The Saint Goes On (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  And this grey old bird was the mysterious unknown who had recognized him on the Axminster Road. Simon’s eyes narrowed fractionally as he remembered the parched undertone of humour in the man’s accounting for that recognition. “That is my business…” Undoubtedly it was—but why was this bloke, whom Garthwait promptly called upon in his emergency, calling in such a friendly fashion on the men who had tied Garthwait up and apparently planned to fatten eels on him?

  Simon bit his lip. He would have given much to overhear what was happening in the office, but his explorations had already revealed that there were only two approaches to Jeffroll’s sanctum, either through the back of the bar or along the passage from the kitchen, and a moment’s reflection showed both of those routes to be impracticable. The Saint swore comprehensively under his breath, damning and blasting everything about the hotel, from the amblyopic architect who had first conceived its fatuous layout down to the last imbecile grandchild of the paranoiac plumbers who had inexplicably omitted to drown themselves in its drains, and when he took out his cigarette-case again for the soothing compensation of tobacco, it was empty.

  He got up restlessly, and went out again to the road. An ancient Morris stood outside, and he recognized it as the car he had met during the night—the identification of the grey dry man was absolutely complete, beyond question. But what the hell was it all about? The lawyer knew that he had been associated with Garthwait, must have known that his voice was easily recognizable; if he had been on such friendly terms with the hotel garrison as his approach and reception seemed to prove, he seemed to be taking an insane risk in coming back to see them after having been caught in his duplicity. Or was it something more than an insane risk? The Saint realized that unless that action were absolutely insane, the danger might be transferred to himself. He had to catch up with the development and put himself in front of it again, quickly. He still wanted a cigarette…

  “Going for a walk?” said a quiet voice at his elbow. “Mind if I come with you?”

  He had set off to walk down to the village almost automatically, remembering a tobacconist’s shop that he had noticed on his earlier stroll, and he had been concentrating so fiercely on his new problem that for the instant his mind had let slip the knowledge that he was under very thinly veiled surveillance.

  “I’m only going out for some cigarettes,” he said.

  “That’s just what I want,” replied Captain Voss blandly.

  For a moment Simon coldly considered whether he should pick up the wizened little man and throw him forcefully over Larkstone Point into the sea, but he controlled himself. He did only want a packet of cigarettes just then, and it would be time enough to start throwing his weight about when he had something more important on hand. But he stopped a little way down the hill to make a pretence of tying his shoelace, and looked back at the hotel. The big black-haired man, Kane, was sitting outside now, exactly as Voss had been sitting, turning the pages of the same newspaper. The door was still guarded while Hoppy remained inside—Voss must have given some signal to call out the reserve watch-dog when he left his post.

  Simon bought a packet of cigarettes, while Voss made a similar purchase, and turned back up the hill. He was walking slowly, but his brain was tearing along, trying to place itself inside the minds of at least three people at once. In spite of that, while he had built up and demolished a score of theories, he hadn’t a single settled hypothesis standing at the end of his quarter of an hour’s walk.

  Someone else had thought ahead of him—he saluted the fact grimly as he came up to the door of the inn again. The lawyer’s car was still standing outside, but the man himself was not in sight. Jeffroll was. He was standing beside Kane, watching them approach, and he nodded as the Saint came up.

  “Good morning, Mr Tombs—could you spare me a moment?”

  “Any number,” said the Saint coolly.

  At that moment he was tense and alert, keyed to a hair-trigger watchfulness, although there was not a trace of uneasiness to be read on his brown face.

  “Come into the office,” said Jeffroll.

  Simon realized that his face was curiously strained and haggard, his mouth twitching unconsciously as it had been the previous evening. Whatever this conversation was to be about, quite definitely it held something that the Saint hadn’t included in any of his theories.

  Perhaps that was the principal reason why Simon Templar’s vigilance relaxed at that crucial moment. He had shrewdly summarized Jeffroll as a man who would never be a good actor, and he knew that that drawn anxiety was utterly genuine. He followed the landlord through the lounge and the curtains behind the bar, with his imagination whirling through a fresh burst of frantic effort to encompass this new and unexpected twist, but without the same grim vigilance, although he knew that Voss had come in also and was following behind him. That is, and ever after was, the only excuse he could make for himself, and the mistake might have cost him his life.

  Jeffroll opened the door of the office, and stood aside for the Saint to go in. Simon went in with a languid stride—Portmore and Weems were there, but the lawyer was surprisingly absent. Then something hard jabbed into his back, and he began to appreciate his error.

  “Put up your hands.”

  It was Jeffroll’s voice, behind him, speaking with a half-hysterical menace that held the Saint studiously motionless where a more callous and seasoned intonation might have encouraged him to lazy backchat or even a swift attempt to retrieve the situation. But he was old enough in outlawry to know that the innkeeper’s forefinger was as uncertain on the trigger as only the finger of a panic-stricken man can be, and he stood very still.

  The weight of his automatic came off his hip-pocket, and then he was pushed forward. Only then, when he could turn round and see Jeffroll’s face, and keep a wary eye on the man’s reactions, did he venture to indulge in any conversational amenities.

  “Bless my soul,” he remarked mildly. “Do you know, for a moment I thought you were going to kiss me.”

  Major Portmore reached down under the desk, where he was sitting, and brought up the shot-gun which he had been carrying in the wood that morning.

  “Get over against the wall and shut up,” he ordered harshly.

  Simon got over against the wall.

  “Now, then,” said Jeffroll, over the sights of his revolver, “where is Julia?”

  The Saint’s mouth hardened as if it had been turned to stone. Then that was the explanation of the landlord’s strange whiteness. Ideas drummed through his brain—Hoppy Uniatz asleep, Garthwait who had escaped while he was away, the lawyer’s visit…But he scarcely had time to pin down one of those speeding flashes of fact before Jeffroll’s voice was shrilling into his ears again.

  “Hurry up, damn you! I’m going to count up to ten. If you haven’t answered by that time—”

  “What happens?” asked the Saint, in his quietest voice. “You can hang yourself off that beam without bothering to shoot me—or would you rather have it done legally? And where does it get you, anyhow?”

  Portmore nodded.

  “That’s right,” he said impersonally. “I told you shooting was too quick, Jeffroll. Voss—Weems—you tie him up, I’ll see if I can make him talk.”

  Weems got up limply out of his chair and produced a coil of wire. The Saint’s arms were twisted behind his back, and the wrists quickly and efficiently bound; then his ankles were similarly treated. Jeffroll’s mouth worked as if he was tempted to refuse interference and stick to his original threat, but he said nothing.

  Portmore got up and came round the desk. He handed the shot-gun over to Voss and stood in front of the Saint.

  “Will you answer that question, or have I got to thrash it out of you?” he demanded.

  Simon looked at him steadily. Placed as he was, it required a superhuman effort to hold back the obvious defiance. Only the fact that he could understand and sympathize with the feelings of his inquisitors helped him to check his temper—that, an
d the knowledge that the same liberties could not be taken with a crazed amateur that could be taken with dispassionate professionals.

  “Don’t you think it might have been worthwhile asking me the question in a normal manner, before you were reduced to all this Lyceum stuff?” he replied evenly.

  For a second they were taken aback; then Portmore blustered back into the breach.

  “All right—if you’re going to answer the question, you can answer it now.”

  “I haven’t the vaguest notion where Julia is,” said the Saint immediately. “But I expect Garthwait could tell us.”

  “Because he helped you take her away,” chattered Jeffroll.

  “You’re wrong there,” said the Saint, as equably as he could. “I’ve told you that I had nothing to do with it. Will you tell me when you think she was taken?”

  The landlord’s white tragic face was in grotesque contrast to the murderousness of his eyes.

  “You know that. You let Garthwait out of this office—you only pretended to fight him because you thought we’d be taken in by you. You took her away between you, last night. You took your car out of the garage—”

  “You saw that when you came out to drive a lorry-load of earth from your tunnel down to the quay and tip it into the harbour,” said the Saint.

  If he had expected to cause a sensation with that blunt challenge, he was disappointed. Not one of the men showed any more reaction than if he had shown that he knew the hotel had a thatched roof, and Jeffroll babbled on: “You took her away in your car, and then Garthwait telephoned this morning—”

  “This is wasting time,” snarled Voss. “Let him do the talking, old man, and if he doesn’t talk we’ll see what we can do to make him.”

  “I’m waiting for a chance to talk,” retorted the Saint curtly. “I guess there are plenty of explanations to be made, and I don’t want to waste time either. I’ll put my cards on the table and trade them for yours, if you can stop making damn fools of yourselves for five minutes.”

  “Get on with it, then,” said Portmore. “And don’t call me a damn fool again, or I’ll hurt you.”

  Simon looked him in the eyes.

  “Hitting a man who can’t hit you back would naturally prove you weren’t a damn fool, wouldn’t it?” he said icily.

  “Oh, leave him alone, Portmore,” drawled Weems. “Let’s hear what he’s got to say first.”

  “Thanks.” Simon held the Major’s gaze as long as the other would meet it; then he relaxed against the wall. “What I’ve got to say won’t take long. To start with, my name isn’t Tombs. It’s Templar—Simon Templar. You may have read about me in the newspaper sometimes. I’m called the Saint.”

  This time he did get a reaction, but for about the first time in his life he did not pause to bask in the scapegrace glow which his own notoriety usually gave him.

  “I came down here because I heard there was something mysterious going on, and poking my nose into mysterious goings-on is my business. I’d never met Garthwait in my life, never heard of him, till we had that argument in the bar last night and I pushed his face in. I know most of the crooks in this country, but I can’t know all of them. I came prowling about last night because I heard noises, and I found Garthwait tied up in here—”

  “And let him out.”

  “No. I admit it was my fault that he got out, but it was unintentional. I opened the door with a pair of wire-cutting pliers, and I left them behind, accidentally, when I went out again. Before that, he’d told me that he was supposed to meet a guy on the Axminster road, and that this guy would give me ten thousand quid to let him loose—from the way he talked he seemed to think I was one of your party. I pushed off to keep the date with this guy—”

  “And he gave you ten thousand pounds to let Garthwait go,” said Voss flatly.

  Simon shook his head.

  “He didn’t—for one reason, because he was a bit wiser in sin than you fellows, and he recognized me.”

  “But you’d have done it if he had given you ten thousand pounds.”

  “I don’t know,” said the Saint candidly. “It isn’t my party anyhow, and I’ve a pretty open mind, but on the whole I doubt it. Anyway the question doesn’t arise. I went out to keep this date because I was hoping to collect some more information on this racket you’ve got here. On account of the guy on the road recognizing me, I didn’t get much more than a couple of bullets whizzing past my ear, but I did hear his voice, and I’ve heard it again this morning. I can’t help it if you think this is a tall story, but the guy on the road—Garthwait’s pal—was your lawyer friend who just called.”

  There was a moment’s silence, and then Weems sniffed loudly.

  “Oh, quate,” he said, and Simon Templar, who reckoned that he himself could do almost anything with his voice, had to acknowledge that he had never heard such a quintessence of sneeringly bored incredulity expressed in two syllables.

  “You’re the worst liar I’ve ever listened to,” rasped Portmore, more crudely. “Why, you bloody crook! Yestering told us you’d probably have some slippery story—”

  “I notice he didn’t stay to listen to it,” said the Saint.

  For a second he had them again, and in that second he got several things straight. Yestering hadn’t taken such an insane risk after all—the lawyer had simply come to the hotel with two strings to his bow and an arrow on each of them, ready to use whichever one his reception told him to. If it had been hostile, he would have known at once that the Saint really was in cahoots with the inn garrison, but Julia Trafford would still remain as an effective hostage. The reception having been friendly, Yestering would have realized that the Saint was sitting in with a lone hand: to pass on the job of getting rid of him to Jeffroll & Co. was the most elementary tactical development. But there was one thing the lawyer had forgotten—or, rather, had never known about—one cogent argument that might still be thrown in in time to break the back of Jeffroll’s insensate vengefulness before his fear drove him too far beyond the reach of reason. Seizing his momentary advantage without relaxing a fraction of his iron restraint, the Saint used it.

  “I can give you a certain amount of proof,” he said. “It doesn’t back up every word I say, but it’s something. I didn’t come down here entirely off my own bat. I was asked to come—by someone on the spot who was definitely worried about what was going on.”

  “Who was that?” asked Voss sceptically.

  “Julia.”

  They stared at him hesitantly—even Portmore looked doubtful. Then Jeffroll’s trembling hand brought up the revolver again.

  “That’s a lie! Julia didn’t know anything—”

  “That’s why she wrote to me,” said the Saint. “The letter’s in my breast pocket—why don’t you read it?”

  Portmore took it out and passed it over.

  “Is that her writing?”

  Jeffroll nodded.

  “My God,” he said stupidly.

  Voss took the letter from him, glanced through it, and handed it to Portmore. They looked at each other rather foolishly. Portmore dropped the letter on the desk in front of Weems, who turned it over with a limp hand and rubbed the place where his chin would have been if he had had a chin. An awkward kind of silence settled upon the congregation and scratched itself reflectively, as Job might have done on discovering a new and hitherto unsuspected boil.

  Weems was the first to break it.

  “That does seem to make things look a little bit different,” he admitted, gazing vacantly at the inkwell.

  Portmore cleared his throat.

  “What was your story again?” he asked.

  The Saint repeated it, in greater detail, and this time there were no interruptions. When it was finished, the four men looked at one another almost bashfully, like members of a Civic Reform committee who have caught each other buying nudist magazines. Something compromising had certainly been done. There had, perhaps, been a slight technical departure from the canons of good form
and unblemished purity. But nothing, of course, that had not been done with the most impeccable motives—that could not, naturally, be explained away with a few well-chosen words delivered in an austere and dignified and gentlemanly tone.

  The other three turned automatically to Jeffroll, tacitly appointing him their spokesman, but perhaps this failure to respond immediately was understandable. The innkeeper had lowered his gun some minutes before, but the strained pallor of his face had altered only in degree.

  “Then…then that means Garthwait has got her!” he stammered. “And if Yestering…if Yestering’s gone over to him…or he may even have been the man who put Garthwait on to us—nobody else knew. Then it’ll all have been for nothing—they’ll use our work and divide the money…” Suddenly, absurdly, his weak pathetic eyes turned to the Saint in helpless appeal. “What are we going to do?”

  Simon smiled.

  “I’d like to help you,” he remarked lazily, “but I’m afraid it always cramps my style when I’m tied up.”

  “Sorry, old boy,” drawled Captain Voss, for after all he was an officer and a gentleman, and had once played cricket for Oxford.

  He stepped forward to undo the wire, but he had barely started fumbling with it when there was a scutter of quick lurching footsteps in the passage outside, and the door burst open with a crash.

  It was the big black-haired man, Kane, who reeled in under the startled eyes of his companions. His shirt was ripped into two great trailing fragments, and he was clutching one side of his head dizzily. A small trickle of blood ran down his cheek from under the heel of his hand. He stared at the scene for a moment and then nodded weakly, sagging against the jamb of the door.

  “Good,” he said huskily. “We’ve still got one of the swine, anyhow.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” demanded Portmore, with the reaction of his nerves indexed in the unnecessary loudness of his voice. “This fellow’s all right—we made a mistake. What’s happened?”