Saint Intervenes (21 page)

“You
can believe him when he’s sincere.”

“Sincere
enough,” Teal mentioned sceptically, “to try to
kill his
host.”

Simon was quiet for a moment,
kicking the toe of his shoe
into the
gravel.

“Did you notice that Vould
was shot in the back ?” he said.

“You
heard Yearleigh’s explanation.”

“You can’t always believe
what a man says—can you?”

Suddenly
the Saint reached out and took the dagger which
Teal was still
holding. He unwrapped the handkerchief from
it; and Teal let out
an exclamation. “You damn fool!”

“Because I’m destroying
your precious finger-prints?” murmured
the Saint coolly. “You immortal ass! If you can hold
a knife in
your handkerchief to keep from marking it, couldn’t
anybody else?”

The
detective was silent. His stillness after that instinctive
outburst
was so impassive that he might have gone to sleep on
his feet. But he
was very much awake. And presently the
 
Saint went on, in that gentle, somewhat
mocking voice which
Teal was listening for.

“I
wonder where you get the idea that a ‘sportsman’ is a sort of hero,” he
said. “It doesn’t require courage to take a
cold bath—it’s simply a matter of whether
your constitution
likes it. It doesn’t
require courage to play cricket—haven’t
you ever heard the howls of protest that shake the British
Empire if a batsman happens to get hit with a ball?
Perhaps it requires a little more courage to watch a pack of hounds
pull down a savage fox, or to loose off a shot-gun
at a
ferocious grouse, or to catch a
great man-eating trout with a little rod and line. But there are certain things
you’ve been
brought up to believe, and your mind isn’t capable of reason
ing them out for itself. You believe that a
‘sportsman’ is a
kind of peculiarly
god-like gladiator, without fear and without reproach. You believe that no
gentleman would shoot a sitting
partridge,
and therefore you believe that he wouldn’t shoot
a sitting poet.”

A light
wind blew through the shrubbery; and the detective
felt queerly cold.

“You’re
only talking,” he said. “You haven’t any evi
dence.”

“I
know I haven’t,” said the Saint, with a sudden weariness.
“I’ve
only got what I think. I think that Yearleigh planned
this days ago—when
Vould first asked for the interview, as
Yearleigh mentioned.
I think he guessed what it would be
about. I think his only reason for
putting it off was to give
himself time to send those anonymous threats
to himself—to
build up the melodrama he had invented. I think you’ll
find
that those
anonymous threats started on the day when Vould
asked for a talk with him, and that Yearleigh had no sound
reason for going away except that of putting Vould
off. I
think that when they were in
the study tonight, Yearleigh
pointed
to the window and made some excuse to get Vould
to turn round, and then shot him in the back in cold blood,
and put this paper-knife in his hand afterwards. I
think that
that is what Lady
Yearleigh, who must have known Year
leigh
so much better than any of us, was afraid of; and I
think that when she said
‘He’s killed him,’
she
meant that
Yearleigh had killed Vould,
and not that Vould had killed Yearleigh.”

The
Saint’s lighter flared, like a bomb bursting in the
dark; and Teal looked
up and saw his lean brown face, grim
and curiously bitter in the light of
the flame as he put it to
his cigarette. And then the light went out
again, and there
was only Simon Templar’s quiet voice speaking out of the
dark.

“I
think that I killed Maurice Vould as surely as if I’d shot
him
myself, because I couldn’t see all those things until now,
when it’s
too late. If I had seen them, I might have saved
him.”

“But
in the back,” said Teal harshly. “That’s the part I
can’t
swallow.”

The tip of
the Saint’s cigarette glowed and died.

“Yearleigh
was afraid of him,” he said. “He couldn’t risk
any
mistake—any cry or struggle that might have spoilt his
scheme. He was afraid
of Vould because, in his heart, he
knew that Vould was so much cleverer
and more desirable, so
much more right and honest than he would ever
be. He was
fighting the old hopeless battle of age against youth. He
knew that
Vould had seen through the iniquity of his bill.
The bill could never
touch Yearleigh. He was too old for the
last war, when I seem
to remember that he made a great
reputation by organising cricket matches
behind the lines. He
would be too old for the next. He had no
children. But it’s
part of the psychology of life, whether you like it or
not,
that war is the time when the old men come back into their
own, and
the young men who are pressing on their heels
are miraculously removed.
Yearleigh knew that Vould de
spised him for it; and he was afraid… .
Those are only
the things I think, and I can’t prove any of them,”
he said;
and Teal turned abruptly on his heel and walked back
towards
the house.

IX

The Damsel in Distress

“You
need brains in this life of crime,” Simon Templar
would say sometimes;
“but I often think you need luck even more.”

He might
have added that the luck had to be consistent.

Mr.
Giuseppe Rolfieri was lucky up to a point, for he
happened to be in
Switzerland when the astounding Liver
pool Municipal Bond forgery was
discovered. It was a simple
matter for him to slip over the border into
his own native
country; and when his four partners in the swindle stum
bled down
the narrow stairway that leads from the dock
of the Old Bailey to
the terrible blind years of penal servitude, he was comfortably installed in
his villa at San Remo
with no vengeance to fear from the Law. For
it is a principal
of international law that no man can be extradited from
his own
country, and Mr. Rolfieri was lucky to have re
tained his Italian
citizenship even though he had made him
self a power in the
City of London.

Simon
Templar read about the case—he could hardly have
helped it, for it was
one of those sensational scandals which
rock the financial
world once in a lifetime—but it did not
strike him as a matter
for his intervention. Four out of the
five conspirators, including the
ringleader, had been convicted
and sentenced; and although it is true that
there was a certain
amount
of public indignation at the immunity of Mr. Rolfieri,
it was inevitable that the Saint, in his career of shameless
lawlessness, sometimes had to pass up one inviting
prospect
in favour of another nearer
to hand. He couldn’t be every
where
at once—it was one of the very few human limitations
which he was ready
to admit.

A certain
Domenick Naccaro, however, had other ideas.

He called
at the Saint’s apartment on Piccadilly one morn
ing—a stout
bald-headed man in a dark blue suit and a light
blue waistcoat, with
an unfashionable stiff collar and a stringy
black tie and a
luxuriant scroll of black moustache ornamenting his face—and for the first
moment of alarm Simon won
dered if he had been mistaken for somebody
else in the
same name but less respectable morals, for Signor Naccaro
was accompanied by a pale pretty girl who carried a small
infant
swathed in a shawl.

“Is
this-a Mr. Templar I have-a da honour to spik to?”
asked
Naccaro, doffing his bowler elaborately.

“This
is one Mr. Templar,” admitted the Saint cautiously.

“Ha!”
said Mr. Naccaro. “It is-a da Saint himself?”

“So
I’m told,” Simon answered.

“Then
you are da man we look-a for,” stated Mr. Naccaro,
with
profound conviction.

As if
taking it for granted that all the necessary formalities
had
therewith been observed, he bowed the girl in, bowed
himself in after her,
and stalked into the living-room. Simon
closed the door and
followed the deputation with a certain
curious amusement.

“Well,
brother,” he murmured, taking a cigarette from the
box on the
table. “Who are you, and what can I do for you?”

The
flourishing bowler hat bowed the girl into one chair,
bowed its owner into
another, and came to rest on its owner’s
knees.

“Ha!”
said the Italian, rather like an acrobat announcing the conclusion of a trick.
“I am Domenick Naccaro!”

“That
must be rather nice for you,” murmured the Saint
amiably. He waved his
cigarette towards the girl and her bundle. “Did you come here to breed?”

“That,”
said Mr. Naccaro, “is-a my daughter Maria. And
in her arms she
hold-as a leedle baby. A baby,” said Mr.
Nacarro, with his
black eyes suddenly swimming, “wis-a no father.”

“Careless
of her,” Simon remarked. “What does the baby
think about it?”

“Da
father,” said Mr. Naccaro, contradicting himself dra
matically,
“is-a Giuseppe Rolfieri.”

Simon’s
brows came down in a straight line, and some of the bantering amusement fell
back below the surface of his
blue eyes. He hitched one hip on to the edge
of the table and
swung his foot thoughtfully.

“How
did this happen?” he asked.

“I
keep-a da small-a restaurant in-a Soho,” explained Mr.
Naccaro.
“Rolfieri, he come-a there often to eat-a da spaghetti.
Maria, she
sit at-a da desk and take-a da money. You,
signor,
you see-a
how-a she is beautiful. Rolfieri, he notice her. When-a he pay his bill, he
stop-a to talk-a wis her. One
day he ask-a her to go out wis him.”

Mr.
Naccaro took out a large chequered handkerchief and
dabbed his eyes. He went on, waving his
hands in broken
eloquence.

“I
do not stop her. I think-a Rolfieri is-a da fine gentleman,
and it is
nice-a for my Maria to go out wis him. Often, they
go out. I tink-a that Maria perhaps she
make-a presently da
good-a marriage, and I
am glad for her. Then, one day, I see
she
is going to have-a da baby.”

“It
must have been a big moment,” said the Saint gravely.

“I say
to her, ‘Maria, what have-a you done?’ ” recounted
Mr.
Naccaro, flinging out his arms. “She will-a not tell-a
me.”
Mr. Naccaro shut his mouth firmly. “But presently she
confess it is-a Rolfieri. I
beat-a my breast.” Mr. Naccaro beat
his
breast. “I say, ‘I will keell-a heem; but first-a he shall
marry you.’ “

Mr. Naccaro
jumped up with native theatrical effect.

“Rolfieri
does-a not come any more to eat-a da spaghetti.
I go to his office,
and they tell me he is-a not there. I go
to his house, and
they tell me he is-a not there. I write-a let
ters, and he does-a
not answer. Da time is going so quick. Pres
ently I write-a da
letter and say: ‘If you do not-a see me
soon, I go to da police.’ He answer that
one. He say he come
soon. But he does-a not
come. Then he is-a go abroad. He
write
again, and say he come-a to see me when he get back.
But he does not-a
come back. One day I read in da paper that
he
is-a da criminal, and da police are already look-a for
him. So Maria she have-a da baby—and Rolfieri
will-a never
come back!”

Simon
nodded.

“That’s
very sad,” he said sympathetically. “But what can
I do about
it?”

Mr.
Naccaro mopped his brow, put away his large chequered
handkerchief, and sat
down again.