The Saint Abroad: The Art Collectors/ the Persistent Patriots (26 page)

“Start it,” Simon whispered.

Mary Bannerman turned the ignition key. The
engine
turned over, coughed, and died.

“It’s tricky,” she said.

The boat had moved downstream only a few
yards. It
was
turning and drifting back toward the bank. Mary tried
the starter again. The engine seemed to catch, then stopped.
In the abrupt silence Simon heard running
footsteps on the
murky shore.

“He’s heard us,” Mary said.

“Try it again before we run
aground.”

The Saint hurried to the stern, which seemed
the part of the boat most likely to strike land first. The starter was grinding
loudly. Rogers was yelling as he ran through the
fog.

“Benson! What’s happening? Is that
you?”

Then suddenly he appeared among trees and
mist on the
bank as the engine at last grumbled into full rhythm. The
propeller bit into
the mud and then pushed free. The boat
began
to move back toward midstream. Rogers had already
drawn his pistol, and he tossed off a wild shot in
their
general direction. The Saint
ducked hastily behind the deck
house.

“Get down!” he shouted to Mary
Bannerman.

“Full speed ahead,” she cried, “and damn the
torpedoes!”

Rogers fired out of the fog three more times in rapid
succession. One of his bullets smashed a pane of
glass a
few inches from the girl’s head. She dropped to her knees,
still holding the wheel. Simon heard her feeble
exclamation.

“Oh, my
…”

Rogers, who was just barely visible, started to run down the riverside
parallel to the boat, but with the help of the
current they were moving much faster than he could, and
then he slipped and tripped over something and
went sprawl
ing.

“That’s one torpedo we won’t have to
worry about any
more for the present,” Simon said.

“He—he really was shooting at us,”
Mary stammered
shakily.

She got to her feet and Simon steadied her
with an arm
around her shoulders as he took the wheel.

“That’s revolution,” he said. “Remember, you can’t
make
an omelet without …”

“I know, I know,” Mary said.

Simon squinted into the misty dark.

“There’s just one thing. I wish you
transformers of society
had picked a more suitable time of year for
your egg cracking.
Like Easter, for instance.”

“What’ll we do now?”

“Get to a telephone, and then back to
London as fast as
possible.”

“In
this?”

“No. We should be able to get a cab in
Windsor even at
this hour. In the meantime, tell me everything
you
know
about
this plot against Liskard.”

“You know it,” she said. “Jeff
got the letters from me.
We were going to send them to the papers and
force Tom
to resign.”

“Why all the pussyfooting around? Why
didn’t you just
publicize the letters right away without tipping Liskard
off?”

Mary frowned and shook her head. Simon was
piloting the
boat, and she was standing close to him, hugging herself
to keep warm.

“It seemed unnecessary to me. A bit
extra sadistic. It was
Jeff who insisted on it. I thought it would
be safer and
better
all around if we just got it over with as fast as pos
sible.”

“That would have been the reasonable
way,” the Saint
agreed. “So unless your boyfriend’s unreasonable he must
have had something else in mind.”

“Don’t call him
my
boyfriend,”
Mary said bitterly. “And
what else could he have had in mind?”

“Something much worse than you did.”

“What?”

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Simon
said grimly. “I see lights up ahead.”

10

The cluster of lights the Saint had seen
through the fog
marked the site of a cottage on the right bank of the
river.
There was a sound of loud dance music even above the
rumble of
the boat’s engine.

“Maybe we can get a lift into London
from there,” Simon
said to Mary Bannerman.

Then came a muffled shout from below.

“Hallo! Who’s there?”

“I’ll have to take care of our
patriot,” Simon said. “Cut
the engine down and make a circle or
something before we
dock.”

He hurried below to the cabin, where Benson lay trussed
on the floor. He stopped shouting and stared with
open fear
at the Saint.

“What are you going to do to me?”
he whimpered. “Where
are we?”

“You don’t happen to have any more
chloroform among
your stores, do you?” Simon asked him. “You
used to be
rather partial to it, I remember.”

Benson could only gape as Simon pulled out a
knife and
then did not use it on the thin man’s scrawny neck but on
one of the
bunk sheets.

“Open wide and take your medicine,” Simon said to him.

“What do you mean?” Benson
quavered.

“Open your mouth,” Simon repeated
harshly.

Benson opened, and the Saint shoved a
generous wad of
cloth into his mouth, then wrapped a long strip of the
sheet
around his head several times to cover his mouth.

“Now try to yell,” Simon said.

“Mmp!” grunted Benson unhappily.

The Saint tore a flyleaf out of a book from
one of the
shelves and wrote a brief message on it:
“I
am
a bad man.
Please hand me over to the police.”

He folded the note and tucked it into Benson’s
shirt so
that most of the paper would be plainly visible to
anybody
entering the cabin.

“I hope nobody will come and find you
before Claud
Eustace Teal can send somebody out to pick you up, but
I can’t
take you with me and I’m afraid Miss Mary wouldn’t
approve of my throwing you overboard. You
can wait for
your pals in jail.
Nighty-night.”

Simon left the cabin in darkness and
rejoined Mary Bannerman
at the helm.

“Now,” he said, “let’s bring
her in.”

He steered the cruiser to the landing stage
and skillfully
brought her to rest without the slightest bump. Before
the
current could
start to affect the craft he cut the power and made fast to shore. Three
men—two with drinks in their
hands—were
already coming out of the cottage toward the
river to see what was happening.

“Stay here, Mary, and just follow my lead,” he told her,
and went to meet them.

“Come to join the party?” one of
the men asked.

They were young, well-dressed, and obviously
well along
in the process of enjoying themselves. A girl came to the
door
of the cottage and looked out, sipping from a tall glass.

“We’re not party-crashing,” Simon
said. “I’m afraid we have
a bit of an emergency. My wife is ill and I
must get her to
our doctor in London. Could I use your phone to call a
taxi?”

“Oh, the poor thing,” said the girl in the doorway.
“We
can’t let her just … pop off or
something.”

“None of us here going to London,”
mumbled one of the
young men drunkenly.

“Would twenty pounds make the trip worth
your trouble?” Simon asked.

The tipsy one who had spoken just before the
girl was the
first to answer.

“It jus’ happens I have to go London! It
jus’ happens!”

“You’re not going anywhere,” one of his soberer com
panions said. Then he spoke to Simon. “Of
course we’ll
help. I’m the only one
fit to drive. Is she really bad—your wife,
I mean?”

“Not terribly, yet,” Simon answered.
“It’s a sort of at
tack she gets sometimes, and only her own
doctor knows
what to do about it.”

He went back to get Mary, who made a face at
him as
he helped her out of the boat. She sagged against him as he
walked with
her toward the cottage.

“Now’s your chance to do some more
acting,” he said
under his breath. “Just moan in a
spartan sort of way oc
casionally and don’t say anything. If anybody
asks you ques
tions just shake your head and close your eyes.”

The sober young man came to help.

“Shall we get right to the car or would
she like to rest
here first?” he asked.

“It’s best to go straight to town,”
Simon answered. “If
you have a telephone I’d like to make a call,
though.”

“Go right ahead. It’s in the bedroom on the left. I’ll help
your wife into the car.”

Simon made his way through the front door of
the cottage
and the girl who had come out to see him showed him to
the telephone. He dialed
Scotland Yard as soon as he was
alone behind
the closed door.

“Hullo,” he said when he received
an answer. “This is
Simon Templar … Yes … Exactly. I
have a message for
Inspector Teal … Yes … There’s a man named Jeff
Peterson
he’ll want to take into custody immediately because
he’s a threat to the
Prime Minister of Nagawiland—Prime
Minister Liskard. Do you have that
clear?”

The functionary at the other end of the line
had it clearly
enough, but he was skeptical.

“Just get the message to Teal and make
sure he knows
who sent it,” said the Saint. “Peterson should
be at the flat
of a Mary Bannerman in Chelsea. You can get her address
from the
directory. It’s very urgent. Secondly, I’ve another
present for him out
here—wait just a minute.”

He put down the phone and went to the door of
the
bedroom.

“Where are we, please?” he asked
the girl in the adjoining living room.

“Forty-eight Meadow Road.”

Simon went back to the phone and gave the
address.

“It’s somewhere between Bray and Windsor
on the south
bank of the Thames,” he said. “If you’ll have
some men
sent out you’ll find one of Peterson’s cronies tied up
in the
cabin of a boat just in front of the cottage.”

“And how did all this happen?” the
Scotland Yard man
asked.

“I don’t have time to talk now. I’ll tell
Teal later.”

He left the phone and hurried out to the car.

“I’ll sit in back and let her stretch
out with her head
in my lap,” Simon said. “And if you don’t mind
it would
be best if we don’t talk. Here’s your twenty
pounds.”

The young man protested, but took the money.
Then, as
Simon
cradled Mary’s head and comforted her, the driver
pulled his sports sedan into the road and aimed it toward
London.

Less than an hour later they pulled up to
the entrance of
Nagawi House. The pickets had exhausted their zeal and
gone
home; the gate was closed, and a lone uniformed guard
spoke through its
bars when Simon got out of the car.

“Have you any sort of official
pass?” he asked.

“We’re coming to the party,” Simon
said.

The driver of the car, meanwhile, gaped as
Mary Bannerman
sat up, blinked her eyes brightly, and stepped out on to
the sidewalk next to the Saint.

“The party’s over long since,” the
guard said.

“As a matter of fact it’s urgent
business,” Simon told him.
“The Prime Minister knows me. I have
information he’ll
want immediately.”

“Have you telephoned for an appointment?”
the guard
asked.

Mary Bannerman began quietly explaining some
of the true
situation to the driver of the car.

“I have a very particular reason for
not telephoning,” Si
mon said. “And I’m sure Prime Minister
Liskard doesn’t make
appointments in the middle of the
night.”