Chapter III
How Simon Templar made a slight error,
and Pinky Budd made a big one
1
Two days later, Simon Templar went unostentatiously to a certain public house in Aldgate. He was not noticed, for he had made some subtle alterations to his appearance and bearing. One man, however, recognized him, and they moved over to a quiet corner of the bar.
"Have they been in touch with you again?" was the Saint's immediate question.
Mr. Dyson nodded.
His right eye was still disfigured by a swollen black-and-blue bruise. Mr. Dyson, thinking it over subsequently, had decided that ten pounds was an inadequate compensation for the injury, but it was too late to reopen that discussion.
"They sent for me yesterday," he said. "I went at once, and they gave me a very good welcome."
"Did you drink it?" asked the Saint interestedly.
"They've definitely taken me on."
"And the news?"
"It was like this…"
Simon listened to a long recital which told him nothing at all of any value, and departed a pound poorer than he had been when he came. It was the highest value he could place upon Mr. Dyson's first budget of information, and Slinky's aggrieved pleading made no impression upon the Saint at all."
He got back to the Yard to hear some real news.
"Your Angels have been out again while you weren't watching them," said Cullis, as soon as the Saint had answered his summons. "Essenden was beaten up last night."
"Badly?"
"Not very. The servants were still about, and Essenden was able to let off a yell which fetched them around in a bunch. The man got away. It seems that Essenden found him in his bedroom when he went upstairs about eleven o'clock. He tried to tackle the man, and got the worst of the fight. The burglar was using a cosh."
"And who did the good work?"
"Probably your friend Slinky. I've put a warrant out for him, anyway."
"Then take it back," said the Saint. "Slinky never used a cosh in his life. Besides, I happen to know that he didn't do it."
"I suppose he told you so?"
"He didn't — that's why I believe him. Have you had the report from Records on the general features of the show?"
"I've given them the details. The report should be through any minute now."
The report, as a matter of fact, was brought up a few minutes later. The Saint ran through the list of names submitted as possible authors of the crime, and selected one without much hesitation.
"Harry Donnell's the man."
"At Essenden's?" interjected Cullis skeptically, "Harry Donnell works the Midlands. Besides, his gang don't go in for ordinary burglary."
"Who said it was an ordinary burglary?" asked the Saint. "I tell you Harry Donnell's the man on that list who'd be most pleased to take on an easy job of bashing like that. I could probably tell your Records Office a few things they didn't know about Harry — you seem to forget that I used to know everything there was to know about the various birds in his line of business. I'm going to pull him in. Before I go I'm going to tell Jill Trelawney that I'm going to do it. I'll go round and see her now. She'll probably try to fix me for some sticky end this time. But that's a minor detail. Having failed in that she'll try to get on the phone to Donnell and warn him — I expect he went back to Birmingham this morning. You'll arrange for the exchange operator to tell her that the line to Birmingham is out of order. Then, if I know anything about Jill Trelawney, she'll set out to try to beat me to Birmingham Herself. She's got to keep up her reputation for rescues, especially when the man to be rescued is wanted for doing a job for her…"
He outlined his plan in more detail.
It was one which had come into his head on the spur of the moment, but the more he examined it the better it seemed to be. There was no evidence against Jill Trelawney on any of the scores which were at present held against her, and the Saint would have been bored stiff to spend his time sifting over ancient history in the hope of building up a live case out of dead material. Besides— which was far more important — that procedure wouldn't have fitted in at all with the real ambition that the story of the Angels of Doom had brought into his young life. And to set Jill Trelawney racing into Birmingham to the rescue of Harry Donnell struck him as being a much more entertaining way of spending the day.
In spite of the two attempts which had already been made on his life, he bore the girl no malice. Far from it. The Saint was used to that kind of thing. In fact, he had already found more amusement in the pursuit of Jill Trelawney than he had anticipated when he first set forth to make her acquaintance, and he was now preparing to find some more — but this, however, he did not confide to the commissioner.
They talked for a while longer, and the Saint left certain definite instructions to be passed on to the appropriate quarter. And then, as the Saint rose to go, the commissioner was moved to revert to a thought suggested by the original subject of the interview.
"Isn't it curious," said the commissioner, "that only the other night you should have been asking whether there might be a reason for the Angels to have a feud with Essenden?"
"Isn't it a scream?" agreed the Saint.
He set off for Belgrave Street in one of his moods of Saintly optimism.
It struck him that he was spending a great deal of his time in Belgrave Street. This would be his third visit that week.
He had no illusions about the possible outcome of it — the gun with which he had provided himself before leaving testified to that. A man cannot make himself as consistently unpopular as, for his own inscrutable reasons, it had in this case pleased the Saint to make himself, without there growing up, sooner or later, a state of tension in which something has to break. The thing broken should, of course, have been Simon Templar, but up to that time the thing broken had somehow failed to, be Simon Templar. But this time…
In the three days since his last visit life had been allowed to deal peacefully with him. He had used the milk from outside his front door with a sublime confidence in its purity, and had not been disappointed. He had walked in and out of the house without any fear of being again enfiladed by machine-gun fire; and in that again his judgment had proved to be right. On the other hand, he had treated letters and parcels delivered to him, and taxis which offered themselves for his hire, with considerable suspicion. He had as yet found no justification for this carefulness, but he realized that the calm could only be the herald of a storm. Possibly this third visit to Belgrave Street would precipitate the storm. He was prepared for it to do so.
He was kept waiting outside for some time before his summons was answered. He did not stand at the top of the stairs, however, while he was waiting, in a position where sudden death might reach him through the letter box, but placed himself on the pavement behind the shelter of one of the pillars of the portico. From behind this, with one eye looking round it, he was able to see the slight movement of a curtain in a ground-floor window as someone looked out to discover who the visitor was. Simon allowed his face to be seen, and then withdrew into cover until the door opened. Then he entered quickly.
"Miss Trelawney is expecting you," said Wells as he closed the door.
The Saint glanced searchingly round the hall and up the stairs as far as he could see. There was no one else about.
He smiled seraphically.
"You're getting quite truthful in your old age, Freddie," he remarked, and went up the stairs.
The girl met him on the landing.
"I got your message to say you were coming."
"I hope it gave you a thrill," said the Saint earnestly.
He looked past her into the sitting room.