Leslie Charteris - The Saint Goes On

"Are you coming along with me," fumed the detective, "or am I going to have you dragged out?"

Simon shook his head.

"You miss the idea, Desmond." He tapped the other firmly on the lower chest with his forefinger, and raised his eyebrows. "Hullo," he remarked, "your stomach hasn't got nearly so much bounce in it as dear old Teal's."

"Never mind my stomach!" Pryke almost screamed.

"I don't mind it," said the Saint generously. "I admit I haven't seen it in all its naked loveliness; but in its veiled state, at this distance, there seems to be nothing offensive about it."

The noise that Pryke made can only be likened to that of a kettle coming to the boil.

"I'll hear that another time," he said. "Simon Templar, I am taking you into custody—"

"But I'm trying to show you that that's exactly what you mustn't do, Desmond," said the Saint patiently. "It would be fatal. Here you are, a rising young officer on the threshold of your career, trying to pull a flivver that'll set you back four years' seniority. I can't let you do it. Why don't you curb the excessive zeal, Rosebud, and listen to reason? I can tell you exactly what's happened."

"I can tell you exactly what's going to happen—"

"It was like this," continued the Saint, as if the interruption not merely fell on deaf ears, but had failed miserably in its effort to occur at all. "This guy Enderby was robbed, as you say. Or he thought he was. Or, still more exactly, his secretary thought he was. A bloke calling himself an insurance agent blew into the office, and breezed out again with a parcel of jools. On account of various complications, the secretary was led to believe that this insurance agent was a fake, and the jools had been pinched. Filled with the same misguided zeal that's pulling the buttons of that horrible waistcoat of yours, Desmond, she called the police. Hearing of this, you come puffing round to see me, with your waistcoat bursting with pride and your brain addled with all the uncomplimentary fairy-tales that Claud Eustace Teal has told you about me."

"Who said so?"

"I did. It's a sort of clairvoyant gift of mine. But you must listen to the rest of it. You come blowing round here, and wait for me from four o'clock onwards. Pepped up with the idea of scoring a solo triumph, you haven't said anything to anyone about your scheme. Consequently, you don't know what's happened since you left Headquarters. Which is this. Shortly after the secretary female called for the police, Comrade Enderby himself returned to the office, the shemozzle was explained to him, he explained the shemozzle, and the long and the short of it was that the insurance agent was found to be perfectly genuine, the whole misunderstanding was cleared up, the whole false alarm exposed; and it was discovered that there was nothing to arrest anybody for — least of all me."

"What makes you think that?"

Simon took in a lungful of tobacco smoke, and inhaled through his nose with a slight smile. What made him think that? It was obvious. It was the fundamental formula on which fifty per cent, of his reputation had been built up.

A man was robbed. Ninety-eight times out of a hundred, the fact was never published at all. But if ever, through some misguided agent, or during a spasm of temporary but understandable insanity on the part of the victim himself, the fact happened to be published, that same victim, as soon as he discovered the accident or came to his senses, was the first and most energetic on the field to explain away the problem with which Scotland Yard had been faced — for the simple reason that there would be things much harder to explain away if the robber were ever detected.

And the bereavement of Mr. Enderby was so perfectly on all fours with the formula that, with the horns of the dilemma touched in, it would have looked like a purple cow. There was no answer to it. So Mr. Enderby had been robbed of some jewels? Well, could he give a description of the jewels, so that if they were recovered… How did the Saint know? He smiled, with unusual tolerance.

"Just the same old clairvoyant gift — working overtime for your special benefit, Desmond. But I'll back it for anything you like to bet — even including that perfectly repulsive shirt you're wearing. If you only got wise to yourself, you'd find that nobody wanted me arrested any more; and it'd save both of us no end of trouble. Now, why don't you get on the 'phone to Headquarters, and bring yourself up to date? Let me do it for you; and then you can save your twopence to buy yourself a bar of milk chocolate on the way home…"

He picked up the telephone on the porter's desk, and pushed his forefinger persuasively into the initial V of the Victoria exchange. It was all ancient history to the Saint, an old game which had become almost stereotyped from many playings, even if with this new victim it had the semblance of a new twist to it. It hadn't seriously occurred to him that the routine could be very different.

And then something hard and compact jabbed into his chest, and his eyes shifted over with genuine surprise from the telephone dial. There was a nickel-plated little automatic in Junior Inspector Pryke's hand — the sort of footling ladylike weapon, Simon couldn't help reflecting, which a man with that taste in clothes must inevitably have affected, but none the less capable of unpleasant damage at contact range. His gaze roamed up to the detective's flaming eyes with a flicker of pained protest that for once was wholly spontaneous and tinged with a glitter of urgent curiosity.

"Put that telephone down," said Pryke sizzlingly.

Simon put the telephone down. There was something in the other's rabid glare which told him that disobedience might easily make Pryke do something foolish — of which the Saint had no desire to suffer the physical effects.

"My dear old daffodil," he murmured, "have you stopped to think that that dinky little pop-gun—"

"Never mind what I think," rasped the detective, whose range of repartee seemed to make up in venom what it lacked in variety. "If there's any truth in what you're saying, we can verify it when we get you to the station. But you aren't going to run away until it has been verified. Come along!"

His finger was twitching over the trigger; and the Saint sighed.

He felt rather sorry for Junior Inspector Pryke. While he disliked the man's face, and his voice, and his clothes, and almost everything else about him, he had not actually plumbed such implacable depths of hatred as to wish him to turn himself into a horrible example which would be held up for the disgusted inspection of students of the Police College for the next decade. But it seemed as if this was the only ambition Desmond Pryke had to fulfil, and he had left no stone unturned in his efforts to achieve it. From permitting himself to be lured into an argument on comparative gastrometry to that final howler of pulling a gun to enforce an ordinary arrest, Junior Inspector Pryke had run doggedly through the complete catalogue of Things A Young Policeman Should Not Do; but it was not Simon Templar's fault.

The Saint shrugged.

"Okay, Desmond," he murmured. "If that's the way you feel about it, I can't stop you. I've done my best. But don't come around asking me for a pension when they drum you out of the Force."

He put on his hat, and pulled the brim out to the perfect piratical tilt. There was not a shadow of misgiving in the smile that he gave Patricia, and he saw no reason for there to be a shadow.

"Be seein' ya, keed," he said. "Don't worry — I'll be back for dinner. But I'm afraid Desdemona is going to have a pain in her little turn-turn before then."

He sauntered out unhurriedly into Stratton Street, and himself hailed the nearest taxi. Pryke put away his gun and climbed in after him. The cab turned into Piccadilly with a burden of internal silence that was almost broken by the exuberance of its own one-sided rancour.