Brighter Buccaneer (13 page)

Monday morning brought a visitor to Manchester in the portly shape of Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal, who automatically came north at the news of the sensational arrest. which had been the front-page splash of every newspaper in the kingdom. But the expert witness who came with him caused a much greater sensation. He examined the contents of the two envelopes, and scratched his head.

“Is this a joke?” he demanded. “Every one of these bonds is perfectly genuine. There isn’t a forgery among them.”

The local inspector’s eyes popped half-way out of his head.

“Are you sure?” he blurted.

“Of course I’m sure,” snapped the disgusted expert. “Any fool can see that with half an eye. Did I have to give up a perfectly good day’s golf to tell you that?”

Chief Inspector Teal was not interested in the expert’s golf. He sat on a bench and held his head in his hands. He was not quite certain how it had been worked, but he knew there was something very wrong somewhere.

Presently he looked up.

“And Deever struck him in the office-that isn’t denied?”

“No, sir,” admitted the local inspector. “Mr. Deever said —”

“And you marched Templar through the streets in broad daylight, handcuffed to a constable?”

“Yes, sir. Knowing what I did about him —”

“I’d better see the Saint,” said Teal. “If I’m not mistaken, someone’s going to be sorry they knew so much.”

He was shown into Simon’s cell, and the Saint rose languidly to greet him.

“Hullo, Claud,” he murmured. “I’m glad you’ve arrived. A gang of these local half-wits in funny hats—
“Never mind that,” said Teal bluntly. “Tell me what you’re getting out of this.”

Simon pondered.

“I shouldn’t accept anything less than ten thousand pounds,” he said finally.

The light in Chief Inspector Teal’s understanding strengthened slowly. He turned to the local inspector, who had accompanied him.

“By the way,” he said, “I suppose you never found that man from Huddersfield, or whoever it was that blew the gaff?”

“No, sir. We’ve made inquiries at all the hotels, but he seems to have disappeared. I’ve got a sort of description of him-a fairly tall broad-shouldered man with a beard —”

“I see,” said Teal, very sleepily.

Simon dipped into the local inspector’s pocket and calmly borrowed a packet of cigarettes. He lighted one.

“If it’s any help to you,” he said, “the report of everything that happened in Deever’s office is perfectly true. I went to him for some money, and then I went to him for some more. Every time I offered excellent security. I behaved myself like a law-abiding citizen —”

“Why did you call yourself Smith?”

“Why shouldn’t I? It’s a grand old English name. And I always understood that you could call yourself anything you liked so long as you didn’t do it with intent to defraud. Go and tell Deever to prove the fraud. I just had to have some cash to go to the races, I had those Latvian bonds with me, and I thought that if I gave my real name I’d be making all sorts of silly difficulties. That’s all there was to it. But did anyone make an honest attempt to find out if there was a fraud?”

“I see,” said Teal again-and he really did see.

“They did not,” said the Saint in a pained voice. “What happened? I was assaulted. I was abused. I was handcuffed and marched through the streets like a common burglar, followed by shop girls and guttersnipes, snapped by press photographers. I was shoved in a cell for forty-eight hours, and I wasn’t even allowed to send for a clean pair of socks. A bunch of flat-footed nincompoops told me when to get up, when to eat, when to take exercise, and when to go to bed again-just as if I’d already been convicted. Deever’s story has been published in every paper in the United Kingdom. And d’you know what that means?”

Teal did not answer. And the Saint’s forefinger tapped him just where his stomach began to bulge, tapped him debonairly in the rhythm of the Saint’s seraphic accents, in a gesture that Teal knew only too well.

“It means that there’s one of the swellest legal actions on earth waiting for me to win it-an action for damages for wrongful imprisonment, defamation of character, libel, slander, assault, battery, and the Lord alone knows what not. I wouldn’t take a penny less than ten thousand pounds. I may even want more. And do you think James Deever won’t come across?”

Chief Inspector Teal had no reply. He knew Deever would pay.

1. The Appalling Politician
   

THE frog-like voice of Sir Joseph Whipplethwaite boomed. He was speaking from the annual dinner of the British Badminton Society. “Badminton is an excellent means of acquiring and retaining that fitness of body which is so necessary to all of us in these strenuous times. We politicians have to keep fit, the same as everyone else. And many of us-as I do myself-retain that fitness by playing badminton.

“Badminton,” he boomed, “is a game which pre-eminently requires physical fitness-a thing which we politicians also require. I myself could scarcely be expected to carry out my work at the Ministry of International Trade if I were not physically fit. And badminton is the game by which I keep myself fit to carry out my duties as a politician. Of course I shall never play as well as you people do; but we politicians can only try to do our best in the intervals between our other duties.” There was a static hum.

“Badminton,” boomed the frog-like voice tirelessly, “is a game which makes you fit and keeps you fit; and we politicians —”

Simon Templar groaned aloud, and hurled himself at the radio somewhat hysterically. At odd times during the past year he had accidentally switched on to Sir Joseph Whipplethwaite speaking at the annual dinners of the North British Lacrosse League, the British Bowling Association, the Southern Chess Congress, the International Ice Skating Association, the Royal Toxophilite Society, and the British Squash Racquets Association; and he could have recited Sir Joseph Whipplethwaite’s speech from memory, with all its infinite variations.

In that mellow oak-beamed country pub, where he had gone to spend a restful week-end, the reminder of that appalling politician was more than he could bear.

“It’s positively incredible,” he muttered to himself, returning limply to his beer. “I’ll swear that if you put that into a story as an illustration of the depths of imbecility that can be reached by a man who’s considered fit to govern this purblind country, you’d simply raise a shriek of derisive laughter. And yet you’ve heard it with your own ears-half a dozen times. You’ve heard him playing every game under the sun in his after-dinner speeches, and mixing it fifty-fifty with his godlike status as a politician. And that-that-that blathering oaf is a member of His Majesty’s Cabinet and one of the men on whom the British Empire’s fate depends. O God, O Montreal!”

Words failed him, and he buried his face wrathfully in his tankard.

But he was not destined to forget Sir Joseph Whipplethwaite that week-end or ever again; for early on the Monday morning a portly man with a round red face and an unrepentant bowler hat walked into the hotel, and Simon recognized him with some astonishment.

“Claud Eustace himself, by the Great White Spat of Professor Clarence Skinner!” he cried. “What brings my little ray of sunshine here?”

Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal looked at him suspiciously. “I might ask the same question.”

“I’m recuperating,” said the Saint blandly, “from many months of honest toil. There are times when I have to get away from London just to forget what gas fumes and soot smell like. Come and have a drink.”

Teal handed his bag to the boots and chewed on his gum continuously.

“What I’m wanting just now is some breakfast. I’ve been on the go since five o’clock this morning without anything to eat.”

“That suits me just as well,” murmured the Saint, taking the detective’s arm and steering him towards the dining-room. “I see you’re staying. Has some sinister local confectioner been selling candy at illegal hours?”

They sat down in the deserted room, and Teal ordered himself a large plate of porridge. Then his sleepily cherubic blue eyes gazed at the Saint again, not so suspiciously as before, but rather regretfully.

“There are times when I wish you were an honest man, Saint,” Teal said.

Simon raised his eyebrows a fraction. “There’s something on your mind, Claud,” he said. “May I know it?”

Mr. Teal pondered while his porridge was set before him, and dug a spoon into it thoughtfully. “Have you heard of Sir Joseph Whipplethwaite?”

Simon stared at him; and then he covered his eyes. “Have I not!” he articulated tremulously. He flung out a hand. ” ‘Badminton,’ ” he boomed, ” ‘is a game that has made we politicians what we are. Without badminton, we politicians —’ “

“I see you have heard of him. Did you know he lived near here?”

Simon shook his head. He knew that Sir Joseph Whipplethwaite had acquired the recently-created portfolio of the Minister of International Trade, and had gathered from broadcast utterances that Sir Joseph considered Whipplethwaite an ideal man for the job, but he had not felt moved to investigate the matter further. His energetic life was far too full to allow him time to trace the career of every pinhead who exercised his jaw in the Houses of Parliament at the long-suffering taxpayer’s expense.

“His house is only about a mile away-a big modern place with four or five acres of garden. And whatever you like to think about him yourself, the fact remains that he has fairly important work to do. Things go through his office that it’s sometimes important to keep absolutely secret until the proper time comes to publish them.”

Simon Templar had never been called slow. “Good Lord, Teal-is this a stolen treaty business?”

The detective nodded slowly. “That sounds a little sensational, but it’s about the truth of it. The draft of our commercial agreement with the Argentine is going before the House tomorrow, and Whipplethwaite brought it down here on Saturday night late to work on it-he has the pleasure of introducing it for the Government. I don’t know much about it myself, except that it’s to do with tariffs, and some people could make a lot of money out of knowing the text of it in advance.”

“And it’s been stolen?”

“On Sunday afternoon.”

Simon reached thoughtfully for his cigarette-case. “Teal, why are you telling me this?”

“I don’t really know,” said the detective, looking at him sombrely.

“When you walked in and found me here, I suppose you thought I was the man.”

“No-I didn’t think that. A thing like that is hardly in your line, is it?”

“It isn’t. So why bring me in?”

“I don’t really know,” repeated the detective stubbornly, watching his empty porridge plate being replaced by one of bacon and eggs. “In fact, if you wanted to lose me my job you could go right out and sell the story to a newspaper. They’d pay you well for it.”

The Saint tilted back his chair and blew a succession of smoke-rings towards the ceiling. Those very clear and challenging blue eyes rested almost lazily on the detective’s somnolent pink half-moon of a face.

“I get you, Claud,” he said seriously, “and for once the greatest criminal brain of this generation shall be at the disposal of the Law. Shoot me the whole works.”

“I can do more than that,” said Teal, with a certain relief. “I’ll show you the scene presently. Whipplethwaite’s gone to London for a conference with the Prime Minister.”

The detective finished his breakfast, and refused a cigarette.

After a few minutes they set out to walk to Whipplethwaite’s house, where Teal had already spent several hours of fruitless searching for clues after a special police car had brought him down from London.

Teal, having given his outline of the barest facts, had become taciturn, and Simon made no attempt to force the pace. The Saint appreciated the compliment of the detective’s confidence-although perhaps it was only one of many occasions on which those two epic antagonists had been silent in a momentary recognition of the impossible friendship that might have been just as epic if their destinies had lain in different paths. Those were the brief interludes when a truce was possible between them; and the hint of a sigh in Teal’s silent ruminations might have been taken to indicate that he wished the truce could have been extended indefinitely.

In the same silence they turned in between the somewhat pompous concrete gate-pillars that gave entrance to the grounds of Sir Joseph Whipplethwaite’s country seat. From there, a gravelled carriage drive led them in a semicircular curve through a rough, densely-grown plantation and brought them rather suddenly into sight of the house, which was invisible from the road. A uniformed local constable was patrolling in front of the door; he saluted as he saw Teal, and looked at the Saint inquiringly.

Teal, however, was uncommunicative. He stood aside for the Saint to pass, and ushered him personally through the front door-a performance which, from the village constable’s point of view, was sufficient introduction to one who could scarcely have been less than an Assistant Commissioner.

The house was not only modern, as Teal had described it-it was almost prophetic. From the outside, it looked at first glance like the result of some close in-breeding between an aquarium, a wedding cake, and a super cinema. It was large, white and square, with enormous areas of window and erratic balconies which looked as if they had been transferred bodily from the façade of an Atlantic liner. Inside, it was remarkably light and airy, with a certain ascetic barrenness of furnishing that made it seem too studiously sanitary to be comfortable, like a hospital ward.

Teal led the way down a long wide white hall, and opened a door at the end. Simon found himself in a room that needed no introduction as Sir Joseph’s study. Every wall had long bookshelves let into its depth in the modern style, and there was a glass-topped desk with a steel-framed chair behind it; the upper reaches of the walls were plastered with an assortment of racquets, bats, skis, skates, and illuminated addresses that looked oddly incongruous.

“Is this architecture Joseph’s idea?” asked the Saint.

“I think it’s his wife’s,” said Teal. “She’s very progressive.”