The Saint vs Scotland Yard (32 page)

Then the Saint woke up, and saw that it was half-past eight.
He jumped
out of bed, lighted a cigarette, and made for the
bathroom. He soaped
his face and shaved, haunted by his dream for some reason that he could not
nail down; and he
was wallowing in bath salts when the interpretation of it
flashed
upon him with an aptness that made him erupt out of
the water with an
almighty splash.

Ten minutes later, gorgeously apparelled in his new spring suit, he tore
down the stairs and found bacon and eggs on the
table and Patricia
reading a newspaper.

“Perrigo has left us,” he said.

The girl looked up with startled eyes, but Simon was laugh
ing.

“He’s left us, but I know where he’s gone,” said the Saint.
“He
collected his papers before he went. I forgot that he
carried a knife, and
locked him up without fanning him—he
spent the night digging his way
through the door, and came
through here for his passport in the early
morning. I was just too slow to catch him. We’ll meet him again on the boat
train
—it leaves at ten o’clock.”

“How do you know he’ll be on it?”

“If he didn’t mean to do that, why did he come back for his
ticket?
No—I know exactly what’s in his head. He knows that
he’s only got one way
out, now that he’s bereaved of Isadore,
and he’s going to try
to make the grade. He’s made up his
mind that I’m not helping the police,
and he’s going to take
his chance on a straight duck with me—and
I’ll bet he’ll park himself in the most crowded compartment he can find, just
to
give himself the turn of the odds. And I’ll say some more; I
know where
those diamonds are now!”

“Have you got them?”

“Not yet. But up at Isadore’s I spotted that Perrigo’s cos
tume was
assorted. I thought he’d changed coats with Frankie
Hormer, and I went
over his jacket twice before Teal buzzed in. Naturally, I didn’t find anything.
I must have been half
witted. It wasn’t coats he’d swapped—it was
trousers. Those
diamonds are sewn up somewhere in Bertie’s leg
draperies!”

Patricia come over to the table.

“Have you thought any more about Teal?” she asked.

Simon
strode across to a book-case and took down a
small
leather-bound volume. There were months of
painstaking
work in its unassuming
compass—names, addresses, personal
data,
means of approach, sources of evidence, all the la
boriously perfected groundwork that enabled the
Saint’s raids
upon the underworld to
be carried through so smoothly and
made
their meteoric audacity possible.

“Pat,” said the Saint, “I’m going to make Teal a great
man. It may be extravagant, but what the hell? Can you have the
whole earth
for ten cents? This party has already cost us our
home, our prize alibi,
and one of our shrewdest counter-attacks
—but who cares? Let’s
finish the thing in style. I’m the cleverest man in the world. Can’t I find
six more homes, work out
fourteen bigger and better alibis, and invent
seventy-nine
more stratagems and spoils? Can’t I fill two more books
like
this if I want to?”

Patricia put her arms round his neck.

“Are you going to give Teal that book?”

The Saint nodded. He was radiant.

“I’m going to steal Perrigo’s pants, Claud Eustace is going to smile
again, and you and I are going away together.”

Chapter IX

The Saint was in a thaumaturgical mood. He performed
a minor
sorcery on a Pullman attendant that materialised seats
where none had been
before, and ensconced himself with the
air of a wizard taking
his ease. After a couple of meditative cigarettes, he produced a pencil and
commenced a metrical
composition in the margins of the wine list.

He was still scribbling with unalloyed enthusiasm when Pa
tricia got
up and went for a walk down the train. She was
away for several
minutes; and when she returned, the Saint
looked up and
deliberately disregarded the confusion in her
eyes.

“Give ear,” he said. “This is the Ballad of the Bold Bad
Man,
another Precautionary Tale:

Daniel Dinwiddie Gigsworth-Glue

Was warranted by those who knew

To be a perfect paragon

With or without his trousers on;

An upright man (the Gigsworths are

Peerlessly perpendicular)

Staunch to the old morality,

Who would have rather died than be

Observed at Slumpton-under-Slop

In bathing drawers without the top.”

“Simon,” said the girl, “Perrigo isn’t on the train.”
The Saint put down his pencil.

“He is, old darling. I saw him when we boarded it at Water
loo, and I
think he saw me.”

“But
I’ve looked in every carriage——”

“Did you take everyone’s finger-prints?”

“A man like Perrigo wouldn’t find it easy to disguise
himself.”

Simon smiled.

“Disguises are tricky things,” he said. “It isn’t the
false
whiskers and the putty nose that get you down—it’s the little
details.
Did I ever tell you about a friend of mine who
thought he’d get the
inside dope about Chelsea? He bought a
pink shirt and a
velvet coat, grew a large semicircular beard, rented a studio, and changed his
name to Prmnlovcwz; and he had a great time until one day they caught him in an
artist’s
colourman’s trying to buy a tube of Golder’s Green… .
Now
you must hear some more about Daniel:

How lovely, oh, how luminous
His spotless virtue seemed to us
Who sat among the cherubim
Reserving Daniel’s pew for him!
Impossible to indispose,
His honour, shining like his nose,
Blazed
through an age of sin and strife
The beacon of a blameless life… .
And then he fell… .

            
 
The Tempter, who
Was mortified by Daniel Glue,
Played his
last evil card; and Dan
Who like a perfect gentleman,
Had scorned strong drink and wicked
oaths
And blondes with pink silk
underclothes,
Bought (Oh, we saw the angels weep!)
 
A
ticket in the Irish Sweep.”

Patricia reached across the table and captured the Saint’s
hands.

“Simon, I won’t be out of it! Where
is
Perrigo?”

“If you talk much louder, he’ll hear you.”

“He isn’t in this coach!”

“He’s in the next one.”

The girl stared.

“What does he look like?”

Simon
smiled, lighting a cigarette.

“He’s chosen the simplest and nearly the most effective dis
guise
there is. He’s got himself up as a very fair imitation of
our old
pal the Negro Spiritual.” The Saint looked at her with
merry eyes.
“He’s done it well, too; but I spotted him at once.
Hence my
parable. Did you ever see a nigger with light yellow
eyes? They may exist,
but I’ve never met one. There used to
be a blue-eyed Sikh in Hong Kong who
became quite famous,
but that’s the only similar freak I’ve met.
So when I got a
glimpse of those eyes I took another peek at the face—and
Perrigo it was. Remember him now?”

Patricia nodded breathlessly.

“Why couldn’t I see it?” she exclaimed.

“You’ve got to have a brain for that sort of thing,” said the
Saint
modestly.

“But—yes,
I remember now—the carriage he’s in is full——”

“And you’re wondering how I’m going to get his trousers off
him? Well,
the problem certainly has its interesting angles.
How does one steal a
man’s trousers on a crowded train? You mayn’t believe it, but I see
difficulties about that myself.”

An official came down the train, checking up visas and
issuing
embarkation vouchers. Simon obtained a couple of
passes, and smoked
thoughtfully for some minutes. And then
he laughed and stood
up.

“Why worry?” he wanted to know. “I’ve thought of a much
better thing to do. One of my really wonderful inspirations.”

“What’s that?”

Simon tapped her on the shoulder.

“I’m going to beguile the time by baiting Bertie,” he said,
with
immense solemnity. “C’mon!”

He hurtled off in his volcanic way, with a long-striding
swing of impetuous limbs, as if
a gale of wind swept him on.

And Patricia Holm was smiling as she ran to catch him up— the
unfathomable and infinitely tender smile of all the women
who have
been doomed to love romantic men. For she knew
the Saint better than
he knew himself. He could not grow old.
Oh, yes, he would grow
in years, would feel more deeply,
would think more deeply, would
endeavour with spasmodic
soberness to fall in line with the common
facts of life; but the
mainsprings of his character could not
change. He would de
ceive himself, but he would never deceive her. Even now,
she knew what was in his mind. He was trying to brace himself to
march down
the road that all his friends had taken. He was daring himself to take up the
glove that the High Gods had
thrown at his feet, and to take it up as he
would have taken
up any other challenge—with a laugh and a flourish, and
the
sound of trumpets in his ears. And already she knew how she
would answer him.

She came up behind him and caught his elbow.

“But is this going to help you, lad?”

“It will amuse me,” said the Saint. “And it’s an act of
piety. It’s our sacred duty to see that Bertie has a journey he’ll never
forget. I
shall open the ball by trying to touch him for a
subscription to the
funds of the Society for Distributing Wool
len Vests to the
Patriarchs of the Upper Dogsboddi. Speaking
emotionally and in a
loud voice I shall wax eloquent on the
work that has already
been done among his black brothers,
and invite him to make a contribution.
If he does, we’ll go
and drink it and think up something else. If
he doesn’t, you’ll
barge in and ask him for his autograph. Address him as Al
Jolson, and ask him to sing something. After that——
”

“After that,” said Patricia firmly, “he’ll pull the commu
nication
cord, and we shall both be thrown off the train. Lead
on, boy!”

Simon nodded, and went to the door of the compartment he
had marked
down.

And there he stopped, statuesquely, while the skyward-slanting
cigarette between his lips sank slowly through the arc of a circle and ended up
at a comically contrasting droop.

After a few seconds, Patricia stepped to his side and also
looked into
the compartment. And the Saint took the cigarette
from his mouth and
exhaled smoke in a long expiring whistle.

Perrigo was gone.

There wasn’t a doubt about that. The corner seat that he
had
occupied was as innocent of human habitation as any
corner seat has ever been
since George Stephenson hitched up
his wagons and went rioting down to
Stockton-upon-Tees. If
not more so. As for the other seats, they were occupied respec
tively by a portly matron with a wart on her chin,
a small boy
in a sailor suit, and a
thin-flanked female with pimples and a
camouflaged
copy of
The Well of Loneliness,
into none of
whom could Gunner Perrigo by any conceivable
miracle of
make-up have transformed
himself… . Those were the irre
futable
facts about the scene, pithily and systematically recorded; and the longer one
looked at them, the more gratui
tously
grisly they became.