Leslie Charteris - The Saint Goes On

He hooked one leg over the arm of his chair.

"I'd like to help you — if you helped me," he said seriously. "But I've damned little to offer."

He hesitated for a moment, and then ran briefly over the events which had made up the entertainment in Duchess Place.

"I don't suppose that's much more use to you than it is to me," he ended up. "My part of it hangs together, but I don't know what it hangs on. Mrs. Ellshaw was killed because she'd seen her husband, and I was offered the pineapple because I knew she'd seen him. The only thing I don't quite understand is why they didn't try to kill me when they had me in Duchess Place; but maybe they didn't want to hurry it. Anyway, one gathers that Ellshaw is a kind of unhealthy guy to see — I wonder if Ripwell saw him?"

"I haven't seen Ripwell myself yet," said Teal. "He's gone down to Shepperton to look at things for himself, and I shall have to go down tonight and have a talk with him. But I thought I'd better see you first."

The Saint fixed him with clear and speculative blue eyes for a few seconds, and then he drawled: "I could run you down in the car."

Somehow or other, that was what happened; Mr. Teal was never quite sure why. He assured himself that he had never contemplated such a possibility when he set out to interview the Saint. In any case on which he was engaged, he insisted to this sympathetic internal Yes-man, the last thing he wanted was to have Simon Templar messing about and getting in his way. He winced to think of the remarks the Assistant Commissioner would make if he knew about it. He told himself that his only reason for accepting the Saint's offer was to have both his witnesses at hand for an easier comparison of clues; and he allowed himself to be hurled down to Shepperton in the Saint's hundred-mile-an-hour road menace with his qualms considerably soothed by the adequacy of his ingenious excuse.

They found his lordship pottering unconcernedly in his garden — a tall spare vigorous man with white hair and a white moustache. He had an unassuming manner and a friendly smile that were leagues apart from the conventional idea of a big business man.

"Chief Inspector Teal? I'm pleased to meet you. About that bomb, I suppose — a ridiculous affair. Some poor devil as mad as a hatter about capitalists or something, I expect. Well, it didn't do me any harm. Is this your assistant?"

His pleasant grey eyes were glancing over the Saint; and Teal performed the necessary introduction with some trepidation.

"This is Mr. Templar, your lordship. I only brought him with me because—"

"Templar?" The grey eyes twinkled. "Not the great Simon Templar, surely?"

"Yes, sir," said Teal uncomfortably. "This is the Saint. But—"

He stopped, with his mouth open and his eyes starting to protrude, blinking speechlessly at one of the most astounding spectacles of his life. Lord Ripwell had got hold of the Saint's hand, and was pumping it up and down and beaming all over his face with a spontaneous warmth that was quite different from the cheerful courtesy with which he had greeted Mr. Teal himself.

"The Saint? Bless my soul! What a coincidence! I think I've read about everything you've ever done, but I never thought I should meet you. So you really do exist. That's splendid. My dear fellow—"

Mr. Teal cleared his throat hoarsely.

"I was trying to explain to your lordship that—"

"Remember the way you put it over on Rayt Marius twice running?" chortled his lordship, continuing to pump the Saint's hand. "I think that was about the best thing you've ever done. And the way you got Hugo Campard, with that South American revolution? I never had any use for that man — knew him too well myself."

"I brought him down," said Mr. Teal, somewhat hysterically, "because he had the same."

"And the way you blew up Francis Lemuel?" burbled Lord Ripwell. "Now, that was a really good job of bombing. You'll have to let me into the secret of how you did that before you leave here. I say, I'll bet Chief Inspector Teal would like to know. Wouldn't he? You must have led him a beautiful dance."

Mr. Teal felt that he was gazing at something that Could Not Possibly Happen. The earth was reeling across his eyes like a fantastic roundabout. He would have been incapable of further agonies of dizzy incredulity if Lord Ripwell had suddenly gone down on all fours behind a bush and tried to growl like a bear.

The effort which he had to exert to get a grip on the situation must have cost him two years of life.

"I brought the Saint down, your lordship, because he seemed to have some kind of knowledge of the matter, and I thought—"

"Quite," drivelled his lordship. "Quite. Quite right. Now I know that everything's in good hands. If anybody knows how to solve the mystery, it's Mr. Templar. He's got more brains than the whole of Scotland Yard put together. I say, Templar, you showed them how to do their own job in that Jill Trelawney case, didn't you? And you had them guessing properly when Renway — that Treasury fellow — you know—"

Chief Inspector Teal suppressed an almost uncontrollable shudder. Lord Ripwell was actually digging Simon Templar in the ribs.

It was some time before Mr. Teal was able to take command again, and even then it was a much less positive sort of command than he had intended to maintain.

"Have you ever come across a man named Ellshaw?" he asked, when he could persuade Lord Ripwell to pay any attention to him.

"Ellshaw? Ellshaw? Never heard of him. No. What is he?"

"He is a rather bad cardsharper, your lordship."

"I don't play cards. No. I don't know him. Why?"

"There is some reason to believe that he may be connected with these bombing attempts. Did you ever by any chance meet his wife — Mrs. Florence Ellshaw? She was a sort of charwoman."

Ripwell shook his head.

"I don't think I've ever employed any sort of charwoman." He looked up and raised his voice. "Hey, Martin, have we ever had a charwoman called Mrs. Ellshaw?"

"No, sir," answered the youngish man who was coming across the lawn from the house, as he joined them. "At least, not in my time."

Ripwell introduced them.

"This is Mr. Irelock — my secretary. He's been looking after me for five years, and he knows as much as I do."

"I'm sure that we've never employed anyone of that name," said Martin Irelock. To describe him in a sentence, he looked like a grown-up and rather seriousminded Kewpie with hornrimmed glasses fixed across the bridge of his nose as firmly as if they had grown there. "Do you think he has something to do with this business, Inspector?"

"It's just a theory, but it's the only one we have at present," said Mr. Teal. He summarised Simon Templar's knowledge of the mystery for them. Lord Ripwell was interested in this. He slapped the Saint on the back.

"Damn good," he applauded. "But why ever didn't you shoot the man when you had the chance? Then everything would have been cleared up."

"Claud Eustace doesn't like me shooting people," said the Saint mildly, at which Lord Ripwell guffawed in a manner which removed the last shadow of doubt from Teal's mind that at least one member of the peerage was in advanced and malignant stage of senile decay.

Teal almost strangled himself.

"Apparently both the bombs were planted on the same day," he said, trying to lead the conversation back into the correct vein with all the official dignity of which he was capable. "I understand that your secretary—"

"That's right," agreed Irelock. "I had to come down here the day before yesterday, and there was no bomb here then."

"What time did you leave?"

"Just after six — I caught the six-twenty back to town."

"So the bomb must have been placed here at some time between six o'clock on Wednesday and the time the chauffeur found it this morning." Teal's baby-blue eyes, throttled down again to a somewhat strained drowsiness, were scanning the house and garden. The grounds were only about three-quarters of an acre in extent, bordered by the road on one side and the river on another, and separated from its neighbours by well-grown cypress hedges on the other two boundaries. In such a comparatively quiet situation, it might not be difficult to hear of anyone who had been seen loitering about the vicinity. "The local police may have learnt something more by this time, of course," he said.