“Slip that to the gentleman over there,” said Teal to a passing waiter, and pointed out Connell.
Connell read the note, and Teal caught his eye. Then the detective rose and walked towards the exit.
Connell caught him up in the street.
“What’s this?” he demanded thickly, brandishing the envelope.
Teal took it from him.
“I want you to do a job for me,” he said. “There’s a place just up the road where we can talk without being disturbed. It’s worth a hundred to you. Are you on?”
Connell swayed, and steadied himself.
“Let’s hear,” he said, and Teal took his arm and walked him up the road.
In half an hour Connell was back at the club calling for more drinks, but Teal did not return. He went back to Scotland Yard, changed into his ordinary clothes, and went home to bed.
He retailed the encounter to Sergeant Barrow the next morning.
“I asked him if he could drive a car, and he said he could. Then I asked him if he could do tricks with one, and he asked me what I meant. I told him I’d got a down on a man and I wanted him messed up in an accidental sort of way. ‘This man’s given his chauffeur notice,’ I said, ‘and I can get you the job, references and all, in any name you like. If you’re a fool, you’ll land yourself for dangerous driving, but if you’re clever, maybe you can get away with it and draw the hundred I’m offering.’ He was in a boastful mood, and he said he could make a car eat out of his hand and turn somersaults just when he wanted it to. I arranged to meet him at the same place in two days’ time, with the money, and that was that.”
“And?” prompted Sergeant Barrow.
“And,” said Mr Teal, with languid satisfaction, “I think that tells me all I want to know about the later history of Mulligan, and how Stenning managed to die so successfully.”
Altogether it was a successful twenty-four hours for Mr Teal; for a few minutes later the man he had set to tail Connell home arrived with his report, and another mystery was well on its way to solution.
Mr Teal now had a very good idea why the Saint had been going out to lunch so infrequently, and this further progress increased his conviction that things would shortly commence to hum.
10
At twelve o’clock on a certain morning, Simon Templar made a decision.
He came to this decision at the end of twenty-four hours’ unbroken deliberation. In the office he had been moody, going about his work with his usual efficiency, but with the air of devoting to it no more attention than was absolutely necessary, while all the spare energy of his mind was simultaneously devoted to this far more important thing of which he said nothing. When he was not working, he sat back in his chair, scowling darkly about him.
Pamela Marlowe diagnosed these symptoms as the proof of a misspent night before; but in this she was wrong, for the night before did not occur until the night after. The Saint had gone back to the luxuriously converted garage in Upper Berkeley Mews where he made his home, and had gone to bed before midnight like a good boy.
The decision was finally made at twelve o’clock, and with the removal of uncertainty and the arrival of a definite plan of campaign he brightened perceptibly. His pencil went flying across the room into a corner, the blotting-paper was screwed up into a ball and hurled into the waste-paper basket with the gesture of a challenger throwing down the gauntlet, and his feet returned to their usual position on top of the desk.
“I’ve got it,” he said triumphantly.
“Badly, I should say,” agreed Pamela, but he refused to be suppressed.
“Since lunch-time yesterday,” he explained solemnly, “I have been tormented by visions of helpless orphans struggling to make their way in the world, with no mother to spank them and no father to borrow fivers from. I think something ought to be done about it. Don’t you?”
“Are you going to start an orphanage?” she asked.
The Saint stroked his chin.
“Not exactly,” he replied gravely. “I’m starting a fund for distressed orphans, and the fund will be used to help deserving cases to end their days in the luxury to which the hardships of their early years have entitled them. I am an orphan,” he added absently.
Clearly he was bursting with some big scheme, but he was too intent upon it to waste time elaborating any more fantastic explanations.
He plumped down in his chair, and rang the bell marked “Secretary.”
“Take a letter,” he said. “This is to Rolands and Battersby, 240 Threadneedle Street. ‘Dear Sirs,—With reference to your advertisement of a thousand-ton, ocean-going motor-cruiser, in the current issue of Yachting, I’ll buy the darned thing at the price mentioned. Paragraph. I understand that the said hooker is at present lying in Southampton Water. Stop. You will kindly rake up a crew, shove them on board, and tell them to shoot the old tub along to Gravesend. Stop. This must be done immediately, as I am likely to be leaving on short notice. Stop. Communicate these instructions to Southampton by telephone, and drum it into the fat heads of the big stiffs at the other end of the line that the barnacled barge aforesaid has got to arrive at Gravesend within forty-eight hours of your receipt of this letter. Yours faithfully.’ Turn that into respectable business English, and type it on plain paper. Vanney’s,” he said, “will shortly know me no more. Observe my tears.”
“Are you serious?” she asked.
“I was never more serious in my life,” answered the Saint.
“You’re leaving Vanney’s?”
The Saint smiled.
“Certainly there’s going to be a break in the partnership,” he said. “But whether I shall leave Vanney’s or Vanney’s will leave me remains to be seen.”
Business had been getting brisker every day, and that afternoon established a new record. Simon spent the whole of his time in a whirl of letters, telegrams, and telephone conversations, and he had no leisure in which to give vent to the high spirits which otherwise he would have enjoyed indulging.
He was not sorry to leave the office that night, for work was a thing in which he was accustomed to indulge spasmodically, and with the sole object of reaping sufficient profit from it to render further work unnecessary for a considerable period.
With a number of late nights behind him, and the prospect of tiring days ahead, he had intended to go to bed early that night; but unfortunately for that plan, when he was half undressed, he was smitten with an idea. With the Saint, to conceive an idea and to put it into execution were things so closely consecutive as to be almost simultaneous. He sighed, dressed again, and went out.
The next morning, however, he showed no trace of tiredness as he ran up the stairs to the office.
He was always the first to arrive, as only Vanney and himself and one other man held keys, and the other two were invariably late. He was feeling cheerful that morning as he let himself in, but the gay humming died swiftly on his lips as he endeavoured to extract the key from the lock.
He twisted, pulled, and wrenched, and eventually it came away. Then he looked at the lock, and discovered the reason for the jam. It was a Yale, and it took him no more than ten seconds’ expert investigation to see and appreciate how neatly it had been broken.
He went quickly through the offices—waiting-room, clerks’ room, and his own room. The communicating doors were all open. He might have left them like that himself, but one door was open which he had never by any chance forgotten to close, and that was the door between his own office and the room marked “Private.”
He passed quickly through, and what he saw made him pull up suddenly with his face gone strangely stern.
Facing him on either side of the fireplace, were two tall cupboards, which, as has been mentioned, were kept locked. Presumably they were used for storing the private files of the company. But since nobody except himself and his partners ever entered the room, the question was never a subject for curiosity and comment. Now both the cupboards had been roughly broken open, and the
doors sagged wide, showing the interiors.
One was empty. The intruder, whoever he was, had drawn blank with his first guess. The other was also empty; but instead of the wooden back, which one might have expected to see, there was clearly visible the raw brickwork of the wall, and this had been broken away so that there was a large gap through which a man could easily pass. On the other side of this gap was a curtain, which had been drawn aside, and through the hole in the wall could be seen a room.
The Saint stood still for a long time. Then he took out his cigarette-case, and very slowly and calmly selected and lighted a cigarette. With this in his mouth he strolled forward, pushed through the doors of the right-hand cupboard, ducked through the aperture in the wall, and came out into the room beyond. It was furnished as a sitting-room, with a safe in one corner and a writing-desk in another. The safe had been smashed by an expert, and its heavy door stood wide open—a battered and drunken-looking apology for a door. Papers were strewn about the floor. The writing-desk was in a similar state of disrepair; every drawer had been forced, and the contents were scattered over it, around it, and across the carpet.
After what he had already seen, these catastrophes were of minor importance, and even the litter failed to exasperate his tidy instincts. Moving very slowly and deliberately, he examined the rest of the flat, and found that no part of it which might constitute a hiding-place had been overlooked.
The Saint smiled faintly, but it was not because he was amused.
He went back into Vanney’s office, pulled the cupboard doors to, and returned to his own room, closing the door marked “Private” carefully behind him.
When Pamela Marlowe arrived he was comfortably blowing smoke-rings, and no one would have known from his expression what a jar he had received.
She sat down, and it was some time before he became aware that she was expecting him to do something. He pulled himself together with an effort.
“Oh yes, the letters,” he murmured, and swept the pile before him neatly into a drawer, “I’ve already opened those, and there’s nothing to attend to yet.”
He played a tattoo on the desk with a pencil.
“By the way,” he said casually, “I’m giving you a week’s notice, though the necessity for your services may cease to exist before then.”
It was some moments before she could recover from her surprise.
“Why?” she stammered. “Isn’t my work satisfactory?”
“Perfectly, sweetheart,” he said. “But the firm you work for isn’t. Later on in the day I shall be giving myself notice, so you needn’t think you are the only victim. You will receive three months’ salary in lieu of however much longer notice you thought you were entitled to, and a further three months’ salary instead of a reference. The procedure may seem strange to you, but it is dictated by my wishes for your welfare. You could have a reference if you wanted one, but it would be quite useless. The money I spoke of has already been paid into your bank account, and you will receive confirmation of that from them as soon as the cheque has been passed through.”
“But surely,” said Pamela blankly, “six months’ salary isn’t necessary in lieu of notice and a reference?”
“The firm of Vanney,” answered the Saint, “although eccentric to the point of being crooked, has a reputation for generosity to maintain. I have just started to give it that reputation, and you are the first beneficiary.”
She hesitated.
“It’s very kind of you,” she said at length. “But since the money has already been paid over, you must have known that this was going to happen.”
“I did,” he replied. “But I wasn’t sure exactly when. I discovered this morning that it was going to happen today.”
Pamela looked straight at him.
“Simon,” she said, “since I’m leaving Vanney’s, and this looks like the last eccentricity I shall have to puzzle over, is it any use asking you to give me the real reason for it?”
The Saint stood up. He was quite serious.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve stopped playing the fool from this moment. So I’ll just say that it’s impossible to answer your question today. Tomorrow, perhaps…”
The last words were spoken almost in a whisper, and he was standing quite still with his head bent slightly forward, as though listening.
“One moment,” he said, and went quickly into Vanney’s office.
“George,” said the Saint quickly, to the porter, “yours not to reason why, yours but to promptly fly. In English, pull out of here right away. You also, my King Beaver,” this to Vanney. “Go away and sit down and open your hearts to each other. And wait till I come back—it will be within two hours.”
He returned to his own office, taking no notice of Pamela, jerked his hat down from the rack, and went out.
A taxi took him to Upper Berkeley Mews. It was there that Teal found him an hour later. There was a half-filled suitcase on the table, and the Saint, having admitted the detective, returned unconcernedly to the task of trying to close the lid of a trunk that was already crammed to bursting point. A selection of clothes was laid out on the bed, and every chair in the room was similarly loaded.
Teal surveyed the disorder thoughtfully.
“Where are you going, Saint?” he inquired.
“Where am I going, old dear? Well, that isn’t decided yet. I may be going abroad, or I may not—it just depends how things turn out.”
11
Teal did not seem surprised.
“That’s what I came to see you about,” he remarked, “I suppose there’s no chance of your putting in a bit of King’s Evidence?”
“Teal,” said the Saint, “surely you know me better than that!”
The detective sighed.
“Unfortunately I do,” he said. “But I was told to try it.”
He picked up his hat.
“There are some men who say no,” he observed, “and you wonder whether they mean yes. You don’t say yes or no, but one always knows what you mean. Sorry to have troubled you.”
“The last man who said that to me,” remarked the Saint reminiscently, “is one of the only two possible starters for the Great Burglary Sweepstakes. Tell me, do you boys ever indulge in what you might call judicially sanctioned crime?”
“Not that I know of.”
“I just wondered,” said the Saint. “Now I know. It must have been Harry.”
Teal put down his hat again. If he had not been so obviously incapable of such contortions, one would have said that he pricked up his ears.
“Harry?” he repeated.
“The same. But if you think you’re going to get anything out of me before you’ve got me in the dock, you may have another guess free. Good morning, Claud—and don’t forget to close the door as you go out.”
Obediently, Teal went to the door.
“By the way,” he said from the threshold, “you were working late at the office last night, Saint.”
“I was,” said Simon, folding a dinner-jacket. “What about it?”
“I made some inquiries, and I found that the rule in those offices is that everyone must be out of them by eight o’clock.”
“True,” said the Saint. “But since Mr Vanney owns not only the offices but the whole block of flats as well, and since he made that rule, I think one may say that he and his staff are allowed to break it. Good-bye.”
“See you again soon,” said Teal, and went.
The two hours which the gentleman known as George and the King Beaver had been told to wait had expired to the minute when Simon Templar returned. He knew that he had been followed from Upper Berkeley Mews back to the office, but he was not bothering about such trifling troubles.
He walked quickly down the corridor and turned into his own room.
It was empty.
With a grim foreboding, the Saint swung round on his heel and flung open the door leading into the clerks’ room.
“Anybody seen or heard of Miss Ma
rlowe?” he observed.
They had not.
“You’re an idle bunch, and you know it,” Simon rapped back. “Don’t waste your breath telling me you were so busy working you couldn’t hear anything, because I shan’t believe it. She couldn’t have left the office without you hearing the door close. Have you heard her go out?”
They had not.
“Right,” said the Saint violently, and closed the door with a contrasting gentleness.
He went through into Vanney’s room, closing the door behind him, passed through the cupboard and the wall beyond, and entered the flat. There was only one man there.
“Stenning,” said the Saint, “I want to know where Pamela Marlowe is, and I want to know it quick!”
“Miss Marlowe?” repeated the big man blankly.
“You heard me the first time,” snapped the Saint.
“I don’t know anything about her.”
Simon put his hands in his pockets.
“You’re a liar and a dog, Stenning, my man,” he said. “But I’ll settle that account later. Where’s your partner in crime?”
The Saint looked round the room.
“He was here when I left you,” he said. “He can’t have gone without your knowing—unless you weren’t here yourself. Which is it?”
Stenning rose.
“I left him,” he said.
“I told you to stay here.”
“And I chose to leave. Have you got anything to say?”
“A mouthful,” said the Saint, “but that’ll wait. Where did you go?”
“I went out to buy a bottle of whisky, if you want to know.”
Simon’s glance fell on the table.
“I see. Well, we’ll come to that in due course. I’m only putting it off because I think that when I’ve finished my interview with you, you’ll be more disposed to tell me all the things I want to know about Connell.”
He flung some papers on the table.
“Take a look at those,” he said.
Stenning looked.
“A cheque for twenty thousand pounds, which only needs your signature to make it worth that amount, payable to Miss Pamela Marlowe. That is the sum of twelve thousand pounds which you swindled off her father, plus a sum of interest which, I grant you, is extortionate, but which you will pay all the same. A receipt for that sum, signed by Miss Marlowe. I know it’ll pass in a court of law, because I forged the signature myself. You may keep it as a souvenir. Also, there’s a cheque for fifty thousand pounds, payable to myself, for which I am afraid I omitted to provide a receipt. I’ll address it to you on Dartmoor, if you think you’d like something to remember me by.”
Alias the Saint (The Saint Series) Page 7