Leslie Charteris - Saint Errant

“That ain’t all that may be touchin’ you soon, son.”

“Now you’ve broken the spell,” said the Saint reproachfully. “We are no longer in tune with the infinite. So — it seems as if we may have to leave you with your problem. Unless, of course, you propose to arrest me now and fight it out with my lawyers later.”

“Not right away, son. We don’t none of us want to be too hasty. But just don’t get too far away, or the old police dog might have to start bayin’ a trail.”

“We’ll be around,” said the Saint, and ushered Patricia out.

As the murmurous inanities of the public rooms lapped around them again, she glanced up and found his eyes as blue and debonair as if no cares had ever crossed his path. The smile he gave her was as light as gosling down.

“I hardly think,” he drawled, “that we have bothered Señor Esteban enough. Would’st you care to join me?”

“Try and lose me,” said the girl.

They found Esteban keeping a weather eye on the play of his guests, and followed his politely lifted brows to the patio.

“The moonlight, she is so beautiful,” Esteban said, with all the earnestness of a swing fan discussing Handel. “Did the sheriff let you go?”

“Like he let you — on probation,” Simon answered cheerfully. “He just told us to stick around.”

The man formed insolent question marks with the corners of his mouth.

“I did not think you would care to stay here after your friend kill herself.”

“I heard you the first time, Esteban. I’m sure if your customers have to die on the premises, you’d much rather have a Monte Carlo suicide than a murder. It wouldn’t scare half so many suckers away. But we happen to know that Mrs Verity wasn’t the sort to be worried about being blackjacked out of a few hundreds, or even thousands, in this kind of clip joint.”

There was no reaction in the dark lizard eyes.

“You hint at something, maybe?”

“I hint at nothing, maybe. I’m still asking questions. And one thing I’ve been wondering is, who did she come here with?”

Esteban repeated, without inflection, “Who she come here with?”

“She wouldn’t have come here alone,” said Patricia. “She didn’t come with her husband, because he’s still in Tokyo. So — who?”

“A little while ago, madame, you tell me she come here to meet you.”

“Tonight, perhaps,” Simon admitted patiently. “But this wasn’t her first visit. The Admiral of the watch seemed to know her quite well. So who did she usually come with?”

Esteban shrugged.

“I do not inquire about these things.”

The Saint’s voice became rather gentle.

“Comrade, you don’t seem to get the point. I’m a guy who might make a great deal of trouble for you. On the other hand, I might save you a lot.”

Esteban took note of the steady blue eyes, the deceptive smile that played across the Saint’s chiseled mouth. He forced a laugh.

“You frighten me terribly, Señor Templar.”

“But you don’t frighten me, Don Esteban. Because whatever Sheriff Haskins may think, I have the advantage of knowing that I had nothing to do with killing Mrs Verity. Which leaves me with a clear head to concentrate on finding out who did. So if you don’t co-operate, I can only draw one conclusion.”

There was silence, save for the rustle of palm fronds and the thud and hiss of the surf — and the muffled sounds of the Quarterdeck doing business as usual.

At last Esteban said craftily, “What will you do if I help you?”

“That depends on how much you know and how much you tell. I don’t mind admitting that Miss Holm and I are slightly allergic to people who kill our friends. Also, it wouldn’t bother me a bit if the sheriff closed your Parcheesi parlor. You ought to know how much you’ve really got to be scared of.”

Esteban seemed to give him the same poker-faced assessment that he would have performed on a new customer who wanted to cash a check. And with the same impenetrable decisiveness he said, “Mrs Verity come here with Mr Maurice Kerr. He is what you call a — ah, playboy. A leetle old, perhaps, but most charming. Perhaps you should ask him your questions. If you wait, I tell you where he lives.”

The address he came back with was only a half mile south, on a side street off Collins Avenue. There were still lights in the house when the Saint’s car pulled up outside a mere matter of minutes later, and a man who could only have been Kerr himself, in white tie and a smoking jacket, opened the door to the Saint’s casual knock. His somewhat florid face peered out under the porch light with strictly reasonable ineffusiveness.

He said, “What do you want? Who are you?” But his tone was still genial enough to be described as charming.

“A moment with you, Mr Maurice Kerr,” the Saint answered. “You may call me the Saint — temporarily. Before we’re through with you, you may think of some other names. And this is Miss Holm.”

Kerr’s eyebrows rose like levitating gray bushes.

“I don’t pretend to understand you.”

“May we come in? This is a matter of life and death.”

Kerr hesitated, frowned, then swung the door wide.

“Do. In here, in the library.”

The library was lighted for the benefit of those who liked to read comfortably at the least expense to their eyesight. The walls were lined with books, an artificial fire flickered in the fireplace, and chairs, lovingly fashioned to fit the human form, were spaced at tasty intervals.

“Sit down,” Kerr invited graciously. “What is this all about?”

Simon remained standing. He put his lighter to a cigarette and said, “Our spies tell us that you went to the Quarterdeck Club with Lida Verity tonight.”

He risked the exaggeration intentionally, and saw it pay off as Kerr paused to pick up the highball which he had obviously put down when they knocked.

Kerr sipped the drink, looked at the Saint. “Yes?”

“Why did you leave the club without her?”

“May I ask what that has to do with you?”

“Lida was a friend of mine,” Patricia said. “She asked us to help her.”

“Just before she died,” the Saint said.

Kerr’s soft manicured hand tightened around his glass. His dark eyes swung like pendulums between the Saint and his lady. He didn’t catch his breath — quite, and the Saint wondered why.

“But that’s ghastly!” Kerr’s voice expressed repugnance, shock, and semi-disbelief. “She — she lost too much?”

“Meaning?” the Saint asked.

“She killed herself, of course.”

“Lida,” Simon explained, “was shot through the heart in the grounds of the Quarterdeck Club.”

“You’re trying to frighten me,” Kerr said. “Lida couldn’t have been—”

“Who said so? Who told you she committed suicide?”

“Why, why — it was just a—” Kerr broke off. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The Saint did not actually groan out loud, but the impulse was there.

“I can’t understand why this is always happening to me,” he complained. “I thought I spoke reasonably good English. The idea should be easy to grasp. All I told you was that Lida Verity was dead. You immediately assumed that she’d committed suicide. Statistics show that suicide is a helluva long way from being the most common way to die. Therefore the probability is that something or someone specifically gave you that idea. Either you knew that she might have had good reason to commit suicide, or somebody else has already talked to you. Whichever it is, I want to know about it.”

Kerr licked his lips.

“I fail to see what right you have to come here and cross-examine me,” he said, but his voice was not quite as positive as the words.