Leslie Charteris - Catch the Saint

“I don’t know what to do,” Julie said forlornly, standing outside the still unopened door of her brother’s flat. “Do you think that the Mr Fawkes I saw was really the man from the art gallery? I mean, I know he must have been, but it doesn’t seem possible. He was there, with his secretary, in his office, with his name on the door, and the man on duty downstairs didn’t think there was anything peculiar...” She suddenly paused. “Well, he did say that Mr Fawkes was probably out to lunch, but then he found out he wasn’t.”

“It’ll be very easy to check this out,” Simon said. “May I use your telephone?”

Any suspicion or resistance that remained in Julie’s mind was being rapidly washed away. She hesitated for only a moment.

“All right.”

Simon took the key from her hand and opened the door. As soon as he followed her inside he was intrigued by the mixture of North-of-England bourgeois and artistic individualism that characterised the place. It was as if two people lived there and had shared in the decoration — a very conventional middle-class old maid, and the artist who had tried to work in his own ideas wherever he could without unduly disconcerting his alter ego. The effect was comfortable but a little stifling.

“Has your brother always lived alone here?”

“Yes. He came down about five years ago and he’s been here the whole time.”

“There’s one thing that I’m puzzled about.” Simon smiled before he went on. “Well, one thing among several. I’m surprised you didn’t recognise Pargit’s name when I asked you about him.”

“Why?”

“Well, what sent you to his art gallery?”

“Oh. I looked all through my brother’s things, because I got the idea that I should find out as much as I could about him. I thought I might get a clue of some kind about what had been going on in his life before I came here, but I just couldn’t believe Adrian had actually done anything wrong. So I started hunting round and I couldn’t find much of anything... but on the back of one of Adrian’s paintings, on the back of the frame, there was a sticker that said ‘Leonardo Galleries,’ and a price, so I thought he must have shown his work there or something, and I thought I’d talk to them about him. That’s when you saw me.” They were still standing in the middle of the sitting-room. “Won’t you sit down? Would you like some tea?”

“Neither, thank you,” Simon replied. He paced round, his eyes taking in and his memory recording every detail of the room, just in case there might be something informative or useful there. “But if your brother had dealings with Pargit’s gallery, surely there must have been more than a sticker on the back of a frame. Wasn’t there any correspondence with Pargit?”

Julie shook her head.

“I couldn’t find any letters or receipts or anything like that connected with art galleries.”

“That’s a little odd, isn’t it? You’re sure your brother really was a painter?”

“Is a painter, Mr. Temple—”

“Templar, but please call me Simon.”

“I’m sorry. Yes, he definitely is a painter; I’ve watched him work since I got here. Would you like to see his studio?”

“Yes, but I’d like to make that call first.” He still did not pick up the telephone. “You know, it’s impossible that your brother didn’t have any business correspondence, unless he never sold a painting. He did sell, didn’t he?”

“Yes. And he used to mention where he’d sold paintings; you know, in his letters to Mother and me; but the names didn’t mean anything to me and I don’t remember them.” She shrugged. “Probably I just haven’t found all of his papers and things yet.”

“Or else those Special Branch investigators purloined a few letters while you weren’t looking, just to slow down your investigations.”

“I didn’t see them take anything.”

“They wouldn’t want you to, would they?”

She shook her head.

“I can’t believe there are people running around actually doing things like that... to me. It’s like something in a Hitchcock film.”

“Let’s try out this scene.”

The Saint picked up the telephone and soon was being shuttled through the labyrinths of government switchboards.

“What was Fawkes’s first name?” he asked Julie, his hand over the mouthpiece.

“Nobody told me. He was in room 405, though.”

Simon spoke into the telephone: “I’d like to speak with Mr Fawkes, in room 405.”

After one ring, a female voice answered, “Factory Act Administration.”

“I was trying to reach Mr Fawkes’s office,” Simon told her.

“I am Mr Fawkes’s secretary.”

“In room 405?”

“Yes. May I help you?”

“I’d like to speak with Mr Fawkes. My name is Guide.”

“One moment.”

After a pause and a few clicking sounds, a male voice said, “Fawkes speaking.”

“Mr Fawkes, I believe you’re involved in administering the Official Secrets Act.”

“No. The Factory Act.”

“Then you’re not the Mr Fawkes who had a discussion in your office with Miss Julie Norcombe yesterday.”

“No.”

“Do you know how I could reach a Mr Fawkes who’s involved in the Official Secrets Act?”

“I’ve never heard of any such person, but of course...”

“Sorry to have troubled you. Best of luck with your factories.”

Simon hung up and faced Julie, who was sitting on the edge of the sofa. “Mr Fawkes in room 405 is not even remotely connected with official secrets, and I doubt that your brother is either. It looks as if comrade Pargit suffers from repressed longings to be a member of the Civil Service, and spends his lunch hours playing bureaucrat. He borrowed Fawkes’s office just long enough to talk to you and scare you into keeping quiet.”

Julie was suddenly on her feet, her hands clenched. “Then where is Adrian, if he isn’t really under arrest? Why couldn’t it be the other way round?”

“You mean, could the Leonardo Galleries be a front for some Secret Service operation? I hardly think so. If they were, they wouldn’t want a whiff of scandal about them. And if ‘Pargit’ were an undercover name for Fawkes, he wouldn’t be swindling elderly widows as a side line. No — I’m sure how that your ‘Special Branch’ visitors were phonies. Why Pargit is going to these lengths is quite another puzzle.”

“Then what’s happened to my brother?”

Julie’s voice was rising to a dangerous pitch, so Simon put an arm round her shoulder and made her sit down beside him on the sofa.

“Take it easy,” he said quietly. “Your brother has probably been kidnapped by Pargit and his pals for some reason we don’t know yet. The purpose of all the dramatic impersonations was to throw you off the track and — more than anything else — keep you from spreading word round that your brother had disappeared.”

Now the girl’s voice became more angry than hysterical.

“I’m a complete idiot! I believed the whole thing! And Adrian’s probably dead or something!”

She started crying.

“Don’t be so pessimistic,” Simon said, trying to counter her despair with reassurance. “If anyone had killed your brother it wouldn’t have served much purpose to use four men — men you might identify later — just to sell you on a fake version of where he’d be for the next few days or weeks. I certainly don’t think he’s dead. Assuming he’s taken an involuntary leave of absence, whoever’s got him must plan to keep him for some time — otherwise why go to so much trouble to stop you reporting him as missing? So I don’t imagine he’s in any immediate danger.”

“But why would anybody want to kidnap him?” Julie argued. “Nobody in our family is rich.”