Лесли Чартерис - Capture the Saint

“What do we do now?” Asked Vi.

“We?”

She laughed nervously, relaxing somewhat from her previous pitch of keyed tension.

“You’re going to sample an Italian soda at that little bistro,” he stated pleasantly, “while I burgle Emerald City Catering.”

“Going after seafood?” She attempted regaining her sense of humor. “Absolutely not,” said the Saint. “This story has enough red herrings already.”

Twenty minutes later, Viola Inselheim Berkman sat sipping an Italian cream soda in the cozy bistro. The warm aroma of baking pizza permeated the air, relaxed conversations and occasional laughter drifted in from neighboring booths, and the dark wood bench upon which she sat seemed solid and reassuring. Simon Templar was also solid and reassuring, but he had merged into the night’s darkness some time ago armed, to her knowledge, with only a slim black flashlight.

She would wait; she would think; she would watch the traffic. She imagined the Saint sneaking into Emerald City Catering by violating whatever security existed for such establishments, and returning filled with self-satisfaction and pertinent information.

Vi swirled the cream around the ice cubes in her tall class, checked her watch, and glanced out the window. A sleek black Jaguar XKE pulled up along the bistro’s west side, stopped momentarily and moved on. She looked at her watch again and realized the hands had moved only one tiny increment since her previous examination of the dial.

She gave the ice cubes another ride around the glass. They slowed in their gradual spin and settled precariously, one atop another. She held the glass in her right hand and raised it to her lips. At that precise moment she saw an Emerald City Catering van turn the corner and head directly toward the old, dark building where Simon Templar was breaking and entering.

The glass stopped mid-motion and the ill-concealed shaking of her hand caused the weary cubes to collide in a wet, muted clatter. She delicately placed the glass on the table, resolutely rose, and walked out into the night with hell-bent determination and iron-willed resolve. Viola Inselheim Berkman would never allow the Ungodly to capture the Saint.

Simon Templar hated fighting in the dark. He calmly despised the entire scenario of dodging bullets, hiding behind makeshift shelters, and anticipating a sudden, shattering end to his carefree lawless career. He felt much the same about the intellectual equivalent. The Saint never fancied himself following in Bulldog Drummand’s footsteps; he preferred leaving dogmatic detection to plodding, patient, meticulous clue collectors and masters of deductive reasoning. Simon Templar’s mental gymnastics were, if one must invoke stereotypical geographic references, more conceptually Eastern. Jigsaw puzzles were neither his forte nor had he ever selected them as a pleasurable pastime. He could, if requested, successfully assemble the pieces, but gleaned no enchantment from the process nor completion. He was simply a big picture thinker.

Yet, here he was, performing one of his least favorite functions — breaking, entering, and searching for puzzle pieces. In the Saint’s intuitive and highly refined consciousness, he knew an absence of hard facts left drastic gaps in this adventure’s logic. The logical adventure was itself a rarity, but no more so than an uncritical publisher or an unblemished bootlegger. Criminals were seldom the masterminds portrayed in paperbacks, nor were they as successful in their complex conspiracies as best-seller hardbacks would have their readers believe. But greed and selfishness, coupled with an indiscriminate longing for excess wealth, had driven small time hoods to the big house, and bigwigs of industry to small cells in multi-tiered institutions. One man’s political indiscretion, the Saint once noted, was another man’s prison sentence. And while blind justice often peeked, Simon Templar preferred putting a thumb’s pressure on the scales of equity. At this exact moment, however, the Saint was applying his thumb and forefinger to the combination lock found on Salvadore Alisdare’s personal safe in Emerald City Catering.

Simon Templar burgled the building in record time, surveyed the basic layout of the enterprise, briefly admired the two gleaming stainless steel kitchens, located Salvadore Alisdare’s unimpressive office, riffled through every item on or in the cluttered desk, and set about unlocking whatever secrets were concealed behind tumblers and steel.

So advanced was he at the art of safecracking that he mastered the combination with minimal effort and a minor narrowing of concentration. Actually, to be perfectly frank, Alisdare’s investment in personal security was not up to industry standards. Perhaps had he been general manager rather than an opportunistic event planner with added responsibilities in cold storage and shipping, Alisdare could have procured a more complex and inviable system. In the deft and dazzling hands of Simon Templar, however, it would have made no difference whatsoever.

The safe’s door swung open, and the black flashlight’s intense shaft of precision illumination highlighted the contents. There was not much to highlight — a nefarious black book of names, numbers, and addresses, a yellow legal pad, a loose audio cassette tape, a battery powered micro-cassette recorder, and a small packet of photo negatives. The tape was labeled “Talon #1”; the negatives were similar in content, albeit more detailed, to the snapshots in Vi’s folder.

“Why, Alisdare, my dear, you are a thorough little blackmailer,” murmured Simon as he poked through the safe’s contents, “And you thought these would be more secure here than at home.”

A cursory examination of the black book revealed curious and incriminating annotations, women’s names with little stars drawn next to them, a cryptic ledger, a list of chemicals, and a thought provoking addendum under the name Dexter Talon: a.k.a. Tex Nolan. The address was a prestigious high-rise condominium complex on the 2000 block of Madison Park’s 43rd Ave. East. The phone number was not the one at which he had reached Talon earlier.

Enveloped in the cloak of darkness, peering into Alisdare’s collection of incriminating evidence, Simon had a bright idea. It was one of those wild, reckless and impertinent actions for which the Saint had been both roundly criticized and deservedly admired. He swiveled to the black business phone on Alisdare’s desk and dialed the fictional Tex Nolan’s unpublished phone number.

There was, of course, the distinct possibility that Talon was still ensconced in the smoky environs of Ernie Steele’s, cruising for adolescent company along First Avenue, or at his respectable address of record. Possibilities, however, seldom deterred the Saint from following inspiration’s prescient tickles.

“Hullo?” It was Talon answering, his voice rasping of bad beer and harsh tobacco.

“Sorry to bother you, Tex,” chirped the Saint affably, “but after I walked out on your alter ego, I decided to discover a few facts.”

“Saint! How did you...”

“Perfectly, the same way I do everything,” admitted Simon, “but in the joy of the moment, I couldn’t allow myself to forget you.”

Talon, shocked at receiving a call from Templar on his most secret of lines connected to his most secret of lives, was momentarily nonplussed but allowed his deepest fears to find voice.

“You’re working with Alisdare, aren’t you,” barked the detective, “he must have given you this number. I’ll get you both!”

“Relax, Tex,” advised the Saint, “Alisdare is your problem, and I suggest you take my initial advice. I have no more love for him than you do. He didn’t give me this number, nor did he reveal your secret identity. Let’s just say I’m not such a slouch at detective work myself. I don’t know everything, Talon,” Simon lied convincingly, “but enough to know Alisdare is up to his little red ears in more than seafood and serviettes. I’ve found a delightful stash of photo negatives...”