Leslie Charteris - Saint Errant

The newcomer wasn’t really tall. He stood several inches below the Saint’s seventy-four, but he gave the impression of height by his manner: suave, completely poised.

“Good evening,” he said, his dark eyes flickering up and down Pat in appreciation. “Permit me to introduce myself. I am Esteban. Welcome to the Quarterdeck.”

“How do you do, Esteban?” said the Saint. “Quite well, I guess, from the looks of things.”

Esteban smiled, and made a comprehensive gesture at the crowd.

“Always there are many people at the Quarterdeck Club. We conduct honest games. But what will you play? Roulette, faro, blackjack?”

“None but the brave chemin de fer ,” murmured the Saint. “It’s nice of you to give us a choice of weapons. But as a matter of fact, we’re looking for a friend. A Mrs Verity.”

The dark eyes went flat.

“Ah,” Esteban said without expression. “Mrs Verity.”

Pat said, “You know her?”

“Who does not, señorita? Of course.”

“She’s here, isn’t she?”

“I am afraid you are to be disappointed. I think Mrs Verity has gone.”

“You think ?” Simon repeated pointedly. “Did you see her go?”

Esteban shrugged, his face still blank and brown.

“There are so many. It is hard to say.”

Simon’s stare could have been fashioned in bronze. “You wouldn’t be stalling, would you, Esteban?” he asked with gentle deadliness.

“She told us she’d wait for us,” Pat said. “When did she leave?”

Esteban smiled suddenly, the accommodating host.

“I try to find out for you. Mrs Verity like to play the big, big stake, take the big risk. Maybe she hit too many times wrong at the blackjack; perhaps she went for more money... Please, will you have a drink on the promenade deck while I make inquiries? Out here...”

He ushered them towards French doors that opened on one side of the gaming room, and bowed himself away. The patio was dappled with moonlight and the shadows of palm fronds, but it seemed to have no appeal for the other customers. Simon lighted a cigarette, while Patricia walked to a rail trimmed with unnecessary life belts, and gazed out at the vista of landscaped ground sloping gently to the moongladed sea.

She caught her breath at the scene, and then shivered slightly.

“It’s so beautiful it hurts,” she said. “And yet it seems every time we find a romantic spot like this, there’s something... I don’t know, but this place gives me the creeps.”

“Inside,” the Saint said, “the creeps are giving to Esteban. I don’t know if you’d call that a fair exchange.”

He looked up as a waiter arrived.

“Esteban’s compliments, sir. Would you and the lady care for anything?”

“Very handsome of Esteban,” the Saint said. “We’ll have double Manhattans made with a good bourbon, and—”

He broke off as a flat splat! broke the silence off in the direction of the sea, seeming to come from a clump of magnolia trees.

“What was that?” Patricia breathed.

“Probably a backfire, miss,” the waiter said. “Somebody having trouble with a car.”

“On account of driving it into the sea?” Simon said, and swung a leg over the rail.

“Could a motorboat do that?” Pat asked.

“No, darling. Come on.”

“About your drinks, sir—”

“Don’t put any cherries in them,” said the Saint.

He sped down a winding path to the deeply shadowed little grove of trees, white with blossoms that were like wax in the moonlight, and Patricia was only a stride behind him.

It took no searching at all to find the body. It lay sprawled under a tree, half in shadow, staring upward with glazed eyes that would never see again. It was — had been — Lida Verity. She held an automatic pistol in one hand, and under the swell of her left breast was a small dark hole and a spreading stain.

The Saint made a brief examination, and knew while he did it that he was only deferring to a conventional routine. There was no doubt now that Lida Verity had had reason to call him, and the line of his mouth was soured by the recollection of his earlier flippancy.

He knew that Patricia was only obeying the same inescapable conventions when she said, “Simon — is she—”

He nodded.

“Now she isn’t scared anymore.”

Lida Verity had lived — gaily, indifferently, passionately, thoughtfully, frantically. Her life had echoed with the tinkle of champagne glasses, Mendelssohn’s solemnity, the purr of sleek motors, the chatter of roulette frets, before the final sound of a gun in the night had changed the tense of the declarative sentence “I am.”

The Saint stood quietly summarizing the available data: the body, the wound, the gun, the time, the place. And as he stood, with Patricia wordless beside him, a whisper of footsteps announced the coming of Esteban.

Simon’s eyes hardened as they moved up the proprietor of that palace of chance in which only the guests took the chance.

“Welcome to the wake, comrade,” he said coldly.

Esteban looked over the situation. His expression was impassive, yet his dark eyes were sharp as he added the factors and came up with an answer.

“The waiter told me there was some trouble,” he said, exactly like one of his headwaiters dealing with some trivial complaint. “You found her — like this?”

“We did.”

“Is she—”

“You’ve lost your place in the script,” Simon said patiently. “We’ve already read that line.”

“I am sorry,” Esteban said bloodlessly. “She was a lovely lady.”

“Somebody didn’t share your opinion,” the Saint said.

The words hung in the quiet night, as if they were three-dimensional, to be touched, and turned, and examined. The pause lengthened while the Saint lighted a cigarette without taking his eyes off Esteban. His meaning seemed to materialize slowly during the silence.

“But—” Esteban gestured at the body, face upward, black hair glinting in the wash of moonlight. “The gun is in her hand. Surely you cannot mean—”

“She was murdered.”

“But that is impossible!” Esteban protested. “It is so obvious, Mr Templar. It is suicide.”

“Lida wouldn’t have killed herself!” Patricia said hotly. “She was so — so alive. She wouldn’t, I tell you!”

“Madame,” Esteban said sadly, “you do not know. She lose much money tonight at the gaming table. Perhaps more than she should.”

“How much?” Simon asked bluntly.

Esteban shrugged.

“We do not keep accounts. She buy many chips for the roulette table.”

“A few minutes ago you thought ‘perhaps’ she had been losing at blackjack. Now you seem to know different.”

Esteban’s shoulders rose another inch.

“You ask me to find out, I accommodate you. And now I go call the sheriff. I must ask you not to disturb anything.”

“I think,” the Saint said softly, “that before the evening is out we shall disturb many things, my friend.”

Esteban went back up the path, and the Saint took Patricia’s arm and led her off at a tangent to pass around the outside of the building. He had several more questions to ask, and he thought he knew where to start asking them.

In front of the club, the Admiral was admitting new customers on a froth of salt-water argot. He greeted the Saint and Pat with his largest smile.

“Ahoy, mates! Enjoying the trip?”

“That is hardly an accurate description of our emotions at the moment,” Simon said. “We’re after a little information about an incident that occurred a few moments ago.”

“I keep an accurate log, sir. Fire away.”

“Did you see Mrs Verity come out of the club?”