Leslie Charteris - The Saint Steps In

"You won't get around me by flattering my mother. Do we talk or shall we go on playing?"

He poised his fist again; and for the first time Morgen flinched and raised one arm to cover his face.

"Well?" Simon prompted.

"What d'ya want to know?"

"That's better."

The Saint took out another cigarette and lighted it. He blew the first breath of smoke deliberately into Morgen's face. If he had to bully a bully, he could go all the way with it.

"Are you working for Imberline?" he asked.

"No."

"What were you doing with him last night?"

"I only just met him. I was tryin' to get a job with Consolidated Rubber."

"Why?"

"I want to eat."

"It seems to me," Simon observed, "that you're rather fond of rubber in your diet."

"You got me wrong, bud. I'm a chemist. I gotta find a job I can do."

Simon's gaze was inclement and unimpressed.

"Who gave you that note to put in my pocket?"

"Somebody else."

"The same guy who hired you to snatch Madeline Gray?"

"That wasn't a snatch. We were just goin' to scare her a bit."

"I said, was it the same guy?"

"Yeah."

"Who?"

"Someone I work for."

"Karl," said the Saint genially, "I'm afraid you're stalling. Don't keep the suspense going too long, or I might get excited. Who are you working for?"

"A business man."

"Is his name Schicklgrüber?"

Morgen's eyes burned.

"No."

Simon smashed him on the mouth with a long straight left that bounced his head off the wall again.

"I told you I was excitable," he said equably. "And besides stalling, you're lying. I'm sure of that. Now tell me who else you're working for, and talk fast. Or else we are going to get really rough."

Morgen wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

"Okay, bud," he rasped. "Have it your way. We have got Calvin Gray. And if anything happens to me, it's gonna be just too bad about him."

"You've been seeing too many B pictures," said the Saint flintily. "That line is so standard that they put it in the script with a rubber stamp."

"You better ask Madeline and see what she thinks."

Simon didn't hesitate for an instant.

"I can't. She's in New York."

"Better ask her, just the same."

"I'd rather ask you. How much will it console you to think about what's going to happen to Calvin Gray while I'm broiling your feet and basting them with nitric acid?"

Morgen looked at him for quite a while, and that was one pause which the Saint didn't hurry. He let it sink in for all it was worth.

The man said: "Couldn't we make a deal?"

"It depends what the deal is."

"Gimme a cigarette, bud."

Simon backed off a couple of paces, dipped in his pocket, fingered out a cigarette, and tossed it over. Morgen fumbled the catch, and the cigarette flipped off his hands and fell towards the work-bench. He muttered something and went to pick it up. And then everything erupted.

Morgen was down on his hands, groping for the cigarette; and he must have been less groggy than he had left himself appear. Or else he was tougher than he boasted. Instead of straightening up, he dived forward like a sprinter off the mark. The dive took him right under the work-bench. Then the whole massive bench heaved up at one end as he rose under it. Glass slid and crashed on the floor; but Morgen was momentarily hidden, arid the Saint had to sidestep fast and put up a hand to deflect the heavy table as it teetered over on to him like a gigantic club. He caught a blurred glimpse of Morgen plunging out through the hall, and squeezed the trigger of his automatic for a snap shot, but he was off balance and moving and it hadn't a chance.

The Saint's vocabulary, displayed to the right audience, would have entitled him to a priority on excommunications.

He skidded around the upturned table and darted through the hall in pursuit. Morgen was out of sight when the Saint got outside, but the blundering and crashing of his flight could be heard distinctly in the coppice to the left, and Simon's brain was working like a comptometer now — when it was a little late. Morgen — car keys — a car — the road… Simon gave a second to clear mechanical thought, and started down the path towards the house. Then after a few yards he swerved off through a thin space in the shrubbery to try and head off the retreat.

Something solid but soft intercepted his feet. He spilled forward with his own momentum, and sprawled headlong into an unsatisfactory cushion and uncut grass. Half winded, he rolled over and sat up.

Then he saw what had tripped him.

It was a body which had been plainly exposed by the encounter. Until recently, it had been inhabited by the late Mr. Sylvester Angert.

The "late" was not to be taken too literally. It wasn't so very late. The hands were still limp and supple, and not particularly cold.

As for the instrument which had separated Mr. Angert from his not very statuesquely modeled clay, it was most probably the blackjack which Simon still had in his pocket. There was no blood on Mr. Angert's clothes, no marks of strangulation on his throat. His mousey face was relaxed, and he didn't even seem to have struggled. But there was a depression in his skull just above and behind his right ear which yielded rather sickeningly to the Saint's exploring fingers. Apparently Mr. Angert's assimilation of calcium had failed to provide his cranium with the normal amount of resistance, or else Karl Morgen had underestimated his own strength. Simon had no doubt that it had been Morgen.

And Morgen was gone, now, and couldn't be asked any more questions.

The Saint used a few more time-honored Anglo-Saxon words in interesting combinations. Between the delay of the erupting work-bench, the delay of his fall, and the delay of finding out whether Sylvester Angert was an active obstruction or not, Morgen had stretched out too long a lead for the chase to offer many possibilities. Simon Templar raised himself to his feet, listening, and almost at once he heard the whirr of a starter, the grinding of gears, and the rising roar of an engine too far off to start him running again.

Then he heard something else — a patter of light feet running on the path he had just left. Instinctively he raised the gun he had never let go, and squirmed back into the shelter of the nearest bush. A moment later he saw the girl, and stepped out again.

"Simon!" she got out breathlessly. "Are you all right?"

"Fairly," he said. "I thought I told you to stay in the house."

"I know. But I was watching. I saw Karl running away — I was afraid something had happened to you — and…"

That was when she saw the body of the mousey little man lying at his feet.

Her eyes widened, and then darkened with bewilderment.

"But — I was sure it was Karl — and it wasn't here—"

"It was Karl," said the Saint. "And he did run away. We were in the laboratory, and I was just getting around to a real heart-to-heart talk with him when he pulled a fast one. So I learnt a new trick." Simon twisted his lips wryly. "I was running after Karl when I fell over Sylvester."

Madeline Gray looked down at the motionless figure in rumpled clothes that didn't seem to belong to it any more.

"He looks sort of dead, doesn't he?" she said uncertainly.

"He is dead," said the Saint.

She swallowed something, and found her breath way down in her chest.

"You — killed him?"

"No. He was dead when I tumbled over him. He's been dead a little while, too. He must have been snooping around when Karl came here, and Karl thought he belonged to us and conked him — just a little too hard. So they weren't on the same side after all… This gets more interesting all the time."

"I'm glad you think so," she said, without any intention of being smart.