Trust the Saint (12 page)

“Even a minor?”

“The kids take a glass of wine with the family in France, or beer in Germany, and I’ve never noticed that it seemed to do them any harm. Personally, I’d say it was a lot better for them than the soda-pop-slop they swill by the gallon in America, and that’s already infiltrated here.”

“Well, the chap that Sam swears he was shopped by wouldn’t agree with you,” Monty said. “Particularly since he’s apparently got an interest in one of those soda-pop-slop factories, as you call ‘em.”

“This may ruin a beautiful dinner,” Simon said grimly. “And the chicken pie here, which I ordered for us, is merely the best in England. But at the risk of acute indigestion, I must hear more about this ineffable excrescence.”

“His name,” Monty said reluctantly, “is Isaiah Thoat.”

“I can hardly believe it,” said the Saint, rubbing his hands together ecstatically. “But do go on.”

If Mr Isaiah Thoat’s ears had begun to burn at this juncture, they would actually have added little luminosity to his complexion, in spite of their impressive size, for his facial capillaries had already endowed him with the rosy coloration which is popularly believed to be engendered by over-indulgence in ferments and distillates. It was an incongruous tint for his mournful cast of countenance, and attained its zenith of infelicity at the end of his long nose, which was positively purple. The combination, with his unfortunately rheumy eyes and the somber clothes which he preferred, made him look like a bibulous undertaker. This was a cruel injustice, for he had never tasted anything even as potent as lager beer, and the only burial he aspired to supervise was that of the allegorical figure personified as John Barleycorn.

Even Mr Thoat’s bitterest opponents, who were legion, had never found grounds for questioning his sincerity. But it could be claimed with equal truth that the Emperor Nero, the directors of the Spanish Inquisition, and the hierarchy of the Nazi Party were also sincere, according to their lights. And Isaiah Thoat would not have had to take second place to any of them for the fanaticism with which he was prepared to persecute dissenters from his dogma that liquor was the root of all evil.

“There he stood, Mr Templar,” said Sam Outrell, “right where you are, an’ no witnesses, of course, an’ sez: ‘Between you an’ me, I’d borrow the devil’s own pitchfork if I could use it to help toss some of you traders in Satan’s poison into his own Hades.’”

“And he used his own daughter to coax a drink out of you?” Simon asked.

“As true as I’m standin’ here, so help me. I wouldn’t have no cause to lie to you, sir, you know that, much as I’ve done it for you in the old days. She’s just as ‘omely as he is, what you’d expect, with that breeding, an’ it makes her look a lot older. But I didn’t have the foggiest who she was, an’ I fell for the whole swindle like a ton o’ bricks.”

“What did she do?”

“It’s closing time, an’ she’s about the last customer left, an’ she sez she feels faint. Now, she ain’t had nothing to account for that, I know, ‘cause I served her meself all evening, an’ all she drank was that Sanitade stuff her father makes—though I didn’t know then he was her father. So I gets everybody else out, while the wife is fussin’ over her, an’ this young woman sez ‘Could I have a sip of brandy?’”

“She asked for it herself?”

“Oh, yes—very weak like, as if she might die any minute. Well, sir, what would you do?”

Simon nodded in anticipation.

“And as soon as you gave it to her, the door opens—”

“Which I’d bin too bothered to lock up, an’ there’s a bobby comin’ in. ‘I seen you through the window,’ he sez, ‘selling this girl a drink.’

“‘She’s a friend of ours an’ a guest in the house,’ I sez, knowin’ the Law. ‘We didn’t sell her nothing, we gave it to her.’

“Right away she ain’t faintin’ no more, but sittin’ up as fine as you please, an’ she sez ‘That’s a lie,’ she sez, ‘I bought and paid for it.’ An’ there she’s pointin’ to a half-crown on the bar which she must’ve put down while we were talkin’. I ask you, sir, what chance did I have?”

The Saint took a sympathetically thoughtful swig from his tankard.

“Did you tell all this to the Beak?”

Of course I did. An’ he sez he has a mind to send me to jail for perjury. Because this girl, which ain’t what I’d like to call her, is there in court with her father, Mr Thoat, an’ he backs her up.”

“They were in it together?”

“It looks like it. ‘She’s a wayward girl and a cross I have to bear, your Honour,’ he sez. In spite of all I’ve done, this craving for the devil’s brew comes over her. That’s why I asked the constable to keep an eye out for her. It only takes an opportunity like this despicable publican gave her,’ he sez, ‘to undo all my loving care. I ask your Honour to make an example of him.’”

“And he did?”

“This magistrate is a teetotaller himself, an’ a real holy terror. He fines me a hundred quid, an’ sez he’ll consider havin’ my license taken away. I don’t think I’ve got an earthly, Mr Templar.”

Outrell looked around the low-ceilinged room with its age-blackened beams and yellowed plaster, the honestly worn chairs and tables of uncertain vintage, the bare floor eroded in ancient contours compounded of the vagaries of its own wood grain and the most-used routes between bar and bench and dart-board, all exposed in their nakedest simplicity by the bright morning light that streamed through the leaded windows; and his big hands tightened into stolid pain-enduring fists. It was just after opening time, and there were no other customers to listen or interrupt.

“This is all I ever wanted, sir. Even when I went to work in London, to earn more money for bringing up the kids than I could as a farm hand. A place like this to put what was left of our savings in, where the wife an’ me could make enough to get along without being a burden to anyone includin’ the other taxpayers, an’ we could have good company every day, with the kind o’ plain country people we like. Thank God the old English country pub is still goin’ strong, Mr Templar, in spite of Mr Thoat an’ his Sanitade. It’s as English as the changin’ of the Guard, or the Derby, or them orators in Hyde Park: it’s the little man’s club an’ debating society an’ a place to get away from the missus when she’s actin’ up without gettin’ into no real trouble, where he can have his mug o’ beer an’ good company an’ not get hurt or hurt nobody. I thought I could be a good publican, though he sez it as if it was a rude word. … It hurts, Mr Templar, but p’raps after all I wasn’t cut out for it. It hurts; but me an’ the wife are readin’ the advertisements, lookin’ for something else. We might have to take a little tobacco an’ sweet shop, something like that, somewhere. But it won’t be the same.”

“Have you any idea why they picked on you?”

“I suppose that’s not hard to see, if you make yourself think like he does. His Sanitade company bought all the land next to me, from here to the main road, for their new Garden Factory. You must’ve noticed the foundations goin’ in when you drove up. That’s it. He thinks it’d be terrible to have a common pub right next to the plant where his Angels of Abstinence Association are mixin’ up their swill—not to mention the danger to his precious workers who might be tempted to drop in here for a quick one at lunch time or on the way home. He tried to get me to sell, when I moved in here, that time I started off tellin’ you about; an’ when I said I was goin’ to stay, an’ couldn’t we live an’ let live, that’s when he swore he’d get me out whatever it took. But what’s the use o’ tellin’ that to a magistrate, especially one like that one? He’s against you from the start, an’ anything you say is just tryin’ to wriggle out of a conviction. I know when I ain’t got a chance.”

You’re putting me in the hell of a spot, Sam, said tne Saint. “All these years I’ve had a dim hope that Prohibition might really take over in England, and then we could all become bootleggers and get rich. But if this front man for the Cause has to be mowed down, for your sake, I’ll see what can be done. Don’t give up yet.”

He went back to London to make some inquiries of his own, of which the most delicate concerned the constable who had played an essential part in the conviction of Sam Outrell. Obtaining the police records of policemen is about as ticklish an assignment as any outsider can undertake, especially when he is as traditionally non grata in police circles as the Saint, and when it might later become vital that nobody should recall that he had been inquiring about the officer in question.

There is however a section in the War Office which can request such information without having to give reasons, and which at certain periods has gratefully accepted the services of even more irregular characters than the Saint. There was a gray colonel still there who had not forgotten an obligation incurred during the days of the Swastika, who called the Saint back very promptly and without any fuss.

“There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with him except that he may be a bit too ambitious. He put in for the Scotland Yard training school, but he failed the written examination and went back to the Hertford constabulary. He’s entered for another try next year. They give him good marks locally except for taking himself too seriously and trying to get ahead too fast.”

The supplementary data on Isaiah Thoat were much easier to get, being mostly matters of public record. A former lay preacher, food faddist, pacifist, and anti-vivi-sectionist, he had finally settled on spiritus frumenti as the ideal lifelong adversary, and in that cause had formed and dedicated and made himself President of the Angels of Abstinence Association. But unlike the creators of many similar organizations, Mr Thoat had a hard head as well as a chip on his shoulder, and he had learned from other efforts to divert the human race from doom and damnation that Mammon is a powerful ally in righteous as well as unrighteous persuasion, and that the Righteous are often uncomfortably short of this assistance. Therefore he had arranged for the subscriptions, donations, and other funds picked up by the Angels of Abstinence to be funnelled into the manufacture and marketing of a potion that they could all themselves enjoy without fear of divine or digestive retribution, which they could personally propagandize wherever they went with the comforting assurance that no souls would be even superficially scorched, but that the coffers of salvation would be enriched by every sip.

Thus was born Sanitade, a nectar loosely based on a chocolated broth which Mr Thoat’s mother had made for him when he broke out in teen-age pimples, fortified with fruit juices chosen for their vitamin content, this horrendous concoction being well pasteurized, carbonated, and sealed in non-returnable bottles. The cachet of manufacture by the Angels of Abstinence gave it the same sort of distinction as is enjoyed, in the opposing camp, by the liqueur brewed by the Benedictine monks, and practically forced its acceptance and indorsement by all other groups dedicated to the same tenets as the Angels even under different management. It had thus become almost the official potion of all dry crusaders, and from them had spread to the membership of many equally zealous if less mono-phobic organizations, until Mr Thoat could congratulate himself on having been rewarded with quite a thriving business for his battle against those other beverages which, he maintained, also fuelled the fires of Hell, causing them to burn with a blue flame.

“We must do something about him, Monty,” Simon Templar said at another encounter.

“Why?” Monty argued. “Live and let live. Let him enjoy preaching prohibition and let’s us enjoy our drinks. Then everybody’s happy.”

“Except Sam.”

“He might do better selling cigarettes and gum drops, after all. The country-pub business isn’t what it used to be when you and I were a bit younger, anyway. And if you want to start that Robin Hood stuff again, you should do it on something important. There are still people smuggling dope into this country, for instance. It was in the papers only yesterday that Scotland Yard is baffled—”

“Maybe I’D help them with that, too,” said the Saint. “As soon as I can spare the time. But, Monty, have you ever tasted Sanitade?”

“No; and I don’t want to. I have a rather sensitive stomach—”

“I understand that. It looks sensitive, since you became an Editorial Director. So you should have more sympathy for other people who are being afflicted. It’s almost a sacred duty to get that swill off the market. And if we can strike a blow against crackpots and help Sam at the same time, wouldn’t it make you feel young again?”

The old hypnotic devilment danced in the Saint’s blue eyes, and Monty Hayward groaned.

“It makes me wish I’d had the sense to keep my mouth shut,” he said.

No such rueful presentiment clouded the horizon of Mr Isaiah Thoat as he watched the first rather unceremonious activation of the Sanitade Garden Plant—that would be a better name than “Factory,” he was thinking, and fitted the “Garden” motif so nicely.

The activation in fact consisted only of the delivery of a truck-load of cacao to an old but well-built barn which had been the only edifice on the plant site when he acquired it, which he had thriftily decided to preserve and use for miscellaneous storage. Though the new buildings were barely starting to rise from their footings, his shrewdness was already being vindicated: he had had the chance to pick up this consignment of essential raw material at a giveaway price, but would have had to turn it down if he had been limited to the storage facilities of the outgrown original Sanitade Factory which he was preparing to replace.

“You see, my dear Selina,” he observed to his daughter, who was with him, “Fortune does not only aid the wicked. Good luck is usually the reward of good judgment.”

“And you deserve all that you get, Papa,” she said.

She was one of those unlucky young females who seem to have been created solely to boost the morale of their nearest competitors. Beside her, no other creature in a skirt could have felt hopeless. It might be kinder not to detail her specifications, but simply to say that for every apparently ultimate disaster in feminine architecture there must be something worse; and she was it.

Mr Thoat signed the driver’s receipt and himself closed and locked the barn doors. He was just completing this when County Constable George Yelland rode by on his bicycle, and stopped.