The Saint and Mr. Teal: Formerly Called "Once More the Saint" (6 page)

He glanced downwards into the hall. There was no sound or movement from below. For a minute or two he might consider he had the field to himself-if he was quick and quiet about taking it over.

The door of the lighted room opened further, inch by inch, against the steady persuasion of his fingers, while his nerves were keyed up to check its swing at the first faint hint of a squeak out of the hinges. Gradually the strip of light at the edge widened until he could see part of the room. A grotesque confusion of metal and glass, tangled up with innumerable strands and coils of wire, was heaped over all the floor space that he could see like the scrap heap of one of those nightmare laboratories of the future which appear in every magazine of pseudo-scientific fiction. The Saint’s unscientific mind could grasp nothing but the bare visual impression of it-an apparently aimless conglomeration of burnished steel spheres and shining crystal tubes that climbed in and out of each other like a futurist sculptor’s rendering of two all-in wrestlers getting acquainted. Back against the far wall ran a long workbench of wood and porcelain surmounted by racks and shelves of glass vessels and bottles of multicoloured mixtures. It was the most fantastic collection of incomprehensible apparatus that Simon Templar had ever seen; and yet in some ridiculously conventional way it seemed to have its perfect focus and presiding genius in the slender white-haired man in a stained and grimy white overall who stood at the bench with his back to the open door.

Simon Templar walked very quietly into the room and closed the door noiselessly behind him. He stood with his back leaning against it and his right hand circling comfortably round the butt of the automatic in his pocket, and cleared his throat apologetically.

“Hullo,” he said.

The figure at the bench turned round sharply. He was a mild-faced man with a pair of thick gold-rimmed pince-nez perched slantwise on the end of a long fleshy nose; and his response was pitched in the last key on earth that the Saint had expected to hear.

“What the devil do you want?” he demanded.

To say that the Saint was taken aback means nothing. The effect on his emotional system was much the same as it would have been if the aged scientist had tittered a shrill war whoop and begun to turn cartwheels over the test tubes. Even in these days of free thought and speech the greeting seemed singularly unusual. When you have been at considerable pains, without appreciable hope of reward, to hunt along the trail of a kidnapped professor-when, in the process, you have been warned off the course with a couple of bullets, and have found it necessary to let yourself in for a charge of vulgar burglary in the good cause-you are definitely entitled to expect a fairly cordial welcome from the object of your rescue expedition, Once before the Saint had been greeted something like that in rather similar circumstances, and the memory of that adventure was still fresh with him. It cut short the involuntary upward jerk of his eye-brows; and when he found an answer his voice was absolutely level and natural. Only an ear that was listening for it would have sensed the rapier points that stroked in and out of its casual syllables. “I just came to see how you were getting on, Dr. Quell”

“Well, why can’t you leave me alone? How do you expect me to get any work done while I’m being pestered with your absurd questions every ten minutes?” The old man was gesticulating his disgust with everything from his feet to his forehead, till the glasses on his nose quivered with indignation. “What d’you think I am-a lazy schoolboy? Eh? Dammit, haven’t you any work of your own ?”

“You see, we don’t want you to have a breakdown, Professor,” said the Saint soothingly. “If you took a little rest now and then —”

“I had seven hours’ rest last night. I’m not an invalid. And how would I get this done in time if I lay in bed all day? Think it would get done by itself? Eh?”

Simon took out his cigarette case and moved over to sit down on a conveniently shaped dome of metal.

“All the same, Professor, if you wouldn’t mind —”

The old man leapt towards him with a kind of yelp Simon drew back hurriedly; and the professor glared at him, breathing heavily.

” Dammit, if you want to commit suicide, must you come and do it here?”

“Suicide?” repeated the Saint vaguely. “I hadn’t —”

” Pish!” squawked the professor.

He snatched up a loose length of wire and tossed it onto the dome on which Simon had been preparing to rest himself. There was a momentary crackle of hot blue flame-and the wire ceased to resemble anything like wire. It simply trickled down the side of the dome in the shape of a few incandescent drops of molten metal; and Simon Templar mopped his brow.

He retreated towards the clear space around the door with some alacrity.

“Thanks very much, Professor,” he remarked. “Have you any more firework effects like that?”

“Bah!” croaked the professor huffily.

He went back to his bench and wiped his hands on a piece of rag, with every symptom of a society welfare worker removing the contamination of an afternoon with the deserving poor.

“Is there anything else you want to know?” he barked; and the Saint braced himself for the shot that had to be taken in the dark.

“When are we going to see some gold?”

The professor seemed on the verge of an outburst beside which his former demonstrations would pale into polite tea-table chatter. And then with a tremendous effort he controlled himself. He addressed the Saint with the dreadfully laboured restraint of a doting mother taking an interest in the precocities of a rival parent’s prodigy and thinking what an abominable little beast he is.

“When you can use your eyes. When you can get some glasses powerful enough to show you something smaller than a haystack. Or else when you can improve on my methods and make gold run out of the bathroom tap. That’s when.” The old man stalked across to a cupboard and flung it open. “There. Look again. Try to see it. Borrow a microscope if you have to. But for heaven’s sake, young man”—the quavering voice lost some of its self-control and rose two shrill notes-“for heaven’s sake, don’t utter any more blithering idiocies like that in my laboratory.”

Simon stared into the cupboard.

He had never dreamed of seeing wealth like that concentrated in tangible form under his eyes. From floor to ceiling the cupboard was stacked high with it —great glittering yellow ingots the size of bricks, reflecting the lamplight in one soaring block of tawny sleekness like the realization of a miser’s dream. The sight of it dazed him. There must have been over a million pounds’ worth of the metal heaped carelessly into that tall rectangular cavity in the wall. And back and forth across his memory flashed the inane repetition of the dying young roué in Paris: “He says Binks can make gold …”

The professor’s cracked voice broke in on him through a kind of fog.

“Well? Can you see it? Have you found your eyes at last? Eh? Does it begin to satisfy you?” —
Simon had to fight for the smooth use of his tongue.

“Naturally, that’s-er-very satisfactory, Dr. Quell; but —”

“Very satisfactory! I should think so.” The professor snorted. “Half a hundred weight every hour. Very satisfactory. Faugh! You’re a fool-that’s what you are. Dammit, if the rest of the Secret Service are as thick-headed as you, I don’t know why the country should bother to have a Secret Service.”

The Saint stood very still.

But he felt as if a light bomb had exploded inside him. The mystery was opening out before his eyes with a suddenness that could only be compared with an explosion. The detached items of it whirled around like scattered aircraft in the beam of a searchlight and fell luminously into formation with a precision that was uncanny. Everything fitted in its place: the murder of Brian Quell, the King’s Messenger who lay dead in an adjoining room, the man who could make gold … the man called “Binks”-a queer nickname to be given to such a brilliant and irritable old magician by his dissolute young brother! And that last mordant reference to the Secret Service: an idea that was worthy of the genius of Mr. Jones-so much simpler, so much more ingenious and effective than the obvious and hackneyed alternative of threats and torture. . . . Most astounding of all, the proof that the essential pivot of the thing was true. Sylvester Quell-“Binks” could make gold. He had made it-hundredweights of it. He was making more.

Simon heard him grousing on in the same cracked querulous voice.

“I don’t know why I came here. I could have done better in my own laboratory. Look after me, eh? With the intelligence you’ve got, you couldn’t look after yourself. What use d’you think you are? Why don’t you go away and let me do my work? You’re worse than that other man, with his stupid questions and his schoolroom tests. Does he think I don’t know real gold when I make it ?”

It was all quite clear to the Saint. The only question left was how he should act. He could give very little time now to arguments and discussions-escape from that house had become one of the paramount considerations of his life, a thing more vitally important than he had ever thought it could be.

His hand went back to his pocket, his thumb feeling around for the safety catch of his automatic and pressing it gently out of engagement. Under straight dark brows the blue Saintly eyes centred on Quell like spear points.

“Of course not, Professor. But about the notes of your process —”

He was so intent on the scientist that the movement of the door behind him missed his ears. The crack of an automatic fired at close quarters battered and stung his eardrums, and the bullet plucked at his coat. Somehow he was untouched-it is much easier to miss with an automatic than any inexperienced person would believe, and perhaps Mr. Jones’s haste made him snatch at the pull-off. The Saint spun round and fired from his pocket; his nerves were steadier, and he scored where he meant to score-on the gun in the big man’s hand. The weapon dropped to the floor, and Simon stepped closer.

“Keep still.”

The big man’s face was twisted with fury. Behind him, Simon heard Quell’s shrill whine.

“What does this mean, sir? Eh? Dammit —”

The Saint smiled.

“I’m afraid you’ve been taken in, Professor. Our friend no more belongs to the Secret Service —”

“Than you do!” the big man’s voice snarled in viciously. His fists were clenched and his eyes murderous-only the Saint’s gun held him where he stood. “This is one of the men I warned you about, Professor -he’s trying to steal your secret, that’s what it means! The damned traitor!-if I could only get my hands on him… . For God’s sake, why don’t you do something? He’s probably one of the gang that killed your brother —”

“Stop that!”

The Saint’s voice cracked through the room like a blade of lightning; but he saw where the big man’s desperate clatter of words was leading to a fraction of a second too late. Quell leapt at him suddenly with a kind of sob, before Simon had time to turn. The professor’s skinny hand wrestled with his gun wrist, and late-crazed talons clawed at his throat. Simon stumbled sideways under the berserk fury of the scientist’s onslaught, and his aim on the man called Jones was hopelessly lost. They swayed together in the corner. Quell’s hysterical breathing hissed and moaned horribly in the Saint’s ears; and over the demented man’s shoulder he saw Jones stooping with his left hand for the fallen gun.

The Saint saw certain and relentless death blazing across his path like an express train. With a savage gathering of all his muscles he shook the professor off and sent him reeling back like a rag doll. Quell’s dreadful shriek rang in his ears as Simon leapt across the dividing space and kicked away the automatic that the big man’s fingers were within an inch of touching. The gun clanged heavily into a piece of metal on the far side of the room, and Simon caught the big man by one lapel of his coat and spun him round. The Saint’s gun rammed into the big man’s ribs with brutal forcefulness that made the other wince. “Don’t try that again.”

Simon’s whisper floated into the other’s ears with an arctic gentleness that could not have been driven deeper home by a hundred megaphones. It carried a rasping huskiness of meaning that only a fool could have mistaken. And Mr. Jones was no fool. He stood frozen into stone; but the sweat stood out in glistening beads on his forehead.

The Saint flashed one glance sideways, and saw what Mr. Jones had seen first.

Sylvester Quell was sitting on the floor with his back to the shining dome-like contrivance that Simon had seen in action. One hand still rested on the dome, as if by some kind of spasmic attraction, exactly as it had involuntarily gone out to save himself when the Saint’s frantic struggle sent him stumbling back against the machine; but the hand was stiff and curiously blackened. The professor’s upturned face was twisted in a hideous grin… . While Simon looked, the head slipped sideways and lolled over on one shoulder. …

CHAPTER VII
A TWITCH of expression tensed over the face of the man who called himself Jones. His eyebrows were drawn down at the bridge of his nose and strained upwards at the outside corners; the eyes under them were swollen and bloodshot.

“You killed him,” he rasped.

“I’m afraid I did,” said the Saint. “An unfortunate result of my efforts at self-defense-for which you were entirely responsible.”

“You’ll have a job to prove it.”

The Saint’s gentlest smile plucked for an instant at thin-drawn lips.

“I don’t know whether I shall try.”

He grasped the big man’s shoulder suddenly and whirled him half round again, driving him back towards the door.

“Move on, comrade.”

“Where are you going?”

“Downstairs. I’ve got a friend of mine waiting with claustrophobia, and I guess she’s been locked up long enough for one day. And if she couldn’t eat all those sausages I might find a home for one.”

They went down the stairs step by step, in a kind of tango style that would have been humorous to anyone who was insensitive to the deadly tension of it. But Simon Templar was giving no more chances. His forefinger was curled tightly over the trigger for every foot of the way, and the big man kept pace with him in a silence that prickled with malignant vigilance. They came to the door of the room below, and the Saint stopped. “