Leslie Charteris - The Saint Goes On

"I must leave you to pack them up and attend to the formalities, Miss Weagle," he said. "I have — er — another appointment."

Miss Weagle's stoat-like face did not move a single, impolite muscle, although she had listened to a similar ritual every working day for the past five years, and knew perfectly well where Mr. Enderby's appointment would be kept. She was not even surprised that he should leave such a collection of gems in her care, for the casualness with which diamond traders handle huge fortunes in stones is only incredible to the layman.

"Very well, Mr. Enderby. What is the value of the shipment?"

"Twenty-seven thousand six hundred and fifty pounds," replied Mr. Enderby, after an almost imperceptible deliberation; and he knew his business so well that the most expert and laborious valuation could not have disputed his snap assessment by more than a five-pound note.

He put on his bowler hat and overcoat again, and paddled thirstily out to the streets, mumbling an apology to the red-faced walrus-moustached man whom he had to squeeze past at the top of the narrow stairs; and the walrus-moustached man gazed after him with thoughtful blue eyes which would have seemed incongruously keen and clear if Mr. Enderby had noticed them.

The Saint went back across the landing as Mr. Enderby's footsteps died away, and knocked on the door of the office.

"I'm from the insurance company," he said, when Miss Weagle had let him in.

"About the jewels?"

"Yes."

With his walrus moustache and air of disillusioned melancholy, he reminded Miss Weagle of her mother.

"You've been quick," she said, making conversation when she ought to have been making love.

"I was out on a job, and I had to ring up the office from just round the corner, so they told me to come along," Simon explained, wiping his whiskers on his sleeve. He had spent three hours putting on that ragged growth, and every hair was so carefully planted that its falsehood could not have been detected at much closer quarters than he was ever likely to get to with Miss Weagle. He glanced at the little heap of gems, which Miss Weagle had been packing into another cardboard box lined with cotton-wool. "Are these them?" he asked.

Miss Weagle admitted coyly that those were them. Simon surveyed them disinterestedly, scratching his chin.

"If you'll just finish packing them up, miss," he said, "I'll take 'em along now."

"Take them along?" she repeated in surprise.

"Yes, miss. It's a new rule. Everything of this kind that we cover has to be examined and sealed in our office, and sent off from there. It's on account of all these insurance frauds they've been having lately."

The illicit passion which Miss Weagle seemed to have been conceiving for him appeared to wane.

"Mr. Enderby has been dealing with your firm for a long time," she began with some asperity.

"I know, miss; but the firm can't make one rule for one customer and another for another. It's just a formality as far as you're concerned, but them's my orders. I'm a new man in this district, and I can't afford to take a chance on my own responsibility. I'll give you a receipt for 'em, and they're covered from the moment they leave your hands."

He sat down at the desk and wrote out the receipt on a blank sheet of paper, licking his pencil between every word. The Saint was an incomparable artist in characterisation at any time, but he had rarely practised his art under such a steady tension as he did then, for he had no means of knowing how soon the real insurance company's agent would arrive, or how long Mr. Enderby's appointment would keep him. But he completed the performance without a trace of hurry, and watched Miss Weagle tucking a layer of tissue over the last row of jewels.

"The value is twenty-seven thousand six hundred and fifty pounds," she said coldly.

"I'll make a note of it, miss," said the Saint, and did so.

She finished packing the box, and he picked it up. He still had to get away with it.

"You doing anything particular next Saturday?" he asked, gazing at her with a hint of wistfulness.

"The idea!" said Miss Weagle haughtily "Do you like Greta Garbo?"

This was different.

"Oh," said Miss Weagle.

She wriggled. Simon had rarely witnessed such a revolting spectacle.

"Meet me at Piccadilly Circus at half-past one," he said.

"All right."

Simon stuffed the box into one of the pockets of his sober and unimaginative black suit, and went to the door. From the door, he blew a juicy kiss through the fringe of fungus which overhung his mouth, and departed with a wink that left her giggling kittenishly — and he was out of the building before she even looked at the receipt he had left behind, and discovered that his signature was undecipherable and there was no insurance company whatever mentioned on it…

It was not by any means the most brilliant and dashing robbery that the Saint had ever committed, but it had a pure outrageous perfection of coincidence that atoned for all its shortcomings in the way of gore. And he knew, without the slightest diminution of the scapegrace beatitude that was performing a hilarious massage over his insides, that nothing on earth could have been more scientifically calculated to fan up the flames of vengeance on every side of him than what he had just done.

What he may not have foreseen was the speed with which the inevitable vengeance would move towards him.

Still wearing his deep-sea moustache and melancholy exterior, he walked west to New Oxford Street and entered a business stationer's. He bought a roll of gummed paper tape, with which he made a secure parcel of Mr. Enderby's brown cardboard box, and a penny label which he addressed to Joshua Pond, Esq., Poste Restante, Harwich. Then he went to the nearest post-office and entrusted twenty-seven thousand six hundred and fifty pounds to the care of His Majesty's mails.

Two hours later he crossed Piccadilly from the Green Park underground station, and a vision of slim fair-haired loveliness turned round from a shop window as he swung in towards her.

"Were you waiting for somebody?" he asked gravely.

Her eyes, as blue as his own, smiled at him uncertainly.

"I was waiting for a bold bad brigand called the Saint, who doesn't know how to keep out of trouble. Have you seen him?"

"I believe I saw somebody like him sipping a glass of warm milk at a meeting of the World Federation for Encouraging Kindness to Cockroaches," he said solemnly. "Good-looking fellow with a halo. Is that the guy?"

"What else was he doing?"

The Saint laughed.

"He was risking the ruin of his digestion with some of Ye Fine Olde Englishe Cookinge which is more deadly than bullets even if it doesn't taste much different," he said. "But it may have been worth it. There was a parcel shoved into a bloke's overcoat pocket some time when I was sweating through my second pound of waterlogged cabbage, just like Sunny Jim said it would be, and I trailed the happy recipient to his lair. I suppose I was rather lucky to be listening outside his door just when he was telling his secretary to get an insurance hound over to inspect the boodle— By the way, have you ever seen a woman with a face like a stoat and George-Robey eyebrows wriggling seductively? This secretary—"

"Do you mean you?"

"That's just what I do mean, old darling. I toddled straight into the office when this bloke went out, and introduced my self as the insurance hound summoned as aforesaid in Chapter One. And I got out of Hatton Garden with a packet of boodle valued at twenty-seven thousand six hundred and fifty quid, which ought to keep the wolf from the door for another day or two." The glint of changeless mischief in his eyes was its own infinite elaboration of the theme. "But it'll bring a lot of other wolves around that'll want rather more getting rid of; and I expect we can look forward to fun and games."