The Saint vs Scotland Yard (2 page)

Some seconds passed before the detective recovered the use
of his
voice; but when he had done this, he made up for lost
time.

“What,” he snarled, “the blankety blank blanking blank-
blanked
blank——

“Hush,” said the Saint.

“Why?” snarled Teal, not unreasonably.

Simon held up his hand.

“Listen.”

There was a moment’s silence; and then Teal’s glare recalorified
.

“What am I supposed to be listening to?” he demanded
violently;
and the Saint beamed at him.

“Down in the forest something stirred—it was only the note
of a
bird,” he explained sweetly.

The detective centralised his jaw with a visible effort.

“Is Montgomery Bird another of your fancy names?” he
inquired,
with a certain lusciousness. “Because, if it is——”

“Yes, old dear?”

“If it is,” said Chief Inspector Teal grimly, “you’re
going to
see the inside of a prison at last.”

Simon regarded him imperturbably.

“On what charge?”

“You’re going to get as long as I can get you for allowing
drinks to
be sold in your club after hours—

“And then——?”

The detective’s eyes narrowed.

“What do you mean?”

Simon flourished Mr. Bird’s cigar airily.

“I always understood that the police were pretty bone-
headed,”
he remarked genially, “but I never knew before that
they’d
been reduced to employing Chief Inspectors for ordinary drinking raids.”

Teal said nothing.

“On the other hand, a dope raid is quite a different matter,”
said the
Saint.

He smiled at the detective’s sudden stillness, and stood up,
knocking
an inch of ash from his cigar.

“I must be toddling along,” he murmured. “If you really
want to
find some dope, and you’ve any time to spare after you’ve finished cleaning up
the bar, you ought to try locking
the door of this room and pulling up
bits of wainscoting. The
third and fifth sections—I can’t tell you
which wall. Oh, and
if you want Montgomery, he’s simmering down in the Frigidaire
… .
See you again soon.”

He patted the crown of Mr. Teal’s bowler hat affectionately,
and was
gone before the detective had completely grasped
what was happening.

The Saint could make those well-oiled exits when he chose;
and he
chose to make one then, for he was a fundamentally tactful man. Also, he had in
one pocket an envelope purporting to contain one hundred pounds, and in
another pocket the
entire contents of Mr. Montgomery Bird’s official safe;
and at such times the Saint did not care to be detained.

Chapter II

Simon Templar pushed back his plate.

“Today,” he announced, “I have reaped the first-fruits of
virtue.”

He raised the letter he had received, and adjusted an imag
inary pair
of pince-nez. Patricia waited expectantly.

The Saint read:

“Dear Mr: Templar,

“Having come across a copy of your book ‘The Pirate’
and having nothing to do I sat down to read it. Well, the impression it gave me
was that you are a writer with no sense of proportion. The reader’s sympathy
owing to the
faulty setting of the first chapter naturally goes all the
way with Kerrigan, even though he is a crook. It is not
surprising
that this book has not gone to a second edition.
You do not
evidently understand the mentality of an
English reading
public. If instead of Mario you had se
lected for your hero
an Englishman or an American, you
would have written a fairly readable and a
passable tale
—
but a lousy Dago who works himself out of
impossible difficulties and situations is too much. It is not convincing.
It does not appeal. In a word it is puerile.

“I fancy you yourself must have a fair amount of
Dago
blood in you——”

He stopped, and Patricia Holm looked at him puzzledly.

“Well?” she prompted.

“There is no more,” explained the Saint. “No address—no
signature—no
closing peroration—nothing. Apparently words
failed him. At that
point he probably uttered a short sharp
yelp of intolerable
agony, and began to chew pieces out of the
furniture. We may
never know his fate. Possibly, in some
distant asylum——”

He elaborated on his theory.

During a brief spell of virtue some time before, the Saint
had
beguiled himself with the writing of a novel. Moreover, he
had
actually succeeded in finding a home for it; and the
adventures of Mario,
a super-brigand of South America, could be purchased at any bookstall for three
half-crowns. And the letter that he had just read was part of his reward.

Another part of the reward had commenced six months
previously.

“Nor is this all,” said the Saint, taking another document from
the table. “The following
billet-doux
appears to close
some
entertaining correspondence:

“Previous applications for payment of the undermen
tioned
instalment for the year 1931-1932,
due from you on the 1st day January,
1932,
having been made to you without effect, PERSONAL DEMAND is now made for pay
ment, and I
HEREBY GIVE YOU FINAL NOTICE that if the amount be not paid or remitted to me
at the above
address within SEVEN DAYS from this date, steps will be
taken for
recovery by DISTRAINT, with costs.

“
L
IONEL
D
ELBORN,
C
OLLECTOR.”

In spite of the gloomy prognostications of the anonymous
critic,
The
Pirate
had not passed utterly unnoticed in the
spate of sensational
fiction. The Intelligence Department (“A
beautiful name for
them,” said the Saint) of the Inland
Revenue had observed
its appearance, had consulted their
records, and had discovered that the
author, the notorious
Simon Templar, was not registered as a
contributor towards
the expensive extravagances whereby a modern boobocracy
does its
share in encouraging the survival of the fattest. The
Saint’s views about
his liabilities in this cause were not
invited: he simply received an assessment
which presumed his
income to be six thousand
pounds per annum, and he was
invited
to appeal against it if he thought fit. The Saint
thought fit, and declared that the assessment was
bad in law,
erroneous in principle,
excessive in amount, and malicious in
intent.
The discussion that followed was lengthy and
diverting; the Saint, conducting his own case with remarkable
forensic ability and eloquence, pleaded that he was
a charitable institution and therefore not taxable.

“If,” said the Saint, in his persuasive way, “you will
look up the delightful words of Lord Macnaghten, in
Income Tax
Commissioners
v.
Pemsel,
1891, A.C. at p. 583, you will find
that
charitable purposes are there defined in four principal
divisions,
of which the fourth is
‘trusts for purposes beneficial
to the
community, not falling under any of the preceding
heads.’
I am simply
and comprehensively beneficial to the
community, which the face of the third
Commissioner from
the left definitely is not.”

We find from the published record of the proceedings that
he was
overruled; and the epistle he had just quoted was final
and
conclusive proof of the fact.

“And that,” said the Saint, gazing at the formidable red
lettering
gloomily, “is what I get for a lifetime of philanthropy and
self-denial.”

“I suppose you’ll have to pay,” said Patricia.

“Someone
will,” said the Saint significantly.

He propped the printed buff envelope that had accompa
nied the
Final Demand against the coffee-pot, and his eyes
rested on it for a
space with a gentle thoughtfulness—amaz
ingly clear,
devil-may-care blue eyes with a growing glimmer of
mischief lurking
somewhere behind the lazily drooping lids.

And slowly the old Saintly smile came to his lips as he contemplated
the address.

“Someone
will have to
pay,” repeated the Saint
thoughtfully; and Patricia Holm sighed, for
she knew the
signs.

And suddenly the Saint stood up, with his swift soft laugh,
and took
the Final Demand and the envelope over to the
fireplace. On the wall
close by hung a plain block calendar, and on the mantelpiece lay an old
Corsican stiletto.
“Che la
mia ferita sia
mortale,”
said the inscription on the blade.

The Saint rapidly flicked over the pages of the calendar and tore out the
sheet which showed in solid red figures the day on
which Mr. Lionel
Delborn’s patience would expire. He placed
the sheet on top of
the other papers, and with one quick
thrust he drove the stiletto through
the collection and speared
it deep into the panelled overmantel.

“Lest we forget,” he said, and turned with another laugh to
smile seraphically into Patricia’s outraged face. “I just wasn’t
born to be
respectable, lass, and that’s all there is to it. And
the time has come for
us to remember the old days.”

As a matter of fact, he had made that decision two full
weeks
before, and Patricia had known it; but not until then
had he made his open
declaration of war.

At eight o’clock that evening he was sallying forth in quest
of an
evening’s innocent amusement, and a car that had been
standing in the
darkness at the end of the cul-de-sac of Upper
Berkeley Mews suddenly
switched on its headlights and roared
towards him. The Saint leapt back and
fell on his face in the
doorway, and he heard the
plop
of a
silenced gun and the thud of a bullet burying itself in the woodwork above his
head. He
slid out into the mews again as the car went past,
and fired twice as it
swung into Berkeley Square, but he could
not tell whether he
did any damage.

He returned to brush his clothes, and then continued calmly on his way;
and when he met Patricia later he did not think it necessary to mention the
incident that had delayed him. But it
was the third time since the episode
chez
Bird that the Scor
pion had tried to kill him, and no one knew
better than
Simon Templar that it would not be the last attempt.

Chapter III

For some days past, the well-peeled eye might at inter
vals have
observed a cadaverous and lantern-jawed individual
protruding about six
and a half feet upwards from the cobbled paving of Upper Berkeley Mews. Simon
Templar, having that
sort of eye, had in fact noticed the
apparition on its first and
in all its subsequent visits; and anyone less
well-informed than himself might pardonably have suspected some connection be
tween the
lanky boulevardier and the recent disturbances of
the peace. Simon
Templar, however, was not deceived.

“That,” he said once, in answer to Patricia’s question,
“is
Mr. Harold Garrot, better known as Long Harry. He is a
moderately
proficient burglar; and we have met before, but
not professionally. He
is trying to make up his mind to come
and tell me something, and one of
these days he will take the
plunge.”

The Saint’s deductions were vindicated twenty-four hours
after the
last firework display.