The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint)

'Let me go after him with a gun, boss,' said Ted Orping. 'I'll get him for you.'

'Yeah-you'd get him like you got him last time,' replied Tex Goldman sourly. 'You're just a beginner, and from what I hear that guy was toting a gun before you were weaned. You ain't much to look at, but you're more use alive than dead.'

Orping scowled. He had almost thought out a fittingly belligerent retort when Goldman put away his cigar and waved him to silence.

''Back in St. Louis, when a guy had to be bumped off we had a way of doing it. I'll tell you what it was. We found an empty apartment, or a room, or sump'n, that had a window fixed so's you could see his door. Then a coupla choppers, or maybe sometimes just one, would sit up in that window and watch till he came out. They had a machine gun, and they didn't care how long they waited. Some time he had to come out, and then he got his.'

'How could we get a machine gun?' asked Orping skeptically.

'We couldn't-not yet,' said Goldman. 'But we can get a rifle, can't we ? And half the houses in that street are boarding houses or apartments, ain't they? We'll get him-maybe tomorrow.'

The simple feasibility of the idea impressed itself gradually on Ted Orping. He nodded.

'I'll do it,' he said.

'You won't,' said Tex Goldman, without emotion. 'With a rifle, it wants a guy who can shoot. Tope can shoot, and I'll be wanting you for another job.'

Extraordinarily enough, this was no less than the truth. During the Great War, Basher Tope had found himself pressed into the army with the coming of con­scription, and had actually contrived to spend nearly six months of his service outside the military prisons which opened their doors to him as automatically as had the civil prisons with which he was so familiar. The only good mark on his military record was that he had passed his musketry courses with flying colours. It was a rather unexpected accomplishment to find in a man like that, but good shots are born a thousand times more often than they are made. Basher Tope had the gift, and Tex Goldman selected him uncompromis­ingly for the second assault.

He appeared in Manson Place that afternoon, wearing a stained black suit and hat and an impressive beard. In the fourth house which he tried he secured a front bed-sitting-room on the ground floor from which he had a perfect view of Simon .Templar's front door. He called himself Schwarz, a traveller for a Leipzig firm of publishers, and spoke English so badly that his Hoxton accent was indetectable among the dense clutter of other accents with which- his guttural speech was interspersed. He said he required a room only for two days, and could not stand hotels.

Unfortunately for him, he discarded his beard in the privacy of his room before he went to bed that night. Simon Templar, scanning the street from behind drawn curtains through a pair of field glasses, saw him through the window, and knew what to expect.

'Tex isn't wasting any time,' he said.

His reply to the threat called for two curious articles of which at least one is not an ordinarily purchasable commodity; but a closed car had been standing near his back door in the mews all day, and he knew it would not be easy to go out and do his shopping.

He telephoned to a hotel, and to a firm of removers; and at half-past four a motor van drew up outside his front door, and two men in green baize aprons dis­embarked and rang the bell. They were admitted; and a few minutes later they came out again with a large wardrobe trunk. It was loaded into the van and delivered half an hour later to the hotel. Simon stepped out of it in his room, went unnoticed down the stairs, and in due course was shown up to his room again.

It stands to the credit of his remarkable knowledge of queer markets that he was able to make his purchases in a very short time.

At half-past ten the following morning, another van drew up outside the Saint's house. This time the men unloaded a large packing case and carried it inside. Half an hour later they brought it out again; and Basher Tope, at his window, did not notice that it appeared to be just as heavy when it came out as when it went in.

He stole a few minutes from his post to telephone Tex Goldman.

'Templar seems to be moving out,' he said. ''E sent orf some luggage and a packin' case.'

'I thought he would,' said Goldman, with satis­faction. 'Get back to your window and see you don't miss him.'

There was a fast car outside the door of the house where Basher Tope had found his lodgings, waiting to take its part in his escape as soon as his job was done. The landlady came up to his room after lunch, and he paid her bill and muttered something about leaving that night. That left him free to depart at any time he pleased without exciting attention, and his task seemed easy. The fast car was only provided in case of unfore­seen accidents.

There was certainly an accident, and it was certainly unforeseen.

Shortly afterwards Clem Enright, in a new brown check suit and a bowler hat, called round with a mes­ sage.

'The boss says you're to get 'im before eight o'clock, an' 'e don't care 'ow yer do it.'

'I'll get 'im if it's possible,' growled Tope.

Clem Enright found him unresponsive to a line of conversation about 'real men like you an' me, wot means to get wot we goes after,' and departed huffily in a few minutes. There was a shabby loafer knocking his pipe out on the bumpers of the car as Enright came out, but Clem paid him no attention. Basher Tope had not noticed him, though he had been hanging around there for half an hour.

Simon Templar only required the street to himself for a couple of minutes to do what he had to do, but it took him all that time to get it.

He had left the house in the packing case in which he had returned to it, but one of his purchases had gone in with him and had not come out again. Patricia Holm stayed there to attend to it.

The shabby loafer shuffled out of Manson Place a quarter of an hour after Enright had gone; and in three quarters of an hour more, by devious routes, he became Simon Templar again. It was as Simon Templar that he rang up Chief Inspector Teal.