The Saint and the Happy Highwayman s-21

by Leslie Charteris

  "May I interrupt for a moment, ladies and gentlemen ?" he said.

  He spoke quietly but the loud-speakers made his voice audible in every corner of the room. Nobody moved or made any answer. His question was rather superfluous. He had interrupted, and everyone's ears were strained for what he had to say.

  "This is a holdup," he went on in the same easy conversational tone. "You've all been expecting it, so none of you should have heart failure. Until I've finished, none of you may leave the room--a friend of mine is at the other end of the hall to help to see that this order is carried out."

  A sea of heads screwed round to where a shorter stockier man in evening clothes that seemed too tight for him, stood blocking the far entrance, also masked and also with two guns in his hands.

  "So long as you all do exactly what you're told, I promise that nobody will get hurt. You two"--one of his guns flicked towards the countess' bodyguards, who were standing stiff-fingered where they had been caught when they saw him--"come over here. Turn your backs, take out your guns slowly and drop them on the floor."

  His voice was still quiet and matter-of-fact but both the men obeyed like automatons.

  "Okay. Now turn round again and kick them towards me. . . . That's fine. You can stay where you are, and don't try to be heroes if you want to live to boast about it."

  A smile touched his lips under the mask. He pocketed one of his guns and picked up a black gladstone bag from the dais and tossed it out on to the floor. Then he put a cigarette between his lips and lighted it with a match flicked on the thumbnail of the same hand.

  "The holdup will now proceed," he remarked affably. "The line forms on the right, and that means everybody except the waiters. Each of you will put a contribution in the bag as you pass by. Lady Instock, that's a nice pair of earrings. . . ."

  Amazed, giggling, white-faced, surly, incredulous, according to their different characters, the procession began to file by and drop different articles into the bag under his directions. There was nothing much else that they could do. Each of them felt that gently waving gun centred on his own body, balancing its bark of death against the first sign of resistance. To one red-faced man who started to bluster, a waiter said tremulously: "Better do what he says. Tink of all da ladies. Anybody might get hit if he start shooting." His wife shed a pearl necklace and hustled him by. Most of the gathering had the same idea. Anyone who had tried to be a hero would probably have been mobbed by a dozen others who had no wish to die for his glory. Nobody really thought much beyond that. This wasn't what they had expected, but they couldn't analyze their reactions. Their brains were too numbed to think very much.

  Two brains were not numbed. One of them belonged to the chairman who had lost his glasses, adding dim-sightedness to his other failings."From where he stood he couldn't distinguish anything as small as a mask or a gun but somebody seemed to be standing up on the platform and was probably making a speech. The chairman nodded from time to time with an expression of polite interest, thinking busily about the new corn plaster that somebody had recommended to him. The other active brain belonged to the Countess Jannowicz but there seemed to be nothing useful that she could do with it. There was no encouraging feeling of enterprise to be perceived in the guests around her, no warm inducement to believe that they would respond to courageous leadership.

  "Can't you see he's bluffing?" she demanded in a hoarse bleat. "He wouldn't dare to shoot!"

  "I should be terrified," murmured the Saint imper-turbably, without moving his eyes from the passing line. "Madam, that looks like a very fine emerald ring. . . ."

  Something inside the countess seemed to be clutching at her stomach and shaking it up and down. She had taken care to leave her own jewels in a safe place but it hadn't occurred to her to give the same advice to her guests. And now the Saint was robbing them under her nose--almost under her own roof. Social positions had been shattered overnight on slighter grounds.

  She grabbed the arm of a waiter who was standing near.

  "Send for the police, you fool!" she snarled.

  He looked at her and drew down the corners of his mouth in what might have been a smile or a sneer, or both, but he made no movement.

  Nobody made any movement except as the Saint directed. The countess felt as if she were in a nightmare. It was amazing to her that the holdup could have continued so long without interruption--without some waiter opening a service door and seeing what was going on, or someone outside in the hotel noticing the curious quietness and giving the alarm. But the ballroom might have been spirited away on to a desert island.

  The last of the obedient procession passed by the Saint and left its contribution in the bag and joined the silent staring throng of those who had already contributed. Only the chairman and the countess had not moved--the chairman because he hadn't heard a word and didn't know what was going on.

  The Saint looked at her across the room.

  "I've been saving Countess Jannowicz to the last," he said, "because she's the star turn that you've all been waiting for. Will you step up now, Countess?"

  Fighting a tangle of emotions, but compelled by a fascination that drove her like a machine, she moved towards the platform. And the Saint glanced at the group of almost frantic photographers.

  "Go ahead, boys," he said kindly. "Take your pictures. It's the chance of a lifetime. . . . Your necklace, Countess."

  She stood still, raised her hands a little way, dropped them, raised them again, slowly, to her neck. Magnesium bulbs winked and splashed like a barrage of artificial lightning as she unfastened the clasp and dropped the necklace on top of the collection in the bag.

  "You can't get away with this," she said whitely.

  "Let me show you how easy it is," said the Saint calmly. He turned his gun to the nearest man to the platform. "You, sir--would you mind closing the bag, carefully, and taking it down to my friend at the other end of the room? Thank you." He watched the bag on its way down the room until it was in the hands of the stocky man at the far entrance. "Okay, partner," he said crisply. "Scram."

  As if the word had been a magical incantation, the man vanished.

  A kind of communal gasp like a sigh of wind swept over the assembly, as if the final unarguable physical disappearance of their property had squeezed the last long-held breath out of their bodies. Every eye had been riveted on it in its last journey through their midst, every eye had blinked to the shock of its ultimate vanishment, and then every eye dragged itself dazedly back to the platform from which those catastrophes had been dictated.

  Almost to their surprise, the Saint was still standing there. But his other gun had disappeared and he had taken his mask off. In some way, the aura of subtle command that had clung to him before in spite of his easy casualness had gone, leaving the easy casualness alone. He was still smiling.

  For an instant the two bodyguards were paralyzed. And then with muffled choking noises they made a concerted dive for their guns.

  The Saint made no move except a slight deprecating motion of the hand that held his cigarette.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," he said into the microphone, "I must now make my apologies, and an explanation."

  The bodyguards straightened up, with their guns held ready. And yet something in his quiet voice, unarmed as he was, gripped them in spite of themselves, as it had gripped everyone else in the room. They looked questioningly towards the countess.

  She gave them no response. She was rigid, watching the Saint with the first icy grasp of an impossible premonition closing in on her.

  Somehow the Saint was going to get away with it. She knew it with a horrible certainty, even while she was wildly trying to guess what he would say. He could never have been so insane as to believe that he could pull a public holdup like that without being arrested an hour after he left the hotel, unless he had had some trick up his sleeve to immobilize the hue and cry. And she knew that she was now going to hear the trick she had not thought of.

  "You have
just been the victims of a holdup," he was saying. "Probably to nearly all of you that was a novel experience. But it is something that might happen to any of you tonight, tomorrow, at any time--so long as there are men at large to whom that seems like the best way of making a living.

  "You came here tonight to help the National League for the Care of Incurables. That is a good and humane work. But I have taken this opportunity--with the kind co-operation of Countess Jannowicz--to make you think of another equally good, perhaps even more constructive work: the Care of Curables.

  "I am talking about a class of whom I may know more than most of you--a section of those unfortunates who are broadly and indiscriminatingly called criminals.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, not every lawbreaker is a brutalized desperado, fit only for swift extermination. I know that there are men of that kind, and you all know that I have been more merciless with them than any officer of the law. But there are others.

  "I mean the men who steal through ignorance, through poverty, through misplaced ambition, through despair, through lack of better opportunity. I mean also men who have been punished for their crimes and who are now at the crossroads. One road takes them deeper and deeper into crime, into becoming real brutalized desperadoes. The other road takes them back to honesty, to regaining their self-respect, to becoming good and valuable citizens. All they need is the second chance which society is often so unwilling to give them.

  "To give these men their second chance, has been founded the Society for the Rehabilitation of Delinquents--rather an elaborate name for a simple and straightforward thing. I am proud to be the first president of that society.

  "We believe that money spent on this object is far cheaper than the money spent on keeping prisoners in jail, and at the same time is less than the damage that these men would do to the community if they were left to go on with their crimes. We ask you to believe the same thing, and to be generous.

  "Everything that has been taken from you tonight can be found tomorrow at the office of the Society, which is in the Missouri Trust Building on Fifth Avenue. If you wish to leave your property there, to be sold for the benefit of the Society, we shall be grateful. If it has too great a sentimental value to you, and you wish to buy it back, we shall be glad to exchange it for a check. And if you object to us very seriously, and simply want it back, we shall of course have to give it back. But we hope that none of you will demand that.

  "That is why we ventured to take the loot away tonight. Between now and tomorrow morning, we want you to have time to think. Think of how different this holdup would have been if it had been real. Think of your feelings when you saw your jewelry vanishing out of that door. Think of how little difference it would really make to your lives"--he looked straight at the countess--"if you were wearing imitation stones, while the money that has been locked up idly in the real ones was set free to do good and useful work. Think, ladies and gentlemen, and forgive us the melodramatic way in which we have tried to bring home our point."

  He stepped back, and there was a moment of complete silence.

  The chairman had at last found his glasses. He saw the speaker retiring with a bow from the microphone. Apparently the speech was over. It seemed to be the chairman's place to give the conventional lead. He raised his hands and clapped loudly.

  It is things like that that turn tides and start revolutions. In another second the whole hall was clattering with hysterical applause.

  "My dear, how do you think of these things?"

  "The most divinely thrilling----"

  "I was really petrified . . ."

  The Countess Jannowicz wriggled dazedly free from the shrill jabber of compliments, managed somehow to snatch the Saint out of a circle of clamorous women of which Lady Instock was the most gushing leader. In a comparatively quiet corner of the room she faced him.

  "You're a good organizer, Mr Templar. The head-waiter tells me that Mr Ullbaum telephoned this afternoon and told the staff how they were to behave during the holdup."

  He was cheerfully appreciative.

  "I must remember to thank him."

  "Mr Ullbaum did no such thing."

  He smiled.

  "Then he must have been impersonated. But the damage seems to be done."

  "You know that for all your talking you've still committed a crime?"

  "I think you'd be rather a lonely prosecutor."

  Rage had made her a little incoherent.

  "I shall not come to your office. You've made a fool of yourself. My necklace is in the bank----"

  "Countess," said the Saint patiently, "I'd guessed that much. That's why I want you to be sure and bring me the real one. Lady Instock is going to leave her earrings and send a check as well, and all the rest of your friends seem to be sold on the idea. You're supposed to be the number one patron. What would they think of you if after all the advertising you let yourself out with a fifty-dollar string of cut glass?"

  "I can disclaim----"

  "I know you can. But your name will still be mud. Whereas at the moment you're tops. Why not make the best of it and charge it to publicity?"

  She knew she was beaten--that he had simply turned a trick with the cards that for days past she had been busily forcing into his hand. But she still fought with the bitterness of futility.

  'I'll have the police investigate this phony charity----"

  "They'll find that it's quite legally constituted, and so long as the funds last they'll be administered with perfect good faith."

  "And who'll get the benefit of them besides yourself?"

  Simon smiled once again.

  "Our first and most urgent case will be a fellow named Marty O'Connor. He helped me with the collection tonight. You ought to remember him--he was your chauffeur for three weeks. Anyone like yourself, Countess," said the Saint rather cruelly, "ought to know that charity begins at home."

  VIII THE MUGS' GAME

  The stout jovial gentleman in the shapeless suit pulled a card out of his wallet and pushed it across the table. The printing on it said "Mr J. J. Naskill."

  The Saint looked at it and offered his cigarette case.

  "I'm afraid I don't carry any cards," he said. "But my name is Simon Templar."

  Mr Naskill beamed, held out a large moist hand to be shaken, took a cigarette, mopped his glistening forehead and beamed again.

  "Well, it's a pleasure to talk to you, Mr Templar," he said heartily. "I get bored with my own company on these long journeys and it hurts my eyes to read on a train. Hate travelling, anyway. It's a good thing my business keeps me in one place most of the time. What's your job, by the way ?"

  Simon took a pull at his cigarette while he gave a moment's consideration to his answer. It was one of the few questions that ever embarrassed him. It wasn't that he had any real objection to telling the truth, but that the truth tended to disturb the tranquil flow of ordinary casual conversation. Without causing a certain amount of commotion, he couldn't say to a perfect stranger, "I'm a sort of benevolent brigand. I raise hell for crooks and racketeers of all kinds, and make life miserable for policemen, and rescue damsels in distress and all that sort of thing." The Saint had often thought of it as a deplorable commentary on the stodgy un-adventurousness of the average mortal's mind; but he knew that it was beyond his power to alter.

  He said apologetically: "I'm just one of those lazy people. I believe they call it 'independent means.' "

  This was true enough for an idle moment. The Saint could have exhibited a bank account that would have' dazzled many men who called themselves wealthy, but it was on the subject of how that wealth had been accumulated that several persons who lived by what they had previously called their wits were inclined to wax profane.

  Mr Naskill sighed.

  "I don't blame you," he said. "Why work if you don',t have to? Wish I was in your shoes myself. Wasn't born lucky, that's all. Still, I've got a good business now, so I shouldn't complain. Expect you recognize the name."

  "Na
skill?" The Saint frowned slightly. When he repeated it, it did have a faintly familiar ring, "It sounds as if I ought to know it----"

  The other nodded.

  "Some people call it No-skill," he said. "They're about right, too. That's what it is. Magic for amateurs. Look."

  He flicked a card out of his pocket on to the table between them. It was the ace of diamonds. He turned it over and immediately faced it again. It was the nine of clubs. He turned it over again and it was the queen of hearts. He left it lying face down on the cloth and Simon picked it up curiously and examined it. It was the three of spades, but there was nothing else remarkable about it.

  "Used to be a conjuror myself," Naskill explained. "Then I got rheumatism in my hands, and I was on the rocks. Didn't know any other job, so I had to make a living teaching other people tricks. Most of 'em haven't the patience to practise sleight of hand, so I made it easy for 'em. Got a fine trade now, and a two-hundred-page catalogue. I can make anybody into just as good a magician as the money they like to spend, and they needn't practise for five minutes. Look."

  He took the card that the Saint was still holding, tore it into small pieces, folded his plump fingers on them for a moment and spread out his hands--empty. Then he broke open the cigarette he was smoking and inside it was a three of spades rolled into a tight cylinder, crumpled but intact.

  "You can buy that one for a dollar and a half," he said. "The first one I showed you is two dollars. It's daylight robbery, really, but some people like to show off at parties, and they give me a living."

  Simon slid back his sleeve from his wrist watch and glanced out of the window at the speeding landscape. There was still about an hour to go before they would be in Miami, and he had nothing else to take up his time. Besides, Mr Naskill was something novel and interesting in his experience; and it was part of the Saint's creed that a modern brigand could never know too much about the queerer things that went on in the world.