Leslie Charteris - The Saint Around the World

The Saint knew that the error of underestimation which he had committed was of suicidal dimensions. Now he reviewed the situation in a single flash, adding up the Emir and Tâlib and Abdullah, the four musicians, the ebony giant with the scimitar and an unknown number of other palace guards of his ilk, and an equally indeterminate but certainly larger number of the less picturesque but better armed and probably more efficient militia outside — and came up with a very cold-blooded assessment. He had blithely accepted some extravagant odds in his time, but he hadn’t lived as long as that by kidding himself that he was Superman.

But he did attain a modest pinnacle of heroic effrontery as he turned and tapped Yûsuf on the shoulder with a genial nonchalance that made Mr Usherdown’s trembling jaw sag.

“Just a minute, Joe,” he said. “You may be an old goat, but that doesn’t mean you can jump all over the rules if you want everyone else to be stuck with ’em.”

The Sheik stared at him with incomprehension mixed with indignation and incredulity, and then turned to Tâlib for enlightenment.

“Tell him,” said the Saint, “that Mortimer isn’t a thief yet, because at his own expense he’s brought me here to finish the job. Joe will be satisfied if I make him rich, won’t he? And until I’ve had a chance to show what I can do, nobody can prove that Mortimer hasn’t delivered.”

Tâlib repeated the argument haltingly, but must have succeeded in conveying the general trend of it, for Yûsuf listened with a deepening scowl that was not without sharp calculation, and promptly came back with a question.

“Sheik ask, when you do this?”

“Hell, I only just got here,” said the Saint. “Give me a chance. I’ll go to work tomorrow morning, if you like.”

Yûsuf stared at him for what seemed like an interminable time, from under lowered beetling brows. Simon could almost hear the wheels going round behind the beady and slightly bloodshot eyes, like the cogs of a laborious sort of cash register. He was betting that the Sheik’s tender passion was not quite so intoxicating that it would have obliterated the much longer established urgings of avarice. Besides, Yûsuf should figure that he might have his cupcake and his oil too, if he delayed just a little longer. And delay was what the Saint needed first and most desperately.

The Emir growled another question, through Tâlib: “You take money?”

“I love it,” said the Saint.

Yûsuf spoke to the huge Negro, and pointed to the packet of currency in front of Mr Usherdown. The guard stepped forward, flourished his scimitar, and dextrously picked up the bundle with the flat of the blade, like a flapjack, and held it out towards Simon.

“Oh, no,” wailed Mr Usherdown. “Then you’ll be in the same mess as me. I can’t let you—”

“But I’m one of the best dowsers in the business,” said the Saint. “Maybe the best. You gave me the testimonial yourself.”

He took the parcel of money from the sword.

“Now if you not do nothing, you a big thief too,” Tâlib said unnecessarily. “Can have hands cut off like him. Okey-dokey?”

Simon had slipped the string off the wad of greenbacks and was riffling through them for a rough estimate of their total.

“This is all right for a retainer,” he said coolly. “But you can tell Joe that if I strike it rich for him he’s going to owe us a lot more than this.”

“You find plenty oil,” Tâlib brought back the answer, “Sheik say, he be very generous. You betcha. But you get on the ball damn quick, skiddoo.”

“Fine,” said the Saint. He put the money in his pocket, lighted a cigarette, and indicated the neglected trio of diaphanously veiled beauties with a gesture of magnificent insouciance. “And now can we go on with the floor show? And may I pick a girl too?”

“I still wish you’d kept out of it,” Mr Usherdown repeated miserably, for perhaps the eleventh time. “You shouldn’t have let them trick you into touching that money.”

“I wasn’t tricked,” said the Saint scornfully. “I just decided that if I was going in at all, I might as well go in with a splash. Didn’t you ever play poker? If you were bluffing, in a no-limit game, would you expect to impress anybody with a two-bit raise?”

This was very much later, when they were back in the guest suite, on which the guards had been doubled — which Simon had been tempted to call a two-edged compliment.

“I’ll never forgive myself,” moaned the little man.

“Phooey,” snarled the Saint. “You invited me in, didn’t you?”

“I just happened to hear your name, and I realized who you were. I never thought I’d have had the nerve to pretend to know you like that, right in front of Tâlib and Abdullah. But I was frantic. I thought you might be able to do something.”

“Well, I’m trying.”

“I mean, something sensational, like I’ve heard about you — like fighting our way out of here.”

“Too much of this is like a B picture already, Mortimer. Don’t make it any worse. What did you think I was going to use for armaments?”

“I thought someone like you… you know… would have a gun.”

“I did. It’s in the suitcase I left in bond in Basra. Did you think I’d try to sneak it into a place like this, when I’m supposed to be a peaceful water-diviner? You should know how hysterical it makes little big shoots to think of anybody but their own trigger men having nasty toys that go bang. Do you think my overnight bag wasn’t searched before they brought it up here, and Tâlib didn’t paw me over himself while he was hustling us through the Customs?”

“Perhaps we should have jumped on them at dinner,” Mr Usherdown said weakly. “We didn’t talk it over enough beforehand. I could have distracted their attention while you got the sword away from that eunuch, if that’s what he was, and then you’d have grabbed Yûsuf and taken him for a hostage, and we might’ve fought our way out…”

Simon gazed at him in genuinely sympathetic amazement.

“My God, my public,” he said dazedly. “You must have really seen it like that, with me whacking our way through the infidels like Errol Flynn in his prime… Forgive me, Mortimer, but there was a moment when I dallied with an idea of that kind myself, only I sobered up in the nick of time. I suppose I might have wrought some havoc among the Saracens — with your help, of course — but I’d still have had to get all of us all the way out of this castle. Including Violet. And after that, where would we go? Take a running dive into the Persian Gulf and start swimming through the sharks? Leap onto three conveniently parked camels and gallop off into the dunes? Or just hitch a ride to the airport and talk our way past the local Gestapo on to the next plane out?… Assume that we’ve busted loose, and we’re running: how do you see us getting out of Qabat ?”

“I deserve anything that happens to me,” Mr Usherdown said wretchedly. “I think you should forget about us and try to escape on your own. I know we’d be a terrible burden, but perhaps you could make it by yourself.”

The Saint stood by a window and examined the ornamental iron grille across it with professional appraisal.

“Crashing out of this gilded cage is liable to be more than an overnight project, even for me,” he said.

Violet Usherdown helped herself to another chocolate cream from the box beside her.

“That’s the first sensible thing I’ve heard from you for a long time, Mortimer. Mr Templar should not feel obligated,” she said with remarkable cheerfulness. “Anyway, you know now that you aren’t in half as much trouble as you were afraid of.”