The Saint in London: Originally Entitled the Misfortunes of Mr. Teal (16 page)

“Hullo, sunshine,” he said at length. “And who are you?”

The man’s mouth worked hungrily, like an animal’s.

“All right,” he said, in a curiously stiff hoarse whisper, as if he had half forgotten how to use his voice. “I’m used to it now. You can’t make me suffer any more.”

“Who are you?” Simon repeated.

“I’m you,” said the man huskily. “I know now. I’ve thought it all out. I’m you—Nordsten!”

The Saint’s nerves were steady enough now. Somehow, that last shock had been a homoeopathic dose, wiping out everything else; he was left with the dizzy certainty that the trail had turned into a stranger course than anything he had dreamed of, and with a grim curiosity to find out where it led.

“I’m here to help you, you fathead,” he said. “Tell uncle what it’s all about.”

The man below him laughed, a horrible quivering dry cackle which sent an uncanny chill down the Saint’s spine, as if a spider had crawled there, in spite of the recovered steadiness of his nerves.

“Help me! Ha-ha! That’s funny. Help me like you’ve been helping me for two years. Help me to keep alive so that I can die at the right time! I know. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” Then the wild voice fell to a whisper. “Help,” it breathed, with a fearful intensity. “How long? How long?”

“Listen,” said the Saint urgently. “I––”

An then, as if his command had turned back on himself, he broke off and listened. He could hear the scratching again. It was outside the library door—on the door itself… . There was a faint thud; and then an instant’s electric silence, while he strained his ears for he knew not what… And then, shattering the stillness of the house, came a frightful coughing scream that rang up and down the scale in an eldritch howl of vocal savagery that stopped the breath in his throat.

Looking down stupidly through the trapdoor, Simon saw the parchment face of the man who looked like Nordsten turn whiter. The dull eyes dilated, and the stiff unnatural voice rose in a sobbing cry.

“No, no, no, no,” it shrieked. “Not now! Not now! I didn’t mean it. I’m not ready yet! I’m not––”

The hairs prickled on the nape of Simon’s neck; and then, with an effort that hardened his eyes to mere slits of arctic blue, he got up from his knees and lifted the heavy stone trapdoor again.

“I’ll see you later,” he said shortly and lowered the trap much quicker than he had raised it.

In another second he had fitted the square of dummy parquet over it, and he was rolling out the carpet again to cover up the traces of his inspection. Whatever else his curiosity might demand to know, there was the screeching shadow with the yellow eyes to be accounted for first— everyone in the house must have been awakened by that unearthly yell, and he would achieve nothing by being discovered where he was. Whatever it might be, the Thing in the hall had to be dealt with first, and he preferred to take it on the run rather than let his nerves get the better of him again. With his automatic in his hand, he went back to the door and switched out the lights. No one would ever know what it cost him to turn the handle of the door with that screaming horror waiting for him on the other side, but he did it; and his nerves were like ice as he drew the door sharply back and waited for whatever his fate might be.

Something soft and yet heavy hissed past him and landed on the parquet beside the central rug with the same scratching noise as he had heard before, and once again his nostrils twitched to the queer musty odour which they had detected on the stairs. In the pitch darkness he heard the claws of the beast scrabbling for a turning hold on the polished oak, and kicked out instinctively with his bare foot. His toes bedded into something furry and muscular, and for the second time that fiendish worrying yell wailed through the blackness.

Simon whipped up his gun; but something like a hot iron ripped down his forearm before he could fire, and the automatic was brushed effortlessly out of his hand. He felt hot fetid breath on his face and smashed his fist into something soft and damp; and then he went down under the clawing spitting weight of the brute with its shrill snarl of fury ringing in his ears.

More by luck than judgment he found the animal’s throat with his hands; and probably it was that fluke, and the reprieve of a second or two it gave him, which saved him from serious injury, “Sheba!”

The lights had gone up in the hall, and he heard running footsteps. He had never been so breathlessly thankful to hear anything in his life. A whip lashed, and the huge black panther on top of him roared again and stepped back, turning its head with bared fangs. Simon took his chance and rolled clear—it was the fastest roll he had ever performed in his acrobatic career.

“Back!” shouted Nordsten furiously and lashe at the panther again.

It was one of the most amazing demonstrations of brutal fearlessness which Simon had ever witnessed. Nordsten simply advanced step by step, swinging the wire-tipped rawhide back and forth in a steady rhythm of flailing punishment; and as he went forward, the panther went back. Quite obviously it had never been tame, and no attempt had ever been made to tame it. Nordsten dominated it by nothing but his own savage courage. Its yellow eyes blazed with the most horrible intelligent hatred which the Saint had ever dreamed of seeing in the eyes of an animal; it clawed and bit at the slashing whip with deep growls of murderous rage; but it went back. Nordsten’s face was black with anger, and he had no more pity than fear. He drove the brute right across the hall into a corner, lashed it half a dozen times more when it could retreat no farther—and then turned his back on it. It crouched there, staring after him, with a steady rumbling of frightful viciousness burring in its throat.

“You’re lucky to be alive, Vickery,” Nordsten said harshly, curling his whip in his big white hands.

He was in his pyjamas and dressing gown—. Simon had known very few financiers who could be impressive in that costume, but Nordsten was.

The Saint nodded, dabbing his handkerchief over the deep claw-groove in his bare forearm.

“I was just coming to the same conclusion,” he remarked lightly. “Have you got any more docile pets like that around the place?”

“What were you doing down here?” answered Nordsten sharply; and Simon remembered that he was still supposed to be Tim Vickery.

“I wanted a drink,” he explained. “I thought all the servants would have been in bed by this time, so I didn’t like to ring for it. I just came down to see if I could find anything. I was halfway down the stairs when that thing started chasing me––”

Nordsten’s faded bright eyes looked away to the left, and Simon saw that the saturnine butler was standing on the stairs at a safe distance, with a revolver clutched in his hand.

“You forgot to lock the door, Trusaneff?” Nordsten said coldly.

The man licked his lips.

“No, sir––”

“It wasn’t locked, anyway,” said the Saint blankly.

Nordsten looked at the butler for a moment longer; then at the Saint. Simon met his gaze with an expression of honest perplexity, and Nordsten turned away abruptly and went past him into the library, switching on the lights. He saw the automatic lying in the middle of the carpet and picked it up.

“Is this yours?”

“Yes.” Simon blinked and shifted his eyes with an air of mild consternation. “I—I always carry it now, and— Well, when that animal started––”

“I see.” Nordsten’s genial nod of understanding was very quick. He glanced at the Saint’s gashed arm. “You’ll need a bandage on that. Trusaneff will attend to it. Excuse me.”

He spoke those few words as if with their utterance the episode was finally concluded. Somehow the Saint found himself outside the library door while Nordsten closed it from the outside.

“This way, please, Mr. Vickery,” said the butler, without moving from his safe position on the lower flight of stairs.

Simon felt for his cigarette case and walked thoughtfully across the hall. Through another half-open door he caught a glimpse of the scared features of the battle-scarred warrior who had paraded under his window, peering out from an equally safe position. The black panther crouched in the corner where Nordsten had left it, lashing its tail in sullen silence… .

Altogether a very exciting wind-up to a pleasant social evening, reflected the Saint; if it was the wind-up… . He rememberd that Nordsten had carelessly omitted to give him back his automatic when ushering him so smoothly out of the library, and realized that he would have felt a lot happier if the financier had been less pointedly forgetful. He also remembered that either Annette or Patricia should have telephoned him that night, and wondered why there had been no message. Teal might have been responsible—so far as Simon knew, that persistent detective had not been aware of his latest acquisition in the way of real estate; but there had been no secrecy about the transaction, and it would have been perfectly simple for Mr. Teal to discover it after a certain amount of time. Or else they might have tried to telephone, and Nordsten or one of his servants might have been the barrier. That also was possible, since he had already been allowed to write a letter which had doubtless been read before it was posted. He

was developing a profound respect for Ivar Nordsten’s thoroughness––

“Vickery.”

It was Nordsten’s voice; and the Saint stopped, and saw the financier standing at the foot of the stairs.

“I’d like to see you again for a moment, if your arm can wait.”

There was no real question of whether his arm could wait; and Simon turned with a smile.

“Of course.”

He went down the stairs again. Trusaneff halted on the last flight, and Simon crossed the hall alone.

Nordsten was standing by the desk when the Saint entered the library, and the panther was crouching at his feet. Simon saw that the carpet was rolled back from the trapdoor, and the financier was holding his gun in his hand. He realized that he had been exceedingly careless; but he allowed nothing but a natural puzzlement to appear on his face.

“You tell me that Sheba started chasing you when you were on the stairs, and you tried to get in here to escape,” Nordsten said, with a curious flat timbre in his voice.

“That’s right,” Simon answered.

“Then can you explain this?”

Nordsten pointed his whip at the floor; and Simon looked down and saw the stub of a cigarette lying beside the trapdoor—that same cigarette which his tingling nerves had forced him to light when he got inside the room, and which he had unconsciously trodden out when the demoniac snarl of the panther disturbed him in his investigations—and a few little splashes of grey ash around it.

“I don’t understand,” he said, with a frown of perfect bewilderment.

The financier’s faded bright eyes were fixed on him steadily.

“None of my servants smoke, and I smoke only cigars.”

“I still don’t know why you should ask me,” Simon said.

“Is your name Vickery?”

“Of course it is.”

Nordsten stared at him for a few seconds longer.

“You’re a liar,” he said at length, with absolute calm.

Simon did not answer, and knew that there was no answer to make. He admitted nothing, continuing to gape at Nordsten with the same expression of helpress perplexity which the real Tim Vickery would have worn; but he knew that he was only carrying on mechanically with a bluff that had long since been called. It made no difference.

The thing which surprised him a little was Nordsten’s complete restraint. He would have expected some show of emotion, some manifestation of nerves, fear, anger, even insensate viciousness; but there was none of those. The financier was as rock-still as if he had been contemplating an ordinary obstacle which had arisen in the course of a normal and respectable business campaign— almost as if he had already envisaged the obstacle and sketched out a rough plan of remedy, and was simply considering the remedy again in detail, to make sure that it contained no flaws. And Simon Templar, remembering the poor half-crazy wretch under the trap, had an eerie presentiment that perhaps this was only the barest truth.

Nordsten spoke only one revealing sentence.

“I didn’t think it would come so soon,” he said, speaking aloud but only to himself; and his voice was quiet and almost childlike.

Then he looked at the Saint again with his dispassionate and empty eyes, and the gun in his hand moved slightly.

“Lift up the trap, please … Vickery,” he said.

Simon hesitated momentarily; but the gun was aimed on him quite adequately, and Nordsten was too far away for a surprise attack. With a slight shrug he moved the square of parquet aside and locked his hands in the ring bolt of the heavy stone door. He lifted it with a strong quiet heave and laid it back on the floor.

“This is lots of fun,” he murmured. “What do we do now—wiggle our ears and pretend to be rabbits?”

The financier ignored him. He raised his voice slightly, and called:

“Erik!”

In the silence that followed, Simon listened to the sounds of stumbling movement in the cave under the floor; and presently he saw the head of the man who looked like Nordsten coming up out of the hole. The man was climbing up some sort of ladder which the Saint had not noticed, taking each rung with a shaky effort such as an old man might have made, as if his limbs had grown pitifully feeble from long disuse. As he appeared under the full open light, Simon was even more amazed at the resemblance between the two men. There was minor differences, it was true; but most of them could be accounted for by the unimaginably frightful years of imprisonment which Erik had endured in that lightless pit. Even in stature they were almost identical. Simon had a moment’s recollection of the man’s stiff husky voice saying: “I’m you. I know now… . I’m you—Nordsten!” And he shivered in the sudden chill of understanding.

The man had climbed out at last. His glazed eyes, tensed painfully in the brilliant light, fell on the black panther, and he swayed weakly, clutching the collar of his ragged shift with a trembling hand. And then he mastered himself.

“All right,” he said, with a shuddering gasp. “I’m not afraid. I didn’t mean you to see me afraid. But when you opened the door just now— and the thing yelled—I forgot. But I’m not afraid any more. I’m not afraid, damn you!”