The Saint vs Scotland Yard (24 page)

“I don’t.”

“Then what are you thinking?”

The Saint lighted his second cigarette, and blew a streamer
of smoke towards the ceiling.
His blue eyes laughed.

“I think,” he answered carefully, “that Claud Eustace is
just
getting set for his come-back. I think he’s just finished nursing
the flea I
shot into his ear last time so tenderly that it’s now big and bloodthirsty
enough to annihilate anything smaller
than an elephant—and maybe that plus.
And I’m darned sure
that if we lie low much longer, Claud Eustace will be
getting ideas into his head, which would be very bad for him indeed.”

“But——
”

“There are,” said the Saint, “no buts. I had a look at my
pass-book
yesterday, and it seems to be one of the eternal
verities of this
uncertain life that I could this day write a
cheque for ninety-six
thousand, two hundred and forty-seven
pounds, eleven shillings, and
fourpence—
and
have it
honoured. Which is very nice, but just not
quite nice enough.
When I started this racket, I promised myself I wasn’t
coming
out with one penny less than a hundred thousand pounds. I
didn’t say
I’d come out even then, but I did think that when I
reached that figure I
might sit down for a bit and consider the
possible advantages of
respectability. And I feel that the time
is getting ripe for
me to have that think.”

This was after a certain breakfast. Half a dozen volumes
might be
written around nothing else but those after-break
fast s
é
ances in Upper Berkeley Mews. They occupied most of
the early afternoon in days of
leisure, for the Saint had his
own opinions about the correct hours for meals; and they were
the times when ninety per cent, of his
coups were schemed.
Towards
noon the Saint would arise like a giant refreshed,
robe himself in furiously patterned
foulard, and enter with an i
mmense earnestness of concentration upon the task of shatter
ing his fast. And after that had been
accomplished in a prop
erly
solemn silence, Simon Templar lighted a cigarette, slanted
his eyebrows, shifted back his ears, and
metaphorically rolled
up
his sleeves and looked around for something to knock
sideways. A new day—or what was left
of it—loomed up on his
horizon
like a fresh world waiting to be conquered, and the
Saint stanced himself to sail into it
with an irrepressible impetuosity of hair-brained devilment that was never too
tired or
short-winded to
lavish itself on the minutest detail as cheer
fully and generously as it would have spread itself over
the
most momentous affair in the whole solar
system.

And in
those moods of reckless unrepentance he smiled with
shameless Saintliness right into that stubborn alignment of his
lady’s mouth, challenged it, teased it, dared it,
laughed it into
confusion, kissed it
in a way that would have melted the
mouth
of a marble statue, and won her again and again, as he
always would, into his own inimitable madness. As
he said
then… .

“There’s money and trouble to be had for the asking,” said
the Saint,
when it was all over. “And what more could anyone
want, old dear? …
More trouble even than that, maybe.
Well, I heard last night that Claud
Eustace was also interested
in Isadore, though I haven’t the foggiest
idea how much he
knows. Tell me, Pat, old sweetheart, isn’t it our
cue?”

And Patricia sighed.

When Frankie Hormer landed at Southampton, he figured that his arrival
was as secret as human ingenuity could make
it. Even Detective
Inspector Peters, who had been waiting for
him for years, on and
off, knew nothing about it—and he was
at Southampton at the time. Frankie
walked straight past him,
securely hidden behind a beard which had
sprouted to very
respectable dimensions since he last set foot in England,
and
showed a passport made out in a name that his godfathers and
godmother
had never thought of. Admittedly, there had been
a little difficulty
with the tall dark man who had entered his
life in Johannesburg
and followed him all the way to Durban
—inconspicuously, but
not quite inconspicuously enough. But
Frankie had dealt with that intrusion
the night before he
sailed. He carried two guns, and knew how to use them
both.

And after that had been settled, the only man who should
have known
anything at all was Elberman, the genial little
fellow who had
financed the expedition at a staggering rate of
interest, and who had
personally procured the passport aforementioned, which was absolutely
indistinguishable from the
genuine article although it had never been
inside the Foreign
Office in its life.

Frankie had made that trip a number of times before—often
enough to
acquire a fairly extensive knowledge of the possible
pitfalls. And this
time he was reckoning to clean up, and he
was taking no
chances. The man from Johannesburg had both
ered him more than a
little, but the voyage back to England
had given him time to
forget that. And in the train that was
speeding him towards
Waterloo, Frankie thought ahead into a
pleasant and peaceful
future—with a chalet in Switzerland, probably, and a villa on the Riviera
thrown in, and an endless
immunity from the anxieties that are
inseparable from what
those who have never tried to earn it call
“easy money”.

And so, perhaps, his vigilance relaxed a trifle on the last lap
of the
journey—which was a pity, because he was quite a
likeable man in spite
of his sins. Perrigo got him somewhere
between Southampton
and Waterloo—Perrigo of the big
coarse hands that were so quick and skilful
with the knife. Thus Frankie Hormer enters the story and departs; and two
men have
been killed in the first four pages, which is good
going.

Of this, Simon Templar knew nothing at the moment. His
absorbing
interest in Mr. Perrigo, and particularly in Mr.
Perrigo’s trousers,
developed a little later. But he knew a
whole lot of other
things closely connected with the dramatis
person
æ
already introduced, for it was part of the Saint’s busi
ness to know something about everything
that was happening
in
certain circles; and on the strength of that he went after
Isadore Elberman in quest of further
information.

The structural alterations along the south side of Upper
Berkeley
Mews, which had recently been providing the Saint
with as much exercise
as he wanted, were now completed; and
by means of a slight elaboration of
his original scheme, he was
able to enter and leave his home without in
any way disturb
ing the stolid vigil of the two plain-clothes men who
prowled
before his front door, day and night, in a variety of disguises
which
afforded him continuous entertainment.

At nine o’clock that night he went upstairs to his bedroom,
slid back
the tall pier-glass which adorned one wall, and
stepped into a narrow
dimly-lighted passage, closing the panel
again behind him.
Thus with his feet making no sound on the thick felt matting that was laid over
the floor, he passed down
the corridor between the back of the mews and
the dummy
wall which he had built with his own hands, through
numbers
5 and 3—which highly desirable residences had already been
re-let to
two impeccably respectable tenants who never knew
that their landlord
had a secret right-of-way through their
homes. So the Saint
came (through the false back of a ward
robe) into the
bedroom of No. 1, which was occupied by the
chauffeur of a Mr.
Joshua Pond, who was the owner of No.
104, Berkeley Square, which adjoined
the corner of the mews.
Mr. Pond was not otherwise known to the
police as Simon
Templar, but he would have been if the police had been
clever
enough to discover the fact. And the Saint left No. 1,
Upper Berkeley Mews
through another cupboard in the room
at which he had entered it, and
reappeared out of a similar
cupboard in one of the bathrooms of No. 104,
Berkeley
Square, and so became a free man again, while Chief
Inspector
Teal’s watchers went on patrolling Upper Berkeley Mews in
an
ineffable magnificence of futility which can’t really have
done them
any harm.

This was one of the things that Perrigo didn’t know; and th
e
possibility that the Saint might have any business with
Isadore
Elberman that night was another.

Perrigo had got what he wanted. It had been easier than he
had
expected, for Frankie Hormer had made the mistake of occupying a reserved
compartment all by himself on the boat
train. Perrigo walked
in on him with some gold braid pinned
to his overcoat and a guard’s cap on
his head, and took him by
surprise. The trouble had started at
Waterloo—a detective had
recognised him in the station, and he had only
just managed
to make his getaway.

He reached Elberman’s house at Regent’s Park by a roundabout route, and
morsed out the prearranged signal on the bell
with feverish haste.
The entrance of the house was at the back,
in a little courtyard
which contained the doorways of four
other houses that also overlooked the
Park. While he waited
for the summons to be answered, Perrigo’s
eyes searched the
shadows with the unsleeping instinct of his calling. But
he did
not see the Saint, for the simple reason that the Saint was at
that moment
slipping through a first-floor window on the Park
side.

Elberman himself opened the door, and recognised his visi
tor.

“You’re late,” he said.

His pale bird-like face, behind the owlish spectacles, ex
pressed no
more agitation than his voice. He merely stated the fact—a perkily unemotional
little man.

“I had to run for it at Waterloo,” said Perrigo shortly.

He pushed into the hall, and shed his overcoat while Elber
man barred
the door behind him. Divested of that voluminous
garment, he seemed
even huskier than when he was wearing it.
His jaw was square and
pugnacious, and his nose had been
broken years ago.

Elberman came back and looked up at him inquiringly.

“You
weren’t followed?”

“Not far.”

“Everything else all right?”

Perrigo grunted a curt affirmative. He clapped his hat on a
peg and
thrust out his jaw.

“What
you’re
talking about’s O.K.,” he said. “It’s
the follow-
up that’s not jake. When Henderson hears about Frankie,
he’ll
remember the way I ran—and there’s a warrant for me over
that
Hammersmith job already.”

“You killed Frankie?”

All Elberman’s questions were phrased in the same way:
they were
flat statements, with the slightest of perfunctory
interrogation marks
tacked on to the last syllable.

“Had to,” Perrigo said briefly. “Let’s get on—I want a
drink.”

He was as barren of emotion as Elberman, but for a
different
reason. Habit had a hand in Perrigo’s callousness. In
the course of his
chequered career he had been one of Chi
cago’s star
torpedoes, until a spot of trouble that could not be
squared had forced
him to jump the Canadian border and
thence remove himself from the
American continent. There
were fourteen notches on his gun—but he was
not by nature a
boastful man.

Elberman led the way up the stairs, and Perrigo followed at
his
shoulder.

“Did you get that ticket?”

“Yes, I got you a berth. It’s on the
Berengaria.
She sails
tomorrow
afternoon. You’re in a hurry to leave?”