Leslie Charteris - Follow the Saint

The Saint's face showed no hint of his disappointment. He sat for a few seconds longer, tilting himself gently back and forth; and then he stood up.

"It's a pity you don't keep more money on the premises, Henry," he remarked. "You could have saved yourself a stamp."

He picked up a paperknife from the desk and tested the blade with his thumb. It was sharp enough. The eyes of the bound men dilated as they watched him.

The Saint smiled.

"From the way you were talking when I first came in, it looks as if you know my business," he said. "And I hope you've realized by this time that I know yours. It isn't a very nice business; but that's something for you to worry about. All I'm concerned with is to make sure that you pay the proper luxury tax to the right person, which happens to be me. So will you attend to it as soon as possible, Henry? I should think about ten thousand pounds will do for a first instalment. I shall expect it in one-pound notes, delivered by messenger before two-thirty pm tomorrow. And it had better not be late." The Saint's blue eyes were as friendly as frozen vitriol. "Because if it is, Chief Inspector Teal will be calling here again — and next time it won't be an accident… Meanwhile" — the knife spun from his hands like a whirling white flame, and the three men flinched wildly as the point buried itself with a thud in the small space of carpet centrally between them—"if one of you gets to work with that, you ought to be up and about again in a few minutes. Goodbye, girls; and help yourself to some sal volatile when you get down stairs."

It was nearing one o'clock by his watch when he reached the street; and Patricia was ordering herself a second Martini when he strolled into the cocktail room at Quaglino's.

She leaned back and closed her eyes.

"I know," she said. "Teal and the Flying Squad are about two blocks behind you. I can tell by the smug look on your face."

"For once in your life you're wrong," he said as he lowered himself into a chair. "They're so far behind that if Einstein is right they ought to have been here an hour ago."

Over lunch he gave her an account of his morning.

"But what is it all about?" she said.

He frowned.

"I just wish I knew, darling. But it's something bigger than burglary — you can take bets on that. If Henry Osbett is the Miracle Teapot in person, the plot is getting so thick you could float rocks on it. If I haven't got mixed on what Claud Eustace told me last night, they run a radio programme, and that costs plenty of dough and trouble. No gang of burglars would bother to go as far as that, even to keep up appearances. Therefore this is some racket in which the dough flows like water; and I wish I could think what that could be. And it's run by experts. In the whole of that shop there wasn't a single clue. I'll swear that Claud Eustace himself could put it through a sieve and not find anything… I was just bluffing Henry, of course, but I think I made a good job of it."

"You don't think he'll pay, do you?"

"Stranger things have happened," said the Saint hopefully. "But if you put it like that — no. That was just bait. There wasn't anything else useful that I could do. If I'd had them somewhere else I might have beaten it out of them, but I couldn't do it there, and I couldn't put them in a bag and bring them home with me. Anyhow, this may be a better way. It means that the next move is up to the ungodly, and they've got to make it fast. And that may give us our break."

"Of course it may," she agreed politely. "By the way, where did you tell me once you wanted to be buried?"

He chuckled.

"Under the foundation stone of a brewery," he said. ''But don't worry. I'm going to take a lot of care of myself."

His idea of taking care of himself for that afternoon was to drive the Hirondel down to the factory at an average speed of about sixty miles an hour to discuss the installation of a new type of supercharger designed to make the engine several degrees more lethal than it was already, and afterwards to drive back to London at a slightly higher speed in order to be punctual for his appointment with Mr Teal. Considering that ride in retrospect, he sometimes wondered whether he would have any chance of claiming that the astounding quality of care which it showed could be credited entirely to his own inspired forethought.

It was on the stroke of four when he sailed into the May Fair and espied the plump and unromantic shape of Chief Inspector Teal dumped into a pink brocade armchair and looking rather like a bailiff in a boudoir.

Teal got up as the Saint breezed towards him; and something in the way he straightened and stood there almost checked Simon in the middle of a stride. Simon forced himself to keep coming without a flaw in the smooth surface of his outward tranquillity; but a sixth sense was rocketing red danger signals through his brain even before he heard the detective's unnaturally hard gritty voice.

"I've been waiting for you, Saint!"

"Then you must have been early, Claud," said the Saint. His smile was amiable and unruffled, but there was an outlaw's watchfulness at the back of his bantering eyes. "Is that any excuse for the basilisk leer? Anyone would think you'd eaten something—"

"I don't want to hear any more of that," Teal said crunchily. "You know damned well why I'm waiting for you. Do you know what this is?"

He flourished a piece of paper in Simon's face.

The Saint raised his eyebrows.

"Not another of those jolly old warrants?" he murmured. "You must be getting quite a collection of them."

"I'm not going to need to collect any more," Teal said grimly. "You went too far when you left your mark on the dead man you threw out of your car in Richmond Park this afternoon. I'm taking you into custody on a charge of wilful murder!"

Simon took Mr Teal by the arm and led him back to a seat. He was probably the only man in the world who could have got away with such a thing, but he did it without the faintest sign of effort. He switched on about fifty thousand watts of his personality, and Mr Teal was sitting down beside him before he recovered from it.

"Damn it, Templar, what the hell do you think you're doing?" he exploded wrathfully. "You're under arrest!"

"All right, I'm under arrest," said the Saint accommodatingly, as he stretched out his long legs. "So what?"

"I'm taking you into custody—"

"You said that before. But why the hurry? It isn't early closing day at Vine Street, is it? Let's have our tea first, and you can tell me all about this bird I'm supposed to have moidered. You say he was thrown out of a car—"

"Your Hirondel!"

"But why mine? After all, there are others. I don't use enough of them to keep the factory going by myself."

The detective's jaws clamped on his chewing gum.

"You can say all that to the magistrate in the morning," he retorted dourly. "It isn't my job to listen to you. It's my job to take you to the nearest police station and leave you there, and that's what I'm going to do. I've got a car and a couple of men at each of the entrances, so you'd better not give any trouble. I had an idea you'd be here at four o'clock —"

"So I spent the afternoon moidering people and chucking them out of cars, and then rush off to meet you so you needn't even have the trouble of looking for me. I even use my own famous Hirondel so that any cop can identify it, and put my trademark on the deceased to make everything easy for the prosecution. You know, Claud," said the Saint pensively, "there are times when I wonder whether I'm quite sane."

Teal's baby blue eyes clung to him balefully.

"Go on," he grated. "Let's hear the new alibi. It'll give me plenty of time to get it torn down before you come up for trial!"