Leslie Charteris - Send for the Saint

“Maybe he was forced to?”

The Saint shook his head.

“Fly a plane at gunpoint — to almost certain death? No, I don’t think so. And there’s something else.”

“What?”

Simon slid a filing cabinet drawer shut with a thud.

“The codebook. It never left London.”

“It never left? But I don’t understand. We couldn’t find it when we looked.” Ariadne stared at him.

“Oh, I took it out of the safe all right,” the Saint explained. “I got it as far as the airport. Your Patroclos picked it up.”

She followed him as he moved to the inner office.

“So if the codebook didn’t reach Athens, the ships—”

“Couldn’t have been diverted from here,” supplied the Saint. “Right. Your Patroclos must have done the diverting from London. He had the book all the time. You see, it just doesn’t fit. And it’s too pat — plane crashes, impostor killed, case solved. And,” the Saint added softly, “Templar forgiven.”

The girl digested the implications in silence for a few minutes, watching him systematically rifle Patroclos’ big mahogany desk.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“Cargo manifests, showing what’s on those ships.”

Ariadne opened a filing cabinet and started to shuffle through papers; and she didn’t see the Saint’s brows angle together in interest at what he had found in the bottom drawer of the desk. A Dictaphone fitted snugly into the drawer — loaded, with a record ready to play.

There was an earphone lying in the drawer; Simon plugged it in, held it loosely up to one ear, and switched the machine on. He listened thoughtfully to the harsh voice of Diogenes Patroclos.

It said: “Templar — lam told you have seen the impostor. Why are you wasting time telephoning instead of watching him?... I am here in Athens. If you have seen the impostor, it should make your job easier. Please do not waste my time telling me that I am being impersonated. That I already know. Goodbye.”

Simon reversed the machine, re-started it, and held out the earphone to Ariadne. She listened with a blank expression.

“Does Dio always record his own telephone conversations?” he asked.

“I never knew about it. Perhaps he wanted a record sometimes, for his own protection, or something.”

“Or something,” agreed the Saint.

Ariadne continued going through the files, and suddenly pulled out a folder.

“Here, will this help? Papers on a ship called the Macedonian Queen. She was supposed to sail for Singapore with the other five but she was held up with steering trouble... There’s a repair bill. But she’s still here.”

“In Athens?” The Saint could hardly believe his luck.

“In Piraeus, the port. But she sails at midnight.”

“Ariadne,” said the Saint. “I love you. Call me Theseus.”

The Macedonian Queen was not hard to find among the few freighters berthed in Piraeus at the time. Simon Templar and the girl simply wandered along the wharf to which she guided him until they came to the smart-looking but unexceptional freighter painted in the blue and gold Patroclos colours. The gangplank was unguarded, and only one seaman was visible on deck, a Greek in a grubby dark-blue sweat-shirt and dungarees who was leaning over the rail at the bow, with his back to them. It seemed quite probable that he represented the entire watch left on board, while the rest of the crew were enjoying their last hours ashore.

Patroclos had still not returned to the office by one o’clock, when the Saint had insisted on taking Ariadne out for an ouzo, leaving a note for him, and then to lunch.

“There’s nothing in my contract that says I have to go without regular meals,” he maintained, “and I’m sure there isn’t in yours either.”

They had eaten dolmades and moussaka, but he had declined to be tempted by retsina, the traditional resin-flavoured wine which is said to have been invented by the Greeks to discourage hostile invaders from swilling or swiping it. Simon found it just as unpalatable as the earlier barbarians, and ordered a bottle of Cypriot Othello instead.

He had sensed that while Ariadne might not yet be a full ally, she would not be an enemy, and decided at the end of the meal to tell her his plan.

“I want to have a look around the Macedonian Queen. I think I might find the answers to some of the questions that are still nagging me. But I’m not going to tell Dio.”

“But he’ll expect you to be in the office if he wants you,” she objected.

“The impostor has crashed. Technically, my job is finished. I’m free to slope off and go sightseeing if I feel like it. How do I get to Piraeus?”

She pondered for only a few seconds.

“I’ll take you.”

“But you’ve still got a job to keep.”

“And I’ve got more questions, too. I shall telephone the office and leave a message that everything this morning has given me such a terrible headache that I have to go home and go to bed, and I will be back tomorrow.”

That was how they came to be lurking behind a pile of crates near the untended gangway in the gathering dusk, unnoticed by the bored seaman on so-called “watch” on the foredeck. The Saint gripped the girl’s arm gently.

“This is where I go aboard, and it could develop into a rough party if they catch me. Stay out of sight and keep your fingers crossed.”

“I’m going with you,” said Ariadne in a determined voice, “since I brought you as far as this.”

The Saint smiled at her and stood up.

The glided unobserved up the narrow gangplank on to the deck, and then down a ladder through a hatchway into the after cargo hold. The lighting was dim, but they could see to move among the mountains of crates, in several shapes and sizes, that were stacked there. Simon peered at random at the export labels, bringing his pencil flashlight to bear on them, and spoke in a whisper.

“As you’d expect. All Singapore. That’s where the ships were officially headed.”

“This label says Paint. Why don’t we have a look inside?” suggested the girl in an equally low voice.

Lying on one of the crates was a pair of metal-shears and a crowbar. There was a sharp twang as Simon used the shears to sever the steel customs bond on the crate, and for a minute or more they both froze in silence, listening for the sound of approaching footsteps. Then gingerly, and with one ear still cocked, the Saint prised up the lid a few inches and peered into the crate.

“What’s inside?” asked the girl.

“Paint,” said Simon pressing the lid back on. “Let’s try this long one marked Agricultural Implements.”

He repeated the breath-bating procedure with the shears and crowbar. The lid lifted more easily, and inside they saw dozens of gleaming hoes. But the Saint, carelessly for him, rammed the lid back on with unnecessary force and more than the unavoidable minimum of noise, and a hinged side of the crate dropped down. Inside, in a compartment beneath the hoes, were revealed at least a score of carbines.

The Saint gave a low whistle.

“A few hoes on top, and a rich harvest of guns underneath! And they’re the very latest thing. And American! But the interesting question is, Where are they going?”

The girl reached into one end of the gun compartment and took out a folded piece of paper.

“Look. Some kind of instruction leaflet. With diagrams. But it’s printed in Chinese.”

Simon took the paper from her and studied it, frowning.

“Not Chinese... My knowledge of oriental scripts isn’t all it might be,” he confessed. “But I’m pretty sure I’ve seen something like this before. It’s like ancient Sanskrit characters, only there’s a difference in the way they’re arranged on the page.” He spread out the paper on a crate in front of her. “Look — if you turn it so that the diagrams are the right way up, you can see which way the text goes. See — it’s in vertical lines — like Chinese. Sanskrit characters, Chinese arrangement. And the only script I know of like that is Korean! So that’s the game!”