Leslie Charteris: Send for the Saint

The Midas Double (story by John Kruse) (based on “The Double Take”)

The Pawn Gamble (story by Donald James) (based on “The Organisation Man”)

Adapted by Peter Bloxsom

Whatever else may be said about the Saint stories which have been adapted from television scripts, it can at least be safely asserted that they are works of genius.

My authority for this statement is that all those which have been published hitherto were written up by Fleming Lee, who is a member of Mensa. And as everyone should know, membership in that highly elitist society is restricted to those who can prove an IQ, in the top two percentile of the available statistics, which makers every Mensan officially a genius. On paper, at any rate.

Since the adaptations are also supervised and given their final vetting by myself, I am blushingly obliged to admit that I too am a Mensa member.

This volume introduces the first Saintly efforts of a new adapter, Peter Bloxsom. But to maintain a newly established tradition, I am glad to assure all readers that he too is a Mensan, whom I first met through our common membership.

So you have been warned. We may seem stupid to you, but we have certificates that say we aren’t.

LC

It was on a searingly hot August afternoon in 1950 that Simon Templar uncoiled his lean seventy-four-inch frame from the seat he had occupied for interminable hours in the creaking Parnassian Airways Dakota, and stepped down on to the tarmac of Athens Airport.

From above, as the plane had begun to sink into its droning circuitous approach. Simon had looked down on the city with the same sense of unreality as he had felt on previous visits. There below, scarcely believable in their exact correspondence to all the tourist guidebook photographs, lay the monumental relics of the Old Greece: and there in less than comfortable juxtaposition with them were strewn the lesser glories of the New — those stark and faceless hotel and office blocks that were even then beginning to crawl like a blight across the green and ochre landscape. To anyone possessing, as the Saint possessed, a nodding acquaintance with the history and art of ancient Greece, the thought was inescapable that here was a nation whose architecture had deteriorated along with its Olympic athletes.

The thought being inescapable, Simon had not tried to escape it. He had merely sighed, and promised himself a longer visit before the rot went much farther.

On this occasion, he didn’t mean to get on speaking terms with so much as a single Ionic column. He was purely and simply passing through, en route to London from Lebanon. In Beirut his attention had recently been occupied with one Elil Azziz, a large-scale flesh-trader and particularly unpleasant pustule on the face of humanity. Even the Saint had never been mixed up in a nastier bit of business: and even he had never come closer to death or had more cause to be grateful for the steel-spring nerves and reflexes with which a thoughtful providence had seen fit to equip him. In the end, he had succeeded in administering his own harsh yet poetic brand of justice to the excrescence in question, and in escaping not only with his own life but with some of the excrescence’s more negotiable property, chiefly in the convenient form of banknotes. And the Saint now proposed to spend an indefinite period in London enjoying Mr Azziz’s money on a lavish celebratory scale.

For the sake of accuracy, then, let it be recorded that he intended to remain on Greek soil for a period of just thirty-one minutes, this being the scheduled interval before the connecting flight. And let it be added that he was at that moment — aside from what might be called a certain constitutional readiness of the blood — definitely not in search of further Saintly adventure.

But he had failed to reckon with the persuasive charms of a certain Ariadne...

Despite the heat, no one could have looked more sublimely, insolently relaxed than Simon Templar as he sauntered into the airport passenger building. He had been entertaining himself by guessing at the occupations, preoccupations, and amorous propensities of his fellow passengers; and a faint smile hovered on his tanned piratical features as he wondered idly which of that motley crowd would contrive to smuggle the greatest weight, bulk, or value of contraband goods past the deceptively somnolent-looking Greek customs officers.

Simon had not been slow to notice the girl in the blue-and-gold airport staff uniform. She was armed with a clipboard on which she appeared to be keeping count as the incoming passengers filed past, and Simon had just drawn level with her when she spoke. “Sir! One moment please!”

The Saint turned, cocking a quizzical eyebrow, and looked into level wide-apart hazel eyes topped by a mop of dark curly hair. The eyes were set in a youthful elfin face, and the hair asserted itself defiantly against the restraint of the uniform-cap. Simon took in these and certain other details — including the way she filled the well-cut uniform — in a single comprehensively appraising and approving glance, and replied with a seraphic smile, after scarcely an instant’s hesitation:

“How can I help you? Only ask, and if it should lie within my power...”

“It is my pleasure to inform you that you are the two-millionth passenger to pass through Athens Airport,” said the girl, in the slightly formal tones of one who had rehearsed the sentence; and with a flourish of finality she made a large pencilled tick on the top sheet of the wad attached to her clipboard.

As she spoke she returned his smile and found her gaze met by a pair of the most amazingly clear blue eyes she had ever seen. Still more remarkable was the sublime innocence of their expression; but in them too, for a few moments, anyone who knew him well might have detected a faint, elusively mocking light as the Saint digested her announcement, weighed, considered, and formed a sceptical but open-minded judgement, before replying enthusiastically:

“What fun! This must be what my dear old Granny had in mind when she used to say I was fated to do something historic one day.”

“The management would like to make a small presentation,” the girl continued. “And there’s some champagne. Please come this way.”

“Well...” Simon hesitated. “I don’t want to risk missing my plane—”

“Please — it will take a few minutes only.”

The Saint possessed, as he sometimes modestly reminded himself, a surprising number of natural assets that were invaluable in his hazardous freebooting trade. Not least among these aptitudes useful to any buccaneer with a hankering to stay in the business was his acute sense of the probable and the improbable — and when the notorious Simon Templar was stopped as the two-millionth passenger, or customer, or for that matter male visitor wearing shoes in a particular shade of brown... then it was entirely to be expected that the notorious Simon Templar should have his reservations concerning the probable truth of the claim.

But it was equally in character that he should have been swayed by his curiosity, and by the pleading in the eyes of a girl in a well-cut uniform. Wherefore the Saint replied, with an even more seraphic smile:

“All right. If you say so, I’ll be delighted. Lead on, darling.”

He followed her through a door marked Official Use Only in English and Greek, into a short corridor leading to another door. They passed through the second door into the open air.

“Are we having the champagne alfresco?” asked the Saint with interest. “Or — forgive my suspicious mind — have you been deceiving me?”