Leslie Charteris - The Saint in Pursuit

“Nothing as bad as that,” she said. She imbibed a large sip from her glass and took the plunge. “It was about a rather mysterious letter that she partly helped me to find. And then when I’d gotten it, I couldn’t tell her what was in it. At least I couldn’t tell her at the time without thinking it over first. She was hurt, I think — and that was the last I saw of her.”

The wine was making her feel more indifferent than disconsolate when she remembered Freda’s reaction. She hoped the waiter would bring the Vichyssoise before she started getting dizzy. One cocktail before dinner had always been her limit — and when she had last drunk champagne, at a wedding reception, she had found the whole world swooping and dipping around her head like a carnival run wild.

“This letter — it indeed sounds very mysterious,” Jaeger said, with no sign of unseemly curiosity. “Are you sure it would not help to talk it over with a friend?”

“I’m sure it would,” she admitted.

To her relief, the soup arrived just then to preserve her higher cerebral processes from alcoholic annihilation.

“Many problems that seem impossible alone become much easier if one talks about them,” Jaeger observed in the most fatherly of tones.

“But this is such a special problem!”

“All problems are special to the person who has them. But I am a special kind of friend.”

“But I hardly know you at all,” Vicky blurted. Then she lowered her spoon and earnestly added, “Not that I mean anything by that. It’s just...”

Curt Jaeger raised a reassuring hand.

“Don’t apologize. What you say is quite true. On the other hand, the fact that we aren’t old friends is my greatest advantage. I’ve often thought, in fact, that a stranger is the best friend one can have, assuming that he — or she — is particularly simpático. Because you can believe a stranger to be anything you like. For a little while, at least, a stranger can be one’s ideal.” He tapped a cigarette from a pack and added ironically, “Which probably explains love-at-first-sight — and the fact that one falls very easily in love with people one doesn’t really know, but has a devil of a time becoming, or staying, infatuated with people who’ve been around for quite a while.”

“You’re right,” said Vicky, impressed with the exposition but a little confused about what he was driving at.

“So, in brief,” her companion said, “it’s just because you don’t know me that you can consult me about anything as impersonally as a doctor or a confessor. My disapproval — which I guarantee you won’t have to face — couldn’t bother you, but you could be sure that my advice would be quite impartial.”

A waiter topped up their wineglasses while another took away the soup bowls.

“I’m not trying to pry, of course. If you want to tell me anything, put it in general terms, and I won’t possibly be able to guess what you are referring to.”

Vicky settled back against her cushion.

“Well, suppose you had a clue that might lead you to a fortune, like a buried treasure, but you didn’t really have a right to it. I mean, it didn’t really belong to you or anybody at the moment, but the only people who would have a legal right would be some government or other. What would you do?”

“You mean like these cases of sunken ships, where divers do all the work and then the government that controls the coastline steps in and scrapes off most of the profits? I assure you I would help myself to the treasure and let the government worry about its own welfare. They would certainly hear nothing from me.”

Vicky smiled and raised her moisture-beaded glass to her lips with both hands.

“Well, that’s a straight answer,” she said. “I think I can probably swing my conscience around to that point of view.”

“Yes,” Jaeger concurred. “What could be less worthy of your guilty conscience than a government?”

“Especially when I don’t even know which government,” said Vicky, feeling more lighthearted than she had since leaving Iowa. “You’re right. Why turn over anything to a bunch of stuffed-shirt bureaucrats?”

“Bravo!” Jaeger applauded. “And naturally you couldn’t show your stewardess friend the mysterious letter telling about the pirate’s gold, because then she would have been able to use the map to find her way there before you.”

“She might, I suppose,” Vicky said. “But...”

Suddenly Jaeger seemed struck by a disturbing thought that fitted aptly into her hesitation.

“I’m just thinking,” he said. “Your friend, with all respect, probably has the same weaknesses as the rest of us, and her disappearance was rather abrupt. You don’t suppose she could somehow have taken the letter — or perhaps be planning to take it while you’re out?”

“Oh, no, Freda wouldn’t have thought of such a thing! And even if she had, it wouldn’t do her any good to try to find the letter.”

“You hid it well?” Jaeger asked. “Or better still, put it in the hotel vault for safe-keeping?”

“Even better than that,” Vicky said proudly. “I cut out the paragraph with all the important things in it — with all the directions — and memorized it, and burned it!”

Curt Jaeger’s admiration was so very far from boundless that only the longest swig of champagne could quench the fire of rage and disappointment that rose unbidden into his face.

“That was really brilliant of you,” he commented, with grim honesty hardening his smile. “I’m glad I am not some kind of foreign agent trying to pick your brain.”

For Simon Templar, entering Vicky Kinian’s hotel room was about as difficult an operation as sliding a hot spoon into a dollop of ice cream. But only paranormal powers of observation or intuition could have warned him that the girl whose private correspondence he intended to investigate was already being orbited by such a galaxy of variegated snoopers that it would have been impossible to approach within visiting range of her or her lodgings without entering the purview of at least one of them.

From the moment when he left his own room and crossed the corridor, he was, in fact, under the surveillance of the white-whiskered bald man who made such practical use of the aids to his infirmities: the cane was already fitted with its periscope extension, and the oversized hearing-amplifier was already switched on when the door to Vicky Kinian’s dark room swung quietly inward. It had been partially by luck that the plump eavesdropper had detected Simon’s movement across the passage; but now, with his gadgets fully activated, he set about systematically following the Saint’s explorations.

Once in Vicky Kinian’s room Simon turned on the lights, glanced at the general layout, and began his search as coolly as if he were paying the bill for room 302 himself. First, the obvious: empty suitcases, underneath the underclothes in the chest-of-drawers... Success already amongst the lacy silks. His hand brought forth an envelope slightly yellowed with age. There was a typed directive on the front which read: For Victoria Kinian, on her 25th birthday, c/o William F. Grey, Attorney-at-Law. Inside was a cryptic note telling daughter Vicky to visit Portugal and pick up a box at an antique shop in Lisbon. Hardly what could be called a cliff-hanging letter. Almost certainly Vicky Kinian had already gone there in the morning and come back to the Tagus Hotel with something much more informative.

Simon kept on looking. Underneath the mattress of the bed there was nothing but a chewing-gum wrapper. His attention turned then to the massive mahogany wardrobe which seemed to loom over the rest of the room as if it considered itself immeasurably superior. Such old-fashioned examples of the cabinetmaker’s art, with double doors surmounted by a carved cornice, had flat recessed tops ideally designed for concealing dust, dead flies, and highly personal correspondence.