The Saint Intervenes (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  Once Rolfieri had been taken to the farmhouse, how would they force him through the necessary marriage?

  “We make-a him,” was all that Naccaro would say, but he said it with grim conviction.

  When the Saint finally agreed to take the job, there was another scene of operatic gratitude which surpassed all previous demonstrations. Money was offered, but Simon had already decided that in this case the entertainment was its own reward. He felt pardonably exhausted when at last Domenick Naccaro, bowing and scraping and yammering incoherently, shepherded his daughter, his illegitimate grandchild, and his own curling whiskers out of the apartment.

  The preparations for his share in the abduction occupied Simon Templar’s time for most of the following week. He drove down to Brooklands and tested the plane which the syndicate had purchased—it was an ancient Avro which must have secured its certificate of airworthiness by the skin of its ailerons, but he thought it would complete the double journey, given luck and good weather. Then there was a half-way refuelling base to be established somewhere in France—a practical necessity which had not occurred to the elemental Mr Naccaro. Friday had arrived before he was able to report that he was ready to make the trip, and there was another scene of embarrassing gratitude.

  “I send-a da telegram to take Rolfieri on Sunday night,” was the essence of Mr Naccaro’s share in the conversation, but his blessings upon the Saint, the bones of his ancestors, and the heads of his unborn descendants for generations, took up much more time.

  Simon had to admit, however, that the practical contribution of the Naccaro clan was performed with an efficiency which he himself could scarcely have improved upon. He stood beside the museum Avro on the aerodrome of San Remo at dusk on the Sunday evening, and watched the kidnapping cortège coming towards him across the field with genuine admiration. The principal character was an apparently mummified figure rolled in blankets, which occupied an invalid chair wheeled by the unfortunate Maria in the uniform of a nurse. Her pale lovely face was set in an expression of beatific solicitude at which Simon, having some idea of the fate which awaited Signor Rolfieri in England, could have hooted aloud. Beside the invalid chair stalked a sedate spectacled man whose role was obviously that of the devoted physician. The airport officials, who had already checked the papers of pilot and passengers, lounged boredly in the far background, without a single disturbing suspicion of the classic getaway that was being pulled off under their noses.

  Between them, Simon and the “doctor” tenderly lifted the mummified figure into the machine.

  “He will not wake before you arrive, signor,” whispered the man confidently, stooping to arrange the blankets affectionately round the body of his patient.

  The Saint grinned gently, and stepped back to help the “nurse” into her place. He had no idea how the first stage of the abduction had been carried out, and he was not moved to inquire. He had performed similar feats himself, no less slickly, without losing the power to stand back and impersonally admire the technique of others in the same field. With a sigh of satisfaction he swung himself up into his own cockpit, signalled to the mechanic who stood waiting by the propeller of the warmed-up engine, and sent the ship roaring into the wind through the deepening dusk.

  The flight north was consistently uneventful. With a south wind following to help him on, he sighted the three red lights which marked his fuelling station at about half past two, and landed by the three flares that were kindled for him when he blinked his navigating lights. The two men procured from somewhere by Mr Naccaro replenished his tank while he smoked a cigarette and stretched his legs, and in twenty minutes he was off again. He passed over Folkestone in the early daylight, and hedge-hopped for some miles before he reached his destination so that no inquisitive yokel should see exactly where he landed.

  “You have him?” asked Mr Naccaro, dancing about deliriously as Simon climbed stiffly down.

  “I have,” said the Saint. “You’d better get him inside quickly—I’m afraid your pals didn’t dope him up as well as they thought they had, and from the way he was behaving just now I shouldn’t be surprised if he was going to have-a da baby, too.”

  He stripped off his helmet and goggles, and watched the unloading of his cargo with interest. Signor Giuseppe Rolfieri had recovered considerably from the effects of the drug under whose influence he had been embarked, but the hangover, combined with some bumpy weather on the last part of the journey, restrained him hardly less effectively from much resistance. Simon had never known before that the human skin could really turn green, but the epidermis of Signor Rolfieri had literally achieved that remarkable tint.

  The Saint stayed behind to help the other half of the reception committee—introduced as Mr Naccaro’s brother—wheel the faithful Avro into the shelter of a barn, and then he strolled back to the farmhouse. As he reached it the door opened, and Naccaro appeared.

  “Ha!” he cried, clasping the Saint’s shoulders. “Meester Templar—you have already been-a so kind—I cannot ask it—but you have-a da car—will you go out again?”

  Simon raised his eyebrows.

  “Can’t I watch the wedding?” he protested. “I might be able to help.”

  “Afterwards, yes,” said Nacarro. “But we are not-a ready. Ecco, we are so hurry, so excited, when we come here we forget-a da mos’ important tings. We forget-a da soap!”

  Simon blinked.

  “Soap?” he repeated. “Can’t you marry him off without washing him?”

  “No, no, no!” spluttered Naccaro. “You don’t understand. Da soap, she is not-a to wash. She is to persuade. I show you myself, afterwards. It is my own idea. But-a da soap we mus’ have. You will go, please, please, signor, in your car?”

  The Saint frowned at him blankly for a moment, and then he shrugged.

  “Okay, brother,” he murmured. “I’d do more than that to find out how you persuade a bloke to get married with a cake of soap.”

  He stuffed his helmet and goggles into the pocket of his flying coat, and went around to the barn where he had parked his car before he took off for San Remo. He had heard of several strange instruments of persuasion in his time, but it was the first time he had ever met common or household soap in the guise of an implement of torture or moral coercion. He wondered whether the clan Naccaro had such a prejudiced opinion of Rolfieri’s personal cleanliness that they thought the mere threat of washing him would terrify him into meeting his just obligations, or whether the victim was first smeared with ink and then bribed with the soap, or whether he was made to eat it, and he was so fascinated by these provocative speculations that he had driven nearly half a mile before he remembered that he was not provided with the wherewithal to buy it.

  Simon Templar was not stingy. He would have bought any necessitous person a cake of soap, any day. In return for a solution of the mystery which was perplexing him at that moment, he would cheerfully have stood Mr Naccaro a whole truckload of it. But the money was not in his pocket. In a moment of absent-mindedness he had set out on his trip with a very small allowance of ready cash, and all he had left of it then was two Italian lire, the change out of the last meal he had enjoyed in San Remo.

  He stopped the car and scowled thoughtfully for a second. There was no place visible ahead where he could turn it, and he had no natural desire to back half a mile down that narrow lane, but the road had led him consistently to the left since he set out, and he stood up to survey the landscape in the hope that the farmhouse might only be a short distance across the fields as the crow flies or he could walk. And it was by doing this that he saw a curious sight.

  Another car, of whose existence nobody had said anything, stood in front of the farmhouse, and into it Mr Naccaro and his brother were hastily loading the body of the unfortunate Signor Rolfieri, now trussed with several fathoms of rope like an escape artist before demonstrating his art. The girl Maria stood by, and as soon as Rolfieri was in the car she followed him in, covered him with a rug, and settled herse
lf comfortably on the seat. Naccaro and his brother jumped into the front, and the car drove rapidly away in the opposite direction to that which the Saint had been told to take.

  Simon Templar sank slowly back behind the wheel and took out his cigarette-case. He deliberately paused to tap out a cigarette, light it, and draw the first two puffs as if he had an hour to spare, and then he pushed the gear lever into reverse and sent the great cream and red Hirondel racing back up the lane at a speed which gave no indication that he had ever hesitated to perform the manoeuvre.

  He turned the car round in the farmhouse gates and went on with the cut-out closed and his keen eyes vigilantly scanning the panorama ahead. The other car was a sedan, and half the time he was able to keep the roof in sight over the low hedges which hid the open Hirondel from its quarry. But it is doubtful whether the possibility of pursuit ever entered the heads of the party in front, who must have been firm in their belief that the Saint was at that moment speeding innocently towards the village to which they had directed him. Once, at a fork, he lost them, and then he spotted a tiny curl of smoke rising from the grass bank a little way up one turning, and drove slowly up to it. It was the lighted stub of a cigar which could not have been thrown out at any place more convenient for a landmark, and the Saint smiled and went on.

  In a few seconds he had picked up the sedan again, and very shortly afterwards he jammed on his brakes and brought the Hirondel to a sudden halt.

  The car in front had stopped before a lonely cottage whose thatched roof was clearly visible. In a flash the Saint was out of his own seat and walking silently up the lane towards it. When the next turn would have brought him within sight of the car, he slipped through a gap in the hedge and sprinted for the back of the house. In broad daylight, there was no chance of further concealment, and it was neck or nothing at that point. But his luck held, and so far as he could tell he gained the lee of his objective unobserved. And once there, an invitingly open kitchen window was merely another link in the chain of chance which had stayed with him so benevolently throughout that adventure.

  Rolfieri and the Naccaro team were already inside. He could hear the muffled mutter of their voices as he tiptoed down the dark passage towards the front of the house, and presently he stood outside the door of the room where they were. Through the keyhole he was able to take in the scene.

  Rolfieri, still safely trussed, was sitting in a chair, and the Naccaro brothers were standing over him. The girl Maria was curled up on the settee, smoking a cigarette and displaying a remarkable length of stocking for a betrayed virgin whose honour was at stake. The conversation was in Italian, which was only one language out of the Saint’s comprehensive repertoire, and it was illuminating.

  “You cannot make me pay,” Rolfieri was saying, but his stubbornness could have been more convincing.

  “That is true,” Naccaro agreed. “I can only point out the disadvantages of not paying. You are in England, where the police would be very glad to see you. Your confederates have already been tried and sentenced, and it would be a mere formality for you to join them. The lightest sentence that any of them received was five years, and they could hardly give you less. If we left you here, and informed the police where to find you, it would not be long before you were in prison yourself. Surely twenty-five thousand pounds is a very small price to pay to avoid that.”

  Rolfieri stared sullenly at the floor for a while, and then he said, “I will give you ten thousand.”

  “It will be twenty-five thousand or nothing,” said Naccaro. “Come, now—I see you are prepared to be reasonable. Let us have what we ask, and you will be able to leave England again before dark. We will tell that fool Templar that you agreed to our terms without the persuasion of the soap, and that we hurried you to the church before you changed your mind. He will fly you back to San Remo and you will have nothing more to fear.”

  “I have nothing to fear now,” said Rolfieri, as if he was trying to hearten himself. “It would do you no good to hand me over to the police.”

  “It would punish you for wasting so much of our time and some of our money,” put in the girl, in a tone which left no room for doubt that that revenge would be taken in the last resort.

  Rolfieri licked his lips and squirmed in the tight ropes which bound him—he was a fat man, and they had a lot to bind. Perhaps the glimpse of his well-fed corporation which that movement gave him made him realize some of the inescapable discomforts of penal servitude to the amateur of good living, for his voice was even more half-hearted when he spoke again.

  “I have not so much money in England,” he said.

  “You have a lot more than that in England,” answered the other Naccaro harshly. “It is deposited in the City and Continental Bank under the name of Pierre Fontanne, and we have a cheque on that bank made out ready for you. All we require is your signature and a letter in your own hand instructing the bank to pay cash. Be quick and make up your mind, now—we are losing patience.”

  It was inevitable that there should be further argument on the subject, but the outcome was a foregone conclusion.

  The cheque was signed and the letter was written, and Domenick Naccaro handed them over to his brother.

  “Now you will let me go,” said Rolfieri.

  “We will let you go when Alessandro returns with the money,” said Domenick Naccaro. “Until then, you stay here. Maria will look after you while I go back to the farm and detain Templar.”

  The Saint did not need to hear any more. He went back to the kitchen with soundless speed, and let himself out of the window by which he had entered. But before he left he picked up a trophy from a shelf over the sink.

  Domenick Naccaro reached the farmhouse shortly after him and found the Saint reading a newspaper.

  “Rolfieri has-a marry Maria,” he announced triumphantly, and kissed the Saint on both cheeks. “So after all I keep-a da secret of my leedle trick wis-a da soap. But everyting we owe to you, my friend!”

  “I guess you do,” Simon admitted. “Where are the happy couple?”

  “Ha! That is-a da romance. It seems that Signer Rolfieri was always fond of Maria, and when he hear that she have-a da baby, and he see her again—presto! —he is in love wis her. So now they go to London to get-a da clothes, queeck, so she can go wis him for da honeymoon. So I tink we drink-a da Antinori wine till they come back.”

  They spent a convivial morning, which Simon Templar would have enjoyed more if caution had not compelled him to tip most of his drinks down the back of his chair.

  It was half past one when a car drew up outside, and a somewhat haggard Rolfieri, a jubilant Alessandro Naccaro, and a quietly smiling Maria came in. Domenick jumped up.

  “Everything is all right?” he asked.

  “Pairfect,” beamed Alessandro.

  That was as much as the Saint was waiting to hear. He uncoiled himself from his chair and smiled at them all.

  “In that case, boys and girls,” he drawled, “would you all put up your hands and keep very quiet?”

  There was an automatic in his hand, and six eyes stared at it mutely. And then Domenick Naccaro smiled a wavering and watery smile.

  “I tink you make-a da joke, no?” he said.

  “Sure,” murmured the Saint amiably. “I make-a da joke. Just try to get obstreperous, and watch me laugh.”

  He brought the glowering Alessandro towards him and searched his pockets. There was no real question of anybody getting obstreperous, but the temptation to do so must have been very near when he brought out a sheaf of new banknotes and transferred them one-handed to his own wallet.

  “This must seem rather hard-hearted of me,” Simon remarked, “but I have to do it. You’re a very talented family—if you really are a family—and you must console yourselves with the thought that you fooled me for a whole ten days. When I think how easily you might have fooled me for the rest of the way, it sends cold shivers up and down my spine. Really boys, it was a rather brilliant scheme, and I
wish I’d thought of it myself.”

  “You wait till I see you da next time, you pig,” said Domenick churlishly.

  “I’ll wait,” Simon promised him.

  He backed discreetly out of the room and out of the house to his car, and they clustered in the doorway to watch him. It was not until he pressed the starter that the fullest realization dawned upon Signor Rolfieri.

  “But what happens to me?” he screamed. “How do I go back to San Remo?”

  “I really don’t know, Comrade,” answered the Saint callously. “Perhaps Domenick will help you again if you give him some more money. Twenty-five thousand quid instead of five years’ penal servitude was rather a bargain price, anyway.”

  He let in the clutch gently, and the big car moved forward. But in a yard or two he stopped it again, and felt in one of his pockets. He brought out his souvenir of a certain fortunate kitchen, and tossed it to the empurpled Domenick.

  “Sorry, brother,” he called back over his shoulder. “I forget-a da soap!”

  THE LOVING BROTHERS

  “You never saw a couple of brothers like ’em,” said the garrulous Mr Penwick. “They get enough pleasure out of doing anybody down, but if one of ’em can cheat the other out of anything it’s a red-letter day.”

  Dissension between brothers is unhappily nothing new in the world’s history. Jacob and Esau, Cain and Abel, disagreed in a modest way, according to the limitations of their time. Walter and Willie Kinsall, living in days when a mess of pottage has no great bargaining value, disagreed on a much more lavish scale.