The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint)

"They know how," said Ted Orping. "There's noth­ing they won't do to make you confess. Keep you with­out water, bash you about, beat you with a rubber hose, grind your teeth down with a dentist's drill-just any torture they can think of. You got to be tough to keep your trap shut when they do things like that."

Clem Enright shuddered as Orping proceeded to explain other methods of persuasion that he had read of. Clem didn't feel tough-not in that way. He had had his arms twisted often enough by bigger boys in his ragamuffin youth to know what acute physical pain was like, and he didn't fancy any of its more agonizing refinements.

"Time, please," said the barmaid again, and a shirt-sleeved potman began to take up the refrain as he collected glasses off the tables with every circumstance of the spiteful satisfaction which public-house em­ployees seem to feel when they enforce that fatuous law.

"Come on," said Ted finally. "Let's get out of here."

He turned his glass defiantly upside down and swaggered out of the bar, with Clem following him. On the pavement they paused.

"Where are you goin'?" asked Ted. "I got a date with a dame."

He had spent three hours in a cinema the day before and learnt several new words.

"I'll go down to the revolver range and practise a bit of shooting," said Enright.

"Right-oh," said Ted heartily. "You can't get too much practice, but don't let 'em know you got a gun of your own. See you tonight."

They separated there, and Clem Enright walked slowly and a little unsteadily down Villiers Street. He was always conscious of his inferior toughness in the presence of Ted Orping, who had killed two men and wounded others. The weight of the automatic in his hip pocket gave him the feeling of being a genuine desperado only occasionally-at other times it seemed to bulk out under his clothes like a poached pheasant, and he went into a cold sweat at the momentary ex­pectation of feeling a heavy hand on his shoulder and hearing familiar words of invitation murmured genially in his ear. Of late he had spent a lot of his money on ammunition at the range and had once scored a target of twenty-four at twelve paces.

They didn't believe he had it in him to be tough-that was the trouble. He was a good man with the brick in a smash-and-grab, and he could drive a car pretty well in an emergency, but they didn't class him as a man to take the initiative in any violence. And it rankled. He was as good as they were, but they had never let him play a prominent part in a hold-up. He had a sense of injustice about it, and in his daydreams he lived for the glory of the day when he could demand the right to equality with them by virtue of the notch on his own gun.

Sometimes he heard in imagination the horrible grunt of the policeman whom Basher Tope had shot, the way the man clutched at his stomach and kicked like a wounded rabbit. And then the cold sweat came out on him again. .. . He closed his eyes to the vision and tried to think of it differently. He saw his own eyes behind the sights, his own finger curling steadily and ruthlessly round the trigger, the gun held as firmly as if in a vise- he had read plenty of the literature of his profession, and knew how it ought to be done; Then the crisp smack of the report, the jerk of the barrel, the pride and the confidence that would come. . . .

"Hey, you!"

The rasp of a voice that seemed to be aimed straight at his ear made him start.

He looked round with his heart pumping ridiculously. He was almost opposite the range, down at the bottom of Villiers Street, and he had not noticed the approach of the car that had slipped silently down the street and pulled up so close to him that the running board brushed his trousers.

The man at the wheel had a hard sunburnt face that seemed faintly familiar, but the yellow-tinted tortoise-shell glasses over his eyes and the unlighted cigar in his mouth did not assist recognition. He spoke with a strong American accent.

"Get in. Goldman wants you-quick."

Clem leaned over, opening the door. The hope that never slept in his narrow bosom roused up and palpitated.

"Any idea wot it is?"

"I can't tell you, but I know there's shooting in it. Got your heater? . . . Good boy. Let's keep moving."

Clem Enright leaned back and let himself relax in contemplation of the roseate dawn of his apotheosis. So it had come at last, the chance that he had been praying for. It followed so closely on the trend of his daydream that he could scarcely believe it was true. Now if only luck was with him-if the sudden fit of trembling that had seized his limbs wore off and left him as cool and steady-nerved as he had been in his dreams . . .