Лесли Чартерис - Capture the Saint

Talon sat speechless, each softly spoken phrase pounding into his brain like a pile-driver.

“One more thing,” said Simon with intensified confidentiality, “I couldn’t help but notice that it never occurred to you to ask me how I knew about little Buzzy or where I had seen the incriminating photos. Decent detectives notice such errors of omission, even old amateurs such as myself. You are, in the vernacular, a scumbag, Talon. If these were the good old days, I would gladly give you ‘da woiks’ myself.”

Talon gulped audibly.

The Saint reached down, scooped up the pack of cigarettes from the table, pulled out the remaining coffin nails, and tossed them directly into the detective’s lap.

“Here,” said the Saint flashing his brightest smile, “why don’t you suck on all those at once and put everyone out of your misery.”

Simon Templar turned briskly on his heels and made a direct line for the door. The Saint always enjoyed a melodramatic exit, and he was particularly proud of this one. He had vented his honest anger at Detective Talon in a blatant display of believable dishonesty. There was no doubt that Talon swallowed Simon’s convincing post-retirement diatribe. After all, the Saint’s most recent foray in the realm of outrageous adventure — an unchronicled caper in British Columbia involving Marian Kent of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police — had been well-concealed from the press on both sides of the border.

Outside Ernie Steele’s, the Saint filled his lungs with Seattle’s crisp night air and noticed the brightly illumined marquee of the Broadway Theater.

Before he could turn left or right, Simon felt the distinctive pressure of a small gun barrel nudged against his ribs.

“Oh, no!” exclaimed the Saint, “Not that!”

“Calm down, Templar. Keep quiet and I won’t shoot.”

The gruff voice did not belong to Dexter Talon, and while the Saint was curious as to who was jabbing him with a diminutive firearm, he knew he would find out soon enough.

“It’s not the iddy-biddy gun in my ribs that concerns me,” said the Saint without so much as budging, “its the horrendous realization that ‘Love, The Redeemer’ has been made into a movie. Really,” continued the Saint as if having a drawing room conversation, “it was a quite dreadful play.”

“Start walking up the street, wiseguy,” insisted the voice, but the Saint refused to move.

“I don’t think so. No, I really don’t think so at all.”

Between the words “think” and “all”, Simon Templar turned sharply on his heels to face the man eye to eye.

“Why Snookums, dearest,” intoned the Saint, “you’re more ugly than ever. Of course, you’ll be even uglier after I take that away your clumsily concealed peashooter and use it to hammer your forehead. Besides, there is a famous Seattle detective sitting in the Checkerboard Room right beyond that door.”

Snookums, operating upon the erroneous assumption that any man will do what you want if you have a gun on him, stared at the Saint in total confusion.

“Do you honestly intend to gun me down amid the bright lights of Broadway?” asked Simon as if chatting with a familiar acquaintance. “You must be under the mistaken impression that I’ll go where you want and do as you insist because of the implied threat of physical violence. Now, it is possible that where you want to take me is exactly where I want to go, but your manners are so affrontive that my response is, with all due courtesy, decidedly negative.”

The Saint threw back his head and laughed as if he had heard the joke of the century. When his head snapped forward, however, it did so with sudden impact and accurate aim.

In one flashing instant of rhinoplastic agony, a broken-nosed Snookums released the weapon and sagged at the knees. Simon jabbed him quickly in the ribs, caught him in what appeared as a playful embrace, pressed the pistol into the beast’s back, and began walking his would be assailant northbound on Broadway Avenue.

“A drinking ditty would be appropriate right about now,” insisted Simon to his bleary eyed and wobbly companion, and the Saint raised his manly baritone in song.

The evening crowd strolling up Broadway chuckled at the presumably alcohol fueled comraderie of the unlikely male couple. As Capitol Hill is notoriously supportive of unorthodox interpersonal relationships, no one gave the men’s behavior a second thought.

When Snookums’ vision and personal attitude began to re-align, the Saint encountered problems maneuvering him around the luxuriously maintained black Jaguar XKE which suddenly emerged from the parking lot of Jimmy Woo’s Jade Pagoda. Having kept his stumbling, disoriented, and angry burden from becoming an unwelcome hood ornament above the personalized license plate, 1 °COM, Simon propped the groggy beast against the restaurant’s wall, discretely impacted the concrete with Snookums’ head, pocketed the pistol, and hastily joined the pedestrians crossing the intersection of Broadway and Roy. As the Saint stepped on the curb, he glanced back to see Snookums slowly slide to the sidewalk and the shiny Jaguar slip sleekly into Northbound traffic.

The Saint quickly merged with the patrons queued up at the ticket window of the Harvard Exit, Seattle’s most famous specialty cinema. Dissimilar to such historical palaces as the Paramount or the Orpheum, the Harvard Exit was formerly the Women’s Century Club. It retained the Club’s demure hospitality and living room atmosphere while accomodating a discriminating theatrical audience in the social auditorium. The Exit’s patrons — collegiates, bohemians, and tweed attired upwardly mobile professionals — obviously preferred the subtitled double bill of “La Vaca Espana” and “Les Anges des Tenebres” to the American made blood and thunder adventure playing at the Broadway.

Certain that Snookums did not attempt snatching him without backup nearby, Simon quickly bypassed the ticket booth and directly entered the front door. As the Saint mounted the stairs, he retrieved an impressive memento from his billfold — a lifetime pass assigned by the theater’s original owners.

“Is this still good here?” asked Simon, showing the ticket to the young man inside the door.

“For you, Mr Templar, we always have a seat. If you’re looking for Karl Krogstad,” said the fellow with understandable cinema savvy and a warm smile, “he’s pontificating over by the piano.”

The Saint had no idea that Karl Krogstad, director of The Pirate, would be one of this evening’s patrons. Considering Krogstad’s repeated viewings of his own film, a double dose of subtitled foreign pretension was undoubtedly a creative salvo.

As described, Krogstad was indeed holding pre-curtain court around the keyboard, loudly and gregariously proclaiming the plight of struggling independent filmakers — a noble gesture in as much as two prestigious domestic nominations and several international accolades elevated Krogstad long ago from the ranks of the struggling, if not the independent.

“Simon,” called out Karl, “you’ve missed ‘La Vaca Espana,’ but the French film rolls right after intermission.”

“I saw ‘La Vaca Espana’ in Juan-Les-Pins,” responded the Saint as he clasped Karl’s enthusiastic grip in his own, “it broke my heart and I never recovered.”