Leslie Charteris - The Saint Returns

“Yes, but I picked up your trail again as you came from the clothing store.”

“Which one? The men’s or the women’s?”

“The men’s,” Smolenko said matter-of-factly. “Why would you go to a store for women?”

She hesitated, momentarily flustered as he simply looked at her tolerantly.

“Of course,” she said. “Presents for some friend. But that is not my affair. I am glad I discovered nothing that would make it necessary for me to consider you my enemy. I must admit that I am now inclined to trust you, for the present, and to believe that other elements must have somehow infiltrated my own organization.”

“Brilliant, Colonel. Better late than never. Incidentally, what is your name?”

“You know it.”

“Don’t tell me you have only one. In Russian novels they always have five or six at the very least, and they get called something different on every page.”

She smiled, and again there was that reflection of inner warmth and irrepressible youth the Saint had noticed on the street that afternoon.

“It’s Tanya,” she said. “Very common. Very easy.”

She was standing by one of the tables, and Simon stepped toward her.

“But there’s nothing common about you, tovarishtch,” he said softly.

She took a step backward, turned, and moved to the door of her room. For him the retreat was a form of flattery. If she had been uninterested — as women never seemed to be in a man so almost impossibly handsome as Simon Templar — she would most likely have stood her ground to freeze him off.

“I take a bath now,” she said. “It is very warm here, after Moscow.”

“Please don’t consider my bourgeois sensitivities, any time you feel like undressing accordingly. As you were saying...”

A knock at the door interrupted him, and in an instant his hand was on the lock.

“Who’s there?” he asked,

“Packages for you, m’sieu.”

Simon’s sensitive ears recognized the voice of one of the chasseurs who had brought them to the suite earlier in the day. The man came into the room, both arms supporting a heap of parcels retained by his chin. The Saint sorted through the pile as Tanya watched from the door of her room and the bellhop went happily away with his pourboire.

“You are most generous with my expense account,” Tanya said caustically.

“Don’t talk like a capitalist, Comrade Colonel. I paid for these things personally.”

He turned toward her, holding a large flat box wrapped in white paper and tied with red ribbon.

“Here. A little something for you.”

For a presumably hard-boiled survivor of Soviet political shuffles, Colonel Smolenko blushed somewhat easily. She was openly astonished, and the Saint was a little touched that it should never even have occurred to her that his visit to the ladies’ clothing shop could have been on her behalf.

“You must be wrong,” she said. “Not for me.”

She was shaking her head even as she held out her hands to accept the box.

“I’m quite sure I’m not wrong,” Simon answered. “Who’d know better than the one who picked it out?”

“Well, thank you,” she said quietly.

She put the package on a table next to her bedroom door, then looked at him as her hands touched the red bow. For an instant she brought herself to something like the military posture of attention.

“Thank you,” she repeated with great correctness.

“You’re welcome. Open it please, if you will. One never knows when something is going to explode these days, and I’d just as soon get the suspense over with.”

She pulled the bow loose, apparently being careful to avoid any appearance of excited haste. Before she lifted the cardboard top she looked over at him, questioningly. He nodded. She peered inside.

“Oh, what beautiful...” she began.

She brought out a mass of shimmering pale satin and spread it on the bed.

“A lovely dress,” she whispered. “And shoes. But what shoes.”

She held them up, and she was almost laughing. The slender heels were three inches high, and the tops were almost nonexistent.

“I?” she said. “Wear these?”

She studied Simon’s face for a moment. Her expression became suspicious.

“You make fun of me?”

It was a suggestion rather than an accusation.

“Nothing could be farther from my mind,” the Saint said. “Why would I throw away perfectly good and expensive clothes just for a laugh? There’s more, too.”

“I see.”

But she didn’t inspect the smaller black lacy items while he was watching.

“Thank you very much,” she said awkwardly, but with genuine feeling. “Now I shall go wash and dress myself.”

As she was closing her door she looked back again.

“This is very good of you.”

Simon discovered, after finishing his own shaving, bathing, and changing, that female Soviet colonels are no more prompt in dressing for dinner than most other varieties of female. He called room service for ice and water, inspected the delivery for bombs and other quaint attachments, and poured himself a Peter Dawson. He was standing by the fireplace in his dinner jacket, meditating on the strange whims of whatever Fate it is that decides which lives shall cross, when Tanya came out of her room.

To say that he was overwhelmed at the sight of her would be to underestimate the Saint’s capacity for subtleties of feeling. In addition to the normal elation produced by the close proximity of any exceptionally beautiful woman, he experienced a curious thrill at the thought that, Svengali-like, he was partly responsible for bringing the beauty into open bloom.

He bowed his respects, and Tanya smiled hesitantly. Her self-consciousness, like that of a girl going to her first formal dance, was as charming to an observer as it probably was uncomfortable for her. The brown hair which had been suppressed into a tight wad at the back of her head now fell free and soft around her face to her bare shoulders. Her face, though innocent of makeup except for lipstick, was lovely enough to have graced the cover of any Hollywood magazine — which struck Simon, who momentarily wished he had the time to arrange such a photographic appearance for her, as the perfect joke on both the magazine and the Soviet Secret Police.

“You’re a gorgeous woman,” he said simply, and kissed her hands.

“You are very kind. I still do not understand...”

“Why I’d get you these things?”

“Yes.”

“I like giving presents, especially to attractive young ladies who’re living in hotels in Paris with me. It’s a weakness of mine.”

Tanya underwent another of her incongruous blushes.

“You embarrass me.”

Simon gave her a devilish look as he took the stole she carried and draped it expertly over her shoulders.

“Do I detect a trace of still unviolated bourgeois morality?” he asked.

“You may detect all kinds of strange things. I am suddenly like a fish out of water, in a world I never saw with my own two eyes before, and with a man I...”

Simon looked at her expectantly without interrupting as she paused. Suddenly the old suspicious shadow fell across her face again.

“You think I come here without clothes to wear in the Paris restaurants?”

The Saint took her arm and pressed her hand.

“Tanya, don’t you have any proverb in Russia about gift horses? When I give intimate gifts such as dresses or lacy lingerie to a lady, it’s not because I think she has nothing else to wear. I promise you, my motives weren’t in the least noble or charitable.”

“Well, you would have been right,” she admitted with a sheepish little smile. “I did not have anything proper to wear.”