Leslie Charteris - Follow the Saint

He said: "What sort of a guy is he?"

"A tall thin foreign-looking bloke wiv a black beard."

It still sounded possible. Whatever Mr Osbett's normal appearance might be, and whatever kind of racket he might be in, he might easily be anxious not to have his identity known by such dubiously efficient subordinates as Red McGuire.

"And exactly how," said the Saint, "did your foreign-looking bloke know that I had any miracles in the house?"

"I dunno—"

Patricia Holm came back into the room with a curling-iron that glowed dull red.

Simon turned and reached for it.

"You're just in time, darling," he murmured. "Comrade McGuire's memory is going back on him again."

Comrade McGuire gaped at the hot iron, and licked his lips.

"I found that out meself, guv'nor," he said hurriedly. "I was goin' to tell yer —"

"How did you find out?"

"I heard somethink on the telephone." The Saint's eyes narrowed.

"Where?"

"In the fust house I went to — somewhere near Victoria Station. That was where I was told to go fust an' swop over the tea. I got in all right, but the bloke was there in the bedroom. I could hear 'im tossing about in bed. I was standin' outside the door, wondering if I should jump in an' cosh him, when the telephone rang. I listened to wot he said, an' all of a sudding I guessed it was about some tea, an' then once he called you 'Saint', an' I knew who he must be talkin' to. So I got out again an' phoned the guvnor an' told him about it; an' he ses, go ahead an' do the same thing here."

Simon thought back over his conversation with Mr Teal; and belief grew upon him. No liar could have invented that story, for it hung on the fact of a telephone call which nobody else besides Teal and Patricia and himself could have known about.

He could see how the mind of Mr Osbett would have worked on it. Mr Osbett would already know that someone had interrupted the attempt to recover the package of tea from Chief Inspector Teal on his way home, that that someone had arrived in a car, and that he had presumably driven Teal the rest of the way after the rescue. If someone was phoning Teal later about a packet of tea, the remainder of the sequence of accidents would only have taken a moment to reconstruct… And when the Saint thought about it, he. would have given a fair percentage of his fifteen hundred pounds for a glimpse of Mr Osbett's face when he learned into what new hands the packet of tea had fallen.

He still looked at Red McGuire.

"How would you like to split this packet of tea with me?" he asked casually.

McGuire blinked at him.

"Blimey, guv'nor, wot would I do wiv art a packet of tea?"

Simon did not try to enlighten him. The answer was enough to consolidate the conclusion he had already reached. Red McGuire really didn't know what it was all about — that was also becoming credible. After all, any intelligent employer would know that Red McGuire was not a man who could be safely led into temptation.

The Saint had something else to think about. His own brief introductory anonymity was over, and henceforward all the attentions of the ungodly would be lavished on himself — while he was still without one single solid target to shoot back at.

He sank into a chair and blew the rest of his cigarette into a meditative chain of smoke rings; and then he crushed the butt into an ashtray and looked at McGuire again.

"What happens to your fifty-quid-a-week job if you go back to stir, Red?" he inquired deliberately.

The thug chewed his teeth.

"I s'pose it's all over with, guv'nor."

"How would you like to phone your boss now — for me?"

Fear swelled in McGuire's eyes again as the Saint's meaning wore its way relentlessly into his understanding. His mouth opened once or twice without producing any sound.

"Yer carn't arsk me to do that!" he got out at last. "If he knew I'd double-crorst 'im — he said—"

Simon rose with a shrug.

"Just as you like," he said carelessly. "But one of us is going to use the telephone, and I don't care which it is. If I ring up Vine Street and tell 'em to come over and fetch you away, I should think you'd get about ten years, with a record like yours. Still, they say it's a healthy life, with no worries

"Wait a minute," McGuire said chokily. "What do you do if I make this call?"

"I'll give you a hundred quid in cash; and I'll guarantee that when I'm through with your boss he won't be able to do any of those things he promised."

McGuire was no mathematician, but he could do simple arithmetic. He gulped something out of his throat.

"Okay," he grunted. "It's a bet."

Simon summed him up for a moment longer, and then hauled his chair over to within reach of the table where the telephone stood. He picked up the microphone and prodded his forefinger into the first perforation of the dial.

"All you're going to do," he said, as he went on spelling out BER 3100, "is tell the big bearded chief that you've been through this place with a fine comb, and the only tea-leaf in it is yourself. Do you get it? No Saint, no tea — no soap… And I don't want to frighten you or anything like that, Red, but I just want you to remember that if you try to say any more than that, I've still got you here, and we can easily warm up the curling-tongs again."

"Don't yer think I know wot's good for me?" retorted the other sourly.

The Saint nodded warily, and heard the ring of the call in the receiver. It was answered almost at once, in a sharp cultured voice with a slight foreign intonation.

"Yes? Who is that?"

Simon put the mouthpiece to McGuire's lips.

"McGuire calling," said the burglar thickly.

"Well?"

"No luck, guv'nor. It ain't here. The Saint's out, so I had plenty of time. I couldn't 've helped findin' it if it'd been here."

There was a long pause.

"All right," said the voice curtly. "Go home and wait for further orders. I'll call you tomorrow."

The line went down with a click.

"And I wouldn't mind betting," said the Saint, as he put the telephone back, "that that's the easiest hundred quid you ever earned."

"Well, yer got wot yer wanted, didn't yer?" he snarled. "Come on an' take off these ruddy bracelets an' let me go."

The Saint shook his head.

"Not quite so fast, brother," he said. "You might think of calling up your boss again and having another chat with him before you went to bed, and I'd hate him to get worried at this hour of the night. You stay right where you are and get some of that beauty sleep which you need so badly, because after what I'm going to do tomorrow your boss may be looking for you with a gun!"

Early rising had never been one of the Saint's favourite virtues, but there were times when business looked more important than leisure. It was eleven o'clock the next morning — an hour at which he was usually beginning to think drowsily about breakfast — when he sauntered into the apothecarium of Mr Henry Osbett.

In honour of the occasion, he had put on his newest and most beautiful suit, a creation in pearl-grey fresco over which his tailor had shed tears of ecstasy in the fitting room; his piratically tilted hat was unbelievably spotless; his tie would have humbled the gaudiest hues of dawn. He had also put on, at less expense, a vacuous expression and an inanely chirpy grin that completed the job of typing him to the point where his uncle, the gouty duke, loomed almost visible in his background.

The shifty-eyed young assistant who came to the counter might have been pardoned for keeling over backwards at the spectacle; but he only recoiled half a step and uttered a perfunctory "Yes, sir?"

He looked nervous and preoccupied. Simon wondered whether this nervousness and preoccupation might have had some connection with a stout and agitated-looking man who had entered the shop a few yards ahead of the Saint himself. Simon's brightly vacant eyes took in the essential items of the topography without appearing to notice anything — the counter with its showcases and displays of patent pills and liver salts, the glazed compartment at one end where presumably prescriptions were dispensed, the dark doorway at the other end which must have led to the intimate fastnesses of the establishment. Nowhere was the stout man visible; therefore, unless he had dissolved into thin air, or disguised himself as a bottle of bunion cure, he must have passed through that one doorway… The prospects began to look even more promising than the Saint had expected…