The Saint Plays with Fire (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  Mr Teal thrust himself sizzlingly forward. He signed to his plain-clothes sergeant.

  “Take her outside and get her statement,” he gritted.

  Then he turned back to the Saint. His eyelids drooped as he fought frantically to maintain some vestige of the pose of somnolent boredom which had been his lifelong defence against all calamities.

  “And while that’s being done, I’d like to hear what you’ve got to say.”

  “Say?” repeated the Saint vaguely. He searched for his lighter. “Why, Claud, I can only say that it all looks most mysterious. But I’m sure it’ll all turn out all right. With that brilliant detective genius of yours—”

  “Never mind that,” Teal said pungently. “I want to hear what you’ve got to say for yourself. I came here and found you standing over the body.”

  The Saint shrugged.

  “Exactly,” he said.

  “What do you mean—‘exactly’?”

  Mr Teal’s voice was not quite so monotonous as he wanted it to be. It tended to slide off its notes into a kind of squawk. But that was something that the Saint’s ineffable sangfroid always did to him. It was something that always brought Mr Teal to the verge of an apoplectic seizure.

  “What do you mean?” he squawked.

  “My dear ass,” said the Saint patiently, in the manner of one who explains a simple point to a small and dull-witted child, “you said it yourself. You came in and found me standing over the body. You know perfectly well that when I murder people you never come in and find me standing over the body. Now, do you?”

  Mr Teal’s eyes boggled in spite of the effort he made to control them. The hot porridge came back into his larynx.

  “Are you trying to tell me you’re in the clear because I came in and found you bending over the body?” he yawped. “Well, this is once when you’re wrong! Perhaps I haven’t done it before. But I’ve done it now. I’ve got you, Saint.” The superb, delirious conviction grew upon him. “This is the one time you’ve made a mistake, and I’ve got you.” Chief Inspector Teal drew himself up in the full pride of his magnificent climatic moment. “Simon Templar, I shall take you into custody on a charge of—”

  “Wait a minute,” said the Saint quietly.

  The porridge bubbled underneath Teal’s collar stud.

  “What for?” he exploded.

  “Because,” said the Saint kindly, “in spite of all the rude ideas you’ve got about me, Claud, I like you. And it hurts me to see you going off like a damp squib. Didn’t you hear the landlady say that she found the body half an hour ago?”

  “Well?”

  “Well, I should think we could safely give her the full half-hour—she could hardly have got to a telephone and got you here with all your stooges in much less than that. And we’ve been talking for some minutes already. And if I murdered this body, you must give me a few minutes to spare at the other end. Let’s be very conservative and say that I could have murdered him forty minutes ago.” Simon consulted his watch. “Well, it’s now exactly a quarter to three.”

  “Are you starting to give me another of your alibis?”

  “I am,” said the Saint. “Because at twelve minutes past one I left the Golden Fleece in Anford, which is ninety-five miles from here. Quite a number of the natives and several disinterested visitors can vouch for that—including a member of the local police whose name, believe it or not, is Reginald. And I know I’m the hell of a driver, but even I can’t drive ninety-five miles in fifty-three minutes over the antediluvian cart tracks that pass for roads in this country.”

  Over Chief Inspector Teal’s ruddy features smeared the same expression that must have passed over the face of Sisyphus when, having at last heaved his rock to the very top of the hill, it turned round and rolled back again to the bottom. In it was the same chaotic blend of dismay, despair, agonised weariness, and sickening Incredulity.

  He knew that the Saint must be telling the truth. He didn’t have to take a step to verify it, although that would be done later as a matter of strict routine. But the Saint had never wasted time on an alibi that couldn’t be checked to the last comma. How it was done, Teal never knew; if he had been a superstitious man he would have suspected witchcraft. But it was done, and had been done before, too often for him not to recognise every brush-stroke of the technique. And once again he knew that his insane triumph had been premature—that the Saint was slipping through his fingers for what seemed like the ten thousandth time…

  He bent his pathetically weary eyes on the body again, as if that at least might take pity on him and provide him with the inspiration for a comeback. And a sudden flare of breathless realisation went through him.

  “Look!” he almost yelped.

  The Saint looked.

  “Messy sort of business, isn’t it?” he said chattily. “Some of these hoodlums have no respect for the furniture. There ought to be a correspondence course in Good Manners for Murderers—”

  “That blood,” Teal said incoherently, “It’s drying…”

  He went down clumsily on his knees beside the body, fumbled over it, and peered at the stain on the carpet. Then he got slowly to his feet, and his hot resentful eyes burned on the Saint with a feverish light.

  “This man has been dead for three to six hours,” he said. “You could have gone to Anford and back in that time!”

  “I’m sorry,” said the Saint regretfully.

  “What for?”

  Teal’s voice was a hoarse bark.

  Simon smiled.

  “Because I spent all the morning in Anford.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “I was at an inquest.”

  “Whose inquest?”

  “Some poor blighter by the name of John Kennet.”

  “Do you mean the Foreign Secretary’s son—the man who was killed in that country house fire?” Teal asked sharply.

  Simon regarded him benevolently.

  “How you do keep up with the news, Claud,” he murmured admiringly. “Sometimes I feel quite hopeful about you. It’s not often, but it’s so cheering when it happens. A kind of warm glow comes over me—”

  “What were you doing at that inquest?” Teal said torridly.

  The Saint moved his hands.

  “Giving evidence. I was the hero of the proceedings, so I got nicely chewed up by the Coroner for a reward. You’ll read all about it in the evening papers. I hate to disappoint you, dear old weasel, but I’m afraid I’ve been pretty well in the public eye since about half past ten.”

  Simon struck his lighter and made the delayed kindling of his cigarette.

  “So with one thing and another, Claud,” he said, “I’m afraid you’re going to have to let me go.”

  Chief Inspector Teal barred his way. The leaden bitterness of defeat was curdling in his stomach, but there was a sultry smoulder in his eyes that was more relentless and dangerous than his first unimpeded blaze of wrath. He might have suffered ten thousand failures, but he had never given up. And now there was a grim lourd determination in him that tightened his teeth crushingly on his battered scrap of spearmint.

  “You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here,” he said stolidly.

  Simon Templar trickled smoke through momentarily sober lips.

  “I came to see Windlay,” he said. “I wanted to see him before somebody else did. Only I was too late. You can believe it or not as you like. But the late John Kennet shared this place with him.”

  The detective’s eyes went curiously opaque. He stood with a wooden stillness.

  “What was the verdict at this inquest?”

  “Accidental death.”

  “Do you think there was anything wrong with that?”

  Simon’s glance travelled again over the disordered room.

  “Someone seems to have been looking for something,” he said aimlessly. “I wonder if he found what he was after?”

  Casually, as if performing some quite idle action, he leaned forward a
nd picked up a crumpled sheet of newspaper from the litter scattered over the floor. It was a French newspaper, five days old, and a passage in it had been heavily marked out in blue pencil.

  “Well, well, well,” he said. “Listen, Claud. What do you make of this? ‘We should like your readers to ask themselves where this criminal association calling itself the Sons of France obtains its funds and the store of arms which Colonel Marteau has so often boasted that he has hidden away for the day when they will be needed. And we ask our readers, how long will they tolerate the existence of this terrorist organisation in their midst?’ ”

  He picked up a second scrap of paper from the floor. Again there was a blue-pencilled paragraph.

  “M. Roquambert, in a vitriolic speech to the Chamber of Deputies last night, urged on the Government the necessity for a greatly increased expenditure on armaments, ‘Are we,’ he demanded, ‘to suffer the Boche to batter once more on the gates of Paris?’ ” Simon let the cuttings flutter out of his fingers. “I seem to remember that Comrade Roquambert is one of the heads of the Sons of France,” he said. “Doesn’t that interest you?”

  “What was wrong with that verdict?” Teal repeated.

  The Saint looked at him, and for once there was no mockery in his eyes.

  “I think it would be a good idea if you started investigating two murders instead of one,” he said.

  4

  Which was undoubtedly a highly effective and dramatic exit line, Simon reflected, as the Hirondel roared westwards again towards Anford, but how wise it had been was another matter. It had been rather a case of meeting trouble half-way and taking the first smack at it. In the course of his inquiries, Teal would inevitably have discovered that Kennet had shared the flat with Windlay, and Simon knew only too well how the detective’s mind would have worked on from there directly the inquest headlines hit the stands. The Saint had had no option about taking the bull by the horns, but he wondered now whether he might have achieved the same result without saying quite so much. Chief Inspector Teal’s officially hidebound intelligence might sift slowly, but it sifted with a dour and dogged thoroughness…Simon realised at the same time that if he had an adequate alibi for the period during which Windlay might have been killed, Luker and his satellites had an alibi that was absolutely identical—it gave him an insight into the efficiency of the machinery that he had tampered with which was distinctly sobering, and he had plenty to think about on the return journey.

  Patricia was waiting for him when he stopped the car on Peter’s drive. He picked her up and kissed her.

  “You look good enough to eat,” he said. “And that reminds me, I haven’t had any lunch. Where are the troops?”

  “Peter’s keeping an eye on your menagerie,” she told him. “I came back and sent Hoppy over to keep him company. They’re all at the Golden Fleece, and when Peter last phoned, Hoppy was just starting on his second bottle of whisky. Did you find Windlay?”

  “I found him,” said the Saint stonily. “But not soon enough.”

  In the kitchen, over a plate of cold beef and a tankard of ale, he told her the story in curt dispassionate sentences that brought it all into her mind as vividly as if she had been there herself.

  “It only means that you were right, darling,” he concluded. “Kennet had something that was big enough to commit murder for. There wasn’t any accidental death hokum about Windlay. Somebody knocked on the door and gave him the works the minute he opened it. And the whole flat was torn into small pieces. It must have gone on while we were all footling about at that inquest acquiring beautiful alibis—these ungodly are professionals!”

  “But did they find what they were looking for?”

  “I wish I knew. But there’s a hell of a good chance that they didn’t, since they made a mess like that. I wish I knew exactly what the prize was. It seems to me that it must have been a fair-sized dossier—something that wouldn’t be too easy to hide. And unless Kennet was a certifiable lunatic he wouldn’t have brought that to Whiteways without leaving a duplicate somewhere. Hence the battle of Balaclava Mansions.” He pushed his plate away and scowled at it. “If only that damned girl could remember a bit more of the things Kennet told her! He must have spouted like a fountain, and she simply didn’t listen.”

  “Why don’t you see her again?” suggested Patricia. “You might be able to jog her memory, or something. Anyway, you’d have a good time trying.”

  Simon looked up at her from under impenitently slanting brows.

  “Are you insinuating that a man of my unparalleled purity—”

  “You’ll have to hurry if you want to catch her today,” Patricia said practically. “Peter found out from one of the chauffeurs that they’re starting back to London at five-thirty.”

  The Saint looked up restlessly.

  “I think I’d better amble over,” he said.

  Again the Hirondel roared over the Anford road, and a few minutes later it swung in to a grinding stop in the small courtyard of the Golden Fleece. As Simon stopped the engine and hitched his long legs over the side, he glanced around for a glimpse of his confederates. The maternal laws of England being what they were, Hoppy must have been torn away from his second bottle about three hours ago, and it would be another half-hour before he would be allowed to return to it. Simon scanned the landscape for some likely place where the thirsty vigil might have been spent, and he became totteringly transfixed as his eyes settled on the window of an establishment on the opposite side of the road, next to the Assembly Rooms, over which ran the legend: Ye Village Goodie Shoppe.

  Peter Quentin was stoically reading a magazine, but on the other side of the table, bulging over the top of a chocolate éclair, the frog-like eyes of Mr Uniatz ogled Simon through the plate glass with an indescribable expression of anguish and reproach that made the Saint turn hastily into the hotel entrance with his bones melting with helpless laughter.

  The first person he saw was Valerie Woodchester herself. She was sitting alone on the arm of a chair in the lounge, smoking a cigarette and swinging one shapely leg disconsolately, but at the sight of him her face brightened.

  “Oh, hullo,” she said. “What’s the matter?”

  “Some things are too holy to talk about,” said the Saint, sinking on to the chair opposite. “Never mind. Perhaps you can bring me back to earth. Are you always being left alone?”

  “The others are upstairs having a business conference or something.” She studied him with fresh and candid interest “Where have you been all the afternoon? You simply seem to vanish off the face of the globe. I was afraid I should have to go back to town without seeing you again.”

  “Then why go back to town?” he asked. “You could come over and join us at Peter Quentin’s. There’s a spare bed and a dartboard and plenty to drink, and we could see lots more of each other.”

  For a moment she looked a little hesitant. Then she shook her head quite decidedly.

  “I couldn’t do that. After all, two’s company and all that sort of thing, you know, and anyhow I don’t think it would be good for you to see much more of me than you did when we first met.” A little smile touched her lips and gleamed in her dark eyes. “Besides, I’m quite sure Algy Fairweather wouldn’t like it. He’s been warning me against you. For some reason or other he doesn’t seem to approve of you an awful lot.”

  “You amaze me,” said the Saint solemnly. “But does it matter whether Comrade Fairweather approves or not?”

  “Well,” she said, “a girl has to struggle along somehow, and Comrade Fairweather is a great help. I mean, if he has a man coming to dinner, for instance, and he doesn’t want him to concentrate too hard on business, he asks me along and pays me for it. And then I probably have to have a new dress as well, because of course you can’t stop a businessman concentrating in an old piece of sackcloth, and I never seem to have any new clothes when I need them.”

  “In other words, you’re his tame vamp, I take it.”

  She opened
her eyes wide at him.

  “Do you think I’m tame?”

  The Saint surveyed her appraisingly. Again he experienced the bafflement of trying to probe beyond that pert childish beauty.

  “Maybe not so tame,” he corrected himself. “And what would be your fee for dining with a gent if it meant earning Comrade Fairweather’s disapproval? For instance, what about having dinner with me on Thursday?”

  She didn’t answer for a moment. She sat looking downwards, swinging her leg idly, apparently absorbed in the movement of her foot.

  Then she looked up at him and smiled.

  “You’ve fallen for me in quite a big way, haven’t you?” she said, a little ironically. “I mean, inviting me to dinner and offering to pay me for it.”

  “I fell passionately in love with you the moment I saw you,” Simon declared shamelessly.

  She nodded.

  “I know. I couldn’t help noticing the eager way you dashed off this morning when you thought you’d got all the information you could out of me. I mean, it was all too terribly romantic for anything.”

  “The audience made me bashful,” said the Saint. “Now if only we’d been alone—”

  Her dark eyes were mocking.

  “Well!” she said, “I don’t mean that I couldn’t put up with having dinner with you if you paid me for it. After all, I’ve got to have dinner somewhere, and I’ve been out with a lot of people who weren’t nearly so good-looking as you are even if they weren’t nearly so bashful either. Algy used to pay me twenty guineas for entertaining his important clients.”

  “That must have helped to make things bearable,” said the Saint in some awe.

  “Of course,” she went on innocently, “I should expect you to pay me a bit more than that, because after all I’m only a defenceless girl, and I know you must have some horrible motive for wanting me to have dinner with you.”

  Simon raised his eyebrows.

  “You shock me,” he said. “What horrible motive could I have for asking you out to dinner? I promise that you’ll be as safe with me as you would be with your old Aunt Agatha.”