The Saint and the Happy Highwayman (12 page)

“I think you’ve done more than anyone could have asked,” she said generously. “Won’t you stay and have a drink?”

Mr Westler declined the offer firmly. He had no moral prejudice against drinking, and in fact he wanted a drink very badly, but more particularly he wanted to have it in a place where he would not have to place any more restraint on the shouting rhapsodies that were seething through his system like bubbles through champagne.

Some two hours later, when Simon Templar drifted into the house, he found Jacqueline still looking slightly dazed. She flung her arms around his neck and kissed him.

“Simon!” she gasped. “You must be a mascot or something. You’ll never guess what’s happened.”

“I’ll tell you exactly what’s happened,” said the Saint calmly. “Cousin Harry has been here, told you that he’d rather have dear old Granny’s love letters than all the money in the world and paid you a hell of a good price for them. At least I hope he paid you a hell of a good price.”

Jacqueline gaped at him weakly.

“He paid me ten thousand dollars. But how on earth did you know? Why did he do it?”

“He did it because a lawyer called on him this morning and told him that Sidney Farlance had collared an absolutely priceless mining concession when he was in British Guiana, and that there was probably something about it in the letters which would be worth millions to whoever had them to prove his claim.”

She looked at him aghast.

“A mining concession? I don’t remember anything about it–-“

“You wouldn’t,” said the Saint kindly. “It wasn’t there until I slipped it in when I got you to show me the letters at breakfast time this morning. I sat up for the other half of the night faking the best imitation I could of what I thought a concession ought to look like, and apparently it was good enough for Harry. Of course I was the lawyer who told him all about it, and I think I fed him the oil pretty smoothly, so perhaps there was some excuse for him. I take it that he was quite excited about it—I see he didn’t even bother to take the envelopes.”

Jacqueline opened her mouth again, but what she was going to say with it remained a permanently unsolved question, for at that moment the unnecessarily vigorous ringing of a bell stopped her short. The Saint cocked his ears speculatively at the sound and a rather pleased and seraphic smile worked itself into his face.

“I expect this is Harry coming back,” he said. “He wasn’t supposed to see me again until tomorrow but I suppose he couldn’t wait. He’s probably tried to ring me up at the address I had printed on my card and discovered that there ain’t no such lawyers as I was supposed to represent. It will be rather interesting to hear what he has to say.”

For once, however, Simon’s guess was wrong. Instead of the indignant equine features of Harry Westler, he confronted the pink imploring features of the small and shapeless elderly gent with whom he had danced prettily around the gateposts the day before. The little man’s face lighted up and he bounced over the doorstep and seized the Saint joyfully by both lapels of his coat.

“Mnynghlfwgl!” he crowed triumphantly. “Ahkgmp glglgl hndiuphwmp!”

Simon recoiled slightly.

“Yes. I know,” he said soothingly. “But it’s five o’clock on Fridays. Two dollars every other yard.”

“Ogh hmbals!” said the little man.

He let go the Saint’s coat, ducked under his arms and scuttled on into the living room.

“Oi!” said the Saint feebly.

“May I explain, sir?”

Another voice spoke from the doorway, and Simon perceived that the little man had not come alone. Someone else had taken his place on the threshold—a thin and mournful-looking individual whom the Saint somewhat pardonably took to be the little man’s keeper.

“Are you looking after that?” he inquired resignedly. “And why don’t you keep it on a lead?”

The mournful-looking individual shook his head.

“That is Mr Horatio Ive, sir—he is a very rich man, but he suffers from an unfortunate impediment in his speech. Very few people can understand him. I go about with him as his interpreter, but I have been in bed for the last three days with a chill–-“

A shrill war whoop from the other room interrupted the explanation.

“We’d better go and see how he’s getting on,” said the Saint.

“Mr Ive is very impulsive, sir,” went on the sad-looking interpreter. “He was most anxious to see somebody here, and even though I was unable to accompany him he has called here several times alone. I understand that he found it impossible to make himself understood. He practically dragged me out of bed to come with him now.”

“What’s he so excited about?” asked the Saint, as they walked towards the living room.

“He’s interested in some letters, sir, belonging to the late Mrs Laine. She happened to show them to him when they met once several years ago, and he wanted to buy them. She refused to sell them for sentimental reasons, but as soon as he read of her death he decided to approach her heirs.”

“Are you talking about her love letters from a bird called Sidney Farlance?” Simon asked hollowly.

“Yes sir. The gentleman who worked in British Guiana. Mr Ive is prepared to pay something like fifty thousand dollars–-Is anything the matter, sir?”

Simon Templar swallowed.

“Oh, nothing,” he said faintly. “Nothing at all.”

They entered the living room to interrupt a scene of considerable excitement. Backing towards the wall, with a blank expression of alarm widening her eyes, Jacqueline Laine was staring dumbly at the small elderly gent, who was capering about in front of her like a frenzied redskin, spluttering yard after yard of his incomprehensible adenoidal honks interspersed with wild piercing squeaks apparently expressive of intolerable joy. In each hand he held an envelope aloft like a banner.

As his interpreter came in, he turned and rushed towards him, loosing off a fresh stream of noises like those of a hysterical duck.

“Mr Ive is saying, sir,” explained the interpreter, raising his voice harmoniously above the din, “that each of those envelopes bears a perfect example of the British Guiana one-cent magenta stamp of 1856, of which only one specimen was previously believed to exist. Mr Ive is an ardent philatelist, sir, and these envelopes–-“

Simon Templar blinked hazily at the small crudely printed stamp in the corner of the envelope which the little man was waving under his nose.

“You mean,” he said cautiously, “that Mr Ive is really only interested in the envelopes?”

“Yes sir.”

“Not the letters themselves?”

“Not the letters.”

“And he’s been flapping around the house all this time trying to tell somebody about it?”

“Yes sir.”

Simon Templar drew a deep breath. The foundations of the world were spinning giddily around his ears but his natural resilience was unconquerable. He took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow.

“In that case,” he said contentedly, “I’m sure we can do business. What do you say, Jacqueline?”

Jacqueline clutched his arm and nodded breathlessly.

“Hlgagtsk sweghlemlgl,” beamed Mr Ive.

V THE BENEVOLENT BURGLARY

“Dennis umber?” Simon Templar repeated vaguely. “I don’t know … I think I read something about him in a newspaper some time ago, but I’m blowed if I can remember what it was. I can’t keep track of every small-time crook in creation. What’s he been doing?”

“I just thought you might know something about him,” Inspector Fernack answered evasively.

He sat on the edge of a chair and mauled his fedora with big bony fists, looking almost comically like an elephantine edition of an office boy trying to put over a new excuse for taking an afternoon off. He glowered ferociously around the sunny room in which Simon was calmly continuing to eat breakfast and racked his brain for inspiration to keep the interview going.

For the truth was that Inspector John Fernack had not called on the Saint for information about Mr Dennis Umber. Or about anybody else in the same category. He had a highly efficient Records Office at his disposal down on Centre Street, which was maintained for the sole purpose of answering questions like that. The name was simply an excuse that he had grabbed out of his head while he was on his way up in the elevator. Because there was really only one lawbreaker about whom Fernack needed to go to Simon Templar for information—and that was the Saint himself.

Not that even that was likely to be very profitable, either, but Fernack couldn’t help it. He made the pilgrimage in the same spirit as a man who had lived under the shadow of a volcano that had been quiescent for some time might climb up to peep into the crater, with the fond hope that it might be good enough to tell him when and how it next intended to erupt. He knew he was only making a fool of himself, but that was only part of the cross he had to bear. There were times when, however hard he tried to master them, the thoughts of all the lawless mischief which that tireless buccaneer might be cooking up in secret filled his mind with such horrific nightmares that he had to do something about them or explode. The trouble was that the only thing he could think of doing was to go and have another look at the Saint in person, as if he hoped that he would be lucky enough to arrive at the very moment when Simon had decided to write out his plans on a large board and wear them hung round his neck. The knowledge of his own futility raised Fernack’s blood pressure to a point that actively endangered his health; but he could no more have kept himself away from the Saint’s apartment, when one of those fits of morbid uneasiness seized him, than he could have danced in a ballet.

He stuck a cigar into his mouth and bit on it with massive violence, knowing perfectly well that the Saint knew exactly what was the matter with him, and that the Saint was probably trying politely not to laugh out loud. His smouldering eyes swivelled back to the Saint with belligerent defiance. If he caught so much as the shadow of a grin on that infernally handsome face …

But the Saint wasn’t grinning. He wasn’t paying any particular attention to Fernack at all. He was reading his newspaper again, and Fernack heard him murmur: “Well, isn’t that interesting?”

“Isn’t what interesting?” growled the detective aggressively.

Simon folded the sheet.

“I see that the public is invited to an exhibition of Mr Elliot Vascoe’s art treasures at Mr Vascoe’s house on Knickerbocker Place. Admission will be five dollars, and all the proceeds will go to charity. The exhibition will be opened by Princess Eunice of Greece.”

Fernack stiffened. He had the dizzy sense of unreality that would overwhelm a man who had been daydreaming about what he would do if his uncle suddenly died and left him a million dollars, if a man walked straight into his office and said, “Your uncle has died and left you a million dollars.”

“Were you thinking of taking over any of those art treasures?” he inquired menacingly. “Because if you were–-“

“I’ve often thought about it,” said the Saint shamelessly. “I think it’s a crime for Vascoe to have so many of them. He doesn’t know any more about art than a cow in a field, but he’s got enough dough to buy anything his advisers tell him is worth buying and it gives him something to swank about. It would be an act of virtue to take over his collection, but I suppose you wouldn’t see it that way.”

Fernack’s brow blackened. He could hardly believe his ears, and if he had stopped to think he wouldn’t have believed them. He didn’t stop.

“You’re damn right I wouldn’t 1” he roared. “Now get this, Saint. You can get away with just so much of your line in this town, and no more. You’re going to leave Vascoe’s exhibition alone, or by God–-“

“Of course I’m going to leave it alone,” said the Saint mildly. “My paths are the paths of righteousness, and my ways are the ways of peace. You know me, Fernack. Vascoe will get what’s coming to him in due time, but who am I to take it upon myself to dish it out?”

“You said–-“

“I said that I’d often thought about taking over some of his art treasures. But is it a crime to think? It it was, there ‘d be more criminals than you could build jails for. Pass the marmalade. And try not to look so disappointed.” The mockery in Simon’s blue eyes was bright enough now for even Fernack to realize that the Saint was deliberately taking him over the jumps once again. “Anyone might think you wanted me to turn into a crook—and is that the right attitude for a policeman to have?”

Between Simon Templar and MrElliot Vascoe, millionaire and self-styled art connoisseur, no love at all was lost. Simon disliked Vascoe on principle because he disliked all fat loud-mouthed parvenus who took care to obtain great publicity for their charitable works while they practised all kinds of small meannesses on their employees. Vascoe hated the Saint because Simon had once happened to witness a motor accident in which Vascoe was driving and a child was injured and Vascoe had made the mistake of offering Simon five hundred dollars to forget what he had seen. That grievous error had not only failed to save Mr Vascoe a penny of the fines and damages which he was subsequently compelled to pay, but it had earned him a punch on the nose which he need not otherwise have suffered.

Vascoe had made his money quickly, and the curse of the nouveau riche had fallen upon him. Himself debarred for ever from the possibility of being a gentleman, either by birth or breeding or native temperament, he had made up for it by carrying snobbery to new and rarely equalled highs. Besides works of art, he collected titles; for high-sounding names, and all the more obvious trappings of nobility, he had an almost fawning adoration. Therefore he provided lavish entertainment for any undiscriminating notables whom he could lure into his house with the attractions of his Parisian chef and his very excellent wine cellar, and contrived to get his name bracketed with those who were more discriminating by angling for them with the bait of charity, which it was difficult for them to refuse.

In a great many ways, Mr Elliot Vascoe was the type of man whose excessive wealth would have been a natu-ral target for one of the Saint’s raids on those undesirable citizens whom he included in the comprehensive and descriptive classification of “the ungodly”; but the truth is that up till then the Saint had never been interested enough to do anything about it. There were many other undesirable citizens whose unpleasantness was no less immune from the cumbersome interference of the Law, but whose villainies were on a larger scale and whose continued putrescence was a more blatant challenge to the Saint’s self-appointed mission of justice. With so much egregiously inviting material lying ready to hand, it was perhaps natural that Simon should feel himself entitled to pick and choose, should tend to be what some critics might have called a trifle finicky in his selection of the specimens of ungodliness to be bopped on the bazook. He couldn’t use all of them, much as he would have liked to.