The Saint and the People Importers (4 page)

The kitchen of the Golden Crescent was amazingly small and cramped, reminiscent of the interior of an early-model U-boat. There was no sign of a boiler explosion or the collapse of a stove. One panic-stricken cook had propped himself cataleptically against the greasy refrigerator and was staring at the open door of the storage pantry. The other cook and a waiter whose name Simon did not know were in that doorway ineffectually moving forward and backwards like two particles trapped in a fluctuating magnetic field.

Beyond their legs the Saint could see someone writhing on the floor of the storage pantry. Reaching the two frightened and hesitant men who were blocking the way, Simon saw over their shoulders that the party on the floor was Mahmud, who had waited on him. Mahmud lay moaning, his eyes squeezed shut, his knees drawn up, his left hand clutching his right arm. As he twisted in pain his white jacket was blotched and smeared with grime from the wooden floor. There was no sign of blood.

The Saint took in the details of the scene in one second, scarcely pausing behind the men who were already there.

As he shoved his way past them they gibbered at one another and at him in an incomprehensible amalgam of English and their native dialects.

“What happened and who did it?” Simon snapped.

All he could make out from the ensuing linguistic detonation were the words, “Arm broken!”

He did not stop beside Mahmud any longer than he had stopped behind the other two men.

“Call a doctor!” he threw over his shoulder.

If he had waited to inspect Mahmud or question the incoherent witnesses, anybody who had made the assault and fled could be putting half the West End between himself and the scene of his crime. There were only two doors to the Golden Crescent, the front and the back, and nobody had left through the front. Simon hurried on through the narrow room, rich with the smells of the condiments on its shelves, and out of the back door into the alley where he had seen the van parked not long before. There was no van and nobody in the semi-darkness of the alley now, no Indian Gulliver with Lilliputian helper.

The Saint paused for an instant, looking both ways to be doubly sure the alley was free of any possible danger, and then he ran to the corner and the sidewalk where he had passed on his way to the restaurant. He was sure that he saw the van which conveyed the purveyors of Indian foodstuffs losing itself in the traffic almost a block away. A recollection of the giant delivery man glowed to brief vividness in his mind; but knowing that he had no chance of identifying the mayhem merchant, whoever he was and whether he was in the van or not, Simon retraced his steps to the back door of the restaurant.

In the small storeroom Mahmud still lay on the floor, but Abdul Haroon and the uninjured waiter were kneeling beside him. Mahmud’s eyes were open now, and though his face was tense with pain he was completely conscious.

He turned his head fearfully to see who had come in the door, but tended to relax again when he saw that it was the Saint. Abdul looked more confused than his prostrate employee.

“Where did you go?” he asked Simon.

“To see if I could catch whoever did whatever’s been done,” said the Saint matter-of-factly. “I didn’t.”

He was standing beside Abdul now.

“His arm is broken,” the owner of the Golden Crescent told him.

Mahmud looked up at the Saint almost pleadingly.

“It was an accident,” he said.

Simon narrowed his eyes with disbelief.

“An accident?” he asked. “I’m sorry to have to take an ironic attitude in a time of personal tragedy for you, my friend, but what did you do-catch your arm in an egg-beater?”

“He slipped,” the other waiter said vaguely.

“A box fell,” added one of the cooks from the doorway for good measure.

The Saint knelt next to Abdul and Mahmud.

“I’d have been more likely to conclude that one of your competitors was trying to do you out of your waiters the hard way,” he averred.

He reached to touch Mahmud’s limp arm, but the injured man winced in agony as Simon put pressure on it, and tried to shrink away.

Haroon told one of the cooks to call for a taxi to pull into the alley, and the man scuttled out.

“We will take him to a doctor,” Haroon explained to Simon. “We know one near here.”

“At the rate you’re going, you might as well hire one to stay in residence,” the Saint said. He stood up suddenly, stepped back, and faced the whole group. “Now let’s try to bring a little realism to this Never-Never Land. As far as I can tell through all the polite fog, you’ve got every intention of sitting tight while the bad guys walk all over you with king-sized boots. There’s not much point in being discreet if you end up like Mahmud here.”

There was an embarrassed and very deep silence. Abdul finally spoke.

“It would be worse to end up like Ali,” he said in a voice that was almost a whisper.

The mere fact that he had found the courage to refer to Ali gave Simon hope.

“I don’t expect anybody to sign a complaint,” he said, “but I’m not the police so there’s no need to sign anything. I think Mr. Haroon at least has an idea of how I work. Just give me a hint-or get in touch with me later if you won’t talk in front of other people.”

He stopped and waited, feeling slightly ridiculous as another long silence followed. Abdul got to his feet next to Simon and avoided looking at him.

“But it was only an accident,” he muttered.

Simon looked around at his otherwise mute audience in exasperation. Before he could think of anything appropriately galvanising to say, the cook who had taken off came running back in.

“Taxi here!” he announced.

Behind him, through the open door, Simon could see the lights of the black taxi in the alley.

“Help me,” Mahmud groaned.

They lifted him carefully to his feet, and he was able to walk very slowly out to the car, supported by Abdul and one of the cooks. Abdul told his last operational waiter and his second cook to get back on the job before his reputation was so besmirched that he would be reduced in this, his intolerable old age, to hawking chestnuts in Piccadilly Circus.

Simon saw Mahmud safely into the taxi. The cook looked questioningly at Abdul.

“Yes, go with him, go with him!” the restaurant-owner cried in despair, flapping the cook into the automobile with the backs of both hands. “I am already destroyed. What does it matter-one cook, two cooks, no cook? I am utterly and completely undone!”

His whole body sagged as the cook scrambled into the taxi with the injured man and the cab pulled away. With a Lear-like expression of total despair he faced the Saint for an instant and then walked slowly towards the open door of the Golden Crescent. Simon reached out and closed it before Abdul could step inside. The sky was almost completely dark now, and there were no artificial lights in the alley itself. Abdul’s eyes, as they met the Saint’s at close range, were large with fear, reflecting the moving illuminations of the street at the comer.

“I must… see to my customers,” he said desperately.

As he pushed towards the door Simon barred his way with an outstretched arm so efficiently strong that it would have taken ten Abduls to move it.

“I’m one of your customers,” the Saint said, “and I’m always right.” He relaxed a little as Abdul stopped trying to push past him. “Besides, I have priority. I was the first one here tonight and I still haven’t been waited on, and I’m getting a little tired of waiting in general.”

Abdul made a futile effort to misinterpret.

“I am sorry, Mr. Templar, but you understand … As soon as possible you will have your dinner.”

Simon leaned back against the closed door and folded his arms, regarding Abdul in the darkness as a circus trainer might regard a recalcitrant seal.

“Let’s stop playing patty cake, shall we? I’m embarrassed enough for myself without having to be embarrassed for you.”

“Embarrassed?” Abdul asked.

“Yes, embarrassed. I’m a natural-born anarchist, and if there’s one thing I’d just as soon step on as look at it’s a do-gooder who tries to help people who don’t want his help. But that’s what you’re making me feel like.”

Abdul shifted his feet miserably.

“I’m sorry.”

Simon hesitated thoughtfully.

“I’m beginning to think you people enjoy being bashed.”

Abdul did not say anything.

“We’re obviously alone out here,” the Saint argued, “Nobody can hear us. I feel like dropping the whole subject and sticking to Italian restaurants from now on, but I hate to let something go once I’ve got a hold on it. So why don’t you at least give me a lead?”

Abdul still did not say anything.

“What about King Kong and his pint-sized playmate who were toting groceries through this very door at about the time Mahmud had his accident? They must have seen it … or done it.”

He could sense the electric tension that suddenly stiffened Abdul’s body, and he could see the confused surprise on the fat man’s face.

“How did you know they were here?” Abdul croaked.

“I was admiring them on my way in.”

“They …” Abdul stopped and shrugged. “They had left, of course, or they would have stayed … to help after the accident.”

Simon took in a deep breath and blew it tiredly out again.

“Oh, Mr. Haroon, you are very good at running a restaurant but very bad at lying. I’ll try once more: Would you just give me the name of the driver of that van and the address of Supreme Imports?”

Abdul, sensing reprieve in the wind, spoke more vehemently.

“I don’t know the driver’s name. There is no need to. And Supreme Imports …” He shrugged. “I do not happen to know their address since their salesman called on me here originally and all our business has been done here since then.”

Simon saw no reason to continue wasting his time. He stepped away from the door and opened it.

“After you, then. I’ve enjoyed our talk. It’s nice to meet a man without a care in the world.”

Abdul smiled wanly and dabbed his handkerchief against his perspiring fat cheeks.

“After you, Mr. Templar,” he said in a loud voice. “It is very good of you to be so concerned about poor Mahmud.”

Simon went disgustedly back through the kitchen, where his very existence was conscientiously ignored and down the hallway to his table. His red-cheeked acquaintance who had once ruled the waves had disappeared, perhaps understandably, but several more innocent diners had taken other places in the room. The other waiter, soon reinforced by Abdul’s frenetic help, was running from errand to errand in a valiant effort to please them. Almost as soon as the Saint sat down his food was served, but he had scarcely any real appetite left. Like a mathematician with a teasing problem in his head, he found it hard to think of anything but the challenge towards which he had set his course when he had entered the Golden Crescent in the first place. Briefly, out of disgust with the terror-stricken reticence of Abdul and his staff, he had felt like dropping the whole tentative project and leaving them to sweat out their own problems; but on reflection the silence of the Pakistanis seemed more a challenge than their co-operation would have been. And then there was that muttonchop-whiskered Goliath and his pipsqueak partner … and that daring reporter, Mr. Tam Rowan … all in all, ingredients which properly blended might provide as much excitement as the Saint had enjoyed in a long long while.

By the time he had finished his dinner Simon had no more thoughts of quitting left in his head. His mind was simmering with plans and possibilities, and he was as eager as a hound for the chase.

As if in reward for his determination, there was a little surprise waiting for him when he opened the folded bill which Abdul himself left on his table. A hasty hand had pencilled five words in the margin which had nothing to do with the menu.

“Don’t! They would kill anybody,”

2
HOW THE SAINT MET TAM
ROWAN, AND THEY HEARD
OF A RENDEZVOUS

The Saint placed a five-pound note-one pound for each word of the pencil-scribbled warning-on the small tray with his dinner bill, and Abdul Haroon immediately scooted over from the centre of the room and confiscated it.

“Thank you, sir! Thank you very much! One moment for the change …”

“Give it to Mahmud,” Simon said, getting to his feet. “He won’t be picking up many tips for a few weeks.”

He searched the restaurant-owner’s round perspiring face for some trace of admission that it was Abdul himself who had written the note, but he met only an impenetrable determinedly smiling mask.

“You are most kind,” Abdul said.

He was bowing the Saint to the door. The bill and the five-pound note had already disappeared into his pocket.

“And you are very good about looking after your customers,” Simon rejoined.

“I must try to look after them well,” Abdul said gloomily. “They are few enough!”

Even as the Saint nodded goodnight just before stepping into the street Abdul’s expression betrayed nothing. He bowed again with elaborate politeness and held the door open. Simon left without another word, deciding to accept the remembered message for what it was worth and not press matters any further at the Golden Crescent.

But just what was the warning worth? When he was alone on the sidewalk outside the restaurant he thought it over briefly. There had been no information in it, nothing he could draw any help from. He was still just where he had been after Mahmud’s implausible accident. He had a newspaper story bylined by a man who claimed to know more about the illegal immigration racket than he apparently dared to reveal, and he had in his head the name of a wholesale food-distribution company whose employees had shown conspicuous alacrity in getting on to their next job after doing whatever they had done at the Golden Crescent that evening.

Simon stood on the street corner and watched the cars and taxis and evening crowds hurrying by, regretting that he had not memorized the delivery van’s licence. But at the time he had noticed the truck there had been no reason to believe he would ever need to know its number.

There was a telephone outside a pub not far down the street. The Saint walked down to it, stepped into the tobacco-acrid atmosphere of the red kiosk, and swivelled the “S” volume of the directory up so he could have a look at it. He soon satisfied himself, without any great astonishment, that there was no Supreme Imports Ltd. in the London area-or at least that Supreme Imports (whatever it might be they imported) did not feel the need of a listed telephone in the transaction of their business. To make sure, he dialled directory inquiries, asked if Supreme Imports had a number, and received the expected negative answer.