The Saint vs Scotland Yard (5 page)

And so it was with half a dozen subsequent incidents; and
the legend
of the Scorpion grew up and was passed from hand to hand in queer places,
unmarked by sensation-hunting jour
nalists, a mystery for police and
criminals alike. Jack Wilbey,
ladder larcenist, died and won his niche in
the structure; but
the newspapers noted his death only as another unsolved
crime on
which to peg their perennial criticisms of police
efficiency, and only
those who had heard other chapters of the
story linked up that
murder with the suicide of a certain
wealthy peer. Even Chief Inspector
Teal, whose finger was on
the pulse of every unlawful activity in the
Metropolis, had not
visualized such a connecting link as the Saint had just
forged
before his eyes; and he pondered over it in a ruminative
silence
before he resumed his interrogation.

“How much else do you know?” he asked at length, with the mere
ghost of a quickening of interest in his perpetually weary
voice.

The Saint picked up a sheet of paper.

“Listen,” he said.

“His faith was true: though once misled

By an appeal that he had read

To honour with his patronage

Crusades for better Auction Bridge

He was not long deceived; he found

No other paladins around

Prepared to perish, sword in hand,

While storming in one reckless band

Those strongholds of Beelzebub

The portals of the Portland Club.

His chance came later; one fine day

Another paper blew his way:

Charles wrote; Charles had an interview;

And Charles, an uncrowned jousting Blue,

Still spellbound by the word Crusade,

Espoused the cause of Empire Trade.”

“What on earth’s that?” demanded the startled detective.

“A little masterpiece of mine,” said the Saint modestly.
“There’s
rather an uncertain rhyme in it, if you noticed. Do
you think the Poet
Laureate would pass
patronge
and
Bridge?
I’d like your
opinion.”

Teal’s eyelids lowered again.

“Have you stopped talking?” he sighed.

“Very nearly, Teal,” said the Saint, putting the paper down
again.
“In case that miracle of tact was too subtle for you, let
me explain
that I was changing the subject.”

“I see.”

“Do you?”

Teal glanced at the automatic on the table and then again at the papers
on the wall, and sighed a second time.

“I think so. You’re going to ask the Scorpion to pay your
income
tax.”

“I am.”

“How?”

The Saint laughed. He pointed to the desecrated over
mantel.

“One thousand three hundred and thirty-seven pounds, nine
teen
and
fivepence,” he said. “That’s my sentence for being a useful
wage-earning citizen instead of a prolific parasite, according to the laws of
this spavined country. Am I supposed to
pay you and do your
work as well? If so, I shall emigrate on
the next boat and
become a naturalised Venezuelan.”

“I wish you would,” said Teal, from his heart.

He picked up his hat.

“Do you know the Scorpion?” he asked suddenly.

Simon shook
his head.

“Not yet. But I’m going to. His donation is not yet assessed,
but I can
tell you where one thousand three hundred and
thirty-eight pounds of
it are going to travel. And that is to
wards the offices of
Mr. Lionel Delborn, collector of extortions
—may his teeth fall
out and his legs putrefy! I’ll stand the odd
sevenpence out of my
own pocket.”

“And what do you think you’re going to do with the man
himself?”

The Saint smiled.

“That’s a little difficult to say,” he murmured.
“Accidents
sort of—er—happen, don’t they? I mean, I don’t want you
to
start getting back any of your naughty old ideas about me,
but——
”

Teal nodded; then he met the Saint’s mocking eyes seriously.

“They’d
have the coat off my back if it ever got round,” he
said, “but between you and me and these four
walls, I’ll make
a deal—if you’ll
make one too.”

Simon settled on the edge of the table, his cigarette slanting
quizzically
upwards between his lips, and one whimsically sardonic eyebrow arched.

“What is it?”

“Save the Scorpion for me, and I won’t ask how you paid
your
income tax.”

For a few moments the Saint’s noncommittal gaze rested on
the detective’s round red face;
then it wandered back to the
impaled
memorandum above the mantelpiece. And then the
Saint looked Teal in the eyes and smiled again.

“O.K.,” he drawled. “That’s O.K. with me, Claud.”

“It’s a deal?”

“It
is. There’s a murder charge against the Scorpion, and I
don’t see why the hangman shouldn’t earn his fiver. I guess it’s
time you had a break, Claud Eustace. Yes—you can
have the
Scorpion. Any advance on
fourpence?”

Teal
nodded, and held out his hand.

“Fourpence halfpenny—I’ll buy you a glass of beer at any
pub inside the three-mile
radius on the day you bring him in,”
he
said.

Chapter V

Patricia Holm came in shortly after four-thirty. Simon
Templar
had lunched at what he always referred to as “the
pub round the corner”—the
Berkeley—and had ambled elegantly about the purlieus of Piccadilly for an hour
thereafter;
for he had scarcely learned to
walk two consecutive steps when
his
dear old grandmother had taken him on her knee and
enjoined him to “eat, drink, and be merry, for
tomorrow is
Shrove Tuesday”.

He was
writing when she arrived, but he put down his pen
and surveyed her solemnly.

“Oh, there you are,” he remarked. “I thought you were
dead, but Teal said he thought you might only have taken a
trip to
Vladivostok.”

“I’ve been helping Eilen Wiltham—her wedding’s only five
days away.
Haven’t you any more interest in her?”

“None,” said the Saint callously. “The thought of the ap
proaching
crime makes my mind feel unbinged—unhinged.
I’ve already refused
three times to assist Charles to select pyjamas for the bridal chamber. I told
him that when he’d been
married as often as I have——
”

“That’ll do,” said Patricia.

“It will, very nearly,” said the Saint.

He cast an eye over the mail that she had brought in with
her from
the letter-box.

“Those two enevelopes with halfpenny stamps you may exter
minate
forthwith. On the third, in spite of the deceptive three-
halfpenny
Briefmarke,
I
recognise the clerkly hand of Ander
son and Sheppard. Add
it to the holocaust. Item four”—he
picked up a small
brown-paper package and weighed it calculatingly in his hand—“is much too
light to contain high explo
sive. It’s probably the new gold-mounted
sock-suspenders I
ordered from Asprey’s. Open it, darling, and tell me what
you think of them. And I will read you some more of the Hideous
History of
Charles.”

He took up his manuscript.

“With what a zest did he prepare
For the first meeting (open-air)!
With what a glee he fastened on
His bevor and his morion,
His
greaves, his ventail, every tace,
His pauldrons and his rerebrace!
He sallied forth with martial eye,
Prepared to do, prepared to die,
But not prepared
—
by
Bayard!
not
For the reception that he got.
Over that chapter of the tale
It would be kind to draw a veil:
Let it suffice that in disdain,
Some hecklers threw him in a drain,
And plodding home——

“Excuse me,” said the Saint.

His right hand moved like lightning, and the detonation of
his heavy
automatic in the confined space was like a vindictive
thunderclap. It left
the girl with a strange hot sting of powder
on her wrist and a
dull buzzing in her ears. And through the
buzzing drifted the
Saint’s unruffled accents:

“And plodding home, all soaked inside,

He caught pneumonia
—
and died.”

Patricia looked at him, white-faced.

“What was it?” she asked, with the faintest tremor in her
voice.

“Just an odd spot of scorpion,” answered Simon Templar
gently.
“An unpleasant specimen of the breed—the last time I
saw one
like that was up in the hills north of Puruk-jahu.
Looks like a pal of
mine has been doing some quick travelling,
or
…
Yes.” The Saint grinned. “Get on the phone to the
Zoo, old
dear, and tell ‘em they can have their property back
if they care to send
round and scrape it off the carpet. I don’t
think we shall want
it any more, shall we?”

Patricia shuddered.

She had stripped away the brown paper and found a little
cardboard
box such as cheap jewellery is sometimes packed in.
When she raised the
lid, the tiny blue-green horror, like a
miniature deformed
lobster, had been lying there in a nest of
cotton-wool; while she
stared at it, it had rustled on to her
and …

“It—wasn’t very big,” she said, in a tone that tried to match
the Saint’s
for lightness.

“Scorpions run to all sizes,” said the Saint cheerfully,
“and
as often as not their poisonousness is in inverse ratio to
their
size in boots. Mostly, they’re very minor troubles—I’ve been
stung
myself, and all I got was a sore and swollen arm. But the
late
lamented was a member of the one and only sure-certain
and no-hokum family of
homicides in the species. Pity I
bumped it off so quickly—it might have been
really valuable
stuffed.”

Patricia’s finger-tips slid mechanically around the rough
edges of the hole that the
nickel-cased .45 bullet had smashed
through
the polished mahogany table before ruining the carpet
and losing itself somewhere in the floor. Then she
looked
steadily at the Saint.

“Why should anyone send you a scorpion?” she asked.

Simon Templar shrugged.

“It was the immortal Paragot who said: ‘In this country the
unexpected
always happens, which paralyses the brain’. And if
a real man-sized
Scorpion can’t be expected to send his young
brothers to visit his
friends as a token of esteem, what can he
be expected to
do?”

“Is that all?”

“All
what?”

“All you propose to tell me.”

The Saint regarded her for a moment. He saw the tall slim
lines of
reposeful strength in her body, the fine moulding of
the chin, the eyes as
blue and level as his own. And slowly he
screwed the cap on his
fountain pen; and he stood up and
came round the table.

“I’ll tell you as much more as you want to know,” he said.

“Just like in the mad old days?”

“They had their moments, hadn’t they?”

She nodded.

“Sometimes
I wish we were back in them,” she said wistfully.
“I didn’t fall in love with you in a pair of Anderson and
Sheppard trousers——
”

“They were!” cried the Saint indignantly. “I distinctly
re
member ——”