Leslie Charteris - Saint Errant

“We don’t want no trouble,” Jimmy said. “We want Big Bill. You got him, but we got to take him back with us.”

“And who is Big Bill, and why do you want him, and why do you think I have him?”

“We know you got him,” Jimmy said. “This here’s Trailer Mac.”

The Saint nodded at Mac.

“Hey, Jimmy,” Mac broke in, “this guy’s a phony.”

“Charmed, I’m sure.” Jimmy blinked.

“Owls,” Mac explained, “can’t swim.”

“What the damblasted hell has owls to do with it?” Jimmy demanded.

“He said pour owls on the something waters. So that,” Mac said in triumph, “proves it.”

This, the Saint thought, wanders. He restrained Jimmy from assaulting Mac, and returned to the subject.

“Why should the revelation of this gent’s identity be regarded as even an intimation that I have — what was the name? — Big Bill?”

“Holbrook,” Jimmy said. “Why, this is Trailer Mac. Ain’t you never heard of him? He follered Loopie Louie for eighteen years and finally caught ’im in the middle of Lake Erie.”

“I never heard of him,” Simon said, and smiled at Mac’s hurt look. “But then there are lots of people I’ve never heard of.”

This, he thought as he said it, was hardly true. He had filed away in the indexes of his amazing memory the dossiers of almost every crook in history. He was certain that he’d have heard of such a chase if it had ever occurred.

“Anyway,” Jimmy went on, “we didn’t go more’n a couple miles till Mac he says Big Bill ain’t here, ’n he ain’t been here, neither. Well, he come this far, ’n he didn’t go no farther. So you got him. He’s inside.”

“The cumulative logic in that series of statements is devastating,” the Saint said. “But logicians veer. History will bear me out. Aristotle was a shining example. Likewise all the boys who gave verisimilitude to idiocy by substituting syllogisms for thought processes, who evaded reality by using unsemantic verbalisms for fact-facing and, God save the mark, fact-finding.”

Mac appealed to the superior intellect in his crowd.

“Whut’n hell’s he talkin’ about, Jimmy?”

“I mean,” the Saint said, “Big Bill ain’t here. Come in and case the joint.”

“Whyn’t cha say so?” Mac snarled, and pushed inside.

They searched nook and cranny, and Mac fingered a knothole hopefully once. They gave the bunk beds a passing glance, and were incurious about the seeming pile of pine cones in the corner. Mac boosted Jimmy up on the big central beam to peer into ceiling shadows, and they scanned the fireplace chimney.

Then they stood and looked at the Saint with resentment.

“Sump’n’s fishy,” Jimmy pronounced. “He’s got to be here. This here” — he pointed — “is Trailer Mac.”

“Maybe we better go get the boss, huh, Jimmy?”

“Yeah,” Jimmy agreed. “He’ll find Big Bill.”

“Who,” the Saint inquired, “is the boss?”

“You’ll see,” Jimmy promised. “He won’t be scared of you. He’s just down the hill in the town. Stopped off to play a game of billiards. So we’ll be seein’ ya, bub.”

They went off into the night, and the Saint stood quite still for a moment in a little cloud of perplexity.

Never before had he been faced with a situation that was so full of holes.

He added up known data: a man who had a fabulous jewel, who claimed to be the projected dream of his alter ego; a girl of incredible beauty said to be another creation of that dream; and two characters who were after two men and/or the jewel and/or — perhaps — the girl.

Mac and Jimmy had searched the cabin. They professed to have overlooked an object the size of Big Bill Holbrook. Their proof that they had overlooked him: “This here’s Trailer Mac.” They assumed he would remain here while they walked four miles to the settlement and back with their boss who was said to have stopped off to shoot a game of billiards.

But would a man on the trail of that fire opal stop off to play billiards? Would two pseudo-tough guys go away and leave their quarry unguarded?

No, the Saint decided. These were the observable facts, but they were unimportant. They masked a larger, more sinister pattern. Great forces must be underlying the surface trivia. Undeniably, the jewel was a thing to drive men to madness. It could motivate historic bloodshed. The girl, too, possessing the carven features of the gem, could drive men to — anything. But for the life of him, the Saint could not get beneath the surface pattern to what must be the real issues. He could only cling to the conviction that they had to exist, and that they must be deadly.

He turned back to the bunk beds.

“Come on out, kids,” he said. “The big bad wolves have temporarily woofed away.”

Fear lingered in the dark depths of Dawn Winter’s eyes, making her even more hauntingly beautiful. The Saint found strange words forming on his lips, as if some other being possessed them.

He seemed to be saying, “Dawn... I’ve seen the likeness of every beauty in history or imagination. Every one of them would be a drab shadow beside you. You are so beautiful that the world would bow down and worship you — if the world knew of your existence. Yet it’s impossible that the world doesn’t know. If one single person looked at you, the word would go out. Cameramen would beat a path to your door, artists would dust off their palettes, agents would clamor with contracts. But somehow this hasn’t happened. Why? Where, to be trite, have you been all my life?”

He couldn’t define the expression which now entered her eyes. It might have been bewilderment, or worry, or fear, or an admixture.

“I... I...” She put a hand as graceful as a calla lily against her forehead. “I... don’t know.”

“Oh, don’t let’s carry this too far.” It sounded more like himself again. “Where were you born, where did you go to school, who are your parents?”

She worried at him with wide, dark eyes.

“That’s just the trouble. I... don’t remember any childhood. I remember only my great-great-grandmother. I never saw her, of course, but she’s the only family I know about.”

Big Bill’s facial contortions finally caught the Saint’s eye. They were something to watch. His mouth worked like a corkscrew, his eyebrows did a can-can.

“I gather,” said the Saint mildly, “that you are giving me the hush-hush. I’m sorry, comrade, but I’m curious. Suppose you put in your two cents.”

“I told you once,” Big Bill said, “I told you the truth.”

“Pish,” Simon said. “Also, tush.”

“It’s true,” Big Bill insisted. “I wouldn’t lie to the Saint.”

The girl echoed this in a voice of awe.

“The Saint? The Robin Hood of Modern Crime, the twentieth century’s brightest buccaneer, the” — she blushed — “the devil with dames.”

It occurred to Simon, with a shock of remembrance, that her phrases were exactly those of Big Bill’s when he learned his host’s identity. And even they had been far from new. The Saint thought of this for a moment, and rejected what it suggested. He shook his head.

“Let’s consider that fire opal then, children. It’s slightly fabulous, you know. Now, I don’t think anybody knows more than I do about famous jools. Besides such well-known items as the Cullinan and the Hope diamonds, I am familiar with the history of almost every noteworthy bauble that was ever dug up. There’s the Waters diamond, for example. No more than a half dozen persons know of its existence, its perfect golden flawless color. And the Chiang emerald, that great and beautiful stone that has been seen by only three living people, myself included. But this cameo opal is the damn warp of history. It couldn’t be hidden for three generations without word of it getting out. In the course of time, I couldn’t have helped hearing about it. But I didn’t... So it doesn’t exist. But it does. I know it exists; I’ve held it in my hand—”