Leslie Charteris - The Saint 49 Count On The Saint

With a final furtive look around, Darslow let himself into the nearest cottage. The slamming of the- door was immediately followed by the scrape of a bolt being shot home. A moment later a light came on behind the curtains of the broad downstairs window.

The roadway and pavement were deserted, but lights showed in several other windows on the street. Simon lingered in the shadows until he was sure that neither the professor nor his neighbours were looking out from behind their curtains. Satisfied that he would be unobserved, he crossed the road and tried the handle at the blunt end of the Austin. It was securely locked. Had he been carrying even the most rudimentary instrument, the mechanism would not have survived his probing for more than a few seconds, but he had not expected for a moment to need any such thing when he set out.

He straightened quickly and glanced along the close at the sound of a door opening and the clatter of milk bottles on the step. Conscious of how suspicious he looked, he turned on his heel and walked briskly back to the college gate from where he could see Darslow’s cottage and most of the close without being visible himself.

Analysed individually, the three pointers that came together to make Professor Edwin Darslow a suspect were each completely innocuous. Why shouldn’t his car be parked outside the college wherein he worked? Why shouldn’t he put a parcel in the boot of the aforementioned automobile? And why shouldn’t an academic who has spent his life surrounded by books be ill at ease in the company of the most notorious outlaw of his generation, especially when the said outlaw is investigating the murder of the said academic’s boss? The Saint was fully aware that he might be adding one and one and one and making four. But it was the only equation that had so far presented itself, and he wasn’t going to dismiss it until he had double-checked the arithmetic.

Short of hammering on Darslow’s door, dragging him out, and forcing him to open his car and the mysterious package, which would have lacked a certain degree of subtlety, there were only two options open. One was to return to the hotel and bring back the kit of burglarious implements which he always carried with him in readiness for all contingencies; the other was to do nothing and wait on events.

While the Saint considered the alternatives the light downstairs was extinguished and after a few moments another came on in the room above. Ten minutes later that too went out.

His watch showed ten forty-five, which seemed a fairly early bedtime unless the professor was planning an equally early start in the morning. The Saint waited for a further five minutes, to assure himself that Darslow had done nothing more exciting than go to bed, before retracing his steps through the college grounds and heading back for his hotel. Whatever Edwin Darslow’s plans for the following day, it seemed an odds-on chance that they included the parcel and its contents. Simon decided that it might prove more interesting to keep an eye on the professor and his package than to pre-empt events by breaking into the car.

In spite of Simon Templar’s scepticism about the virtues of early rising, there were occasions when his vocation made such tiresome activities mandatory. The sun rose at seven twenty-five the next morning and the Saint witnessed its first rays pierce the sky from behind the wheel of the Hirondel. Faced with the choice of enduring the discomforts of keeping the house and its occupant under surveillance all night or of returning early in the morning and risking missing Darslow’s exit, he had gambled on the latter. The fact that the professor’s car was still in the same spot, and he had arrived in time to see the bedroom light switched on, showed that the bet had paid off.

He had parked the Hirondel at the T junction where the close met a quiet side road which in turn connected with the main thoroughfares of the city. Through the side window he could see the entire close at a glance, while the windscreen provided a clear view of the road leading to the city centre, the direction in which anyone leaving the close was most likely to go.

He leaned across and pushed open the passenger door in response to a rap on the window. Chantek slid into the seat beside him.

She smiled brightly.

“Good morning.”

Simon looked at her doubtfully.

“Is it? I’ve been here an hour and he hasn’t done anything more exciting than take in the milk.”

Chantek delved into the carrier bag she had brought and produced a vacuum flask and a stack of bacon sandwiches.

“Coffee?”

“That’s the best offer I’ve had today,” he said gratefully.

Aware that he would have to leave the hotel before the kitchen started serving breakfast, he had taken the precaution of calling Chantek the night before and enlisting her help in combating early morning hypoglycemia, though he was not entirely motivated by the need for nutrition. The department store was closed out of respect, and he had his own ideas about how to fill the time on her hands.

He turned in his seat to take the mug from her and grimaced at the stiffness of his joints.

“I’ve just made medical history. I’m the first person to get rigor mortis while still breathing,” he complained.

Chantek was not sympathetic.

“It serves you right for suspecting Professor Darslow. He looks such a timid little man.”

The Saint sipped the hot brown liquid and sighed at the rapid thaw it produced in his arteries.

“So did Crippen and Christie,” he pointed out.

“I still don’t believe it,” Chantek said firmly.

The Saint nodded towards the cottage as he saw its front door opening.

“Well, we shall see. It looks as though we’re going into business at last.”

Chantek followed his eyes and watched Darslow leave the cottage and get into his car.

The Saint put a hand on her shoulder and drew her down beside him below the level of the dashboard as the Austin chugged past them heading for the centre of town. The rakish lines of the Hirondel would have drawn curious attention in Piccadilly; in that staid and sleepy backwater the cream and red speedster was as much in harmony with its surroundings as a tuba in a string quartet. For once he wished he had been driving something more sedate, but as he had not used it to go to the college there was no reason why anyone seeing it should associate it with him: it could as well have belonged to some very well-heeled undergraduate. At any rate, it did not seem to affect Professor Darslow’s progress.

Cautiously Simon peeped over the rim of the steering wheel and noted that the professor had not bothered to scrape the overnight frost from the rear window. Until the sun or the car’s heater dissolved the grey crystal coating, it would not be easy for him to discover that he was being followed.

The Hirondel awoke with a roar that slipped into rhythmic purring as he flicked the stick into gear and swung out on the trail of the Austin, steering with one hand and munching a bacon sandwich held in the other.

Darslow drove at a steady forty miles an hour once they had cleared the limits of Cambridge, and the Saint remained a regular fifty yards astern. As they followed the main highway towards Saffron Walden he brought the conversation back to the fellows of St. Enoch’s.

“If you think Professor Edwin Darslow is far too meek and mild to be a murderer,” he remarked thoughtfully, “why does he have that shifty and evasive manner?”

“I think he’s terribly shy. But he’s rather sweet.”

It was not the objective observation he would have preferred, and Chantek, sensing that he was hoping for something more substantial, continued: “It doesn’t seem likely that someone who lectures in law would commit a crime.”