The Saint Goes On (11 page)

And that was approximately that.

The Saint continued to lie prostrate on the floor after Pryke had been handcuffed and taken away, letting the profound contentment of the day sink into his soul and make itself gorgeously at home. Misunderstanding his stillness, Mr. Teal bent over him with a shadow of alarm on his pink face.

“Are you hurt?” he asked gruffly; and the Saint chuckled.

“Only in my pride.” He reached out and retrieved his cigarette, which had parted company with him during the scuffle, and blew the dust off it before replacing it in his mouth. “I’m getting a worm’s-eye view of life-you might call it an act of penance. If I’d had to make a list of all the people whom I didn’t think would ever turn out to be the High Fence, your Queen of the May would have been first on the roll. Well, I suppose Life has these surprises… . But it all fits in. Being on duty at Market Street, he wouldn’t have had any trouble in poisoning Johnny Anworth’s horse-radish; but I’m not quite sure how he got Sunny Jim”

“I am,” said Teal grimly. “He was standing a little behind me when I was talking to Fasson-between me and the door. He could have shot Fasson from his pocket and slammed the door before I could look round, without taking a tremendous risk. After all, there was no reason for anyone to suspect him. He put it over on all of us.” Teal fingered a slip of chewing gum out of his pocket and unwrapped it sourly, for he also had his pride. “I suppose it was you who took Sunny Jim away,” he said suddenly.

Simon grinned.

‘Teal! Will you always think these unkind thoughts about me?”

The detective sighed. He picked up the evidential package from the counter, opened it, glanced at the gleaming layers of gems, and stuffed it firmly into his pocket. No one knew better than himself what unkind thoughts he would always have to think. But in this case at least the Saint had done him a service, and the accounts seemed to be all square-which was an almost epoch-making denouement. “What are you getting out of this?” he inquired suspiciously.

The Saint rose to his feet with a smile, and brushed his clothes.

“Virtue,” he said piously, “is its own reward. Shall we go and look for some breakfast, or must you get on with your job?”

Mr. Teal shook his head.

“I must get back to London-there are one or two things to clear up. Pryke’s flat will have to be searched. There’s still a lot of stolen property to be recovered, and I shouldn’t be surprised to find it there-he must have felt so confident of never being suspected that he wouldn’t bother about a secret headquarters. Then we shall have to pull in Quincey and Enderby, but I don’t expect they’ll give us much trouble now.” The detective buttoned his coat, and his drowsy eyes went over the Saint’s smiling face with the perpetual haze of unassuageable doubt still lingering in them. “I suppose I shall be seeing you again,” he said.

“I suppose you will,” said the Saint, and watched Teal’s stolid portly figure lumbering out into the street before he turned into the nearest telephone booth. He agreed with Mr. Teal that Pryke had probably been confident enough to use his own apartment as his headquarters. But Patricia Holm and Hoppy Uniatz were already in London, whereas Mr. Teal had to get there; and Simon Templar had his own unorthodox interpretation of the rewards of Virtue.

Part I I
THE ELUSIVE ELLSHAW

THE visitors who came to see the Saint uninvited were not only members of the C.I.D. In several years of spectacular outlawry, Simon Templar had acquired a reputation which was known wherever newspapers were read.

“There must be something about me that excites the storytelling instinct in people,” he complained once to Patricia Holm, who should have known better than anyone how seriously to take his complaint. “Four out of every five have it, and their best friends won’t tell ‘em.”

Most of the legends that circulated about him were fabulously garbled, but the fundamental principles were fairly accurate. As a result, he had an ever-growing public which seemed to regard him as something between a benevolent if slightly weak-minded uncle and a miracle-working odd-job man. They ranged from burglars who thought that his skill might be enlisted in their enterprises for a percentage of the proceeds, to majestic dowagers who thought that he might be instrumental in tracing a long-lost Pekinese; from shop girls in search of romance to confidence men in search of a likely buyer of a gold brick. Sometimes they were interesting, sometimes they were pathetic; mostly they were merely tiresome. But on rare occasions they brought the Saint in touch with those queer happenings and dark corners in other people’s lives from which many of his adventures began, and for that reason there were very few of them whom he refused to see.

There was one lady in particular whom he always forced himself to remember whenever he was tempted to dodge one of these callers, for she was quite definitely the least probable herald of adventure who ever crossed his path. He was, as a matter of fact, just ready to go out one morning when Sam Outrell telephoned up to announce her.

“Your Jersey ‘as come back from the cleaners, sir,” was his cryptic postscript to the information.

Sam Outrell had been raised on a farm, many years before he came to be head porter in the apartment building on Piccadilly where the Saint lived, and incidentally one of Simon’s loyalest watch-dogs; and the subterfuges by which he managed to convey a rough description of visitors who were standing at his elbow were often most abstrusely bucolic. Simon could still remember the occasion, when he had been suffering tireless persecution from a stout Society dame who was trying to manufacture divorce evidence against her doddering spouse, on which Sam had told him that “Your silk purse has turned up, sir,” and had explained later that he meant to convey that “The old sow’s ‘ere.”

“I’ll have a look at it,” said the Saint, after a brief hesitation.

Viewing Mrs. Florence Ellshaw for the first time, when he opened the door to her, Simon could not deny that Sam Outrell had an excuse for his veiled vulgarity. She was certainly very bovine in build, with stringy mouse-coloured hair and a remarkable torso-the Saint didn’t dislike her, but he did not feel that Life would have been incomplete if she had never discovered his address.

“It’s about me ‘usband, sir,” said Mrs. Ellshaw, putting the matter in what must have looked to her like a nut shell.

“What is about your husband?” asked the Saint politely.

“I seen ‘im,” declared Mrs. Ellshaw emphatically. “I seen ‘im last night, plain as I can see you, I did, Mm wot left me a year ago wivout a word, after all I done for ‘im, me that never gave ‘im a cross word even when ‘e came ‘ome late an’ left all ‘is money at the local, as large as life ‘e was, an’ me workin’ me fingers to the bone to feed ‘is children, six of ‘em wot wouldn’t ‘ave a rag to their backs if it weren’t for me brother Bert as ‘as a job in a garridge, with three of his own to look after and his wife an invalid she often cries all night, it’s pitiful-Simon perceived that to let Mrs. Ellshaw tell her story in her own way would have required a lifetime’s devotion.

“What do you want me to do?” he interrupted.

“Well, sir, I seen ‘im last night, after ‘im leaving me wivout a word, ‘e might ‘ave bin dead for all I was to know, after all I done for ‘im, as I says to ‘im only the day before ‘e went, I says ‘Ellshaw,’ I says. ‘I’m the best wife you’re ever likely to ‘ave, an’ I defy you to say anythink else,’ I says, an’ me workin’ me fingers to the bone, with varicose veins as ‘urts me somethink terrible sometimes, I ‘as to go an’ sit down for an hour, this was in Duchess Place”

“What was in Duchess Place?” asked the Saint weakly.

“Why, where I sore ‘im,” said Mrs. Ellshaw, ” ‘im wot left me wivout a word-
“After all you done for him–-“

“An’ me doing for gentlemen around ‘ere all these months to feed ‘is children, wiv me pore legs achin’, an’ ‘e turns an’ runs away when ‘e sees me as if I ‘adn’t bin the best wife a man ever ‘ad, an’ never a cross word between us all these years.”

The Saint had found it hard to believe that Mrs. Ellshaw had reached an intentional full stop, and concluded that she had merely paused for breath. He took a mean advantage of her momentary incapacity.

“Didn’t you run after him?” he put in.

“That I did, sir, wiv me pore legs near to bursting after me being on them all day, an’ ‘e runs into an ‘ouse an’ slams the door, an’ I gets there after ‘im an’ rings the bell an’ nobody answers, though I waits there ‘arf an hour if I waited a minnit, ringin’ the bell, an’ me sufferin’ with palpitations wot always come over me if I run, the doctor tole me I mustn’t run about, an’ nobody answers till I says to meself, ‘All right, Ellshaw,’ I says, ‘I’ll be smarter’n you are,’ I says, an’ I goes back to the ‘ouse this morning, not ‘arf an hour ago it wasn’t, an’ rings the bell again like it might be a tradesman delivering somethink, an’ ‘e opens the door, an’ when ‘e seen me ‘e gets all angry, if I ‘adn’t bin the best wife ever a man ‘ad”

“And never a cross word between you all these years–-“

” ‘Yer daft cow,’ ‘e says, ‘can’t yer see yer spoilin’ everythink?’ ‘Never you mind wot I’m spoiling,’ I says, ‘even if it is some scarlet ‘ussy yer livin’ with in that ‘ouse, you gigolo,’ I says, ‘leaving me wivout a word after all I done for you,’ I says; and ‘e says to me, ‘ ‘Ere’s some money, if that’s wot yer after, an’ you can ‘ave some more any time you want it, so now will you be quiet an’ get out of ‘ere or else you’ll lose me me job, that’s wot you’ll do, if anybody sees you ‘ere,’ ‘e says, an’ ‘e shoves some money into me ‘and an’ slams the door again, so I come straight round ‘ere to see you, sir.”

“What for?” asked the Saint feebly.

He felt that he was only inviting a fresh cataract of unpunctuated confidences, but he could think of no other question that seemed so entirely apt.

Mrs. Ellshaw, however, did not launch out into another long-distance paragraph. She thrust one of her beefy paws into the fleshy canyon that ran down from her breastbone into the kindly concealment of her clothing, and dragged out what looked at first like a crumpled roll of white paper.

“That’s wot for,” she said, thrusting the catch towards him.

Simon took it and flattened it out. It was three new five-pound notes clumsily crushed together; and for the first time in that interview he was genuinely interested.

“Is that what he gave you?”

“That’s wot he gave me, exactly as ‘e put it in me ‘and, an’ there’s somethink dirty about it, you mark my words.”

“What sort of job was your husband in before he-er- left you?” Simon inquired.

” ‘E never ‘ad no regular job,” said Mrs. Ellshaw candidly. “Sometimes ‘e made a book-you know, sir, that street betting wot’s supposed to be illegal. Sometimes ‘e used to go to race meetings, but I don’t know wot ‘e did there, but I know ‘e never ‘ad fifteen pounds in ‘is life that ‘e came by honestly, that I know, and I wouldn’t let ‘im be dishonest, it ain’t worth it, with so many coppers about, and ‘im a married man wiv six children”

“What’s the address where you saw him?”

“It’s in Duchess Place, sir, wot’s more like a mews, and the ‘ouse is number six, sir, that’s wot it is, it’s next door to two young gennelmen as I do for, such nice gennelmen they are too, always askin’ about me legs––”

The Saint stood up. He was interested, but he had no intention of resuming a study of Mrs. Ellshaw’s varicose veins.

“I don’t know whether I can do anything for you, but I’ll see what I can find out-you might like to let me change these fivers for you,” he added. “Pound notes will be easier for you to manage, and these may help me.”

He put the three banknotes away in a drawer, and saw the last of Mrs. Ellshaw with some relief. Her troubles were not so utterly commonplace as he had expected them to turn out when she started talking, and some of the brightest episodes in his career had had the most unpromising beginnings, but there was nothing in the recital he had just listened to which struck him as giving it any special urgency. Even when the whole story was an open book to him, the Saint could not feel that he was to blame for failing to foresee the consequences of Mrs. Ellshaw’s visit.

He was occupied at that time with quite a different proposition-the Saint was nearly always occupied with something or other, for his ideas of good living were put together on a shamelessly plutocratic scale, and all his expenses were paid out of the proceeds of his raids on those whom he knew as the Ungodly. In this case it was a man of no permanent importance who claimed to be the owner of a mining concession in Brazil. There were always one or two men of that kind on the Saint’s visiting list-they were the providential pot-boilers of his profession, and he would have considered it a crime to let them pass by, but only a very limited number of them have been found worthy of commemoration in these chronicles. He walked home from the conclusion of this casual episode at two o’clock in the morning, and might have died before dawn if Sam Outrell had been less conscientious.

“The men have been to fix your extension telephone,” was the message passed on to him by the night porter; and the Saint, who had not ordered an extension telephone at all, was silently thoughtful in the elevator that whisked him up to his floor.

He walked down the corridor, as soundless as a prowling cat on the thick carpet, past the entrance of his own suite to another door at the very end of the passage. There was a key on his chain to unlock it; and he stepped out on to the fire-escape and lighted a cigarette under the stars.

From the handrail of the grating where he stood, it was an easy swing to his bathroom window, which was open. He passed across the sill like a shadow and went from room to room with a gun in his hand, searching the darkness with supersensitive faculties for anything that might be waiting to catch him unawares. Everything was quiet; but he touched pieces of furniture, and knew that they had been moved. The drawers of his desk were open, and his foot rustled against a sheaf of papers carelessly thrown down on the floor. Without touching a light switch he knew that the place had been effectively ransacked; but he came to the hall without finding a trace of any more actively unfriendly welcome.