Prelude For War s-19

by Leslie Charteris

  Patricia was waiting for him when he stopped the car on Peter's drive. He picked her up and kissed her.

  "You look good enough to eat," he said. "And that reminds me, I haven't had any lunch. Where are the troops?"

  "Peter's keeping an eye on your menagerie," she told him. "I came back and sent Hoppy over to keep him com­pany. They're all at the Golden Fleece, and when Peter last phoned Hoppy was just starting on his second bottle of whiskey. Did you find Windlay?"

  "I found him," said the Saint stonily. "But not soon enough."

  In the kitchen, over a plate of cold beef and a tankard of ale, he told her the story in curt dispassionate sentences that brought it all into her mind as vividly as though she had been there herself.

  "It only means that we were right, darling," he con­cluded. "Kennet had something that was big enough to commit murder for. There wasn't any accidental-death hokum about Windlay. Somebody knocked on the door and gave him the works the minute he opened it. And the whole flat was torn into small pieces. It must have gone on while we were all footling about at that inquest acquiring beauti­ful alibis—these ungodly are professionals!"

  "But did they find what they were looking for?"

  "I wish I knew. Bur there's a hell of a good chance that they didn't, since they made a mess like that. I wish I knew exactly what the prize was. It seems to me that it must have been a fair-sized dossier—something that wouldn't be too easy to hide. And unless Kennet was a certifiable lunatic he wouldn't have brought that to Whiteways with­out leaving a duplicate somewhere. Hence the battle of Balaclava Mansions." He pushed his plate away and scowled at it. "If only that damned girl could remember a bit more of the things Kennet told her! He must have spouted like a fountain, and she simply didn't listen."

  "Why don't you see her again?" suggested Patricia. "You might be able to jog her memory or something. Any­way, you'd have a good time trying."

  Simon looked up at her from under impenitently slant­ing brows.

  "Are you insinuating that a man of my unparalleled purity——"

  "You'll have to hurry if you want to catch her today," Patricia said practically. "Peter found out from one of the chauffeurs that they're starting back to London at five-thirty."

  The Saint stood up restlessly.

  "I think I'd better amble over," he said.

  Again the Hirondel roared over the Anford road, and a few minutes later it swung to a grinding stop in the small courtyard in front of the Golden Fleece. As Simon stopped the engine and hitched his long legs over the side he glanced around for a glimpse of his confederates. The maternal laws of England being what they were, Hoppy must have been torn away from his second bottle about three hours ago, and it would be another half-hour before he would be allowed to return to it. Simon scanned the landscape for some likely place where the thirsty vigil might have been spent, and he became totteringly transfixed as his eyes set­tled on the window of an establishment on the opposite side of the road, next to the Assembly Rooms, over which ran the legend; Ye Village Goodie Shoppe.

  Peter Quentin was stoically reading a magazine; but on the other side of the table, bulging over the top of a choco­late eclair, the froglike eyes of Mr Uniatz ogled Simon through the plate glass with an indescribable expression of anguish and reproach that made the Saint turn hastily into the hotel entrance with his bones melting with helpless laughter.

  The first person he saw was Valerie Woodchester her­self. She was sitting alone on the arm of a chair in the lounge, smoking a cigarette and swinging one shapely leg disconsolately, but at the sight of him her face brightened.

  "Oh, hullo," she said. "What's the matter?"

  "Some things are too holy to talk about," said the Saint, sinking on to the chair opposite. "Never mind. Perhaps you can bring me back to earth. Are you always being left alone?"

  "The others are upstairs having a business conference or something." She studied him with fresh and candid inter­est. "Where have you been all the afternoon? You simply seemed to vanish off the face of the globe. I was afraid I should have to go back to town without seeing you again."

  "Then why go back to town?" he asked. "You could come over and join us at Peter Quentin's. There's a spare bed and a dart board and plenty to drink, and we could see lots more of each other."

  For a moment she looked a little hesitant. Then she shook her head quite decidedly.

  "I couldn't do that. After all, two's company and all that sort of thing, you know, and anyhow I don't think it would be good for you to see much more of me than you did when we first met." A little smile touched her lips and gleamed in her dark eyes. "Besides, I'm quite sure Algy Fairweather wouldn't like it. He's been warning me against you. For some reason or other he doesn't seem to approve of you an awful lot."

  "You amaze me," said the Saint solemnly. "But does it matter whether Comrade Fairweather approves or not?"

  "Well," she said, "a girl has to struggle along somehow, and Comrade Fairweather is a great help. I mean, if he has a man coming to dinner, for instance, and he doesn't want him to concentrate too hard on business, he asks me along and pays me for it. And then I probably have to have a new dress as well, because of course you can't stop a businessman concentrating in an old piece of sackcloth, and I never seem to have any new clothes when I need them."

  "In other words, you're his tame vamp, I take it."

  She opened her eyes wide at him.

  "Do you think I'm tame?"

  The Saint surveyed her appraisingly. Again he experi­enced the bafflement of trying to probe beyond that pert childish beauty.

  "Maybe not so tame," he corrected himself. "And what would your fee be for dining with a gent if it meant earning Comrade Fairweather's disapproval? For instance, what about having dinner with me on Thursday?"

  She didn't answer for a moment. She sat looking down­wards, swinging her leg idly, apparently absorbed in the movement of her foot.

  Then she looked up at him and smiled.

  "You've fallen for me in quite a big way, haven't you?" she said a little ironically. "I mean, inviting me to dinner and offering to pay me for it."

  "I fell passionately in love with you the moment I saw you," Simon declared shamelessly.

  She nodded.

  "I know. I couldn't help noticing the eager way you dashed off this morning when you thought you'd got all the information you could out of me. I mean, it was all too terribly romantic for anything."

  "The audience made me bashful," said the Saint. "Now if we'd only been alone——"

  Her dark eyes were mocking.

  "Well," she said, "I don't mean that I couldn't put up with having dinner with you if you paid me for it. After all, I've got to have dinner somewhere, and I've been out with a lot of people who weren't nearly so good looking as you are even if they weren't nearly so bashful either. Algy used to pay me twenty guineas for entertaining his important clients."

  "That must have helped to make things bearable," said the Saint in some awe.

  "Of course," she went on innocently, "I should expect you to pay a bit more than that, because after all I'm only a defenceless girl, and I know you must have some horrible motive for wanting me to have dinner with you."

  Simon raised his eyebrows.

  "You shock me," he said. "What horrible motive could I have for asking you out to dinner? I promise that you'll be as safe with me as you would be with your old Aunt Agatha."

  She sighed.

  "I know. That's just what I mean. If your eyes were foaming with unholy desire, or anything like that, I prob­ably shouldn't charge you anything at all. After all, brief life is here our portion, and all that sort of thing, and a spot of unholy desire from the right sort of person and in the right sort of way—well, you see what I mean, don't you ? But as things are, I don't think I could possibly let you off with less than fifty guineas."

  Simon leaned towards her.

  "You know," he said earnestly, "there's something about you—an innocence, a
freshness, a sort of girlish appeal that attracts me irresistibly. You're so—so ingenuous and uncal­culating. Will a check do, or shall you want it in cash?"

  "Damn," she said in dismay. "I believe you'd have paid a hundred if I'd asked for it. Oh well, I suppose a bargain's a bargain. A check will do."

  The Saint grinned.

  "Thursday, then, at eight o'clock. At the Berkeley. And since this is a business deal I shall expect you to be punctual. The fee will go down one guinea for every minute I'm kept waiting."

  She tossed the stub of her cigarette across the room into the empty fireplace.

  "Well, now we've finished talking about business can't we enjoy ourselves? I was hoping we'd have a chance after the inquest, but Algy hustled me away before I could even look round. They were all as mad as hornets, and I can't blame them. After all, you did make rather an ass of yourself, didn't you?"

  "Do you really think I was just playing the fool?" he asked curiously.

  "I mean trying to make out that Johnny had been mur­dered and Algy set fire to the house and so on. I mean, it was all so ridiculous, wasn't it?"

  This time he knew beyond doubt that her artlessness was not so naïve as it seemed. Her chatter was just a little too quick; besides, he had seen her face at one stage of the inquest.

  He paused to consider his reply for a moment. If she knew what he had seen in London, it might startle some­thing out of her. He felt that the move must be made with a fine hand.

  He had no chance to make it in that way.

  There was a sound of footsteps descending stairs, reach­ing the entrance of the lounge. Simon glanced over his shoulder; and then he rose leisurely to his feet.

  "It's time you were getting ready, my dear——"

  Fairweather's thinly jovial voice broke off sharply as he realized that there was someone else in the room. He stared at the Saint for a long moment, with his mouth slightly open, while his fat face turned into the likeness of a piece of lard. And then, without any acknowledgment of recog­nition, he turned deliberately back to Lady Valerie.

  "We shouldn't have left you so long," he said. "I hope you haven't been annoyed."

  "Of course she's been annoyed!" General Sangore's stormy voice burst out without the subtlety of Fairweather's snub. "It's an insult for that feller to speak to any decent person after his behaviour this morning. Damned if I know what he meant by it, anyway."

  Simon put his hands in his pockets and relaxed against a cabinet full of hideous porcelain.

  "What I meant by it was that I believe Kennet was mur­dered," he said good-humouredly. "Now have I made myself quite clear?"

  The general glared at him from under his bushy eye­brows. He seemed to expect Simon to melt like wax.

  "By Gad, sir," he said truculently, "you're—you're a bounder! I've never heard such bad form in my life!"

  "You mean that if it was murder you'd rather have it hushed up, don't you?" Simon said gently. "You didn't murder him yourself by any chance, did you?"

  Sangore's complexion went a rich mottled puce. He tried to speak, but there seemed to be an obstruction in his throat.

  Simon went on talking, and his voice was cool and piti­less.

  "Last year, when there was a strike at the Pyrford Aviation Works, which is a subsidiary of the Wolverhamp­ton Ordnance Company, you stated publicly that the ring­leaders ought to be put up against a wall and shot. This year, addressing the Easter rally of the Imperial Defence Society, you said: 'A great deal of nonsense has been talked about the horrors of war.' If you would have liked to kill half-a-dozen men for the sake of dividends, and if you think it's a great deal of nonsense to object to people being massacred in millions, I can't help feeling that you qualify as a good suspect. What do you think?"

  What General Sangore thought could only be inferred; he was still choking impotently.

  Lady Sangore came to his rescue. Her face had gone from white to scarlet, and her small eyes were glittering with vindictive passion.

  "The man's a cad," she proclaimed tremblingly. "It's no use wasting words on him. He—he simply isn't a sahib!"

  She appeared to be slightly appalled by her temerity, as if she had pronounced the ultimate unspeakable condem­nation.

  "It's—it's an outrage!" spluttered Fairweather. "The man is a well-known criminal. We're only lowering ourselves——"

  The Saint's cold blue eyes picked him up like an insect on a pin.

  "Let me see," he said. "I seem to remember that you played a forward part in getting a change made in the workings of the National Defence Contribution a few years ago. The sales talk was that the tax on excess profits would have paralyzed business enterprise; but the truth is that it would have hit hardest against the firms that were booming on the strength of the new rearmament program—of which, I think, Norfelt Chemicals was by no means the smallest. And you recently stated before a royal commission that 'The armament industry is one which provides employment for thousands of workers. The fact that its products are open to misuse can no more be held against the industry per se than can the production of drugs which would be poisonous if taken without medical advice.' If those are samples of your logic, I don't see why we shouldn't have you on the suspected list—do you?"

  Luker stepped forward.

  "Surely, Mr Templar," he remarked urbanely, "you aren't going to leave me out of your interesting summary."

  The Saint looked at him steadily.

  "I can give you some news," he said. "That is, if you haven't heard it already. I spent the afternoon going to London to see if I could catch Ralph Windlay, the man Kennet lived with, before an accident happened to him. I'm sure you'll be cheered to know that everything went off without a hitch and he was already dead when I got there."

  There was a dead silence.

  And then Lady Valerie Woodchester was tugging uncon­sciously at the Saint's arm. Her full lips were quivering and there was an expression of dazed horror on her face.

  "Not Ralph?" she was saying shakily. "No ... no, he can't have been murdered, too!"

  The Saint's eyes went to her with an instant's brief compassion.

  "I'm afraid so," he said. "Even our coroner here couldn't make out it was an accident. He was shot right between the eyebrows, and his brains were all over the carpet."

  "The use of the word 'too' is interesting." Luker's impassive voice came levelly through the stillness. "If Kennet was murdered, somebody killed him and then set fire to the house. Within a few minutes Mr Templar arrives on the scene. It is he who suggests foul play. Then Kennet's friend Windlay is murdered, and again Mr Templar is first on the scene; again it is he who discovers that there has been foul play. It certainly appears to be a coincidence to which the attention of the police should be called."

  Simon's bleak gaze took him up.

  "Or you might mention it to the Sons of France," he said.

  It was a shot in the dark, but it hit a target somewhere. For the first time since he had known him, Simon saw Luker's graven mask slip for a fraction of a second. For that fleeting micron of time the Saint saw the stark soul of a man to whom murder meant nothing.

  IV

  How Kane Luker Spoke His Mind, and

  Hoppy Uniatz Did the Best He Could

  with His

  "I LIKE THIS PLACE," said Lady Valerie Woodchester, looking smugly around her. "It's one of the few places in London where civilized people can eat civilized food."

  The Saint nodded. They had worked their way through three quarters of a menu selected with Simon Templar's own impeccable gastronomic artistry and served with the deference which waiters always instinctively gave him; and he had watched her personality expand and ripen like an exotic flower coming into bloom. Undoubtedly she did the setting no less justice than it did her. Her flawless shoul­ders and deliciously modelled head rose out of a plain but daringly cut evening gown like an orchid rising from a dark stem, with a startling loveliness that turned many envi­ous eyes towards her; she knew it, and
she was delighted, like a child who has been taken out on a special treat. A brighter sparkle had crept gradually into her eyes and a faint flush into her cheeks. It was fun, you felt, to be eating a good dinner, and to be in one of the best places among the best people, and to be with a man who was tall and dark and handsome and who could make waiters fuss about obsequiously. Her dazzling flow of gay, senseless prattle had given the Saint no need to make trivial conver­sation while they ate; but now he hardened his heart.

  "Yes," he agreed. "The food is good and the atmosphere is right. Also a stitch in time saves embarrassing exposure, and the horse is the noblest of animals. Now you've earned your bread and butter, and you can stop entertaining me. Let's be serious for a minute. Have you seen any of our friends today?"

  She didn't answer at once. She was looking down at her plate, drawing idle patterns with her fork. Her expression had become abstracted; her thoughts seemed to be very far away.

  "Yes, I've seen them," she said vaguely.

  "And how are they making out?"