The Saint vs Scotland Yard (7 page)

In the blackness, his left hand must have been stealthily
engaging
the gears; and then, as a pair of swiftly growing
lights pin-pointed in
his driving-mirror, he unleashed the car
with a bang.

The Saint, with one foot in the road and the other on the
running-board,
was flung off his balance. As he stumbled, the
jamb of the door
crashed agonisingly into the elbow of the
arm that reached out
to the driver’s collar, and something like
a thousand red-hot
needles prickled right down his forearm to
the tip of his little
finger and numbed every muscle through
which it passed.

As he dropped back into the road, he heard the crack of
Patricia’s
gun.

The side of the car slid past him, gathering speed, and he whipped out
the Scorpion’s own automatic. Quite casually, he plugged the off-side back
tyre; and then a glare of light came
into the tail of his eye, and he
stepped quickly across to
Patricia.

“Walk on,” he said quietly.

They fell into step and sauntered slowly on, and the head
lights of
the car behind threw their shadows thirty yards
ahead.

“That jerk,” said Patricia ruefully, “my shot missed him
by a
yard. I’m sorry.”

Simon nodded.

“I know. It was my fault. I should have switched his engine
off.”

The other car flashed past them, and Simon cursed it
fluently.

“The real joy of having the country full of automobiles,” he
said,
“is that it makes gunning so easy. You can shoot anyone
up
anywhere, and everyone except the victim will think it was only a backfire. But
it’s when people can see the gun that the
deception kind of
disintegrates.” He gazed gloomily after the
dwindling tail light
of the unwelcome interruption. “If only
that four-wheeled
gas-crocodile had burst a blood-vessel two
miles back, we
mightn’t have been on our way home yet.”

“I heard you shoot once——
”

“And he’s still going—on the other three wheels. I’m not expecting
he’ll stop to mend that leak.”

Patricia sighed.

“It was short and sweet, anyway,” she said. “Couldn’t you
have
stopped that other car and followed?”

He shook his head.

“Teal could have stopped it, but I’m not a policeman. I
think this
is a bit early for us to start gingering up our
publicity
campaign.”

“I wish it had been a better show, boy,” said Patricia wistfully,
slipping her arm through his; and the Saint stopped to
stare at her.

In the darkness, this was not very effective, but he did it.

“You bloodthirsty child!” he said.

And then he laughed.

“But that wasn’t the final curtain,” he said. “If you
like to
note it down, I’ll make you a prophecy: the mortality among
Scorpions
is going to rise one unit, and for once it will not be
my fault.”

They were back in Hatfield before she had made up her
mind to ask
him if he was referring to Long Harry, and for
once the Saint did
not look innocently outraged at the sugges
tion.

“Long Harry is alive and well, to the best of my knowledge
and
belief,” he said, “but I arranged the rough outline of his decease
with Teal over the telephone. If we didn’t kill Long
Harry, the Scorpion
would; and I figure our method will be
less fatal. But as for the Scorpion
himself—well, Pat, I’m dread
fully afraid
I’ve promised to let them hang him according to
the law. I’m getting so respectable these days that I feel I may
be removed to Heaven in a fiery chariot at any
moment.”

He examined his souvenir of the evening in a corner of the
deserted
hotel smoking-room a little later, over a final and
benedictory tankard
of beer. It was an envelope, postmarked
in the South-Western
district at 11 a.m. that morning, and
addressed to Wilfred Garniman, Esq.,
28, Mallaby Road, Har
row. From it the Saint extracted a single
sheet of paper, writt
en in a feminine hand.

Dear Mr. Garniman,

Can you come round for dinner and a game of bridge
on Tuesday
next? Colonel Barnes will be making a fourth.
Yours
  
sincerely

(Mrs.) R. Venables.

For a space
he contemplated the missive with an exasperated
scowl darkening the beauty of his features; then he passed it
to Patricia, and reached out for the consolation of
draught
Bass with one hand and for a
cigarette with the other. The
scowl
continued to darken.

Patricia read, and looked at him perplexedly.

“It looks perfectly ordinary,” she said.

“It looks a damned sight too ordinary!” exploded the Saint.
“How
the devil can you blackmail a man for being invited to
play bridge?”

The girl frowned.

“But I don’t see. Why should this be anyone else’s letter?”

“And why shouldn’t Mr. Wilfred Garniman be the man I
want?”

“Of course. Didn’t you get it from that man in the car?”

“I saw it on the seat beside him—it must have come out of
his pocket
when he pulled his gun.”

“Well?” she prompted.

“Why shouldn’t this be the beginning of the Scorpion’s
triumphal
march towards the high jump?” asked the Saint.

“That’s what I want to know.”

Simon surveyed her in silence. And, as he did so, the scowl
faded
slowly from his face. Deep in his eyes a pair of little
blue devils
roused up, executed a tentative double-shuffle, and paused with their heads on
one side.

“Why not?” insisted Patricia.

Slowly, gently, and with tremendous precision, the Saintly
smile
twitched at the corners of Simon’s lips, expanded, grew,
and
irradiated his whole face.

“I’m blowed if I know why not,” said the Saint seraphically.
“It’s
just that I have a weakness for getting both feet on the
bus before
I tell the world I’m travelling. And the obvious
deduction seemed too
good to be true.”

Chapter VII

Mallaby Road, Harrow, as the Saint discovered, was one
of those
jolly roads in which ladies and gentlemen live. Lords
and ladies may be
found in such places as Mayfair, Monte
Carlo, and St.
Moritz; men and women may be found almost
anywhere; but Ladies
and Gentlemen blossom in their full
beauty only in such places as Mallaby
Road, Harrow. This was
a road about two hundred yards long,
containing thirty of the stately homes of England, each of them a miraculously
pre
served specimen of Elizabethan architecture, each of them ex
actly the
same as the other twenty-nine, and each of them
surrounded by
identical lawns, flower-beds, and atmospheres of overpowering gentility.

Simon Templar, entering Mallaby Road at nine o’clock—an
hour of
the morning at which his vitality was always rather
low—felt slightly stunned.

There being no other visible distinguishing marks or peculi
arities about it, he discovered
No. 28 by the simple process of
looking at
the figures on the garden gates, and found it after
inspecting thirteen other numbers which were not
28. He
started on the wrong side of
the road.

To the maid who opened the door he gave a card bearing
the name of
Mr. Andrew Herrick and the official imprint of
the
Daily Record.
Simon
Templar had no right whatever to
either of these decorations, which were the
exclusive property of a reporter whom he had once interviewed, but a little
thing like that never bothered the Saint. He kept every visiting card
that was
ever given him and a few that had not been consciously donated, and drew
appropriately upon his stock in
time of need.

“Mr. Garniman is just finishing breakfast, sir,” said the maid
doubtfully, “but I’ll ask him if he’ll see you.”

“I’m sure he will,” said the Saint, and he said it so winningly
that if
the maid’s name had been Mrs. Garniman the
prophecy would have
passed automatically into the realm of
sublimely concrete certainties.

As it was,
the prophecy merely proved to be correct.

Mr. Garniman saw the Saint, and the Saint saw Mr. Garni
man. These
things happened simultaneously, but the Saint
won on points. There
was a lot of Mr. Garniman.

“I’m afraid I can’t spare you very long, Mr. Herrick,” he
said.
“I have to go out in a few minutes. What did you want
to see me about?”

His
restless grey eyes flittered shrewdly over the Saint as he
spoke, but Simon endured the scrutiny with the
peaceful calm which only the man who wears the suits of Anderson and
Shepphard, the shirts of Harman, the shoes of
Lobb, and self-
refrigerating conscience can achieve.

“I came to ask you if you could tell us anything about the
Scorpion,” said the Saint
calmly.

Well, that is one way of putting it. On the other hand, one
could say
with equal truth that his manner would have made a
sheet of plate glass
look like a futurist sculptor’s impression of
a bit of the Pacific
Ocean during a hurricane. And the innocence of the Saintly face would have
made a Botticelli angel
look positively sinister in comparison.

His gaze rested on Mr. Wilfred Garniman’s fleshy prow
with no
more than a reasonable directness; but he saw the
momentary flicker of
expression that preceded Mr. Garniman’s blandly puzzled frown, and wistfully
wondered whether, if he
unsheathed his swordstick and prodded it
vigorously into Mr.
Garniman’s immediate future, there would be a loud pop,
or
merely a faint sizzling sound. That he overcame this insidious
temptation,
and allowed no sign of the soul-shattering struggle
to register itself on
his face, was merely a tribute to the persistently sobering influence of Mr.
Lionel Delborn’s official proc
lamation and the Saint’s sternly practical
devotion to business.

“Scorpion?” repeated Mr. Garniman, frowning. “I’m afraid
I
don’t quite——
”

“Understand. Exactly. Well, I expected I should have to
explain.”

“I wish you would. I really don’t know——
”

“Why we should consider you an authority on scorpions.
Precisely.
The Editor told me you’d say that.”

“If you’d——
”

“Tell you the reason for this rather extraordinary proce
dure——
”

“I should certainly see if I could help you in any way, but at
the same time——”

“You don’t see what use you could be. Absolutely. Now,
shall we
go on like this or shall we sing the rest in chorus?”

Mr. Garniman blinked.

“Do
you want to ask me some questions?”

“I should love to,” said the Saint heartily. “You don’t
think
Mrs. Garniman will object?”

“Mrs. Garniman?”

“Mrs. Garniman.”

Mr. Garniman blinked again.

“Are you——
”

“Certain——
”

“Are you certain you haven’t made a mistake? There is no
Mrs.
Garniman.”

“Don’t mention it,” said the Saint affably.

He turned the pages of an enormous notebook.

” ‘Interviewed Luis Cartaro. Diamond rings and Marcel
wave.
Query—Do Pimples Make Good Mothers? Said——
’

Sorry, wrong page… . Here we are:
‘Memo.
See Wilfred
Garniman
and ask the big—ask him about scorpions. 28
Mallaby Road,
Harrow’. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“That’s my name and address,” said .Garniman shortly.
“But
I have still to learn the reason for this—er—
”