Leslie Charteris - The Saint and Mr. Teal

They went down the stairs step by step, in a kind of tango style that would have been humorous to anyone who was insensitive to the deadly tension of it. But Simon Templar was giving no more chances. His forefinger was curled tightly over the trigger for every foot of the way, and the big man kept pace with him in a silence that prickled with malignant vigilance. They came to the door of the room below, and the Saint stopped."

"Open it."

The big man obeyed, turning the lock with a key which he took from his trouser pocket. Simon kicked the door wider.

"This way, Pat."

He waited on the landing while the girl came out, never shifting his eyes from the big man's venomous stillness. Patricia touched his sleeve, and he smiled. "Simon — then it wasn't you I heard…"

"That scream?" Simon slipped an arm round her and held her for a moment. "Why — did you think my voice was as bad as that, old darling?… No, but it wasn't brother Jones either, which is a pity."

"Then who was it?"

"It was Dr. Quell. Pat, we've struck something a little tougher than I expected, and it hasn't turned out too well. This is just once in our lives that Claud Eustace will be useful. Once upon a time we might have handled it alone, but I think I promised to be careful."

He looked at his prisoner.

"I want your telephone," he said.

The big man hesitated, and Simon's gun screwed in his ribs.

"C'mon. You can have indigestion afterwards." Simon released the girl. "And that reminds me — if you did leave one of those sausages…"

Again they descended step by step towards the hall, with the Saint using his free hand to feed himself in a manner that is rarely practised in the best circles.

The telephone was in the hall, on a small table by the front door; and Simon turned his gun over to Patricia and walked across to it, chewing. He leaned a chair against the door and sat in it. The dial buzzed and clicked.

"Hullo… I want Chief Inspector Teal… Yeah — and nobody else. Simon Templar speaking. And make it snappy!"

The big man took a step towards him, his face yellow and his hands working. And immediately the girl's finger took up the slack of the trigger. It was an almost imperceptible movement; but Mr. Jones saw it, and the steady deliberateness of it was more significant than anything that had entered his imagination since the gun changed hands. He halted abruptly; and the Saint grinned.

"Hullo. Is that you, Claud?… Well, I want you… Yeah — for the first time in my life I'll be glad to see you. Come right over, and bring as many friends as you like… I can't tell you on the phone, but I promise it'll be worth the trip. There's any amount of dead bodies in the house, and… Well, I suppose I can find out for you. Hold on."

He clamped a hand over the mouthpiece and looked across the table.

"What's the address, Jones?"

"You'd better go on finding out," retorted the big man sullenly.

"Sure." The Saint's smile was angelic. "I'll find out. I'll go to the street corner and see. And before I go I'll just kick you once round the hall — just to see my legs are functioning."

He lounged round the table, and their eyes met.

"This is 208, Meadowbrook Road," said the man grimly.

"Thanks a lot." Simon dropped into his chair again and picked up the telephone. "Two-o-eight, Meadow-brook Road, Hampstead — I'll be here when you come… O.K., Eustace."

He rose.

"Let's climb stairs again," he said brightly.

He took over the gun and shepherded the party aloft. The show had to be seen through, and his telephone call to Chief Inspector Teal had set a time limit on the action that could not be altered. It was a far cry from that deserted house to the hotel in Paris where Brian Quell had died, and yet Simon knew that he was watching the end of a coherent chain of circumstances that had moved with the inscrutable remorselessness of a Greek tragedy. Fate had thrust him into the story again and again, as if resolved that there should be no possibility of a failure in the link that bore his name; and it was ordained that he should write the end of the story in his own way.

The laboratory upstairs stood wide open. Simon pushed the big man in and followed closely behind. Patricia Holm came last: she saw the professor huddled back against his machine with his face still distorted the ghastly grimace that the death agony of high-voltage electricity had stamped into his features, and bit her lip. But she said nothing. Her questioning eyes searched the Saint's countenance of carved brown granite; and Simon backed away a little from his captive and locked the door behind him.

"We haven't a lot of time, Jones," he remarked queitly; and the big man's lips snarled.

"That's your fault."

"Doubtless. But there it is. Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal is on his way, and we have one or two things to settle before he comes. Before we start, may I congratulate you?"

"I don't want any congratulations."

"Never mind. You deserve them." The Saint fished out his cigarette case with his left hand. Quite naturally he extracted and lighted a cigarette, and stole a glance at his wrist watch while he did so. His brain worked like a taximeter, weighing out miles and minutes. "I think I've got everything taped, but you can check me up if I go wrong anywhere. Somehow or other — we won't speculate how — you got to know that Dr. Quell had just perfected a perfectly sound commercial method of transmuting metals. It's been done already, on a small scale, but the expense of the process ruled it right out as a get-rich-quick proposition. Quell had worked along a new line, and made it a financial cinch."

"You must have had a long talk with him," said the big man sardonically.

"I did… However — your next move, of course, was to get the process for yourself. You're really interesting, Jones — you work on such original lines. Where the ordinary crook would have tried to capture the professor and torture him, you thought of subtler methods. You heard of Quell's brother, a good-for-nothing idler who was always drunk and usually broke. You went over to Paris and tried to get him in with you, figuring that he could get Sylvester's confidence when no one else could. But Brian Quell had a streak of honesty in him that you hadn't reckoned with. He turned you down — and then he knew too much. You couldn't risk him remembering you when he sobered up. So you shot him. I was there. A rotten shot, Jones — just like the one you took at me this evening, or that other one last night. Gunwork is a gift, brother, and you simply haven't got it."

The big man said nothing.

"You knew I knew something about Brian Quell's murder, so you tried to get me. That talk about an 'envoy' of yours was the bunk — you were playing the hand alone, because you knew there wasn't a crook on earth who could be trusted on a thing as big as this." The Saint never paused in his analysis; but his eyes were riveted to the prisoner's face, and he would have known at once if his shot in the dark went astray. Not the faintest change of expression answered him, and he knew he was right. Jones was alone. "By the way, I suppose you wouldn't like to tell me exactly how you knew something had gone wrong in Paris?"

"If you want to know, I thought I heard someone move in the corridor outside, and I went out to make sure. The door blew shut behind me, on an automatic lock. I had to stand outside and listen. Then someone really did come along the passage—"

"And you had to beat it," Simon nodded. "But I don't think you rang me up this morning just to make out how much I heard. What you wanted was to hear my voice, so that you could imitate it."

"He did it perfectly," said Patricia.

The Saint smiled genially.

"You see, Jones? If you couldn't have made your fortune as a gun artist, you might have had a swell career as a ventriloquist. But you wouldn't have it. You wanted to be a Master Mind, and that's where the sawdust came out. My dear old borzoi, did you think we'd never heard of that taxi joke before? Did you think poor little Patricia, with all her experience of sin, was falling for a gag like that? Jones, that was very silly of you — quite irreparably silly. We let you have your little joke just because it seemed the easiest way to get a close-up of your beautiful whiskers. If you'd left us your address before you rang off this morning we'd have been saved the trouble, but as it was—"