Leslie Charteris - Prelude for War

The start of the Hirondel's engine was scarcely audible. Almost instantaneously he let in the clutch, and cut in to the line of traffic only two cars behind her. Intent and expressionless as a stalking leopard, the Saint drove on after her.

Her first stop was at the South Kensington post office. The Saint's eyes went cold and brittle when he saw the Daimler slowing up: Exhibition Road was too wide and unfrequented for any car to be unnoticeable in it. Fortunately on that account he had let himself fall some distance behind her. He jammed on the brakes and whipped round into Imperial Institute Road, and felt that the gods had been kind to him when he saw that she crossed the sidewalk and entered the post office without looking round. Clearly it had not occurred to her that she could have been picked up by that time.

He made a U turn in the side road and parked near the corner. Then, after a moment's hesitation, he got out and walked up towards the post-office entrance. It was a foolhardy thing to do, but a theory was already taking solid form in his mind. He had used that trick himself. Mail anything you want to hide, addressed to yourself at a poste restante in any name you can think of: where could it be safer or harder to find?

She came out so quickly that he was almost caught. He turned in a flash and stood with his back to her, taking out his cigarette case and deliberating lengthily over his selection of a cigarette. Reflected in the polished inside of the case, he saw her cross the pavement again, still without looking round, and get back into the car.

But he had been wrong. As she came out she was putting an envelope into her bag, but it was only a small one — obviously too small and thin to contain such a dossier as Kennet must have given her.

His brain leaped to encompass this reversal. Her cloakroom story must have been true, then: she had simply given herself double cover, mailing the ticket to herself at the poste restante. His imagination bridged the gaps like a bolt of lightning. Without even turning his head to check his observations, without letting himself indulge a further instant's vacillation, he started back towards his own car.

And in the middle of the next stride he stopped again as if he had run into an invisible wall.

Where he had left the Hirondel there was now another car drawn up alongside it — a lean, drab, unobtrusive car that hid its speedy lines under a veneer of studiously sombre cellulose, a car which to the Saint's cognizant eye carried the banners of the mobile police as plainly as the sails on a full-rigged ship, even before he saw the blue-uniformed man at the wheel and the other blue-uniformed man who had got out to examine the Hirondel at close quarters. The dragnet was out, and this was the privileged one out of the hundreds of patrol cars that must even then have been scouring the city for him that had located its gaudy quarry. If he had waited in the car they would have caught him.

But his guardian angel was still with him. They must have arrived only a moment ago, and they were still too wrapped up in the discovery of the Hirondel to have started looking round for the driver.

The Saint had spun round as soon as he saw them. He was between two fires now, but Valerie Woodchester was the less formidable. He whipped out a handkerchief and held it over the lower part of his face as he started up the road again. The Daimler was pulling out from the curb, moving on towards Kensington Gardens. On the opposite side of the road a taxi had pulled up to discharge its freight. Simon walked over towards it with long space-devouring strides that gave a deceptive impression of having no haste behind them. He climbed into the offside door as the passenger paid his fare.

"Go up towards the Park," he said. "And step on it."

The taxi swung round in an obedient semicircle and rattled north. As it came round the curve the Saint took a last look at the corner where he had so nearly met disaster. The blue-uniformed man who had got out of the police car was putting his hand on the Hirondel's radiator. He took it away quickly and said something to his companion, and then they both started to look round; but by that time their chance of immortal fame had slipped through their fingers. The Saint buried himself in the corner of the seat, and his cab bowled away on the second lap of the chase.

The policeman at the top of the road was stopping the north-and-south traffic, and the taxi had caught up to within a few yards of the Daimler's petrol tank when he lowered his arm. The driver slackened speed and half turned.

"Where to, sir?"

"Keep going." The Saint sat forward. "You see this Daimler just ahead of you?"

"Yessir."

"There's two quid for you on top of the fare if you can keep behind it."

You may have wondered what happens in real life when the pursuing sleuth leaps into a cab and yells "Follow that car!" The answer is that the driver says "Wot car?" After this has been made clear, if it can be made clear in time to be of any use, he simply follows. He has nothing better to do, anyhow.

Whether he can follow adequately or not is another matter. Simon suffered a short interval of tenterhooked anxiety before he was assured that his guardian angel, still zealously concentrating on its job, had sent him a taxi that was capable of keeping up with most ordinary cars in traffic and a driver with enough cupidity to kick it along in a way that showed that he regarded a two-pound tip as something to be seriously worked for. The whim of a traffic light or a point-duty policeman might still defeat him, but nothing else would.

Simon sat back and relaxed a little.

He had a brief breathing spell now in which to synopsize his thoughts on the recent visit from Comrade Fairweather which had dragged on to such a disastrous denouement. He was sure that the denouement had been no part of Fairweather's design. Fairweather, caught unprepared by Teal's presence and the things that had been going on when he arrived, had simply been improvising from start to finish — exactly as Simon's counterattack had been improvised. What he had really meant to say when he came to Cornwall House had not even been hinted at. But Simon was sure that he knew what had been left unsaid. By that time Bravache and his satellites must have reported to headquarters, and all the ungodly must have known that their plans had done more than go agley. Fairweather would not have been sent to threaten — he was not the type. He had been sent to try diplomacy, possibly the kind in which the balance of power is a bank balance, perhaps more probably the kind which is meant to lead one party to that apocryphal place known to American gangdom as the Spot. Either way, it was a token of the ungodly's increasing interest which gave the Saint a a stimulating feeling of approaching climax. He wished he could have heard what Fairweather really meant to say; but life was full of those unfinished symphonies…

They had slipped through the Park meanwhile and left it at Lancaster Gate. The Daimler threaded through to Eastbourne Terrace and parked there; the Saint's taxi driver, taking his instructions literally, stopped behind it. But luckily there is no vehicle on the streets of London so unlikely to draw attention to itself even by the weirdest manoeuvres as a taxi. Valerie Woodchester did not even look at it twice. She crossed the road and hurried away, heading for the gaunt grimy monstrosity known to long-suffering railway travellers as Paddington Station.

Simon unpacked himself from the depths of the cab into which he had instinctively retreated. He hopped out and poured two pound notes and some silver into the driver's palm.

"Thanks, Rupert," he said. "Pull down the street a little way and stick around for a bit — I may want you again."