Leslie Charteris - The Saint Goes West

“That was nice shootin’, Simon,” he said. It was as if he had shaken hands. The Saint grinned and said, “We’re starving.”

“We were just goin’ to have a bite.”

When they were sitting on a rock with fragrant bowls of stew balanced on their knees, Reefe said, “I thought I heard a shot once, but they’ve been blastin’ too, so I wasn’t sure.”

“They’ve been blasting, all right,” said the Saint. “We saw one charge go off. But they haven’t touched the stream yet, and until they do that we’ll have to be careful how we interfere. Max Valmon can blast holes all over his property if he wants to, and we haven’t any right to stop him until he does us some harm. In fact, if he’s got the sheriff in his pocket it’d only make things worse for us. We might give them an excuse to lock us up legally and keep us out of the way until the damage was all done. Valmon might even be playing for that.”

“All the same,” said Reefe, “that feller I was talkin’ about last night — the Saint — he wouldn’t ’ve sat around doin’ nothing.”

“Too bad we can’t send for him,” said the Saint. “He might be handy to have around.”

He went on eating without saying any more about it, and Reefe seemed to draw back into himself in a disappointed way, as if Simon had let him down. Presently he began to talk to Jean in a rather strained manner, making stiff and trivial conversation. The girl answered him more easily, but every now and again her eyes turned back to the Saint in silent puzzlement.

Simon was too preoccupied with his own speculations to do much about it. They finished eating, and one of the cowboys brought mugs over and poured them coffee. The conversation of Reefe and Jean dried up again, and again they seemed to be waiting for the Saint’s lead. Simon lighted a cigarette and stared frowning at the tinted hills.

At last Reefe got to his feet.

“You want to try your hand at helpin’ us rope some of these calves?” he asked stolidly.

Simon shook his head. He finished his coffee and stood up.

“I think I’ll ride back to the house. Mr Morland should be back with my car before long, and I want to drive into town.”

Hank Reefe considered him lengthily. Then he spoke with deliberation, as if he had finally made up his mind and was satisfied to go through with his decision.

“You ain’t figurin’ on doin’ anything about Valmon at all?”

Simon looked him in the eyes, with the faintest glimmer of a smile.

“Hell no,” he said. “It wouldn’t be legal. In fact, I might even think of taking some dynamite over and helping him a bit... Of course, I couldn’t do that now, though — not in broad daylight. I think that Max has a proud and sensitive nature, and he wouldn’t be happy if he knew about it. But if you and I rode over very quietly after dinner, we might be able to do a couple of little things for him... Of course, that’d just be a little secret between us.”

Reefe’s face relaxed so slowly that there was not a movement of a muscle which could have been identified, and yet the change was so profound that he no longer looked like the same man.

“Why, sure,” he agreed. “It’s nice ridin’ around here after the moon’s up.”

“I’ll go back with you and show you the way,” said the girl.

Simon knew how Reefe looked at her without watching. He said, “You don’t really need to. It won’t be any trick to find.”

“It’s time I was getting back, anyhow. I want to know how Daddy made out.”

The Saint shrugged.

On the way back he said, “Hank is good people.”

She said, “Yes.”

It was all there. He didn’t have to say, “You know he’s in love with you, of course. But how do you feel?” And she didn’t have to answer, “I don’t know now, since you came here. So what about you?” And that saved him from having to say, “We should be afraid of this. It’s got to be something we’re both imagining. It musn’t be anything else.” But those words were all there, intuitively, unspoken, so that it was as though he knew she was reading it all out of his mind just as her mind couldn’t deceive his, and he knew it and couldn’t stop it, and didn’t want to, only it was not so cold that way as it would have been in words. And so they talked idly about everything else, and this was all they said all the time.

It was soon after two when they rode down to the ranch house. There was an unfamiliar car parked outside, a green coupe, and an unfamiliar man rose from a chair on the porch as they stepped up, and bowed with insinuating politeness.

“Good afternoon,” he said.

He wore a greenish speckled tweed suit, conventionally cut on city lines and complete right down to the waistcoat with a gold watch-chain strung across the stomach, and he carried a green felt hat with a feather in it, so that he looked rather as if he had been outfitted to correspond with a Bronx tailor’s specifications for a country gentleman’s costume. He was of medium height and soft in the middle. His face was round and pink and a little shiny, and his smooth brow extended back over the top of his head, like a polished atoll surrounded by a surf of sandy grey hair. His eyes were pale gunmetal, and looked like small marbles behind the thick lenses of his gold-rimmed spectacles. They anatomised the girl rather completely, and turned back to Simon.

“Are you Mr Don Morland?”

“Mr Morland isn’t here,” said the Saint coolly. “But I’m his manager. Can I help you?” The other pursed his small red lips.

“Of course. Of course. Mr Morland would be an older man.” He spoke English perfectly, yet he could have been neither American nor English. His accent was faultless, but his voice was pitched in the wrong part of his mouth. “So you’re his manager. Yes. You mean you are in absolute charge of all his affairs?”

“Just that,” said the Saint pleasantly.

It is only a matter of history that he never even paused to wonder whether Jean Morland would fail to back him up, but without looking at her he could sense that she hadn’t betrayed him by the flick of an eyelid.

“I see.” The tone was much too ingratiating to be sceptical, but the cautious advance was there just the same. “So that any business proposition he received would have to be referred to you?”

There were ethereal emphases and question marks in just the right places.

“Exactly.”

“Even quite a private matter?... Such as... if I were interested in buying this ranch?”

“Even that,” said the Saint cheerfully. “But as a matter of fact, the ranch isn’t on the market.”

“Of course not. No. But I could be permitted to wonder whether a sufficiently attractive price — let us say, perhaps, double Mr Valmon’s offer...”

Simon looked at him unhelpfully.

The visitor sat on the arm of a chair and dabbed his pink forehead with a large silk handkerchief.

“Perhaps I should make a fuller explanation. I’ve always wanted to own a place of this kind. It so happens that I’m a temporary guest of Mr Valmon’s — he used to have business connections with a cousin of mine, who sent me to him with an introduction. I had never met him before. Naturally, I heard about what happened last night. I hate to say it, but I feel that Mr Valmon’s behaviour must have been very bad. And yet of course I have no control over him. But I do feel that his attitude absolves me from some of my ordinary obligations as a guest.”

“So that you’re free to go behind his back and bid for a place that he’s interested in?” Simon suggested politely.

“Indeed, no. I don’t see it that way. I feel rather that I’m trying to make some amends, by proxy, for his bad manners.”

“Did he tell you what he was threatening to do — about the stream?”