12 The Saint in London (The Misfortunes of Mr Teal)

by Leslie Charteris

  He led her across the hall to the study which adjoined the living room, and picked up the telephone on the desk. In a few moments he was through to London.

  "Hullo, Pat," he said. "I thought you'd be back. Did you have a swell time? . . . Grand. I'm down at Weybridge. Now listen, keed--can you catch the next train down? . . . Well, we've had a certain amount of song and skylarking while you've been away, and I've got a damsel in distress down here, and now I've got to push off again. That only leaves Hoppy and Orace, so you'll have to do your celebrated chaperoning act. . . . No, nothing desperate; but Claud Eustace may be puffing and blowing a bit in the near future. . . . Good girl. Then the damsel in distress will tell you all about it when you arrive. So long, darling. Be seein' ya."

  He hung up the instrument and turned back with a smile.

  "You're going to meet Patricia Holm," he said.

  "Which is rather a privilege. When she gets here, tell her everything--from the beginning right down to where I take up your brother's name. Do you understand? If there's any trouble--whether it's from Act of God or Chief Inspector Teal-- Pat will be able to handle it better than anyone else I know."

  She nodded.

  "I'll be all right."

  "If I didn't think so, I wouldn't be leaving you," he said and went to a bookcase beside the desk. "Now here's the next thing: If there's any trouble--and if Pat isn't here, Grace will know --this is your way out."

  The entire bookcase opened like a door on well-oiled hinges, giving her a glimpse of what appeared to be a passage.

  "It isn't a passage," he explained, closing the bookcase again. "It's just a space between two walls. I built it myself. But they're both solid, so it can't be found by tapping around to see if anything sounds hollow. There's an armchair and some magazines, and it's ventilated; but you'd better not smoke. This is how it works: If the door's closed, and you open this drawer of the desk till it clicks, and then pull out the second shelf . . ."

  He showed her how to manipulate the series of locks which he had devised.

  "There's just one other thing," he said. "I want you to ring me up tonight--or get Pat to do it and say she's you. Just talk as if you were talking to Tim, because somebody may listen on the line. But listen very carefully to what I say at the other end. If there's anything I want, I'll be able to let you know."

  Mr. Uniatz, who had been nibbling the end of a black cigar and watching all these proceedings with a vacant expression, cleared his throat and gave utterance to a problem which had been puzzling him ever since he left the breakfast table. "Boss," he interrupted diffidently, "what's wrong wit' my accent?"

  "Nothing at all," said the Saint. "It reminds me of a nightjar calling to its mate." He put a hand on the girl's shoulder. "If you're ready now, we'll go."

  They walked down a leafy avenue over the hill. There were starlings cheeping in the undergrowth, and the air was hazy with the promise of a fine day. The world was so still, without even a whisper of distant traffic, that her adventure seemed yet more unbelievable.

  "Why are you taking so much trouble?" she had to ask; and he laughed.

  "You've heard that I'm an outlaw, haven't you? And an outlaw lives by the supply of boodle. I know we still haven't very much to go on; but when a bird like Ivar Nordsten is falling over himself to get in touch with a convicted forger, I kind of get inquisitive. Besides, there's another thing. If I could dump the evidence of some really full-grown ungodliness into Teal's lap, he mightn't feel quite so upset about losing you."

  A quarter of an hour's walk brought them to the gates of Hawk Lodge. They went up the broad gravelled drive and came upon the house suddenly round a bend that skirted a clump of trees--a big neo-Jacobean mansion that looked out over terraced gardens to the haze that hid another range of hills far to the south.

  A grey-haired saturnine butler with a slight foreign accent took their names.

  "Miss Vickery and Mr. Vickery? Will you wait?"

  He left them in the great bare hall and passed through a door which opened off it. In a few moments he came back.

  "Mr. Nordsten does not need to see Miss Vickery today," he said. "Will Mr. Vickery come in?"

  Simon nodded, and smiled at the girl.

  "Okay, sister," he murmured. "Thanks for bringing me--and take care of yourself."

  Quite naturally he kissed her; and she went back down the broad drive again feeling very much alone.

  "SIT down, Mr. Vickery," said Nordsten cordially. "I'm glad we were able to find you. Would you like a cigar?"

  He sat behind a wide mahogany desk in a library that was panelled out from floor to ceiling with bookcases, more like the study of a university professor than of an internationally famous financier. The illusion was heightened by his physique, which was broad-shouldered and tall in spite of a scholarly stoop, and his bald domelike skull ringed round at the level of his ears with a horseshoe of sandy grey hair. Only a trace of overemphasis on his guttural consonants betrayed his Scandinavian upbringing; and only a certain unblinking rigidity in his pale blue eyes, a certain tense restraint in the movements of his large white hands, marked the man whose business instincts commanded millions where others played with hundreds.

  "Thanks."

  Simon took a cigar, sniffed it with an affectation of wisdom, and stuck it between his teeth with the band on. It was an inferior cigar; but Tim Vickery would know no better.

  "You look older than I heard you were," said Nordsten, holding out a match.

  The Saint shrugged sullenly.

  "Prison life doesn't help you to look young," he said.

  "Does it teach you any lessons?" asked Nordsten.

  "I don't know what you mean," Simon answered defensively.

  The financier's mouth made a fractional movement that might have been intended for a smile, but his hard unblinking gaze remained on the Saint's face.

  "Only a short while ago," he explained, "you were a young man with a brilliant future. Everyone thought well of you. You might have continued your training and become a very successful artist. But you didn't. You devoted your exceptional talents to forging banknotes--doubtless, not to mince matters, because you thought the rewards would be quicker and bigger than legitimate art would pay. But they weren't. You were arrested and sent to prison. You had leisure to reflect that quick profits are not always so quick as they first appear--that is, as I was trying to find out, if you learnt your lesson."

  Simon grimaced.

  "Well, is that why you sent for me?"

  "I take it that my diagnosis is correct," said Nordsten blandly.

  "How do you know?"

  "My dear boy, your conviction was mentioned quite prominently in the newspapers. I remember that it was considered remarkable that a youth" of your age should have produced the cleverest forgeries that the police witness could remember. The rest is merely a matter of deduction and elementary psychology." Nordsten leaned back and rolled his match between the finger and thumb of one hand. "But I remember thinking at the time what a pity it was that so much talent should have

  been employed in a comparatively poor field of effort. If only you had had proper guidance--if you'd had someone behind you who could dispose of your products without the slightest possibility of detection--wouldn't it have been quite a different story?"

  Simon did not answer; and Nordsten went on, as if addressing the match: "If you had another chance to use your gifts in the same way, for even greater profits, but without any risk, wouldn't you see what a marvellous opportunity it was?"

  The Saint sighed quite noiselessly--a deep slow inhalation of breath that took all the rich air of adventure into his lungs.

  "I don't understand," he said stubbornly; and Nordsten's hard faded stare turned to him with a sudden resolution.

  "Then I'll put it more plainly. You could do some work for me, Vickery. I'll pay you magnificently. I can make you richer than you've ever been even in your dreams. Do you want the chance or not?"

  Simon shook his
head. It was an effort.

  "It's too risky," he said; but he spoke in a way that carried no conviction.

  "I've promised to eliminate the risk," said Nordsten impatiently. "Listen--would you like a hundred thousand pounds?"

  The Saint was silent for a longer time. His mouth opened, and he gaped at the financier more or less as he would have expected the real Tim Vickery to gape, in startlement and incredulity and a swelling hunger of greed; and not all of that was an effort. The same queer tingle of supernatural expectation touched his spine as had touched it when he discovered that quartet of detectives gathering in Bond Street eight hours ago; the same tiny pulse beat in his brain, but those were things that Ivar Nordsten could not see.

  "What do I have to do?" he asked at last; and that humourless twitch moved the corners of the financier's thin mouth again.

  "I'll show you."

  Nordsten got up and opened the door. Following him out into the hall and up the broad oak staircase, the Saint's face relaxed in a fleeting smile that hardly reached beyond the corners of his eyes. It was, he reflected, only in keeping with the rest of his madcap existence that he should have been in such a situation at that moment--it was the only logical sequel to the crazy impulse which had put him into the driving seat of that prehistoric taxi such a short while ago. Adventures were still to the adventurous. One-saw the tail of a wild goose whisk by in the arid deserts of the commonplace and grabbed it; and the chase led inevitably to a land flowing with un-godliness and boodle. And he would not have had his life ordered on any other lines. . . .

  They went down a long corridor carpeted ins rich purple; and Nordsten opened a door at the end. It gave onto a kind of small lobby, from which other doors opened on three sides. Nordsten opened the one on the left and led him in.

  It was a fairly large room with windows opening onto the falling view which the Saint had seen when he approached the house. There was a good rug on the floor, and a couple of armchairs; but it was the rest of the furnishings which were unusual. Looking them over slowly, Simon grasped their purpose. The room was fitted up as a complete engraving and printing plant in miniature. There was a drawing board with a green-shaded light, a workbench at one end of which were set out orderly rows of tools and a neat stack of steel plates, an electric warming plate, bottles of printing ink of every conceivable colour, and larger containers of acid and etching ground. In one cor-ner was a new hand press of the most modern design, and in another corner were boxes of paper of various sizes.

  "I think you'll find everything you could want," Nordsten said suavely; "but if you should require anything else, it will be procured as soon as you ask for it."

  Simon moistened his lips.

  "What do you want me to copy?" he asked.

  Nordsten went to the drawing board and picked up a small sheaf of papers which had been placed at one side of it.

  "As many of these as you can manage," he said. Some will be more difficult than others--perhaps you would do better to start on the easiest ones, You will have to work hard, but not so fast that you cannot do your best work. I will pay you one hundred thousand pounds as an indefinite retainer, and fifty thousand pounds for every plate you complete to my satisfaction. Do I take it that the proposition appeals to you?"

  The Saint nodded. He held in his hands the sheaf of papers which Nordsten had given him-- Italian national bonds, Norwegian national bonds, Argentine conversion bonds--a complete sample packet of international gilt-edge securities.

  "All right," he said. "I'll start on Monday."

  The financier shook his head.

  "If you intend to accept my offer you must start at once. I have arranged your accommodation so that you can always be near your work. This is a small self-contained suite--there is a bedroom next door and a bathroom opposite. Anything you need to make yourself comfortable can be obtained in an hour or two."

  "But my sister------"

  "You can write to her, or telephone whenever you like--there is an extension in your bedroom. Naturally you will not tell her what you are doing; but you will doubtless be able to explain your stay easily enough."

  "I shall have to match the paper."

  "It is already matched." Nordsten indicated the piles of boxes in the corner. "In fact, you have here sheets of the original papers. Many of the inks, also, are those which were used in the original printings. The only things I have been unable to obtain are the original plates; but those, of course, were destroyed. That is why I sent for you. Are you ready to start?"

  There was something in his voice which made Simon look at him quietly for a moment; and then he remembered again that he was supposed to be Tim Vickery and swallowed.

  "Yes," he said. "I'm ready."

  Ivar Nordsten smiled; Hut there was no more softening behind the smile than there had been behind any of the previous infinitesimal movements of his lips.

  "Really, it's the only sensible decision," he said genially. "Well, Vickery, I'll leave you to make your preparations. There is a bell beside the fire-place, and it will be answered as soon as you ring. Perhaps you will have dinner with me?"

  "Thank you," said the Saint.

  When his host had gone, he threw his cigar into the fireplace and lighted a cigarette. Later on he lighted another. For half an hour he wandered about the workshop, stopping sometimes to examine the implements that had been provided for . his use, stopping often to look at the sheaf of specimen bonds which he was asked to copy, with his brows knitted in a straight line of intense thought. And once his hand went to his hip for a reassuring feel of the weight of the automatic which he had not forgotten to put on when he dressed for the occasion; for there had been something in Ivar Nordsten's persuasive voice which told him that no Tim Vickery who refused the offer would have been allowed to take his knowledge of that strange proposition back into the open world.

  Nordsten required forgeries of a round dozen government bonds of as many nationalities. Why? Not for any ordinary purpose to which such counterfeits might have been put--the very idea was absurd. What for, then?

  He ran over everything he could recall about Nordsten. The name was not on the tip of every tongue, like the names of Rockefeller, or Morgan, but it was a name that was no less famous in other fields of finance; and it was part of Simon Templar's business to have at least a passing knowledge of those fields where millions are dealt with which are outside the limited ken of the average man in the street. Ivar Nordsten reaped in those fields; and the Saint had heard of him.

  To the few people whose interests brought them in contact with the less publicized kingdoms of industry, he was known as the Paper King. Start-, ing from one small factory in Sweden, he had built up a chain of production units which controlled practically the whole output of Scandinavia, Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and Holland, until more than half the paper which was consumed in Europe was manufactured under his management. Not long ago he had taken over the most important mills in Austria and Denmark, and penetrated the British industry with an amount of capital which completed a virtual financial monopoly of the most considerable manufacturing and consuming countries in Europe. Not even content with that, he was rumoured to be negotiating for a series of loans and amalgamations which would link up the major concerns of Canada and the United States in the gigantic organization of which he was dictator--an invulnerable world trust that would practically be able to write its own checks on every industry in which paper was used, and which would in a few years lift his already fabulous fortune into astronomical figures. This was the Ivar Nordsten of whom Annette Vickery had never heard; but it is a curious commentary on this civilization that the average man and woman hears of comparatively few of the great financial wizards until those wizards are trying to conjure themselves out of the dock in a criminal court. And this was the Ivar Nordsten who required a convicted forger to counterfeit twelve different 'series of foreign government bonds.

  Simon Templar sat in the armchair and turned the specimen bond
s over on his knee; and his second cigarette smouldered down till it scorched his fingers. There was only one possible explanation that he could see, and it made him feel giddy to think of it.

  At one o'clock the saturnine butler brought him an excellent cold lunch on a tray and asked him what he would like to drink. Simon suggested a bottle of Liebfraumilch, and it was brought at once.

  "Mr. Nordsten told me to ask if you would like a letter posting to your sister," said the man when he returned with the wine.

  Simon thought quickly. He would be expected to communicate with his "sister" in some way, but there were obvious reasons why he could not ring up his own house.

  "I'll give you a note right away, if you'll wait a sec," he said.

  He scribbled a few conventional phrases on a sheet of notepaper that was produced for him, and addressed it to Miss Annette Vickery at an entirely fictitious address in north London.

  At half-past two the butler came for the tray, asked him if there was anything else he wanted, and went out again. After a while the Saint strolled over to the drawing board, pinned out one of the certificates on it, covered it with a sheet of tracing paper, and began to pick out a series of lines in the engraving. Beyond that point the mechanics of counterfeiting would stump him, but he thought it wise to produce something to show that he had made a start on his commission. The future would have to take care of itself.

  He worked for two hours, and then the saturnine butler brought him tea. The Saint poured out a cup and carried it to the window with a cigarette. He had something else to think of; and that something was the sweltering spleen of Chief Inspector Teal, which by that time could scarcely be very far below the temperature at which its possessor would burst into flame if he scratched himself incautiously. Certainly the rear number plate of the taxi had been unreadable, and no one could have positively id ntified the eccentric driver with the Saint; but Claud Eustace Teal had seen him and spoken with him in Bond Street only a few minutes before the disastrous events which had followed, and Simon was only too familiar with the suspicious and uncharitable grooves in which Mr. Teal's mind locomoted along its orbit. That would provide an additional complication which had been ordained from the beginning, but the Saint could see no way of avoiding it.