The Saint and Mr. Teal: Formerly Called "Once More the Saint" (16 page)

“I’ll have two fried eggs, lots of bacon, and about a quart of coffee,” he said to the waitress who had already served him with one breakfast that day. “After that, I might be able to toy with three more eggs, a pound of mushrooms, and a lot more bacon. Go out and tell them to kill the pig, Gladys.”

While at least part of his order was being executed he went to the telephone and put another call through to Patricia.

“Hullo, darling,” he said. “This is very late for you to be up.”

“I have been to bed,” said the girl.

“So have I,” murmured the Saint breezily. “But not for long. I don’t think this early rising is healthy- the prospect of it takes such a lot of kick out of the night before, and I hate having my morning tea by moonlight.”

“How did the fishing go?”

“Pretty well.” Simon glanced round him cautiously, but there was no one within earshot. “When last observed, Brother Ronald was running into a lot of trouble. I ran all the oil out of his engines, and unless he thought of greasing them with his own perspiration they’ve seized up in a way that’ll take days to unstick. The Seabird won’t be making any more voyages for a while.”

Patricia laughed softly.

“When are you coming home, boy?”

“Well-this is Friday, isn’t it? I seem to remember that we have a date for lunch with Claud Eustace Teal. I’ll meet you at the Bruton at twelve-thirty.”

He went back to his second breakfast with the contented knowledge that another and very different conversation must have been seething over the London wire at about that time, and he was right.

Ronald Nilder did not think it expedient to go into details.

“The Saint caught me in the Solent, Goldman. He didn’t say it was him, but it couldn’t have been anyone else. He threw the guns overboard and beat me up.”

Tex Goldman had the gift of not wasting time on useless bad language.

“Get back here as quick as you can,” he said grimly. “I’ll have something waiting for the Saint.”

Simon Templar, however, had an equally valuable gift which had stood him in good stead before. On that Friday morning it worked at full pressure. He had a very clear conception of Tex Goldman’s psychology. Wherefore he drove back to London by way of Leather-head and Epsom, and Ted Orping waited for him at the end of the Portsmouth Road in vain.

It was a minute or two before twelve-thirty when he entered the doors of Lansdowne House, but Patricia was waiting for him. The Saint ordered cocktails and told her the detailed history of his early-morning escapade.

“If you came back by a roundabout way, I expect Nilder’s got home about the same time,” she said, and Simon smiled.

“I doubt it, old darling,” he said calmly. “I stuck my penknife through both his back tires and the spare for luck, so he could either wait for someone to repair the damage or catch a train that won’t get him in for another quarter of an hour. That’ll make it a bit too much of a rush for him to catch the two o’clock via Boulogne, so he can either make a dash for the four o’clock Dover-Calais or wait for the eight-twenty via Dieppe or the nine o’clock via Havre-my familiarity with these timetables is remarkable,” said the Saint modestly. “In any case, he’ll have to go to his bank first, and that’s all I’m interested in.”

The girl looked at him curiously.

“There was a time when he wouldn’t have got off so lightly,” she said.

Simon leaned back with his long legs stretched out in front of him and watched the smoke from his cigarette curling towards the ceiling.

“I know. But we weren’t so businesslike in those days, and the income tax wasn’t five bob in the pound. Besides which, the activities of the great Claud Eustace weren’t quite so near the mark. No, Pat-in the autumn of his life this young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of subtler things, which includes ingenious methods of getting his dirty work done for him. And I think I know a far, far neater way.”

And then he looked round and saw the oval figure of Chief Inspector Teal crossing the lounge towards them. He hitched himself up and called for more Martinis.

“Tell us about things,” he murmured.

“There’s nothing much to tell,” said the detective sleepily, sinking into a chair. “We’re still working, and we’ll get our men before long. I suppose you read about the Underground hold-up last night?”

Simon shook his head.

“I haven’t seen a morning paper.”

“They wounded two men and got away with over three thousand pounds in cash-the booking-office takings from several stations. That’s where it’s so difficult. They’ve got us guessing all the time. First it’s jewellers’ shops; then we guard those, and it’s banks. Then we watch the banks, and it’s a night club. Now it’s the Underground. We can’t possibly protect every place in London where you can find large sums of money, and they know it.”

“No more clues?”

“We’re working on several lines,” said the detective, with professional vagueness; but Simon Templar was not impressed.

“As I see it,” he said, “your trouble is to get hold of the man up top who’s producing all these smart ideas. It’s no good knocking off Green Cross boys here and there-you can always keep tabs on them in the ordinary way, and it’s just this unknown bloke who’s got control of ‘em who’s making ‘em dangerous for the time being.”

Teal nodded.

“That’s about it.”

“And if you did find this unknown bloke, he’d probably turn out to be so unknown that all the evidence you could get against him wouldn’t hang a mosquito.”

“That’s often the trouble,” said Teal gloomily. “But we can’t work any other way.”

“Let’s have some lunch,” said the Saint brightly.

Throughout the meal he played the perfect host with a stern devotion to the book of etiquette that Patricia could not understand. He talked about racing, beer, aeroplanes, theatres, politics, sparking plugs, dress reform, and cancer-everything that could not be steered to any subject that the detective might find tender. Most particularly he avoided saying anything more about the Green Cross boys or their unknown leader; and more than once Teal looked sideways at him with a kind of irritated puzzlement. It was not like the Saint to show such an elaborate desire to keep possibly painful matters out of discussion, and the symptom made Mr. Teal feel a dim uneasiness.

At two o’clock he excused himself with a muttered hint of official business, and Simon accompanied him to the door. Teal twiddled his bowler hat and stared at him somnolently.

“You’re keeping something back,” he said bluntly. “I can’t make you tell me if you don’t want to, but I suppose you realize that these shootings will go on until we get the man who’s at the back of it.”

“That reminds me,” said the Saint. “Can you give me the names of all the. people who’ve been shot up since the fashion started-including the policeman ?”

He wrote down the names Teal gave him on the back of an envelope, and waved the detective a cheery farewell without saying anything in answer to his implied question-a fact which did not dawn clearly upon Mr. Teal until he was halfway down Berkeley Street.

Simon went back to Patricia, and his eyes were gay and dangerous.

“This is where we work very fast,” he said. “London stinks in my throat, and we need a holiday. Wouldn’t you like to get hold of a ship and sail out into the great open seas?”

“But what do we do now?” she asked; and the Saint tilted his eyebrows in teasing mysteriousness.

“One of the agenda is to have words with Clem Enright. Thank God, Corrigan told me where he hangs around when he’s not doing anything-otherwise it might have been difficult.”

He was lucky enough to find Clem Enright at his third attempt, in a public house near Charing Cross station; but he made no fuss about his discovery. Clem Enright, in fact, did not know that it had been made.

Clem in his earlier days had haunted the public bars of the taverns where he drank; but recently, under the patronizing tuition of Ted Orping, he had learned to walk quite unselfconsciously through the saloon entrance. Clem was handling more money than he had ever had in his life before, and in the daze of his newfound affluence he was an apt pupil.

He sat behind a whisky and soda-“Only bums drink beer,” insisted Ted-with his derby hat tipped cockily over one ear in what was meant to be an imitation of Ted Orping’s swagger, listening to a lecture from his hero.

“Protection,” said Ted Orping impressively. “That’s what we’re goin’ for. Protection.”

“I thought that was somethink to do wiv politics,” said Clem hazily.

“Not that sort of protection, you chump,” snarled the scornful Ted. “Who cares about that? I mean protection-like they do it in America. Ain’t you never heard of it? What I mean is, you say to a guy: ‘Here you are with a big business, an’ you never know when some gang may hold you up or chuck a bomb at you. You pay us for protection, an’ we’ll see nothing happens to you.”

“But I thought we was doing the ‘old-ups,” said Clem.

Ted Orping sighed and spat a loose strand of tobacco through his teeth.

“Course we are, fathead. That’s just to show ‘em what may happen if they don’t pay. Then when they’re all frightened, we come an’ talk about protection. We get just as much money, an’ we don’t have to work so hard.”

“Sounds all right,” said Clem.

He took a drink from his glass and tried to conceal his grimace. He’d never cared for whisky and never would, but it cost twice as much as beer, and a toff always had the best. They were toffs now-Ted Orping said so. They owned cigarette cases, had their nails manicured, and changed their shirts twice a week.

“This is a big thing,” said Ted, leaning sideways confidentially. “It’s goin’ to grow an’ grow-there ain’t no limits to it. An’ we’re in at the beginnin’, like the guys who started motorcars an’ wireless. An’ what are they now? Look at ‘em!”

“Marconi,” hazarded Clem helpfully, “Austin,Morris, ‘Enry Ford —”

“Millionaires,” said Ted. “That’s what. And why? Because they were in first. Just like we are. An’ we can be millionaires too. Ain’t Tex told you what them guys in Chicago live like? Sleepin’ in silk sheets, tickin’ off judges, an’ havin’ the mayor to dinner off gold plates. That’s what we’ll be like one day. Have another drink.”

He went to the bar to have the glasses replenished and came back to the corner where they were sitting. A barmaid began to cry “Time, please!” and Ted put his tongue out at her impudently.

“We won’t have none of this, either,” he said. “We’ll have it in our own homes, an’ nobody can say ‘Time’ there. Why, we’re better off in England, because there ain’t no third degree here.”

“Wot’s that mean?” asked Clem.

“Well, when you get pinched they don’t treat you friendly like they do here. They don’t just ask you a few questions which you needn’t answer, an’ then lock you up till you see the beak in the mornin’. What they do is, they take you into a room, about half a dozen bloody great coppers, an’ they make you talk-whether you know anything or not.”

Enright regarded him owlishly.

” ‘Ow do they do that?”

“They know how,” said Ted Orping. “There’s nothing they won’t do to make you confess. Keep you without water, bash you about, beat you with a rubber hose, grind your teeth down with a dentist’s drill-just any torture they can think of. You got to be tough to keep your trap shut when they do things like that.”

Clem Enright shuddered as Orping proceeded to explain other methods of persuasion that he had read of. Clem didn’t feel tough-not in that way. He had had his arms twisted often enough by bigger boys in his ragamuffin youth to know what acute physical pain was like, and he didn’t fancy any of its more agonizing refinements.

“Time, please,” said the barmaid again, and a shirt-sleeved potman began to take up the refrain as he collected glasses off the tables with every circumstance of the spiteful satisfaction which public-house employees seem to feel when they enforce that fatuous law.

“Come on,” said Ted finally. “Let’s get out of here.”

He turned his glass defiantly upside down and swaggered out of the bar, with Clem following him. On the pavement they paused.

“Where are you goin’?” asked Ted. “I got a date with a dame.”

He had spent three hours in a cinema the day before and learnt several new words.

“I’ll go down to the revolver range and practise a bit of shooting,” said Enright.

“Right-oh,” said Ted heartily. “You can’t get too much practice, but don’t let ‘em know you got a gun of your own. See you tonight.”

They separated there, and Clem Enright walked slowly and a little unsteadily down Villiers Street. He was always conscious of his inferior toughness in the presence of Ted Orping, who had killed two men and wounded others. The weight of the automatic in his hip pocket gave him the feeling of being a genuine desperado only occasionally-at other times it seemed to bulk out under his clothes like a poached pheasant, and he went into a cold sweat at the momentary expectation of feeling a heavy hand on his shoulder and hearing familiar words of invitation murmured genially in his ear. Of late he had spent a lot of his money on ammunition at the range and had once scored a target of twenty-four at twelve paces.

They didn’t believe he had it in him to be tough-that was the trouble. He was a good man with the brick in a smash-and-grab, and he could drive a car pretty well in an emergency, but they didn’t class him as a man to take the initiative in any violence. And it rankled. He was as good as they were, but they had never let him play a prominent part in a hold-up. He had a sense of injustice about it, and in his daydreams he lived for the glory of the day when he could demand the right to equality with them by virtue of the notch on his own gun.

Sometimes he heard in imagination the horrible grunt of the policeman whom Basher Tope had shot, the way the man clutched at his stomach and kicked like a wounded rabbit. And then the cold sweat came out on him again… . He closed his eyes to the vision and tried to think of it differently. He saw his own eyes behind the sights, his own finger curling steadily and ruthlessly round the trigger, the gun held as firmly as if in a vise- he had read plenty of the literature of his profession, and knew how it ought to be done; Then the crisp smack of the report, the jerk of the barrel, the pride and the confidence that would come… .