Leslie Charteris - The Saint Sees it Through

And so the smile he gave Avalon was gay as confetti on New Year's Eve.

"I'm not so sure, old thing, that I myself know what I'm talking about. But if I do, those boys will come out of there with one single first desire: transportation to celebration. And I'd rather they kept greedy eyes off our cab." He opened the glass panel. "Pull up to the corner and wait," he told the driver.

With one of those lightning decisions that was the despair of his enemies and the envy of his friends, Simon Templar reorganised his offense. He wanted to talk to those two young men who had gone a-knocking at James Prather's door, but he didn't want them to know that he wanted to talk to them.

He looked gravely at Avalon.

"Will you do something for me?"

"I'll make a cake or slice a throat," she said softly. "Or cross Fortysecond and Broadway against the traffic light at Saturday noon."

"This is an even greater sacrifice," he said mockingly. "I want you to go back into that apartment house and do some lobbyloitering."

Avalon didn't frown, didn't raise her eyebrows. She meditated for the space of ten seconds. Then she raised her eyes to his.

"I get the pitch, except for one thing. Who are you?"

"Your agent, of course."

"Of course. So I manage to be seen when they come down, and will be here at the curb with them when you drive up. I'll be telling them I can't go with them, but you'll allow me to be persuaded, provided you come along. Then we all go off in your cab." She gave him a quick kiss. "I should fall for a ten percenter yet. Everything happens to me."

She was out and clicking along the sidewalk on slim heels. The Saint watched her for a moment and wondered. What a partner she would make! She had divined his scheme of action, and with no prompting. She had known, without words, what his plan was. All he had had to do was sketch the bare outlines, and she had filled in the details.

"Drive around the block," he told the driver.

It was on the third circumnavigation that the Saint saw Avalon and the two seamen at the curb in front of the apartment house. He amused himself with the idea that these were the only live persons he had seen on his rounds: all others had been members of the Bronx nobility walking their dogs.

"Stop there," he commanded, and the cab driver drew up with a satisfying squeal of rubber.

"Darling," the Saint said to Avalon, "I was afraid you'd have gone. I'm horribly late."

"Aren't you, just?" she said. "I was about to take off. Well, since you're here— By the way, these are Joe Hyman and Sam Jeffries. Joe is the one with the glint."

Simon shook hands.

"Simon Simplon, I," he said. "Hello, kids. Where away?"

Avalon looked dubious.

"I'm not sure you're invited on this jaunt, Simon. The boys and I were just setting out to give the town a reddish hue."

The Saint said: "But I'm your agent. You can't do anything without me."

She raised her eyebrow.

"Anything?"

"Well—"

The sailors snickered.

Avalon stamped a foot

"You know what I mean."

"Miss Dexter," Simon told her sternly, "according to law, I am your agent. Perhaps that phrase carries implications which need not be considered here. I still say that I should be able to advise you on your goings about."

She put a curl into her lip.

"Because you're my agent?"

"Lowly though that may be, yes."

Joe Hyman, stocky, gray-suited, and Sam Jeffries, tall in blue, shifted from one foot to the other.

The Saint could have kissed her. She showed that perfect combination of camaraderie and contempt, of distrust and declination, that a temperamental artist exhibits toward her agent.

"How do you do?" the Saint said, and shook hands.

Joe Hyman was inarticulate, with small hard hands. He shook as if his life depended upon it. Sam Jeffries gave the Saint a handful of limp bananas.

"We were just about to go out and put an edge on the town," Jeffries said.

The Saint appeared to consider.

"A sound idea, seems to me. Why don't we all do it?"

Each of the boys looked at Avalon. They obviously didn't relish extra company. She looked at them, then at the Saint. She shrugged. Sam Jeffries said, "Why not?"

So they all climbed into the Saint's cab. As Simon followed them into the interior, he glanced upward. He saw peering from a window the face of James Prather.

The first thing the Saint noticed, when he was seated in the jump seat — so he could watch through the rear window to see if they were being followed — was that Sam Jeffries had drawn from his pocket a snub-nosed revolver and pointed it unwaveringly at the vitals of Simon Templar.

"My goodness," the Saint ejaculated mildly.

The revolver was held so that Avalon couldn't see it. She elevated exciting eyebrows. The Saint looked at her, then at Sam Jeffries. He shrugged. "The meter," he said, gesturing at his back. "It clicks and clicks."

The revolver seemed to waggle approbation.

Sam Jeffries eyed Simon for a long time.

"You're quite a guy, ain't you, bud?"

Simon shrugged.

"Oh — I wouldn't go that far."

"We think you're quite a guy," Sam insisted. "We've been told you're more'n that. You see, I recognized you. You've had too many photos printed in the papers — Saint."

Simon smiled, a devil-may-care smile, a smile as light as butterflies' worries.

"So? And now that we're putting everything on the barrelhead, why are you holding that cannon on me?"

Avalon gasped, and glanced sidewise.

"Well," Sam Jeffries said, "I guess it ain't necessary. I really wouldn't shoot you without'n you done more'n you've did."

Simon grinned.

"Thanks. Just to get the record straight, I really am this young lady's agent. She's a nightclub singer."

Stocky Joe Hyman said: "Huh?"

Sam Jeffries made a threatening motion at his pal.

" 'F she says she's a singer, she's a singer, see? 'N 'f he says he's her agent, well, shaddup, see?"

"I didn't mean nothing," Joe said.

"Well, Mister?" Sam said to Simon.

The Saint eyed the gun, the neat blue suit, the maroon tie, the long tanned face of Sam Jeffries. He began to move one hand toward his inner coat pocket.

"May I smoke?"

"Sure," Sam said.

The Saint took out his cigarette case, that case which had special properties that had before now helped him out of tighter spots than this. Not that the case seemed to differ from any similar case made of gold and embellished with a tasteful amount of precious gems. No, it seemed functional in design, if a bit on the ornate side. And functional it was; for one of its edges could be used as a razor. The toughest beard would fall before that redoubtable keenness. Not only was it a weapon for cutting bonds or throats, it contained ammunition which could be applied in sundry ways to the confusion of the Ungodly.

Interspersed among his regular brand were other special cigarettes which could blind, frighten, and fling into chaos such unsavory members of the human race as the Saint wished to blind, frighten, or fling into chaotic action. Each of these explosive tubes consisted almost entirely of magnesium.

His sensitive fingers felt among the case's cargo to light upon a bona fide smoke, which he lighted. He puffed a blue cloud at the ceiling and placed the case in a convenient jacket pocket. There might be use for it later. In doing so, he felt the outline of the small knife, Belle, which nestled in her case up his sleeve.

He eyed Sam Jeffries with that devilish carelessness that had made his name not only a by-word but a guide to independence.

"What do you mean, what now?"

"Well," Sam said, "I didn't recognize you at first. But after we was in the cab, see, I says, 'Sam, that's the Saint,' I says. And I asks myself what would the Saint want of the likes of us, and I gets no answer, see. So then I says to myself it'd be a good idea maybe if I didn't take no chances, so I hauls out my rod."