Leslie Charteris - The Saint and Mr. Teal

Simon opened the door.

"Claud Eustace himself!" he murmured genially. "It seems years since I last saw you, Claud. And how's the ingrowing toenail?" He glanced past the detective's bulky presence at the four other men who were unloading themselves and their apparatus from the police car and lining up for the entrance. "I rather thought you'd be bringing a party with you, old dear, but I don't know that the caviare will go all the way round."

The detective stepped past him into the hall, and the other men followed. They were of various shapes and sizes, deficient in sex appeal but unconversationally efficient. They clumped themselves together on the mat and waited patiently for orders.

Mr. Teal faced the Saint with a certain grimness. His round pink face was rather more flushed than usual, and his baby-blue eyes were creased up into the merest slits, through which pinpoints of red danger lights glinted like scattering embers. He knew that he had taken a chance in coming to that house at all, and the squad he had brought with him multiplied his potential regrets by more factors than he cared to think about. If this was one of the Saint's practical jokes, Chief Inspector Teal would never hear the last of it. The whole C.I.D. would laugh itself sick — there were still giggles circulating over the gramophone-record incident — and the assistant commissioner's sniff would flay him till he wanted to find a quiet place to die. And yet he had had no choice. If he was told about a murder he had to go out and investigate it, and his private doubts did not count.

"Well?" he barked.

"Fairly," said the Saint. "I see you brought the homicide squad."

Teal nodded briefly.

"I gathered from what you told me that a murder had been committed. Is that the case?"

"There are certainly some dead bodies parked about the house," admitted the Saint candidly. "In fact, the place is making a great start as a morgue. If you're interested—"

"Where are these bodies?"

Simon gestured impressively heavenwards.

"Upstairs — at least, so far as the mortal clay is concerned, Eustace."

"We'll go up and see them."

Curtly Teal gave his orders to the silent squad. One man was left in the hall, and Patricia stayed with him. The others, who included a fingerprint expert with a little black bag, and a photographer burdened with camera and folding tripod, followed behind. They went on a tour that made every member of it stare more incredulously from stage to stage, until the culminating revelation left their eyeballs bulging as if they were watching the finale of a Grand Guignol drama coming true under their noses.

CHIEF INSPECTOR TEAL twiddled his pudgy fingers on his knees and studied the Saint's face soberly, digesting what he had heard.

"So after that you allowed this man Jones to kidnap Miss Holm so that you could follow him and find out his address?" he murmured; and the Saint nodded.

"That's about it. Can you blame me? The guy Jones was obviously a menace to the community that we ought to know more about, and it was the only way. I hadn't the faintest idea at that time what his graft was, but I figured that anything which included wilful murder in its programme must be worth looking into. I was all bubbling over with beans after that bust I told you about — talking of busts, Claud, if you ever go to the Folies Bergère—"

"Yes, yes," interrupted the detective brusquely. "I want you to tell me exactly what happened when you got here."

"Well, naturally I had to break into the house. I went up to the first floor and heard Jones talking to Miss Holm in the room where he'd taken her. I hid in another room when he came out to get her some food; then I went and spoke to Miss Holm through the door — which Brother J. had remembered to lock. We exchanged some bright remarks about the weather and the Test Match prospects, and then I carried on with the exploration. On the way I found that King's Messenger. Then Jones came upstairs again, and I lay low for quite a while, cautious like. After a time I got tired standing about, and I went in search of him. I came up outside this laboratory door and listened. That's when I heard what it was all about. Jones was just wheedling what sounded like the last details of the process out of Quell — the science I know wouldn't cover a pinhead, but Jones seemed quite happy about it."

"Can you remember any part of what you heard?"

"Not a thing that'd make sense — except the outstanding bit about the gold. Quell was making gold, there's not a doubt about it. You can see it for yourself. I gathered that Jones had told the old man some yarn about saving England from going off the gold standard — manufacturing an enormous quantity of the stuff under the auspices of the Secret Service, and unloading it quietly in a way that'd put new life into the Bank of England — and Quell, who probably wasn't so wise to the ways of crime as he was to the habits of electrons and atoms, had fallen for it like a dove. Anyway, Jones was happy."

"And then?"

"There was a frightful yell. I've never heard anything like it. I burst in — the door wasn't locked — and saw the professor doing a last kick beside that machine. Jones must have pushed him onto it in cold blood. The old man had told him everything he wanted to know, and made him a lot of specimen gold as well, and Jones hadn't any further use for him. Jones heard me come in, and spun round, pulling a gun. He tripped over the professor's legs and put out a hand to save himself — then he saw his hand was going on the machine, and he pulled it away. He fell on his shoulder, and it burned him just the same. I suppose the current jiggered his muscles like it does on those electric machines, and he went on shooting all round the place for a second or two."

Teal looked round at the fingerprint expert, who was busy at the bench.

"Have you done those shells?" he asked.

"Just finished, sir."

Simon raised his eyebrows.

"What's the idea?" he inquired.

"I don't know whether you've thought of wearing gloves when you're loading a gun," said the detective blandly; and the Saint did not smile.

He allowed the expert to take impressions of his fingertips on a special block, and waited while the man squinted at them through a magnifying glass and checked them against the marks which he had developed on the spent cartridge cases which had been picked up. Teal went over to his side and stood there with a kind of mountainous placidity which was not the most convincing thing Simon Templar had ever seen.

"There's no similarity, sir," pronounced the expert at length, and a glimmer of blank disbelief crossed the detective's round face.

"Are you sure?"

"It's quite obvious, sir. The prints are of totally different types. You can see for yourself. The prints on the shells are spirals, and this gentleman's prints—"

"Don't call him 'this gentleman,'" snapped the detective. "This is Simon Templar, known as the Saint — and you know it too."

"Why not try Jones's fingerprints?" suggested the Saint mildly. "It seems simpler than suspecting me automatically. I've told you — I'm not in this party. That's why I sent for you."

Teal regarded the two contorted bodies thoughtfully. The photographer had finished his work, and he was packing his exposed plates away in a satchel. The detective took a step forward.

"I should take a lot of care, if I were you," murmured the Saint. "I'd hate you to have an accident, and I suppose the juice is still functioning."

They went round the room circumspectly. Someone discovered a collection of switches, and reversed them. A likely-looking terminal was disconnected by a man who donned rubber gloves for the purpose. Finally they approached the dome again, and one of the men tossed bits of wire onto it from various angles. Nothing happened; and eventually Teal knelt down and tried to detach the gun from the dead man's hand. He remained alive, but it took the efforts of two other men to unlock the terrific clutch of the dead man's fingers.