The Saint and Mr. Teal: Formerly Called "Once More the Saint" (12 page)

“What’s the idea?” he demanded sullenly. “We don’t want to go this way.”

Ted Orping looked left and right.

“This’ll do,” he said.

“What for?”

“Just to give you what’s coming to you, rat.”

He fired three times before Joe Corrigan could speak

CHAPTER III
SIMON TEMPLAR came back from Amsterdam a few days later. The items of jewellery which sometimes came his way were never fenced in England-the Saint was far too notorious for that, and caution in the right place was still his longest suit. He travelled by roundabout routes, for his movements were always a subject of absorbing interest to the watchful powers of Scotland Yard. That particular trip took him the best part of a week, but it was worth three thousand pounds to him. He felt no remorse on account of Mr. Peabody. The insurance companies would cover most if not all of the loss, and Mr. Peabody had definitely asked for it. As for those insurance companies, Simon felt that the blow would not be likely to shake their stock to its foundations. In a misguided moment of altruistic zeal he had once attempted to insure his own life, and had discovered that so long as he undertook not to fly aeroplanes, travel in tropical parts, enter into naval or military service, become a lion-tamer or a steeplejack, or in fact do anything whatsoever that might by any conceivable chance endanger the life of a reasonably healthy and intelligent man, the insurance company would be charmed to accept his premiums. His opinion of insurance companies was that they were bloated organizations which were delighted to take anybody’s money over risks that had been eliminated from every angle that human ingenuity could foresee. They were fair game so far as he was concerned, and his conscience was even more pachydermatous than usual over their rare misfortunes.

But he came back to a London in which the insurance companies were more worried than they had been for many years.

Patricia Holm met him in the Haymarket, where the Air Union bus decanted him after an uneventful journey from Ostend. One of the first things he saw was a crimson evening newspaper poster proclaiming “Another Bank Hold-up,” but he was not immediately impressed. They strolled up to Oddenino’s for a cocktail, and she sprang the news on him rather suddenly.

“They got Joe Corrigan,” she said.

Simon raised his eyebrows. He read the newspaper cutting which she handed him, and smoked a cigarette.

“Poor devil!… But what a fool! He shouldn’t have gone back-at least, I thought he’d have the sense to put up a good story. Goldman must have caught him out somehow… .. Tex is clever!”

The cutting simply described the finding of the body and its identification. Corrigan was the man of doubtful associations with three convictions to his name, and the police were hopeful of making an early arrest.

“I saw Claud Eustace in Piccadilly the day before yesterday,” said Patricia. “He as good as told me they hadn’t a hope of getting the man who did it.”

“I suppose it’d be a long shot if the night porter in Tex’s block recognized the photograph,” said the Saint thoughtfully. “It isn’t particularly flattering to Joe. And the whole Green Cross bunch would have their alibis.” He speared a cherry and frowned at it. “Tex might have done it himself-or else it was Ted Orping. I don’t see Brother Clem as a cold-blooded killer.”

“There’ve been some odd-looking men hanging about Manson Place,” she told him; and the Saint’s eyebrows slanted again-dangerously.

“Any trouble?”

“No. But I’ve been taking care not to come home late at night.”

Simon sipped his Bronx and gazed at the Bacchanalian array of shakers and glasses stencilled on the coloured glass behind the bar.

“I expected things would be quiet. Tex isn’t the lad to waste his energies on side issues when there’s big stuff in the offing. Now that I’m home, South Kensington may get unhealthy. Glory be, Pat-wouldn’t you love to see the faces of the local trouts if Tex started spraying S.W.7 with Tommy guns for my benefit?”

It was characteristic of him to turn off the menace with a flippant remark, and yet he knew better than anyone what a threat hung over others in London besides himself-others who had a far sounder claim than he to object to a lavish expenditure of ammunition. The Saint had never cared to live safely; but there were others who held their lives less lightly.

Before dinner was over he had learned more. Things had been happening quickly in London while he had been away, and behind them all he could see the guiding hand of the man from St. Louis. After the fiasco of the Peabody raid it seemed as if Goldman had gone all out for a restoration of confidence in his followers. The work was rapid, ruthlessly thorough, a desperate bid for power under the standards of sudden death. The day after the Peabody raid, another jeweller’s shop had been successfully smashed in Bond Street, and on the same night a small safe deposit off the Tottenham Court Road had been blasted open and half emptied while masked men with revolvers held a small crowd at bay and covered the escape of the inside party before the police reached the scene. In those cases the victims were discreet rather than valorous.

It was different at the Battersea branch of the Metropolitan Bank, which the same men held up the following midday. A cashier attempted to reach for a gun under the counter, and was shot dead where he stood. The gang escaped with over two thousand pounds in cash.

While officialdom was still humming with that outrage, another bank in Edmonton was similarly held up; but with the warning of the Metropolitan Bank murder fresh in their memories, the staff showed no resistance.

Conferences were held, and special reserves of armed men in plain clothes were called out to cover as many likely spots as possible. But the police were again outguessed. The next day, an excess of confidence on the part of the management concerned allowed a private car bearing the week’s pay envelopes for half a dozen branches of a popular library to leave a bank in the City. It was intercepted at its first stop, the messenger sandbagged, and fifteen hundred pounds in cash stolen. A constable on point duty saw the incident and tried to pursue the bandits’ car on the running board of a commandeered taxi. He was shot off it by the fugitives and seriously injured, but it was expected that he would live.

The tale went through a sequence of barefaced brigandage that was staggering.

“We’re getting ‘em scared,” Tex Goldman said. “That’s the only way to do it. Hit ‘em, and keep on hitting. Don’t give ‘em time to think. In a month or two they’ll be begging for mercy.”

“You bet,” said Orping.

He had automatically become Goldman’s aide-decamp, and held his position by his own audacity. It was he who had shot the Metropolitan Bank cashier- in a week he had become a confirmed killer, with two notches on his gun and the bravado of experience. “Basher” Tope, who had shot the policeman, ran him a fair second.

Ted Orping poured out a dose of brandy from a silver hip flask. He had learned that trick too, and he used it often. Alcohol braced his recklessness up to a point at which murder meant nothing.

“The guy I’m wantin’ to see again is the Saint,” he said.

“You’ll get your chance,” said Goldman. “We’ll know about it the minute he comes home. I’d like to see him myself.”

He might or might not have been pleased to know that Simon Templar shared that wish with him in no uncertain manner.

As far as the Saint was concerned, the desired opportunity came his way with a promptness for which he had only a stretch of coincidence to thank. On the night when some of the events already mentioned were told to Simon they had dined at a favourite restaurant of theirs in Beak Street, a quiet little Spanish eating-house where the food was good and cheap and the crowd neither fashionable nor pseudo-Bohemian. It was some time after eleven o’clock when they left, and wandered through side streets towards Shaftesbury Avenue with the vague idea of having another cup of coffee somewhere before going home. They were just turning a corner when Simon saw the man from St. Louis emerging from a doorway. In a flash Simon had caught Patricia’s arm and jerked her back into the narrow lane from which they had just been turning. He leaned against the wall, covering her with his body, with his broad back turned to the Yankee gunman.

“Tex himself!” he said. “Pretend to be powdering your nose-get out a mirror.”

His ambition to see Tex Goldman again included a time and place of his own choosing, with the circumstances carefully reviewed and his plan of campaign completely polished-not a chance encounter in a back street that would do little more than advertise his return.

In the girl’s mirror, he saw Goldman step into a taxi and drive off. Patricia saw the gunman for the first time.

“That’s the boy who’s causing all the trouble. And I wonder what he’s doing around here tonight?”

They walked on, and Simon studied the doorway that had exhaled the new menace to the peace of London. A small illuminated sign over the lintel announced it as the Baytree Club. The door was open, but all that could be seen was a short passage leading to a flight of stairs, from beyond which came subdued sounds of music. It appeared to be one of those centres of furtive gaiety which one passes almost without noticing in daylight, and which suddenly become attractive when the neon signs wake up and the unprepossessing street outside is hidden in a kindly gloom.

The Saint stood on the opposite pavement with a cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth and surveyed the premises in a contemplative silence. A private car turned into the street and drew up outside the doorway to exude two men who went down the passage and up the stairs.

“Feel like a spot of night life, Pat?” queried the Saint.

There was a promise of mischief in his gaze. It might have come to anything or nothing, as the Fates decreed, but he felt that he would like to know more about a place where Tex Goldman descended to common or garden frivolity.

She nodded.

“O.K., boy.”

They were crossing the road when the Saint’s keen ears became aware that the music inside the club had stopped. There was nothing very remarkable in that, for even the most energetic orchestras must rest for a few moments now and then to expand their lungs and gargle. And yet it made the Saint hesitate. Somehow he associated that stoppage with the arrival of the two men who had just gone in-and the peculiar fact that their car was still standing outside, where parking was not allowed. Perhaps the glimpse he had had of Tex Goldman leaving the same premises a few minutes before had made him unduly suspicious. He turned off diagonally along the road, drawing Patricia with him. He seemed to hear the muffled sounds of some commotion inside the club-a commotion that was rather more than the usual babble of conversation that springs up between dances.

And then he heard the sound of feet pelting down the stairs.

He guided Patricia into the nearest porch, as if he were merely an innocent young citizen taking his girl friend home from a movie, and again used her mirror inconspicuously. He saw the two men dash out of the doorway and plunge into their car, and before they disappeared he had seen that the lower halves of their faces were covered by their white evening scarves.

The car pulled out and whirled up the street, passing them where they stood. Other feet were pounding down the steps of the club, and Simon looked round and saw the owner of the first pair reach the pavement. He was a frantic-looking young man with his bow tie draggling loose down his shirt front, and he yelled “Police!” in a voice that echoed down the street. In a few seconds he was joined by others with the same cry. One or two pale-faced girls crowded out behind the leading men.

Simon glanced after the departing car. He could still see its tail light as it was swinging round the next corner, and his hand flew to his hip… .

It stayed there. His other hand followed suit, on the other hip. With his coat swept back behind his forearms, he lounged over towards the panic-stricken mob on the pavement. A police whistle was shrilling somewhere near by. He might have been able to do some damage to the bandits’ car, but the official attention to his tactics might have been more embarrassing than the damage would have been worth. He was not yet ready to take the law into his own hands.

The frantic-looking young man confirmed his guess of what had happened.

“They held us up-it must have been the gang that’s been holding up all the banks. Took all our money and the girls’ jewellery. We couldn’t do anything, or some of the girls might have got hurt. … I say! Officer —”

A running policeman had appeared, and the young man joined the general surge towards him. Simon faded away from the group and rejoined Patricia.

“Let’s stick around,” he said. “If I know anything, Claud Eustace will be along.”

He was right in his diagnosis. The chattering crowd gradually filtered back into the club to make its several statements, under the constable’s pressure; and a couple of plain-clothes men arrived from Marlborough Street. After a while another taxi entered the street and released a plump, familiar figure. Simon buttonholed him.

“What ho, Claud!” he murmured breezily. “This is a bit late in life for you to take up dancing. Or has someone been trying to buy a box of chocolates after nine o’clock?”

The detective looked at him with a rather strained weariness.

“What are you doing here, Saint?”

“Taking an after-dinner breather. Giving the gastric juices their ozone. I just happened to be around when the fun started.”

” Did you see the men ?”

Simon nodded.

“Yes. But they were half-masked, of course. I got the number of the car; but it looked new, so I suppose it was stolen.”

Teal rubbed his chin.

“If you can wait till I’ve finished here I’d like to have a talk with you.”

“Oke. We’ll toddle along to Sandy’s and sniff some coffee. See you there.”

The Saint took Patricia’s arm, and they strolled through to Oxenden Street. Three quarters of an hour later Chief Inspector Teal came in and took his place at the counter.

“Did you get anything useful?” asked the Saint.