The Saint Steps In s-24

by Leslie Charteris

  "You'll have to prove that, bud."

  "Both Miss Gray and I are ready to identify you."

  "And my friend will say we were playin' cards."

  "Quite a while after that," Simon continued unperturbed, "did you by any chance take a long shot at me through my window at the Shoreham?"

  "No."

  Simon inhaled throughtfully.

  "No, maybe that wasn't you. That was probably your chunky friend." He glanced down at the Pullman stub for a moment. "You came up on the sleeper last night, so you'd have been headed for the station by that time."

  "It's a free country."

  "I didn't think you'd be a guy who appreciated free coun­tries."

  The other went on looking at him with his mouth clamped shut and his eyes hard with hate.

  "I hope you know just what sort of a spot you're in," said the Saint carefully. "Kidnaping has been a federal rap for quite a while now, and I don't imagine you'd be very happy about having a lot of G-men move in on your life. On top of that, I catch you breaking in here——"

  "I didn't break anything. The door was unlocked."

  "That doesn't make any difference. And you know it. You were carrying concealed weapons——"

  "Only because you say so."

  "And just how do you explain being here?"

  "I left a coupla books," Morgen said slowly. "I forgot them when I was packin'. I came back to get them."

  "Why didn't you go to the house and ask for them?"

  "I didn't want to make any trouble. I just thought I could find them and take them away."

  Simon shook his head judicially.

  "It's a lovely story, Karl. The FBI will have lots of fun with it."

  "Go ahead. Tell them."

  "Aren't you afraid they might be a little rough with you?"

  "Why don't you turn me in and find out?"

  "Because," said the Saint, "I want to talk to you myself first."

  The man licked his lips, standing very stiffly and still holding on to the work-bench with big bony hands.

  "I don't want to talk to you, bud."

  "But you don't have any choice," Simon pointed out mildly. "And I've got a whole lot of questions I want answered. I want to know who gave you that note to put in my pocket at the Shoreham. I want to know who hired you to put the arm on Madeline Gray. I want to know who you're working for, in a general way. I want to know where Calvin Gray is right now."

  "You better ask somebody who can tell you."

  "And who's that?"

  "I wouldn't know."

  The Saint smiled very faintly.

  "Tough guy, aren't you?"

  "Maybe."

  "So am I," Simon said, rather diffidently. "I'm sure you know who I am. And I expect you've heard about me before. I'm a pretty tough guy too, Karl. I could have quite a good time getting rough with you."

  "Yeah? When do you start?"

  "You don't want to play?"

  "No, bud."

  The smile didn't leave the Saint's lips.

  "Bud," he said, "your dialogue is a little dull."

  He put his weight on the foot that was on the floor, and fol­lowed it with the other.

  He knew exactly what he was going to do, and he was per­fectly calm about it. It wouldn't be pretty, but that wasn't his fault. He couldn't see anything handy to tie Morgen up with at the moment, and he couldn't afford to take any chances. The man really was tough, out of the down-to-bone fiber of him—and dangerous.

  The Saint's expression was amiable and engaging, and he really felt that way, taking an audit of his good fortune. Only the icy blue of his eyes matched the part of his mind that was detached and passionless and without pity or friendliness.

  He walked around the bench until he was within arm's length of Morgen, and raised his right hand until his gun was at the level of Morgen's face. The other stared at it without blinking. Simon swung his wrist and forearm through a sudden arc that smashed the gun barrel against the side of the man's head. Morgen staggered and clung to the table. The Saint took another step towards him and jabbed the muzzle of the gun like a kicking piston into the region of his solar plexus. Morgen gasped throatily and sagged towards him.

  The Saint took a half step back and slipped the automatic into his pocket. He used Morgan's chin like a punch-bag, giving him a left hook and then a right. The man let go the table and reeled back until he crashed into the wall behind him and slid down it to the floor.

  "Get up," Simon said relentlessly. "This is only the begin­ning."

  The man clawed himself up against the wall. He spat blood, and spat out an unprintable phrase after it.

  Simon hit him again. Morgen's head caromed off his knuckles and thudded against the wall. The man's eyes were glazing, and only the same wall at his back held him upright.

  He stood flattened against it, his arms spread out a little to hold himself up.

  "How does it feel to suffer for your Führer?" Simon asked gently.

  He hit the man once more, not so hard, but stingingly.

  It wasn't a magnificent performance, and it wasn't meant to be. It was simply and callously the mechanical process known in off-the-record police lore as softening up the opposition. But the Saint had no more compunction about it than he would have had about gaffing a shark. He was too sure of how Karl Morgen would have behaved if the positions had been reversed.

  He was even more sure as he stared down Morgen's eyes, still unchangeably vicious and hate-filled in spite of their un­certain focus, but beginning to shift in sheer animal dread of such ruthless punishment.

  "This can go on as long as you like, Karl," said the Saint, "and I won't mind it a bit. I can spend the rest of the day beat­ing you to a pulp. And in between times we can try some new tricks with bunsen burners and some of the hungrier acids."

  "You son of a bitch!"

  "You won't get around me by flattering my mother. Do we talk or shall we go on playing?"

  He poised his fist again; and for the first time Morgen flinched and raised one arm to cover his face.

  "Well?" Simon prompted.

  "What d'ya want to know?"

  "That's better."

  The Saint took out another cigarette and lighted it. He blew the first breath of smoke deliberately into Morgen's face. If he had to bully a bully, he could go all the way with it.

  "Are you working for Imberline?" he asked.

  "No."

  "What were you doing with him last night?"

  "I only just met him. I was tryin' to get a job with Consoli­dated Rubber."

  "Why?"

  "I want to eat."

  "It seems to me," Simon observed, "that you're rather fond of rubber in your diet."

  "You got me wrong, bud. I'm a chemist. I gotta find a job I can do."

  Simon's gaze was inclement and unimpressed.

  "Who gave you that note to put in my pocket?"

  "Somebody else."

  "The same guy who hired you to snatch Madeline Gray?"

  "That wasn't a snatch. We were just goin' to scare her a bit."

  "I said, was it the same guy?"

  "Yeah."

  "Who?"

  "Someone I work for."

  "Karl," said the Saint genially, "I'm afraid you're stalling. Don't keep the suspense going too long, or I might get excited. Who are you working for?"

  "A business man."

  "Is his name Schicklgrüber?"

  Morgen's eyes burned.

  "No."

  Simon smashed him on the mouth with a long straight left that bounced his head off the wall again.

  "I told you I was excitable," he said equably. "And besides stalling, you're lying. I'm sure of that. Now tell me who else you're working for, and talk fast. Or else we are going to get really rough."

  Morgen wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

  "Okay, bud," he rasped. "Have it your way. We have got Calvin Gray. And if anything happens to me, it's gonna be just too bad about him."
/>
  "You've been seeing too many B pictures," said the Saint flintily. "That line is so standard that they put it in the script with a rubber stamp."

  "You better ask Madeline and see what she thinks."

  Simon didn't hesitate for an instant.

  "I can't. She's in New York."

  "Better ask her, just the same."

  "I'd rather ask you. How much will it console you to think about what's going to happen to Calvin Gray while I'm broil­ing your feet and basting them with nitric acid?"

  Morgen looked at him for quite a while, and that was one pause which the Saint didn't hurry. He let it sink in for all it was worth.

  The man said: "Couldn't we make a deal?"

  "It depends what the deal is."

  "Gimme a cigarette, bud."

  Simon backed off a couple of paces, dipped in his pocket, fingered out a cigarette, and tossed it over. Morgen fumbled the catch, and the cigarette flipped off his hands and fell to­wards the work-bench. He muttered something and went to pick it up. And then everything erupted.

  Morgen was down on his hands, groping for the cigarette; and he must have been less groggy than he had left himself appear. Or else he was tougher than he boasted. Instead of straightening up, he dived forward like a sprinter off the mark. The dive took him right under the work-bench. Then the whole massive bench heaved up at one end as he rose un­der it. Glass slid and crashed on the floor; but Morgen was momentarily hidden, arid the Saint had to sidestep fast and put up a hand to deflect the heavy table as it teetered over on to him like a gigantic club. He caught a blurred glimpse of Morgen plunging out through the hall, and squeezed the trigger of his automatic for a snap shot, but he was off balance and moving and it hadn't a chance.

  The Saint's vocabulary, displayed to the right audience, would have entitled him to a priority on excommunications.

  He skidded around the upturned table and darted through the hall in pursuit. Morgen was out of sight when the Saint got outside, but the blundering and crashing of his flight could be heard distinctly in the coppice to the left, and Simon's brain was working like a comptometer now—when it was a lit­tle late. Morgen—car keys—a car—the road . . . Simon gave a second to clear mechanical thought, and started down the path towards the house. Then after a few yards he swerved off through a thin space in the shrubbery to try and head off the retreat.

  Something solid but soft intercepted his feet. He spilled for­ward with his own momentum, and sprawled headlong into an unsatisfactory cushion and uncut grass. Half winded, he rolled over and sat up.

  Then he saw what had tripped him.

  It was a body which had been plainly exposed by the en­counter. Until recently, it had been inhabited by the late Mr. Sylvester Angert.

  4

  The "late" was not to be taken too literally. It wasn't so very late. The hands were still limp and supple, and not particu­larly cold.

  As for the instrument which had separated Mr. Angert from his not very statuesquely modeled clay, it was most probably the blackjack which Simon still had in his pocket. There was no blood on Mr. Angert's clothes, no marks of strangulation on his throat. His mousey face was relaxed, and he didn't even seem to have struggled. But there was a depression in his skull just above and behind his right ear which yielded rather sick­eningly to the Saint's exploring fingers. Apparently Mr. An­gert's assimilation of calcium had failed to provide his cra­nium with the normal amount of resistance, or else Karl Mor­gen had underestimated his own strength. Simon had no doubt that it had been Morgen.

  And Morgen was gone, now, and couldn't be asked any more questions.

  The Saint used a few more time-honored Anglo-Saxon words in interesting combinations. Between the delay of the erupt­ing work-bench, the delay of his fall, and the delay of finding out whether Sylvester Angert was an active obstruction or not, Morgen had stretched out too long a lead for the chase to offer many possibilities. Simon Templar raised himself to his feet, listening, and almost at once he heard the whirr of a starter, the grinding of gears, and the rising roar of an engine too far off to start him running again.

  Then he heard something else—a patter of light feet running on the path he had just left. Instinctively he raised the gun he had never let go, and squirmed back into the shelter of the nearest bush. A moment later he saw the girl, and stepped out again.

  "Simon!" she got out breathlessly. "Are you all right?"

  "Fairly," he said. "I thought I told you to stay in the house."

  "I know. But I was watching. I saw Karl running away—-I was afraid something had happened to you—and . . ."

  That was when she saw the body of the mousey little man lying at his feet.

  Her eyes widened, and then darkened with bewilderment.

  "But—I was sure it was Karl—and it wasn't here——"

  "It was Karl," said the Saint. "And he did run away. We were in the laboratory, and I was just getting around to a real heart-to-heart talk with him when he pulled a fast one. So I learnt a new trick." Simon twisted his lips wryly. "I was run­ning after Karl when I fell over Sylvester."

  Madeline Gray looked down at the motionless figure in rumpled clothes that didn't seem to belong to it any more.

  "He looks sort of dead, doesn't he?" she said uncertainly.

  "He is dead," said the Saint.

  She swallowed something, and found her breath way down in her chest.

  "You—killed him?"

  "No. He was dead when I tumbled over him. He's been dead a little while, too. He must have been snooping around when Karl came here, and Karl thought he belonged to us and conked him—just a little too hard. So they weren't on the same side after all ... This gets more interesting all the time."

  "I'm glad you think so," she said, without any intention of being smart.

  The Saint would scarcely have noticed if she had. His mind was busy with too many new adjustments, working resiliently ahead from the setback and trying to follow the sudden break in the pattern.

  "Go on back to the house," he said, "and keep out of sight. I'll be with you in a minute."

  He had already disturbed the body and its surroundings considerably by stumbling over it and then verifying its con­dition, so a little more disturbance would make no difference. Once again he turned out a set of pockets, and found nothing very extraordinary except the eavesdropping device which he had seen before. Mr. Angert apparently had been trustful enough to carry no weapons. There was a bulging wallet in one inside pocket, and a folded sheet of paper with a lot of cryp­tic scribbling on it in another. Simon replaced everything else, and took those two items with him.

  He found Madeline Gray in the living-room, toying nerv­ously with a cigarette.

  "I don't seem to be much good at this, do I?" she said. "I'm frightened."

  He smiled encouragement.

  "You haven't screamed yet." He sat down beside the tele­phone. "Now I'm going to do something very dull. I'm going to have to call the FBI."

  "I suppose that is the right thing to do."

  "It's the only thing to do. I don't have a fingerprinting out­fit with me, I don't have access to a lot of criminal records, I can't broadcast your father's description, and I haven't got an army of operatives to follow every lead. Aside from that, I'm wonderful."

  He dialed the operator and asked for information, and af­ter a few minutes he was through to New Haven.

  "I want to talk to whoever's in charge there," he said. "The name is Simon Templar."

  After a moment another voice said: "Yes, Mr. Templar?"

  "Did you get a call from Washington about me?"

  "Yes. Anything we can do?"

  "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to Tun down to Stamford. This is a kidnaping. And incidentally there's an­other guy murdered, if that makes it sound better."

  There was a brief digestive pause.

  "Okay," said the voice matter-of-factly. "I can be there in about an hour. Where are you?"

  Simon
got the address from Madeline, repeated it, and hung up.

  He lighted a cigarette, took out his automatic, and replen­ished the clip with a couple of loose shells from his pocket.

  "So," she said, "it was Karl."

  "It was. And he was also one of our playmates of last night. And he may have been the man who put that note in my pocket. I did get a few answers out of him, for what they're worth, before he foxed me."

  He gave her a complete story of what had happened.

  "I haven't any doubt that Karl is a Nazi," he said. "But somehow I don't think he's a big one. I don't know how big the Nazi angle is. It still doesn't look big—or else it's too big to see. But I'd be inclined to say that Karl was just put in here originally as a routine assignment, a sort of leg man, to find out what your father was up to. Did he have any chance to learn this formula?"

  "No. Daddy never told anyone the real secret except me."

  "I didn't think so. If Karl had known it, they wouldn't have needed to kidnap your father—which he admitted, by the way, when he was getting under my guard by pretending to break down—and Karl wouldn't have needed to come back here. I imagine he was sent back to see if he couldn't find some notes or clues."

  "What else did he say?"

  "He said he wasn't working for Imberline—yet. But I don't know whether I believe that or not."

  "Could Imberline be a Nazi?"

  "Anything is possible, in this goddam war. And yet, if he is a very brilliant and cunning guy, he certainly does an amaz­ing job of hiding it ... I don't know ... At any rate, I'm sure that Karl is working for somebody else besides Schicklgrüber, even if it's only to cover his real boss and help him get into the places where he wants to be."

  "Then who is it?"

  "If I could tell you that, darling, I wouldn't be getting much of a headache. The new fun that we have to cope with is that the Ungodly don't all seem to be in one camp. Hence the sad fact that Comrade Angert's head will never ache again."

  She winced at that.

  "And we don't know anything about him at all," she said.

  "No. But we may find out something now."

  The Saint had his trophies on the table beside him. He turned to them to see if they were going to be any help, and the girl came over to sit on the arm of his chair and look over his shoulder.