Leslie Charteris - The Saint Intervenes

Costello hesitated for a second. Then:

"I started in an electrical engineering workshop when I was a boy," he explained briefly, and turned back to Teal's desk.

After a considerable pause the detective turned to the tubby man with glasses, who had been sitting without any signs of life except the ceaseless switching of his eyes from one speaker to another.

"Are you in partnership with Mr. Costello, Mr. Hammel?" he asked.

"A working partnership — yes."

"Do you know any more about Enstone's affairs than Mr. Costello has been able to tell us?"

"I'm afraid not."

"What were you talking about at dinner last night?"

"It was about a merger. I'm in International Cotton, too. One of Enstone's concerns was Cosmopolitan Textiles. His shares were standing high and ours aren't doing too well, and we thought that if we could induce him to amalgamate it would help us."

"What did Enstone think about that?"

Hammel spread his hands.

"He didn't think there was enough in it for him. We had certain things to offer, but he decided they weren't sufficient."

"There wasn't any bad feeling about it?"

"Why, no. If all the business men who have refused to combine with each at different times became enemies, there'd hardly be two men in the City on speaking terms."

Simon cleared his throat.

"What was your first important job, Mr. Hammel?" he queried.

Hammel turned his eyes without moving his head.

"I was chief salesman of a general manufacturer in the Midlands."

Teal concluded the interview soon afterwards without securing any further revelations, shook hands perfunctorily with the two men, and ushered them out. When he came back he looked down at the Saint like a cannibal inspecting the latest missionary.

"Why don't you join the force yourself?" he inquired heavily. "The new Police College is open now, and the Commissioner's supposed to be looking for men like you."

Simon took the sally like an armoured car taking a snowball. He was sitting up on the edge of his chair with his blue eyes glinting with excitement.

"You big sap," he retorted, "do you look as if the Police College could teach anyone to solve a murder?"

Teal gulped as if he couldn't believe his ears, He took hold of the arms of his chair and spoke with an apoplectic restraint, as if he were conscientiously determined to give the Saint every fair chance to recover his sanity before he rang down for the bugs wagon.

"What murder are you talking about?" he demanded. "Enstone shot himself."

"Yes, Enstone shot himself," said the Saint. "But it was murder just the same."

"Have you been drinking something?"

"No. But Enstone had."

Teal swallowed, and almost choked himself in the process.

"Are you trying to tell me," he exploded, "that any man ever got drunk enough to shoot himself while he was making money?"

Simon shook his head.

"They made him shoot himself."

"What do you mean — blackmail?"

"No."

The Saint pushed a hand through his hair. He had thought of things like that. He knew that Enstone had shot himself, because no one else could have done it. Except Fowler, the valet — but that was the man whom Teal would have suspected at once if he had suspected anyone, and it was too obvious, too insane. No man in his senses could have planned a murder with himself as the most obvious suspect. Blackmail, then? But the Lewis Enstone he had seen in the lobby had never looked like a man bidding farewell to blackmailers. And how could a man so openly devoted to his family have been led to provide the commoner materials of blackmail?

"No, Claud," said the Saint. "It wasn't that. They just made him do it."

Mr. Teal's spine tingled with the involuntary reflex chill that has its roots in man's immemorial fear of the supernatural. The Saint's conviction was so wild and yet real that for one fantastic moment the detective had a vision of Costello's intense black eyes fixed and dilating in a hypnotic stare, his slender sensitive hands moving in weird passes, his lips under the thin black moustache mouthing necromantic commands… It changed into another equally fantastic vision of two courteous but inflexible gentlemen handing a weapon to a third, bowing and going away, like a deputation to an officer who has been found to be a traitor, offering the graceful alternative to a court-martial — for the Honour of High Finance… Then it went sheer to derision.

"They just said: 'Lew, why don't you shoot yourself?' and he thought it was a great idea — is that it?" he gibed.

"It was something like that," Simon answered soberly. "You see, Enstone would do almost anything to amuse his children."

Teal's mouth opened, but no sounds came from it. His expression implied that a whole volcano of devastating sarcasm was boiling on the tip of his tongue, but that the Saint's lunacy had soared into realms of waffiness beyond the reach of repartee.

"Costello and Hammel had to do something," said the Saint. "International Cottons have been very bad for a long time — as you'd have known if you hadn't packed all your stuff away in a gilt-edged sock. On the other hand, Enstone's interest — Cosmopolitan Textiles — were good. Costello and Hammel could have pulled out in two ways: either by a merger, or else by having Enstone commit suicide so that Cosmopolitans would tumble down in the scare and they could buy them in — you'll probably find they've sold a bear in them all through the month, trying to break the price. And if you look at the papers this afternoon you'll see that all Enstone's securities have dropped through the bottom of the market — a bloke in his position can't commit suicide without starting a panic. Costello and Hammel went to dinner to try for the merger, but if Enstone turned it down they were ready for the other thing."

"Well?" said Teal obstinately; but for the first time there seemed to be a tremor in the foundations of his disbelief.

"They only made one big mistake. They didn't arrange for Lew to leave a letter."

"People have shot themselves without leaving letters."

"I know. But not often. That's what started me thinking."

"Well?" said the detective again.

Simon rumpled his hair into more profound disorder, and said: "You see, Claud, in my disreputable line of business you're always thinking: 'Now, what would A do? — and what would B do? — and what would C do?' You have to be able to get inside people's minds and know what they're going to do and how they're going to do it, so you can always be one jump ahead of 'em. You have to be a practical psychologist — just like the head salesman of a general manufacturer in the Midlands."

Teal's mouth opened, but for some reason which was beyond his conscious comprehension he said nothing. And Simon Templar went on, in the disjointed way that he sometimes fell into when he was trying to express something which he himself had not yet grasped in bare words:

"Sales psychology is just a study of human weaknesses. And that's a funny thing, you know. I remember the manager of one of the biggest novelty manufacturers in the world telling me that the soundest test of any idea for a new toy was whether it would appeal to a middle-aged business man. It's true, of course. It's so true that it's almost stopped being a joke — the father who plays with his little boy's birthday presents so energetically that the little boy has to shove off and smoke papa's pipe. Every middle-aged business man has that strain of childishness in him somewhere, because without it he would never want to spend his life gathering more paper millions than he can ever spend, and building up rickety castles of golden cards that are always ready to topple over and be built up again. It's just a glorified kid's game with a box of bricks. If all the mighty earth-shaking business men weren't like that they could never have built up an economic system in which the fate of nations, all the hunger and happiness and achievement of the world, was locked up in bars of yellow tooth-stopping." Simon raised his eyes suddenly — they were very bright and in some queer fashion sightless, as if his mind was separated from every physical awareness of his surroundings. "Lewis Enstone was just that kind of a man," he said.