Leslie Charteris - The Saint to the Rescue

The Arabian delegate accepted the hand gingerly, and winced at the shake, but managed a toothily courteous grimace.

“Y’know, pardner,” Jobyn observed as they drove away, “Felicity’s goin’ to be spittin’ like a scalded bobcat when she hears this water-makin’ invention is as genuine as I been tellin’ her all along. She’ll like to tear your hair out for backin’ me up.”

“I can imagine that,” said the Saint. “So since she isn’t my wife, I’d just as soon pass up that exhilarating privilege, if it’s all the same to you.”

Jobyn seemed to wilt slightly in the mid-act of igniting a celebratory cigar of sufficient caliber to have defended the Alamo,

“But I was countin’ on you to—”

“Why should either of us ask for trouble? Is there any law in Texas that everything has to be done in your joint names? Does she add up your bank statement every month? Does it take both your signatures to write a check?”

“No, but—”

“I’ll bet that when you were courting, Walt, you thought she’d be a right cute little filly to rope and tie. But not so long after she had your name on a marriage license, you found she’d grown into a bucking bronco — and she was riding you!”

“How did yuh know that?”

“One day I’m going to write a book about the Great American Wife. But meanwhile I’ll give you a free preview of the last chapter. It says: she’s only the fault of the Great American Husband. He gave up too easily. I suppose it’s too late for him to go back to the good healthy custom of belting her in the mouth any time she opens it out of turn. But if she wants to make out she’s so much smarter than he is, on strictly intellectual terms, then he’s got a right to outsmart her if he can.”

Mr Jobyn squinted up at him sidelong.

“What yuh gettin’ at, Mr Templar?”

“You said it yourself to Hamzah. However many wives he’s got, he keeps ’em locked up and he doesn’t tell them about his business. Now, you could hardly start a harem with Felicity, but she’s only one, and you should be able to handle her. Go back and tell her you still think Nemford has a gold mine, and I said it looked good, too, but in deference to her great wisdom you decided not to invest in it. This makes her love you to death, but inside, she wonders—”

“But—”

“Then you go right ahead with what you already decided. And after it’s made you a few millions, the next time she’s getting really ornery, you can say: ‘Now I come to think of it, sweetheart, I forgot to tell you how much I made out of the last time I didn’t take your advice.’ And you sock her with the figures, for the first time... On the other hand, until this deal does pay off, and even if by sheer bad luck it never does, you’ll never have to squirm while she tells you what a dope you were.”

The immediate representative of the second biggest of the United States mulled this shamelessly pragmatic proposition under an intensely corrugated brow for several seconds, and came up jubilantly slapping his thigh.

“Goll dang it,” he said exuberantly, “I think yuh got the answer I was lookin’ for. An’ I ain’t the man to forget it. How much do you figure to invest in this here process?”

“Not much more than I already have,” said the Saint. “With taxes the way they are, I can’t afford to be a millionaire, and I can’t take a profit from giving matrimonial advice without losing my amateur standing. But someday if I get desperate I may stop at one of your wells with a bucket.”

He dropped Jobyn at the hotel in La Jolla, and firmly declined to stay for dinner or even for a drink, claiming that he was already overdue at the home of the friends he had been on his way to visit in San Diego.

“If you’re going to play it the way I suggested, you shouldn’t need any moral support when you talk to Felicity. Not at this stage, anyway,” he said. “But I’ll give you the phone number where I’m staying, and you can call me any time you have qualms.”

For his host he had a slightly different story, merely to avert the tedium of more complicated explanations.

“I have to see a fellow at Mission Beach about a small business deal that a pal of mine asked me to check on,” he said with careful casualness, as they were finishing dinner. “D’you mind if I run over there and join you at the Yacht Club later? It shouldn’t take me an hour, at the very worst.”

He had memorized the location of Doc Nemford’s shack so accurately that he did not need to drive within a hundred yards of it. He parked his car an inconspicuous block away, and strolled down an alley with a chipped and faded signboards at the entrance that offered “Boats & Bait.”

Simon had seen the boats from Nemford’s jetty, and had been less than excited as a nautical connoisseur. At close quarters they looked even less picturesque and more unseaworthy, but he was not planning an extended cruise. There were no oars or other conventional means of propulsion in sight, the livery operator having no doubt thoughtfully secured them inside the padlocked shed from which he did his business, but the Saint did not have to search far for a discarded four-foot piece of board that would serve as an adequate paddle for the voyage he had in mind.

He quietly nursed the least leaky skiff he could select along the shore line to Nemford’s property, and let it drift up to the pier and even under it.

There was only a half-moon that night, and the sky was murky, but Simon had a pencil flashlight to help him in the dark corners, though he used it with the most furtive discretion. He verified certain structural possibilities that had intrigued him, and then hitched the painter to one of the pilings and swung himself nimbly up on to the decking.

There was a glow of light behind the ground-floor curtains of Nemford’s cottage, and the Saint moved like a drifting shadow towards an open window until the murmur of voices inside resolved itself into distinct words and equally clear identifications of the speakers.

The first to emerge into this unconscious clarity was Nemford himself, who was saying, “You’re asking me to go back on my word to Mr Jobyn. I know we haven’t signed anything yet, but we shook hands on a deal.”

Simon could not see into the room from any angle, but the accent and context of the next speech made visual confirmation supererogatory.

“I appreciate your problem, Doctor, and I am prepared to compensate you for your embarrassment. I have spoken by telephone to Cairo, and I am authorized to pay you fifty thousand dollars more to change your mind about this bargain with Mr Jobyn. I am sure that if he changed his mind, he would not be bound by the handshake.”

“But suppose, then, he wanted to offer me more?”

“If you accept my price, you need not be here to listen to him. Perhaps it would be wiser if you were not, in case he is only angry. But I cannot haggle as in a bazaar. I was talking to you first, I remind you, and I deserved the right to make the first bid. But since I made the second, it is also the last for me. A quarter of a million dollars, Doctor. The extra money will almost pay your tax on the transaction.”

There was a pause.

“But when would you expect to pay me, Colonel? You remember, I had to tell Mr Jobyn that I only had his word for his oil wells. I hate to say this sort of thing, but after all, how do I know that your Government will back you up? And meanwhile, if I alienate Mr Jobyn—”

“My Embassy is being ordered tonight to let me have the money. As soon as the bank is open in Washington tomorrow morning, they can send it to me. Because of the time difference, it can arrive here as soon as the banks open in San Diego. Tell me which bank you keep your papers in, and I’ll have it sent there. We meet, I give you the money, you give me the blueprints. It is so simple.”