Leslie Charteris - Prelude for War

She gazed vindictively at Dumaire, who was then having his hands efficiently taped behind his back by Peter Quentin, and kicked him thoughtfully on the shins.

"Then they made you ring me up?" Simon prompted her.

"Well, when they couldn't find the ticket they said they'd do horrible things to me unless I told them where it was. So I told them I'd given it to you to look after, and I was quite glad to be able to ring you up by that time. I–I sort of knew you'd catch on at once, because you're so frightfully clever and that's how things always happen in stories."

"It makes everything so easy, doesn't it?" said the Saint satirically. "We must talk some more about that, but I think we'll talk alone."

He watched while the taping of the other prisoners' wrists was completed; then he started exploring doors. He found one that communicated with the bedroom — a place of glass and natural woods and pale blue sheets and pillows, with a pale blue bathroom beyond it that gave an infinitesimally humorous shift to the alignment of his eyebrows. He left the door open and signed to Peter.

"Bring the menagerie in here," he said.

Dumaire, Pietri and Bravache lurched sullenly in, urged on by the unarguable prodding of gun muzzles.

On his way in after them, Hoppy Uniatz stopped at the door. It is true, as has perhaps already been made superfluously clear, that there were situations in which the light of intelligence failed to coruscate on Mr Uniatz' ivorine brow; it is no less true that in the vasty oceans of philosophy and abstract Thought he wandered like a rudderless barque at the mercy of unpredictable winds; but in his own element he was immune to the distractions that might have afflicted lesser men, and his mental processes became invested with the simplicity of true greatness.

"Boss," said Mr Uniatz, with the placidity of a mahatma approaching the settlement of an overdue grocer's bill, "I t'ink ya better gimme dem shells."

"What shells?" asked the Saint hazily.

"De shells," explained Mr Uniatz, who was now flourishing Pietri's silenced revolver in addition to his own beloved Betsy, "you take outa de dumb cannon."

Simon blinked.

"What for?"

"Dey don't make no ners," explained Mr Uniatz, with a slight perplexity for such slowness on the uptake, "when we are giving dese guys de woiks."

The Saint swallowed.

"I'll give them to you when you need them," he said and closed the door hastily on Mr Uniatz' back.

He went back and sat on the arm of a chair in front of Lady Valerie. He wanted to smile, but he had too many other things on his mind that were not smiling matters. The recent episode which had been absorbing all his nervous and intellectual energy was over, and his brain was moving on again with restless efficiency. It had not reached an end, but only a fresh beginning.

She had regained most of her composure. Her face was repaired, and she had lighted a cigarette herself. He had to admit that she possessed amazing recuperative powers. There was a naughty gleam in her eyes that would have amused him at any other time.

"You always seem to be catching me in these boudoir moments, don't you?" she said, smoothing her flimsy negligee. "I mean, first I was in my nightie at the fire, and then now. It must be fate, or something. The only trouble is, there won't be any thrills left when we get really friendly… Of course I suppose I ought to thank you for rescuing me," she went on hurriedly. "Thanks very much, darling. It was sweet of you."

"Don't mention it," he said graciously. "It's been a pleasure. You must call me again any time you want a helping hand."

He got up restlessly, poured himself out a drink and sat down again.

"Don't you think you'd better tell me what it's all about?" he said abruptly. "I could live through an explanation of this cloakroom-ticket gag."

"Oh, that," she said. She trimmed the end of her cigarette. "Well, you see, they thought I'd got a cloakroom ticket they wanted, so they came to look for it. That's all."

"It isn't anything like all," he said bluntly. "Why go on holding out on me? You've got something they want — probably some papers that Kennet gave you. You parked them in a cloakroom somewhere, and these birds knew it and wanted the ticket. Or do you want me to believe that they went to all this trouble simply to get a receipt for Luker's hat?"

She frowned at her knees, and then she shrugged.

"I suppose there's no reason why you shouldn't know, since you've guessed already," she said. "As a matter of fact, I have got some papers. I thought Algy might like to know, so I just mentioned it to him casually on the telephone tonight."

"Meaning what I was talking to you about at the Berkeley."

"What was that?"

"Blackmail."

"I don't understand."

"Don't make me tired. You were trying to sell him those papers."

"After all," she said, "a girl has to live."

"How long do you think you'd have lived tonight if it hadn't been for me?"

She hesitated.

"How was I to know Algy would do anything like this?" she said sulkily. "I told him I'd put the papers in a cloakroom and I wasn't sure where they were. He rang me up later on, just before the monkey-man got here, and offered me ten thousand pounds if I'd bring them round to him right away, but I thought they might be worth more than that, so I pretended I still couldn't remember what I'd done with them. Of course I know where they are really."

The Saint's lips tightened.

"You poor little fly-brained moron," he exploded uncontrollably. "What makes you think you can cut in on a game like this? Haven't you had your lesson yet? You know what happened to Kennet and Windlay. You know what happened to you tonight. You heard what Bravache said. If I hadn't had everything organized, you were booked to go down the drain with me — plus any specialized unpleasantnesses that your boy friend Dumaire could think of. Is that your idea of a good time?"

She shuddered almost imperceptibly.

"I know, that wasn't very nice. I never was one of those heroines who don't think life is worth living unless bullets are whizzing past their ears and ships sinking under them and houses crashing in ruins about their heads and all that sort of thing. Personally I'm all for a life of selfish self-indulgence, and I don't care who knows it. If I could get a decent offer for those papers, I'd take it like a shot and skip off to Bermuda or somewhere and enjoy it. The trouble is, I don't know what they're worth. What do you think?"

She looked at him with limpid brown eyes big with artlessness.

"I'll give you a shilling for them," he said.

"Oh, I wasn't thinking of selling them to you," she said innocently. "What I was thinking was that if I went to a fairly decent pub tonight — the Carlton, for instance, where I should be perfectly safe — and then I rang up Algy and told him he could have the papers for fifteen thousand pounds, he'd most likely do something about it. I mean, after what's happened tonight, he ought to consider himself damned lucky to get them for fifteen thousand. Don't you think so?"

"Very lucky," said the Saint, with fine-drawn patience. "Where are these papers at the moment?"

She smiled.

"They're in a cloakroom all right. I've got the ticket somewhere, only I forget exactly where. But I expect I'll remember all right when I have to."

"I expect you will," he said coldly. "Even if somebody like Dumaire has to help you."

Suddenly he got up and went over to her and took both her hands. The coldness fell out of his voice.

"Valerie, why don't you stop being an idiot and let me get into the firing line?"

She looked at him speculatively for a while, for quite a long while. Her hands were small and soft. He kept still, and heard a taxi rattle past the end of the street. But she shook her head.