Leslie Charteris - The Saint Around the World

Mr Usherdown’s eyes took on a slight glaze.

“Nothing worse than having my hands chopped off,” he chattered bravely. “Lots of soldiers have had that happen. And you can get wonderful artificial limbs now. I’ve seen pictures of them. I wouldn’t be surprised if I could even go on divining, with a bit of practice—”

“In a pig’s eye,” said Mrs Usherdown trenchantly. “You wouldn’t be doing me any favors, wanting me to live with a man with nothing but a pair of hooks. I couldn’t stand it.” She shuddered delicately. “I mean, knowing it was on account of me, of course, even though he was most heroic. I would rather be divorced and taken into the Sheik’s harem.”

“But I love you, Vi,” pleaded her spouse. “I couldn’t sacrifice you like that.”

“What is a woman’s life but sacrifice?” she asked. “And it isn’t as if I would have to put up with his old wives, because he has promised me he will give them away. And even if he is getting down to his last few millions we wouldn’t starve to death. When I think of some of the things I’ve had to put up with since I married you, Mortimer Usherdown, I cannot say it is the worst fate that could possibly happen to me, although naturally it is always a shock to a lady to be put asunder.”

Both Mr Usherdown and the Saint looked at her in oddly similar ways for a moment.

Then Simon touched the little man’s arm. “I want some sleep before the performance tomorrow, chum,” he said. “But before I turn in, you’d better dig out those hazel twigs and show me how to make like a real dowser.”

It was quite a large and colorful gallery that turned out in the still bearable warmth of the early morning to watch the Saint set forth on his quest, as if it had been the tee-off of a golf championship. There was a group of about three dozen VIPs, identifiable by their fine robes and arrogant bearing, whom Simon took for the squires of the smaller manors and their personal friends. There were, inevitably, Tâlib and Abdullah, with no less than four of the scimitar-bearing Negroes hovering close behind them to add muscle to their menace. At a respectful distance stood a sizeable crowd of somber and ragged citizens from the town, summoned by whatever served as a grapevine in that grapeless land. A full platoon of the militarily uniformed guards was deployed to keep the common herd at bay — and was also a sobering reminder of the unromantic improbability of the dashing kind of getaway that Mr Usherdown had dreamed of. From the palace entrance had spilled a heterogeneous collection of servants and minor functionaries, including the quartet of musicians, but the dancing girls were not with them, or in fact any other feminine members of the Emir’s household. However, glancing up at the façade, Simon was sure that he could detect a stirring of veils behind every barred window. He might have imagined it, but he even thought that in one of the gratings he saw a timid flutter of pale fingers, instantly withdrawn…

The only woman in plain sight was Violet Usherdown, and the descriptive phrase was not strictly apt, at that, for she had tied a square of brocade over her head in a sort of babushka effect, and fastened what looked like a man’s white handkerchief across the aperture in front in such a way that it masked her completely from the eyes down.

“I’ve got to obey the custom of the country if Yûsuf is going to respect me at all,” she had explained with dignity. “Why, I’ve found out that the women here would rather expose any part of themselves than let a man see their face. That means, if I didn’t wear a veil, all the men would be staring at me — and I know what men are like, Mortimer — as if I was stark naked! When I think how I used to let anyone here see me with a bare face, before I knew what it meant to them, I’m so embarrassed I could blush all over.”

The Sheik Yûsuf Loutfallah ibn Hishâm, in conformity with his royal prerogative, was the last to appear, but his arrival was a welcome signal that the period of suspenseful waiting was over. The Sheik confirmed this himself, barking a few words directly at the Saint which needed no interpreter to announce that they meant “Okay, let’s get going.”

“You want camel or jeep?” Tâlib amplified, with a lavish wave of his arm which embraced both forms of transportation, conveniently parked along the driveway.

Simon had already considered the possibility of stretching the reprieve to the limit by embarking on a safari to the remotest corner of Qabat, but after reckoning that that could hardly be more than forty or fifty miles, he had decided that the time he could gain would not be worth the discomfort involved.

“I shall begin here ” he said, pointing dramatically to the ground at his feet, “where nobody before me has thought of beginning.”

From the buzz of comment that came from those within earshot of Tâlib’s translation of that announcement, the Saint knew that he had at least scored a point of showmanship.

He raised the hazel branch which he carried and took hold of it very carefully in the way that Mr Usherdown had taught him. It was cut and trimmed in the shape of a “Y” with long arms, and he held it inverted, in a peculiar kind of half-backwards grip, with the ends of the arms of the “Y” in the upturned palms of his hands. The main stem of the “Y” pointed almost straight up, but seemed to be in rather precarious balance because of the way he was spreading and twisting his arms at the same time, against the spring of the wood.

“You have to stretch it till it feels almost alive and fighting you,” Mr Usherdown had told him. “And then you just concentrate your mind on oil, or whatever it is you’re looking for. It’s the concentration that does it.”

Simon could feel the almost-life of the twig, reacting against the odd strained way he held it, but his concentration fell far short of the prescribed optimum. He found, rather disconcertingly, that his mind was capable of simultaneous wandering in at least three directions. One part of it remained solidly burdened with the involvements of the basic situation; another maverick element insisted on leaning back and making snide observations of the percentage of ham in his own performance; while whatever was otherwise unoccupied tried to think about oil, found it an elusive subject after picturing black sluggish streams of it in which revolved ponderous cams and gears, which merged into the oscillating stomachs of harem dancers, so that he switched quickly to the smog-belching sexlessness of a California oil refinery, and the gray haze creeping out to the Pacific Ocean where the sybarites thought it was too cold to swim but it would be wonderful to leap into straight out of the blazing sand and sky of Qabat… and he found that his intensely aimless circling had brought him smack up against the gate in the fence around the Emir’s precious private lawn.

The impulse that seized him then was pure gratuitous devilment. Letting go the hazel twig for a moment, he indicated the barrier with an air of pained indignation.

There was an awe-stricken mutter among the spectators, and Tâlib seemed to swell up in preparation for an explosion, but the Emir cut in with half a dozen words that abruptly deflated him. The gate was opened, and Simon resumed the proper grip on his oddly shaped wand and walked in.

He went on trying to think about oil, because the effort helped him to maintain a convincing aspect of strenuous concentration, but a perverse slant of association insisted on linking it next with salad dressing, and then leaving only the lettuce, fresh picked and still jewelled with morning dew, like the drops that sparkled on the grass he walked on, relicts of the mechanical sprayer which until a few minutes ago had been scattering its priceless elixir over the sacrosanct turf…