Leslie Charteris - The Saint and Mr. Teal

"Easy pickings," said Clem Enright.

He tried to ape Ted Orping's manner, but he lacked the physical personality. He was a cockney sneak thief born and bred, with the pale peaked face and shifty eyes of his inheritance. Alone and sober, his one idea was to avoid attracting attention; but in the shelter of Ted Orping's massive bravado he found his courage expanding.

He also lolled back in the seat and produced a battered yellow packet of cigarettes.

"Fag?"

Ted Orping looked down his nose.

"Y'ain't still smokin' those things?"

He twitched the packet out of the cockney's fingers and flipped it over the side. A rolled-gold cigarette case came out of his pocket and pushed into Clem Enright's ribs under a black-rimmed thumbnail.

"Take 'alf a dozen."

Clem helped himself, and struck a match. They lounged back again, exhaling the fumes of cheap Turkish tobacco with elaborate relish. Either of them would secretly have preferred the yellow gaspers to which they were accustomed, but Ted Orping insisted on their improved status.

Suddenly he leaned forward and punched the driver on the shoulder.

"Hey, Joe! Time you were turning east. The Flying Squad ain't after us tonight."

The driver nodded. They were speeding up the west side of Regent's Park, and the driving mirror showed no lights behind.

"And easy on the gas," Ted snapped. "You don't want to be copped for dangerous driving."

The car spun round a bend with a sharpness that sent Ted Orping lurching back into his corner, and held its speed. They drove east, and turned south again.

Ted Orping scowled. He wanted all his colleagues to acknowledge him as the boss, the Big Fellow, whose word was law — to be obeyed promptly and implicitly. Joe Corrigan didn't seem to cotton to the idea. And he had broad shoulders too — and grey Irish eyes that didn't flinch readily. Independent. Maybe too independent, Ted Orping thought. It was Joe Corrigan who had insisted that they should go into a pub and have a bracer before they did the job, and who had got his way against Ted Orping's opposition. Maybe Joe was getting too big for his boots… Ted ran a hand over the hard bulge at his hip, thoughtfully. Four or five years ago the independence of Joe Corrigan would never have stimulated Ted to thoughts of murder, but he had been taught that when a guy got too big for his boots he was just taken for a ride.

The car swung left, violently, and then to the right again. They were droning down a street of sombre houses on the east side of the park. One or two upper windows were lighted, but there were no pedestrians about — only another long-nosed silver-grey speed wagon drawn up by the curb with its side lights dimmed facing towards them.

All at once their brakes went on with a screaming force that jerked the two men behind forward in their seats. They skidded to a stop by the pavement, with their bonnet a dozen feet away from the nose of the silver car.

Ted Orping cursed and hitched himself further forward. His broad hand crimped on the driver's shoulder.

"What the hell—"

He fell back as the driver turned, with his jaw dropping.

The two Green Cross boys sat side by side, staring at the face of the man in the heavy leather coat that had been worn by Joe Corrigan when they set out. It was a lean sunburnt face, recklessly clean-cut and swashbuckling in its rakish keenness of line, in which the amazingly clear and mocking blue eyes gleamed like chips of crystal. There was a coolness, an effrontery, a fighting ruthlessness about it that left them momentarily speechless. It was the most dangerously challenging face that either of them had ever seen. But it was not the face of Joe Corrigan.

"The jaunt is over, boys," said the face amiably. "I hope you've had a good time and caught no colds. And thanks for the job — it was about the best I've been able to watch. You two ought to take it up professionally — you'd do well."

Ted Orping wetted his lips.

"Who are you?" he asked.

The driver smiled. It was a benevolent, almost seraphic smile, that bared a glint of ivory white teeth; and yet there was nothing reassuring about it. It was as full of the hair-trigger threat of sudden death as the round hollow snout of the gun that slid up over the back of the seat in the driver's hand. Ted Orping had seen smiles like that in the movies, and he knew.

"I am the Saint," said the driver gently. "I see you've heard of me. But perhaps you thought I'd gone out of business. Well, you can work it out. I'm sorry about Joe, but he kind of had an accident coming out of that pub. It seemed as if you were left without a driver, but I hated to disappoint you — so I took his place… You might keep your hands on your lap, Ted — it makes me nervous when they're out of sight."

The muzzle of the gun shifted slightly, so that Ted Orping looked down the barrel. His hands ceased to stray behind him, and lay still.

The Saint reached a long arm over to the floor at Ted Orping's feet and picked up the bag. He weighed it, speculatively and judiciously, under the two Green Cross boys' noses.

"A nice haul — as you were both saying," he murmured. "I couldn't have done better myself. But I think it's worth too much money for you lads to have all to yourselves. You might want to move up another stage in life and take to cigars — and cigars, Ted, need a strong tum-tum when you aren't used to them. So I'll just take care of it for you. Give my love to Joe and the rest of the gang; and if you hear any more of those rumours about my having retired you'll know what to say. And I hope you'll say it. It cannot be too widely known—"

Ted Orping came to life, grimly and desperately. It may have been that the actual sight of so much hard-won wealth vanishing into the hands of the mocking hijacker in front spurred him to the gamble; it may have been that he had to prove to himself that he wasn't afraid of any other man who carried a gun; or it may only have been the necessity of retaining Clem Enright's respect. Whatever his motive was, he took his chance, with a blaze of sheer animal courage.

He hurled himself forward out of his seat and grabbed at the gun in the Saint's hand. And the Saint pressed the trigger.

There was no report — only a sharp liquid hiss. A shining jet of ammonia leapt from the muzzle of the gun like a pencil of polished glass, and struck Ted Orping accurately on the bridge of his nose. It sprayed out over his face from the point of impact, burning his eyeballs with its agonizing sting and filling his lungs with pungent choking vapours. Orping fell back with a gasp; and Simon Templar opened the door.

He stepped out onto the pavement, and his gun still covered the two men. Clem Enright cringed away.

"So long, Clem," said the Saint genially.

He ran down to the other car. The engine was ticking smoothly over as he reached it, and he swung himself nimbly in beside the girl who sat waiting at the wheel. The car swung out and skimmed neatly past the front wheels of the motionless bandit wagon ahead; and the Saint turned to wave a farewell to the two helpless men as they went by.

Then he sank back with a laugh and lighted a cigarette.

"Haven't you ever noticed that the simplest ideas are usually the best?" he remarked. "That old water-pistol gag, for instance: could anything be more elementary, and yet more bright and beautiful? I see that our technique is not yet perfect, Pat — all we need is to discover some trick with the smell of the Ark still wafting fruitily about it, and we could clean up the world."

Patricia Holm steered the huge Hirondel round another corner, and the wind caught her fair hair as she turned to smile at him.

"Simon," she said dispassionately, "you have no conscience."

"None," said Simon Templar.

He was wearing a dinner jacket under his leather coat, and Joe Corrigan's cap went into a pocket in the car. Half an hour later they were strolling into the Breakfast Club for a celebratory plate of bacon and eggs and a final turn round the minute dance floor. And to any casual observer who saw the Saint drifting debonairly through the throng of elegant idlers, exchanging words with an acquaintance here and there, straightening the head waiter's tie, and at last demolishing a large dish of the club's world-famous specialty, it would have been difficult to believe that the police and the underworld alike reckoned him the most dangerous man in England — or that a matter of mere minutes earlier he had been giving a convincing demonstration that his hand had lost none of its cunning.