The Saint Meets His Match (35 page)

The Saint smiled.

“Did Cullis see the man who bust his desk?”

“He did.”
. “Is he certain he could identify him?”

“Fairly certain.”

“Then,” said the
Saint, “you might fetch him along
and
ask him to identify me.”

Teal shook his head.

“Oh, no,” he
said. “Yours weren’t the only footprints. And the other set of footprints
are the ones which Mr.
Cullis can identify.”

Simon raised Saintly
eyebrows.

“Then why bother
me?”

“I just had an
idea.”

“Headlines in the
Daily Scream,”
murmured
the Saint
irreverently, ” ‘Scotland
Yard a Hive of First-class Brains!’
But
you must take care you don’t get too many of these
ideas, Claud. I don’t know how far your skull will
stretch, but I shouldn’t think it would hold more than
two at a time… . Now is that all you’ve got to
say,
or do you want to charge me with
anything?”

“Not yet,” said
Teal. “I just wanted to see whether I was right or not.”

“And now you either
know or you don’t,” said the
Saint.

He picked up a small black
notebook from the table
and stuffed it into the
detective’s breast pocket.

“You can have
that,” he said. “It’s an exact transcrip
tion
of a book that the late lamented Essenden lost in
Paris.
You may have heard the story. Personally decoded
and
annotated by Simon Templar. There are about twen
ty-five
names and addresses there, with full records and enough evidence to hang
twenty-five archangels—all the
main squeezes in the organization that
Waldstein and
Essenden were running. You
may have it with my bless
ing, Claud.
I’d have dealt with it myself once, but life
is getting too short for these diversions now. Take it home
with
you, old dear, and don’t tell anyone how you got it;
and if you play your cards astutely you may make some
mug
believe you always were a real detective, after all.
And I’m going back to bed.”

Teal followed him into the
bedroom.

“Templar,” said
Teal drowsily, “are you still sure it
wouldn’t be worth your
while to come across?’ “

“Quite sure,”
said the Saint, closing his eyes.

Teal masticated
thoughtfully.
         

“You’re taking on a
lot,” he said. “You’ve been lucky so far, but that doesn’t say it’s
going on for ever. And
sooner or later, if you keep on this way,
you’re going to
find a big hunk of trouble
waiting for you round the
corner. I’m
not looking forward to anything like that
happening. I’ll admit you’ve scored off me more than
once, but I’m ready to call that quits if you
are.”

“Thanks,”
yawned the Saint. “And now do you mind
shutting
your face?”

“You’re clever,” said Teal, “but
there are other bright
people in the world
besides you, and——
”

“I know,”
drawled the Saint. “You’re a bright boy
yourself.
That bit of sleuthing over the mud in the car
was
real hot dog. I’ll send the chief commissioner an unsolicited testimonial to
your efficiency one day. Good
night.”

2

Teal departed gloomily.

He was very busy for the
rest of the day with other
business, but that did not
prevent him taking frequent
peeps at the notebook
which the Saint had pressed upon
him. The entries were
almost shockingly transparent;
and Teal did not take
twenty minutes to realize that
that little book placed in
his pudgy hands all the loose
threads of an organization
that had been baffling him on
and off for years. But the
realization did not uplift his
soul as much as it might
have done. He knew quite
well that once upon a time
the contents of that book
would, as Simon Templar
had frankly admitted, have
remained the private
property of the same gentleman un
der his
better-known title of the Saint, and there would
have
been twenty-five more mysterious deaths or disappearances, heralded by the
familiar trade-mark, to weed
some more of the thinning
hairs from Chief Inspector
Teal’s round pate. The
Saint’s own statement, that the
old game had lost its
charm, and that he was on the eve of another of his perennial lapses into
virtue, Teal was
inclined to regard skeptically. It
seemed almost too good to be true; and Teal had never been called an
incorrigible
optimist.

He waded through his
divers affairs with a queer cer
tainty that something was
shortly going to shatter the comparative peace of the past few days; and in
this surmise he was perfectly right.

It was not until after
dinner that he returned to Scot
land Yard; but by that time
he had formed a distinct
resolve, and he had not
been in the building five minutes
before he was asking
to see the chief commissioner.

The answer which he
received, however, was not what he expected.

“The chief
commissioner has not been in all day.”

Teal raised his eyebrows.
He happened to know that
the chief commissioner had
had a particular piece of
work to do that day and also a number of
appointments;
and he knew that his chief’s
habits were as regular as
clockwork.

“Has he sent any
message?”
           

“No, sir. We’ve heard
nothing of him since he left
yesterday evening.”
    

That was less like the
chief commissioner than any
thing, to disappear without
a word to anyone; and Teal
was a rather puzzled man
as he made his way to his little
office overlooking the
Embankment.

He worked there until ten
o’clock; for in spite of the
air of massive boredom
which he was never without, he was, as a matter of fact, absorbed in his
profession, and
regular office hours meant nothing to
him when he was
on a case. In this he was totally
different from his immediate superior, Mr. Cullis, who always grudged giving
one
minute more of his time than the state purchased with
his salary.

He prepared to leave at
last, however, and as he
emerged into the corridor a hurrying constable
collided
with him violently.

A buff envelope was knocked
out of the man’s hand by the impact, and Teal good-humouredly stooped to
pick it up. As he did so he noticed the address.

“Hasn’t Mr. Cullis
gone home?” he inquired.

“No, sir. He’s still
in his room.”

“Can you wait half a
minute?”

Without waiting for a reply
Teal went back into his
office, taking the
telegram with him. Under the consta
ble’s goggling eyes
Teal carefully sponged the back of
the envelope and
eased up the flap with his paper knife.
Then
he extracted the form and read the message.

He actually stopped
maltreating a well-worn pellet
of spearmint as he read.

Then, with ponderous
deliberation, he refolded the
form and replaced it in the
envelope, freshened up the
gum on the flap from a pot
of paste on his desk, and
dried his handiwork
carefully before the gas fire.

He returned the telegram
to the messenger.

“Now you can take
that on to Mr. Cullis,” he said.
“But you
needn’t mention my name.”

“No, sir.”

The vestige of a smile
twitched at Teal’s mouth as
the constable departed. It
was perhaps fortunate for
him that the messenger owed a recent promotion
entirely
to Teal’s good offices, and might
therefore be safely count
ed upon to
obey his somewhat eccentric injunction.

The messenger had closed
the door behind him; but
as his footsteps died away along the corridor,
Teal rose
silently and opened the door
again. Turning out the
light he waited
close by the switch, listening patiently.

He heard the constable
return and go down the stairs, and five minutes later he heard a different
footfall com
ing towards him.

Cullis’s office was at
the far end of the same corridor, and Teal stepped silently out of his darkened
doorway as
the assistant commissioner reached it.

“Heavens, you gave me a start!” said
Cullis peevishly.
“I wish you wouldn’t
creep about in those rubber soles.”

“Regulation boots, sir,” said Teal
phlegmatically, fall
ing into step beside
the assistant commissioner. “Get the
order changed, and I’ll get the rubbers taken off. Nice day it’s been
to-day, hasn’t it?”

Cullis was not disposed
to discuss the weather. He left
Teal abruptly at the foot
of the stairs, and Teal gazed
at his departing back with
an expressionless face. Then
he turned and went through
the passage into Cannon
Row police station and
found the man he was wanting
to see.

“What’s the news about Templar?” he
asked. “Has he
slipped you again?”

The plain-clothes man
nodded ruefully.

“Same as he always does, Mr.
Teal.”
  
.

“When was this?”

“About four o’clock,
sir.”

“And hasn’t been back
since?”

“He hadn’t up till half-past nine, when I
was relieved.”

Teal glared at him.

“Then why the blue
monkeys didn’t you let me know
before?”

“Chiefly because you
weren’t in, Mr. Teal,” said the
man truthfully.

Teal turned on his heel
and went back into Scotland
Yard, and was lucky enough
to catch the day telephone operator, who was just going home.

“They tell me there’s
been no message from the chief
today,” said Teal.
“But are you certain he didn’t speak
to
anyone on the phone?”

“Yes, Mr. Teal, he
did. He spoke to Mr. Cullis about
six o’clock. The
lines got crossed while I was putting
somebody else
through, as a matter of fact, and I heard
him
tell Mr. Cullis to stay on tonight until the chief
sent
him word again.”

Teal nodded.

“Thanks. That’s all I
wanted to know. Good-night.”

“Good-night, sir.”

Teal changed his mind
about going home himself. In
stead, he returned to his
office, took off his overcoat again,
and sat down in the
dark with a fresh piece of gum.

The departure of Mr.
Assistant Commissioner Cullis
from his usual routine was
explained, even if nothing else
was. But there were still
far too many things about which
Mr. Teal was in the dark;
and he meditated those things ,
for an hour and a half before light dawned on
him in a
blinding flash that made him shoot
out of his chair as if he had been stung.

A moment afterwards he
was tearing through a timetable. And he swore fluently when he found that he
had
missed the last train to the place where he wanted to
go.

He descended the stairs
at a surprising speed for a man
of his languid appearance,
and a few seconds later he was barking at the first man he met.

“Get me a fast Flying
Squad car,” he said, “and a
couple of men with
it. And they’d better be armed!”

The car and the men were
outside the Yard within five
minutes, and Teal climbed
in.

He gave the name of an
obscure village in Surrey, and
fumed at the delay while
the driver consulted a map.

“It’s near Guildford,
anyway,” snapped Teal. “Make
for
Guildford, and I’ll look out the rest while we’re
going
along.”

He knew the place was near
Guildford, because that was where the telegram which he had intercepted had
been handed in; and the prosaic words on the tape past
ed across the Inland Telegraph form seemed to stand
out in the blackness in letters of fire when he closed his
eyes, although they merely conveyed information which
should not have been in the least disturbing to a man of
Teal’s experience.