Knight Templar, or The Avenging Saint

CHAPTER FOUR How Simon Templar dozed in the Green Park, and discovered a new use for toothpaste

1

TO WALK from Upper Berkeley Mews to the Ritz Hotel should ordinarily have taken a man with the Saint's stride and the Saint's energy about four minutes. Simon Templar in motion, his friends used to say, was the most violent man that ever fumed through London; all his physical movements were made as if they were tremendously important. Buccaneer he was in fact, and buccaneer of life he always looked — most of all when he strode through London on his strange errands, with his incredibly vivid stride, and a piratical anachronism of a hat canted cavalierly aslant over the face of a fighting troubadour.

But there was nothing of that about the aged graybeard who emerged inconspicuously from a converted garage in Upper Berkeley Mews at half-past eleven that Sunday morning. He did not look as if he had ever been anything in the least like a buccaneer, even fifty years ago; and, if in those decorously wild young days he had once cherished lawless aspirations, he must long since have decently buried all such disturbing thoughts. He walked very slowly, almost apologetically, as if he doubted his own right to be at large; and when he came to Piccadilly he stopped at the edge of the sidewalk and blinked miserably through his dark glasses at the scanty traffic, looking so forlorn and helpless that a plain-clothes man who had been searching for him for hours was moved to offer to help him across the road—an offer which was accepted with plaintive gratitude, and acknowledged with pathetic effusiveness. So an officer of the Criminal Investigation Department did his day's good deed; and the pottering patri­arch shuffled into the Green Park by the gate at the side of the Ritz Hotel, found a seat in the shade, sat there, folded his arms, and presently ap­peared to sleep. ...

He slept for an hour; and then he climbed stiffly to his feet and shambled out of the park by the way he had entered it, turning under the shadow of the Ritz. He pushed through the revolving doors with­out hesitation; and it says much for the utter re­spectability of his antique appearance that the flunkey who met him within made no attempt to eject him, but greeted him deferentially, hoping that he would prove to be a millionaire, and certain that he could not turn out to be less than an earl.

'I wish to see Prince Rudolf,' said the Saint; and he said it in such a way that the lackey almost grovelled.

'What name, sir?'

'You may send up my card.'

The Saint fumbled in his waistcoat pocket; he had a very fine selection of visiting cards, and the ones he had brought with him on this expedition bore the name of Lord Craithness. On the back of one, he wrote: 'Maidenhead, June 28.'

It was the day on which he had last seen the prince—the day on which Norman Kent had died. 'Will you take a seat, your lordship?' His lordship would take a seat. And he waited there only five minutes, a grave and patient old aristocrat, before the man returned to say that the prince would see him—as Simon had known he would say.

It was a perfect little character study, that per­formance—the Saint's slow and sober progress down the first-floor corridor, his entrance into the prince's suite, the austere dignity of his poise in the moment that he waited for the servant to announce him.

'Lord Craithness.'

The Saint heard the door close behind him, and smiled in his beard. And yet he could not have told why he smiled; for at that moment there came back to him all that he had to remember of his first and last meeting with the man who now faced him—and those were not pleasant memories. Once again he saw the friendly house by the Thames, the garden cool and fresh beyond the open French windows, the sunlit waters at the end of the lawn, and Norman Kent with a strange peace in his dark eyes, and the nightmare face of Rayt Marius, and the prince . . . Prince Rudolf, calmest of them all, with a sleek and inhuman calm, like a man of steel and velvet, impeccably groomed, exquisite, impas­sive—exactly as he stood at that moment, gazing at his visitor with his fine eyebrows raised in faint in­terrogation . . . not betraying by so much as the flicker of an eyelid the things that must have been in his mind. He could not possibly have forgotten the date that had been written on that card, it could not by any stretch of imagination have omened good news for him: and yet he was utterly master of himself, utterly at his ease. . . .

'You're a wonderful man,' said the Saint; and the prince shrugged delicately.

''You have the advantage of me.'

'Have you forgotten so quickly?'

'I meet many people.'

The Saint put up his hand and removed his gray wig, his glasses, his beard . . . straightened up.

'You should remember me,' he said.

'My dear Mr. Templar!' The prince was smil­ing. 'But why such precautions? Or did you wish to make your call an even greater surprise?'

The Saint laughed.

'The precautions were necessary,' he said— 'as you know. But I'll say you took it well—High­ness. I never expected you to bat an eye-lash, though—I remembered so well that your self-con­trol was your greatest charm.'

'But I am delighted to see you.'

'Are you?' asked Simon Templar, gently.

2

THE PRINCE proffered a slim gold case.

'At least,' he said, 'you will smoke.'

'One of my own,' said the Saint affably. 'I find that these are the only brand I can indulge in with safety—my heart isn't what it was.'

The prince shrugged.

'You have missed your vocation, Mr. Tem­plar,' he said regretfully. 'You should have been a diplomat.'

'I could have made a job of it,' said Simon modestly.

'I believe I once made you an offer to enter my own service.'

'You did.'

'And you refused.'

'I did.'

'Perhaps you have reconsidered your decision.'

The Saint smiled.

'Listen,' he said. 'Suppose I said I had. Sup­pose I told you I'd forgotten the death of my dear­est friend. Suppose I said that all the things I once believed in and fought for—the things that he died for—meant nothing more to me. Would you wel­come me?'

'Candidly,' said the prince, 'I should not. I admire you. I know your qualities, and I would give much to have them in my service. But that is an ideal—a daydream. If you turned your coat, you would cease to be what you are, and so you would cease to be desirable. But it is a pity. ...'

Simon strolled to a chair. He sat there, watching the prince through a curling feather of cigarette smoke. And the prince, sinking onto the arm of another chair, with a long thin cigarette holder be­tween his perfect teeth, returned the gaze with a glimmer of amusement on his lips.

Presently the prince made one of his indescrib­ably elegant gestures.

'As you have not come to enlist with me,' he remarked, 'I presume you have some other rea­son. Shall we deal with it?'

'I thought we might have a chat,' said the Saint calmly. 'I've discovered a number of obscure odours in the wind during the last twenty-four hours, and I had an idea you might have some­thing to say which would clear the air. Of course, for one thing, I was hoping our dear friend Marius would be with you.'

The prince glanced at his watch.

'I am expecting him at any moment. He was re­sponsible for your friend's unfortunate—er—acci­dent, by the way. I fear that Marius has never been of a very even temper.'