Alias the Saint (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  “What’s the idea?”

  “Vittorio has collected his hat,” said the Saint cheerfully. “When he and Jack Farnberg get together to admire the drawing I left in the lining, there will be vitriol in the air. Unless my prophetic powers are getting as punk as Claud Eustace Teal’s, we shall see fun and games before tonight is out. What do you say we burst a bottle?”

  6

  Duncarry examined the automatic more closely when they got to Upper Berkeley Mews.

  “Looks useful,” he remarked. “That’s a neat little silencer.”

  “German. Did I hear you say one time that Jack Farnberg and Vittorio Ardossi are wandering around together lovingly hand in hand?”

  Duncarry wrinkled his long nose.

  “Not as a great and solemn truth—only as an intelligent guess,” he answered. “Ardossi was never a big cheese before his uncle made a will. Uncle had a chain of salami foundries from Minneapolis to ’Frisco. He must have been some hash-slinger, believe me. There was a dandy sea-going steam-yacht and a fleet of cars among the oddments.”

  “Sounds good.” The Saint was sliding an ingenious specimen of folding steel shuttering across the windows. “Pardon these precautions, but I have a constitutional objection to spilling blood in my drawing-room, and you never know what some gay bird may be doing on the other side of the castle walls.”

  Duncarry nodded his approval.

  “You certainly know how to look after yourself,” he conceded.

  “If I didn’t, I should be ancient history,” said the Saint coolly. “And, by the Lord—”

  He broke off as a bell rang softly somewhere outside the room. He flicked a little automatic from his pocket and went out into the hall; and as he did so something was pushed into the letter-box. The Saint looked at it for one second, and then leapt like a cat and snatched a cone-shaped metal fire-extinguisher from its bracket as he saw a speck of fire like an angry red eye glowing between the wires of the box. There was a hiss and a splashing as a jet of liquid from the extinguisher deluged the letter-box and drenched the mat below in foaming lather.

  “What’s happening?” asked Duncarry’s voice.

  “Watering the garden,” replied the Saint genially, pushing the plug back into the extinguisher. “And now we shall have to swab up the mess. I have an idea, Duncarry, that if that guy was the postman he was doing a bit of overtime. You’d better take cover, son—maybe I haven’t soaked all the spitefulness out of this kindly gift.”

  He opened the letter-box cautiously, and withdrew something hard and heavy with the charred and saturated paper wrapping still clinging to it. Duncarry shifted his cigar and peered over the Saint’s shoulder. It was a flat cigarette-box that had once contained fifty gaspers of a popular brand. Copper wire had been wrapped round the box from end to end, and the tails of wire were twisted tightly together. In the centre, a scorched half-inch of cotton fuse protruded from a hole punched in the tin.

  “Crude,” said the Saint pleasantly, “but effective. I guess it would have made a mess of me if I’d met it in action at close quarters. Without dissecting its internals, Dun, I should diagnose a combination of high explosive and hobnails.”

  “More like Ardossi’s visiting-card than Jack Farnberg’s stuff,” grunted the New Yorker. “That’s in exchange for the scare you gave him.”

  The Saint laughed and made for the kitchen in search of a mop. He found a swab and pail, and was down on his knees giving a good imitation of an industrious housemaid when he heard a hasty step outside, and the bell rang again.

  The Saint pushed the pail into the fairway, leapt to his feet, and opened the door with a jerk.

  The visitor, who seemed to be in a desperate hurry, rushed in, staggered over the pail, fell, and scrambled up to discover an automatic pistol levelled at him, and behind the pistol the lean face and red-tipped cigar of Detective Duncarry.

  “Put ’em good and high, stranger,” drawled the American. “Are you claiming this bird, Saint?”

  Simon smiled at the amazed and startled visitor, and shook his head.

  “Hullo, Barringer,” he said. “I’m sorry you tripped over the iron-mongery, and sorrier still that you’ve slopped all the juice out of it. However—take him inside and give him some beer while I clean up, Dun.”

  Barringer was a good-looking, up-standing young fellow of about twenty-six. He seemed worried and nervous, and probably he had reason. To be shadowed and dogged at every twist and turn by the watchful myrmidons of the law is not a stimulating tonic.

  “I really can’t wait, Mr Templar. I just wanted to know: Is Eileen—is Miss Wiltham here?”

  The Saint waved his swab affably to a man who was energetically ornamenting the opposite side of the Mews as a living proof of the vigilance of Scotland Yard, and shut the door.

  “I’m afraid she isn’t,” he said, resuming his job.

  “She promised to meet me at quarter-past eight—”

  “I know. Didn’t she turn up?’’

  Barringer shook his head.

  “I waited till nearly nine, and then took a taxi straight here.”

  “She has been here,” said the Saint. “But she left at seven. That bit of mopping isn’t bad work for an amateur, is it? Slide into the consulting-room while I shift the bag of tools, and I’ll be right with you. Mr Charles Barringer, Mr Duncarry. Barringer, Dun, is the bloke who’s slightly tangled up with the Gaydon’s Wharf murder, that brain-racking mystery now filling Teal’s head with aches and his heart with tears.”

  Barringer, however, refused beer and declined cigarettes. The Saint rang up Hamilton Place, and the butler informed him that the whole party, including Miss Wiltham, had left at eight o’clock in Lord Hannassay’s car. This provided the sum total of the information which the Saint could give. And when Barringer heard it he apologised for intruding and took his leave.

  “I should think that young fellow might kill a man in a row, but he doesn’t seem the sort to lay out for one,” said Duncarry, and the Saint groaned.

  “Don’t rack my brains. The crime is manifestly impossible, as we all know, and I refuse to burst any blood vessels over it this evening.”

  “Friste was a shipping agent, wasn’t he? What did he ship?”

  “Various things. Some of them legitimate, and some of them not. I think I told you he was a nasty man. He had one boat on the South American run. Get me? Some souls travelled to hell on that ship.”

  Duncarry nodded; and for some moments the Saint smoked with a thoughtful frown. And then, all at once, with one of the electric changes of mood that were so characteristic of the man, the frown vanished, and Simon sprang to his feet, smiling.

  “Come on, Dun! I’m tired of this. Let’s leave it to Teal and his staff of high-brow stars. That bomb stunt was probably the beginning and the end of the entertainment for tonight, so we’ll go out and be riotous. I’ll take you down the Wild West End and show you some gay life.”

  “So long as you don’t take me to a place that Teal’s likely to raid—”

  “I’ll try to think of one of which he’s a leading member,” promised the Saint.

  They went out with some circumspection; but the Saint’s guess seemed to have been accurate, for there was no disturbance, and the Mews was deserted.

  On the Embankment, the Saint stopped his car and got out. With the tin box in his hand he leaned against the parapet, watching the river; and then he gave the box a heave, lighted a cigarette, and went back to Detective Duncarry.

  “One of my brilliant inspirations has just struck me, Dun.” The American raised inquiring eyebrows.

  “Pat and Eileen have been together half the evening, and our recent fake postman probably wasn’t the first man to take a look at Upper Berkeley Mews. The great thought is that Jack or Vittorio, or both, who’ve never set eyes on Pat, though they’ve probably heard of her, may have got the two girls mixed. Suppose they got the great idea of grabbing Pat in the hope of getting a pull over me—it’s nearly as eas
y to kidnap a girl in this motor-car age as to do a smash-and-grab stunt and get away with it.”

  “It certainly is, Saint.”

  “I’ve got no down on Eileen,” said the Saint, “but still, I almost wish that’s what’s happened. If Jack and Vittorio have butted in and mixed their stuff, I believe I shall be able to view even that Gaydon’s Wharf murder without feeling sea-sick.”

  It was half-past eleven when Patricia Holm arrived with Lady Susan Hannassay and her party at the club that the Saint had selected. They were greeted with the edifying spectacle of Simon Templar seated on the back of a chair playing the banjo, while Detective Duncarry, in spite of his limp, was dancing to the melody and at the same time balancing a champagne bottle on his head. While the dancer was receiving his meed of applause the Saint spoke to Patricia.

  “At what time did Eileen leave you?”

  “About ten-past eight, I think—we dropped her at Piccadilly Circus. Why?”

  “She missed her boy, somehow. Barringer has been round with his hair on end. He waited for her till nearly nine, and then came along to see if she was still with you.”

  Patricia looked at him anxiously.

  “What do you think has happened?”

  “I’ve got a very good idea,” said the Saint rather grimly. “And so have you, lass. But at the moment there’s just nothing we can do. We haven’t a clue in the wide world. Of course, Barringer may have located her since—”

  He shrugged. As a matter of fact, the problem was plaguing him, and only the sober knowledge of his own helplessness kept him in exasperated inaction.

  The club band was taking a breather, and the Saint resumed his strumming on the borrowed banjo as if no such joy-shattering nuisances as Gaydon’s Wharf murders, infernal machines thrust into letter-boxes, and blood-thirsty gunmen, had any existence in a glad world.

  He raised his cheerful voice, and continued with his self-appointed task of entertaining the assembled company.

  “Dearest, the jaunt is over, Ended the jag divine;

  You must go back to your wife, I must go back to mine—”

  “Zoom! Boom! Ta-ra-ra!” aided and abetted Detective Duncarry with enthusiasm.

  A waiter approached and whispered something in the Saint’s ear.

  “Spill the rest for yourself, Dun, and get yourself hated,” said the Saint, saddling the American with the instrument of torture. “There’s an infuriated laundress outside, flourishing a club and my unpaid washing bill.”

  He went through into the vestibule, and greeted Charles Barringer blithely.

  “I came here because I found this address in my pocket, Mr Templar,” he said, holding out a scrap of paper.

  “Sure. I put it there for you to find”. So you haven’t found Eileen yet?”

  “I haven’t.”

  “Have you mentioned her disappearance to the sleuth from Scotland Yard who’s watching over your welfare?”

  Charles Barringer shook his head hopelessly. He looked strained and worried beyond his years; and suddenly the Saint gripped him by the shoulders, swung him round, and looked long and searchingly into his troubled brown eyes.

  “Son,” he said, “don’t be too sure that you’re desperately wanted for killing Friste, because it isn’t true. I can’t deny that Teal’s alleged brain is running that way, but mine isn’t. And I’m also on the job, and I have a very good reason for knowing that you didn’t do it.”

  He smiled encouragingly.

  “Keep the stiff upper lip, old chap. If you like to hang around here a few minutes longer, I’ll get on the phone to Teal right away and tell him all about it. I’d toddle off with you myself, but I can’t abandon Duncarry, who’s getting happy and ready and willing to play the superb ass. If you like, I’ll fetch in your bloodhound as well, or he’ll be getting nervous. I promise you the poor boob isn’t the man-eating horror you think he is, and you may get quite sociable over a smoke and a glass of beer. He’s only holding down his job.”

  “It’s a dirty job,” said the boy bitterly. “Why don’t they arrest me again, and get it over?”

  The Saint hitched his shoulders.

  “Search me. The intricacies of British law are beyond me. Leave it to Teal, and I’ll collect the sleuth.”

  Simon moved on past the doorkeeper and beckoned the plain-clothes man across the road.

  “Two friends of mine,” he said to the suspicious waiter. “Supply them with beer and cigarettes, and add the debt with Mr Duncarry’s to my death warrant.”

  “Mr Duncarry has just ordered a magnum of champagne, sir.”

  “He would,” said the Saint mournfully. “If I’d had any sense, I’d have made him a member for half a guinea and entitled him to pay for himself.”

  He went to the telephone and asked for Teal’s private number. By this time, Chief Inspector Teal should either have retired to bed, or have been seated at the domestic fireside listening to the radio and putting innumerable threepences into the pockets of Mr Wrigley’s shareholders. The latter guess appeared to hit the bull’s-eye, for Teal himself answered the call, promptly.

  “Oh, you,” he said, almost with a moan. “Oh, damn!”

  “Glad you’re sitting up and taking notice, dear old Antipon. Eileen Wiltham has faded into the great unknown, so you’d better shed those carpet slippers and get busy. I’m at the Jericho with Duncarry, who’s full of pep. Gin and pep.”

  “What the—what’s this about the Wiltham girl?” asked Teal sourly.

  “I’m only guessing,” said the Saint, who was also hoping it with considerable horsepower, “but I’ve got a hunch that my loving pals Jack Farnberg and Vittorio Ardossi have mixed her up with Pat. Get on the job, old dear.”

  Mr Teal breathed so hard that the Saint almost fancied he could smell peppermint, and hung up the receiver. Simon grinned gently. He was practically certain now that his guess had been correct, and, with certain humane reservations, he welcomed the idea. Commonplace crimes like the Gaydon’s Wharf murder mystery had a very transient appeal for him, and the idea of inviting Teal’s assistance against Farnberg and Ardossi over a strictly personal slab of hatred would have made him laugh; but if Farnberg and Ardossi had been insane enough to entangle themselves in the Gaydon’s Wharf affair, the resulting developments might have their entertaining angles.

  “You can push on now, Charles,” he said, returning to the vestibule. “I’ve started things moving, so don’t be too anxious about your beloved. Goodnight, son.”

  A couple of hours later the Saint gathered up the wreckage of Detective Duncarry, conveyed it forth into the night, and handed it over to the porter of the American’s hotel. He went down the steps again to his car, fresh and smiling; and at that moment another car purred into the quiet square and pulled up within a yard of his own tail light.

  The chauffeur jumped down to open the door, and the passenger stepped out. The fur collar of his overcoat rose above his ear-tips, and from under a glossy silk hat a sallow face peered out through gold-rimmed glasses. Even so, Simon recognised him at once.

  “I’ll telephone when I want you again.”

  “Thank you, sir. Goodnight, sir.”

  Simon felt inclined to burst into song. This sort of thing smithereened all Teal’s cautious ideas and painstaking methods of forging the chain link by link and ratting after his man from hole to hole. It was pure unadulterated luck, of course, but it was so.

  “Welcome, Vittorio mio,” cried the Saint with extended arms. “Why did you run so fast when I last saw you? And why didn’t you inform the police of your address? You may be a proud American citizen, but you’re an alien over here, my pet, and the police may jug you for it. Hadn’t I better come in and explain the law?”

  Ardossi began to protest, but the Saint shepherded him irresistibly up the steps. “What’s Mr Duncarry’s number?” he asked the night porter.

  “Twenty-eight, sir.”

  The little hotel in a quiet corner of Elmbury Square suited Detective Du
ncarry’s pocket, but it was not the kind of place for a recently fledged plutocrat like Ardossi to select unless he felt that it might be unhealthy to be too much in the limelight. There was no lift. The Saint followed Ardossi up the stairs, and patted him tenderly about the person for any hard bulge suggestive of a hidden weapon.

  Ardossi’s room was on the second floor, and the lights went up in his sitting-room as he unlocked the door. The room looked comfortable enough, but slightly dingy.

  “Lead on, little one,” said the Saint persuasively. “I want to inspect the rest of your dovecote.”

  The Italian, finding that his protests were ignored, obeyed meekly enough. A small bedroom adjoined the sitting-room, and beyond that was the bathroom. They returned when the Saint was satisfied with his tour of inspection.

  “A jolly-looking overcoat, Vittorio,” commented the Saint critically, as Ardossi divested himself of that expensive garment and removed his gloves. “These are happy days.”

  Ardossi sat down without removing his glossy hat. In the centre of his shirt front was a fine pink pearl, and he spread out his hands with an opulent sparkle of diamond rings.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “Not much, Vittorio—only the lady you kidnapped. Funny thing to want, isn’t it? But I want it very much, so don’t let’s have any trouble. Open your mouth and wag your chin, sweetheart, or I’ll start at your ears and peel the hide off you in strips.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Ardossi sighed. The Saint was expecting him to lie and keep on lying, but there were certain methods of overcoming such trifling difficulties. Simon took out his cigarette-case and lighted a cigarette as if he had all the time in the world to spare. Then his unfriendly gaze returned again to the Italian.

  “You’re not so bat-eyed as all that,” he said. “Jack up those glasses and let’s have a look at you.”

  The glasses went, revealing the Italian’s eyes, black as sloes and unwinking.

  “What’s the game over here, Vittorio?”

  The Italian gave the ghost of a smile. “The same game, Mr Templar.”