The Saint in Action (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  “Eh?”

  “What’s all this,” she repeated, in exactly the same quiet voice, “about bringing them here?”

  Lasser rubbed his chin.

  “Oh, of course,” he said. “Bringing them here. Yes. I didn’t tell you—I didn’t really mean them to meet me at Lulworth. That was just to get them ready for the story Jopley had to tell them. It was all arranged so that they’d be sure to come here, so I suppose I can say we brought them.”

  “I see,” she said innocently. “So you were just using me as a sort of stuffed decoy.” Lasser’s broad smile did not waver.

  “I shouldn’t say that, my dear. No. Not at all. You couldn’t have played your part nearly so well if you hadn’t believed in it. I was just making it easier for you.” He tugged at his ear again for a moment, and then pulled out his watch, consulted it, stuffed it back in his pocket, and rubbed his hands briskly together with an air of breezy decision. “Now, Brenda, it’s time you were off. As a matter of fact, I thought you’d have started by this time. Remember you’re due in London at one o’clock.”

  Her shoulders moved slightly.

  “I can make it in three hours easily in the new Lagonda,” she said slowly. “And since I’m here I’d like to see how you get on.”

  “But you’ve got to allow for accidents. If you had a puncture—”

  “Do you mean you don’t want me to stay?”

  The Saint felt an odd thrill of breathlessness. There was a subtle tension in the room that had not been there before, even in spite of the display of artillery which was still in evidence. To the Saint’s preternaturally sharpened senses it was perceptible in the darkened sullenness of Jopley, in the harsh rigidity of Borieff, even in the frozen fixity of Lasser’s expansive smile.

  And there could only be one explanation for it. It meant that he must have been right in the one wild theory which had come to him on the way there when it was too late to probe into it—that Brenda Marlow and her contradictions were accounted for, and that it was no longer necessary to look to Messalina and Lucrezia Borgia for her prototype. It gave the Saint a curious sense of lightness and relief, even though it did nothing to improve his own position. There were worse things than to be at the mercy of men like Lasser and Jopley and Borieff, and in Simon Templar’s own inconsequential philosophy to have to think of a girl as he had been thinking of her was one of them.

  “I don’t mean that at all,” Lasser was saying jovially. “No. Of course not. But that—um—envelope has got to be delivered, and this is rather a private matter—”

  “Doesn’t it concern all of us?”

  The Saint raised his glass and drank with a certain deep satisfaction.

  “Comrade Lasser has his own views about who’s concerned with one thing and another, darling,” he explained. “For instance, there was that business about Pargo. I’ll bet he didn’t tell you that Pargo was tortured to death and dumped on my—”

  Borieff’s lunging fist thudded against the side of the Saint’s head and sent the glass he was holding spinning away to splinter itself on the edge of a table.

  Simon’s muscles gathered themselves in spontaneous reaction. And then, as he gazed squarely into the muzzle of Borieff’s automatic, they slowly loosened again. Just as slowly, he took out a handkerchief and wiped a few drops of spilt liquid from his coat.

  After the sudden crash of shattering glass there was a brief interval of intense silence. And then Lasser spoke, with his eyes creased up to slits in his plump jolly face.

  “Tie them up,” he said, and as Jopley and Borieff moved to obey the order, the smile that had been only temporarily shaken came back to his wide, elastic mouth. “I’m sorry, Templar, but you must have some respect for the position you’re in. I can’t have you saying things like that. Now for the rest of this interview you’d better confine yourself to speaking when you’re spoken to, or I may have to do something you won’t like.”

  Simon looked at the girl.

  “You see how touchy he is?” he drawled recklessly. “I don’t know how well you know the signs of a guilty conscience—”

  Out of the corner of his eye he could see Lasser’s forefinger tightening on the trigger of his levelled gun, but there were provocations that could bring the Saint’s contempt for such things to the verge of sheer insanity. What might have happened if he had been allowed to go on was something that he could hardly have refused to bow to in cold blood, but before he could say any more the girl stepped forward.

  “Leave him alone, Lasser,” she said. “I’m interested in this. What did happen to Pargo?”

  “We sent him to Canada, of course, as I told you,” Lasser replied brusquely. “You surely don’t believe any of this fellow’s wild accusations?”

  Her dark grey eyes went over him with an unexpectedly mature kind of thoughtfulness.

  “I believe what I see,” she said. “And I saw Borieff hit him. I think that was a better answer than yours—”

  She was opening her bag as she spoke, and Lasser went to meet her suddenly, with a swiftness that was surprising and somehow horrible in a man of his build. His downward-sinking fist knocked the bag through her hands, and then he was holding her by the wrists.

  “You mustn’t interfere in things like this,” he said, still smiling. “Of course I don’t tell you everything—you wouldn’t like it if I did. But we’ve got to put a stop to Templar’s interference, and that isn’t your business unless you want to make it so.” He looked at the Saint over his shoulder. “You’re going to tell me what happened to those three vans—and do you know why you’ll tell me the truth? Because I’m going to take each one of you separately into the next room and ask you questions in my own way, and when you all tell me the same thing I’ll know you aren’t lying!”

  11

  There were bands of adhesive tape around the Saint’s wrists and ankles, and Peter Quentin had been quickly strapped up in the same way at the same time. Now they were working on Hoppy Uniatz, after first depriving him of the whisky bottle which by some irresistible magnetism had gravitated into his hands.

  Lasser held the girl until they had finished, and then he pushed her back into an armchair and signed to Borieff to take charge of her. He straightened his coat and picked up her bag and tossed it into her lap, but not before he had transferred a heavy sealed envelope from it to his pocket.

  “This is really very tiresome of you, my dear,” he said heartily. “Now I shall have to make some other arrangements.”

  “You certainly will,” she retorted. “I wouldn’t have any more to do with this business of yours for all the money in the world.”

  He stood manipulating his ear meditatively for a little while.

  “No,” he said. “No, of course not. No, but it’s your own fault. You didn’t have to know any more than was good for you. Naturally you would be—um—sentimental, but you ought to have realised that there are serious things in this business. Well, we’ll talk about that presently. Now that you’re here, you’ll have to be quiet and behave yourself, because we can’t waste any more time.”

  “Be quiet and behave myself while you torture them, I suppose,” she said with bitter directness.

  “No. Not necessarily. But they’ve got to answer my questions. It’ll only be their own fault if they’re obstinate.” He shrugged. “Anyhow, you’ve no choice. If you don’t behave yourself, Borieff will have to keep you quiet.”

  He beamed at her in his stout, avuncular way, as if he were insisting on giving her an especially extravagant birthday present.

  She looked at Simon with a white face.

  “I apologise for what I said to you last night,” she said huskily. “If I’d known why you were going to burn Jopley’s feet, I’d have stayed and helped you.”

  “The joke is that we didn’t really mean to do it,” Simon answered regretfully. “But next time—”

  “There won’t be no muckin’ next time,” Jopley stated with savage complacency. “Come on.�
� He grasped the Saint’s arm, but Simon was still looking at the girl.

  “Maybe you made a mistake about me,” he said. “And I’m glad I was wrong about you. Remind me to make up for it when we take that stroll in the moonlight.”

  His gaze rested on her a moment longer with all the steadying courage he could send her, and then he turned to Peter.

  “I ought to have come alone,” he said. “But since we’re all here we might as well tell Comrade Lasser what he wants to know.”

  “What for?” Peter demanded indignantly, as Simon might have known he would. “If you think we give a damn for that fat slob—”

  Lasser pointed at the Saint.

  “Take him in, Jopley,” he said, like a genial host arranging the procession of guests to a dining-room.

  With an evil grin, Jopley pushed the Saint off his balance and half dragged and half carried him through a door at one end of the room. The room that it opened into was almost bare of furniture and smelt strongly of paraffin—even at that moment the Saint’s brow wrinkled with puzzlement as he met the rank, powerful odour.

  Jopley heaved him up and shoved him roughly into the only chair as Lasser followed them in. The door closed softly behind him—an ancient and massive door of solid oak that settled into place with a faint fuff of perfectly fitting joints, seeming to shut out every sound and contact with the outside world. He stood there, smiling benevolently at the Saint, smoothing his large hands one over the other.

  “I hope we shan’t have to hurt you very much,” he said. “If you would like to tell me at once what happened to those vans, we needn’t go any further. But of course I shall take care that your two friends don’t have a chance to find out what you’ve told me, so if they don’t tell the same story we shall have to hurt them until they do.”

  The Saint looked at him and then at Jopley. And as he did so he felt the blood run faster in his veins. For Jopley was sliding his gun away into his pocket.

  A flood of strength seemed to surge through the Saint’s body like a tidal wave. He could feel the race of it through his muscles, the galvanic awakening of his nerves, the sudden clearing of his brain to crystal brilliance. It was as if his whole being was lifted up in a sublime ecstasy of renewed life. And yet otherwise everything was the same. The corner was just as tight, the prospects just as deadly, but that one action had altered a balance in which the difference between life and death would be weighed. Lasser had already put away his gun. Jopley’s gun was going—had gone. It was in his pocket, and his hands were hanging empty at his sides. In that room, with the two of them together against one man bound hand and foot, they had done what any other two men would have done in the confidence of their obvious superiority. And the astronomical hopelessness of the odds had been lessened by the fraction of time that it would take a man to draw a gun from his pocket…

  Only the Saint’s face betrayed nothing of the fanfares of exultation that were pouring magnificent music through his soul. He moved slightly in his chair, twisting his right hand as far as he could, and his fingertips touched the hilt of his knife under the sleeve with a thrill that added new harmonies of its own.

  “And what happens after we’ve told you all this?” he asked. Lasser pursed his lips.

  “Well, I’m afraid we shall still have to get rid of you. You know too much, Templar, and we can’t risk your being tempted to interfere with us again.”

  “Do we get sent to Canada too?”

  “No, not to Canada. No. I think we shall just leave you here. This place is being burnt down tonight,” Lasser explained calmly. “You may have noticed the smell of paraffin. Yes. It’s rather antiquated and I want to rebuild it—something modern, you know. It’s quite well insured, so I thought it would be a good idea to have a fire. Yes, we’ll just have to leave you here with a lighted candle on the floor, and kill two birds with one stone, if you know what I mean.”

  Simon had his knife in his hand and he was working the point of it under the tapes on his wrists, but for a moment he almost stopped.

  “You mean you’d leave us here to be burnt alive?” he said slowly.

  “I’m afraid we’d have to. The place is supposed to be unoccupied, you know, and I sent the caretaker away this morning. It’d look as if you were tramps who’d broken in to sleep for the night, and you might have set fire to the house yourselves by accident. So it wouldn’t look right if they found bullets in you or anything like that.”

  Lasser seemed to ponder over his reasoning again, and shook his head with refreshed conviction.

  “No, that would never do,” he said, and then his sunny smile dawned again. “But don’t let’s meet our troubles half-way. After all, I’ve heard that in a real fire people are often suffocated by the smoke before they get burnt at all. But we could hurt you a lot first if you didn’t tell us what happened to those vans.”

  The Saint’s hands were free—behind his back, he could move his wrists apart. But even so, he felt as if his stomach was emptied with a kind of sick revulsion. There was no doubt in his mind that Lasser would have done everything he spoke of with such a genial matter-of-factness—would still do it, if the Saint failed in the only gamble he had left. That rich, unchangingly beaming smile was a better guarantee of it even than Jopley’s lowering vindictiveness. And now the Saint seemed to read through it for the first time into something that explained it, something monstrous and gloating, something that smoothed Lasser’s bald, glistening forehead into a horrible vacantness of bland anticipation…

  “Where are those vans, Templar?” he asked in a silky whisper. Simon met his gaze with eyes of frosted sapphire.

  “They’re where you’ll never find them,” he said deliberately, “you greasy grinning bladder of lard.”

  Lasser turned his head as if he was pleased. “Light the candle, Jopley,” he said.

  He took three steps forward and squatted down in front of the Saint like a great glossy toad. With leisured care he began to unlace the Saint’s shoes.

  “You shouldn’t say things like that,” he muttered protestingly. “You’re only making it worse for yourself. Now we shall have to hurt you anyway. But of course you’ll tell me about the vans. It’s only a question of time, you know. Pargo didn’t want to talk to me either, but he had to before Borieff had finished.”

  The Saint looked sideways. Jopley was at the table, fumbling with a box of matches. He was half turned away, intent on a short length of candle stuck in a saucer. The match he had extracted sizzled and flamed suddenly, and at the same moment Simon felt one of his shoes being pulled off.

  If anything was to be done it had to be done now—now, while Jopley was concentrating on dabbing the match at the candle wick, and while Lasser’s head was bent as he tugged at the other shoe.

  The Saint breathed a silent prayer to whatever gods he acknowledged, and brought his hands from behind him.

  His clenched right fist drove down like a hammer at the exposed nape of Lasser’s bent neck. On that blow hung the unthinkable issue of the adventure and the fate of more lives than his own, and the Saint stocked it with all the pent-up strength that was in him. For Peter Quentin, and Hoppy Uniatz, and Pargo, and the girl whose life might be worth no more than theirs now that she also knew too much, the Saint struck like a blacksmith, knowing that if he failed to connect completely with one punch he would have no chance to throw in a second. He felt his fist plug achingly into the resisting flesh, and Lasser grunted once and lurched limply forward.

  Simon caught him with one hand as he slumped on to his knees, and his other hand dived like a striking snake for the pocket that sagged with the weight of Lasser’s gun.

  Jopley looked round, with the candle burning, as the sudden whirl of movement caught his ear. An almost comically incredulous expression transfixed his face as he grasped the import of the scene, but the shock only stopped him for a moment. In the next instant he was grabbing for his own gun and plunging towards the Saint at the same time.

  Only for
an instant. And then he was brought up again, rocking, as if he had run into an invisible wall, before the round black muzzle of the automatic in the Saint’s hand.

  The Saint’s smile was seraphically gentle.

  “If I have to shoot you, Algernon,” he said, “I shall be terribly disappointed.”

  The man stared at him in silence, while Lasser’s unconscious body, released from the Saint’s grasp, slid down and rolled over on the floor.

  “You can put your hand in your other pocket,” Simon went on, in that soft and terrible voice. “I want the rest of that sticking plaster. And then we will talk a little more about this Guy Fawkes party.”

  12

  Standing in the shadows outside the library windows, the Saint studied the scene within. The chairs where Peter and Hoppy and Brenda Marlow sat were ranged roughly at the three corners of a square; approximately at the fourth corner stood Borieff, leaning against the back of an armchair and watching them, with his gun in his hand and a cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth. Simon could easily have dropped him where he stood, but that was not what he wanted. He saw that Borieff’s back was directly turned to the door through which they had first entered the library, and spent a few seconds more printing the estimated distances and angles on his memory. Then he returned silently along the path to the room he had just left.

  Jopley, taped hand and foot exactly as the Saint had been a little while ago, glared up at him malevolently from the floor, and in another corner Lasser groaned and stirred uneasily as if he was rousing from a troubled sleep, but that was very near the limit of their power of self-expression. The Saint smiled encouragingly at Jopley as he went by.

  “I don’t mind if you yell, Algernon,” he said kindly. “I should say that door was almost sound-proof, but in any case it’d be quite good local colour.”

  The other seemed to consider whether he should accept the invitation, but while he was still making up his mind the Saint crossed the room to the door opposite the French windows and let himself out into the dark, bare hall.