Brighter Buccaneer (8 page)

“Yeah?”

“This is Chief Inspector Teal speaking. Have you got a man with you now?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I thought so. That’s Simon Templar-the Saint. I just saw him go into the hotel. Never mind if you think you know him. That’s his favourite trick. We heard he was planning to hold you up, and we want to get him red-handed. Now what about that idea I mentioned yesterday?”

Kemmler looked round inconspicuously. It was difficult to keep the incredulity out of his eyes. The appearance of his most trusted croupier failed to correspond with the description he had heard of the Saint in any respect except that of height and build. Then he saw that the Anglo-Indian complexion could be a simple concoction of grease-paint, the hardness of the features and the moustache and eyebrows an elementary problem in make-up.

The croupier was strolling around the bed, and Kemmler could scarcely control himself as he saw the man touch the pillow underneath which the envelope of notes still lay.

“Well?”

Kemmler fought out a battle with himself of which nothing showed on his face. The Saint’s right hand was resting in a side pocket of his coat-there was nothing in that ordinary fact to disturb most people, but to Max Kemmler it had a particular and deadly significance. And his own gun was under the pillow with the money-he had been caught like the veriest greenhorn.

“What about it?” he demanded as calmly as he could.

“We want to get him,” the detective said. “If he’s in your room already you can’t do a thing. Why not be sensible? You’re sailing on the Empress of Britain today, and that suits us. We’ll turn a blind eye on your new passport. We won’t even ask why the Saint wants to rob you. All we ask is for you to help us get that man.”

Max Kemmler swallowed. That knowledge of his secret plans was only the second blow that had come to him. He was a tough guy in any circumstances, but he knew when the dice were loaded against him. He was in a cleft stick. The fact that he had promised himself the pleasure of giving the Saint an unwholesome surprise if they ever met didn’t enter into it.

“What shall I do?” he asked.

“Let him get on with it. Let him stick you up. Don’t fight or anything. I’ll have a squad of men outside your door in thirty seconds.”

“Okay,” said Max Kemmler expressionlessly. “I’ll see to it.”

He put down the receiver and looked into the muzzle of Simon Templar’s automatic. With the detective’s warning still ringing in his ears, he let his mouth fall open in well-simulated astonishment and wrath.

“What the hell —”

“Spare my virginal ears,” said the Saint gently. “It’s been swell helping you to rake in the berries, Max, but this is where the game ends. Stick your hands right up and feel your chest expand!”

He turned over the pillow and put Kemmler’s gun in a spare pocket. The envelope of notes went into another. Max Kemmler watched the disappearance of his wealth with a livid face of fury that he could hardly control. If he had not received that telephone call he would have leapt at the Saint and chanced it.

Simon smiled at him benevolently.

“I’m afraid we’ll have to see that you don’t raise an alarm,” he said. “Would you mind turning around?”

Max Kemmler turned reluctantly. He was not prepared for the next thing that happened to him, and it is doubtful whether even Chief Inspector Teal could have induced him to submit meekly to it if he had. Fortunately he was given no option. A reverse gun-butt struck him vimfully and scientifically on the occiput, and he collapsed in a limp heap.

When he woke up a page-boy was shaking him by the shoulder and his head was splitting with the worst headache that he had ever experienced.

“Is your luggage ready to go, Mr. Kemmler?”

Kemmler glared at the boy for a few seconds in silence. Then recollection returned to him, and he staggered up with a hoarse profanity.

He dashed to the door and flung it open. The corridor was deserted.

“Where’s that guy who was here a minute ago? Where are the cops?” he shouted, and the bellhop gasped at him uncomprehendingly.

“I don’t know, sir.”

Max Kemmler flung him aside and grabbed the telephone. In a few seconds he was through to Scotland Yard-and Chief Inspector Teal.

“Say, you, what the hell’s the idea? What is it, huh? The grand double-cross? Where are those dicks who were going to be waiting for the Saint outside my door? What’ve you done with ‘em?”

“I don’t understand you, Kemmler,” said Mr. Teal coldly. “Will you tell me exactly what’s happened?”

“The Saint’s been here. You know it. You phoned me and told me. You told me to let him stick me up-give him everything he wanted-you wouldn’t let me put up a fight-you said you’d be waiting for him outside the door and catch him red-handed —”

Kemmler babbled on for a while longer; and then gradually his tale petered out incoherently as he realized just how thoroughly he had been fooled. When the detective came to interview him Kemmler apologized and said he must have been drunk, which nobody believed.

But it seemed as if the police didn’t know anything about his passage on the Empress of Britain after all. It was Max Kemmler’s only consolation.

1. The Bad Baron
   

“IN these days of strenuous competition,” said the Saint, “it’s an extraordinarily comforting thing to know you’re at the top of your profession-unchallenged, undismayed, and wholly beautiful.”

His audience listened to him with a very fair simulation of reverence-Patricia Holm because she had heard similar modest statements so often before that she was beginning to believe them, Peter Quentin because he was the very latest recruit to the cause of Saintly lawlessness and the game was still new and exciting.

They had met together at the Mayfair for a cocktail; and the fact that Simon Templar’s remark was not strictly true did nothing to spoil the prospect of an innocent evening’s amusement.

For the Saint certainly had a rival; and of recent days a combination of that rival’s boundless energy and Simon Templar’s cautious self-effacement had placed another name in the position in the headlines which had once been regularly booked for the Saint. Newspapers screamed his exploits from their bills; music-hall comedians gagged about him; detectives tore their hair and endured the scathing criticisms of the Press and their superiors with as much fortitude as they could call on; and owners of valuable jewellery hurriedly deposited their valuables in safes and found a new interest in patent burglar alarms.

For jewels were the specialty of the man who was known as “The Fox”-there was very little else known about him. He burst upon the public in a racket of sensational banner lines when he held up Lady Palfrey’s charity ball at Grosvener House single-handed, and got clear away with nearly thirty thousand pounds’ worth of display pieces. The clamour aroused by that exploit had scarcely passed its peak when he raided Sir Barnabay Gerrald’s house in Berkeley Square and took a four-thousand-pound pearl necklace from a wall safe in the library while the Gerralds were entertaining a distinguished company to dinner in the next room. He opened and ransacked a Bond Street jeweller’s strong-room the very next night at a cost to the insurance underwriters of over twenty thousand pounds. Within a week he was the topic of every conversation: Disarmament Conferences were relegated to obscure corners of the news sheets, and even Wimbledon took second place.

All three coups showed traces of careful preliminary spade-work. It was obvious that the Fox had mapped out every move in advance, and that the headlines were merely proclaiming the results of a scheme of operations that had been maturing perhaps for years. It was equally obvious to surmise that the crimes which had already been committed were not the beginning and the end of the campaign. News editors (who rarely possess valuable jewels) seized on the Fox as a Heavensent gift in a flat season; and the Fox worked for them with a sense of news value that was something like the answer to their blasphemous prayers. He entered Mrs. Wilbur G. Tully’s suite at the Dorchester and removed her jewel-case with everything that it contained while she was in the bathroom and her maid had been decoyed away on a false errand. Mrs. Tully sobbingly told the reporters that there was only one thing which never could be replaced-a diamond-and-amethyst pendant valued at a mere two hundred pounds, a legacy from her mother, for which she was prepared to offer a reward of twice its value. It was returned to her through the post the next morning, with a typewritten expression of the Fox’s sincere apologies. The news editors bought cigars and wallowed in their Hour. They hadn’t anything as good as that since the Saint appeared to go out of business, and they made the most of it.

It was even suggested that the Fox might be the once notorious Saint in a new guise; and Simon Templar received a visit from Chief Inspector Teal.

“For once I’m not guilty, Claud,” said the Saint, with considerable sadness; and the detective knew him well enough to believe him.

Simon had his private opinions about the Fox. The incident of Mrs. Tully’s ancestral pendant did not appeal to him; he bore no actual ill-will towards Mrs. Tully, but the very prompt return of the article struck him as being a very ostentatious gesture to the gallery of a kind in which he had never indulged. Perhaps he was prejudiced. There is very little room for friendly rivalry in the paths of crime; and the Saint had his own human egotisms.

The fame of the Fox was brought home to him that evening through another line.

“There’s a man who’s asking for trouble,” said Peter Quentin.

He pointed to a copy of the Evening News as it lay open on the table between the glasses. Simon leaned sideways and scanned it lazily.

THE MAN WHO IS NOT AFRAID OF BURGLARS
Three times attacked-three times the winner
NO QUARTER!

BARON VON DORTVENN is one visitor to London who is not likely to spend any sleepless nights on account of the wave of crime with which the police are trying in vain to cope.

He has come to England to look after the bracelet of Charlemagne, which he is lending to the International Jewellery Exhibition which opens on Monday.

The famous bracelet is a massive circle of gold four inches wide and thickly encrusted with rubies. It weighs eight pounds, and is virtually priceless.

At present it is locked in the drawer of an ordinary desk at the house in Campden Hill which the Baron has rented for a short season. He takes it with him wherever he goes. It has been in the care of his family for five centuries, and the Baron regards it as a mascot.

Baron von Dortvenn scorns the precautions which would be taken by most people who found themselves in charge of such a priceless heirloom.

“Every criminal is a coward,” the Baron told an Evening News representative yesterday. “I have been attacked three times in the course of my travels with the bracelet —”

“Sounds like a job for our friend the Fox,” remarked Peter Quentin carelessly; and was amazed at the look Simon Templar gave him. It leapt from the Saint’s eyes like blued steel.

“Think so?” drawled the Saint.

He skimmed the rest of the half-column, which was mainly concerned with the Baron’s boasts of what he would do to anyone who attempted to steal his heirloom. Half-way down there was an inset photograph of a typical Junker with a double chin, close-cropped hair, monocle, and waxed moustaches.

“A nasty-looking piece of work,” said the Saint thoughtfully.

Patricia Holm finished her Dry Sack rather quickly. She knew all the signs-and only that afternoon the Saint had hinted that he might behave himself for a week.

“I’m starving,” she said.

They went into the restaurant, and the subject might have been forgotten during the Saint’s profound study of the menu and wine list, for Simon had a very delicate discrimination in the luxuries of life. Let us say that the subject might have been forgotten-the opportunity to forget it simply did not arise.

“To get the best out of caviare, you should eat it like they used to in Rumania-in half-pound portions, with a soup-ladle,” said the Saint, when the cloud of bustling waiters had dispersed.

And then he relaxed in his chair. Relaxed completely, and lighted a cigarette with infinite deliberation.

“Don’t look round,” he said. “The gent has got to pass our table. Just put it on record that I said I’d be damned.”

The other two gazed at him vaguely and waited. A superb chef de restaurant came past, ushering a mixed pair of guests to a table on the other side of the room. One of them was a blonde girl, smartly dressed and rather good-looking in a statuesque way. The other was unmistakably the Baron von Dortvenn.

Simon could hardly keep his eyes off them. He barely trifled with his food, sipped his wine with no more interest than if it had been water, and lighted one cigarette from another with monotonous regularity. When the orchestra changed over to a dance rhythm, he pleaded that he was suffering from corns and left it to Peter Quentin to take Patricia on the floor.

The Baron was apparently not so afflicted.

He danced several times with his companion, and danced very badly. It was after a particularly elephantine waltz that Simon saw the girl, quite openly, dab her eyes with her handkerchief as she left the floor.

He leaned back even more lazily, with his eyes half closed and a cigarette merely smouldering in the corner of his mouth, and continued to watch. The couple were admirably placed for his observations-the girl facing him, and he saw the Baron in profile. And it became very plain to him that a jolly soirče was definitely not being had by all.

The girl and the Baron were arguing-not loudly, but very vehemently-and the Baron was getting red in the face. He was clearly working himself into a vicious rage, and wrath did not make him look any more savoury. The girl was trying to be dignified, but she was breaking down. Suddenly, with a flash of spirit, she said something that obviously struck home. The Baron’s eyes contracted, and his big hands fastened on the girl’s wrists. Simon could see the knuckles whitening under the skin in the savage brutality of the grip, and the girl winced. The Baron released her with a callous fling of her arm that spilled a fork off the table; and without another word the girl gathered up her wrap and walked away.