“Will that do?” she asked curtly, after scrawling her name.
Axe-nose took the piece of paper and scrutinized it word by word. He read it a second time before he nodded.
“Eez okay,” he granted.
“I must say Mr Jaeger has a pretty violent way of breaking a date,” Freda said. “But now that you’ve got what he wants, you can let me out of here.”
Her kidnapper tucked the note she had written into his jacket. Then, before he answered, he unwrapped, clenched in his teeth, and held a match to a long thin cigar—all with deliberate slowness. The silence was unnerving. The only sound in the thick-walled room was the man’s quick sucking of fire into his cheroot. When it was glowing, he snapped the wooden match in half between his fingers and flipped its pieces across the room.
“Oh, no, senhorita,” he said softly. “I cannot let you out of here. Now that your absence weel be explained—now we can ask you some important questions.”
He had put one foot on a rung of her chair and leaned down with his face so close to hers that she could feel the heat of the scarlet glowing coal tip of the cigar which jutted from his mouth.
“But…”
She was almost too frightened to say anything, and he cut her off after the first word she uttered. The big knife, which he had kept out of sight while she wrote the letter to Vicky, appeared again from behind his back. He held the blade for her to see.
“No ‘but,’ senhorita,” he murmured. “Now you weel answer questions, and you weel answer quickly, or eet weel be a long afternoon that you spend here.”
He moved the knife towards her midriff until it punctured the thin fabric of her blouse, and then—like a surgeon beginning to operate—with a slow careful upward movement he slit the material open all the way to the neckline.
“A very long afternoon…”
2
Through his half-open door, which gave him an adequately direct view of the entrance to Vicky Kinian’s room across the hall, Simon Templar had heard Freda’s parting line—“I just hope my father never writes me a cliff-hanging letter like that!”—and had been well aware of her glance into his room, and of the significant deceleration of her pace as she passed it. He would have been hardly human, or more like an authentic saint, if he had not been tempted to accept the obvious challenge to make a discreet bid for her acquaintance. He could even have twisted the rubber arm of his conscience with the specious argument that such a manoeuvre would be strictly in the line of duty, anyhow, since it could be an adroitly indirect way to sneak up on his prime target. The blonde was not one of the characters of the script that had been presented to him at the embassy, but then life almost always ignored the scripts men prepared for it anyway. The important things at the moment were that Vicky Kinian was in her room and could not get out without him knowing it, and that with her—unless the blonde had a more active role than he imagined—was a fascinating epistle from her departed dad. Whether it was the same letter she had been given in Iowa or a new one that had somehow come into her hands in Lisbon did not make much difference now; in either case it was just the sort of light reading the Saint craved to while away a few minutes of his tax-supported holiday in Portugal. And from that objective he could not let himself for the moment be detoured.
He had gone directly from the American Embassy to the Tagus Hotel after his briefing on the case of the errant Major Kinian, who had somehow neglected to report to his superiors for the past quarter of a century. And as he entered the modest foyer, which was a pleasant but nevertheless gently jolting contrast to those of the chain-store caravanserais to which he had latterly become accustomed, the Saint had been musing on the stupendous changes that had subvened in the two-and-a-half decades since the missing major had last been heard from. That most popular puppet of the newspaper cartoonist, the black octopus with the swastika on its head, had long since withdrawn its tentacles from the borderlands of the abdicated British Empire and disappeared even from children’s nightmares. Former heroic allies had become sour antagonists, and one of those which had most cynically played both ends against the middle had spread its web over the world on a scale that made the reach of the black octopus seem puny in comparison.
And yet, through it all, certain denizens of the Pentagon, part of a species which could easily misplace whole shiploads of bulldozer axles and misdirect trainloads of snow-boots to Equatorial Africa, had managed to keep a sharp eye out for Major Kinian—and not only that, but also to know when his daughter decided to take her summer holiday. Such atypical cases of bureaucratic alertness were enough to arouse the curiosity of the most skeptical buccaneer—or even of a Saint.
“There is a young American lady staying here whom I would like very much to meet,” Simon had said to the desk clerk in clear Portuguese as he took up the pen to sign the register. “Her name is Victoria Kinian.”
“Ah, sim,” the clerk said promptly. “She has just arrived this morning.”
“Bem. But please say nothing to her. There is always a tactful way to arrange these things.”
The clerk smiled understandingly, and then came to sudden attention.
“Senhor!” he whispered, scarcely moving his lips. “You have good fortune. There comes the lady now. The dark-haired one. The blonde one does not stay here.”
At a single glance the Saint had discovered at least one superficial reason why the men of American intelligence need not have been excessively pitied for the close watch they had kept on Major Kinian’s daughter. Unconsciously beautiful in a modest white-and-yellow summer dress, she made her bare-shouldered flashier companion look like the late night shift at a hamburger stand. For just a moment she had met his gaze with interest but without encouragement, and then had turned her head and gone on up the stairs.
“A most lovely young lady,” the desk clerk said discreetly.
“Most lovely,” Simon agreed. “Have she and her friend been out long?”
“No, senhor. Less than two hours.”
The Saint thanked him, and followed the bellhop who came to carry his bags. There was no elevator in the building, and they used the same broad stairway which the girls had just climbed.
“Desculpe-me, faça o favor!” puffed a voice just behind them, and a small bald roundish man in Vandyke whiskers chugged between Simon and his burdened porter with such urgent speed that he knocked one of the suitcases against the railing. “Pardon!” he called back without turning, and bounded out of sight at the top of the stairs like an animated rubber ball.
Pardon, in French pronunciation, being a universal European term of public apology, its use by the bearded man did not give Simon any clue to his nationality, but he made a careful mental note of the stair-hog’s personal appearance. It could have been that the man’s headlong rush up the steps was due to his being late for an appointment or uncontrollably eager for a cool bath, but it was also just possible that his enthusiasm for climbing was connected with an interest in the comings and goings of Vicky Kinian, who had preceded him by just a few minutes. However, there had been no sign of him during the rest of the climb to Simon’s room, and the Saint soon had less remotely speculative things to think about.
Such as the mysterious letter, or letters, upon which Vicky Kinian’s enigmatic odyssey seemed to hinge. The immediate problem was to get a look at it, or them, by some means less crude than bursting into the room opposite while the girl was there and hoping to attain his objective by force or menace, with an odds-on risk of hashing up the rest of the game even if that play succeeded. Therefore he would have to wait until she went out—while trying meanwhile to decide whether it would be better to gamble on her having hidden the documents in her room, or having them with her in a purse that might be snatched or rifled somewhere without identifiably involving himself.
It was an exercise in patience which only a most unusual mission could have commanded of him, for the Saint was not by nature a patient man. And it should say enough for the old-time bond between him an
d the man called Hamilton that he embarked upon it at all.
An hour after the blonde had left, a waiter delivered a tray to the room. Late lunch. Simon followed suit. Then, when long after he had finished his cold chicken and wine nothing more had happened across the hall, he was forced to assume that the lovely object of his watch was taking a siesta—a natural part of the first-day schedule of a transatlantic traveller for whom waking-up time on landing in Portugal would have been three in the morning at home.
Simon, who had flown in the opposite direction, had not suffered the same bashing of his biological clock, and through plenty of firsthand experience with the relativity of time and space had learned to adapt himself automatically to the most bizarre antics of chronometers and shifting dawns. All the same, a hot afternoon in Lisbon was not ideal for guard duty, and the Saint fought drowsiness as he resigned himself to his vigil.
If he had had any notion of what had happened, and was happening, to Freda Oliveiros, his enforced inaction would have been infinitely harder to endure, but mercifully that knowledge was forever spared him.
Curt Jaeger, who knew, was emotionally perturbed only by the inevitable native unpunctuality of his temporary deputy. Freshly bathed, shaved, and changed into a newly pressed dark suit, in complete readiness for his date with Vicky Kinian, he was sitting at a table at the cafe down the street at exactly six twenty-nine. At a quarter to seven he was still nursing a small glass of Robertson’s Port and checking his watch every two or three minutes, with progressively increasing irritation. A deadline was rapidly approaching when, through no fault of his own, he could be late to pick up his dinner engagement. Curt Jaeger did not like lateness—his own or other people’s—and he sat stiffly, cursing the congenital incompetence of inferior races.
Finally, at almost ten minutes to, Pedro came scurrying around the corner blinking at the red sunset and twitching his thin black antennae. He dropped into a chair opposite Jaeger and began to hiss words so rapidly that even one of his own countrymen might have had trouble understanding him.
“You are late!” Jaeger cut him off. “I always make it a practice to arrive at any appointment at least a minute ahead of tune.”
Pedro only ducked briefly as if to dodge that bit of uplifting advice, and went on hissing.
“Slow down, at least, so I can understand you!” Jaeger snapped. “Although I have no doubt that what you have to tell me is disappointing.”
“The news is bad, senhor,” Pedro whined.
“Naturally,” Jaeger said without emotion. “What did she tell you?”
“Her name—Freda Oliveiros, a stewardess with International Airways. That she was once at school, long ago, with the dark one, Victoria Kinian. But they had not met since, until by chance they were on this flight from New York.”
“What else?”
“She could only tell us that the dark one’s father had a strong box at the bank. They went to the bank this morning and opened the box and found a letter in it.”
Jaeger pushed his port aside and unconsciously tensed forward.
“Well, and what did the letter say?”
“The dark one read it but would not tell the blonde one what was in it, except that it seemed very important.”
“Idiot!” Jaeger barked. “You believe one girl could keep such a thing from another? You must keep on until you make her talk.”
Pedro twisted his feet around the legs of his chair and rubbed his hatchet nose with the back of his hand in an embarrassed gesture.
“We tried very hard, until she died,” he grumbled. “I think perhaps she truly did not know.”
Jaeger had no rebuttal for that. He sat with his jaw clamped shut for a moment while the muscles in his gaunt cheeks worked nervously.
“You tried everything?” he finally asked, wanting to be sure his dissatisfaction was quite clear.
Pedro’s black eyes glittered as he remembered some of the things he had done during the long hours of the hot afternoon.
“Everything,” he said.
He spoke the word with such evident sincerity that even Jaeger had to be contented.
“So!” he said, slapping the table in front of him with his palms. “That matter is concluded then. I assume you have taken care of the—final details.”
Pedro nodded.
“We went by the waterfront on our way here. I have a friend with a trapdoor in the bottom of his boathouse which…”
“Never mind telling me the tricks of your filthy trade,” Jaeger said coldly. “I am in a hurry. Would you like to earn some more money for an easy job?”
“What is the job?” asked Pedro sensibly.
“I am taking the dark girl out to dinner. When we have left the hotel, go to her room—number 302—and see if you can find the letter they got from the bank.”
“Sim,” Pedro said. “I go to the room. But how do I know which is the letter?”
“Bring anything that looks like a letter,” Jaeger said impatiently. “Take your time. I shall have the girl out with me for at least two hours from now.”
He stood up.
“But you have made me late and I must go. I can rely on you?”
“Sim! Room number 302.”
“Correct. Telephone me at my room at the Tagus later tonight, and we can arrange a meeting so you can give me what you have found.”
“And settle accounts,” Pedro said practically.
“Of course,” Jaeger replied. “Até logo.”
“Va com Deus,” said Pedro, with no perceptible trace of irony.
His employer did not return the sentiment, but hurried away to keep his appointment with Vicky Kinian. He called her on the house phone, apologized profusely for not being earlier, and tried to compose himself while he waited. It was now more vital than ever that Major Kinian’s daughter should continue to accept him as only a friendly businessman with no more worrisome thought in his head than selling an order of wristwatches or choosing the best wines for dinner.
To Simon Templar, sitting where the open few inches of his door, angled in the dressing-table mirror, were directly in line with the top of the book he was reading, it seemed like a budding eternity before Vicky Kinian finally came out. She looked stunning in a shoulderless black dress and long white gloves, and he briefly wavered again between visiting her empty room, as he had decided, and investigating her in person. But girls going out at the dinner hour in shoulderless black dresses were likely to have plans of their own which would not make them welcome last-minute invitations from total strangers, and furthermore the small beaded bag which he had seen she now carried hardly looked as if it would hold anything momentous in the way of documents. The room was now a more logical and certainly less reckless first possibility to try, and if he drew blank there the alternative would still be open.
He waited until she had had time to get all the way down the stairs. Then he pocketed a small metal implement he had already chosen from a selection in his suitcase after inspecting his own door lock, and armed with this modern open-sesame, prepared to find what treasures or terrors lay hidden in the cave of Major Kinian’s disappearance.
3
“It’s fortunate there are no cannibals in Lisbon,” Curt Jaeger said, coming to meet Vicky as she appeared on the last flight of stairs. “Because, as they say in America, you look good enough to eat. But it’s so nice of you to consent to eat with me instead.”
He bent to kiss her hand, feeling her fingers tense as he held them, but noting as he straightened up that her cheeks had a pleased glow. She was, in her innocence, as he had assumed, a pushover for what the Americans called the Continental touch. A heavy dose of gallantry with no alarming passes: that should be the most effective formula.
“It’s nice of you to invite me,” she said, “but I’m afraid that Freda seems to have let us down.”
“Perhaps she’s expecting us to call for her at her own hotel,” he said with a frown of mild concern.
“No. She was supposed
to come back at seven, and she hasn’t called or anything. I don’t understand it.”
Jaeger looked around the lobby, and then at the clock behind the desk clerk’s counter.
“I’m sorry I am late myself,” he said. “I had business at the last minute. Maybe she will show up soon. In the meantime, we could ask if she has sent a message.”
They walked to the desk, and in response to Vicky’s question the clerk promptly produced an envelope. Before she read the short note inside she glanced at the bottom to confirm that it really was from Freda Oliveiros.
“I don’t understand this,” she said. “Why ever wouldn’t she have phoned me? When did this note come?”
“Half an hour ago, senhorita,” said the man behind the counter.
“Would she like us to pick her up?” Jaeger asked helpfully.
“No. She says she’s been called to replace another stewardess on a flight leaving at once. That was late this afternoon, I guess.” Vicky looked up from the paper, her eyes puzzled. “So of course she won’t be joining us.”
Jaeger shrugged and gestured towards the main exit.
“Well, I am sorry for her, but for myself, this is one case in which a loss is no real loss.”
He held the door for her and they walked out on to the tranquil darkening street.
“I just hope you will feel safe with me even though your friend cannot be with us,” he said sympathetically.
Vicky was already beginning to cast off any worry she felt about Freda’s not showing up.
“Oh, I’m not thinking of that, Mr Jaeger. But I had to disappoint Freda about something earlier today, and I hope she isn’t just making an excuse because she’s mad at me.”
“I’m sure she isn’t,” Jaeger said with mature assurance. “Now let us eat, drink, and be merry because…because that’s what one ought to do in Lisbon!”
On that cheerful note he took her away by taxi to one of the golden dining rooms of the Restaurant Avis, and waited until she was semi-steeped in champagne before gently continuing his research into the more secret aspects of her private life.
The Saint in Pursuit Page 5
