Authors: Leslie Charteris
“Are
you in partnership with Mr. Costello, Mr. Hammel?”
he asked.
“A working
partnership—yes.”
“Do
you know any more about Enstone’s affairs than Mr.
Costello has been able to tell us?”
“I’m
afraid not.”
“What
were you talking about at dinner last night?”
“It
was about a merger. I’m in International Cotton, too.
One of Enstone’s
concerns was Cosmopolitan Textiles. His
shares were standing high and ours aren’t
doing too well, and
we thought that if we
could induce him to amalgamate it
would
help us.”
“What
did Enstone think about that?”
Hammel spread his hands.
“He
didn’t think there was enough in it for him. We had
certain things to offer, but he decided
they weren’t sufficient.”
“There wasn’t any bad
feeling about it?”
“Why,
no. If all the business men who have refused to com
bine with each at
different times became enemies, there’d
hardly be two men in
the City on speaking terms.”
Simon
cleared his throat.
“What
was your first important job, Mr. Hammel?” he
queried.
Hammel turned his eyes without
moving his head.
“I
was chief salesman of a general manufacturer in the Mid
lands.”
Teal concluded the interview
soon afterwards without se
curing any
further revelations, shook hands perfunctorily with
the two men, and ushered them out. When he came
back he
looked down at the Saint like
a cannibal inspecting the latest
missionary.
“Why
don’t you join the force yourself?” he inquired
heavily. “The
new Police College is open now, and the Com
missioner’s supposed
to be looking for men like you.”
Simon took
the sally like an armoured car taking a snow
ball. He was sitting
up on the edge of his chair with his blue
eyes glinting with
excitement.
“You
big sap,” he retorted, “do you look as if the Police
College
could teach anyone to solve a murder?”
Teal
gulped as if he couldn’t believe his ears, He took hold
of the
arms of his chair and spoke with an apoplectic restraint,
as if he
were conscientiously determined to give the Saint every fair chance to recover
his sanity before he rang down
for the bugs wagon.
“What
murder are you talking about?” he demanded.
“Enstone shot
himself.”
“Yes,
Enstone shot himself,” said the Saint. “But it was
murder
just the same.”
“Have
you been drinking something?”
“No.
But Enstone had.”
Teal
swallowed, and almost choked himself in the process.
“Are
you trying to tell me,” he exploded, “that any man
ever got
drunk enough to shoot himself while he was making
money?”
Simon
shook his head.
“They
made him shoot himself.”
“What
do you mean—blackmail ?”
“No.”
The Saint
pushed a hand through his hair. He had thought
of things like that.
He knew that Enstone had shot himself,
because no one else
could have done it. Except Fowler, the
valet—but that was
the man whom Teal would have suspected
at once if he had
suspected anyone, and it was too obvious,
too insane. No man in
his senses could have planned a murder
with himself as the
most obvious suspect. Blackmail, then? But the Lewis Enstone he had seen in the
lobby had never
looked like a man bidding farewell to blackmailers. And
how
could a man so openly devoted to his family have been led
to provide
the commoner materials of blackmail?
“No,
Claud,” said the Saint. “It wasn’t that. They just
made him do
it.”
Mr. Teal’s
spine tingled with the involuntary reflex chill
that has its roots in
man’s immemorial fear of the supernatural. The Saint’s conviction was so wild
and yet real that for
one fantastic moment the detective had a
vision of Costello’s
intense black eyes fixed and dilating in a
hypnotic stare, his slender sensitive hands moving in weird passes, his lips
under
the thin black moustache mouthing necromantic commands.
…
It changed into another equally fantastic vision of two
courteous but inflexible gentlemen handing a
weapon to a
third, bowing and going away, like a deputation to an
officer
who has been found to be a traitor,
offering the graceful al
ternative to
a court-martial—for the Honour of High Fi
nance… . Then it went
sheer to derision.
“They
just said: ‘Lew, why don’t you shoot yourself?’ and
he thought it was a
great idea—is that it?” he gibed.
“It
was something like that,” Simon answered soberly.
“You see,
Enstone would do almost anything to amuse his children.”
Teal’s
mouth opened, but no sounds came from it. His ex
pression implied
that a whole volcano of devastating sarcasm
was boiling on the
tip of his tongue, but that the Saint’s lu
nacy had soared into
realms of waffiness beyond the reach of repartee.
“Costello
and Hammel had to do something,” said the
Saint.
“International Cottons have been very bad for a long
time—as
you’d have known if you hadn’t packed all your stuff
away in a gilt-edged
sock. On the other hand, Enstone’s in
terest—Cosmopolitan Textiles—were
good. Costello and Ham
mel could have pulled out in two ways:
either by a merger, or
else by having Enstone commit suicide so
that Cosmopolitans
would tumble down in the scare and they could buy them in
—you’ll probably find they’ve
sold a bear in them all through
the month,
trying to break the price. And if you look at
the papers this afternoon you’ll see that all Enstone’s securi
ties have dropped through the bottom of the
market—a
bloke in his position can’t commit suicide without starting a
panic. Costello and Hammel went to dinner to try
for the
merger, but if Enstone
turned it down they were ready for the
other
thing.”
“Well?”
said Teal obstinately; but for the first time there
seemed to be a tremor
in the foundations of his disbelief.
“They
only made one big mistake. They didn’t arrange for Lew to leave a letter.”
“People
have shot themselves without leaving letters.”
“I
know. But not often. That’s what started me thinking.”
“Well?”
said the detective again.
Simon
rumpled his hair into more profound disorder, and
said: “You see,
Claud, in my disreputable line of business
you’re always
thinking’; ‘Now, what would A do?—and what
would B do?—and what
would C do?’ You have to be able
to get inside people’s minds and know what
they’re going to
do and how they’re going to do it, so you can always be
one
jump ahead of ‘em. You have to be a practical psychologist —just like the
head salesman of a general manufacturer in
the Midlands.”
Teal’s
mouth opened, but for some reason which was be
yond his conscious
comprehension he said nothing. And Si
mon Templar went on, in the disjointed
way that he some
times fell into when he was trying to express something
which
he himself had not yet grasped in bare words:
“Sales psychology is just
a study of human weaknesses. And
that’s a
funny thing, you know. I remember the manager of
one of the biggest novelty manufacturers in the world
telling me that the soundest test of any idea for
a new toy
was whether it would appeal
to a middle-aged business man.
It’s
true, of course. It’s so true that it’s almost stopped being a
joke—the father who plays with his little boy’s
birthday
presents so energetically
that the little boy has to shove off
and
smoke papa’s pipe. Every middle-aged business man has that strain of childishness
in him somewhere, because without
it
he would never want to spend his life gathering more paper
millions than he can ever spend, and building up
rickety
castles of golden cards that
are always ready to topple over
and
be built up again. It’s just a glorified kid’s game with a
box of bricks. If all the mighty earth-shaking
business men
weren’t like that they
could never have built up an economic system in which the fate of nations, all
the hunger and happi
ness and
achievement of the world, was locked up in bars
of yellow tooth-stopping.” Simon raised his eyes suddenly—
they were very bright and in some queer fashion
sightless, as
if his mind was
separated from every physical awareness of
his surroundings. “Lewis Enstone was just that kind of a man,”
he said.
“Are
you still thinking of that toy you were playing with,”
Teal asked
restlessly.
“That—and
other things we heard. And the photographs.
Did you notice them
?”
“No.”
“One
of them was Enstone playing with a clock-work train.
In another of them he
was under a rug, being a bear. In another he was working a big model
merry-go-round. Most of
the pictures were like that. The children came
into them, of
course, but you could see that Enstone was having the
swellest time.”
Teal, who
had been fidgeting with a pencil, shrugged
brusquely and sent it
clattering across the desk.
“You
still haven’t shown me a murder,” he stated.
“I had
to find it myself,” said the Saint gently, “You see,
it was a
kind of professional problem. Enstone was happily
married, happy with
his family, no more crooked than any
other big-time financier, nothing on
his conscience, rich and
getting richer—how were they to make him
commit suicide? If I’d been writing a story with him in it, for instance, how
could I
have made him commit suicide?”
“You’d
have told him he had cancer,” said Teal caustically,
“and
he’d have fallen for it.”
Simon
shook his head.
“No.
If I’d been a doctor—perhaps. But if Costello or
Hammel had suggested
it, he’d have wanted confirmation. And
did he look like a
man who’d just been told that he might
have cancer?”
“It’s
your murder,” said Mr. Teal, with the beginnings of a
drowsy
tolerance that was transparently rooted in sheer resig
nation. “I’ll let
you solve it.”
“There
were lots of pieces missing at first,” said the Saint.
“I
only had Enstone’s character and weaknesses. And then it
came
out—Hammel was a psychologist. That was good, be
cause I’m a bit of a
psychologist myself, and his mind would
work something like
mine. And then Costello could invent
mechanical gadgets and make them
himself. He shouldn’t
have fetched out that lighter, Claud—it gave
me another of
the missing pieces. And then there was the box.”
“Which
box?”
“The
cardboard box—on his table, with the brown paper.
You know Fowler said
that he thought either Hammel or
Costello left it. Have you got it here?”
“I
expect it’s somewhere in the building.”
“Could
we have it up?”
With the
gesture of a blase hangman reaching for the
noose, Teal took hold
of the telephone on his desk.
“You
can have the gun, too, if you like,” he said.
“Thanks,”
said the Saint. “I wanted the gun.”
Teal gave
the order; and they sat and looked at each other in silence until the exhibits
arrived. Teal’s silence explained
in fifty different ways that the Saint
would be refused no facili
ties for nailing down his coffin in a manner
that he would
never be allowed to forget; but for some reason his
facial regis
ter was not wholly convincing. When they were alone again,
Simon went to the desk, picked up the gun, and put it in the
box. It
fitted very well.