Saint Intervenes (31 page)

“But
that isn’t all of it!” he yelled. “It leaves off before the place
where you gave me the cheque!”

“Of
course it does,” said the Saint shamelessly. “That
would spike
the forgery charge, wouldn’t it? But as it stands,
you’ve got two things
to answer. First you tried to blackmail
me; and then, when
you found that wouldn’t work, you forged
my signature to a
cheque for ten thousand quid. It was all
very rash and naughty
of you, Gilbert; and I’m sure the police would take a very serious view of the
case—particularly after
they’d investigated your business a bit more. Well, well, well,
brother—we all make mistakes, and I’m afraid I
shall
have to send that dictaphone
record along to Chief Inspector
Teal, as well as charging you with
forgery, if you haven’t come
through with the
spondulix inside seven days.”

Once again
words rose to Mr. Tanfold’s lips; and once
again, glimpsing the
unholy gleam in the Saint’s eye and re
membering his previous
experience in that room, they stuck in his throat. And once again Simon went to
the door and
opened it.

“This
is the way out,” said the Saint.

Mr. Gilbert
Tanfold moved hazily towards the portal. As he
passed through it, a
pair of hands fell on his shoulders and
steadied him with a
light but masterful grip. Some premoni
tion of his fate must
have reached him, for his shrill cry dis
turbed the regal
quietude of the Palace Royal Hotel even
before the toe of a
painfully powerful shoe impacted on his
tender posterior and
lifted him enthusiastically on his way.

XIII

The Man Who Liked Toys

Chief
Inspector Claud Eustace Teal rested his pudgy elbows
on the table and
unfolded the pink wrappings from a fresh
wafer of chewing gum.

“That’s
all there was to it,” he said. “And that’s the way it
always is.
You get an idea, you spread a net out among the
stool pigeons, and
you catch a man. Then you do a lot of
dull routine work to build up the
evidence. That’s how a real
detective does his job; and that’s the way
Sherlock Holmes
would have had to do it if he’d worked at Scotland
Yard.”

Simon
Templar grinned amiably, and beckoned a waiter for
the bill. The
orchestra yawned and went into another dance
number; but the floor
show had been over for half an hour,
and Dora’s Curfew was hurrying the
drinks off the tables. It
was two o’clock in the morning, and a fair
proportion of the patrons of the Palace Royal had some work to think of before
the next
midnight.

“Maybe
you’re right, Claud,” said the Saint mildly.

“I
know I’m right,” said Mr. Teal, in his drowsy voice.
And then,
as Simon pushed a fiver on to the plate, he chuck
led. “But I know
you like pulling our legs about it, too.”

They
steered their way round the tables and up the stairs to the hotel lobby. It was
another of those rare occasions
when Mr. Teal had been able to enjoy the
Saint’s company
without any lurking uneasiness about the outcome. For some
weeks his life had been comparatively peaceful. No hints of further
Saintly lawlessness had come to his ears; and at such
times he admitted to
himself, with a trace of genuine sur
prise, that there were few things
which entertained him more
than a social evening with the gay buccaneer
who had set
Scotland Yard more mysteries than they would ever solve.

“Drop
in and see me next time I’m working on a case,
Saint,” Teal
said in the lobby, with a truly staggering
generosity for which
the wine must have been partly respon
sible. “You’ll see for yourself
how we really do it.”

“I’d
like to,” said the Saint; and if there was the trace of a
smile in
his eyes when he said it, it was entirely without
malice.

He settled
his soft hat on his smooth dark head and glanced round the lobby with the vague
aimlessness which ordinarily precedes a parting at that hour. A little group of
three men had discharged themselves from a near-by lift and were moving
boisterously
and a trifle unsteadily towards the main entrance.
Two of them were
hatted and overcoated—a tallish man with
a thin line of black
moustache, and a tubby red-faced man
with rimless spectacles. The third
member of the party, who
appeared to be the host, was a flabby flat-footed man of about
fifty-five with a round bald head and a rather
bulbous nose
that would have
persuaded any observant onlooker to expect
that he would have drunk more than the others, which in
fact he obviously had. All of them had the
dishevelled and
rather tragically
ridiculous air of Captains of Industry who
have gone off duty for the evening.

“That’s
Lewis Enstone—the chap with the nose,” said
Teal, who knew
everyone. “He might have been one of the
biggest men in the
City if he could have kept off the bottle.”

“And
the other two?” asked the Saint incuriously, because
he already
knew.

“Just
a couple of smaller men in the same game. Abe Costello
—that’s the tall
one—and Jules Hammel.” Mr. Teal
chewed meditatively on his spearmint.
“If anything ever hap
pens to them, I shall want to know where you
were at the
time,” he added warningly.

“I
shan’t know anything about it,” said the Saint piously.

He lighted
a cigarette and watched the trio of celebrators
disinterestedly.
Hammel and Costello he knew something
about from the untimely reincarnation
of Mr. Titus Oates; but
the more sozzled member of the party was new
to him.

“You
do unnerstan’, boys, don’t you?” Enstone was articula
ting
pathetically, with his arms spread around the shoulders of
his guests
in an affectionate manner which contributed help
fully towards his
support. “It’s jus’ business. I’m not hard
hearted. I’m kind to
my wife an’ children an’ everything,
God bless ‘em. An’ any time I can do
anything for either of
you—why, you jus’ lemme know.”

“That’s
awfully good of you, old man,” said Hammel, with
the blurry-eyed
solemnity of his condition.

“Less
have lunch together on Tuesday,” suggested Costello.
“We
might be able to talk about something that’d interest
you.”

“Right,”
said Enstone dimly. “Lush Tooshday. Hic.”

“An
¹
don’t forget the kids,” said Hammel confidentially.

Enstone
giggled.

“I
shouldn’t forget that!” In obscurely elaborate pantomime, he closed his
fist with his forefinger extended and his thumb
cocked vertically upwards, and aimed the
forefinger between
Hammel’s eyes.
“Shtick ‘em up!” he commanded gravely, and
at once relapsed into further merriment, in which
his guests
joined somewhat
hysterically.

The group
separated at the entrance amid much handshak
ing and back-slapping
and alcoholic laughter; and Lewis En
stone wended his way back with
cautious and preoccupied
steps towards the lift. Mr. Teal took a fresh
bite on his gum
and tightened his mouth disgustedly.

“Is he
staying here?” asked the Saint.

“He
lives here,” said the detective. “He’s lived here even
when we
knew for a face that he hadn’t got a penny to his
name. Why, I remember
once——
”

He launched
into a lengthy anecdote which had all the vi
tality of personal
bitterness in the telling. Simon Templar, lis
tening with the half
of one well-trained ear that would prick
up into instant
attention if the story took any twist that might
provide the germ of an
adventure, but would remain intently
passive if it didn’t, smoked his
cigarette and gazed abstractedly into space. His mind had that gift of
complete division;
and he had another job on hand to think about. Somewhere
in the
course of the story he gathered that Mr. Teal had once
lost some money on
the Stock Exchange over some shares
in which Enstone was speculating; but
there was nothing much
about that misfortune to attract his
interest, and the detec
tive’s mood of disparaging reminiscence was as
good an op
portunity as any other for him to plot out a few details
of
the campaign against his latest quarry.

“…
So I ,lost half my money, and I’ve kept the rest of it
in gilt-edged stuff
ever since,” concluded Mr. Teal rancorously; and Simon took the last
inhalation from his cigarette
and dropped the stub into an ashtray.

“Thanks
for the tip, Claud,” he said lightly.
 
“I gather
that next time I murder somebody you’d like
me to make it a
financier.”

Teal
grunted, and hitched his coat round.

“I
shouldn’t like you to murder anybody,” he said, from his
heart.
“Now I’ve got to go home—I have to get up in the
morning.”

They walked
towards the street doors. On their left they
passed the
information desk; and beside the desk had been
standing a couple of
bored and sleepy page-boys. Simon had
observed them and their sleepiness as
casually as he had ob
served the colour of the carpet, but all at
once he realised
that their sleepiness had vanished. He had a sudden queer
sensitiveness of suppressed excitement; and then one of the
boys said
something loud enough to be overheard which
stopped Teal in his
tracks and turned him round abruptly.

“What’s
that?” he demanded.

“It’s
Mr. Enstone, sir. He just shot himself.”

Mr. Teal
scowled. To the newspapers it would be a surprise
and a front-page
sensation: to him it was a surprise and
a potential menace to
his night’s rest if he butted into any responsibility. Then he shrugged.

“I’d
better have a look,” he said, and introduced himself.

There was a
scurry to lead him towards the lift. Mr. Teal
ambled bulkily into
the nearest car, and quite brazenly the
Saint followed him. He
had, after all, been kindly invited to
“drop in”
the next time the plump detective was handling a
case… . Teal put
his hands in his pockets and started in moun
tainous drowsiness at
the downward-flying shaft. Simon stu
diously avoided his eye, and had a
pleasant shock when the de
tective addressed him almost genially.

“I
always thought there was something fishy about that fel
low. Did he
look as if he’d anything to shoot himself about,
except the head that
was waiting for him when he woke up?”

It was as
if the decease of any financier, however caused,
was a benison upon
the earth for which Mr. Teal could not
help being secretly
and quite immorally grateful. That was
the subtle impression
he gave of his private feelings; but the
rest of him was
impenetrable stolidity and aloofness. He dis
missed the escort of page-boys and strode
to the door of the
millionaire’s suite. It
was closed and silent. Teal knocked on
it
authoritatively, and after a moment it opened six inches
and disclosed a pale agitated face. Teal introduced
himself again and the door opened wider, enlarging the agitated face
into the unmistakable full-length portrait of an
assistant hotel
manager. Simon
followed the detective in, endeavouring to
look equally official.

“This
will be a terrible scandal, Inspector,” said the assist
ant
manager.

Teal looked
at him woodenly.

“Were
you here when it happened ?”

“No.
I was downstairs, in my office——
”

Teal
collected the information, and ploughed past him. On the right, another door
opened off the generous lobby; and
through it could be seen another elderly
man whose equally
pale face and air of suppressed agitation bore a certain
general
similarity
and also a self-contained superiority to the first. Even
without his sober black coat and striped trousers,
grey side-
whiskers and passive hands,
he would have stamped himself as something more cosmic than the assistant
manager of an
hotel—the assistant
manager of a man.