“I guess you’re right,” Simon said. “An ice cream truck in winter would scare off any crook with a better brain than yours. But in these days of government economy, think how much you could save on prison maintenance by never catching anyone.”
7
The Saint drove his car on an elusive route through side streets guaranteed to lose Mister Snowball, and then hurried on to Belfort Close, which was in the neighborhood of Maida Vale.
The short street, with the decrepit antiquity of its brick façades, was like a score of other streets in northwest London. Beyond the turning circle at the end of the cul-de-sac was a rusty iron fence with a gate sagging from the cumulative weight of generations of swinging children. The churchyard, an old one, was shadowed by trees and populated by a pygmy army of squat tombstones. Simon could see only dark outlines. The feeble lamps of Belfort Close behind him were made doubly ineffective by the misty night.
Someone with a rather unreal sense of melodrama had chosen the setting, if not the mists. The Saint, with his flashlight in hand, moved without particular stealth into the stoney darkness. If he had wanted to come on stage secretly he would not have chosen the entry planned for him by the telephone caller. But his object was not to surprise anybody, but to be surprised himself. Only in that way would he stand much chance of getting to the truth about Liskard’s enemy.
“Come into my parlor, said the fly to the spider,” he murmured to himself.
If he had tried to capture the blackmailer he might only have frightened him away. And if, as seemed more than likely, there was more than one person involved, the capturing of one might lead to the immediate release of Liskard’s letters to the papers.
The lights of an automobile swung through the trees of the churchyard. Simon turned. A taxi was pulling into the circle at the end of Belfort Close and a man was getting out. The Saint could see only that he was tall and quite thin, even frail. The taxi left, and the man came into the churchyard. Simon aimed the flashlight at the stranger’s face and turned it on when he was within twenty feet.
“Good evening,” Simon said.
The man held a hand in front of his face until the light was switched off. Even so the Saint got a look at him, and he was unfamiliar.
“You’re Simon Templar?” the man asked.
“What if I say I’m not?”
“I’ve come to talk business,” said the thin man irritably. “Do you want me to leave?”
“Yes, but I’ll have to put personal feelings aside for the moment. What’s your deal?”
“Twenty-five thousand pounds for the return of certain letters,” the man answered curtly.
“Very expensive,” the Saint said mildly.
“It should be worth it to Liskard.”
Most men would not have noticed the almost imperceptible change in the blackmailer’s carriage. He was scarcely more than a silhouette, but Simon sensed the sudden rise in tension.
“Do you have any proof that you have the letters?” Simon asked.
He moved closer to the man, until he was within striking distance.
“I’ll give you one,” the blackmailer said.
He reached into his pocket and produced an envelope. The Saint moved to take it, and then suddenly shifted his weight and jabbed his flashlight straight into the man’s ribs. In the same motion he whirled and confronted the man he knew would be just behind him. His eyes were accustomed to the darkness how, and he could see the second man’s heavy-featured face and the wadded white cloth he was holding forward in one hand.
The Saint reached a quick decision. Obviously if there were two men involved, it was unlikely that the plot against Liskard was based on a simple desire for revenge on Mary Bannerman’s part. Whether the demand for twenty-five thousand pounds had been genuine or a mere ruse to hold the Saint’s attention, there was very possibly a wider membership in the scheme than had gathered together in the churchyard.
Simon decided — since his assailant was not about to use a knife or gun — to let himself be captured. He lunged at the thug behind him, took a glancing blow on his shoulder, and slipped to his knees. Immediately the thin man and his hefty friend pounced, and Simon held his breath and went quickly limp as the chloroformed cloth was pressed against his face.
“Easy,” muttered the hefty one.
“These chaps live on their reputations,” the thin one concurred. “Let’s get him out to the car.”
The Saint held his breath again as he was given a precautionary second dose of the anesthetic. Then the men picked up his apparently unconscious body and hurried with it to the side of the churchyard opposite Belfort Close. Simon could not open his eyes more than a crack, but he saw that he was being taken to a very ordinary black car parked on a deserted lane. His porters put him into the back seat, and the thin one sat next to him.
“Get rid of that rag,” the thin one said.
“How long will it keep him under?” the other asked.
He tossed the cloth away and slipped into the driver’s seat.
“Long enough,” the thin one said. “If anybody asks, we just say he’s drunk.”
“Keep his head down until we’re out of town.”
The car jerked and moved away. Simon kept track of the turns, and presently recognized Harrow Road as they turned into and headed west in the bright lights and heavy traffic. Another amateurish move.
The thin man chuckled, looking at Simon slumped in the other corner.
“So much for the Saint. How to lose your halo in one easy lesson.”
The hefty one gave a hoarse laugh.
“Right. Jeff’s going to think it’s too good to be true.”
That name was all Simon needed and had been waiting for, but he had scarcely hoped to have his answer so soon.
“It is too good to be true,” he said quietly.
The thin man jumped as if the door handle had suddenly spoken to him. The driver jerked his head around and almost swerved into the opposite line of traffic. Simon’s right arm swept out and encircled the thin man’s neck, locking it in a crushing hold.
“Stop!” the thin man croaked. “Do something!”
They were coming to a red light. The driver was groping in his jacket pocket, probably for a cosh. At the same time he was looking desperately for some way to turn into a side street, but he was hemmed in by cars piling up at the traffic signal. Simon simply gave the thin man’s neck one last crack, which it would take a first-class osteopath to unstiffen, let him topple half conscious and gasping on to the floor, and stepped as casually out of the car as if he had been leaving a cab.
A policeman on the busy corner gave him a disapproving look as he strode across the inner line of traffic to the sidewalk and turned to wave goodbye to the driver.
“Sorry,” Simon said sincerely to the policeman, “but with traffic the way it is these days it’s almost quicker to walk.”
Simon caught a taxi back to his car at Belfort Close. The time was seven-fifty. He could still make it to Mary Bannerman’s apartment for his dinner date in less than a quarter of an hour.
As he drove, theories raced through his head. There was still no evidence that the girl was knowingly involved. Her boyfriend Jeff Peterson could easily have taken the Liskard letters without her knowing that he had the slightest interest in them. Maybe Peterson had engineered the robbery of her apartment in order to take her mind away from the possibility that the letters had had any special importance to the thieves. The motive could involve anything from politics to purely commercial considerations. Still, the oddity of the approach to Liskard, the somehow amateurish approach to monetary blackmail and the lack of demand for money or concessions of any other kind, left a great many questions still to be answered.