Leslie Charteris - Prelude for War

"In other words, you're his tame vamp, I take it."

She opened her eyes wide at him.

"Do you think I'm tame?"

The Saint surveyed her appraisingly. Again he experienced the bafflement of trying to probe beyond that pert childish beauty.

"Maybe not so tame," he corrected himself. "And what would your fee be for dining with a gent if it meant earning Comrade Fairweather's disapproval? For instance, what about having dinner with me on Thursday?"

She didn't answer for a moment. She sat looking downwards, swinging her leg idly, apparently absorbed in the movement of her foot.

Then she looked up at him and smiled.

"You've fallen for me in quite a big way, haven't you?" she said a little ironically. "I mean, inviting me to dinner and offering to pay me for it."

"I fell passionately in love with you the moment I saw you," Simon declared shamelessly.

She nodded.

"I know. I couldn't help noticing the eager way you dashed off this morning when you thought you'd got all the information you could out of me. I mean, it was all too terribly romantic for anything."

"The audience made me bashful," said the Saint. "Now if we'd only been alone—"

Her dark eyes were mocking.

"Well," she said, "I don't mean that I couldn't put up with having dinner with you if you paid me for it. After all, I've got to have dinner somewhere, and I've been out with a lot of people who weren't nearly so good looking as you are even if they weren't nearly so bashful either. Algy used to pay me twenty guineas for entertaining his important clients."

"That must have helped to make things bearable," said the Saint in some awe.

"Of course," she went on innocently, "I should expect you to pay a bit more than that, because after all I'm only a defenceless girl, and I know you must have some horrible motive for wanting me to have dinner with you."

Simon raised his eyebrows.

"You shock me," he said. "What horrible motive could I have for asking you out to dinner? I promise that you'll be as safe with me as you would be with your old Aunt Agatha."

She sighed.

"I know. That's just what I mean. If your eyes were foaming with unholy desire, or anything like that, I probably shouldn't charge you anything at all. After all, brief life is here our portion, and all that sort of thing, and a spot of unholy desire from the right sort of person and in the right sort of way — well, you see what I mean, don't you? But as things are, I don't think I could possibly let you off with less than fifty guineas."

Simon leaned towards her.

"You know," he said earnestly, "there's something about you — an innocence, a freshness, a sort of girlish appeal that attracts me irresistibly. You're so — so ingenuous and uncalculating. Will a check do, or shall you want it in cash?"

"Damn," she said in dismay. "I believe you'd have paid a hundred if I'd asked for it. Oh well, I suppose a bargain's a bargain. A check will do."

The Saint grinned.

"Thursday, then, at eight o'clock. At the Berkeley. And since this is a business deal I shall expect you to be punctual. The fee will go down one guinea for every minute I'm kept waiting."

She tossed the stub of her cigarette across the room into the empty fireplace.

"Well, now we've finished talking about business can't we enjoy ourselves? I was hoping we'd have a chance after the inquest, but Algy hustled me away before I could even look round. They were all as mad as hornets, and I can't blame them. After all, you did make rather an ass of yourself, didn't you?"

"Do you really think I was just playing the fool?" he asked curiously.

"I mean trying to make out that Johnny had been murdered and Algy set fire to the house and so on. I mean, it was all so ridiculous, wasn't it?"

This time he knew beyond doubt that her artlessness was not so naive as it seemed. Her chatter was just a little too quick; besides, he had seen her face at one stage of the inquest.

He paused to consider his reply for a moment. If she knew what he had seen in London, it might startle something out of her. He felt that the move must be made with a fine hand.

He had no chance to make it in that way.

There was a sound of footsteps descending stairs, reaching the entrance of the lounge. Simon glanced over his shoulder; and then he rose leisurely to his feet.

"It's time you were getting ready, my dear—"

Fairweather's thinly jovial voice broke off sharply as he realized that there was someone else in the room. He stared at the Saint for a long moment, with his mouth slightly open, while his fat face turned into the likeness of a piece of lard. And then, without any acknowledgment of recognition, he turned deliberately back to Lady Valerie.

"We shouldn't have left you so long," he said. "I hope you haven't been annoyed."

"Of course she's been annoyed!" General Sangore's stormy voice burst out without the subtlety of Fairweather's snub. "It's an insult for that feller to speak to any decent person after his behaviour this morning. Damned if I know what he meant by it, anyway."

Simon put his hands in his pockets and relaxed against a cabinet full of hideous porcelain.

"What I meant by it was that I believe Kennet was murdered," he said good-humouredly. "Now have I made myself quite clear?"

The general glared at him from under his bushy eyebrows. He seemed to expect Simon to melt like wax.

"By Gad, sir," he said truculently, "you're — you're a bounder! I've never heard such bad form in my life!"

"You mean that if it was murder you'd rather have it hushed up, don't you?" Simon said gently. "You didn't murder him yourself by any chance, did you?"

Sangore's complexion went a rich mottled puce. He tried to speak, but there seemed to be an obstruction in his throat.

Simon went on talking, and his voice was cool and pitiless.

"Last year, when there was a strike at the Pyrford Aviation Works, which is a subsidiary of the Wolverhampton Ordnance Company, you stated publicly that the ringleaders ought to be put up against a wall and shot. This year, addressing the Easter rally of the Imperial Defence Society, you said: 'A great deal of nonsense has been talked about the horrors of war.' If you would have liked to kill half-a-dozen men for the sake of dividends, and if you think it's a great deal of nonsense to object to people being massacred in millions, I can't help feeling that you qualify as a good suspect. What do you think?"

What General Sangore thought could only be inferred; he was still choking impotently.

Lady Sangore came to his rescue. Her face had gone from white to scarlet, and her small eyes were glittering with vindictive passion.

"The man's a cad," she proclaimed tremblingly. "It's no use wasting words on him. He — he simply isn't a sahib!"

She appeared to be slightly appalled by her temerity, as if she had pronounced the ultimate unspeakable condemnation.

"It's — it's an outrage!" spluttered Fairweather. "The man is a well-known criminal. We're only lowering ourselves—"

The Saint's cold blue eyes picked him up like an insect on a pin.

"Let me see," he said. "I seem to remember that you played a forward part in getting a change made in the workings of the National Defence Contribution a few years ago. The sales talk was that the tax on excess profits would have paralyzed business enterprise; but the truth is that it would have hit hardest against the firms that were booming on the strength of the new rearmament program — of which, I think, Norfelt Chemicals was by no means the smallest. And you recently stated before a royal commission that 'The armament industry is one which provides employment for thousands of workers. The fact that its products are open to misuse can no more be held against the industry per se than can the production of drugs which would be poisonous if taken without medical advice.' If those are samples of your logic, I don't see why we shouldn't have you on the suspected list — do you?"