Leslie Charteris - Follow the Saint

Simon knew all this without looking directly at her. But he had singled her out at once from the double handful of riverside weekenders who crowded the small bar-room as the most probable writer of the letter which he still carried in his pocket — the letter which had brought him out to the Bell that Sunday evening on what anyone with a less incorrigibly optimistic flair for adventure would have branded from the start as a fool's errand. She was the only girl in the place who seemed to be unattached; there was no positive reason why the writer of that letter should have been unattached, but it seemed likely that she would be. Also she was the best looker in a by no means repulsive crowd; and that was simply no clue at all except to Simon Templar's own unshakeable faith in his guardian angel, who had never thrown any other kind of damsel in distress into his buccaneering path.

But she was still looking at him. And even though he couldn't help knowing that women often looked at him with more than ordinary interest, it was not usually done quite so fixedly. His hopes rose a notch, tentatively; but it was her turn to make the next move. He had done all that had been asked of him when he walked in there punctually on the stroke of eight.

He leaned on the counter, with his wide shoulders seeming to take up half the length of the bar, and ordered a pint of beer for himself and a bottle of Vat 69 for Hoppy Uniatz, who trailed up thirstily at his heels. With the tankard in his hands, he waited for one of those inevitable moments when all the customers had paused for breath at the same time.

"Anyone leave a message for me?" he asked.

His voice was quiet and casual, but just clear enough for everyone in the room to hear. Whoever had sent for him, unless it was merely some pointless practical joker, should need no more confirmation than that… He hoped it would be the girl with the blue troubled eyes. He had a weakness for girls with eyes of that shade, the same colour as his own.

The barman shook his head.

"No, sir. I haven't had any messages."

Simon went on gazing at him reflectively, and the barman misinterpreted his expression. His mouth broadened and said: "That's all right, sir, I'd know if there was anything for you."

Simon's fine brows lifted puzzledly.

"I've seen your picture often enough, sir. I suppose you could call me one of your fans. You're the Saint, aren't you?"

The Saint smiled slowly.

"You don't look frightened."

"I never had the chance to be a rich racketeer, like the people you're always getting after. Gosh, though, I've had a kick out of some of the things you've done to 'em! And the way you're always putting it over on the police — I'll bet they'd give anything for an excuse to lock you up…"

Simon was aware that the general buzz of conversation, after starting to pick up again, had died a second time and was staying dead. His spine itched with the feel of stares fastening on his back. And at the same time the barman became feverishly conscious of the audience which had been captured by his runaway enthusiasm. He began to stammer, turned red, and plunged confusedly away to obliterate himself in some unnecessary fussing over the shelves of bottles behind him.

The Saint grinned with his eyes only, and turned tranquilly round to lean his back against the bar and face the room.

The collected stares hastily unpinned themselves and the voices got going again; but Simon was as oblivious of those events as he would have been if the rubber-necking had continued. At that moment his mind was capable of absorbing only one fearful and calamitous realization. He had turned to see whether the girl with the fair curly hair and the blue eyes had also been listening, and whether she needed any more encouragement to announce herself. And the girl was gone.

She must have got up and gone out even in the short time that the barman had been talking. The Saint's glance swept on to identify the other faces in the room — faces that he had noted and automatically catalogued as he came in. They were all the same, but her face was not one of them. There was an empty glass beside her chair, and the chair itself was already being taken by a dark slender girl who had just entered.

Interest lighted the Saint's eyes again as he saw her, awakened instantly as he appreciated the subtle perfection of the sculptured cascade of her brown hair, crystallized as he approved the contours of her slim yet mature figure revealed by a simple flowered cotton dress. Then he saw her face for the first time, and held his tankard a shade tighter. Here, indeed, was something to call beautiful, something on which the word could be used without hesitation even under his most dispassionate scrutiny. She was like—"Peaches in autumn," he said to himself, seeing the fresh bloom of her cheeks against the russet shades of her hair. She raised her head with a smile, and his blood sang carillons. Perhaps after all…

And then he saw that she was smiling and speaking to an ordinarily good-looking young man in a striped blazer who stood possessively over her; and inward laughter overtook him before he could feel the sourness of disappointment.

He loosened one elbow from the bar to run a hand through his dark hair, and his eyes twinkled at Mr Uniatz.

"Oh, well, Hoppy," he said. "It looks as if we can still be taken for a ride, even at our age."

Mr Uniatz blinked at him. Even in isolation, the face that Nature had planted on top of Mr Uniatz's bull neck could never have been mistaken for that of a matinee idol with an inclination towards intellectual pursuits and the cultivation of the soul; but when viewed in exaggerating contrast with the tanned piratical chiselling of the Saint's features it had a grotesqueness that was sometimes completely shattering to those who beheld it for the first time. To compare it with the face of a gorilla which had been in violent contact with a variety of blunt instruments during its formative years would be risking the justifiable resentment of any gorilla which had been in violent contact with a variety of blunt instruments during its formative years. The best that can be said of it is that it contained in mauled and primitive form all the usual organs of sight, smell, hearing, and ingestion, and prayerfully let it go at that. And yet it must also be said that Simon Templar had come to regard it with a fondness which even its mother could scarcely have shared. He watched it with good-humoured patience, waiting for it to answer,

"I dunno, boss," said Mr Uniatz.

He had not thought over the point very deeply. Simon knew this, because when Mr Uniatz was thinking his face screwed itself into even more frightful contortions than were stamped on it in repose. Thinking of any kind was an activity which caused Mr Uniatz excruciating pain. On this occasion he had clearly escaped much suffering because his mind — if such a word can be used without blasphemy in connection with any of Mr Uniatz's cerebral processes — had been elsewhere.

"Something is bothering you, Hoppy," said the Saint. "Don't keep it to yourself, or your head will start aching."

"Boss," said Mr Uniatz gratefully, "do I have to drink dis wit' de paper on?"

He held up the parcel he was nursing.

Simon looked at him blankly for a moment, and then felt weak in the middle.

"Of course not," he said. "They only wrapped it up because they thought we were going to take it home. They haven't got to know you yet, that's all."

An expression of sublime relief spread over Mr Uniatz's homely countenance as he pawed off the wrapping paper from the bottle of Vat 69. He pulled out the cork, placed the neck of the bottle in his mouth, and tilted his head back. The soothing fluid flowed in a cooling stream down his asbestos gullet. All his anxieties were at rest.