The Saint Around the World (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  He heard Farrast walk heavily past and open a door further down the verandah, and then he heard him through the partition wall. Farrast, then, had the adjoining room to his, and the other wing of the house would be the master suite. The wall was not much of a sound insulator. Simon heard Farrast moving about, opening drawers and closets, getting ready for bed, and presently the fall of his slippers and the creak of springs.

  The Saint put out his cigarette, took off his shorts, lay down quietly, and turned out the lamp. But for some time he lay with his hands behind his head and his eyes open, staring up at the ceiling.

  When two people have slept together, there is a kind of transmutation between them which, no matter how carefully they behave, without a single false step that could be specifically pinpointed, can reveal the fact to a sensitized intuition as baldly as if it were branded on them. The Saint dozed.

  Presently, he judged it was about half an hour later, he was wide awake again, and the sound that had aroused him was still clear in his recollection. It had been the creak of a board outside on the verandah. Instinctively he dropped one hand to the butt of the automatic which he had tucked under the edge of the mattress, but he made no other movement, and made himself breathe regularly and heavily. And after a few seconds he heard the almost inaudible scuff of stealthy footsteps moving away. That was when he let go the gun again, for his preternaturally acute hearing told him that the feet were shod. It was hard to follow them very far: the surrounding night crowded in on his ears with its competing antiphony of innumerable frogs and insects and small beasts of unimaginable variety, a background orchestration that you could forget entirely until you wanted to listen for something else and then it seemed to swell up into deafening volume. But after a while he heard, with unmistakable clarity, the soft turning of a latch, and perhaps felt rather than heard, conducted through the joists of the building, the muffled closing of a door, far down in the other wing of the house.

  He went to sleep.

  When he woke up again it was as if his brain had not stopped working. It was daylight enough to read, and he reached out at once for the book on the bedside table. He could not wait any longer to find out what Major Ascony had wanted him to read in it. But it was a very thick book, and to work through it from the first page in the hope of coming upon something that might fit in would be a marathon task.

  He riffled the pages methodically in search of a clue, and suddenly came to one that was turned down at the upper corner. It was a very neat turn-down, no bigger than the diagonal half of a postage stamp, but it was the only one in the volume, and it was on the first page of a story. He had a feeling that Ascony might almost have measured it with a micrometer, making it just big enough not to be overlooked permanently, but small enough not to be found prematurely.

  The story was called “Footprints in the Jungle.” As he started on it he had a vague recollection of having read it before, and as he went on it all came back to him. It was about a woman whose lover, with her encouragement, murdered her husband, and then married her.

  4

  When he went out on the verandah he carried the book with him. Eve Lavis was sitting at the coffee table in the living area, sipping a cup of tea. She looked up with a ready smile and said, “Good morning. Did you sleep all right?”

  “Like a baby. No, that’s wrong. Babies wake up at ungodly hours, bawling their heads off. I didn’t.”

  She was wearing light tan jodhpurs and a pastel yellow shirt, and her ash-blonde hair was pulled plainly back and tied with a yellow ribbon on the nape of her neck. It made her look even younger than the day before. Her gray eyes were clear and unshadowed.

  “I don’t need to ask you how you feel,” he said. “You look merely wonderful.”

  “I can’t help that. But I’m afraid it shocks you.”

  “It shouldn’t. I ought to know better than anyone that death seems a little less important each time you see it.”

  “You mean that this isn’t the first husband I’ve lost and I’m getting hardened to it.”

  “Well, Ascony did mention the doctor. But he didn’t go into any details.”

  “Dr Quarry,” she said. “Donald Quarry. He committed suicide.”

  “You don’t have to talk about it.”

  “I don’t mind. You’re curious, aren’t you? It’s natural. I was on a cruise boat that stopped here. It suddenly came over me that if I had to make one more sightseeing trip with the same crowd of people saying the same things about everything I’d go out of my mind. I decided to drive out to the Golf Club and ask if they’d let me play a round and be by myself for the first time for weeks. But I met Donald on the first tee and we played the round together, and then we had drinks, and he asked me to dinner, and it was something at first sight, I suppose, and when the cruise boat went on I wasn’t on it. We were married for two years. And then he did an operation that went wrong and his patient died. I don’t know why, but he got very depressed and thought he was no good any more, and soon afterwards he took a shot of morphine and put himself to sleep. I think I cried a little that time.”

  Simon looked down the hill, across the railroad tracks to the dense greenness that reached back towards a horizon of blue haze. The damp air still had a deceptively spring-like freshness.

  “The first time is always the worst, isn’t it?” he said.

  “You really do understand,” she said.

  “If you won’t accuse me of going back on our pact, Mrs Lavis, I think you may be the most remarkable woman I’ve ever met.”

  She was pleased, and did not pretend to hide it.

  “I’m glad you came here,” she said. “And I think you could drop the ‘Mrs Lavis’ stuff. Do you mind if I call you Simon?”

  “I was waiting for a chance to suggest it, Eve.”

  She put a hand on the teapot to test its temperature.

  “Would you like a cup of tea? It’s still hot.”

  “I’d rather have breakfast. I’m the horribly healthy type.”

  She glanced at a clock across the room.

  “We’ll give Charles another five minutes, and then I’ll ring for it, whether he’s here or not.”

  He was still trying to visualize her in bed with Farrast. There was nothing prurient about the effort, it was more like an exercise in abstract mathematics. Intellectually, he had no doubt left that his assumption was correct, but to translate it into a picture that he could believe emphatically was a form of confirmation that eluded him. Could that invulnerable air-conditioned poise really melt in the warm confusion of sex, abdicating its pedestal to lie with a cheaply handsome spoiled wilful and surely less than fascinating mortal like Charles Farrast?

  “Isn’t he up yet?” Simon asked.

  “Good heavens, yes. We literally get up at the crack of dawn here. Ketchil makan, and out to get the coolies started at six o’clock. Then back to breakfast after everything’s running.”

  He still had the book in his hand as he sat down beside her, and he put it down on the table in front of him.

  “I didn’t know how long it might be till breakfast, and I didn’t know I’d have better company,” he explained.

  She leaned a little towards him to look at the title.

  “Maugham,” she said. “I don’t think I know that one. Is it new?”

  “No, it’s a collection. Ascony lent it to me.”

  “Vernon? I never thought of him as the bookish type.”

  “He said there was a story in it that he’d like to get my reaction to.”

  “Really? Which one?”

  “A thing called ‘Footprints in the Jungle.’ ”

  She passed him a tin of cigarettes and took one herself.

  “What’s it about?”

  “Well, Maugham never does go in for very sensational plots, and this one certainly isn’t the newest one in the world. It’s about a woman whose husband is murdered, supposedly by robbers, and soon afterwards she marries his best friend, and the presumption is
that they were the ones who actually arranged to knock off Hubby.”

  She took a light from the match he held, without a wrinkle in her smooth brow. She was enjoying a civilized conversation, nothing more.

  “It isn’t exactly original, is it?”

  “It’s all in the writing. He makes you see them as quite ordinary people that you might meet anywhere, instead of monsters out of another world.”

  “But I wonder why Vernon wanted your opinion of it.”

  “The inside story is supposedly told by a police chief,” he said. “The policeman finds enough evidence to be fairly convinced that they did it, but he also knows that he could never get enough to stand any chance of convicting them. So he’s never done anything about it.”

  She met his gaze with level untroubled eyes. “I wonder if Vernon has a problem of that kind and can’t make up his mind what to do. But I can’t imagine Vernon not being able to make up his own mind about anything. But of course, if he didn’t have enough evidence, there’s nothing he could do anyway, is there?”

  Simon shrugged.

  “He didn’t tell me anything, and I didn’t read the story until this morning.”

  “I’ll have to read it myself.” She glanced at the clock, and stood up. “Let’s not starve ourselves any longer.”

  She went to the dining table and rang the silver hand-bell that stood in front of her place, but they had hardly settled themselves when Farrast stomped up the front steps and shouldered blusterily through the screen door. “Sorry if I’m late,” he said perfunctorily.

  He sailed a terai hat into an armchair as he marched through to the table and sat himself down heavily, his boots scraping the floor. He had the kind of complexion on which sunburn never loses all its redness, and it seemed more inflamed now, perhaps because he was warm. His khaki shirt was already wilted and clinging.

  “Trouble?” Eve Lavis asked.

  “Plenty,” Farrast said. “And I’m going to make more.”

  “You’ll be able to do it better with a good breakfast under your belt,” she said practically.

  It was a good breakfast, staunchly British, with bacon and eggs and sausages and toast and marmalade and strong tea to wash it down, as was to be expected, for that is one tradition on which no proper Colonial even in the remotest outpost of the Empire would make any concession to local cuisine. At other meals he may without protest eat bird’s-nest soup or stewed buffalo hump, and may even become an addict of semi-incandescent curries, but breakfast under the British flag is incorruptible from Hampstead to Hong Kong.

  After the boy had finished serving and gone out, and they had started eating, Farrast said, “I went down to the plant. The krani was there, but no men. They were supposed to clean out a couple of the stills. I waited twenty minutes. Then I loaded him in the jeep and drove out where they were last cutting wood. The other krani was there, with a truck, but no men. I gave it another ten minutes. Nobody showed up. So you know what I did? I made the kranis pick up a saw and start cutting wood themselves. I said if they couldn’t get their crews on the job, the only way they could earn their pay was by doing it themselves.”

  “Do you think that was wise, Charles?” Mrs Lavis asked. “You want to keep them on your side.”

  “You told me last night to show who was boss,” Farrast answered belligerently. “If the kranis had been tougher themselves, perhaps we’d never have had this trouble. This ought to teach ’em a lesson. I told ’em not to come in till they could bring the truck full of wood, which is all we need to complete a batch that’s waiting to be baked. And then I hiked off to the Malay village.”

  “By yourself?”

  “No, I had a friend with me.” He drew his revolver, held it up for a moment, and thrust it back in the holster. “I was just hoping somebody would start something, so I’d be given a chance to use it. But when I got there there wasn’t a grown man in sight. They’d all sneaked off into the bush when they heard me coming. Except the penggulu.”

  “Poor old man! I hope you didn’t hurt him.”

  “I made him show me the pawang’s hut. I threw everything out of it that was movable, his personal possessions as well as his charms and concoctions—broke everything that was breakable, and trampled the whole shebang into the mud. Then I told him to see that all the men saw it when they came back, and he could ask ’em how they thought the pawang’s magic could be any good if I could do that to him. And I told him to give the pawang a message, in front of plenty of witnesses, that I dared him to show his face anywhere around the estate, because wherever I found him I’d give him a public thrashing.”

  Eve Lavis buttered some toast.

  “Well, that ought to lead to a showdown,” she said. “What do you think, Simon?”

  “I don’t see how the pawang can help losing face if he doesn’t do something about it,” said the Saint. “On the other hand, if he does something, it’s liable to be something unhealthy for Charles.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Templar,” Farrast said. “I’m pretty handy at taking care of myself.”

  Mrs Lavis frowned thoughtfully.

  “I can’t help wondering if we aren’t missing the target,” she said. “You said yourself that the pawang must have gone over to the Reds. Doesn’t that mean there must be a bigger Commie agent somewhere around here who’s giving him his orders. If you could find him, you’d get the trouble out by the root.”

  “Perhaps Templar can detect him,” Farrast said.

  “I’ll think about it,” Simon said amiably. “But with, your local knowledge you’d do it better. I think Eve’s got something, though.”

  “Well,” Farrast said grudgingly, “if I catch that pawang I’ll see what I can beat out of him.”

  They had finished eating and were smoking cigarettes at the table when one of the guards came up the verandah steps and knocked on the frame of the screen door. Farrast got up and went over there, and the guard spoke briefly.

  “He says the pawang and a couple of his pals are in the Chinese shop across from the station,” Mrs Lavis translated to Simon.

  Farrast returned to pick up his hat, and also a stout Malacca cane.

  “This is what I’ve been looking forward to,” he said grimly.

  Simon folded his napkin and stood up.

  “Would you like me to come with you?” he asked.

  “Suit yourself.”

  Farrast opened the door and went out. Simon followed him.

  The tropical day was getting into its stride, and as they stepped out from under the shade of the roof the sun hit them through a mugginess that was almost palpable. Farrast marched down the hill in ominous silence, the set of his jaw proclaiming one implacable preoccupation. But at the gate in the fence that ringed the upper part of the hill he stopped the guard and told him to wait there.”

  “Jaga baik-baik, tuan,” the guard said, and Farrast glared at him as if the man had insulted him by merely urging him to be careful.

  They went on down past the plant and the warehouse and across the station platform, without another word being spoken until they had crossed the tracks. Then Farrast stopped a few yards from the open entrance of the store and looked carefully to left and right, as though satisfying himself that he was not walking into an ambush.

  He said, “You can come in with me if you like. But don’t interfere unless you’re quite sure that I’ve had it. I’m the fellow who’s got to go on running this show. They’ve got to be afraid of me all by myself, and not thinking they can start up again as soon as you’ve left.”

  “Whatever you say, boss,” murmured the Saint. Farrast went in, and Simon followed again and stepped off to one side, keeping his back to the wall.

  There were three Malays gathered around an antique pinball machine at the rear of the shop. Two of them, with bottles in their hands, were watching and boisterously encouraging the third, who was playing. But as Simon and Farrast walked in they abruptly stopped laughing, one of them muttered a warning, and
they stepped back a little. The one who was playing seemed to pay no attention. He remained huddled closely over the machine, without looking around, concentrating intently on his shot. He could only have been the pawang, though he was dressed no differently from the others, in a much-mended shirt and a sarong.

  Farrast strode straight over to him, without hesitation, his boots thudding on the bare floor in defiant announcement of his approach, but the third Malay did not move until Farrast grasped his shoulder. Then the pawang turned, like a twisting snake, and a kris flashed in his hand at waist level where he must have been holding it all the time under cover of his crouch at the machine. Simon saw the glint of the wicked wavy-bladed knife, but the Malay was so quick and Farrast was so close to him that even the Saint could have done nothing about it. But Farrast himself must have been anticipating the attack in precisely the way it happened, and he was countering it almost before it started, pushing the Malay back and bringing his already lifted cane down in a vicious cracking blow on the man’s wrist which undoubtedly broke a bone. The knife fell to the ground and Farrast put his foot on it. Then he grasped the pawang by the collar and began to rain merciless blows with the stick on his back and buttocks.

  The pawang’s attempt had been made and foiled so instantaneously that it hardly seemed like an interruption at all, and his two putative sycophants were left winded and dumbfounded by the speed with which their prospective hero had been disarmed and reduced to squirming impotence. Simon kept them under close observation, but it was obvious that their role had been meant to be that of witnesses and admirers, and that they had no ambition to join the fray after the tables had been so catastrophically turned on their champion. They watched open-mouthed, until with a scream and a still more violent plunge the pawang tore himself free, leaving half his patched shirt in Farrast’s hand, and raced out of the shop like a terrified cur; and then, as Farrast turned speculatively towards them, they sidled around behind a counter with increasing velocity that culminated in a panic-stricken bolt for the door.