“They had good references.”
“So had everybody else who ever took that way in. But what else do you know about them?”
“What else do I know about them?” Freddie echoed, for the sake of greater clarity. “Nothing much. Except that Angelo is the best houseboy and valet I ever had. The other Filipino—Al, he calls himself—is a pal of his. Angelo brought him.”
“You didn’t ask if they’d ever worked for Smoke Johnny?”
“No.” Freddie was surprised. “Why should I?”
“He could have been nice to them,” said the Saint. “And Filipinos can be fanatically loyal. Still, that threatening letter seems a little bit literate for Angelo. I don’t know. Another way of looking at it is that Johnny’s friends could have hired them for the job…And then, did you know that your chef was an Italian?”
“I never thought about it. He’s an Italian, is he? Louis? That’s interesting,” Freddie looked anything but interested. “But what’s that got to do with it?”
“So was Implicato,” said the Saint. “He might have had some Italian friends. Some Italians do.”
“Oh,” said Freddie.
They turned over the bridge across the stream, and there was a flurry of hoofs behind them as Ginny caught up at a gallop. She rode well, and she knew it, and she wanted everyone else to know. She reined her pony up to a rearing sliding stop, and patted its damp neck.
“What are you two being so exclusive about?” she demanded.
“Just talking,” said the Saint. “How are you doing?”
“Fine.” She was fretting her pony with hands and heels, making it step nervously, showing off. “Esther isn’t so happy, though. Her horse is a bit frisky for her.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Esther said, coming up. “I’m doing all right. I’m awful hot, though.”
“Fancy that,” said Ginny.
“Never mind,” said the Saint tactfully. “We’ll call a halt soon and have lunch.”
They were walking down towards a grove of great palms that rose like columns in the nave of a natural cathedral, their rich tufted heads arching over to meet above a cloister of deep whispering shade. They were the same palms that Simon had paused under once before, years ago; only now there were picnic tables at their feet, and at some of them a few hardy families who had driven out there in their automobiles were already grouped in strident fecundity, enjoying the unspoiled beauties of Nature from the midst of an enthusiastic litter of baskets, boxes, tin cans, and paper bags.
“Is this where you meant we could have lunch?” Freddie asked rather limply.
“No. I thought we’d ride on over to Murray Canyon—if they haven’t built a road in there since I saw it last, there’s a place there that I think we still might have to ourselves.”
He led them down through the trees, and out on a narrow trail that clung for a while to the edge of a steep shoulder or hill. Then they were out on an open rise at the edge of the desert, and the Saint set his horse to an easy canter, threading his way unerringly along a trail that was nothing but a faint crinkling in the hard earth where other horses had followed it before.
It seemed strange to be out riding like that, so casually and inconsequentially, when only a few hours before there had been very tangible evidence that a threat of death to one of them had not been made idly. Yet perhaps they were safer out there than they would have been anywhere else. The Saint’s eyes had never stopped wandering over the changing panoramas, behind as well as ahead, and although he knew how deceptive the apparently open desert could be, and how even a man on horseback, standing well above the tallest clump of scrub, could vanish altogether in a hundred yards, he was sure that no prospective sniper had come within sharp-shooting range of them. Yet…
He stopped his horse abruptly, after a time, as the broad flat that they had been riding over ended suddenly at the brink of a sharp cliff. At the foot of the bluff, another long column of tall silent palms bordered a rustling stream. He lighted a cigarette, and wondered cynically how many of the spoiled playboys and playgirls who used Palm Springs for their wilder weekends, and saw nothing but the smooth hotels and the Racquet Club, even realised that the name was not just a name, and that there really were Palm Springs, sparkling and crystal clear, racing down out of the overshadowing mountains to make hidden nests of beauty before they washed out into the extinction of the barren plain…
Freddie Pellman reined in beside him, looked the landscape over, and said, tolerantly, as if it were a production that had been offered for his approval: “This is pretty good. Is this where we eat?”
“If everybody can take it,” said the Saint, “there’s a pool further up that I’d like to look at again.”
“I can take it,” said Freddie, comprehensively settling the matter.
Simon put his horse down the steep zigzag, and stopped at the bottom to let it drink from the stream. Freddie drew up beside him again—he rode well enough, having probably been raised to it in the normal course of a millionaire’s son’s upbringing—and said, still laboring with the same subject: “Do you really think one of the girls could be in on it?”
“Of course,” said the Saint calmly. “Gangsters have girlfriends. Girlfriends do things like that.”
“But I’ve known all of them for some time at least.”
“That may be part of the act. A smart girl wouldn’t want to make it too obvious—meet you one day, and bump you off the next. Besides, she may have a nice streak of ham in her. Most women have. Maybe she thinks it would be cute to keep you in suspense for a while. Maybe she wants to make an anniversary of it, and pay off for Johnny this Christmas.”
Freddie swallowed.
“That’s going to make some things—a bit difficult.”
“That’s your problem,” Simon said cheerfully.
Freddie sat in his saddle unhappily and watched Ginny and Esther coming down the grade. Ginny came down it in a spectacular avalanche, like a mountain cavalry display, and swept off her Stetson to ruffle her hair back with a bored air while her pony dipped its nose thirstily in the water a few yards downstream. Esther, steering her horse down quietly, joined her a little later.
“But this is wonderful!” Ginny called out, looking at the Saint. “How do you find all these marvelous places?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned to Esther and said in a solicitous undertone which was perfectly pitched to carry just far enough: “How are you feeling, darling? I hope you aren’t getting too miserable.”
Simon was naturally glancing towards them. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular, and as far as he was concerned Esther was only one of the gang, but in those transient circumstances, he felt sorry for her. So for that one moment he had the privilege of seeing one woman open her soul in utter stark sincerity to another woman. And what one woman said to another, clearly, carefully, deliberately, quietly, with serious premeditation and the intensest earnestness, was “You bitch.”
“Let’s keep a-goin’,” said the Saint hastily, in a flippant drawl, and lifted his reins to set his horse at the shallow bank on the other side of the stream.
He led them west towards the mountains with a quicker sureness now, as the sense of the trail came back to him. In a little while it was a track that only an Indian could have seen at all, but it seemed as if he could have found it at the dead of night. There was even a place where weeds and spindly clawed scrub had grown so tall and dense since he had last been there that anyone else would have sworn that there was no trail at all, but he set his horse boldly at the living wall and smashed easily through into a channel that could hardly have been trodden since he last opened it…so that presently they found the creek again at a sharp bend, and he led them over two deep fords through swift-running water, and they came out at last in a wide hollow ringed with palms where hundreds of spring floods had built a broad open sandbank gouged out a deep sheltered pool beside it.
“This is lunch,” said the Saint, and swung out of the saddle t
o moor his bridle to a fallen palm log where his horse could rest in the shade.
They spread out the contents of their saddlebags on the sandbank and ate cold chicken, celery, radishes, and hard-boiled eggs. There had been some difficulty when they set out over convincing Freddie Pellman that it would have been impractical as well as strictly illegal to take bottles of champagne on to the reservation, but the water in the brook was sweet and ice-cold.
Esther drank it from her cupped hands, and sat back on her heels and gazed meditatively at the pool.
“It’s awful hot,” she said, suggestively.
“Go on,” Ginny said to Simon. “Dare her to take her clothes off and get in. That’s what she’s waiting for.”
“I’ll go in if you will,” Esther said sullenly.
“Nuts,” said Ginny. “I can have a good time without that.”
She was leaning against the Saint’s shoulder for a backrest, and she gave a little snuggling wriggle as she spoke which made her meaning completely clear.
Freddie Pellman locked his arms around his knees and scowled. It had been rather obvious for some time that all the current competition was being aimed at the Saint, even though Simon had done nothing to try and encourage it, and Freddie was not feeling so generous about it as he had when he first invited the girls to take Simon into the family.
“All right,” Freddie said gracelessly. “I dare you.”
Esther looked as if a load had been taken off her mind.
She pulled off her boots and socks. She stood up, with a slight faraway smile, and unbuttoned her shirt and took it off. She took off her frontier pants. That left her in a wisp of sheer close-fitting scantiness. She took that off, too.
She certainly had a beautiful body.
She turned and walked into the pool, and lowered herself into it until the water lapped her chin. It covered her as well as a sheet of glass. She rolled, and swam lazily up to the far end, and as the water shallowed she rose out again and strolled on up into the low cascade where the stream tumbled around the next curve. She waded on up through the falls, under the palms, the sunlight through the leaves making glancing patterns on her skin, and disappeared around the bend, very leisurely. It was quite an exit.
The rustle of the water seemed very loud suddenly, as if anyone would have had to shout to be heard over it. So that it was surprising when Ginny’s voice sounded perfectly easy and normal.
“Well, folks,” she said, “don’t run away now, because there’ll be another super-colossal floor show in just a short while.” She nestled against the Saint again and said, “Hullo.”
“Hullo,” said the Saint restrainedly.
Freddie Pellman got to his feet.
“Well,” he said huffily, “I know you won’t miss me, so I think I’ll take a walk.”
He stalked off up the stream the way Esther had gone, stumbling and balancing awkwardly on his high-heeled boots over the slippery rounded boulders.
They watched him until he was out of sight also.
“Alone at last,” said Ginny emotionally.
The Saint reached for a cigarette.
“Don’t you ever worry about getting complicated?” he asked.
“I worry about not getting kissed,” she said.
She looked up at him from under her long sweeping lashes, with bright impudent eyes and red lips tantalisingly parted. The Saint had been trying conscientiously not to look for trouble, but he was not made out of ice cream and bubble gum. He was making good progress against no resistance when the crash of a shot rattled down the canyon over the chattering of the water and brought him to his feet as if he had actually felt the bullet.
6
He ran up the side of the brook, fighting his way through clawing scrub and stumbling over boulders and loose gravel. Beyond the bend, the stream rose in a long twisting stairway of shallow cataracts posted with the same shapely palms that grew throughout its length. A couple of steps further up he found Freddie.
Freddie was not dead. He was standing up. He stood and looked at the Saint in a rather foolish way, with his mouth open.
“Come on,” said the Saint encouragingly. “Give.” Freddie pointed stupidly to the rock behind him. There was a bright silver scar on it where a bullet had scraped off a layer of lead on the rough surface before it ricocheted off into nowhere.
“It only just missed me,” Freddie said.
“Where were you standing?”
“Just here.”
Simon looked at the scar again. There was no way of reading from it the caliber or make of gun. The bullet itself might have come to rest anywhere within half a mile. He tried a rough sight from the mark on the rock, but within the most conservative limits it covered an area of at least two thousand square yards on the other slope of the canyon.
The Saint’s spine tingled. It was a little like the helplessness of his trip around the house the night before—looking up at that raw muddle of shrubs and rocks, knowing that a dozen sharpshooters could lie hidden there, with no risk of being discovered before they had fired the one shot that might be all that was necessary…“Maybe we should go home, Freddie,” he said.
“Now wait.” Freddie was going to be obstinate and valiant after he had found company. “If there’s someone up there—”
“He could drop you before we were six steps closer to him,” said the Saint tersely. “You hired me as a bodyguard, not a pall-bearer. Let’s move.”
Something else moved, upwards and a little to his left. His reflexes had tautened instinctively before he recognised the flash of movement as only a shifting of bare brown flesh.
From a precarious flat ledge of rock five or six yards up the slope, Esther called down: “What goes on?”
“We’re going home,” Simon called back.
“Wait for me.”
She started to scramble down off the ledge. Suddenly she seemed much more undressed than she had before. He turned abruptly.
“Come along, then.”
He went back, around the bend, past the pool, past Ginny, to where they had left the horses, hearing Freddie’s footsteps behind him but not looking back. There were no more shots, but he worked quickly checking the saddles and tightening the cinches. The place was still just as picturesque and enchanting, but as an ambush it had the kind of topography where he felt that the defending team was at a great disadvantage.
“What’s the hurry?” Ginny complained, coming up beside him, and he locked the buckle he was hauling on and gave the leather a couple of rapid loops through the three-quarter rig slots.
“You heard the shot, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“It just missed Freddie. So we’re moving before they try again.”
“Something’s always happening,” said Ginny resentfully, as if she had been shot at herself.
“Life is like that,” said the Saint, untying her horse and handing the reins to her.
As he turned to the next horse Esther came up. She was fully dressed again, except that her shirt was only half buttoned, and she looked smug and sulky at the same time.
“Did you hear what happened, Ginny?” she said. “There was a man hiding up in the hills, and he took a shot at Freddie. And if he was where Simon thought he was, he must have seen me sunbathing without anything on.”
“Tell Freddie that’s what made him miss,” Ginny suggested. “It might be worth some new silver foxes to you.”
A dumb look came into Esther’s beautifully sculptured face. She gazed foggily out at the landscape as the Saint cinched her saddle and thrust the reins into her limp hands.
She said, “Simon.”
“Yes?”
“Didn’t you say something last night about—about being sure it was someone in the house?”
“I did.”
“Then…then just now—you were with Ginny, so she couldn’t have done anything. And Lissa isn’t here. But you know I couldn’t…you know I couldn’t have hidden a gun anywhere, don’t you?�
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“I don’t know you well enough,” said the Saint.
But it was another confusion that twisted around in his mind all the way home. It was true that he himself was an alibi for Ginny—unless she had planted one of those colossally elaborate remote-control gun-firing devices beloved of mystery writers. And Esther couldn’t have concealed a gun, or anything else, in her costume—unless she had previously planted it somewhere up the stream. But both those theories would have required them to know in advance where they were going, and the Saint had chosen the place himself…It was true he had mentioned it before they started, but mentioning it and finding it were different matters. He would have sworn that not more than a handful of people besides himself had ever discovered it, and he remembered sections of the trail that had seemed to be completely overgrown since they had last been trodden. Of course, with all his watchfulness, they might have been followed. A good hunter might have stayed out of sight and circled over the hills—he could have done it himself…
Yet in all those speculations there was something that didn’t connect, something that didn’t make sense. If the theoretical sniper in the hills had been good enough to get there at all, for instance, why hadn’t he been good enough to try a second shot before they got away? He could surely have had at least one more try, from a different angle, with no more risk than the first…It was like the abortive attack on Lissa—it made sense, but not absolute sense. And to the Saint’s delicately tuned reception that was a more nagging obstacle than no sense at all…
They got back to the stables, and Freddie said, “I need a drink. Let’s beat up the Tennis Club before we go home.”
For once, the Saint was not altogether out of sympathy with the exigencies of Freddie’s thirst.
They drove out to the club, and sat on the balcony terrace looking down over the beautifully terraced gardens, the palm-shaded oval pool, and the artificial brook where imported trout lurked under spreading willows and politely awaited the attention of pampered anglers. The rest of them sipped Daiquiris, while Freddie restored himself with three double brandies in quick succession. And then, sauntering over from the tennis courts with a racquet in her hand, Lissa O’Neill herself came up to them. She looked as cool and dainty as she always seemed to look, in one of those abbreviated sun suits that she always seemed to wear which some clairvoyant designer must have invented exclusively for her slim waist and for long tapered legs like hers, in pastel shades that would set off her clear golden skin. But it seemed as if all of them drew back behind a common barrier that made them look at her in the same way, not in admiration, but guardedly, waiting for what she would say.
The Saint Goes West (The Saint Series) Page 13
