Leslie Charteris - The Saint in the Sun

"Most strictly," he smiled. "As long as nobody makes the path too strait and narrow for my tottering tootsies. Talking of which, why don't we see if they can still keep time with this team of paranoiac Paraguayans, who are obviously subsidized by the local Society of Osteopaths?"

But that had been the very night during which, somewhat later, Mr. Daniel Tench made his catastrophic verification of the laws of gravity.

The Saint had been detained all morning by the skeptical inspector of the Police Judiciaire, and when he got back he had found a brief note from Natalie saying that she had gone to Eden Roc with Mrs. Noversham. By that time it was already late for lunch, and in any case he thought it might be more opportune to leave them on their own. He left an answering message for her to call him when she came in, and thus it was tea-time when she asked him to meet her at the Martinez, and it was there that he got off the wry reflection that could have been an epitaph on their brief friendship,

"This is another place where the guests often have jewels," she pointed out.

"There are so damn many of them," he complained, "Staying away from them is easier said than done."

"And you do like some of the people, don't you?"

"I never thought of you as one of the jewelled ones. Which is a compliment to someone's good taste in settings. Because now I come to think of it, the choice bits of ice I've seen you wearing could be worth twice as much as all Bertha Noversham's rocks, if they're real. You see how I must have reformed? Something like this has to happen before I even start thinking like a jewel thief."

"That isn't the way Bertha sees it."

Her voice was so cool that he stared at her.

"This is very interesting," he said. "I know it was my idea for you to give me a build-up, but could you have over-sold yourself?"

"I don't know, but I couldn't cover up for you. When Bertha called me about seven o'clock this morning, she'd just woken up and discovered that someone had taken that precious apron-bag of hers, which she was so sure couldn't be done. I almost got the giggles when I remembered that the last thing she talked about on the way home last night was how she was going to break down and take something for her insomnia. But by the time I got to her room, she'd already called the manager, and of course they'd already found that man who fell off a balcony, so the police were there, and she'd told them that I knew about her apron and so you certainly knew too. She was much more hep than you thought — she knew who you were all the time. She didn't blame me for letting you get so much out of me, but I couldn't deny that you had."

"Naturally," said the Saint, without rancor. "I gathered most of that while I was being grilled, though the inspector did his best not to let on. But it seems to be bothering you more than it does me."

She twisted her fingers together — he had not seen her so tensely defensive since their first meeting.

"How do you explain that man being on your balcony?"

"Just what the inspector asked me. I asked him if there was a French version of the English or American parable that we all know, only don't ask me where it's from, which says that 'if a man only makes a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he lives in the heart of a wilderness, the world will beat a path to his door'. I'd hate to calculate how many billions the advertising industry has spent to prove that this is the silliest old saw that ever lost its teeth, but it still works for me. At one time in the shocking days you've heard about, I managed to become the best-known alleged crook since Raffles. Since then, there has been the dreariest procession of otherwise bright lads who could think of no more dazzling climax to their careers than to leave their tracks on my doorstep. Brother Tench was only the latest, but he won't be the last."

"He had Bertha's apron, with all her jewels — she got them all back, I suppose you know. But what would he have done with them in your room?"

"He could 've afforded to drop one piece, or even just one stone. And then with only an anonymous phone call, he could 've had all the cops concentrating on me for days, while he wrapped up his getaway. As it is, the only thing that really saved me from being stuck was that he had all the boodle on him when they scraped him up."

"Would you mind," Natalie said, in a fainting voice, "if I went back and took a little nap? I guess I'm not used to coping with things like this."

She made him walk back on the other side of the Croisette, the beach side, so that it was easy to look up at the façcade of the Carlton as they approached it. When they were almost opposite, she stopped and pointed.

"That's your balcony, isn't it, to the right of the middle, on the fourth floor?"

"Yes."

"Bertha's on the sixth floor, the corner room on the left."

"Is she?"

"And I'm on the floor below you, just a little more to the right."

"I could have figured that from your room number, although you never invited me to see."

"This man Tench had already been to Bertha's room," she said. "Suppose he was on his way to my room from there. That could just as well have taken him past your balcony, just because it was on the way, without him necessarily having the idea of planting something in your room."

The Saint frowned. He had tried hard not to be unduly sensitive, but she was making it a little more difficult with every sentence.

"I suppose so," he said. "I had a theory, but anyone else is entitled to another. I'm only the guy who was in the middle — as you've rather neatly pointed out."

"But that's the whole point, isn't it?" she said. "They don't seem to know where Tench started climbing around from. He didn't have a room of his own in the hotel, apparently. Bertha swears that her door was bolted on the inside, but once he'd got into her room he could still have gone out by the door — and why wouldn't he have done that, instead of risking his neck on the outside, if he was in cahoots with you and only wanted to bring you the jewels?"

"Thank you," murmured the Saint, with a trace of irony. "I should have had you with me when I was trying to convince that inspector."

"The only other reason that Tench would have to be on your balcony, except for your theory that he meant to try to frame you, would be if he was on his way somewhere else. To my room, perhaps."

Simon gazed at her for quite a long time.

"Did you figure all that out in your own little head?"

"You don't need to be sarcastic. Of course Bertha and I talked about — everything. And I feel rather ashamed of some of the things we said last night. She was just having a bad spell; but she isn't a bad person."

"Good. Then you don't want me to steal her jewels, after all?"

"Or mine either. I'll take all the blame, I've loved every minute of it, but Bertha reminded me of an old saying — 'Lead us not into temptation'. One can ask too much even of a Saint, can't one?" She put out her hand suddenly. "Let's just say goodbye now, and nothing else."

"If that's how you want it, darling. It's your script."

He raised her fingers to his lips, in a gesture that added a uniquely cavalier insolence to a Latin flourish, and watched her force her own way through the endlessly crawling cross-streams of traffic.

If that was how she wanted it, so be it.

He couldn't remember when he had last felt so recklessly resentful. It had become almost a standing joke, for him, to protest that he was always being driven back towards the old bad ways by the people who refused to believe that he had ever forsaken them. But seldom had his admittedly equivocal past been raised to slap him in the face as unfairly as this.

Natalie Sheridan deserved to lose her bloody diamonds.