At last he was satisfied that everything had been done that he had to do.
He went to the window, drew the curtains aside a cautious half-inch, and looked down again. A little further up Brook Street, on the other side of the road, a blue Furillac sports saloon had drawn up by the kerb. The Saint smiled approvingly.
He turned out the lights in the sitting-room, went through to his bedroom, and began to undress. When he rolled up his left sleeve, there was visible a little leather sheath strapped to his forearm, and in this sheath he carried a beautifully-balanced knife—a mere six inches of razor-keen, leaf-shaped blade and three inches of carved ivory hilt. This was Anna, the Saint’s favourite throwing-knife. The Saint could impale a flying champagne cork with Anna at twenty paces. He considered her present place of concealment a shade too risky, and transferred the sheath to the calf of his right leg. Finally, he made sure that his cigarette-case contained a supply of a peculiar kind of cigarette.
Outside, in the street, an ordinary bulb motor-horn hooted with a peculiar rhythm. It was a pre-arranged signal, and the Saint did not have to look out again to know that Ganning had returned. And then, almost immediately, a bell rang, and the indicator in the kitchen showed him that it was the bell of the front door.
“They must think I’m a mug!” murmured the Saint.
But he was wrong—he had forgotten the fire-escape across the landing outside the door of his flat.
A moment later he heard, down the tiny hall, a dull crash and a sound of splintering wood. It connected up in his mind with the ringing of the front door bell, and he realized that he had no monopoly of pre-arranged signals. That ringing had been to tell the men who had entered at the back that their companions were ready at the front of the building. The Saint acknowledged that he had been trapped into underrating the organizing ability of Edgar Hayn.
Unthinkingly, he had left his automatic in his bedroom. He went quickly out of the kitchen into the hall, and at the sound of his coming the men who had entered with the aid of a jemmy swung round. Hayn was one of them, and his pistol carried a silencer.
“Well, well, well!” drawled the Saint, whose mildness in times of crisis was phenomenal, and prudently raised his hands high above his head.
“You are going on a journey with me, Templar,” said Hayn. “We are leaving at once, and I can give no date for your return. Kindly turn round and put your hands behind you.”
Templar obeyed. His wrists were bound, and the knots tightened by ungentle hands.
“Are you still so optimistic, Saint?” Hayn taunted him, testing the bonds.
“More than ever,” answered the Saint cheerfully. “This is my idea of a night out—as the bishop said to the actress.”
Then they turned him round again.
“Take him downstairs,” said Hayn.
They went down in a silent procession, the Saint walking without resistance between two men. The front door was opened and a husky voice outside muttered, “All clear. The flattie passed ten minutes ago, and his beat takes him half an hour.”
The Saint was passed on to the men outside and hustled across the pavement into the waiting car. Hayn and two other men followed him in; a third climbed up beside the driver. They moved off at once, heading west.
At the same time, a man rose from his cramped position on the floor of the Furillac that waited twenty yards away. He had been crouched down there for three-quarters of an hour, without a word of complaint for his discomfort, to make it appear that the car was empty, and the owner inside the house opposite which the car stood. The self-starter whirred under his foot as he sidled round behind the wheel, and the powerful engine woke to a throaty whisper.
The car in which the Saint rode with Hayn flashed up the street, gathering speed rapidly, and as it went by, the blue sports Furillac pulled out from the kerb and purred westwards at a discreet distance in its wake.
Roger Conway drove. The fit of his coat was spoiled by the solid bulge of the automatic in one pocket, and there was a stern set to his face which would have amazed those who only knew that amiable young man in his more flippant moods.
From his place in the leading car Simon Templar caught in the driving mirror a glimpse of the following Furillac, and smiled deep within himself.
11
Gwen Chandler lived in a microscopic flat in Bayswater, the rent of which was paid by the money left her by her father. She did the housekeeping herself, and, with the saving on a servant, there was enough left over from her income to feed her and give her a reasonably good time. None of the few relations she had ever paid much attention to her.
She would have been happy with her friends, and she had been, but all that had stopped abruptly when she had met and fallen in love, head over heels, with Jerry Stannard.
He was about twenty-three. She knew that, for the past two years, he had been leading a reckless life, spending most of his time and money in night clubs and usually going to bed at dawn. She also knew that his extravagant tastes had plunged him into debt, and that since the death of his father he had been accumulating bigger and bigger creditors, and she attributed these excesses to his friends, for the few people of his acquaintance she had met were of a type she detested. But her advice and inquiries had been answered with such a surliness, that at last she had given up the contest and nursed her anxiety alone.
But a few days ago her fiancé’s grumpiness had strangely vanished. Though he still seemed to keep the same Bohemian hours, he had been smiling and cheerful whenever she met him, and once, in a burst of good spirits, he had told her that his debts were paid off and he was making a fresh start. She could get no more out of him than this, however—her eager questions had made him abruptly taciturn, though his refusal to be cross-examined had been kindly enough. He would be able to tell her all about it one day, he said, and that day would not be long coming.
She knew that it was his practice to lie in bed late on Sunday mornings—but then, it was his practice to lie in bed late on all the other six days of the week. On this particular Sunday morning, therefore, when a ring on the front door bell had disturbed her from the task of preparing breakfast, she was surprised to find that he was her visitor.
He was trying to hide agitation, but she discerned that the agitation was not of the harassed kind.
“Got any breakfast for me?” he asked. “I had to come along at this unearthly hour, because I don’t know that I’ll have another chance to see you all day. Make it snappy, because I’ve got an important appointment.”
“It’ll be ready in a minute,” she told him.
He loafed about the kitchen, whistling, while she fried eggs and bacon, and sniffed the fragrant aroma appreciatively.
“It smells good,” he said, “and I’ve got the appetite of a lifetime!”
She would have expected him to breakfast in a somewhat headachy silence, but he talked cheerfully.
“It must be years since you had a decent holiday,” he said. “I think you deserve one, Gwen. What do you say if we get married by special licence and run over to Deauville next week?”
He laughed at her bewildered protests.
“I can afford it,” he assured her. “I’ve paid off everyone I owe money to, and in a fortnight I’m getting a terribly sober job, starting at five pounds a week.”
“How did you get it?”
“A man called Simon Templar found it for me. Have you ever met him, by any chance?”
She shook her head, trying to find her voice.
“I’d do anything in the world for that man,” said Jerry.
“Tell me about it,” she stammered.
He told her—of his miraculous rescue by the Saint and the interview that followed it, of the Saint’s persuasiveness, of the compact they had made. He also told her about Hayn, but although the recital was fairly inclusive, it did not include the machinations of the Maison Laserre. The Saint never believed in telling anybody everything, and even Hayn had secrets of his own.
> The girl was amazed and shocked by the revelation of what Stannard’s life had been and might still have been. But all other emotions were rapidly submerged in the great wave of relief which swept over her when she learned that Stannard had given his word to break away, and was even then working on the side of the man who had brought him back to a sense of honour—even if that honour worked in an illegal method.
“I suppose it’s crooked, in one way,” Stannard admitted. “They’re out to get Hayn and his crowd into prison, but first they’re swindling them on behalf of charity. I don’t know how they propose to do it. On the other hand, though, the money they’ve got back for me from Hayn is no more than I lost in cash at his beastly club.”
“But why did Hayn let you keep on when he knew you’d got no money left?”
Stannard made a wry grimace.
“He wanted to be able to force me into his gang. I came in, too—but that was because Templar told me to agree to anything that would make Hayn pay me that three-thousand-pound cheque.”
She digested the information in a daze. The revelation of the enterprise in which Jerry Stannard was accompliced to the Saint did not shock her. Womanlike, she could see only the guilt of Hayn and the undoubted justice of his punishment. Only one thing made her afraid.
“If you were caught—”
“There’ll be no fuss,” said Jerry. Templar’s promised me that, and he’s the kind of man you’d trust with anything. I haven’t had to do anything criminal. And it’ll all be over in a day or two. Templar rang me up last night.”
“What was it about?”
“That’s what he wouldn’t tell me. He told me to go to the Splendide at eleven and wait there for a man called Tremayne, who may arrive any time up to one o’clock, and he’ll tell me the rest. Tremayne’s one of Templar’s gang.”
Then she remembered Hayn’s peculiar behaviour of the previous morning. The parcel she had brought away from Laserre still lay unopened on her dressing-table. Jerry was interested in the account. Hayn’s association with Laserre, as has been mentioned, was news to him. But he could make nothing of the story.
“I expect he’s got some foolish crush on you,” he suggested. “It’s only the way you’d expect a man like that to behave. I’ll speak to Templar about it when I see him.”
He left the dining-room as soon as he had finished breakfast, and was back in a moment with his hat.
“I must be going now,” he said, and took her in his arms. “Gwen, dear, with any luck it’ll all be over very soon, and we’ll be able to forget it. I’ll be back as soon as ever I can.”
She kissed him.
“God bless you. And be careful, my darling!”
He kissed her again, and went out singing blithely. The world was very bright for Jerry Stannard that morning.
But the girl listened to the cheerful slamming of the door with a little frown, for she was troubled with misgivings. It had all seemed so easy at the time, in the optimistic way in which he had told her the story, but reviewed in cold blood it presented dangers and difficulties in legion.
She wished, for both their sakes, that he had been able to stay with her that day, and her fears were soon to be justified.
Half an hour after he had gone, when the breakfast things had been cleared away, and she was tidying herself to go out for a walk, there was a ring on the front door bell.
She answered it, and when she saw that it was Edgar Hayn, after what Jerry had been able to tell her, she would have closed the door in his face. But he had pushed through before she could collect her wits.
He led the way into the sitting-room, and she followed in mingled fear and anger. Then she saw that there were dark rings round his eyes, and his face was haggard.
“What is it?” she asked coldly.
“The police,” he said. “They’re after me—and they’re after you, too. I came to warn you.”
“But why should they be after me?” she demanded blankly.
He was in a terrible state of nerves. His hands fidgeted with his umbrella all the time he was talking, and he did not meet her eyes.
“Drugs!” he said gruffly. “Illicit drugs. Cocaine. You know what I mean! There’s no harm in your knowing now—we’re both in the same boat. They’ve been watching me, and they saw me with you yesterday and followed you.”
“But how do you know?”
“I’ve got friends at Scotland Yard,” he snapped. “It’s necessary. Policemen aren’t incorruptible. But my man let me down—he never gave me the rip till the last moment. They’re going to raid this flat and search it this morning.”
Her brain was like a maelstrom, but there was one solid fact to hold onto.
“There’s nothing for them to find.”
“That’s where you’re wrong! Those things I gave you—one of our other boxes got mixed up in them. I’ve just found that out. That’s why I’m here. There’s six ounces of cocaine in this flat!”
She recoiled, wide-eyed. Her heart was thumping madly. It all seemed too impossible, too fantastic…And yet it only bore out and amplified what Jerry had been able to tell her. She wondered frantically if the excuse of innocence would convince a jury. Hayn saw the thought cross her mind, and shattered it.
“You know how Jerry’s lived,” he said. “No one would believe that you weren’t both in it.”
He looked out of the window. She was impelled to follow his example, and she was in time to see two broad-shouldered men in bowler hats entering the house.
“They’re here!” said Hayn breathlessly. “But there may be a chance. I recognized one of the men—he’s a friend of mine. I may be able to square him.”
Outside, a bell rang.
Hayn was scribbling something on a card.
“Take this,” he muttered. “My car’s outside. If I can get them away from you for a moment, slip out and show the card to the chauffeur. I’ve got a house at Hurley. He’ll take you there, and I’ll come down later and discuss how we’re going to get you and Jerry out of the country.”
The bell rang again, more urgently. Hayn thrust the pasteboard into the girl’s hand.
“What’re you hesitating for?” he snarled. “Do you want to stand in the dock at the Old Bailey beside your brother?”
Hardly knowing what she did, she put the card in her bag.
“Go and open the door,” Hayn commanded. “They’ll break in if you don’t.”
As he spoke, there came yet a more insistent ringing, and the flat echoed with the thunder of a knocker impatiently plied.
The girl obeyed, and at the same time she was thinking furiously. Jerry—or his chief, this man Templar—would know how to deal with the crisis, but for the moment there was no doubt that Hayn’s plan was the only practicable one. Her one idea was to stay out of the hands of the police long enough to make sure that Jerry was safe, and to give them time to think out an escape from the trap in which Hayn had involved them.
The two broad-shouldered men entered without ceremony as she opened the door.
“I am Inspector Baker, of Scotland Yard,” said one of them formally. “And I have a warrant to search your flat. You are suspected of being in illegal possession of a quantity of cocaine.”
The other man took her arm and led her into the sitting-room.
Hayn came forward, frowning.
“I must protest about this,” he said. “Miss Chandler is a friend of mine.”
“That’s unlucky for you,” was the curt reply.
“I’ll speak to Baker about this,” threatened Hayn hotly, and at that moment Baker came in.
He was carrying a small cardboard box with the label of Laserre. “Poudre Laserre,” the label said, but the powder was white and crystalline.
“I think this is all we need,” said Baker, and stepped up to Gwen. “I shall take you into custody on a charge—”
Hayn came between them.
“I should like a word with you first,” he said quietly.
Baker shrugged
.
“If you must waste your time—”
“I’ll take the risk,” said Hayn. “In private, please.”
Baker jerked his thumb.
“Take Chandler into another room, Jones.”
“Jones had better stay,” interrupted Hayn. “What I have to say concerns him also. If you will let Miss Chandler leave us for a minute, I will guarantee that she will not attempt to escape.”
There was some argument, but eventually Baker agreed. Hayn opened the door for the girl, and as she went out gave her an almost imperceptible nod. She went into her bedroom and picked up the telephone. It seemed an eternity before the paging system of the Splendide found Jerry. When he answered, she told him what had happened.
“I’m going to Hayn’s house at Hurley,” she said. “It’s the only way to get out at the moment. But tell Tremayne when he comes, and get hold of Templar, and do something quickly!”
He was beginning to object, to ask questions, but there was no time for that, and she hung up the receiver. She had no means of knowing what Hayn’s methods of “Squaring” were, or how long the negotiations might be expected to keep the detectives occupied.
She tiptoed down the hall, and opened the door.
From the window, Hayn, Baker, and Jones watched her cross the pavement and enter the car.
“She’s a peach, boss,” said Baker enviously.
“You’ve said all I wanted you to say,” Hayn returned shortly. “But it’s worked perfectly. If I’d simply tried to kidnap her, she’d have been twice as much nuisance. As it is, she’ll be only too glad to do everything I say.”
Dicky Tremayne arrived two minutes after Hayn’s car had driven off. He should have been there over an hour ago, but the cussedness of Fate had intervened to baulk one of the Saint’s best-laid plans. A bus had skidded into Tremayne’s car in Park Lane, the consequent policeman had delayed him interminably, the arrangements for the removal of his wrecked car had delayed him longer, and when at last he had got away in a taxi a series of traffic blocks had held him up at every crossing.
Enter the Saint (The Saint Series) Page 8