The Saint Intervenes (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  Naturally this lavishness of discord was a thing which grew up through the years. It was not achieved at one stroke. When Walter, aged four, realized that Willie, aged two months, was commanding the larger share of his parents’ time and attention, and endeavoured to brain him with a toy tomahawk, their mutual jealousy was merely embryonic.

  When Willie, aged seven, discovered that by lying awake at night until after Walter, aged eleven, had gone to sleep, he was able to rifle Walter’s pockets of a judicious share of their current collection of sweets, pennies, pieces of string, and paper clips, his ideas of retaliation were only passing through the experimental stage.

  But when Walter, aged twenty, found that he was able to imitate the handwriting of Willie, aged sixteen, so well that he succeeded in drawing out of Willie’s savings bank account a quantity of money whose disappearance was ever afterwards a mystery, it might be said that their feud was at least within sight of the peaks to which it was destined later to rise.

  The crude deceptions of youth, of course, gave place to subtler and less overtly illegal stratagems as the passing years gave experience and greater guile. Even their personal relationship was glossed over with a veneer of specious affability which deceived neither.

  “How about running down to my place for the weekend?” suggested Willie, aged twenty-seven.

  Walter ran down, and at dead of night descended to the study and perused all of Willie’s private correspondence that he could find, obtaining an insight into his brother’s affairs which enabled him to snap up the bankrupt shoe repairing business which Willie was preparing to take over at a give-away price.

  “Come and have lunch one day,” invited Walter, aged thirty-five.

  Willie came at a time when Walter was out, and beguiled a misguided secretary into letting him wait in Walter’s private office. From letters which were lying on the desk he gained the information through which he subsequently sneaked a mining concession in Portuguese East Africa from under Walter’s very nose.

  The garrulous Mr Penwick had several other anecdotes on the same lines to tell, the point of which was to establish beyond dispute the fraternal affection of the Brothers Kinsall.

  “Even their father got fed up with them,” said Mr Penwick. “And he wasn’t a paragon, by any means. You must have heard of Sir Joseph Kinsall, the South African millionaire? Well, he’s their father. Lives in Malaga now, from what I hear. I used to be his solicitor, before I was struck off the rolls. Why, I’ve still got his last will and testament at home. Living abroad, he doesn’t know about my misfortune, and I’ve kept the will because I’m going to be reinstated. I had an awful time with him when he was over here. First he made a will leaving everything to ’em equally. Then he tore it up and left everything to Walter. Then he tore that one up and left everything to Willie. Then he tore that up and made another. He just couldn’t make up his mind which of ’em was the worst. I remember once…”

  What Mr Penwick remembered once he could be counted on to remember again. His garrulousness was due only in part to a natural loquacity of temperament: the rest of it could without injustice be credited to the endless supplies of pink gin which Simon Templar was ready to pay for.

  The Saint had met Mr Penwick for the first time in a West End bar, and thereafter had met him a number of times in other bars. He had never had the heart to shatter Mr Penwick’s fond dream that reinstatement was just round the corner, but it is doubtful whether Mr Penwick really believed it himself.

  Gin was Mr Penwick’s fatal weakness, and after several encounters with his watery eyes, his shaky hands, and his reddened and bulbous nose, it was hard to imagine that he could ever occupy his former place in the legal profession again. Nevertheless, Simon Templar had sought his company on many occasions, for the Saint was not snobbish, and he had his own vocation to consider.

  The uninitiated may sometimes be tempted to think that the career of a twentieth-century brigand is nothing but a series of dramatically satisfying high spots interluded with periods of ill-gotten ease, but nothing could be farther from the truth. The Saint’s work was never done. He knew better than anyone that golden-fleeced sheep rarely fall miraculously out of Heaven for the shearing, and while he certainly enjoyed a liberal allowance of high spots, many of the intervals between them were taken up with the dull practical business of picking up clues, sifting stray fragments of gossip from all quarters that came his way, and planning the paths by which future high spots were to be attained.

  He followed a score of false scents for every one that led him to profit, and there was none which he could pass by, for he never knew until the moment of coincidence and inspiration which would lead him to big game and which would lead to nothing more than a stray mouse.

  The garrulousness of Mr Penwick was a case in point. Lawyers hear many secrets, and when they have been struck off the rolls and nurse a grievance, and their downward path is lubricated by a craving for juniper juice which they are not financially equipped to indulge as deeply as they would wish, there is always the chance that a modern buccaneer with an attentive mind, who will provide gin in limitless quantities, may sooner or later hear some item of reminiscence that will come in useful one day.

  Some weeks passed before Mr Penwick came in useful, and Simon was not thinking of him at all when Patricia Holm looked up from the newspaper one morning and said, “I see your friend Sir Joseph Kinsall is dead.”

  The Saint, who was smoking a cigarette on the window-sill and looking down into the sunlit glades of the Green Park, was not immediately impressed.

  “He’s not my pal—he’s the bibulous Penwick’s,” he said, and in his mind ran over the stories which Mr Penwick had told him. “May I see?”

  He read through the news item, and learned that Sir Joseph had succumbed to an attack of pneumonia at ten o’clock the previous morning. A well-known firm of London solicitors was said to be in possession of his will, and the disposition of his vast fortune would probably be disclosed later that day.

  “Well, that’ll give Walter and Willie something new to squabble over,” Simon remarked, and thought nothing more about it until that evening when a late edition told him that the Kinsall millions, according to a will made in 1927, would be divided equally between his two sons.

  That appeared to close the incident, and Simon decided that the late Sir Joseph had found the only possible answer to the choice between two such charming heirs as the gods had blessed him with. He dismissed the affair with a characteristic shrug as only one of the false scents which had crossed his path in his twelve years of illicit hunting.

  He was turning to the back page for the result of the 4:30 when a wobbly hand clutched his sleeve, and he looked round to behold a vision of the garrulous Mr Penwick arrayed in a very creased and moth-eaten frock coat and a top hat which had turned green in the years of idleness.

  “Hullo,” Simon murmured, and automatically ordered a double pink gin. “Whose funeral have you been to?”

  Mr Penwick clutched at the glass which was provided, downed half the contents, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

  “Ole boy,” he said earnestly, “I’m going to be reinshtated. Congrashiilate me.”

  Indubitably he was very drunk, and the Saint relaxed into perfunctory attention.

  “Splendid,” he said politely. “When did you hear the news?”

  “They got to reinshtate me now,” said Mr Penwick, “because I’m only schap hoosh got Kinshallsh will.” He dabbed astigmatically at the Saint’s evening paper. “Jew read newsh? They shay moneysh divided between Wallern Willie ’cording to will he made in nineen-twenny-sheven. Pish!” said Mr Penwick, snapping his fingers. “Bosh! That will wash revoked ycarsh ago. I got the will he made in nineneen-thirry-two. Sho they got to reinshtate me. Can’t have sholishitor shtruck off rollsh hoosh got will worth millionsh.”

  Simon’s relaxation had vanished in an instant—it might never have overcome him. He glanced round the bar in sudden alarm, but fortunate
ly the room was empty and the barmaid was giggling with her colleague at the far end of her quarters.

  “Wait a minute,” he said firmly, and steered the unsteady Mr Penwick to a table as far removed as possible from potential eavesdroppers. “Tell me this again, will you?”

  “Sh-shirnple,” said Mr Penwick, emptying his glass and looking pathetically around for more. “I got Kinshallsh lasht willan teshtamen. Revoking all othersh. I wash going to Law Society to tellum, shoonsh I read the newsh, but I shtopped to have drink an’ shellybrate. Now I shpose Law siety all gone home.” He flung out his arms, to illustrate the theme of the Law Society scattering to the four corners of the globe. “Have to wait till tomorrer. Have ’nother drink inshtead. Thishish on me.”

  He fumbled in his pockets, and produced two halfpennies and a sixpence. He put them on the table and blinked at them hazily for a moment, and then, as if finally grasping the irrefutable total, he covered his face with his hands and burst into tears.

  “All gone,” he sobbed. “All gone. Moneysh all gone. Len’ me a pound, ole boy, an’ I’ll pay for drinksh.”

  “Mr Penwick,” said the Saint slowly, “have you got that will on you?”

  “’Coursh I got will on me. I tole you, ole boy—I wash goin’ Lawshiety an’ show ’em, so they could reinshtate me. Pleash pay for drinksh.”

  Simon lifted his Peter Dawson and drank unhurriedly. “Mr Penwick, will you sell me that will?”

  The solicitor raised shocked but twitching eyebrows. “Shell it, old boy? Thash imposhible. Professhnal etiquette. Norrallowed to sell willsh. Len’ me ten bob—”

  “Mr Penwick,” said the Saint, “what would you do if you had five hundred a year for life?”

  The solicitor swallowed noisily, and an ecstatic light gleamed through his tears like sunshine through an April shower.

  “I’d buy gin,” he said. “Bols an’ bols an’ bols of gin. Barrelsh of gin. Lloyd’s gin. I’d have a bath full of gin, an’ shwim myshelf to shleep every Sarrerdy night.”

  “I’ll give you five hundred a year for life for that will,” said the Saint. “Signed, settled, and sealed—in writing—this minute. You needn’t worry too much about your professional etiquette. I’ll give you my word not to destroy or conceal the will, but I would like to borrow it for a day or two.”

  Less than an hour later he was chivalrously ferrying the limp body of Mr Penwick home to the ex-solicitor’s lodgings, for it is a regrettable fact that Mr Penwick collapsed rather rapidly under the zeal with which he insisted on celebrating the sale of his potential reinstatement. Simon went on to his own apartment, and told Patricia of his purchase.

  “But aren’t you running a tremendous risk?” she said anxiously. “Penwick won’t be able to keep it secret—and what use is it to you anyway?”

  “I’m afraid nothing short of chloroform would stop Penwick talking,” Simon admitted. “But it’ll take a little time for his story to get dangerous, and I’ll have had all I want out of the will before then. And the capital which is going to pay his five hundred a year will only be half of it.”

  Patricia lighted a cigarette. “Do I help?”

  “You are a discontented secretary with worldly ambitions and no moral sense,” he said. “The part should be easy for you.”

  Mr Willie Kinsall had never heard of Patricia Holm.

  “What’s she like?” he asked the typist who brought in her name.

  “She’s pretty,” said the girl cynically.

  Mr Willie Kinsall appeared to deliberate for a while, and then he said, “I’ll see her.”

  When he did see her, he admitted that the description was correct. At her best, Patricia was beautiful, but for the benefit of Mr Willie she had adopted a vivid red lipstick, an extra quantity of rouge, and a generous use of mascara to reduce herself to something close to the Saint’s estimate of Mr Willie’s taste.

  “How do you do, my dear?” he said. “I don’t think we’ve…er—”

  “We haven’t,” said the girl coolly. “But we should have. I’m your brother Walter’s secretary—or I was.”

  Mr Willie frowned questioningly. “Did he send you to see me?”

  Patricia threw back her head and gave a hard laugh.

  “Did he send me to see you! If he knew I was here he’d probably murder me.”

  “Why?” asked Willie Kinsall cautiously.

  She sat on the corner of his desk, helped herself to a cigarette from his box, and swung a shapely leg.

  “See here, beautiful,” she said. “I’m here for all I can get. Your brother threw me out of a good job just because I made a little mistake, and I’d love to see somebody do him a bad turn. From what he’s said about you sometimes, you two aren’t exactly devoted to each other. Well, I think I can put you in the way of something that’ll make Walter sick, and the news is yours if you pay for it.”

  Mr Kinsall drummed his fingertips on the desk and narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. By no stretch of imagination could he have been truthfully described as beautiful, but he had a natural sympathy for pretty girls of her type who called him by such endearing names. The rat-faced youth of sixteen had by no means mellowed in the Willie Kinsall of thirty-eight; he was just as scraggy and no less ratlike, and when he narrowed his beady eyes they almost disappeared into their deep-set sockets.

  “I’m sorry to hear you’ve lost your job, my dear,” he said insincerely. “What was this mistake you made?”

  “I opened a letter, that’s all. I open all his letters at the office, of course, but this one was marked ‘private and confidential.’ I came in rather late that morning, and I was in such a hurry I didn’t notice what it said on the envelope. I’d just finished reading it when Walter came in, and he was furious. He threw me out then and there—it was only yesterday.”

  “What was this letter about?” asked Mr Kinsall.

  “It was about your father’s will,” she told him, and suddenly Mr Kinsall sat up. “It was from a man who’s been to see him once or twice before—I’ve listened at the keyhole when they were talking,” said the girl shamelessly, “and I gather that the will which was reported in the papers wasn’t the last one your father made. This fellow—he’s a solicitor—had got a later one, and Walter was trying to buy it from him. The letter I read was from the solicitor, and it said that he had decided to accept Walter’s offer of ten thousand pounds for it.”

  Mr Willie’s eyes had recovered from their temporary shrinkage. During the latter part of her speech they had gone on beyond normal, and at the end of it they genuinely bulged. For a few seconds he was voiceless, and then he exploded.

  “The dirty swine!” he gasped.

  That was his immediate and inevitable reaction, but the rest of the news took him longer to grasp. If Walter was willing to pay ten thousand pounds for the will…Ten thousand pounds! It was an astounding, a staggering figure. To be worth that, it could only mean that huge sums were at stake—and Willie could only see one way in which that could have come about. The second will had disinherited Walter. It had left all the Kinsall millions to him, Willie.

  And Walter was trying to buy it and destroy it—to cheat him out of his just inheritance.

  “What is this solicitor’s name?” demanded Willie hoarsely.

  Patricia smiled. “I thought you’d want that,” she said. “Well, I know his name and address, but they’ll cost you money.”

  Willie looked at the clock, gulped, and reached into a drawer for his cheque-book.

  “How much?” he asked. “If it’s within reason, I’ll pay it.”

  She blew out a wreath of smoke and studied him calculatingly for a moment.

  “Five hundred,” she said at length.

  Willie stared, choked, and shuddered. Then, with an expression of frightful agony on his predatory face, he took up his pen and wrote.

  Patricia examined the cheque and put it away in her hand-bag. Then she picked up a pencil and drew the note-block towards her.

  Willie
snatched up the sheet and gazed at it tremblingly for a second. Then he heaved himself panting out of his chair and dashed for the hatstand in the corner.

  “Excuse me,” he got out. “Must do something about it. Come and see me again. Good-bye.”

  Riding in a taxi to the address she had given him, he barely escaped a succession of nervous breakdowns every time a traffic light or a slow-moving dray obstructed their passage. He bounced up and down on the seat, pulled off his hat, pulled out his watch, looked at his hat, tried to put on his watch, mopped his brow, craned his head out of the window, bounced, sputtered, gasped, and sweated in an anguish of impatience that brought him to the verge of delirium.

  When at last they arrived at the lodging-house in Bayswater which was his destination, he fairly hurled himself out of the cab, hauled out a handful of silver with clumsy hands, spilt some of it into the driver’s palm and most of it into the street, stumbled cursing up the steps, and plunged into the bell with a violence which almost drove it solidly through the wall.

  While he waited, fuming, he dragged out his watch again, dropped it, tried to grab it, missed, and kicked it savagely into the middle of the street with a shrill squeal of sheer insanity, and then the door opened and a maid was inspecting him curiously.

  “Is Mr Penwick in?” he blurted.

  “I think so,” said the maid. “Will you come in?”

  The invitation was unnecessary. Breathing like a man who had just run a mile without training, Mr Willie Kinsall ploughed past her, and kicked his heels in a torment of suspense until the door of the room into which he had been ushered opened, and a tall man came in.

  It seems superfluous to explain that this man’s name was not really Penwick, and Willie Kinsall did not even stop to consider the point. He did look something like a solicitor of about forty, which is some indication of what Simon Templar could achieve with a black suit, a wing collar and a bow tie, a pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez, and some powder brushed into his hair.