The Mammoth Book of Short Spy Novels (Mammoth Books) Page 17

  “Get this, Templar,” Kinglake said coldly. “We think Stephens committed suicide – ”

  “In the most painful way he could think of – ”

  “He must have been nuts. But I’ve met nuts before.”

  “And even while he was dying he tried to make up a story – ”

  “He was out of his mind. He must have been, after a burning like that. You haven’t been burned yet, so you use your head. And if you want to keep your nose clean, you will forget the whole thing – or you may find yourself with your can in the can. Do I make myself clear?”

  The Saint met his eyes lengthily.

  “If you were rolled flat, you could rent yourself out as a window,” he said. “Instead of which, you have the colossal crust to sit there and spew that pap at me even after I’ve told you that I know more about Matson than you did.”

  “Yes,” was all Kinglake replied.

  “You aren’t even going to make an issue out of the Blue Goose and my going there.”

  “No,” Kinglake said curtly.

  For once in his life, Simon Templar was frankly flabbergasted. He searched the shreds of his brain for a better word, and couldn’t find one. Theories whirled through his head; but they were too fast and fantastic to be coordinated while he had to think on his feet.

  Which was where he was thinking, since Kinglake’s impenetrable stonewall had brought him up there, shrugging off Detective Yard’s clumsy physical obstruction as if it had been a feather which had accidentally drifted onto him out of a cloud.

  “I’ve met an astonishing variety of cops in my time,” he remarked absorbently; “but you, chum, are an entirely new species. You don’t even attempt to give me the guileless runaround or the genteel brush-off . . . Have you said your last word on the subject?”

  “Yes,” snapped the Lieutenant. “Now will you kindly get the hell out of here and go on with the survey you were talking about?”

  “I will ,” retorted the Saint. “And don’t blame me if you find G-men in your G-string.”

  He stalked out of there with another unique feeling which was the precise antithesis of the sensation he had had when a certain log moved on the shore road. His blood had run cold then. Now it was boiling.

  He had had to cope with local politics and obstruction before, in different guises and for different reasons. But this game was something else. And in that swift invigorating anger, the Saint knew just what he was going to do about it.

  Kinglake had taunted him about publicity. Well, the Saint didn’t need to hire any press agents . . . He had seen himself waiting and hoping for a lead; but he could always ask for one. He had used newspapers before, in sundry ways, when he wanted to lead with his chin and invite the ungodly to step up and introduce themselves while they looked at it.

  Almost literally without looking to left or right, he followed Center Street toward the waterfront on the north or channel side of the city. He walked into the building that housed the Times-Tribune, and worked his way doggedly through the trained interference until he stood in front of the city editor’s desk.

  “My name is Simon Templar,” he said for about the fourteenth time. “If you spelt me right, I’d be the traveling salesman who found that botched biscuit on the shore road yesterday. I want to cover that case for you; and all I want out of you is a by-line.”

  The editor scrutinized him quite clinically.

  “Our police reporter must have messed up his spelling,” he said. “It’s funny – the name started to ring a bell when I read it . . . so you’re the Saint. But what are you selling?”

  “I’m selling you your lead story for the afternoon edition,” said the Saint. “I may be nuts, but I’m still news. Now shall we play gin rummy, or will you lend me a typewriter and stop the press?”

  5

  If only to be different in one more way from most typical men of action, Simon Templar was perfectly happy with words and paper. He could play just as fluently on the legitimate or L.C. Smith form of typewriter as he could on the well-known Thompson variety, and he handled both of them in much the same way. The keys rattled under his fingers like gunfire, and his choice of words had the impact of bullets. He worked at white heat, while his wrath still had all its initial impetus.

  He told his own full story of the finding of “Henry Stephens,” and every word that the dying man had said, together with a general summary of the other facts as he knew them, in a fusillade of hardboiled sinewy prose that would have qualified him for a job on the toughest tabloid in the country. Then he squared off to a fresh sheet of paper and went into his second movement. He wrote:

  It now grieves me to have to break it to all you nice people that these sensitive nostrils, which long ago became extraordinarily appreciative of certain characteristic smells, have caught wind of the grand inspiration that this guy committed suicide, which Lieutenant Kinglake was feeling out this morning.

  Now I am in here with quite a different story, and it has got to be known that Bulldog Templar does not brush off that easy.

  I am remembering a legend, true or not, that once when S.S. Van Dine happened to be close to the scene of another murder, it was suggested by some newspaper that he might cooperate with the gendarmerie and help run the villain to earth in the best Philo Vance manner; whereupon Mr. Van Dine placed himself in the center of four wheels and trod on the loud pedal so rapidly that his shadow had to be sent after him by express.

  We Templars are made of sterner stuff. Just give us a chance to stick our neck out, and a giraffe is not even in our league.

  So we are going to sign our name to this invitation to all of you voting citizens to take a good long look at the suicidal Mr. Stephens.

  He was, we observe, the stern and melancholy type which can get along without life anyway. He proved that by the way he spent his last days here, drinking all night in speakeasies and dancing with the girls. He didn’t go much for fun of any kind, which is said to soften people up. He was strictly an ascetic; and when he knocked himself off he was still going to be tough. He wouldn’t jump out of a window, or take an overdose of sleeping tablets, or put a gun in his ear and listen to see if it was loaded. He deliberately picked the most painful way that a man can die.

  He figured he had some suffering coming to him. After all, he wasn’t broke, for instance, which has been known to make some people so unhappy that they have let air into their tonsils with a sharp knife. He seemed to have had plenty of spending money. So he was going to have his hard times on his deathbed instead of before.

  He even went 20 miles out of town to do it, walking all the way, since the street cars don’t go there, so that he’d have lots of time to look forward to it and enjoy the prospect.

  He was a consistent guy, too. He didn’t mean to be selfish about his suffering. He wanted somebody else to have some of it too. So after he’d taken his gasoline shower, and before he struck the match, he carefully chewed up and ate the bottle he’d brought it in, so that Lieutenant Kinglake could have something to worry about. Not knowing, of course, that Lieutenant Kinglake wouldn’t worry about a little thing like that at all.

  It always gives us Templars a great respect for the benignness of Providence to observe how frequently a hard-pressed police department, facing a nervous breakdown before the task of breaking a really difficult case, has been saved in the nick of time by discovering that there never was a murder after all. It makes us feel pretty good to think that cops are practically people, and God takes care of them as well as Pearl White.

  The Saint was beginning to enjoy himself by then. He lighted a cigarette and gazed at the ceiling for a while, balancing his ideas for the finale. Then he went on when he was ready.

  But let’s pretend that we don’t have the clear and penetrating vision of Lieutenant Kinglake. Let’s just pretend that we are too dumb to believe that a man in the dying agonies of third-degree burns cooked up that wonderful story about three men who did it to him, just because he was too modest to w
ant to take the credit. Let’s pretend there might really have been three other men.

  Men with names. Blatt, Weinbach, Maris. A nice trio of Herrenvolk.

  Then we might go along with the gag and say, suppose Henry Stephen Matson was a traitor. Suppose he’d gotten into some sabotage organization, and he’d been given a job to do in this explosives plant in Missouri. Suppose he’d even drawn payment in advance – just to account for what he was using for dough in Galveston.

  Then suppose he welshed on the job – either from an attack of cold feet or a relapse of patriotism. He knew that the heat was on. He couldn’t stay in this country, because they might have turned him in to the FBI. If they didn’t do anything worse. He took it on the lam for here, hoping to get a passport, and hoping he’d shaken off his pals. But they were too good for him. They tracked him down, struck up an acquaintance with him, and gave him what he had coming. In a very nasty way, just to discourage imitators.

  That’s my fairy tale. And I like it.

  Blatt, Weinbach, Maris. I have a description of two of those men, and I’ve got my own good ideas about the third. And I am hereby announcing that I shall now have to get them for you myself, since we must not disturb Lieutenant Kinglake in his august meditations.

  The city editor read it all through without a change of expression. Then he tapped the page with his forefinger and said: “It’s an ingenious theory, but what’s your basis for it?”

  “Nothing but logic, which is all you can say for any theory. The facts are there. If you can do better with them, you can join Kinglake’s club.”

  “This last statement of yours, about the three men – is that a fact?”

  “Some of it. But the main point of it is that that’s what you pay me with. If I can make them believe that I know more than I do, I may scare them into making some serious mistakes. That’s why I’m making you a present of all the rest of that luscious literature.”

  The editor pulled at his underlip. He was a pear-shaped man with a long forbidding face that never smiled even when his eyes twinkled.

  “It’s good copy, anyway, so I’ll print it,” he said. “But don’t blame me if you’re the next human torch. Or if Kinglake has you brought in again and beats hell out of you.”

  “On the contrary, you’re my insurance against that,” said the Saint. “Going my own way, I might have had a lot more trouble with Kinglake at any moment. Now, he won’t dare to do anything funny, because it would look as if he was scared of me.”

  “Kinglake’s a good officer. He wouldn’t do a thing like this unless there was a lot of pressure on him.”

  Simon recalled the Lieutenant’s tight-lipped curtness, his harried and almost defensive belligerence.

  “Maybe there was,” he said. “But whose was it?”

  The editor put his fingertips together.

  “Galveston,” he said, “has what is now called the commission form of government. Commissioner Number One – what other cities would call the mayor – is coming up for reelection soon. He appoints the Chief of Police. The Chief controls such men as Lieutenant Kinglake. Nobody wants any blemish on the record of the Police Department at this time. I’m quite confident that neither the Commissioner nor the Chief of Police is mixed up in anything crooked. It’s just best for everybody concerned to let sleeping dogs – in this case, dead dogs – lie.”

  “And that is perfectly jake with you.”

  “The Times-Tribune, Mr. Templar, unlike yourself, is not addicted to sticking its neck out. We are not a political organ; and if we did start a crusade, it would not be on the basis of this one sensational but insignificant killing. But we do try to print the whole truth, as you’ll see by the fact that I’m ready to use your article.”

  “Then you still haven’t told me where the pressure would come from.”

  The city editor’s long equine face grew even more absorbed in the contemplation of his matched fingers.

  “As a stranger in town, Mr. Templar, it may surprise you to know that some of our most influential citizens sometimes go to the Blue Goose for – their – er relaxation. The Blue Goose is one of the leads in this story as you have it. So while none of these people, from the Commissioner down, might want to be a party to hushing up a crime, you can see that they might not be keen on too comprehensive an investigation of the Blue Goose. So that the management of the Blue Goose, which naturally doesn’t want the spot involved in a murder mystery, might find a lot of sympathetic ears if they were pointing out the advantages of forgetting the whole thing. I shall not allow you to print that in your next article, but it might help you personally.”

  “It might,” said the Saint. “And thank you.”

  He spent several hours after that on a conscientious job of verifying his background material that would have amazed some people who thought of him as a sort of intuitive comet, blazing with pyrotechnic violence and brilliance to ends and solutions that were only indicated to him by a guardian angel with a lot of spare time and an incurable weakness for piloting irresponsible characters. His research involved visits to various public places, and ingenuous conversations with a large number of total strangers, each of them a cameo of personality projection that would have left Dale Carnegie egg-bound with awe. But the net yield was negatively and concisely nothing.

  The Commissioner appeared to be a bona fide native of Galveston who had made his money in sulfur and still controlled an important business. There seemed to be no particularly musty bones in his family skeleton. He came of Texas stock from way back, and he was set solid with business and family ties.

  The sheriff of the county came out with the same sort of background and clean bill of health. Nobody seemed to know much about the type of deputies in his office, but there had never been any scandal about his administration. He was frankly a member of the same political machine as the Commissioner.

  Nor were there any crevices in the armor of the Chief of Police. Kinglake was not too popular, very likely because of his personality; but his record was good. Quantry was negligible.

  Which meant that the Times-Tribune editor’s analysis stood unshaken, and there was no evidence to brand the official eagerness to turn a blind eye on a murder as anything but a local issue of political expediency.

  Except for the one thin thread that curled into a question mark and asked who it was at the Blue Goose who had turned the heat on even a complaisant political machine.

  Olga Ivanovitch?

  The Saint knew she was beautiful, he thought she was clever, and he suspected that she was dangerous. But how clever and how dangerous? He could learn nothing about her that sounded at all important. If she had any political connections, they weren’t common gossip. But he knew that she had a definite place in the picture.

  He made another call at the Ascot Hotel; but Mr. Baker hadn’t remembered anymore overnight, and could add nothing to his information about Blatt or Black.

  “But I’m sure, Mr. Titwillow, he wasn’t a local man. I’ve been here so long that I think I know all the important people in Galveston by sight.”

  Blatt, Weinbach, Maris.

  The names made no impression on anyone to whom he mentioned them. But he did find some representatives of their clans in the telephone directory, and studiously checked on each of them. Each of them had the kind of unimpeachable clearance that it would have been simply a waste of time to investigate any further.

  It was a long and strenuous day, and dusk was creeping over the city as Simon headed back toward the Alamo House. He bought an evening paper and a bottle of Peter Dawson on the way.

  The Times-Tribune carried his article on the front page, unabridged and unexpurgated, but with a box that gave a brief explanation of the Saint’s background for the benefit of the ignorant, and stated that Mr. Templar’s theories were his own and did not necessarily represent the editorial opinion of the Times-Tribune.

  There was special justification for that in a short column which ran alongside his, which reporte
d succinctly that at an inquest held that afternoon the coroner’s jury had brought in a verdict of suicide.

  Simon Templar crushed the newspaper in his hand with a grip that almost reverted it to its original pulp, and said several things which even our freedom of the press will not allow us to print.

  So Kinglake hadn’t backed down. He had gone right out from their interview and helped to railroad that fantastic verdict through. Maybe he had a wife and children and just wanted to go on feeding them; but he had done it.

  In his room at the Alamo House, Simon sent for ice and opened his bottle, and tried to simmer down again over a highball.

  He only had one other clue to think about, and that was in another snatch of words that the dying man had managed to get out. He could hear them just as clearly now as when they had been dragged hoarsely through the charred tortured lips.

  “Ostrich-skin – leather case – in gladstone lining . . . Get case – and send . . . send . . .”

  Send where?

  And why?

  And anyhow, Black or Blatt had the gladstone now.

  One of three practical killers, probably strangers to Galveston themselves, possibly from Chicago (he remembered the 606 Club match booklet) who had trailed Matson on their mission of vengeance, carried out the assignment, and vanished.

  He had another drink, and didn’t get any further on that one.

  It was later still when the telephone rang.

  He had an electric moment as he went to answer it. He knew that the call had to have some bearing on the case, since he had no personal friends in Galveston; but the exquisite suspense was in wondering – who? A soft-pedaling politician? A raging Kinglake? Or the first nibble at his bait?