Leslie Charteris - The Saint in Europe

“Who’s always like what?” screamed Mrs Nussberg.

The charming damsel sipped her coffee.

“We’re off,” she remarked.

“I can pull faces just as well as you can,” yelled Mrs Nussberg, with justifiable pride and the little imps of Satan elected that instant to enter into the Saint.

He turned.

“Madam,” he said generously, “you can pull them better.”

Simon had never spoken boastfully of the encounter. He was ordinarily a very chivalrous bloke, kind to the fat and infirm, and willing to oblige a lady in any manner that was in his power, but there were moments when he ceased to be a truly responsible captain of his soul, and that was one of them.

The result was that three minutes later he found himself strolling back to the beach with the charming damsel on his arm and a delirious bar behind him. Few people had ever been known to score off the Saint in an exchange of back-chat, and Mrs Nussberg was certainly not one of them. It was that same night, in the Casino, that he saw Mrs Nussberg plastered with all her jewels, and the modest glow of those three minutes of light-headed revelry abruptly vanished.

Which explained his abstracted thoughtfulness on this subsequent morning.

For it was a principle of the Saint’s sparsely principled career that one never exchanged entirely carefree badinage with anyone so liberally adorned with diamonds as Mrs Porphyria Nussberg. On the contrary, one tended to be patient — almost long-suffering. Following the example of the sun-worshippers simmering in their grease, one stewed to conquer. Diamonds so large and plentiful could not be gazed upon at any time by any honest filibuster without sentiment, and when they chanced to be hung around a woman who pulled faces and shouted wrathfully across bars, it became almost a sacred duty to give that sentiment full rein. Unfortunately Simon saw the grimaces first and the jewelry afterwards, and he had spent some days regretting that chance order of events — the more earnestly when he discovered that Myra Campion had helped to spread the fame of his achievement, and that he was widely expected to repeat the performance every time he and Mrs Nussberg passed close enough to speak.

He hoped speechlessly that the call of Romance, which he had at last decided was the only possible approach, might be strong enough to obliterate the memory of that earlier argument. The Spanish Cow had no friends — he had had some difficulty in learning her official name, which no one had apparently troubled to inquire. From local gossip he learned that she had once had a gigolo, a noisome biped with tinted fingernails and a lisp, but even that specimen had found the penalties of his job too high, and had minced on to pastures less conspicuous. It seemed as if a cavalier with stamina to last the course might get near enough to those lavish ropes of gems to pay his expenses, and having reached that decision Simon made up his mind to go ahead with it before his nerve failed him.

He had his chance at the Casino that evening. Miss Campion was safely settled at the boule table with a pile of chips, and the Saint looked around and saw Mrs Nussberg emerging majestically from the baccarat room and proceeding towards a table in the lounge. Simon drew a deep breath, straightened his tie, and sauntered after her.

She stared at him belligerently.

“What do you want?”

“I think I owe you an apology,” said the Saint quietly.

“You’ve found that out, have you?” she barked.

A smirking waiter was dusting off the table. Simon sat down opposite her and ordered a fine à l’eau . Parties at adjoining tables were already glancing curiously and expectantly towards them, and the movement cost Simon a clammier effort than anything he had done for a long time.

“That morning a few days ago,” he explained contritely, “you misunderstood me. I wasn’t being fresh. But when you called me down, I sort of forgot myself.”

“I should think you did,” rasped Mrs Nussberg, without friendliness.

“I’m sorry.”

“So you ought to be.”

It dawned on the Saint that this vein of dialogue could be continued almost indefinitely, if Mrs Nussberg insisted on it. He looked around somewhat tensely for inspiration, wondering if after all the jewels could be worth the price, and by the mercy of his guardian angel the inspiration was provided.

It was provided in the person of Maurice Walmar, who at that moment came strolling superbly across the lounge and recognized an acquaintance in the far corner. With an elegant wave of his hand he started in that direction. His route took him past the table where Simon was prayerfully groping for the light. Walmar recognized the Spanish Cow, and flashed a mean sneer towards his acquaintance. As he squeezed past the table, he deliberately swerved against Mrs Nussberg’s arm as she raised her glass. The drink spilled heavily across her lap.

“ Pardon ,” said Walmar casually, and went on.

Simon leapt up.

Even if he had not been interested in Mrs Nussberg’s jewels, he would probably have done the same thing. He had witnessed every phase of the incident, and at any time he would have called that carrying a joke too far. Nor did he care much for Maurice Walmar, with his too beautifully modeled face and platinum watch bracelet. He caught the young humorist by the elbow and spun him around.

“I don’t think you saw what you did,” he remarked evenly.

For a second the other was startled to incredulity. Then he glanced down at the soaked ruin of Mrs Nussberg’s gown, and back from that to the Saint. His aristocratic lips curled in their most polished insolence.

“I have apologized,” he said carelessly. “It was an accident.”

“Then so is this,” said the Saint mildly, and his fist shot over and slammed crisply into the center of the sneering mouth.

Walmar rocked on his heels. He clutched at a table and went down in a spatter of glass and splashing fluids.

There was an instant’s deathly stillness, and then a gray-haired Englishman observed quietly, “He asked for it.”

Walmar crawled up shakily. His mouth was a mess, and there was blood on his silk shirt. A covey of waiters awoke from their momentary stupor and buzzed in among the tables, interposing themselves between a resumption of the strife. The players abandoned the boule table and swarmed out towards the prospect of more primitive sport, leaving the high priest to intone his forlorn “ Rien ne va plus! ” to a skeleton congregation. The two inevitable policemen, who appear as if at the rubbing of a kind of Aladdin’s lamp on the scene of any French fracas, stalked ponderously into the perspective, closely followed by an agitated manager. The tableau had all the makings of a second-act musical comedy curtain, but Simon overcame the temptation to explore all the avenues of extravagant burlesque which it opened up. He spoke calmly and to the point.

“He upset this lady’s drink — purposely.”

Walmar, struggling dramatically in the grasp of a waiter whom he could have shaken off with a wave of his hand, shouted, “Messieurs! It was an accident. He attacked me—”

The larger agent turned to the waiter.

“ Qu’est-ce qui est arrivé? ” he demanded.

“ Je n’ai rien vu ,” answered the man tactfully.

It was the gray-haired Englishman who came forward with quiet corroboration, and the affair turned into a general soothing-party for Maurice Walmar, whose wealth and family entitled him to eccentricities that would rapidly have landed an ordinary visitor in jail. The jaundiced eye with which private battles are viewed in France was well known to the Saint, and he was rather relieved to be spared the unheroic sequels in which offenders against the code of peace are usually involved.