The Saint in Action (8 page)

Quintana looked at him with the raised eyebrows of faintly contemptuous reproach, and then he got up from the desk and went to the safe and unlocked it. He came back with a heavy sheaf of bank notes bound together with an elastic band and threw it down on the blotter in front of him as he sat down again.

“There is the money. You can take it away with you as soon as the formalities are complete. And for your own sake it would be better to complete them quickly. That is a condition I cannot argue about. Either you will accept your price on my terms, or you will be shot before your friends communicate with Scotland Yard. In that case the trouble we shall be caused will be of no benefit to you. Choose for yourself.”

He spread out his arms in a suave diplomatist’s bow, gargled his tonsils and spat gracefully at the porcelain cuspidor beside the desk.

The Saint trimmed his cigarette end in an ash tray.

An immense calm had suddenly come over him, in strange contrast to the tension he had been under before. Now that his questions had been answered, everything had been smoothed out into a simplicity in which tension had no place. His bluff had gone over—up to a point. But Quintana’s answer was complete and unarguable. Simon knew that it was a lie, that Quintana had no intention of keeping his side of the bargain, that he never meant to hand over the money in front of him, that to telephone the others to come over and sign fabulous undertakings would only be leading them into the same trap that he himself was in. But he also knew equally well that if he rejected the condition he would be shot without mercy—and that Quintana might get away with it. It was a trap that he was expected to walk into like the greenest of greenhorns; and yet to stand back and announce that he had heard better fairy tales at his nurse’s knee would merely be making the preliminary arrangements for his own funeral service.

“You are lucky to get your price so easily,” whined Urivetzky.

“The conditions are only reasonable,” said Perez.

Simon looked from one to the other. They had grasped the trend of Quintana’s strategy as quickly as he had himself, and they were hunched forward, taut with eagerness to see how he would respond. And the Saint knew that this was one occasion when his fluent tongue would take him no further—when the only response that would save his life would be the response they wanted. How long even that would save his life for was another matter, but the alternatives were instant and inexorable. They could be read like a book in the hollow-eyed intentness of Urivetzky’s skull-life face and the savage vindictiveness of Perez’s stare.

The Saint smiled.

“Why, yes,” he agreed sappily. “That seems fair enough.”

It was as if an actual physical pressure had been released from the room. The others drew back imperceptibly, and the air seemed to lighten, although the claws were still there.

Quintana opened a drawer of the desk and took out a telephone.

“This is a private line which cannot be traced,” he said. “I am telling you that in case you should have any idea of going back on your bargain.”

“Why should I?” Simon enquired guilelessly. “I want that money too much.”

“I am only warning you. If in the course of this conversation you should say anything which might make us suspect that you were trying to evade our agreement you will be killed at once. If you have no intention of double-crossing us the warning can do you no harm.”

He pushed the telephone across the desk, and Simon picked up the receiver.

Without a shadow of hesitation he dialled the private number of Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal.

IX

The only thing left was to pray that Teal would be there. Simon glanced at his watch while he waited for the connection. Mr Teal was not a man who had many diversions outside his job, and at that hour he should have been peacefully installed beside his hearth, chewing spearmint and doing whatever homely things chief inspectors did when they were off duty. And while the Saint was holding his breath the answer, in a familiar sleepy voice, came on the line.

“Hullo.”

“Hullo,” said Simon. “This is the Saint.”

There was a moment’s pause.

“Well, what do you want?” Teal asked nastily.

“I’m okay,” said the Saint. “Can I speak to Patricia?”

“She’s not here.”

Simon took a pull at his cigarette.

“Oh, hullo, Pat,” he said. “How are you?”

“I tell you she isn’t here,” yowled the detective. “Why should she be? I’ve got enough to do–-“

“I’m fine, darling,” said the Saint. “I’m with Quin-tana now.”

“Who?”

“Luis Quintana … at 319 Cambridge Square.”

“Look here,” Teal said cholerically, “if this is another of your ideas of a joke–-“

“I’ve talked things over with him,” said the Saint, “and he’s ready to do business. I’ve told him that we’ll keep everything quiet—about Urivetzky being alive, and about those forged American short-term loan bearer bonds, and about Perez murdering Ingleston— all for forty thousand pounds cash. It seems fair enough to me if it’s all right with the rest of you.”

There was another silence for a second or two, and then Teal said in a different voice: “Are you talking to me?”

“Yes, darling,” said the Saint. “I’m in his study now, and he’s ready to hand over the money at once. There’s only one condition. He knows that you know all about these things, and he wants you all to come over and sign an undertaking to keep your mouths shut as well as mine. I guess we’ll have to agree to that.”

“You want me to come over to 319 Cambridge Square?” said Teal slowly.

“Yes, Pat. At once. Quintana insists on it, and I can’t argue with him.”

“Shall I bring some help?”

“Yes, bring the others. He wants you all to sign. You needn’t send your names in—they’ll be expecting you. Will you come on over?”

“They’ve got a gun on you, I suppose,” Teal said intelligently.

“That’s the idea,” said the Saint. “As quick as you can, darling. ‘Bye.”

He dropped the microphone back and pushed the telephone away with a smile of satisfaction.

“They’ll be here in a few minutes,” he announced.

Urivetzky unlocked his fingers and leaned back; and Perez, who had sat down on the arm of the same chair, crossed his legs and took out a cigarette. Quin-tana nodded and put his gun down on the desk where it was still within easy reach. Every one of their individual reactions held an unspoken triumph that would have shrieked aloud its confirmation of the Saint’s deductions—if he had wanted any confirmation. They were like three spiders waiting for the entrance of the flies.

None of them spoke. An atmosphere of guarded relaxation settled upon the scene, in which they waited in savoury anticipation for the logical outcome of their own ingenuity.

The Saint himself was not reluctant to be spared the trouble of making conversation. At ease in his chair, with an outward confidence and equanimity that was even more convincing than theirs, with his head thrown back so that he could build intermittent smoke-ring patterns towards the ceiling, he watched in his imagination the machinery that his telephone call had set in motion.

Now Teal was hanging up the receiver after another telephone call. Now he would be kicking off his carpet slippers and going quietly frantic over the obstinacy of his boot laces. And over in the gloomy soot-grimed building on the Embankment that was called Scotland Yard there would be a suppressed crescendo of traffic ir certain bare echoing corridors, and big heavy-footed men would be buttoning their prosaic and respectable coats and reaching down their prosaic and respectable hats; and a car or two would start up and swing round in the courtyard and stand there unexcitedly ticking over; and a man would hurriedly finish his beer in the canteen and stump up the stairs. Perhaps in his study in Hampstead an assistant commissioner would be frowning over the telephone and fiddling with his moustache and giving counsel in a worried Oxonian bleat. “Well, I don’t know … Yes, but … ticklish business, you know … international complications … Home Secretary … Foreign Office … Yes, I know, got to do something, but … Bonds? Forgery? Murder? … I don’t know . . discretion … unofficial … tact … Well, for God’s sake be careful …” And Teal would be waiting, fidgeting on his doorstep, till the cars drove up and he stepped in with a curt businesslike greeting and they went on, threading rapidly through the traffic, filled with stolid, unromantic, uncommunicative men. “Your policemen are wonderful.” Now they would be well on their way—it wouldn’t take them long to get to Cambridge Square via the modest lodgings in Victoria where Teal had his home. All these things happening in London between the drab narrow streets under the pulse of the city while seekers after excitement crowded into movie theatres and sleek men and shrill women danced on overcrowded floors and smug or frustrated nonentities paced under the bright lights or hurried through quiet squares. All this happening under the deep monotonous murmur of London which penetrated even through closed windows and solid walls, a continuous thrum of life of which one would be unaware unless it stopped, out of which an isolated squeal of brakes or the toot of a passing horn close by came sometimes like an abrupt reminder of its far-spread reality… .

The time passed so quickly, Simon thought, and stole another glance at his watch. At any moment now they would be here. And then there would be trouble for himself, whoever else was in it. He had still been guilty of burglary, and there were several items of information which he had condoned or concealed. And on the desk in front of him there were still forty thousand pounds in ready cash, which any efficiently organized buccaneering concern could have used.

He had done the only thing he could have done, in the circumstances. And Chief Inspector Teal, not being completely solid ivory above the bowler hatbrim, had grasped enough of the idea to save the situation, as the Saint had known he would. But it didn’t end there.

Even at that moment, probably, Teal was gloating over the fact that for the first time in his life the Saint had had to appeal to him and the majesty of the Law for help; and he was doubtless elaborating in his mind the various sarcastic comments with which he would rub home the unpleasantness that could be visited on the Saint impartially with any other malefactors who might be collected at the same time. On that visitation at least the assistant commissioner must have been insistent—if Mr Teal needed any encouragement.

But the Saint had done what Quintana wanted. And after he had done it the certainty of success had had its own demoralizing effect on the opposition. The’ sharp edge of vigilance on which Simon had felt his life balancing had been dulled—little enough, he knew, but with a subtle definiteness.

Quintana was rocking his swivel chair backwards and forwards, his hands supporting him on the edge of the desk. Urivetzky was lounging back as the Saint was, his hands folded and his deep-set eyes lost in thought. Perez was sprawling, his cigarette drooping limply from the corner of his mouth, his hands in his pockets. But in one of those same pockets, Simon knew, was a loaded automatic.

And at that moment in a complete silence the Saint heard the soft pad of footsteps outside that suddenly broke into the sharp rap of knuckles on the door.

It was one of the servants who looked in in answer to Quintana’s summons.

“There are some people downstairs,” he said in Spanish. “They will give no names, but they say you are expecting them.”

“How many?” asked Quintana without ceasing his measured rocking in his chair.

“Four.”

“Let them come up.”

The tension was back in the room, under the surface, evident in the slight motions which Urivetzky and Perez made. Only the Saint did not stir from his reclining position; but his left hand, on the arm of the chair, imperceptibly tested the effort that would be necessary to raise him quickly out of it.

There was only one light in the room, he noted—a single bulb hung from the ceiling under a painted parchment shade. As he was lying back he could see under the shade straight to the bulb beneath.

Quintana turned to Perez.

“Search them before they come in,” he said.

Perez’s flat eyes hid a gleam of approval. He got up and slouched through the door as other footsteps approached along the passage.

Quintana looked at the Saint.

“A formality,” he said, “but we must be careful. There are only three of us.”

There were only two of them now, to be exact; and Quintana was still balanced with his fingers against the edge of the desk, in a position where it would take him a fraction of a second longer to recover himself than if he had been sitting up. The last vital difference in the odds had been adjusted when Perez left the room… .

The Saint seemed to lounge even more lazily, while his left hand took a firmer grip of the arm of his chair. He waved his cigarette case back aimlessly, so that it was near his ear.

“Of course,” he said very clearly, “I’m not worried about that. The only thing I’m bothered about is this bloke Graham. You know, the police might think he murdered Ingleston. We know that Perez did it–-“

“I should hardly call it murder,” answered Quintana, and although he was taking no pains to clarify his voice, it must have been lucidly audible through the open door. “Ingleston was a traitor, and traitors are executed. Perez was simply carrying out the sentence of the Fascist government as I interpreted it.”

“That’s all I wanted to know,” said the Saint; and with a crisp jerk of his wrist he sent his cigarette case spinning diagonally upwards like a whirling shaft of silver, straight at the single light over the desk.

The plop of the exploding bulb thudded like a gunshot into the silence, and after it there was a flash of darkness, complete and blinding, before the dim quantity of light filtering through from the corridor outside could take effect on unadjusted eyes. And in that interval of darkness the Saint hurled himself out of his chair like a living thunderbolt.

He reached the bundle of bank notes on the desk as his cigarette case went on to crash against the far wall, and they were in his pocket before it clattered to the floor. Quintana went first for his gun, but he was off balance, he had to take weight off his hands before they could grab, and that lost him a fraction of a second in which everything was lost. As Quintana raised the automatic Simon went on with the same continuous hurtling movement that had swept the sheaf of money into his pocket, but at this stage all the power and impetus of the movement was gathered to a focal point in his left fist. The fist took Quintana squarely and centrally on the end of his nose, with every ounce of the Saint’s flying bone and muscle behind it; something seemed to crumple like an eggshell, and Simon felt his knuckles sog into warm sticky pulp.