The Saint Around the World (8 page)

“Absolutely. He went to a good school, where he didn’t get into any particular trouble. Then he became an actor. He never made any hit, but he managed to make a living. He didn’t care much what he did, as long as it was something theatrical. He got married the first time when he was twenty-five. He and his wife were both in the chorus of some revue. Later on they joined up with one of those troupes that used to play on the piers at the seaside in the summer. He was about thirty when she got drowned in a boating accident.”

“Why did he wait that long?”

“It wasn’t so Jong after she’d inherited some money from an uncle in Australia; and right on top of that they’d taken out mutual insurance policies.”

“So then he became a capitalist.”

“He still wasn’t so awfully rich, but he moved up a notch. He helped to produce some shows in London, which were mostly flops. But he always got other people to invest with Mm, so his own money lasted longer than you’d think. He was getting a bit short, though, when he married his second wife.”

“The American?”

“Yes. That was after the War, when the tourists started coming over again. He married her, and they went to America together—after taking out insurance policies for each other. Six months later she was electrocuted. She was lying in the bath listening to a small radio, apparently, and it fell in.”

“Just doing his bit to improve Britain’s dollar balance,” Simon remarked.

“Then it was the same story all over again—a night club, plays, a film company that never produced anything, and some other business schemes. Never anything crooked that you could put your finger on, except that his partners somehow always lost more money than he did. And about a year ago he married the present Mrs. Clarron.”

“He sounds like a real cagey operator. At least, until that shooting accident misfired—if we should use the expression.”

She nodded.

“That was when the Southshire Insurance Company got very interested, as I told you. Being stuck three times in a row was a bit too much. Of course it could all be coincidence, but it had to be looked into.”

Simon regarded her appreciatively.

“They’re not so stupid. I’d have taken a long time to spot you as a detective.”

“It’s a new discovery,” she said spiritedly. “They found out that investigators could do a lot more if they didn’t look like investigators, and somebody told them that a woman with brains isn’t obliged to look like a hippopotamus.”

He grinned.

“I must tell Teal that the same could apply to policemen,” he said.

“What does he think about you butting in—or doesn’t he know?”

“Oh, he knows all right, and he disapproves strongly. But there’s nothing he can do about it. I told him that the insurance company stood to lose ten thousand pounds if Clarron managed to get away with killing another wife, and they couldn’t afford to bet that much on Scotland Yard being smart enough to stop him.”

Simon chuckled aloud.

“I’m beginning to think of you as a soul-mate. But you still haven’t told me how you visualize me in this set-up.”

“In rather the same way,” she said seriously. “I know it’ll sound ridiculous, but I’ve always been your wildest fan. I started reading about you in my teens, and idolizing you in a silly way. I can’t have altogether grown out of it. When I heard you asking about Clarron in Skindle’s, and heard your name, it just hit me like a mad flash of inspiration. I’d give anything to get even with Teal for the patronizing way he’s talked to me, and I knew you’d sympathize with that, and besides, this case would be a great big feather in my cap. That is—if we could get together …”

The Saint finished his plate and leaned back. The tranquil glow that he felt was fueled by more subtle calories than a good meal satisfyingly washed down. For his luck, it seemed, was as unchangingly blessed as ever. He had been in England only a few hours, and already the old merry-go-round was rolling at full throttle in his honor. A problem, a pretty girl, and Chief Inspector Teal to bedevil. What more had he ever asked? It was as if he had never been away.

“You just got yourself soul-hitched, darling,” he said. “Now what’s the music you think we might make together?”

“I’ve told you everything I know, for a start. But what do you know?”

“Not another thing. The worthy watchdogs of the Yard undoubtedly spotted my name in a routine check for incoming undesirables, and Teal came huffing out to the airport to warn me to keep my nose clean. I knew that Teal had to be working on some case, even if he is retiring; and whatever it was, I figured I could do a memorable job of lousing it up for him.”

“You mean you didn’t know about Clarron before?”

“Teal took it for granted that I did, and let out the name. Then I needled him some more, and he mentioned Maidenhead. That was plenty for me to start on.”

She stared at him with sober brown eyes, and bit her lip.

“That’s rather disappointing.”

“I’ve done plenty with less, in my time,” he said cheerfully. “But you’re still holding something back. What was that about you being the next victim?”

“Oh. Yes. You see, I’ve got to know him quite well. He thinks I’m a young widow with money.”

“And that you might be available if only he were free?”

“That’s right. That’s why I talked the insurance company into letting me rent this cottage, to make it easy. It’s right next door to his house.”

The Saint raised his eyebrows over the cigarette he was lighting.

He got up and stood at the window. Looking out at an angle, he still could not see the other house; and he recalled that when they arrived at the cottage he had not clearly seen an adjoining house, since the front of the cottage was well screened with trees; but in the back only a low hedge separated the lawns that went down to the river.

“I’ve done more than that,” Adrienne said. “Once I got him over here, and pretended to be a bit tight, and more than hinted that when my imaginary husband was ill with pneumonia I’d helped to make sure that he didn’t get over it.”

“The soul-mate approach again?”

“It was a trick I read about in a mystery story. But it didn’t work on him. He’s too—what did you call it?—cagey, even to fall for that.”

A man had come into sight on the next lawn, at first inspecting a stretch of hedge with the diagnostic eye of an amateur gardener, then turning and looking back over it towards the cottage. Then he walked down a little farther and came through an opening in it.

“We’d better hurry up and think of a new approach that includes me,” said the Saint. “Lover Boy is coming to call.”

iv

Mr. Reginald Clarron’s failure to achieve any notable success on the stage was only due, he would always be convinced, to the cloddish stupidity of the public. About his own outstanding talents he had no doubt whatsoever. Where lesser thespians played their parts for a couple of hours behind the footlights, he could sustain his for twentyfour hours a day, with no help from a script, and sell them to an audience that did not have to be pre-conditioned by the atmosphere o.f a theater. He prided himself on having every flicker of expression and every inflection of voice under conscious control at every moment. It would be trite to observe that he would have made a formidable poker player: he already was.

He was a passably good-looking face without a single distinctive feature, but like a good showman he applied distinction to it with the full cut of his artistically long but carefully brushed gray hair and a pair of glasses with extra heavy black frames, so that a recognizable caricature might have been made of those two items alone with no face shown at all. His figure, at least as far as it was ever displayed to the public, was most commendable for a man of fiftyfive; and only a certain fleshiness around the chin betrayed a tendency to embonpoint which skilful tailoring was able to conceal elsewhere.

He had not batted an eyelid when he heard the name Templar, although instinct told him that there was only likely to be one Templar who might be making inquiries about him. He still could not imagine how that Templar could have become interested in him, but he had read enough to believe that the Saint’s nose for undetected crime verged on the supernatural. Nevertheless, he was not going to let himself be stampeded by the uncomfortable fact, which he believed was the main reason why less astute malfeasors had been the Saint’s easy prey.

“I can’t imagine what the man can be up to,” he told his wife boldly, for he was clever enough never to create complications for himself with lies or evasions that were not strictly necessary. “I’m quite sure that poor Frances never mentioned a friend called Mrs. Brown. The very name is an obvious subterfuge.”

“I do hope he isn’t after my jewels,” Mrs Clarron said.

She touched the sapphire pendant that showed in the open neck of her bed jacket, with fingers glittering with diamond and ruby rings. Except for being propped up on pillows, she looked as if she had been decorated for a grand entrance at a first night at the opera.

Mr. Clarron pursed his lips.

“I don’t want to alarm you, my love, but that’s quite a possibility. I still wish you’d let me put them in a safe deposit for you. To keep fifty thousand pounds’ worth of jewels in the house, these days, is simply asking for trouble.”

“Please don’t start that all over again, dear,” she pleaded wanly. “They’re insured, aren’t they? And since I can never go out and show them off again, wearing them for you is the only pleasure I’ve got left. I know you can’t understand how a woman feels, but it does make me happy. And they are mine, after all.”

Mr. Clarron stoically refrained from arguing. He had already devoted some of his best performances to that theme, without making any impression on her whimsical obduracy.

It had been somewhat of a shock to him when, shortly after their marriage, he had discovered that the millionaire’s baubles which she displayed so opulently were not complemented by any proportionate resources in the bank. Her late husband, who had catered to her obsession by showering precious stones on her like a sultan, had apparently mortgaged his business assets so improvidently to do it that after his death they had barely realized enough to pay the inheritance taxes. Not that her value in gems alone was anything to be sneezed at, but it was less than Mr. Clarron had been counting on. And her fanatical refusal to let the jewels out of her own custody for a moment had made it plain that nothing but a third widowhood would show him an appreciable profit.

However, a recent brainstorm had shown him how her jewelry could be made to return a double dividend, and he was quite glad that the original accident he had planned for her had failed and left him the chance to improve on it.

“Very well, my dear,” he said. “But if he should call here and I happen to be out, you must refuse to talk to him on any pretext.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. I’d be completely terrified. And I think you should warn the police about him at once.”

“Of course, I should have done that already,” he said.

Looking up from the garden at Adrienne Halberd’s cottage, he was troubled by another consideration. He was forewarned that she had been in the bar at Skindle’s when the Saint was asking about him, but he had no way of knowing what might have developed between them later. With unlimited confidence, he decided to take that bull also by the horns.

It was a blow under the belt when the girl admitted him at the back door and he instantly saw the lean bronzed man lounging on the couch under the window as if he owned it.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I had no idea you had company.”

“Don’t be silly, Reggie,” she insisted breezily. “Come on in. We were just talking about you, anyway. This is Mr. Templar. I picked him up at Skindle’s. I heard him asking about you there, so we got talking.”

Mr. Clarron’s acting ability and stage presence still somehow stood by him.

“Mrs. Jafferty told me,” he said, with absolute naturalness. “But frankly, I just can’t place that Mrs. Brown you spoke of.”

“I’m not surprised,” said the Saint. “I didn’t mean to spring it on you quite so bluntly, but Mrs. Brown was her sister. Mr. Brown is better known to the FBI as Bingo Brown, the racket boss of Baltimore.”

“The Saint knows all the gangsters, of course,” Adrienne contributed blithely. “He started telling me such fabulous stories about them, I just had to bring him home to hear more.”

“Indeed?” Mr. Clarron’s voice was impeccably distant. “But in this case I’m sure he’s mistaken. My late wife had no sister.”

“I didn’t expect you’d have heard of her,” said the Saint. “When she took up with Bingo, her family disowned her and agreed never to mention her name. But she was still very fond of your late wife, and ever since that odd accident she’s been pestering Bingo to find out if you were a right guy. So when I happened to run into him just before I was leaving, he asked me to look you up. Of course it’s absurd, but–-“

“I think you have put it in a nutshell, Mr. Templar,” Clar-ron said icily. “But if you want me to discuss this preposterous fabrication, I must do it another time.” He turned to the girl. “I only dropped over, my dear, to ask if you would be home this evening. I have to run up to London on business, and won’t get back until late; and it’s Mrs. Jafferty’s night off. I know everything is all right, but I’d just feel happier to know that my wife could call you in an emergency.”

“Of course,” Adrienne said awkwardly.

“Thank you, my dear.”

Mr. Clarron bowed to the Saint with courtly frigidity, and walked out without faltering.

He was immune to panic—the career of a successful Blue-beard calls for coldblooded qualities that would scarcely be comprehensible to more temperamental murderers. But in much the same way as he had heard of the Saint, and perhaps less critically, he was well imbued with legends of the im-placable code of America’s gangdom.

He still had not lost his head. He could conceive that the fantastic thing that the Saint had suggested might be true, without actually having to concede that it was. But that only meant that he must delay no longer about setting in motion a plan that he had already worked out to the ultimate detail —had, in fact, already prepared all the mechanical ground-work for.