Leslie Charteris - The Saint in Europe

The old man shook his head.

“No, Gretchen, I didn’t do it all by myself. There was dot great man who helped me. You know?” He looked at the Saint. “Und he is on this train himself!”

“Who’s that?” asked the Saint cheerfully.

“Mr Voyson. Mr Bruce Voyson. He has der big factory where I vork. When I safe a little money I put it in his company because they pay so big dividends, und so there is alvays much more money, und I invest dot also, und so it all helps us. All my money I have in his company.”

Simon hardly moved.

“Sometimes I see him in der factory, und he has alvays something to say to me,” said the old man almost reverently.

“Now today I see him on der platform at Cologne. You remember, Greta? I think he is very tired with all the vork he does to look after the factory, because he is vearing dark glasses und he is very stooped like he never was before und his hair is gone quite white. But I recognize him because I have seen him so often, und besides he has a scar on his hand dot I remember so veil und I see it when he takes off his glove. So I go up und speak to him und thank him, und at first he does not recognize me. Of course he has so many employees in der big factory, how can he remember every one of them all der time? But I tell him, ‘You are Mr Voyson und I vork in your factory fifteen years und I invest all my money in your company, und I vant to thank you that now I can retire and go home.’ So he shakes hands with me, und then he is so busy that he has to go away. But he is on der train, too.”

“You put all your money in Voyson’s company?” repeated the Saint, with a sudden weariness.

The old man nodded.

“Dot is how I mean, I didn’t do it all by myself. If I hadn’t done that I should’ve had to vork some more years.”

Simon Templar’s eyes fell to the newspaper on his knee. For it was on that day that the collapse of the Voyson Plastics Company was exposed by the sudden disappearance of the President, and ruined investors learned for the first time that the rock on which they had been lured to found their fortunes was nothing but a quicksand. Even the local sheet which the Saint had bought devoted an entire column to the first revelations of the crack-up.

Simon drew a slow breath as if he had received a physical blow. There was nothing very novel about the story; there never will be anything very novel about these things, except for the scale of the disaster, and certainly there was nothing very novel about it in the Saint’s experience. But his heart went oddly heavy. For a second he thought that he would rather anyone but himself should bring the tragedy — anyone who hadn’t seen what he had seen, who hadn’t been taken into the warmth and radiance of the enchanted castle that had been opened to him. But he knew that the old man would have to know, sooner or later. And the girl would have to know.

He held out his paper.

“Maybe you haven’t read any news lately,” he said quietly, and turned away to the window because he preferred not to see.

The lottery of travel had done a good job. It reached out into the world and threw lives and stories together, shuffled them in a brief contact, and then left them altered forever. An adventurer, a Rhine Maiden, an old man. Hope, romance, a crooked company promoter, a scrap of cheap newsprint, tragedy. Perhaps every route that carries human freight is the same, only one doesn’t often see the working of it. Human beings conquering and falling and rising again, each in his own trivial little play, in the inscrutable loneliness which everything human makes for itself wherever crowds mingle and never know each other’s names. Simon Templar had loved the lottery for its own sake, because it was a gamble where such infinitely exciting things could happen, but now he thought that it looked on its handiwork and sneered. He could have punched it on the nose. After a long time the old man was speaking to him.

“It isn’t true. It couldn’t be true. Der great big company like dot couldn’t break down!”

Simon looked into the dazed honest eyes.

“I’m afraid it must be true,” he said steadily.

“But I spoke to him only a little vhile ago. I thank him. Und he shook hands with me.” The old man’s voice was pleading, pleading tremulously for the light that wasn’t there. “No man could have acted a lie like dot... Vait! I go to him myself, und he’ll tell me it isn’t true.”

He stood up and dragged himself shakily to the door, holding the luggage rack to support himself.

Simon filled his lungs. He fell back into the reality of it with a jolt like a plunge into cold water, which left him braced and tingling. Mentally, he shook himself like a dog. He realized that the fragment of drama which had been flung before him had temporarily obscured everything else; that because the tragedy had struck two people who had given him a glimpse of a rare loveliness that he had forgotten for many years, he had taken their catastrophe for his own. But they were only two of many thousands. One never feels the emotion of these things, except academically, until it touches the links of one’s own existence. Life was life. It had happened before, and it would happen again. Of the many crooked financiers whom the Saint had known to their loss, there was scarcely one whose victims he had ever considered. But Bruce Voyson was actually on the train, and he must have been carrying some wealth with him, and the old man knew what he looked like.

The girl was rising to follow, but Simon put his hands on her shoulders and held her back.

“I’ll look after him,” he said. “Perhaps you’d better stay here.”

He swung himself through the door and went wafting down the corridor, long-limbed and alert. A man like Bruce Voyson would be fair game for any adventurer, and it was in things like that that the Saint was most at home. The fact that he could be steered straight to his target by a man who could really recognize the financier when he saw him, in spite of his disguise, was a miracle too good to miss. Action, swift and spontaneous and masterly, was more in the Saint’s line than a contemplation of the brutal ironies of Fate, and the prospect of it took his mind resiliently away from gloom.

He followed the old man along the train at a leisured distance. At each pause where the old man stopped to peer into a compartment the Saint stopped also and lounged against the side, patient as a stalking tiger. Sometime later he pushed into another carriage and found himself in the dining car, for it was an early train with provision for the breakfasts of late-rising travellers. The old man was standing over a table half-way down, and one glance was enough to show that he had found his quarry.

Simon sank unnoticed into the adjoining booth. In a panel mirror on the opposite side he could see the man who must have been Bruce Voyson — a thin dowdily dressed man with the almost white hair and tinted glasses which the old German had described. The glasses seemed to hide most of the sallow face, so that the line of the thin straight mouth was the only expressive feature to be seen. The old German was speaking.

“Mr Voyson, I’m asking you a question und I vant an answer. Is it true dot your company is smashed?”

Voyson hesitated for a moment, as if he was not quite sure whether he had heard the question correctly. And then, as he seemed to make up his mind, his gloved fingers twisted together on the table in front of him.

“Absolute nonsense,” he said shortly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The old man swallowed.

“Then vhy is it, Mr Voyson, dot der paper here says dot it is all smashed, und everyone vants to know where you are?”

“What paper is that?” demanded Voyson, but there was a harsh twitch in his voice.