Андрей Л.Рюмин - 03 Enter the Saint

His right hand reached to his breast pocket in the most natural way in the world. Hilloran's scream of agony shattered the silence. Like lightning, Dicky's right hand had dropped and gripped Hilloran's right hand, at the same instant as Dicky's left hand fas­tened paralyzingly on Hilloran's right arm just above the elbow. The wrench that almost broke Hilloran's wrist was made almost in the same movement.

The gun thudded into the carpet at their feet, but Tremayne took no notice. Retaining and strengthen­ing his grip, he turned Hilloran round and forced him irresistibly to his knees. Tremayne held him there with one hand. "We can talk more comfortably now," he remarked. He looked at the girl, and saw that she had picked up the fallen automatic. "Before we go any further, Audrey," he said, "I should like to know what you think of the suggestion-that I might be a friend of the Saint's. I needn't remind you that this object is jealous as well as drunk. I won't deny the charge, because that wouldn't cut any ice. I'd just like your opinion."

"Let him go, first."

"Certainly."

With a twist of his hand, Dicky released the man and sent him toppling over onto his face. "Hilloran, get up!"

"If you-"

"Get up!"

Hilloran stumbled to his feet. There was murder in his eyes, but he obeyed. No man of his calibre could have challenged that command. Dicky thought. "A crook-and she can wear power like a queen. ..."

"I want to know, Hilloran," observed the girl frostily, "why you said what you said just now."

The man glared. "He can't account for himself, and he doesn't look or behave like one of us. We know there's a squeaker somewhere-someone who squealed on Handers-and he's the only one-"

"I see." The contempt in the girl's voice had the quality of concentrated acid. "What I see most is that because I prefer his company to yours, you're ready to trump up any wild charge against him that comes into your head-in the hope of putting him out of favour."

"And I see," sneered Hilloran, "that I'm the one who's out of favour-because he's taken my place. He's-"

"Either," said the girl, "you can walk out on your own flat feet, or you can be thrown out. Take your choice. And whichever way you go, don't come back here till you're sober and ready to apologize."

Hilloran's fists clenched. "You're supposed to be bossing this gang-"

"I am," said Audrey Perowne. "And if you don't like it, you can cut out as soon as you like."

Hillorn swallowed. "All right-"

"Yes?" prompted Audrey silkily.

"One day," said Hilloran, staring from under black brows, "you're going to be sorry for this. We know where we are. You don't want to fire me before the big job, because I'm useful. And I'll take every­thing lying down for the present time, because there's a heap of money in it for me. Yes, I'm drunk, but I'm not too drunk to be able to see that."

"That," said the girl sweetly, "is good news. Have you finished?"

Hilloran's mouth opened, and closed again delib­erately. The knuckles showed whitely in his hands. He looked at the girl for a long time. Then, for a long time in exactly the same way, he looked at Tre­mayne, without speaking. At last. "Good-night, "he said, and left the room without another word.

From the window, Tremayne watched him walk slowly up the street, his handkerchief to his mouth. Then Dicky turned and found Audrey Perowne be­side him. There was something in her eyes which he could not interpret. He said: "You've proved that you trust me-"

"He's crazy," she said.

"He's mad," said Dicky. "Like a mad dog. We haven't heard the last of this evening. From the moment you step on board the yacht, you'll have to watch him night and day. You understand that, don't you?"

"And what about you?"

"A knowledge of ju-jitsu is invaluable."

"Even against a knife in the back?"

Dicky laughed. "Why worry?" he asked. "It doesn't help us."

The grey eyes were still holding his. "Before you go," she said, "I'd like your own answer-from your own mouth."

To what question?"

"To what Hilloran said."

He was picking up his coat. He put it down and came towards her. A madness was upon him. He knew it, felt everything in him rebelling against it; yet he was swept before it out of reason, like a leaf before the wind. He held out his hand. "Audrey," he said, "I give you my word of honour that I'd be burnt alive sooner than let you down."

The words were spoken quite simply and calmly. The madness in him could only prompt them. He could still keep his face impassive and school the intensest meaning out of his voice. Her cool fingers touched his, and he put them to his lips with a smile that might have meant anything-or nothing. A few minutes later he was driving home with the first streaks of dawn in the sky, and his mouth felt as if it had been seared with a hot iron. He did not see the Saint again before they left for Marseilles.

Chapter IV THREE days later, Dicky Tremayne, in white trous­ers, blue reefer and peaked cap, stood at the star­board rail of the Corsican Maid and stared moodily over the water. The sun shone high overhead, turn­ing the water to a sea of quicksilver, and making of the Chвteau d'If a fairy castle. The Corsican Maid lay in the open roadstead, two miles from Marseilles Harbour; for the Countess Anusia Marova, ever thoughtful for her guests, had decided that the docks, with their grime and noise and bustle, were no place for holiday-making millionaires and their wives to loiter, even for a few hours. But over the water, from the direction of the harbour, approached a fussy little tender. Dicky recognized it as the tender that had been engaged to bring the millionaires, with their wives and other baggage, to the countess's yacht, and watched it morosely.

That is to say that his eyes followed it intently; but his mind was in a dozen different places. The situation was rapidly becoming intolerable-far too rapidly. That, in fact, was the only reflection which was seriously concerned with the approach of the tender. For every yard of that approach seemed, in a way, to entangle him ten times more firmly in the web that he had woven for himself.

The last time he had seen the Saint, Dicky hadn't told him the half of it. One very cogent reason was that Dicky himself, at the time, hadn't even known the half well enough to call it Dear Sir or Madam. Now, he knew it much too well. He called it by its first name now-and others-and it sat back and grinned all over its ugly face at him. Curse it. ...

When he said that he might fall in love with Au­drey Perowne, he was underestimating the case by a mile. He had fallen in love with her, and there it was. He'd done his level best not to; and when it was done, he'd fought for all he was worth against admit­ting it even to himself. By this time, he was begin­ning to see that the struggle was hopeless.

And if you want to ask why the pink parrakeets he should put up a fight at all, the answer is that that's the sort of thing men of Dicky Tremayne's stamp do. If everything had been different-if the Saint had never been heard of-or, at least, if Tremayne had only known him through his morning newspaper- the problem would never have arisen. Say that the problem, having arisen, remains a simple one-and you're wrong. Wrong by the first principles of psychological arithmetic.

The Saint might have been a joke. The press, at first, had suggested that he must be a joke-that he couldn't, reasonably, be anything else. Later, with grim demonstrations thrust under their bleary eyes, the press admitted that it was no joke. In spite of which, the jest might have stood, had the men carry­ing it out been less under the Saint's spell.

There exists a loyalty among men of a certain type which defies instinct, and which on occasion can rise above the limitations of mere logic. Dicky Tremayne was of that breed. And he didn't find the problem simple at all. He figured it out in his own way.