He wondered whether he had gone blind.
His head hurt very much, and the shaking at his shoulder made him dizzy. He wished it would all go away.
“Tom! Wake up!”
A voice that filled out words like a cello, a voice and a fragrance that would be in his memory always.
“Avalon darling,” he murmured sleepily, “I love you very much, but can’t you do anything about your insomnia?”
Then everything was utterly still, except for the far faint lulling whisper of the sea.
It seemed like a good time to go to sleep again.
Then there was a face soft against his cheek, moving, and a dampness that was not the wet cloth, but warmer, and the fragrance sweeter and stronger in his senses, and arms and hands clinging and pressing, and the same voice talking and making sounds that merged with the slow soft roll of the sea, and breaking strangely where there were no waves breaking, and speaking and stirring, and this was something that happened a million years ago but had only been waiting a million years to happen, and he had to do something about it even if it meant smashing his way out of an iron vice that was holding him in that absurd and intolerable suspension, and there was the sweetness and the voice saying, “Simon, darling…Oh, darling, my darling…Simon, wake up, Simon!”
And the voice saying, “I didn’t know—I’m such a dope, but I should have…Simon, darling wake up!…Simon, wake up…”
And then he was awake.
A moment of clarity drifted toward him like a child’s balloon, and he caught it and held on to it and everything was quite clear again while he held it.
He said very carefully, “Avalon, I left a message for you that I’d see you tomorrow. Well, this is tomorrow. Only I can’t see you. That’s silly, isn’t it?”
She said, “I had to put the light out again because I didn’t want it to show under the door…Simon, dear, wake up! Don’t go to sleep again!”
He said, “Why did you come here anyway?”
“Because that creep I was with knew Cookie, and she’d apologised, and she was being as nice as she can be, and I have to work and Hollywood came into the picture, and it seemed like the only graceful thing to do, and I can’t fight the whole night-club racket, and…Simon, you must stay awake!”
“I am awake,” he said. “Tell me what happened.”
“After Pat hit you, Cookie said that it wasn’t your fault that Ferdy went after him—he went by himself, or she sent him, or something. And he was broken-hearted. So we all put you to bed, and everything broke up. Zellermann said that you’d sleep it off—”
“I bet he did. But I never had to sleep off a crack on the jaw before.”
“Pat’s a strong guy. He carried you upstairs all by himself.”
“I’ve been slugged by strong guys before. Believe it or not. But it never felt like this afterwards. I feel as if I’d been drugged.”
“You could have been. You were drinking.”
“I was cheat-drinking. I poured the last one myself. But Zellermann could have slipped something into my glass.”
“I suppose he could have, in the commotion…Stay awake, Simon. You must!”
“I’m still awake. That’s how I know. If I’d had it all, you wouldn’t have been able to rouse me now. Hogan stopped that by slugging me. But Zellermann still thought I’d sleep it off. I would have, too, if you hadn’t worked on me.”
“Simon, are you making sense now?”
“I’m doing everything in the wide world I can.” It was still an unforgettable effort to speak concisely and intelligibly. “Give me a chance, baby. I’m working at it. I never was drunk tonight. I sound like it now, but I wasn’t.”
She was close to him and holding him, her face against his, as if she were trying to transmit her life and wakefulness to him from every inch of her body.
It seemed like a long time, and through all of it he was working through fluctuating waves of awareness to cling on to the wandering balloon that was his only actual link with this other world that he had to keep touch with against all the cruel violation of a dream and the fumes of a drug that kept creeping back to try and steal away his will.
She said after a few seconds or a thousand years, “Darling, you shouldn’t have dressed up with that moustache.” He knew that he had to shut out the note in her voice that hung between a sob and a hysterical giggle.
“It tickles,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Remind me to get rid of it. Any time when I know what I’m doing.”
She roused up beside him.
“Darling, you won’t go off again now, will you?”
“No.” He rolled over and rolled up. The movement sent his head whirling away from his body on a weird trajectory that revolted his stomach. He caught it somehow as it came back, and held it firmly in his hands. He said meticulously, “Look. You were dabbing my face with a wet cloth when I came to. You got the wet cloth from somewhere. Where?”
“There’s a bathroom. Here.”
Her fingers slid into his hand. He went stumbling through the dark where she led him, as if his limbs didn’t belong to him any more.
Then he was alone for a while.
A while during which he used every trick and help that his experience could lend to him. Plus an overdose of aspirin from a bottle which he found in a cabinet over the wash-bowl.
Plus an effort of will that tore every nerve in his body to shreds and put it painstakingly together again. He never quite knew how he accomplished that. Part of it came from the native resilience of a perfect physique in pluperfect condition, the inestimable reserves of a phenomenal athlete who hadn’t been out of training for sixteen years. Part of it came from an unconquerable power of mind that would have torn every cell of its habitation apart and remodelled it to achieve the resuscitation that had to be achieved. The Saint didn’t know, and had no sort of inward power to waste on analysing it. He only knew that it took every atom of inward power that he could gouge out of himself, and left him feeling as if he had been drawn through a steam wringer at the end. But he had done what he had set himself to do, and he knew that also.
He didn’t even know how long it took, but he knew he had done it when he was finished.
He knew it when he turned out the light in the bathroom and ventured back into the dark to find Avalon, feeling strangely light and vacuous in his bones, but with his mind queerly cool and alive, as if the discipline had purged and polished it to stratospheric limpidity and translucence.
He knew it when she was still waiting for him, and their hands met in the blackness that was not blind any more, and they sat side by side on the edge of a bed, and he could touch the warmth of her hair and say, “It’s okay now, Avalon. Honestly. Everything’s under control. Now tell me—”
“How did you do it?” she asked, huskily, and close to him, but not leaning on him. “Why were you putting on the act, and what are you doing here?”
“I bought myself a costume and some warpaint,” he said lightly, “and here I am, because I was invited. The important thing is—what were you doing, trying to wake me up in the middle of the night?”
“I was afraid,” she said, very quietly now.
He could feel the tenseness of her like a strung wire beside him, but he said nothing, keeping her hand steadily in his hand and his shoulder lightly against hers until she went on.
“I told you why I came here.”
“I remember.”
“I had a scare when I saw Zellermann. Nobody had said anything about him, which they could hardly have helped doing unless they were holding out on purpose. But I didn’t want to be silly, so I just tried to pass it off. You heard me. And I thought, Ferdy didn’t count at all, and you and Pat were two outside guys who couldn’t have been mixed up in anything, and nothing much could happen while you were around. But I was scared, in a silly way, inside. And then, when Pat picked on you for no reason at all, it all came up again.”
“I know,” said the Sai
nt. “And then?”
“Then I just tried to talk myself out of it, but I didn’t get very far with that. But us Dexters never know when to say Uncle…So then I went to bed when everybody else did, when Pat had broken everything up anyway. I thought I could go to sleep and forget it, but I couldn’t…I just lay awake and listened…And nobody else seemed to go to bed. Nobody tried to open my door, which I’d locked, being a bright girl, but every time I was nearly asleep I could hear people creeping about and muttering. And it never sounded like the sort of noises they’d make if they were just trying to go on with a party. And I went on being afraid all the time. I’m a very imaginative character, don’t you think?”
“No,” he said. “Not any more than you should be.”
“So finally I thought I just had to talk to somebody safe and ordinary again, and I thought you and Pat were the best bet there was. I didn’t know what on earth I’d have said to you when I got here, but I’d have thought of something. I always can, being an old hardened expert…But when I crept in here, and had the light on for a moment, and Pat hadn’t been to bed at all, and you seemed to be out for keeps as Zellermann said you would be—I suppose I had a moment of panic. So…Simon, will you forget me being so stupid? I’m not usually like this. But it’s sort of ridiculous, after everything that’s gone on, for this to be you.”
The Saint seemed to have arms vaguely attached to his body, one of them pressing her against him and the other lying across his lap and becoming conscious of something sharp-edged and metallic in his pocket—something that was definably not small change creased into a fold of his trousers. Something that bothered his forearm and his thigh pocket, so that he put his hand into his trouser pocket to fumble and identify it, while he was talking…He still had to cling on to every item of his hard-won clarity, inch upon inch.
He said, “Avalon, I’ve got to tell you two or three things as sharply as I can make it. I’ll fill in the details later, when we have time. If we have time. But probably you can do that for yourself anyway.”
She said, “Yes, darling.”
“If you can’t, you’ll have to take my word for it. We’re right in the middle of a situation where human life is cheaper than the air. I’m going to try to make sense, and I want you to listen closely. I’m sure I can’t do it twice.”
“I won’t interrupt,” she said.
The Saint fastened his mind on what he wanted to say. He forced himself with tremendous effort to expand the phrase “Benny sent me” into a broad picture.
“The relationship between 903 Bubbling Well Road in Shanghai and Dean’s Dock and Warehouse Company in Brooklyn is not apparent on any map. But it’s there. I know it. I came along on this clambake to snap the cord that ties those two locations together. This joint is where one end of it is anchored. You’ve got to see the theory before you can understand the problem.”
He rested for a moment. It was still harder than he would have believed to marshal his thoughts.
“Once there was a man who got an idea. For the sake of convenience let’s call him Dr Ernst Zellermann, though it may be somebody else. His idea was utterly simple: if you can supply a man with narcotics you can make him into a tool. The war shot the dope-smuggling racket into its proper hell, but revival on a large scale was forecast when Hiroshima became a subject for history books. And that’s where 903 Bubbling Well Road entered the picture.”
He paused again.
“Let’s assume that some person or persons glaumed on to the bulk of available opium in the Orient. Collaborationists, almost certainly. They established a headquarters, stored their supplies, and awaited the inevitable ending of hostilities. They knew that merchant ships would soon be coming, and that many of these ships would have touched at New York. So Dr Z collects a pal or two and sets up a place here. For the sake of clarity let’s call it Cookie’s Canteen. Merchant seamen are invited, everything free even a roll of hay with whatever hostess a boy can promote. Our likely character is wined and dined at Cookie’s Cellar, everything still on the house. If he exhibits certain desirable larcenous tendencies—which would be revealed under questioning by a clever psychiatrist—the pitch is made. And the Mad Hatter said plaintively, ‘It was the best butter—’ ”
Avalon said, “Huh?”
The Saint took another grip on himself, brought his conscious mind up from whirling in dark chasms, lifted it with every ounce of will power he could command.
“Sorry, I wandered…The pitch was made. ‘How would you like to make some extra money, chum, and here’s a hundred on account? Just go to 903 Bubbling Well Road and say Benny sent you. Bring back the packages you’ll be given, bring them here, and collect some more money.’…So our lad does it. Now the sale and distribution of the dope won’t bring in enough to pay the overhead of a really big-scale set-up like this, so Operation B goes into effect. A doctor can supply patients with narcotics, can turn them into hopheads more safely than anybody else. Then, by shutting off the supply, he can get almost anything in return for more dope to ease the craving. Blackmail—or services. That’s where Dean’s Dock and Warehouse Company is tied up with Operation A, or Shanghai. The hopheads knock it over, bring in the sheaves—of furs, jewels, whisky, whatnot. Or a bank is held up, instead. Or anything. A whole empire of crime begins to spread out from one central system.”
The Saint sighed. He was weary. Avalon took his hand in hers.
“So that’s it,” she said. “That explains a lot of things I didn’t understand before. Why they’d go overboard for some creep who knew the difference between port and starboard and nothing else.”
They were still keeping their voices very low, as if they were in a room full of ears.
“This is all new to you?” Simon asked expressionlessly.
“Why do you ask that?”
“I thought I would. I’ve told you all this because it doesn’t matter now how much anybody knows I know.”
The Saint’s fingers had almost finished with the odd metal shape in his pocket. And the message which had begun to spell itself slothfully out from it by some multi-dimensional alchemy between his finger-tips and his remembrance began to sear his brain with a lambent reality that cauterised the last limp tissues of vagueness out of his awakening.
He felt his own grip biting into her flesh.
“Avalon,” he said, in a voice that came from a long way off in the dark. “You’ve been in this up to the neck from the beginning. You might even have started a lot of it—for all of us—by that parting crack of yours about the Saint after I socked Zellermann. But the play-acting is over, and I must know something now.”
“What, darling?” she asked, and her voice was so easy in contrast to his own that he knew where he had to keep his own sanities together.
“I must know which side you’re on, Avalon. Even if you haven’t had any sense—even if it’s all words of one syllable now. Are you going all the way with me, or is this just an excursion?”
It seemed as if she stiffened beside him for an instant, and then softened so that she was closer and more real than ever before.
Her voice came from a great distance also in the darkness between them.
“You damn fool,” she said. “I worship the ground you walk on. I want you more than I ever wanted anyone in my whole life, or ever will.”
They were both very quiet then, as if something had been said which should never have been put into words.
And there were other sounds far away, faint frettings against the monotonous rolling of the sea.
The Saint’s fingers touched the hard sharp metal in his trouser pocket for one last assurance, and brought it out. He said very matter-of-factly, “Can you find a match, Avalon?”
She was in movement all around him, and he kept still, and then there was a sudden hurtful flare of light that flickered agonisingly over the scrap of embossed metal that he had taken out of his pocket and held toward her in the palm of his hand.
“No,” he said, without
any inflexion. “Not mine. Pat Hogan must have stuck his badge into my pocket as a last desperate resort—as a clue or a signal of some kind. He never knew me from Adam. But he was an under-cover man in this racket for the Treasury Department.”
2
The match flickered once more and went out, leaving him with the moulding of her face stamped on his memory. And he knew that that was not only printed by one match, but by more lights than he had seen in many years.
“How long have you known that?” she asked.
“Only since I found the badge and figured it out,” he said. “But that’s long enough…Until then, I’m afraid I was off with some very wrong ideas. When I picked him up at the Canteen this evening I happened to see that he was going heeled—he had a gun in his hip pocket—and I began wondering. I’ve been listening to his rather shaky brogue all night, and watching him sell the blarney to Kay Natello, who never could be a sailor’s ‘swateheart’ no matter what else, and I knew before we left town that there was something screwy in the set-up…But I had everything else wrong. I had Hogan figured as one of the Ungodly, and I thought he was playing his game against me.”
“If he wasn’t,” she said, “why did he pick on you and knock you out?”
“To get me out of the way. He didn’t know who I was. I was playing the part of a blabber-mouthed drunken sailor, and just doing it too damn well. I was doing everything I could to make myself interesting to Cookie and Zellermann anyhow. I was barging around in the dark, and I happened to hit a nail on the head by mentioning Shanghai. So I was something to work on. And I was being worked on, the last thing I remember. But Hogan didn’t want me being propositioned. His job was to get the goods on this gang, so he wanted to be propositioned himself. I might have been too drunk to remember, or I might have refused to testify. So he had to create a good interruption and break it up. And he did a lovely job, considering the spot he was in.”
“I’m getting some of my faith back,” she said. “If a government man knocks you cold, that’s legitimate, but you can’t let anybody else do it. Not if I’m going to love you.”
The Saint Sees it Through (The Saint Series) Page 15
