Leslie Charteris - The Saint Abroad

The nurse peered at his eyes.

“I’m sorry, doctor, but I don’t recognize...”

“Bronson,” he said impatiently. “I’m on the Prime Minister’s personal staff — from Nagawiland. Now, if you please...”

The nurse, accustomed to obeying doctors without question, thinned her lips, nodded, and left the room.

Instantly the doctor hurried to the bed. The patient lay still, his breathing slow and shallow, only his closed eyes showing through the bands of gauze and adhesive that swathed his head. With a swift glance over his shoulder at the door, the doctor pulled something that looked like a thin pointed stick from beneath his white smock. He bent over the bed, bringing the long slender shaft down toward the throat of the man in the bed.

The patient suddenly came to life. He rolled violently toward the doctor, catching him low in the stomach with a foot that shot out from between the sheets and sent him tumbling back across the room. The doctor’s eyes were wide with surprise and panic. The patient flung back the covers and sprang out on his feet. The doctor reeled back toward the door, wildly swinging the stick to cover his retreat; but the patient now had an automatic in his hand, pointing accurately at the center of the doctor’s chest

“If I were in the movies,” came Simon Templar’s voice from behind the patient’s mask, “I’d say, Sorry to interrupt your operation, doctor, but this time I’m afraid you’re the one who gets stuck.”

The doctor froze, his back to the alcove which led into the main corridor.

“Now drop that Magic wand — which looks to me like a souvenir Nagawi arrow, probably dipped in some jolly native poison,” Simon said, pulling off his own bandages.

The other man seemed about to obey, but then he drew back his arm and flicked his wrist, and the arrow flashed through the air toward the Saint. Simon ducked aside, and the sharp stained point whipped past his ear and clattered against the wall beyond the bed in which he had been lying.

He could easily have shot his opponent dead in that single second, even while he was dodging the arrow, which might actually have been what the other was hoping for, if his last desperate throw failed to inflict a scratch which could likely have been lethal. But the Saint wanted him alive. So when the man followed the arrow with a wild suicidal lunge at him, Simon once more held his fire, but sidestepped and deflected the blow with a numbing karate cut into the forearm. His own right hand jabbed the gun muzzle cruelly into the “doctor’s” belly. His left caught him flat on the side of his head, and then snatched away the white mask.

“Foreign Minister Todd,” Simon said pleasantly. “I suppose this is a sample of how your followers would have gone back to nature if your little revolution had come off?”

Todd tried another futile swing even though he was dazed and against the wall. He succeeded only in knocking over a table lamp. Simon swung him around and locked him in a comparatively painless if undignified judo hold.

“One thing you’re not,” the Saint said regretfully, “and that’s a fighter. I suppose those diplomatic cocktail parties aren’t the best exercise in the world. All right, everybody — the show’s over.”

The door of the communicating lavatory burst open, and half a dozen people came through it in fairly rapid succession. Among them were two police officers and Chief Inspector Claud Eustace Teal.

Simon released Todd with a motion that swung him directly into Teal’s arms.

“Liskard’s dead?” Todd asked as he was put in handcuffs.

“Don’t sound so hopeful,” Simon answered. “You’re as bad a shot as you are a brawler. You fractured his jaw, but that should only increase any politician’s popularity.”

Anne Liskard had also come into the room. She stared at Todd with shock and horror.

“Why?” was all she could say.

“He’s a tyrant!” Todd screamed hysterically.

“And you wanted to take his place — which is both more truthful and to the point,” Simon put in. “Obviously you didn’t have any hope of getting all the way to the top on your own merits, so you thought it easily might be worth a couple of thousand lives to get there through a coup.”

“It’s a revolution!” Todd raved defiantly. “It can go on without me.”

“There is no revolution,” Anne Liskard said to him icily. “And I don’t know how even somebody as low as you could have the nerve to use that word for the bloody little game you’re playing.”

She and Todd glared at one another. Teal took the prisoner’s arm and pulled him toward the door.

“Coming, Templar?” he asked.

“No, thanks, Claud. I’ll let you bask in whatever limelight you can scrape together at this hour of the morning. The one thing I want in the world at this point is some sleep.”

Teal and his troops left with Todd. As Simon followed, Anne Liskard touched his arm. Her whole manner had changed since he had first met her.

“I don’t know what I can do to...”

“Thank me?” the Saint said. “Just one thing. Try to get the past in perspective, and be nice to your husband. Until anyone better comes along, Nagawiland really needs him. He’s a good man.”

She looked at him seriously, and then her tired face softened into a smile.

“I’m way ahead of you on that,” she said. “I’ve already made enough good resolutions to last me through a dozen New Years’.”

Simon looked back over his shoulder as he walked away.

“And take care of yourself,” he said. “That’s a worthy cause too.”

At ten in the morning of the same day the Saint settled down beside the telephone in his own home in Upper Berkeley Mews. It had begun to snow lightly, and his own personal view of London was beginning to look like sugared cake. The fog was already gone, and by nightfall the stars would probably be as sharp as crystals in a clear sky.

And there would be no Mr Snowball truck lurking in a gray street. Mr Snowball would be happily taking credit for his latest victory over evil, and the gray street would no longer be gray but pure and sparkling white in the pale sunlight.

“Good morning — London Hilton,” came the response to his dialing.

“Miss Bannerman, please,” Simon said.

A little later Mary Bannerman answered.

“Did you think I’d forgotten you?” Simon asked.

“Oh, thank goodness it’s you!” she exclaimed. “Are you all right? I’ve heard everything on the radio — about Jeff and the others being arrested, and Todd, and... and you were right. They were planning to take over in Nagawiland.”

“In fact, their buddies down there murdered two good men before word got there that Liskard was still alive — contrary to their expectations. But it could have been much worse. If the tribes had gone on a rampage...”

“I can imagine,” she said. “And Tom... how is he?”

“He’ll be all right. Todd must have panicked when he got word that Peterson had been picked up, and his hands were shaking when he tried to fake a Liskard suicide by himself. Then he had to make one last mad try at the hospital — but he blew that, too.”

“I’m glad.” The girl’s voice was subdued. “Tom’ll be able to carry on, then?”

“Yes. In fact this could make him a hero. And his wife shows signs of being something more than an anchor, for the first time in years.”

Mary was silent for some moments before she spoke again.

“I suppose the police will be around to get me soon.”

Simon deliberated.

“I’ve thought it over,” he said. “Until now I’ve never gone in much for psychologists’ theories about the treatment of criminals, but I’ll give even a bad idea a chance. You can consider yourself under suspended sentence. I’m taking personal responsibility for your rehabilitation. You’ll have to own up to your little insurance swindle, of course; but if you give the money back I’m sure the Company won’t prosecute you.”