The Saint in London: Originally Entitled the Misfortunes of Mr. Teal (8 page)

He looked round and saw the reason for it. The ponderous thought processes of Hoppy Uniatz had at last reduced the situation to terms which he could understand. In his slow but methodical way, Mr. Uniatz had sifted through the dialogue and action and arrived at the conclusion that something had gone amiss. Instinct had made him go for his gun; but the armchair in which he was ensconced had impeded his agility on the draw, and Nassen had forestalled him. He sat with his right hand still tangled in his pocket, glaring at the lanky stillness of Iveldown’s private defective with self-disgust written all over his face.

“I’m sorry, boss,” he growled plaintively. “De guy beat me to it.”

“Never mind,” said the Saint. “It’s my fault.” Iveldown came forward, with his mouth twitching.

“The mistake could have been worse,” he said. “At least we have the Saint. Where is Yorkland?”

Farwill chewed his lower lip.

“I believe he could be intercepted. When he first arrived, he told me that he had meant to call on Lady Bredon at Camberley on his way down, but he had not had time. He intimated that he would do so on his way back––”

“Telephone there,” snapped Iveldown.

He strode about the room, rubbing his hands together under his coattails, while Farwill made the call. He looked at the Saint frequently, but not once did he meet Simon’s eyes. Simon Templar never made the mistake of attributing that avoidance of his gaze to fear; at that moment, Iveldown had less to fear than he had ever had before. Watching him with inscrutable blue eyes, the Saint knew that he was looking at a weak pompous egotistical man whom fear had turned into jackal at bay.

“What message shall I leave?” asked Farwill, with his hand over the transmitter.

“Tell them to tell him—we’ve caught our man,” said Iveldown.

The Saint blew a smoke ring.

“You seem very sure about that, brother,” he remarked. “But Snowdrop doesn’t look too happy about that gun. He looks as if he were afraid it might go off—and do you realize, Snowdrop, that if it did go off it’d burn a hole in your beautiful Sunday suit, and Daddy would have to smack you?”

Nassen looked at him whitely.

“Leave him to me,” he said. “I’ll make him talk.”

Simon laughed shortly.

“You might do it if you’re a ventriloquist,” he said contemptuously. “Otherwise you’d be doing good business if you took a tin cent for your chance. Get wise to yourself, Snowdrop. You’ve lost your place in the campaign. You aren’t dealing with a girl yet. You’re talking to a man—if you’ve any idea what that means.”

Lord Iveldown stood aside, with his head bowed in thought, as if he scarcely heard what was going on. And then suddenly he raised his eyes and looked at the Saint again for the first time in a long while; and, meeting his gaze, Simon Templar read there the confirmation of his thoughts. His fate lay in the hands of a creature more ruthless, more vindictive, more incalculable than any professional killer—a weak man, shorn of his armour of pomposity, fighting under the spur of fear.

“The mistake could have been worse,” Iveldown repeated.

“You ought to be thinking about other things,” said the Saint quietly. “This is Friday evening; and the sun isn’t standing still. By midnight tomorrow I have to receive your contribution to the Simon Templar Foundation—and yours also, Leo. And I’m telling you again that whatever you do and whatever Snowdrop threatens, wherever I am myself and whether I’m alive or dead, unless I’ve received your checks by that time Chief Inspector Teal will get something that at this moment he wants more than anything else you could offer him. He’ll get a chance to read the book which I wouldn’t let him see this morning.”

“But meanwhile we still have you here,” said Lord Iveldown, with an equal quietness that contrasted strangely with the nervous flickers that jerked across his mottled face. He turned to his host. “Farwill, we must go to London at once. Miss Holm will be—ah—concerned to hear the news.”

“She has a great sense of humour,” said the Saint metallically, but his voice sounded odd in his own ears.

Iveldown shrugged.

“That remains to be seen. I believe that it will be comparatively easy to induce her to listen to reason,” he said thoughtfully; and the Saint’s blood went cold.

“She wouldn’t even listen to you,” he said and knew that he lied.

Lord Iveldown must have known it, too, for he paid no attention. He turned away without answering, gathering his party like a schoolmaster rallying a flock of boys.

“Nassen, you will remain here and guard these two. When Mr. Yorkland arrives, explain the developments to him, and let him do what he thinks best… . Farwill, you must find some pretext to dismiss your servants for the night. It will avoid difficulties if Nassen is compelled to exercise force. We will leave the front door open so that York-land can walk in… .”

“Mind you don’t catch cold,” said the Saint in farewell.

He smoked his cigarette through and listened to the hum of Lord Iveldown’s car going down the drive and fading away into the early night.

Not for a moment since Iveldown walked into the room had he minimized his danger. Admittedly it is easier to be distantly responsible for the deaths of ten thousand unknown men than to order directly the killing of one; yet Simon knew that Lord Iveldown, who had done the first many years ago, had in the last two days slipped over a borderline of desperation to the place where he would be capable of the second. The fussiness, the pretentious speech, the tatters of pomposity which still clung to him and made him outwardly ridiculous made no difference. He would kill like a sententious ass; but still he would kill. And something told the Saint that the Rose of Peckham would not be unwilling to do the job at his orders.

He lighted another cigarette and paced the room with the smooth nerveless silence of a cat. It was queer, he thought, how quickly and easily, with so little melodrama, an adventurer’s jest could fall under the shadow of death; and he knew how utterly false to human psychology were the ranting bullying villains who committed the murders in fiction and films. Murder was so rarely done like that. It was done by heavy, grandiose, flabby, frightened men—like Lord Iveldown or the Honourable Leo Farwill or Mr. Neville Yorkland, M.P. And it made no difference that Simon Templar, who had often visualized himself being murdered, had a futile angry objection to being murdered by pettifogging excrescences of that type.

They would have no more compunction in deal-ing with Patricia. Perhaps less.

That was the thought which gnawed endlessly at his mind, infinitely more than any consideration of his own danger. The smooth nerveless silence of his own walking was achieved only by a grim effort of will. His muscles strained against it; a savage helplessness tore at his nerves while the minutes went by. Farwill and Iveldown had seventy-five miles to go; and with every minute his hope of overtaking them, even with his car and brilliant driving, was becoming more and more forlorn.

He glanced at Hoppy Uniatz. Mr. Uniatz was sitting hunched in his chair, his fists clenched, glowering at Nassen with steady unblinking malevolence. In Hoppy’s philosophy there could be only one outcome to what had happened and his own failure on the draw. There was no point in revolving schemes of escape: the chance to put them into practice was never given. The only question to be answered was—how long? His wooden nerves warping under the strain of the long silence, he asked it.

“Well,” he growled, “when do we go for dis ride?”

“I’ll tell you when the time comes,” said Nassen.

The Saint pitched away his cigarette and lighted yet another. Nassen was alone. There were two of them; and nobody had thought to take Hoppy’s gun away. If Hoppy could only get a second chance to draw—if Nassen’s nerves could be played on, skilfully and relentlessly, until It be-came a question of which side could outlast the other …

“What does it feel like to be monarch of all you survey, Snowdrop?” he asked. “Doesn’t it make your little heart go pit-a-pat? I mean, suppose Hoppy and I suddenly decided we didn’t love you any more, and we both jumped up together and slapped you?”

“You’d better try,” said Nassen. “I’d be glad of the excuse.”

He spoke with a cold stolidity that made the Saint stop breathing for a moment. Not until then, perhaps, had he admitted to himself how hopeless was the idea which had crossed his mind—hopeless, at least, to achieve any results in time for it to be worth the effort.

He halted in front of Nassen, gazing at him over the gun between them. So there was only one way left. Nassen could not possibly miss him; but he might be held long enough to give Hoppy Uniatz a chance. And after that, Hoppy would have to carry the flag… .

“You know that would be murder, don’t you, Snowdrop?” he said slowly, without a flinch of fear in his bleak watchful eyes.

“Would it?” said Nassen mincingly. “For all anyone would ever know, you’re a couple of armed burglars caught red-handed. Your record at Scotland Yard will do the rest. Don’t forget whose house this is––”

He broke off.

Another pair of headlights had flashed across the windows; and a car, frantically braked, skidded on the gravel outside. A bell rang in the depths of the house; the knocker hammered impatiently; then came the slight creak of the front door opening. Every movement of the man outside could be pictured from the sounds. The unlatched door moved when he plied the knocker: he looked at it for a moment in indecision—took the first hesitant step into the hall—hurried on. …

Nassen was listening, too. And suddenly the Saint realized that the chance he had never looked for, the chance he had never thought of, had been given him. Nassen’s attention was distracted—he, too, had been momentarily fascinated by the imaginary picture that could be deduced from the sequence of sounds. But he recovered less quickly than the Saint. And Simon’s fist had already been clenched for a desperate blow when the interruption came.

The Saint launched it. Snowdrop, the Rose of Peckham, was never very clear in his mind about what happened. He was not by nature addicted to physical violence of the cruder sort; and no experience of that kind had ever come his way before to give him a standard of comparison. He saw a bony fist a few inches from his face, travelling towards him with appalling speed; and his mouth opened. The fist shut it again for him, impacting on the point of his chin with a crack that seemed to jar his brain against the roof of his skull. And beyond that there was nothing but a great darkness filled with the hum of many dynamos… .

Simon caught him by the coat lapels and eased him silently to the floor, gathering up the automatic as he did so. As he did so, the door burst open and the rounded rabbit features of Mr. Neville Yorkland looked into the room.

“Hullo,” he stuttered. “What’s happened? Got Lord Iveldown’s message. Said he’d caught our man.” His weak blinking eyes travelled all over the room and came to rest on the prostrate form of the slumbering Nassen. He pursed his lips. “Oh. I see. Is this––”

The Saint straightened up; and a slow godless gleam came into his blue gaze.

“That’s the guy,” he said, in the accents of Pete the Blood. “Hoppy an’ me was just waitin’ to see ya before we scram. We gotta get on to London— Lord Iveldown wants us there!”

IX

PATRICIA Holm was waiting for the Saint when the telephone bell rang to announce the penultimate round of that adventure.

“It’s that detective again, miss,” said Sam Outrell hoarsely. “Mr. Teal. An’ he’s got another detective with him. They wouldn’t wait for me to ask if they could go up.”

The girl’s heart missed a beat; and then she answered quite quietly:

“All right, Sam. Thanks. Tell Mr. Templar as soon as you see him—if they haven’t gone before he comes in.”

She put down the receiver and picked up the cigarette which she had been about to light. She looked about the room while she put a match to it —her hand was steady, but her breath was coming a little faster. She had walked with Simon Templar in the ways of lawlessness too long to be flung into panic; but she knew that she was on trial. The Saint had not come back, and he had sent no message: his habits had always been too erratic for a thing like that to frighten her, but this time she was left to hold the fort alone, with no idea of what he had done or was doing or what his plans might be. The only thing she could be sure of was that Chief Inspector Teal had not! arrived for the second time that day, bringing another detective with him, on a purely social call. The book, Her Wedding Secret, lay on the table. Patricia picked it up. She had to think—to think quickly and calmly, building up deduction and prophecy and action, as the Saint himself would have done. Simon had left the book there. He had not troubled to move it when Hassen came. But Teal—Teal and another man… 1 The bell of the apartment rang while she was still trying to reach a conclusion. There was an open bookcase beside the fireplace, and with a sudden tightening of her lips she thrust the book in among the row of novels on the bottom shelf. She had no time to do anything more; but she was desperately conscious of the inadequacy of what she had done.

Chief Inspector Teal did not know it. He looked across the threshold with affectedly weary eyes at the slim startling beauty of the girl who even to his phlegmatic unimpressionable mind was more like a legendary princess than any other woman he had ever seen, who for reasons not utterly beyond his understanding had chosen to give up the whole world that she might have queened to become the companion in outlawry of a prince of buccaneers; and he saw in her blue eyes, so amazingly like the Saint’s own, the same light of flickering steel with which Simon Templar had greeted him so many times.

“Good-evening, Miss Holm,” he said sleepily. “I think you know me; and this is Sergeant Barrow. We have a warrant to search this apartment.”

He held out the paper; and she glanced at it and handed it back.

“Mr. Templar isn’t in,” she said coolly. “Hadn’t you better call back later?”

“I don’t think so,” said Mr. Teal and walked past her into the hall.

She closed the door and followed the two detectives into the living room. Mr. Teal took off his bowler hat and put it on the table—it was the only concession he made to her presence.