Follow the Saint s-20

by Leslie Charteris

  "Claud," he said softly, "how would you like to make the haul of a lifetime ?"

  Teal sat and looked at him.

  "I'll trade it," said the Saint, "for something that'll hardly give you any trouble at all. I was thinking of asking you to do it for me anyhow, in return for saving your life last night. There are certain reasons why I want to know the address where they have a telephone number Berkeley 3100. I can't get the information from the telephone company myself, but you can. I'll write it down for you." He scribbled the figures on a piece of paper. "Let me know where that number lives, and I'll give you your murderer and a lot more."

  Teal blinked suspiciously at the memorandum.

  "What's this got to do with it?" he demanded,

  "Nothing at all," said the Saint untruthfully. "So don't waste your time sleuthing around the place and trying to pick up clues. It's just some private business of my own. Is it a sale?"

  The detective's eyes hardened.

  "Then you do know something about all this!"

  "Maybe I'm just guessing. I'll be able to tell you later. For once in your life, will you let me do you a good turn without trying to argue me out of it?"

  Mr Teal fought with himself. And for no reason that he could afterwards justify to himself, he said grudgingly: "All right. Where shall I find you ?"

  "I'll stay home till I hear from you." Simon stood up, and suddenly remembered for the first time why he was there at all. He pulled a yellow package out of his pocket and dropped it in the detective's lap. "Oh yes. And don't forget to take some of this belly balm as soon as you get the chance. It may help you to get back that sweet disposition you used to have, and stop you being so ready to think unkind thoughts about me."

  On the way home he had a few qualms about the ultimate wisdom of that parting gesture, but his brain was too busy to dwell on them. The final patterns of the adventure were swinging into place with the regimented precision that always seemed to come to his episodes after the most chaotic beginnings, and the rhythm of it was like wine in his blood.

  He had made Teal drive slowly past Cornwall House with him in a police car, in case there were any watchers waiting to see whether the attempt to saddle him with Nancock's murder would be successful. From Cannon Row police station, which is also a rear exit from Scotland Yard, he took a taxi back to his apartment, and stopped at a newsagent's on the way to buy a copy of a certain periodical in which he had hitherto taken little interest. By the time he got home it had given him the information he wanted.

  Sam Outrell, the janitor, came out from behind the desk as he entered the lobby.

  "Those men was here, sir, about two hours ago, like you said they would be," he reported. "Said you'd sent 'em to measure the winders for some new curtains. I let 'em in like you told me, an' they went through all the rooms."

  "Thanks a lot, Sam," said the Saint, and rode up in the lift with another piece of his mosaic settled neatly into place,

  He came into the living-room like a ray of sunshine and spun his hat over Patricia's head into a corner.

  "Miracle Tea is on the air in about ten minutes," he said, "with a program of chamber music. Could anything be more appropriate ?"

  Patricia looked up from her book.

  "I suppose you've heard about our curtain measurers."

  "Sam Outrell told me. Do I get my diploma in advanced prophetics? After the party I had this morning, I knew it wouldn't be long before someone wanted to know what had happened to Comrade McGuire. Did you get him to Wey­bridge in good condition?"

  "He didn't seem to like being locked in the trunk of the Daimler very much."

  The Saint grinned, and sat down at the desk to dismantle his automatic. He opened a drawer and fished out brushes and rags and cleaning oil.

  "Well, I'm sure he preferred it to being nailed up in a coffin," he said callously. "And he's safe enough there with Orace on guard. They won't find him in the secret room, even if they do think of looking down there.... Be a darling and start tuning in Radio Calvados, will you ?"

  For a short while she was busy with the dials of the radio­gram; and then she came back and watched him in silence while he went over his gun with the loving care of a man who knew how much might hang on the light touch of a trigger.

  "Something else has happened," she said at last. "And you're holding out on me."

  Simon squinted complacently up a barrel like burnished silver, and snapped the sliding jacket back into place. There was a dynamic exuberance in his repose that no artist could have captured, an aura of resilient swiftness poised on a knife-edge of balance that sent queer little feathery ripples up her spine.

  "A lot more is going to happen," he said. "And then I'll tell you what a genius I am."

  She would have made some reply; but suddenly he fell into utter stillness with a quick lift of his hand.

  Out of the radio, which had been briefly silent, floated the opening bars of the Spring Song. And his watch told him that it was the start of the Miracle Tea Company's contribution to the load that the twentieth-century ether has to bear.

  Shortly the music faded to form a background for a deli­cate Oxford accent informing the world that this melody fairly portrayed the sensations of a sufferer from indigestion after drinking a nice big cup of Miracle Tea. There followed an unusually nauseating dissertation on the manifold virtues of the product, and then a screeching slaughter of the Grand March from Tannhäuser played by the same string quartet. Patricia got up pallidly and poured herself out a drink.

  "I suppose we do have to listen to this ?" she said.

  "Wait," said the Saint.

  The rendition came to its awful end, and the voice of Miracle Tea polluted the air once again.

  "Before we continue our melody programme, we should like to read you a few extracts from our file of unsolicited letters from sufferers who have tried Miracle Tea. Tonight we are choosing letters one thousand and six, one thousand and fourteen, and one thousand and twenty-seven. . .."

  The unsolicited letters were read with frightful enthusi­asm, and the Saint listened with such intentness that he was obviously paying no attention to the transparently bogus effusions. He sat with the gun turning gently in his hands and a blindingly beatific smile creeping by hesitant degrees into the lines of his chiselled fighting mouth, so that the girl looked at him in uncomprehending wonderment.

  ". . . And there, ladies and gentlemen, you have the opinions of the writers whose letters are numbered one thousand and six, one thousand and fourteen, and one thousand and twenty-seven in our files," said the voice of the announcer, speaking with tedious deliberation. "These good people cured themselves by drinking Miracle Tea. Let me urge you to buy Miracle Tea—tonight. Buy Miracle Teal . . . And now the string quartet will play Drink to Me Only——"

  There were two more short numbers and the broadcast was over. Simon switched off the radio as the next advertiser plunged into his act.

  "Well," said Patricia mutinously, "are you going to talk ?"

  "You heard as much as I did."

  "I didn't hear anything worth listening to."

  "Nor did I. That's the whole point. There wasn't anything worth listening to. I was looking for an elaborate code mes­sage. An expert like me can smell a code message as far off as a venerable gorgonzola—there's always a certain clumsiness in the phrasing. This was so simple that I nearly missed it."

  Patricia gazed into the depths of her glass.

  She said: "Those numbers——"

  He nodded.

  "The 'thousand' part is just coverage. Six, fourteen, and twenty-seven are the operative words. They have to buy Miracle Tea—tonight. Nothing else in the programme means a thing. But according to that paper I brought in, Miracle Tea broadcasts every night of the week; and that means that any night the Big Shot wants to he can send out a call for the men he wants to come and get their orders or anything else that's waiting for them. It's the last perfect touch of organiza­tion. There's no connecting link tha
t any detective on earth could trace between a broadcast and any particular person who listens to it. It means that even if one of his operatives should be under suspicion, the Big Shot can contact him without the shadow of a chance of transferring suspicion to himself. You could think of hundreds of ways of working a few numbers into an advertising spiel, and I'll bet they have a new one every time."

  She looked at him steadily.

  "But you still haven't told me what——"

  The telephone rang before he could answer.

  Simon picked it up.

  "Metropolitan Police Maternity Home," he said.

  "Teal speaking," said a familiar voice with an unneces­sarily pugnacious rasp in it. "I've got the information you asked for about that phone number. The subscriber is Baron Inescu, 16 North Ashley Street, Berkeley Square. Now what was that information you were going to give me in return ?"

  The Saint unpuckered his lips from a long inaudible whistle.

  "Okay, Claud," he said, and the words lilted. "I guess you've earned it. You can start right now. Rush one of your squads to Osbett's Drug Store, 909 Victoria Street—the place where you bought your Miracle Tea. Three other guys will be there shopping for Miracle Tea at any moment from now on. I can't give you any description of them, but there's one sure way to pick them out. Have one of your men go up to everyone who comes out of the shop and say: 'Are you six, fourteen, or twenty-seven ?' If the guy jumps halfway out of his skin, he's one of the birds you want. And see that you get his Miracle Tea as well!"

  "Miracle Tea!" sizzled the detective, with such searing savagery that the Saint's ribs suddenly ached with awful intuition. "I wish——" He stopped. Then he said: "What's this about Miracle Tea ? Are you trying to be funny ?"

  "I was never so serious in my life, Claud. Get those three guys, and get their packets of Miracle Tea. You'll find some­thing interesting in them."

  Teal's silence reeked of tormented indecision.

  "If I thought "

  "But you never have, Claud. Don't spoil your record now. Just send that Squad out and tell 'em to hustle. You stay by the telephone, and I ought to be able to call you within an hour to collect the Big Shot."

  "But you haven't told me——" Again Teal's voice wailed off abruptly. Something like a stifled groan squeezed into the gap. He spoke again in a fevered gabble. "All right all right I'll do it I can't stop now to argue but God help you——"

  The connection clicked off even quicker than the sentence could finish.

  Simon fitted his automatic into the spring clip holster under his coat, and stood up with a slow smile of ineffable impishness creeping up to his eyes.

  XII

  16 NORTH ASHLEY STREET stood in the middle of one of those rows of crowded but discreetly opulent dwellings which provide the less squalid aspect of certain parts of Mayfair. Lights could be seen in some of the windows, indicating that someone was at home; but the Saint was not at all troubled about that. It was, in fact, a stroke of luck which he had hoped for.

  He stepped up to the front door with the easy aplomb of an invited guest, arriving punctually for dinner, and put his finger on the bell. He looked as cool as if he had come straight off the ice, but under the rakish brim of his hat the hell-for-leather mischief still rollicked in his eyes. One hand rested idly between the lapels of his coat, as if he were adjusting his tie. ...

  The door opened, exposing a large and overwhelming butler. The Saint's glance weighed him with expert pene­tration. Butlers are traditionally large and overwhelming, but they are apt to run large in the wrong places. This butler was large in the right places. His shoulders looked as wide as a wardrobe, and his biceps stretched tight wrinkles into the sleeves of his well-cut coat.

  "Baron Inescu?" inquired the Saint pleasantly.

  "The Baron is not——"

  Simon smiled, and pressed the muzzle of his gun a little more firmly into the stomach in front of him.

  The butler recoiled, and the Saint stepped after him. He pushed the door shut with his heel.

  "Turn round."

  Tensely the butler started to obey. He had not quite finished the movement when Simon lifted his gun and jerked it crisply down again. The barrel made a sharp smacking sound on the back of the butler's bullet head; and the result, from an onlooker's point of view, was quite comical. The butler's legs bowed outwards, and he rolled down on to his face with a kind of resigned reluctance, and lay motionless.

  For a second the Saint stood still, listening. But except for that single clear-cut smack there had been no disturbance, and the house remained quiet and peaceful.

  Simon's eyes swept round the hall. In the corner close to the front door there was a door which looked as if it be­longed to a coat cupboard. It was a coat cupboard. The Saint pocketed his gun for long enough to drag the butler across the marble floor and shove him in. He locked the door on him and took the key—he was a pretty accurate judge of the comparative toughness of gun-barrels and skulls, and he was confident that the butler would not be constituting a vital factor in anybody's life for some time.

  He travelled past the other doors on the ground floor like a voyaging wraith, listening at each one of them, but he could hear no signs of life in any of the rooms beyond. From the head of the basement stairs he heard an undisturbed clink of dishes and mutter of voices which reassured him that the rest of the staff were strictly minding their own business.

  In another moment he was on his way up the main staircase.

  On the first wide landing he knew he was near his destina­tion. Under one door there was a thin streak of light, and as he inched noiselessly up to it he heard the faint syncopated patter of a typewriter. Then the soft burr of a telephone interrupted it.

  A voice said: "Yes. . . . Yes." There was a slight pause; then: "Vernon! Here is your copy for the special nine o'clock broadcast. Take it down. 'Why suffer from indiges­tion when relief is so cheap ? Two cups will make your pains vanish—only two. Four cups will set you on the road to a complete cure—so why not take four ? But after sixteen cups you will forget that indigestion ever existed. Think of that. Sixteen cups will make you feel ten years younger. Wouldn't you like to feel ten years younger in a few days ? Buy Miracle Tea—tonight!'. . . Have you got that? ... Splendid. Good-night!"

  The receiver rattled back. And the latch of the door rattled as Simon Templar closed it behind him.

  The man at the desk spun round as if a snake had bitten him.

  "Good evening, Baron," said the Saint.

  He stood there smiling, blithe and elegant and indescrib­ably dangerous.

  The Baron stared frozenly back at him. He was a tall, clean­shaven man with dark hair greying at the temples, and he wore impeccable evening clothes with the distinction of an ambassador: but he had spoken on the telephone in a voice that was quite strangely out of keeping with his appearance. And the Saint's smile deepened with the joy of final certainty as he held his gun steadily aligned on the pearl stud in the centre of the Baron's snowy shirt-front.

  The first leap of fear across the Baron's dark eyes turned into a convincing blaze of anger.

  "What is the meaning of this ?"

  "At a rough guess, I should say about fifteen years—for you," answered the Saint equably. "It'll be quite a change from your usual environment, I'm afraid. That is, if I can judge by the pictures I've seen of you in the society papers. Baron Inescu driving off the first tee at St Andrew's—Baron Inescu at the wheel of his yacht at Cowes—Baron Inescu climbing into his new racing monoplane. I'm afraid you'll find the sporting facilities rather limited at Dartmoor, Baron ... or would you rather I called you—Henry ?"

  The Baron sat very still.

  "You know a great deal, Mr Templar."

  "Just about all I need to know, I think. I know you've been running the most efficient espionage organization that poor old Chief Inspector Teal has had to scratch his head over for a long time. I know that you had everything lined up so well that you might have got away with
it for years if it hadn't been for one of those Acts of God that the insurance companies never want to underwrite. I told you I knew all about it this morning, but you didn't believe me. By the way, how does the jaw feel tonight ?"

  The other watched him unwinkingly.

  "I'm afraid I did find it hard to believe you," he said evenly. "What else do you know ?"

  "I know all about your phoney broadcasts. And if it's of any interest to you, there will be a squad of large flat-footed bogey-men waiting for numbers six, fourteen, and twenty-seven when they stop by for their Miracle Tea. ... I know that instead of getting ready to pay me the tax I asked for, you tried to frame me for the murder of Nancock this afternoon, and I resent that, Henry."

  "I apologize," said the Baron suavely. "You shall have your money tomorrow——"

  The Saint shook his head, and his eyes were glacially blue.

  "You had your chance, and you passed it up. I shall help myself to the money." He saw the other's eyes shift fraction­ally to the safe in the corner, and laughed softly. "Give me the keys, Henry."

  The Baron hesitated a moment before he moved.

  Then he put his hand slowly into his trouser pocket and pulled out a bunch of keys on a platinum chain. He detached them and threw them on to the desk.

  "You have the advantage, Mr Templar," he said smoothly. "I give you the keys because you could easily take them yourself if I refused. But you're very foolish. There are only about three thousand pounds in the safe. Why not be sensible and wait until the morning ?"

  "In the morning you'll be too busy trying to put up a defence at the police court to think about me," said the Saint coldly.

  He moved towards the desk; but he did not pick up the keys at once. His eyes strayed to the sheet of paper in the typewriter; and yet they did it in such a way that the Baron still knew that the first move he made would call shattering death out of the trim unwavering automatic,

  Simon read:

  In conjunction with numbers 4, 10, and 16 you will proceed at once to Cheltenham and establish close watch on Sir Roland Hale who is on holiday there. Within 24 hours you will send report on the method by which urgent War Office messages—