The Happy Highwayman (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  “I am the Saint,” he said. “You should know the name. I know where to find Marty O’Connor. The only question you have to answer is—how much is he worth to you?”

  Luckner’s knees bent until he reached the level of the settee. He put the cigar back in his mouth.

  “Sit down,” he said. “Let’s talk this over.”

  The Saint shook his head. “Why waste the time, Joe? You ought to know how much Marty’s worth. He knows you and your precious gang, and he ought to be able to make a great squeal if they get him in the witness box. Not that I’d lose any sleep if you were going to be topped, but I suppose we can’t put everything right at once. You’ll get what’s coming to you. Sooner or later. But just for the moment, this is more important.”

  Simon studied his fingernails. “I owe Marty something, but I can’t give it to him myself. That’s one of the disadvantages of the wave of virtue which seems to have come over everybody. But I don’t see why you shouldn’t do it for me.”

  The Saint’s eyes lifted again suddenly to Luckner’s face with a cold and laconic directness. “I don’t care what you do about Marty so long as you pay what I think he’s worth.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “That is just five thousand pounds.”

  Luckner stiffened as if a spear had been rammed up his backbone from his sacrum to his scalp.

  “How much?”

  “Five thousand per-luscious Peppiatts,” said the Saint calmly. “And cheap at the price. After all, that only works out at about five hundred a year on the sentence you’ll get if you don’t pay. I’ll take it in fivers, and I shall want it by ten o’clock tonight.”

  The dilated incredulity of Luckner’s eyes remained set for a moment. Then they narrowed back to their normal size and remained fixed on the Saint’s face like glittering beads. It was symptomatic of Luckner’s psychology that he made no further attempt to argue.

  The Saint didn’t have the air of a man who was prepared to devote any time to bargaining, and Luckner was shrewd enough to know it. It didn’t even occur to him to question the fundamental fact of whether Simon Templar was really in a position to carry out his share of the transaction.

  The Saint’s name, and the reputation which Luckner still remembered, was sufficient guarantee of that. There was only one flimsy quibble that Luckner could see at all, and he had a premonition that even this was hopeless before he tried it.

  “Suppose we kept you here without any five thousand quid and just saw what we could do about persuading you to tell us where Marty is?”

  The Saint smiled rather wearily. “Of course I’d never have thought of that. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to have somebody waiting outside here who’d start heading south if I didn’t come out of this house safe and sound in”—be looked at his watch—”just under another three minutes.

  “And I wouldn’t have thought of telling this guy that if he had to beat it without me he was to get Marty and take him straight along to see dear old Claud Eustace Teal at Scotland Yard…You’re taking an awful lot for granted, Joe, but if you think you can make me talk in two and a half minutes I can’t stop you trying.”

  Luckner chewed his cigar across from one side of his mouth to the other. He was in a corner, and he was capable of facing the fact.

  “Where do we do this deal?”

  “You can send a couple of the Boys with the money down to Thames Ditton tonight. I’ll be waiting in a car a little way short of the level crossing. If the dough is okay I’ll tell them where to find Marty, and they can have him in five minutes. What they do when they see him is none of my business.”

  The Saint’s blue eyes rested on Luckner again with the same quiet and deadly implication. “Is that all quite clear?”

  Luckner’s head remained poised for a moment before it jerked briefly downwards.

  “The dough will be okay,” he said.

  The Saint smiled again. “They didn’t know how lucky you were going to be when they gave you your name, Joe,” he said.

  For some time after Templar had gone, Luckner sat in the same position, with his hands on his spread knees, chewing his cigar, and staring impassively in front of him. The man with the toothpick continued his endless foraging. The man who had guarded the front door, and the man who had stood in the hall, lighted cigarettes and gazed vacantly out of the window.

  The situation was perfectly clear, and Luckner had enough cold-blooded detachment to review it with his eyes open. After a while he spoke.

  “You better go, Luigi,” he said. “You and Karlatta. Better take guns this time—I don’t want any more half jobs like you did on Romaro.”

  Toscelli nodded phlegmatically and garaged his toothpick in his waistcoat pocket.

  “Do we take the dough?”

  “You’re damn right you take the dough. You heard what he said? You give him the dough and he’ll tell you where to find Marty. I’ll write a cheque and you can go to the bank this afternoon and collect it. And don’t kid yourselves. If there are any tricks, that bucker has thought of them all. You remember what he did to Ganning and Baldy Mossiter?”

  “It’s a lot of money, Lucky,” said Mr Toscelli gloomily.

  Joe Luckner’s jaw hardened. “Ten years is a lot of hard labour,” he said stolidly. “Never mind the dough. Just see that Marty keeps his mouth shut. Perhaps we can do something about the money afterwards.”

  Even then he kept his belief in his lucky star, although the benefit it had conferred on him was somewhat ambiguous. A more captious man might have quibbled that a price ticket of five thousand pounds was an expensive present, but to Luckner it represented fair value. Nor did he feel any compunction about the use to which he proposed to put the gift.

  In this respect at least, Mr Luigi Toscelli was able to agree with him. The chief strain on Mr Toscelli’s nerves was the responsibility of the cargo of crisp five-pound notes which he had collected during the afternoon. He felt a certain relief when he arrived at the rendezvous and found a closed car parked by the roadside and waiting for him exactly as the Saint had promised that it would be. Even so, he kept one hand on his gun while the Saint received the parcel of currency through the window.

  Simon examined its contents carefully under the dashboard light and satisfied himself that there was no deception.

  “A very nice little nest-egg,” he murmured. “You must be sorry to see it go, Luigi. By the way you needn’t clutch that gun so desperately—I’ve got you covered from here, and you’re a much better target than I am.”

  Toscelli wavered, peering at him sombrely out of the dark. It was true that it grieved him to see so much hard cash taken out of his hands. But he remembered Luckner’s warning, and he had heard of the Saint’s reputation himself.

  “Where do we go?” he growled.

  The shiny barrel of the Saint’s automatic, resting on the edge of the window, moved in a briefly indicative arc.

  “Over the crossroads and straight on past Hurst Park racecourse. Park your car beside the waterworks and wait for results. He’ll be travelling towards Walton, looking for a car parked exactly where you’re going to be—but he won’t expect you to be in it. You won’t make any mistake, because I’ve marked his car; the near-side headlight has a cross of adhesive tape on the lens, and I hope it will give you pious ideas. On your way, brother.”

  Simon drove slowly down the Portsmouth road. About a mile beyond Esher he pulled into the side of the road again and stopped there. He flicked his headlights two or three times before he finally switched them out. He had hardly done so when a subdued voice hailed him cautiously from the shadows at the roadside.

  The Saint grinned, and opened the door. “Hullo, there, Marty,” he said. He buttoned his coat and slipped out. “Are you ready to travel?”

  “If there’s nothing to stop us.”

  “There isn’t.” Simon punched him gently in the stomach, and their hands met. “The world is yours between here and Holyhead, and you can leave the
car at Fairfield’s and I’ll pick it up later. You’ll find five thousand quid in one of the pockets. And any time I’m in Cork I’ll drop by your stable and take one of your nags over the jumps. This’ll just even up what you did for me one time.” He gripped Marty’s shoulder for a moment, and then turned to the other slighter figure who stood beside them. “Take care of him, Cora—and yourself, too.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  A match, flared in the Saint’s hand for an instant, but his eyes were intent on the cigarette he was lighting.

  “You called Lucky Joe as I told you to?” he asked casually. “Told him you were through with Marty and couldn’t bear to wait another day to take up with the new love?”

  “Yes—an hour ago.”

  “I bet he fell for it.”

  “He said he’d be there.” She hesitated. “I don’t know why you’ve done all this for us, Saint, and I don’t know how you did it—but why did you want me to do that?”

  The Saint smiled invisibly in the dark.

  “Because I made a date for him by those Hurst Park waterworks and I wanted to be sure he’d keep it. Some friends of his will be there to meet him. I have to work in these devious ways these days, because Claud Eustace warned me to keep out of trouble. Don’t lose any sleep over it, kid. Be good.”

  He kissed her, and held the door while they got into the car. By about that time, he estimated, Mr Toscelli should be obeying Lucky Joe’s last orders.

  THE SMART DETECTIVE

  Inspector Corrio was on the carpet. This was a unique experience for him, for he had a rather distinguished record in the Criminal Investigation Department. While he had made comparatively few sensational arrests, he had acquired an outstanding reputation in the field of tracing stolen property, and incidentally in pursuit of this specialty had earned a large number of insurance company rewards which might have encouraged the kind-hearted observer to list a very human jealousy among the chief causes of his unpopularity. He was a very smug man about his successes, and he had other vanities which were even less calculated to endear him to the other detectives whom his inspired brilliance had more than once put in the shade.

  None of these things, however, were sufficient to justify his immediate superiors in administering the official flattening which they had long been yearning to bestow. It was with some pardonable glow of satisfaction that Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal, who was as human as anyone else if not more so, had at last found the adequate excuse for which his soul had been pining wistfully for many moons.

  For at last Inspector Corrio’s smug zeal had overreached itself. He had made an entirely gratuitous, uncalled for, and unauthorized statement to a writer on the Bulldog which had been featured under two-column headlines and decorated with Inspector Corrio’s favourite photograph of himself on the first inside sheet of that enterprising but sensation-loving weekly.

  This copy of the paper lay on Mr Teal’s desk while he spoke his mind to his subordinate, and he referred to it several times for the best quotations which he had marked off in blue pencil in preparation for the interview.

  One of these read, “If you ask me why this man Simon Templar was ever allowed to come back to England, I can’t tell you. I don’t believe in idealistic crooks any more than I believe in reformed crooks, and the Department has got enough work to do without having any more troubles of that kind on its hands. But I can tell you this. There have been a lot of changes in the system since Templar was last here, and he won’t find it so easy to get away with his tricks as he did before.”

  Teal read out this and other extracts in his most scorching voice, which was a very scorching voice when he put his heart into it, and let his temper rise a bit.

  “I hadn’t heard the news about your being appointed Police Commissioner,” Teal said heavily. “But I’d like to be the first to congratulate you. Of course a gentleman with your education will find it a pretty soft job.”

  Inspector Corrio shrugged his shoulders sullenly. He was a dark and rather flashily good-looking man who obviously had no illusions about the latter quality, with a wispy moustache and the slimmest figure consistent with the physical requirements of the Force.

  “I was just having a chat with a friend,” he said. “How was I to know he was going to print what I said? I didn’t know anything about it until I saw it in the paper myself.”

  Teal turned to page sixteen and read out from another of his blue-pencilled panels: “Inspector Corrio is the exact reverse of the popular conception of a detective. He is a slender well-dressed man who looks rather like Clark Gable and might easily be mistaken for an idol of the silver screen.”

  “You didn’t know that he’d say that either, did you?” Teal inquired in tones of acid that would have seared the skin of a rhinoceros.

  Inspector Corrio’s face reddened. He was particularly proud of his secretaryship of the Ponders End Amateur Players, and he had never been able to see anything humorous in his confirmed conviction that his destined home was in Hollywood and that his true vocation was that of the dashing hero of a box-office shattering series of romantic melodramas.

  Having dealt comprehensively with these lighter points, Mr Teal opened his shoulders and proceeded to the meatier business of the conference. In a series of well-chosen sentences, he went on to summarize his opinion of Inspector Corrio’s ancestry, past life, present value, future prospects, looks, clothes, morals, intelligence, and assorted shortcomings, taking a point of view which made up in positiveness and vigour for anything which it may have lacked in absolute impartiality.

  “And understand this,” he concluded. “The Saint hasn’t come home to get into any trouble. I know him and he knows me, and he knows me too well to try anything like that. And what’s more, if anybody’s got to take care of him I can do it. He’s a grown-up proposition, and it takes a grown-up detective to look after him. And if any statements have to be made to the papers about it, I’ll make them.”

  Corrio waited for the storm to pass its height, which took some time longer.

  “I’m sure you know best, sir—especially after the way he’s often been able to help you,” he said humbly, while Teal glared at him speechlessly. “But I have a theory about the Saint.”

  “You have a what?” repeated Mr Teal, as if Corrio had uttered an indecent word.

  “A theory, sir. I think the mistake that’s been made all along is in trying to get something on the Saint after he’s done a job. What we ought to do is pick out a job that he looks likely to do, watch it, and catch him red-handed. After all, his character is so well known that any real detective ought to be able to pick out the things that would interest him with his eyes shut. There’s one in that paper on your desk—I noticed it this morning.”

  “Are you still talking about yourself?” Teal demanded unsympathetically. “Because if so—”

  Corrio shook his head.

  “I mean that man Oppenheim who owns the sweat-shops. It says in the paper that he’s just bought the Vanderwoude emerald collection for a quarter of a million pounds to give to his daughter for a wedding present. Knowing how Oppenheim got his money and knowing the Saint’s line, it’s my idea that the Saint will try to do something about those jewels.”

  “And try something so feeble that even a fairy like you could catch him at it,” snarled Mr Teal discouragingly. “Go back and do your detecting at Ponders End, Corrio. I hear there’s a bad ham out there that they’ve been trying to find for some time.”

  If he had been less incensed with his subordinate, Mr Teal might have perceived a germ of sound logic in Corrio’s theory, but he was in no mood to appreciate it. Two days later he did not even remember that the suggestion had been made, which was an oversight on his part, for it was at that time that Simon Templar did indeed develop a serious interest in the unpleasant Mr Oppenheim.

  This was because Janice Dixon stumbled against him late one night as he was walking home in the general direction of Park Lane through one of the dar
k and practically deserted streets of Soho. He had to catch her to save her from falling.

  “I’m sorry,” she muttered.

  He murmured some absent-minded commonplace and straightened her up, but her weight was still heavy on his hand. When he let her go she swayed towards him and clung on to his arm.

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated stupidly.

  His first thought was that she was drunk, but her breath was innocent of the smell of liquor. Then he thought the accident might be only the excuse for a more mercenary kind of introduction, but he saw her face was not made up as he would have expected it to be in that case. It was a pretty face, but so pale that it looked ghostly in the semi-darkness between the far-spaced street lamps, and he saw that she had dark circles under her eyes and that her mouth was without lipstick.

  “Is anything the matter?” he asked.

  “No—it’s nothing. I’ll be all right in a minute. I just want to rest.”

  “Let’s go inside somewhere and sit down.”

  There was an all-night snack bar on the corner, and he took her into it. It seemed to be a great effort for her to walk, and another explanation of her unsteadiness flashed into his mind. He sat down at the counter and ordered two cups of coffee.

  “Would you like something to eat with it?”

  Her eyes lighted up, and she bit her lip. “Yes. I would. But—I haven’t any money.”

  “I shouldn’t worry about that. We can always hold up a bank.”

  The Saint watched her while she devoured a sandwich, a double order of bacon and eggs, and a slice of pie. She ate intently, quickly, without speaking. Without seeming to stare at her, his keen blue eyes took in the shadows under her cheek bones, the neat patch on one elbow of the cheap dark coat, the cracks in the leather of shoes which had long since lost their shape.

  “I wish I had your appetite,” he said gently, when at last she had finished.