The Saint in Action (26 page)

“We might as well try it,” Teal said grimly. “Ten to one they’ve taken the girl out of London, but it would be just like the Saint’s blasted nerve to hold her here right under our very noses.”

Again his fears were confirmed. Twenty-six Abbot’s Yard was in the same condition as Mother Hubbard’s supboard; and enquiries among the near-artist neighhours elicited the information that the Saint had not been seen for weeks.

Mr Teal was so exasperated that he nearly inserted the next slice of spearmint into his mouth without removing the pink wrapper; but on the intellectual side his grey matter was not quite so white hot now and therefore was slightly more efficient. He was certain of one thing: the Saint had not taken Beatrice Avery to Scotland. After years of experience of Simon Templar’s methods Mr Teal easily guessed that Patricia Holm’s reference to Scotland had very much the fishy smell of a red herring.

“Not much good looking for him, is it, sir?” asked the driver of the police car depressingly.

“No; let’s sit down on the curb and play shove-ha’penny,” retorted Mr Teal with searing sarcasm.

“I mean, sir, the Saint’s got all sorts of hideouts,” said the man. “There’s no telling–-“

“I’ve long since come to the conclusion that most of these stories of the Saint are pure legend,” said Mr Teal with a real flash of intelligence. “In nine cases out of ten he remains in full view and just dares us to do our worst. One of these days he’s going to dare us once too often. Perhaps this is the day,” he added hopefully. “Anyhow, let’s get going.”

“Where to, sir?”

“We know he’s got a place at Weybridge, so we might as well run down and have a look at it,” replied Mr Teal, climbing into the car. “We’ll try every place we know until we find him.”

The more he thought of his recent interview with the Saint, the more he reviewed the subsequent happenings, the higher became his dudgeon. In everything except outward appearance Chief Inspector Teal was exactly like a fire-breathing dragon as he sat in the back of the car, asking the driver why he had left the engine behind and what was the blank-blank idea of driving with the brakes full on.

However, in spite of his unsympathetic comments the journey was accomplished in remarkably good time, and a gleam of hope appeared in Mr Teal’s overheated blue eyes when he saw lights gleaming from the windows of Simon Templar’s house on St George’s Hill. In answer to his thunderous knock and insistent ringing the door was opened by Orace, who inspected him with undisguised disfavour.

“Oh, it’s you, is it?” said Orace witheringly.

“Is Templar here?” roared Mr Teal.

“Is ‘oo ‘ere? If you mean Mister Templar–-“

“I mean Mr Templar!” said the detective chokingly. “Is Mr Templar here?”

“Oo wants ter know?”

“I want to know!” bellowed Mr Teal, his spleen surging out of him like a discharge of poison gas. “Stand out of the way, my man. I’m coming in–-“

“Like ‘ell you are,” Orace said stolidly. “Back door fer you, my man. The idear !”

At this point of the proceedings Simon Templar, resplendent in tuxedo and soft silk shirt, materialized into the picture. The living-room door was half open, and the Saint had an idea that the dialogue would soon become blue around the edges and unfit for the shell-like ears of his guests.

“All right, Orace,” he said breezily. “Walk right in, Claud Eustace. What brings you into the wilds this evening? Not that I wasn’t expecting you–-“

“Oh, you were expecting me, were you ?” broke in Mr Teal, forcing the words past his strained throttle with some difficulty. “Well, I hope you’re glad to be right. You’ve been just a little too smart since I saw you this afternoon. Now I know damned well you are the Z-Man!”

“In that case, dear heart, there must be two Z-Men,” answered the Saint accommodatingly. “Isn’t it amazing how the little fellows breed? I’m glad you’re here, Claud. There’s something I want you to do. It ‘11 interest you to know that I had quite a chat with the original Z-Man this evening–-“

“When I want to listen to any more of that I’ll let you know,” Teal said massively. “Just now I’m going to be busy. I have reason to believe that you kidnapped Miss Beatrice Avery from her apartment in Parkside Court this evening, and I’m not going to leave this house until I’ve searched it—and you might as well know that I haven’t got a warrant.”

“But why search the house, dear old fungus?” Simon protested reasonably. “Kidnapping is a hard word, and I resent it. But I’m willing to make allowances for your blood pressure. At the rate the red corpuscles are being pumped through that lump of petrified wood you wear your hat on the poor thing must be feeling the strain. Have I denied that Miss Avery is under this roof? She came down with Patricia a little more than an hour ago, and we’re just having our coffee.”

Mr Teal gulped, and his chewing gum slithered to the back of his mouth, played hide-and-seek with his tonsils and finally slid into his gullet before he could recover it.

“What!” His voice was like a pinpricked carnival balloon. “You admit you’ve got her here? You admit you’re the Z-Man? Then by God–-“

“My poor boob,” said the Saint sympathetically, “I haven’t admitted anything of the sort. I merely said that Miss Avery was having dinner with me. If that makes me the Z-Man it makes you the Grand Lama of Tibet. Miss Avcry is a friend of Pat’s, and we’ve got a couple of other good-looking girls here too. We’re making a collection of them. If you’ll promise to behave yourself I’ll take you in and let you look at them.”

He turned back into the living room, and Mr Teal followed him with the beginnings of a new vacuum pumping itself out from under his belt. Somehow it was going to be done again—the awful certainty of it made Mr Teal feel physically sick. He had a wild desire to turn back to his car and drive away to the end of the earth and forget that he had ever seen Scotland Yard, but he had to drag himself on, like a condemned man walking to the scaffold.

He stood in the doorway with his hands clasped tightly on his belt and stared around at the four eye-filling sirens who reclined in armchairs around the fire. Patricia Holm and Beatric Avcry he knew; but his heavy eyelids nearly disappeared into the back of his head when he heard the names of Irene Cromwell and Sheila Ireland. And the worst of it was that they all looked perfectly happy. They didn’t leap up with shrill cries of joy and greet him as their deliverer. They studied him with the detached curiosity of surgeons inspecting a new kind of tumour revealed by an operation.

Mr Teal grunted his acknowledgment of the introductions and stood glaring desperately at Beatrice Avery.

“I’ve got one thing to ask you, Miss Avery,” he said with a hideous presentiment of what the answer would be. “Did you come here entirely of your own free will?”

“I think that’s a very unkind thing to ask, Mr Teal,” she answered sweetly. “It’s unkind to me, since it implies that I’m weak minded; and it’s unkind to Mr Templar–-“

“I want to be unkind to Mr Templar!” Teal stated homicidally. “If there is any kind of threat being held over you, Miss Avery, I give you my word that so long as I’m here–-“

“Of course there isn’t any threat,” she said. “How ridiculous! What do you think Mr Templar is—a sort of Bluebeard?”

Mr Teal didn’t dare to say what he thought Mr Templar was. But he knew that Beatrice Avery would give him no help. There was nothing about her that gave the slightest hint of fear or anxiety. However accomplished an actress she might be, he knew that she could never have acted like that under compulsion. What other supernatural means the Saint had taken to silence her, Mr Teal couldn’t imagine; but he knew that it was hopeless to fight them.

He pulled himself miserably together.

“I don’t think I need bother you with any more questions, Miss Avery,” he said brusquely.

He went out of the room very much like a beaten dog, and if he had had a tail it would have been hanging between his legs. The Saint followed him out, closed the door and lighted a fresh cigarette.

“Cheer up, Claud,” he said kindly. “You’ve got over these things before, and you’ll get over it again. Look me squarely in the eye and tell me you’re sorry I’m not the Z-Man, and I’ll spread you all over the hall in a mass of squashy pulp.”

The detective looked at him for a long time.

“Damn it, Saint, you’ve got me,” he growled sheepishly. “You know how much I want to get my hands on you, but I’d still be glad if you weren’t the Z-Man.”

“Then why not be glad?”

“I think I’m getting some more ideas now,” Teal went on, flashing the Saint a glance which was very far from sleepy. “Miss Avery—Miss Cromwell— Miss Ireland. Top-line film stars, every one. Let me make another guess. Those girls are the Z-Man’s intended victims; and if you aren’t the Z-Man yourself you’ve brought them here so that tlicy’ll be safe while you go after him.”

“You must have been eating ;i lot of fish and spinach,” said the Saint respectfully. “Your ideas are improving every minute—except for one minor detail. I’ve been out after the Z-Man already, I’ve met him, and we had quite an interesting Jive minutes.”

Mr Teal, who had just rolled up a fresh slice of spearmint with his tongue like a miniature piece of music, shook his head sceptically.

“Just because I’ll believe you up to a point–-“

“Would I lie to you, Claud?” asked the Saint. “Have I ever told you anything but the truth? Listen, brother, I don’t know much about the Z-Man, but I can tell you this. Until this evening he has been known as Mr Otto Zeidelmann, and he’s large and fat and has a black beard and wears horn-rimmed glasses and speaks with a phony German accent. He has been using an office in Bryerby House, Victoria, for his business address; but you needn’t trouble to look for him there, because I don’t think he likes the place so much now. And I doubt if his appearance in ordinary life is anything like my description. But that’s where I saw him, and that’s what he looked like to me.”

Mr Teal opened his mouth, but words failed him.

“And here’s a gun,” Simon went on, taking something wrapped in a silk handkerchief from his pocket. “It’s one of my own, but I fooled a gentleman who goes by the name of Raddon into making a grab for it, and you ought to find a fair sample of his fingerprints. Get Records to look them up, will you ? I have an idea it’s what you professionals call a Clue. I’ll drop into your office in the morning and get your report. Has that percolated?”

“Yes,” replied Mr Teal, taking the gun and putting it carefully away. “But I’m damned if I get the rest. Is this another of your tricks, or are you playing the game for once ? We’ve been trying to get a line on the Z-Man for months–-“

“And I heard of him for the first time today,” murmured the Saint with a smile. “You can call it luck if you like, but most of it’s due to the fact that I’m not festooned with red tape until I look like a Bolshevik Egyptian mummy. Having a free and unfettered hand is a great help. It might even help you to solve a mystery sometimes—but I’m not so sure about that.’*

“Well, what are you getting out of it?” asked Mr Teal with reasonable curiosity. “If you think I’m going to believe that you’re doing this for fun–-“

“Maybe I might persuade the Z-Man to contribute towards my old age pension,” Simon admitted meditatively, as though the idea had just occurred to him. “But it’s still a lot of fun. And if you get his body, dead or alive, you ought to be satisfied. Don’t you think you’re asking rather a lot of questions?”

Mr Teal did, but he couldn’t help it. His mind would never be at ease about anything so long as he knew that the Saint was busy. He stared resentfully at the smiling man in front of him and wondered if he was still only being hoodwinked again.

“I’ve got to get back to town,” he said curtly. “I’m sorry about the misunderstanding. But who the devil did phone that message through to the Yard?”

“That was Comrade Raddon, whose fingerprints are carefully preserved on that gun in your pocket,” Simon replied. “I expect he thought it was a bright idea. Now run along home and play with your toys.”

Mr Teal hitched his coat round.

“I’m going,” he said, fighting a losing battle with the new crop of gnawing suspicions that were springing up all over the well-fertilized tracts of his unhappy mind. “But get this. If you still think you’re putting anything over on me–-“

“I know,” said the Saint. “I needn’t think I can get away with it. How empty the days would be if I couldn’t hear that dear old litany! I think I could recite it in my sleep. Come again, Claud, and we’ll have some new grey hairs for you.” He opened the front door and steered the detective affectionately down the steps. “Take care of Mr Teal, George,” he said to the police driver who still sat at the wheel of the car. “He isn’t feeling very strong just now.”

He patted the detective’s bowler hat well down over his ears and went back into the house.

IX

Back in the living room the Saint’s air of leisured badinage fell off him like a cloak. He draped himself on the mantelpiece with a cigarette tilting from his mouth and a drink in his hand and started to ask questions. He had a lot to ask.

They were not easy questions, and the answers were mostly vague and unsatisfactory. The subject of the Z-Man was not one that seemed to encourage conversation; but Simon Templar had a knack of his own of making people talk, and what he did learn was significant enough. Two or three months earlier Mer-cia Landon, dancing and singing star of Atlantic Studios, had been working in the final sequences of a new supermusical when for no apparent reason she had had a breakdown. All work on the production was held up, the overhead mounted perilously, and finally the picture had to be shelved. It was rumoured that Mercia was being threatened by a blackmailer, but nobody knew anything for certain. And then one morning she was found dead in her apartment from the conventional overdose of veronal.

“Accidental death,” said the coroner’s jury, since there was no evidence to show that the overdose had been deliberately taken; but those “in the know”— people on the inside of the screen world—knew perfectly well that Mercia Landon had taken her own life. And for a good and sufficient reason. Although she was only twenty-two and in perfect health, she had known that her screen career was finished. For when her maid found her there was a deep and jagged cut on her face in the rough zigzag shape of a Z. The upper line crossed her eyebrows, the diagonal crossed her nose, and the lower horizontal gashed her mouth almost from ear to ear. No amount of plastic surgery, no miracles of skin grafting could ever have restored the famous modelling of her face or made it possible for her to smile again that quick sunny smile that had been reflected from a million screens.