Leslie Charteris - The Saint and Mr. Teal

If it is true that there is some occult urge which draws a murderer back to the scene of his crime, it must have been an infinitely more potent force which brought Simon Templar back across the Channel to the scene of more light-hearted misdemeanours than Scotland Yard had ever before endured from the disproportionate sense of humour of any one outlaw. It was not so many years since he had first formulated the idea of making it his life work to register himself in the popular eye as something akin to a public institution; and yet in that short space of time his dossier in the Records Office had swollen to a saga of debonair lawlessness that made Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal speechless to contemplate. The absurd little sketch of a skeleton figure graced with a symbolic halo, that impudent signature with which Simon Templar endorsed all his crimes, had spread the terror of the Saint into every outpost of the underworld and crashed rudely into the placid meanderings of all those illustrious members of the Criminal Investigation Department who had hitherto been content to justify their employment as guardians of the law by perfecting themselves in the time-honoured sport of persuading deluded shop assistants to sell them a bar of chocolate one minute later than the lawful hours for such transactions. The Robin Hood of Modern Crime they called him in the headlines, and extolled his virtues in the same paragraph as they reviled the C.I.D. for failing to lay him by the heels; which only shows you what newspapers can do for democracy. He had become an accepted incident in current affairs, like Wheat Quotas and the League of Nations, only much more interesting. He stood for a vengeance that struck swiftly and without mercy, for a gay defiance of all dreary and mechanical things.

"It's not my fault, sir," Chief Inspector Teal stated gloomily, in an interview which he had with the assistant commissioner. "We aren't in the Saint's class, and some day I suppose we shall have to admit it. If this was a republic we should make him dictator and get some sleep."

The commissioner frowned. He was one of the last survivors of the old military school of police chiefs, a distinguished soldier of unimpeachable integrity; but he laboured under the disadvantage of expecting professional law breakers to parade for judgment as meekly as the casual defaulters he had been accustomed to dealing with in Pondicherry.

"About two months ago," he said, "you told me that the Saint's arrest was only a matter of hours. It was something to do with illicit diamonds, wasn't it?"

"It was," Teal said grimly.

He was never likely to forget the incident. Neither, it seemed, were his superiors. Gunner Perrigo was the culprit in that case, and the police had certainly got their man. The only trouble was that Simon Templar had got him first. Perrigo had been duly hanged on the very morning of this conversation, but his illicit diamonds had never been heard of again.

"It should have been possible to form a charge," insisted the commissioner, plucking his iron-grey moustache nervously. He disapproved of Teal's attitude altogether, but the plump detective was an important officer.

"It might be, if there were no lawyers," said Teal. "If I went into a witness box and talked about illicit diamonds I should be bawled out of court. We know the diamonds existed, but who's going to prove it to a jury? Frankie Hormer could have talked about them, but Perrigo gave him the works. Perrigo could have talked, but he didn't — and now he's dead. And the Saint got away with them out of England, and that's the end of it. If I could lay my hands on him tomorrow I'd have no more hope of proving he'd ever possessed any illicit diamonds than I'd have of running the Pope for bigamy. We could charge him with obstructing and assaulting the police in the execution of their duty, but what in heaven's name's the use of running the Saint for a milk-and-water rap like that? It'd be the biggest joke that Fleet Street's had on us for years."

"Did you learn all the facts about his last stunt in Germany?"

"Yes. I did. And it just came through yesterday that the German police aren't in a hurry to prosecute. There's some big name involved, and they've got the wind up. If I was expecting anything else, I was betting the Saint would be hustling back here and getting ready to dare them to try and extradite him from his own country — he's pulled that one on me before."

The commissioner sniffed.

"I suppose if he did come back, you'd want me to head a deputation of welcome," he said scathingly.

"I've done everything that any officer could do in the circumstances, sir," said Teal. "If the Saint came back this afternoon, and I met him on the doorstep of this building, I'd have to pass the time of day with him — and like it. You know the law as well as I do. We couldn't ask him any more embarrassing questions than if he had had a good time abroad, and how was his aunt's rheumatism when he last heard from her. They don't want detectives here any longer — what they need is a staff of hypnotists and faith healers."

The commissioner fidgeted with a pencil.

"If the Saint came back, I should certainly expect to see some change in our methods," he remarked pointedly; and then the telephone on his desk buzzed.

He picked up the receiver, and then passed it across to Teal.

"For you, Inspector," he said curtly.

Teal took over the instrument.

"Saint returns to England," clicked the voice on the wire. "A report from Newhaven states that a man answering to Simon Templar's description landed from the Isle of Sheppey this afternoon. He was subsequently traced to a hotel in the town—"

"Don't talk to me like a fourth-rate newspaper," snarled Teal. "What have they done with him?"

"On the instructions of the chief constable, he is being detained pending advice from London."

Teal put the receiver carefully back on its bracket.

"Well, sir, the Saint has come back," he said glumly,'

THE assistant commissioner did not head a deputation of welcome to Newhaven. Teal went down alone, with mixed feelings. He remembered that the Saint's last action before leaving England had been to present him with a sheaf of information which had enabled him to clean up several cases that had been racking the brains of the C.I.D. for many months. He remembered also that the Saint's penultimate action had been to threaten him with the most vicious form of blackmail that can be applied to any police officer. But Chief Inspector Teal had long since despaired of reconciling the many contradictions of his endless feud with the man who in any other path of life might have been his closest friend.

He found Simon Templar dozing peacefully on the narrow bed of a cell in Newhaven police station. The Saint rolled up to a sitting position as the detective entered, and smiled at him cheerfully.

"Claud Eustace himself, by the tum-tum of Tutankhamen! I thought I'd be seeing you." Simon looked the detective over thoughtfully. "And I believe you've put on weight," he said.

Teal sank his teeth in a well-worn lump of chewing gum.

"What have you come back for?" he asked shortly.

On the way down he had mapped out the course of the interview minutely. He had decided that his attitude would be authoritative, restrained, distant, perfectly polite but definitely warning. He would tolerate no more nonsense. So long as the Saint was prepared to behave himself, no obstacles would be placed in his way; but if he was contemplating any further misdeeds… The official warning would be delivered thus and thus.

And now, within thirty seconds of his entering the cell, in the first sentence he had uttered, the smooth control of the situation which he had intended to usurp from the start was sliding out of his grasp. It had always been like that. Teal proposed, and the Saint disposed. There was something about the insolent self-possession of that scapegrace buccaneer that goaded the detective into faux pas for which he was never afterwards able to account.