Leslie Charteris - Send for the Saint

The three-storey block he was in stood a little apart from the monstrosity of a central building. It was a comparatively recent structure, built in the days of the college to house the privileged senior pupils in study-bedrooms. Simon’s was one of some fifty such rooms, identically small and opening identically off L-shaped corridors on each floor, along with the “usual offices”.

He was one floor up, and counted it a minor advantage that his room was next door to a “usual office”.

He got out of the narrow bed and arranged the clothing he had arrived with, and one of the two pillows, to make it look as though he might still be in it. He didn’t know how far Lembick and Cawber’s brief to keep an eye on him went, or whether it included making close checks in the middle of the night, but that was another chance he just had to take.

He put on the regulation denims, plimsolls, and black pullover he had been issued with earlier after his own things had been thoroughly searched, and went noiselessly into the corridor and into the bathroom on the other side, which overlooked the direction he wanted to take through the grounds. Outside its window was a convenient drainpipe, of obviously solid vintage, which combined with more ancient ivy to give him an easy ladder to the neglected flower bed below.

Approximately as a leopard glides through tangled jungle undergrowth with both speed and uncanny silence, so Simon Templar transferred himself from there to his chosen spot near the south-east corner of the wall. The analogy is only approximate, because admittedly he had no creeping lianas or other dense vegetative hindrances to contend with. Most of the estate was open land; though there were a few sparsely wooded areas and he had to pass through one of these in the course of his 250-yard sortie.

Near the far edge of this spinney, he waited for two or three minutes till he heard the footsteps of the outer patrol as they turned to skirt the wall. They were on time to the minute; and if they kept to schedule it would be three-quarters of an hour before they came around again.

He emerged from the tenebrous dark just short of the section of fence, which thanks to his earlier preparatory work would hardly detain him at all. But first, after removing the piece of string with which he had replaced the bottom wire, he reached through and brought out the haversack from under the bush where had had hidden it, and took out a one-piece oversuit, which had been packed into a remarkably small space. He put it on. It was dark grey and made of a thin but tough canvas-like material, and it covered and protected every square inch of his clothing — and the leggings even terminated in overshoes, made out of extra thicknesses of the same tough material.

Then he crawled safely through the space he had previously created, under what had now become the lowest of the live wires.

Extracting his rope ladder from under his clothing, he succeeded this time in hooking it over the top of the wall at the first attempt. In a few seconds more, he landed lightly outside the wall and looked around. A few yards away, an unlit parked car faced him. He glided like a wraith towards it, keeping close in under the shadow of the wall until he was sure the car was Ruth Barnaby’s, and that it was Ruth Barnaby who was sitting behind the wheel.

He drummed a spirited tattoo on the roof and got in beside her.

“Doesn’t the romper suit make me look fetching?” he said. “I feel a bit like a truant from the nursery. Except that this playpen has twelve-foot walls, and nannies about as kindly and maternal and lovable as any rattlesnake with a sore tail.”

Faithful readers who have come to expect that the female lead will invariably be captivated by Simon Templar’s bantering charm and piratical good looks will now need to come to terms with harsh reality, which is that, incredible as it may seem, not every woman found the Saint irresistible. Just occasionally he encountered one who seemed peculiarly blind to his dazzling virtues, and almost deaf to his brilliant persiflage.

This might have been because of the mysterious chemistry of personality whereby two people, when mixed and shaken, sometimes precipitate an immediate curd of mutual antipathy. The Saint preferred to like people if he possibly could, but he had to admit that the psychic factor was real enough. Or it might be because the female in question was so besotted at the time with some other male that she was temporarily in a condition indistinguishable from imbecility. Simon Templar didn’t present the problem to himself in so many words, but he did notice.

Although he wasn’t aware of any actual antagonism on either side, it seemed like damned hard work to pierce through Ruth Barnaby’s professional single-mindedness to anything softer or lighter-hearted underneath.

“It does the job, though?” she inquired dispassionately, indicating the oversuit.

“It does,” he said. “It keeps my clothes from getting dirty and scuffed or muddy on an outing like this and saves awkward questions about where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing.”

“I can tell Pelton that you’re well and truly installed, then?”

“Yes. Though I’ve nothing much to report as yet. But by the way, you never did explain how Nobbins has been reporting.”

“He didn’t — not till he became a trusty. Trusties are allowed odd days off. But that wasn’t till he’d been there a couple of weeks or so. And then he sent those reports you read.”

“And they weren’t too helpful. I suppose he wouldn’t have been up to climbing walls?”

“Neither physically nor psychologically,” she said. “He’s been scared stiff ever since he went in.”

“Then why did he go in?”

She shrugged.

“Pelton’s idea. Bert had been griping a bit about always being behind the scenes — you know, the poor grey anonymous little man. Pelton wanted someone else on the inside in a hurry. He didn’t want to risk sending in another front-line agent. The face just might have been recognised. And then this vacancy came up. Pelton found out that Rockham needed somebody to do his accounts, look after the men’s pay, keep records — all that sort of thing.”

“And Nobbins had the right qualifications?”

“For that, yes — he used to be in the Pay Corps. But for active service as an infiltrator, no — in my opinion.”

The outline facts weren’t new to the Saint at this point. But for the first time he was beginning to see what Bert Nobbin’s real position in the affair might be; and that dawning realisation, or suspicion, made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up and do what felt like an icy little minuet.

“But Pelton put him in regardless,” he said slowly.

“It was a risk,” she admitted, without saying for whom. “But without Bert’s contribution it would have been a lot harder to brief you for your job. And he was keen to prove himself outside his own field.”

“Which is?”

“Information handling,” the girl said. “That’s analysis of incoming reports. For example, from Resident Directors — you know the set-up overseas. Deciphering, extraction, collating, condensing. It’s mostly dull, boring, routine work. But Bert’s good at it. I know — I worked under him for a couple of years.”

Thoughts were chasing each other around in the Saint’s head like wasps in a jam-jar. Somewhere in this whole setup was something — or maybe it was two or three or four things — that didn’t fit, no matter which way up you turned it and no matter what angle you looked at it from. His nose for these matters told him only one thing for certain: somewhere, in some way that it was beyond his present knowledge and understanding to discern, the game was rigged.