The Saint in Pursuit

by Leslie Charteris

  Now Mischa could have his own turn at the Cimetiere Internationale’s suddenly most popular landmark. He hurried up to the curved granite structure, gazed dolefully at the doleful face of the carved eagle, and read the lettering which the bird protected with outspread wings.

  HIER RUHTE DIE ASCHE DER FREIEN DEUTSCHER DENEN ES DAS SCHICKSAL VERWEHRTE, IN IHR VATERLAND ZURUCKZUKEHREN.

  The words translated themselves automatically in Mischa’s mind: “Here rest the ashes of free Germans to whom fate denied a return to their Fatherland.”

  Behind the glass door, which was locked flush against the granite, were four shelves, each bearing a row of ten small metal caskets.

  Mischa had no time for meditation on the meaning of it all. He turned again, and by walking fast managed to bring the Saint within his purview near the cemetery gate. There followed another tripartite procession back to the Hotel Portal, where Vicky Kinian and Simon Templar got out of their respective vehicles and went separately into the lobby. Mischa walked to the bar across the street from the Portal and telephoned his supervisor, his voice betraying unmitigated self-approbation.

  “I have interesting news,” he said.

  “Useful as well as interesting, I hope,” snarled the man at the other end of the line. “Has he been anywhere? Have you lost him?”

  “Of course I haven’t lost him!” Mischa said indignantly. “He has just come back to the hotel, and I can see the entrance from where I am. He seemed to tell the doorman that he would be inside only a few minutes.”

  “You are a mind reader as well as a hunting dog. Tell me everything Templar did while he was out.”

  Mischa described his processional tour of the graveyard.

  “This gravestone that they were both looking at,” his bearded superior said with great interest. “Tell me more about it.”

  “That is all I know. It was a monument to Germans who died in Switzerland during the war. It is full of ashes.”

  “And of what else? Something much more intriguing than ashes, I have no doubt. The girl or Templar will go back for whatever is hidden there as soon as they think it is safe. But you must see that they do not get it.”

  “I shall take tools and go as soon as it is dark,” Mischa said.

  “Go now!” the other man responded impatiently. “What if somebody should get there before you?”

  “I go,” said Mischa with dignity. “But what about the Saint? I cannot watch him also.”

  “You concern yourself with whatever is in that shrine,” was the reply. “I shall occupy myself with Mr Templar!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  HOW CURT JAEGER FAILED TO LEVITATE AND MISCHA’S EFFORTS WERE REWARDED

  1

  All the intensely individual interests which had been launched like homing missiles in the general direction of Vicky Kinian from such diverse silos as Washington, Tokyo, and the American Midwest, and Simon Templar could only speculate where else, had now converged upon a single city, and even two small parts of that city: a place of accommodation for the living and a place of accommodation for the dead, the Hotel Portal and the Cimetiere Internationale. And some of the personages involved in Vicky Kinian’s treasure hunt were soon to find that the shortest route between the two locations was not necessarily a straight line.

  The Saint, returning to the hotel from the cemetery after observing Vicky’s fascination with a memorial to German exiles, had not for a moment forgotten the mysterious disappearance in a Lisbon alley of a vital letter that he had not had time to read, and was continuously alert to the uncomfortable fact that he himself might be under somebody else’s watchful eye. But unless he had searched behind each potted plant in the Portal’s lobby like the folkloric old spinster looking under beds, he would have had no way of knowing that Curt Jaeger, ensconced in a low chair behind the additional cover of the largest newspaper he could buy, was watching every step he took towards the elevator with an ardour that should have wilted the foliage of his verdurous ambuscade.

  The Saint had one objective in his own mind at the moment, and although it had some concern with the dead it was considerably less violent than the thoughts that were reaching their logical climax in Jaeger’s head at just the same time. Jaeger was a man of quick decision who believed in the tactical value of a minimum of delay and a maximum of force. He had done his homework. He knew what Simon Templar looked like and he knew his room number. Now it was only a matter of putting a simple but utterly deadly plan into effect.

  When the elevator doors had closed behind the Saint, Jaeger got up from his chair, put aside his newspaper neatly folded on a nearby table, pressed one arm close against his ribs to feel the reassuring hardness of the thing that was concealed there, and followed the path his prey had taken across the Portal’s thick carpet.

  The Saint, in the meantime, had reached his room on the sixth floor and was taking from a drawer a small wooden box which opened into an inexpensive (so that it would not arouse the evaluating instincts of Customs inspectors) traveller’s chess board. When the chessmen were put aside, only a twist of the box’s catch was necessary to reveal the false bottom where—in a bed of cotton—lay certain implements designed to circumvent the locksmith’s most cunning defences. The mechanism that held the door of the German memorial tombstone closed was a good one, but there was sure to be something in the Saint’s kit that would quickly overcame its resistance.

  He did not know what he would find in that macabre oversized strongbox, but he admired the ingenuity of whoever had chosen it as an open-air bank vault and he was determined to get to it ahead of Vicky Kinian. She would spend some time pondering how to break into it, and in any case she would almost certainly wait until it was dark before she took any action. While she was being cannily cautious, the Saint would exercise qualities more natural to him and open the shrine while there was still a little daylight left.

  He glanced out of the window of his room as he slipped the chess box into his jacket pocket. The sun had already disappeared and the street lights down in the street six floors below were beginning to win their competition with the fading glow in the sky above. Simon felt sure that if he hurried he could be back from the burying ground in time to invite Vicky Kinian out for a truce dinner and a pipe of peace before she even began to get up her nerve to leave the hotel.

  There was, however, a slight preliminary delay.

  Simon turned from the window, strode to the door of his room, and opened it to find himself looking straight at the open snout of a large black automatic. Just beyond the automatic, and balanced like a man who knew and was ready for the recoil of a large-calibre pistol, was Curt Jaeger.

  “Step back and let me in,” he commanded in a low voice, “or I’ll shoot you on the spot.”

  He was already on the threshold, and the Saint had no encouragement to doubt that his visitor would carry out the threat with the least reasonable provocation. Simon moved backward into his room as the other man, just slightly shorter than himself, stepped inside and closed and locked the door behind without taking the concentration of either his gun or his cold eyes off the Saint’s face.

  “Why, you must be Curt Jaeger!” Simon said cordially. “I was wondering when you’d be dropping in to swap a few war stories.”

  “So you know who I am,” Jaeger said, not allowing himself to betray any great surprise. “That will save tiresome questions.”

  The Saint had stopped near the middle of the room. Jaeger, keeping a cautious distance, held the automatic aimed steadily at his chest.

  “Not entirely,” Simon said. “You must have been on this treasure hunt for a long time, if your dossier reads anything like I think it does. I just haven’t figured why the big shots of the Third Reich would’ve shared their biggest secret with a punk bully-boy like you must have been in 1945.”

  “They did not,” Jaeger replied. “All who knew the details died in Berlin or Nuremberg. I happened to be in Portugal at the end, and…But why should I be tell
ing you anything?”

  “Because you must be bursting to regale somebody with tales of your exploits after all these years—and because I think you’d love to rub my nose in your colossal brilliance before you rub me out. Unless of course you just dropped in to get my autograph or tell me to be out of town by sunrise.”

  Jaeger’s slight nod indicated his appreciation of the Saint’s logic.

  “I happened to be in Portugal and to catch up with your Major Kinian, who had killed one of our top agents and taken information from him that was known—until then—only at the highest levels. I was lucky enough to catch Kinian and be the only one to question him—and I have waited too long to use what I learned to let you rob me!”

  The Saint was completely relaxed, his hands loose at his sides.

  “Apparently you aren’t such a genius at asking questions if you waited this long and still haven’t found the goodies.”

  “Kinian was wounded already, and I had to use rather heavy methods to get his cooperation. Unfortunately he died before he could finish talking, but he said enough to tell me that I only had to wait until his daughter was twenty-five, and watch her.”

  “Only now you don’t have the exclusive on that,” said Simon.

  “In a moment I shall,” Jaeger retorted with grim quietness. “Step back and open the window.”

  “It seems cool enough in here to me already,” said the Saint. “In fact the atmosphere is downright chilly.”

  “Your comfort is the last thing that interests me at the moment. Do as I tell you. Step backward to the window and open it.”

  Simon still stood his ground.

  “It’s getting dark in here, and while I don’t want to cast any aspersions on your marksmanship I’d hate you to mess me up with a lousy shot. The light switch is right beside you.”

  The harsh line of Jaeger’s lips warped into the trace of a smile.

  “Thank you for your kind advice, but I have no intention of giving a shooting exhibition on a floodlit stage. Just open the window.”

  The Saint stepped slowly back to the tall window, which reached from knee level almost to the ceiling. Before he reached for the handle which would swing it open he spoke to Jaeger again. He felt sure that nothing he could say would have any effect on the other’s murderous intentions, but as long as he could stall them there was at least a chance that his luck might produce some kind of accident or interruption that would throw Jaeger off guard.

  “If you’re really determined to pop off that little cannon, wouldn’t you rather have the window shut so it’ll make less noise outside? I could even draw the curtains.”

  “Your thoughtfulness touches me deeply,” said Jaeger. “But you must take me for an idiot.”

  “A natural mistake,” Simon said apologetically. “All I really had to judge by was your face.”

  Any hint of amusement which might have been on Jaeger’s lips had completely evaporated, and his voice was hard and biting.

  “I am not here to waste time talking. Open it!”

  The Saint opened it. As the glass swung outward, a breeze sharp with the feel and taste of Alpine ice swept into the room, rustling the heavy drapes. Even in summer the peaks which towered not far from the city let nobody forget their snowy domination. Death and the white glaciers high above clouds in the moonlight seemed brothers at this moment, and the Saint sensed that the dark wind which swept down from them had coursed through his whole life, filling every instant with the crystalline tingle of supernal frost.

  The barrel of the black pistol was levelled at his chest.

  “Turn around,” Jaeger said softly.

  “Maybe we can make a deal,” the Saint said without moving. “Has it occurred to you that I might have some information you could use?”

  “No, it has not,” Jaeger answered, “and I don’t believe that anything you say could convince me. I’ve done well enough so far on my own, and I don’t need any deals with anybody. Turn around and face the window.”

  “If you shoot,” Simon said calmly, “there’ll be people all over you before you can get out of the door.”

  Jaeger’s voice crackled with a tension like static electricity.

  “Turn around immediately!”

  The Saint obeyed, shifting his position so that he stood facing the open window. Ahead of him, across a wide void of empty air, was the tall apartment building that faced the Hotel Portal from the far side of a traffic circle. Below, just beyond the window ledge but a long way beneath it, were the canopy of the hotel’s marquee, the taxis with headlights like flashlight beams, and foreshortened views of miniature people.

  Behind him, Simon could hear Curt Jaeger moving, stepping very quietly across the carpet towards the window. A sensation of warming confidence began to spread through the Saint’s veins.

  “You wouldn’t be thinking of saving ammunition, would you, Curt?” he inquired. “Considering something even sneakier than a shot in the back—and less noisy?”

  Jaeger, predictably, made no reply, and just as predictably he came on towards Simon’s back. The Saint’s acute hearing measured each step the other man took, plotted his distance, noted the rustle of the material of his jacket as he raised his gun arm above Simon’s head, poising the heavy barrel before smashing it down on the back of his skull.

  Then, with a timing that allowed only the shaving of a second’s error, the Saint exploded into action. His whole body ducked and whirled just as Jaeger chopped down with the automatic, and it was only Jaeger’s wrist that landed on Simon’s shoulder—a harmless blunting of the blow that was to have cracked his head with a handful of steel.

  In the same tornado of movement that saved him from being knocked out of the window, Simon turned from defence to offence. One of his elbows smashed into Jaeger’s ribs and sent him staggering away. With a speed and balance that left his adversary in total confusion, he continued his pivot, snatched Jaeger’s gun arm, and with a bone-shattering chop of his straightened right hand bashed the pistol out of the man’s fingers to the floor.

  Jaeger gave a yelp of pain and struck out wildly with his other fist. It caught Simon harmlessly on a protective forearm, but his own fist was more effective. It made forceful contact with Jaeger’s anatomy in the vicinity of his private beer-cellar, doubling him up and flinging him back against the wall not far from the open window.

  “Give up, chum,” Simon said. “You didn’t figure on having to fight for your loot, and you’ve gone too soft to handle anything tougher than a lightweight female.”

  Jaeger, wheezing for breath, grabbed up a sharp-edged glass ashtray and hurled it at the Saint. It flew past Simon’s ear and thumped on to the sofa.

  “If you mistreat the crockery I’ll have to ask you to leave,” said the Saint.

  He went after his opponent again, and Jaeger countered by trying for a clinch, tangling Simon’s arms with his own and using all his weight to push him back towards the window. The Saint balked, braced himself, and freed a hand. He cocked back his fist and unleashed a short jab at Jaeger’s nose. Jaeger staggered, letting go his grip on Simon, and launched a vicious kick.

  The Saint caught the flying foot in midair.

  “Sorry to behave badly for a host,” he said, “but I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

  With both hands on Jaeger’s ankle he whipped him around in a perfectly timed swing that sent the other man not against the wall this time, but straight at the open window…

  And suddenly there was only one man left in the room.

  Simon braced himself on the window frame and looked down, secure in the knowledge that there were no lights on to reveal his interest to anybody in the street below or in the neighbouring buildings. There was a hole in the glass outcrop of the marquee six storeys down, and great excitement among the people on the sidewalk. Jaeger’s sudden ungainly appearance in front of the hotel was already public knowledge, but nobody—unless someone had happened to be looking directly upwards as he made his unsuccessful atte
mpt to defy the force which controlled Newton’s apple—would know from which window he had fallen.

  The Saint felt no remorse. Jaeger had taken precisely what he had intended to dish out, no more and no less, and nothing could have been fairer than that.

  Simon checked to make sure that his double purpose chess box was still in his jacket pocket, and went to the door—a means of egress he much preferred to the one the late Curt Jaeger had planned for him. He would be out of the hotel before the police could begin to unfurl their clumsy nets, and Curt Jaeger’s Luger—the only thing which could connect the Saint’s room with the fallen man—would go with him.

  2

  “Ghoul,” Vicky Kinian said accusingly to herself.

  “An aperitif, mademoiselle?” the white-haired waiter asked.

  Vicky looked up from the spotless surface of her small table. Outside the sidewalk cafe of the Beau Rivage the Quai du Mont-Blanc was almost dark. Within half an hour she could safely proceed with the task ahead of her. In the meantime, she wondered, what would be the best booster for a girl who was about to do her first job of grave-robbing?

  “An Old Fashioned,” she said, and then remembered she was in Switzerland and not in the Kit Kat Steak House in southern Des Moines. “Oh, I don’t guess you’d have that…”

  “Of course, mademoiselle. Immediately.”

  The aged cupbearer limped away to fetch her drink, and Vicky continued to meditate nervously on her immediate future. She told herself that she was not really a grave-robber, of course, since her father’s instructions clearly specified which of the urns in the cemetery shrine contained not human ashes but something—just what she still did not know—much less necromantic and much more valuable. All she had to do was break through the monument’s glass door and take the metal box marked Josef Meier, and then run—no, walk—out of the graveyard. It was not really so ghoulish, and it would all be over in a matter of minutes.