Leslie Charteris - The Saint Around the World

“And what kind of justice is the Saint going to bring to Ayer Pahit?” she asked.

“I don’t think Major Ascony expects me to do that,” Simon said lightly.

“Have you known him long?”

“No. In fact, only since yesterday.”

“He said in his wire that he’d just met you, and he thought we’d like you, but I didn’t know if he was kidding.”

“Would that be his idea of kidding?”

“It might be. He likes to do mysterious things. After all, even I recognized your name, so he must know all about you. I didn’t think he’d send you here without some reason.”

“I told him I was trying to keep out of mischief, but I put in some time up and down the peninsula a long while ago, when at least there were no guerrillas to worry about, and I was curious to see what it was like today.”

The houseboy came in and began to light the lamps, and they moved idly towards the front of the verandah.

“We’ll show you the rest of the place tomorrow,” she said. “Not that there’s much to see. But no guerrillas, I hope.”

Looking down the hill, he could still see the barracks below as blocks of blackness.

“Your coolies seem to be barricaded in already,” he remarked. “I suppose being outside the fence they’re more nervous.”

“No, they’re not there at all. Those quarters were built for the Chinese who used to work here. But most of them were scared away when the trouble started, and you couldn’t be sure that those who wanted to stay weren’t in league with the Reds. Most of the guerrillas are Chinese, you know, but most of the Malays hate the Commies. The only Chinese we have now are the cook and the boy and an amah , and Ted had had them for years. We’re using Malay laborers, from a village a mile away. They don’t get half as much work done, but we feel a lot safer with them.”

“I wouldn’t go on saying that too loud,” Farrast put in.

He had sat down on a sofa with his feet up on the coffee table and was flipping over the pages of an old Illustrated London News .

“Why?” Eve Lavis turned. “Is anything wrong?”

“It’s been getting worse for several days,” Farrast said. “Every day a few more of ’em haven’t been showing up, and the ones that do come have been more jittery. Even the excuses are half-hearted. When I got back to the woodcutting gang this afternoon after… after the funeral, more than half of ’em had gone home. Just dropped their tools and wandered off as soon as my back was turned.”

“Couldn’t the krani stop them?”

“They wouldn’t pay any attention to him. They only accept him as a foreman when they can see me standing behind him. He said the pawang had been talking to them.”

“That’s their sort of witch-doctor,” Mrs Lavis explained to Simon.

“I think the Commies have converted him, or they’ve bought him,” Farrast said. “Anyway, he’s been spouting a mixture of propaganda and mumbo-jumbo. His latest yarn is that the spirits have taken sides against the white colonizers, as witness the way Ted was struck down, and anyone who works for us is due to fall under the same curse.”

“They can’t possibly fall for that nonsense!”

“I’m afraid they do, my dear. These are jungle Malays, remember, not like the ones you were used to in Singapore. They’re as superstitious as any savages.”

“Then we’ll just have to sell them a better fairytale, Charles.”

“If I catch that pawang around tomorrow,” Farrast said darkly, “I’m going to take a stick to him, and let ’em see if his spells can do anything about that.”

The boy had been bringing in plates of soup and lighting candles on the dining table, and now he stood waiting patiently beside it. Mrs Lavis put down her empty glass and turned to the Saint again.

“Are you ready?” she said, and put her hand under his arm, so that he had to escort her to the table as formally as if they were going into a ceremonial banquet.

The soup was chicken. The main dish after it was steamed chicken, to accompany which the boy passed a platter on which was a great mound of rice smothered with successive sprinklings of fried onions, grated coconut, and chopped hard-boiled egg. The rice when dug into proved to be liberally mixed with peanuts and raisins.

“I hope you like it,” Mrs Lavis said. “We’re terribly limited in the supplies we can get here, and I can’t stand curry more than once a week, though we usually seem to have it at least twice. But we must stop boring you with all our problems.”

“That’s what I came for,” said the Saint cheerfully. “And I’ve been wanting to taste this dish again for more years than I want to count. I’ll make a deal with you. If you don’t want us fussing over you, will you stop apologizing to me?”

Her face lighted with a more spontaneous smile than he had seen on it yet.

“You’re absolutely right. I promise I won’t do it again.”

Thereafter the conversation was as unstrained as it could be amongst a threesome of whom one was a virtual stranger. Even Farrast relaxed from the dour mood which had started to overtake him sufficiently to ask some questions about London, which he had not seen for four years. But he drank another highball with his meal, and his face seemed to become a little ruddier and shinier, while in repose the sullen cast of his brow became more pronounced and a surly undertone always seemed ready to edge into his voice. Simon diagnosed him as a man of uncertain and violent temper who had probably made no little trouble for himself with it in his time, and was careful to avoid being drawn into any argument.

Eve Lavis became more of an enigma to him as the time went on. In every technical detail she was a perfect hostess. She was unfailingly ready with the anticipation, the interjection, or the explanation that would save the stranger from an instant’s embarrassment or perplexity or a feeling of being left out. Yet that very perfection of poise and graciousness might have made someone less relaxed than the Saint uncomfortably conscious of his own gaucheness. She was a good and appreciative listener, and yet her complete attentiveness could seem exacting, as if she required in return that what the speaker was saying should be informative or intelligent or witty enough to justify the attention she gave it. There was no suggestion that she would cease to be polite if you failed to measure up to her, but her politeness could be more crushing than anyone else’s open contempt. The proof that she could live up to her own standards was in the fact that Simon had to keep reminding himself that her husband had died that morning and been buried that afternoon.

The Saint had been trying to guess her age. She wore no make-up except lipstick, but not even the closest scrutiny would support a guess as high as thirty. The combination of such poise and self-control with such youth was almost frightening, and yet at the same time strangely exciting.

After dinner they adjourned to the front part of the breezeway for coffee, and Mrs Lavis was pouring it when a sound of footsteps and voices approaching made them all silent in sudden tension. In a moment she resumed pouring without a tremor, but her eyes had flicked once to the holster on the arm of her chair, and Simon had a feeling that thereafter she could have drawn the gun without looking.

Farrast stood up, with a hand on the revolver tucked in the waist fold of his sarong, and went to the front door, standing up to it with legs truculently apart and his face close to the screen to see out better. The Saint rose quietly and moved only a little to the side, so that if it were needed the gun in his hip pocket would be less obstructed.

One of the rifle-carrying guards came into the overflow of light at the foot of the steps. With him was a very old Malay, wearing nothing but a sarong drawn up under his protruding ribs. The old man hung back as they approached and squatted down, tucking the sarong between his skinny legs.