Leslie Charteris - Catch the Saint

“I’ll ’ave this done in ’arf a mo’,” the engineer said pleasantly.

Blackie showed no gratitude for the announcement, and went off to the other side of the room to stimulate his brain with a copy of Frilly Frolics. The repairman detached the container he had left on the wall. Inside, he could feel the small wire recorder still running soundlessly. He shut it off, put it in his bag, and five minutes later had restored Sam Caffin’s telephone to perfect working order.

As he was seen to the door by the heavy-set watchman, he said: “Tell Mr Caffin ta for the quid, and tell him I’ll be drinkin’ to ’im with it tonight.”

“I can’t believe it,” Julie Norcombe breathed. “I just can’t believe what Adrian has got mixed up in.”

“It’s quite a set-up, isn’t it?” Simon admitted.

He had listened to the recording before bringing it over to Julie’s flat, so he knew that there was nothing more to hear but a monotonous kiss. He leaned forward and killed the sound with a touch of one long finger.

“It must mean that Adrian’s safe, then,” Julie reasoned in momentary rapture.

“It sounds as if he’s as safe as the crown jewels in the Tower of London,” Simon agreed. “He’s so much safer than the average citizen that he could probably get cut-rate life insurance... at least for the next few weeks.”

The possibly ominous connotations of Simon’s final phrase were lost on her. She was too concerned with the more glaring facts of Pargit’s meeting with Caffin in Caffin’s flat.

“But Adrian’s a prisoner!” she persisted. “What if they don’t feed him well? Or if they don’t get him his stomach pills? He has a very nervous stomach. Or if they do terrible things to him... like beat him, or...”

Simon raised a soothing hand.

“My dear,” he said, “if you were entertaining me as an involuntary artist in residence, and I was worth approximately half a million pounds to you, would you feed me crusts and beat me with andirons? No, you certainly would not. You would make me as comfortable as possible, cater to my hypochondria, lavish my pet medicines upon me, and feed me all my favourite dishes. In short, you’d try to keep me as happy and calm as possible, so that my hands would be steady and my brain operating at peak efficiency.”

Julie whirled from a position she had taken near the front window, came across the room, and sat down facing Simon.

“But I don’t even understand why they’ve got to have my brother kept a prisoner so he can touch up some old Rembrandt. All I can make out from that recording is that this art-gallery man who tricked me, and a lot of gangsters from Soho, have all got together about some painting and kidnapped my brother. I mean, if you look past all those niggling little details about who goes where when, and who pays who what, that’s what it comes to, doesn’t it?”

“Perhaps I’d better try to clarify a few points?” Simon said patiently. “I’ve listened to this tape several times now, and you’ve just had your first impression. And you were asking me so many questions while it was playing that you missed half of it anyway.”

“I’m sorry,” Julie pouted.

“All right. Now listen. I’ll admit that it isn’t always too clear from those discussions on the tape, but if you put together all the bits and pieces and use your noodle, this is the general picture: Our friend Pargit, proprietor of the Leonardo Galleries and your brother’s sometime agent, had an amazing piece of luck. Not long ago, someone brought him a very old and very dirty painting and asked him to have it cleaned up and restored. We don’t know anything about this client, but it was probably some artistically naive soul who inherited the thing from an aristocratic uncle, or found it in the attic of the family manse. Anyway, the person who trustingly lugged this painting into the Leonardo Galleries had no idea when it was painted or who painted it, but he hoped it might be worth something and he asked Pargit to identify and value it while he was having it restored.”

“I didn’t hear all that,” she said.

“Well, naturally Pargit and Caffin aren’t going to recite the whole history of the deal in the course of their meeting, since they both know about it. But when you listen to this tape again you’ll see that I’m right.”

“Sorry,” Julie said.

“Stop saying you’re sorry all the time.”

“All right. Sorry.”

Simon breathed deeply and went on: “You can imagine Pargit’s feelings when he discovered that he had been handed a genuine, original Rembrandt — a work that had dropped out of sight for a couple of hundred years and now was plumped into his unworthy lap like manna from heaven. So what does Pargit do? What he does not do is rush to the telephone to give the owner of the painting the glad tidings. Instead he tells the client that it’s going to be several weeks before the restoration is completed and the canvas is identified... but meanwhile the client shouldn’t get his hopes up, because it’s pretty certain that the painting is by some insignificant imitator of one of the great masters.

“Now, as we know, comrade Pargit is a man who hasn’t enjoyed outstanding success in overcoming the sin of covetousness, and he has no scruples about how he makes his profits. But what can he do? He can’t just run off with the unknown Rembrandt, or pretend he’s misplaced it. So he comes up with a brainstorm: He will have a duplicate painting done, a fine imitation of the real Rembrandt. This forgery will be suitably aged by the best dishonest methods. Then it will be presented to the client, and the client will be told that what he’s getting is of course the restoration of his painting. The client will believe that he has his old canvas back looking much prettier than it did when he brought it in, and Pargit will keep the real Rembrandt. The client will be told that his painting turned out to be by a minor artist of the Rembrandt school, but not by Rembrandt himself. Cyril is now free to take the original genuine Rembrandt to the States and sell it for at least half a million. Do you get the point now?”

Julie nodded.

“And so they’ve got Adrian painting a copy of the Rembrandt?”

“Because Pargit knew his talent for imitation,” Simon affirmed. “And that’s probably one of the main reasons Pargit needed to bring Caffin in on the deal. Cyril isn’t a strong-arm type himself. Those were Caffin’s boys who visited you here the night Adrian didn’t come home, and they’re the ones who’ll be making Adrian comfortable while he works.”

“But why would Adrian do it?” she protested. “He mayn’t be a great artist yet, but I know he wouldn’t be a crook.”

“Not even if they gave him a sales talk about what they might do to you if he didn’t co-operate?”

Julie sat pondering for a moment, then abruptly raised her eyes to meet Simon’s: “What’ll they do with him when he’s finished the painting?”

“I’m sorry you asked that question,” the Saint replied. “I’m not sure that Pargit knows yet. He’s probably hoping that things will work out so that he can just let Adrian go when it’s all over. Your brother won’t be told everything that’s going on. Pargit may think that a pay-off and a warning to keep his mouth shut will be enough. But Caffin’s a cautious type; and a rougher type. I’m afraid he may come up with a more drastic way of guaranteeing that Adrian will keep the secret.”

Julie jumped to her feet.

“We can’t just sit here talking about it! We’ll have to get the police, and...” She started towards the telephone, changed her mind after two steps, and swarmed over the wire player with all ten fingers. “We even heard where they’re keeping him. Let’s play it back. How do you work this thing?”