Андрей Л.Рюмин - 03 Enter the Saint

"She's a crook. On the other hand, as far as that goes, so am I-though not the way she thinks of it. She's robbing people who can afford to stand the racket. Their records, if you came to examine them closely, probably wouldn't show up any too clean. In fact, she's on much the same ground as we are ourselves. Except that she doesn't pass on ninety per cent of the profits to charity. But that's only a private sentimentality of our own. It doesn't affect the main issue. Hilloran isn't the same proposition. He's a real bad hombre. I'd be glad to see him go down.

"The snag with the girl is the late John L. Mor­ganheim. She probably murdered him. But then, there's not one of our crowd that hasn't got blood on his hands. What matters is why the blood was shed. We don't know anything about Morganheim, and action's going to be forced on me before I've time to find out. In a story, the girl's always innocent. Or, if she's guilty, she's always got a cast-iron reason to be. But I'm not going to be led away. I've seen enough to know that that kind of story is mostly based on vintage boloney, according to the recipe. I'm going to look at it coldly and sanely, till I find an answer or my brain busts. Because- "Because, in fact, things being as they are, I've as good as sworn to the Saint that I'd bring home the bacon. Not in so many words, but that's what he assumes. And he's got every right to assume it. He gave me the chance to cry off if I wanted to-and I turned it down. I refused to quit. I dug this perish­ing pitfall, and it's up to me to fight my own way out-and no whining. ..."

Thus Dicky Tremayne had balanced the ledger, over and over again, without satisfying himself. The days since the discomfiture of Hilloran had not made the account any simpler.

Hilloran had come round the next morning and apologized. Tremayne had been there-of course. Hilloran had shaken his hand heartily, boisterously disclaimed the least animosity, declared that it had been his own silly fault for getting canned, and taken Dicky and Audrey out to lunch. Dicky would have had every excuse for being deceived-but he wasn't. That he pretended to be was nobody's busi­ness.

But he watched Hilloran when he was not being watched himself; and from time to time he surprised in Hilloran's eyes a curiously abstracted intentness that confirmed his misgivings. It lasted only for a rare second here and there; and it was swallowed up again in a fresh flood of open-handed good humour so quickly that a less prejudiced observer might have put it down to imagination. But Dicky under­stood, and knew that there was going to be trouble with Hilloran.

Over the lunch, the intrusion of the Saint had been discussed, and a decision had been reached- by Audrey Perowne. "Whoever he is, and whatever he's done," she said, "I'm not going to be scared off by any comic-opera threats. We've spent six thousand pounds on ground bait, and we'd be a cheap lot of pikers to leave the pitch without a fight. Besides, sooner or later, this Saint's going to bite off more than he can chew, and this may very well be the time. We're going to be on the broad Mediterra­nean, with a picked crew, and not more than twenty per cent of them can be double-crossing us. That gives us an advantage of four to one. Short of pulling out a ship of their own and making a pitched battle of it, I don't see what the Saint can do. I say we go on-with our eyes twice skinned." The argument was incontestable.

Tremayne, Hilloran and Audrey had left London quietly so as to arrive twelve hours before their guests were due. Dicky had spent another evening alone with the girl before the departure. "Do you believe in Hilloran's apology?" he had asked.

She had answered, at once: "I don't."

"Then why are you keeping him on?"

"Because I'm a woman. Sometimes, I think, you boys are liable to forget that. I've got the brain, but it takes a man to run a show like this, with a crew like mine to handle. You're the only other man I'd trust it to, but you-well, Dicky, honestly, you haven't the experience, have you?"

It had amazed him that she could discuss a crime so calmly. Lovely to look upon, exquisitely dressed, lounging at her ease in a deep chair, with a cigarette between white fingers that would have served the most fastidious sculptor for a model, she looked as if she should have been discussing, delightfully- anything but that. Of his own feelings he had said nothing. He kept them out of his face, out of his eyes, out of his voice and manner. His dispassionate calm rivalled her own. He dared hold no other pose. The reeling tumult of his thoughts could only be masked by the most stony stolidness. Some of the turmoil could inevitably have broken through any less sphinx-like disguise.

He was trying to get her in her right place-and, in the attempt, he was floundering deeper and deeper in the mire of mystification. There was about her none of the hard flashiness traditionally sup­posed to brand the woman criminal. For all her command, she remained completely feminine, gen­tle of voice, perfectly gracious. The part of the Coun­tess Anusia Marova, created by herself, she played without effort; and, when she was alone, there was no travesty to take off. The charmingly broken En­glish disappeared-that was all. But the same woman moved and spoke.

If he had not known, he would not have believed. But he knew-and it had rocked his creed to its foundations. There had only been one moment, that evening, when he had been in danger of stumbling. "If we bring this off," she had said, "you'll get your quarter share, of course. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand pounds of your money. You need never do another job as long as you live. What will you do?"

"What will you do with yours?" he countered.

She hesitated, gazed dreamily into a shadowy corner as though she saw something there. Then: "Probably," she said lightly, "I'll buy a husband."

"I might buy a few wives," said Dicky, and the moment was past. Now he looked down into the blue Mediterranean and meditated that specimen of repartee with unspeakable contempt. But it had been the only thing that had come into his head, and he'd had to say something promptly. "Blast it all," thought Dicky, and straightened up with a sigh.

The tender had nosed up to the gangway, and Sir Esdras Levy, in the lead, was helping Lady Levy to the grating. Mr. George Y. Ulrig stood close behind. Dicky caught their eye. He smiled with his mouth, and saluted cheerily.

He ought to know them, for he himself had been the means of introducing them to the house in Park Lane. That had been his job, on the Continent, under Hilloran, for the past three months-to travel about the fashionable resorts, armed with plenty of money, an unimpeachable wardrobe and his natural charm of manner, and approach the Unapproacha­bles when they were to be found in holiday moods with their armour laid aside.

It had been almost boringly simple. A man who would blow up high in the air of addressed by a perfect stranger in the lounge of the Savoy Hotel, London, may be addressed by the same stranger with perfect impunity in the lounge of the Heliopolis Hotel, Biarritz. After which, to a man of Dicky Tremayne's polished worldliness, the improvement of the shining hour came automatically. Jerking himself back to the realities of immediate impor­tance, he went down to help to shepherd his own selected sheep to the slaughter.

Audrey Perowne stood at the head of the gang­way, superbly gowned in a simple white skirt and coloured jumper-superbly gowned because she wore them. She was welcoming her guests inimita­bly, with an intimate word for each, while Hilloran, in uniform, stood respectfully ready to conduct them to their cabins.

"Ah, Sir Esdras, ve 'ardly dare expec' you. I say, ' 'E vill not com' to my seely leetle boat.' But 'e is nize, and 'e com' to be oncomfortable to pleasse me. . . . And Lady Levy. My dear, each day you are more beautiful." Lady Levy, who was a fat fifty, glowed audibly. "And Mrs. Ulrig. Beefore I let you off my boat, you shall tell me 'ow eet iss you keep zo sleem." The scrawny and faded Mrs. George Y. Ulrig squirmed with pleasure. "George Y.," said the Countess, "I see you are vhat zey call a sheek. Ozairvize you could not 'ave marry 'er. And Mrs. Sankin ..."