Trust the Saint (14 page)

Constable Yelland had another of those remotely unsettling qualms which had afflicted him since the previous morning.

“That isn’t for me to say, sir. I only gave evidence as to what I saw and heard with my own eyes and ears. It’s the magistrate who makes the conviction.”

“Oh, come off it, Robert!”

“The name is George, sir.”

“All right, Robert George. You’ve got opinions of your own, haven’t you?”

“It’s against regulations for me to discuss the decision of a court in which I have been a witness, sir,” said the constable, taking refuge in asperity from his own uncertainty. “And anyhow, what are you so interested about?”

Monty Hayward grinned, and brought out a pipe and tobacco-pouch which he began to work together with a disarming assurance which he had practised in some considerably more risky situations than this one.

“Suppose I was doing an article on Mr Thoat,” he said. “I’d be interested in a lot of things. Not just that business about his daughter, though that might come into it. But about what’s going on here, too. For instance, do you know what he’s got in this barn?”

“Yes. Cocoa.”

“Ah.”

“What do you mean, Ah?”

“I only mean that items like that are what sometimes make headlines.”

“I don’t see what’s a headline in that.”

“Do you know where he got this cocoa?”

“No, sir. Only that it was a bargain.”

“He told you that, did he?”

“His daughter did.”

“That was careless of her.”

“Look here, sir,” Yelland said, with increasing impatience, “if you know something that I ought to know, it’s your duty to tell me, not tease me with it.”

“I don’t definitely know anything,” Monty replied. “Not yet. Suspicions aren’t evidence, as you know. But I am investigating what sounded like a rather hot tip—”

“Where did it come from?”

Monty gave a reproachful look.

“Now, officer, you know very well that no reporter would give away the source of some kinds of information, and even a judge couldn’t force him to. I can only tell you that it came from an acquaintance of mine who isn’t always on good terms with the police, but who usually knows what he’s talking about. I’ve got a few more inquiries to make here and there, and if they confirm each other there may be an interesting arrest. Would you like to make an interesting arrest?”

The spontaneous gleam in the young policeman’s eye was replaced almost instantly by a dampening recognition of fact.

“I’m not in the CID yet, sir.”

“But you’d like to be, wouldn’t you? You’re a lot smarter than a lot of chaps on a beat, I’ve noticed that. I wish I could give you a—”

Suddenly Monty Hayward froze, staring fixedly, one hand extending with his pipe pointing in the direction of the stare.

“Robert George, do you see that?”

“What, sir?”

“That piece of paper, just sticking out from under the barn door! Go and get it. This may save us all the trouble of applying for a search warrant!”

Constable Yelland perplexedly retrieved the fragment. It appeared to be the corner of a label, but the only printing that could be read on it was the words: latropic IMPORT COMPANY, CUTTS LANE, STEPNEY.

“Cocoa is a tropical product,” Monty said. “I think we can assume that that label came from some of the stuff that was delivered here.”

“Very likely, sir. But I still don’t see-“

“Of course not. But you will … Hang on to the clue, officer. And let me know where you can be reached tomorrow morning, especially if you’re off duty. I’ll pass the tip on to you before anyone else, if it turns out to be a sound one, and you can make the most of it. Meanwhile, mum’s the word.”

Constable Yelland found himself left in a dreamy cloud not entirely unlike the one which had befogged Mr Thoat when Simon Templar took leave of him the day before. Which was not a fantastic coincidence, since the technique for creating both befuddlements had originated in the same disgracefully handsome head.

“A very nice job, Monty,” said the Saint, when he had listened to an almost verbatim report. “I don’t think you missed a trick. With a little more practice and a few less suburban scruples, you could soon be the perfect partner in crime again.”

“Thanks very much,” Monty said. “But I never was. This was an easy job, and it can’t get me into any trouble, whatever happens. I can still hide behind the Consolidated Press and the professional secrecy excuse. But when I think what it would be like if we’d been caught breaking into that Latropic warehouse, I wonder if I was ever qualified to be a company director.”

“Lots of them have ended up in jail,” Simon pointed out reassuringly. “But I’d’ve got you out of it somehow. Didn’t I always?”

“Like you did in that business about Prince Rudolf and his crown jewels. Yes; but my aging nerves can’t take so much any more. And suppose Young Sherlock identifies me as the driver of the truck that delivered that cocoa yesterday?”

The Saint laughed at him shamelessly.

“He never saw you. And Isaiah never looked at you twice—you said that yourself. And anyhow, I made you up and messed you up until even I wondered what you really looked like. And I stole the truck myself while you were in a board meeting with some of the best alibis on Fleet Street. Now will you stop worrying long enough to work out the timing for tomorrow?”

“It seems to me that our timing’s a bit off already. I’ve been watching for a report on that Latropic robbery, and there still doesn’t seem to have been one.”

“Because their warehouse isn’t opened every day, only when shipments are coming in or going out. We did a nice quiet job that didn’t attract any attention in the neighborhood, and obviously they didn’t have any reason to go to the place on Friday. That’s the first thing to take care of. You just use your reporter’s immunity again, call the head man at home and say you’ve heard through the underworld grapevine that his storehouse was cracked, and what does he know about it? If it hasn’t been discovered yet, he’ll soon find out. Then you see that it gets in the Sunday papers. Then tomorrow morning …”

At eight o’clock the next morning, George Yelland was just starting his breakfast and his Sunday paper simultaneously when his landlady called him to the telephone.

“This is the scoop I promised you, officer,” Monty Hay-ward said, after identifying himself. “Have you seen a newspaper yet?”

“I was just starting it, sir.”

“You’ll find a report that the Latropic Import Company —remember that label?—had their warehouse broken into on Thursday night and a lorry load of cocoa beans stolen, but the theft wasn’t discovered till yesterday afternoon, some time after I talked to you. Item two: if you check with Scotland Yard, you’ll find that they have a report of a lorry being stolen from a garage on Thursday afternoon which was found abandoned at Highgate on Friday afternoon. You might find out about its tires, and have another look at the tracks at Thoat’s barn. If you want to get credit for some fast thinking, you put that together with what Thoat’s daughter told you and take it to your Inspector. You needn’t bring me into it—tell him you figured it all out yourself. It should be good enough to take to any magistrate you can catch on his way to church, and get a search warrant for that barn.”

“But, sir … Mr Thoat—a receiver of stolen goods!” Yelland’s voice almost choked on the enormity of the thought as well as its possible value to his record. “They’d laugh at me, and I wouldn’t blame ‘em!”

“The thieves knew just where to unload the stuff, didn’t they, only a few hours after it was stolen? And there aren’t so many people who could use all that cocoa. Didn’t his daughter say it was a bargain? And where do you get some of the best bargains—if you don’t ask any questions?”

“I know, sir, but-“

“Don’t disappoint me, Robert,” Monty insisted, and this time the constable was too spellbound to reprove him on the name. “I’m trying to do something for you, and all I want in return is that you’ll see that the Consolidated Press gets the official news first. But if anyone goes on laughing at you, you suggest phoning the managing director of Latropic Import himself, and he’ll tell you that they haven’t sold or delivered that much cocoa to anyone, Mr Thoat or anyone else, for more than a week. I’ll give you his name and home address. Take this down …”

For Mr Isaiah Thoat it was also destined to be a climactic day. After a chapel service at which he had been invited to read the First Lesson, a performance which always left him feeling that at least part of the mantle of some Old Testament prophet remained clinging to his shoulders, he had huddled with the captains of his Angels of Abstinence over last-minute parade arrangements until he was only able to arrive an apologetic five minutes late at the address on Grosvenor Street which Simon Templar was using for that operation.

The apartment itself actually belonged to a stalwart pillar of the House of Lords, who stayed there only when Parliament was in session, and even then retreated every weekend to his estate in the Cotswolds, who would have been most surprised to know what unauthorized use was being made of it. But with the sole aid of this elementary knowledge of his lordship’s habits, and a certain persuasive skill with a lock, the mythical personality of Sebastian Tombs had been provided for the brief necessary time with a physical abode which could not possibly be linked to Simon Templar by any thread of proof.

“Come in, come in,” said the Saint heartily, brushing off Mr Thoat’s excuses on the threshold. “I know it must have been hard for you to get away.”

“I took the liberty of bringing my daughter Selina,” Mr Thoat said, disclosing her as he entered.

“Delighted,” said the Saint, without flinching. “She can help with the salad. I’m all alone here—I don’t approve of making a servant work on Sunday, even for a special occasion. But I think we can look after ourselves. I was just experimenting with something I thought of yesterday —a Sanitade cocktail. I know Sanitade is wonderful by itself, but people like to mix things, it makes them feel smart and creative. Might be another sales angle for you. Here, try it.”

He poured from a silver cocktail shaker.

Mr Thoat and Selina tasted, and tasted again.

“It’s very good,” Mr Thoat said politely.

“Just some Angostura, ginger, peppermint, and a couple of other things,” said the Saint. “I’ll send you the recipe when it’s perfected, and perhaps a few others. You could put out a little booklet. There’s nothing wrong about fighting the Devil with his own weapons, is there? And I think this mixture has quite a refreshing tang for a hot day.”

Mr Thoat and Selina drank some more. It was a hot day.

“Very good indeed,” Mr Thoat said.

His tone was a little less perfunctory, a little warmer. The combination certainly seemed to do something. Although it obscured the pure flavor of Sanitade, which to him was delicious, it indeed had a zest which developed like a sort of delayed deeper echo to the first impact on the palate.

“I haven’t forgotten our time limit,” said the Saint. “So if your daughter would take over in the kitchen, we can get right down to business. Would you like to start reading the deed while I show her where everything is?”

It was an impressive document on which Simon had labored conscientiously for some hours, loading it with all the whereases and heretofores that his sense of legal jargon could supply, and typing it on a grade of paper only slightly less heavy than the stone tablets which its verbiage deserved. After stretching to the limit the details of periodicity of payment, it proceeded, as he had warned at their luncheon, to prohibit at great length a list of highly improbable ways in which the money could not be spent, such as financing disorderly houses or lewd publications. From there it went on to enumerate the even more fanciful covenants assumed by Isaiah Thoat, who personally undertook to eschew such practices as nudism, consorting with astrologers, or dancing in a ballet, on down to receiving stolen goods or being charged with drunkenness, upon the least of which breaches the whole deal was off.

Ail this was gone through, clause by clause, while Mr Thoat had two more Sanitade cocktails and Simon took another one out to the kitchen.

“I know it sounds almost insulting,” Simon said unhappily. “But that’s the kind of man my father was. Don’t take anything for granted, was one of his principles. Even I had to sign the same thing myself.”

“I am not offended,” said Mr Thoat, with an almost benign superciliousness. “No man need be ashamed of reaffirming his principles. And with such a lot of money involved, you can’t be coo tareful—I mean, too careful.”

He scrawled his signature in the places provided, and handed the papers back with a grandiose flourish which almost upset his glass.

“Thish ish a great moment in my life,” he announced. “The climaxsh of thirty yearsh of vedotion … Do you have a liI more of that tocktail?”

Simon figured that Mr Thoat had already absorbed about four and a half ounces of vodka under the heading of the “couple of other things” in his concoction, and he did not want to overdo it.

“I’ve got something else, a Sanitade punch, to go with the salad,” he said. “And I think we ought to be starting on it. I don’t want to make you late.”

Selina Thoat was bringing in the salad, and Simon went to the refrigerator for the punch. In this the motive power consisted of rum and gin, but in milder dilution with Sanitade and pineapple juice than the alcohol in the cocktail. Their necessary aroma was masked by liberal twists of orange peel, and the strength was carefully calculated to counteract the sobering effect of food and keep the consumer at the elevation he started at, without boosting him to a more dangerous altitude.

Mr Thoat talked garrulously, often boastfully, and with many stumbles of enunciation which sometimes seemed to puzzle him, about his past achievements and future projects; Simon made the essential minimum of admiring and encouraging noises to keep him going; and Selina spent most of the time staring at the Saint with bewilder-edly enlarged and rapturous eyes while she chewed her cud, which gave her a disconcerting resemblance to a lovesick cow. A preposterously long time seemed to crawl by before a clock struck two and Simon could initiate the adjournment.