Prelude For War s-19

by Leslie Charteris

  All these accumulated indignations and despairs drained through Mr Teal's intestines in one corrosive moment of appalling stillness before he finally wrenched a response out of his vocal cords.

  "How the hell did you get here?" he glurked.

  It was not, perhaps, the most fluent and comprehensive speech that Mr Teal had ever made. But it conveyed, with a succinctness which more rounded oratory might well have failed to achieve, the distilled essence of what was seething through the overloaded cauldrons of his mind. Its most serious defect was in the enunciation, which lacked much of that flutelike clarity which is favoured by the cognoscenti of the science of elocution. It sounded in fact, as if his throat were full of hot porridge.

  Simon smiled at him rather thoughtfully. He also had his memories; and the prime deduction which they offered him was that the unexpected intrusion of Chief Inspector Teal, at that particular moment of all moments, was defi­nitely an added complication in an affair that was already complicated enough. But the sublimely bantering slant of his brows never wavered.

  "I might ask you the same," he murmured. "But I see that your feet are looking as flat as ever, so I suppose you're still wearing them down."

  The detective's face under his staid bowler hat remained a glaring purple, but his inflated china-blue eyes were reced­ing fractionally.

  "I noticed your car outside," he said.

  He was a liar. He had seen it, but not noticed it. That shining cream-and-red monster was something that it would have been almost impossible to overlook in any landscape; but Mr Teal's thoughts had been far away from any subject so disturbing as the Saint. They had simply been moving in a fool's paradise where detectives from Scotland Yard were allowed to plod along investigating ordinary crimes committed by ordinary criminals without even a hint of such fantastic freaks as Simon Templar to mar the serenity of their dutiful labours. But Mr Teal had to say something like that to try and recover the majestic dominance from which in the agony of the moment he had so ruinously lapsed.

  The Saint dissected his effort with a sardonically generous tolerance that made the detective's collar feel as if it were shrinking into his neck like a garrote.

  "Of course, Claud," he said mildly. "Of course you did. I was forgetting what a sleuth you were. And while we're on the subject of sleuthing, I must say that you seem to have arrived in the nick of time. I don't know whether you've noticed it yet, but there's a dead man on the floor behind me. Without pretending to your encyclopedic knowl­edge of crime I should say that he appears to have been murdered."

  "That's right," Teal said raspingly. "And I should say that I knew who did it."

  The Saint raised his eyebrows.

  "I don't want to seem unduly sensitive," he remarked, "but there's something about your tone of voice that makes me feel uncomfortable. Can you by any chance be suggesting——"

  "We'll see about that," Teal retorted. He stepped aside out of the doorway. "Search him!" he barked.

  Behind him a lanky uniformed sergeant unfolded himself into full view. Somewhat apprehensively he stepped up to the Saint and went over his coat pockets. He took out a platinum cigarette case, a wallet, an automatic lighter and a fountain pen; and an expression of outraged astonishment came over his face.

  " 'Ere," he said suspiciously. "What 've you done with that gun?"

  "What gun?" asked the Saint puzzledly. "You don't think I'd carry a gun in a suit like this, do you? I've got too much respect for my tailor. Anderson would be horri­fied and Sheppard would probably throw a fit."

  "Search his hip pockets, you fool," snarled Mr Teal. "And under his armpits. That's where he's most likely to have it."

  "And don't tickle," said the Saint severely, "It makes me go all girlish."

  Breathing heavily, the sergeant searched as instructed and continued to find nothing.

  Simon lowered his arms.

  "After which little formality," he said amiably, "let us get back to business. As I was tactfully trying to mention, Claud, there seems to be a sort of corpse lying about on the floor. Do you think we ought to do something about it, or shall we shove it into the bathroom and pretend we haven't seen it?"

  Chief Inspector Teal's lower jaw moved in a ponderous surge like the first lurch of the pistons of a locomotive getting under way as he dislodged a forgotten bolus of chewing gum from behind his wisdom teeth. The purple tinge was dying out of his face, allowing it to revert a little closer to its normal chubby pink. The negative results of the sergeant's search had almost thrown him back on his heels, but the shock had something homeopathic in its effect. It had jarred him into taking one wild superhuman clutch at the vanishing tail of his self-control; and now he found himself clinging on to it with the frenzied fervour of a man who has inadvertently taken hold of the steering end of a starving alligator.

  Behind him, while the search was proceeding, a number of other persons had sidled cautiously into the room—a melancholy plain-clothes sergeant, a bald-headed man with a camera, a small sandy man with a black bag, a constable in uniform. To the experienced eye, they identified them­selves as the members of a C.I.D. murder squad as unmis­takably as if they had been labelled.

  Simon had watched their entrance with interest. He was doing some rapid reconstruction of his own. Mr Teal's advent had been far too flabbergastingly apt to be pure coincidence; and the presence of that compact covey of supporters was extra confirmation of the fact. Even chief inspectors didn't go forth with a retinue of that kind unless they were on a particular and major assignment. And Simon located the origin of the assignment a moment later in the shape of a fat blowzy woman with stringy gray hair who was hovering nervously in the least-exposed part of the background.

  Teal turned and looked for her.

  "Have you seen this man before ?" he demanded.

  She gulped.

  "N-no. But I bet 'e done it, just the sime. 'E looks just like one o' them narsty capitalists as pore Mr Windlay was always talkin' abaht."

  Simon's gaze rested on her.

  "Do you live in these parts?" he inquired politely.

  She bridled.

  "This 'ere is my property, young man, so you mind yer tongue. I come 'ere every week to collect the rent, not that I 'aven't wasted me time coming 'ere the larst two weeks."

  "You came here today and found the body?"

  "Yes, I did."

  "How long ago was that ?"

  "Not 'arf an hour ago, it wasn't. You oughter know."

  "And then you went straight out for the police, I sup­pose."

  "I went an' phoned Scotland Yard, that's wot I done, knowing as it's their business to catch murderers, an' a good thing, too. They got you, all right."

  "You didn't scream or anything?" Simon asked inter­estedly.

  The woman snorted.

  "Wot, me? Me scream an' 'ave all the neighbours in, an' get me 'ouse a bad nime ? Not likely. This is a respecta­ble place, this is, or it was before you come to it." A twinge of grief shot through her suety frame and made it quiver. "An' now ooze going ter pie me rent, that's wot I wanter know."

  The Saint extracted a cigarette from his case. The minor details of the situation were satisfactorily cleared up—the remarkably prompt arrival of the C.I.D. combined with the absence of a crowd outside. The fact that that exceptional conjunction of circumstances had resulted in his present predicament unfortunately remained unaltered; but it was some consolation to know that his first wild surmise was wrong and that Teal hadn't been led there in some fan­tastic way on a definite search for him. It made the odds look rather more encouraging.

  "Madam," he said helpfully, "I should think you might do rather well for a while by inviting the public to drop in and charging them sixpence admission. X marks the spot where the body was found, and they can see the original pool of blood on the mat. With Inspector Teal's bowler hat on the mantelpiece in a glass case and a plaster cast of his tummy in the hall­——"

  Mr Teal thrust himself sizzlingly forward. H
e signed to his plain-clothes sergeant.

  "Take her outside and get her statement," he gritted.

  Then he turned back to the Saint. His eyelids drooped as he fought frantically to maintain some vestige of the pose of somnolent boredom which had been his lifelong defence against all calamities.

  "And while that's being done, I'd like to hear what you've got to say."

  "Say?" repeated the Saint vaguely. He searched for his lighter. "Why, Claud, I can only say that it all looks most mysterious. But I'm sure it 'll all turn out all right. With that brilliant detective genius of yours——"

  "Never mind that," Teal said pungently. "I want to hear what you've got to say for yourself. I came here and found you standing over the body."

  The Saint shrugged.

  "Exactly," he said.

  "What do you mean—'exactly' ?"

  Mr Teal's voice was not quite so monotonous as he wanted it to be. It tended to slide off its note into a kind of squawk. But that was something that the Saint's ineffa­ble sangfroid always did to him. It was something that always brought Mr Teal to the verge of an apoplectic seizure.

  "What do you mean?" he squawked.

  "My dear ass," said the Saint patiently, in the manner of one who explains a simple point to a small and dull-witted child, "you said it yourself. You came in and found me standing over the body. You know perfectly well that when I murder people you never come in and find me stand­ing over the body. Now, do you ?"

  Mr Teal's eyes boggled in spite of the effort he made to control them. The hot porridge came back into his larynx.

  "Are you trying to tell me you're in the clear because I came in and found you bending over the body ?" he yawped. "Well, this is once when you're wrong! Perhaps I haven't done it before. But I've done it now. I've got you, Saint." The superb, delirious conviction grew upon him. "This is the one time you've made a mistake, and I've got you." Chief Inspector Teal drew himself up in the full pride of his magnificent climactic moment. "Simon Templar, I shall take you into custody on a charge of——"

  "Wait a minute," said the Saint quietly.

  The porridge bubbled underneath Teal's collar stud.

  "What for?" he exploded.

  "Because," said the Saint kindly, "in spite of all the rude ideas you've got about me, Claud, I like you. And it hurts me to see you going off like a damp squib. Didn't you hear the landlady say that she found the body about half an hour ago?"

  "Well?"

  "Well, I should think we could safely give her the full half-hour—she could hardly have got to a telephone and got you here with all your stooges in much less than that. And we've been talking for some minutes already. And if I murdered this body, you must give me a few minutes to spare at the other end. Let's be very conservative and say that I could have murdered him forty minutes ago." Simon consulted his watch. "Well, it's now exactly a quarter to three."

  "Are you starting to give me another of your alibis?"

  "I am," said the Saint. "Because at twelve minutes past one I left the Golden Fleece in Anford, which is ninety-five miles from here. Quite a number of the natives and several disinterested visitors can vouch for that—including a member of the local police whose name, believe it or not, is Reginald. And I know I'm the hell of a driver, but even I can't drive ninety-five miles in fifty-three minutes over the antediluvian cart tracks that pass for roads in this country."

  Over Chief Inspector Teal's ruddy features smeared the same expression that must have passed over the face of Sisyphus when, having at last heaved his rock nearly to the top of the hill, it turned round and rolled back again to the bottom. In it was the same chaotic blend of dismay, despair, agonized weariness and sickening incredulity.

  He knew that the Saint must be telling the truth. He didn't have to take a step to verify it although that would be done later as a matter of strict routine. But the Saint had never wasted time on an alibi that couldn't be checked to the last comma. How it was done, Teal never knew; if he had been a superstitious man he would have suspected witchcraft. But it was done, and had been done, too often for him not to recognize every brush stroke of the tech­nique. And once again he knew that his insane triumph had been premature—that the Saint was slipping through his fingers for what seemed like the ten thousandth time. . . .

  He bent his pathetically weary eyes on the body again, as if that at least might take pity on him and provide him with the inspiration for a comeback. And a sudden dull flare of breathless realization went through him.

  "Look!" he almost yelped.

  The Saint looked.

  "Messy sort of business, isn't it ?" he said chattily. "Some of these hoodlums have no respect for the furniture. There ought to be a correspondence course in Good Manners for Murderers."

  "That blood," Teal said incoherently. "It's drying . . ."

  He went down clumsily on his knees beside the body, fumbled over it, and peered at the stain on the carpet. Then he got slowly to his feet, and his hot, resentful eyes burned on the Saint with a feverish light.

  "This man has been dead for from three, to six hours," he said. "You could have gone to Anford and come back in that time!"

  "I'm sorry," said the Saint regretfully.

  "What for?"

  Teal's voice was a hoarse bark.

  Simon smiled.

  "Because I spent all the morning in Anford."

  "What were you doing there?"

  "I was at an inquest."

  "Whose inquest?"

  "Some poor blighter by the name of John Kennet."

  "Do you mean the foreign secretary's son—the man who was killed in that country-house fire?" Teal asked sharply.

  Simon regarded him benevolently.

  "How you do keep up with the news, Claud," he murmured admiringly. "Sometimes I feel quite hopeful about you. It's not often, but it's so cheering when it happens. A kind of warm glow comes over me——"

  "What were you doing at that inquest?" Teal said tor­ridly.

  The Saint moved his hands.

  "Giving evidence. I was the hero of the proceedings, so I got nicely chewed up by the coroner for a reward. You'll read all about it in the evening papers. I hate to disappoint you, dear old weasel, but I'm afraid I've been pretty well in the public eye since about half-past ten."

  Simon struck his lighter and made the delayed kindling of his cigarette.

  "So what with one thing and another, Claud," he said, "I'm afraid you're going to have to let me go."

  Chief Inspector Teal barred his way. The leaden bitter­ness of defeat was curdling in his stomach, but there was a sultry smoulder in his eyes that was more relentless and dangerous than his first unimpeded blaze of wrath. He might have suffered ten thousand failures, but he had never given up. And now there was a grim lourd determination in him that tightened his teeth crushingly on his battered scrap of spearmint.

  "You still haven't told me what you're doing here," he said stolidly.

  Simon Templar trickled smoke through momentarily sober lips.

  "I came to see Windlay," he said. "I wanted to see him before somebody else did. Only I was too late. You can believe that or not as you like. But the late John Kennet shared this place with him."

  The detective's eyes went curiously opaque. He stood with a wooden stillness.

  "What was the verdict at this inquest?"

  "Accidental death."

  "Do you think there was anything wrong with that?"

  Simon's glance travelled again over the disordered room.

  "Someone seems to have been looking for something," he said aimlessly. "I wonder if he found what he was after?"

  Casually, as if performing some quite idle action, he leaned forward and picked up a crumpled sheet of news­paper from the litter scattered over the floor. It was a French newspaper five days old, and a passage in it had been heavily marked out in blue pencil.

  "Well, well, well," he said. "Listen, Claud. What do you make of this? 'We should like your readers to ask
themselves where this criminal association calling itself the Sons of France obtains its funds and the store of arms which Colonel Marteau has so often boasted that he has hidden away for the day when they will be needed. And we ask our readers, how long will they tolerate the existence of this terrorist organization in their midst?' "

  He picked up a second scrap of paper from the floor. Again there was a blue-pencilled paragraph.

  " 'M. Roquambert, in a vitriolic speech to the Chamber of Deputies last night, urged on the government the neces­sity for a greatly increased expenditure on armaments. "Are we," he demanded, "to suffer the Boche to batter once more on the gates of Paris?" ' " Simon let the cuttings flutter out of his fingers. "I seem to remember that Comrade Roquambert is one of the heads of the Sons of France," he said. "Doesn't that interest you?"

  "What was wrong with that verdict?" Teal repeated.

  The Saint looked at him, and for once there was no mockery in his eyes.

  "I think it would be a good idea if you started investi­gating two murders instead of one," he said.

  4

  Which was undoubtedly a highly effective and dramatic exit line, Simon reflected, as the Hirondel roared westwards again towards Anford; but how wise it had been was another matter. It had been rather a case of meeting trouble halfway and taking the first smack at it. In the course of his inquiries Teal would inevitably have discovered that Kennet had shared the flat with Windlay, and Simon knew only too well how the detective's mind would have worked on from there directly the inquest headlines hit the stands. The Saint had had no option about taking the bull by the horns, but he wondered now whether he might have achieved the same result without saying quite so much. Chief Inspec­tor Teal's officially hidebound intelligence might sift slowly, but it sifted with a dour and dogged thoroughness. Simon realized at the same time that if he had an adequate alibi for the period during which Windlay might have been killed, Luker and his satellites had an alibi that was abso­lutely identical—it gave him an insight into the efficiency of the machinery that he had tampered with which was distinctly sobering, and he had plenty to think about on the return journey.