“Tough,” Simon said reluctantly. “But—”
“Soon after that he came down with TB. Then it wasn’t even a matter of starting over. When his money ran out, he had to become a charity patient in the State hospital. He’s there now.”
The Saint blinked.
“Don’t look up,” Stern said, “but she seems to have signed the check, and they’re headed this way. Do you want to be introduced?”
“Yes,” Simon said, assiduously finishing his plate. “If you can bring yourself to gamble your good repute on my alias.”
“Who do you want to be—Sebastian Tombs?”
“I think the Count of Cristamonte might appeal to her more.”
He was only just able to say it in time, and then she was at the table. Even before he raised his eyes with carefully measured nonchalance, his senses were aware of a perfume, a warmth, a physical presence that seemed to send out vibrations from its own high-voltage charge.
“Relax, darling,” she said, as the newspaper proprietor stood up. “I’m not going to slap you, or even make a scene.”
“It never occurred to me that you would,” Stern said with easy courtesy.
“I don’t mean for some of those scandalous columns you’ve published—I know you only print what the syndicates send you. I mean, though, I hope you don’t think I’m sore at you for picking on me in that editorial the other day. How did it go?—‘Louisiana’s industrial potential should not be judged solely by the unfortunate publicity earned by the personal antics of certain of our prominent commercial citizens!’ And everyone knows that I’ve had more publicity than any other commercial citizen of this town. That was a little bit snide, darling.”
She had a naturally husky voice, and she had adapted to herself some of the mannerisms of a famously mannered Southern actress, but an interpretation of her own softened and sugared them.
“It’s all right, I know you can’t admit you were referring to me,” she went on before the other could admit or deny anything. “Especially before witnesses. But you know the Marchese isn’t my attorney.” For the first time she made a show of noticing the Saint. “What about your friend?”
“The Count of Cristamonte,” Stern said with the obligatory gesture. “Mrs Ashville.”
The momentary widening of her eyes might have been hard to measure without a micrometer, but Simon did not miss it. They were brown eyes with flecks of green, and there were hardly any telltale wrinkles around them. Even at close quarters her skin had the clear and silky texture coveted by the users of Dreemicreem. There was no doubt that simply as a female she was what almost any male would have classified to himself as a Dish.
She put out her hand with more than conventional cordiality and said, “Oh, a distinguished visitor getting the VIP treatment. Please don’t be scared by anything I was just saying, about Mr Stern. You couldn’t be in better hands. I was only kidding him, in our crude American way.”
“You don’t have to explain,” smiled the Saint, with the barest trace of some vaguely European accent. “I’ve been in America before. And for the pleasure of meeting you, I would forgive David anything.”
She had left her hand with him when he bent over it, and it took her that long to withdraw it, as if it were something she had forgotten. She had not bothered to present the Marchese to anyone, and he was trying to appear elegantly inscrutable and aristocratically bored in the near background, to which he was strategically relegated by Mrs Ashville’s uncooperative back and the space limitations of the aisle which burdened waiters and bus boys were trying to use as a thoroughfare.
She continued to look the Saint over, not a whit less candidly than he had been studying her a few minutes earlier.
“How long are you here for?”
“To my sorrow, only a few days.”
“I’m sorry too. Very sorry.” She turned back to Stern at last with a smile. “Don’t worry about losing my advertising, darling. As long as your circulation figures hold up, you can make all the jokes you want to about me. Just don’t knock the product…And be careful where you take your handsome friend. He should go back to Europe remembering nothing but the best of this town.”
With a last flashing glance at the Saint she swept on. Her pallidly aesthetic escort followed like a reactivated toy towed by a string, with a coldly perfunctory inclination of his head towards the table that had interrupted their progress, as he went by.
“That’s a lot of woman,” Simon observed as they sat down again. “She transmits like a long-range radio station—and it isn’t only music. I can see where a little guy in a corner drugstore wouldn’t have had much chance.”
“She’s progressed quite a bit since then.”
“Sure. And there are movie stars who graduated just as recently from slinging hash. Some of ’em were smothered with sables before they were quite used to wearing shoes. But more women are natural actresses than end up in Hollywood. If they’re born with the spark, and given the opportunity, they don’t take long to learn the princess routines. Cinderella had to have a fairy godmother, but all the modern gal needs is the confidence that comes with a little success and a lot of money. And I say the performance can be just as much fun if you forget the pedigree.”
“You turn a fine phrase, my friend. But you sound as if you were trying to sell yourself.”
“If she threw herself at me, I can’t pretend it wouldn’t be nice to have an excuse not to duck.”
“And forget the discarded husband in the charity ward? I must have had a wrong impression, but I didn’t know you were as tough as that.”
Simon lighted a cigarette.
“Have you printed that story? It doesn’t seem like it, or she’d’ve mentioned it.”
“Frankly, we only got the tip yesterday. We sent someone out to check on it today, and Ashville begged him to drop it. Said Mrs Ashville didn’t know, and he didn’t want her to.”
“Then where did the tip come from?”
“A sister of his who phoned us. She said Mrs Ashville knew all about it and didn’t care.”
“Do you know if this sister could be bitter about something else? If Mrs Ashville really doesn’t know, you can’t score it against her. Has anyone asked Mrs Ashville? You had a chance to ask her yourself just now,” said the Saint.
“I have a top-notch editor and some excellent reporters,” said his host urbanely. “I don’t try to do all their jobs myself. I was only telling you as much as I happened to know. You’ll have to read the rest of it in the paper—if they decide it’s worth printing. And I’m sorry if I spoiled the romance you didn’t have.”
The Saint had to laugh.
“And I’m sorry I can’t make you a story, after you’ve tried so hard to feed me the ingredients. But things don’t happen to me that way.”
He was wrong, of course—any time he made a categorical statement like that, his peculiar Fate usually took it as a personal challenge and set out to make a liar of him.
An hour later, after pancakes and coffee and Benedictine, the headwaiter who was bowing them out deftly slipped a folded piece of paper into the Saint’s hand while seeming to almost ignore him in the exchange of compliments and banalities with the important local patron. But Simon felt the warning pressure that went with this professional legerdemain and slid the note into his pocket without a visible flicker of attention.
He managed to read it under the street lighting, with the most unostentatious casualness, while waiting for their car at the parking lot, as if it had been a list of Things To Do In Town. In a vigorous sprawling hand, it said:
If you feel like a quiet nightcap, call me any time after eleven—Magnolia 7-5089. The name is Elise Ashville.
“Where would you like me to drop you off?” Stern asked cagily. “I’m afraid I have an important meeting first thing in the morning, but—”
“Don’t worry, I don’t want to be shown the Vieux Carré,” said the Saint. “As a matter of fact, I took the Bourbon Street promenade las
t night, for old times’ sake. Maybe it’s old age creeping up on me, but the honky-tonks seem to get honkier and tonkier every year. Let’s have a quiet digestive dram at my hotel and call it a day.”
Thus a little time passed quickly and painlessly, and a few minutes after eleven he was able to dial a pay phone in the lobby.
The voice that answered the ring had none of the charm of the traditional Southern servitor as it snapped: “Mrs Ashville’s residence. Who’s calling?”
“The Count of Cristamonte,” Simon said, with the accent.
“Hold on.”
Then after a moment it was the voice he had been expecting, electrically rich with suggestive overtones.
“Please excuse my maid’s tone of voice. I think she thinks she’s working too late, or something. Are you ready for that nightcap?”
“I would like to see you again.”
“Ask any taxi driver for the Elysée Apartments. The new building. I had it named for me. You work the elevator yourself. On top of all the floor buttons there’s one small green button with no number. That’s my penthouse. Will you be long?”
“No longer than this taxi will take,” he said.
One reason why Simon Templar’s nervous system had survived his extraordinary life with so little damage by strain and fraying was that he had an amazing gift of closing his mind to unprofitable speculation. When there was obviously nothing to be gained by trying to foreguess a situation that would soon supply its own answers, he was able to simply switch off the futile circuit and wait with only philosophical anticipation for the future to unroll itself. He saved his prophetic energy for the occasions when life and death might depend on how many moves he could stay ahead of the game, but he felt reasonably sure that this was not that kind of game.
He was even more sure when she unlocked the inside door at which the automatic elevator stopped in obedience to the small green button and let him step out into a room that could only have been designed by an interior decorator who had studied his subject by watching old movies on television. It cried aloud for a sinuous slumber-eyed siren in a long clinging robe, possibly fondling a tame ocelot. Elise Ashville was too palpably charged with corpuscles and vitamins for that rôle, and she had not even conceded to the diaphanous négligée which any writer of a certain modern school would have considered a formal necessity for such an occasion, but the suggestion of untrammeled nakedness under the demurely neck-high and ankle-deep housecoat she had changed into was no less positive and even more effective. And her approach had a refreshing time-saving candor.
“I’m glad you weren’t too tied up with Mr Stern, since you aren’t going to be here long.”
“I think he was rather relieved that he didn’t have to take me on a tour of the strip-tease joints.” The Saint held his accent down to an intriguing cosmopolitan minimum, just enough to add spice to the personality he was projecting. “And your Marchese?”
“I told him I had a terrible headache.”
She led the way to a long, wide, deep, and unlimitedly functional couch, flanked by a coffee table burdened with bottles of almost anything except coffee, together with glasses and an ice bucket.
“Then the only one who must be unhappy is your maid,” he remarked. “She sounded quite annoyed about answering the phone.”
“She was sore because I took her away from her TV set to give me a rubdown and fix me a bath and a few things like that, and then I made her wait up until you called—that was in case anyone else called first, she could say I was out. So she’ll be fired as soon as she’s fixed my breakfast. I can’t stand servants who think they ought to have union hours and rules. If a servant isn’t a servant, what are you paying for? That’s the European angle, isn’t it?”
“Well, it was like that once. But today—”
“I’m going to ask the employment agency for a good hungry refugee. I couldn’t do worse than with what I’ve been getting. But I won’t bore you any more with that. Do you mind fixing your own nightcap?”
“I thought that was a figure of speech.”
She met the intentional challenge of his gently insolent gaze without the flicker of one mascara’d eyelash.
“I suppose in Europe no lady would have sent you a note like mine?”
“No, it could happen. But a gentleman would only take it as a most generous compliment.”
“You’ve got a nice line, darling, but you don’t have to strain it. Mr Stern must have told you a little about me. I expect you’re used to getting a lot of breaks because of your title. I get them because I can pay for anything I want. And I couldn’t let you get away, because I think you’re the most exciting-looking man I’ve ever seen.”
“Then you would not misunderstand my impatience to kiss the most exciting woman I have seen in America?”
It was a purely Arabian Nights kind of episode that the Saint would never have dared to relate to anyone who he did not already know to be convinced that in this amazing world anything can happen, but this subtracted nothing from his enjoyment of it, since he was not in the habit of telling that kind of story.
Churlish as it may seem to some readers, however, he did not wake up the next morning completely bemused by exquisite if implausible memories. In fact, after reviewing everything through a third cup of breakfast coffee, he found nothing more incredible than one recklessly premature pontification of his own. To retrieve that one he had to brazen out an unexpected call at a local newspaper office.
“I thought you decided last night that there was no story in it for you,” Stern said, not without malice. “What happened to change your mind?”
“Nothing,” Simon replied mendaciously, “except that I began to wonder if you’d think I just couldn’t be bothered. Would you care to get me those other details that you didn’t know last night?”
“Let’s go and talk to the editor.”
The editor was a composed and genial man who puffed a pipe in a relaxed manner that would have horrified any well-trained casting director. He said, “No, I haven’t sent anyone to talk to this sister. Since Ashville himself was so definite about not wanting the story printed, I decided to drop it. After all, if his pride is all he’s got left, and it means that much to him, we don’t have to strip him of that last shred of dignity to get out an interesting edition.”
“Did the sister leave any address?” Simon asked.
“Yes. I’ve got a note of it somewhere.” The editor rummaged through the papers in a tray. “Here it is. 4818 Alamanda Street. I think that’s out towards the hospital.”
“I’d like to talk to her. I won’t pretend that you sent me or even let her know where I got the address. On the other hand, if I don’t think you can do any good by printing anything she tells me, I won’t pass it on to you. Fair enough?”
The gentlemen of the press exchanged glances.
“Well,” said the editor philosophically, “since he seems to have got the address anyhow, we could call that an extravagantly generous offer.”
Alamanda Street proved to be a channel of grimy and uninspired façades that ran for only two blocks—the impressive numbering of the houses was simply scaled to match the corresponding numbers on the boulevard which it paralleled. The buildings were old without having acquired any antique elegance and somewhat oversized without stateliness. Several of them had signs offering rooms or apartments for rent, as the owners tried to eke out some revenue from their outmoded dimensions. Number 4818 was one of these, and the Saint found Miss Ashville’s name on a card over one of the mailboxes in the hall with a penciled note in the corner, 2nd floor back.
She came to the door as soon as he knocked, and he accepted that as a good omen, having been prepared to wait all day if she had been out.
“Good morning,” he said. “Could I talk to you about the call you made to the paper, about your brother?”
“You’ve been long enough getting here,” she said. “Come in.”
The room to which she admitted him was larg
e but airless, shabbily furnished but meticulously tidy. One couch had an unmistakable air of being convertible into a bed, and he suspected that the barest essentials of a kitchenette were crowded behind an anachronistic concertina door in one corner. The contrast with the penthouse which he had left less than twelve hours ago could hardly have been starker.
“A reporter went to see Mr Ashville at once, but he said he didn’t want anything printed.”
“I know. And he may never forgive me for making that call.”
She had waved Simon to a chair, but she remained standing, her hands folded together at her waist. She had black hair with gray strands in it that she must have washed and set herself, very accurately and unbecomingly, and she was probably not more than a year or two past forty, but she had the kind of untended face that any casual observer would say belonged to a nice homely middle-aged woman—without even a thought of the heartbreaks and frustrations that might be buried behind that callous classification.
“Before you called the paper,” he said, “did you try to see Mrs Ashville?”
“I did. More than once. But at the office she was always in a meeting. I went to her apartment, and I know she was in, because the maid took my name, but she came back and said Mrs Ashville was not at home. Just like that. Then I wrote her a letter.”
“A rude one?”
“No, a very nice one. I said that I wondered if she was avoiding me because she was afraid I was going to be a nuisance, either by blaming her for the divorce or trying to patch things up. I told her I could understand that, but I wasn’t the meddling kind, and I didn’t want anything from her, either. Not for myself. But I thought she ought to know about Richard. And I told her just how it was with him.”
“How bad is it?”
“The doctors don’t give him more than a year. Of course, with new drugs being tried all the time, you never give up hope…But even if he hasn’t got long, it might be a little longer, and it’d certainly be a lot less horrible, if he could be taken to Arizona or Colorado or one of those places.”
“Didn’t she answer that?”
Thanks to the Saint (The Saint Series) Page 8