Leslie Charteris - The Saint and Mr. Teal

SIMON TEMPLAR landed in England when the news of Brian Quell's murder was on the streets. He read the brief notice of the killing in an evening paper which he bought in Newhaven, but it added scarcely anything to what he already knew.

Brian Quell died in Paris, and died drunk; which would probably have been his own choice if he had been consulted, for the whole of his unprofitable existence had been wrapped up in the pleasures of the Gay City. He was a prophet who was without honour not only in his own country and among his own family, but even among the long-suffering circle of acquaintances who helped him to spend his money when he had any, and endeavoured to lend him as little as possible when he was broke — which was about three hundred days out of the year. He had arrived ten years ago as an art student, but he had long since given up any artistic pretensions that were not included in the scope of studio parties and long hair. Probably there was no real vice in him; but the life of the Left Bank is like an insidious drug, an irresistible spell to such a temperament as his, and it was very easy to slip into the stream in those days before the rapacity of Montmartre patrons drove the tourist pioneers across the river. They knew him, and charmingly declined to cash his checks, at the Dome, the Rotonde, the Select, and all the multitudinous boîtes-de-nuit which spring up around those unassailable institutions for a short season's dizzy popularity, and sink back just as suddenly into oblivion. Brian Quell had his fill of them all. And he died.

The evening paper did not say he was drunk; but Simon Templar knew, for he was the last man to see Brian Quell alive.

He heard the shot just as he had removed his shoes, as he prepared for what was left of a night's rest in the obscure little hotel near the Gare du Montparnasse which he had chosen for his sanctuary in Paris. His room was on the first floor, with a window opening onto a well at the back, and it was through this window that the sharp crack of the report came to him. The instinct of his trade made him leap for the nearest switch and snap out the lights without thinking what he was doing, and he padded back to the window in his stockinged feet. By that time he had realized that the shot could be no immediate concern of his, for the shots that kill you are the ones you don't hear. But if Simon Templar had been given to minding his own business there would never have been any stories to write about him.

He swung his legs over the low balustrade and strolled quietly round the flat square of concrete which surrounded the ground-floor skylight that angled up in the centre of the well. Other windows opened out onto it like his own, but all of them except one were in darkness. The lighted window attracted him as inevitably as it would have drawn a moth; and as he went towards it he observed that it was the only one in the courtyard besides his own which had not been firmly shuttered against any breath of the fresh air which, as all the world knows, is instantly fatal to the sleeping Frenchman. And then the light went out.

Simon reached the dark opening and paused there. He heard a gasping curse; and then a hoarse voice gurgled the most amazing speech that he had ever heard from the lips of a dying man.

"A mos' un frien'ly thing!"

Without hesitation Simon Templar climbed into the room. He found his way to the door and turned on the lights; and it was only then that he learned that the drunken man was dying.

Brian Quell was sprawled in the middle of the floor, propping himself up unsteadily on one elbow. There was a pool of blood on the carpet beside him, and his grubby shirt was stained red across the chest. He stared at Simon hazily.

"A mos' unfrien'ly thing!" he repeated.

Simon dropped on one knee at the man's side. The first glance told him that Brian Quell had only a few minutes to live, but the astonishing thing was that Quell did not know he was hurt. The shock had not sobered him at all. The liquor that reeked on his breath was playing the part of an anaesthetic, and the fumes in his brain had fuddled his senses beyond all power of comprehending such an issue.

"Do you know who it was?" Simon asked gently.

Quell shook his head.

"I dunno. Never saw him before in my life. Called himself Jones. Silly sora name, isnit? Jones… An' he tole me Binks can make gold!"

"Where did you meet him, old chap? Can you tell me what he looked like?"

"I dunno. Been all over place. Everywhere you could gerra drink. Man with a silly sora face. Never seen him before in my life. Silly ole Jones." The dying man wagged his head solemnly. "An' he did a mos' unfrien'ly thing. Tried to shoot me! A mos' unfrien'ly thing." Quell giggled feebly. "An' he saysh Binks can make gold. Thash funny, isnit?"

Simon looked round the room. There was no trace of the man who had called himself Jones — nothing but an ashtray that had been freshly emptied. Obviously the killer had stayed long enough to obliterate all evidence of his visit; obviously, too, his victim had been temporarily paralyzed, so that the murderer had believed that he was already dead.

There was a telephone by the door, and for a moment Simon Templar gazed at it and wondered if it was his duty to ring for assistance. The last thing on earth that he wanted was an interview even with the most unsuspecting police officer, but that consideration would not have weighed with him for an instant if he had not known that all the doctors in France could have done nothing for the man who was dying in his arms and did not know it.

"Why did Jones try to shoot you?" he asked, and Brian Quell grinned at him vacuously.

"Becaush he said Binksh could—"

The repetition choked off in the man's throat. His eyes wavered over Simon's face stupidly; then they dilated with the first and last stunned realization of the truth, only for one horrible dumb second before the end…

Simon read the dead man's name from the tailor's tab inside the breast pocket of his coat and went softly back to his room. The other windows on the courtyard remained shrouded in darkness. If anyone else had heard the shot it must have been attributed to a passing taxi; but there is a difference between the cough of an engine and the crack of an automatic about which the trained ear can never be mistaken. If it had not been for Simon Templar's familiarity with that subtle distinction, a coup might have been inscribed in the annals of crime which would have shaken Europe from end to end — but Simon could not see so far ahead that night.

He left Paris early the following morning. It was unlikely that the murder would be discovered before the afternoon; for it is an axiom of the Quarter that early rising is a purely bourgeois conceit, and one of the few failings of the French hotel keepers is that they feel none of that divine impulse to dictate the manner of life of their clientele which has from time immemorial made Great Britain the Mecca of holiday makers from every corner of the globe. Simon Templar had rarely witnessed a violent death about which he had so clear a conscience, and yet he knew that it would have been foolish to stay. It was one of the penalties of his fame that he had no more chance of convincing any well-informed policeman that he was a law-abiding citizen than he had of being elected President of the United States. So he went back to England, where he was more unpopular than anywhere else in Europe.