Leslie Charteris - Señor Saint

She peered at him sharply, then gave a short grating laugh.

“You did?”

The car had stopped now, and Inkler turned around in the front seat.

“Don’t let’s waste any more time, Doris.”

“Hold it, Sherm. This I have got to hear!”

“You remember the lecture I promised you about your extravagant generosity, darling?” said the Saint. “That was the tip-off. When you came and offered me a third share of a prize like this, after you’d done all the groundwork, and with you and Sherman paying all the expenses out of your end, you overplayed it to a fare-thee-well. They just don’t make fairy godparents like that in the racket. If you’d offered me about twenty grand, say, just to keep my mouth shut and do this little walk-on in the last act, I might have fallen for it. But more than a hundred and sixty thousand, free and clear — that just had to be sucker bait.”

“Then why did you go for it?”

“I had to see how it would work out. And there was always an outside chance that you might just be a little crazy. But if you were a thoroughly bad girl — if you really were trying to pull something like this on the old maestro — then I’d have to teach you a lesson.”

“I’ll look forward to that,” she said.

She fumbled behind her and opened the door on her side. She got out, without ever turning away from him, and held the door open, still keeping him covered. At the same time, Sherman got out on his side.

“Come on outside, Saint,” she said.

“That’s a fighting phrase,” Simon remarked mildly.

But he followed her out, and she made him step a little away from the car. She handled the gun like a professional, and kept a safe distance from a sudden leap.

He gave her a last chance.

“You seemed to rather like me last night, if I may be so ungentlemanly as to mention it,” he said. “Why don’t we ditch your husband instead, and start a new team?”

She shook her head.

“Not my husband,” she said. “My brother. We only work as husband and wife because it makes a better act. I like you a lot that way, Saint, but you just aren’t in the running.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

He caught the flicker of her eyes and the almost imperceptible whisper of movement behind him at the same instant, and spun around. He saw Sherman Inkler with something like a blackjack in his right hand raised and already falling, and stepped in under it like a cat. The Saint’s left came up under the man’s chin with a snap like a collision of pool balls, and Sherman was probably already unconscious before the right cross that followed the uppercut slammed him against the car and dropped him at the enforced limit of his horizontal travel.

The Saint turned. And quite deliberately, Doris Inkler shot at him. He heard the click of the firing pin, but that was all.

Then he took the gun out of her hand.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “It deprives you of your last hope of sympathy. You’d have killed me if I hadn’t been careful.” He was doing something to the gun and putting it back in his shoulder holster. “You knew where I had a gun, so I knew the first thing you’d do would be to take it, so I took out the magazine while we were driving,” he explained calmly.

She spat obscenities at him, and flew at him with her fingernails, so that he had to clip her on the jaw with a loose fist, just hard enough to knock her cold for a few seconds, rather than have his last remaining pleasant memories of her ruined.

He took the aeroplane tickets, but left them some money and their tourist cards, without which they would have found it very complicated indeed to cross any Mexican border. He felt that that was pretty Saintly, considering what they would have done to him, but that would always be his weakness. Even so, their chances would be none too good.

He got into the Cadillac and drove on. At the outskirts of Veracruz he stopped for long enough to peel off his moustache and rub the grey out of his hair with a handkerchief; he put the tinted glasses in his pocket. Then he drove on again, slowly, until he found himself within a couple of blocks of bright lights. He parked the car in a dark yard, took out the suitcase of loot, and walked on. In a little while he found a taxi, and ordered it to drive him to the airport. He saw no need to risk going back to the Mocambo for his over-night bag: with what he carried in his hand, he could cheerfully consider everything it contained expendable. His watch told him he had just a comfortable margin of time to catch the plane.

He checked in at the ticket counter, but kept possession of the suitcase. It was a little larger than the size which passengers are normally permitted to carry with them, but the clerk was sleepy and let him get away with it. He was passed on to another official who stamped his tourist card.

Then a hand fell on his shoulder.

“You are leaving us so soon?” said Captain Carlos Xavier.

“Just for a few days,” said the Saint, with superhuman blandness. “Some friends of mine are honeymooning in Havana, and they begged me to hop over and see them.”

Xavier nodded.

“We still have so much to talk about. Come with me.”

He took the Saint’s arm and led him past the customs counter, under the eyes of the uniformed officer, through a door marked Entrada prohibida , and into a small shabby office. He shut the door, and pointed to the Saint’s suitcase.

“You know that if you had gone on, the officer outside would have made you open that?”

“I was just figuring how much it would cost to discourage him,” said the Saint blandly, “when you interrupted me.”

“You will let me look in it, please?”

Simon laid the case on the desk and released the locks, but did not open it. He stepped back and let Xavier raise the lid. He unbuttoned his coat, and was glad he had reloaded his gun.

Xavier stared at the money for a long time.

“I suppose this belongs to the Enriquez brothers?” he said.

“It did,” Simon replied steadily. “But they paid it over quite voluntarily, for what they thought was a shipment of arms and ammunition for Jalisco’s revolution.”

“To be supplied by the Inklers?”

It was the Saint’s turn to stare.

“How did you know?”

“Why do you think I took you to Larue last night, where I knew the Enriquez brothers would be, and where I hoped the Inklers would try to contact them? If they had not done it that night, I would have taken you wherever they went the next night. Why do you think I arranged for Inkler to be delayed, until I had had time to tell you about Manuel and Pablo? Why do you think I arranged to be called away afterwards so that you would be free to observe what happened and to act as you chose? Why do you think I have never been far away from you since then, even to watching you at sea this afternoon from an aeroplane, until it got too dark? Meeting you here, of course, was easy: I knew about your reservations as soon as they were made. But you should be grateful to me, instead of wondering whether to use the gun you have under your arm.”

“Excuse me,” said the Saint, and leaned against the wall.

“I told you I was an unusual policeman,” Xavier said. “I received word from your FBI that the Inklers were here, and what to expect from them. They have been in other Central American countries, always working on the discontented element, and usually with the story that they could influence assistance from Washington. So I knew that the Enriquez brothers would be perfect for them. I had a problem. It was my duty not to let the Inklers swindle anyone; yet I did not have much desire to protect Manuel and Pablo. That is why I was most happy that you were here. I was sure I could rely on you for a solution.”