The Saint in Action (15 page)

“Unless they all met at the same top.”

“Of course I had been thinking of that. But there was no actual proof that it was the same top; and in any case we didn’t know where the top was. The point is that every lead petered out as soon as it started to get interesting. It was the perfect setup—three separate outfits doing separate shares in the same job, and none of ‘em making any contact with the others except in places that were practically leak-proof. And now they all blow up together.”

“Off the same fuse,” commented Peter economically.

The Saint nodded.

“That’s what it means. The top is the same—right the way through. This steamboat of Lasser’s—the Valkyrie—brings the stuff over the Channel. That’s a cinch. A private yacht can go anywhere and no questions asked. He could keep her in Southampton Water, push off for a week-end cruise, say he was going to Torquay or anywhere, scoot over the Channel and pick up his cargo. There’s probably a fourth gang on the other side, which just collects contraband for some smugglers unknown. And it’s only about seventy miles straight across from Cherbourg to Brandy Bay. The Valkyrie comes back and sends the stuff ashore and steams back to Southampton Water, and nobody knows where she’s been or bothers to ask… . There’s a coastguard station at Worbarrow Head and another one on the far side of Kimmeridge Bay; but Brandy Bay is hidden from both of ‘em, and coast guarding is pretty much of a dead letter these days.”

“And the shore gang picks it up–-“

“Under the same orders. It wouldn’t be too hard for Lasser to organize that. And then it goes out to the great unsuspecting public, nicely mixed up with any amount of genuine duty-paid legitimate liquor through the central warehouses of Lasser’s Wine Stores, Limited—who don’t know where it came from, any of the guys who handle it, but just take it as part of the day’s work. What’s that advertising line of theirs? ‘Butlers to the Nation.’ It’s not a bad line either, from the experience I’ve had of butlers.”

Peter lowered the level in his glass an inch further.

“Apart from what goes rustling around the limbs of the aristocracy from the salons of Brenda et Cie,” he remarked.

“Apart from that,” Simon agreed unemotionally. “But it all works out so beautifully that we ought to have been on to it months ago.”

“I should have been,” said Peter, “if you hadn’t got in the way. And now it’s all so simple. You keep on chasing the shore gang and finding bodies on the doorstep while I sit out on Gad Cliff with a telescope every night catching pneumonia and watching for the smuggling gang, and Hoppy puts on some lipstick and ankles up and down Bond Street looking for chiffon brassieres with bottles of whisky in them. I don’t know what happens about this fourth gang you’ve invented on the French side, but I suppose you can always find somebody else to keep track of them.” Peter drank deeply and looked around for a refill. “As you said just now it’s so childishly simple that it almost makes you howl.”

The Saint regarded him pityingly.

“I’ve always approved of these birds who want to strangle imbecile children at birth,” he said. “And now I think I shall send them a donation. You ineffable fathead—what do these assorted gangs amount to? It doesn’t matter if there are four of them or forty. They’re only stooges, like poor old Pargo. Knock the kingpin out, and they all fall apart. Take one man in, and they all go for the same ride. All we want is Lasser, and we can call it a day.”

“Just like poor old Pargo,” said Peter, sotto voce. He looked up from manipulating the siphon. “What happened to him, by the way?”

“We took him down to Lymington and borrowed a boat while the tide was going out. If he ever gets washed up again anywhere he’ll be another headache for Chief Inspector Teal; but we had to do something with him.”

“Probably that’s one reason why he was left here,” said Peter intelligently.

Simon was kindling the latest cigarette in a chain that had already filled an ash tray. He saw that it was burning evenly and crushed the preceding fag end into the heap of wreckage.

“That was one obvious motive—bodies being troublesome things to get rid of,” he said. “The other, of course, was pour encourager les autres. I’ve been expecting some more direct encouragement all day, but it hasn’t materialized yet. I don’t suppose it ‘11 be long now, though.”

Mr Uniatz, who had been silent for a long time except for intermittent glugging noises produced by the bottle beside him, stirred himself abruptly and consulted his watch with the earnest air of a martyr who realizes that he is next in line for the lions. His intrusion after such a long absence seemed so portentous that both Peter and the Saint turned towards him with what must have been a disconcerting expectancy. Mr Uniatz blinked at them with his nightmare features creased in the grooves of noble self-abnegation.

“Boss,” he said, with some embarrassment, “what’s de next train to London?”

“Train?” said the Saint blankly.

“Yes, boss. I t’ought you an’ Mr Quentin ‘d be busy, so ya wouldn’t wanta drive me dere, an’ dey ain’t no udder car–-“

The Saint studied him anxiously.

“You aren’t feeling ill or anything, are you?” he asked. “But you don’t have to worry about the ungodly giving us some more encouragement. Peter and I will hold your hand if there’s any rough stuff.”

“Encouragement?” repeated Mr Uniatz foggily. He shook his head, as one who was suddenly confronted with a hopelessly outlandish twist of thought. “I dunno, boss… . But ya said I gotta go to Bond Street an’ look for braseers wit’ bottles in dem. Dat’s okay wit’ me,” said Mr Uniatz, squaring his shoulders heroically, “but if any a dese dames t’ink I’m gettin’ fresh–-“

Simon readjusted himself hastily to the pace of a less volatile intellect.

“That’s all right, Hoppy,” he said reassuringly. “We’re putting that idea on the shelf for the moment. You just stick around with us and keep your Betsy ready.”

Mr Uniatz’s eyes lighted tentatively with the dawn of hope.

“You mean I don’t gotta go to London?”

“No.”

“Or–-“

“No.”

Hoppy drew a deep breath.

“Chees, boss,” he said, speaking from the heart, “dat’s great!”

His bottle glugged again expressively.

“We haven’t any other ideas,” Peter explained dis-hearteningly, “but that doesn’t matter.”

The Saint’s eyes mocked him with dancing pin points of silent laughter. During that day the Saint’s cold anger of the night before seemed to have worn off, although the inexorable pith of it was still perceptible in the fine-drawn core of steel that seemed to underlie his outward languor. But now it was masked by something more vital: the mad gay recklessness that came around him like a mantle of sunlight when the hunt was up and the fanfares of adventure were sounding out in the open.

“You’re wrong,” he said. “We’ve got a much better idea. I had a telegram this afternoon—it was phoned through from Lyndhurst just before you arrived. I’ve been saving it up for you.” He picked up the scrap of paper on which he had scribbled the message down. “It says: ‘Your car will be at the Broken Sword in Tyneham at nine-fifteen tonight.’ It isn’t signed, and anyhow it wouldn’t have mattered much who signed it. It didn’t originate from any of these assorted gangs we’ve been talking about—otherwise why be so very accurate about the time? It means that the master mind is taking a hand, just as I prophesied last night, and whatever happens he won’t be far away. It’s bait of course; and we’re going to bite!”

VIII

Simon wanted seventy-three to finish, and the babble of chaff and facetious comment died down through sporadic resurrections as he took over the darts and set his toe on the line. His first dart went in the treble nineteen; and the stillness lasted a couple of seconds after that before a roar of delight acknowledged the result of the mental arithmetic that had been working itself out in the heads of the onlookers. His second dart brushed the inside wire of the double eight on the wrong side as it went in; and the hush came down again, more breathless than before. Somebody in a corner bawled a second encouraging calculation, and the Saint smiled. Quite coolly and unhurriedly, as if he had no distracting thought in his mind, he balanced the third dart in his fingers, poised it and launched it at the board. It struck and stayed there—dead in the centre of the double four.

A huge burst of laughter and applause crashed through the silence like a breaking wave as he turned away; and his opponent, who had been pushed forward as the local champion, grinned under his grey moustache and said: “Well, zur, the beer’s on me.”

The Saint shook his head.

“No, it isn’t, George. Let’s have a round for everybody on me, because I’m going to have to leave you.”

He laid a ten-shilling note on the bar and nodded to the landlord as the patrons of the Broken Sword crowded up to moisten their parched throats. He glanced at his watch as he did so and saw that it showed sixteen minutes after nine. Zero hour had struck while he was taking his stand for those last three darts, but it had made no difference to the steadiness of his hand or the accuracy of his eye.

Even now it made no difference, and while he gathered up his change he was as much a part of the atmosphere of the small low-ceilinged bar as any of the rough, warm-hearted local habitues… . But his eyes were on the road outside the narrow leaded windows, where the twilight was folding soft grey veils under the trees; and while he was looking out there she arrived. His ears caught the familiar airy purr of the Hirondel through the clamour around him before it swept into view, and he saw the brightness of her golden hair behind the wheel without surprise as she slowed by. It was curious that he should have been thinking for the last hour in terms of “she”; but he had been expecting nothing else, and in that at least his instinct had been faultless.

The boisterous human fellowship of the Broken Sword was swallowed up in an abyss as he closed the door of the public bar behind him. As if he had been suddenly transported a thousand miles instead of merely over the breadth of a threshold he passed into a different world as he faced the quiet road outside—a world where strange and horrible things happened such as the men he had left behind him to their beer would never believe, a world where a man’s life hung on the flicker of an eyelid and the splitting of a second and where there was adventure of a keen, corrosive kind such as the simple heroes of mythology had never lived to see. The Saint’s eyes swept left and right before he stepped out of the shadow of the porch, but he saw nothing instantly threatening. Even so, he found some comfort in the knowledge that Peter Quentin and Hoppy Uniatz would be covering him from the ambush where he had posted them behind a clump of trees in the field over the way.

But none of that could have been read in his face or in the loose-limbed ease of his body as he sauntered over to the car. He smiled as he came up and saluted her with the faint mockery that was his fighting armour.

“It’s nice of you to bring the old boat back, darling. And she doesn’t look as if you’d bent her at all. There aren’t many women I’d trust her with, but you can borrow her again any time you want to. Just drop in and help yourself—but of course I don’t have to tell you to do that.”

The girl was almost as cool as he was. Only a hardened campaigner like the Saint would have detected the sharp edges of strain under the delicate contours of her face. She patted the steering wheel with one white-gloved hand.

“She’s nice,” she said. “The others wanted to run her over a cliff, but I said that would have been a sin. Besides, I had to see you anyway.”

“It’s something to know I’m worth saving a car for,” he murmured.

She studied him with a kind of speculative aloofness.

“I like you by daylight. I thought I should.”

He returned her survey with equal frankness. She wore a white linen skirt and a cobwebby white blouse, and the lines of her figure were as delicious as he had thought they would be. It would have been easy, effortless, to surrender completely to the blood-quickening enchantment of her physical presence. But between them also was the ghostly presence of Pargo; and a chilling recollection of Pargo’s livid distorted face passed before the Saint’s eyes as he smiled at her.

“You look pretty good yourself, Brenda,” he remarked. “Perhaps it’s because that outfit looks a lot more like Bond Street than what you had on last night.”

Her poise was momentarily shaken.

“How did you–-“

“I’m a detective too,” said the Saint gravely. “Only I keep it a secret.”

She unlatched the door and swung out her long slender legs. As she was doing so a sleek black sedan swam round the nearest bend, slowing up, and turned in towards the front of the pub. The Saint’s right hand stayed in his coat pocket, and his eyes were chips of ice for an instant before the driver got out unconcernedly as the car stopped and walked across to the entrance of the bar. The Saint could almost have laughed at himself but not quite; those reactions were too solidly founded on probabilities to be wholly humorous, and he was still waiting for the purpose of their meeting to be revealed.

The girl didn’t seem to have noticed anything. She straightened up as her feet touched the road, flawless as a white statue, with the same impenetrable aloofness. She said: “There’s your car. Would you like to take it and drive away? A long way away—to the north of Scotland or Timbuktu or anywhere. At least far enough for you to forget that any of this ever happened.”

“The world is so small,” Simon pointed out unhappily. “Twelve thousand miles is about the farthest you can get from anything, and that’s not very far in these days of high-speed transport. Besides, I don’t know that I want to forget. We’ve still got that date for a stroll in the moonlight–-“

“I’m not joking,” she said impatiently. “And I haven’t got much time. The point is, I found out your name last night, but I didn’t know who you were. I suppose I haven’t been around enough in that kind of society. But the others knew.”

“Look at the advantages of a cosmopolitan education,” he observed. “There are more things in this cockeyed world than Bond Street–-“