Leslie Charteris - The Saint Around the World

“At least you don’t despise Mr Oddington for liking it.”

“Not a bit. I think he’s very lucky to only want what he can have, and to be able to have it.”

“His nephew despises him.”

“I’d just say, he disapproves.”

“He disapproves of me, too.”

“I don’t think he can figure you out. If it comes to that, I’ve been trying to figure you myself. You speak English very well—”

“I taught in a school in England for three years.”

“Then you also have a better than ordinary education. And you have much better than ordinary looks, and an attractive personality. There must be plenty of other things you could do — things that most girls would like better.”

“But I like it here,” she said simply. “And Mr Oddington likes it. And what he likes, I like even more. Is that so unusual where you come from?”

He nodded.

“Sometimes.”

“Why don’t you say that you think there must be something wrong because he is so much older?”

“Even if I did, it wouldn’t be any of my business. But you can understand why it might worry George.”

She looked at him without a trace of the coquettish mischief that played so easily on her face.

“Mr Oddington is a very good man. He is different from other people in his way, but he does nobody any harm. I have known young men who were not good at all.”

Simon held her eyes steadily for a few seconds. If anyone had ever predicted that he would one day hold a conversation like that with a sea-nymph sitting on a rock without a stitch on her, he wouldn’t have believed it. This was what you could get for striking up conversations with strangers in bars, he thought.

He looked back towards the beach where he could see Mr Oddington and his nephew still sitting together. McGeorge was still firmly enveloped in his shirt, while Mr Oddington poked restively at the stones with his spear-gun. It was too far to see any expression on their faces, but the abruptness of an occasional gesture suggested restrained violence in the discussion.

“I wish you luck,” said the Saint. “But I don’t think George will give you any blessing.”

“Then,” she said, with a toss of her head, “it’s what you call too bad about him.”

She stood up, straight and lovely, and then sprang from her toes and arrowed into the water.

The Saint watched her come up and start swimming towards the shore. The breeze which springs up in the Mediterranean almost every summer afternoon was chasing turbulent riffles even into the sheltered bay; and in the dancing water an increasing number of swimmers, nearly all of them equipped with the diving masks and snorkel breathing tubes without which even a nudist might have felt undressed for Mediterranean swimming in those days, cruised in all directions like a fleet of miniature submarines. Simon stayed on the rock and wondered whether he should follow her, not knowing exactly how he was meant to take her parting retort.

Then, as her blonde head drew near the beach, she found a footing and came upright with her shoulders clear of the water, and at the same time one of the swimmers near her also stopped and stood. The swimmer pushed his mask up onto his forehead to talk, but even without that distant sight of his face, by the development of his shoulders and the carriage of his head, Simon recognized the same persistent male whose arrival at the cove he had already noticed.

Even the Saint had a limit to how long he could curb his discretion, and at that point he reached it. No matter if that meeting was entirely accidental or to what extent it might have been engineered, Nadine and the man were talking again, and the Saint had to hear something of it. One word, or even a look passed between them, might be enough to decide whether he would agree or disagree with McGeorge’s estimate of the situation. This time he couldn’t help it if he seemed crudely intrusive. Nothing in the whole set-up was any of his business anyway, but curiosity had always been one of his major vices.

He dived in and swam towards them, as quickly as he could without too noticeable a churning of water, and keeping his head down as much as possible. But in that way, because of the rustle of water around his ears, he heard nothing until he stopped swimming a yard from them. And then he only heard Nadine say the one word: “Demain.”

Then Nadine saw him.

“I wish I’d brought one of those masks,” he said conversationally. “The water here must be wonderful for them.”

“Yes, it is,” she said.

She was angry — it was easy to see that, although she had it under control. But whether it was because of the interruption, or because of what had been interrupted, he had no way to tell. He let his feet down to the bottom and stood smiling as if he were unaware of any tension at all, and looked at the other man in such a way that it would have been almost impossible for her to avoid making the introduction.

“This is Monsieur Pierre Eschards,” she said. “Mr Templar.”

Eschards extended a hand, flexing his biceps.

“Enchanté,” he said, but he did not look enchanted. The stare that he gave the Saint was cold and insolent. Then, as if Simon had already passed out of his life again, he turned back to the girl and took her hand. The way he looked at her was quite different in its intensity. “J’attendrai,” he said.

He touched her fingers to his lips, pulled down his mask, and swam away.

Nadine followed him a little distance with her eyes, biting her lip.

Simon took a chance.

“That’s the fellow you first came to the island with, isn’t it?” he said casually.

“I suppose Mr Oddington told you.” The frown stayed on her brows. “It makes him very cross that Pierre has come back. He does not even think I should speak to him.”

“You can’t altogether blame him for that.”

“Pierre is my cousin. We have known each other since we were children. I cannot suddenly pretend not to know him.”

“But didn’t you say you were — sort of engaged?”

“For a while. I cannot undo the past. But that is all over. It was over when I began to go with Mr Oddington. He should believe that.”

Simon shrugged.

“He might find it easier to believe if Pierre stayed away.”

“I did not ask him to come. He just came here, from Antibes, where he likes to spend the summer. He said that he wanted to see how it was with me. He should have stayed there. It is a much better place for him.”

“And full of consolations, if you can afford them.”

She gave him a slow measuring look.

“There are plenty of rich women who can afford them,” she said.

It fell into place with a click. The Saint knew now why something about Pierre Eschards had seemed vaguely familiar. He was a type. You could find three or four of his duplicates any day of the season at a place like Eden Roc — sleek and handsome young men, wearing their hair rather esthetically long but with carefully cultivated and tanned physiques, lounging around like well-fed cats, with bold and calculating eyes.

“But I thought you couldn’t afford to stay here unless you had a job. What attracted him to you?”

“Everyone thought my grandfather was rich, and would leave me money. But that summer he died, and he had lost it all in the stock market. After that, Pierre was not so much in love. I did not believe it at first, but I know now that he was only waiting for an excuse for us to break up.”

“But you said he came back to see how it was with you.”

“I did not say he was not fond of me at all. He said I should not be wasting my life here — that presently Mr Oddington would die, and I would not be so young, but I would have nothing. I told him that Mr Oddington had thought of that in his will, even before we are going to be married… You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?”