Лесли Чартерис - The Saint

Emma smiled. There was nothing more to say. She glanced from his disguised face to her wristwatch, and then to the theater door. It was time. As she threw him a fraught farewell look, he whispered a parting promise.

“You found me, Emma... I’ll find you.”

She slipped back into the crowd, and joined her fellow attendees. Entering the Shelton Theatre she was soon surrounded by colleagues, press, and Oxford security.

Teal and Rabineau, still standing outside in the rain, were feeling both increasingly wet and foolish.

Teal motioned toward the theater.

“We might as well go on in.”

With the auditorium filled and the perfunctory introductions concluded, the conference chairman introduced the first speaker.

“... Dr. E. J. Russell, whose presentation is entitled ‘The Future of Cold Fusion: Promise and Possibilities.’ ”

Emma waved away the applause as she approached the stage and prepared to take the podium.

Inspector Teal secured a seat just off the aisle near the side exit, and scanned the crowd for anyone resembling Simon Templar. His intense concentration was broken by the nasal lisp of the balding nerd who plopped himself down in the seat beside him.

“You don’t thwallow thith cold futhion nonthenth, do you?”

The detective frowned at the intrusion, then resumed scrutinizing the attendees as Dr. Russell began her address.

“We know cold fusion had a difficult childhood. Those few of us in the field are orphans, bastards at best...”

She knew Templar was somewhere in the crowd, and her gaze soon found his bald head and thick glasses. The sight of him sitting next to Inspector Teal almost made her drop her notes.

She paused, composed herself as if searching for just the right phrase, and continued.

“But difficult childhoods, I believe,” said Emma, looking directly at the Saint, “create the most interesting adults.”

As not to be obvious, she turned her attention to another section of the theater.

“And today, I’m here to tell you that although practical application of cold fusion is still speculative, still years away...”

She turned back toward Templar, and the Saint was gone. Her voice involuntarily caught in her throat, and Teal noticed she was looking directly at him — almost.

The detective turned to the empty aisle seat beside him, then back to Emma on stage. A slight flush of pink appeared on his portly cheeks as he processed the unavoidable implication.

“Recent events in Russia,” continued Dr. Russell, “have dramatically demonstrated that, in a theoretical sense at least, cold fusion has finally come of age.”

Teal slowly unwrapped a fresh stick of spearmint gum, and muttered softly under his breath.

“Hell, let Dorn find the Saint himself.”

Outside the theater, Simon Templar strolled undeterred toward his awaiting Volvo C70. Passing through the parking lot, he discreetly discarded the baldcap wig and geeky glasses, both of which went sailing into the nearest trash can.

He turned the ignition key and piloted the C70 out into traffic.

The businessman whose Canadian passport identified him as James Westlake of Windsor, Ontario, drove his Volvo to Heathrow in full compliance with the rules of the road. He couldn’t risk a traffic ticket, and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel while listening to the BBC. The reporter detailed the current status of the restablized democratic regime in Russia, and confirmed that the notorious Simon Templar, alias the Saint, was, despite his recent heroics, still wanted for questioning in numerous international cases of high-tech theft.

Someday, Templar fancied, he would take Teal to tea and explain to him the entire sordid story. Someday. Not today, not with half of Scotland Yard and British Intelligence searching for him with arrest warrants, not with Interpol awaiting him in any country which had ever signed an extradition agreement with the United Kingdom.

“In other news,” continued the BBC reporter, “a nonprofit research foundation has been established to develop cold fusion technology. Funded by an anonymous donation of fifty million dollars, the foundation is chartered to develop ‘inexpensive, clean energy for the benefit of all mankind...’ ”

The St. Ignatius Home for Boys was neither as large nor as foreboding as Simon Templar remembered it from his childhood.

Viewed from an adult perspective, the rooms were small, the desks were tiny, and the hallways narrow.

He arrived without appointment one sunny spring day and simply asked to see the headmaster. The nun who greeted him was warm and personable. She bade him be seated.

Memories flooded his senses, bringing to the fore every emotion associated with his years at St. Ignatius.

He looked out the window and saw something he did not expect — children playing happily on an elaborate outdoor swing-set. He heard laughter and giggles, shouts of glee and delight. A smile began to light his eyes and spread to the corners of his mouth.

“The Father will see you now.”

Simon smiled pleasantly at the friendly Sister and stepped inside the headmaster’s office.

It was not Father Brennan whose face he saw, but the big bearded visage of a joyous, barrel-chested priest with a bearlike build.

His handshake was firm and his demeanor gregarious.

“Welcome, welcome to St. Ignatius,” he began. “I’m the headmaster. What can I do for you?”

“I’m... I’m a graduate, or former student, or former...”

“Inmate?”

The blunt but accurate noun came as a surprise.

“Well, yes, honestly...”

“What’s your name, son?”

Simon Templar looked the priest square in the eye and played a hunch.

“My name is not John Rossi. Never has been, never will be.”

A thunderclap of recognition flashed across the priest’s face. “Simon! Simon Templar!”

The Saint was swept up in the manly hug of a lifetime.

“Don’t you see who’s behind this fuzzy beard? It’s me, Bartolo!”

“I thought so, but I wasn’t sure — the beard!”

“ ’Tis I, indeed, my Saintly crusader — hey, still breaking and entering?”

“Old habits... no pun intended,” said Templar, and he recalled their friendship from years gone by.

The man who was Bartolo gave Templar the complete tour of the new and improved facility, ending at a small garden in the courtyard — a garden named in memory of Agnes.

“I never expected this,” admitted Templar.

“Nothing stays the same forever, and neither do people. We all form our lives and build our futures on the experiences of the past. Take us, for example: You ran away and became a thief. I stayed and became a priest.”

“I saw a movie like that once,” joked Simon Templar. “You were Pat O’Brian and I was James Cagney.”

“Pat O’Brian, indeed.” Bartolo laughed. “You’re too debonair for Cagney.”

Templar looked at his old friend with heartfelt admiration. It was as if the years between them melted away. He could have sworn it was just last night that they raided the pantry.

“Brennan?” said Templar, and he needn’t have said more.

Father Bartolo shrugged and cocked his head. “If I told you” — he smiled coyly — “you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Now you must tell me,” insisted Templar.

Bartolo began walking around the garden. “One day, not long after you... you left, he became enraged about something... or nothing... it doesn’t matter.”

He stopped.

“The dogs turned on him. They almost ripped him to shreds. It was horrible.”

“Dead?”

“No. And I’m sure he’d like to see you.”