Leslie Charteris - The Saint 49 Count On The Saint

The Saint smiled to himself as he thought of all the pillars of propriety he had known, from Cabinet ministers and judges to a few police officers, who were always lecturing in law in one way or another but had not always been known to practise their teachings themselves. But he let the matter rest and went on to see if he could learn any more about Darslow’s colleagues.

“What do you know about Professor Rosco?” he asked.

“He’s sweet.”

“Are all professors sugar-coated as far as you’re concerned?” Simon enquired, half amused by her innocence and half exasperated by her vagueness.

“What I mean,” Chantek explained with slow deliberation, “is that Professor Darslow is sweet like an uncle, but Rosco is mmmmm sweet.”

The seductive purr made the Saint chuckle.

“I get the message. Is he one of your tutors?”

“No, bad luck. I’m reading English, and he lectures on zoology,” she said with a sigh.

Rosco was clearly a more stimulating topic of conversation, and she needed no prompting to continue.

“He’s really very clever and he has been all over the world on expeditions. Borneo, the Amazon, Africa, everywhere. When he came here last year there was a feature on him in the university magazine, full of pictures of him wading through swamps and hacking through jungles and things. Last summer he went to Kenya to study the animals in one of the national parks and almost got killed by a leopard.”

“Sounds like stirring stuff,” Simon agreed.

“He doesn’t approve of hunting, but he had to kill it with a single shot just as it sprang,” Chantek said.

The Saint, who had firsthand knowledge of the speed of a big cat going for the kill and the reflexes needed to stay alive, was duly impressed.

“He must be a good shot.”

“He’s won prizes for it. There’s a whole cabinet full of them in his study, and he helps to run the shooting club of the university too.”

“Is that so?” he murmured, and was silent as he considered what Chantek had told him.

He had thought Rosco out of place the night before because he appeared less fusty than the others, and his global wanderings certainly provided a reason why he should be more open-minded than they. The fact that he could also handle himself in a tight corner and knew his way around a firearm was of even greater interest.

“I don’t think that either Dr. Burridge or Mr. Nyall really approves of him,” Chantek was saying, and he filed his thoughts for the moment and returned to the present.

“Why not?”

She shrugged.

“Oh, I don’t know really. They’re so stuffy and always going on about the college and its traditions, and he’s not a bit like that.”

She paused, and he was about to press her for more information about the college administrators when the Austin indicated right and turned off the main highway onto a secondary road. The Saint followed, and before he could restart the conversation a signpost announced that they were coming to the village of Bucksberry.

As English villages go, it was neither historically nor visually interesting, but on that particular morning it did have a certain picturesque charm owing to the riders and their pack of yapping hounds who were gathered on the green outside the aptly named Fox Inn. With the last traces of snow still clinging to the rooftops, it could have been a scene straight from a Victorian painting.

Darslow stopped in the pub’s forecourt next to a group of locals who were watching the preparations for the morning’s hunt. Simon tucked the Hirondel behind the cover of a conveniently placed van outside the general store on the opposite side of the road and switched off the engine.

The professor clambered out of his car and began talking to two or three of the men standing on the pavement. The Saint wound down his window but was too far away to hear what was said, and to leave the Hirondel would have risked instant recognition if Darslow looked his way. The conversation appeared, however, to consist more of arm pointing and head nodding than verbal communication.

Darslow’s dress of Wellington boots, tough cord trousers, and chunky rollneck sweater beneath a heavy homespun jacket blended perfectly with the clothes of those he talked to and with the environment generally. If the rest of the day was to be spent roaming the countryside, the Saint began to fear that his Bond Street car coat and Savile Row jacket and slacks might place him at a conspicuous disadvantage.

“What’s he doing, Simon?” Chantek asked.

“I’m not sure, but by the look of it he’s being given directions. We’ll just have to wait and see where to.”

Although he could not hear Darslow’s conversation there was no difficulty in hearing the remarks of the nearer riders and hunt followers as they drained their stirrup cups and speculated on the sport ahead of them. Dominating the group and clearly in charge of it was a red-jacketed rider whose heavy roan gelding stamped impatiently on the turf. The man, like his horse, was large and powerfully built. His features were strong and florid and he controlled his mount with the sureness of an accomplished horseman.

The whippers-in were ordering the hounds and the landlord of the inn was collecting the last of the stirrup cups, indicating that the hunt was about to move off. He retrieved the big red-coated rider’s cup last of all and smiled diffidently at the man, who had every air of being the master of the hunt.

“Should be a good day, Colonel,” he said chattily,

“Damn well hope so,” the colonel muttered, and briskly caught up with his companions on the way through a gate beside the inn where they trotted out into the open fields beyond. Once through the narrow opening they fanned out and broke into a canter behind the vanguard of sniffing canine noses.

Darslow got back into his car as the pack set off and headed out of the village in the opposite direction to the way he had entered it. Simon waited until he had rounded the first bend and then pulled out in pursuit.

Bucksberry rests in a shallow scoop of land between two low tree-crested ridges. The village consists of little more than a couple of dozen houses, most of them strung out along each side of the one main street like beads on a necklace. From the back fences of the houses the fields run flat for half a mile before beginning to slope gently upwards. The road meanders for nearly a mile before forking into two lanes which curve around the base of each hill.

At this junction Darslow turned left. As he followed, the Saint glanced across the fields to his right and saw the hunters reach the end of the flat land and begin heading uphill along a path that would take them through a broad gap in the trees and over to the open country on the other side.

Darslow’s next move was so unexpected that the Saint had to brake hard to avoid coming up too close behind him. As the Austin rounded the foot of the hill it made a sudden right turn through a gateway onto a rutted cart track leading towards the top of the hill.

Simon cruised the Hirondel around the next bend, and as soon as the hedges hid them he came to a halt in a fortunate pull-off beside a farm gate.

“What do you think he’s up to?” Chantek asked.

“It must be something to do with the hunt,” said the Saint. “Or one of the hunters. At the pub, he must have been trying to find out where they were going to have their first try at drawing a fox. The answer must have been the woods on top of that hill, and he’s meaning to get there first.”

“But what for?” she persisted.

“Maybe he’s one of those fox-hunting buffs who can’t ride or can’t afford a horse and like to follow the action on foot.”

He got out of the car and watched the Austin pulling itself up the track. At the top of the hill it stopped and Darslow climbed out. He walked quickly around to the back, unlocked it, and lifted out the package he had put there the night before. The hunt was now halfway up the slope, the huntsman shouting encouragements to the hounds as they cast about for a scent.