The Noble Sportsman
It would be difficult to imagine two more ill-assorted guests at a country house party than Simon Templar and Chief Inspector Teal. The Saint, of course, was in his element. He roared up the drive in his big cream and red sports car and a huge camel-hair coat as if he had been doing that sort of thing for half his life, which he had. But Mr. Teal, driving up in the ancient and rickety station taxi, and alighting cumbrously in his neat serge suit and bowler hat, fitted less successfully into the picture. He looked more like a builder's foreman who had called to take measurements for a new bathroom, which he was not.
But that they should have been members of the same house party at all was the most outstanding freak of circumstance; and it was only natural that one of them should take the first possible opportunity to inquire into the motives of the other.
Mr. Teal came into the Saint's room while Simon was dressing for dinner, and the Saint looked him over with some awe.
"I see you've got a new tie," he murmured. "Did your old one come undone?"
The detective ran a finger round the inside of his collar, which fitted as if he had bought it when he was several years younger and measured less than eighteen inches around the neck.
"How long have you known Lord Yearleigh?" he asked bluntly.
"I've met him a few times," said the Saint casually.
He appeared to be speaking the truth; and Mr. Teal was not greatly surprised — the Saint had a habit of being acquainted with the most unlikely people. But Teal's curiosity was not fully satisfied.
"I suppose you're here for the same reason as I am," he said.
"More or less, I take it," answered Simon. "Do you think Yearleigh will be murdered?"
"You've seen the anonymous letters he's been receiving?"
"Some of 'em. But lots of people get anonymous threatening letters without getting a Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard sent down as a private pet."
"They aren't all M.P.'s, younger sons of dukes, and well-known influential men," said the detective rather cynically. "What do you think about it?"
"If he is murdered, I hope it's exciting," said the Saint callously. "Poison is so dull. A hail of machine-gun bullets through the library window would be rather diverting, though… What are you getting at, Claud — are you trying to steal my act or are you looking for an alliance?"
Mr. Teal unwrapped a wafer of chewing gum and stuck it in his mouth, and watched the Saint fixing buttons in a white waistcoat with a stolid air of detachment that he was far from feeling. It was sometimes hard for him to remember that that debonair young brigand with the dangerous mouth and humorous blue eyes had personally murdered many men, beyond all practical doubt but equally beyond all possibility of legal proof; and he found it hard to remember then. But nevertheless he remembered it. And the fact that those men had never died without sound reason did not ease his mind — the Saint had a disconcerting habit of assassinating men whose pollution of the universe was invisible to anyone else until he unmasked it.
"I'd like to know why you were invited," said Mr. Teal.
Simon Templar put on his waistcoat, brushed his tuxedo, and put that on also. He stood in front of the dressing-table, lighting a cigarette.
"If I suggested that Yearleigh may have thought that I'd be more use than a policeman, you wouldn't be flattered," he remarked. "So why worry about suspecting me until he really is dead? I suppose you've already locked up the silver and had the jewels removed to the bank, so I don't see how I can bother you any other way."
They went downstairs together, with Chief Inspector Teal macerating his spearmint in gloomy silence. If the Saint had not been a fellow-guest he would have taken his responsibilities less seriously; and yet he was unable to justify any suspicion that the Saint was against him. He knew nothing about his host which might have inspired the Saint to take an unlawful interest in his expectation of life.
The public, and what was generally known of the private, life of Lord Thornton Yearleigh was so far above reproach that it was sometimes held up as a model for others. He was a man of about sixty-five with a vigour that was envied by men who were twenty-five years his junior, a big-built natural athlete with snow-white hair that seemed absurdly premature as a crown for his clear ruddy complexion and erect carriage. At sixty-five, he was a scratch golfer, a first-class tennis player, a splendid horseman, and a polo player of considerable skill. In those other specialised pastimes which in England are particularly dignified with the name of "sport," hunting, shooting, and fishing, his name was a by-word. He swam in the sea throughout the winter, made occasional published comments on the decadence of modern youth, could always be depended on to quote 'mens sana in corpore sano' at the right moment, and generally stood as the living personification of those robust and brainless spartan ideals of cold baths and cricket which have contributed so much to England's share in the cultural progress of the world. He was a jovial and widely popular figure; and although he was certainly a member of the House of Commons, the Saint had not yet been known to murder a politician for that crime alone — even if he had often been known to express a desire to do so.
There was, of course, no reason at all why the prospective assassin should have been a member of the party; but his reflections on the Saint's character had started a train of thought in the detective's mind, and he found himself weighing up the other guests speculatively during dinner.
The discussion turned on the private bill which Yearleigh was to introduce, with the approval of the Government, when Parliament reassembled during the following week; and Teal, who would have no strong views on the subject until his daily newspaper told him what he ought to think, found that his role of obscure listener gave him an excellent chance to study the characters of the others who took part.
"I shouldn't be surprised if that bill if mine had something to do with these letters I've been getting," said Yearleigh."Those damned Communists are capable of anything. If they only took some exercise and got some fresh air they'd work all that nonsense out of their systems. Young Maurice is a bit that way himself," he added slyly.
Maurice Vould flushed slightly. He was about thirty-five, thin and spectacled and somewhat untidy, with a curiously transparent ivory skin that was the exact antithesis of Yearleigh's weather-beaten complexion. He was, Teal had already ascertained, a cousin of Lady Yearleigh's; he had a private income of about £800 a year, and devoted his time to writing poems and essays which a very limited public acclaimed as being of unusual worth.
"I admit that I believe in the divine right of mankind to earn a decent wage, to have enough food to eat and a decent house to live in, and to be free to live his life without interference," he said in a rather pleasant quiet voice. "If that is, Communism, I suppose I'm a Communist."
"But presumably you wouldn't include armed attack by a foreign power under your heading of interference," said a man on the opposite side of the table.
He was a sleek well-nourished man with heavy sallow cheeks and a small diamond set in the ring on his third finger; and Teal knew that he was Sir Bruno Walmar, the chairman and presiding genius of the Walmar Oil Corporation and all its hundred subsidiaries. His voice was as harsh as his appearance was smooth, with an aggressive domineering quality to it which did not so much offer argument as defy it; but the voice did not silence Vould.
"That isn't the only concern of Yearleigh's bill," he said.
The Right Honourable Mark Ormer, War Minister in the reigning Government, scratched the centre of his grey moustache in the rather old-maidish gesture which the cartoonist had made familiar to everyone in England, and said: "The National Preparedness Bill merely requires a certain amount of military training to be included in the education of every British boy, so that if his services should be needed in the defence of his country in after life, he should be qualified to play his part without delay. No other eventuality has been envisaged."
"How can you say that no other eventuality has been envisaged?" asked Vould quietly. "You take a boy and teach him the rudiments of killing as if they were a desirable thing to know. You give him a uniform to wear and impress upon him the fact that he is a fighting man in the making. You make him shoot blank cartridges at other boys, and treat the whole pantomime as a good joke. You create a man who will instinctively answer a call to arms whenever the call is made; and how can you sit there tonight and say that you know exactly and only in what circumstances somebody will start to shout the call?"
"I think we can depend on the temperament of the English people to be sure of that," said Ormer indulgently.
"I think you can also depend on the hysteria of most mobs when their professional politicians wave a flag," answered Maurice Vould. "There probably was a time when people fought to defend their countries, but now they have to fight to save the faces of their politicians and the bank balances of their business men."
"Stuff and nonsense!" interjected Lord Yearleigh heartily. "Englishmen have got too much sense. A bit of military training is good for a boy. Teaches him discipline. Besides, you can't stop people fighting — healthy people — with that watery pacifist talk. It's human nature."
"Like killing your next-door neighbour because you want to steal his lawn mower," said Vould gently. "That's another primitive instinct which human nature hasn't been able to eradicate."
Yearleigh gave a snort of impatience; and Sir Bruno Walmar rubbed his smooth hands over each other and said in his rasping voice: "I suppose you were a conscientious objector during the last war, Mr. Vould?"
"I'm sorry to disappoint you," said Vould, with a pale smile, "but I was enjoying the experience of inhaling poison gas when I was sixteen years old. While you, Ormer, were making patriotic speeches, and you, Walmar, were making money. That's the difference between us. I've seen a war, and so I know what it's like; and I've also lived long enough after it to know how much good it does."
"What's your opinion, Mr. Templar?" asked Yearleigh. "Don't you think Maurice is talking like one of these damned street-corner Reds?" The Saint nodded.
"Yes, I do," he said. There was a moment's silence; and then he added thoughtfully: "I rather like these street-corner Reds — one or two of them are really sincere."
Chief Inspector Teal nibbled a crust of bread secure in his voluntary self-effacement, while Mrs. Ormer made some twittering remark and the thread of conversation drifted off into a less dangerously controversial topic. He had, he admitted, failed dismally in his little solitaire game of spotting the prospective murderer. A Cabinet Minister, a multi-millionaire, and a poet did not seem to comprise a gathering amongst whom a practical detective could seek hopefully for felons. The only suspect left for him was still the Saint; and yet even when the meal was finished, after the ladies had retired and the port and cigars had been passed around, he had no reason, actual or intuitive, to believe that Simon Templar was meditating the murder of his host.
Yearleigh rose, and there was a general pushing back of chairs. The noble sportsman caught the detective's eye; and for the first time since Teal's arrival the object of his invitation was brought up again.
"I've had another of those damned letters," he said.
He produced it from his pocket, and held it out in a movement that was a general announcement that anyone who cared to might peruse it. Vould and the Saint, who were nearest, shared it with Mr. Teal.—
The message contained two lines in laboured script.
Since you have ignored my previous warnings, you will learn your lesson tonight.
There was no signature — not even the skeleton haloed figure which Teal had half expected to see.
The detective folded the letter and put it away in his wallet. His faded sleepy eyes turned back to his host.
"I'd like to have a talk with you later on, sir," he said. "I have some men in the village, and with your permission I'd like to post special guards."
"Certainly," agreed Yearleigh at once. "Have your talk now. I'm sure the others will excuse us… Wait a moment, though." He turned to Maurice Vould. "You wanted to have a talk with me as well, didn't you?"
Vould nodded.
"But it can wait a few minutes," he said; and both Teal and the Saint saw that his pale face was even paler, and the eyes behind his big glasses were bright with sudden strain.
"Why should it?" exclaimed Yearleigh good-humouredly. "You modern young intellectuals are always in a hurry, and I promised you this talk three or four days ago. You should have had it sooner if I hadn't had to go away. Inspector Teal won't mind waiting, and I don't expect to be murdered for another half-hour."
Simon fell in at Teal's side as they went down the hall, leaving the other two on their way to Yearleigh's study; and quite naturally the detective asked the question which was uppermost in his mind.
"Have you any more ideas?"
"I don't know," was the Saint's unsatisfactory response. "Who were you most interested in at dinner?"
"I was watching Vould," Teal confessed.
"You would be," said the Saint. "I don't suppose you even noticed Lady Yearleigh."
Teal did not answer; but he admitted to himself that the accusation was nearly true. As they went into the drawing-room his sleepy eyes looked for her at once, and saw her talking to Ormer on one side of her and Walmar on the other. He suddenly realised that she was young enough to be Yearleigh's daughter — she might have been thirty-five, but she scarcely looked thirty. She had the same pale and curiously transparent complexion as her cousin Vould, but in her it combined with blue eyes and flaxen hair to form an almost ethereal beauty. He could not help feeling the contrast between her and her husband — knowing Yearleigh only by reputation, and never having visited the house, he would have expected Lady Yearleigh to be a robust horsey woman, at her best in tweeds and given to brutal bluntness. Mr. Teal had never read poetry; but if he had, Rossetti's Blessed Damosel would have perfectly expressed what he felt about this Lady Yearleigh whom Simon Templar had made him notice practically for the first time.
"She's very attractive," said Teal, which was a rhapsody from him.
"And intelligent," said the Saint. "Did you notice that?"
The detective nodded vaguely.
"She has a wonderful husband."
Simon put down his cigar-butt in an ashtray and took out his cigarette-case. Teal knew subconsciously that his hesitation over those commonplace movements was merely a piece of that theatrical timing in which the Saint delighted to indulge; he knew that the Saint was about to say something illuminating; but even as Simon Templar opened his mouth the sound of the shot boomed through the house.
There was an instant's terrible stillness, while the echoes of the reverberation seemed to vibrate tenuously through the tense air like the vibrations of a cello-string humming below the pitch of hearing; and then Lady Yearleigh came to her feet like a ghost rising, with her ivory skin and flaxen hair making her a blanched apparition in the dimly lighted room.
"My God," she breathed, "he's killed him!"
Teal, who was nearest the door, awoke from his momentary stupor and rushed towards it; but the Saint reached it first. He ran at the Saint's shoulder to the study, and as they came to it the door was flung open and Lord Yearleigh stood there, a straight steady figure with a revolver in his hand.
"You're too late," he said, with a note of triumph in bis voice. "I got him myself."
"Who?" snapped Teal, and burst past him into the room, to see the answer to his question lying still and sprawled out in the middle of the rich carpet.
It was Maurice Vould.
Teal went over to him. He could barely distinguish the puncture of the bullet in the back of Vould's dinner jacket, but the scar in his shirt-front was larger, with a spreading red stain under it. Teal opened the dead man's fingers and detached an old Italian dagger, holding it carefully in his handkerchief.
"What happened?" he asked.
"He started raving," said Yearleigh, "about that bill of mine. He said it would be better for me to die than to take that bill into the House. I said: 'Don't be silly,' and he grabbed that dagger — I use it as a paper-knife — off the desk, and attacked me. I threw him off, but he'd become a maniac. I got a drawer open and pulled out this revolver, meaning to frighten him. He turned to the window and yelled: 'Come in, comrades! Come in and kill!' I saw another man at the window with a scarf round his face, and fired at him. Maurice must have moved, or I must have been shaken up, or something, because I hit Maurice. The other man ran away."
Still holding the knife, Teal turned and lumbered towards the open french windows. Ormer and Walmar, who had arrived while Yearleigh was talking, went after him more slowly; but the Saint was beside him when he stood outside, listening to the murmurs of the night.
In Teal's mind was a queer amazement and relief, that for once Simon Templar was proved innocent and he had not that possibility to contend with; and he looked at the Saint with half a mind to apologise for his suspicions. And then he saw that the Saint's face was deeply lined in the dim starlight, and he heard the Saint muttering in a terrible whisper: 'Oh, hell! It was my fault. It was my fault!"
"What do you mean?' asked the startled detective. Simon gripped him by the arm, and looked over his shoulder. Ormer and Walmar were behind them, venturing more cautiously into the dangerous dark. The Saint spoke louder.
"You've got your job to do," he said rather wildly."Photographers — finger-prints—"
"It's a dear case," protested Teal, as he felt himself being urged away.
"You'll want a doctor — coroners — your men from the village. I'll take you in my car…"
Feeling that the universe had suddenly sprung a high fever, Teal found himself hustled helplessly around the broad terrace to the front of the house. They had reached the drive before he managed to collect his wits and stop.
"Have you gone mad?" he demanded, planting his feet solidly in the gravel and refusing to move further. "What do you mean — it was your fault?"
"I killed him," said the Saint savagely. "I killed Maurice Vould!"
"You?" Teal ejaculated, with an uncanny start. "You're crazy," he said.
"I killed him," said the Saint, "by culpable negligence. Because I could have saved his life. I was mad. I was crazy. But I'm not now. All right. Go back to the house. You have somebody to arrest."
A flash of memory went across Teal's mind — the memory of a pale ghostly woman rising from her chair, her voice saying: "My God, he's killed him!" — the hint of a frightful foreknowledge. A cold shiver touched his spine.
"You don't mean — Lady Yearleigh?" he said incredulously. "It's impossible. With a husband like hers—"
"You think he was a good husband, don't you?" said the Saint. "Because he was a noble sportsman. Cold baths and cricket. Hunting, shooting, and fishing. I suppose it's too much to expect you to put yourself in the place of a woman— a woman like her — who was married to that?"
"You think she was in love with Vould?"
"Of course she was in love with Vould. That's why I asked you if you'd looked at her at all during dinner — when Vould was talking. If you had, even you might have seen it. But you're so full of conventions. You think that any woman ought to adore a great fat-headed blustering athlete — because a number of equally fat-headed men adore him. You think she oughtn't to think much of a pale poet who wears glasses, because the fat-headed athletes don't understand him, as if the ability to hit a ball with a bat were the only criterion of value in the world. But I tried to tell you that she was intelligent. Of course she was in love with Vould, and Vould with her. They were made for each other. I'll also bet you that Vould didn't want an interview with Yearleigh to make more protests about that bill, but to tell him that he was going to run away with his wife."
Teal said helplessly: "You mean — when Yearleigh objected — Vould had made up his mind to kill him. Lady Yearleigh knew, and that's what she meant by—"
"She didn't mean that at all," said the Saint. "Vould believed in peace. You heard him at dinner. Have you forgotten that remark of his? He pointed out that men had learned not to kill their neighbours so that they could steal their lawn mowers. Why should he believe that they ought to kill their neighbours so that they could steal their wives?"
"You can't always believe what a man says—"
"You can believe him when he's sincere."
"Sincere enough," Teal mentioned sceptically, "to try to kill his host."
Simon was quiet for a moment, kicking the toe of his shoe into the gravel.
"Did you notice that Vould was shot in the back?" he said.
"You heard Yearleigh's explanation."
"You can't always believe what a man says — can you?"
Suddenly the Saint reached out and took the dagger which Teal was still holding. He unwrapped the handkerchief from it; and Teal let out an exclamation. "You damn fool!"
"Because I'm destroying your precious finger-prints?" murmured the Saint coolly. "You immortal ass! If you can hold a knife in your handkerchief to keep from marking it, couldn't anybody else?"
The detective was silent. His stillness after that instinctive outburst was so impassive that he might have gone to sleep onhis feet. But he was very much awake. And presently the Saint went on, in that gentle, somewhat mocking voice which Teal was listening for.
"I wonder where you get the idea that a 'sportsman' is a sort of hero," he said. "It doesn't require courage to take a cold bath — it's simply a matter of whether your constitution likes it. It doesn't require courage to play cricket — haven't you ever heard the howls of protest that shake the British Empire if a batsman happens to get hit with a ball? Perhaps it requires a little more courage to watch a pack of hounds pull down a savage fox, or to loose off a shot-gun at a ferocious grouse, or to catch a great man-eating trout with a little rod and line. But there are certain things you've been brought up to believe, and your mind isn't capable of reasoning them out for itself. You believe that a 'sportsman' is a kind of peculiarly god-like gladiator, without fear and without reproach. You believe that no gentleman would shoot a sitting partridge, and therefore you believe that he wouldn't shoot a sitting poet."
A light wind blew through the shrubbery; and the detective felt queerly cold.
"You're only talking," he said. "You haven't any evidence."
"I know I haven't," said the Saint, with a sudden weariness. "I've only got what I think. I think that Yearleigh planned this days ago — when Vould first asked for the interview, as Yearleigh mentioned. I think he guessed what it would be about. I think his only reason for putting it off was to give himself time to send those anonymous threats to himself — to build up the melodrama he had invented. I think you'll find that those anonymous threats started on the day when Vould asked for a talk with him, and that Yearleigh had no sound reason for going away except that of putting Vould off. I think that when they were in the study tonight, Yearleigh pointed to the window and made some excuse to get Vould to turn round, and then shot him in the back in cold blood, and put this paper-knife in his hand afterwards. I think that that is what Lady Yearleigh, who must have known Yearleigh so much better than any of us, was afraid of; and I think that when she said 'He's killed him,' she meant that Yearleigh had killed Vould, and not that Vould had killed Yearleigh."
The Saint's lighter flared, like a bomb bursting in the dark; and Teal looked up and saw his lean brown face, grim and curiously bitter in the light of the flame as he put it to his cigarette. And then the light went out again, and there was only Simon Templar's quiet voice speaking out of the dark.
"I think that I killed Maurice Vould as surely as if I'd shot him myself, because I couldn't see all those things until now, when it's too late. If I had seen them, I might have saved him."
"But in the back," said Teal harshly. "That's the part I can't swallow."
The tip of the Saint's cigarette glowed and died.
"Yearleigh was afraid of him," he said. "He couldn't risk any mistake — any cry or struggle that might have spoilt his scheme. He was afraid of Vould because, in his heart, he knew that Vould was so much cleverer and more desirable, so much more right and honest than he would ever be. He was fighting the old hopeless battle of age against youth. He knew that Vould had seen through the iniquity of his bill. The bill could never touch Yearleigh. He was too old for the last war, when I seem to remember that he made a great reputation by organising cricket matches behind the lines. He would be too old for the next. He had no children. But it's part of the psychology of life, whether you like it or not, that war is the time when the old men come back into their own, and the young men who are pressing on their heels are miraculously removed. Yearleigh knew that Vould despised him for it; and he was afraid… Those are only the things I think, and I can't prove any of them," he said; and Teal turned abruptly on his heel and walked back towards the house.