Leslie Charteris The Saint 12 The Saint In England

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Hoppy, harking back to his original problem.
Simon Templar fought with his soul for a short time without speaking. If he
had followed his most primitive instincts, there would probably have been a
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late lamented Mr. Uniatz tucked up in the bushes alongside the sleeping rural
constable; but the Saint's sense of civic responsibility was improving.
"I guess we'll leave him," he said at length. "It can't make things any
worse."
He drove back to London in, a thoughtful frame of mind. It was one of those
times when the hundredth chance turned up in magnificent vindication of all
harebrained enterprise; and when the established villain was a man in the
position of Sir Hugo Renway, the Saint was inclined to have a few things to
think about. There were only two forms of smuggling in which the rewards were
high and the penalties heavy enough to justify such extreme measures as the
murdered airman on the Brighton road and that lethally electrified wire fence
at March House it is curious that the Saint was still far from reading the
real interpretation into the facts he knew.
The wandering policeman whom Hoppy Uniatz had poked in de jaw was a
complication which had not been allowed for in his plan of campaign as
seriously as it might; and he was not expecting the repercussions of it to
reach him quite so quickly as they did.
He put the Hirondel back in its garage at about a quarter to four and walked
round to his apartment on Piccadilly. A sleepy night porter took them up in
the lift: he was a new employee of the building whom the Saint had not seen
before, and Simon made a "mental note to learn more about him at an early
date he had found it a very sound principle to enlist the sympathies of the
employees in any such building where he lived, for there were other detectives
besides Mr. Teal who had visualized a cast-iron arrest of the Saint as a
signpost to promotion. But he was not thinking of doing anything about it at
that hour, and his mind was too much occupied with other matters to notice
that the man looked at him with more than ordinary curiosity as he got in.
His apartment lay at the end of a short corridor. He strolled innocently
towards it, taking out his key, with Hoppy following him; and he was on the
point of putting his key in the lock when a voice that was only too familiar
spoke behind him:
"Do you mind if we come in?"
The Saint turned rather slowly on his heel and looked at the two men who had
appeared from somewhere to bar the way back along the corridor there was
something rather solid and purposeful about the way they stood shoulder to
shoulder so as to fill the passage, something which put the glint of steel
back in his eyes and set his heart ticking a fraction faster. Hoppy's hand was
leaping automatically to his hip; but Simon caught it by the wrist and smiled.
"You know you're always welcome, Claud," he murmured. "But you do choose the
most Bohemian hours for your visits."
He turned back to the door and unlocked it and led the way into the living
room, spinning his hat onto a peg in the hall as he passed through. He took a
cigarette from the box on the table and lighted it, facing round with one hand
in his pocket and that thoughtful smile still on his lips.
"Well, what's the fun, boys?" he inquired genially. "Has somebody pinched the
north side of Oxford Street and do you think I did it, or have you just
dropped in to sing carols?"
"Where have you been tonight?" asked Mr. Teal.
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His manner was not the manner of a man who had dropped in to sing carols.
Even in his wildest flights of whimsy, the Saint had never thought of Chief
Inspector Teal as the Skylark of Scotland Yard, but he had known him to look
more like an embryonic warbler than he did just then. Simon smiled even more
genially and even more thoughtfully and trickled out a lungful of blue smoke.
"We've been on a pub-crawl with Andrew Volstead and Lady Astor, and Hoppy
came along to carry the bromo-seltzer."
Teal did not smile.
"If you've got another alibi," he said, "I'd like to hear it. But it had
better be a good one."
The Saint pondered for a moment.
"You are getting particular," he said. "A story like that would always have
kept you amused for hours in the old days. I suppose you've been taking a
correspondence course in this detective business. All right. We haven't been
on a pub-crawl. We've been splitting hairs on the dome of St. Paul's and
looking for needles in the Haymarket."
Mr. Teal's hands remained in his pockets, but his whole attitude suggested
that they were grasping something as heavy as a steam roller.
"Is that all you've got to say?" he demanded hoarsely.
"It'll do for the time being," said the Saint calmly. "That's what I say
we've been doing; and what the hell does it matter to you?"
The detective appeared, somehow, in spite of his mountainous immobility, to
approach the verge of gibbering. It may seem unkind of the chronicler to
mention this, but he is conscientiously concerned to deal only with the bare
facts, without apology or decoration. And yet he must admit that Mr. Teal had
lately suffered much.
"Now listen," Mr. Teal got out through his teeth. "About half-past eleven
tonight the watchman at Hawker's factory, down at Brooklands, was knocked on
the head by someone he found prowling around the sheds. When he woke up and
raised the alarm, one of the hangars had been forced open and an aeroplane had
been stolen!"
Simon tapped his cigarette on the edge of an ashtray. His brain was starting
to turn over like an electric motor responding to the touch of a switch, but
no hint of that sudden mental commotion could have been seen in his face. His
gaze went back to the detective from under quizzically slanting eyebrows.
"It sounds pretty ambitious," he remarked. "But what makes you think I'd be
interested?"
"I don't kave to think "
"1 know, Claud. You just chew a thistle and your ears flap." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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