Authors: Leslie Charteris
“You’ll
need a lot,” said the Saint. “I’ve risked my job
standing
outside your apartment to catch you when you arrived,
if you got there
before Teal; and I didn’t do it for nothing.
Now listen. I’ve got a
friend who does a bit of smuggling
from the Continent with a private
aeroplane. He’s got his own
landing-grounds, here and in France. I’ve done
him a few
favours,
the same as I’ve done for you already, and I can get him to take you to
France—or further, if you want to go. It’s
your
only chance; and it’ll cost you two thousand pounds.”
Mr. Journ
swallowed.
“All
right,” he gulped. “All right. I’ll pay it.”
“It’s
cheap at the price,” said Inspector Tombs, and leaned
forward to
give further instructions to the driver.
Presently
they turned into a mews off Queen’s Gate. Simon
paid off the cab, and
asked the garage proprietor for the
loan of a telephone. He spoke a few
cryptic words to his con
nection, and returned smiling.
“It’s
all fixed,” he said. “Let’s go.”
There was
a car waiting—a big cream and red speedster that looked as if it could pass
anything else on the road and
cost its owner a small fortune for the
privilege. In a few
moments Mr. Journ, still clutching his precious bag,
found
himself being whirled recklessly through the outskirts of Lon
don.
He
released one hand from his bag to hold on to his hat,
and submitted to the
hurricane speed of the getaway in a kind
of trance. The
brilliant driving of his guide made no im
pression on his numbed
brain, and even the route they took
registered itself on his mind only
subconsciously. His whole
existence had passed into a sort of cyclonic
nightmare which
took away his breath and left a ghastly gnawing emptiness
in his
chest. The passage of time was merely a change in the positions of the hands of
his watch, without any other signifi
cance.
And then,
in the same deadened way, he became aware that the car had stopped, and the
driver was getting out. They were
in a narrow lane far from the main
road, somewhere between Tring and Aylesbury.
“This
is as far as we go, brother,” said the Saint.
Mr. Journ
levered himself stiffly out. There were open
fields all around,
partly hidden by the hedges which lined
the lane.
Inspector
Tombs was lighting another cigarette.
“And
now, dear old bird,” he murmured, “you must pay
your
fare.”
Sumner
Journ nodded, and fumbled with the fastening of
his case.
“But
I don’t mind taking it in the bag,” Simon said quietly.
Mr. Journ
looked up. There was a subtle implication in the
way the words were
said which struck a supernatural chill into his blood. And in the next second
he knew why; for his lifting
eyes looked straight into the muzzle of an
automatic.
Slowly Mr.
Journ’s eyes dilated. He stopped breathing. A
cold intangible hand
closed round his heart in a vice-like grip;
and the muscles of
his face twitched spasmodically.
“But
you can’t do that!” he screamed suddenly. “You can’t
take it
all!”
“That
is a matter of opinion,” said the Saint equably; and
then,
before Mr. Journ really knew what was happening, a
strong brown hand had
shot out and grasped the brief-bag
and twitched it out of Mr. Journ’s
desperate grip with a deft
twist that was too quick for the eye to
follow.
With a
guttural gasp Sumner Journ lurched forward to tear
it back, and found
himself pushed away like a child!
“Now
don’t be silly,” said the Saint. “I don’t want to hurt
you—much.
You’ve lived like a prince for four years on the
sucker crop, and a
bloke like you can always think up a new
racket. Don’t take
it so much to heart. Disguise yourself and
make a fresh start.
Shave off your moustache, and no one will
recognise you.”
“But
what am I going to do?” Sumner Journ shrieked at
him as he seated
himself again in the car. “How am I going to
get away?”
Simon stopped with his foot on
the clutch.
“Bless
my soul!” he said. “I almost forgot.”
He dipped a
long arm into the tonneau and brought up a
small article which
he pushed into Mr. Journ’s trembling
hands. Then the great car leapt away
with a sudden roar from
the exhaust, and Mr. Journ was left staring
at his consolation
prize with a face that had gone ashen grey.
It was a
little toy aeroplane; and tied to it was a tag label
on which was
written:
With the compliments of the Saint.
XII
The Art Photographer
“It
becomes increasingly obvious,” said the Saint, “that the
time has
arrived when we shall have to squash Mr. Gilbert
Tanfold.”
He did
not utter this prophecy within the hearing of Mr.
Tanfold, for that
would have been a gesture of a kind in which
Simon Templar indulged more rarely now
than he had once
been wont to do. If the time
had arrived when the squashing
of Mr.
Tanfold became a public service which no altruistic
freebooter could refuse to perform, the time had
also passed
when the squashing could
be carried out with full theatrical
honours,
with a haloed drawing on a plain card left pinned to
the resultant blob of grease to tell the world
that Simon
Templar had been there.
There was too much interest in his
activities
at Scotland Yard for anything like that to be entered
upon without an elaborate preparation of alibis,
which
was rather more trouble than he
thought Mr. Tanfold
was worth. But the
ripeness for squashing, the
zerquetschen
reiftichkeit,
if we may borrow a word which the English lan
guage so unhappily lacks, of Mr. Gilbert Tanfold,
even if it
could not be made a public
ceremony, could not be over
looked
altogether for any such trivial reason.
The
advertisements of Mr. Tanfold appeared in the
black pages of several
appropriate journals, and were distin
guished by their prodigality of
exclamation marks and their
unusual vagueness of content. The specimen
which was an
swered by a certain Mr. Tombs was fairly typical.
PARISIAN ART PHOTOS !!!!!!!!
rare !
extraordinary !!
Special offer!
(Cannot be repeated!)
100
unique poses, 3/6 post free. Exceptional
rarities, 10/-, 15/-, £1, £5 each!! Also
BOOKS!!!!
all editions, curiosities, erotic
æ
, etc.!
“Gar
den of
Love”
(very rare)
10/6.
Send for
illustrated catalogue
and samples!!!
G. TANFOLD & CO., Gaul St., Birmingham.
It was an
advertisement which regularly brought in a re
markable amount of
business, considering that it left so much
to the imagination;
but certain imaginations are like that.
The
imagination of Mr. Gilbert Tanfold, however, soared
far above the ordinary
financial possibilities of this common
place catering to
pornography. If ever there was a man who
did not believe in
Art for Art’s sake this man walked the
earth with his ankles
enveloped in the spats of Mr. Gilbert Tanfold. Where any other man trading in
these artistic lines
would have been content with the generous
profit from the
sale of his “exceptional rarities,” Mr. Tanfold
had made them
merely
stepping-stones to bigger things; which was one of the
reasons for his tempting
zerquetschenreiflichkeit
aforesaid.
Every
letter which came to his cheap two-roomed office
in Birmingham was examined with an
interest that would have
astonished the
unsuspecting writer. Those which, by inferior
notepaper, cheaply printed letterheads, and/or clumsy hand
writing, branded their authors as persons of no
great sub
stance, merely had their
orders filled by return, as specified;
and
that, so far as Mr. Tanfold was concerned, was the end
of them. But those letters which, by expensive
paper, die-
stamped letterheads,
and/or an educated hand, hinted at a
client
who really had no business to be collecting rude pictures
or “curiosities,” came under the close
scrutiny of Mr. Tanfold
himself; and
their orders were merely the beginning of many other things.
Mr. Tombs
wrote on the notepaper of the Palace Royal Ho
tel, London, which
was so expensive that only millionaires,
film stars, and
buccaneers could afford to live there; and it
is a curious fact that
Mr. Tanfold entirely forgot that third
category of possible
guests when he saw the letter. It must
be admitted, in
extenuation, that Simon Templar misled him.
For as his profession
(which all customers were asked to state
with their order) he
gave
“Business man (Australian).”
Mr.
Gilbert Tanfold, like others of his ilk, had a sound
working knowledge of
the peculiar psychology of wealthy
Colonials at large in London—of that
open-hearted, almost
pathetically guileless eagerness to be good
fellows which
leads them to buy gold bricks in the Strand, or to hand
thou
sands of pounds in small notes to two perfect strangers as evi
dence of
their good faith—and he was so impressed with the potentialities of Mr. Tombs
that he ordered the very choicest
pictures in his stock to be included
in the filling of the order,
and made a personal trip to London the next
day to find out
more about his Heaven-sent bird from the bush.
The problem
of making stealthy inquiries about a guest in
a place like the Palace Royal Hotel might
have troubled anyone
less experienced in the
art of investigating prospective victims;
but to Mr. Tanfold it was little more than a matter of routine,
a case of Method C4
(g
). He knew that lonely
men in a big city will always talk to a barman, and simply followed the
same procedure himself. To a man as practised as
he was in
the technique of drawing
gossip out of unwitting informants, results came quickly. Yes, the barman at
the Palace
Royal knew Mr. Tombs.
“A
tall dark gentleman with glasses—is that him?”
“That’s
him,” agreed Mr. Tanfold glibly; and learned,
as he had hoped, that Mr. Tombs was a
regular and solitary
patron of the bar.
It did not
take him much longer to discover that Mr.
Tombs’s father was an
exceedingly rich and exceedingly pious
citizen of Melbourne, a loud noise in the
Chamber of Com
merce, an only slightly
smaller noise in the local government,
and
an indefatigable guardian of public morality. He also
gathered that Mr. Tombs, besides carrying on his
father’s busi
ness, was expected to
carry on his moralising activities also,
and that this latter inheritance was much less acceptable to
Mr. Tombs Jr. than it should have been to a
thoroughly well-brought-up young man. The soul of Sebastian Tombs II, it ap
peared, yearned for naughtier things: the panting
of the
psalmist’s hart after the
water-brooks, seemingly, was posi
tively
as no pant at all compared with the panting of the
heart of, Tombs
fils
after those spicy
improprieties on which
it was the
devoted hobby of Tombs
p
è
re
to
bring down all
the weight of public
indignation. The barman knew this be
cause
the younger Tombs had sought his advice on the subject of wild-oat sowing in
London, and had confessed him
self sadly disappointed with the limited
range of fields avail
able to the casual
sower. He was, in fact, living only for the day when the business which had
brought him to England
would be over,
and he would be free to continue his search
for sin in Paris.