Leslie Charteris - The Saint 49 Count On The Saint

“And you would use the money to save St. Jude’s?”

“Yes. But what is the good of thinking about such things? It would be a miracle.”

Simon had put a reassuring arm around his shoulders.

“I believe in miracles,” he confided.

And then he had taken his leave and returned home to plan the details of what he had decided to do. Now that it had been accomplished there still remained the problem of whether Father Bernardo would agree to it.

He replaced the cloth over the chalice so that it was no longer either a distraction or a temptation.

“You guessed I might do this, Bernardo?” he asked.

“It was not hard. I know you too well, Simon, and the kind of solutions you find. Did you think I could not read what was in your mind?”

“No,” Simon admitted. “But I hoped that you might prefer not to. I can still put the chalice back if that is what you want.”

“What I want is to save St. Jude’s. What you do with the chalice must now be your decision.”

“And if I decide to take it?”

“I cannot stop you.”

“But what will you say to the police?”

“I shall tell them that it has been stolen.”

“Nothing more?”

Father Bernardo looked round the room, as if seeking an answer, and when he looked at the Saint again the smile that pulled at the corners of his mouth indicated that he had found one.

“My church is a ruin and this room is the nearest place I have to a confessional. People tell me many things here that I would never repeat. I can treat you no differently.”

The Saint laughed. He opened the violin case and put the chalice inside.

“Then I think it’s time to take my leave.”

He slung the case over his shoulder as he had carried it before, crossed to the window, and swung himself onto the ledge.

The priest raised his hands and parted them in blessing.

“ Pax vobiscum, my son.”

“ Hasta luego, Papa Bernardo,” said the Saint, and disappeared into the darkness.

He shinned down the drainpipe as nimbly as any sailor down the rigging of a becalmed galleon. He stepped backwards onto the ground, and in that same instant he felt a kind of dull shock in the back of his head and everything went black.

Actually his awareness of the impact was retrospective, when he woke up. It had been as neat a demonstration of the sandbagger’s art as Simon Templar had ever had the misfortune to experience. The cushioned blow had done its job without even breaking the skin, let alone the skull. Its legacy would be little more than a tender bump and a hangover-style headache. He had been despatched out of the world for perhaps thirty seconds. But it was enough. The first sense to break clear of the fog numbing his brain was hearing: the sound of running feet growing rapidly fainter as the attacker fled. Sight returned reluctantly: the blurred outlines of the grill of the drain that he was slumped beside. He screwed his eyes tight closed and then blinked them wide open, repeating the process until his vision cleared. Gripping the drainpipe with both hands, he groggily hoisted himself upright.

Leaning with his back against the wall, he sucked the cool night air into his lungs and looked around. The court was deserted. His gaze travelled upwards to the few squares of light in the surrounding buildings but he saw no one. He had hardly expected to. Even if the attack had been witnessed, Soho is an area where the residents’ discretion makes the three wise monkeys appear congenital gossips when it comes to seeing, hearing, or speaking of the evil they may come across. Neither was he surprised to find that the violin case had gone, as well as his wallet.

The Saint uttered certain expletives of Anglo-Saxon origin fluently and forcefully during the few seconds he spent casting about for some clue to his attacker, but the man had left no trace. If indeed it was a man, Simon told himself ruefully: for all he knew it could have been a dowager duchess in full ermine regalia.

The light was still burning in Father Bernardo’s study above him, and for a moment he considered returning via the front door and explaining the situation. But what could he say? “I’ve been robbed” perhaps, or “You’ll never guess what just happened to me.” No, he decided, it would be better to leave him in happy ignorance while there was still a chance of getting the chalice back.

The thief had left enough small change in his trouser pocket for a taxi fare, but the Saint felt that a walk would help to clear his head and provide time to think.

He began to retrace the route he had taken an hour before. Then his mission had been as straightforward as any he had ever undertaken. Now, in less than a minute, everything had been turned upside down and confusion had replaced simplicity.

He turned right into Shaftesbury Avenue towards Piccadilly Circus. The throbbing at the base of his skull subsided as he walked and allowed his brain to grapple methodically with the problems he now faced.

There was no profit in damning the vagaries of fate, no point in looking back. He had to concentrate on questions that might be answered productively.

Had the sandbag artist been waiting for him? Unlikely. Not even Father Bernardo had known precisely when the Saint would come. Therefore, had the attack been spontaneous? Most possibly; although the court was little used and so not the most likely place for a footpad to lurk. But could the mugger have been planning a break-in on his own, and been happy to watch the Saint do it for him and hijack the proceeds? If so, was he after the chalice or just anything that might come his way? Square one again.

It might seem to be a detail of stupendous unimportance, whether he had been robbed of the chalice with intent or purely by bad luck. If it was by accident, as soon as the thief discovered what he had stolen, it would be quickly funnelled into one of the normal markets for stolen goods: if it was with intent, the problem could be infinitely more complicated.

The irony of the situation was not lost on the Saint. Despite his anger, he could acknowledge it with a rueful smile. The Robin Hood of Modern Crime, the newspapers had dubbed him, and he had more than lived up to the title, robbing the ungodly rich and giving the loot to the poor — minus a respectable percentage to cover his expenses. Much of his career had been spent thieving from thieves and now the tables had been turned. It might be poetic, Simon reflected as he arrived back at Upper Berkeley Mews, but on this particular occasion it was certainly not justice.

His only immediate solution, as it had been with many another riddle, was to sleep on it. But in this case the prescription failed to work. Sleep removed the physical pain but did nothing to soothe the hurt to his pride, nor did he awake with the inspiration he had hoped for. The problems of the dark were just as unanswerable in the light.

But if he thought they were difficult enough, he did not have to wait long to be shown their true proportionate triviality.

He had dealt with a late breakfast, showered, and dressed when the doorbell rang. He recognised his visitor with a smile of pleasure and appreciation, and held the door wide for her to enter.

“Buenos dias, Mila!” he said.

Mila is short for Milagrosa, which in Spanish means miraculous, and so is an apt choice of name for the niece of a priest. The last time Simon had seen her she had been a skinny schoolgirl scarcely out of pigtails, but two years can see many changes at that age.

Now, although she could still have been barely old enough to vote, she had a refined beauty that Goya would have paid to paint. The sheen of the long black hair which swirled across her face when she turned her head, the pout of her lips, the mystery and promise of dark flashing eyes, and a figure that curved in exactly the right places and proportions were as much as any man, artist or not, could have asked for. Perhaps one day the smooth skin would wrinkle and the taut figure would spread, but that would not be for a long time to come.