Conway took him insinuatingly by the arm.
“Then you’d better come and have another drink, old boy.”
“Good idea,” nodded the Saint, draping himself affectionately on Roger’s neck. “Less go on drinking. All night. All the silly ole night. That,” said the Saint, “sha good idea.” He turned to blow the manageress an unsteady kiss. “See you tomorrow, ole fruit, ’cos we’re not going home till the morning, we’re not—hic!…Roger, old water-melon, why does this floor wave about so much? You ought to have it s-seem to…”
They reached the porter’s room with realistic unsteadiness, and lurched in, and then the Saint straightened up.
“Hustle Dismal Desmond along, kiddo,” he said. “Where did you put the girl?”
“In one of the lounges. Do you have to act like this?”
“Obviously, my pet—to account for Dismal Desmond. Get Betty out of the way, up to one of the rooms. Pretend you’re just playing the fool. I leave it to you, partner!”
He literally pushed Conway out of the room, and the muffled sounds of his discordant singing followed Roger down the corridor. Conway felt like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
He hoisted the man out of the Saint’s car and carried him in, and only the simmering manageress saw him plugged into the porter’s cubicle.
Through the open door came the Saint’s voice: “Why, there’s dear ole Desmond! How are you, Desmond, ole pineapple? I was joss sayin’—”
Roger closed the door, and assumed an air of official efficiency.
“Did you say all the rooms were taken, Miss Cocker?”
“Number Seven’s empty at the moment, sir, but there’s some people due in tonight—”
“Then I’m afraid they’ll be unlucky. A girlfriend of mine arrived at the same time as we did, and I must give her a room. Tell these people you’re awfully sorry, but you’ve booked the same room twice by mistake—and pass them on to some other place.”
He turned on his heel and went back up the corridor. The manageress, standing petrified, heard a short conversation in which Roger’s voice was the only one audible, and then Mr Conway reappeared from the lounge with the girl in his arms.
“Cavemen,” said Mr Conway strongly, “are all the vogue, and there’ll be no nonsense from you, Betty darling—see?” He swept rapidly past the scandalized Miss Cocker, and continued towards the stairs. “Do you like being carried about the place? Does it make you love me any more? What’s that? Right. I’ll teach you to sham dead. You wait till I drop you in the bath…”
A bend in the staircase hid him from sight, but the conversation went on. Miss Cocker, rooted in her tracks, listened, appalled…
She was standing at the foot of the stairs when Roger came down, a few minutes later, feeling as if he had blasted his reputation for ever as far as his executive staff was concerned. And he was quite right.
“Will you be taking dinner, Mr Conway?” asked the manageress frostily, and Roger knew that he might as well be jugged for a julep as a jujube.
He grinned.
“Get sandwiches cut for twenty people,” he said, “and tell the porter to get a couple of dozen Bass. I think we’re all going for a moonlight picnic on the moors—and we won’t be home till the morning.”
He passed on, comforted by the moral victory, and found the Saint sitting on the porter’s bed, smoking a cigarette and surveying the man sprawled out on the floor. In much the same way an introspectively-minded cat might have surveyed a sleeping mouse.
He looked up, as Roger came in, with a lift of one questioning eyebrow, and Roger shook his head.
“I left her down at the other end of the corridor. And I should like to tell you that after this, either I shall have to fire her, or I shall have to fire myself.”
“Why worry?” demanded the Saint. “Pub-keeping is no trade for an honest criminal. Where’s Betty now?”
“I got her up to Number Seven.”
“Unsuspected?”
“I think so.”
“Good boy. Now let’s look at you.”
He stood up. Suddenly his hands went out and stroked down each side of Roger’s chin. Conway started back.
“What the blazes—”
“Hush,” said the Saint. “Not so much excitement.”
He showed Roger his hands. The palms were black with dust.
“You ought to make your bell-hop sweep under his bed more carefully,” he said. “However, in this case we’ll forgive him. It helps to make you look really villainous. Now—off with that collar and tie. A choker’ll suit you much better. That handkerchief—”
He jerked the square of fancy silk out of Roger’s pocket.
“Knot this round your neck, and you’ll start to look more like yourself. And unbutton the coat and turn up the collar at the back—it’ll make you look tougher…And a rakish cap effect, as worn by college chums, would make it perfect. There ought to be a cap here somewhere—every self-respecting bell-hop has one for his night out…”
He opened the wardrobe unceremoniously, rummaged, and found what he sought.
“Put that on. Over one ear, and well down over the eyes. That’s the stuff!”
Roger obeyed blindly. The Saint’s staccato urgency would have overwhelmed anyone.
“But what’s the idea?”
“Easy,” said the Saint. “A real bull-dozing would make too much noise, and we haven’t a place to do it. So we take Desmond on the bend, so to speak. I’d be the stool-pigeon myself, only he’d recognize me, so you have the honour. Meanwhile, I’ll park myself in Betty’s room and put her wise when she wakes up.”
“Yes, but—”
“I’ve got to leave it to your imagination what tale you tell Desmond when he comes to. The main point is that you’re one of the gang, and you’ve been captured, too. You’re the prisoners of the Saint, and you don’t know where you are. This room won’t tell anything.”
He pointed to the tiny window, set high up in the wall and looking out upon nothing more informative than another blank wall.
“Old-fashioned and unhygienic,” said the Saint, “but useful on this occasion. It’s much too small to get out through. And I’ll lock the door and take the key with me. In half an hour’s time I’ll lock myself in the service room upstairs and start watching. When you’re through, flutter your handkerchief out of this window, and I’ll see it and be right down.”
“But why the rush?” asked Conway, with what breath had not been taken away by the Saint’s machine-gun fire of directions.
“For the plan,” answered Simon. “You have the advantage of getting on to Desmond while he’s still hazy with dope. As a friend in the same boat as himself, you worm all you can out of him, put two and two together, and worm again. The great thing is to find out under what name Whiskers is known to the police, and where Desmond was supposed to meet him to hand over Betty.”
Roger took the Saint’s place on the bed.
“And you want to know that tonight?”
“Of course. This is the night when Whiskers is expecting Betty to join her uncle and complete the family party. And that’s what she’ll do, if you pull your stuff. I’ll take her there myself, roughly disguised as Dismal Desmond. And as soon as Whiskers has rumbled that joke, you, old haricot, having followed closely behind in your fancy dress will beetle in and arrest the lot of us—thereby hoisting Whiskers with his own what-not. How’s that for a funny story?”
Roger looked up with enthusiasm kindling in his face.
“It gets a laugh,” he said.
“My funny stories,” said Simon Templar modestly, “frequently do.”
“And once we’ve got Whiskers—”
“Exactly. The mystery of Uncle Sebastian’s house will no longer be a mystery.”
The Saint took a quick glance round him, picked up a piece of printed hotel paper off the table and stuffed it into his pocket, and then reached up and removed the single bulb from its socket.
“It’s getting da
rk,” he explained, “and a bad light might help you. All set?”
“You may always,” said Mr Conway tranquilly, “leave these little things to me.”
It was one of Roger’s pet expressions, and the Saint hailed it with a grin. Roger was not the star of the gang in the matter of purely abstract brains, but there could have been no greater lieutenant, when it came to the point, in the whole solar system.
The Saint opened the door cautiously, and peered out. The passage was deserted. He turned back.
“You’re playing the hand,” he said. “Don’t miss any of the important tricks. And when Dismal Desmond’s conversation gets boring, or if he starts to smell rats, just blip him over the head with the slop-pail and wave the flag.”
“Right you are, Saint.”
“So long, beautiful.”
“So long, Ugly-Wugs.”
Roger heard the turning of the lock and the withdrawing of the key, but he never heard the Saint pad away down the corridor. He lighted a cigarette and stretched himself out on the bed, with one eye on the man on the floor, considering the memory of a most intriguing mouth.
5
Conway finished his cigarette, and lay for a time gazing at the ceiling. Then he tried to watch the minute-hand of his watch crawling round the dial. Time passed. The room was shrouded in a grey dusk. Roger yawned.
He wondered uneasily if the Saint had underestimated the potency of the drug in the hypodermic syringe. True, it had been only half full when Simon found it, and Simon had promptly injected the half on the assumption that what had been sauce for the goose might very justly be made sauce for the gander—but there was nothing to show that the syringe had ever been full. Perhaps Betty had only been given a few drops, the rest being kept for a repeat dose in case of need.
Roger speculated for a moment on his chance in a murder trial. He had never been able to acquire that dispassionate valuation of human life, nor that careless contempt for the law that forbids you to bounce off your neighbour simply because you have decided that his habits are objectionable and his face an outrage, which were among the charming simplicities of Simon Templar.
But the persistent snoring of Dismal Desmond, distasteful as it might be to a sensitive man, was reassuring. Roger lighted another cigarette…
Nevertheless, it was another ten minutes before the man on the floor gave any sign of returning consciousness. Then a snore was strangled into a grunt, and the grunt became a low moan.
Roger twisted over on to one shoulder to observe the recovery. The man twitched and moved one leg heavily, but after that, for some time, there seemed to be a relapse. Then another groan, and another movement more vigorous than the first.
“My head,” muttered the man foggily. “He hit me…”
Silence.
Roger shifted up on to his elbow.
“Hullo, mate,” he said.
Another silence. Then, painfully—
“Who’s that?”
“They seem to have got you all right, mate,” said Roger.
“There were two men in a car. One of ’em got out an’ hit me. Must have smashed us up…Blast this head…Why’s it so dark?”
“It’s night. You’ve been out a long time.”
Silence for a long time. Roger could sense the man’s struggle to pierce the drug-fumes that still murked his brain. He would have given much for a light, even while he realized that the darkness was helping his deception. But presently the voice came again.
“Who’re you, anyway?”
“They got me, too.”
“Is that Carris?”
“Yes.”
The man strained to penetrate the gloom. Roger could see his eyes.
“That’s not Bill Carris’s voice.”
“This is George Carris,” said Roger. “Bill’s brother.”
He swung his legs off the bed and crossed the floor. The man had writhed up into a sitting position, and Conway put an arm round his shoulder.
“Come and lie down on the bed,” he suggested. “You’ll feel better in a minute.”
The man peered closely into his face.
“You don’t look like Bill.”
“I’m not Bill—I’m George.”
“You ought to look like Bill. How do you come here?”
“I was with Bill.”
“On the telephone?”
“Yes.”
“Bill said he was going alone.”
“He changed his mind and took me. D’you think you could get over to that bed if I helped you?”
“I’ll try. My head’s going round and round…”
Roger helped the man up and more or less carried him to the bed, where he collapsed again limply. Roger sat down on the edge. He glanced at his watch; it was over half an hour since the Saint had left him.
“Who are you?” he asked. “Why, don’t you know?”
“I’m new. I don’t know any of the gang except Bill.”
“You’re a liar!” snarled the man. “You’re not in the gang at all. You’re—”
“You fool!” retorted Roger, with an oath. “What the —— d’you think I’d be doing here if they hadn’t caught me, too?”
The man appeared to cogitate this argument painfully for a time. Presently he said, as though satisfied, “Where are we?”
“I don’t know. I was laid out when they brought me here. What did you say your name was, mate?”
“My name’s Dyson. ‘Slinky’ Dyson. Who’re these guys you keep talking about? Who’re they?”
“The Saint’s gang, of course.”
“The Saint…”
Dyson’s voice choked on a note of fear.
“You’re a liar!” he croaked.
“I tell you, it was the Saint. I saw him—”
“No one’s ever seen the Saint an’ got away with it.”
“But I’ve seen him. An’ he said he was going to torture us. I’m scared. Slinky, we’ve got to get out of this!”
Conway felt the bed shaking.
“He can’t do anything to me,” said Dyson hoarsely. “He’s got nothing on me. He can’t—”
“That’s all you know. He wants you most—for doping that girl. Flog the hide off your back, that’s what he said he was going to do.”
“They can’t—”
Roger Conway, well as he knew the superstitious terror which the name of the Saint inspired, and the legends of ruthlessness which had grown up around him, had no need to act his contempt for the whining wretch on the bed. He caught the man’s shoulder and shook him roughly.
“For heaven’s sake, stop blubbering!” he snapped. “D’you think that’ll get us anywhere?”
“The boss’ll do something when he finds out.”
“He’s too far away to be any use,” ventured Roger. “I was nearly there when they got me.”
Nearly there! And they had been about five miles from Two Bridges. Somewhere on the moor, then…Roger’s heart leapt with a thrill of triumph, and he drove in upon the opening like lightning.
“You don’t know how far away we are now,” he said. “We’ve both been out for over an hour. And if the boss does find out, and knows the Saint, he’ll most likely be too busy making his own getaway to bother about us.”
“That’s all you know. You ever heard of ‘Spider’ Sleat letting his bunch down?”
“Spider” Sleat! Point two…Roger made his next remark almost with apprehension. It was a tremendous strain to keep up what he considered to be the right tone of voice, when his whole system was tingling with half-incredulous delight.
“They’ll be bringing us some food soon. They said they would. I’m fitter than you are—I might make a bolt for it, if you keep them busy. And I’d fetch the boss and the rest of the bunch along…Only I can never find the way alone, out on that moor. And it’d be dark…”
“How often you been there?”
“Only twice. And Bill took me each time.”
“It’s easy. Where did you come f
rom?”
“Exeter.”
“Through Okehampton?”
Something in the way the question was put—a faint, almost imperceptible hesitation, stabbed a sharp warning through Roger’s flush of exultation. But he had no time to think. With his muscles tensed, he flashed back his gamble.
“No—you know that’s not the way. We came through Moreton Hampstead.”
Slinky Dyson’s breath came again, audibly, through his teeth.
“Sorry, chum. I had to make sure you were straight. Well, you went about ten miles past Moreton Hampstead—”
“I suppose so.”
“That put you about two miles from Two Bridges. Don’t you remember the knoll with three humps, on the right of the road near where you stopped?”
“That’s about all I do remember.”
“Then you can’t go wrong. You make two hundred yards due north of the knoll into the dip, and follow the low ground north-west till you come to a patch of gorse in the shape of an ‘S.’ Then you strike off north-east—and you’re there.”
“But it’ll be dark.”
“There’ll be a moon.”
Roger appeared to meditate.
“It sounds easy, the way you put it,” he said. “But—”
“It is easy!” Dyson snarled. “But I don’t believe you’ll do it. You’re yellow! You’d just cut and run, and no one’ll ever see you again for dust. You miserable little dirty quitter!”
“What the blazes are you talking about?”
“What I say. I don’t believe you. You’re just trying to save your own skin and get me to help you. You might make a bolt for it, you say, while I keep ’em busy. Thanks for nothing! You listen here—either we both make a bolt, or we both stay. I know your sort. Bill was always a yaller dog, an’ you take after him. You—”
It struck Roger that Mr Dyson’s conversation was certainly becoming monotonous. And his brain was humming with other things. “Spider” Sleat—whoever he might be—and a knoll with three humps two miles from the Two Bridges on the Moreton Hampstead road. Due north—a dip—north-west to a patch of gorse in the shape of an “S”—turn north-east…
A fight in that dark room might have been troublesome. Dyson was no light weight—Roger had noticed that when helping him to the bed. And his strength must be returning rapidly.
Enter the Saint (The Saint Series) Page 13