Leslie Charteris - The Saint vs Scotland Yard

"Between these four walls," said the Saint, "and in these trousers, I cannot tell a lie."

"Very well." Teal's knuckles whitened over the brim of his hat. "Templar, I arrest you—"

"Oh, no," said the Saint. "Oh, no, Claud, you don't."

The detective tautened up as if he had received a blow. But Simon Templar wasn't even looking at him. He was selecting a cigarette from a box on the centre table. He flicked it into the air and caught it between his lips, with his hands complacently outspread. "My only parlour trick," he remarked, changing the subject.

Teal spoke through his teeth.

"And why?" he flared.

"Only one I ever learnt," explained the Saint naively.

"Why don't I arrest you?"

Simon ranged himself side-saddle on the table. He stroked the cog of an automatic lighter and put his cigarette in the flame.

"Because, Claud, what I say to you now, between these four walls and in these trousers, and what I'd say in the witness-box, are two things so totally different you'd hardly believe they came from the same rosebud mouth."

Teal snorted.

"Perjury, eh? I thought something cleverer than that was coming from you, Saint."

"You needn't be disappointed."

"Got a speech that you think'll let you out?"

"I have, Claud. I've got a peach of a speech. Put me in the dock, and I'll lie like a newspaper proprietor. Any idea what that means?"

The detective shrugged.

"That's your affair," he grunted. "If you want to be run for perjury as well as other things, I'm afraid I can't stop you."

Simon leaned forward, his left hand on his hip and his right hand on his knee. The deep-blue danger lights were glinting more brightly than ever in his eyes, and there was fight in every line of him. A back-to-the-wall, buccaneering fight, rollicking out to damn the odds.

"Claud, did you think you'd got me at last?"

"I did. And I still think so."

"Thought that the great day had dawned when my name was coming out of the Unfinished Business ledger, and you were going to sleep nights?"

"I did."

"That's too bad, Claud," said the Saint.

Teal pursed his lips tolerantly, but there were pinpoints of red luminance darting about in his gaze.

"I'm still waiting to hear why," he said flatly.

Simon stood up.

"O.K.," he said, and a new indefinable timbre of menace was pulsing into his easy drawl. "I'll tell you why. You asked for a showdown. I'll tell you what you've been thinking. There was a feather you wanted for that hat of yours: you tried all manner of ways to get it, but it wasn't having you. You were too dumb. And then you thought you'd got it. Tonight was your big night. You were going to collect the Saint on the most footling break he ever made. I've got away with everything from murder downwards under your bloodshot eyes, but you were going to run me for stealing fourpence out of the Bank of England."

"That's not what I said."

"It goes for what you meant. You get what you asked for, Claud. Thought I was the World's Wet Smack, did you? Figured that I was so busy crashing the mountains that I'd never have time to put a tab on all the molehills? Well, you asked for something. Now would you like to know what I've really been doing tonight?"

"I'll hear it."

"I've been entertaining a dozen friends, and I'll give you from now till Kingdom Come to prove it's a lie!"

The detective glared.

"D'you think I was born yesterday?" he yelped.

"I don't know," said the Saint lazily. "Maybe you weren't born at all. Maybe you were just dug up. What's that got to do with it?"

Teal choked. His restraint split into small pieces, and the winds of his wrath began to twitch the bits out of his grasp, one by one.

"What's the idea?" he demanded heatedly; and the Saint smiled.

"Only the usual alibi, old corpuscle. Like it?"

"Alibi?" Teal rent the words with sadistic violence. "Oh, yes, you've got an alibi! Six men saw you at Regent's Park alone, but you've got twelve men to give you an alibi. And where was this alibi?"

"In the house that communicates with this one by the secret passage you wot of."

"You aren't going to change your mind about that passage?"

"Why should I? It may be eccentric, but there's nothing in the Statute Book to say it's illegal."

"And that's the alibi you're going to try and put over on me?"

"It's more," said the Saint comfortably. "It's the alibi that's going to dish you."

"Is it?"

Simon dropped his cigarette into an ashtray and put his hands in his pockets. He stood in front of the detective, six feet two inches of hair-trigger disorder — with a smile.

"Claud," he said, "you're missing the opportunity of a lifetime. I'm letting you in on the ground floor. Out of the kindness of my heart I'm presenting you with a low-down on the organisation of a master criminal that hundreds would give their ears to get. I'm not doing it without expense to myself, either. I'm giving away my labyrinth of secret passages, which means that if I want to be troublesome again I shall have to look for a new headquarters. I'm showing you the works of my emergency alibi, guaranteed to rescue anyone from any predicament: there are four lords, a knight and three officers of field rank in it — they've taken me years to collect, and now I shall have to fossick around for a new bunch. But what are trifles like that between friends? Now be sensible, Claud. It becomes increasingly evident that some one is impersonating me."

"Yes, and I know who it is!"

"But it was bound to happen, wasn't it?" said the Saint, continuing in that philosophically persuasive strain under which the razor-keen knife-edges were gliding about like hungry sharks in a smooth tropical sea. "In my misguided efforts to do good, I once made myself so notorious that someone or other was bound to think of hanging his sins on me. The wonder is that it wasn't thought of years ago. Now look at that recent affair in Hampstead—"

"I don't want to know any more about that affair in Hampstead," said Teal torridly. "I want to know how you're going to swing it on me this time. Come on. Let me have the names and addresses of these twelve liars. I'll run them for perjury at the same time as I'm running you."

"You won't. But I'll tell you what I'll do—"

The Saint's forefinger shot out. Teal struck it aside.

"Don't do that!" he yapped.

"I have to," said the Saint. "I love the way your tummy dents in and pops out again. Talking of tummies—"

"You tell me what you think you're going to do."

"I'll run you for bribery, corruption, and blackmail!" said the Saint.

His languid voice tightened up on the sentence with a sudden crispness that had the effect of a gunshot. It rocked the atmosphere like an exploding bomb. And it was followed by a silence that was ear-splitting.

The detective gaped at him with goggling eyes, while a substratum of dull scarlet sapped up under the skin of his face. It was the most flabbergasting utterance that Chief Inspector Teal had listened to. He blinked as if he had been smitten with doubts of his own sanity.

"Have you gone off your head?" he hooted.

"Not that I know of."

"And who's supposed to have been bribing me?"

"I have."

"You?"

"Yeah." The Saint took another cigarette from the box, and lighted it composedly. "Haven't seen your pass-book lately, have you? You'd better ask for it tomorrow morning. You'll discover that in the last six weeks alone you've taken eight hundred and fifty pounds off me. Two hundred pounds on February the sixteenth, two-fifty on March the sixth, four hundred on March the twenty-second — apart from smaller regular payments extending over the previous six months. All the cheques have got your endorsement on 'em, and they've all been passed through your account: they're back in my bank now, available for inspection by any authorised person. It's quite a tidy little sum, Claud — eighteen hundred quid altogether. You'll have a grand time explaining it away."