Leslie Charteris - The Saint in Pursuit

Behind them, glasses glinting in the pale light of the moon, a short rotund figure stepped cautiously from a group of trees, and a plump hand switched off the electrical current of a kind of hearing device.

The man with the Vandyke beard walked from his hiding place to the monument to German refugees. Out at the cemetery’s boundary he heard a car engine start and move away through four gears. He could move and talk freely now. He went over to Mischa Ruspine and prodded him with the toe of a well-polished shoe. Mischa grunted and lay still. The man with the white beard kicked him in the waist several times with increasing impatience.

Finally Mischa revived sufficiently to realize where he was and to remember what had happened. When he saw the formidable broad figure of his superior standing over him he at once began to make excuses.

“It was not my fault, Comrade Uzdanov! I had the box and he took me from behind.”

“He was not behind you when he hit you,” Comrade Uzdanov corrected him. “I saw it!”

Mischa was kneeling, holding his bowed head in both hands. Uzdanov moved slightly behind him.

“I will make up for it as soon as I can find him again,” Mischa said.

“There will be no need for that,” Uzdanov said kindly.

His words veiled the fact that he was very quietly twisting the crooked handle of his walking stick and pulling it from the main section of the cane. If Mischa had not been so busy trying to still the throbbing in his head he might have looked around and seen the short slender shaft of steel which projected from the detached handle, glinting frostily in the pallid light.

Uzdanov placed a reassuring hand on Mischa’s shoulder from behind.

“There will be no need,” he repeated. “You are now only a man who knows too much, Mischa — and I cannot trust one with such a record of failures. So goodbye!”

On the last, word he plunged the sharp steel spike deeply between Mischa’s shoulders. A moment later he withdrew the stiletto from his co-worker’s body and left him lying where he slumped. Then, on second thought, he turned and wiped the blade clean on the tail of Mischa’s jacket before replacing it in the cane and locking the sections solidly back into place.

All things neatly attended to, Uzdanov turned on his heel and walked rapidly out of the cemetery whose population he had just increased by one. He was ready to stop listening and watching now. The time had come for action.

“I don’t know whether to thank you or call you a rat,” Vicky Kinian said sulkily.

She was huddled in the front passenger seat of the Saint’s rented Volkswagen pouting like a disobedient little girl being whisked home by her father from the school principal’s office. During most of the drive from the Cimetière Internationale she had kept quiet, nursing her hurt pride and throbbing head. As they came to the light-fringed boulevards that bordered Lac Leman she finally gave her vocal facilities a real test and found they were still in fair working order despite the ungentle massage Mischa Ruspine had given her larynx in the graveyard.

“I think you’re horrible for following me and poking into my business,” she opined. “Even though I suppose you might’ve saved my life.”

“I suppose the deed was worth just about that much adulation,” Simon replied cheerfully. “After all, there are lots of American girl tourists in the world; one certainly wouldn’t be missed. Maybe I should just take you back to the cemetery.”

Vicky sat up as if a loose spring had penetrated her seat cushion.

“No!”

“Then try to show a little proper reverence for your mental superiors. Remember, I warned you back in Lisbon that you’d find the going rough on your own.”

“Don’t rub it in,” she answered resentfully.

“I won’t, but I’m afraid the shocks are starting to come thick and fast now. Do you think you can take another one?”

She stared at him, alarmed at his tone of voice.

“Why? Has something else happened?”

“Yes, and you’ll hear about it when you get back to the hotel anyway. It’s about your pal, Curt Jaeger.”

“What about him? And he’s not my pal. I met him on the plane from New York purely by chance.”

Simon concentrated with unusual intensity on making a left turn at an intersection.

“He’s not anybody’s pal now, because purely by chance he tried to throw me out of a window about an hour ago — and fell out himself.”

Vicky gazed at him unbelievingly.

“You mean he’s injured?”

“Quite fatally,” said the Saint, with a perceptible lack of mourning. “Which is just how he wanted me because I was sowing a few weeds in the primrose path he was leading you down.”

Vicky covered her face with her hands and started sobbing.

“You killed him!” she wailed.

“Gravity killed him, with the help of a large section of concrete pavement.” He glanced at her. “I didn’t know you cared so much about him, though.”

She lowered her hands from tear-glazed cheeks and her next words were almost a scream.

“I don’t! I’m having hysterics!”

“You’re much too sophisticated now for hysterics,” Simon intoned soothingly.

“I’m not sophisticated! I wish I’d never left Iowa!” Then she tried hard to get control of herself. “Well, tell me! Why would Curt Jaeger want to kill anybody? He’s just a watch salesman.”

“He’s more a watcher than a salesman,” said the Saint. “I told you that there were probably other competitors in this gold rush.”

“But when he got on the plane in New York he couldn’t possibly have known what I was going to do over here.”

“He’d been keeping an eye on you for years, ever since the end of the war. He was one of Hitler’s Gestapo buckos, and he was the one who was on the same trail your father was. When they met, I’m afraid your father got the worst of it.”

“You mean that’s what happened to my father? Curt Jaeger did something...”

Her words trailed off, and Simon nodded.

“I’m afraid Jaeger killed him. But before he did he found out enough about your father’s plans to make him take a long-term interest in your whereabouts.”

Vicky sat limply beside him, staring straight ahead.

“I feel numb,” she said finally.

“And I don’t blame you.”

He was pulling the car into a parking space not far from the Hotel Portal. Vicky thought a minute longer and turned to him.

“Then you won’t blame me for not trusting anybody, including you,” she said. “I won’t necessarily believe you, but why did you start following me?”

“I’m sure you won’t believe me, but it wasn’t with any idea of loot. I knew nothing about it at the start, and I’ve still got no real idea of what you’re after.” He shut off the Volkswagen’s engine and killed the lights. “Somebody in Washington asked me to get in on the fun when the Pentagon heard you were taking a short-notice Grand Tour of your dad’s old stomping grounds. Apparently some tax-supported computer has also had you in its memory bank for a long, long time.”

“Then you were tied in with that army man from the embassy in Lisbon who talked to me?”

“Yes. It was through his good offices that I almost did a swan dive from six flights up on to Lake Geneva’s moonlit shore. I did a few odd jobs for the cloak-and-dagger divisions during the Nazi war and they figured I knew my way around some old alleys better than most. As far as I can tell, they were merely assisting me to try on the old school noose again.”

“You don’t mean they wanted to see you get in trouble?”

“No. They just didn’t care. I walk through the fiery furnace, and if I come out with my skin uncrisped Colonel Wade gets another oak-leaf cluster on his good conduct ribbon.” Simon tapped the oilcloth packet inside his coat. “Which makes me hope very sincerely that more material rewards of virtue are wrapped in this little bundle from the beyond that your father has led us to.”