Prelude For War s-19

by Leslie Charteris

  "Before she takes off what?" asked the Saint foggily.

  "Before she takes off wit' de compressed whiskey," said Mr Uniatz proudly, "De stuff de temperance outfit she's woikin' for t'rows out of de aeroplanes." Mr Uniatz raised his bottle and washed out his throat with enthusiastic lavish-ness. His eyes glowed with the rapture of achievement. "Chees, boss, why didden we t'ink of dat before? It's in de bag!"

  Simon looked at him for a moment; and then he bowed his head in speechless reverence.

  And at that instant the telephone bell rang.

  The sound jarred into the silence with a shrill unexpected­ness that jolted them all into an unnatural stillness. There were many people among the Saint's large acquaintance who might have made a casual call at that hour; and yet for some illogical reason the abrupt summons gave him a queer intuitive tightening in his stomach. Perhaps it was the way his thoughts had been running. He lifted his head and looked at the faces of the others, but they were all expressionless with the same formless foreboding.

  Simon picked up the phone.

  "Hullo," he said.

  "Is that you, Simon darling?" it answered. "This is Valerie."

  A feathery tingle passed up the Saint's spine and was gone, and with it the tightness in his stomach was gone also. He could not have said exactly how he knew so much. Her voice was quite ordinary, and yet there was an inde­finable tension in it that seemed to make everything quite clear. Suddenly his brain seemed to be abnormally cool and translucent.

  "Hullo, darling," he said evenly. "And how are you?"

  "I'm all right, thanks. . . . Listen, Simon, you remem­ber that cloakroom ticket I asked you to keep for me?"

  Simon drew at his cigarette.

  "Of course," he said, without hesitation. "It's quite safe."

  "That's good," she said. "You see, I'm afraid I've got to have it back at once. I'm awfully sorry to be such a nuisance, but it's frightfully important. I mean, could you bring it round right away? It's all frightfully thrilling, but I'll tell you all about it when you get here. Can you possibly manage it?"

  "Easily," he said. "I was just looking for something useful to do."

  "You know where I live, don't you?"

  "I should think so. I looked it up in the phone book as soon as I got back to town, and I've just been waiting for an invitation."

  "Well, you've got one now. And listen. Nobody must know you're coming to see me. I'll tell you why afterwards."

  "No one shall even guess where I've gone," said the Saint, with his eyes on Patricia. "I'll be over in ten minutes."

  "Thanks so much, darling," she said. "Do hurry."

  "I will."

  He laid the phone gently back on its bracket, and stood up. The dance of his blue eyes was as if he had been asleep all the evening and had just become awake. He had no more doubts or problems. All the dammed-up, in-turned energy with which he had been straining was crystallized suddenly into the clean sharp leap of action. He was smiling.

  "Did you get that, souls?" he said.

  "She wants to see you," said Patricia. "Am I supposed to get excited?"

  "She wants more than that," he said. "She wants a cloakroom ticket which she gave me to keep for her—which she never gave me. She wants it at once; and nobody's to know where I've gone. And somebody was listening on the wire all the time to make sure she said all the right things. So I don't see how I can refuse the date." The Saint's smile was dazzlingly seraphic. "I told you something was bound to happen, and it's starting now!"

  4

  "Excuse me a minute while I get into my shooting clothes," he said.

  He vanished out of the nearest door; but the room had hardly had time to adapt itself to his disappearance when he was back again. The Saint could always make a profes­sional quick-change artist look like an elderly dowager dressing for a state ball, and when he was in a hurry he could do things with clothes that bordered on the miracu­lous. He came back in a gray lounge suit whose sober hue had no counterpart in the way he wore it, which was with all the peculiarly rakish elegance that was subtly infused into anything he put on. His fresh shift was buttoned and his tie was tied, and he was feeding a fully charged maga­zine into the butt of a shining Luger.

  "You're not really going, are you?" asked Patricia hope­lessly.

  She knew when she said it that it was a waste of words, and the scapegrace slant of his brows was sufficient answer.

  "Of course not, darling," he said. "These are my new pajamas."

  "But you're doing just what they want you to do!"

  "Maybe. But do they know that I know it? I don't think so. That phone call was as straightforward as a baby's prayer—to the guy who was checking up on it. Only Valerie knows that she never gave me a cloakroom ticket, and she knows I know it. She's on the spot in her own flat, and that was the only way she could tip me off and call for help. Do you want me to stay home and knit?"

  Patricia stood up. She kissed him.

  "Be careful, boy," she said. "You know I look terrible in black."

  Peter Quentin finished his drink and rose. He buttoned his coat with a deep sigh.

  "I suppose this is the end of our chance of a night's rest," he said pessimistically. "I ought to have stayed in Anford." He saluted Patricia. "Will you excuse Hoppy and me if we trot along to take care of the dragons while your problem child is striking attitudes in front of the heroine? We don't want anything to happen to him—it would make life so horribly quiet and peaceful."

  Simon stopped at the door.

  "Just a minute," he said. "There may be policemen and other emissaries of the ungodly prowling around outside. We'd better not take chances. Will you call down to Sam Outrell, Pat, and tell him to meet me in the garage?"

  As they rode down in the elevator he felt the springy elation of the moment spreading its intoxication through his muscles. The lucid swiftness of his mind ran on, constructing a clear objective framework of action in which he moved with unhurried precision with each step unerringly laid out a fraction of time before he reached it.

  Down in the basement garage Sam Outrell, the janitor, was waiting for him when the elevator doors opened, with a look of placid expectancy on his pleasant bucolic face. He fell in at the Saint's side as Simon walked across to where the Hirondel stood waiting in its private bay.

  "Goin' out on business again, sir?" he queried, with the imperturbation of many years of experience of the Saint's unlawful occasions.

  "I hope so, Sam." The Saint cocked his legs over the side while Peter and Hoppy climbed into their own seats. "I don't want to stage a big demonstration, but you might just do a quiet job of obstructing if anyone's waiting for us. Take your own heap and follow me up the ramp, and see that you stick tight on my tail. When I wave my hand, swing across the road and stall your engine. I'll only want two or three minutes."

  The exhaust purred as he touched the starter. He pulled the Hirondel out to the foot of the ramp and held it there, warming the engine, until he saw Outrell's car behind him. Then he let in the clutch and roared up the slope, with the other car following as if it were nailed to his rear fenders.

  At the top he whipped round in a screaming turn out into the narrow street that ran by the back of Cornwall House. There was a taxi parked close by the garage entrance and a small sports car with a man reading a news­paper in it standing just behind; both of them might have been innocent, but if they were it would do them no harm to be obstructed for a few minutes.

  The Saint raised one hand just above his head and made a slight movement.

  He heard the squeal of Sam Outrell's brakes behind him, and grinned gently to himself as he locked the wheel for another split-arch turn into Half Moon Street. The snarl of the engine rose briefly, lulled, and then settled into a steady drone as they nosed into Piccadilly, shot across the front of a belated bus and went humming down the west-ward slope towards Hyde Park Corner.

  Peter Quentin settled deep into his seat and turned to Hoppy.

 
; "I hope your insurance policies are all paid up, Hoppy," he said.

  "I ain't never had none," said Mr Uniatz seriously. "I seen guys what try to sell me insurance, but I t'ought dey was all chisellers." He brooded anxiously over the idea. "Do ya t'ink I oughta get me some, boss?"

  "I'm afraid it's too late now," said Peter encouragingly. "But perhaps it doesn't matter. You haven't got a lot of wives and things lying around, have you?"

  Mr Uniatz scratched his head with a row of worried fingers.

  "I dunno, boss," he said shyly. "Every time I get mar­ried I am not t'inking about it very much. So I never know if I have got married or not," he said, summarizing his problem with a conciseness that could scarcely have been improved upon.

  Peter pondered over the exposition until he felt himself getting slightly giddy, when he decided that it would prob­ably be safer to leave it alone. And the Saint spun the wheel again and sent the Hirondel thundering down Grosvenor Place.

  "When you two trollops have finished gloating over your sex life," he said, "you'd better try to remember what hap­pens when we get to Marsham Street."

  "But we know," said Peter, carefully continuing to refrain from looking at the road. "Don't we, Hoppy? If we ever get there alive, which is very unlikely, we jump about in the foreground and try to attract the bullets while the beauteous heroine swoons into Simon's arms."

  Simon squeezed the car through on the wrong side of a crawling taxi which was hogging the centre of the road, and while he was doing it he neatly swiped Peter's cigarette with his disengaged hand.

  "That's something like the idea; except that as usual you'll be in the background. I'm just building on probabili­ties, but I think I've got it pretty straight. Two or more thugs will be in possession. When I ring the bell, one of them will come to the door. They can't all open it at once, and at least one of them will probably be busy keeping Valerie quiet, and in any case they won't want any noise that they can avoid. Besides, they'll be expecting me to walk in like a blindfolded lamb. Now, I think it can only break two ways. Either the warrior who opens the door will open it straight on to a gun . . ."

  He went on, sketching possibilities in crisp, comprehen­sive lines, dictating move and countermove in quick sinewy sentences that strung the strides of a supreme tactician together into a connected chain on which even Hoppy Uniatz could not lose his grip. It might all seem very simple in the end, but in that panoramic grasp of detail lay the genius that made amazing audacities seem simple.

  "Okay, skipper," Peter said soberly, as the car swooped into Marsham Street. "But don't forget you're responsible to Hoppy's widows and my orphans."

  Ever since the first few hectic moments of the ride they had been running with the cutout closed, and the dying of the engine was scarcely perceptible as Simon turned the switch.

  After the last turn they had slid up practically in silence to their destination, which was one of a row of modern apartment buildings that had not long ago transformed the topography of that once sombre district. One or two other cars were parked within sight, but otherwise the street seemed quiet and lifeless. Simon glanced up at the cross­word design of light and dark windows as he stepped out of the car and crossed the pavement, with some attention to the softness of his footsteps, for he knew well how sounds could echo to the upper windows of a silent street at that hour of the night. He said nothing to the others, for all the ground had been covered in advance in his instructions. He read off the apartment number from the indicator in the empty lobby, and an automatic elevator carried them up to the top floor. The Saint was as cool as chromium, as accurate and self-contained as a machine. He left the elevator doors open and waited until Peter and Hoppy had taken up their positions flattened against the wall on either side of the door; then he put his knuckle against the bell.

  There was an interval of perhaps ten seconds, then the door opened.

  It opened, according to the Saint's first diagnosis, straight on to an awkward-looking silenced revolver in the hand of the stocky ape-faced man who unfastened the latch.

  "Come in," he said.

  Blank astonishment, anger and incredulity chased them­selves over the Saint's face—exactly as they were expected to chase themselves.

  "What's the idea of this?" he demanded wrathfully. "And who the hell are you, anyway?"

  "Come in," repeated the man coldly. "And put your hands up. And hurry up about it, before I give you some­thing."

  The Saint put his hands up and went in. But he went in with his shoulder blades sliding along the door, so that the other was momentarily cut off from it. Then the man had to turn his back to the doorway when he started to close the door, so as to keep Simon covered at the same time. And that was part of the clockwork of the Saint's preorgan­ized plan. Simon gave the signal with a gentle cough; and over the man's shoulder appeared the intent face of Peter Quentin, soundlessly, with a stiff rubber blackjack raised. There was a subdued clunk, and the man's eyes went com­ically glassy.

  At that instant other things happened with the smooth timing of a well-rehearsed conjuring trick. The Saint's hands dropped like striking falcons on to the ape-faced man's gun, bent the wrist inwards towards the elbow, whipped the revolver out of the suddenly powerless fingers. Simultaneously Peter Quentin was moving aside, to be replaced by Hoppy Uniatz, whose massive paws closed on the man's throat in a gorilla grip faster than Peter himself could have put away his blackjack and taken the same hold. Meanwhile Peter slid round the man's side, received the revolver as Simon detached it and jammed the silencer into the man's ribs. It was all done with a glossy perfection of teamwork that would have dazed the eye of the beholder if there had been any beholder present, all within the space of a scant second; and then the Saint was talking into the man's ear.

  "One whisper out of you, and they'll be able to thread you on a flagpole," he said. Then he stepped back a few inches. "Okay, Hoppy—let him breathe."

  The crushing grasp of Mr Uniatz fingers slackened just sufficiently to allow a saving infiltration of air. The deli­cately judged blow of the rubber blackjack had deadened the ape-faced man's brain for just long enough to allow the subsequent manoeuvres to take place without stunning him permanently. Now he stared at the Saint with squeezed-out eyes in which there was a pallor of voiceless fear.

  "Talk very quietly," said the Saint, in that ghostly into­nation which barely travelled a handbreadth beyond the ears of its intended audience. "What was supposed to hap­pen next?"

  "I was to take you in there—there's two chaps want to see you."

  Simon's glance had already covered the tiny hall. The three doors that opened off it were all closed; the ape-faced man had indicated the centre one.

  "Good enough," said the Saint. "Let's carry on as if nothing had happened."

  He passed his own automatic to Peter, took away the silenced revolver, spilled the shells out into his palm and dropped them into Hoppy's pocket, then thrust the empty weapon back into the hand of its owner.

  "Cover me with it and carry on," he ordered. "When we go in there, leave the door open. And remember this: my friends will be watching you from outside. If you breathe a word or bat an eyelid to let your reception committee know that everything isn't going according to plan, and any bother starts—you'll be the first dead hero of the evening." The Saint's voice was as caressing as velvet, but it was as cold and unsentimental as a polar sea. "Let's go."

  He turned his back and sauntered over to the middle door; and the ape-faced man, urged on by a last remem­brancing prod from the muzzle of the murderous gun which Mr Uniatz had by that time added to the displayed collec­tion of artillery, lurched helplessly after him.

  Simon turned the handle and entered the room with his arms raised. On one side Lady Valerie Woodchester was roughly tied to a chair, and one of the two men there was bending over her with a hand clamped over her mouth. The other man stood on the opposite side of the room with a cigarette loosely held in one hand and a small automatic levelled in th
e other.

  The Saint's eyes rambled interestedly over the scene.

  "What ho, souls," he drawled. "And how are all the illegitimate sons of France tonight?" .

  V

  How Simon Templar Obliged Lady Valerie,

  and Chief Inspector Teal Re­ fused Breakfast

  THE MAN who had been bending over Lady Valerie straight­ened up. He was slim and sallow, with black hair plastered down over his head until it looked as if it had been waxed. He had quick darting eyes and a sly slinking manner; his movements were abrupt and silent, like those of a lizard. One could imagine him lurking in dark corners for sinister purposes.

  The Saint smiled at Lady Valerie as the lizardlike man withdrew his hand and her face became visible. The first expression on her face was a light of joy and relief; and then when she saw that he kept his hands up and saw the ape-faced man follow him in with the silenced revolver screwed into his back, it changed through stark unbelief to hopeless dejection.

  "Hullo, darling," he said. "You do have some nice friends, don't you?"

  She didn't respond. She sat there and stared at him reproachfully: she seemed to be deeply disappointed in him. Simon realized that there was some excuse for her, but she would have to endure.her unfounded disappointment for a little while longer.

  He transferred his smile to the automatic and the ciga­rette.

  "Nice weather we've been having, haven't we?" he mur­mured, keeping the conversational ball rolling single--handed.

  This other man was bigger, and there was an air of con­scious arrogance about him. He had the cold, intolerant eyes and haughty moustache of a Prussian guardsman. He gazed back at Simon with fishlike incuriosity and made a gesture with his cigarette at the sallow man.

  "Disarm and search him, Dumaire."

  "So your name is Dumaire, is it?" said the Saint politely. "May I compliment you on your coiffure? I've never seen floor polish used on the head before. And while this is going on, won't you introduce me to your uncle?"

  Dumaire said nothing; he simply proceeded to do what he was told and run through the Saint's pockets. Keys, ciga­rette case, lighter, money, handkerchief, wallet, fountain pen—he took out the commonplace articles one by one and laid them on a small table in front of the man who appeared to be in charge. While he was waiting for the collection to be assembled the latter answered Simon's question.