The Saint Goes On (18 page)

The Saint felt him go limp, and cautiously relaxed the pressure of his hands. Then he slipped his arms under the man’s unconscious body and lifted him up. The whole encounter had made very little noise; and Simon was no less attentive to silence than he had been before, while he carried the man down the bank and laid him out in the canoe. A couple of deft sweeps of the paddle sent the craft skimming out into the stream; but the Saint kept it moving until a bend in the river hid the lights of the house before he struck a match and inspected the face of his capture.

It was Ellshaw.

VIII
“Now you are going to talk, brother,” said the Saint.

He sat facing his trophy over another flickering match, giving the other every facility to recognise him before the light went out. Ellshaw’s face was wet with the river water that had been slopped over him to help him back to unhappy consciousness; but there was something else on his face besides water-a pale clammy fright that made his oversized red nose stand out like a full-blown rose against the blanched sickliness of his cheeks.

The match spun from the Saint’s fingers into the water with an expiring hiss, dropping the curtain of blackness between them again; and the Cockney’s adenoidal voice croaked hysterically through the curtain.

“I carn’t tell yer nothing, guv’nor-strike me dead if I can!”

“I shouldn’t dream of striking you dead if you can,” said the Saint kindly. “But if you can’t … well, I really shouldn’t know what to do with you. I couldn’t just let you run away, because then you might begin to think you’d scored off me and get a swollen head, which would be very bad for you. I couldn’t adopt you as a pet and take you around with me on a lead, because I don’t like your face so much. I couldn’t put you in a cage and send you to the Zoo, because the other monkeys might object. And so the question would arise, brother, how would one get rid of you? And of course it would always be so easy to get hold of your skinny neck again for a while, and hold you under water while you blew bubbles.”

“Yer wouldn’t dare!” panted Ellshaw.

“No?” The Saint’s voice was just an infinitely gentle challenge lilting out of the darkness. “Did you get a good look at me when I struck that match, by any chance? You knew me well enough when I dropped in to see you in Duchess Place. And you talked as if you’d heard all about me, too. Did somebody ever tell you there was anything I didn’t dare?”

He could hear the racking harshness of the man’s breathing.

“Yer wouldn’t dare,” Ellshaw repeated as if he was only trying to convince himself. “That-that ‘ud be murder!”

“Yeah?” drawled the Saint. “I’m not so sure. You tell me the answer, brother, out of that vast general-knowledge fund of yours-is it legally possible to kill a man who’s already dead? Because you are dead, aren’t you? You were murdered nearly a year ago.”

It was a shot literally in the dark, but the sharp catch of the other’s breath was as clear an answer to him as if he had had a searchlight focused down the boat. His thumb-nail gritted across another match, and the flame cut the pitiless buccaneering lines of his face out of the gloom for as long as it took him to light a cigarette. And then there was only the red tip of the cigarette glowing in the intensified dark, and his voice coming from behind it: “So how on earth could I murder you again, brother? I could only make you stay dead, and I don’t think anybody’s ever laid down the law about a crime like that.”

“I don’t know nothing,” persisted Ellshaw hoarsely. “Honest I don’t.”

“Honest you do,” said the Saint persuasively. “But I didn’t even ask for your opinion. Just you come through with what’s on your mind, and I’ll let you know whether I think it was worth knowing.”

Ellshaw did not answer at once; and Simon went on quite calmly, with a matter-of-fact detachment that was more deadly than any bullying bluster: “Don’t kid yourself, sonny. If I had to toast your feet over a hot fire to make you talk, it wouldn’t be the first toasting party I’d been out on. If I ever felt like wiping you off the face of the earth, I’d do it and never have a sleepless night on account of it. But just for this one occasion, I’m liable to be as good as you’ll let me. When I came out here to catch a man, I told Chief Inspector Teal I’d bring him back with me, and I’d just as soon bring him back alive. What Teal will do to you when he gets you depends a whole lot on how you open your mouth first. Get wise to the spot you’re sitting in, Ellshaw. It isn’t everybody’s idea of a good time to get himself hanged; but nobody who did a good job of King’s Evidence has ever been strung up yet.”

“They couldn’t do it,” said Ellshaw sobbingly. “They couldn’t ‘ang me. I ain’t done nothing––”

“What about your wife?” said the Saint ruthlessly.

“She’s all right, guv’nor. I swear she is. Nobody’s done ‘er no ‘arm. I can tell you all abaht that.”

“Tell me.”

“Well, guv’nor, it was like this. When she spotted me in Duchess Plyce, an’ I ‘ad to get rid of ‘er, we thought afterwards she might go blabbin’ abaht ‘aving seed me, so we ‘ad to keep ‘er quiet, see? But she ain’t dead. She just got took off to some other place an’ kep’ there so she couldn’t talk. We couldn’t ‘ave people lookin’ for ‘er, though, an’ kickin’ up a fuss; so we ‘ad to give out she was dead, see?”

“Did you have to get the police to fish her dead body out of the Thames as well-just to make it more convincing?” asked the Saint coldly.

He was not quite sure what answer he expected-certainly he had not looked at the question as a vital thrust in the argument. The reaction which it obtained startled him, and he was surprised to find that he could still be startled.

For some seconds Ellshaw did not speak at all; and then his voice was shockingly different from the defiant whine in which he had been talking before.

“Go on,” he said huskily. “Yer carn’t tike me in wiv a yarn like that.”

“My dear sap,” said the Saint slowly, “I don’t want to take you in with any yarn. I’m only telling you. Your wife’s body was taken out of the river last night. It was supposed to be suicide at first, but now they’re pretty sure it was murder.”

There was another silence at the opposite end of the canoe; and Simon Templar drew his cigarette to an instant’s bright gleam of red in which the lines of his mouth could be seen as intent and inexorable as a stone mask, and went on without a change in the purring level of his voice.

“If you keep your mouth shut I wouldn’t give you a bad penny for your chance. You can put a lot of things over on a jury, but somehow or other they never take a great shine to a fellow who kills his own wife. Of course, they say hanging
isn’t such a bad death–—”

Ellshaw was making queer noises in his throat, as if he was struggling to do something with his voice. “Oh Gawd!”

His feet shuffled on the bottom. His breath was whistling through his teeth with a weird harshness that chilled something dormant in the Saint’s heart.

“You ain’t tryin’ to scare me, are yer? Yer just tellin’ me the tile to make me talk. She ain’t-dead?” “I’m afraid she is.” Ellshaw gulped. “My Gawd …” His voice went shrill. “The dirty lyin’

swine! The rat! He told me–—”

There was a sound as if he flopped over a thwart. In another moment he was sprawled across the Saint’s feet, clutching aimlessly at Simon with crazy shaking hands.

“I didn’t do it,” he blubbered. “I swear I didn’t! I didn’t wish ‘er dead. I believed wot I told yer. I thought she was just ‘idden away somewhere, like I was. I ain’t never murdered nobody!”

“Didn’t you know that Lord Ripwell was to be murdered?” said the Saint relentlessly. “Didn’t you know that I was to be murdered?”

“Yes, I did!” shouted the other wildly. “But I wouldn’t ‘ave murdered Florrie. I wouldn’t ‘ave stood for killin’ me
own missus. That filthy double-crossin’”

Simon gripped him by the shoulders. “Will you squeal, Ellshaw?”

He could feel the man’s stupefied eyes straining to find him in the darkness.

“Yes, I’ll squeal. My Gawd, I’ll squeal!” “You’re a bright boy after all,” said the Saint. He pushed the demented man away and took up his paddle again. Driving the canoe back up the stream with cool steady strokes, he felt a great ease of triumph. It was the same quiet thrill that a chess-player must feel on mastering an intricate problem. He realised with a touch of humour that it was one of the very few episodes in which success could not conceivably bring him one pennyworth of boodle; but it made no difference to his satisfaction. He had taken one of his impulsively wholehearted likings to Lord Ripwell.

The red light in the back upper window swam into view again past a clump of trees, and he turned the canoe into the bank and drove the paddle-blade into the shallow river bed to hold it. Ellshaw was still moaning and muttering incoherently; and, for his own sake, Simon hauled him up out of the canoe and shook him vigorously.

“Snap out of it, brother. This is your chance to get even- and shift yourself off the high jump at the same time ” “I’m going to squeal,” repeated Ellshaw dazedly The Saint kept hold of him.

“Okay. Then come up to the house and let Teal listen to it.” He rushed the trembling man over the rough lawn and up the side of the house to the french window of the living-room. There was an exclamation somewhere in the middle distance, and heavy feet pounded after him. The beam of a bullseye lantern picked him up.

“Oh, it’s you, sir,” said the police guard, illuminatingly.

“I thoughtGosh, what have you got there?”

“A tandem bicycle,” said the Saint shortly. “Get back to your post.”

Teal, startled by the noise, was on his feet when he thrust his prize into the room. The detective’s jaw hung open, and for a second or two he stopped chewing.

“Good Lord-is that”

“Yes, it is, Claud. A new gadget for punching holes in cellophane. If I could go on thinking up questions like that, I might be a policeman myself. Which God forbid. Don’t you know your boy friend?”

For once in his life Chief Inspector Teal was incapable of being offended.

“Ellshaw! Was he outside?”

“No, he was baked into the middle of a sausage-roll in the pantry perfectly disguised as a new genius from Scotland Yard.”

“How did you know he’d be there?”

“Oh, my God!” Simon pushed the harvest of his brain work into a chair like a sack of beans, and subsided against the table. “Have I got to do everything for you? All right. It was only this morning that I crashed into Duchess Place. I ought to have been killed last night. Since that failed, they hoped to get me this morning when I went nosing around. When that fell through, they had to make a quick getaway. I assumed that they were so far from expecting trouble that they hadn’t got a spare bolthole waiting to move into. Therefore they had to do something temporary. The Grand Panjandrum couldn’t have been a Grand Panjandrum at all if he hadn’t known that Ellshaw was a bit of a dim bulb. Therefore he wouldn’t want to risk letting him far out of his reach. He knew he was coming down here this afternoon, so naturally he’d park Ellshaw somewhere locally where he could get in touch with him, while he figured out what they were going to do next. Having made up his mind, he’d have to tell Ellshaw. Therefore Ellshaw would have to come to him for instructions-it would probably be easier than him going to see Ellshaw, and at the time he’d think it was just as safe. Therefore Ellshaw had to come here. Therefore he probably had to come here soon. Therefore he’d probably come to-night. And even if he didn’t, I couldn’t do any harm by waiting. Therefore I waited. Q. E. D. Or do you want a dictionary to help you out with the two-syllable words?”

Teal swallowed.

“Then he was”

His eyes travelled to a carefully corked bottle on a side table. Simon knew at once that it must be a sample of whisky corked for analysis, and smiled faintly.

“You needn’t bother with that,” he said. “I can tell you what’s in it. It’s nitroglycerine … as used in making the best bombs. If Irelock hadn’t coughed it all up you could drop him down the stairs and blow up the house; but it’s a deadly enough poison without that. No, I don’t think Ellshaw did it. He wouldn’t have known. But the man who made our two bombs might have.”

“Then do you mean it isn’t Ellshaw”

“Of course not. It’s much too big for him. There he is. Look at him. There’s the guy that all the commotion’s about-the great million-pound mystery that people had to be killed to keep. But he isn’t the brains. He couldn’t do anything at all. He’s dead!”

Mr. Teal blinked, staring at the red-nosed snivelling man who lay sprawling hot-eyed in the chair where Simon had thrown him. He looked alive. The low-pitched gasping noises that broke through his lips sounded alive. “How is he dead?” Teal asked stupidly. “Because he’s been murdered. And don’t forget something else. He’s King’s Evidence-I promised him that, and you haven’t a case to go to a jury without him.” The detective hesitated.

“But if he had anything to do with murdering his wife”

“He didn’t. I believe that, and so will you. He was double-crossed. After his wife had seen him, he was told she’d got to disappear in case she shot her mouth. He thought she was just going to be kept somewhere in hiding, like he was. He’ll tell you all about it. The Grand Panjandrum knew he’d never stand for killing his wife, so that was the story. And that’s why he’s going to squeal. You are going to squeal, aren’t you, Ellshaw?”

The man licked his lips.

“Yes, I’ll talk. I’ll tell everythink I know.” His voice had gone back to its normal level, but it was coarse and raspy with the blind vindictiveness of the passion that was sweating down inside him. “But I didn’t kill Florrie. Nobody ‘ad to kill her. I didn’t know nothink about it. I’ll tell yer.”

The Saint lighted a cigarette and drew the smoke down into his lungs.

“There you are, Claud,” he murmured. “Your case is all laid out for you. Shall I start the story or shall Ellshaw?”

Teal nodded.

“I think we’d better wait a moment before we begin,” he said. “Our police methods are useful sometimes. We’ve got young Nulland.”

“You have?”

“Yes.” Mr. Teal was beginning to recover some of his habitual bored smugness. “He was held up with a puncture just outside Sunningdale, and a motor-cycle patrol spotted him-I had a ‘phone call while the doctor was here last. He’s being sent back under guard-they ought to arrive any minute now.”