With that he fell asleep. He didn’t know how long it lasted, but it was deep and relaxed. And it ended with an electrifying suddenness that was as devastating as the collapse of a tall tower of porcelain. But the sound was actually a little different. It was a shrill shattering scream that brought him wide awake in an instant and had him on his feet while the echo was still ringing in his ears.
3
There was enough starlight outside for the windows to be rectangles of silver, but inside the room he was only just able to find his dressing-gown without groping. His gun was already in his hand, for his fingers had closed on it instinctively where the butt lay just under the edge of the mattress at the natural length of his arm as he lay in bed. He threw the robe on and whipped a knot into the belt, and was on his way to the door within two seconds of waking.
Then the scream came again, louder now that he wasn’t hearing it through a haze of sleep, and in a way more deliberate. And it came, he was certain, not from the direction in which he had first automatically placed it, without thinking, but from the opposite quarter—the room on the opposite side of his own.
He stopped in mid-stride, and turned quickly back to the other communicating door. This one was not locked. It was a double door like the one to Freddie’s room, but the second handle turned smoothly with his fingers. As he started to open it, the door outlined itself with light; he did the only possible thing, and threw it wide open quickly but without any noise, and stepped swiftly through and to one side, with his gun balanced for instant aiming in any direction.
He didn’t see anything to aim at. He didn’t see anyone there except Lissa.
She was something to see, if one had the time. She was sitting upright in bed, and she wore a filmy flesh-colored nightgown with white overtones. At least, that was the first impression. After a while, you realised that it was just a filmy white nightgown and the flesh color was Lissa. She had her mouth open, and she looked exactly as if she was going to scream again. Then she didn’t look like that any more.
“Hullo,” she said, quite calmly. “I thought that’d fetch you.”
“Wouldn’t there have been a more subtle way of doing it?” Simon asked.
“But there was someone here, really. Look.”
Then he saw it—the black wooden hilt of a knife that stood up starkly from the bedding close beside her. The resignation went out of his face again as if it had never been there.
“Where did he go?”
“I don’t know—out of one of the doors. If he didn’t go into your room, he must have gone out on to the porch or into Ginny’s room.”
Simon crossed to the other door and stepped out on to the verandah. Lights came on as he did so, and he saw Freddie Pellman swaying in the doorway at the dead end of the L.
“Whassamarrer?” Freddie demanded thickly. “What goes on?”
“We seem to have had a visitor,” said the Saint succinctly. “Did anybody come through your room?”
“Anybody come through my room? I dunno. No. I didn’t see anybody. Why should anybody come through my room?”
“To kiss you goodnight,” said the Saint tersely, and headed in the other direction.
There was no other movement on the verandah. He knocked briefly on the next door down, and opened it and switched on the light. The bed was rumpled but empty, and a shaft of light came through the communicating door. All the bedrooms seemed to have communicating doors, which either had its advantages or it didn’t. Simon went on into the next room. The bed in there had the covers pulled high up, and appeared to be occupied by a small quivering hippopotamus. He went up to it and tapped it on the most convenient bulge.
“Come on,” he said. “I just saw a mouse crawl in with you.”
There was a stifled squeal, and Esther’s head and shoulders and a little more jumped into view in the region of the pillow.
“Go away!” she yelped inarticulately. “I haven’t done anything—”
Then she recognised him, and stopped abruptly. She took a moment to straighten her dark hair. At the same time the other half of the baby hippopotamus struggled up beside her, revealing that it had a red-gold head and a snub nose.
“Oh, it’s you,” said Ginny. “Come on in. We’ll make room for you.”
“Well, make yourselves at home,” said Esther. “This just happens to be my room—”
“Little children,” said the Saint, with great patience, “I don’t want to spoil anybody’s fun, but I’m looking for a hairy thug who seems to be rushing around trying to stick knives into people.”
They glanced at each other in a moment’s silence.
“Wh-who did he stick a knife into?” Ginny asked.
“Nobody. He missed. But he was trying. Did you see him?”
She shook her head.
“Nobody’s been in here,” said Esther, “except Ginny. I heard a frightful scream, and I jumped up and put the light on, and the next minute Ginny came rushing in and got into my bed.”
“It was Lissa,” said Ginny. “I’m sure it was. The scream sounded like it was right next door. So I ran in here. But I didn’t see anyone.” She swallowed, and her eyes grew big.
“Is Lissa—?”
“No,” said the Saint bluntly. “Lissa’s as well as you are. And so is Freddie. But somebody’s been up to mischief tonight, and we’re looking for him. Now will you please get out of bed and pull yourselves together, because we’re going to search the house.”
“I can’t,” said Esther. “I haven’t got anything on.”
“Don’t let it bother you,” said the Saint tiredly. “If a burglar sees you he’ll probably swoon on the spot, and then the rest of us will jump on him and tie him up.”
He took a cigarette from a package beside the bed, and went on his way. It seemed as if he had wasted a lot of time, but actually it had scarcely been a minute. Out on the verandah he saw that the door of Lissa’s room was open, and through it he heard Freddie Pellman’s obstructed croak repetitiously imploring her to tell him what had happened. As he went on towards the junction of the main building, lights went on in the living-room and a small mob of chattering figures burst out and almost swarmed over him as he opened the door into the arched alcove that the bedroom wing took off from. Simon spread out his arms and collected them in a sheaf.
“Were you going somewhere, boys?”
There were three of them, in various interesting costumes. Reading from left to right, they were: Angelo, in red, green, and purple striped pyjamas, another Filipino in a pair of very natty bright blue trousers, and a large gentleman in a white nightshirt with spiked moustaches and a Vandyke.
Angelo said, “We hear some lady scream, so we come to see what’s the matter.”
Simon looked at him shrewdly.
“How long have you worked for Mr Pellman?”
“About six months, sir.”
“And you never heard any screaming before?”
The boy looked at him sheepishly, without answering.
The stout gentleman in the nightshirt said with some dignity: “Ziss wass not ordinairy screaming. Ziss wass quite deefairent. It sounds like somebody iss in trouble. So we sink about ze note zat Meestair Pellman receive, and we come to help.”
“Who are you?” asked the Saint.
“I am Louis, sir. I am ze chef.”
“Enfin, quand nous aurons pris notre assassin, vous aurez le plaisir de nous servir ses rognons, légèrement grillés.”
The man stared at him blankly for a second or two, and finally said, “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t ondairstand.”
“You don’t speak French?”
“No, sir.”
“Then what are you doing with that accent?”
“I am Italian, sir, but I lairn this accent because she iss good business.”
Simon gave up for the time being.
“Well, let’s get on with this and search the house. You didn’t see any strangers on your way here?”
“No, si
r,” Angelo answered. “Did anyone get hurt?”
“No, but we seem to have had a visitor.”
“I no understand,” the Filipino insisted. “Everything lock up, sir. I see to it myself.”
“Then somebody opened something,” said the Saint curtly. “Go and look.”
He went on his own way to the front door. It was locked and bolted. He opened it and went outside.
Although there seemed to have been a large variety of action and dialogue since Lissa’s scream had awakened him, it had clicked through at such a speed that the elapsed time was actually surprisingly short. As he stood outside and gave his eyes a moment to adjust themselves to the darkness he tried to estimate how long it had been. Not long enough, he was sure, for anyone to travel very far…And then the night cleared from his eyes, and he could see almost as well as a cat could have seen there. He went to the edge of the terrace in front of the house, and looked down. He could see the private road which was the only vehicular approach to the place dropping and winding away to his left like a gray ribbon carelessly thrown down the mountainside, and there was no car or moving shadow on it. Most of the street plan at the foot of the hill was as clearly visible also as if he had been looking down on it from an airplane, but he could see nothing human or mechanical moving there either. And even with all his delays, it hardly seemed possible that anything or anyone could have travelled far enough to be out of sight by that time—at least without making a noise that he would have heard on his way through the house.
There were, of course, other ways than the road. The steep slopes both upwards and downwards could have been negotiated by an agile man. Simon walked very quietly around the building and the gardens, scanning every surface that he could see. Certainly no one climbing up or down could have covered a great distance: on the other hand, if the climber had gone only a little way and stopped moving he would have been very hard to pick out of the ragged patchwork of lights and shadows that the starlight made out of tumbles of broken rock and clumps of cactus and incense and grease-wood. By the same token, a man on foot would be impossibly dangerous game to hunt at night: he only had to keep still, whereas the hunter had to move, and thereby give his quarry the first timed deliberate shot at him.
The Saint could be reckless enough, but he had no suicidal inclinations. He stood motionless for several minutes in different bays of shadow, scanning the slopes with the unblinking patience of a head-hunter. But nothing moved, and presently he went back in by the front door and found Angelo.
“Well?” he said.
“I no find anything, sir. Everything all lock up. You come see yourself.”
Simon made the circuit with him. Where there were glass doors they were all metal framed, with sturdy locking handles and bolts in addition. All the windows were screened, and the screen frames fastened on the inside. None of them showed a sign of having been forced or tampered with in any way, and the Saint was a good enough burglar in his own right to know that doors and casements of that type could not have been fastened from outside without leaving a sign that any such thing had been done—particularly by a man who was trying to depart from the premises in a great hurry.
His tour ended back in Lissa’s room, where the rest of the house party was now gathered. He paused in the doorway.
“All right, Angelo,” he said. “You can go back to your beauty sleep…Oh, yes, you could bring me a drink first.”
“I’ve got one for you already,” Freddie called out.
Simon went on in.
“That’s fine.” He stood by the portable bar, which had already been set up for business, and watched Freddie manipulating a bottle. It was a feat which Freddie could apparently perform in any condition short of complete unconsciousness. All things considered, he had really staged quite a comeback. Of course, he had had some sleep. The Saint looked at his watch, and saw that it was a few minutes after four. He said, “I think it’s so nice to get up early and catch the best part of the morning, don’t you?”
“Did you find out anything?” Freddie demanded.
“Not a thing,” said the Saint. “But that might add up to quite something.”
He took the highball that Freddie handed him, and strolled over to the windows. They were the only ones in the house he had not yet examined. But they were exactly like the others—the screens latched and intact.
Lissa still sat up in the bed, the covers huddled up under her chin, staring now and again at the knife driven into the mattress, as if it were a snake that somebody was trying to frighten her with and she wasn’t going to be frightened. Simon turned back and sat down beside her. He also looked at the knife.
“It looks like a kitchen knife,” he remarked.
“I wouldn’t let anyone touch it,” she said, “on account of fingerprints.”
Simon nodded and smiled, and took a handkerchief from the pocket of his robe. Using the cloth for insulation, he pulled the knife out and held it delicately while he inspected it. It was a kitchen knife—a cheap piece of steel with a riveted wooden handle, but sharp and pointed enough to have done all the lethal work of the most expensive blade.
“Probably there aren’t any prints on it,” he said, “but it doesn’t cost anything to try. Even most amateurs have heard about fingerprints these days, and they all wear gloves. Still, we’ll see if we have any luck.”
He wrapped the knife carefully in the handkerchief and laid it on a Carter Dickson mystery on the bedside table.
“You’re going to get tired of telling the story,” he said, “but I haven’t heard it yet. Would you like to tell me what happened?”
“I don’t really know,” she said. “I’d been asleep. And then suddenly for no reason at all I woke up. At least I thought I woke up, but maybe I didn’t, anyway it was just like a nightmare. But I just knew there was somebody in my room, and I went cold all over, it was just as if a lot of spiders were crawling all over me, and I didn’t feel as if I could move or scream or anything, and I just lay there hardly breathing and my heart was thumping away till I thought it would burst.”
“Does that always happen when somebody comes into your room?” Ginny asked interestedly.
“Shut up,” said the Saint.
“I was trying to listen,” Lissa said, “to see if I couldn’t hear something. I mean if he was really moving or if I’d just woken up with the frights and imagined it, and my ears were humming so that it didn’t seem as if I could hear anything. But I did hear him. I could hear him breathing.”
“Was that when you screamed?”
“No. Well, I don’t know. It all happened at once. But suddenly I knew he was awful close, right beside the bed, and then I knew I was wide awake and it wasn’t just a bad dream, and then I screamed the first time and tried to wriggle out of bed on the other side from where he was, to get away from him, and he actually touched my shoulder, and then there was a sort of thump right beside me—that must have been the knife—and then he ran away and I heard him rush through one of the doors, and I lay there and screamed again because I thought that would bring you or somebody, and besides if I made enough noise it would help to scare him and make him so busy trying to get away that he wouldn’t wait to have another try at me.”
“So you never actually saw him at all?”
She shook her head.
“I had the shades drawn, so it was quite dark. I couldn’t see anything. That’s what made it more like a nightmare. It was like being blind.”
“But when he opened one of these doors to rush out—there might have been a little dim light on the other side—”
“Well. I could just barely see something, but it was so quick, it was just a blurred shadow and then he was gone. I don’t think I’ve even got the vaguest idea how big he was.”
“But you call him ‘he,’ ” said the Saint easily, “so you saw that much, anyway.”
She stared at him with big round blue eyes.
“I didn’t,” she said blankly. “No, I didn’t.
I just naturally thought it was ‘he.’ Of course it was ‘he.’ It had to be.” She swallowed, and added almost pleadingly, “didn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” said the Saint, flatly and dispassionately.
“Now wait a minute,” said Freddie Pellman, breaking one of the longest periods of plain listening that Simon had yet known him to maintain. “What is this?”
The Saint took a cigarette from a package on the bedside table and lighted it with care and deliberation. He knew that their eyes were all riveted on him now, but he figured that a few seconds’ suspense would do them no harm.
“I’ve walked around outside,” he said, “and I didn’t see anyone making a getaway. That wasn’t conclusive, of course, but it was an interesting start. Since then I’ve been through the whole house. I’ve checked every door and window in the place. Angelo did it first, but I did it again to make sure. Nothing’s been touched. There isn’t an opening anywhere where even a cat could have got in and got out again. And I looked in all the closets and under the beds too, and I didn’t find any strangers hiding around.”
“But somebody was here!” Freddie protested. “There’s the knife. You can see it with your own eyes. That proves that Lissa wasn’t dreaming.”
Simon nodded, and his blue eyes were crisp and sardonic.
“Sure it does,” he agreed conversationally. “So it’s a comfort to know that we don’t have to pick a prospective murderer out of a hundred and thirty million people outside. We know that this is strictly a family affair, and you’re going to be killed by somebody who’s living here now.”
4
It was nearly nine o’clock when the Saint woke up again, and the sun, which had been bleaching the sky before he got back to bed, was slicing brilliantly through the Venetian blinds. He felt a lot better than he had expected to. In fact, he decided, after a few minutes of lazy rolling and stretching, he felt surprisingly good. He got up, sluiced himself under a cold shower, brushed his hair, pulled on a pair of swimming trunks and a bath robe, and went out in search of breakfast.
The Saint Goes West (The Saint Series) Page 11
