The Saint Plays with Fire (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  She sighed.

  “I know. That’s just what I mean. If your eyes were foaming with unholy desire, or anything like that, I probably shouldn’t charge you anything at all. After all, brief life is here our portion, and all that sort of thing, and a spot of unholy desire from the right sort of person and in the right sort of way—well, you see what I mean, don’t you? But as things are, I don’t think I could possibly let you off with less than fifty guineas.”

  Simon leaned towards her.

  “You know,” he said earnestly, “there’s something about you—an innocence, a freshness, a sort of girlish appeal that attracts me irresistibly. You’re so…so ingenuous and uncalculating. Will a cheque do, or shall you want it in cash?”

  “Damn,” she said in dismay. “I believe you’d have paid a hundred if I’d asked for it…Oh, well, I suppose a bargain’s a bargain. A cheque will do.”

  The Saint grinned.

  “Thursday, then, at eight o’clock. At the Berkeley, and since this is a business deal, I shall expect you to be punctual. The fee will go down one guinea for every minute I’m kept waiting.”

  She tossed the stub of her cigarette across the room into the empty fireplace.

  “Well, now we’ve finished talking about business can’t we enjoy ourselves? I was hoping we’d have a chance after the inquest, but Algy hustled me away before I could even look round. They were all as mad as hornets, and I can’t blame them. After all, you did make rather an ass of yourself, didn’t you?”

  “Do you really think I was just playing the fool?” he asked curiously.

  “I mean trying to make out that Johnny had been murdered and Algy set fire to the house and so on. I mean, it was all so ridiculous, wasn’t it?”

  This time he knew beyond doubt that her artlessness was not so naïve as it seemed. Her chatter was just a little too quick; besides, he had seen her face at one stage of the inquest.

  He paused to consider his reply for a moment. If she knew what he had seen in London, it might startle something out of her. He felt that the move must be made with a fine hand.

  He had no chance to make it in that way.

  There was a sound of footsteps descending the stairs, reaching the entrance of the lounge. Simon glanced over his shoulder, and then rose leisurely to his feet.

  “It’s time you were getting ready, my dear—”

  Fairweather’s thinly jovial voice broke off sharply as he realised that there was someone else in the room. He stared at the Saint for a long moment, with his mouth slightly open, while his fat face turned into the likeness of a piece of lard. And then, without any acknowledgement of recognition, he turned deliberately to Lady Valerie.

  “We shouldn’t have left you so long,” he said. “I hope you haven’t been annoyed.”

  “Of course she’s been annoyed!” General Sangore’s stormy voice burst out without the subtlety of Fairweather’s snub. “It’s an insult for that feller to speak to any decent person after his behaviour this morning. Damned if I know what he meant by it, anyway.”

  Simon put his hands in his pockets and relaxed against a cabinet full of hideous porcelain.

  “What I meant by it was that I believe Kennet was murdered,” he said good-humouredly. “Now have I made myself quite clear?”

  The General glared at him from under his bushy eyebrows. He seemed to expect Simon to melt like wax.

  “By Gad, sir,” he said truculently, “you’re…you’re a bounder! I’ve never heard such bad form in my life!”

  “You mean that if it was murder you’d rather have it hushed up, don’t you?” Simon said gently. “You didn’t murder him yourself by any chance, did you?”

  Sangore’s complexion went a rich mottled puce. He tried to speak, but there seemed to be an obstruction in his throat.

  Simon went on talking, and his voice was cool and pitiless.

  “Last year, when there was a strike at the Pyrford Aviation Works, which is a subsidiary of the Wolverhampton Ordnance Company, you stated publicly that the ringleaders ought to be put up against a wall and shot. This year, addressing the Easter Rally of the Imperial Defence Society, you said, ‘A great deal of nonsense has been talked about the horrors of war.’ If you would have liked to kill half a dozen men for the sake of dividends, and if you think it’s a great deal of nonsense to object to people being massacred in millions, I can’t help feeling that you qualify as a good suspect. What do you think?”

  What General Sangore thought could only be inferred; he was still choking impotently.

  Lady Sangore came to his rescue. Her face had gone from white to scarlet, and her small eyes were glittering with vindictive passion.

  “The man’s a cad,” she proclaimed tremblingly. “It’s no use wasting words on him. He…he simply isn’t a sahib!”

  She appeared to be slightly appalled by her temerity, as if she had pronounced the ultimate unspeakable condemnation.

  “It’s…it’s an outrage!” spluttered Fairweather. “The man is a well-known criminal. We’re only lowering ourselves—”

  The Saint’s cold blue eyes picked him up like an insect on a pin.

  “Let me see,” he said. “I seem to remember that you played a forward part in getting a change made in the workings of the National Defence Contribution a few years ago. The sales talk was that the tax on excess profits would have paralysed business enterprise, but the truth is that it would have hit hardest against the firms that were booming on the strength of the new rearmament programme—of which, I think, Norfelt Chemicals was by no means the smallest. And you recently stated before a Royal Commission that ‘The armament industry is one which provides employment for thousands of workers. The fact that its products are open to misuse can no more be held against the industry per se than can the production of drugs which would be poisonous if taken without medical advice.’ If those are examples of your logic, I don’t see why we shouldn’t have you on the suspected list—do you?”

  Luker stepped forward.

  “Surely, Mr Templar,” he remarked urbanely, “you aren’t going to leave me out of your interesting summary.”

  “I can give you some news,” he said. “That is, if you haven’t heard it already. I spent the afternoon going to London to see if I could catch Ralph Windlay, the man Kennet lived with, before an accident happened to him. I’m sure you’ll be cheered to know that everything went off without a hitch, and he was already dead when I got there.”

  There was a dead silence.

  And then Lady Valerie Woodchester was tugging unconsciously at the Saint’s arm. Her full lips were quivering, and there was an expression of dazed horror on her face.

  “Not Ralph?” she was saying shakily. “No…no, he can’t have been murdered too!”

  The Saint’s eyes went to her with an instant’s brief compassion.

  “I’m afraid so,” he said. “Even our Coroner here couldn’t make out it was an accident. He was shot right between the eyebrows, and his brains were all over the carpet.”

  “The use of the word ‘too’ is interesting.” Luker’s impassive voice came levelly through the stillness. “If Kennet was murdered, somebody killed him and then set fire to the house. Within a few minutes Mr Templar arrives on the scene. It is he who suggests foul play. Then Kennet’s friend Windlay is murdered, and again Mr Templar is first on the scene; again it is he who discovers that there has been foul play. It certainly appears to be a coincidence to which the attention of the police should be called.”

  Simon’s bleak gaze took him up.

  “Or you might mention it to the Sons of France,” he said.

  It was a shot in the dark, but it hit a target somewhere. For the first time since he had known him, Simon saw Luker’s graven mask slip for a fraction of a second. For that fleeting micron of time, the Saint saw the stark soul of the man to whom murder meant nothing.

  CHAPTER FOUR:

  HOW KANE LUKER SPOKE HIS MIND AND HOPPY UNIATZ DID THE BEST HE COULD WITH HISr />
  1

  “I like this place,” said Lady Valerie Woodchester, looking smugly around her. “It’s one of the few places in London where civilised people can eat civilised food.”

  The Saint nodded. They had worked their way through three quarters of a menu selected with Simon Templar’s own impeccable gastronomic artistry, and served with the deference which waiters always instinctively gave him, and he had watched her personality expand and ripen like an exotic flower coming into bloom. Undoubtedly she did the setting no less justice than it did to her. Her flawless shoulders and deliciously modelled head rose out of a plain but daringly cut evening gown like an orchid rising from a dark stem, with a startling loveliness that turned many envious eyes towards her; she knew it, and she was delighted, like a child who had been taken out on a special treat. A brighter sparkle had crept gradually into her eyes and a faint flush into her cheeks. It was fun, you felt, to be eating a good dinner, and to be in one of the best places among the best people, and to be with a man who was tall and dark and handsome and who could make waiters fuss about obsequiously. Her dazzling flow of gay senseless prattle had given the Saint no need to make trivial conversation while they ate, but now he hardened his heart.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “The food is good and the atmosphere is right. Also a stitch in time saves embarrassing exposure, and the horse is the noblest of animals. Now you’ve earned your bread and butter, and you can stop entertaining me. Let’s be serious for a minute. Have you seen any of our friends today?”

  She didn’t answer at once. She was looking down at her plate, drawing, idle patterns with her fork. Her expression had become abstracted; her thoughts seemed to be very far away.

  “Yes, I’ve seen them,” she said vaguely.

  “And how are they making out?”

  She looked at him suddenly straight in the eyes.

  “You remember what Luker said at the Golden Fleece? Well, I suppose if I’d got any sense I’d think the same, seeing what a reputation you’ve got. I suppose you could have got into the house somehow, and killed Johnny, and locked his bedroom door, and started the fire, and got out again, and then come back again and pretended to try and rescue him. And then of course you could easily have gone to London and shot Ralph Windlay.”

  “Easily,” said the Saint. “But you don’t believe I did, do you? Or do you?”

  “I suppose not,” she said. “In a way, I wish you had.”

  She pushed away her plate, and he offered her his cigarette case.

  “Why do you wish I’d killed them? I didn’t have any reason to.”

  “Well, it would have made everything so much easier. Of course, I suppose they’d have had to hang you, but everybody knows you’re a criminal so that would have been all right. But then you went and upset it all at the inquest, and you made it sound frightfully convincing to me whatever anybody else thought, only it didn’t seem quite real then. I mean, you know, it was all rather like something out of a book. Blazing Mansion Mystery, and all that sort of thing. I was terribly sorry about it all, in a way, because I was quite fond of Johnny, but I wasn’t going to be brokenhearted about it or anything like that. And then when Ralph was killed it wouldn’t have made much difference, because he was a nice well-meaning boy but I never thought very much of him. After all, life’s too short for one to be getting brokenhearted all the time, isn’t it, and I’m sure it gives you circles under your eyes.”

  “You were too close up against it then to realise it properly,” said the Saint shrewdly. “Now you’ve got away from it, your nerves are going back on you. I’m afraid I sympathise with you. What you need is another drink.”

  She pushed her glass forward.

  “That’s exactly what I do need.” she said.

  He poured her out the last of the wine, and she sipped it and put the glass down again.

  “It’s not really my nerves,” she said, talking very quickly. “We modern girls have nerves of iron, you know, and we only swoon when we think a man needs a little encouragement. The point is, if I’d heard that Johnny had been killed in a railway accident I should have been terribly sorry whenever I thought about it, but I don’t suppose I should have thought about it terribly often. You see, that would have been just one of those things that happen, and it would have been all over, and it wouldn’t really have been anything to do with me.”

  “But you invited him down to Whiteways, and that makes it different.”

  She nodded feverishly.

  “Of course, I told you that, didn’t I?”

  “The idea was that you were to get a fur coat if Johnny could be persuaded to keep his mouth shut,” Simon pursued her ruthlessly. “He has been persuaded to keep his mouth shut. Do you get your fur coat?”

  Her fingers tightened on the stem of her wine glass. Her face had gone very pale, but her eyes were burning.

  “That’s a filthy thing to say.”

  “Murder is a moderately filthy subject,” answered the Saint brutally. “You can’t play with it and keep your little girlie ribbons clean. Haven’t you realised that yet?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  She picked up her glass and drained it at one gulp. Then she sat back and laughed at him with a kind of brittle giddiness.

  “Well?” he insisted.

  “I’m a nice girl, aren’t I?” she chattered. “I do the odd spot of gold-digging here and there, and in my spare time I lure men to their deaths. What would the dear vicar say if he knew?”

  “I expect he’d say plenty. But that doesn’t seem to matter so much as what you say. Do you enjoy luring men to their deaths?”

  “I love it!”

  “Then of course you’ll be wanting another job soon. Why don’t you advertise? There must be plenty of openings if you can produce proof of previous experience.”

  She sat looking at him and two scalding tears brimmed in her eyes.

  “You swine!” she whispered.

  “I’m sorry,” he said cynically.

  “What have you got to talk about anyway? I mean, you think Johnny was murdered. Well, why should you care? You’ve killed dozens of people yourself, haven’t you?”

  “Only people who really needed it. You know, there are some people who are vastly improved by death.”

  “If somebody murdered Johnny, perhaps they thought he needed it,” she said. “I daresay the people you killed were pretty poisonous one way or another, but then who isn’t? I mean, look at me for instance. Supposing somebody murdered me. I suppose you’d think that was a damned good job.”

  “I should think it was a great pity,” he said with surprising gentleness. “You see, you poor little idiot, I happen to like you.”

  “Isn’t that thrilling?” she said, and then she suddenly put her face in her hands.

  The Saint lighted a cigarette and watched her. She sat quite still, without sobbing. He knew that this was what he had been working for, the success of his relentless drive to break her down, and yet he felt sorry for her. An impulse of tenderness moved him that it was not easy to fight down. But he knew that on this moment might hang things too momentous to be thought about. His brain had to be cold, accurate, making no mistakes, even if he wanted to be kind…

  “All right,” she said huskily. “Damn you.”

  She put her hands down abruptly and looked at him, dry-eyed.

  “But what’s the use?” she said. “It’s done now, isn’t it? I did it. Well, that’s all about it. If I were the right sort of girl I suppose I’d go and jump in the river, but I’m not the right sort of girl.”

  “That wouldn’t help anybody very much.” His voice was quiet now, understanding, not taunting. “It’s done, but we can still do things about it. You can help me. We can go on with what Johnny was doing. But we’ve got to find out what it was all about. You’ve got to think. You’ve got to think back—think very hard. Try to remember what Johnny told you about Luker and Fairweather and Sangore. Try to remember what he’d got that was going to
upset them all. You must remember something.”

  He tried to hammer his words into her brain with all the urgency that was in him, to awaken her with the warmth of his own intense sincerity. She must tell him now if she was to help him at all.

  Her eyes stayed on him, and her hands opened and closed again.

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t,” she replied. “Really. But…”

  She stopped, frowning. He held his breath.

  “But what?” he prompted.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  Simon turned an ash from his cigarette on to the edge of a plate with infinite restraint. The reaction had emptied him so that he had to make the movement with a deliberate effort.

  And a waiter bustled up to the table and asked if they wanted coffee.

  Simon felt as if a fire in him had been put out. He felt as if he had been led blindfold to the top of a mountain and then turned back and sent down again without being given a glimpse of the view. While he mechanically gave the order, he wondered, in an insanely cold-blooded sort of way, what would happen if he stood up and shot the waiter through the middle of his crisp complacent shirt-front. Probably it had made no ultimate difference, but it seemed as if that crowning clash of the banal had inscribed an irrevocable epilogue of frustration. The mood that might have meant so much was gone. Nothing would bring it back.

  He sat without moving while coffee and balloon glasses were set before them.

  Lady Valerie Woodchester stubbed out a half-smoked cigarette and lighted another. She tasted her brandy.

  “It’s a hard life,” she observed moodily. “I suppose if one can’t get exactly what one wants, the next best thing is to have bags of money. That’s what I’m going to do.”

  “Who are you going to blackmail?” Simon inquired steadily.

  Her eyes widened.

  “What do you mean?” she asked in astonishment.

  “Just that,” he said.