Brighter Buccaneer (9 page)

She came towards the Saint on her way to the door. He saw that her eyes were faintly rimmed with red, but he liked the steady set of her mouth. Her steps were a little uncertain; as she reached his table she swayed and brushed against it, slopping over a few drops from a newly-filled wine-glass.

“I’m awfully sorry,” she said in a low voice.

The Saint snapped a match between his fingers, and held her eyes.

“I saw what happened-let me get you a taxi.”

He stood up and came around the table while she started to protest. He led her up the stairs and through the lobby into the street.

“Really-it’s awfully nice of you to bother–”

“To tell you the truth,” murmured the Saint, “I have met people with a better taste in barons.”

The commissionaire hailed a taxi at the Saint’s nod, and the girl gave an address in St. John’s Wood. Simon allowed her to thank him again, and coolly followed her in before the commissionaire closed the door. The taxi pulled out from the kerb before she could speak.

“Don’t worry,” said the Saint. “I was just feeling like a breath of fresh air, and my intentions are fairly honourable. I should probably have been obliged to smite your Baron on the nose if you hadn’t left him when you did. Here-have a cigarette. It’ll make you feel better.”

The girl took a smoke from his case. They were held up a few yards farther on, in Piccadilly; and suddenly the door of the taxi was flung open and a breathless man in a double-breasted dinner-jacket appeared in the aperture.

“Pardon, madame-I did not sink I should catch you. It is yours, isn’t it?”

He held up a small drop ear-ring; and as he turned his head Simon recognized him as a solitary diner from a table adjoining his own.

“Oh!” The girl sat up, biting her lip. “Thank you-thank you so much —”

“Il n’y a pas de quoi, madame” said the man happily. “I see it fall and I run after you, but always you’re too quick. Now it’s all right. I am content. Madame, you permit me to say you are a brave woman? I also saw everysing. Zat Baron —”

All at once the girl hid her face in her hands.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” she said chokingly. “You’re all so sweet … Oh, my God! If only I could kill him! He deserves to be killed. He deserves to lose his beastly bracelet. I’d steal it myself —”

“Ah, but then you would be in prison, madame —”

“Oh, it’d be easy enough. It’s on the ground floor.-you’d only have to break open the desk. He doesn’t believe in burglar-alarms. He’s so sure of himself. But I’d show him. I’d make him pay!”

She turned away to the corner and sobbed hysterically.

Simon glanced at the little Frenchman.

“Elle se trouvera mieux chez elle,” he said; and the other nodded sympathetically and closed the door.

The taxi drew away in a wedge of traffic and turned up Regent Street. Simon sat back in his corner and let the girl have her cry. It was the best possible thing for her; and he could have said nothing helpful.

They had a practically clear run through to St. John’s Wood; and the girl recovered a little as they neared their destination. She wiped her eyes and took out a microscopic powder puff, with the unalterable vanity of women.

“You must think I’m a fool,” she said, as the taxi slowed up. “Perhaps I am. But no one else can understand.”

“I don’t mind,” said the Saint.

The cab stopped, and he leaned across her to open the door. Her face was within two inches of his, and the Saint required all adventures to be complete. In his philosophy, knight-errantry had its own time-honoured rewards.

His lips touched hers unexpectedly; and then in a flash, with a soft laugh, he was out of the taxi. She walked past him and went up the steps of the house without looking back.

Simon rode back jubilantly to the Mayfair, and found his lady and Peter Quentin patiently ordering more coffee. The Baron had already left.

“I saw you leaving with the blonde Venus,” said Peter enviously. “How on earth did you work it?”

“Is this a new romance?” smiled Patricia.

“You want to be careful of these Barons,” said Peter. “Next thing you know, you’ll have a couple of his pals clicking their heels at you and inviting you to meet him in Hyde Park at dawn.”

The Saint calmly annexed Peter Quentin’s liqueur and tilted his chair backwards. Over the rim of his glass he exchanged bows with the chivalrous Frenchman at the adjoining table, who was paying his bill and preparing to leave; and then he surveyed the other two with a lazily reckless glint in his eye that could have only one meaning.

“Let’s, go home,” he said.

They sauntered down Piccadilly to the block where the Saint’s flat was situated; and there the Saint doffed his hat with a flourish, and kissed Patricia’s hand.

“Lady, be good. Peter and I have a date to watch the moon rising over the Warrington waterworks.”

In the same silence two immaculately-dressed young men sauntered on to the garage where the Saint kept his car. Nothing was said until one of them was at the wheel, with the other beside him, and the great silver Hirondel was humming smoothly past Hyde Park Corner. Then the fair-haired one spoke.

“Campden Hill, I suppose?”

“You said it,” murmured the Saint. “Baron von Dortvenn has asked for it once too often.”

He drove past the house for which Baron von Dortvenn had exchanged the schloss that was doubtless his more natural background. It was a gaunt Victorian edifice, standing apart from the adjacent houses in what for London was an unusually large garden, surrounded by a six-foot brick wall topped by iron spikes. As far as the Saint could see, it was in darkness; but he was not really concerned to know whether the Baron had come home or whether he had passed on to seek a more amenable candidate for his favours in one of the few night clubs that the police had not yet closed down. Simon Templar was out for justice, and he could not find his opportunity too soon.

Twenty yards beyond the house he disengaged the gear lever and swung himself out while the car was coasting to a standstill. It was then only half past eleven, but the road was temporarily deserted.

“Turn the bus round, Peter, and pretend to be tinkering with the engine. Hop back into it at the first sounds of any excitement, and be on your toes for a quick getaway. I know it’s bad technique to plunge into a burglary without getting the lie of the land first, but I shall sleep like a child tonight if I have the bracelet of Charlemagne under my mattress.”

“You aren’t going in alone,” said Peter Quentin firmly.

He had the door on his side of the car open; but the Saint caught his shoulder.

“I am, old lad. I’m not making a fully-fledged felon of you sooner than I can help-and if we were both inside there’d be no one to cover the retreat if the Baron’s as hot as he tells the world.”

His tone forbade argument. There was a quietly metallic timbre in it that would have told any listener that this was the Saint’s own private picnic. And the Saint smiled. He punched Peter Quentin gently in the biceps, and was gone.

The big iron gates that gave entrance to the garden were locked-he discovered that at the first touch. He went on a few yards and hooked his fingers over the top of the wall. One quick springy heave, and he was on top of the wall, clambering gingerly over the spikes. As he did so he glanced towards the house, and saw a wisp of black shadow detach itself from the neighbourhood of a ground-floor window and flint soundlessly across a strip of lawn into the cover of a clump of laurels.

The Saint dropped inside the garden on his toes, and stood there swiftly knotting a handkerchief over the lower part of his face. The set of his lips was a trifle grim. Someone else was also on the job that night-he had only just arrived in time.

He slipped along the side of a hedge towards the spot where the black shadow had disappeared; but he had underrated the first intruder’s power of silent movement. There was a sudden scuff of shoes on the turf behind him, and the Saint swerved and ducked like lightning. Something whizzed past his head and struck his shoulder a numbing blow: he shot out an arm and grabbed hold of a coat, jerking his assailant towards him. His left hand felt for the man’s throat.

It was all over very quickly, without any noise. Simon lowered the unconscious man to the ground, and flashed the dimmed beam of a tiny pocket torch on his face. A black mask covered it-Simon whipped it off and saw the sallow face of the Frenchman who had followed him with the unfortunate girl’s earring.

The Saint snapped off his flashlight and straightened up with his mouth pursed in a noiseless whistle that widened into a smile. Verily, he was having a night out …

He glided across the lawn to the nearest window, feeling around for the catch with a thin knife-blade. In three seconds it gave way, and he slid up the sash and climbed nimbly over the sill. His feet actually landed on the baronial desk. The top drawer was locked: he squeezed a fine steel claw in above the lock and levered adroitly. The drawer burst open with a crash, and the beam of his torch probed its interior. Almost the first thing he saw was a heavy circlet of dull yellow, which caught the light from a hundred crimson facets studded over its surface. Simon picked it up and shoved it into his pocket. Its great weight dragged his coat all over on one side.

And at that moment all the lights in the room went on.

The Saint whirled around.

He looked into the single black eye of an automatic held in the hand of Baron von Dortvenn himself. On either side of the Baron was a heavily-built, hard-faced man.

“So you’re the Fox?” said the Baron genially.

Simon thanked heaven for the handkerchief that covered his face. The two hard-faced men were advancing towards him, and one of them jingled a pair of handcuffs.

“On the contrary,” said the Saint, “I’m the Bishop of Bootle and Upper Tooting.”

He held out his wrists resignedly. For a moment the man with the handcuffs was between him and the Baron’s automatic, and the Saint took his chance. His left whizzed round in a terrific hook that smacked cleanly to its mark on the side of the man’s jaw, and Simon leapt on to the desk. He went through the window in a flying dive, somersaulted over his hands, and was on his feet again in an instant.

He sprinted across the lawn and went over the wall like a cat. A whistle screamed into the night behind him, and he saw Peter Quentin tumble into the car as he dropped down to the pavement. Simon jumped for the Hirondel as it streaked past, and fell over the side into the seat beside the driver.

“Give her the gun,” he ordered briefly, “and dodge as you’ve never dodged before. I think they’ll be after us.”

“What happened?” asked Peter Quentin; and the Saint unfastened the handkerchief from his face and grinned.

“It looks like they were waiting for someone,” he said.

It took twenty minutes of brilliant driving to satisfy the Saint that they were safe from any possible pursuit. On the way Simon took the heavy jewelled armlet from his pocket and gazed at it lovingly under one of the dashboard lamps.

“That’s one thing the Fox didn’t put over,” he said cryptically.

He was breakfasting off bacon and eggs the next morning at eleven o’clock when Peter Quentin walked in. Peter carried a morning paper, which he tossed into the Saint’s lap.

“There’s something for your ‘Oh, yeah?’ album,” he said grimly.

Simon poured out a cup of coffee.

“What is it-some more intelligent utterances by Cabinet Ministers?”

“You’d better read it,” said Peter. “It looks as if several people made mistakes last night.”

Simon Templar picked up the paper and started at the double-column splash.

“THE FOX” CAPTURED
C.I.D. WAKES UP
BRILLIANT COUP IN KENSINGTON

ONE OF THE CLEVEREST STRATAGEMS in the history of criminal detection achieved its object at eleven-thirty last night with the arrest of Jean-Baptiste Arvaille, alleged to be the famous jewel thief known as “The Fox.”

Arvaille will be charged at the police court this morning with a series of audacious robberies totalling over Ł70,000.

It will be told how Inspector Henderson, of Scotland Yard, assisted by a woman member of the Special Branch, posed as “Baron von Dortvenn” and baited the trap with a mythical “bracelet of Charlemagne” which he was stated to have brought to England for the International Jewellery Exhibition.

The plot owed much of its success to the cooperation of the Press, which gave the fullest possible publicity to the “Baron’s” arrival.

It was stated in this newspaper yesterday that the “bracelet of Charlemagne” was a circle of gold thickly encrusted with rubies.

In actual fact it is made of lead, thinly plated with gold, and the stones in it are worthless imitations. Workmen sworn to secrecy created it specially for Inspector Henderson’s use.

Simon Templar read through the whole detailed story. After which he was speechless for some time..

And then he smiled.

“Oh, well,” he said, “it isn’t everyone who can say he’s kissed a woman policeman.”

1. The Brass Buddha
   

“HAVE another drink,” said Ambrose Grange.

He was a man with a lot to say, but that was his theme song. He had used it so many times during the course of that evening that Simon Templar had begun to wonder whether Sir Ambrose imagined he had invented a new and extraordinarily subtle philosophy, and was patiently plugging it at intervals until his audience grasped the point. It bobbed up along the line of his conversation like vitamins in a food reformer’s menu. Tapping resources which seemed inexhaustible, he delved into the kit-bag of memory for reminiscences and into his trouser pockets for the price of beer; and the Saint obliged him by absorbing both with equal courtesy.

“Yes, sir,” resumed Sir Ambrose, when their glasses had been refilled. “Business is business. That is my motto, and it always will be. If you happen to know that something is valuable, and the other fellow doesn’t, you have every right to buy it from him at his price without disclosing your knowledge. He gets what he thinks is a fair price, you get your profit, and you’re both satisfied. Isn’t that what goes on every day on the Stock Exchange? If you receive inside information that certain shares are going to rise, you buy as many as you can. You probably never meet the man who sells them to you, but that doesn’t alter the fact of what you’re doing. You’re deliberately taking advantage of your knowledge to purchase something for a fraction of its value, and it never occurs to you that you ought to tell the seller that if he held on to his shares for another week he could make all the profit for himself.”