The Saint vs Scotland Yard (29 page)

Chapter VI

The Hirondel skimmed round a corner and flashed out
into
Regent Street. The bows of an omnibus loomed up, bear
ing down upon them.
Patricia spun the wheel coolly; they swerved round the wrong side of an island,
dodged a taxi and
a private car, and dived off the main road again.

Perrigo, on the floor of the tonneau, digested the fresh set of
facts that
the Saint had streamed into him. However apocry
phal the first sheaf
that he had meditated had been, these new
ones were definitely concise and
concrete—as was the circle of
steel that bored
steadily into his dewlap. He assimilated them
in a momentous silence, while the stars gyrated giddily above
him.

“All right,” he said at length. “Let me up.”

Simon hitched himself on to the seat; his gun went into his
pocket, but
retained command of the situation. As they en
tered Berkeley Square
he watched Perrigo looking out to left and right, and was prompted to utter an
additional warning.

“Stepping off moving vehicles,” he said, “is the cause
of ump
teen street accidents per annum. If you left us now, it would
be the
cause of umpteen plus one. Ponder the equation,
brother… . And
besides,” said the Saint, who was starting to
feel expansive again,
“we’ve only just begun to know each
other. The warbling
and the woofling dies, so to speak, and we settle down to get acquainted. We
approach the peaceful inter
lude

When the
cakes and ale are over
   
And the buns and beer
runs dry
And the pigs are all in clover
   
Up above the bright
blue sky
—

as the poet
hath it. Do you ever write poetry?”
Perrigo
said nothing.

“He does not write poetry,” said the Saint.

The car stopped a few yards from the entrance of Upper
Berkeley
Mews, and Simon leaned forward and put his elbows
on the back of the
front seat. He rested his chin on his hands.

“When we were interrupted, darling,” he said, “I was on
the
point of making some remarks about your mouth. It is, bar
none, the
most bewitching, alluring, tempting, maddening, seductive mouth I’ve ever
kiss—set eyes on. The idea that it
should ever be used for eating kippers is sacrilegious. You
will
oblige me by eating no more kippers.
The way your lips curl
at the corners
when you’re not sure whether you’ll smile or
not——
”

Patricia turned with demure eyes.

“What do we do now?” she asked; and the Saint sighed.

“Teal’s bloodhound saw you go out?”

“Yes.”

“Then he’d better see you go in again. It’ll set his mind at
rest.
Bertie and I will go our ways.”

He opened the door and stepped out, Perrigo followed,
constrained
to do so by a grip which the Saint had fastened on
the scruff of his
neck. Maintaining possession of Perrigo, Si
mon leaned on the side
of the car.

“When we get a minute or two to ourselves, Pat,” he said,
“remind
me that my discourse on your eyes, which occupies
about two hundred and fifty well-chosen
words——”

“Is to be continued in our next,” said Patricia happily, and
let in the
clutch.

Simon stood for a moment where she had left him, watching
the car
swing round into the mews.

And he was realising that the warbling and the woofling
were very
near their end. His flippant parody had struck home
into the truth.

It was a queer moment for that blithe young cavalier of
fortune.
Out of the clear sky of the completely commonplace,
it had flashed down
upon him with a blinding brightness. The
lights pointed to the
end. No tremendous battle had done it, no breathless race for life, no
cataclysmic instant of vision
when all the intangible battlements of Paradise
were shown up
under the shadow of the sword. Fate, in the cussedness of
its
own inscrutable designs, had ordained that the revelation
should be
otherwise. Something simple and startling, a thing
seen so often and
grown so tranquilly familiar that the sudden
unmasking of its inner
portent would sweep away all the
foundations of his disbelief like a tidal
wave; something that
would sheer ruthlessly through all
sophistries and lies. A girl’s
profile against the streaking backcloth of
smoke-stained stone.
Yellow lamp-light rippling on a flying mane of
golden hair.
Commedia.

On the night of the 3rd of April, at 10:30 p.m., Simon
Templar
stood on the pavement of Berkeley Square and
looked life squarely
in the eyes.

Just for that moment. And then the Hirondel was gone, and
the moment
was past. But all that there was to be done was
done. The High Gods
had spoken.

Simon turned. There was a new light in his eyes. “Let’s go,”
he said.

They went. His step was light and swift, and the blood
laughed in
his veins. He had drunk the magic wine of the
High Gods at one
draught, down to the last dregs. It is a brave
man who can do that,
and he has his reward.

Perrigo walked tamely by his side. Simon had less than no
idea what
was passing in the gangster’s mind just then. And he
cared less than
nothing. He would have taken on a hundred
Perrigos that night,
one after another or in two squads of fifty,
just as they
pleased—blipped them, bounced them, boned
them, rolled them,
trussed them up, wrapped them in grease
proof paper, and laid
them out in a row to be called for by
the corporation scavengers. And if
Perrigo didn’t believe it,
Perrigo had only got to start something and
see what hap
pened. Simon thought less of Perrigo than a resolute
rhinoc
eros would think of a small worm.

He ran up the steps of 104, Berkeley Square, turned his key
in the
lock, and switched on the lights. He made way for
Perrigo with a
courtly gesture.
“In,” he said.

Perrigo walked in very slowly. Some fresh plan of campaign
was formulating
behind the gangster’s sullen complicance. Si
mon knew it. He knew
that the ice was very thin—that only
the two trump cards of passport and
tickets, and the superb
assurance with which they had been played,
had driven Per
rigo so far without a third bid for freedom. And he was
not
interested. As Perrigo’s rearward foot lifted over the threshold,
Simon
shoved him on, followed him in a flash, and put his
back to the closed
door.

“You’re thinking,” he murmured, “that this is where you
slug me
over the head with the umbrella-stand, recover your property, and fade out.
You’re wrong.”

He pushed Perrigo backwards. It seemed quite an effortless
push, but
there was an unsuspected kick of strength behind it.
It flung Perrigo
three paces towards the stairs; and then the
hoodlum stopped on his
heels and returned in a savage recoil.
Simon slipped the gun
out of his pocket, and Perrigo reined
in.

“You daren’t shoot,” he blustered.

“Again you’re wrong,” said the Saint metallically. “It
would
give me great pleasure to shoot. I haven’t shot anyone for months.
Perhaps you’re thinking I’ll be scared of the noise.
Once more you’re
wrong. This gun isn’t silenced, but the first
three cartridges are
only half-charged. No one in the street
would hear a
sound.” For a tense second the Saint’s gaze
snapped daggers across
the space between them. “You still think I’m bluffing. You’ve half a mind
to test it out. Right.
This is your chance. You’ve only to take one
step towards me.
One little step… . I’m waiting for you!”

And Perrigo took the step.

The automatic slanted up, and hiccoughed. It made less noise than
opening up a bottle of champagne, but Perrigo’s
hat whisked off his
head and floated down to the carpet behind him. The gunman looked round
stupidly at it, his face
going a shade paler.

“Of course,” said the Saint, relapsing into the conversational
style. “I’m not a very good shot. I’ve been practising a bit
lately, but
I’ve a long way to go yet before I get into your
class. Another time I
might sort of kill you accidental like, and
that would be very
distressing. And then the question arises,
Perrigo; would you go
to Heaven? I doubt it. They’re so
particular about the people they let
in. I don’t think they’d
like that check suit you’re wearing. And can
you play a harp?
Do
you know your psalms? Have you got a white nightie?”

Perrigo’s fists clenched.

“What game are you playing?” he snarled.

“You know me,” said the Saint rhetorically. “I am the man
who knocked
the L out of London, and at any moment I may become the man who knocked the P
out of Perrigo. My game hasn’t changed since we first met. It’s a private
party, and the
police seemed to want to interfere, so we commuted to
another
site. That’s the only reason why we’re here, and why I took the
trouble to
get you away from Regent’s Park. In short, if you
haven’t guessed it
already, I’m still after those diamonds, my pet. They mean the beginning of a
new chapter in my career,
and a brief interlude of peace for Chief
Inspector Teal. They
are my old-age pension. I want that packet of
boodle more
than I’ve ever wanted any loot before; and if you imagine
I’m
not going to have them, your name is Mug. And now you can
pass
on—this hall’s getting draughty.”

“I’ll see you in hell first,” grated Perrigo.

“You won’t see me in hell at all,” said the Saint. “I like
warm climates, but I’m very musical, and I think the harps
have it.
Forward march!”

He propelled Perrigo down the hall to a door which opened
on to a
flight of stone steps. At the bottom of these steps there
was a small
square cellar furnished with a chair and a camp
bed. The door, Perrigo
noticed, was of three-inch oak, and a broad iron bar slid in grooves across it.
Simon pointed, and
Perrigo went in and sat on the bed.

“When you know me better,” said the Saint, “you’ll
discover
that I have a cellar complex. So many people have taken
me
into cellars in order to do me grievous bodily harm that the infection
has got into my system. There’s something very sinister and thrilling about a
cellar, don’t you think?”

Perrigo hazarded no opinion.

“How long do I stay here?” he asked.

“Until tomorrow,” Simon told him. “You’ll find the place
rather damp and stuffy, but there’s enough ventilation to save you from
suffocating. If you decide to strangle yourself with
your braces, you might
do it under that loose flagstone in the
corner, which conceals
a deep grave all ready dug for any
corpses I might have on my hands. And
in the morning I’ll be
along with some breakfast and a pair of
thumbscrews, and
we’ll have a little chat. Night-night, old dear.”

He left Perrigo with those cheering thoughts to chew over,
and went
out, bolting the iron bar into place and securing it
with a steel staple.

A silver-noted buzzer was purring somewhere above him as
he ran up
the stairs, and he knew that the next development
was already on its
way. He was not surprised-—he had been
expecting it—but the
promptitude with which his expectations
had been realised
argued a tenacious implacability on the part of Chief Inspector Teal that would
have unsettled the serenity
of anyone but a Simon Templar. But the Saint
was lining up
to the starting-gate of an odyssey quite different from
that of Mr. Teal. He let himself through the linen cupboard of the
first-floor
bathroom into No. 1, Upper Berkeley Mews, and
went quickly down the
runway to No. 7; and he was smiling as
he stepped out of it
into his own bedroom and slid the mirror
panel shut behind him.