Leslie Charteris - Catch the Saint

She considered that suggestion unworthy of a reply, and strode off ahead of Simon into the woods until she stepped in a hole and fell to her knees. He lifted her, red-faced, to her feet, and led the way north from the highway along what seemed to be a public path. Before very long, they came to the top of a knoll shaded by tall trees, and far down to the right across an open field they could see a stone house.

“That must be it!” Julie said excitedly.

Simon could see the trace of the old road leading up to the house. Lifting the field-glasses which hung round his neck, he focussed on the house itself. Stone. Two storeys. Facing south towards the highway. And in front of it, a trace of something red which must have been the roof of a well.

Satisfied, he stood like a general planning a battle. The cleared fields to the north of the house gave no cover. But behind the building were thick woods, extending west to join the forested area where they were now standing.

“When it’s dark,” he said as much to himself as to her, “I’ll come back this way, cross over through those trees to the north, and come up behind the house.”

“And then what?” Julie challenged. “Take it by storm?”

“Take it in my own way,” he said calmly, raising the binoculars to his eyes again.

“Just knock on the door and tell them to surrender?” she persisted. “What if there are a dozen of them down there? Do you see anybody?”

“No, but I’m sure they’d never let Adrian get lonely. They keep to themselves, I imagine, in those two upstairs rooms Caffin mentioned on the tape. Not nature-lovers, these boys.”

“Then how will you get in, or get them out?”

“I think your idea was quite a good one: I’ll just knock on the door.”

“But—”

“Could you be quiet a minute, please? I see better when I’m not listening.”

For a long time he studied every detail of the house, the location of its front door, its windows, the placement of its chimney, the slant of the roof, the way the big trees crowded up to it from the rear. He could see that certain upstairs windows showed up differently from others in the light of the lowering sun.

When all this information was photographically recorded in his brain, he turned to Julie, smiled suddenly, and said, “Not a twit to be seen.”

“What can I do?” Julie asked seriously.

“About what?”

“About tonight. I’m coming along to help.”

“No you’re not,” said the Saint firmly.

“He’s my brother!” she flared.

“Don’t worry,” he said, making her stroll at a leisurely pace with him through the woods. “You’ll have plenty to do. My object is to get your brother and the Rembrandt safely out of that farmhouse. Then I’ll send him to the Golden Fleece, where you’ll be waiting for him. You then contact the local police, Adrian can explain how he was kidnapped, and the Dorset constabulary can round up the casualties from the farmhouse.”

“Casualties?” she objected. “How do you know you won’t be a casualty?”

He took her by the arm and steered her back down the hill towards his car.

“Just let me worry about my end of it,” he said. “Yours is to be waiting for your brother and call the local cops. But when you call them don’t mention Caffin or Pargit.”

“Whyever not?”

“I don’t want to risk them skinning out. Now listen to this carefully: Get the police to arrange transportation for you and Adrian to London. Tell them there are some urgent angles to this which you’ll only discuss with Chief Inspector Teal at Scotland Yard. Then, but only then, when you see him, first thing tomorrow morning, tell him about Pargit and Caffin.”

“Why not tell them right away?”

“Because our brave bobbies have been known to bungle and let people escape. I have not.”

“Oh,” said Julie, and went with him docilely to the car.

Only from very close by was it possible to detect slivers of light at several of the upstairs windows of the old farmhouse. Simon Templar gave no such careless hints of his own presence in that moonless night. In dark clothing, he was one moment a tree trunk, another moment a section of crumbling wall, the next moment an indistinguishable part of the house itself.

Having reached the house after leaving certain equipment at the base of the nearest trees, he made his way soundlessly round the side of the building, and then to the front. The softly chirping night gave no warning sign of the approaching commotion.

The first to feel its impact was one Alfonso “Sleepy” Trocadero, Caffin’s most exotic import, who liked napping in the afternoon who was therefore well suited for beginning the first half of the night watch at 10 p.m. If indeed it is accurate to say that Alfonso felt anything. He was sitting stolidly in the darkness behind the locked door of the farmhouse, contemplating the vast vacancies of his moustachioed skull, when there were six knocks — three fast, three slow.

It was the correct signal, and it was proper that it should come at night. There was no telephone at the farmhouse, and messengers, supplies, or reinforcements from London could be expected to arrive in just this way.

Unsuspecting, Alfonso hauled his generously nourished bulk from the chair, turned a key, threw a bolt, and opened the door a little. Seeing no one immediately, he cautiously poked his head outside. It was then that he might have felt something if the light of his nervous system had not been extinguished so suddenly that there was no time even for a signal to race from the back of his neck to his brain.

When he rejoined the world, he was no longer at the still un-alarmed farmhouse. He was lying on his back in the woods, looking up at stars beyond the treetops, at the patient face of a man in dark clothing, and at the point of his own flick knife. This eight-inch blade was such a part of his personality that his first automatic reaction was to confirm that his pocket was really empty. But his arm would not move. He was so thoroughly trussed up that he could move nothing but his head, and he did not care to move it when he saw the look in his captor’s eyes, which seemed almost to glow in the night.

“Now, friend,” the man with the dagger said, “there are certain things I want to hear from you and certain things I don’t want to hear. I have very delicate ears, and anything louder than a whisper tends to make me very nervous.”

“Who are you?” Alfonso stammered.

The point of the knife moved closer to the tip of his nose.

“I also dislike hearing questions,” the other told him. “I like asking them, though, and nothing pleases me more than hearing correct answers. If you tell me something, and I find out you were a naughty boy and didn’t tell me the truth, I’m going to give this little toy of yours back to you in a location you won’t enjoy. Now, how many people are in that house besides you?”

He pressed the point of the knife against the bulbous end of Alfonso’s nose much more gently, he was sure, than Alfonso had used it against his own victims, but firmly enough to produce immediate co-operation.

“Ah — three,” said Alfonso.

“Does that include the painter?”

“Painter?”

The knife, which had eased away, renewed its pressure.

“Is there a painter in there? An artist, painting a picture?”

“Yes.”

“And two guards besides you?”

“Yes.”

The Saint had waited after dropping Alfonso to see if another head would appear at the front door, or if an alarm would be raised. Neither had happened. If the door-guard’s absence was discovered, no harm would be done; it might even bring another of Caffin’s gang outside to expose himself to the Saint’s attentions. Meanwhile, Simon had been able to enter the lower floor of the house and make certain preparations before taking Alfonso off to the woods.