The anchor came down from the freighter with a clanking of chain and a splash. Enriquez turned to Inkler.
“We can go in to the dock, but he is too big. My men will come out in smaller boats to unload.”
Inkler relayed the information, shouting upwards at the freighter’s bridge. He added, “Don’t let ’em have the stuff till I give the signal!”
A voice shouted back, unnautically, “Okey-doke.”
The Mexican captain shoved the clutches forward, and the Chris-Craft purred away.
In a few minutes they were alongside the ramshackle dock where the flashlights bobbed. There were at least a dozen men on it, and a slight aroma of fish and sweat and garlic; the silent shadowy figures gave an impression of roughness and toughness, but only an occasional glimpse of detail could be seen when a light moved. Manuel stepped ashore first, and the Saint followed him and gave his hand to Doris Inkler to help her. Her hand was cold, and kept hold of his even after she had joined him on the rickety timbers. Sherman Inkler stumbled on to the pier after them.
Enriquez seemed to sense the defensiveness of their grouping for he said reassuringly, “They are all friends of our friend Jalisco. Don’t worry. This village is one of ours.”
He guided them through the opening ranks and off the dock. It felt good to the Saint to stretch his legs again on solid ground. The dim square outlines of several parked trucks loomed around them, then another man alone, whose face was faintly spotlighted in the darkness by the glow of a cigar. It was Pablo.
The two brothers talked quickly and briefly in Spanish, and Manuel said mostly “Sí, sí,” and “Está bien.”
“This way,” Pablo said.
He led them a little distance from the trucks, to where one of the yellow Cadillacs was parked under a tree, with one of the burly chauffeurs beside it. He went around to the back and unlocked the boot. An automatic light went on as it opened, illuminating one medium-sized suitcase inside.
“That is for you,” Pablo said.
Inkler stepped slowly forward. He opened the suitcase gingerly, as if expecting it to be booby-trapped. Simon felt Doris tremble a little at his shoulder. Then they saw the neat bundles of green bills that filled the case.
“You may count it,” Manuel said.
Inkler took out one of the packages of currency and thumbed through it methodically. He compared it with the others for thickness. Doris joined him and began to count packages, rummaging to the very bottom of the case. Sherman pulled out occasional bills and examined them very closely under the light. Most of them were twenties and fifties.
Simon Templar watched from where he stood, and also let his eyes travel all around and turned his head casually to look behind him. His muscles and reflexes were poised on a hair trigger. But he could neither see nor hear any hint of a closing ambush. The husky chauffeur stood a little apart, like a statue. The Enriquez brothers talked together in low tones, and the only scraps of their conversation that the Saint could catch were concerned entirely with their arrangements for storing and distributing the ordnance that they thought they were buying.
“I’m satisfied,” Sherman Inkler said at last.
Manuel lighted a cigar.
“Good. Then you will give the signal to your boat?”
“Of course.”
Manuel led him back into the gloom, in the direction of the pier.
Doris Inkler closed and fastened the suitcase and pulled it out of the car boot. She unbalanced a little as the full weight came on her arm, and put it down on the ground.
“It’s heavy,” she said with a nervous laugh, and as the Saint stepped up to feel it, out of curiosity, she said, “Give me a cigarette.”
He gave her one, and Pablo lighted it.
“It is a lot of money,” Pablo said. “It will buy many pretty things, if you have an appreciative husband.”
“I’ll feel safer with it when it’s turned into traveller’s cheques,” said the Saint.
Pablo laughed.
They made forced and trivial conversation until Simon heard Manuel and Sherman returning.
Now, if there was to be any treachery on the part of the Enriquez brothers, it would have to show itself. The Saint’s weight was on the balls of his feet, his right hand ready to move like a striking snake, but still the movement that he was alert for did not come.
“I am afraid it will take several hours to unload everything,” Manuel said. “Would you like to go back on the boat and have some more drinks?”
Doris looked at her husband.
“Can’t we go back to the hotel? I’m tired, and famished—and I think some mosquitoes are eating me.”
“Pablo and I must stay here,” Manuel said. “And we need all our men. Even the chauffeur should be helping. However…Would you like to take the car? One of you can drive. It is an easy road to Veracruz. You cannot get lost.”
He gave directions.
“But what about you?” Inkler protested half-heartedly.
“We will come later, on one of the trucks. Do not wait up for us.”
Almost incredulously, they found themselves getting into the Cadillac. Sherman picked up the suitcase full of money and put it in the front seat, and got in beside it, behind the wheel. “Don’t want to let it out of my sight,” he said with an empty grin. Manuel and Pablo kissed the hand of Doris, and she got in the back seat. Simon shook hands with them and got in after her. In a mere matter of seconds they were on their way.
They must have driven more than a mile in unbelieving silence. It was as if they were afraid that even there the Enriquez brothers might overhear them, or that a careless word might shatter a fragile spell…
And then suddenly, uncontrollably, Doris electrified the stillness with a wild banshee shriek.
“We did it!” she screamed. “We’ve got the money, and we’re off. We did it!”
She leaned forward and grasped her husband’s shoulders and shook them.
“Better than I ever hoped for,” Sherman said shakily. “I thought at the very least we’d have a chauffeur to get rid of. But we’re on our own already. Now pull yourself together!”
Doris fell back, giggling hysterically.
The Saint’s right hand slid unobtrusively under his coat, fingered the butt of the holstered automatic that he had not had to touch. Then it moved to the pocket where he kept his cigarettes.
“So you didn’t really need me,” he said. “The Enriquez brothers were on the level, after their fashion. They may swindle the government and send peasants out to kill and be killed for them, but they pay their own bills. I guess there is honour among certain kinds of thieves.”
Doris stopped squirming and sat up with a final cathartic gasp.
“Oh, no,” she said. “I’m glad we ran into you. Terribly glad.”
And suddenly her lips were on his mouth, hot and hungry, and her body against him and her arms winding around him, groping…And then just as quickly she tore herself away, back to the far side of the seat, and he looked down and saw the gleam of his own gun in her hand, pointing at him.
“You didn’t have to use it,” she said, a little breathlessly. “But I will, if you try anything. Pull over, Sherm. I’ve got him covered.”
6
The Saint didn’t move. He gazed at her steadily, and rather sadly, while the car lost speed without any abruptness that might have spoiled her aim.
“A perfect stranger,” he said, “a person who didn’t know your sweet loyal soul, would think you were going to take a mean advantage of me—to toss me aside like an old squeezed-out toothpaste tube.”
“A perfect stranger would be right,” she said. “It was mighty nice to have you with us while there was a real chance that the Enriquez brothers might have been planning to pull a fast one. But now we’re out of that danger, you’re too expensive a partner. But you can still be useful. I figure that if we leave you for them or the cops to catch, when they find out who you are they won’t care so much about trying t
o find us.”
“That’s how I thought you had it figured.”
She peered at him sharply, then gave a short grating laugh.
“You did?”
The car had stopped now, and Inkler turned around in the front seat.
“Don’t let’s waste any more time, Doris.”
“Hold it, Sherm. This I have got to hear!”
“You remember the lecture I promised you about your extravagant generosity, darling?” said the Saint. “That was the tip-off. When you came and offered me a third share of a prize like this, after you’d done all the groundwork, and with you and Sherman paying all the expenses out of your end, you overplayed it to a fare-thee-well. They just don’t make fairy godparents like that in the racket. If you’d offered me about twenty grand, say, just to keep my mouth shut and do this little walk-on in the last act, I might have fallen for it. But more than a hundred and sixty thousand, free and clear—that just had to be sucker bait.”
“Then why did you go for it?”
“I had to see how it would work out. And there was always an outside chance that you might just be a little crazy. But if you were a thoroughly bad girl—if you really were trying to pull something like this on the old maestro—then I’d have to teach you a lesson.”
“I’ll look forward to that,” she said.
She fumbled behind her and opened the door on her side. She got out, without ever turning away from him, and held the door open, still keeping him covered. At the same time, Sherman got out on his side.
“Come on outside, Saint,” she said.
“That’s a fighting phrase,” Simon remarked mildly.
But he followed her out, and she made him step a little away from the car. She handled the gun like a professional, and kept a safe distance from a sudden leap.
He gave her a last chance.
“You seemed to rather like me last night, if I may be so ungentlemanly as to mention it,” he said. “Why don’t we ditch your husband instead, and start a new team?”
She shook her head.
“Not my husband,” she said. “My brother. We only work as husband and wife because it makes a better act. I like you a lot that way, Saint, but you just aren’t in the running.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
He caught the flicker of her eyes and the almost imperceptible whisper of movement behind him at the same instant, and spun around. He saw Sherman Inkler with something like a blackjack in his right hand raised and already falling, and stepped in under it like a cat. The Saint’s left came up under the man’s chin with a snap like a collision of pool balls, and Sherman was probably already unconscious before the right cross that followed the uppercut slammed him against the car and dropped him at the enforced limit of his horizontal travel.
The Saint turned. And quite deliberately, Doris Inkler shot at him. He heard the click of the firing pin, but that was all.
Then he took the gun out of her hand.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “It deprives you of your last hope of sympathy. You’d have killed me if I hadn’t been careful.” He was doing something to the gun and putting it back in his shoulder holster. “You knew where I had a gun, so I knew the first thing you’d do would be to take it, so I took out the magazine while we were driving,” he explained calmly.
She spat obscenities at him, and flew at him with her fingernails, so that he had to clip her on the jaw with a loose fist, just hard enough to knock her cold for a few seconds, rather than have his last remaining pleasant memories of her ruined.
He took the aeroplane tickets, but left them some money and their tourist cards, without which they would have found it very complicated indeed to cross any Mexican border. He felt that that was pretty Saintly, considering what they would have done to him, but that would always be his weakness. Even so, their chances would be none too good.
He got into the Cadillac and drove on. At the outskirts of Veracruz he stopped for long enough to peel off his moustache and rub the grey out of his hair with a handkerchief; he put the tinted glasses in his pocket. Then he drove on again, slowly, until he found himself within a couple of blocks of bright lights. He parked the car in a dark yard, took out the suitcase of loot, and walked on. In a little while he found a taxi, and ordered it to drive him to the airport. He saw no need to risk going back to the Mocambo for his over-night bag: with what he carried in his hand, he could cheerfully consider everything it contained expendable. His watch told him he had just a comfortable margin of time to catch the plane.
He checked in at the ticket counter, but kept possession of the suitcase. It was a little larger than the size which passengers are normally permitted to carry with them, but the clerk was sleepy and let him get away with it. He was passed on to another official who stamped his tourist card.
Then a hand fell on his shoulder.
“You are leaving us so soon?” said Captain Carlos Xavier.
“Just for a few days,” said the Saint, with superhuman blandness. “Some friends of mine are honeymooning in Havana, and they begged me to hop over and see them.”
Xavier nodded.
“We still have so much to talk about. Come with me.”
He took the Saint’s arm and led him past the customs counter, under the eyes of the uniformed officer, through a door marked Entrada prohibida, and into a small shabby office. He shut the door, and pointed to the Saint’s suitcase.
“You know that if you had gone on, the officer outside would have made you open that?”
“I was just figuring how much it would cost to discourage him,” said the Saint blandly, “when you interrupted me.”
“You will let me look in it, please?”
Simon laid the case on the desk and released the locks, but did not open it. He stepped back and let Xavier raise the lid. He unbuttoned his coat, and was glad he had reloaded his gun.
Xavier stared at the money for a long time.
“I suppose this belongs to the Enriquez brothers?” he said.
“It did,” Simon replied steadily. “But they paid it over quite voluntarily, for what they thought was a shipment of arms and ammunition for Jalisco’s revolution.”
“To be supplied by the Inklers?”
It was the Saint’s turn to stare.
“How did you know?”
“Why do you think I took you to Larue last night, where I knew the Enriquez brothers would be, and where I hoped the Inklers would try to contact them? If they had not done it that night, I would have taken you wherever they went the next night. Why do you think I arranged for Inkler to be delayed, until I had had time to tell you about Manuel and Pablo? Why do you think I arranged to be called away afterwards so that you would be free to observe what happened and to act as you chose? Why do you think I have never been far away from you since then, even to watching you at sea this afternoon from an aeroplane, until it got too dark? Meeting you here, of course, was easy: I knew about your reservations as soon as they were made. But you should be grateful to me, instead of wondering whether to use the gun you have under your arm.”
“Excuse me,” said the Saint, and leaned against the wall.
“I told you I was an unusual policeman,” Xavier said. “I received word from your FBI that the Inklers were here, and what to expect from them. They have been in other Central American countries, always working on the discontented element, and usually with the story that they could influence assistance from Washington. So I knew that the Enriquez brothers would be perfect for them. I had a problem. It was my duty not to let the Inklers swindle anyone; yet I did not have much desire to protect Manuel and Pablo. That is why I was most happy that you were here. I was sure I could rely on you for a solution.”
Simon’s eyes widened in a blinding smile.
“Is anything wrong with this one?”
“It is a lot of money.” Xavier pursed his lips over it judicially. “But I have no report of any such sum being stolen. And no one has made any accu
sations against you. I do not see how I can prevent you leaving with it. On the other hand, I am not very well paid, and I think you owe me something.” He took out six of the neat bundles of green paper and distributed them in different pockets of his clothing. “I should like to retire, and buy a small hotel in Fortín.”
Simon Templar drew a deep breath, and straightened up.
“One day I must visit you there,” he said.
Captain Xavier closed the suitcase, and Simon picked it up. Xavier opened another door, and the Saint found himself out on the landing field. In front of him, the first passengers were boarding the plane.
THE ROMANTIC MATRON
1
She had probably celebrated at least thirty-five birthdays, but most of them must have marked pleasant years. Now she was entering the period of life at which the sophisticated European, impervious to the adolescent fixations with which Hollywood has helped to pervert the American taste, finds a woman most attractive. She could approach it with the confidence of a figure that had ripened without ever being allowed to get out of hand, a face enhanced by the distinction of maturity, and the kind of clothes and grooming that it takes experience as well as money to acquire.
She said, in a quick breathless way, “You’re Simon Templar, aren’t you? The Saint. One of the croupiers at the Tropicana told me.”
“Did he warn you not to play cards with me?” Simon asked disinterestedly.
“Silly. I’m Mrs Carrington. Beryl, to be friendly. That’s all the introduction I can manage.”
“How do you do,” he said, with restrained courtesy.
She looked over her shoulder nervously, then back to him again.
“I’m not drunk,” she said. “Please believe that. We’ve got to have help and I thought you might be it.”
The Saint inhaled expressionlessly through his cigarette. It was getting to be a job for an electronic computer to count the number of times he had heard some similar opening to that. And “help” usually meant something basically unlawful, with a good chance of getting shot, or clapped in jail, or both, as the most obvious reward.
Señor Saint (The Saint Series) Page 7