The Saint vs Scotland Yard (28 page)

“Well?” she asked calmly; and the Saint laughed.

“Oh, we had quite a jolly little party.”

“What happened?”

Simon lighted a cigarette, and inhaled with deep
satisfaction.

“Claud Eustace Teal’s stomach walked in, closely followed
by Claud
Eustace. It was most extraordinary. Subsequently, I walked out. Claud Eustace
is now thinking that that was even
more extraordinary.”

Patricia nodded.

“I saw the men getting into the gardens, and then I drove
round to
the back and saw the squad car. Did you have much
trouble?”

“Nothing to speak of.” The Saint was slewed round in his
seat, his
keen eyes searching back up the road. “I pulled Teal’s nose, told him a
perfectly drawing-room limerick, and left him
to think it over.
…
I should
turn off again here, old darling
—they’re certain to be after us.”

The girl obeyed.

And then she flashed the Saint a smile, and she said:

“Boy, I was all set to crash that squad car if they’d tried to
take you
away in it.”

The Saint stared.

“You were which?”

“Sure, I’d have wrecked that car all right.”

“And then?”

“I’d have got you out somehow.”

“Pat,
have you gone loco?”

She laughed, and shook her head, hustling the car recklessly
down the
long clear street.

Simon gazed at her thoughtfully.

It was typical of him that even then he was able to do that—
and do it
with his whole attention on the job. But the longer
you knew him, the
more amazing did that characteristic of light-hearted insouciance become. The
most tempestuous inci
dents of his turbulent life occupied just as
much of his mind
as he allotted to them, and no more. And their claims were
repudiated altogether by such a mood of scapegrace devilment as
descended upon him at that instant.

He took in the features that he knew even better than his own with a new
sense of delight. They stood out fair and
clean-cut against the
speeding background of sombre build
ings—the small nose, the finely
modelled forehead, the firm
chin, the red lips slightly parted, the eyes
gay and shining.
The wind whipped a faint flush into her cheeks and swept
back her hair like a golden mane. Under her short leather
jacket the
small high breasts seemed to be pressing forward
with the eagerness of youth.

She turned to him, knowing his eyes were on her.

“What are you thinking, lad?”

“I’m thinking that I shall always want to remember you as
I’m seeing
you now,” said the Saint.

One of the small strong hands came off the wheel and rested
on his
knee. He covered it with his own.

“I’m glad I was never a gentleman,” he said.

They raced on, carving a wide circle out of the map of
London.
Traffic crossings delayed them here and there, but
they kept as much as
possible to unfrequented side streets, and
moved fast. Perrigo
sat in the back and brooded, with his coat
collar turned up over
his ears. His cosmos was still in a dizzy
whirl, which he was trying to reduce to
some sort of coherence.
The vicissitudes
that had somersaulted upon him from all
angles during the past forty-five minutes had hopelessly dislo
cated his bearings. One minute the Saint was
thumping him in
the stomach, the next
minute he was helping him on with his
hat.
One minute the Saint was preparing to hoist him, the
next minute he was yanking him out of a splice.
One minute
the Saint seemed to have a
direct hook-up with the police, the
next
minute he was leading the duck-out with all the zeal of
an honest citizen avoiding contact with a Member of
Parlia
ment. It was a bit too much
for Gunner Perrigo, a simple soul
for
whom the solution of all reasonable problems lay in the
breech of a Smith-Wesson.

But out of the chaos one imperishable thought emerged to
the
forefront of his consciousness, and it was that which moti
vated his
eventual decision. One bifurcated fact stood inde
feasible amid the
maelstrom. The Saint knew too much, and the Saint had at one time announced his
intention of hijack
ing a certain parcel of diamonds. And the two prongs of
that
fact linked up and pointed to a single certainty: that the safest
course for
Gunner Perrigo was to get the hell out of any place
where the Saint might
be—and to make the voyage alone.

The car was held up at an Oxford Street crossing, and the
Saint’s
back was towards him. Perrigo thought he had it all his
own way.

But he had reckoned without the driving-mirror. For several
minutes
past the Saint had been doing a lot of Perrigo’s think
ing for him, and the
imminence of some such manoeuvre as
that had been keeping him on the
tip-toe of alertness.
Throughout that time the driving-mirror had
never been out
of the tail of his eye, and he spotted Perrigo’s stealthy
move
ment almost before it had begun.

He turned his head and smiled sweetly.

“No,” he said.

Perrigo squinted at him, sinking back a trifle.

“I can look after myself now,” he grunted.

“You can’t,” said the Saint.

He was turning round again when Perrigo set his teeth,
jumped up,
and wrenched at the handle of the door.

It flew open; and then the Saint put one foot on the front
seat and
went over into the tonneau in a flying tackle.

He took Perrigo with him. They pelted over into the back
seat in a
lashing welter of legs and arms, fighting like savages.
Perrigo
had the weight, and brute strength, but Simon had the
speed and cunning. The
car lurched forward again while they
rolled over and over in a flailing
thudding tangle. After a few
seconds of it, the Saint got an arm loose and
whipped in a
couple of pile-driving rib-binders; the effects of them
put him on top of the mess, and he wedged Perrigo vigorously into a
corner and
held him there with a knee in his chest.

Then he looked up at the familiar helmet of a police con
stable,
and found that the car had stopped.

They were in one of the narrow streets in the triangle of
which
Regent and Oxford form two sides. A heavy truck and a
brace of taxis had
combined to put a temporary plug in the
meagre passage, and
the constable happened to be standing by.
Patricia was looking
round helplessly.

“Wot’s this?” demanded the Law, and Simon smiled winningly
.

“We
are secret emissaries of the Sheik Ali ben Dova, and we
have sworn to place the sacred domestic utensil of the Caliph
on top of the Albert Memorial.”

“Wot?”

“Well, what I mean is that my friend is rather drunk, and
that’s his
idea.”

The Law produced a notebook.

“Any’ow,” he said, “you got no right to be treating ‘im
like that.”

Perrigo’s mouth opened, and Simon shifted some more weight on to his
knee. Perrigo choked and went red in the
face.

“Ah, but you’ve no idea how violent he gets when he’s had a
few,”
said the Saint. “Goes quite bats. I’m trying to get him
home now before he does any
damage.”

“Help!” yapped Perrigo feebly.

“Gets delusions, and all that sort of thing,” said the Saint.
“Thinks
people are trying to kidnap him and murder him and
so forth. Fancies
everyone he meets is a notorious criminal.
Doesn’t even
recognise his own wife—this is his wife, officer.
Leads her an awful
life. I don’t know why she married the
fool. And yet if you
met him when he was sober, you’d take
him for the most respectable gentleman
you ever saluted. And
he is, too. Man with a big diamond business.
Right now, he’s
worth more money than you could save out of your salary
if you were in the Force another three hundred years and lived
on
air.”

Patricia leaned over pleadingly.

“Oh, officer, it’s dreadful” she cried. “Please try to
under
stand—please help me to save a scandal!
 
Last time, the mag
istrate said he’d send my husband to prison if
it happened
again.”

“I’m not your husband!” howled Perrigo. “I’m being
robbed! Officer——
”

“You see,” said the Saint. “Just what I told you. Three
weeks ago
he fired a shot-gun at the postman because he said
he was trying to put a
bomb in the letter-box.”

The policeman looked doubtfully from him to the lovely
anxious
face of Patricia, and was visibly moved. And then
Perrigo heaved up
again.

“Don’t you know who this guy is?” he blurted. “He’s the
Sgloogphwf——
”

This was not what Perrigo meant to say, but Simon clapped
a hand over
his mouth.

“Uses the most frightful language, too, when he’s like this,”
said the
Saint confidentially. “I couldn’t even repeat what he
called the
cook when he thought she was sprinkling arsenic on
the potatoes. If I had
my way he’d be locked up. He’s a
dangerous lunatic, that’s what he is ——
”

Suddenly
the policeman’s eyes glazed.

“Wot’s that?” he barked.

Simon glanced round. His automatic lay in a corner of the
seat,
clear to view—it must have fallen out of his pocket during the scramble. It
gleamed up accusingly from the glossy green-leather upholstery, and every
milligram of the accusation was
reflected in the constable’s fixed and
goggling eyes… .

Simon drew a deep breath.

“Oh, that’s just one of the props. We’ve been to a rehearsal
of one of these amateur
dramatic shows—”

The constable’s head ducked with unexpected quickness. It
pressed
down close to the face of Perrigo, and when it raised
itself again there was
a blunt certitude written all over it.

“
That
man ain’t bin drinking,” it
pronounced.

“Deodorised gin,” explained the Saint easily. “A new
inven
tion for the benefit of a A.W.O.L. matrimoniates. Wonderful stuff. No
longer can it be said that the wages of gin is breath.”

The policeman straightened up.

“Ho, yus? Well, I think you’d better come round to the
station,
and let’s ‘ear some more about this.”

The Saint shook his head.

He looked over the front of the car, and saw that the jam
ahead had
sorted itself out, and the road was clear. One hand
touched Patricia’s
shoulder. And he smiled very seraphically.

“Sorry,” he said. “We’ve got that date with the Albert
Memo
rial.”

He struck flat-handed at the policeman’s shoulder, sending him staggering
back; and as he did so Patricia engaged the
gears and the Hirondel
rocketed off the mark again like a shell
from a howitzer.

Simon and Perrigo spilled over in another wild flurry. This
time the
objective was the gun on the seat. Simon got it. He
also got Perrigo
effectively screwed down to the mat, and knelt
heavily on his biceps.
The cold muzzle of the automatic
rammed up under Perrigo’s chin.

“That will be the end of your bonehead act, brother,” said
the Saint
tersely. “You’d better understand that the only
chance you’ve got is
with me. You’re a stranger over here. If I
left you on your own,
Teal would have you behind bars in
record time. You wouldn’t last
twenty-four hours. And if you’d
been able to make that cop take notice of you
the way you
wanted, you wouldn’t have lasted twenty-four minutes—he’d
have lugged you off to the station with the rest of us, and that
would have
been your finale. Get that up under your skull.
And then put this
beside it: you can’t make your getaway now
without consulting
me. I’ve got your passport and your ticket
to New York right next
my heart—dipped them out of your
pocket before we left Isadora’s. Which is why
you’re going to stick as close to me as you know how. When I’m through with
you, I’ll
give you the bum’s rush quick enough—but not
before!”