“That’s great. Well, I want you to go and dig out this sort of cousin, or something, and stage a reunion. Be nice to him—remind him of the old family tree—and find out something for me about the Chalfont Castle.”
“Like a shot, old boy. But are you sure you don’t want an estate agent?”
“No, I don’t want an estate agent, you fathead. It’s a wreck, not a ruin. She sank somewhere near Alderney about the beginning of March. I want you to find out exactly where she went down. They’re sure to have a record at Lloyd’s. Get a chart from Potter’s, in the Minories, and get the exact spot marked. And send it to me at the Poste Restante, St Peter Port, Guernsey—tonight. Name of Tombs. Or get a bearing and wire it. But get something. All clear?”
“Clear as mud,” There was a suspicious hiatus at the other end of the line. “But if this means you’re on the war path again—”
“If I want you, I’ll let you know, Peter,” said the Saint contentedly, and rang off.
That was that…But even if one knew the exact spot where things were likely to happen, one couldn’t hang about there and wait for them. Not in a stretch of open water where a floating bottle would be visible for miles on a calm day. The Saint’s next call was to another erstwhile companion in crime.
“Do you think you could buy me a nice diving suit, Roger?” he suggested sweetly. “One of the latest self-contained contraptions with oxygen tanks. Say you’re representing a movie company and you want it for an undersea epic.”
“What’s the racket?” inquired Roger Conway firmly.
“No racket at all, Roger. I’ve just taken up submarine geology, and I want to have a look at some globigerina ooze. Now, if you bought that outfit this afternoon and shipped it off to me in a trunk—”
“Why not let me bring it?”
The Saint hesitated. After all, why not? It was the second time in a few minutes that the suggestion had been held out, and each time by a man whom he had tried and proved in more than one tight corner. They were old campaigners, men with his own cynical contempt of legal technicalities, and his own cool disregard of danger, men who had followed him before, without a qualm, into whatever precarious paths of breathless filibustering he had led them, and who were always accusing him of hogging all the fun when he tried to dissuade them from taking the same risks again. He liked working alone, but some aspects of Vogel’s crew of modern pirates might turn out to be more than one man’s meat.
“Okay.” The Saint drew at his cigarette, and his slow smile floated over the wire in the undertones of his voice. “Get hold of Peter, and any other of the boys who are looking for a sticky end. But the other instructions stand. Ship that outfit to me personally, care of the Southern Railway—you might even make it two outfits, if you feel like looking at some fish—and Peter’s to do his stuff exactly as I’ve already told him. You toughs can put up at the Royal; but you’re not to recognise me unless I recognise you first. It may be worth a point or two if the ungodly don’t know we’re connected. Sold?”
“Cash,” said Roger happily.
Simon walked on air to the stairs. As he stepped down into the foyer, he became aware of a pair of socks. The socks were particularly noticeable because they were of a pale brick-red hue, and intervened between a pair of blue trousers and a pair of brown and yellow co-respondent shoes. It was a combination of colours which, once seen, could not be easily forgotten, and the Saint’s glance voyaged idly up to the face of the man who wore it. He had already seen it once before, and his glance at the physiognomy of the wearer confirmed his suspicion that there could not be two men simultaneously inhabiting Dinard with the identically horrible taste in colour schemes. The sock stylist was no stranger. He had sat at a table close to the Saint’s at lunch-time, arriving a few moments later and calling for his bill in unison—exactly as he was sitting in the foyer now, with an aloof air of having nothing important to do and being ready to do it at a minute’s notice.
The Saint paid for his calls and the use of the room, and sauntered out. He took a roundabout route to his destination, turned three or four corners, without once looking back, and paused to look in a shop window in the Rue du Casino, In an angle of the plate glass he caught a reflection—of pale brick-red socks.
Item Two…So Vogel’s affability had not been entirely unpremeditated. Perhaps it had been carefully planned from the start. It would have been simplicity itself for the sleuth to pick him up when he was identified by sitting with Vogel and Yule at the café.
Not that the situation was immediately serious. The pink-hosed spy might have discovered that Simon Templar had rented a room and made some telephone calls, but He wasn’t likely to have discovered much more. And that activity was not fundamentally suspicious. But with Vogel already on his guard, it would register in the score as a fact definitely to be accounted for. And the presence of the man who had observed it added its own testimony to the thoroughness with which the fact would doubtless be scrutinised.
The Saint’s estimation of Kurt Vogel went up another grim notch. In that dispassionate efficiency, that methodical examination of every loophole, that ruthless elimination of every factor of chance or guesswork, he recognised some of the qualities that must have given Vogel his unique position in the hierarchy of racketeers—the qualities that must have been fatally underestimated by those three nameless scouts of Ingerbeck’s, who had not come home…
And which might have been underestimated by the fourth.
The thought checked him in his stride for an almost imperceptible instant. He knew that Loretta Page was ready to be told that she was suspected, but was she ready for quite such an inquisitorial surveillance as this?
He turned into the next tobacconist’s and gained a breathing space while he purchased a pack of cigarettes. To find out, he had to shake off his own shadow. And it had to be done in such a way that the shadow did not know he was being intentionally shaken off, because an entirely innocent young man in the role Simon had set himself would never discover that he was being shadowed anyway.
He came out and walked more quickly to the corner of the Rue Levasseur. A disengaged taxi met him there, almost as if it had been timed for the purpose, and he stopped it and swung on board without any appearance of undue haste, but with a movement as swift and sure as an acrobat’s on the flying trapeze.
“À la gare,” he said, and the taxi was off again without having actually reached a standstill.
Looking back through the rear window, he saw the pink socks piling into another cab a whole block behind. He leaned forward as they rushed into the Place de la République.
“Un moment,” he said in the driver’s ear. “Il faut que j’aille premièrement à la Banque Boutin.”
The driver muttered something uncomplimentary under his breath, trod on the brakes, and spun the wheel. By his limited lights, he was not without reason, for the Banque de Bretagne and Travel Agency of M. Jules Boutin are at the eastern end of the Rue Levasseur—in exactly the opposite direction from the station.
They reeled dizzily round the corner of the Rue de la Plage, with that sublime abandon of which only French chauffeurs and suicidal maniacs are capable, gathered speed, and hurtled around another right-hand hairpin into the Boulevard Féart, Simon looked back again, and saw no sign of the pursuit. There were three other possible turnings from the hairpin junction which they had just circumnavigated, and the Saint had no doubt that his pink-socked epilogue, having lost them completely on that sudden swerve out of the Place de la République, and not expecting any such treacherous manoeuvre, was by that tune frantically exploring routes in the opposite direction.
They turned back into the Rue Levasseur, and to make absolutely certain the Saint changed his mind again and ordered another twist north to the post office. He paid off the driver and plunged into a telephone booth.
She was in. She said she had been writing some letters.
“Don’t post ’em till I see you,” said the Saint. “What’s the number
of your room?” “Twenty-eight. But—”
“I’ll walk up as if I owned it. Can you bear to wait?”
4
She was wearing a green silk robe with a great silver dragon crawling round it and bursting into fire-spitting life on her shoulders. Heaven knew what she wore under it, if anything, but the curve of her thigh sprang up in a sheer sweep of breath-taking line to her knee as she turned. The physical spell of her wove a definite hiatus in between his entrance and his first line.
“I hope I intrude,” he said.
The man who was with her scowled. He was a hard-faced, hard-eyed individual, rather stout, rather bald, yet with a solid atmosphere of competence and courage about him.
“Loretta—how d’ya know this guy’s on the rise?”
“I don’t,” she said calmly. “But he has such a nice clean smile.”
“Just a home girl’s husband,” murmured the Saint lightly. He tapped a cigarette on his thumb-nail, and slanted his brows sidelong at the objector. “Who’s the young heart’s delight?”
She shrugged.
“Name of Steve Murdoch.”
“Of Ingerbeck’s?”
“Yes.”
“Simon to you,” said the Saint, holding out his hand.
Murdoch accepted it sullenly. Their grips clashed, battled in a sudden straining of iron wrists, but neither of them flinched. The Saint’s smile twitched at his lips, and some of the sullenness went out of the other’s stare.
“Okay, Saint,” Murdoch said dourly. “I know you’re tough. But I don’t like fresh guys.”
“I hate them, myself,” said the Saint unblushingly. He sat on the arm of a chair, making patterns in the atmosphere with cigarette-smoke. “Been here long?”
“Landed at Cherbourg this morning.”
“Did you ask for Loretta downstairs?”
“Yeah.”
“Notice anyone prick up his ears?” Murdoch shook his head.
“I didn’t look.”
“You should have,” said the Saint reprovingly. “I didn’t ask, but I looked. There was a bloke kicking his heels in a corner when I arrived, and he had watchdog written across his chest in letters a foot high. He didn’t see me, because I walked through with my face buried inside a newspaper; but he must have seen you. He’d’ve seen anyone who wasn’t expecting him, and he was placed just right to hear who was asked for at the desk.”
There was a short silence. Loretta leaned back against a table with her hands on the edge and her long legs crossed.
“Did you know Steve was here?” she asked.
“No. He only makes it more difficult. But I discovered that a ferret-faced bird with the most beautiful line in gent’s half-hose was sitting on my tail, and that made me think. I slipped him and came round to warn you.” Simon looked at her steadily. “There’s only a trace of suspicion attached to me at the moment, but Vogel’s taking no chances. He wants to make sure. There’s probably a hell of a lot of suspicion about you, so you weren’t likely to be forgotten. And apparently you haven’t been. Now Steve has rolled up to lend a hand—he’s branded himself by asking for you, and he’ll be a marked man from this moment.”
“That’s okay,” said Murdoch phlegmatically. “I can look after myself without a nurse.”
“I’m sure you can, dear old skunk,” said the Saint amiably. “But that’s not the point. Loretta, at least, isn’t supposed to be looking after herself. She’s the undercover ingénue. She isn’t supposed to have anything to look after except her honour. Once she starts any Mata Hari business, that boat is sunk.”
“Well?”
Simon flicked ash on to the carpet.
“The only tune is the one I’m playing. Complete and childlike innocence. With a pan like yours, Steve, you’ll have a job to get your mouth round the flute, but you’ve got to try it. Because any sucker play you make is going to hit Loretta. The first thing is to clean yourself up. If you’ve got a star or anything like that of Ingerbeck’s, flush it down the lavatory. If you’ve got anything in writing that could link you up, memorise it and burn it. Strip yourself of every mortal thing that might tie you on to this party. That goes for you too, Loretta, because sooner or later the ungodly are going to try and get a line on you from your luggage, if they haven’t placed you before that. And then, Steve, you blow.”
“What?”
“Fade. Waft. Pass out into the night. Loretta can go downstairs with you, and you can take a fond farewell in the foyer, with a few well-chosen lines of dialogue from which any listeners can gather that you’re an old friend of her father’s taking a holiday in Guernsey, and hearing she was in Dinard you hopped an excursion and came over for the day. And then you beetle down to the pier, catch the next ferry to St Malo, and shoot on to the return steamer to St Peter Port like a cork out of a bottle. Vogel will be there tomorrow.”
“How do you know that?” asked Loretta quickly.
“He told me. We got into conversation before lunch.” Simon’s gaze lifted to hers with azure lights of scapegrace solemnity playing in it. “He was trying to draw me out, and I was just devilling him, but neither of us got very far. I think he was telling me the truth, though. If I chase him to St Peter Port, he’ll be able to put my innocence through some more tests. So when you’re saying goodbye to Steve, he might ask you if you’re likely to take a trip to Guernsey, and you can say you don’t think you’ll be able to—that may make them think that you haven’t heard anything from me.”
Murdoch took out a cigar and bit the end from it with a bulldog clamp of his jaws. His eyes were dark again with distrust.
“It’s a stall, Loretta,” he said sourly. “How d’ya know Vogel isn’t capable of having an undercover man, the same as us! All he wants to do is get me out of the way, so he can take you alone.”
“You flatter yourself, brother,” said the Saint coldly. “If I wanted to take her, you wouldn’t stop me. Nor would you stop Vogel.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m not running.”
Loretta glanced from one man to the other. The animosity between them was creeping up again, hardening the square obstinacy of Murdoch’s jaw, glittering like chips of elusive steel in the Saint’s eyes. They were like two jungle animals, each superb in his own way and conscious of his strength, but of two different species whose feud dated back too far into the grey dawns of history for any quick forgetting.
“Yes, you are, Steve,” said the girl.
“When I start taking orders from that—”
“You aren’t.” Her voice was quiet and soothing, but there was a thread of calm decision under the silky texture. “You’re taking orders from me. The Saint’s right. We’d better break off again, and hope we can alibi this meeting.”
Murdoch was staring at her half incredulously.
“Orders?” he repeated.
“That’s right, Steve. At present I’m running this end of it. Until Martin Ingerbeck takes me off the assignment, you do what I tell you.”
“I think you’re crazy.”
She didn’t answer. She took a cigarette from a box on the table and walked to the window, standing there with her arms lifted and her hands on either side of the frame. The silver dragon lifted on her waist.
Murdoch’s lips flattened the butt of his cigar. His hands clutched the arms of his chair, and he started to get up slowly. With a sudden burst of vicious energy he grabbed for his hat and thumped it on his head.
“If you put it that way, I can’t argue,” he growled. “But you’re going to wish I had!” He transferred his glare from her unconscious back to the Saint’s face. “As for you—if anything happens to Loretta through my not being here—”
“We’ll be sure to let you know about it,” said the Saint, and opened the door for him. Murdoch stumped through with his fists clenched, and the Saint half closed it as
Loretta turned from the window and came across the room. He took her hands.
“I shall b
e gone while you’re seeing Steve off,” he said. “I can’t risk the foyer again, but I spotted a fire escape.”
“Must you?” The faint irony of her voice was baffled by the enigma of her smiling mouth.
He nodded.
“Not because I want to. But they ought to see me going back to the Corsair before there’s too much excitement about my shadow having lost me. You’re still sure you mean to go tonight?”
“Quite sure.”
“Did I dream the rest of it, after you’d gone last night?”
“I don’t know, dear. What did you have for dinner?”
“Lobster mayonnaise. I dreamt that you came back from the Falkenberg. Safe. And always beautiful. To me.”
“And then the danger really started.”
“I dreamt that you didn’t think it was too dangerous.”
Her eyes searched his face, with the laughter stilled in them for a moment. The tip of the dragon’s tongue stirred on her shoulder as she drew breath. One hand released itself to trace the half-mocking line of his mouth.
“But I am afraid,” she said.
Suddenly he felt her lips crushed and melting against his, and her body pressed against him, for one soundless instant, and then, before he could move, she had brushed past him and gone.
Orace was waiting for him anxiously when he got back. “Yer bin a long time,” Orace remarked shatteringly.
“Thousands of years,” said the Saint.
He sat out on deck again after he had taken his last daylight swim, and sipped a glass of sherry, and dined on one of Orace’s superlative meals. The speed tender had set out again from the Falkenberg and returned about half-past seven with Vogel, in evening dress, sitting beside Loretta. Through the binoculars, from one of the saloon portholes, he had seen Vogel smiling and talking, his great nose profiled against the water.
He sat out, with a cigarette clipped and half-forgotten between his lips and his eyes creased against the smoke, as motionless as a bronze Indian, while the water turned to dark glass and then to burnished steel. There was no fog that night. The river ran blue-black under the wooded rocks of the Vicomté and the ramparts and granite headland of St Malo. Lights sprang up, multiplying, on the island, and were mirrored in St Servan and Dinard, and spread luminous rapiers across the river. The hulls of the craft anchored in the Rance sank back into the gloom until the night swallowed them, and only their winking lights remained on the water. The lighthouses of the inlet were awake, green and red flashes stabbing irregularly across the bay and twinkling down from Grand Larron. A drift of music from one of the Casinos lingered across the estuary, and the anchorage where the Falkenberg should be was a constellation of lights.
Saint Overboard (The Saint Series) Page 6
