The Saint in London: Originally Entitled the Misfortunes of Mr. Teal (17 page)

Nordsten’s faded eyes, without pity, glanced at the Saint.

“So—you had opened the trap,” he remarked, almost casually.

“Maybe I had,” Simon responded calmly. He was not meeting Nordsten’s gaze, and he only answered perfunctorily. He was looking at the man Erik; and he went on speaking to him, very clearly and steadily, trying to strike a spark of recognition from that terribly injured brain. “I was the bloke who said hullo to you just now, Erik. It wasn’t Brother Ivar. It was me.”

The man stared at him sightlessly; and Nord-sten moved nearer to the door. The great black panther rose and stretched itself. It padded after him, watching him with its oblique malignant eyes; and Nordsten took the whip in his right hand. His voice rang out suddenly:

“Sheba!”

The whip whistled through the air and curled over the animal’s sleek flanks in a terrific blow.

“Kill!”

The whip fell again. Growling, the panther started forward. A third and a fourth lash cracked over its body like the sound of pistol shots, and it stopped and turned its head.

Simon will never forget what followed.

It was not clear to him at the time, though the actual physical fact was as vivid as a nightmare. He knew that he faced certain death, but it had come on him so quickly that he had had no chance to grasp the idea completely. The man Erik was standing beside him, white-faced, his body rigid and quivering, his lips stubbornly compressed and the breath hissing jerkily through his nostrils. He knew. But the Saint, with his eyes narrowed to slits of steel and his muscles flexed for the hopeless combat, only understood the threat of death instinctively. He saw what was happening long before reason and comprehension caught up with it.

The head of the beast turned; and again the cruel whip cut across its back. And then—it could only have been that the deep-sown hate of the beast conquered its fear, and its raging blood-lust burst into the deeper channel. The twist of its magnificent rippling body was too quick for the eye to follow. It sprang, a streak of burnished ebony flying through the air—not towards the Saint or Erik, but away from them. Nordsten’s gun banged once; and then the cry that broke from his lips as he went down was drowned in the rolling thunder of the panther’s hate.

VIII

“Say,” pleaded Mr. Uniatz bashfully, plucking up the courage to seek illumination on a point which had been worrying him for some hours, “is a nightjar de t’ing––”

“No, it isn’t,” said Patricia Holm hurriedly. “It’s a kind of bird.”

“Oh, a boid!” Hoppy’s mouth stretched horizontally in a broad grin of overwhelming relief. “I t’ought it couldn’t of been what I t’ought it was.”

Patricia sighed.

“Why on earth did you have to think about nightjars at all, anyway?”

“Well, it was dis way. Before de Saint scrammed, after he made me a pansy bootlegger, he said my accent reminded him of a nightjar callin’ to its mate––”

“He must have been thinking of a nightingale, Hoppy,” said the girl kindly.

She lighted a cigarette and strolled over to the window, watching the dusk deepening down the glade of bracken and trees. Annette Vickery gazed after her with a feeling that was oddly akin to awe. Annette herself couldn’t help knowing, frankly, that she was pretty; but this slim fair girl who seemed to be the Saint’s partner in outlawry had an enchanting beauty like nothing that she had ever seen before. That alone might have made her jealous, after the fashion even of the nicest women; but in Patricia Holm it was only an incidental feature. She had a repose, a quiet understanding confidence, which was the only thing that made hours of waiting tolerable.

She had come in towards midday.

“I’m Patricia,” she said; and with that she was introduced.

She heard the story of the night before and the morning after, and laughed.

“I expect it seems like the end of the world to you,” she said, “but it isn’t very new to me. 1 wondered what had happened to Simon when I blew into the apartment this morning and found he hadn’t been in all night. But he always has been daft—I suppose you’ve had plenty of time to find that out. How about a spot of sherry, kid—d’you think that would do you good?”

“You talk like a man,” said Annette.

It was clearly meant for a compliment; and Patricia smiled.

“If I talk like a Saint,” she said softly, “it’s only natural.”

She had a serene faith in the Saint which removed the last excuse for anxiety. If she had doubts, she kept them to herself. Orace served an excellent cold lunch. They bathed in the swimming pool, sunned themselves afterwards in deck chairs, had tea brought out on the terrace. The time passed; until Patricia stood at the window and watched night creeping down over the garden.

“I’ll make some Old Fashioneds,” she said.

In the glow of that most insidiously potent of all aperitifs, it was not so difficult to keep anxiety at bay for another hour and more. Presently Orace announced dinner. It was quite dark when the left the table and went into the study.

“I suppose we might telephone now,” said Pa-tricia at length.

She took up the telephone and gave the number calmly. It was then nearly nine o’clock. In a short while a man’s voice answered.

“Can I speak to Mr. Vickery?” she asked.

“Who is that, please?”

“This is his sister speaking.”

“I will inquire, madam. Will you hold on?”

She waited, and presently the man came back.

“Mr. Vickery is engaged in a very important conference with Mr. Nordsten, madam, and cannot be disturbed. Can I take a message?”

“When will the conference be over?” asked Patricia steadily.

“I don’t know, madam.”

“I’ll call up again later,” said Patricia and replaced the microphone on its bracket.

She tilted herself back in the desk chair and blew smoke at the wall in front of her. It was Hoppy Uniatz, removing his mouth temporarily from a glass of whisky, who crashed in where angels might have feared to tread.

“Well,” he said cheerfully, “who’s been rubbed out?”

“I can’t get him just now,” said Patricia evenly “We’ll call again before we go to bed. How about a game of poker?”

“I remember,” said Mr. Uniatz wistfully, “one

time I played strip poker wit’ a coupla broads on Toity-toid Street. De blonde one had just drawn to a bob-tailed straight an’ raised me a pair of pants––”

The glances which turned in his direction would have withered any man whose hide had less in common with that of the African rhinoceros; but Hoppy’s disreputable reminiscence served to relieve the strain. Somehow, the time went on. The girls smoked and talked idly; and Mr. Uniatz, finding his anecdotes disrespectfully received, relapsed into fluent silence and presently went out of the room. After a while he returned, bearing with him a fresh bottle of whisky which he had discovered somewhere and succeeded in abstracting from under Orace’s vigilant eye. At half-past eleven Patricia telephoned Hawk Lodge again.

“Mr. Vickery has gone to bed, madam,” said the butler suavely. “He was very tired and left orders that he was not to be awakened. He wrote you a letter which I have just posted, madam. You should receive it in the morning.”

“Thank you,” said Patricia slowly and rang off.

She turned round serenely to the others.

“We’re out of luck,” she reported. “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it. We’ll have some news in the morning—and I’m ready for bed.”

“You’re very brave,” said Annette, seeing more than Hoppy Uniatz would ever be capable of seeing.

Patricia laughed shortly and put an arm round her.

“My dear, if you’d known the Saint as long as I have, you’d have given up worrying. I’ve seen him get people out of messes that would make yours look like a flea bite. I’ve seen him get him-self out of far worse trouble than anything I think he’s in now. The man’s simply made that way––”

She might have been going to say more, but she didn’t; for at that moment a bell rang faintly at the back of the house. Annette looked up at her quickly, and for a second even Mr. Uniatz forgot that he was grasping a bottle of Bourbon which was as yet only half empty. But Patricia shook her head with a very tiny smile.

“Simon wouldn’t ring,” she said.

They listened and heard Orace’s dot-and-carry footfalls crossing the hall. The front door opened and there was a sound of other feet treading over the threshold. A voice could be heard inquiring for Mr. Templar.

“Mr. Templar ain’t ‘ere,” Orace said brusquely.

“We’ll wait for him,” stated the voice imperturbably.

“Like ‘ell you will,” retorted Orace’s most belligerent accents. “You’ll wait ahtside on the bleedin’ doorstep, that’s wot you’ll do––”

There were the sounds of a scuffle; and Mr Uniatz, who understood one thing if there was nothing else he understood, gave a surprising demonstration of his right to his nickname. He hopped out of his chair with a leap which an athletic grasshopper might have envied, reaching for his hip. Patricia caught the other girl by the arm.

“Through the bookcase—quick!” she ordered. “Hoppy, leave the door shut, or we can’t open this one.”

She bundled Annette through the secret panel, saw that it was properly closed, and grabbed Hoppy’s wrist as he snatched at the door handle again.

“Put that gun away, you idiot,” she said. “That’ll only make things worse.”

Hoppy’s jaw fell open aggrievedly.

“But, say––”

“Don’t say,” snapped Patricia, in a venomous whisper. “Get the darn thing back in your pocket and leave this to me.”

She thrust him aside and opened the door herself. Outside in the hall, Orace was engaging in a heroic but one-sided wrestling match in the arms of Chief Inspector Teal and another detective. As she emerged, one of his boots landed effectively on Mr. Teal’s right shin and drew a yelp of anguish in response. Patricia’s cool voice cut across the brawl like a blade of honey.

“Good-evening—er—gentlemen,” she said.

The struggle abated slightly; and Orace’s purple face screwed round out of the tangle with its walrus moustache whiffling.

“Sorl right, miss,” he panted valiantly. “You jus’ wait till I’ve kicked these plurry perishers down the thunderin’ ‘ill––”

“I’m afraid they’d only come back again,” said Patricia regretfully. “They’re like black beetles— once you’ve got them in the house, you can’t get rid of them. Take a rest, Orace, and let me talk to them. How are you, Mr. Teal?”

Mr. Teal glared pinkly at Orace and shook him off. He picked up his bowler hat, which had been dislodged from his head during the melee and had subsequently been somewhat trampled on, and glared at Orace again. He appeared to have some difficulty in controlling his voice.

“Good-evening, Miss Holm,” he said at last, breathing deeply and detaching his eyes from Orace’s stormy countenance with obvious diffi-culty. “I have a search warrant––”

“You must be collecting them,” murmured Patricia sweetly. “Come in and tell me what it’s all about this time.”

She turned and went back into the study, anc Mr. Teal and his satellite followed. Mr. Teal’ eyes discovered Mr. Uniatz and transferred their smouldering malevolence to him. It is a regret-l table fact that Mr. Teal’s soul was not at that moment overflowing with courtesy and good wil towards men; and Mr. Uniatz had crossed his path on another unfortunate occasion.

“I’ve seen you before,” Teal said abruptly. “Who are you?”

“Tim Vickery,” replied Hoppy promptly, with an air of triumph.

“Yes?” barked the detective. “You’re the forger, eh?”

There was something so consistently unfriendly in his china-blue gaze that Hoppy reached around nervously for the whisky bottle. He had been let down. This was not what the Saint had told him. He had to think, and that always gave him a pain somewhere between his ears.

“I ain’t no forger, boss,” he protested. “I’m a fairy.”

“You’re what?” blared the detective.

“A bootlegger,” said Mr. Uniatz, gulping hastily. “I mean, de udder business is my perfes-sion. I got an accent like a nightingale––”

Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal grabbed at the scattering fragments of his temper with both hands. If only he could master the art of remaining tranquil under the goad of that peculiar form of baiting in which not only the Saint indulged, but which seemed to infect all his associates like a malignant disease, he might yet be able to score for law and order the deciding point in that ancient feud. He had missed points before by letting insult and injury get under his skin— the Saint’s malicious wit had stung him, ragged him, baited him, rattled him, tied him up in a series of clove hitches and stood him on his head and rolled him over again, till he had no more chance of victory than a mad bull would have had against an agile hornet.

But this man in front of him, whose calloused throat apparently allowed whisky to flow through it like milk, was not the Saint. The style of badinage might be similar—in fact, it is interesting to record that, to Teal’s overwrought imagination, the style was almost identical—but the man behind it could not conceivably be the same. In any one century, two men like the Saint could not plausibly have been born. The earth could not have survived it.

And Mr. Teal had a point to make. The man with the whisky bottle had given it to him, open-handed. It was a point which annihilated all the routine plans he had made for that raid on which he had barely started to embark—a point so free and brazen that Mr. Teal’s respiratory system went haywire at the sight of it.

“Your name’s Vickery, is it?” he said, in the nearest he could get to his normal sleepy voice; and Mr. Uniatz, after an appealing glance at Patricia, nodded dumbly. “Then why is it,” Teal flung at him suddenly, “that when Miss Holm tried to ring you up a quarter of an hour ago, she was told that you were in bed and asleep?”

Mr. Uniatz opened his mouth, and, finding that nothing at all would come out of it, decided to put something in and hope for the best. He pushed the neck of the whisky bottle between his teeth and swallowed feverishly; and Patricia spoke for him.

“That was a mistake,” she explained. “Mr. Vickery came in just a minute or two after I telephoned.”