Featuring the Saint s-5

by Leslie Charteris

  "I'll give you this girl's address"-Lemuel took a slip of paper, and wrote. "She's expecting you to pick her up at nine o'clock to-morrow morning. You must go straight to Hanworth. . . ."

  Simon folded the paper and stowed it carefully away in his pocketbook, while Lemuel gave further instructions.

  Lemuel was showing signs of the strain. There was a puffiness about his eyes, and his plump cheeks seemed to sag flabbily. But he played his part with a grim restraint.

  Leaving Jermyn Street, the Saint found himself heading mechanically for the Piccadilly Hotel. There he composed, after some careful calculations with the aid of a calendar, a brief note: Unless the sum of Ł20,000 (Twenty Thousand Pounds) is paid into the account of J. B. L. Smith at the City and Continental Bank, Lombard Street, by 12 noon on Saturday, I shall forward to the Public Prosecutor sufficient evidence to assure you of five years' penal servitude.

  The note was signed with one of the Saint's most artistic self-portraits, and it was addressed to Francis Lemuel.

  This was on Thursday night.

  As he strolled leisurely home the Saint communed with himself again.

  "Uncle Francis wanted a disreputable aviator so that if anything went wrong the aviator could be made the scapegoat. But when he deduced that I was the Saint, that idea went west. What should I have done if I'd been Uncle Francis? ... I should have arranged for Mr. Templar to fall out of an aëroplane at a height of about four thousand feet. A nasty accident-he stalled at the top of a loop, and his safety belt wasn't fastened. . . . And Uncle knows enough about the game to be able to bring the kite down. . . . And that's what I thought it was going to be, with a few drops of slumber mixture in my beer before we went up next time. . . . But this is nearly as good. I do my last job of work for Uncle, and doubtless there is an entertainment arranged for my especial benefit in Berlin to-morrow night-or a man hired to file my elevator wires ready for the return journey on Saturday. Yes- perhaps this is even cleverer than my own idea. The commission to take this girl to Berlin is intended to disarm my suspicions. I am meant to think that I'm not suspected. I'm sup posed to think that I'm absolutely on velvet, and therefore get careless. . . . Oh, it should be a great little week-end!"

  The only trouble he expected the next morning would not be directly of Lemuel's making-and in that, again, his deduction was faultless.

  Stella Dornford was surprised to see him.

  "What do you want?" she asked.

  "I want you to fly with me," said the Saint dramatically, and she was taken aback.

  "Are you Lemuel's man?"

  Simon nodded.

  "Extraordinary how I get about, isn't it?" he murmured.

  "Is this a joke?"

  He shook his head.

  "Anything but, as far as I'm concerned, old dear. Now, can you imagine anyone getting up at this hour of the morning to be funny?" He grinned at her puzzled doubts. "Call it coincidence, sweetheart, and lead me to your luggage."

  At the foot of the stairs he paused and looked thoughtfully round the courtyard.

  "They seem to have scraped Cuthbert off the concrete," he said; and then, abruptly: "How did you get this job?"

  "Lemuel was in front the other night," she answered. "He sent his card round in the interval--"

  "Told you he was struck with your dancing, bought you out, signed you up--"

  "How did you know?"

  "I didn't. But it fits in so beautifully. And to make me the accessory-oh, it's just too splendiferous for words! I didn't know Francis had such a sense of humour."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I'm right, am I? Listen. He said: 'It's one of the worst shows I've ever seen, but your dancing, Old Man'-no, I suppose he'd vary that-'but your dancing, Old Woman, is the elephant's uvula.' Or words to that effect. What?"

  "He certainly said he liked my dancing--"

  "Joke," said the Saint sardonically.

  She caught him up when he was loading her two suitcases into the back of his car.

  "Mr. Templar--"

  "My name."

  "I don't understand your sense of humour."

  "Sorry about that."

  "I'd be obliged if you'd leave my dancing alone."

  "Darling," said the Saint kindly, "I'd like to maroon it on a desert island. After I'd met you for the first time I made a point of seeing your show; and I must say that I decided that you are beautiful and energetic and well-meaning, and your figure is a dream-but if your dancing is the elephant's uvula, then I think the R. S. P. C. A. ought to do something about it."

  Pale with fury, she entered the car, and there was silence until they were speeding down the Great West Road.

  Then Simon added, as if there had been no break in his speech: "If I were you, old dear, I'd be inclined to think very kindly of that nice boy in the bank."

  "I don't think I want your advice, Mr. Templar," she said coldly. "Your job is to take me to Berlin-and I only wish I could get there in time without your help."

  All the instinctive antagonism that had come up between them like barbed wire at their first meeting was back again. After the accident to the amateur mountaineer there had been a truce; but the Saint had foreseen renewed hostilities from the moment he had read the name and address on the paper which Lemuel had given him, and he had been at no pains to avert the outbreak. Patricia Holm used to say that the Saint had less than no idea of the art of handling women. That is a statement which other historians may be left to judge; the Saint himself would have been the smiling first to subscribe to the charge, but there were times when Simon Templar's vanity went to strange extremes. If he thought he had any particular accomplishment, he would either boast about it or disclaim it altogether, so you always knew where you were with him. So far as the handling of women was concerned, his methods were usually of the this-is-your-label-and-if-you-don't-like-it-you-can-get-the-hell-out-of-here school-when they were not exactly the reverse-and in this case, at least, he knew precisely what he was doing. Otherwise, he might have had a more entertaining journey to Berlin than he did; but he had developed a soft spot in his heart for the unknown nice boy who used to take Stella Dornford to the movies-and, bless him, probably used to hold her hand in the same. Now, Jacob Einsmann would never have thought of doing a thing like that. . . .

  There was another reason-a subsidiary reason-for the Saint's aloofness. He wanted to be free to figure out the exact difference that had been made in the situation by the discovery of the identity of his charge. A new factor had been introduced which was likely to alter a lot of things. And it was necessary to find out a little more about it-a very little more.

  So they travelled between Hanworth and the Tempelhof in a frostbitten silence which the Saint made no attempt to alleviate; and in the same spirit he took Stella Dornford by taxi to the address that Lemuel had given him.

  This was a huge, gloomy house nearly two miles away from the centre of fashionable gaiety, and anything less like a night club Simon Templar had rarely seen.

  He did not immediately open the door of the taxi. Instead, he surveyed the house interestedly through a window of the cab; and then he turned to the girl.

  "I'm sure Jacob Einsmann isn't a very nice man," he said. "In fact, he and I are definitely going to have words. But I'm ready to leave you at a hotel before I go in."

  She tossed her head and opened the door herself.

  The Saint followed her up the steps of the house. She had rang the bell while he was paying off the taxi, and the door was unbarred as he reached her side.

  "Herr Einsmann wishes to see you also, sir."

  The Saint nodded and passed in. The butler-he, like the porter at the Calumet Club, of hallowed memory, looked as if he had been other things in his time-led them down a bare, sombre hall, and opened a door.

  The girl passed through it first, and Simon heard her exclamation before he saw Einsmann.

  Then her hand gripped his arm.

  "I don't like this," she said.

  S
imon smiled. He had read the doubt in her eyes when she first saw the house, and had liked the dam'-fool obstinacy that had marched her into it against his advice and her better judgment. But, while he approved her spirit, he had deliberately taken advantage of it to make sure that she should have her lesson.

  "So!" Jacob Einsmann rose from his chair, rubbing his hands gently together. His eyes were fixed upon the girl. "You vould not listen to it vot I say in London, no, you vere so prrroud, but now you yourself to me hof come, aind't it?"

  6

  "Aye, laad, we've coom," drawled the Saint.

  "So you hof got it vot you vanted, yes, no, aind't it?"

  Einsmann turned his head.

  "Ach! I remember you."

  "And I you," said the Saint comfortably. "In fact, I spent a considerable time on the trip over composing a little song about you, in the form of a nursery rhyme for the instruction of small children, which, with your permission, I will now proceed to sing. It goes like this: " 'Dear Jacob is an unwashed mamser, We like not his effluvium, sir; If we can tread on Jacob's graft, Das wird jja wirklich fabelhaft.'

  For that effort in trilingual verse I have already awarded myself the Swaffer Biscuit." Einsmann leered.

  "For vonce, Herr Saint, you hof a misdake made."

  "Saint?"

  The girl spoke, at Simon's shoulder, startled, half incredulous. He smiled round at her.

  "That's right, old dear. I am that well-known institution. Is this the Boche you mentioned at the Cri-the bird who got fresh at the Calumet?"

  She nodded.

  "I didn't know--"

  "You weren't meant to," said Simon coolly. "That was just part of the deception. But I guessed it as soon as Lemuel gave me your name."

  "You vos clever, Herr Saint," Einsmann said suavely.

  "I vos," the Saint admitted modestly. "It only wanted a little putting two and two together. There was that dinner the other day, for instance. Very well staged for my benefit, wasn't it? All that trout-spawn and frog-bladder about your cabarets, and Lemuel warbling about the difficulty of getting English girls abroad. ... I made a good guess at the game then; and I'd have laid anyone ten thousand bucks to a slush nickel, on the spot, that it wouldn't be long before I was asked to ferry over a few fair maidens in Lemuel's machine. I had your graft taped right out days ago, and I don't see that the present variation puts me far wrong. The only real difference is that Francis is reckoning to have to find another aviator to carry through the rest of the contract-aind't it?"

  His hand went lazily to his hip pocket; and then something jabbed him sharply in the ribs, and he looked down at a heavy automatic in the hand of the imitation butler, who had not left the room.

  "You vill bring your gun out verree slowly," said Einsmann, succulently. "Verree slowly. . . ."

  Simon smiled-a slow and Saintly smile. And, as slow as the smile, his hand came into view.

  "Do you mind?" he murmured.

  He opened the cigarette case, and selected a smoke with care. The butler lowered his gun.

  "Let us talk German," said the Saint suddenly, in that language. "I have a few things to say which this girl need not hear."

  Einsmann's mouth twisted.

  "I shall be interested," he said ironically.

  With an unlighted cigarette between his lips, and the cigarette case still open in his hands, Simon looked across at the German. Stella Dornford was behind the Saint; the imitation butler stood a little to one side, his automatic in his hand. "You are a man for whom there is no adequate punishment.

  You are a buyer and seller of souls, and your money is earned with more human misery than your insanitary mind can imagine. To attempt to visit some of this misery upon yourself would do little good. The only thing to do is to see that you cease to pollute the earth."

  His cold blue eyes seemed to bore into Einsmann's brain, so that the German, in spite of his armed bodyguard, felt a momentary qualm of fear.

  "I only came here to make quite sure about you, Jacob Einsmann," said the Saint. "And now I am quite sure. You had better know that I am going to kill you."

  He took a step forward, and did not hear the door open behind him.

  Einsmann's florid face had gone white, save for the bright patches of colour that burned in either cheek. Then he spoke, in a sudden torrent of hoarse words: "Sol You say you will kill me? But you are wrong. I am not the one who will die to-night. I know you, Herr Saint! Even if Lemuel had not told me, I should still have known enough. You remember Henri Chastel? He was my friend, and you killed him. Ach! You shall not have a quick death, my friend--"

  With the Saintly smile still resting blandly on his lips, Simon had closed his cigarette case with a snap while Einsmann talked, and was returning it to his hip pocket. ... He performed the action so quietly and naturally that, coming after the false alarm he had caused when he took it out of the same pocket, this movement of his hand passed almost unnoticed. Nor did it instantly seem strange to the audience when the Saint's hand did not at once return to view. He brought the hand up swiftly behind his back; he had exchanged the cigarette case for a gun, and he nosed the muzzle of the gun through the gap between his left arm and his body.

  "You may give my love to Henri," he remarked, and touched the trigger.

  He saw Einsmann's face twist horribly, and the German clutched at his stomach before he crumpled where he stood; but Simon only saw these things out of the tail of his eye. He had whipped the gun from under his armpit a second after his first shot; there was no time to fetch it round behind his body into a more convenient firing position, and he loosed his second shot with his forearm lying along the small of his back and the gun aimed out to his left. But the butler's attention had been diverted at the moment when the Saint fired first, and the man's reaction was not quite quick enough. He took the Saint's bullet in the shoulder, and his own shot blew a hole in the carpet.

  Then the door slammed shut and Simon turned right round.

  The man who had seized Stella Dornford from behind a moment before the Saint's first shot was not armed, and he had not taken a second to perceive the better part of valour. Unhappily for his future, the instinct of self-preservation had been countered by another and equally powerful instinct, and he had tried to compromise with the two. Perhaps he thought that the armed butler could be relied upon.

  The speculation is interesting but unprofitable, for the man's mental processes are now beyond the reach of practical investigation. All we know is that at that precise instant of time he was heading down the hall with an unconscious bur den.

  And the Saint had wrenched at the handle of the door, and found it locked from the outside. Simon jerked up his gun again, and the report mingled with a splintering crash.

  Her jerked the door open and looked up and down the dark hall. At the far end, towards the back of the house, another door was closing-he saw the narrowing strip of brighter light in the gloom. The strip vanished as he raced towards it, and he heard a key turn as he groped for the handle. Again he raised his automatic, and then, instead of the detonation he was expecting, heard only the click of a dud cartridge. He snatched at the sliding jacket, and something jammed. He had no time to find out what it was; he dropped the gun into his pocket, made certain of the position of the keyhole, and stepped back a pace. Then he raised his foot and smashed his heel into the lock with all his strength and weight behind it.

  The door sprang open eighteen inches-and crashed into a table that was being brought up to reinforce it. The Saint leaped at the gap, made it, wedged his back against the jamb, and set both hands to the door. With one titanic heave he flung the door wide and sent the table spinning back to the centre of the room.

  The girl lay on the floor by the doorway. On the other side of the room, beyond the upturned table, the man who had brought her had opened a drawer in a desk, and he turned with an automatic in his hand.

  'Schweinhund!" he snarled.

  The Saint laughed, took two quick steps, and l
aunched himself headlong into space in a terrific dive. It took him clear over the table, full length, and muddled his objective's aim. The man sighted frantically, and fired; and the Saint felt something like a hot iron sear his right arm from wrist to elbow; then Simon had gathered up the man's legs in that fantastic tackle, and they went to the floor together.

  The Saint's left hand caught the gunman's right wrist and pinned it to the floor; then, his own right hand being numb, he brought up his knee. ...

  He was on his feet again in a moment, gathering the automatic out of the man's limp hand as he rose.

  The girl's eyes fluttered as he reached her, but the Saint reckoned that freight would be less trouble than first aid. He put his captured gun on a chair; and, as the girl started to try to rise, he yanked her to her feet and caught her over his left shoulder before she could fall again.

  Quickly he tested his right hand again, and found that his fingers had recovered from the momentary shock. He picked up the gun in that hand.

  A faint sound behind him made him turn swiftly, and he saw the gunman crawling towards him with a knife. He had not meant to fire, but the trigger must have been exceptionally sensitive, and the gunman rolled over slowly and lay quite still.

  Then the Saint broke down the hall.

  A gigantic Negro loomed up out of the twilight. Careful of the trigger this time, the Saint snapped the muzzle of the gun into the man's chest, and the Negro backed away with rolling eyes. Keeping him covered, Simon sidled to the door and set the girl gently on her feet. She was able to stand then; and she it was who, under his directions, unbarred the door and opened it.

  "See if there's a taxi," rapped the Saint, and heard her hurry down the steps.

  A moment later she called him.

  He gave her time to get into the taxi herself; and then, like lightning, he sprang through the door and slammed it behind him.

  The chauffeur, turning to receive his instructions through the little window communicating between the inside and the outside of the cab, heard the shout from the house, and looked round with a question forming on his lips. Then something cold and metallic touched the back of his neck, and one of his fares spoke crisply: "Gehen Sie schnell, mein Freund!"