Authors: Leslie Charteris
“When do you think they will get around to it?”
“That is not for me to predict, Monsieur Templar. But after this, if anything violent should happen to Pierre Norval that cannot instantly be attributed to his equally abominable associates, I predict that I shall be obliged to investigate every possibility that it was an act of the Saint.”
“Do you mean,” asked the Saint incredulously, “that you don’t believe me?”
The Inspector rubbed his sad sunken jowls forbearingly.
“We have been through more than one case together, and I have learned a great respect and fondness for you, mon cher ami. But I do not forget the record which was the first thing I had to study about you, and I do not think you have quite overcome all your bad habits—especially when you mock a serious policier.”
They had arrived at the hotel. Simon got out, and said with unabated impudence: “Must we make it such an early night? How about bringing your tape measure and we’ll walk over and process the G-strings at the Crazy Horse Saloon?”
But Quercy shook his head and remained in the cab.
“Merci. I am too comfortable now, so I shall ride the rest of the way home. But I beg you, do not forget what I have said. For I shall not forget.”
“Everyone should have his beautiful memories, Archi-mede,” said the Saint.
But upstairs in his suite, he paced the floor for half an hour before he could relax enough even to lie down on the bed.
The wild coincidence that Quercy had chanced to spot him in the first cafe, and had deployed such unexpected talents for analytical observation, had transformed with one malign stroke what should have been a virtually kindergarten exercise in meritorious homicide into a disconcertingly serious hazard.
The Saint was even less inclined to allow Pierrot-le-Fut to continue to pollute the universe than he had been when he set out for Montmartre that night; but he had no intention of losing his head over the project, figuratively or literally—and Inspector Quercy had made the latter possibility much too explicit for complacency.
The mopping-up of Pierre Norval would have to be as clean a job as the Saint had ever engineered.
It was not until he was horizontal, but still tussling frustratedly with the problem, that he had a sudden dazzling recollection of a certain cocktail party and the pompously infuriating Dr Wilmot Javers.
There was a BEA flight to London at eleven o’clock in the morning which he was able to catch with no indecent scrambling, and thanks to the anomaly of daylight-saving time he arrived in England a little earlier than he had left France. He called Dr Javers from the first telephone he could reach at the airport, and was fortunate to catch him at his office.
“You remember, you warned me your puzzle would haunt me,” he said, with shamelessly hypocritical humility. “I didn’t believe you at the time, but eventually it did. But I simply don’t have the technical knowledge to solve it. Anyway, this being the first time I’ve been back here since you gave me that headache, the top-priority item on my list is to get you to put me out of my misery.”
He could hear the man’s jocund gurgle of self-satisfaction.
“I remember our little talk perfectly. And I think you’ve suffered enough. Can you dine with me tonight at my club? It just happens to be the evening I keep free for my scientific reading, but for an occasion like this the Medical Journal can wait!”
Dr Javers was just as unctuously patronizing when they met, and maliciously refused to be the first to bring up the reason for their meeting. Simon out-waited him through two Dry Sacks and a lot of small talk, and finally had the minor satisfaction of forcing the other to advert to the topic after they had sat down to dinner.
“So you couldn’t stand it any longer, eh? You admit that was one mystery that stumped you?”
“You can have it in writing if you like. But don’t make me rack my feeble brain any longer.”
Dr Javers took his time, sipping a spoonful of soup and savoring it deliberately along with his moment ot trmmpn.
“The subject was poisoned by carbon tetrachloride— otherwise, the commonest kind of cleaning fluid.”
Simon stared at him, blinking.
“I thought that was supposed to be harmless. Unless he drank it. But I’m positive you never gave me any hint that he might have done that.”
“I didn’t, and he didn’t. The clue I gave you was the lipstick stain on his coat. Although it was comparatively innocent, he probably thought it would be better to get rid of it than have to explain it to his wife. He got out a bottle of this cleaner and started to work on it. But, being in the condition he was, he knocked the bottle over and spilt what there was in it. After that, he gave up and went to bed.”
“But if a few fumes like that can kill someone, from something that everybody uses, why aren’t people dropping dead all the time?”
“It’s a wonder it doesn’t happen more often. Everyone thinks carbon tet is harmless, but that’s because it doesn’t catch fire or explode. The fumes are quite poisonous—a concentration of five thousand parts per million, with an exposure of only five minutes, can cause damage that may be fatal after a week’s illness. That is, about a quart of fluid vaporized in a small space like the dressing-room where the subject slept.”
“Do you mean he was using a whole quart bottle of cleaning fluid?”
“Certainly not. But neither was he exposed for only five minutes. That’s why the average user gets away with it-even if they’re leaning over the thing they’re cleaning and inhaling lots of fumes, they don’t do it for long. The subject slept in this small room for more than four hours. In that length of time, a few ounces could have fatal results. And on top of this, there was one other factor which I was careful to emphasize.”
Simon figured that he had eaten his humble pie, so he was no longer obligated to play guessing games.
“Which was that?”
“Now, really, I should have thought any detective would have spotted that one. I refer to the fact that the subject had been drinking heavily. For some reason which is not yet fully understood, alcohol sharply reduces the ability of the liver and kidneys to detoxify carbon tetra-chloride. So that for a person who is under the influence, the probably lethal dose can be cut by about thirty per cent. Put these factors together, and you can calculate that it didn’t take any extraordinary amount of fluid to kill the subject I told you about, in the circumstances I described.”
The Saint thoughtfully finished his soup, enjoying it every bit as much as the doctor had enjoyed his, and considered various angles while the traditionally venerable club waiter was replacing it with a plate of delicately browned sole meuniere.
Then he said: “Perhaps it’s just as well more people don’t know all that, or there might be a whole rash of mysterious murders.”
“Don’t you believe it,” Javers said scornfully. “Carbon tet evaporates, yes, but it isn’t undetectable. Any good pathologist would recognize the effects at once, from the way it dissolves the fat in the body organs—just as it dissolves grease spots from your clothes. So any murderer who was planning to use it would have to be damn sure it could be taken for an accident. And that’s the problem with practically any other poison, as you must know.”
Simon nodded respectfully. He could see no flaw that would be a handicap to him.
Me Knew that his subject slept in a small room and went to bed well marinated in alcohol every night; and he could safely assume that Pierrot-le-Fut slept with the shutters tightly closed, like the average Frenchman of his class, in defense against the deleterious miasmas of the night. He also knew the hours during which Yvonne Norval would be scouring and vacuuming the corridors of the George V, consolidating any alibi she might ever need.
Dr Wilmot Javers, flicking bright gloating glances at him between dissecting operations on his sole, thought he could read the Saint’s mind like a book.
“Of course, you might have been able to get away with it, for one of those so-called ‘justice’ killings they say you did in your young days, where there was no obvious motive to connect you with the victim. It’s too bad you couldn’t think of it for yourself then. It’s too late now, because if I read in the paper about anything that sounded as if you’d made use of it, I’d feel morally bound to go to the police and tell them how I might have given you the idea. I don’t approve of people taking the law into their own hands.”
Simon Templar was able to smile beatifically. Fate, true to its kindly form, had finally paid its indemnity for the time and irritation that this odious coxcomb had cost him.
To make one more flying visit to Paris under another name, avoiding all places in the category of the George V, and wearing some simple disguise that this time would obviate the risk of accidental recognition by Archimede Quercy or any of his ilk, would present no great difficulty to the Saint. And he felt reasonably confident that the unspectacular demise of a low-echelon Parisian hood like Pierrot-le-Fut would not rate any space in the English press.
“Good heavens, chum,” he protested. “Everyone knows I gave that up years ago.”
THE
INTEMPERATE
REFORMER
THE INTEMPERATE REFORMER
Copyright Š 1961 by Fiction Publishing Company
Simon Templar watched with a remorselessly calculating eye the quantity of caviar that was being spooned on to his plate, with the eternal-springing hope that this would intimidate the head waiter into serving a more than normally generous portion, and said: “If I had to answer such a silly question as why I want to be rich, I’d say it was so I could afford to eat those unhatched sturgeon twice a day. There must be some moral in the thought that they’re considered the national delicacy of Russia, the self-styled protector of the under-privileged.”
He waved away the tray of minced onion and chopped whites and yolks of eggs proffered by a lesser servitor, and signalled the wine steward who waited near by with a frosted bottle.
“Romanoff caviar and Romanoff vodka—what a wonderful proletarian combination!”
“I always did like your ideas of the simple life,” said Monty Hayward comfortably.
The Saint piled a small mound of black grains on a thin slice of brown toast, tasted it reverently, and raised his glass.
“I read somewhere that the scientists have discovered a rare vitamin in caviar which greatly increases the human system’s ability to stand up to alcohol—I’m not kidding,” he remarked. “I suppose the Russians, who always claim to have discovered everything, would say that they knew this all along. That’s why they put away so much of this stuff at their banquets. Well, don’t quote me to the FBI, but I prefer this to the American excuse for vodka-tippling.”
“And what’s that?” Monty asked unguardedly.
“The sales pitch that it doesn’t change the flavor of whatever slop you dilute it with; and that it doesn’t taint your breath—so that if you wreck a few cars on the way home, and you can still stand up, the cops presumably won’t dream you’ve been drinking. This may be predicated on the erroneous assumption that cops can’t read advertisements, too, but I suppose it gives some people confidence. I shall let you drive us home, Monty. Na zdorovye!”
“Here’s to crime,” Monty said.
Simon regarded him affectionately.
They were dining at the East Arms at Hurley, a onetime English country pub which was its own sufficient answer to some of the old traditional gibes at British gas-tronomical facilities, and it was their first reunion in many years. It was a very far cry from the days when Monty Hayward had sometimes found himself involved in the fringes of the Saint’s lawless activities, and in particular had been embroiled in one incredible adventure which had whirled them across Austria and Bavaria in a fantastic flight that may still be remembered by senior students of these chronicles.
“It’s been a long time, Monty,” said the Saint. “And now you’re a Director of the Consolidated Press, with an expense account and a chauffeured limousine and all the trimmings, and you wouldn’t get mixed up in any of my shenanigans for anything. Don’t you ever get tired of this awful respectability?”
“Never,” declared Monty firmly. “It’s too nice to be able to look a policeman in the eye.”
“I never saw one with such beautiful eyes, myself,” said the Saint.
“I ran into another reformed friend of yours the other day, incidentally. I’d been to Cambridge with the Chairman about one of our scholarship projects, and on the way back in the evening we felt thirsty. We were going through a little village called Listend, which you won’t even find on most maps, but it’s just off the main road not far from Hertford, and we spotted a very quaint pub called the Golden Stag, so we stopped there. And who do you think was standing there behind the bar?”
“I’ll try one guess. Gypsy Rose Lee.”
“Sam Outrell—the fellow you had for a janitor when you lived at Cornwall House.”
The Saint’s face lighted up.
“Good old Sam! I’ve often wondered what happened to him.”
“Well, he always said he was a country boy, you remember; and I suppose all those years of tipping you off when Inspector Teal was waiting in the lobby to see you, and inventing alibis for you when you weren’t there, must have convinced him that the city life was too strenuous for the likes of him. So after he’d earned his pension, he took his savings and bought this pub.”
“That’s wonderful. How’s he doing?”
“Not too well, right now … He’s run into a bit of trouble.”
Some of the blue in the Saint’s gaze seemed to gently change latitude, from Mediterranean to arctic.
“Has he? What kind?”
“He was caught selling drinks after hours—and to a minor, what’s more. It looks pretty bad.”
“What ever made him do a stupid thing like that? I mean, getting caught.”
“He swears he didn’t do it, it was a frame-up. But he doesn’t think he’s got a chance of beating it. He’s expecting to lose his license.”
“This is something that could only happen in Merrie England,” said the Saint sulfurously. “I love this country; but the equating of morality with the precise hour at which somebody wants a drink is one refinement where they lost me. I am so depraved that I still admire the good sense of all those barbarous countries which cling to the primitive notion that a citizen should be entitled to a drink any time he can pay for it.”