended to shoot after they returned to the laboratory, whatever happened; but he snatched his gun away out of range of the wild grab that Jones made for it, and tossed it neatly across to Patricia. She caught it at her knees; and the Saint slipped under the big man’s arms and jammed him against the door. For an instant they strained against each other face to face; and the Saint drew a deep breath and spoke over his shoulder.

“Don’t shoot, Pat,” he said. “Get over in the corner and stay out of the way. The gun’s for you to get out with if anything goes wrong.”

The big man heaved up off the door in a mighty jerk and hurled the Saint back with all the impetus of his superior weight. He shook off the Saint’s grip with a writhing effort of his arms-Simon felt the man’s biceps cording under his hands before the grip was broken, and knew that he was taking on nothing easy. The force of his opponent’s rush drove him to within a yard of the deadly steel dome; then he recovered his balance and stopped the man with a couple of half-arm jolts to the stomach that thudded into their mark like pistons hitting a sandbag. Jones grunted and went back on his heels, dropping his hands to guard; and the Saint shot out a snake-like left for the exposed chin. The big man took it on the side of his jaw, deliberately, and snatched at the flying wrist as the blow landed.

His fingers closed on it like iron clamps, twisting spitefully. He had every ounce of the strength that his build indicated, and he was as hard as teak all over -the Saint had felt that when he landed with those two staggering blows that would have broken most men in the middle. What was more, he had been trained in a school of fighting that knew its stuff: he never gave the Saint a chance to make a boxing match of it. Simon swerved away from the dome and kicked up his knee, but the big man edged back. The Saint’s left arm was clamped in an agonizing armlock, and he was wrenched ruthlessly round again towards the dome. The leverage of the hold was bearing him down to his knees; then with a swift terrific kick he straightened his legs under him and swung his right fist over in a smashing blow at the back of the man’s neck. The man coughed, and crumpled to his hands and knees; and Simon tore his wrist out of the grip and fell on top of him.