“I don’t think it’s any business of yours, Mr Tombs,” she began, and then he looked up at her.
“Since the villain has been unmasked,” drawled the Saint, “I think you can forget that name. I only chose it in the hope that one day that it would annoy Claud Eustace, and the longer I live with it the less I like it.”
“Very well—Mr Templar.”
Mr “Simon,” murmured the Saint, “is even more soothing to my ears.”
The girl frowned.
“Did he or did he not?” asked the Saint, returning to the argument.
She flushed resentfully at his insistence.
“What if he did?” countered a stubborn Pamela. Simon fingered his chin.
“I was afraid he would,” he said. “The morals of the modern employer are appalling. You might remind me to dictate a letter to The Times about it. But I’ll just ask Mr Vanney not to annoy you anymore.”
To her astonishment, he rose at once from his desk and went into the next office. This time she had no compunction about eavesdropping. But, strain her ears as she might, she could make nothing of the faint, almost inaudible murmur of voices.
In a few minutes the Saint returned, and his normally unwrinkled brow wore a frown that was not one of concentration.
“Mr Vanney is inclined to be obstinate,” he said. “I hope I’ve convinced him of the error of his ways, but if it occurs again you will let me know.”
Thereafter he ignored her existence until lunch time, but when she had put on her hat she found him holding her coat for her—a courtesy which he had never offered before.
“Pamela,” he said, “will you put me in the same category as Vanney if I ask you to lunch with me?”
Pamela looked at him, met the full brilliance of the Saintly smile, and was lost. “No—I don’t think so.”
“Then we’ll go and beat up the Carlton,” said the Saint cheerfully; and it was so.
Sergeant Jones, who was loitering inconspicuously on the corner of the block, saw them come out. He followed them to the Carlton, and two hours later followed them back.
Inspector Teal, to whom the most trivial details were always a matter of the most
tremendously absorbing interest, had posted him there to report on the habits of the clients and staff of Vanney’s Ltd.; and Sergeant Jones had begun to feel that he had a personal grievance against Simon Templar, for on the previous five days Mr Jones had sacrificed his own mid-day meal in the hope of getting a chance to observe the Saint at lunch, and had been disappointed.
“He’s either been dieting to keep his figure, or he’s been on hunger strike,” Mr Teal was told that night. “Anyhow, this is the first time he’s been out for a bite during the day since I started tailing him.”
Inspector Teal blinked once, but inwardly he was chalking up the Saint’s mysterious fast among the many other peculiar facts which were catalogued in his mind against the firm of Vanney’s.
5
On a certain morning a grocer in South London was found lying, shot through the heart, behind his counter, when the assistant came to open up the shop in the morning, with the till broken open and the previous three days’ takings missing. The man in charge of the case, before he allowed anything to be moved, sent for the police photographers. The pictures they took were developed and printed in a few hours; and these, together with the inspector’s own copious notes, were sent immediately to that department of Scotland Yard known as the Records Office, where are catalogued in one gigantic card index all the known forms, variations, and trimmings of crime, with cross-references to the men who are known to practise them.
The usual scientific process of elimination then began. The extra heavy sentence which is always received by a criminal who uses firearms in his work means that comparatively few burglars go armed. From the list of these men were eliminated those whose known methods of entering a house did not correspond with the method used in that case. The list was reduced again by removing the names of those who, without a serious divergence from their old habits—a rare phenomenon among habitual criminals—would have solved the problem of the locked till in a way other than that in which it had been solved. The list diminished steadily as the names it contained were in turn tested by other characteristics of the crime in question.
Even with these precise methods, several names are frequently left over for further scrutiny; but in this instance the accumulated evidence pointed with the most convincing certainty to one man.
“You mentioned his name to me only the other day,” said the man from the Records Office, “So I thought you would be interested.”
“I am,” said Mr Teal. “But I’d be still more interested if you could tell me where he is.”
It was in a pessimistic spirit that he telephoned an inquiry through to the inspector in charge of F Division, and therefore he was not disappointed when it proved fruitless.
“The last time anything was seen or heard of Connell,” F Division informed him
concisely, “was in July, two years ago.”
Mr Teal, remembering his breakfast of a fortnight ago, took his hat and coat and went for a walk.
He ran his victim to earth in a public-house near Victoria Station, and took the next place at the bar.
“This is a pleasant surprise, Harry,” said Mr Teal untruthfully, for he had drawn a blank at several coverts before he found his fox. “What’ll you have?”
“A bottle of champagne with you, Mr Teal,” said Long Harry.
“Two bitters, please, Miss,” said Mr Teal.
He picked up his tankard and nodded towards a vacant table in a corner.
“Suppose we get out of the crowd, and have a little talk,” he suggested, and Long Harry knew of old that when Mr Teal made such a request it was useless to refuse.
He followed the portly detective to the secluded spot he had indicated, and they sat down.
“Now tell me about Connell,” said Mr Teal.
Long Harry scowled.
“I told you once, I don’t know anything about him.”
“But he did a job in Battersea last night,” said Mr Teal. “I thought you’d have heard—it’s in the lunch editions.”
Long Harry shook his head. ‘I don’t know anything about it, Mr Teal,” he said.
“Now, I thought you would,” said Teal dreamily. “The lunch editions didn’t say Connell did it, but I was expecting you to come along and tell me that. Either Connell did it, or someone who knew his methods inside out arranged it so that everything would point to Connell.”
Harry grinned.
“If you’re thinking I pulled that job to frame Connell, you’re right up the spout. I’ve got an alibi.”
The torpescent Mr Teal felt in his waistcoat pocket for a fresh bar of chewing gum.
“Then,” he remarked pensively, “it seems as if you must have done it.”
“But this,” said Harry, “is a copper-bottomed alibi. I spent last night in Marlborough Street Police Station. I’d been entertaining some friends, and we’d had what you might call a sticky evening. It took three policemen to get me there.”
Mr Teal raised a reproving eyebrow.
“Drunk, I suppose,” he murmured.
“All three of them,” said Harry.
The detective ruminated in silence for some moments, and then he said, “Do you get drunk easily, Harry?”
“I can knock back a tank-full and not show it,” Harry bragged.
“Entertaining friends, were you?” said Teal slumberously. “Then you must have come into some easy money. I know how fond you are of work, and you haven’t been out of stir long enough to earn that much honestly.”
“I got a remittance,” said Harry glibly. “An uncle of mine who went out to Australia years ago, suddenly remembered his poor, persecuted nephew in the old country, and sent me a tenner.”
Mr Teal went back to Scotland Yard very little wiser than he had been when he left it.
That afternoon an
idea struck him. He walked up the Embankment to Charing Cross, and he was standing by a tobacco kiosk when Pamela Marlowe left the offices of Vanney’s Ltd., and crossed the road to the Strand Tube Station.
“Excuse me, Miss,” said Teal, catching her up at the entrance to the subway.
It was not the first time she had been spoken to by a stranger, and she would have hurried on, but something in the business-like tone of his address stopped her, and she looked round.
She saw a big, red-faced, sleepy-eyed man of considerable girth, wearing a rather noisy tweed suit, with a soft felt hat tilted to the back of his head.
“I am Inspector Teal, of Scotland Yard,” said the same, “and you might be able to help me a lot, Miss Marlowe, if you’d just step into that tea den with me and have a chat.”
Over a cup of tea, at his request, she repeated the history of her association with Stenning and Vanney, in much the same way as she had told it to Vanney himself. Mr Teal appeared to doze during the recital, but as soon as she had finished he was ready with a question.
“How did you get your job at Vanney’s?”
“Mr Vanney wrote to me off his own bat. He knew Mr Stenning, and he says that Mr Stenning had often spoken of me.”
“What were you doing before that?”
“Nothing. Father was always pretty well off, and he left me everything he had.” “And something went wrong?”
She nodded.
“Most of the money was in Claravox Gramophones. Father put all his eggs in that basket just before he died. The shares were at about 450, but the promised dividends were colossal.” She smiled ruefully. “If you remember, the fraud was shown up two years ago, when Stenning died and the company went smash.”
“I remember,” said Teal. “Claravox Gramophones was one of Stenning’s companies. I guess that man must have held the dud company record for this country.”
He drank some tea, and cogitated with his eyes closed; and his next query was a surprising one.
“Does the Saint ever make love to you?”
“No,” she replied at once, and wondered how she came to lie so spontaneously. Teal, however, seemed to have been anticipating that answer.
“He wouldn’t,” he said. “The Saint’s a clean crook. But what about Vanney?”
“I’ve only seen him once, and then he asked me to have dinner with him.”
“Is that so?” Teal opened one eye. “Did you go?”
She shook her head.
“It was only the other day. I put him off, and he hasn’t mentioned it since.”
With that he seemed to have come to the end of his intended interrogation, and she took advantage of his silence to make an inquiry of her own.
“What did you mean when you said that the Saint was a clean crook?” she asked.
“Well,” said Mr Teal judiciously, “he’s a crook, all right—you’ll know that if you’ve ever read a newspaper. He doesn’t make any bones about it. The reason he’s at large is because on the few occasions when he’s left any evidence behind him that could be used in court, the injured parties have refused to kick. The Saint has a way of knowing too much about them. He went off the rails once, and then squared that up by stopping a war, confound him; and at the moment anyone who said he was not a respectable citizen could be soaked with good and heavy damages for slander. To give the devil his due, most of the men he’s trodden on have been pretty undesirable specimens, but that doesn’t make him an honest man.”
“Why do you think he does it?”
“The Lord knows,” said Teal wearily. “All I can tell you is that if I’ve got any grey hairs, he gave them to me. Of course, he’s made plenty of money out of it—the men he has gone after had a good deal of boodle on them, a lot of which seems to drift eventually into the Saint’s own bank balance.”
She was astonished at this revelation.
“Then why does he work at Vanney’s?”
“If you could answer that question, Miss Marlowe,” said Teal, “you’d save my mind a lot of hard wear. All I know is that I smell trouble wherever the Saint’s hanging around.”
The implication did not make itself plain to her at once; but when she had grasped it, she stopped with her cup half-way to her lips, and stared.
“Do you mean Vanney’s isn’t straight?” she asked.
“I’ve a good idea,” said Teal, “that Vanney’s is one of the crookedest shows in the history of commerce. If Vanney’s is straight, I’m going to ask the Commissioner to call in all the rulers in Scotland Yard, and supply the clerical department with corkscrews.”
He gazed at her in his drowsily placid way while she digested this startling piece of information, and his air of heavy-lidded weariness did not prevent him taking in every detail of her appearance. She was pretty. Mr Teal, who by no stretch of imagination could have been called a connoisseur of feminine beauty, would have been blind if he had not recognised that fact. Nice eyes and mouth. A trim figure and well-chosen clothes that suited her to perfection. Mr Teal thought that there would have been some excuse for the Saint, anyway.
He thought of the Saint. The Saint, with his gay, devil-may-care face, his dancing blue eyes, and reckless smile, would have found no difficulty in waltzing into any woman’s heart. True, Teal knew that the Saint was theoretically attached to a certain Patricia Holm; but Teal had never thought the Saint was a man to confuse fidelity with fun. Maybe there would have been some excuse for Pamela Marlowe.
“You seem to be rather interested in Templar,” murmured Mr Teal. “Are you in love with him, by any chance?”
“No,” she replied promptly. “Whatever made you ask that?”
“It just occurred to me,” said the detective vaguely.
After a few minutes’ more desultory conversation he left her.
Those were turbulent days for her under their superficial calm, and she was beginning to feel the strain. Consequently, it was a most welcome relief for her when, after dinner, the girl who occupied the next room in the house where she lived came in and suggested a visit to the movies.
They went by bus to Piccadilly, and walked up Regent Street.
As they passed the back entrance of the Piccadilly Hotel, two men in evening dress came out, and one of them hailed a passing taxi. They stepped in and were driven away.
One of the men she had recognised at once, for it was none other than Simon Templar. His companion had been a big, heavy-featured man, with a small military moustache, whose face seemed curiously familiar.
It required some minutes of concentration before she could place him, but when she had done so her involuntary gasp of amazement startled her companion.
It was not surprising that she had not been able to identify him at once, for the last time she had seen him he had been wearing a purple uniform decorated with buttons and braid of gold, and he answered to the name of George.
6
Pamela walked on with her brain in a ferment. She felt strangely disinclined to embark on a lengthy explanation of what had startled her, and the other girl, after some futile attempts to draw her, relapsed into an offended silence.
It seemed that she was destined to become more and more lost each day in the network of mystery of which Vanney’s was the centre, and no added complication seemed to lead nearer to a solution.
What was the closely guarded secret of Vanney’s, and which part was Simon Templar playing in it? Everything she had seen or heard pointed to the secret being a sinister one; and yet, however suspicious a character Simon Templar might be, he had one of the least sinister personalities that she had ever met. But why did so many irregular things mark the conduct of the office which was under his supervision, and why, to cap it all, had he been dining at the Piccadilly with the porter—George?
Pamela’s brain seethed with unanswerable questions for the rest of the evening, and the entertainment, which should have been a means of forgetting the perplexities which had worried her for days, was spoilt for her; but her ad
ventures were not yet finished for that night.
She got home to find a note on the hall table informing her that a man had rung her up twice while she had been out. While she was reading it, the telephone bell rang again.
She went to the instrument with an instinctive certainty that the call was for her, and she was right.
“I am speaking for Mr Tombs,” said a masculine voice. “An important deal has been concluded this evening, and since the other party is leaving for the Continent early tomorrow morning, Mr Tombs wishes you to come round at once and make out the necessary papers.”
“But—”
“Mr Tombs asks me to say that he is very sorry to trouble you at this hour, but he must ask you to come immediately.”
“A closed car is waiting for you at the corner of the street. Please come at once!”
Before she could reply, a click from the receiver told her that the man at the other end of the line had rung off.
Pamela put the telephone down slowly, biting her lip. In one sense there was nothing very extraordinary about the request. The circumstances were plausible, and it was not unusual for important business negotiations to be concluded over dinner, although such a thing had never happened before while she had been at Vanney’s. And Chief Inspector Teal had said that Simon Templar was a clean crook. She might easily have left without further deliberation, but she did not.
There were one or two things which she could not understand, and they made her pause. First, the message which awaited her when she got in told her that she had been called at 9:30 and at 10:30. If it was so important that papers should be made out without delay, would they have waited so long for her? Another stenographer should have been obtainable; and, besides, the Saint was perfectly capable of working the typewriter efficiently himself—she had seen him do so more than once. Secondly, when she had last seen him, he had been with George; and whatever the reason for that intimacy, it was not likely that the janitor would be present when business was being discussed. And then, what was the reason for the car? Apparently it had been sent much earlier in the evening, so that its arrival would coincide with the first attempt to get her on the telephone, and yet there was no reason for Simon Templar to have suspected a sudden dearth of taxis in Kensington. Finally, why had he not spoken to her himself?
Alias the Saint (The Saint Series) Page 4