A Social Evening
“No,” said the Saint, shaking his head sadly, “it can’t be done. It
can’t really. For one thing, we’re getting all melodramatic, and I
know how you hate that. For another thing, we’ve got the set all
wrong. You’ve got to get into training for looking evil—just now,
you’re as harmless-looking a blackguard as I’ve ever met. I’m strong
for getting the atmosphere right. What d’you say to adjourning, and we
can arrange to meet in Limehouse in about two months, which’ll give
you time to grow a beard and develop a cast in one eye and employ a
few tame thugs by way of local colour. . . .”
The Saint rambled on in his free-and-easy manner, while his brain
dealt rapidly with the situation. Bittle had not raised his automatic.
It pointed innocuously into the carpet, held as loosely as it could be
without falling, for Simon’s eyes were narrowed down to glinting chips
of steel that missed nothing, and Sir John Bittle had an uncomfortable
feeling that those eyes were keen enough to note the slightest
tightening of a muscle. The Saint was giving an admirable imitation of
a man pretending to be off his guard, but the millionaire knew that
the sight of the least threatening movement would telegraph an instant
message to the hand that played with that slim little knife—and the
Saint’s general manner suggested that he felt calmly confident of
being able to reproduce any and every stunt in any and every Mexican
knife-throwing act that ever was, with a few variations and trimmings
of his own.
“You are not conversational, Bittle,” said the Saint, and Bittle
smiled.
“My style is, to say the least of it, cramped,” replied the
millionaire. “If I move, what are the chances of my being pricked with
your pretty toy?”
“Depends how you move,” answered the Saint. “If, for instance, you
relaxed the right hand, so as to allow the ugly toy now reposing there
to descend upon the carpet with what is known to journalists as a
sickening thud—then, I might say that the chances are about one
thousand to one against.”
Bittle opened his hand, and the gun dropped. He stepped to one side,
and the Saint, with a swift sweeping glide, picked up the weapon and
dropped it into his pocket. At the same time he replaced his own
weapon in its concealed sheath.
“Now we can be matey again,” remarked Simon with satisfaction. “What’s
the next move? Taking things in a broad way, I can’t credit your bunch
with much brilliance so far. Dear old Spittle, why on earth must you
make such an appalling bloomer? Don’t you know that according to the
rules of this game you ought to remain shrouded in mystery until
Chapter Thirty? Now you’ve been and gone and spoilt my holiday,”
complained the Saint bitterly, “and I don’t know how I shall be able
to forgive you.”
“You are a very extraordinary man, Mr. Templar.”
The Saint smiled.
“True, O King. But you’re quite as strange a specimen as ever went
into the Old Bailey. For a retired grocer, your command of the Oxford
language is astonishing.”
Bittle did not answer, and the Saint gazed genially around and seemed
almost surprised to see Patricia standing a little behind him. The
girl had not known what to make of most of the conversation, but she
had recovered from her immediate fear. There was a large assurance
about everything the Saint did and said which inspired her with
uncomprehending courage—even as it inspired Bittle with
uncomprehending anxiety.
“Hope we haven’t bored you,” murmured Simon solicitously. “Would you
like to go home?”
She nodded, and Templar looked at the millionaire.
“She would like to go home,” Templar said in his most winning voice.
A thin smile touched Bittle’s mouth.
“Just when we’re getting matey?” he queried.
“I’m sure Miss Holm didn’t mean to offend you,” protested Simon. He
looked at the girl, who stared blankly at him, and turned to Bittle
with an air of engaging frankness. “You see? It’s only that she’s
rather tired.”
Bittle turned over the cigars in a box on a side table near the Saint,
selected one, amputated the tip, and lighted it with the loving
precision of a connoisseur. Then he faced Templar blandly.
“That happens to be just what I can’t allow at the moment,” said
Bittle in an apologetic tone. “You see, we have some business to
discuss.”
“I guess it’ll keep,” said the Saint gently.
“I don’t think so,” said Bittle.
Templar regarded the other thoughtfully for a few seconds. Then, with
a shrug, he jerked the millionaire’s automatic from his pocket and
walked to the french windows. He opened one of them a couple of
inches, holding it with his foot, and signed to the girl to follow
him. With her beside him, he said:
“Then it looks, Bittle, as if you’ll spend to-morrow morning burying a
number of valuable dogs.”
“I don’t think so,” said Bittle.
There was a quiet significance in the way he said it that brought the
Saint round again on the alert.
“Go hon!” mocked Simon watchfully.
Bittle stood with his head thrown back and his eyes half closed, as
though listening. Then he said:
“You see, Mr. Templar, if you look in the cigar-box you will find that
the bottom sinks back a trifle under quite a light pressure. In fact,
it acts as a bell-push. There are now three men in the garden as well
as four bloodhounds, and two more in the passage outside this room.
And the only dog I can imagine myself burying to-morrow morning is an
insolent young puppy who’s chosen to poke his nose into my business.”
“Well, well, _well_,” said the Saint, his hands in his pockets. “Well,
well, WELL!”
Sir John Bittle settled himself comfortably in his arm-chair, pulled
an ashstand to a convenient position, and continued the leisurely
smoking of his cigar. The Saint, looking at him in a softly
speculative fashion, had to admire the man’s nerve. The Saint smiled;
and then Patricia’s hand on his arm brought him back with a jerk to
the stern realities of the situation. He took the hand in his, pressed
it, and turned the Saintly smile on her in encouragement. Then he was
weighing Bittle’s automatic in a steady hand.
“Carrying on the little game of Let’s Pretend,” suggested Simon,
“let’s suppose that I sort of pointed this gun at you, all nervous and
upset, and in my agitation I kind of twiddled the wrong knob. I mean,
suppose it went off, and you were in the way? Wouldn’t it be awkward!”
Bittle shook his head.
“Terribly,” he agreed. “And you’re such a mystery to Baycombe already
that I’m afraid they’d talk. You know how unkind gossip can be. Why,
they’d be quite capable of saying you did it on purpose.”
“There’s something in that,” said Templar mildly, and he put the gun
back in his pocket. “Then suppose I took my little knife and began
playing about with it, and it flew out of my hand and took off your
ear? Or suppose it sliced off the end of your nose? It’s rotten to
have only half a nose or only one ear. People stop and stare at you in
the street, and so forth.”
“And think of my servants,” said Bittle. “They’re all very attached to
me, and they might be quite unreasonably vindictive.”
“That’s an argument,” conceded the Saint seriously. “And now suppose
you suggest a game?”
Bittle moved to a more comfortable position and thought carefully
before replying. The time ticked over, but the Saint was too old a
hand to be rattled by any such primitive device, and he leaned
nonchalantly against the wall and waited patiently for Bittle to
realise that the cat-and-mouse gag was getting no laughs that journey.
At length Bittle said:
“I should be quite satisfied, Mr. Templar, if you would spend a day or
two with me, and during that time we could decide on some adequate
expression of your regret for your behaviour this evening. As for Miss
Holm, she and I can finish our little chat uninterrupted, and then I
will see her home myself.”
“Um,” murmured the Saint, lounging. “Bit of an optimist, aren’t you?”
“I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer, Mr. Templar,” said Bittle cordially.
“In fact, I expect your room is already being prepared.”
The Saint smiled.
“You almost tempt me to accept,” he said. “But it cannot be. If Miss
Holm were not with us—well, I should be very boorish to refuse. But as
a matter of fact I promised Miss Girton to join them in a sandwich and
a glass of ale towards midnight, and I can’t let them down.”
“Miss Holm will make your excuses,” urged Bittle, but the Saint shook
his head regretfully.
“Another time.”
Bittle moved again in the chair, and went on with his cigar. And it
began to dawn upon the Saint that, much as he was enjoying the
sociable round of parlour sports, the game was becoming a trifle too
one-sided. There was also the matter of Patricia, who was rather a
handicap. He found that he was still holding her hand, and was
reluctant to make any drastic change in the circumstances, but
business was business.
With a sigh the Saint hitched himself off the wall which he had found
such a convenient prop, released the hand with a final squeeze, and
began to saunter round the room, humming light-heartedly under his
breath and inspecting the general fixtures and fittings with a
politely admiring eye.
“This room is under observation from two points,” Bittle informed him
as a tactful precaution.
“Pity we haven’t got a camera—the scene’d shoot fine for a shocker,”
was the Saint’s only criticism.
And Simon went on with his tour of the room. He had taken Bittle’s
warning with the utmost nonchalance, but its reactions on the problem
in hand and his own tentative solution were even then being balanced
up in his mind. Bittle, meanwhile, smoked away with a large
languidness which indicated his complete satisfaction with the
entertainment provided and a sublime disregard for the time spent on
digesting it. Which was all that the Saint could have asked.
In its way, it was a classical performance. Anyone with any experience
of such things, entering the room, would have sensed at once that both
men were past masters. Nothing could have been calmer than their
appearance, nothing more polished than their dispassionate exchange of
backchat.
The Saint worked his unhurried way round the room. Now he stopped to
examine a Benares bowl, now an etching, now a fine old piece of
furniture. The patina on a Greek vase held him enthralled for half a
minute: then he was absorbed in the workmanship of a Sheraton whatnot.
In fact, an impartial observer would have gathered that the Saint had
no other interest in life than the study of various antiques, and that
he was thoroughly enjoying a free invitation to take his time over a
minute scrutiny of his host’s treasures. And all the while the Saint’s
eyes, masked now by lazily drooping lids, were taking in all the
details of the furnishing to which he did not devote any ostentatious
attention, and searching every inch of the walls for the spyholes of
which Bittle had spoken.
The millionaire was unperturbed, and the Saint once again permitted
the shadow of a smile to touch the corners of his mouth as he caught
Patricia’s troubled eyes. The smile hardly moved a muscle of his face,
but it drew an answering tremor of the girl’s lips that showed him
that her spirits were still keeping their end up.
The Saint was banking on Bittle’s confidence as a bluffer, and he was
not disappointed. Bittle knew that, for all the guards with whom he
had surrounded himself, his personal safety hung by the slender thread
of a simulated carelessness for it. Bittle knew that to show the least
anxiety, the faintest flutter of uncertainty, would have been to throw
an additional weapon into Templar’s already dangerously comprehensive
armoury, and that was exactly what Bittle dared not do. Therefore the
millionaire affected not to notice the Saint’s movements, and never
changed his position a fraction or allowed his eyes to betray him by
following Simon round the room. Bittle leaned back among the cushions
and gazed abstractedly at a water-colour on the opposite wall. At
another time he studied the pattern on the carpet. Then he looked
expressionlessly at Patricia. Once he pored over his finger-nails, and
measured the length of ash on his cigar against his cuff. All the
while the Saint was behind him, but Bittle did not turn his head, and
the Saint was filled with hope and misgiving at the same time. He had
located one peephole, cunningly concealed below a pair of old
horse-pistols which hung on the wall, but the second he had failed to
find. It might have been a bluff; in any case, the time was creeping
on, and the Saint could not afford to carry his feigned languor too
far. He would have to chance the second watcher.
He began a second circuit, deliberately passing in front of Bittle,
and the millionaire looked up casually at him.
“Don’t think I’m hurrying you,” said Bittle, “but it’s getting late,
and you might have rather a tiring day to-morrow.”
“Thanks,” murmured Simon. “It takes a lot to tire me. But I’ve decided
to spend the night with you, at any rate. You might tell the big stiff
with the damaged proboscis to fill the hot-water bottle and lay out
some night-shirts.”
Bittle nodded.
“I can only commend your discretion,” he remarked, “as sincerely as I
appreciate your simple tastes.”
“Not at all,” murmured the Saint, no less suave. “Would it be
troubling you too much to ask for the loan of a pair of bedsocks?”
The Saint was now behind Bittle again. He was standing a bare couple
of feet from the millionaire’s head, one hand resting lightly on the
back of a small chair. The other hand was holding a bronze statuette
up to the light, and the whole pose was so perfectly done that its
hidden menace could not have struck the watchers outside until it was
too late.
Bittle was a fraction quicker on the uptake. The Saint caught
Patricia’s eye and made an almost imperceptible motion towards the
window; and at that moment the millionaire’s nerve faltered for a
split second, and he began to turn his head. In that instant the Saint
sogged the statuette into the back of Bittle’s skull—without any great
force, but very scientifically. In another lightning movement, he had
jerked up the chair and flung it crashing into the light, and
blackness fell on the room with a totally blinding density.
The Saint sprang towards the window.
“Pat!” he breathed urgently.
He touched her groping hand and got the french window open in a trice.
There was a hoarse shouting in the garden and in the corridor, and
suddenly the door burst open and a shaft of light fell across the
room, revealing the limp form of Bittle sprawled in the arm-chair. A
couple of burly figures blocked the doorway, but Patricia and Simon
were out of the beam thrown by the corridor lights.
Before she realised what was happening, the girl felt herself snatched
up in a pair of steely arms. Within a bare five seconds of the blow
that removed Sir John Bittle from the troubles of that evening the
Saint was through the window and racing across the lawn, carrying
Patricia Holm as he might have carried a child.
The complete manœuvre was carried through with so faultless a
technique that Simon Templar, for all his burden, passed right between
the two men who were waiting outside the french window, and the ambush
was turned into a cursing pursuit. As soon as that danger was past,
Simon paused for a moment to set the girl down again; and then, still
keeping hold of her hand, he ran her towards the obscurity of a clump
of bushes at the end of the lawn.
They had a flying start, and they reached the shrubbery with a lead of
half a dozen yards. Without hesitation the Saint plunged into the
jungle, finding by instinct the easiest path between the bushes,
doubling and dodging like a wild animal and dragging Patricia after
him with no regard for the twigs and branches that ripped their
clothes to shreds and grazed blood from the exposed skin. Presently he
stopped dead, and she stood close beside him, struggling to control
her breathing, while he listened for the sounds of pursuit. They could
hear men ploughing clumsily through the shrubbery, calling to-one
another, crashing uncertainly about. Then, as the hunters realised
that their quarry was running no longer, the noise died down, and was
succeeded by a tense and straining hush.
Patricia heard Simon whispering in her ear.
“We’re right by the wall. I’m going to get you over. Go home and don’t
say anything to your aunt. If I don’t turn up in an hour, tell Dr.
Carn. Get me? Don’t, whatever you do, start raising hell in less than
an hour.”
“But aren’t you coming?”
Her lips were right against his ear, so that she could feel his head
move negatively, though she could not see it.
“Nope. I haven’t quite had my money’s worth yet. Come along.”
She felt him move her so that she could touch the wall. Then he had
stooped and was guiding her foot on to his bent knee. As he raised her
other foot to his shoulder, while she steadied herself against the
wall, a twig snapped under his heel, and the hunt was up again.
“Quick!” he urged.
He straightened up with her standing on his shoulders.
“Mind the glass on top. My coat’s up there. Found it? . . . Good. Over
you go. Have some beer waiting for me—I’ll need it.”
“I hate leaving you.”
She could just see a tiny flashing blur of white as he moved a little
away from the wall, for she was now nearly over, and she recognised it
for his familiar smile.
“Tell me that some time when I can make an adequate reply,” he said.
“Tinkety-tonk!”
Then she was gone—he drew himself up and almost thrust her down into
the road outside.
The pursuers were very near, and the Saint broke off along the wall
with a cheery “Tally-ho!” so that there should be no mistake as to his
whereabouts. His job at the moment was to divert the attention of the
hunt until the girl had reached safety. He also had a vague idea of
taking a look at some of the other rooms of the house—it was only a
vague idea, for the Saint was the most blithely irresponsible man in
the world, and steadfastly refused to burden himself with a
cut-and-dried programme.
Again he distanced the pursuit, working away from the wall to minimise
the risk of being cornered, and trying to make enough noise to
persuade the enemy that they were still chasing two people. Once,
pausing in silence to re-locate the trackers, he heard a scuffle not
far away, which shortly terminated in an outburst of profanity and
mutual recrimination; and the Saint chuckled. In being saved the
trouble of distinguishing friend from foe he had an incalculable
advantage over the others, although it made him wonder how long it
would be before the search became more systematic and electric torches
were brought into service. Or would they decide to wait until
daylight? The Saint began to appreciate the numerous advantages
attached to a garden wall which so effectively shut out the peering of
the stray passer-by.
Simon Templar, however, declined to let these portents oppress his gay
recklessness. There seemed to be some reorganisation going on among
the ungodly, following the unfortunate case of mistaken identity, and
it occurred to the Saint that the fun was losing the boisterous
whole-heartedness which had ennobled its early exuberance. No sooner
had this chastening thought struck him than he set out to restore the
former state of affairs. Creeping along towards the main gate, where
he expected to find a guard posted, he almost fell over a man
crouching by a tree. Templar had the sentinel by the throat before he
could cry out; then, releasing the grip of one hand, he firmly but
unmistakably tweaked the man’s nose. Before the sentinel had recovered
from the surprise, the Saint had thrown him into a thorny bush and was
sprinting for the cover on the other side of the drive. He had
scarcely gained the gloom of another clump of bushes before the man’s
bellow of rage drifted like music to his ears. The cry was taken up
from four different points, and the Saint chuckled.
A moment later he was frozen into immobility by the sound of a voice
from the house rising above the clamour.
“Stop shouting, you blasted fools! Kahn—come here!”
“Tush!” murmured the Saint. “I can’t have dotted you a very stiff one,
honey, but it certainly hasn’t improved your temper!”
He waited, listening, but he could make nothing of the mutter of
voices. Then came the muffled sounds of someone running across the
lawn, followed by the dull thud of a wooden bar being thrown back.
Then a clinking of metal.
Suddenly there was a snuffling whine, which sank again into a more
persistent snuffing. The whine was taken up in three other different
keys. Abruptly, the fierce deep-throated baying of a great hound rent
the night air. Then there was only a hoarse whimpering.
“Damn their eyes!” said Templar softly. “This is where, item, one
Saint, slides off in the direction of his evening bread and milk.”
Even then he was fumbling for the bolts which held the heavy main
gates. He had one back and was wrestling with the other when a dog
whimpered eagerly only a few yards away. The Saint tore desperately at
the metal, thanking his gods for the darkness of the night, and the
bolt shot back. At the same instant there was a thunderous knocking on
the door, and a vociferous barking replaced the whining of
blood-hounds temporarily distracted from the scent.
“To be continued in our next, I think,” grinned the Saint.
He pulled back the heavy door.
“So glad you’ve come, brothers,” remarked the Saint in loud and
hospitable accents. “We’re hunting a real live burglar. Care to lend
the odd paw?”
“Quietly,” advised a voice.
A blinding beam of light flashed from the hand of the man who had
stepped first through the opening. It stabbed at the Saint’s eyes,
dazzling him for a moment; then into the ray of it came a hand which
held a small automatic pistol with a curious cylindrical gadget
screwed to the muzzle. The Saint knew the gadget for a silencer, and
there was no doubt whatever about the accuracy of the aim.
“Quietly, Mr. Templar,” repeated the crooning voice.
“Dear me!” said the Saint, who never swore when he was seriously
annoyed, and put up his hands.