Leslie Charteris - The Saint vs Scotland Yard

"I heard you shoot once—"

"And he's still going — on the other three wheels. I'm not expecting he'll stop to mend that leak."

Patricia sighed.

"It was short and sweet, anyway," she said. "Couldn't you have stopped that other car and followed?"

He shook his head.

"Teal could have stopped it, but I'm not a policeman. I think this is a bit early for us to start gingering up our publicity campaign."

"I wish it had been a better show, boy," said Patricia wistfully, slipping her arm through his; and the Saint stopped to stare at her.

In the darkness, this was not very effective, but he did it.

"You bloodthirsty child!" he said.

And then he laughed.

"But that wasn't the final curtain," he said. "If you like to note it down, I'll make you a prophecy: the mortality among Scorpions is going to rise one unit, and for once it will not be my fault."

They were back in Hatfield before she had made up her mind to ask him if he was referring to Long Harry, and for once the Saint did not look innocently outraged at the suggestion.

"Long Harry is alive and well, to the best of my knowledge and belief," he said, "but I arranged the rough outline of his decease with Teal over the telephone. If we didn't kill Long Harry, the Scorpion would; and I figure our method will be less fatal. But as for the Scorpion himself — well, Pat, I'm dreadfully afraid I've promised to let them hang him according to the law. I'm getting so respectable these days that I feel I may be removed to Heaven in a fiery chariot at any moment."

He examined his souvenir of the evening in a corner of the deserted hotel smoking-room a little later, over a final and benedictory tankard of beer. It was an envelope, postmarked in the South-Western district at 11 a.m. that morning, and addressed to Wilfred Garniman, Esq., 28, Mallaby Road, Harrow. From it the Saint extracted a single sheet of paper, written in a feminine hand.

Dear Mr. Garniman,

Can you come round for dinner and a game of bridge on Tuesday next? Colonel Barnes will be making a fourth. Yours sincerely

For a space he contemplated the missive with an exasperated scowl darkening the beauty of his features; then he passed it to Patricia, and reached out for the consolation of draught Bass with one hand and for a cigarette with the other. The scowl continued to darken.

Patricia read, and looked at him perplexedly.

"It looks perfectly ordinary," she said.

"It looks a damned sight too ordinary!" exploded the Saint. "How the devil can you blackmail a man for being invited to play bridge?"

The girl frowned.

"But I don't see. Why should this be anyone else's letter?"

"And why shouldn't Mr. Wilfred Garniman be the man I want?"

"Of course. Didn't you get it from that man in the car?"

"I saw it on the seat beside him — it must have come out of his pocket when he pulled his gun."

"Well?" she prompted.

"Why shouldn't this be the beginning of the Scorpion's triumphal march towards the high jump?" asked the Saint.

"That's what I want to know."

Simon surveyed her in silence. And, as he did so, the scowl faded slowly from his face. Deep in his eyes a pair of little blue devils roused up, executed a tentative double-shuffle, and paused with their heads on one side.

"Why not?" insisted Patricia.

Slowly, gently, and with tremendous precision, the Saintly smile twitched at the corners of Simon's lips, expanded, grew, and irradiated his whole face.

"I'm blowed if I know why not," said the Saint seraphically. "It's just that I have a weakness for getting both feet on the bus before I tell the world I'm travelling. And the obvious deduction seemed too good to be true."

Mallaby Road, Harrow, as the Saint discovered, was one of those jolly roads in which ladies and gentlemen live. Lords and ladies may be found in such places as Mayfair, Monte Carlo, and St. Moritz; men and women may be found almost anywhere; but Ladies and Gentlemen blossom in their full beauty only in such places as Mallaby Road, Harrow. This was a road about two hundred yards long, containing thirty of the stately homes of England, each of them a miraculously preserved specimen of Elizabethan architecture, each of them exactly the same as the other twenty-nine, and each of them surrounded by identical lawns, flower-beds, and atmospheres of overpowering gentility.

Simon Templar, entering Mallaby Road at nine o'clock — an hour of the morning at which his vitality was always rather low — felt slightly stunned.

There being no other visible distinguishing marks or peculiarities about it, he discovered No. 28 by the simple process of looking at the figures on the garden gates, and found it after inspecting thirteen other numbers which were not 28. He started on the wrong side of the road.

To the maid who opened the door he gave a card bearing the name of Mr. Andrew Herrick and the official imprint of the Daily Record. Simon Templar had no right whatever to either of these decorations, which were the exclusive property of a reporter whom he had once interviewed, but a little thing like that never bothered the Saint. He kept every visiting card that was ever given him and a few that had not been consciously donated, and drew appropriately upon his stock in time of need.

"Mr. Garniman is just finishing breakfast, sir," said the maid doubtfully, "but I'll ask him if he'll see you."

"I'm sure he will," said the Saint, and he said it so winningly that if the maid's name had been Mrs. Garniman the prophecy would have passed automatically into the realm of sublimely concrete certainties.

As it was, the prophecy merely proved to be correct.

Mr. Garniman saw the Saint, and the Saint saw Mr. Garniman. These things happened simultaneously, but the Saint won on points. There was a lot of Mr. Garniman.

"I'm afraid I can't spare you very long, Mr. Herrick," he said. "I have to go out in a few minutes. What did you want to see me about?"

His restless grey eyes flittered shrewdly over the Saint as he spoke, but Simon endured the scrutiny with the peaceful calm which only the man who wears the suits of Anderson and Shepphard, the shirts of Harman, the shoes of Lobb, and self-refrigerating conscience can achieve.

"I came to ask you if you could tell us anything about the Scorpion," said the Saint calmly.

Well, that is one way of putting it. On the other hand, one could say with equal truth that his manner would have made a sheet of plate glass look like a futurist sculptor's impression of a bit of the Pacific Ocean during a hurricane. And the innocence of the Saintly face would have made a Botticelli angel look positively sinister in comparison.

His gaze rested on Mr. Wilfred Garniman's fleshy prow with no more than a reasonable directness; but he saw the momentary flicker of expression that preceded Mr. Garniman's blandly puzzled frown, and wistfully wondered whether, if he unsheathed his swordstick and prodded it vigorously into Mr. Garniman's immediate future, there would be a loud pop, or merely a faint sizzling sound. That he overcame this insidious temptation, and allowed no sign of the soul-shattering struggle to register itself on his face, was merely a tribute to the persistently sobering influence of Mr. Lionel Delborn's official proclamation and the Saint's sternly practical devotion to business.

"Scorpion?" repeated Mr. Garniman, frowning. "I'm afraid I don't quite—"

"Understand. Exactly. Well, I expected I should have to explain."

"I wish you would. I really don't know—"

"Why we should consider you an authority on scorpions. Precisely. The Editor told me you'd say that."

"If you'd—"

"Tell you the reason for this rather extraordinary procedure—"