The Saint Meets His Match (15 page)

Cullis sat up abruptly.

“What’s that
mean?” he demanded.

“It was all written up
in code, of course——
”

“What was written up
in code?”

“Some accounts—and
some addresses. Nothing to do
with anything in England,
though.”

The assistant commissioner
leaned back again.

“Someone’s certainly
interested in you,” he remarked.

“I’ve told you that
before,” said Essenden peevishly.
“But
you never do anything about it.”

“I’ve offered you
police protection.”

“I’ve had police
protection, and one of your men was
on guard outside my
house the night I found a man
breaking open my desk.
That’s all your police protection
is worth!”

Cullis tugged at his moustache.

“Still,” he said,
“there’s nothing to connect the Saint with that burglary, any more than
there’s anything to
connect either him or Trelawney with
your—er—accident
in Paris.”

Essenden fumbled in his
pocket and produced a sheet
of paper. He laid it on
the desk beneath Cullis’s eyes.

“What about
that?” he asked.

Cullis looked at a little
drawing that was already familiar to him—a childish sketch of a little
skeleton man with a symbolical halo woven round his head. But beside this
figure there was another such as neither Cullis nor Teal
had ever seen before in that context—a figure that wore a skirt and had
no halo. And under these drawings were
three
words:
“April the First.”

“What about
that?” asked Essenden again.

Teal raised his sleepy eyes to the calendar on
the wall.

“A week next
Friday,” he said. “Are you superstitious?”

Essenden was pardonably
annoyed.

“If you’re supposed
to be in charge of this case, Mr.
Teal,” he said testily, “I
don’t think much of the way you
do your job.
Is this the way you train your men to work,
Cullis?”

“I didn’t train
him,” said Cullis patiently. “April the
first is All Fool’s Day,
isn’t it?”

“I don’t see the
joke.”

“It may be explained to you,” said
Cullis.

He stood up with a
businesslike air, meaning that, so
far as he was
concerned, the interview had served its
purpose.
As a matter of fact, this story was a mere variation on a theme which Cullis
was already finding wearisome. He had heard too much in a similar strain of
late to
be impressed by this repetition, although he was far
from
underestimating its significance. But he could not
discuss that with Essenden, for there was something about
Lord Essenden which sometimes made Cullis think
seriously of murder.

“Let me know any
developments,” he said with curt
finality.

Lord Essenden, it should
be understood, though impor
tant enough to be able to
secure interviews with the assist
ant commissioner,
was not important enough to be able
to dictate the
course which any interview should take,
and
this fact was always a thorn in Essenden’s vanity.

“You treat it all very
lightly,” he complained weakly. “I do think you might make some sort
of effort, Cullis.”

“Every policeman in England is looking for
Simon Templar and Jill Trelawney,” said the assistant commis
sioner. “If and when we find them they will
be arrested
and tried. We can’t do
more than that. Write down your
story
and give it to Sergeant Berryman downstairs on your
way out, and we’ll see that it’s added to the
dossier.
Good-evening.”

“I tell you, Cullis, I’m scared——”

Cullis nodded.

“They certainly seem to have it in for
you,” he said. “I
wonder why?
Good-evening!”

Essenden felt his hand
vigorously shaken, and then he
found himself in the stone corridor outside,
blinking at a
closed door.

He went downstairs and
wrote out his formal report,
as he had been directed,
but with a querulous lack of
restraint which spoilt the
product as a literary effort.
Then he drove to his club
and dined and wined himself
well before he returned to
his waiting car and directed
a cold and sleepy
chauffeur to take him home.

“Home” was on
the borders of Oxfordshire, for Essen-den preferred to live away from the
social life of London.
Lady Essenden had
objections to this misanthropy, of
which Lord Essenden
took no notice. In his way, he was
almost as retiring
a character as Mr. Cullis.

Through all that drive
home, Lord Essenden sat un
comfortably upright in
one corner of his car, sucking the
knob of his umbrella and pondering
unpleasant thoughts.

It was after midnight when
he arrived, and the foot
man who opened the door
informed him that Lady
Essenden had gone to bed
with a headache two hours
earlier.

Essenden nodded and handed
over his hat and coat.
In exchange, he received one solitary letter,
and the handwriting on the envelope was so familiar that he car
ried it to his study to open behind a locked door.
The
letter contained in the envelope
was not so surprising
to him as it
would have been a month before:

Have
a look at the safe behind the dummy row
in
your bookcase.

And underneath were the
replicas of the two drawings
that he had seen before.

Essenden struck a match and
watched the paper curl and blacken in an ashtray. Then, with a perfectly im
passive fatalism, he went to the bookcase and slid back the panel which
on one shelf replaced a row of books.
He had no anxiety
about any of the papers there, for
since the first
burglary he had transferred every important
document
in his house to a safer place.

He opened the safe and
looked at the notebook he
had lost in Paris.

Thoughtfully he flicked
through the pages.

Every entry had been decoded, and the
interpretation
written neatly in between the
lines.

Essenden studied the book
for some minutes; and
then he dropped it into his pocket and began to
pace the
room with short bustling strides.

The notebook had not been
in the safe when he arrived
back from Paris that
afternoon. He knew that, for he
had deposited some
correspondence there before he left
again to interview
the commissioner. And yet, to be
delivered that night, the letter
which told him to look
in the safe must have been
posted early that morning.
And early that morning
Jill Trelawney and the Saint
were in Paris—and the
letter was post-marked in London.
There was something terrifying about the
ruthless assur
ance which emerged from the
linking of those two facts.

A gentle knock on the door
almost made Essenden
jump out of his skin.

“Would there be
anything else to-night, my lord?”
inquired
the footman, tactfully.

“A large brandy and soda, Falcon.”

“Very good, my
lord.”

In a few moments the tray was brought in.

“Thank you,
Falcon.”

“I have cut some
sandwiches for you, my lord.”

“Thank you.”

“Is there nothing
else, my lord?”

Essenden picked up his
glass and looked at it under the
light.

“Have there been any
callers to-day?”

“No, my lord. But
the young man you sent down from
London to inspect your
typewriter came about six
o’clock.”

Essenden nodded slowly.

He dismissed the servant,
and when the door had
closed again, he went to
another bookcase and extracted
a couple of dusty volumes.
Reaching into the cavity
behind the other books, he
brought out an automatic
pistol and a box of
cartridges. The books he replaced.
Carrying the gun
over to the table, he first carefully
tested the action and then loaded the
magazine, bringing the first cartridge into the chamber and then thumbing in
the safety catch.

With the gun in his pocket
he experienced a slight
feeling of relief.

But for hours afterwards
he sat in the study, staring
at the embers of the dying
fire, sipping brandy and smok
ing cigarette after
cigarette, till the fire died altogether,
and
he began to shiver as the room grew colder. And
thus, alone, through
those hours, he pondered fact upon fact, and formed and reviewed and discarded
plan after
plan, until at last he had shaped
an idea with which his
weary brain
could at the moment find no fault.

It was a wild and
desperate scheme, the kind of scheme
which a man only forms after a sleepless
night fortified
with too many cigarettes
and too much strong drink taken
alone
and in fear; but it was the only answer he could
find to his problem. He was quite calm and decided about
that. When at last he dragged himself to bed, he
was more
calm and cold and decided
than he had ever been be
fore in all
his life, was Lord Essenden, that fussy and
peevish little man.

2

Simon Templar picked up the sheet of paper on
which
he had been working spasmodically
during the return
from Paris, and
cleared his throat.

“We understand,”
he said, “that the following lines
have
been awarded the Dumbbell Prize for Literature:

“The King sits in the
silent town,

Sipping his China tea:

‘And where shall I find a fearless knight

To bear a sword for me?

‘The beasts are leagued
about my gates,

The vultures seek the
slain,

Till a perfect knight
shall rise and ride

To find the Grail again.’

Then up and spake a
Minister,

Sat at the King’s right
knee:

‘Basil de Bathmat Dilswipe Boil

Has a splendid pedigree.

‘His brother is Baron de
Bathmat Boil,

Who owns the
Daily Squeal,

And everybody knows he is

Impeccably genteel.’

‘Has he been with my men-at-arms,

Has he borne scars for me,

That I should take this
Basil Boil

Among my chivalry?’

‘Sire, in a war some years
ago

You called him to the
fray,

And he would have served
you loyally,

But his conscience bade him
nay.

‘And they took him before
the judges,

Because he did rebel,

And he lay a year in
prison

To save his soul from
hell.’

‘Then what have I for a
portent,

What bring you me for a
sign,

That I should take this
coistril

To be a knight of mine?’

‘Sire, we are bringing in a bill

Which the
Daily Squeal
could
foil,