Leslie Charteris - Prelude for War

"And what are they all about?"

"I don't know yet, but they look rather dull. You see, I'd only just started to look at them when you came in. I didn't like to open them on the train, because there were always other people in the carriage, and I didn't know if they might not see something they shouldn't see… You can look at them with me if you like. As a matter of fact, I–I meant you to have them anyway."

Simon gazed at her with the admiration reserved for very special occasions.

"Darling," he said, "how can I ever have managed to misjudge you?"

"But I did, really. You don't think I'd have let Algy have them after what happened last night, do you?"

"Of course not — unless he paid you a much bigger price for compensation."

"Aren't you a beast!" she said.

The Saint sighed.

"Do we have to go into that again?"

She considered him, pouting.

"But you do really like me quite a lot, don't you?"

"Darling, I adore you."

"Well, I hope you do, because if you don't I'm going to scream for help and bring the whole town in. On the other hand, provided you're reasonable…"

The Saint put his hands in his pockets. He was patient to the point of languor, completely sure of the eventual outcome. He could afford to bide his time. These preliminaries were incidental illuminations rather than delays.

"Yes, if I'm reasonable," he said. "Go on. I'm interested."

"What I mean," she said, "is this. You can't get away from the fact that I'm just as much entitled to these papers as you are. If it comes to that, I'm probably more entitled to them, because after all Johnny gave them to me. So if I let you see them, I don't see why we shouldn't work together. You suggested it first, anyway, and after all you do make lots of money, don't you?"

He smiled.

"I keep body and soul together. But do you really think I you'd like being shot at, and having people putting arsenic in your soup and blowing up bombs under your chair and all that sort of thing?"

"I might get used to it."

"Even to finding snakes in your bed?"

"Oh, but I'd expect you to look after me," she said solemnly. "You seem to survive all right, and I expect if I was with you most of the time I'd survive, too. You've got to look after me now, anyhow. It stands to reason that if you got the papers they'll be bound to know you got them from me, and you can't just laugh lightly and walk away and leave me to be slaughtered."

"Suppose we decide about that after we've seen what these papers are," he suggested gently.

She seemed to sit more tightly in her chair, and her smile was very bright.

"You mean we are working together now?" The Saint left the door. He was moving over towards her, still with his hands in his pockets, threading his way with easy nonchalance through the narrow footpaths between the furniture. The glimmer of lazy humour on his lips and eyes was cool and good natured, but under it was a quiet ruthlessness that cannons could not have turned aside.

"Don't let's misunderstand each other again," he said pleasantly. "I came here just to see those papers. Now I'm going to look at them. There aren't any conditions attached to it. If you want a wrestling match you can have one, but you ought to know that you'll only be wasting your strength. And if you want to scream you can scream, but I don't think you'll get out more than half a beep before I knock you out. And then when you wake up you'll have a headache and a pain in your jaw, and I shall be very sorry for you, but by that time I shall have finished my reading. Does that make everything quite clear?"

Her eyes blazed at him. All her limbs were tense. She looked as if she were going to scream and risk the consequences.

The Saint didn't move. He had arrived in front of her, and there he waited. In his immobility there was a kind of cynical curiosity. It was plain that she could do what she liked: he was only interested to see what she would choose to do.

And he wasn't bluffing. His cynicism was not really unkind. He would hate hurting her, but he meant every word he had said. Circumstance had put him on to a plane where the niceties of conventional chivalry could have no weight. And she knew that it was not worth taking up the challenge.

Her lower lip thrust out petulantly.

"Damn you," she whimpered. "Oh, damn you!"

"I'm sorry," he said, and meant it.

He bent over her and took the sheaf of papers out of her hand, from behind her, and touched her mouth lightly with his own as he did so.

She got up and flung herself away from him as far as the topography of the room would let her. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, balanced for any action that might be forced upon him; but the moment of danger was past. She stood by the dressing table glowering at him and biting her lips in a way that he remembered. Her ill temper had something very childish and almost charming about it: she was like a little girl in a pet.

He sat down on the bed with the sheaf of papers in his hand.

"Are you going to Scotland for the grouse?" he inquired amiably.

She took her bag off the dressing table, jerked out a packet of cigarettes, lighted one and moved further away. She stood with her back to him, smoking furiously, tapping one foot on the threadbare carpet, the whole dorsal view of her expressive of raging contempt; but he observed that she was covertly watching him in the long mirror on the wardrobe.

The Saint lighted a cigarette himself and turned the pages of the dossier that had disordered so many lives and ended at least two of them.

At once he seemed to have forgotten her existence. He read more and more intently, with a frown of concentration deepening on his face. His intentness shut out everything beyond the information he was assimilating. For a long time there was no sound in the room except the irritating tattoo of Lady Valerie's toe beating on the floor, the rustle of paper and the creaking of rusty bedsprings as he stirred to turn a page.

And as he read on, a curious empty chill crept over him.

Lady Valerie fidgeted with the catch on the wardrobe door. She breathed on the mirror and drew silly faces with her forefinger in the cloud deposited by her breath, and went on stealing furtive glances at him. At last she turned round in a final fling of exasperation and stubbed out her cigarette in a saucer on the dressing table.

"Well," she said peevishly, "at least you might tell me what it's all about. Is it very interesting?"

"Wait a minute," he said, without looking up.

She pushed the saucer off the dressing table with an exasperated sweep of her hand. Instead of providing a satisfactory smash, it landed on the carpet with a thick plunk and rolled hollowly away over the linoleum under the washstand.

The Saint went on reading.

And as he came towards the end of the manuscript that dry deflated chill seemed to freeze the fire out of him and leave him numb with helpless bafflement.

For there was nothing in that bulky collection of documents that seemed to be worth much more than the paper it was written on in the way of powder and shot. There were the usual notes on the organization of the arms ring, principally taken from the British end, but none of it was very new. Much of it could have been found in such detailed surveys as Merchants of Death. There were notes on Luker's background, the puppet directors of his various companies, the ramifications of their many subsidiaries, their international affiliations, their political connections, their methods of business, together with well-authenticated samples of certain notable iniquities. It was all very interesting and highly scandalous, but it would cause no revolutions. Such exposes had been made before, but they had never done more than superficially ruffle the apathy of the great dumb populace which might have risen up in its wrath and destroyed them. And under the laws made by governments themselves financially interested and practically concerned in the success of the racket, if not actually subsidized by it, there were not even grounds for a criminal prosecution. It was only the kind of oft-repeated indictment that caused a temporary furore, during which the racketeers simply laid low and waited for nature to take its course and the birth of sextuplets in Kalamazoo to repossess the front pages of an indifferent press.