Leslie Charteris - The Saint in Pursuit

“You tried everything?” he finally asked, wanting to be sure his dissatisfaction was quite clear.

Pedro’s black eyes glittered as he remembered some of the things he had done during the long hours of the hot afternoon.

“Everything,” he said.

He spoke the word with such evident sincerity that even Jaeger had to be contented.

“So!” he said, slapping the table in front of him with his palms. “That matter is concluded then. I assume you have taken care of the — final details.”

Pedro nodded.

“We went by the waterfront on our way here. I have a friend with a trapdoor in the bottom of his boathouse which...”

“Never mind telling me the tricks of your filthy trade,” Jaeger said coldly. “I am in a hurry. Would you like to earn some more money for an easy job?”

“What is the job?” asked Pedro sensibly.

“I am taking the dark girl out to dinner. When we have left the hotel, go to her room — number 302 — and see if you can find the letter they got from the bank.”

“Si,” Pedro said. “I go to the room. But how do I know which is the letter?”

“Bring anything that looks like a letter,” Jaeger said impatiently. “Take your time. I shall have the girl out with me for at least two hours from now.” He stood up. “But you have made me late and I must go. I can rely on you?”

“Si! Room number 302.”

“Correct. Telephone me at my room at the Tagus later tonight, and we can arrange a meeting so you can give me what you have found.”

“And settle accounts,” Pedro said practically.

“Of course,” Jaeger replied. “Até logo.”

“Va com Deus,” said Pedro, with no perceptible trace of irony.

His employer did not return the sentiment, but hurried away to keep his appointment with Vicky Kinian. He called her on the house phone, apologized profusely for not being earlier, and tried to compose himself while he waited. It was now more vital than ever that Major Kinian’s daughter should continue to accept him as only a friendly businessman with no more worrisome thought in his head than selling an order of wristwatches or choosing the best wines for dinner.

To Simon Templar, sitting where the open few inches of his door, angled in the dressing-table mirror, were directly in line with the top of the book he was reading, it seemed like a budding eternity before Vicky Kinian finally came out. She looked stunning in a shoulderless black dress and long white gloves, and he briefly wavered again between visiting her empty room, as he had decided, and investigating her in person. But girls going out at the dinner hour in shoulderless black dresses were likely to have plans of their own which would not make them welcome last-minute invitations from total strangers, and furthermore the small beaded bag which he had seen she now carried hardly looked as if it would hold anything momentous in the way of documents. The room was now a more logical and certainly less reckless first possibility to try, and if he drew blank there the alternative would still be open.

He waited until she had had time to get all the way down the stairs. Then he pocketed a small metal implement he had already chosen from a selection in his suitcase after inspecting his own door lock, and armed with this modern open-sesame, prepared to find what treasures or terrors lay hidden in the cave of Major Kinian’s disappearance.

“It’s fortunate there are no cannibals in Lisbon,” Curt Jaeger said, coming to meet Vicky as she appeared on the last flight of stairs. “Because, as they say in America, you look good enough to eat. But it’s so nice of you to consent to eat with me instead.”

He bent to kiss her hand, feeling her fingers tense as he held them, but noting as he straightened up that her cheeks had a pleased glow. She was, in her innocence, as he had assumed, a pushover for what the Americans called the Continental touch. A heavy dose of gallantry with no alarming passes: that should be the most effective formula.

“It’s nice of you to invite me,” she said, “but I’m afraid that Freda seems to have let us down.”

“Perhaps she’s expecting us to call for her at her own hotel,” he said with a frown of mild concern.

“No. She was supposed to come back at seven, and she hasn’t called or anything. I don’t understand it.”

Jaeger looked around the lobby, and then at the clock behind the desk clerk’s counter.

“I’m sorry I am late myself,” he said. “I had business at the last minute. Maybe she will show up soon. In the meantime, we could ask if she has sent a message.”

They walked to the desk, and in response to Vicky’s question the clerk promptly produced an envelope. Before she read the short note inside she glanced at the bottom to confirm that it really was from Freda Oliveiros.

“I don’t understand this,” she said. “Why ever wouldn’t she have phoned me? When did this note come?”

“Half an hour ago, senhorita,” said the man behind the counter.

“Would she like us to pick her up?” Jaeger asked helpfully.

“No. She says she’s been called to replace another stewardess on a flight leaving at once. That was late this afternoon, I guess.” Vicky looked up from the paper, her eyes puzzled. “So of course she won’t be joining us.”

Jaeger shrugged and gestured towards the main exit.

“Well, I am sorry for her, but for myself, this is one case in which a loss is no real loss.”

He held the door for her and they walked out on to the tranquil darkening street.

“I just hope you will feel safe with me even though your friend cannot be with us,” he said sympathetically.

Vicky was already beginning to cast off any worry she felt about Freda’s not showing up.

“Oh, I’m not thinking of that, Mr Jaeger. But I had to disappoint Freda about something earlier today, and I hope she isn’t just making an excuse because she’s mad at me.”

“I’m sure she isn’t,” Jaeger said with mature assurance. “Now let us eat, drink, and be merry because... because that’s what one ought to do in Lisbon!”

On that cheerful note he took her away by taxi to one of the golden dining rooms of the Restaurant Avis, and waited until she was semi-steeped in champagne before gently continuing his research into the more secret aspects of her private life.

“I can’t help wondering,” he began — “Would it be too inquisitive to ask what you did that might have angered your girl friend so much?”

Vicky wished he hadn’t brought the subject up again; she had been trying to forget it completely.

“Oh, it was nothing much,” she said. “It’s hardly worth talking about.”

Jaeger sat back in his chair and raised his champagne glass to his lips.

“I see,” he said gently. “I thought maybe you were still worrying about it. You looked a thousand miles away.”

Vicky realized that she had been staring beyond Jaeger without really seeing anything. She quickly put down her glass and turned all her attention to him.

“I’m so sorry!” she hurried to say. “I suppose there is something on my mind, and it is tied up with Freda. I might as well tell you, since it’s bound to make me act a little funny, and I don’t want you to think I’m rude.”

“I hope it was nothing so momentous as the fact that both you girls were wearing the same dress when you met to go shopping,” Jaeger said with a smile.

Vicky forced herself to laugh and took up her champagne again with relief. She was bursting to share her secrets — and the burden of the tremendous decision her father’s second letter asked her to make — just as she had been eager to confide in Freda when they had talked on the plane.