Leslie Charteris - The Saint in Pursuit

And yet, through it all, certain denizens of the Pentagon, part of a species which could easily misplace whole shiploads of bulldozer axles and misdirect trainloads of snow-boots to Equatorial Africa, had managed to keep a sharp eye out for Major Kinian — and not only that, but also to know when his daughter decided to take her summer holiday. Such atypical cases of bureaucratic alertness were enough to arouse the curiosity of the most skeptical buccaneer — or even of a Saint.

“There is a young American lady staying here whom I would like very much to meet,” Simon had said to the desk clerk in clear Portuguese as he took up the pen to sign the register. “Her name is Victoria Kinian.”

“Ah, si,” the clerk said promptly. “She has just arrived this morning.”

“Bem. But please say nothing to her. There is always a tactful way to arrange these things.”

The clerk smiled understandingly, and then came to sudden attention.

“Senhor!” he whispered, scarcely moving his lips. “You have good fortune. There comes the lady now. The dark-haired one. The blonde one does not stay here.”

At a single glance the Saint had discovered at least one superficial reason why the men of American Intelligence need not have been excessively pitied for the close watch they had kept on Major Kinian’s daughter. Unconsciously beautiful in a modest white-and-yellow summer dress, she made her bare-shouldered flashier companion look like the late night shift at a hamburger stand. For just a moment she had met his gaze with interest but without encouragement, and then had turned her head and gone on up the stairs.

“A most lovely young lady,” the desk clerk said discreetly.

“Most lovely,” Simon agreed. “Have she and her friend been out long?”

“No, senhor. Less than two hours.”

The Saint thanked him, and followed the bellhop who came to carry his bags. There was no elevator in the building, and they used the same broad stairway which the girls had just climbed.

“Desculpe-me, faca o favor!” puffed a voice just behind them, and a small bald roundish man in Vandyke whiskers chugged between Simon and his burdened porter with such urgent speed that he knocked one of the suitcases against the railing. “Pardon!” he called back without turning, and bounded out of sight at the top of the stairs like an animated rubber ball.

Pardon, in French pronunciation, being a universal European term of public apology, its use by the bearded man did not give Simon any clue to his nationality, but he made a careful mental note of the stair-hog’s personal appearance. It could have been that the man’s headlong rush up the steps was due to his being late for an appointment or uncontrollably eager for a cool bath, but it was also just possible that his enthusiasm for climbing was connected with an interest in the comings and going of Vicky Kinian, who had preceded him by just a few minutes. However, there had been no sign of him during the rest of the climb to Simon’s room, and the Saint had soon had less remotely speculative things to think about.

Such as the mysterious letter, or letters, upon which Vicky Kinian’s enigmatic odyssey seemed to hinge. The immediate problem was to get a look at it, or them, by some means less crude than bursting into the room opposite while the girl was there and hoping to attain his objective by force or menace, with an odds-on risk of hashing up the rest of the game even if that play succeeded. Therefore he would have to wait until she went out — while trying meanwhile to decide whether it would be better to gamble on her having hidden the documents in her room, or having them with her in a purse that might be snatched or rifled somewhere without identifiably involving himself.

It was an exercise in patience which only a most unusual mission could have commanded of him, for the Saint was not by nature a patient man. And it should say enough for the old-time bond between him and the man called Hamilton that he embarked upon it at all.

An hour after the blonde had left, a waiter delivered a tray to the room. Late lunch. Simon followed suit. Then, when long after he had finished his cold chicken and wine nothing more had happened across the hall, he was forced to assume that the lovely object of his watch was taking a siesta — a natural part of the first-day schedule of a transatlantic traveller for whom waking-up time on landing in Portugal would have been three in the morning at home.

Simon, who had flown in the opposite direction, had not suffered the same bashing of his biological clock, and through plenty of firsthand experience with the relativity of time and space had learned to adapt himself automatically to the most bizarre antics of chronometers and shifting dawns. All the same, a hot afternoon in Lisbon was not ideal for guard duty, and the Saint fought drowsiness as he resigned himself to his vigil.

If he had had any notion of what had happened, and was happening, to Freda Oliveiros, his enforced inaction would have been infinitely harder to endure; but mercifully that knowledge was for ever spared him.

Curt Jaeger, who knew, was emotionally perturbed only by the inevitable native unpunctuality of his temporary deputy. Freshly bathed, shaved, and changed into a newly pressed dark suit, in complete readiness for his date with Vicky Kinian, he was sitting at a table at the café down the street at exactly six twenty-nine. At a quarter to seven he was still nursing a small glass of Robertson’s Port and checking his watch every two or three minutes, with progressively increasing irritation. A deadline was rapidly approaching when, through no fault of his own, he could be late to pick up his dinner engagement. Curt Jaeger did not like lateness — his own or other people’s — and he sat stiffly, cursing the congenital incompetence of inferior races.

Finally, at almost ten minutes to, Pedro came scurrying around the comer blinking at the red sunset and twitching his thin black antennae. He dropped into a chair opposite Jaeger and began to hiss words so rapidly that even one of his own countrymen might have had trouble understanding him.

“You are late!” Jaeger cut him off. “I always make it a practice to arrive at any appointment at least a minute ahead of tune.”

Pedro only ducked briefly as if to dodge that bit of uplifting advice, and went on hissing.

“Slow down, at least, so I can understand you!” Jaeger snapped. “Although I have no doubt that what you have to tell me is disappointing.”

“The news is bad, senhor,” Pedro whined.

“Naturally,” Jaeger said without emotion. “What did she tell you?”

“Her name — Freda Oliveiros, a stewardess with International Airways. That she was once at school, long ago, with the dark one, Victoria Kinian. But they had not met since, until by chance they were on this flight from New York.”

“What else?”

“She could only tell us that the dark one’s father had a strong box at the bank. They went to the bank this morning and opened the box and found a letter in it.”

Jaeger pushed his port aside and unconsciously tensed forward.

“Well-and what did the letter say?”

“The dark one read it but would not tell the blond one what was in it, except that it seemed very important.”

“Idiot!” Jaeger barked. “You believe one girl could keep such a thing from another? You must keep on until you make her talk.”

Pedro twisted his feet around the legs of his chair and rubbed his hatchet nose with the back of his hand in an embarrassed gesture.

“We tried very hard, until she died,” he grumbled. “I think perhaps she truly did not know.”

Jaeger had no rebuttal for that. He sat with his jaw clamped shut for a moment while the muscles in his gaunt cheeks worked nervously.