Leslie Charteris - The Saint vs Scotland Yard

"Excuse me," said the Saint.

His right hand moved like lightning, and the detonation of his heavy automatic in the confined space was like a vindictive thunderclap. It left the girl with a strange hot sting of powder on her wrist and a dull buzzing in her ears. And through the buzzing drifted the Saint's unruffled accents:

Patricia looked at him, white-faced.

"What was it?" she asked, with the faintest tremor in her voice.

"Just an odd spot of scorpion," answered Simon Templar gently. "An unpleasant specimen of the breed — the last time I saw one like that was up in the hills north of Puruk-jahu. Looks like a pal of mine has been doing some quick travelling, or… Yes." The Saint grinned. "Get on the phone to the Zoo, old dear, and tell 'em they can have their property back if they care to send round and scrape it off the carpet. I don't think we shall want it any more, shall we?"

Patricia shuddered.

She had stripped away the brown paper and found a little cardboard box such as cheap jewellery is sometimes packed in. When she raised the lid, the tiny blue-green horror, like a miniature deformed lobster, had been lying there in a nest of cotton-wool; while she stared at it, it had rustled on to her and…

"It — wasn't very big," she said, in a tone that tried to match the Saint's for lightness.

"Scorpions run to all sizes," said the Saint cheerfully, "and as often as not their poisonousness is in inverse ratio to their size in boots. Mostly, they're very minor troubles — I've been stung myself, and all I got was a sore and swollen arm. But the late lamented was a member of the one and only sure-certain and no-hokum family of homicides in the species. Pity I bumped it off so quickly — it might have been really valuable stuffed."

Patricia's finger-tips slid mechanically around the rough edges of the hole that the nickel-cased .45 bullet had smashed through the polished mahogany table before ruining the carpet and losing itself somewhere in the floor. Then she looked steadily at the Saint.

"Why should anyone send you a scorpion?" she asked.

Simon Templar shrugged.

"It was the immortal Paragot who said: 'In this country the unexpected always happens, which paralyses the brain'. And if a real man-sized Scorpion can't be expected to send his young brothers to visit his friends as a token of esteem, what can he be expected to do?"

"Is that all?"

"All what?"

"All you propose to tell me."

The Saint regarded her for a moment. He saw the tall slim lines of reposeful strength in her body, the fine moulding of the chin, the eyes as blue and level as his own. And slowly he screwed the cap on his fountain pen; and he stood up and came round the table.

"I'll tell you as much more as you want to know," he said.

"Just like in the mad old days?"

"They had their moments, hadn't they?"

She nodded.

"Sometimes I wish we were back in them," she said wistfully. "I didn't fall in love with you in a pair of Anderson and Sheppard trousers—"

"They were!" cried the Saint indignantly. "I distinctly remember —"

Patricia laughed suddenly. Her hands fell on his shoulders.

"Give me a cigarette, boy," she said, "and tell me what's been happening."

And he did so — though what he had to tell was little enough. And Chief Inspector Teal himself knew no more. The Scorpion had grown up in darkness, had struck from the darkness, and crawled back deeper into the dark. Those who could have spoken dared not speak, and those who might have spoken died too soon…

But as he told his tale, the Saint saw the light of all the mad old days awakening again in Patricia's eyes, and it was in a full and complete understanding of that light that he came to the one thing that Chief Inspector Teal would have given his ears to know.

"Tonight, at nine—"

"You'll be there?"

"I shall," said the Saint, with the slightest tightening of his lips. "Shot up by a bloody amateur! Good God! Suppose he'd hit me! Pat, believe papa — when I pass out, there's going to be a first-class professional, hall-marked on every link, at the thick end of the gun."

Patricia, in the deep armchair, settled her sweet golden head among the cushions.

"What time do we start?" she asked calmly. For a second, glancing at him sidelong. She saw the old stubborn hardening of the line of his jaw. It happened instinctively, almost without his knowing it; and then suddenly he swung off the arm of the chair in the breath of an even older Saintly laughter.

"Why not?" he said. "It's impossible — preposterous — unthinkable — but why not? The old gang have gone — Dicky, Archie, Roger — gone and got spliced on to women and come over all bowler-hat. There's only you left. It'd make the vicar's wife let out one piercing squawk and swallow her knitting-needles, but who cares? If you'd really like to have another sniff at the old brew—"

"Give me the chance!"

Simon grinned.

"And you'd flop after it like a homesick walrus down a water-chute, wouldn't you?"

"Faster," she said.

"And so you shall," said the Saint. "The little date I've got for tonight will be all the merrier for an extra soul on the side of saintliness and soft drinks. And if things don't turn out exactly according to schedule, there may be an encore for your especial entertainment. Pat, I have a feeling that this is going to be our week!"

It was one of the Saint's most charming characteristics that he never hurried and never worried. He insisted on spending an idle hour in the cocktail bar of the May Fair Hotel, and seven-thirty had struck before he collected his car, inserted Patricia, and turned the Hirondel's long silver nose northwards at an unwontedly moderate speed. They dined at Hatfield, after parking the Hirondel in the hotel garage, and after dinner the Saint commanded coffee and liqueurs and proceeded to incinerate two enormous cigars of a plutocratically delicate bouquet. He had calculated exactly how long it would take to walk out to location, and he declined to start one moment before his time-table demanded it.

"I am a doomed man," he said sombrely, "and I have my privileges. If necessary, the Scorpion will wait for me."

Actually he had no intention of being late, for the plan of campaign that he had spent the nicotinised interval after dinner adapting to Patricia's presence required them to be at the rendezvous a shade in advance of the rest of the party.

But this the Scorpion did not know.

He drove up slowly, with his headlights dimmed, scanning the dark shadows at the side of the road. Exactly beside the point where his shaded lights picked up the grey-white blur of the appointed milestone, he saw the tiny red glow of a cigarette-end, and applied his brakes gently. The cigarette-end dropped and vanished under an invisible heel, and out of the gloom a tall dark shape stretched slowly upwards.

The Scorpion's right hand felt the cold bulk of the automatic pistol in his pocket as his other hand lowered the nearside window. He leaned over towards the opening.

"Garrot?"

The question came in a whisper to the man at the side of the road, and he stepped slowly forward and answered in a throaty undertone.

"Yes, sir?"

The Scorpion's head was bent low, so that the man outside the car could only see the shape of his hat.

"You obeyed your orders. That is good. Come closer…"

The gun slipped silently out of the Scorpion's pocket, his forefinger curling quickly round the trigger as he drew it. He brought it up without a sound, so that the tip of the barrel rested on the ledge of the open window directly in line with the chest of the man twelve inches away. One lightning glance to left and right told him that the road was deserted.