The Saint on Guard (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  She stared at him in utter stupefaction.

  “Mr Linnet? You mean he’s been murdered?”

  “Very thoroughly.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “Nobody seems to believe anything these days,” Simon remarked sadly. “But it’s still no thanks to you that a lot of large and unfriendly policemen aren’t showing me their incredulity right now with a piece of rubber hose.”

  Half of her mind still seemed to be unreached by his meaning.

  “Who did it?”

  “I think one of the gentlemen in your bedroom might be able to tell you.”

  “The what?”

  “One of the men in your bedroom. I ran into him at the scene of the crime last night, but he got away. However, it’s all right now. It was quite a jolly reunion.”

  “Are you still raving?”

  “Come and see for yourself.”

  He took her arm and pushed her into the bedroom, kicking the door open with his foot. She stopped with a faint gasp on the threshold, her mouth open and one hand going to her throat.

  “Who are they?” she begged.

  “Friends of yours, I take it. Anyway, they were here when I arrived, and they seemed to feel very much at home.”

  “You’re joking!”

  “I’m not joking, darling. Neither were they. In fact, they were proposing to do some very serious and unpleasant things to me. It’s rather lucky I was able to discourage them. But I must say I take a poor view of your choice of playmates.”

  She fought his cynical remoteness with wild and desperate black eyes.

  “I’ve never seen them before in my life. I swear I haven’t. You must believe me!”

  “Then how did they get in here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I suppose they just broke in,” Simon suggested, ignoring the fact that that was exactly what he had done himself.

  “They might have.”

  “Or did they have a key?”

  “I tell you, I don’t know them.”

  “Who else has your key?”

  It was as if he had hit her under the ribs. All the blood drained out of her face and turned the warm golden glow to a sick yellow. The strength seemed to go out of her with it, so that he felt her weight grow on the arm he was holding. He released her again, and she sank on to the bed as if her knees had turned to water.

  “Well?” he said ruthlessly.

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Meaning you won’t.”

  She shook her head so that her long hair swirled like a dancer’s skirt.

  “No…” Her gaze was imploring, frantic, yet trying ineffectually to draw back and harden. “What are you trying to do anyhow, and what right have you got—”

  “You know about me. I’m trying to break the iridium black market. And there was robbery and murder tied up with it even before I started. You may have heard that there’s a small war in progress. Iridium happens to be a ridiculously vital material. Gabriel Linnet had had dealings with the black market, and I was going to talk to him last night. You were planted there to keep me away while he was having his voice amputated—and incidentally to make sure I wouldn’t have an alibi so I could be hung for it.”

  “No,” she said.

  “If you aren’t anything worse, you’re just another butterfly trying to throw curves God didn’t give her to toss around. Maybe you thought it was all good clean fun—great sport for a pretty girl to play Mata Hari and dip her little fingers into international intrigue—”

  “No,” she said. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Then how was it?”

  She twisted her hands together between her knees.

  “I was planted there last night. That’s true.” Her voice was tight and strained. “But that isn’t what I was told. I was told it was just business. That Mr Linnet had hired you to try and spoil a business deal that…that this person I was doing it for was interested in. He said I just had to keep you away from Mr Linnet for a certain time and everything would be all right. I never dreamed it meant any more than that. I still can’t believe it.”

  “Who is this person?” he asked again.

  “How can I tell you? I’d be betraying a trust.”

  “I suppose betraying your country and helping to hide a murderer seems much more noble.”

  Her clenched hands beat at her temples.

  “Please don’t—please! I’ve got to think…”

  “That might be a great beginning.”

  He was as pitiless and implacable as he could be. There was nothing in this that he could afford to be sentimental about. He was deliberately using his voice and personality like a whip.

  She turned her face up to him with the mascara making dark smudges under her eyes, and the same pleading held in her voice. “I’m so mixed up. This is somebody who’s been very good to me…But everything I’ve told you is the truth. I swear it is. You must believe me. You must.”

  He knew that at that time he was as unemotional as a lie detector, and yet unsureness tightened the muscles of his jaw. He took a long inhalation from his cigarette while he assessed the feeling.

  He had his own extra sense of truth that was like the ear of a musician with perfect pitch. He knew also that even that intuition could be deceived, because he himself had more than once deceived some of the most uncooperative critics. But if Barbara Sinclair was doing that, she had to be the most sensational actress that ever walked, on or off, a stage. It simply became easier and more rational to believe that he had met at least some of the truth than that he had met the supreme acting of all time.

  His main objectives were unchanged. He had to convict a murderer, track down the stolen iridium that had been diverted into the black market, and uncover, erase, liquidate, or otherwise dispose of the upper case brain that controlled the whole traitorous racket. He had to do that no matter who got hurt, including himself.

  But there was the slightest change in his tone of voice as he said, “All right. What about these two creeps?”

  “I don’t know who they are. Honestly. I can’t even think how they got in here.”

  “Let’s find out.”

  He made a rapid search of the two sleepers, and found no burglarious implements. But separate from the bunch of keys on Varetti’s gold trouser chain, he found a single key in one waistcoat pocket. He took it to the front door and tried it. It worked.

  He came back, showed it to the girl, and put it in his own pocket.

  “They had a key,” he said. “So by your own count, they must be pals of your boyfriend. Does that help?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “I might ask them some questions,” he said. “How would you like that?”

  “I’d like that,” she said almost intensely.

  He looked at Varetti and Walsh again, but they showed no signs of life whatever, and he regretted a little that he had dealt with them quite so vigorously. But the real motive of his question had been to get her reaction. The two men themselves were obviously dyed-in-the-wool mobsters of an older school, who would endure great persuasion before they opened up their souls and became confidential. And that would take time—quite probably too much time.

  Simon located a closet full of feminine fripperies, and gave it a quick inspection. A suit of masculine pyjamas hanging just inside interested him quite a little—even if Barbara Sinclair had a weakness for masculine modes, they would obviously have been too big for her. But he made no remarks about them. He heaved the two mobsters in, one after the other, and locked the door.

  “They’ll keep for a bit,” he said, and then his eye fell again on the rawhide bag which had damaged his shin.

  He pointed to it.

  “Were you thinking of going somewhere, or were they moving in?”

  She hesitated, fighting another battle with herself before she replied.

  “It isn’t mine.”

  “Who does it belong to—your new boarders?”

&nb
sp; “No. It belongs to—the same person. He left it with me some time ago. He said it was a lot of old books that he’d brought in from the country to give to the USO, but he kept forgetting to do anything about it.” Her eyes went back to him with a weak spark of hope. “Perhaps he just sent those men to fetch it.”

  “Perhaps he did,” Simon agreed courteously. “Do you mind if I have a look at these old books?”

  She shook her head.

  “I suppose I can’t stop you. But the bag’s locked.”

  He looked at her humorously.

  “I should have known that a bookworm like you would have tried to take a peek before this.”

  Her face flamed but she made no retort.

  Simon started to pick up the suitcase, and was momentarily taken aback by his own lack of strength. It was a little distressing to discover that old age had caught up with him so quickly—in the space of a mere few minutes, to be exact. For he had handled the two limp gangsters without much difficulty.

  He took a fresh grip, and heaved the bag on to the bed. Even for a load of books, it was astonishingly heavy for its size.

  It was closed with a three-letter combination lock that surrendered its feeble little secret to the Saint’s sensitive fingers in a few seconds, and he raised the lid and gazed down at two glass jars, about the size of quart milk bottles, solidly embedded in a nest of crumpled newspapers. Each of them was filled to the top with a greenish powder.

  The girl was leaning over to look with him.

  “I don’t know whether you know it, darling,” said the Saint gently, “but you have been taking care of about two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of iridium.”

  7

  If she had had any reactions left he might have suspected her again. It would have been too much like an effort to show the right response—however right it was. But now she seemed to have been stunned into a purely mechanical acceptance.

  “This is what you were looking for,” she said.

  It was a simple statement, almost naive in its tonelessness.

  “I imagine it is,” he said. “The shipment that was hijacked in Nashville. Or about two-thirds of it. That would be about right—a third of the shipment must be in black market circulation by this time.”

  He squinted down at the suitcase again as he reached for a cigarette, and his eyes settled on the combination of letters at which the lock had opened.

  “Do the initials O. S. M. mean anything to you?” he asked.

  Her face was completely empty. He was watching her. And so much depended on whether he was right, and whether he could see through the beauty of her face and not let it colour what he was looking for.

  “Skip it,” he said. “It was just an idea.”

  He lighted his cigarette, while she sat down heavily on the bed and stared at him in that numb kind of bewilderment. Her hands trembled slightly in her lap.

  He said, “Your boyfriend parked this stuff here with you—safely enough, because this is one of the last places where anybody would look for it. Probably even his best friends don’t know anything about his connection with this place. And even if anybody who knew too much already did know, they’d never expect him to be so dumb as to leave a couple of hundred grand’s worth of boodle lying around in a love-nest. Which is what we call the technique of deception by the obvious…Yes, it was a good place to cache the swag. But now, apparently, your mysterious meal ticket is getting nervous. Maybe he’s a little afraid of you and what you know. So he sent Humpty and Dumpty here to fetch it away.” The Saint had slipped out of cold cruelty again as impersonally as he had slid into it. He said quietly, “Now what?”

  She nodded like a mechanical doll.

  “Just give me a chance,” she begged. “If I can only make it right with myself…Can’t you give me just a little time?”

  He was sure now, and his decision was made. It was no part of him to look back.

  “Not here,” he said decisively. “We don’t know who the next caller may be, and in any case we don’t want Humpty and Dumpty waking up and hearing you. If any of the ungodly got the idea that you were talking to me at all, they might find a whole new interest in your health. And I’d rather not have to hold my next interview with you in the morgue.”

  Her eyes widened as she looked at him.

  “You mean you think somebody might try to harm me?”

  “There have been instances,” said the Saint, with considerable patience, “where persons who knew too much, in this life of sin, have been harmed—some of them quite permanently.”

  “But he—I mean, this man wouldn’t hurt me. You see, he’s in love with me.”

  “I don’t altogether blame him,” said the Saint agreeably. “And I’m sure he would weep bitterly while he cut your throat.”

  He closed the valise quickly, hefted it again, and took her arm with his other hand.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  She raised herself slowly from the bed.

  “Where?”

  “Some place with room service, where you don’t have to be seen and where it would take weeks to locate you.”

  He herded her briskly out of the apartment, and stabbed at the button of the self-service elevator. The car was still on that floor, and he followed her in as the door rolled back.

  “And there, my love,” he continued, as the antique apparatus began its glubbering descent, “you will sit in your ivory tower with the night chain on the door, refusing all phone calls and unbarring the portals only to admit slaves bearing food which you are damn sure you ordered, or when you hear my rich and resonant voice announcing that I have a COD package for you from Saks Fifth Avenue. All characters who demand entrance with telegrams, special deliveries, flowers, plumbing tools, or dancing bears will be ignored. In that way I hope I shall save the expense of having to pay for cleaning a lot of your red corpuscles off the carpet.”

  Then he kissed her, because she was still very beautiful looking at him, and other things that were rooted in neither of them as people had forced him into a part that he would never have chosen, and he knew it even while it would never shake the lucid distances of his mind.

  It was like kissing an orchid, and the seismic grounding of the elevator was only just in time to save him from the disturbance of discovering what it might mean to kiss an orchid that became alive.

  He glanced up and down the street as he followed her to the cab which was fortunately waiting at the stand outside. There was nobody he recognised among the few people within range, but nowhere in Simon Templar’s professional habits was there an acceptance of even temporary immunity without precautions.

  “Penn Station,” he told the driver. The girl looked at him questioningly, but before she could speak he said quickly, “We’ll just catch the twelve-thirty, and that’ll get us to Washington in plenty of time.”

  He chattered blithely on about non-existent matters, giving her no chance to make any mistakes, and glancing back from time to time through the rear window. But the traffic was thick enough all the way to make it almost impossible to be certain of identifying any following vehicle. He could only be secure by taking no chances.

  He had the fare and tip ready in his hand as the taxi swooped down the ramp and wedged itself into the jam at the unloading platform. Without waiting for the cab to creep any closer, he hauled the heavy bag, shook his head at a hopeful redcap, grasped Barbara Sinclair by the elbow, and propelled her desirously and without a pause through the crowded rotunda of the station to the escalators with a nimbleness of dodging and threading that would have brought tears to the eyes of a football coach. In a mere matter of seconds they were out on Seventh Avenue opposite the Pennsylvania Hotel.

  “Not that one,” said the Saint. “It’s too obvious. I’ve got another place in mind. Let’s joy-ride some more.”

  “But why—”

  “Darling, that is a one-hack stand in front of your building. Anyone who was trailing us wouldn’t have much trouble finding ou
r last driver.”

  “Do you think he’d remember? He must have so many passengers—”

  The Saint sighed.

  “Didn’t you ever wonder why taxi drivers always haul out a pad at the first red light and start scribbling in it? Did you think they were putting in a quick paragraph on the Great American Novel? Well, they weren’t. That’s a record that the Law makes them keep. Where from and to. So our driver doesn’t need such a memory. With that note to goose him, he’ll probably even remember that we were talking about going to Washington. Now if your glamour boy has any respect for my genius, which he may or may not have, he probably won’t believe we went to Washington. But he won’t be sure. If he’s very bright, he will immediately begin to think of what I was talking about just now—the technique of deception by the obvious. And he will begin to feel quite ill. Uncertainty will breed in his mind. And uncertainty breeds fear, and fear often leads clever men to do quite unclever things. Anyway, this will all help to make him miserable, and since he never set me up in a fancy apartment I don’t owe him anything. Taxi!”

  He signed her into a small residential hotel off Lexington Avenue as the wife of an entirely fictitious Mr Tombs whose sarcophagal personality had given him much private entertainment for many years, and left her there after he had made sure that she remembered his password seriously.

  “You can do your thinking here, in pleasant surroundings,” he said. “Search your soul to the core and make your decision. I’m sorry I can’t stay to help you, but I have things to do while you wrestle with your private confusions.”

  Her eyes wandered around the apartment, and then back to him, in a lost sort of way.

  “Do you really have to go now?”

  She didn’t have to ask that, and he wished that he didn’t have to make an answer.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated with a smile. “But this little war is still going on, and maybe the enemy isn’t waiting.”

  The same bellboy who had just carried the rawhide suitcase in and out of the elevator met him in the small lobby with a somewhat unresolved blend of eagerness and suspicion. The contents of the bag alone weighed a full hundred pounds, and the Saint swung it in one hand as if it had been empty.