Leslie Charteris - The Saint Sees it Through

She said in a rather foolish and meaningless way: "Thank you—"

Then the vanguard of the sedative squad was at the Saint's side, in the person of a captain whose face looked as if it had known rougher employment than smirking welcomes and farewells to transient suckers.

He was a fairly weighty man, and his tuxedo was tight across his shoulders. He grasped the Saint's arm and said without any professional servility: "What's this all about?"

"Just a little apache dance routine," Simon said pleasantly."Unscheduled addition to the floor show. I've been practising it quite a while. Would you like me to show you, or would you rather let go my arm?"

The bouncer captain, with the Saint's biceps palpably under his fingers and the Saint's very cool blue eyes on him, seemed to experience a shred of indecision.

Avalon Dexter's clear voice said: "Take it easy, Joe."

Simon gently eased his arm away in the act of searching for a cigarette, and gazed interestedly at Dr. Zellermann, who was trying to unwrap himself from a tablecloth with which he had become entangled in the course of his descent.

"Unfortunately," he explained, "my partner hasn't practised so much, and his timing is all off. It's too bad he had to fall down and hurt his face, but accidents will happen."

Dr. Zellermann got to his feet, assisted by one of the larger waiters, who thoughtfully kept hold of him under the guise of continuing his support.

With his patriarchal locks dishevelled, one eye closed, and a smear of blood smudged down from one corner of his mouth, Dr. Zellermann was not in the least beautiful or benign. In fact, for a man who claimed to adjust the mental disorders of others, he showed a lamentable lack of psychic balance. He spoke to and about the Saint, in very precise English mingled with a few recherché foreign epithets and expletives; and Simon was saddened to learn from the discourse that the doctor was clearly the victim of several psychoses, inclined towards paranoia, subject to perverse delusions, and afflicted with obsessive coprophilia. Simon realised that the symptoms might have been aggravated by some recent shock, and he was considering the case with clinical impartiality when Cookie herself surged through the ring of bystanders.

Simon had never thought she was beautiful, but now he saw for himself how ugly she could look. The big practised smile was gone, and her mouth was as hard and functional as a trap. Her eyes were bright, watchfully venomous, and coldly capable. For that moment, in spite of the complete oppositeness of all the associations, Simon felt that she had the identical bearing of a hard-boiled matron preparing to quell trouble in a tough reform school.

"What's this all about?" she demanded, using what began to sound like the house formula.

"This insolent swine," Zellermann said, gathering his words with a vicious precision that made them come out as if he were spitting bullets, "attacked me for no reason at all—"

"Or only one little reason," said the Saint easily. "Because I saw you grab Miss Dexter's arm, and I thought you were getting much too rough."

"Because she slapped me!"

"For a very good reason, chum. I saw it."

Cookie's wet marble eyes flicked from face to face with the alertness of a crouched cat surrounded by sparrows. Now she turned on the girl.

"I see," she rasped. "What have you been drinking, Avalon?"

Simon admired the blushless pot-and-kettle majesty of that, for at close quarters Cookie was enveloped in a rich aroma of whisky which probably contributed some of the beady glaze to her malevolent stare.

"Really, Cookie," he said earnestly, "anyone who wanted to get tight on the drinks you serve here would have to have been working on it since breakfast."

"Nobody asked you to come here," Cookie threw at him, and went on to Avalon: "I'd like to know what the hell makes you think you've got a right to insult my customers—"

It was not a pretty scene, even though the Saint's aversion to that kind of limelight was greatly tempered by the happy memory of his knuckles crushing Dr. Zellermann's lips against his teeth. But he felt much more embarrassed for Avalon. The puzzling hint of a smile had left her lips altogether, and something else was coming into her eyes that Cookie should have been smart enough to recognise even if she was too alcoholic for ordinary discretion.

He said quietly: "The customer insulted her, Cookie—"

"You dirty liar!" shouted Zellermann.

"— and he had it coming to him," Simon went on in the same tone. "I saw it all happen. Why not just throw him out and let's go on with the fun?"

"You mind your own goddam business!" Cookie blazed at him purply. Again she turned to the girl. "You drunken slut — I've had just about enough of your airs and graces and bull—"

That was it. Avalon's lips came together for an instant, and the suppressed blaze flashed like dynamite in her eyes.

"That's fine," she said. "Because I've had just about enough of you and your creep joint. And as far as I'm concerned you can take your joint and your job and stuff them both."

She whirled away; and then after only one step she turned back, just as abruptly, her skirts and her hair swooping around her. And as she turned she was really smiling.

"That is," she added sweetly, "if the Saint doesn't do it for you."

Then she was gone, sidling quickly between the tables; and there was a new stillness in the immediate vicinity.

In the local silence, the Saint put a match to his neglected cigarette.

Now he understood the paradoxical ingredient in Avalon's expression when she first saw him. And her revelation flared him into an equally paradoxical mixture of wariness and high amusement. But the barest lift of one eyebrow was the only response that could be seen in his face.

Cookie's stare had come back to him, and stayed there. When she spoke to him again her voice had no more geniality than before, and yet there was still a different note in it.

"What's your name?"

"Simon Templar," he said, with no more pointedness than if he had said "John Smith."

The effect, however, was a little different.

The muscular captain took a step back from him, and said with unconscious solemnity: "Jesus!"

Dr. Ernst Zellermann stopped mopping his mouth with a reddening handkerchief, and kept still like a pointer.

Cookie kept still too, with her gross face frozen in the last expression it had worn, and her eyes so anchored that they looked almost rigid.

The Saint said peaceably: "It's nice to have met you all, but if somebody would give me my check I'd like to get some fresh air."

The melancholy waiter was at his side like a lugubrious genie, holding up the check by the time he had finished his sentence.

"Now, just a minute, Mr. Templar." Cookie's voice came through again with the sticky transparency of honey poured over a file. "These little things do happen in night clubs, and we all understand them. I didn't mean to be rude to you — I was just upset. Won't you sit down and have a drink with me?"

"No, thank you," said the Saint calmly. "I've already had several of your drinks, and I want to get my tummy pumped out before goldfish start breeding in it."

He peeled a bill off his roll and handed it to the waiter with a gesture which dismissed the change.

"Of course you thought you were doing the right thing," Cookie persisted. "But if you only knew the trouble I've had with that little tramp, I'm sure—"

"I'm quite sure," said the Saint, with the utmost charm, "that I'd take Avalon's suggestion — and throw Dr. Zellermann in for a bonus."

He turned on his heel and sauntered away — he seemed tired of the whole thing and full of time to spare, but that effect was an illusion. He wanted very much indeed to catch Avalon Dexter before he lost her, and his long lazy stride took him to the door without a wasted movement.