Featuring the Saint (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  He was certain that Lemuel must have spent a restless night until the recent telephone call came through to calm his fears. There was a bottle, a siphon, a glass, and an ash-tray heaped with cigarette-ends, on a table by the bedside, to support this assumption, but now Lemuel must be sleeping the sleep of the dead.

  Gently Simon drew the edge of the sheet over the sleeping man’s face, and on to the sheet he dripped a colourless liquid from a flask which he took from his pocket. The atmosphere thickened with a sickly reek…

  Five minutes later, in another room, the Saint was opening a burglar-proof safe with Lemuel’s own key.

  He found what he was expecting to find—what, in fact, he had arranged to find. It had required no great genius to deduce that Lemuel would have withdrawn all his mobile fortune from his bank the day before; if there had been no satisfactory report from Einsmann before morning, Lemuel would have been on his way out of England long before the expiration of the time limit which the Saint had given him.

  Simon burned twenty-five thousand pounds’ worth of negotiable securities in the open grate. There was already a heap of ashes in the fireplace when he began his own bonfire and he guessed that Lemuel had spent part of the previous evening disinfecting his private papers; it would be a waste of time to search the desk. With about forty thousand pounds in Bank of England notes cunningly distributed about his person, the Saint closed the safe, after some artistic work on the interior, and returned to Lemuel’s bedroom, where he replaced the key as he had found it. Before he left, he turned the sheet back from Lemuel’s face; the bedroom windows were already open, and by morning the smell of ether should have dispersed.

  “By morning…” The Saint glanced at his watch as he went down the stairs, and realised that he had only just given himself enough time. But he stopped at the janitor’s cubicle on his way out, and the helpless man glared at him defiantly.

  “I’m sorry I had to hit you,” said the Saint. “But perhaps this will help to console you for your troubles.”

  He took ten one-pound notes from his wallet, and bid them on the porter’s desk, then he hurried down the hall, and slipped off his masking handkerchief as he opened the door.

  Half an hour later he was in bed.

  Francis Lemuel had arranged to be called early, in case of accidents, and the reassuring telephone message had come too late for him to countermand the order. He roused at half-past eight, to find his valet shaking him by the shoulder, and sat up muzzily. His head was splitting. He took a gulp at the hot tea which his man had brought, and felt sick.

  “Must have drunk more whisky than I thought,” he reflected hazily, and then he became aware that his valet was speaking.

  “There’s been a burglary here, sir. About six o’clock this morning the porter was knocked out…”

  “Here—in this apartment?” Lemuel’s voice was harsh and strained.

  “No, sir. At least, I’ve looked round, sir, and nothing seems to have been touched.” Lemuel drew a long breath. For an instant an icy dread had clutched at his heart. Then he remembered—the Saint was dead, there was nothing more to fear…

  He sipped his tea again, and chuckled throatily.

  “Then someone’s been unlucky,” he remarked callously, and was surprised when the valet shook his head.

  “That’s the extraordinary thing, sir. They’ve been making inquiries all round, and none of the other apartments seem to have been entered either.”

  Lemuel recalled this conversation later in the morning. He had declined breakfast blasphemously, and had only just managed to get up and dress in time to restore his treasures to the keeping of his bank.

  He saw the emptiness of his safe, and the little drawing which the Saint had chalked inside it by way of receipt, and went a dirty grey-white.

  The strength seemed to go from his knees, and he groped his way blindly to a chair, shaking with a superstitious terror. It was some time before he brought himself to realise that ghosts do not stun porters and clean out burglar-proof safes.

  The valet, coming at a run to answer the frantic pealing of the bell, was horrified at the haggard limpness of his master.

  “Fetch the police,” croaked Lemuel, and the man went quickly.

  Chief Inspector Teal himself had just arrived to give some instructions to the detective-sergeant who had taken over the investigations, and he it was who answered the summons.

  “Sixty-five thousand pounds? That’s a lot of money to keep in a little safe like this.”

  Teal cast sleepy eyes over the object, and then went down on his knees to examine it more closely. His heavy eyelids merely flickered when he saw the chalk-marks inside.

  “Opened it with your own key, too.” Lemuel nodded dumbly.

  “I suppose he warned you?” said Teal drowsily—he was a chronically drowsy man.

  “I had two ridiculous letters…”

  “Can I see them?”

  “I—I destroyed them. I don’t take any notice of threats like that.”

  Teal raised his eyebrows one millimetre.

  “The Saint’s a pretty well-known character,” he said. “I should hate to have to calculate how many square miles of newspaper he’s had all to himself since he started in business. And the most celebrated thing about him is that he’s never yet failed to carry out a threat. This is the first time I’ve heard of anyone taking no notice of his letters.”

  Lemuel swallowed. Suddenly, in a flash of pure agony, he understood his position. The Saint had ruined him—taken from him practically every penny he possessed—and yet had left him one fragile thing that was perhaps more precious than ten times the treasure he had lost—his liberty. And Lemuel’s numbed brain could see no way of bringing the Saint to justice without imperilling that last lonely asset.

  “What was the Saint’s grouse against you?” asked Teal, like a sleep-walking Nemesis, and knew that he was wasting his time.

  All the world knew that the Saint never threatened without good reason. To attempt to get evidence from his victims was a thankless task; there was so little that they could say without incriminating themselves.

  And Lemuel saw the point also, and clapped quivering hands to his forehead.

  “I—I apologise,” he said huskily. “I see you’ve guessed the truth. I heard about the burglary, and thought I might get some cheap publicity out of it. There was nothing in the safe. I drew the picture inside—copied it from an old newspaper cutting…”

  Teal heard, and nodded wearily.

  But to Francis Lemuel had come one last desperate resolve.

  8

  There were many men in London who hated the Saint, and none of them hated him without cause. Some he had robbed; some he had sent to prison; some he had hurt in their bodies, and some he had hurt in their pride; and some, who had not yet met him, hated him because they feared what he might do if he learned about them all the things that there were to learn—which was, perhaps, the most subtle and deadly hatred of all.

  Simon Templar had no illusions about his general popularity. He knew perfectly well that there were a large number of people domiciled between East India Dock and Hammersmith Broadway who would have been delighted to see him meet an end so sticky that he would descend to the place where they thought he would go like a well-ballasted black-beetle sinking through a pot of hot glue, and who, but for the distressing discouragements which the laws of England provide for such natural impulses, would have devoted all their sadistic ingenuity to the task of thus settling a long outstanding account. In the old days Simon had cared nothing for this; in those days he was known only as the Saint, and none knew his real name, or what he looked like, or whence he came; but those days had long gone by. Simon Templar’s name and address and telephone number were now common property in certain circles; it was only in sheer blind cussedness, which he had somehow got away with, that he had scorned to use an alias in his dealings with Francis Lemuel and the Calumet Club. And there had already been a number of enterp
rising gentlemen who had endeavoured to turn this knowledge to account in the furthering of their life’s ambition—without, it must be admitted, any signal success.

  While there were not many men at large who in cold blood could have mustered up the courage to actually bump the Saint off (for British justice is notoriously swift to strike, and English criminals have a greater fear of the rope than those of any other nationality), there were many who would have delighted to do the Saint grievous bodily harm, and Simon Templar had no great wish to wake up in his bed one night and find someone pouring vitriol over his face, or performing any similar kindly office. Therefore he had made elaborate arrangements, in the converted mews where he had taken up his new headquarters, to ensure the peace and safety of his slumbers.

  He woke up, a few nights after his raid upon Jermyn Street, to the whirring of the buzzer under his pillow. He was instantly alert, for the Saint slept and woke like a cat, but he lay still in bed for a few moments before he moved, watching the flickering of tiny coloured lights in the panel on the opposite wall.

  Johnny Anworth knew all that there was to know about the ordinary kind of burglar alarm, and had adroitly circumvented the dummy ones which the Saint had taken care to fix to his doors and windows. But what Johnny did not understand was the kind that worked without wires. There were wireless alarms all over the Saint’s home—alarms that relied upon an invisible ray projected across a doorway, a stairway, or a corridor, upon a photoelectric cell on the opposite side. All was well so long as the ray continued to fall thus, but when anything momentarily obscured it, the buzzer sounded under the Saint’s pillow, and a tiny bulb blinked a coloured eye in the indicator panel on the Saint’s bedroom wall to show the exact locality of the intruder.

  Johnny Anworth had made absolutely no sound, and had heard none, and, when the Saint took him suddenly by the throat from behind, he would have screamed aloud if his larynx had not been paralysed by the steely grip of the fingers that compressed it. He felt himself being lifted into the air and heaved bodily through a doorway, and then the lights went on and he saw the Saint.

  “Don’t make a noise,” drawled Simon. “I don’t want you to wake the house.”

  He had slipped on a startling dressing-gown, and not a hair of his head was out of place. In defence of Simon, it must be mentioned that he did not sleep in a hair-net. He had actually stopped to brush his hair before he went in search of the visitor.

  The capture was a miserable and unsavoury-looking specimen of humanity, his sallow face made even sallower by the shock he had received. The Saint, after a short inspection, was able to identify it.

  “Your name is Anworth, isn’t it, Beautiful? And I recently had the pleasure of socking you on the jaw—one night when you followed me from the Calumet.”

  “I never seed yer before, guv’nor—strite, I never. I’m dahn an’ aht—starvin’…”

  Simon reached out a long, silk-sheathed arm for the cigarette-box—he had heaved the specimen into the sitting-room.

  “Tell me the old, old story,” he sighed.

  “I ’adn’t ’ardly a bite to eat since Friday,” Johnny whined on mechanically. “This is the fust time I ever went wrong. I ’ad ter do it, guv’nor…”

  He stopped, as the Saint turned. Incredulous audiences Johnny Anworth had had, indignant audiences, often, and even sympathetic audiences, sometimes—but he had never met such a bleak light in any outraged householder’s eyes as he met then. If he had been better informed, he would have known that there were few things to which the Saint objected more than being interrupted in his beauty sleep. This Simon explained.

  “Also, you didn’t come here on your own. You were sent.” The cold blue eyes never left Johnny’s face. “By a man named Lemuel,” Simon added, in a sudden snap, and read the truth before the crook had opened his mouth to deny it.

  “I never ’eard of ’im, guv’nor. I was near starvin’…”

  “What were you told to do?”

  “I never…”

  On those words, Johnny’s voice trailed away. For he had heard, quite distinctly, the stealthy footfall in the passage outside.

  The Saint also had heard it. He had not expected a man like Johnny Anworth to be on a job like that alone.

  “You’re telling naughty stories, Precious…”

  The Saint spoke gently and dreamily, stepping back towards the door with the silence of a hunting leopard, but there was neither gentleness nor dreaminess in the eyes that held the burglar half-hypnotised, and Johnny did not need to be told what would happen to him if he attempted to utter a warning.

  “Naughty, naughty stories—you’ve brought me out of my beautiful bed to tell me those. I think I shall have to be very cross with you, Johnny…”

  And then, like an incarnate whirlwind, the Saint whipped open the door and sprang out into the passage. Baldy Mossiter had a gun, but the Saint was too quick for him, and Baldy only just relaxed his trigger finger in time to avoid shooting himself in the stomach.

  “Step right in and join the merry throng, Hairy Harold,” murmured Simon, and Mossiter obeyed, the Saint speeding him on his way.

  That Johnny Anworth, having started forward with the idea of taking the Saint in the rear, should have been directly in the trajectory of his chief, was unfortunate for both parties. Simon smiled beatifically upon them, and allowed them to regain their feet under their own power.

  “You wait, Templar!” Mossiter snarled, and the Saint nodded encouragingly.

  “Were you starving, too?” he asked.

  There was some bad language—so bad that the Saint, who was perhaps unduly sensitive about these things, found it best to bind and gag both his prisoners.

  “When you decide to talk, you can wag your ears,” he said.

  There was a gas fire in the sitting-room, and this the Saint lighted, although the night was already torrid enough. In front of the burners, with ponderous deliberation, he set an ornamental poker to heat.

  The two men watched with bulging eyes.

  Simon finished his cigarette and then he solemnly tested the temperature of the poker, holding it near his cheek as a laundryman tests an iron.

  “Do you sing your song, Baldy?” he inquired—so mildly that Mossiter, who had an imagination, understood quite clearly that his own limits of bluff were likely to be reached long before the Saint’s.

  The story came with some profane trimmings which need not be recorded.

  “It was Lemuel. We were to cosh you, and take your girl away. Lemuel said he knew for certain you’d got a lot of money hidden away, and we were going to make you pay it all over—while we held the girl to keep you quiet. We were going shares in whatever we got…What are you doing?”

  “Phoning for the police,” said the Saint calmly. “You must not commit burglary, particularly with guns.”

  The law arrived in ten minutes in the shape of a couple of men from Vine Street, but before they came the Saint had made some things painfully plain.

  “I’d guessed what you told me, but I always like to be sure. And let me tell you, you pair of second-hand sewer-skunks, that that sort of game doesn’t appeal to me. Personally, I expect the most strenuous efforts to be made to bump me off—I’d be disappointed if they weren’t—but my girlfriends are in baulk. Get that. And if at any time the idea should come back to you that that would be a good way of getting at me—forget it. Because I promise you that anyone who starts that stuff on me is going for a long ride, and he’ll die in a way that’ll make him wish he’d never been born. Think that over while you’re carving rocks on the Moor!”

  Then the police came and took them away. They said nothing then, and went down for three years without speaking.

  But the Saint was a thoughtful man at breakfast the next morning.

  In the old days, Patricia Holm had shared his immunity. Now that his was gone, her own went also. The knowledge of her existence, and what she might be assumed to mean to the Saint, was free to anyone who took the
trouble to watch him. The plan of campaign that the facts suggested was obvious; the only wonder was that it had not been tried before. For one thing, of course, the number of the Saint’s enemies whose minds would take that groove was limited, and the number who would be capable of actually travelling along the groove was more limited still—but the idea must not be allowed to grow. And Lemuel had lost much—he would have a long memory.

  “I don’t think he’s a useful citizen,” concluded the Saint, out of the blue, and Patricia Holm looked up blankly from her newspaper.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Uncle Francis.”

  Then she heard of the nocturnal visitors.

  “He doesn’t know that all the money I took off him has gone to Queen Charlotte’s Hospital—a most suitable charity-less only our regular ten per cent fee for collection,” said the Saint. “And if I told him, I don’t think he’d believe me. As long as he’s at large, he’ll be thinking of his lost fortune—and you. And, as I said, I don’t think he’s a useful citizen.”

  “What can you do?” she asked.

  Simon smiled at her. He really thought that she grew more beautiful every day. “Sweetheart,” he said, “you’re the only good thing this rolling stone’s collected out of all the world. And there’s only one logical thing to do.”

  But he left her to guess what that was; he had not worked out the details himself at that moment. He knew that Francis Lemuel owned a large country house standing in its own spacious grounds just outside Tenterden, and the next day he learned that Lemuel had established himself there—“to recover from a severe nervous collapse,” the newspaper informed him—but it was not for another two days, when another item of news came his way, that the Saint had his inspiration for the manner in which Francis Lemuel should die.

  9

  I shall call on Wednesday at 3 p.m. You will be at home.

  Francis Lemuel stared at the curt note, and the little sketch that served for signature, with blurring eyes. Minutes passed before he was able to reach shakily for the decanter—his breakfast was left untasted on the table.