Leslie Charteris - The Saint Goes West

“He did say something about trying to cut it off.”

“Which would make this place practically worthless.”

“That would be a great pity. But it might not happen.”

“You must think quite a lot of your drag with Valmon.”

The pink-faced man fluttered a plump deprecating hand. His smile was so unshakably sweet that a baby would have been ashamed not to give him its favourite rattle.

“Perhaps I should have a slight advantage — through my cousin’s business connection. Perhaps I’m just too proud of myself as a psychologist. But I’m quite willing to take my risk. Even if I lost, I should be satisfied to think that you hadn’t suffered.”

“Now I come to think of it,” said the Saint, “my mother did tell me about Santa Claus.”

The pale grey eyes gleamed limpidly.

“Will you give Mr Morland my message?”

The Saint lighted a cigarette, and in doing it confirmed an impression that he had caught out of the corner of his eye. His Buick had just then turned the corner in from the desert, but he did not want to help the other to notice it.

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll talk it over with him, and he’ll do what I advise.”

“Mr Morland must have great confidence in you.”

The probing dubiety was still there, but the man’s saccharine accents made the words sound like a compliment.

“This is Mr Morland’s daughter,” said the Saint easily. “She’ll tell you.”

Without looking at him, the girl said, “My father always does what Mr Templar tells him.”

There was a stillness in which the whole earth took part. It seemed as if no living thing could be moving or breathing anywhere. And yet all of that hush was mental, without any change of expression anywhere to which it could be attached. Jean Morland must even have been unaware that it had taken place at all. The visitor went on looking at Simon with his deferential smile and appealing spaniel eyes, his fingers pulling on his soft lower lip.

He said, almost apologetically, “Then... surely... Mr Templar could tell me now — whether I have any hope—”

“Give me a day or two to think it over,” Simon said.

“But this wild threat of Mr Valmon’s. He said he had given you some sort of ultimatum. It’s absurd, of course, but he’s the type of man who might be capable of carrying it out. Then this property would be spoiled. Then, of course, I shouldn’t have had even a sporting chance to make good with it. So then it wouldn’t be fair to ask me to repeat my offer. I don’t want to rush you, but you must see why my proposition can only be good for tonight.”

Simon Templar gazed at him levelly. The stillness had left him bubbling away before a spring of deep inward laughter that didn’t stir a muscle of his chest. The same laughter seeped into the depths of his eyes, like the shift of something stirring far down in a blue mountain lake, without changing a facet of the surface.

He felt quite unreasonably happy. But to the Saint there was always a reckless delight like no other mirth in the world when the wolves split the first stitch of the first tiny seam of their well-tailored sheepskins, and he knew that the cards were coming on to the table and the fight was going to be on. All the sparring and exploring and the rubber stilettos were great fun in their time, but they were only shadows until those moments of reality touched them like magic wands putting life into a picture...

“I’ll see you tonight, then,” he said.

“With something definite?”

“With something definite.”

The other’s hopeful eyes searched his face, as though they were seeking an innuendo that could have been confirmed there, and yet that hadn’t been hinted by the minutest inflection of a single syllable.

“I hope we shall both be pleased about it,” said the visitor at last, wistfully, and stood up. He bowed obsequiously to the girl. “It’s been a pleasure, Miss Morland.” He put out his hand towards her. There was only the faintest hesitation before she responded, and then his head dipped again infinitesimally over her fingers. He turned at once. “Until tonight, then, Mr Templar.”

His soft white hand hovered persuasively in front of the Saint.

Simon enclosed it in brown steel fingers, in a grip like the caress of a hydraulic press set to crack eggshells. He smiled with incomparable hospitality.

“I’ll be looking forward to it,” he murmured cordially, “Dr Julius.”

The other’s eyes misted at him through thick distorting lenses for an infinite instant, and the pink tonsure bobbed at him with impeccable punctilio before it turned away.

Simon Templar put his cigarette back in his mouth and drew long and deep as he eased his hip carefully on to the porch rail, before he turned to meet the inevitable unwavering challenge of Jean Morland’s calm clear eyes.

The green coupe had started away before she spoke. And then her voice had the same inquiring detachment as her gaze.

“He never mentioned his name,” she said. “But you knew it.”

The Saint nodded.

“How did he know mine?” he asked.

“I told him.”

Quite clearly she had no idea of the meaning that he might have placed on the word “know.” She went on, as though she was methodically determined to work through to something: “Why did you tell him you could speak for Daddy?”

“Why did you back me up?”

“I thought you must have something in mind, and I didn’t want to spoil it.”

“You must have great confidence in me,” he said, in smiling mimicry of Dr Julius’s saponaceous lisp.

“But now it isn’t fair to keep me guessing.”

The Saint took one of her hands.

“Did I forget to tell you were perfect, darling? You were. No old campaigner could have done better without a rehearsal. You only made one mistake, and that simply wasn’t your fault.”

“What was it?”

“It doesn’t really matter. Ludwig would probably have found out anyway, in next to no time, and it was fun to see him do his frozen-fish take... But as for the rest of it, I just didn’t have any deep-laid motives. I became your father’s manager to find out what went on. If it was a legitimate visitor I could always back down. If it was the Ungodly, I might be able to draw the fire. In case you still feel there are loose ends, it was the Ungodly.”

“Then Valmon was only bluffing?”

“Oh, no. Valmon would always be effective in an emergency. You heard the subtle way the threat and the ultimatum were repeated? But Ludwig Julius is smarter than Valmon. He’ll go a long way to avoid trouble, because when there’s trouble you never know what may blow off. He’ll even go so far as to double the ante, which is a long way for a guy like that to go. I give you my word, if he were sure of getting away with it, Comrade Julius could play so much rougher than Valmon that he’d make Max look like a squeamish school-teacher.”

Her eyes still held him.

“You still haven’t told me how you know so much about him.”

Simon’s glance switched off the verandah again. His car was just pulling up in front of the house.

“There isn’t time now,” he said. “I’ll tell you presently. Just for now, it’d be so much better if your father didn’t know anything about it. He’s a swell guy and everything else, but he just doesn’t know these games. You’ve backed me so far. Will you back me some more?”

She took a long quiet breath. She was aloof in a dispassionate appraisal that few other women he had ever known could have simulated, let alone made sincere. Yet it all died in the helpless quirk of her shoulders and the surrendering downward turn of her lips.

“I’m nuts,” she whispered. “But I’d back you to hell and back.”