Leslie Charteris - Catch the Saint

“Sam,” the black-haired man called, “he says he’s from the telephone company.”

Sam Caffin was sitting at a desk on the far side of the living-room, next to a high window. His sleeves were rolled up above his elbows, revealing arms thicker than the waists of some of his decorator’s female statues. He was a very broad-shouldered, bull-necked man. His hair was blond, cut short, and his skin ruddy. When he turned to see what was going on behind him, a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles perched on his boxers’ nose looked laughably incongruous. He was about forty, but his rounded features and smooth skin made him seem younger.

He seemed aware of the unsuitability of his eyeglasses, and jerked them off as he spoke.

“What’s wrong with the telephone?”

“Didn’t you get the notice?” the repairman asked. He was unusually tall for a Cockney. He too wore glasses, with thick corrective lenses that blurred his eyes to the viewer. A moustache shadowed his upper lip. “They’re supposed to send you a notice in the post.”

“I never saw it,” Caffin said. He was brusque, but through impatience rather than belligerence. “I can’t keep up with all the trash that comes in the post.”

“I’m not supposed to be ’ere without you getting the notice first, sir; I’d best go get it and come back after lunch.”

“I’m having a business meeting here after lunch,” Caffin said. “Come on in and get it over with now, can’t you?”

“I’ve got to change the junction box. We’re putting in more modern equipment. With your permission I’ll go ahead.”

“You’ve got my permission,” Caffin said irritably.

“Where’s your telephones, sir?”

“Right here on this desk; and there’s another one in my bedroom.”

“I’ll begin right ’ere, sir,” the telephone engineer said.

He shuffled across the room, taking a route that required a kind of slalom among the statues and their fluted pedestals. As he approached Caffin’s desk, where Caffin was attempting to turn his attention back to his paperwork, he stopped to admire a small beautiful Vermeer which hung on the wall. At least it would have appeared to be a Vermeer if Vermeer had ever signed his work with a small “AN” in the lower right-hand corner.

“Very ’andsome, sir,” the repairman said.

Caffin glanced up from his desk and said, “Thanks.”

“Very ’andsome indeed.”

The telephone man shook his head admiringly, almost backed into one of the statues, and proceeded to look for the telephone box along the baseboard near Caffin’s feet. Caffin tried to go on with his business. The repairman got down on his knees to inspect the junction, which happened to be only about two yards from Caffin’s knees. Assuming that either or both men wanted privacy in their work, the proximity made it impossible. Behind the thick lenses of the spectacles, the blue eyes of the telephone engineer were hyperalert, and his fingers moved swiftly to open his equipment bag, belying the apparent clumsiness he had shown in getting himself across the room. His eyes, peering over the glasses which helped to obscure his normal appearance, measured the angle of vision that Caffin must have of the telephone junction. He shifted his position so that his body was between Caffin and the black container bolted to the wall near the floor. Now the junction container could be seen by the black-haired man who had answered the door, had he cared to look at anything so uninteresting; he had taken a chair near the entrance foyer and was perusing a copy of Girl Parade with scholarly intensity.

Quickly the telephone worker got the junction box open, disconnected the wires that connected it to the telephone on Caffin’s desk, and then proceeded to detach the entire box from the wall and deftly free it from the other leads.

“See this ’ere, sir?” he said to Caffin. “This ‘ole lot of equipment was defective.” He displayed the vari-coloured innards of the box, disemboweling it to illustrate his point. “This ’ere, and ” this ’ere. Not worf a ’apenny. You’d ‘ave ‘ad all kinds of trouble soon.”

Caffin watched impatiently as the repairman used a pair of needlenosed pliers to pull out little wires and crush small metal, components.

“Are you supposed to be mending the bloody thing or smashing it?” he asked. “I can’t do without my telephone.”

“I was just showin’ you,” the Cockney said. “This thing ain’t no use to no one now anyway. I’ve got a new one ’ere to slip right in an’ tyke its place.”

Caffin snorted as the telephone engineer tossed the wrecked junction box aside. It was now that the engineer hunched as close as possible over the wall connections. In his bag was a slightly larger box than the one he had just taken from the wall, very similar in shape and color. Its contents, however, were not standard issue of the G.P.O. and in fact could serve no useful purpose at all in improving the operation of Sam Caffin’s telephone. The means by which they would cause him to communicate with the world outside his flat were most efficient, but had nothing to do with telephones, and would have been disapproved of in the extreme by Sam Caffin himself. In fact, Caffin’s immediate reaction, had he known what was in the new box, would have been to bring (or attempt to bring) to a swift, permanent, and unpleasant end, the career of the man who was about to install it.

Nevertheless the engineer went about the substitution as coolly as a garage mechanic changing a spark plug. As he worked, he heard the footsteps of the man who had been sitting by the door come quickly across the room, and a pair of shoes appeared beside him. He sat back on his heels to look up inquiringly, and his body, though seemingly relaxed, tensed for instant action.

“Thinkin’ of learnin’ the business, mate?”

“I’m just watching,” the other growled.

His dour attitude seemed to be only the normal manifestation of his soul; it was not specifically threatening.

“Lemme show you wot the bloody fools ‘ave done,” the repairman said chattily. “You see this ’ere?”

Sam Caffin slammed a pen down on his desk.

“If you’ve got to do that now, could you do it quieter? What are you mucking around there for, Blackie?”

Blackie scratched his bepimpled face. “Just watching,” he said.

“Well, go watch something else.”

Blackie grunted and went back to his picture magazine. Caffin got up and left the room. In a minute the new box was attached to the wall. The wires to the telephone, however, were still hanging loose.

“Mr Caffin?” the engineer called. “Mr Caffin?”

Caffin reappeared.

“What is it now?”

“I can’t finish this job right now. The idiots ‘ave give me some wrong fittings. I’ll ‘ave to go back to the depot.”

Caffin swore to himself, glancing at his watch.

“Can you finish before two o’clock?”

“Today?” the repairman mumbled, on his feet now.

“Of course today!” Caffin snapped. “You sure as hell can’t leave me without a telephone until tomorrow.”

The engineer looked dubious. Caffin reached into his trousers pocket, pulled out some pound notes, and shoved one out.

“That’s to get it finished today.”

“Thank you very much, guv; I’ll do it. But I couldn’t get to the depot and back before two o’clock even if I missed me lunch. I’ll be ’ere as quick as I can.”

“Wait until after three-thirty then, but get back here today.”

“You can count on me, Mr Caffin, sir!”

At three thirty-five the telephone engineer returned to Caffin’s flat. He was once more admitted by the black-haired guard. Caffin was not in sight, but the closeness of the air, dominated by a thick smell of tobacco smoke, was evidence that his business meeting had ended not long before.