The Saint in London: Originally Entitled the Misfortunes of Mr. Teal (24 page)

As they turned into Berkeley Square, he followed a little more hesitantly; and eventually he plucked at the Saint’s sleeve.

“Where ya goin’, boss?” he asked. “Dis ain’t de way to de garage.”

“It’s the way to the garage we’re going to,” answered the Saint.

He had automatically ruled out the Hirondel as a conveyance for that getaway—the great red-and-cream speedster was far too conspicuous and far too well known, and it was the car whose description would be immediately broadcast by Mr. Teal as soon as that hapless sleuth had worked the gag out of his mouth and reached the telephone. Simon had another and more commonplace car in reserve, in another garage and another name, which he had laid up some weeks ago with a far-sighted eye to just such a complication as this; and he was inclined to flatter himself on his forethought without undertaking the Herculean labour of hammering the idea into Hoppy’s armour-plated skull.

Whether any net was actually spread out for him in time to cross his path, he never knew; certainly he slipped through London without incident, making excellent time over the almost deserted roads in spite of several detours at strategic points where he might have been stopped. He abandoned the car outside the entrance of the Vickers factory on the Byfleet road, where there would soon be a score of other cars parked around it, and one more modest saloon might easily pass unnoticed for days; and walked through the woods to his house as the dawn was breaking. There was no hope that Teal would fail to draw that covert as soon as he had reorganized his forces; but it was a temporary haven, and the Saint had a few items of personal equipment there which he wanted to pick up.

There were sounds of movement in the kitchen when he let himself in at the front door, and in another moment the belligerent walrus-mous-tached visage of Orace appeared on the opposite side of the hall. Simon threw his hat at him and smiled.

“What’s our chance of breakfast, Orace?” he asked.

“Narf a minnit,” said Orace expressionlessly and vanished again.

Over the bacon and eggs, golden brown toast and steaming coffee which Orace produced necroman-tically in very little more than the time he had promised, the Saint’s brain was working overtime. For the time being, Teal had been dealt with; but the past tense had no more permanent stability than the haven in which Simon Templar was eat-ing his breakfast. Ahead of those transient satis-factions lay the alternatives of penal servitude or a completed getaway; and he had no spontaneous leaning towards either. He turned them over in his mind like small beetles discovered under a log and decided that he liked them even less. But there was a third solution which took him longer to think over—which, in fact, kept him wrapped in silent concentration until his plate was pushed away and he was smoking a cigarette over a second cup of coffee and Mr. Uniatz intruded his bashful personality again.

Hoppy’s brain had not been working overtime, because the hours between one breakfast and the following bedtime were rarely long enough to let it do much more than catch up with where it had left off the previous night. Nevertheless the wheels, immersed in the species of thick soup in which nature had asked them to whizz round, had been doggedly trying to revolve.

“Boss,” said Hoppy Uniatz, articulating with some indistinctness through a slice of toast, two ounces of butter, a rasher of bacon, and half an egg, “de cops knows you got dis house.”

Simon harked back over some leagues of his own cerebrations and recognized the landmark which Hoppy had contrived to reach.

“That’s perfectly true,” he remarked admiringly. “Now don’t go doing any more of that high-pressure thinking—give your brain a minute to cool off, because I want you to listen to me.”

He rang the bell and smoked quietly until Orace answered. Mr. Uniatz, happily absolved from further brainwork, engulfed the rest of the food within his reach and cast longing eyes at a decanter of whisky on the sideboard.

“Orace,” said the Saint, “I’m afraid Claud Eustace is after us again.”

“Yessir,” said Orace phlegmatically.

“You might sound more sympathetic about it,” Simon complained. “One of the charges is wilful murder.”

“Well, it’s yer own thunderin’ fault, ain’t it?” retorted Orace, unmoved.

The Saint sighed.

“I suppose you’re right,” he admitted. “Anyway, Hoppy’s idea is that we ought to pull an Insull.”

“Dat means to take it on de lam,” explained Hoppy, clarifying the point.

Orace’s faded eyes lost none of their ferocity, but his overhanging moustache twitched.

“If yer can wite ‘arf a minnit, sir,” he said, “I’ll go wiv yer.”

The Saint laughed softly and stood up. His hand fell on Orace’s shoulder.

“Thanks a lot, you old humbug; but it isn’t nec- , essary. You see, Hoppy’s wrong. And you ought to know it, after all the years you’ve been around with me.” He leaned back against the mantelpiece, one hand in his pocket, and looked at the two men with eyes that were beginning to twinkle again. “Hoppy reminds me that Teal knows all about this house, but he’s forgotten that Teal also, knows I know it. Hoppy thinks we ought to pack our keisters and take it on the lam, but he’s for-gotten that that’s the very thing Teal is expecting us to do. After all, Claud Eustace has seen me hang it on the limb before… . Are you there, Hoppy?”

“Yes, boss,” said Mr. Uniatz, after glancing around to reassure himself of the fact.

“It’s quite true that you’ll probably see some cops skating up the drive before long; but somehow I don’t think Claud Eustace will be with them. It’ll be almost a formality. They may browse around looking for incriminating relics, but they won’t be seriously looking for me—or Hoppy. And that’s why none of ‘em will ever be great detectives, because this is exactly where Hoppy is going to be—lying snug and low in the secret room off the study, which is one of the things they still don’t know about this house.”

“Chees!” said Mr. Uniatz, in pardonable awe. “Didja t’ink of all dat while ya was eatin’ breakfast?”

The Saint smiled.

“That and some more; but I guess that’s enough for your head to hold at one time.” He looked at his watch. “You’d better move into your new quarters now—Orace will bring you food and drink from time to time, and I’ll know where to find you when I want you.”

He steered Hoppy across the hall and into the study, slid back the bookcase beside the desk, and pushed him through the gap in the wall behind it. Framed in the narrow opening, Mr. Uniatz blinked out at him pleadingly.

“Boss,” he said, “it’s gonna be toisty waitin’.”

“Hoppy,” said the Saint, “if I think you’re going to have to wait long, I’ll tell Orace to have a pipeline laid from a distillery right into the room. Then you can just lie down under the tap and keep your mouth open—and it’ll be cheaper than buying it in bottles.”

He slammed the bookcase into place again and turned round on the last puff of his cigarette as Orace came in.

“You’ve got to be an Orpen of the Storm, and draw the fire,” he said. “But it shouldn’t be very dangerous. They’ve nothing against you. The one thing you must do is get in touch with Miss Holm —let her know all the latest news and tell her to keep in contact. There may be fun and game! for all before this party’s over.”

“Addencha better ‘ide in there yerself, sir?” asked Orace threateningly. “I can look after every-think for yer.”

The Saint shook his head.

“You can’t look after what I’m going to look after,” he said gently. “But I can tell you some more. It won’t mean much to you, but you can pass it on to Miss Holm in case she’s curious, and remember it yourself in case anything goes wrong.” He caught Orace by the shoulders and swung him round. The mocking blue eyes were reckless and wicked; the Saintly smile was as blithe and tranquil as if he had been setting out on a picnic—which, according to his own scapegrace philosophy, he was.

“Down at Betfield, near Folkestone,” he said, “there’s a place called March House, where a guy called Sir Hugo Renway lives. The night before last, this guy murdered a Spanish airman named Manuel Enrique, on the Brighton road—and left my mark on him. Last night, this same guy pinched an aeroplane out of the Hawker factory over the road—and left my mark on the night watchman. And in the small hours of this morning, an aeroplane which may or may not have been the one that was pinched landed in the grounds of March House. I was there, and I saw it. A few hours back, Claud Eustace Teal tried to run me in for both those efforts.

“I wasn’t responsible for either of ‘em, but Teal doesn’t believe it. Taking things by and large, you can’t exactly blame him. But / know better, even if he doesn’t; and I’m just naturally curious. I want to know what all this jolly carnival is. about that Renway’s trying to tack onto me. And there’s one thing you’ll notice, Orace, with that greased-lightning brain of yours, which ties all these exciting goings-on together. What is it, Orace?”

The war-like moustache of his manservant bristled.

“Hairyplanes,” said Orace brilliantly; and Simon smote him on the back.

“You said it, Horatio. With that sizzling brain of yours, you biff the ailnay on the okobay. Hairy-planes it is. We’ve got to get to the bottom of this, as the bishop said to the actress; and it strikes me that if I were to fetch out the old Gillette and go hairyplaning—if I blundered into March House as a blooming aviator waiting to be pruned–—”

The peremptory zing of the front doorbell interrupted him, and he looked up with the mischief hardening on his lips. Then he chuckled again.

“I expect this is the deputation. Give them my love, Orace—and some of those exploding cigarettes. I’ll be seein’ ya!”

He reached the window in a couple of strides and swung himself nimbly through. Orace watched him disappear into the dell of bracken at the other end of the lawn and strutted off, glower-ing, to answer the front door.

VI

There is believed to exist a happy band of halfwits whose fondest faith it is that the life of a government official, the superman to whom they entrust their national destiny, is one long treadmill of selfless toil from dawn to dusk. They picture the devoted genius labouring endlessly over reports and figures, the massive brain steaming, the massive stomach scarcely daring even to call a halt for food. They picture him returning home at the close of the long day, his shoulders still bowed beneath the cares of state, to fret and moil over their problems through the night watches. They are, we began by explaining, a happy band of half-wits.

The life of a government official is very far from that; particularly if he is of the species known as “permanent,” which means that he is relieved even of the sordid obligation of being heckled from time to time by audiences of weary electors. His job is safe. Only death, the Great Harvester, can remove him; and even when he dies, the event may pass unnoticed until the body begins to fall apart. Until then, his programme is roughly as follows.

10:30 a.m. Arrive at office in Whitehall. Read newspaper. Discuss night before with fellow officials. Talk to secretary. Pick up correspondence tray. Put down again. 11:30 a.m. Go out for refreshment. 12:30 p.m. Return to office. Practise putting on H. M. carpet.

1:00 p.m. Go out to lunch.

3 :00 p.m. Back from lunch. Pick up correspondence tray. Refer to other department.

3:30 p.m. Sleep in armchair.

4:00 p.m. Tea.

4:30 p.m. Adjourn to club. Go home.

As a matter of fact, Sir Hugo Renway was not thinking of his office at all at half-past nine that morning. He was discussing the ravages of the incorrigible green fly with his gardener; but he was not really thinking of that, either.

He was a biggish thin-lipped man, with glossily brushed grey hair and a slight squint. The squint did not make him look sinister: it made him look smug. He was physically handicapped against looking anyone squarely in the face; but the impression he managed to convey was, not that he couldn’t, but that he didn’t think it worth while. He was looking at the gardener in just that way while they talked, but his air of well-fed Jmugness was illusory. He was well-fed, but he was troubled. Under that smooth supercilious exterior, his nerves were on edge; and the swelling drone of an aeroplane coming up from the Channel harmonized curiously well with the rasp of his thoughts.

“I don’t think none of them new-fangled washes is any good, zir, if you aarsk me,” the man was reiterating in his grumbling brogue; and Renway nodded and noticed that the steady drone had suddenly broken up into an erratic popping noise.

The man went on grumbling, and Renway went on pretending to listen, in his bored way. Inwardly he was cursing—cursing the stupidity of a man who was dead, whose death had transformed the steady drone of his own determination into the erratic popping which was going through his own, nerves.

The aeroplane swept suddenly over the house. It was rather low, wobbling indecisively; and his convergent stare hardened on it with an awakening of professional interest. The popping of the engine had slackened away to nothing. Then, as if the pilot had seen sanctuary at that moment, the machine seemed to pull itself together. Its nose dipped, and it rushed downwards in a long glide, with no other accompaniment of sound than the whining thrum of the propeller running free. Instinctively Renway ducked; but the plane sideslipped thirty feet over his head and fishtailed down to a perfect three-point landing in the flat open field beyond the rose garden.

Renway turned round and watched it come to a standstill. He knew at once that the helmeted figure in the cockpit had nothing left to learn about the mastery of an aeroplane. That field was a devil to get into, he had learned from experience; but the unknown pilot had dumped his ship in it with a dead stick as neatly as if he had had a whole prairie to choose from. Enrique had been the same—a swarthy daredevil who could land on a playing card and make an aeroplane do anything short of balancing billiard balls on its tail, whose nerveless brilliance had been so maddeningly beyond the class of all Renway’s own taut-strung effort… . Renway’s hands tensed involuntarily at his sides for a moment while he went on thinking; and then he turned away and began minutely examining some buds of rose-crimson Papa Gontiers as the pilot walked under a rustic arch and came towards him.