The Saint Intervenes (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  Simon Templar would have found nothing psychologically contradictory in the fact that a man who, cultivating the world’s most original moustache with microscopic perfection of detail, had overlooked the fundamental point that a moustache should be visible, should, when creating a Timber Company, have overlooked the prime essential that the one thing which a Timber Company must possess, its sine qua non, so to speak, is timber. Mr Journ had compiled his inducements with unlimited care from encyclopaedias and the information supplied by genuine timber-producing firms, calculating the investors’ potential profits according to a mathematical system of his own; the only thing he had omitted to do was to provide himself with the requisite land for afforestation. He had selected his site from an atlas, and had immediately forgotten all the other necessary steps towards securing a title to it.

  In the circumstances, it was only natural that Mr Sumner Journ, telling tall stories about timber, should remember that the day was coming when he himself would have to set out, metaphorically at least, in the direction of the tall timber which is the fugitive’s traditional refuge, but he reckoned that the profit would be worth it. The only point on which he was a trifle hazy, as other such schemers have been before him, was the precise moment at which the getaway ought to be made, and it was with a sudden sinking of heart that he heard the name of the man who called to see him at his office on a certain afternoon.

  “Inspector Tombs?” he said with a rather pallid heartiness. “I think I have met you somewhere before.”

  “I’m the CID Inspector in this division,” said the visitor blandly.

  Mr Journ nodded. He knew now where he had seen his caller before—it was the man who had been talking to Chief Inspector Teal in Swallow Street, and who had stared at him so intently.

  Mr Journ opened a drawer and took out a box of cigars with unsteady hands.

  “What can I do for you, Inspector?” he asked.

  Somewhat to his surprise, Inspector Tombs willingly helped himself to a handful, and sat down in an armchair.

  “You can give me money,” said Inspector Tombs brazenly, and the wild leaping of Sumner Journ’s heart died down to a painful throbbing.

  “For one of your charities, perhaps? Well, I have never been miserly—”

  The Saint shook his head.

  “For me,” he said flatly. “The Yard has asked us to keep an eye on you, and I think you need a friend in this manor. Chuck the bluffing, Journ—I’m here for business.”

  Sumner Journ was silent for a moment, but he was not thinking of resuming the bluff. That wouldn’t help. He had to thank his stars that his first police visitor was a man who so clearly and straightforwardly understood the value of hard cash.

  “How much do you want?”

  “Two hundred pounds,” was the calm reply.

  Mr Journ put up a hand and twirled one of the tiny horns of his wee moustache with the tip of his finger and thumb. His hard brown eyes studied Inspector Tombs unwinkingly.

  “That’s a lot of money,” he said with an effort.

  “What I can tell you is worth it,” Simon told him grimly.

  Mr Journ hesitated for a short time longer, and then he took out a cheque-book and dipped his pen in the inkwell.

  “Make it out to Bearer,” said the Saint, who in spite of his morbid affection for the cognomen of “Tombs” had not yet thought it worthwhile opening a bank account in that name.

  Journ completed the cheque, blotted it, and passed it across the desk. In his mind he was wondering if it was the fee for Destiny’s warning; if Scotland Yard had asked the local division to “keep an eye on him,” it was a sufficient hint that his activities had not passed unnoticed, and a suggestion that further inquiries might be expected to follow. He had not thought that it would happen so soon, but since it had happened, he felt a leaden heaviness at the pit of his stomach and a restless anxiety that arose from something more than a mere natural resentment at being forced to pay petty blackmail to a dishonest detective. And yet, so great was his seasoning of confidence that even then he was not anticipating any urgent danger.

  “Well, what can you tell me?” he said.

  Simon put the cheque away.

  “The tip is to get out,” he said bluntly, and Mr Journ went white.

  “Wha…what?” he stammered.

  “You shouldn’t complain,” said the Saint callously. “You’ve been going for four years, and you must have made a packet. Now we’re on to you. When I tell you to get out, I mean it. The Yard didn’t ask us to keep an eye on you. What they did was to send an order through for a raid this afternoon. Chief Inspector Teal is coming down himself at four o’clock to take charge of it. That’s worth two hundred pounds to know, isn’t it?”

  He stood up.

  “You’ve got about an hour to clear out—you’d better make the most of it,” he said.

  For several minutes after the detective had gone Mr Journ was in a daze. It was the first time that the consequences of his actions had loomed up in his vision as glaring realities. Arrest—police court—remand—the Old Bailey—penal servitude—the whole gamut of a crash, he had known about in the abstract like everyone else, but his self-confident imagination had never paused to put himself in the leading role. The sudden realisation of what had crept up upon him struck him like a blow in the solar plexus. He sat trembling in his chair, gasping like a stranded fish, feeling his knee-joints melting like butter in a frightful paralysis of panic. Whenever he had visualized the end before, it had never been like this: it had been on a date of his own choosing, after he had made all his plans in unhurried comfort, when he could pack up and beat his trail for the tall timber as calmly as if he had been going off on a legitimate business trip, without fear of interference. This catastrophe pouncing on him out of a clear sky scattered his thoughts like dry leaves in a gale.

  And then he got a grip on himself. The getaway still had to be made. He still had an hour—and the banks were open. If he could keep his head, think quickly, act and plan as he had never had to do before, he might still make the grade.

  “I’m feeling a bit washed out,” he told his secretary, and certainly he looked it. “I think I’ll go home.”

  He went out and hailed a taxi, half expecting to feel a heavy hand drop on his shoulder even as he climbed in.

  It was getting late, and he had several things to do. He had been so sure that his Brazilian Timber Bonds had a long lease of life ahead of them that he had not yet given any urgent thought to the business of shifting his profits out of the country. At the first bank where he called he presented a cheque whose size pushed up the cashier’s eyebrows.

  “This will practically close your account, Mr Journ,” he said.

  “It won’t be out for long,” Journ told him, with all the nonchalance he could muster. “I’m putting through a rather big deal this afternoon, and I’ve got to work in cash.”

  He stopped at two other banks, where he had accounts in different names, and also at a safe-deposit, where his box yielded him a thick wad of various European currencies. When he had finished, his briefcase was bulging with more than sixty thousand pounds in negotiable cash.

  He climbed back into his taxi and drove to his apartment near Baker Street. There would not be much time for packing, he reflected, studying his watch feverishly, but he must pick up his passport, and as many everyday necessities as he could cram into a valise in five minutes would be a help. The taxi stopped, and Mr Journ opened the door and prepared to jump out, but before he could do so a man appeared at the opening and plunged in on top of him, practically throwing him back on to the seat. Sumner Journ’s heart leaped sickeningly into his mouth, and then he recognized the dark piratical features of “Inspector Tombs.”

  “Whasser matter?” Journ got out hoarsely.

  “You can’t go in there,” rapped the Saint. “Teal’s on his way. Put the raid forward half an hour. They’re looking for you.” He opened the driver’s partition, “South Kensington Statio
n,” he ordered. “And step on it!”

  The taxi moved on again, and Mr Journ stared wildly out of the windows. A uniformed constable chanced to cross the street behind them towards his door. He sank back in terror, and Simon closed the partition and settled into the other corner.

  “But what am I going to do?” quavered Journ. “My passport’s in there!”

  “It wouldn’t be any use to you,” said the Saint tersely. “We know you’ve got one, and we know what name it’s in. They’ll be watching for you at all the ports. You’d never get through.”

  “But where can I go?” Journ almost sobbed.

  Simon lighted a cigarette and looked at him.

  “Have you any more money?”

  “Yes.” Sumner Journ saw his companion’s keen blue eyes fixed on the swollen briefcase which he was clutching on his knees, and added belatedly, “A little.”

  “You’ll need a lot,” said the Saint. “I’ve risked my job standing outside your apartment to catch you when you arrived, if you got there before Teal, and I didn’t do it for nothing. Now listen. I’ve got a friend who does a bit of smuggling from the Continent with a private plane. He’s got his own landing-grounds, here and in France. I’ve done him a few favours, the same as I’ve done for you already, and I can get him to take you to France—or farther, if you want to go. It’s your only chance, and it’ll cost you two thousand pounds.”

  Mr Journ swallowed.

  “All right,” he gulped. “All right. I’ll pay it.”

  “It’s cheap at the price,” said Inspector Tombs, and leaned forward to give further instructions to the driver.

  Presently they turned into a mews off Queen’s Gate. Simon paid off the cab, and asked the garage proprietor for the use of a telephone. He spoke a few cryptic words to his connection, and returned smiling.

  “It’s all fixed,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  There was a car waiting—a big cream and red speedster that looked as if it could pass anything else on the road and cost its owner a small fortune for the privilege. In a few moments Mr Journ, still clutching his precious bag, found himself being whirled recklessly through the outskirts of London.

  He released one hand from his bag to hold on to his hat, and submitted to the hurricane speed of the getaway in a kind of trance. The brilliant driving of his guide made no impression on his numbed brain, and even the route they took registered itself on his mind only subconsciously. His whole existence had passed into a sort of cyclonic nightmare which took away his breath and left a ghastly gnawing emptiness in his chest. The passage of time was merely a change in the positions of the hands of his watch, without any other significance.

  And then, in the same deadened way, he became aware that the car had stopped, and the driver was getting out. They were in a narrow lane far from the main road, somewhere between Tring and Aylesbury.

  “This is as far as we go, brother,” said the Saint.

  Mr Journ levered himself stiffly out. There were open fields all around, partly hidden by the hedges which lined the lane.

  Inspector Tombs was lighting another cigarette. “And now, dear old bird,” he murmured, “you must pay your fare.”

  Sumner Journ nodded, and fumbled with the fastening of his case.

  “But I don’t mind taking it in the bag,” Simon said quietly.

  Mr Journ looked up. There was a subtle implication in the way the words were said which struck a supernatural chill into his blood. And in the next second he knew why, for his lifting eyes looked straight into the muzzle of an automatic.

  Slowly Mr Journ’s eyes dilated. He stopped breathing. A cold intangible hand closed round his heart in a vice-like grip, and the muscles of his face twitched spasmodically.

  “But you can’t do that!” he screamed suddenly. “You can’t take it all!”

  “That is a matter of opinion,” said the Saint equably, and then, before Mr Journ really knew what was happening, a strong brown hand had shot out and grasped the briefcase and twitched it out of Mr Journ’s desperate grip with a deft twist that was too quick for the eye to follow.

  With a guttural gasp Sumner Journ lurched forward to tear it back, and found himself pushed away like a child.

  “Now don’t be silly,” said the Saint. “I don’t want to hurt you—much. You’ve lived like a prince for four years on the sucker crop, and a bloke like you can always think up a new racket. Don’t take it so much to heart. Disguise yourself and make a fresh start. Shave off your moustache, and no one will recognize you.”

  “But what am I going to do?” Sumner Journ shrieked at him as he seated himself again in the car. “How am I going to get away?”

  Simon stopped with his foot on the clutch.

  “Bless my soul!” he said. “I almost forgot.”

  He dipped a long arm under the seat and brought up a small article which he pushed into Mr Journ’s trembling hands. Then the great car leapt away with a sudden roar from the exhaust, and Mr Journ was left staring at his consolation prize with a face that had gone ashen grey.

  It was a little toy aeroplane, and tied to it was a tag label on which was written:

  With the compliments of the Saint.

  THE ART PHOTOGRAPHER

  “It becomes increasingly obvious,” said the Saint, “that the time has arrived when we shall have to squash Mr Gilbert Tanfold.”

  He did not utter this prophecy within the hearing of Mr Tanfold, for that would have been a gesture of a kind in which Simon Templar indulged more rarely now than he had once been wont to do. If the time had arrived when the squashing of Mr Tanfold became a public service which no altruistic freebooter could refuse to perform, the time had also passed when the squashing could be carried out with full theatrical honours, with a haloed drawing on a plain card left pinned to the resultant blob of grease to tell the world that Simon Templar had been there. There was too much interest in his activities at Scotland Yard for anything like that to be entered upon without an elaborate preparation of alibis, which was rather more trouble than he thought Mr Tanfold was worth. But the ripeness for squashing, the zerquetschenreiflichkeit, if we may borrow a word which the English language so unhappily lacks, of Mr Gilbert Tanfold, even if it could not be made a public ceremony, could not be overlooked altogether for any such trivial reason.

  The advertisements of Mr Tanfold appeared in the back pages of several appropriate journals, and were distinguished by their prodigality of exclamation marks and their unusual vagueness of content. The specimen which was answered by a certain Mr Tombs was fairly typical.

  It was an advertisement which regularly brought in a remarkable amount of business, considering that it left so much to the imagination, but certain imaginations are like that.

  PARISIAN ART PHOTOS!

  RARE! EXTRAORDINARY!!

  Special Offer! (Cannot be repeated!) 100 unique poses,

  3/6 post free. Exceptional rarities, 10/-, 15/-, £1, £5 each! Also BOOKS!!!! all editions, curiosities, erotica, etc.! “Garden of Love” (very rare) 10/6. Send for illustrated catalogue and samples!!!

  G. TANFOLD & CO.,

  Gaul St., Birmingham.

  The imagination of Mr Gilbert Tanfold, however, soared far above the ordinary financial possibilities of this commonplace catering to pornography. If ever there was a man who did not believe in Art for Art’s sake, this man walked the earth with his ankles enveloped in the spats of Mr Gilbert Tanfold. Where any other man trading in these artistic lines would have been content with the generous profit from the sale of his “exceptional rarities,” Mr Tanfold had made them merely stepping-stones to bigger things, which was one of the reasons for his tempting zerquetschenreiflichkeit aforesaid.

  Every letter which came to his cheap two-roomed office in Birmingham was examined with an interest that would have astonished the unsuspecting writer. Those which, by inferior notepaper, cheaply printed letterheads, and/or clumsy handwriting, branded their authors as persons of no great substance, merel
y had their orders filled by return, as specified; and that, so far as Mr Tanfold was concerned, was the end of them. But those letters which, by expensive paper, die-stamped letterheads, and/or an educated hand, hinted at a client who really had no business to be collecting rude pictures or “curiosities,” came under the close scrutiny of Mr Tanfold himself, and their orders were merely the beginning of many other things.

  Mr Tombs wrote on the notepaper of the Palace Royal Hotel, London, which was so expensive that only millionaires, film stars, and buccaneers could afford to live there, and it is a curious fact that Mr Tanfold entirely forgot that third category of possible guests when he saw the letter. It must be admitted, in extenuation, that Simon Templar misled him. For as his profession (which all customers were asked to state with their order) he gave “Businessman (Australian).”

  Mr Gilbert Tanfold, like others of his ilk, had a sound working knowledge of the peculiar psychology of wealthy Colonials at large in London—of that openhearted, almost pathetically guileless eagerness to be good fellows which leads them to buy gold bricks in the Strand, or to hand thousands of pounds in small change to two perfect strangers as evidence of their good faith—and he was so impressed with the potentialities of Mr Tombs that he ordered the very choicest pictures in his stock to be included in the filling of the order, and made a personal trip to London the next day to find out more about this Heaven-sent bird from the bush.

  The problem of making stealthy inquiries about a guest in a place like the Palace Royal Hotel might have troubled anyone less apt in the art of investigating prospective victims, but to Mr Tanfold it was little more than a matter of routine, a case for Method C4 (g). He knew that lonely men in a big city will always talk to a barman, and simply followed the same procedure himself. To a man as practised as he was in the technique of drawing gossip out of unwitting informants, results came quickly. Yes, the barman at the Palace Royal knew Mr Tombs.