She looked
at him steadily.
“But
you still haven’t told me what——
”
The
telephone rang before he could answer.
Simon
picked it up.
“Metropolitan
Police Maternity Home,” he said.
“Teal
speaking,” said a familiar voice with an unneces
sarily pugnacious
rasp in it. “I’ve got the information you
asked for about that
phone number. The subscriber is Baron
Inescu, 16 North Ashley Street,
Berkeley Square. Now what was that information you were going to give me in
return ?”
The Saint
unpuckered his lips from a long inaudible
whistle.
“Okay,
Claud,” he said, and the words lilted. “I guess
you’ve
earned it. You can start right now. Rush one of your
squads to Osbett’s
Drug Store, 909 Victoria Street—the place
where you bought your
Miracle Tea. Three other guys will
be there shopping for Miracle Tea at
any moment from now
on. I can’t give you any description of them, but there’s
one
sure way to pick them out. Have one of your men go up to
everyone
who comes out of the shop and say: ‘Are you six,
fourteen, or
twenty-seven ?’ If the guy jumps halfway out of
his skin, he’s one of the birds you want.
And see that you get
his Miracle Tea as
well!”
“Miracle
Tea!” sizzled the detective, with such searing
savagery that the
Saint’s ribs suddenly ached with awful
intuition. “I
wish——
” He stopped.
Then he said: “What’s
this about Miracle
Tea ? Are you trying to be funny ?”
“I was
never so serious in my life, Claud. Get those three
guys, and get their packets of Miracle
Tea. You’ll find some
thing interesting in
them.”
Teal’s
silence reeked of tormented indecision.
“If I
thought
“
“But
you never have, Claud. Don’t spoil your record now.
Just send that Squad
out and tell ‘em to hustle. You stay by
the telephone, and I
ought to be able to call you within an hour to collect the Big Shot.”
“But
you haven’t told me
——
” Again Teal’s voice wailed
off abruptly. Something like a stifled groan
squeezed into the
gap. He spoke again
in a fevered gabble. “All right all right
I’ll do it I can’t stop now to argue but God help you——
”
The connection clicked off even
quicker than the sentence
could finish.
Simon
fitted his automatic into the spring clip holster
under his coat, and
stood up with a slow smile of ineffable
impishness creeping up
to his eyes.
XII
16
NORTH
A
SHLEY
S
TREET
stood in
the middle of one of
those rows of crowded but discreetly opulent
dwellings which provide the less squalid aspect of certain parts of
Mayfair.
Lights could be seen in some of the windows, indicating that someone was at
home; but the Saint was not
at all troubled about that. It was, in fact,
a stroke of luck
which he had hoped for.
He
stepped up to the front door with the easy aplomb of an
invited
guest, arriving punctually for dinner, and put his
finger on the bell.
He looked as cool as if he had come
straight off the ice, but under the
rakish brim of his hat the
hell-for-leather mischief still rollicked in his eyes. One hand
rested idly between the lapels of his coat, as if
he were
adjusting his tie.
…
The door
opened, exposing a large and overwhelming
butler. The Saint’s
glance weighed him with expert pene
tration. Butlers are traditionally
large and overwhelming,
but they are apt to run large in the wrong
places. This butler
was large in the right places. His shoulders looked as
wide
as a wardrobe, and his biceps stretched tight wrinkles into
the sleeves
of his well-cut coat.
“Baron
Inescu?” inquired the Saint pleasantly.
“The
Baron is not——
”
Simon
smiled, and pressed the muzzle of his gun a little
more firmly into the
stomach in front of him.
The butler
recoiled, and the Saint stepped after him. He
pushed the door shut
with his heel.
“Turn
round.”
Tensely the
butler started to obey. He had not quite
finished the movement when Simon lifted
his gun and jerked
it crisply down again.
The barrel made a sharp smacking
sound
on the back of the butler’s bullet head; and the result,
from an onlooker’s point of view, was quite
comical. The
butler’s legs bowed
outwards, and he rolled down on to his
face with a kind of resigned
reluctance, and lay motionless.
For a
second the Saint stood still, listening. But except for
that
single clear-cut smack there had been no disturbance, and the house remained
quiet and peaceful.
Simon’s
eyes swept round the hall. In the corner close to
the front door there
was a door which looked as if it be
longed to a coat cupboard. It was a
coat cupboard. The
Saint pocketed his gun for long enough to drag the butler
across the marble floor and shove him in. He locked the door on him and
took the key—he was a pretty accurate
judge of the comparative toughness of
gun-barrels and
skulls, and he was confident that the butler would not be
constituting
a vital factor in anybody’s life for some time.
He
travelled past the other doors on the ground floor like
a voyaging
wraith, listening at each one of them, but he
could hear no signs of life in any of the
rooms beyond. From the head of the basement stairs he heard an undisturbed
clink
of dishes and mutter of voices which
reassured him that the
rest of the
staff were strictly minding their own business.
In
another moment he was on his way up the main staircase.
On the first wide landing he
knew he was near his destina
tion. Under one
door there was a thin streak of light, and as he inched noiselessly up to it he
heard the faint syncopated
patter of
a typewriter. Then the soft burr of a telephone interrupted it.
A voice
said: “Yes… . Yes.” There was a slight pause;
then:
“Vernon! Here is your copy for the special nine
o’clock broadcast.
Take it down. ‘Why suffer from indiges
tion when relief is so cheap ? Two cups
will make your pains
vanish—only two. Four
cups will set you on the road to a
complete cure—so why not take four ?
But after sixteen cups
you will forget that
indigestion ever existed. Think of that.
Sixteen cups will make you feel
ten years younger. Wouldn’t
you
like to feel ten years younger in a few days ?
Buy Miracle
Tea—tonight!’… Have
you got that? … Splendid. Good-
night!”
The
receiver rattled back. And the latch of the door rattled as Simon Templar
closed it behind him.
The man at
the desk spun round as if a snake had bitten
him.
“Good
evening, Baron,” said the Saint.
He stood
there smiling, blithe and elegant and indescribably dangerous.
The Baron
stared frozenly back at him. He was a tall, clean
shaven man with dark
hair greying at the temples, and he
wore impeccable evening clothes with
the distinction of an
ambassador: but he had spoken on the
telephone in a voice
that was quite strangely out of keeping with
his appearance.
And
the Saint’s smile deepened with the joy of final certainty
as he held his gun steadily aligned on the pearl
stud in the
centre of the Baron’s
snowy shirt-front.
The first
leap of fear across the Baron’s dark eyes turned into a convincing blaze of
anger.
“What
is the meaning of this ?”
“At a
rough guess, I should say about fifteen years—for
you,” answered
the Saint equably. “It’ll be quite a change from your usual environment,
I’m afraid. That is, if I can
judge by the pictures I’ve seen of you in the
society papers.
Baron Inescu driving off the first tee at St
Andrew’s—Baron Inescu at the wheel of his yacht at Cowes—Baron Inescu
climbing
into his new racing monoplane. I’m afraid you’ll
find the sporting
facilities rather limited at Dartmoor,
Baron
…
or would
you rather I called you—Henry ?”
The Baron
sat very still.
“You
know a great deal, Mr Templar.”
“Just
about all I need to know, I think. I know you’ve
been running the most
efficient espionage organization that
poor old Chief Inspector Teal has had
to scratch his head over for a long time. I know that you had everything lined
up so well
that you might have got away with it for years if
it hadn’t been for one of those Acts of
God that the insurance
companies never want
to underwrite. I told you I knew all
about it this morning, but you
didn’t believe me. By the way,
how does the
jaw feel tonight ?”
The other
watched him unwinkingly.
“I’m
afraid I did find it hard to believe you,” he said
evenly.
“What else do you know ?”
“I
know all about your phoney broadcasts. And if it’s of
any interest to you,
there will be a squad of large flat-footed
bogey-men waiting for
numbers six, fourteen, and twenty-seven when they stop by for their Miracle
Tea.
…
I know
that instead of getting ready to pay me the
tax I asked for, you
tried to frame me for the murder of Nancock
this afternoon,
and I resent that, Henry.”
“I
apologize,” said the Baron suavely. “You shall have your money
tomorrow——
”
The Saint shook his head, and
his eyes were glacially blue.
“You
had your chance, and you passed it up. I shall help
myself to the
money.” He saw the other’s eyes shift fraction
ally to the safe in
the corner, and laughed softly. “Give me
the keys, Henry.”
The Baron
hesitated a moment before he moved.
Then he put
his hand slowly into his trouser pocket and
pulled out a bunch of
keys on a platinum chain. He detached
them and threw them on to the desk.
“You have the advantage,
Mr Templar,” he said smoothly.
“I
give you the keys because you could easily take them
yourself if I refused. But you’re very foolish.
There are only
about three thousand pounds in the safe. Why not be
sensible
and wait until the morning ?”
“In
the morning you’ll be too busy trying to put up a
defence at the police
court to think about me,” said the
Saint coldly.
He moved
towards the desk; but he did not pick up the
keys at once. His eyes
strayed to the sheet of paper in the
typewriter; and yet they did it in
such a way that the Baron
still knew that the first move he made would
call shattering
death out of the trim unwavering automatic,
Simon read:
In
conjunction with numbers 4, 10, and 16 you will proceed at
once to
Cheltenham and establish close watch on Sir Roland Hale
who is on holiday there. Within
24 hours you will send report on
the method
by which urgent War Office messages
—
Simon’s
eyes returned to the Baron’s face.
“What
more evidence do you think Chief Inspector Teal
will need ?” he
said.
“With
a name like mine?” came the scornful answer. “When I
tell them
that you held me at the point of a gun
while you wrote that
message on my typewriter——
”
“I’m
sure they’ll be very polite,” said the Saint. “Especially
when they
find that yours are the only fingerprints on the
keys.”
“If
you made me write it under compulsion——
”