Alias the Saint (8 page)

10

With the first bottle packed with earth, the Saint put the neck in his mouth, and used it to breathe through, closing his nostrils with his fingers. It had been a forlorn hope, but it had been the only thing he had been able to think of; and he remembered having read in a book that such a device formed one of the most efficient possible respirators. It was something to do with molecular velocity—the Saint was no profound scientist, and he did not profess to understand the principle. The main point was whether it would work effectively. He waited, breathing cautiously, while the luminous dial on his wrist watch indicated the passing of ten minutes. At the end of that time he felt no distress other than that caused by the difficulty of squeezing air through the packed earth, and decided that his improvised gas mask was functioning satisfactorily.

He turned his attention to the door. Hampered as he was by having to take care not to draw a single breath of air which did not pass through his packed bottle, he was not able to fling his whole weight against it, but the efforts he was able to make seemed to produce no impression. He felt all round the door, but the wall in which it was set was the only one which was bricked up. Then he went down on his hands and knees, and tested the stone flags. Two of them, right beside the door, were loose. Handicapped though he was by having only one free hand, he succeeded in getting his fingers under each slab in turn, and dislodging it, and dragging it away. The earth underneath was moist and soft.

Simon Templar began to dig.

It took him three hours by his watch to burrow under the door, but at last he achieved an aperture large enough to worm his way through. He leaned against the wall on the other side for a few moments, to rest himself, and then felt his way down the corridor and up the stairs.

Mercifully, the door at the top of the stairs was unlocked, and it opened at once. Manifestly, Raxel had had no doubt that the Saint would not live long enough to find any way out of the cellar. Simon burst through, and rushed for the nearest window. He had not even time to open it—he smashed it with his respirator bottle, and filled his aching lungs with great gasping breaths of frosty fresh air.

After a short time he was able to breathe more easily, and then he made a round of the ground floor, opening every window and door to give free passage to the sea breeze, which was soon blowing strongly enough through the house to sweep away any of the gas which filtered up from the cellar.

It was in the kitchen that he found Detective Duncarry securely trussed up and gagged in a chair. Simon cut him loose, and heard the story.

“I don’t know how it happened. One minute I was cleaning up a saucepan, and then I got a sickening welt on the back of the head that knocked me right out. Next thing I knew, I was tied up like a Christmas turkey,”

“And I suppose if I’d died, as I was meant to, you’d have sat here till you starved to death,” said the Saint. “It’s a great life if you don’t weaken,”

He lighted a cigarette and paced the room feverishly, refusing to talk. Raxel, Crantor, and Basher Tope had gone—he did not have to search the inn to know that. And the ship had gone. Looking out of the window, he could see nothing but blackness. Nowhere on the sea was visible anything like a ship’s lights. But then they’d had a long start while he was sapping under that cellar door.

And now he knew exactly what the Professor’s scheme was, and the magnitude of it took his breath away.

He wasted only a few minutes in coming to a decision; and then, with Duncarry to help him,, he went round to the garage and examined the dilapidated Hildebrand. It had not been touched— but, of course, Raxel could not have foreseen that the Saint would be in a position to use it. Anyway, it didn’t look up to much, as cars went, and Simon eyed it disparagingly.

“Now, why did I ever think it might be a comic stunt to arrive here in this ruin?” he wanted to know.

But certainly that car was the only vehicle which would take him out of Llancoed that night, for there would be no trains running .from a one-horse village like that, at that hour.

“Where are you making for?” asked Duncarry, as Simon let in the clutch and the car moved off with a deafening rattle.

“Gloucester,” said the Saint briefly. “And Hildebrand is going to touch the ground in spots, like he’s never skipped before. Now get down on your knees in front of the dashboard. Dun, and pray that nothing busts!”

Duncarry pulled his nose.

“This show will be all over before I even know what it’s about,” he said. “I’ve followed you right from the beginning without asking a single question, and I’ve never beefed about it. I’ve waltzed around looking villainous—left to starve—and you haven’t heard me complain. But now—”

“Know anything about the Megantic, son?” asked the Saint; and Duncarry, who was an earnest student of the newspapers, nodded.

“Sure—she’s carrying another instalment of your War Debt over to the States. Just a few million pounds’ worth of gold,” he said, and the Saint’s eyebrows moved slowly northwards.

It was the one item of information that he lacked, and the revelation made his hair curl. “Up-to-date piracy,” he had diagnosed without revving his brain up to any point where it would have been liable to seize, but that the subject of the piracy should be such a colossal sum, in the shape of such an easily negotiable metal, was a factor of which he had never dreamed.

And then he laughed.

“There’s nothing much for you to know, old dear,” he drawled. “It’s only that the Professor has arranged to lift that little flock of ingots on the way.”

Duncarry revolved his long-nosed face towards the Saint, and inhaled sibilantly.

“What’s that?” he demanded.

“Exactly what I told you,” murmured Simon, and passed on what he had seen and what he had overheard.

Now that he had all the threads in his hands, this did not take him long. Mysteries are long and complicated, but facts are always plain and to the point.

“The Professor has a few million cubic feet of compressed poison gas in his heavy luggage for the benefit of the strong-room guards. I’ll bet any money he also has a cabin in a good strategic position for conferring the same benefit. There is also a quantity of tear gas to deal with minor disturbances. That’s what they were manufacturing when I butted in—I got a whiff of it, and the mystery literally made me burst into tears. Crantor will come up in the ship we saw to take off the boodle. I can guess that, though I can’t tell you how it’s going to be arranged.”

“And what do we do about it?” asked Duncarry, and the Saint grimaced.

“That depends upon the efficacy

If anything can be deduced from subsequent events, Duncarry was no mean intercessor. Or perhaps the Saint’s magnificent luck was working overtime. At least it is a simple fact that they covered the eighty-five miles to Gloucester without a mishap, though it took them nearly five hours.

It was three o’clock on the Wednesday morning when the Saint entered the police station in Gloucester, and by some means best known to himself succeeded in so startling the sleepy night shift that they allowed him to use the official telephone for a call to Chief Inspector Teal’s private address.

And the means by which he convinced Chief Inspector Teal that he was not trying to be funny may also never be known. But he passed on Teal’s parting words to Duncarry verbatim.

“Leave this end to me,” Teal had said, and for once in his life his voice was not at all drowsy. “I’ll get through to the police at Portsmouth and tell them to be looking out for you; and after that I’ll get on to the Admiralty, and make sure that they’ll have everything ready for you when you arrive. You’ll see the thing through yourself—it’s hopelessly illegal, but I’m afraid you’ve earned the job.”

“Does that mean we’re temporary policemen?” inquired Duncarry, when the speech had been reported; and Simon Templar nodded.

“I guess it does.”

A constable had already been sent round to waken the owner of the biggest local garage and commandeer the fastest car in stock, and at that moment a huge Bentley roared up and stopped outside the station. Simon took the wheel, and Dun-carry settled in beside him.

They were well on their way before the American voiced his opinion of the whole affair.

“This is a great day for a couple of outlaws,” he remarked; and the Saint, remembering the almost grovelling farewell of the Gloucester police station personnel, could not find it in him to disagree.

11

Passengers on the Megantic who were up early for breakfast that morning were interested to see the low lean shape of a destroyer speeding towards them. As the destroyer came nearer, a string of flags broke out from the mast, and then the passengers were amazed and fluttered, for the Megantic suddenly began to slow up.

The destroyer also hove to, and a boat put out from its side and rowed towards the Megantic.

Betty Tregarth was one of the early risers who crowded to the side to watch the two men from the destroyer’s boat climbing up the rope ladder which had been lowered for them. She saw the first man who clambered over the rail quite clearly, and the colour left her face suddenly, for it was the man whom she knew as Rameses Smith.

The Megantic had got under way again, and the destroyer was rapidly dropping astern, when she received the expected summons to the captain’s cabin.

Besides the captain, Rameses Smith was there, and another man with an official bearing whose face seemed vaguely familiar. Marring was also there, an unsavoury and dishevelled sight in his dressing gown, and she saw that there were handcuffs on his wrists.

“This is the other one,” said the Saint. “Miss Tregarth, I don’t think I need to put you in irons, but I must ask you to consider yourself under arrest.”

She nodded dumbly.

Simon Templar turned to his companion.

“Dun, you can take Marring below. Don’t let him out of your sight. I’ll arrange for you to be relieved later.” Then he turned to the captain. “Captain Davis, may I ask you to allow me a few words alone with Miss Tregarth?”

“Certainly, Mr. Templar.”

The captain followed Duncarry and Marring out of the room, and Simon Templar closed the door behind them, and faced the girl. She had never imagined that he could look so stern.

“Sit down,” he said, and she obeyed.

Simon took a chair on the other side of the table.

“Betty,” he said, “I’m giving you your last chance. Spill all the beans you know, and you mayn’t do so badly. Stay in with the rest of ‘em, and you’re booked for a certain ten years. Which is it going to be?”

“I’ll tell you everything I know,” she said. “It doesn’t matter much now, anyway.”

She told him the story from the beginning, and he listened with rapt attention. She expected incredulity, but he showed none. At the end of the recital he was actually smiling.

“That’s fine!” said the Saint, almost with a sigh —“that’s the best thing I’ve heard for a long time!”

“What do you mean?” she asked dazedly.

“Only this,” answered the Saint. “I guessed you were framed, but the police never knew anything about it. Raxel never bothered to try and deceive them. He just wanted to make sure of you. I don’t know every single idea that waddles through the so-called brains of the police, but if you’re wanted for murdering Inspector Henley you may call me Tiglath-Pileser for short.”

She stared.

“But you’re a detective youself–your name isn’t Smith, of course, but—”

Simon smiled cherubically.

“The captain called me by my right name,” he said. “I am Simon Templar.”

She stared.

“Not—the Saint?”

“None other,” said Simon; and it is the chronicler’s painful duty to record that he said it as if he were very pleased about it. Which he was.

“Then—is all this—”

Simon shook his head.

“I’m afraid it isn’t,” he said, almost lugubriously. “This enterprise is catastrophically respectable. You may take it that the full power and majesty of the Law is concentrated in these lily-white hands. Is there anyone else you’d like arrested?”

“Do you mean that I’m free?” she asked, with a wild hope springing up in her voice.

“Well, that’s a matter for Claud Eustace Teal. You’re too deeply involved to be set free without a considerable flourishing of red tape; but within a week or so, say—Here, have a handkerchief.”

The Saint pushed a gaudy square yard or two of silk into her hands, and went in search of Duncarry.

“Betty Tregarth is drenching the skipper’s carpet,” he said. “Would you like to go and lend a shoulder?”

The destroyer returned some hours later from the task of rounding up and capturing the cooperating vessel that was Crantor’s charge; and it was Duncarry who escorted the girl on board and supervised the transshipment of Gregory Marring and the two expert safe smashers who were discovered among the passengers. The Saint himself seemed to have lost interest, and his interview with Professor Raxel was very brief. ”

“I have just learned your real name, Mr.—er— Smith,” Raxel said, “If I had known it earlier, I should not have made the mistake of underestimating your dangerousness. You should have been killed the first night you arrived at the inn.”

“You should have been strangled at birth,” said the Saint unpleasantly.

It was evening when Duncarry found him hanging over the rail and gazing at the approaching coasts of England with the same moody countenance.

“What’s wrong?” asked the American, and Simon turned and chucked his cigarette end over the side.

“We’ve crashed Dun,” said the Saint, as if he were announcing the end of the world.

Duncarry frowned.

“What are you getting at, Saint?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Here we’ve spent weeks of sleuthing and spadework, and seen our share of the rough stuff as well, and we’re never going to see a cent out of it. Have you forgotten that I’m a business organization?”

Duncarry shrugged.

“If the authorities see it the way I do, they’ll say we’ve paid an instalment of your national debt all by ourselves. Isn’t that enough for you?”

Simon Templar lighted another cigarette and resumed his disparaging inspection of the horizon.