Leslie Charteris - Saint Errant

He went down to breakfast in the same exuberant spirits to which any promise of direct action always raised him. Simon Templar’s conception of a tactful approach was one which nobody else had ever been able to comprehend.

The girl asked him what he proposed to do that day.

“You will remember that I am an outlaw,” said the Saint. “I am going to make a raid.”

Through the kitchen window he caught sight of Mr Urselli, an earlier riser, sitting on the edge of the well at the back and filing his nails meditatively. He went out as soon as he had finished his coffee and nailed his fellow guest with every circumstance of affability.

“What cheer, Amadeo,” he said.

Mr Urselli jerked round sharply, identified him, and relaxed. “Morn’n’,” he said.

His manner was preoccupied, but it took more than that to deter Simon once he had reached a decision. The Saint traveled round and sank cheerfully onto a reach of parapet at his victim’s side. In a similar fashion one of Nero’s lions might have circumnavigated a plump martyr.

“Amadeo,” said the Saint, “will you tell me a secret? Why do you carry a gun?”

Urselli stopped filing abruptly. For a couple of seconds he did not move, and then his eyes slewed round, and they were narrowed to brown slits.

“Whaddaya mean?”

“I know you carry a gun,” said the Saint quietly.

Urselli’s gaze shifted first. He looked down at his hands.

“You gotta be able to take care of yourself in my business,” he explained, and if his voice was a shade louder than was necessary, many ears less delicately tuned than the Saint’s might not have noticed it. “Why, it was nothing to travel about the country with fifty grand worth of ice on me. Suppose I hadn’t packed a roscoe — hell, I’d of been heisted once a week!”

Simon nodded.

“But can you shoot with it?”

“I’m telling you I can shoot with it.”

“That tin can up on the slope, for instance,” Simon persisted innocently. “Do you think you could hit that?”

Urselli squinted upward.

“Sure.”

“I’d like to see you do it,” said the Saint airily.

The barb in his words was subtly smooth, but the other shot a quick glance sideways, his underlip jutting.

“Who says I’m a liar?” he questioned aggressively.

“Nobody I heard.” The Saint was as suave as velvet. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Intuccio standing in the door of the kitchen, watching them in silence, but he had no aversion to an audience. He put a hand in his pocket. “All the same, I’ve got a double saw that wonders whether you can.”

“And I’ve got a century that says I’m telling you I can.”

“Call it a bet.”

Urselli drew out his automatic fumblingly, as though he had started to regret his rashness, and then he caught the Saint’s blue gaze resting on him in gentle mockery, and snapped back the jacket with vicious resolution. He aimed carefully, and his first shot kicked up a spurt of dust six inches to the left of the target. His second was three inches to the right. Urselli cursed under his breath, and the third shot fell short. Intuccio drew nearer, and stood behind them with folded arms.

At that range it was reasonably good shooting, but the Saint smiled, and covered the weapon with a cool hand before Urselli could fire again.

“I mean like this,” he said.

He took the gun and fired without appearing to aim, but the tin leaped like a grasshopper; the third shot caught it in the air and spun it against the side of the hill. Urselli stared at him while the echoes rattled and died, and the can rolled tinkling down toward them till an outcrop of stone checked it.

“By the way,” Simon said, recalling the other’s peculiarly localized pronunciation of jernt and erled , “I thought you came from Chicago.”

“Well?”

“You wouldn’t have noticed it,” Simon said kindly, “but your accent betrays you. You spent some time in the East, didn’t you — on your jewelry business?” He was casually slipping the empty magazine out of the automatic while he talked, and then he suddenly let out an exclamation of dismay and peered anxiously down into the well. A faint splash came up from far below. “It slipped right through my fingers,” he said, looking at Urselli blankly.

The other sprang up, swiftly tearing the now useless weapon out of Simon’s hands.

“You did that on poipose!” he grated.

The Saint seemed to ponder the accusation.

“I might have,” he conceded. “You handle that rod just a little too well, and you wouldn’t want to be tempted to commit murder, would you? Now suppose you happened to run into the guy who told you that that white sapphire in your ring was a real diamond, and charged you five grand for it?”

Urselli’s eyes dilated incredulously towards the scintillation on his left hand.

“Why, the son of a—” He pulled himself together. “What’s the idea?” he snarled. “Are you tryin’ to put me on the spot?”

Simon shook his head.

“No,” he answered. “But maybe you left Chicago because you were already on it.”

Intuccio came up between them.

“You like shooting?” he said in his deep harsh voice.

“I’m always ready for a bit of fun,” said the Saint lightly. “Maybe Amadeo would like some hunting, too. D’you think we could find anything worth shooting around here?”

The innkeeper nodded hesitantly.

“Yesterday morning I saw the tracks of a mountain lion. If you like, we will go out and see what we can find.”

An hour later Intuccio halted his horse in an arroyo two miles away. He laid a rifle across Urselli’s saddlebow. “You will wait here,” he said. “We go round the other side of the mountain and drive him down.”

Urselli’s glance flickered at him.

“How long do I wait?”

The innkeeper shrugged.

“Perhaps three hours, perhaps four. It is a long way. But if we find him, he will come down here.” He turned calmly to the Saint. “Andiamo, signor!”

Simon was contented enough to follow him. Intuccio set a tiring trot, but it was easy for the Saint, who was as iron-hard as he had ever been. A coppery sun baked the air out of a sky of brilliant unbroken blue, one of those subtropical skies that are as flat and glazed as a painted cyclorama. Little whirls of dust floated up behind them as they rode, dancing a phantom veil dance to the irregular tom-tom of swinging hoof beats. Intuccio made no conversation, and Simon was left to ruminate over his own puzzle. To be out under the blazing daylight in that ridged and castled wilderness of mighty boulders piled against steep scarps of rock, with such an enigma on his mind, gave him the exact opposite of the feeling which he had had the night before. Then he had been a spectator; now he was an actor, and he was ready, as he always was, to enjoy his share in the play.

Three hours later, as they rode down the barren slopes again toward the place where they had left Urselli, he felt very much at peace. He had settled quite a number of things in his own mind during the ride, and about Amadeo Urselli’s own exact position in the cosmic scale he had removed all doubts even before they set out. He knew the rats of the big cities too well to be mistaken about Amadeo.

But the setting for the encounter was what made it so ineffably superb. To have met him in the city would have been ordinary enough, but to meet the city gunman out here in the great open spaces was a poem which only the Saint’s impish sense of humor could realize to the full.

Glancing down at the rifle carried ready across his pommel, the Saint even asked himself the wild question whether Amadeo Urselli might conceivably be mistaken in a moment of well-staged excitement for a mountain lion. Almost regretfully he dismissed the idea, but when a turn of the trail brought him a sight of Urselli sitting disconsolately on a rock slapping at the indefatigable flies, he felt genuinely distressed to think that such an ideal opportunity had to be passed by. They rode down into the gulch, and Intuccio leaned over in the saddle with his forearm on his thigh.