Leslie Charteris - Follow the Saint

"So far. But I hope you aren't going to stop before the important part."

"All right. Verdean thought some more — by himself. He was sunk, anyhow. He had to rob the bank if he was going to save his own skin. So why shouldn't he keep all the boodle for himself?… That's just what he decided to do. The branch is a small one, and nobody would have thought of questioning anything he did. It was easy for him to pack a load of dough into a small valise and take it out with him when he went home to lunch — just before the holdup was timed to take place. Nobody would have thought of asking him what he had in his bag; and as for the money, well, of course the holdup men would be blamed for getting away with it. But he didn't want Judd and Morrie on his tail, so he tipped off the police anonymously, meaning for them to be caught, and feeling pretty sure that nobody would believe any accusations they made about him — or at least not until he had plenty of time to hide it…. There were still a few holes in the idea, but he was too desperate to worry about them. His real tragedy was when Kaskin and Dolf didn't get caught after all, and came after him to ask questions. And naturally that's when we all started to get together."

"And then?"

The Saint raised his head and looked at her again.

"Maybe I'm very dense," he said apologetically, "but isn't that enough?"

"It's almost uncanny. But there's still the most important thing."

"What would that be?"

"Did you find out what happened to the money?"

The Saint was silent for a moment. He elongated his legs still farther, so that they stretched out over the carpet like a pier; his recumbent body looked as if it were composing itself for sleep. But the eyes that he bent on her were bright and amused and very cheerfully awake.

She said: "What are you grinning about?"

"I'd just been wondering when it was coming, darling," he murmured. "I know that my dazzling beauty brings admiring sightseers from all quarters like moths to a candle, but they usually want something else as well. And it's been very nice to see you and have this little chat, but I was always afraid you were hoping to get something out of it. So this is what it is. Morrie and Judd sent you along to get an answer to that question, so they'd know whether it was safe to bump me off or not. If Verdean is still keeping his mouth shut, they can go ahead and fix me a funeral; but if I've found out where it is I may have even moved it somewhere else by now, and it would be awkward to have me buried before I could tell them where I'd moved it to. Is that all that's worrying you?"

"Not altogether," she said, without hesitation. "They didn't have to send me for that. I talked them into letting me come because I told them you'd probably talk to me for longer than you'd talk to them and anyhow you wouldn't be so likely to punch me on the nose. But I really did it because I wanted to see you myself."

The flicker that passed over Simon's face was almost imperceptible.

"I hope it's been worth it," he said flippantly; but he was watching her with a coolly reserved alertness.

"That's what you've got to tell me," she said. She looked away from him for a moment, stubbed out her cigarette nervously, looked back at him again with difficult frankness. Her hands moved uncertainly. She went on in a rush: "You see, I know Judd doesn't mean to give me my share. I could trust you. Whatever happens, they're going to give you trouble. I know you can take care of yourself, but I don't suppose you'd mind having it made easier for you. I could be on your side, without them knowing, and I wouldn't want much."

The Saint blew two smoke rings with leisured care, placing them side by side like the lenses of a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles. They drifted towards the ceiling, enlarging languidly.

His face was inscrutable, but behind that pleasantly noncommittal mask he was thinking as quickly as he could.

He might have come to any decision. But before he could say anything there was an interruption.

The door was flung open, and Hoppy Uniatz crashed in.

Mr Uniatz's face was not at all inscrutable. It was as elementarily easy to read as an infant's primer. The ecstatic protrusion of his eyes, the lavish enthusiasm of his breathing, the broad beam that divided his physiognomy into two approximately equal halves, and the roseate glow which suffused his homely countenance, were all reminiscent of the symptoms of bliss that must have illuminated the features of Archimedes at the epochal moment of his life. He looked like a man who had just made the inspirational discovery of the century in his bath.

"It woiked, boss," he yawped exultantly, "it woiked I De dough is in Hogsbotham's bedroom!"

Simon Templar kept still. It cost him a heroic effort but he did it. He felt as if he were balanced on top of a thin glass flagpole in the middle of an earthquake, but he managed to keep the surface of his nonchalance intact. He kept Angela Lindsay's hands always within the radius of his field of vision, and said rather faintly: "What woiked?"

Mr Uniatz seemed slightly taken aback.

"Why, de idea you give me dis afternoon, boss," he explained, as though he saw little need for such childish elucidations. "You remember, you are saying why can't we sock dis guy de udder way an' knock his memory back. Well, I am t'inkin' about dat, an' it seems okay to me, an' I ain't got nut'n else to do on account of de door is locked an' I finished all de Scotch; so I haul off an' whop him on de toinip wit' de end of my Betsy. Well, he is out for a long time, an' when he comes round he still don't seem to know what it's all about, but he is talkin' about how dis guy Hogsbotham gives him a key to look after de house when he goes away, so he goes in an' parks de lettuce in Hogsbotham's bedroom. It is a swell idea, boss, an' it woiks," said Mr Uniatz, still marvelling at the genius which had conceived it.

The Saint felt a clutching contraction under his ribs which was not quite like the gastric hollowness of dismay and defensive tension which might reasonably have been there. It was a second or two before he could get a perspective on it; and when he did so, the realization of what it was made him feel slightly insane.

It was simply a wild desire to collapse into helpless laughter. The whole supernal essence of the situation was so immortally ludicrous that he was temporarily incapable of worrying about the fact that Angela Lindsay was a member of the audience. If she had taken a gun out of her bag and announced that she was going to lock them up while she went back to tell Kaskin and Dolf the glad news, which would have been the most obviously logical thing for her to do, he would probably have been too weak to lift a finger to prevent it.

Perhaps the very fact that she made no move to do so did more than anything else to restore him to sobriety. The ache in his chest died away, and his brain forced itself to start work again. He knew that she had a gun in her beg — he had looked for it and distinguished the outline of it when he first came into the room to meet her, and that was why he had never let himself completely lose sight of her hands. But her hands only moved to take another cigarette. She smiled at him as if she was sharing the joke, and struck a match.

"Well," he said dryly, "it looks like you've got your answer."

"To one question," she said. "You haven't answered the other. What shall I tell Judd?"

Simon studied her for the space of a couple of pulse-beats. In that time, he thought with a swiftness and clarity that was almost clairvoyant. He saw every angle and every prospect and every possible surprise.

He also saw Patricia standing aghast in the doorway behind the gorilla shoulders of Mr Uniatz, and grinned impudently at her.