Teal's mouth opened again.
"You—"
"What are we wasting time for?" snorted Vascoe. "He admits he was here—"
"I was here," said the Saint coolly. "You know how the back of the house goes practically down to the river, and you have a little private garden there and a landing stage? I knew that if anything was happening, it'd happen on that side — it'd be too risky to do anything on the street frontage, where anybody might come by and see it. Well, things were happening. There was a man out there, but I beat him over the head and tied him up before he could make a noise. Then I waited around; and somebody opened the window from inside and threw out a parcel. So I picked it up and took it home. Here it is."
He took it out of his hip pocket — it was a very large parcel, and the bulge would have been easy to notice if anyone had got behind him.
Vascoe let out a hoarse yell, jumped at it, and wrenched it out of his hands. He ripped it open with clawing fingers.
"My miniatures!" he sobbed. "My medallions — my cameos! My—"
"Here, wait a minute!"
Teal thrust himself forward again, taking possession of the package. For a second or two the denouement had blown him sky-high, turned him upside down, and left him with the feeling that the pit of his stomach had suddenly gone away on an unauthorised vacation; but now he had his bearings again. He faced the Saint with homicidal determination.
"It's a fine story," he said raspily. "But this is one time you're not going to get away with it. Yes, I get the idea. You pull the job so you can win your bet, and then you bring the stuff back with that fairy tale and think everything's going to be all right. Well, you're not going to get away with it! What happened to the fellow you say you knocked out and tied up, and who else saw him, and who else saw all these things happen?"
The Saint smiled.
"I left him locked up in the garage," he said. "He's probably still there. As for who else saw him, Martin Ingerbeck was with me."
"Who?"
"Ingerbeck himself. The detective bloke. You see, I happened to help him with a job once, so I didn't see why I shouldn't help him with another.{See Saint Overboard (a PAN Book).} So as soon as I guessed what was going to happen I called him up, and he met me at once and came along with me. He even recognised the bloke who opened the window, too."
"And who was that?" Teal demanded derisively; but somehow his derision sounded hollow.
The Saint bowed.
"I'm afraid," he said, "it was the Comte de Beaucroix."
The Count stared at him pallidly.
"I think you must be mad," he said.
"It's preposterous!" spluttered Vascoe. "I happen to have made every inquiry about the Comte de Beaucroix. There isn't the slightest doubt that he's—"
"Of course he is," said the Saint calmly. "But he wasn't always. They do it the same way in France as we do in England — a fellow can go around with one name for most of his life, and then he inherits a title and changes his name without any legal formalities. It's funny that you should have been asking me about him, Claud. His name used to be Louis Umbert. As soon as Meryl mentioned the Comte de Beaucroix, I remembered what it was that I'd read about him in the papers. I'd noticed that he came into the title when his uncle died. That's why I thought something like this might happen, and that's why I made that bet with Vascoe."
The night guard fizzed suddenly out of retirement.
"That's right!" he exploded excitedly. "I'll bet it was him.
I wondered why I went off to sleep like that. Well, about two o'clock he came downstairs — said he was looking for something to read because he couldn't get to sleep — and got me to have a drink with him. It was just after he went upstairs again that I fell off. That drink must 've been doped!"
De Beaucroix looked from side to side, and his face twitched. He made a sudden grab at his pocket; but Teal was too quick for him.
Simon Templar hitched himself off the armchair as the brief scuffle subsided.
"Well, that seems to be that," he observed languidly. "You'll have to wait for another chance, Claud. Go home and take some lessons in detecting, and you may do better next time." He looked at Vascoe. "I'll see my lawyers later and find out what sort of a suit we can cook up on account of all the rude things you've been saying, but meanwhile I'll collect my check from Morgan Dean." Then he turned to Meryl. "I'm going to lend Bill Fulton the profits to pay off his debts with," he said. "I shall expect a small interest in his invention, and a large slice of wedding cake."
Before she could say anything he was gone. Thanks didn't interest him: he wanted breakfast
Part VI
The star producers
Mr. Homer Quarterstone was not, to be candid, a name to conjure with in the world of the Theatre. It must be admitted that his experience behind the footlights was not entirely confined to that immortal line: "Dinner is served." As a matter of fact, he had once said "The Baron is here" and "Will there be anything further, madam?" in the same act; and in another never-to-be-forgotten drama which had run for eighteen performances on Broadway, he had taken part in the following classic dialogue:
Nick: Were you here?
Jenkins (Mr. Homer Quarterstone) : No sir.
Nick: Did you hear anything?
Jenkins: No sir.
Nick: A hell of a lot of use you are.
Jenkins: Yes sir.
(Exit, carrying tray.)
In the executive line, Mr. Quarterstone's career had been marked by the same magnanimous emphasis on service rather than personal glory. He had not actually produced any spectacles of resounding success but he had contributed his modest quota to their triumph by helping to carry chairs and tables on to the stage and arrange them according to the orders of the scenic director. And although he had not actually given his personal guidance to any of the financial manoeuvres associated with theatrical production, he had sat in the box office at more than one one-night stand, graciously controlling the passage over the counter of those fundamental monetary items without which the labours of more egotistical financiers would have been fruitless.
Nevertheless, while it is true that the name of Quarterstone had never appeared in any headlines, and that his funeral cortege would never have attracted any distinguished pallbearers, he had undoubtedly found the Theatre more profitable than many other men to whom it had given fame.
He was a man of florid complexion and majestic bearing, with a ripe convexity under his waistcoat and a forehead that arched glisteningly back to the scruff of his neck; and he had a taste for black homburgs and astrakhan-collared overcoats which gave an impression of great artistic prosperity. This prosperity was by no means illusory, for Mr. Homer Quarterstone, in his business capacity, was now the principal, president, director, owner and twenty-five percent of the staff of the Supremax Academy of Dramatic Art, which according to its frequent advertisements had been the training ground, the histrionic hothouse, so to speak, of many stars whose names were now household words from the igloos of Greenland to the tents of the wandering Bedouin. And the fact that Mr. Quarterstone had not become the principal, president, director, owner, etc., of the Supremax Academy until several years after the graduation of those illustrious personages, when in a period of unaccustomed affluence and unusually successful borrowing he had purchased the name and good will of an idealistic but moribund concern, neither deprived him of the legal right to make that claim in his advertising nor hampered the free flow of his imagination when he was expounding his own experience and abilities to prospective clients.