The Saint and Mr. Teal: Formerly Called "Once More the Saint" (17 page)

“Hey, you!”

The rasp of a voice that seemed to be aimed straight at his ear made him start.

He looked round with his heart pumping ridiculously. He was almost opposite the range, down at the bottom of Villiers Street, and he had not noticed the approach of the car that had slipped silently down the street and pulled up so close to him that the running board brushed his trousers.

The man at the wheel had a hard sunburnt face that seemed faintly familiar, but the yellow-tinted tortoise-shell glasses over his eyes and the unlighted cigar in his mouth did not assist recognition. He spoke with a strong American accent.

“Get in. Goldman wants you-quick.”

Clem leaned over, opening the door. The hope that never slept in his narrow bosom roused up and palpitated.

“Any idea wot it is?”

“I can’t tell you, but I know there’s shooting in it. Got your heater? … Good boy. Let’s keep moving.”

Clem Enright leaned back and let himself relax in contemplation of the roseate dawn of his apotheosis. So it had come at last, the chance that he had been praying for. It followed so closely on the trend of his daydream that he could scarcely believe it was true. Now if only luck was with him-if the sudden fit of trembling that had seized his limbs wore off and left him as cool and steady-nerved as he had been in his dreams …

He did not notice the way they went, or give another thought or glance to the man who drove him. Again and again he lived over, in visions, a score of shootings in which he was the only surviving hero… . And then, in what seemed only a few minutes, he became aware that the car had stopped and the engine was switched off. They were in one of the small side streets of Chelsea -he could identify the district by the shops he could see in the King’s Road at the end.

“Wot’s up?” he demanded. “This ain’t the place.”

“This is a special secret headquarters,” said the driver, with a scrappy smile. “You haven’t been here before.”

Clem Enright’s chest swelled as he followed his guide through the street door, along a narrow passage, and up a long flight of stairs. Special secret headquarters! He had had no notion that there was such a place. He would swear that Ted Orping had never seen it. And he was the privileged one who had been chosen for what must be an extraordinarily important mission. All at once his opinions of Ted Orping underwent a catastrophic change. They became almost pitying. A nice chap, Ted, but a bit full of himself. Liked to pretend he was bigger than he was. Plenty of muscle, of course, but you wanted more than that. Brains. Personality… .

They went through a miniature hall and passed into a spacious studio that lofted right up into the roof. It was impossible to see out, for all the light came from two large skylights high up in the rafters. And then Clem heard the unmistakable click of a lock and spun round.

His guide was leaning against the door, detaching the key from the lock and dropping it into his pocket. While Enright stared at him, fascinated, he pitched away the cigar and removed the tinted glasses which had so effectively disguised him.

“What d’you think you could pose as, Clem?” inquired the Saint chattily. “Ajax defying the lightning ?”

CHAPTER VII
ENRIGHT crouched back against a divan, with his eyes distending as if they were being inflated by a couple of power pumps.

“Wot’s the idea?” he croaked.

“Just words,” answered Simon urbanely. “Words, words, words, as the Swan of Avon used to tell his pals when Ann Hathaway had one of her off days.”

He took out his cigarette case and selected a cigarette, sauntering across the room with his level gaze fixed on Clem Enright all the time. There was something terrifying to the cockney about that unswerving and passionless stare. In a flash of unspeakable fear Clem remembered his gun and reached for it; and his stomach seemed to turn to water when he found that it was no longer at his hip.

Simon produced it from his own pocket.

“I borrowed it, Clem,” he explained easily. “You haven’t got a license for it, and that’s a serious offense. Besides, it might have chipped the wallpaper if you missed me.”

He was right in front of Enright then, and the edge of the divan was directly behind the man’s knees. Simon gave him a gentle push, and the cockney sat down with a bump.

“Now we can talk,” said the Saint.

He lighted his cigarette deliberately, while Clem watched him with scared and shrinking eyes. And then that very clear and level gaze found Enright’s face again.

“This racket of yours is over, Clem,” said the Saint quietly. “I’m cleaning it up today. As far as you’re concerned, it’s just a question whether we should hand you over to the police or give you a run for it.”

“I ain’t never done nuffink, guv’nor,” Enright whined. “Strite I ain’t —”

“Straight you certainly aren’t,” answered the Saint calmly. “But we didn’t bring you here to discuss that. We brought you here because there’s something we want you to do, and the only interesting point is how long it’s going to take to persuade you to do it. Have you ever heard of the third degree ?”

Enright cringed away with his face going white.

“Yer can’t do that to me!” he yelped. “Yer can’t
“We can only try,” said the Saint mildly.

He opened a cupboard and proceeded to lay out on the table a life preserver, a short length of rubber hose, a large pair of pincers, and an instrument that looked very like a thumbscrew but was actually a patent tin opener. As he produced each item he weighed it in his hand, tested it meditatively, and gave Enright every chance to visualize its employment before he put it down.

Then he turned again to the shaking man.

“The flat underneath is empty,” he remarked pleasantly, “so you can yell as much as you like. What would you like to have done to you first?”

Enright swallowed a lump in his throat. The stimulating effects of the whisky he had drunk had vanished altogether, leaving him at the stage where he would have burst into tears on the slightest provocation. Nobody loved him, and he was going to be tortured till he talked.

“They’d kill me,” he said huskily. “Joe Corrigan squealed, and ‘e was killed.”

“No one will kill you if you behave,” said the Saint. “You can lie low here till the gang’s broken up, and I’ll see you out of the country if you want to go abroad. Also I’ll say nothing about you to the police, and I’ll let you keep all your money.”

Clem Enright tried to lick the saliva round a mouth that had gone unaccountably arid. All his dreams of glory had gone west, and yet he felt lucky. There was that in the Saint’s eye which told him that Ted Orping’s lurid descriptions paled into fairy tales beside what that lean soft-spoken man was capable of doing.

“Wot d’yer want to know?”

“How much have you been getting from Goldman?”

“Fifty quid a week, wiv extra pickings when we did somethink good.”

“How much did Ted get?”

“I dunno, guv’nor. P’raps ‘e got a bit more-‘e did more than they let me.”

” Didn’t it ever occur to you that there was a lot more money than that in what you were doing?”

“Goldman said ‘e better bank for us, guv’nor. We ‘ad plenty o’ dough to spend, and ‘e said where we used to go wrong was by spending everythink when we was flush and then ‘aving nothink to see us through rainy days. ‘E said you ‘ad to ‘ave capital so’s you could wait for the right job instead of ‘aving to do some-think in a nurry.”

Simon nodded.

“Where does Goldman keep this money?”

‘“E’s got a safe in ‘is bedroom-in the wall. Some of it’s there, anyway. I seen ‘im take money out of it to give me, and it was full of dough.”

The Saint smoothed his hair and indicated a telephone which stood on a small table beside the divan.

“Now there’s just one other little thing you can do for me,” he said. “Do you know a man called Ronald Nilder?”

“Yus-I seen ‘im once.”

“You can ring him up and say what I tell you to.”

Enright looked at the telephone, and then at the Saint again.

” Yer wouldn’t fergit yer promise, would yer, guv’nor ? -cross yer ‘eart and ‘ope to die?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” said the Saint gravely.

Mr. Ronald Nilder was completing the packing of his third suitcase when the telephone bell rang in his bedroom. For a few moments he thought of letting it ring unanswered, but cunning dictated the bolder course. He picked up the receiver.

“‘Ullo,” said a voice. “Is that Nilder?”

“This is Mr. Nilder speaking,” he replied primly.

“Goldman wants to know why yer ain’t come to see ‘im like ‘e told yer. ‘E says yer to meet ‘im at once out-side Mark Lane station. It’s very urgent.” Nilder hesitated for a moment. Then: “All right,” he said. “Who’s that speaking?” “Enright ‘ere,” said the voice. “Go on-‘urry. If Goldman ain’t there yer to wait for ‘im. G’bye.”

Nilder replaced the receiver and paced up and down the room. He had planned to catch the eight-twenty train via Newhaven, and that gave him plenty of time to keep the appointment. After all, Goldman had no reason to suspect that he had given anything away. It was just his bad luck that the Saint had caught him- the same thing had happened to other men, and their integrity had not been questioned. He had the testimony of his engineer to support his story. He knew Enright’s name and recognized his voice after the name was given him-there was no trap about it. It would be quite safe to hear what Goldman had to say-it might even have a valuable bearing on his own getaway -whereas to evade it would immediately arouse suspicion. And already he was feeling a little ashamed of the panic that had made him draw all his money from the bank and pack up to leave London in such haste.

Thus Ronald Nilder worked it out, as the Saint had expected him to, and left his flat five minutes later. But just in case of accidents he removed the bulging wallet from his pocket and hid it behind a row of books-his pocket would have been well worth picking that afternoon.

He had a long wait at Mark Lane; but with that we are not yet concerned.

It was half-past four when Simon Templar arrived at Tex Goldman’s apartment by way of the fire escape and let himself in through the bathroom window. A call from the nearest telephone booth had ascertained that Goldman was not at home; and the Saint was not looking quite like his normal self. He had a suit of workman’s overalls over his clothes and a leather bag of tools in his hand, in which outfit he was not likely to arouse so much curiosity on fire escapes as he would have done in one of the light grey fresco suits of Anderson & Sheppard. But the gun which he had taken from Clem Enright was in his pocket, and it was fully loaded. Simon Templar was cleaning up. And he was making no mistakes.

Tex Goldman came in at five.

He had a girl with him—the girl who had partnered him at the night club. She was a rather beautiful child, with fair hair that was a little too brilliant to be natural, and big serious eyes. She hung on Tex Goldman’s arm. It was the visit to his apartment that he had worked for for so long, and the way it had happened was one that he had not expected a week ago.

“It’s marvellous, Tex,” she said.

“It ain’t bad,” said Tex Goldman. “It just wanted one thing, and she’s here now.”

She sat in the settee. He sat on the arm, looking down at her.

“Gee, baby,” he said, “if you told me a week ago I could do this, I’d ‘ve burst myself laughin’. Must be old age, I reckon.”

“I don’t care what it is.”

Goldman took out a bulky leather case. With the unconsciousness of habit, he nipped the end off a cigar and stuck it between his teeth.

“I guess you know all about me,” he said.

“I don’t mind.”

“It ain’t much to think about. All my life I been a hood. That’s the way I was raised. I came out of the gutter-but I came out. Back in St. Louis they call me tough. I killed plenty men, but that don’t seem to mean a thing. It’s the way you work in the racket-bump a guy before he bumps you. But I never double-crossed a pal, and I never carried a gun for vice. I ain’t pullin’ any reformation act. I guess I’ll go on the same way- till I get mine.”

She took a scented cigarette from a lacquer case and stared straight ahead.

“I’m not such a schoolgirl myself,” she said quietly. “I’ve been around. I don’t like killing-any of those things you do. I don’t like knowing I’ll have to sit around and wait till someone does the same thing to you. I didn’t think I could ever face it. Now it seems different, somehow. I’ve got no choice. I just want you to be good to me.”

“I’m on the level, kid. I never been mushy in my life, so I can’t say any of those pretty things you’d like to hear. But I’ll play square with you.”

“Always?”

“Say, if I ever give you the runaround, you can put me on the spot with my own gun.”

It was at that moment that Tex Goldman’s head was hit.

The blow didn’t stun him. It wasn’t intended to. But he felt the sickening sharp crash of a gun butt at the base of his hair, and it seemed to rock the brain inside his skull so that for a second or two his sight was blotted out in a dizzy sea of blackness filled with whirling red sparks. He pitched forward, throwing out his hands, and saved himself on the table. He heard the girl beside him cry out, and then a hand snatched at his hip pocket before his wits could struggle back to coherent functioning. When his own hand reached the pocket his gun was gone.

He turned slowly and saw the weapon being juggled gently round the forefinger of a tall man in grey.

“Hullo, Tex.”

Goldman drew himself up rockily under the rake of the tall man’s smile.

“What the hell —”

“No bad language, Tex,” said the Saint. “I’m sorry I had to dot you a small one, but I thought it’d be safer. You’re the kind of guy who wouldn’t be stuck up very easily, and if you tried to shoot it out with me the birds in the other apartments might have heart failure.”

Goldman’s eyes creased up till only the pupils showed, gleaming like frozen chips of jet.

“Mr. Simon Templar?”

“Yeah. And breaking up your racket. This country can get along without your kind of crime. Maybe America can show us lots of things, but you’ve come over with one kind of thing we don’t want to be shown. It upsets all the dear old ladies who make our laws.” The Saint was not smiling. “Too many men have been killed since you set up shop. I came here to kill you, Tex.”