Brighter Buccaneer (15 page)

Simon read the labels one by one, and nodded. “Is he shortsighted?”

“He wears glasses,” said the detective.

“Splendid,” murmured Simon, and went back to the hotel to supervise the refuelling of his car without relieving Teal’s curiosity.

At six o’clock that evening a very frightened man, who had undergone one of the slickest feats of abduction with violence that he could ever have imagined, and who had been very efficiently gagged, bound, blindfolded, and carried across country by the masked bandit who was responsible, sat with his back to a tree where he had been roughly propped up in a deep glade of the New Forest and watched the movements of his captor with goggling eyes.

The Saint had kindled a small, crisp fire of dry twigs, and he was feeding more wood to it and blowing into it with the dexterity of long experience, nursing it up into a solid cone of fierce red heat. Down there in the hollow where they were, the branches of the encircling trees filtered away the lingering twilight until it was almost as dark as midnight; but the glow of the fire showed up the Saint’s masked face in macabre shading of red and black as he worked over it, like the face of a pantomime devil illuminated on a darkened stage.

The Saint’s voice, however, was far from devilish-it was almost affectionate.

“You don’t seem to realize, brother,” he said, “that stealing secret treaties is quite a serious problem, even when they’re the daft sort of treaties that We Politicians amuse ourselves with. And it’s very wrong of you to think that you can shift the blame for your crimes on to that unfortunate ass whom you dislike so much. So you’re going to tell me just where you put that treaty, and then there’ll be no more nonsense about it.”

The prisoner’s eyes looked as if they might pop out of his head at any moment, and strangled grunts came through the gag as he struggled with the ropes that bound his arms to his sides; but the Saint was unmoved. The fire had been heaped up to his complete satisfaction.

“Our friend Mr. Teal,” continued the Saint, in the same oracular vein, as he began to unlace the captive’s shoes, “has been heard to complain about there being no Third Degree in this country. Now that’s obviously ridiculous, because you can see for yourself that there is a Third Degree, and I’m it. Our first experiment is the perfect cure for those who suffer from cold feet. I’ll show it to you now-unless you’d rather talk voluntarily?”

The prisoner shook his head vigorously, and emitted further strangled grunts which the Saint rightly interpreted as a refusal. Simon sighed, and hauled the man up close to the fire.

“Very well, brother. There’s no compulsion at all. Any statement you like to make will be made of your own free will.” He drew one of the man’s bared feet closer to his little fire. “If you change your mind,” he remarked genially, “you need only make one of those eloquent gurgling noises of yours, and I expect I shall understand.”

It was only five minutes before the required gurgling noise came through the gag. But after the gag had been taken out it was another five minutes before the red-faced prisoner’s speech became coherent enough to be useful.

Simon left him there, and met Teal in the hotel at half past seven. “The treaty is pushed under the carpet in Whipplethwaite’s study,” he said.

The detective’s pose of mountainous sleepiness failed him for once in his life. “As near as that?” he ejaculated. “Good Lord!”

The Saint nodded. “I don’t think you’ll have to worry your heads about whether he’ll prosecute,” he said. “The man’s mentally deficient-I thought so from the beginning. And my special treatment hasn’t improved his balance a lot …

“As a general rule, problems in detection bore me stiff-it’s so much more entertaining to commit the crime yourself-but this one had its interesting points. A man who could hate a harmless ass like that enough to try and ruin him in such an elaborate way is a bit of a museum specimen. You know, Claud, I’ve been thinking about those brilliant ideas you say policemen get sometimes; it strikes me that the only thing you want —”

“Tell me about it when I come back,” said Teal, looking at his watch. “I’d better see Whipplethwaite at once and get it over with.”

“Give him my love,” drawled the Saint, dipping his nose into the pint of beer which the detective had bought for him. “He’ll get his satisfaction all right when you arrest Vallance.”

The detective stood stock still and stared at him with an owl-like face. “Arrest who?” he stammered.

“Mr. Spencer Vallance-the bloke who put insomnia tablets in Whipplethwaite’s dyspepsia bottle at lunch-time, nipped up to Whipplethwaite’s room for the key, opened the safe, replaced the key, and then staggered out of the study bellowing that he’d been sandbagged. The bloke I’ve just been having words with,” said the Saint. —
Teal leaned back rather limply against the bar.

“Good Lord alive, Templar”

“You meant well, Claud,” said the Saint kindly. “And it was quite easy really. The only difficult part was that insomnia-tablet business. But I figured that the culprit might want to make quite sure that Joseph would be sleeping soundly when he buzzed up for the key, and the method was just an idea of mine. Then I saw that Joseph’s insomnia dope was white, while his indigestion muck was light grey, and I guessed he must have been short-sighted to fall for the change-over.

“When I looked up at the house it was quite obvious that if anyone could climb down that flying buttress, someone else could just as easily climb up. That’s why I was going to say something about your brilliant police ideas.”

The Saint patted the detective consolingly on the back. “Policemen are swell so long as they plod along in their methodical way and sort out facts-they catch people that way quite often. But directly they get on to a really puzzling case, and for some reason it strikes them that they ought to be Great Detectives just for once-they fall down with the gooseberries. I’ve noticed those symptoms of detectivosis in you before, Claud. You ought to keep a tighter hand on yourself.”

“How long have you known it wasn’t Whipplethwaite?” asked Teal.

“Oh, for months,” said the Saint calmly. “But when your elephantine hints conjured up the vision of Joseph creeping stealthily down from the balcony upon his foe, couldn’t you see a sort of grisly grotesqueness about it? I could. To stage a crime so that another man would naturally be suspected requires a certain warped efficiency of brain. To think for a moment that Joseph could have produced a scheme like that was the sort of brilliant idea that only a policeman in your condition would get. How on earth could Joseph have worked all that out?”

The Saint smiled blandly. “He’s only a politician.”

1. The Unpopular Landlord
   

THERE were periods in Simon Templar’s eventful life when that insatiable wanderlust which had many times sent him half-way round the world on fantastic quests that somehow never materialised in quite the way they had been intended to, invaded even his busy life in London. He became bored with looking out on to the same street scene from his windows every day, or he saw some other domicile on the market which appealed to his catholic taste in residences, or else he moved because he thought that too long an interval of stability would weaken his resistance to regular hours and Times-reading and other low forms of human activity. At these periods he would change his address with such frequency that his friends despaired of ever establishing contact with him again. It was one of the few aimless things he did; and it never provided any exciting sequels-except on this one historic occasion which the chronicler has to record.

Simon Templar awoke on this particular morning with that familiar feeling of restlessness upon him; and, having nothing else of importance to distract him that day, he sallied forth to interview an estate agent. This interviewing of estate agents is a business that is quite sufficient to discourage any migratory urges which may afflict the average man; but Simon Templar had become inured to it over the course of years. He sought out the offices of Messrs. Potham & Spode, obtained the services of Mr. Potham, and prepared to be patient.

Mr. Potham was a thin, angular man with grey hair, gold-rimmed spectacles, and a face that receded in progressive stages from his eyebrows to the base of his neck. He was a harmless man enough, kind to his children and faithful to his wife, a man whose income tax returns were invariably honest to the uttermost farthing; but twenty years of his profession had had their inevitable effect.

“I want,” said the Saint distinctly, “an unfurnished non-service flat, facing south or west, with four large rooms, and a good, open outlook, at not more than five hundred a year.”

Mr. Potham rummaged through a large file, and eventually, with an air of triumph, drew forth a sheet.

“Now here,” he said, “I think we have the very thing you’re looking for. No. 101, Park Lane: one bedroom, one reception-room —”

“Making four rooms,” murmured the Saint patiently.

Mr. Potham peered at him over the rims of his glasses and sighed. He replaced the sheet carefully, and drew forth another.

“Now this,” he said, “seems to suit all your requirements. There are two bed, two reception, kitchen and bath; and the rent is extremely moderate. Our client is actually paying fifteen hundred a year, exclusive of rates; but in order to secure a quick let he is ready to pass on the lease at the very reasonable rent of twelve hundred —”

“I said five hundred,” murmured the Saint.

Mr. Potham turned back to his file with a hurt expression.

“Now here, Mr. Templar,” he said, “we have No. 27, Cloudesley Street, Berkeley Square —”

“Which faces north,” murmured the Saint.

“Does it?” said Mr. Potham in some pain.

“I’m afraid it does,” said the Saint ruthlessly. “All the odd numbers in Cloudesley Street do.”

Mr. Potham put back the sheet with the air of an adoring mother removing her offspring from the vicinity of some stranger who had wantonly smacked it. He searched through his file for some time before he produced his next offering.

“Well, Mr. Templar,” he said, adjusting his spectacles rather nervously, “I have here a very charming service flat —”

Simon Templar knew from bitter experience that this process could be prolonged almost indefinitely; but that day he had one or two helpful ideas.

“I saw a flat to let as I came along here-just round the corner, in David Square,” he said. “It looked like the sort of thing I’m wanting, from the outside.”

“David Square?” repeated Mr. Potham, frowning. “I don’t think I know of anything there.”

“It had a Potham and Spode board hung out,” said the Saint relentlessly “Perhaps Spode hung it up one dark night when you weren’t looking.”

“David Square!” re-echoed Mr. Potham, like a forsaken bass in an oratorio. “David Square!” He polished his spectacles agitatedly, burrowed into his file again, and presently looked up over his gold rims. “Would that be No. 17?”

“I think it would.”

Mr. Potham extracted the page of particulars and leaned back, gazing at the Saint with a certain tinge of pity.

“There is a flat to let at No. 17, David Square,” he admitted in a hushed voice, as if he were reluctantly discussing a skeleton in his family cupboard. “It is one of Major Bellingford Smart’s buildings.”

He made this announcement as though he expected the Saint to recoil from it with a cry of horror, and looked disappointed when the cry did not come. But the Saint pricked up his ears. Mr. Potham’s tone, and the name of Bellingford Smart, touched a dim chord of memory in his mind; and never in his life had one of those chords led the Saint astray. Somewhere, some time, he knew that he had heard the name of Bellingford Smart before, and it had not been in a complimentary reference.

“What’s the matter with that?” he asked coolly. “Is he a leper or something?”

Mr. Potham smoothed down the sheet on his blotter with elaborate precision.

“Major Bellingford Smart,” he said judiciously, “is not a landlord with whose property we are anxious to deal. We have it on our books, since he sends us particulars; but we don’t offer it unless we are specially asked for it.”

“But what does he do?” persisted the Saint.

“He is-ah-somewhat difficult to get on with,” replied Mr. Potham cautiously.

More than that his discretion would not permit him to say; but the Saint’s appetite was far from satisfied. In fact, Simon Templar was so intrigued with the unpopularity of Major Bellingford Smart that he took his leave of Mr. Potham rather abruptly, leaving that discreet gentleman gaping in some astonishment at a virginal pad of Orders to View on which he had not been given a chance to inscribe any addresses for the Saint’s inspection.

Simon Templar was not actively in search of trouble at that time. His hours of meditation, as a matter of fact, were almost exclusively occupied with the problem of devising for himself an effective means of entering the town house of the Countess of Albury (widow of Albury’s Peerless Pickles) whose display of diamonds at a recent public function had impressed him as being a potential contribution to his Old Age Pension that he could not conscientiously pass by. But one of those sudden impulses of his had decided that the time was ripe for knowing more about Major Bellingford Smart; and in such a mood as that, a comparatively straightforward proposition like the Countess of Albury’s diamonds had to take second place.

Simon went along to a more modern real estate agency than the honourable firm of Potham & Spode, one of those marble-pillared, super-card-index billeting offices where human habitations are shot at you over the counter like sausages in a cafeteria; and there an exquisitely-dressed young man with a double-breasted waistcoat and impossibly patent-leather hair, who looked as if he could have been nothing less than the second son of a duke or an ex-motor-salesman, was more communicative than Mr. Potham had been. It is also worthy of note that the exquisite young man thought that he was volunteering the information quite spontaneously, as a matter of interest to an old friend of his youth; for the Saint’s tact and guile could be positively Machiavellian when he chose.