The Saint Intervenes (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  “To tell you the truth,” he said. “I’m afraid my eyes are not as good as they were. I didn’t recognize you until you had gone by. Dear me! How long is it since I saw you last?”

  The young man thought for a moment. “Was it at Biarritz about ten years ago?”

  “Of course!” exclaimed Uppingdon delightedly—he had never been to Biarritz in his life. “By Gad, how the time does fly! I never thought I should have to ask when I last saw you, my dear—”

  He broke off short, and an expression of shocked dismay overspread his face.

  “Good Gad!” he blurted. “You’ll begin to think there’s something the matter with me. Have you ever had a lapse of memory like that? I had your name on the tip of my tongue—I was just going to say it—and it slipped off! Wait—don’t help me—didn’t it begin with H?”

  “I’m afraid not,” said the young man pleasantly.

  “Not either of your names?” pursued the Colonel hopefully.

  “No.”

  “Then it must have been J.”

  “No.”

  “I mean T.”

  The young man nodded.

  Uppingdon took heart. “Let me see, Tom—Thomson—Travers—Terrington—”

  The other smiled. “I’d better save you the trouble. Templar’s the name—Simon Templar.”

  Uppingdon put a hand to his head.

  “I knew it!” He was certain that he had never met anyone named Simon Templar. “How stupid of me! My dear chap, I hardly know how to apologize. Damned bad form, not even being able to remember a fellow’s name. Look here, you must give me a chance to put it right. What about joining us for a drink? Or are you waiting for somebody?”

  Simon Templar shook his head.

  “Splendid!” said the Colonel. “Splendid! Perfectly splendid!” He seized the young man’s arm and led him across to where Mr Immelbern waited. “By Gad, what a perfectly splendid coincidence. Simon, you must meet Mr Immelbern. Sidney, this is an old friend of mine, Mr Templar. By Gad!”

  Simon found himself ushered into the best chair, his drink paid for, his health proposed and drunk with every symptom of cordiality.

  “By Gad!” said the Colonel, mopping his brow and beaming.

  “Quite a coincidence, Mr Templar,” remarked Immelbern, absorbing the word into his vocabulary.

  “Coincidence is a marvellous thing,” said the Colonel. “I remember when I was in Allahabad with the West Nottinghams, they had a quartermaster whose wife’s name was Ellen. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t really our quartermaster—we borrowed him from the Southwest Kents. Rotten regiment, the Southwest Kents. Old General Plushbottom was with them before he was thrown out of the service. His name wasn’t really Plushbottom, but we called him Old General Plushbottom.

  “The thing was a frightful scandal. He had a fight with a subaltern on the parade-ground at Poona—as a matter of fact, it was almost on the very spot where Reggie Carfew dropped dead of heart failure the day after his wife ran away with a bank clerk. And the extraordinary thing was that her name was Ellen too.”

  “Extraordinary,” agreed the young man.

  “Extraordinary!” concurred Mr Immelbern, and trod viciously on Uppingdon’s toe under the table.

  “That was a marvellous trip we had on the Bremen—I mean to Biarritz—wasn’t it?” said the Colonel, wincing.

  Simon Templar smiled. “We had some good parties, didn’t we?”

  “By Gad! And the casino!”

  “The Heliopolis!”

  “The races!” said the Colonel, seizing his cue almost too smartly, and moving his feet quickly out of range of Mr Immelbern’s heavy heel.

  Mr Immelbern gave an elaborate start. He pulled a watch from his waistcoat pocket and looked at it accusingly.

  “By the way, Sir George,” he interrupted with a faintly conspiratorial air. “I don’t want to put you out at all, but it’s getting a bit late.”

  “Late?” repeated the Colonel, frowning at him.

  “You know,” said Mr Immelbern mysteriously.

  “Oh,” said the Colonel, grasping the point.

  Mr Immelbern turned to Simon.

  “I’m really not being rude, Mr Templar,” he explained, “but Sir George has important business to attend to this afternoon, and I had to remind him about it. Really, Sir George, don’t think I’m butting in, but it goes at two o’clock, and if we’re going to get any lunch—”

  “But that’s outrageous!” protested the Colonel indignantly. “I’ve only just brought Mr Templar over to our table, and you’re suggesting that I should rush off and leave him!”

  “Please don’t bother about me,” said Simon hastily. “If you have business to do—”

  “My dear chap, I insist on bothering. The whole idea is absurd. I’ve put far too great a strain on your good nature already. This is preposterous. You must certainly join us in another drink. And in lunch. It’s the very least I can do.”

  Mr Immelbern did not look happy. He gave the impression of a man torn between politeness and frantic necessity, frustrated by having to talk in riddles, and perhaps pardonably exasperated by the obtuseness of his companion.

  “But really. Sir George—”

  “That’s enough,” said the Colonel, raising his hand. “I refuse to listen to anything more. Mr Templar is an old friend of mine, and my guarantee should be good enough for you. And as far as you are concerned, my dear chap,” he added, turning to Simon, “if you are not already engaged for lunch, I won’t hear any other excuse.”

  Simon shrugged. “It’s very kind of you. But if I’m in the way—”

  “That,” said the Colonel pontifically, “will do.” He consulted his watch, drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the table for a moment, and said, “The very thing! We’ll go right along to my rooms, and I’ll have some lunch served there. Then Mr Immelbern and I can do our business as well without being rushed.”

  “But Sir George!” said Immelbern imploringly. “Won’t you listen to reason? Look here, can I speak to you alone for a minute? Mr Templar will excuse us.”

  He grabbed the spluttering Colonel by the arm and dragged him away almost by main force. They retreated to the other end of the lounge.

  “We’ll get him,” said the Colonel, gesticulating furiously.

  “I know,” said Mr Immelbern, beating his fist on the palm of his hand. “That is, if you don’t scare him off with that imitation of a colonel. That stuff’s so corny it makes me want to scream. Have you found out who he is?”

  “No. I don’t even recognize his name.”

  “Probably he’s mistaken you for somebody else,” said Mr Immelbern, appearing to sulk.

  The Colonel turned away from him and marched back to the table, with Mr Immelbern following him glumly.

  “Well, that’s settled, by Gad,” he said breezily. “If you’ve finished your drink, my dear fellow, we’ll get along at once.”

  They went in a taxi to the Colonel’s apartment, a small suite at the lower end of Clarges Street. Uppingdon burbled on with engaging geniality, but Mr Immelbern kept his mouth tightly closed and wore the look of a man suffering from toothache.

  “How about some caviar sandwiches and a bottle of wine?” suggested the Colonel. “I can fix those up myself. Of if you’d prefer something more substantial, I can easily have it sent in.”

  “Caviar sandwiches will do for me,” murmured Simon accommodatingly.

  There was plenty of caviar, and some excellent sherry to pass the time while the Colonel was preparing the sandwiches. The wine was impeccable, and the quantity apparently unlimited. Under its soothing influence even the morose Mr Immelbern seemed to thaw slightly, although towards the end of the meal he kept looking at his watch and comparing it anxiously with the clock on the mantelpiece.

  At a quarter to two he caught his partner’s eye in one of the rare lulls in the Colonel’s meandering flow of reminiscence.

  “Well, Sir George,” he said grimly, “if you can spare th
e time now—”

  “Of course,” said the Colonel brightly.

  Mr Immelbern looked at their guest, and hesitated again.

  “Er…to deal with our business.”

  Simon put down his glass and rose quickly. “I’ll leave you to it,” he said pleasantly. “Really, I’ve imposed on you quite long enough.”

  “Sit down, my dear chap, sit down,” commanded the Colonel testily. “Dammit, Sidney, your suspicions are becoming ridiculous. If you go on in this way I shall begin to believe you suffer from delusions of persecution. I’ve already told you that Mr Templar is an old friend of mine, by Gad, and it’s an insult to a guest in my house to suggest that you can’t trust him. Anything we have to discuss can be said in front of him.”

  “But think, Sir George. Think of the risk.”

  “Nonsense,” snorted the Colonel. “It’s all in your imagination. In fact”—the idea suddenly appeared to strike him—“I’m damned if I don’t tell him what it’s all about.”

  Mr Immelbern opened his mouth, closed it again, and sank back wearily without speaking. His attitude implied that he had already exhausted himself in vain appeals to an obvious lunatic, and he was beginning to realize that it was of no avail. He could do no more.

  “It’s like this, my dear chap,” said the Colonel, ignoring him. “All that this mystery amounts to—all that Immelbern here is so frightened of telling you—is that we are professional gamblers. We back racehorses.”

  “That isn’t all of it,” contradicted Mr Immelbern sullenly.

  “Well, we have certain advantages. I, in my social life, am very friendly with a large number of racehorse owners.

  Mr Immelbern is friendly with trainers and jockeys. Between the two of us, we sometimes have infallible information, the result of piecing together everything we hear from various sources, of times when the result of a certain race has positively been arranged. Then all we have to do is to make our bets and collect the money. That happens to be our business this afternoon. We have an absolutely certain winner for two o’clock race at Sandown Park, and in a few minutes we shall be backing it.”

  Mr Immelbern closed his eyes as if he could endure no more.

  “That seems quite harmless,” said Templar.

  “Of course it is,” agreed the Colonel. “What Immelbern is so frightened of is that somebody will discover what we’re doing—I mean that it might come to the knowledge of some of our friends who are owners or trainers or jockeys, and then our sources of information would be cut off. But, by Gad, I insist on the privilege of being allowed to know when I can trust my own friends.”

  “Well, I won’t give you away,” Simon told him obligingly.

  The Colonel turned to Immelbern triumphantly.

  “There you are! So there’s no need whatever for our little party to break up yet, unless Mr Templar has an engagement. Our business will be done in a few minutes. By Gad, damme, I think you owe Mr Templar an apology!”

  Mr Immelbern sighed, stared at his fingernails for a while in grumpy silence, and consulted his watch again.

  “It’s nearly five to two,” he said. “How much can we get on?”

  “About a thousand, I think,” said the Colonel judiciously.

  Mr Immelbern got up and went to the telephone, where he dialled a number.

  “This is Immelbern,” he said, in the voice of a martyr responding to the curtain call for the lion-wrestling event. “I want two hundred pounds on Greenfly.”

  He heard his bet repeated, pressed down the hook, and dialled again.

  “We have to spread it around to try and keep the starting price from shortening,” explained the Colonel.

  Simon Templar nodded, and leaned back with his eyes half-closed, listening to the click and tinkle of the dial and Immelbern’s afflicted voice. Five times the process was repeated, and during the giving of the fifth order Uppingdon interrupted again.

  “Make it two-fifty this time, Sidney,” he said.

  Mr Immelbern said, “Just a moment, will you hold on?” to the transmitter, covered it with his hand, and turned aggrievedly.

  “I thought you said a thousand. That makes a thousand and fifty.”

  “Well, I thought Mr Templar might like to have fifty on.”

  Simon hesitated. “That’s about all I’ve got on me,” he said.

  “Don’t let that bother you, my dear boy,” boomed Colonel Uppingdon. “Your credit’s good with me, and I feel that I owe you something to compensate for what you’ve put up with. Make it a hundred if you like.”

  “But Sir George!” wailed Mr Immelbern.

  “Dammit, will you stop whining ‘But Sir George!’?” exploded the Colonel. “That settles it. Make it three hundred—that will be a hundred on for Mr Templar. And if the horse doesn’t win I’ll stand the loss myself.”

  A somewhat strained silence prevailed after the last bet had been made. Mr Immelbern sat down again and chewed the unlighted end of a cigar in morbid meditations. The Colonel twiddled his thumbs as if the embarrassment of these recurrent disputes was hard to shake off. Simon Templar lighted a cigarette and smoked calmly.

  “Have you been doing this long?” he inquired.

  “For about two years,” said the Colonel. “By Gad, though, we’ve made money at it. Only about one horse in ten that we back doesn’t romp home, and most of ’em are at good prices. Sometimes our money does get back to the course and spoils the price, but I’d rather have a winner at evens than a loser at ten to one any day. Why, I remember one race meeting we had at Delhi. That was the year when old Stubby Featherstone dropped his cap in the Ganges—he was the fella who got killed at Cambrai…”

  He launched off on another wandering reminiscence, and Simon listened to him with polite attention. He had some thinking to do, and he was grateful for the gallant Colonel’s willingness to take all the strain of conversation away from him. Mr Immelbern chewed his cigar in chronic pessimism until half an hour had passed, and then he glanced at his watch again, started up, and broke into the middle of one of his host’s rambling sentences.

  “The result ought to be through by now,” he said abruptly. “Shall we go out and get a paper?”

  Simon stood up unhurriedly. He had done his thinking. “Let me go,” he suggested.

  “That’s awfully good of you, my dear boy. Mr Immelbern would have gone. Never mind, by Gad. Go out and see how much you’ve won. I’ll open another bottle. Damme, we must have a drink on this, by Gad!”

  Simon grinned and sauntered out, and as the doors closed behind him the eyes of the two partners met.

  “Next time you say ‘damme’ or ‘by Gad,’ George,” said Mr Immelbern, “I will knock your block off, so help me. Why don’t you get some new ideas?”

  But by that time Lieutenant-Colonel Sir George Uppingdon was beyond taking offence.

  “We’ve got him,” he said gleefully.

  “I hope so,” said Mr Immelbern, more cautiously.

  “I know what I’m talking about, Sid,” said the Colonel stubbornly. “He’s a serious young fellow, one of these conservative chaps like myself—but that’s the best kind. None of this dashing around, keeping up with the times, going off like a firework and fizzling out like a pricked balloon. I’ll bet you anything you like, in another hour he’ll be looking around for a thousand pounds to give us to put on tomorrow’s certainty. His kind starts slowly, but it goes a lot further than any of your high-pressure Smart Alecs.”

  Mr Immelbern made a rude noise.

  Simon Templar bought a Star at Devonshire House and turned without anxiety to the stop press. Greenfly had won the two o’clock at five to one.

  As he strolled back towards Clarges Street he was smiling. It was a peculiarly ecstatic sort of smile, and as a matter of fact he had volunteered to go out and buy the paper, even though he knew what the result would be as certainly as Messrs Uppingdon and Immelbern knew it, for the sole and sufficient reason that he wanted to give that smile the freedom of his face and
let it walk around. To have been compelled to sit around any longer in Uppingdon’s apartment and sustain the necessary mask of gravity and sober interest without a breathing spell would have sprained every muscle within six inches of his mouth.

  “Hullo, Saint,” said a familiar sleepy voice beside him.

  A hand touched his arm, and he turned quickly to see a big baby-faced man in a bowler hat of unfashionable shape, whose jaws moved rhythmically like those of a ruminating cow.

  “Hush,” said the Saint. “Somebody might hear.”

  “Is there anybody left who doesn’t know?” asked Chief Inspector Teal sardonically.

  Simon Templar nodded slowly.

  “Strange as it may seem, there is. Believe it or not, Claud Eustace, somewhere in this great city—I wouldn’t tell you where for anything—there are left two trusting souls who don’t even recognize my name. They have just come down from their hermits’ caves in the mountains of Ladbroke Grove, and they haven’t yet heard the news.

  “The Robin Hood of modern crime,” said the Saint oratorically, “the scourge of the ungodly, the defender of the faith—what are the newspaper headlines?—has come back to raise hell over the length and breadth of England—and they don’t know.”

  “You look much too happy,” said the detective suspiciously. “Who are these fellows?”

  “Their names are Uppingdon and Immelbern, if you want to know—and you’ve probably met them before. They have special information about racehorses, and I am playing my usual role of the Sucker who does not Suck too long. At the moment they owe me five hundred quid.”

  Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal’s baby blue eyes looked him over thoughtfully. And in Chief Inspector Teal’s mind there were no illusions. He did not share the ignorance of Messrs Uppingdon and Immelbern. He had known the Saint for many years, and had heard that he was back.

  He knew that there was going to be a fresh outbreak of buccaneering through the fringes of London’s underworld, exactly as there had been so many times before; he knew that the feud between them was going to start again, the endless battle between the gay outlaw and the guardian of the Law; and he knew that his troubles were at the beginning of a new lease of life. And yet one of his rare smiles touched his mouth for a fleeting instant.