Leslie Charteris - The Saint Around the World

“Tonight?” Eschards objected. “You will find nothing. Wait till tomorrow, and I will help you.”

“By tomorrow the murderer may have gone back himself and taken it away.” Simon addressed himself to the girl. “Is there a flashlight here?”

Nadine seemed to be straining to read his eyes.

“Yes,” she said. “In the top drawer on the left.”

Simon took it out and tested it.

“Just wish me luck,” he said, with a brief grin at them both, and went out quickly.

He walked out on the road over which Mr Oddington had led him so happily that afternoon, not dawdling but not rushing it. The night was full of a massed chirping of cicadas that could have practically drowned any other sound further from his ears than his own footsteps; but he was not worried until he had turned off the road on the side path, and picked his way rather gingerly down the steepening slope, and come out at last on the narrow trail that edged down the sheerest stretch of the final cliff. That was where he heard the tiny scuff of sound that he had steeled himself to wait for, exactly where he had expected it, and he twisted to one side as something grazed the side of his head and thudded with sickening heaviness into the blackness beyond.

Then a weight clamped on his shoulders and an arm around his neck, and he was borne irresistibly down, but he was set for it, and he dropped the flashlight and threw all his strength into turning so that at the last instant it was his assailant who hit the rocky path first and the Saint was on top and cushioned. The attacker had the strength of a young lion, but the Saint was powered by a cold fury such as few crimes had ever aroused in him, a pitiless hate that could only be slaked by doing personal violence to the wanton destroyer of one simple happy man. He got one forearm solidly across his opponent’s throat, clamping the neck to the ground, and drove his fist like a reciprocating piston into the upturned face…

“Ça suffit,” said the gendarme.

With a flashlight in his hand, he forced himself between the Saint and another potential corpse, and metal clicked on the wrists of the man underneath.

“I told you this was where someone would jump me, if my scheme worked out,” said the Saint exultantly. “I only had to be found at the bottom there with my skull caved in on a rock, and it would look as if I slipped and fell in the dark. Another fortunate accident. Shall we really hunt for that other spear-gun now, or wait till tomorrow?”

“I saw him following you, and then I saw him attack you.” said the gendarme judicially. “That requires a motive, and there is only one that is plausible.”

“You have the rest of it,” Simon said. “It was only the kind of impulse, or inspiration, that you spoke of this afternoon, but he saw how to kill Monsieur Oddington so that McGeorge would surely be convicted of it, and therefore would not be able to inherit anything. And in that way Nadine would become rich, and he was sure that after a while he would be able to win her again and marry her.”

The swollen eyes of Pierre Eschards glared up into the flashlight beam out of his bruised and bloody and no longer handsome face.

“It is not true,” he croaked. “It was my gun that killed Oddington, and then I was frightened and I let go of it and took the gun that McGeorge dropped and swam away with it so that he would be accused instead of me. But I had not meant to fire the gun. It was an accident!”

“I think it is you, instead of Monsieur McGeorge, who will now have to convince the juge d’instruction of that,” said the gendarme.

They buried Waldo Oddington in a shaded corner of the tiny flower-grown cemetery on the island.

“That is what he would have chosen,” Nadine said.

Later after they had walked most of the way back to the village in silence, George McGeorge said, in his stiff awkward way, “I suppose you’ll soon be wanting something to occupy yourself. I’ve been getting involved in one or two deals with European connections lately, and I’ll need a secretary here who speaks languages. Perhaps you’d like to think about the job.”

She looked at him uncertainly for a moment, and then put out her hand.

“Thank you,” she said, with a very small smile. “I think I would like it.”

Simon wondered if there might be some unforeseen changes in the future of Mr McGeorge.

The BOAC manager located Simon in the bar of the Cairo airport, and said, “I’m awfully sorry, Mr Templar, but I still haven’t been able to get you confirmed beyond Basra on this flight. So you’ll have to get off there, and hope they’ll be able to put you right back on the plane. If not, they can definitely put you on the Coronet flight to Karachi on Tuesday. So you’d only be stuck there for one night — and two days. You might find ’em interesting. Or of course you could just stay here. I can book you all the way through to Tokyo on this flight next week.”

“I’ll take a chance on Basra,” said the Saint amiably. “I’ve nothing against this charming place, but I’ve already been here a week.”

“I’ve been here for six years,” said the manager neutrally. “But I’m surprised the Saint couldn’t find any excitement in Egypt.”

Simon Templar grinned lazily.

“I leave this territory to Sax Rohmer,” he murmured. “I liked it better in Cinemascope, anyhow — in a nice air-conditioned theater. Your ruins are wonderful, but the Nile just doesn’t send me without Cleopatra. Maybe I’ll come back when you start running time machines.”

“Well, if I’m still here, I hope I can be a bit more help to you then.” The manager fumbled out a carefully folded sheet of paper and a pen. “I know it’s a frightful bore, but would you mind very much doing an autograph? I’ve got a young son who thinks you’re the greatest man who ever lived, and I’ll never hear the last of it if I let you get away without a souvenir.”

“You should have brought him up with more respectable heroes,” Simon said, writing his name.

“And that little stick-figure drawing with the halo — your Saint trademark… Would you?”

“Sure.” Simon drew it. “How do you feel about a drink?”

“Thanks, old chap, but I’ve still got a spot of work to do.” The manager recovered his pen and paper, and put out his hand. “The station officer will be looking out for you at Basra. Have a nice trip, Mr Templar, and come back and see us.”

“Just as soon as you can make me that date with Cleopatra.”

Simon sat down again as the manager hurried away. The friendly smile faded from his tanned face as inevitably as the memory of that whole encounter would presently fade. It had been pleasant indeed, but it was still only part of the routine of travel.

And exactly three seconds later, as a direct result of it, nothing could even remotely be called routine.

His hand was grabbed off the table and practically taken away from him by a little man whom he had never seen before in his life, who pumped it and clung to it with the almost hysterical fervor of a parent greeting a long-lost son or a politician looking for a vote.

The little man beamed from ear to ear, and his little brown eyes were bright with terror, and he said in a frantically pleading undertone, “My name’s Mortimer Usherdown. Please pretend you’re an old friend of mine. Please play along with me. Honestly, it’s one of those life-and-death things…”

“Well, Mortimer,” said the Saint automatically. “Long time no see.”

He patted Mr Usherdown on the shoulder, and gently reclaimed his other hand. The little man with the big name sank into the nearest chair as if his knees had melted. He had a round button-nosed face that made one think of a timid gnome, topped with thinning wisps of mouse-colored hair; he might have been five years on either side of fifty. His trembling could be felt rather than seen as if he were sitting on some kind of delicate vibrator.