Saint Intervenes (10 page)

Mr. Oscar
Newdick swayed slightly, and glugged a
strangling
obstruction out of his throat.

“I—I
don’t think I’ll stay,” he said. “I’m not feeling very
well.”

“A
dose of salts in the morning will do you all the good
in the world,”
said the Saint chattily, and ushered him sympa
thetically to the
door.

IV

The Prince of Cherkessia

Of the
grey hairs which bloomed in the thinning thatch of
Chief Inspector Claud
Eustace Teal, there were at least a
couple of score which he could
attribute directly to an equal
number of encounters with the Saint. Mr. Teal
did not ac
tually go so far as to call them by name and celebrate
their
birthdays, for he was not by nature a whimsical man; but
he had no
doubts about their origin.

The affair
of the Prince of Cherkessia gave him the forty-
first—or it may have
been the forty-second.

His
Highness arrived in London without any preliminary
publicity; but he
permitted a number of reporters to inter
view him at his hotel
after his arrival, and the copy which he
provided had a
sensation value which no self-respecting news
editor could ignore.

It started
before the assembled pressmen had drunk more
than half the
champagne which was provided for them in
the Prince’s suite,
which still stands as a record for any reception of that type; and it was
started by a cub reporter, no
more ignorant than the rest, but more honest
about it, who
had not been out on that kind of assignment long enough
to
learn that the serious business of looking for a story is not supposed to
mar the general conviviality while there is any
thing left to drink.

“Where,”
asked this revolutionary spirit brazenly, with
his mouth full of
foie
gras,
“is Cherkessia?”

The Prince
raised his Mephistophelian eyebrows.

“You,”
he replied, with faint contempt, “would probably know it better as
Circassia.”

At the
sound of his answer a silence spread over the
room. The name rang
bells, even in journalistic heads. The
cub gulped down the
rest of his sandwich without tasting it;
and one reporter was
so far moved as to put down a glass
which was only half empty.

“It is
a small country between the Caucasus Mountains and
the Black Sea,”
said the Prince. “Once it was larger; but it
has been eaten away
by many invaders. The Turks and the
Russians have robbed us piecemeal of
most of our lands—
although it was the Tatars themselves who gave my country
its name, from their word
Cherktkess,
which means ‘robbers.’
That
ancient insult was long since turned to glory by my
ancestor Schamyl, whose
name I bear; and in the paltry lands
which are still left to me the proud
traditions of our race
are carried on to this day.”

The head
of the reporter who had put down his glass was
buzzing with vague
memories.

“Do
you still have beautiful Circassians?” he asked hun
grily.

“Of
course,” said the Prince. “For a thousand years our
women have
been famed for their beauty. Even today, we
export many hundreds
annually to the most distinguished
harems in Turkey—a royal tax on these
transactions,” added
the Prince, with engaging simplicity,
“has been of great assistance to our national budget.”

The
reporter swallowed, and retrieved his glass hurriedly;
and the cub who had
started it all asked, with bulging eyes:
“What other
traditions do you have, Your Highness?”

“Among
other things,” said the Prince, “we are probably
the only
people today among whom the
droit de seigneur
survives. That is to
say that every woman in my country be
longs to me, if and when I choose to
take her, for as long as
I choose keep her in my palace.”

“And
do you still exercise that right?” asked another
journalist, with
estatic visions of headlines floating through
his mind.

The Prince
smiled, as he might have smiled at at naivety
of a child.

“If
the girl is sufficiently attractive—of course. It is a divine right bestowed
upon my family by Mohammed himself.
In my country it is considered an
honour to be chosen, and
the marriageable value of any girl on whom I
bestow my
right is greatly increased by it.”

From that
moment the reception was a historic success; and
the news that one
reason for the Prince’s visit was to approve
the final details of
a new £100,000 crown which was being
prepared for him by a West End firm of
jewellers was almost
an anticlimax.

Chief
Inspector Teal read the full interview in his morn
ing paper the
following day; and he was so impressed with
its potentialities
that he made a personal call on the Prince
that afternoon.

“Is
this really the interview you gave, Your Highness?”
he asked,
when he had introduced himself, “or are you going to repudiate it?”

Prince
Schamyl took the paper and read it through. He
was a tall well-built
man with a pointed black beard and
twirled black moustaches like a
seventeenth-century Spanish
grandee; and when he had finished reading he
handed the
paper back with a slight bow, and fingered his moustaches
in
some perplexity.

“Why
should I repudiate it?” he inquired. “It is exactly
what I
said.”

Teal
chewed for a moment on the spearmint which even in the presence of royalty he
could not deny himself; and then he said: “In that case, Your Highness,
would you be
good enough to let us give you police protection?”

The Prince
frowned puzzledly.

“But
are not all people in this country protected by the
police?”

“Naturally,”
said Teal. “But this is rather a special case. Have you ever heard of the
Saint?”

Prince
Schamyl shrugged.

“I
have heard of several.”

“I
don’t mean that kind of saint,” the detective told him
grimly.
“The Saint is the name of a notorious criminal we
have here, and
something tells me that as soon as he sees
this interview he’ll
be making plans to steal this crown you’re
buying. If I know
anything about him, the story that you
make some of your
money out of selling girls to harems, and
that you exercise
this
droit de seigneur,
whatever that is,
would be the very
thing to put him on your tracks.”

“But,
please,” said the Prince in ingenuous bewilderment,
“what
is wrong with our customs? My people have been
happy with them for
hundreds of years.”

“The
Saint wouldn’t approve of them,” said Teal with
conviction, and realised the hopelessness
of entering upon a
discussion of morals with
such a person. “Anyhow, sir, I’d
be
very much obliged if you would let us give you a special
guard until you take your crown out of the
country.”

The Prince
shook his head, as if the incomprehensible cus
toms of England
baffled him to speechlessness.

“In
my country there are no notorious criminals,” he said,
“because
as soon as a criminal is known he is beheaded.
However, I shall be
glad to help you in any way I can. The
crown is to be
delivered here tomorrow, and you may place as many guards in my suite as you
think necessary.”

The news
that four special detectives had been detailed to guard the Prince of
Cherkessia’s crown was published in an
evening paper which
Simon Templar was reading at a small and exclusive dinner at which the morning
paper’s interview
was
also discussed.

“I
knew you wouldn’t be able to resist it,” said Patricia
Holm
fatalistically, “directly I saw the headlines. You’re that
sort of
idiot.”

Simon
looked at her mockingly.

“Idiot?”
he queried. “My dear Pat, have you ever known
me to be anything but
sober and judicious?”

“Often,”
said his lady candidly. “I’ve also known you to
walk into exactly the
same trap. I’ll bet you anything you
like that Teal made up the whole story
just to get a rise out
of you, and the Prince ‘ll turn out to be
another detective with a false beard.”

“You’d
lose your money,” said the Saint calmly. “Teal is as
worried
about it as you are, and if you like to drop in at
Vazey’s on Bond Street
or make discreet inquiries at the
Southshire Insurance Company, you’ll
find that that crown
genuinely is costing a hundred thousand quid
and is insured
for the same amount. It’s rather pleasant to think that
South
shire will have to stand the racket, because their ninety per
cent
underwriter is a very scaly reptile named Percy Quiltan, whose morals are even
more repulsive than Prince Schamyl’s.
And the Prince’s are bad enough… .
No, Pat, you can’t
convince
me that that tin hat isn’t legitimate boodle; and I’m
going to have it.”

A certain
Peter Quentin, who was also present, sighed, and
turned the sigh into
a resigned grin.

“But
how d’you propose to do it?” he asked.

The Saint’s
blue eyes turned on him with an impish
twinkle.

“I
seem to remember that you retired from this business
some months ago,
Peter,” he murmured. “A really respectable
citizen wouldn’t be
asking that question with so much inter
est. However, since
your beautiful wife is away—if you’d like
to lend a hand, you
could help me a lot.”
         

“But
what’s the plan?” insisted Patricia.
   

Simon
Templar smiled.

“We
are going to dematerialise ourselves,” he said blandly. “Covetous but
invisible, we shall lift the crown of Cherkessia
from under Claud
Eustace’s very nose, and put it on a shelf in the fourth dimension.”

She was no
wiser when the party broke up some hours
later. Simon informed
her that he and Peter Quentin would
be moving into Prince Schamyl’s hotel
to take up residence
there for a couple of days; but she knew that
they would not
be there under their own names, and the rest of his plan
remained
wrapped in the maddening mystery with which the
Saint’s sense of the
theatrical too often required him to
tantalise his confederates.

Chief
Inspector Teal would have been glad to know even
as little as
Patricia; but the evidence which came before him
was far less
satisfactory. It consisted of a plain postcard, ad
dressed to Prince
Schamyl, on which had been drawn a
skeleton figure crowned with a rakishly tilted halo. A
small
arrow pointed to the halo, and at the
other end of the arrow
was written in
neat copperplate the single word:
“Thursday.”

“If
the Saint says he’s coming on Thursday, he’s coming on Thursday,” Teal
stated definitely, in a private conference
to which he was
summoned when the card arrived.

Prince
Schamyl elevated his shoulders and spread out his
hands.

“I do
not attempt to understand your customs, Inspector.
In my country, if we
require evidence, we beat the criminal
with rods until he
provides it.”

“You
can’t do that in this country,” said Teal, as if he
wished you
could. “That postcard wouldn’t be worth tuppence
in a court of law—not
with the sort of lawyers the Saint
could afford to engage. We couldn’t
prove that he sent it.
We know it’s his trade-mark, but the very fact
that everybody
in England knows the same thing would be the weakest
point in
our case. The prosecutor could never make the jury
believe that a crook
as clever as the Saint is supposed to be
would sent out a
warning that could be traced back to him
so easily. The Saint
knows it, and he’s been trading on it
for years—it’s the strongest card in
his hand. If we arrested
him on evidence like that, he’d only have to
swear that the
card was a fake—that some other crook had sent it out as
a
blind—and he could make a fool of anyone who tried to
prove it
wasn’t. Our only chance is to catch him more or less
red-handed. One of
these days he’ll go too far, and I’m only
hoping it’ll be on
Thursday.”