How Simon Templar spoke of birds-nesting,
and Duodecimo Gugliemi also became amorous
1
IT MUST be admitted at once that Duodecimo Gugliemi had never been cited as an advertisement for his native land. A sublime disregard for the laws of property would alone have been enough to disqualify him in that respect; as it was, he was affected also with an amorous temperament which, combined with a sudden and jealous temper, had not taken long to make Italy too hot to hold him. Leaving Italy for the sake of his health, he had crossed the Alps into Austria; but the Austrian prisons did not agree with him, and, again for the sake of his health, he had taken another northward move into German territory. He had seen the insides of jails in Munich and Bonn, and had narrowly escaped even more unpleasant retribution in Leipzig. In Berlin he had led an unimpeachably respectable life for six weeks, during which time he was in hospital with double pneumonia. Recovering, he left Berlin with an unspotted escutcheon, and migrated into France; and from France, after some ups and downs, he came to England, from which country, but for the intervention of Mr. Assistant Commissioner Cullis, he would speedily have departed back to the land of his birth. Actually the thirteenth child of a family that had been christened in numerical order, he had been permitted to slip into the appellation of a brother who had died of a surfeit of pickled onions at the tender age of two; but that, according to his own story, was the only good fortune that had come to him in a world that had mercilessly persecuted his most innocent enterprises.
He was a small and dapper little man, very amusing company in his perky way, with a fascination for barmaids and an innate skill with the stiletto; and certainly he looked less like an English plain-clothes man than any thing in trousers. Which may account for the fact that Simon Templar, sallying forth one morning from Upper Berkeley Mews, and alert for waiting sleuths, observed two large men in very plain clothes on the other side of the road, and entirely overlooked Duodecimo Gugliemi.
These large men in very plain clothes were among the trials of his life which Simon Templar endured with the exemplary patience with which he faced all his tribulations. Ever since his first brush with the law, on and off, he had been favoured with these attentions; and the entertainment which he had at first derived from this silent persecution was beginning to lose its zest. It was not that the continual watching annoyed him, or even cramped his style to any noticeable extent; but he was starting to find it somewhat tiresome to have to shake off a couple of inquisitive shadowers every time he wanted to go about any really private business. If he made a private appointment for midday, for instance, at a point ten minutes away from home, he had to set out to keep it half an hour earlier than he need have done, simply to give himself time to ditch a couple of doggedly unsuccessful bloodhounds; and this waste of time pained his efficient soul. More than once he had contemplated addressing a complaint to the Chief Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis on the subject.
That day, he had a private appointment at noon; and, as has been explained, he allowed himself half an hour to dispose of the watchers. He disposed of them as a matter of fact, in twenty minutes, which was good going. He did not dispose of Duodecimo Gugliemi — partly because Gugliemi was rather more supple of intuition than the two detectives, and partly because he was unaware of Gugliemi's existence. So soon as he found that the two large men had fallen out of the procession, he went on to his appointment by a direct and normal route, in ignorance of the fact that Duodecimo was still on his heels.
The return from Reading had presented no serious difficulty to a man of the Saint's ingenuity and brass neck, although he had known quite well that by the following morning there would be patrols of hawk-eyed men watch ing for him at every entrance to London. In a suit which had not been improved by the previous night's soaking, and which he had deliberately made no effort to smarten up, he had interviewed the proprietor of a garage and spun his yarn. He was an ex-serviceman down on his luck; he had been a haulage contractor, and a run of unsuccessful speculations had forced him to sell up his business; now a windfall had come his way in the shape of a transport job that was worth twenty-five pounds to him if he could only find the means to carry it out. And he secured the truck that he wanted, and the loan of a suit of overalls as well, and so drove boldly into London under the very noses of the men who were waiting for him at the Chiswick end of the Great West Road, with Jill Trelawney under a tarpaulin in the back. And after that, it had been a childishly simple matter to smuggle her stealthily into the studio at dead of night; where he had indicated a cupboard plentifully stocked with unperishable foods, and marooned her. There he visited her frequently, to report news and replenish the larder — that morning, as a matter of fact, he carried a dozen kippers, a loaf of bread, half a pound of butter, and two dozen eggs with him in an attache case.
She met him at the door.
"Bless you," she said. "If you hadn't come today, I think I should have blown up in hysterics. You've no idea what it is to be stuck indoors with nothing to do but read and eat for twenty-four hours a day."
Simon set up the attache case on an easel which had never carried a canvas.
"And I've only been away since the night before last," he said. "The girl's starting to love me, that's what it is."
She offered him a cigarette, and took one herself.
"What's been happening?"
"Nothing much. Teal's been in again. Started by threatening, got the bird, tried to be cunning, got the bird, tried to be friendly, got the bird, tried to bribe me, got the bird, and went home. Now he's going to retire and start a poultry farm on that capital. Policemen disguised as gentlemen still follow me everywhere—"
"How can you be certain you've shaken them off?"
"When I can't hear their boots squeaking. I know I'm at least three blocks in the lead. Oh, and Records Office has been burgled."
She looked down at him in his chair.
"What's that?"
"Burgled. Feloniously entered, and important secret papers unlawfully abstracted from. Jill Trelawney, dossier of, subsection M 3879 xxi ( b )…. Incidentally, that's an exaggeration. Give the police some credit. The burglary theory was discarded after the first five minutes, as a matter of fact, and the crime is now held to have been an inside job, carried out by some corrupt official in the pay of the Saint."
"When was this?"
"Night before last."
"When you were here?"
"Exactly. My alibi is perfect."
"You left at midnight?"
"Not of my own free will."
She smiled.
"But you said you had an appointment?"
"I did."
"Did you have an appointment?"
"Did I say I had? Jill, I won't be cross-examined. You must keep that for your American boy friend, when you've hooked him. I had to see a man in Camden Town about a second-hand Pomeranian, and he sold me a pup. How's that?"
Jill smiled again. Then she pointed to a litter of newspapers on a side table.
"This is the first I've heard about that Records Office affair," she said, "and I'll swear the rest of the world is as much in the dark as I am."
"It is — mostly."
"Then how do you know anything about it?"
"I have secret sources of information," said the Saint.
He yawned monstrously. His head settled lazily back against a cushion, and his eyes closed.
Jill looked at him for a few seconds. Then—
"Simon!"
"Hullo," sighed the Saint, starting up.
"What's the matter with you?" she demanded.
"Sorry," said the Saint. "I've had hardly any sleep for the last couple of nights, and I'm dead tired."
"What have you been doing?"
Simon stretched himself.
"Jill," he said, "you ought to have more faith in me. I haven't been on the tiles. I've been darn near them, though — there was a nasty bit of drain-pipe work on the way, and one hideous moment when I thought the gutter was going to come to pieces in me 'and. But it turned out all right, though I did some damage to the ivy—"
"You didn't break into Scotland Yard?"
"Who said I did?" asked the Saint, opening wide, childlike eyes of innocent astonishment.
The girl came over and sat on the arm of his chair. In her plain blue frock, with her lovely face innocent of the make-up which it never needed, she might have posed for a picture that would have made that studio famous, if Simon Templar had been an artist; and the Saint admired her frankly.
"That American boy is going to have a busy life bumping off aspiring corespondents some day," he murmured idly.
"What were you doing — on drain pipes?"
"Birds-nestin'."
"Simon!"
"All right, teacher. If you want to know, I'm going into the plumbing trade, and I wanted to do my studies on the cheap."
She stood up impatiently; and Simon laughed, and pulled her down again by a hand which he had not released.
Absent-mindedly, he kissed the hand.
"Thank you."
"Not at all," said the Saint politely. "Look here, will you believe me if I swear that Scotland Yard was robbed the night before last, and I didn't do my drain-piping till last night — or rather the small hours of this morning?"
She looked him puzzledly in the eyes.
"Yes," she said, "I will. But what are you getting at?"
The Saint grinned.
"Then hold on," he said, "because your faith in my word is going to get a shock."
He slipped a hand into his breast pocket and brought it out with a heavy envelope.
"Take a look. No charge for inspection."
She turned the envelope over. It was not sealed. Turning back the flap, she drew out a thick bundle of papers and unfolded them.
At the sight of the first one, her face changed. Then she glanced rapidly through the rest. She turned to the Saint with a frown on her eyebrows and a half-smile on her lips.
"You — blighter!"
"I told you your faith would take a toss."
"But why not tell me right away?"
"Tell you what?"
The innocence of the Saint's wide blue eyes was blinding.
"Why not tell me at once that you'd bust the Records Office?" she said.
"Because," said the Saint blandly, "it wouldn't have been precisely true. I'm always very particular about telling the precise truth," he said virtuously.
"It's either true, or it isn't—"
"Talking of macaroons," said the Saint hurriedly, "have you noticed the last sheet?"
She looked.
"It's blank."
"A valuable curiosity. Once upon a time some person or persons whom we will call unknown unlawfully obtained private papers from the files of Scotland Yard. In place of said papers, the said person or persons left an equivalent number of blank sheets. The blank sheet you hold in your hand is a specimen of the same. Very interesting."
She stared.
"One of the sheets that were left in the file?"
"No. An identical sheet, out of the block from which the sheets left at the Yard were taken. Now here" — the Saint dived into another pocket—"is one of the sheets that were left at the Yard. If you compare the two—"
Jill Trelawney took the second sheet in her hand.
She said breathlessly: "But how the—"
Simon Templar smiled seraphically.
"My spies are everywhere," he said. "I have resources at which you cannot even guess. Excuse me."
He took all the papers out of her hand, restored them to the envelope, and replaced the envelope in his pocket.
The girl put a hand on his shoulder.
"You're playing some clever game," she said. "I want to know what it is."
The Saint tapped his pocket.
"There are papers here," he said, "which cannot be duplicated. They are the only genuine dromedary's drawers. There is, for instance, the original letter giving warning of an impending raid, written on Scotland Yard notepaper on the typewriter which was in your father's office, which went part of the way towards substantiating the charges against your father. There is evidence which cannot be taken again. And there are details of the case which, without these papers, nobody might remember, after all this time. Small details, but important to some people. If, for instance, the chief commissioner should for any reason decide to set up a fresh inquiry into the circumstances of your father's dismissal —"
"Why should he do that?"
"Isn't that what you want?"
She did not answer.
"Isn't that what the Angels of Doom were for?"
"Yes," said Jill, almost in a whisper, "that's what they were for — originally."
"To wipe the noses of the guys who framed Papa because they couldn't buy him. Exactly."
"And that's all," said Jill huskily. "That's all they ever did. There was Waldstein and Essenden. Essenden made some sort of confession — but Essenden's dead, and no one would credit my evidence and yours. And it was the same with Waldstein. I'm beginning to think that there's no chance of doing anything but take revenge."
"Waldstein and Essenden," said the Saint—''Numbers One and Two. There's still Number Three; it's always third time lucky, lass."
"Are we going to do any better there?"
"We ought to, after all the practice we've had. If you keep your heart up, old girl—"
She raised her head.
"I still don't know," she said, "why you should be in this with me."
"Child," said the Saint, "is that still biting?"
"The others were in it for money."
"I took a hundred thousand francs off Essenden in Paris. It would have been two hundred thousand if we hadn't gone into partnership. Yes, I know — you're a dead loss to me. But there was that little joke I've mentioned more than once, if you remember."
"Is that your secret?"
"One of them. Didn't I tell you I always have been crazy? That's very important. If I hadn't been crazy, there'd have been no joke, and the Lord alone knows what would have happened to the Angels of Doom; but certainly there'd have been a lot less mirth and horseplay in history than there is now… One day, when this story's over, I'll tell you all about it. All I can say now is that there was one thing I vowed to do before I went respectable; and I can tell you it was well worth doing. Will that do for today, Jill?"
He saw the smiling perplexity in her face and the whimsical shake of her head, and laughed. And then he looked at his watch and stood up.
"Do you mind if I go?" he asked. "It's my bedtime."
"At one o'clock in the afternoon?"
He nodded.
"I told you I hadn't had any sleep to speak of for two nights. And tonight I'm going to call on a most respectable relative, and I don't want to look too dissipated. He mightn't be so ready to believe in my virtues as you are."
She was surprised into an obvious remark.
"I didn't know you had any relatives."
"Didn't you? I had a father and a mother, among others. It was most extraordinary. The papers at the time were full of it."
"You mean the Police News?"
"I don't remember that the Police News was interested in me just then," said the Saint gravely. "I rather think their interest developed later."
She had dropped into banter to cover up her breach of good criminal manners; but she was still inquisitive enough to try to press a serious question.
"Have you honestly got any relatives who still know you?"
It was beautifully put — that touch of sympathetic curiosity, the quiet assumption that they were now intimate enough to exchange notes. But Simon only laughed.
"To tell you the truth," he said, "this isn't a really truly relative, although I call him Auntie Ethel. But he views my indiscretions with a tolerant eye, and still believes that I shall reform one day. Now let's talk about supralapsarianism. I can't promise when I'll be in again, Jill, but it'll be as soon as I can make it…
She went with him to the door and watched him down the stairs, and felt unaccountably lonely when he had gone.
Simon went straight back to Upper Berkeley Mews. He had not been joking when he spoke of going to bed. He would have to be up again that night, and Heaven alone knew when he would get his next full night's rest.
But since he had not noticed Duodecimo Gugliemi before, the Saint did not miss him on the way home.
2
The Saint had been gone eight hours when a peal on the bell rang sharply through the studio and set the girl's heart pounding against her ribs.
No one should have rung that bell. The Saint himself had a key, and no tradesmen ever called, for obvious reasons. Who it could be outside, therefore, except a detective whom the Saint had not been so clever in shaking off as he had believed:.
As she stood by the table with her brain in a whirl the ring was repeated.
She went to the window and looked out and down into the street, but there was nothing out of the ordinary to be seen there — no signs of a cordon or even of one or two men told off to wait for an escape by another exit. As for the man at the door, it was impossible to inspect him; for the entrance of the studio was on the third and top floor of the building, and the architect, not knowing that his building was ever to be used for sheltering a wanted criminal, had omitted to provide a window looking out onto the landing, or any other similar means of inspecting callers before opening the front door.
Jill Trelawney thought all this out in a flash, and made her decision.
Whoever it was, she would gain nothing by refusing to open the door. If it were the police, the block would be well surrounded, and the door would eventually be forced if she refused to answer the bell. If it were anyone else. She had no idea who it could be, but she must still answer.
The little automatic that she was never without in those days was in her hand when she went to the door and opened it.
The first sight of the man outside was reassuring. Certainly he was not a detective, whatever else he might be — he was far too small and slim ever to have succeeded in entering the ranks of the metropolitan police, even if he had wanted to. A second glance told her that he was not likely even to have wanted to; for there was something unmistakably un-English about the exaggerated nattiness of his attire which would have marked him for a foreigner anywhere, even without the evidence of his thin dark features and his restless dark eyes.
"Mees Trelawney?"
After only a fractional hesitation she admitted the charge. His manner was so confident that she realized immediately that a bluff would carry no weight. At the same time, although he seemed so certain of her identity, there was nothing menacing or even alarming about his manner.
But in a moment he explained himself.
"I come from the part of Meester Templar. He has been arresting."
A sudden fear took her by the throat.
"Arrested? When?"
"Very near here. He meet me last night and say he has work for me. This morning I meet him again, he bring me along here, and he tell me to wait outside while he go in, and then we go off together and he tell me what it is to do. Then we get a little way from here, and a man recognize him in the street and say 'I want you.' "
The visitor waved his arms expressively.
"And Mr. Templar told you to come here?"
"Oh, no. But he look at me, and I know what to do."
She understood. The Saint could not have said anything before the police without giving her away. "Who are you?" she asked.
"I am Duodecimo Gugliemi," said the little man dramatically. "Now I tell you. Meester Templar, he get in a taxicab with the detective, and I get in another taxicab and I follow. Then a piece of paper come out of the taxi-cab window, and I stop my taxicab and pick it up. Here it is."
He flourished a muddy scrap of paper, and she took it from him and deciphered the smudged scrawl:
Wait in car outside Scotland Yard ten o'clock. S.
"Why didn't you come before?" she snapped. "If this was only just after he left here—"
"I had to get a car. It is outside now. A friend of mine is driver. Meester Templar, he know my friend also."
"Wait a minute."
She left him at the door and was back in a moment, slipping into her coat and cramming her hat onto her head. Her little gun was in its holster at her side, under her coat.
"Now we'll go."
The Italian was scuttling down the stairs in front of her, and she followed quickly. There was a closed car standing by the curb, and Gugliemi opened the door for her. She stepped in, and he followed, and the car began to move off almost at once.
It was only then that she saw that thin gauze blinds were drawn across all the windows. She sat quite still.
"What are those curtains doing?"
"You must not see where we go. It would be dangerous for you to see."
She sat in silence, with a delirious kaleidoscope of conflicting speculations whirling over in her brain. She was sure only of one thing, and that was that she had been incredibly stupid. She peered at the man beside her, but he was gazing steadily ahead, and seemed to have temporarily forgotten her existence.
Presently, when her watch told her they had been driving for nearly half an hour, Gugliemi spoke:
"We arrive. You must let me put this over your eyes."
There was a flash of a white handkerchief in his hand.
"Is — that — so?"
"I am afraid you cannot refuse. I must tie this over your eyes, and you must not make me be violent about it, because I do not like being violent."
She waited. The blur of white moved towards her, and she felt the soft caress of silk on her face. And then she twitched her automatic from its holster and rammed it into the man's ribs.
"You're moving too fast, Duodecimo," she said softly. "Think again — and think quickly!"
The Italian continued imperturbably with his task.
"I'll count three," she rapped. "You can start saying your prayers now. One—"
"And then the car stop, the police come, and you are arresting," he replied calmly. "But do not trouble, Mees Trelawney, I have already unloaded your gun."
She realized that the car had stopped, and could have wept with rage against herself.
"Will you get out?"
She could feel rather than see the stronger light that entered as the door was opened; but she had been well blindfolded. She could not even get a glimpse of the ground under her feet. Even a change to lift the bandage for a moment was not given her, for both her wrists were firmly grasped.
"There are some steps down—"
He guided her along what seemed to be a passage, up a few more steps that grated like bare stone under her shoes, round a corner.
"Now there are some stairs."
She climbed them with his hand on her arm guiding her — four flights — and then he opened a door and led her through. In a few more paces he checked her, and she felt something hard pressed against the back of her knees.
"Sit down."
She obeyed. She felt his hands at her wrists, the rough contact of tightening leather straps, and the cold touch of a metal buckle… Then the same thing at her ankles… Four straps held her as firmly as steel chains; and then the handkerchief was untied.
The room in which she found herself was small and dingily furnished. The paper was peeling off the walls, and the carpet was patched and frayed at the edges. There was a truckle bed in one corner, and on a rickety table stood a bottle, a few glasses, and the remains of a sandwich reposing on a piece of newspaper.
She was sitting in a solid oaken chair which seemed to have no place in that room and might even have been acquired for the occasion. The straps which he had just fastened pinned her wrists to the arms of it, and her ankles to the legs, and she knew at once that she would never be able to free herself unaided if she sat there for the rest of her life. So much she knew even before she pitched all her strength against the seasoned leather, and found the little Italian watching her with a kind of detached amusement.
"I do not think you will escape, Mees Trelawney," he said, "so I will excuse myself. I will send my friend away, and then I will come back and talk to you." The bright little eyes gleamed under the brim of his hat. "I have very interesting things to say to you — very interesting."
And as the door closed behind him something like a cold ghostly hand seemed to touch the back of her neck, sending a clammy tingle over her scalp and an icy numbness sinking down into the pit of her stomach.
Now that she knew he had nothing to do with the Saint, she wondered if the Saint knew anything about him — if it were possible that the Saint might have noticed him at some time. It meant, at least, that the story of the Saint's arrest was probably untrue, mere bait for the trap into which she had walked so blindly. But how soon would the Saint find out, and, even then, what could he do? Such a little time could make so much difference… And on the upturned dial of her wrist watch, almost under her eyes, three impersonal hands traced the crawling of time into eternity.
She watched their remorseless movements with a dull apathy of fascination, and saw the plodding minutes lengthen into an hour. She had no idea what Gugliemi could be doing; it did not seem to be useful to wonder. Probably he was drinking… One hour became two. Something seemed to snap in her brain and make her insensible to the passage of time. What would the Saint be doing?. She was getting cramp and her nose was tickling…
And then footsteps sounded outside, and the handle of the door turned with a rattle that made her heart leap into her mouth and flop back into a furious hammering. A crazy hope that it might even be the Saint himself swept through her head — she had unconsciously attained to such a faith in the Saint, had fallen so deeply under his spell, without knowing it at the time, that she could have believed him capable of any miracle… But the sound heralded only the return of the dapper Gugliemi, now lightened of his hat and coat.
He came into the room and locked the door behind him, and the girl raised her head.
"You've been a long time with your friend," she remarked.
"Yes." He smiled. "He was a little difficult. But I have sent him away now, and he will not come back for two hours. That will give me plenty of time. I hope you are becoming interested."
"Not enough to raise my temperature. And I didn't invite you to sit down. Even if you are disguised as a gentleman—"
"Mees Trelawney—"
"Or perhaps you aren't disguised as a gentleman. I admit the disguise wasn't very successful, but I thought that was what it was meant to be."
Gugliemi adjusted his tie with delicately manicured hands.
"Do you know what is going to happen to you?" he inquired.
His English had become more fluent, perhaps because his first agitation, which had not been entirely simulated, was wearing off.
"I told you I wasn't interested," she said.
Watching him, she appreciated the circumstances coldbloodedly. Even her useless automatic had been taken from her; and she knew, from the grip that he had once taken on her wrists, that even if she had not been strapped to the chair he could have handled her as he pleased, slight as he was. And then… Of course, the story of the Saint's arrest might possibly be true; but it was unlikely. Her thoughts were muddled by the feeling of exasperation which ran through them. For her, after turning the laws of England inside out, and making enough trouble to whiten the hair of every man in Scotland Yard, to have fallen for a bushel of birdseed like that! But how long would it be before the Saint missed her?
Since she had been installed in the studio he had called at least every other day. Sometimes on consecutive days. At the best, reckoning upon his previous habits, he could not be expected to call again before tomorrow; and two hours, according to Gugliemi, were all the time that there was to spare.
And yet things were moving faster than they had been before, and it was more than possible that the Saint might have reason to see her again that night. And when once he missed her, he wouldn't be likely to accumulate so much moss under his feet that it would seriously interfere with his travelling. But could she hold out so long — long enough to give him the time he would require to make up the lost ground?
"It is necessary," said Gugliemi, "that you should be killed. I have been told so, and I myself have been paid to do it. I did not know before that these things were done in England, but now I am told that they are. In Italy, of course, if anyone is a trouble he disappears— poof! — like that. But I did not know it was done in England until I was told that you must disappear. And they told me that if you disappeared completely they would not send me back to Italy. That is very important, because if I went back to Italy I should be sent to prison at once."
She stared at him, hardly believing her ears.
"Who told you this?" she asked in a strained voice.
"I was told," said Gugliemi. "But I was not told to do it like this. This was an idea of my own. I was told to take my little gun and find out where you lived, and go in and shoot you and walk out again, and no questions would be asked. But I saw you once, when you looked out of the window I was watching in the street outside, and I decided that it could not be done like that. Not with anyone so young and beautiful."
He kissed his fingers to her, elegantly.
"So I have brought you to my little home. You have disappeared, and so the police will be satisfied. As for me, I also will be satisfied, and everything will be quite all right."
The ridiculous preciousness of his speech and gesture made the situation grotesque, and yet…
She looked round the bare, mean room, made dingier, if possible, by the fact that it was lighted only by a feeble gas jet in one corner. And while Gugliemi deliberated his next sentence, rocking gently in his chair, she listened in the silence, and heard no other sound in the house. Probably it was empty — Gugliemi would not have risked leaving her ungagged in a place where she might cry out and attract attention.
He seemed to read her thoughts with the restless dark eyes that searched her face with blatant appreciation of her beauty.
"No," he said, "there is ho one here. We are in Lambeth, and this is the caretaker's room over an empty warehouse. You can cry out if you like, but no one will hear you. And as soon as you promise me that you will behave yourself, I will take those straps away and you will be free."
"So," she said calmly, "Mr. Templar hasn't been arrested?"
He spread out his hands.
"How should I know? That was a story I made up. When he left your house, I did not follow him any more. I was not interested in him. Perhaps he has been arrested, perhaps he has not. Who can say?"
She grasped that one fact as a drowning man might clutch at a straw.
And then, as if in answer to her thoughts, somewhere down in the depths below there was & thunder of knocking on the door.