The Saint vs Scotland Yard (18 page)

“You certainly win on the exchange,” he said; and a slight
frown came between the other’s
eyebrows.

“If you would explain ——
?”

“I’m good-looking,” said the Saint easily, and centred his tie
with elegance.

Kuzela
leaned back.

“Your name is known to me, of course; but I think this is
the first
time we have had the pleasure of meeting.”

“This is certainly the first time you’ve had the pleasure of
meeting
me,” said the Saint carefully.

“Even
now, the responsibility is yours. You have elected to
interfere with my affairs——
”

Simon shook
his head sympathetically.

“It’s most distressing, isn’t it?” he murmured. “And your
most strenuous efforts up to
date have failed to dispose of the
interference.
Even when you sent me a pair of gloves that
would have given a
rhinoceros a headache to look at, I survived
the
shock. It must be Fate, old dear.”

Kuzela pulled himself forward again.

“You are an enterprising young man,” he said quietly. “An
unusually
enterprising young man. There are not many men
living who could have
overcome Ngano, even by the method
which you adopted. The mere fact that
you were able to enter
this house is another testimony to your
foresight—or your good
luck.”

“My foresight,” said the Saint modestly.

“You moved your chair before you sat down—and that again
showed
remarkable intelligence. If you had sat where I in
tended you to sit, it
would have been possible for me, by a
slight movement of my foot, to send a
bullet through the
centre of your body.”

“So I guessed.”

“Since you arrived, your hand has been in your pocket
several times. I presume you
are armed ——”

Simon Templar inspected the finger-nails of his two hands.

“If I had been born the day before yesterday,” he observed
mildly, “you’d find out everything you wanted to know in approximately two
minutes.”

“Again, a man of your reputation would not have commu
nicated
with the police——
”

“But he would take great care of himself.” The Saint’s eyes
met
Kuzela’s steadily. “I’ll talk or fight, Kuzela, just as you
like.
Which is it to be?”

“You are prepared to deal?”

“Within
limits—yes.”

Kuzela drummed his knuckles together.

“On what terms?”

“They might be—one hundred thousand pounds.”

Kuzela shrugged.

“If
you came here in a week’s time——”

“I should be very pleased to have a drink with you,” said
the Saint
pointedly.

“Suppose,” said Kuzela, “I gave you a cheque which you
could cash
tomorrow morning——
”

“Or suppose,”
said the Saint calmly, “you gave me some cash
with which I could buy jujubes on my way home.”

Kuzela looked at him with a kind of admiration.

“Rumour has not lied about you, Mr. Templar,” he said. “I
imagine you will have no objection to receiving this sum in—
er—foreign currency?”

“None whatever,” said the Saint blandly.

The other stood up, taking a little key from his waistcoat
pocket.
And the Saint, who for the moment had been looking at the delicately painted
shade of the lamp that stood on one
side of the desk, which was the sole
dim illumination of the
room, slewed round with a sudden start.

He knew that there was going to be a
catch somewhere—
that, with
a man of Kuzela’s type, a man who had sent those
gloves and who had
devised that extremely ingenious bell-push
on the front door, a
coup could never be quite so easy. How
that last catch was
going to be worked he had no idea; nor was
he inclined to wait
and learn it. In his own way, he had done
as much as he had
hoped to do; and, all things considered——

“Let me see that key!” he exclaimed.

Kuzela
turned puzzledly.

“Really, Mr. Templar——
”

“Let me see it!” repeated the Saint excitedly.

He reached over the desk and took the key out of Kuzela’s
hands. For
a second he gazed at it; and then he raised his eyes
again with a dancing
devil of mischief glinting out of their
blueness.

“Sorry I must be going, souls,” he said; and with one smash
ing sweep of his arm he sent
the lamp flying off the desk and
plunged the
room into inky blackness.

Chapter VI

The phrase is neither original nor copyright, and may
be
performed in public without fee or licence. It remains,
however,
an excellent way of describing that particular phenomenon.

With the extinction of the single source of luminance, the
darkness
came down in all the drenching suddenness of an unleashed cataract of Stygian
gloom. For an instant, it seemed
to blot out not only the sense of sight, but
also every other
active faculty; and a frozen, throbbing stillness settled
between
the four walls. And in that stillness the Saint sank down
without a
sound upon his toes and the tips of his fingers… .

He knew his bearings to the nth part of a degree, and he
travelled
to his destination with the noiseless precision of a
cat. Around him he
could hear the sounds of tensely restrained
breathing, and the
slithering caress of wary feet creeping over the carpet. Then, behind him, came
the vibration of a violent
movement, the
thud of a heavy blow, a
curse, a scuffle, a
crashing fall, and a shrill yelp of startled anguish… and the
Saint grinned gently.

“I got ‘im,” proclaimed a triumphant voice, out of the dark
void.
“Strike a light, Bill.”

Through an undercurrent of muffled yammering sizzled the
crisp
kindling of a match. It was held in the hand of Kuzela himself, and by its
light the two bruisers glared at each other,
their reddened stares
of hate aimed upwards and downwards
respectively. And before the match
went out the opinions of
the foundation member found fervid utterance.

“You perishing bleeder,” he said, in accents that literally
wobbled with earnestness.

“Peep-bo,” said the Saint, and heard the contortionist effects
blasphemously disentangling
themselves as he closed the door
behind him.

A bullet splintered a panel two inches east of his neck as he
shifted
briskly westwards. The next door stood invitingly ajar:
he went
through it as the other door reopened, slammed it
behind him, and
turned the key.

In a few strides he was across the room and flinging up the
window. He
squirmed over the sill like an eel, curved his
fingers over the edge,
and hung at the full stretch of his arms.
A foot below the
level of his eyes there was a narrow stone
ledge running along
the side of the building: he transferred
himself to it, and
worked rapidly along to the nearest corner.
As he rounded it, he
looked down into the road, twenty feet
below, and saw a car
standing by the kerb.

Another window came over his head. He reached up, got a
grip of
the sill, and levered his elbows above the sill level with
a skilful
kick and an acrobatic twist of his body. From there he
was able to make a
grab for the top of the lower sash… .
And in another moment
he was standing upright on the sill,
pushing the upper sash cautiously
downwards.

A murmur of dumbfounded voices drifted to his ears.

“Where the ‘ell can ‘e ‘ave gorn to?”

“Think ‘e jumped for it?”

“Jumped for it, yer silly fat-‘ead? …”

And then the Saint lowered himself cat-footed to the carpet
on the safe
side of the curtains in the room he had recently
left.

Through a narrow gap in the hangings he could see Kuzela
replacing
the shattered bulb of the table-lamp by the light of a
match. The man’s
white efficient hands were perfectly steady;
his face was without
expression. He accomplished his task with
the tremorless
tranquility of a patient middle-aged gentleman
whom no slight
accident could seriously annoy—tested the
switch …

And then, as the room lighted up again, he raised his eyes to
the convex
mirror panel on the opposite wall, and had one
distorted glimpse of
the figure behind him.

Then the Saint took him by the neck.

Fingers like bands of steel paralysed his larynx and choked
back into
his chest the cry he would have uttered. He fought
like a maniac; but
though his strength was above the average,
he was as helpless as
a puppet in that relentless grip. And
almost affectionately Simon Templar’s
thumbs sidled round to their mark—the deadly pressure of the carotid arteries
which is
to crude ordinary throttling what foil play is to sabre
work…
.

It was all over in a few seconds. And Kuzela was lying
limply spread-eagled across the
desk, and Simon Templar was
fitting his key
into the lock of the safe.

The plungers pistoned smoothly back, and the heavy door
swung
open. And the Saint sat back on his heels and gazed in
rapture at what he
saw.

Five small leather attach
é
cases
stood in a neat row before
his eyes. It was superb—splendiferous—it was
just five times
infinitely more than he had ever seriously dared to hope.
That
one hundred million lire were lying around somewhere in London he had
been as sure as a man can be of anything—
Kuzela would never
have wasted time transporting his booty
from the departure
centre to the country house where the Duke
of Fortezza had been
kept—but that the most extempore bluff
should have led him
promptly and faultlessly to the hiding-
place of all that
merry mazuma was almost too good to be true. And for a few precious seconds the
Saint stared en
tranced at the vision that his everlasting preposterous
luck had
ladled out for his delight.
…

And then he was swiftly hauling the valises out on to the
floor.

He did not even have to attempt to open one of them. He
knew…
.

Rapidly he ranged the bags in a happy little line across the
carpet. He
picked up his stick; and he was adjusting his hat at
its most effective
angle when the two men who had pursued
him returned through
the door. But there was a wicked little
automatic pivoting
round in his free hand, and the two men
noticed it in time.

“Restrain your enthusiasm, boys,” said the Saint. “We’re
going on a
journey. Pick up your luggage, and let’s be
moving.”

He transferred one of the bags to his left hand, and his gun continued to
conduct the orchestra. And under its gentle su
pervision the two men
obeyed his orders. The delirious prog
ress of events during the past couple
of minutes had been a
shade too much for their ivorine uptakes:
their faces wore two
uniformly blank expressions of pained
bewilderment, vaguely
reminiscent of the registers of a pair of
precocious goldfish
photographed immediately after signing their first
talking-pic
ture contract. Even the power of protest had temporarily
drained
out their vocal organs. They picked up two bags
apiece and suffered
themselves to be shepherded out of the
room in the same
bovine vacuity of acquiescence.

In the hall, Simon halted the fatigue party for a moment.

“Before we pass out into the night,” he said, “I want you
to
be quite clear about one thing. Those bags you’re carrying, as
you may or
may not know, are each supposed to contain the
equivalent of two
hundred thousand pounds in ready money; and I want you to know anything that
you may be prepared to
do to keep all those spondulix for yourselves is just so much
tadpole-gizzard beside what I’m prepared to do to
prise it off
you. So you should think
a long while before you do anything rash. I am the greatest gun artist in the
world,” said the Saint
persuasively,
but with a singular lack of honesty, “and I’m
warning you here and now that at the first sign I
see of any
undue enterprise, I shall
shoot each of you through the middle
of
the eleventh spinal vertebra, counting from the bottom.
Move on, my children.”