Leslie Charteris - The Saint In Action

"That's all I wanted to know," said the Saint; and with a crisp jerk of his wrist he sent his cigarette case spinning diagonally upwards like a whirling shaft of silver, straight at the single light over the desk.

The plop of the exploding bulb thudded like a gunshot into the silence, and after it there was a flash of darkness, complete and blinding, before the dim quantity of light filtering through from the corridor outside could take effect on unadjusted eyes. And in that interval of darkness the Saint hurled himself out of his chair like a living thunderbolt.

He reached the bundle of bank notes on the desk as his cigarette case went on to crash against the far wall, and they were in his pocket before it clattered to the floor. Quintana went first for his gun, but he was off balance, he had to take weight off his hands before they could grab, and that lost him a fraction of a second in which everything was lost. As Quintana raised the automatic Simon went on with the same continuous hurtling movement that had swept the sheaf of money into his pocket, but at this stage all the power and impetus of the movement was gathered to a focal point in his left fist. The fist took Quintana squarely and centrally on the end of his nose, with every ounce of the Saint's flying bone and muscle behind it; something seemed to crumple like an eggshell, and Simon felt his knuckles sog into warm sticky pulp.

Quintana went over backwards, smashingly, his legs flying in the air, taking the whole chair with him. The Saint's own momentum carried him halfway across the desk; he wriggled over, pushed his feet off onto the ground and dived for the communicating door.

Urivetzky clawed at him as he went by, and Simon whipped round, sent him reeling with a right to the jaw and was on his way with hardly a pause. An instant later, with the door slammed again behind him, he was scooting across the reception room to let himself out through the tall windows onto the terrace. A faint muffled shout, scarcely audible in the deep interior of the house, was the only sound that followed him.

Outside the sombre peace of Cambridge Square was as untroubled as it had always been, but Simon knew that it would not remain untroubled for long. He ignored the tree by which he had climbed up, placed one hand on the balustrade and vaulted out into space. He dropped twenty feet, landed with feet braced and knees bent to absorb the shock, straightened lithely up and dashed for the wall. Again he went over it with the swift sureness of a cat, and by the good grace of Providence the street on the other side was deserted. Simon turned to the left, instead of to the right where Peter Quentin was waiting further off with the car, in order to avoid passing the front of the house; and before the first sounds of the hue and cry arose behind him he was strolling sedately round the next corner like any righteous citizen on his way home.

He walked around two blocks so as to approach the car from behind, and as he re-entered Cambridge Square from the southeast corner he kept the car between him and the front of the house until the last moment when he stepped round it to open the door and get in.

"I was just getting ready to go home," Peter said as he steered the limousine out from the curb. "A couple of cars drove up a few minutes ago with what looked like policemen in them, so I thought they'd look after you."

"Maybe they were looking for a burglar," said the Saint and passed his bundle of currency over Peter's shoulder. "Take care of this for me, will you? There's forty thousand quid there, so don't lose it. You'd better park it somewhere as soon as you can — I'd better not keep it myself tonight, because Claud Eustace will probably be looking for it."

The limousine swerved in a slightly hysterical arc as Peter felt the bundle and stuffed it into his pocket.

"Did they give you this to get rid of you?" he asked feebly.

"More or less." The Saint was slipping into his sober black overcoat and taking his patriarchal white whiskers out of the locker. "Now step on the gas and let's get home. And before you even start ladling me out of here tell Sam Outrell to phone his father and rush him over to Cornwall House by the service entrance while Orace and I get rid of those phony phone repairers — because I have a hunch there's going to be some argument about Joshua Pond!"

Chief inspector claud eustace teal fastened his chewing gum well back in his mouth and prayed that his collar would stand the strain of the swelling which he could feel creeping up his neck.

"Are you trying to tell me that I'm raving mad?" he squawked.

He had not meant to squawk. But those same infuriating convulsions with which he was only too bitterly familiar were taking hold of his vocal cords again, robbing his voice of the rich commanding resonance which for some reason he could never achieve when he faced that lazy, derisive buccaneer who had long ago taken all the joy out of his life. And the sound of his own squawking filled him with such flabbergasted fury that it only increased his internal feeling of inflation till his collar creaked perilously on its studs.

"What — me?" protested the Saint in shocked accents. "Claud, have I ever been rude to you? Have I ever hurt your feelings? I may think things, but I keep them to myself—"

"Listen." The detective took hold of himself with both pudgy hands. "I've spent two hours at Quintana's house—"

"Did you have fun?"

"I've spent most of that time talking to Quintana. I took Urivetzky away with me — he's in a cell at Cannon Row now—"

"You took who?"

"Urivetzky."

"What are Urivetzky?" asked the Saint. "They sound like a remedy for rheumatism. Have you been having some more trouble with that gouty toe of yours?"

"You know damn well who I mean!"

Simon scratched his head.

"Now I think of it the name does sort of sound familiar," he admitted. "Was he the guy who pulled off that big forgery some time ago?"

"You know that as well as I do," Teal said grimly, "and you know we were looking for him until we heard he'd been shot in Spain. Well, it's all very well for you to hand him over—"

"Me?" repeated the Saint. "I never touched him."

"He had a cracked jaw when I picked him up. And where did you skin your knuckles?"

"Trying to do a bit of amateur repair work on the car. I don't know if you've ever noticed what a lot of nobbly bits there are in these new-fangled engines."

"You—"

"I'm not, Claud, really I'm not. And you mustn't say things like that. They're slanderous." The Saint took out a cigarette. "You know, the trouble with you is that you're too modest. After you've done a brilliant piece of detective work running down this crook that everybody's been looking for for years you come over all coy and try to pass the credit on to someone else. It won't do, Claud. Modesty is all very well, but in these days you have to advertise even if it hurts."

"Besides that," Teal proceeded, "I took a man called Perez, and he's charged with murdering Ingles-ton last night."

The Saint frowned slightly.

"Ingleston?" he repeated. "I've heard of him too… Oh yes — he was the bloke with the bent skull that we were looking at this morning. And you've got his murderer too?" The Saint's smile acquired a spontaneous warmth that would have thawed anyone less obstinately prejudiced. "Claud, this has been a great day for you! And you came straight over to tell me before you told anyone else. Well, I think we ought to have a drink on it."

"Quintana told the whole story," Teal ploughed on doggedly. "There wasn't much else he could do unless he'd tried to stand on 'diplomatic rights,' and he was too shaken by what you'd done to his nose to think about that. He was howling for a doctor and cursing his friends in Spanish and answering most of my questions at the same time. I may get into trouble later for taking advantage of him, but I've got his signed statement, and I've got Perez. I don't know how much Quintana's immunity is good for, since he's the representative of the Rebel government, but we'll see about that. I heard what he said to you just before you smashed the light and so did three other officers. And his statement brings you in on three other charges of burglary, demanding money with menaces—"