Лесли Чартерис - Salvage for the Saint

There was nothing he could do but sit and watch helplessly as it slowly backed out of its berth, announcing its departure with a single prolonged trump of what sounded, in the circumstances, very much like derision.

After another rapid investigation of options, the Saint had to conclude that there was nothing else for it but to wait there for the next boat — four hours later.

It was after 9 o’clock that night when he finally drove the Hirondel off the boat at Dieppe and started on the long haul south. Not for the first time, he was glad that he still had the Hirondel to rely on, after the years of service it had given him. Now, with long distances to cover at speed on fairly open and deserted roads, the car would come into its own with a vengeance. The great flamboyant vehicle thrived on a challenge, and it was for the sake of times like these, remembered and anticipated, that Simon Templar had kept it, year after year, despite the blandishments and the sometimes real temptations offered by newer and discreeter vehicles.

There never had been a car quite like the Hirondel, and there never would be again. That magnificent monster, that opulent and now splendidly dated conveyance that drew every eye back for a second ogle — and a third — went, if possible, even better than its looks promised. From the low-throated throb of its eight cylinders to the deep muted rasp of its near-racing exhaust, it promised, and delivered, the exhilaration of sheer power. Unstoppably, tirelessly, it carved its way through the air, its huge-tyred wheels thrusting mile after mile of road and countryside behind it. The Saint met little traffic on that five-hundred-and-fifty-mile drive south, and he covered the distance in an astonishing eleven hours, including a couple of essential stops. For most of the distance the Hirondel’s powerful headlamps sliced a bright wedge through the Gallic dark; for the last hundred miles or so the sky lightened through a grey-and-pink dawn.

It was just about eight o’clock when he pulled up in the Camargue village of St Martin-du-Marais. The hotel was easy enough to find, being slap in the middle of what was anyway a small village. It was a compact hotel and had doubtless once been unimposing; now, its exterior had some of the incongruous flamboyance of its owner himself, an effect achieved mostly by the use of large, elaborately curlicued, multicolored lettering for the name: Hotel Descartes.

Simon opened the front door and went in. The cramped lobby smelt of the morning’s coffee and croissants, and a hint of last night’s bourguignonne still hung on the air, along with the fumes from a cigarette the concierge was smoking.

The concierge, a small weedy cynical-looking man in rolled-up shirtsleeves, looked as though he had been on duty all night and had stayed awake some of the time. When Simon opened the door from the street, he was standing by the reception counter scanning the morning paper. A cleaning cloth and water bucket were by his feet.

“I’m looking for Madame Tatenor,” Simon said in French.

The concierge looked up.

“Madame Tatenor?” he said. “She is departed. Perhaps one hour since.”

Simon started counting to ten, and got as far as five.

“Any idea where she’s heading?”

The weedy concierge shook his head, tapped an inch off his Gauloise, and shrugged.

“Marseille — maybe. I do not know.”

“What about the proprietor, Monsieur Descartes?” Simon persisted. “I believe she is a friend of his — a guest. Would he perhaps know where—”

“M Descartes is not here,” the man cut in. “I cannot help you any further.” His manner had changed from the merely offhand to the definitely truculent. “And now, I have work to do, Monsieur.”

He stubbed out the remains of the Gauloise, picked up the bucket and cleaning cloth, and shuffled off through one of the doorways leading from the lobby. Simon turned to go, his mouth set in a grim line. But then unexpectedly a hoarse voice, like a stage whisper, reached him.

“Monsieur!”

He turned in the direction of the sound. It came from somewhere in the short main corridor from the lobby, from a doorway that was now being held fractionally ajar.

The Saint covered the distance to the doorway in two noiseless seconds. The door was opened wider, and he saw a young woman who might well, in normal circumstances, have been pretty. But it appeared that circumstances for her had recently been far from normal, and she was a far from pretty sight. Her face was a mass of welts and bruises; both her eyes were blackened, and her lips were cut and swollen. She was wearing a nightdress which, though by no means in the negligee class, exposed enough of her neck and shoulders to reveal bruising there too. She spoke with difficulty.

“You... you look for the English woman?”

Simon nodded.

“Madame Tatenor, yes. She is a friend of mine.” Simon kept his own voice to a whisper and motioned his wish to join her inside the room.

She let him in and closed the door quietly behind them.

“I am Genevieve. Chambermaid in the hotel. I think, Monsieur,” she croaked painfully, “you will not find her on the road to Marseille.”

Simon spent approximately the next two and a half seconds digesting the information.

“Is she still here?” he asked.

Genevieve shook her head.

“No, Monsieur... she left perhaps half an hour ago.”

“Alone?”

Genevieve nodded.

“In her own car?”

“Yes... but they have done something to her car. This morning, before it was fully light. I heard a sound, and from the window I saw him, the lizard one, Bernadotti.” She made a mime of spitting in disgust, and Simon’s lips came together in a hard line.

“The lizard one — Bernadotti. Did he do this to you?”

She nodded.

“I found him last night, searching Madame Tatenor’s room, while she was having dinner.”

The Saint said to himself, with feeling: “That’s one I owe you for her, Enrico old chum.” For the moment he preferred not to speculate how many he might owe Enrico for Arabella by the time he caught up with her.

“Where do you think they’ll have taken her?” he asked tersely.

Genevieve rummaged in a drawer.

“I will draw a plan for you so that you can look for her where you are most likely to find her,” she said in that painful whispering croak. “At the haras of Monsieur Descartes.” She paused and looked at Simon appraisingly. “I think you are a good man. Please remember, worse will happen to me if it is know that I assisted you against them.”

“I understand,” Simon told her. “I shall say nothing.”

“They are very bad men.” She gave a shudder. “And no one in the village would help you to find the way quickly if they thought you were no friend of these men. They have fear of these three. We all have fear of them... the sadique, the deaf one with the knife always, and that great fat cochon. For two years or more they have lived here. They loan money to the farmers, rent to us the equipment. Now we do not exist except as they wish.”

She had found a pencil and a piece of paper which she spread on the table with trembling fingers.

“Monsieur — you will have to be very careful. And do not hope too much. I think they will want something from her. If once they have it, they will kill her.”

Arabella had risen early and left the hotel at seven because she was chafing to get to Marseille and see the Phoenix — her yacht. Three nights had passed since she had first learnt of the Phoenix’s existence, and by this time her curiosity was definitely getting the better of her normal preference for late rising. Add to that the fact that the hotel itself was a reminder of two evenings spent in Descartes’ ultimately wearing company, and she had a strong double reason for wanting to get on her way.