Leslie Charteris - The Saint in Europe

The Hollandia is one of the best hotels in Amsterdam. The best hotels everywhere exercise a proper discretion over the guests whom they admit to their distinguished accommodations. The clerk at the Hollandia read the name that Simon Templar had filled in on the form in front of him, and his brow wrinkled as he looked up.

“Mr Templar,” he said, “are you by any chance the Saint?”

Simon sighed imperceptibly. He knew that look. As a man who had rather a weakness for the best hotels, it was sometimes a little tiresome to him.

“You guessed it,” he said.

The clerk smiled with the utmost courtesy.

“I do not know if we have a room that would suit you.”

“I’m not too hard to please.”

“Excuse me,” said the clerk.

He retired to an inner office. In a few minutes he came back, accompanied by an older and more authoritative personage.

“Good afternoon, Mr Templar,” said the personage cordially, “I am the manager. It is nice of you to come to us. But you do not have a reservation.”

“No,” said the Saint patiently. “But I wasn’t expecting any trouble. I’m still not expecting any. Not any at all. I’m on vacation.”

“Of course.”

“As a matter of fact, I only came this way to say hullo to an old friend of mine, one of your eminent citizens. You probably know him — Pieter Liefman. He makes some of the best beer in these parts. But he’s out of town, and won’t be back till tomorrow or the next day. I just want to wait over and see him.”

“You are a friend of Mr Liefman?”

“We are what you might call brothers under the suds.”

The manager studied him frankly for a while, and found it hard to see anything that threatened the peace and good name of the hotel. The Saint wore his clothes with the careless ease of a man accustomed to the best of everything, and with the confidence of one who did not have to think twice about paying for it. And at that moment the keen corsair’s face was in repose, and the imps of devilment stilled in the clear blue eyes — it was a trick of camouflage that sometimes served the Saint better than a disguise, and on those occasions almost made him seem to fit his incongruous nickname.

“I think we can find you a room,” said the manager.

So that minor problem was overcome, but not without starting a slight stir of curiosity that spread like an active virus through all levels of the human beings within the hotel, who were, after all, only human. Simon knew it when he came downstairs again, after a shower and a change, by the studiously veiled interest of the staff, the elaborately impersonal glances and politely inaudible whisperings of the other guests in the lobby. The years had given him an extrasensory perception of the subtle symptoms of recognition, but in the same time he had developed a protective tolerance for it. Let the speculations buzz: they could not embarrass him when he had nothing to hide.

For what he had told the manager was the simple truth. He had made the detour to Amsterdam in the course of an already aimless European vacation for no reason but the impulse to renew an old acquaintance and sample the products of the famous Liefman brouwerij at the source, and he had no thought of avenging any iniquities, robbing any robbers, or doing any of the other entertaining and lawless things which had made his name a nightmare to the police of four continents and given him the reputation which caused even tourists to stare furtively from behind their guidebooks.

That this peaceful project was to be short-lived was not his fault — he himself would have added, with a perfectly straight face, “as usual.”

He dined at the Lido, on a rijsttafel of heroic conception — the taste for, and the art of preparing, a true Indonesian curry being one of the few legacies left to the Netherlands from their former East Indian empire — and it was not until his appetite was on the verge of admitting defeat that he had time to become aware that he was the object of more than ordinary attention from a table across the room.

There were two people at it, a middle-aged couple whose accents, as he had unconsciously overheard them speaking to the waiter, identified them as English, and whose clothes had a dull neatness that was worn like a proud insigne of respectability. The man had a square shape, with thinning hair, rimless spectacles, and a face moulded in the lines of stolid responsibility. The woman was plump and motherly, and looked as if she would be equally at home in a kitchen or a church bazaar. They looked most obviously like a senior employee of a prosperous business house who had worked his way up from the bottom during a lifetime of loyal service, and his competent and comfortable wife. The only untypical thing about them was that instead of eating in the bored or companionable silence normally practised by such couples, they had been talking busily throughout the meal in low voices of which not a sound had reached the Saint’s sensitive ears — except, as has been said, when they spoke to the waiter. Simon Templar, whose favorite study was the mechanism of his fellow creatures, had begun to theorize about what gave them so much material for conversation, as approaching satiety released his interest from food. It was not, be concluded, an affair of connubial recriminations, which might typically have disrupted a typical taciturnity, and yet the conversation did not seem to be made up of pleasant trivialities, for the man’s air of permanent anxiety deepened as it went on, and once or twice he ran a hand over his sparse hair in a gesture almost of desperation.

It was about the same time that Simon realized, from the frequent glances in his direction, that he was somehow being made a major factor in the discussion.

He gazed out of the window at the twinkling lights reflected in the ornamental lakes of the Vondel Park and hoped that his impression was mistaken, or that they would soon find something else to argue about.

A voice at his elbow said, “Excuse me, Mr Templar — you are the Saint, aren’t you?”

He turned resignedly. It was the woman, of course.

“I suppose somebody told you at the Hollandia,” he said. “But they should have told you not to worry. I’ve promised not to murder anyone or steal their jewels while I’m here.”

“My name’s Upwater,” she said. “And I did want to talk to you about jewels. But not about your stealing them. I’ve heard that you’re really a good man, and you help people in trouble, and we’re in terrible trouble. I told my husband it seemed like Providence, your being here, just when this awful thing has happened. I said, ‘The Saint’s the only person who might be able to help us,’ and he said, ‘Why should you bother?’ and we had quite an argument, but I had to speak to you anyway. At least you’ll listen, won’t you? May I call him over?”

She had already dumped herself in a vacant chair, and the Saint did not see any way short of outright churlishness to dislodge her. In the mellow aftermath of a good meal, such violent measures were unthinkable. And he had nothing else in particular to do. That was so often what got him into things...

He grinned philosophically, and nodded.

“What’s the matter with these jewels?” he inquired.

She turned and beckoned to her husband, who started to get up from their table, looking more worried than ever.

“As a matter of fact,” she said, “it’s only one jewel. A diamond.”

“Oh.”

“We’ve lost it. And it doesn’t belong to us.”

‘That could be embarrassing,” Simon admitted. “But why should I know where to look for it?”