Saint Errant (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  He did not want this creature of tattered loveliness, this epitome of what men live for, to get out of his sight. He must therefore keep her inside the cabin. And there was no place to hide…

  His eyes narrowed as he looked at the two bunks. He was tearing out the mattresses before his thought was fully formed. He tossed the mattresses in a corner where shadows had retreated from the candle on the table. Then he motioned to Holbrook.

  “Climb up. Make like a mattress.”

  He boosted the big man into the top bunk, and his hands were like striking brown snakes as he packed blankets around him and remade the bed so that it only looked untidily put together.

  “Now you,” he said to the girl.

  She got into the lower bunk and lay flat on her back, her disturbing head in the far corner. The Saint deposited a swift kiss upon her full red lips. They were cool and soft, and the Saint was adrift for a second.

  Then he covered her. He emptied a box of pine cones on the mattresses and arranged the whole to appear as a corner heap of cones.

  He was busy cleaning the dishes when the pounding came on the door.

  As he examined the pair, Simon Templar was struck by the fact that these men were types, such types as B pictures had imprinted upon the consciousness of the world.

  The small one could be a jockey, but one with whom you could make a deal. For a consideration, he would pull a horse in the stretch or slip a Mickey into a rival rider’s sarsaparilla. In the dim light that fanned out from the door, his eyes were small and rat-like, his mouth a slit of cynicism, his nose a quivering button of greed.

  His heavier companion was a different but equally familiar type. This man was Butch to a T. He was large, placid, oafish, and an order taker. His not to reason why; his but to do—-or cry. He’d be terribly hurt if he failed to do what he was ordered; he’d apologize, he’d curse himself.

  It crossed the Saint’s mind that a bank clerk such as Andrew Faulks had been described would dream such characters. “So you lied to us,” the little man snarled. The Saint arched an eyebrow. At the same time he reached out and twisted the little man’s nose, as if he were trying to unscrew it.

  “When you address me, Oswald, say ‘sir.’ ” The little man sprang back in outraged fury. He clapped one hand to his injured proboscis, now turned a deeper purple than the night. The other hand slid under his coat.

  Simon waited until he had the gun out of the holster, then leaped the intervening six feet and twisted it from the little man’s hand. The Saint let the gun swing from his finger by its trigger guard.

  “Take him, Mac!” grated the disarmed man. Mac vented a kind of low growl, but did nothing but fidget as the Saint turned curious blue eyes on him. The tableau hung frozen for a long moment before the little man shattered the silence.

  “Well? Ya afraid of ’im?”

  “Yup,” Mac said unhappily. “Criminy, Jimmy, ’f he c’n get the best uh you, well, criminy, Jimmy.”

  Jimmy moaned, “You mean you’re gonna stand there and let just one guy take my gun away from me? Gripes, he ain’t a army.”

  “No,” Mac agreed, growing more unhappy by the second, “but he kind of seems like one, Jimmy. Didja see that jump? Criminy, Jimmy.”

  The Saint decided to break it up.

  “Now, Oswald—”

  “Didn’ja hear, Mac? Name’s Jimmy.”

  “Oswald,” the Saint said firmly, “is how I hold you in my heart. Now, Oswald, perhaps you’ll pour oil on these troubled waters, before I take you limb from muscle and throw you away.”

  “We don’t want no trouble,” Jimmy said. “We want Big Bill. You got him, but we got to take him back with us.”

  “And who is Big Bill, and why do you want him, and why do you think I have him?”

  “We know you got him,” Jimmy said. “This here’s Trailer Mac.”

  The Saint nodded at Mac.

  “Hey, Jimmy,” Mac broke in, “this guy’s a phony.”

  “Charmed, I’m sure.” Jimmy blinked.

  “Owls,” Mac explained, “can’t swim.”

  “What the damblasted hell has owls to do with it?” Jimmy demanded.

  “He said pour owls on the something waters. So that,” Mac said in triumph, “proves it.”

  This, the Saint thought, wanders. He restrained Jimmy from assaulting Mac, and returned to the subject.

  “Why should the revelation of this gent’s identity be regarded as even an intimation that I have—what was the name?—Big Bill?”

  “Holbrook,” Jimmy said. “Why, this is Trailer Mac. Ain’t you never heard of him? He follered Loopie Louie for eighteen years and finally caught ’im in the middle of Lake Erie.”

  “I never heard of him,” Simon said, and smiled at Mac’s hurt look. “But then there are lots of people I’ve never heard of.”

  This, he thought as he said it, was hardly true. He had filed away in the indexes of his amazing memory the dossiers of almost every crook in history. He was certain that he’d have heard of such a chase if it had ever occurred.

  “Anyway,” Jimmy went on, “we didn’t go more’n a couple miles till Mac he says Big Bill ain’t here, ’n he ain’t been here, neither. Well, he come this far, ’n he didn’t go no farther. So you got him. He’s inside.”

  “The cumulative logic in that series of statements is devastating,” the Saint said. “But logicians veer. History will bear me out. Aristotle was a shining example. Likewise all the boys who gave verisimilitude to idiocy by substituting syllogisms for thought processes, who evaded reality by using unsemantic verbalisms for fact-facing and, God save the mark, fact-finding.”

  Mac appealed to the superior intellect in his crowd.

  “Whut’n hell’s he talkin’ about, Jimmy?”

  “I mean,” the Saint said, “Big Bill ain’t here. Come in and case the joint.”

  “Whyn’t cha say so?” Mac snarled, and pushed inside.

  They searched nook and cranny, and Mac fingered a knothole hopefully once. They gave the bunk beds a passing glance, and were incurious about the seeming pile of pine cones in the corner. Mac boosted Jimmy up on the big central beam to peer into ceiling shadows, and they scanned the fireplace chimney.

  Then they stood and looked at the Saint with resentment.

  “Sump’n’s fishy,” Jimmy pronounced. “He’s got to be here. This here”—he pointed—“is Trailer Mac.”

  “Maybe we better go get the boss, huh, Jimmy?”

  “Yeah,” Jimmy agreed. “He’ll find Big Bill.”

  “Who,” the Saint inquired, “is the boss?”

  “You’ll see,” Jimmy promised. “He won’t be scared of you. He’s just down the hill in the town. Stopped off to play a game of billiards. So we’ll be seein’ ya, bub.”

  They went off into the night, and the Saint stood quite still for a moment in a little cloud of perplexity.

  Never before had he been faced with a situation that was so full of holes.

  He added up known data: a man who had a fabulous jewel, who claimed to be the projected dream of his alter ego; a girl of incredible beauty said to be another creation of that dream; and two characters who were after two men and/or the jewel and/or—perhaps—the girl.

  Mac and Jimmy had searched the cabin. They professed to have overlooked an object the size of Big Bill Holbrook. Their proof that they had overlooked him: “This here’s Trailer Mac.” They assumed he would remain here while they walked four miles to the settlement and back with their boss who was said to have stopped off to shoot a game of billiards.

  But would a man on the trail of that fire opal stop off to play billiards? Would two pseudo-tough guys go away and leave their quarry unguarded?

  No, the Saint decided. These were the observable facts, but they were unimportant. They masked a larger, more sinister pattern. Great forces must be underlying the surface trivia. Undeniably, the jewel was a thing to drive men to madness. It could motivate historic bloodshed. The girl, too, possessing t
he carven features of the gem, could drive men to—anything. But for the life of him, the Saint could not get beneath the surface pattern to what must be the real issues. He could only cling to the conviction that they had to exist, and that they must be deadly.

  He turned back to the bunk beds.

  “Come on out, kids,” he said. “The big bad wolves have temporarily woofed away.”

  Fear lingered in the dark depths of Dawn Winter’s eyes, making her even more hauntingly beautiful. The Saint found strange words forming on his lips, as if some other being possessed them.

  He seemed to be saying, “Dawn…I’ve seen the likeness of every beauty in history or imagination. Every one of them would be a drab shadow beside you. You are so beautiful that the world would bow down and worship you—if the world knew of your existence. Yet it’s impossible that the world doesn’t know. If one single person looked at you, the word would go out. Cameramen would beat a path to your door, artists would dust off their palettes, agents would clamor with contracts. But somehow this hasn’t happened. Why? Where, to be trite, have you been all my life?”

  He couldn’t define the expression which now entered her eyes. It might have been bewilderment, or worry, or fear, or an admixture.

  “I…I…” She put a hand as graceful as a calla lily against her forehead. “I…don’t know.”

  “Oh, don’t let’s carry this too far.” It sounded more like himself again. “Where were you born, where did you go to school, who are your parents?”

  She worried at him with wide, dark eyes.

  “That’s just the trouble. I…don’t remember any childhood. I remember only my great-great-grandmother. I never saw her, of course, but she’s the only family I know about.”

  Big Bill’s facial contortions finally caught the Saint’s eye. They were something to watch. His mouth worked like a corkscrew, his eyebrows did a can-can.

  “I gather,” said the Saint mildly, “that you are giving me the hush-hush. I’m sorry, comrade, but I’m curious. Suppose you put in your two cents.”

  “I told you once,” Big Bill said, “I told you the truth.”

  “Pish,” Simon said. “Also, tush.”

  “It’s true,” Big Bill insisted. “I wouldn’t lie to the Saint.”

  The girl echoed this in a voice of awe.

  “The Saint? The Robin Hood of Modern Crime, the twentieth century’s brightest buccaneer, the”—she blushed—“the devil with dames.”

  It occurred to Simon, with a shock of remembrance, that her phrases were exactly those of Big Bill’s when he learned his host’s identity. And even they had been far from new. The Saint thought of this for a moment, and rejected what it suggested. He shook his head.

  “Let’s consider that fire opal then, children. It’s slightly fabulous, you know. Now, I don’t think anybody knows more than I do about famous jools. Besides such well-known items as the Cullinan and the Hope diamonds, I am familiar with the history of almost every noteworthy bauble that was ever dug up. There’s the Waters diamond, for example. No more than a half dozen persons know of its existence, its perfect golden flawless color. And the Chiang emerald, that great and beautiful stone that has been seen by only three living people, myself included. But this cameo opal is the damn warp of history. It couldn’t be hidden for three generations without word of it getting out. In the course of time, I couldn’t have helped hearing about it. But I didn’t…So it doesn’t exist. But it does. I know it exists; I’ve held it in my hand—”

  “And put it in your pocket,” Big Bill said.

  The Saint felt in his jacket.

  “So I did.” He pulled out the chamois bag with its precious contents and made as if to toss it. “Here.”

  Big Bill stopped him with flared hands.

  “Please keep it for me, Mr Templar. Things will get rather bad around here soon. I don’t want Appopoulis to get his fat hands on it.”

  “Soon? Surely not for a couple of hours.”

  Big Bill frowned.

  “Things happen so quickly in dreams. This may seem real, but it’ll still hold the screwy pattern you’d expect.”

  The Saint made a gesture of annoyance.

  “Still sticking to your story? Well, maybe you’re screwy or maybe you just think I am. But I’d rather face facts. As a matter of fact, I insist on it.” He turned back to the girl. “For instance, darling, I know that you exist. I’ve kissed you.”

  Big Bill growled, glared, but did nothing as the Saint waited calmly.

  Simon continued, “I have the evidence of my hands, lips, and eyes that you have all the common things in common with other women. In addition you have this incredible, unbelievable loveliness. When I look at you, I find it hard to believe that you’re real. But that’s only a figure of speech. My senses convince me. Yet you say you don’t remember certain things that all people remember. Why?”

  She repeated her gesture of confusion.

  “I…don’t know. I can’t remember any past.”

  “It would be a great privilege and a rare pleasure,” the Saint said gently, “to provide you with a past to remember.”

  Another low growl rumbled in Big Bill’s chest, and the Saint waited again for developments. None came, and it struck the Saint that all the characters in this muddled melodrama had one characteristic in common—a certain cowardice in the clutch. Even Dawn Winter showed signs of fear, and nobody had yet made a move to harm her. It was only another of the preposterous paradoxes that blended into the indefinable unreality of the whole.

  Simon gave it up. If he couldn’t get what he thought was truth from either of these two, he could watch and wait and divine the truth. Conflict hung on the wind, and conflict drags truth out of her hiding place and casts her naked before watching eyes.

  “Well, souls,” he said, “what now? The unholy three will be back sometime. You could go now. There is the wide black night to wander in.”

  “No,” Big Bill said. “Now that you’re in this, give us your help, Saint. We need you.”

  “Just what, then,” Simon asked, “are we trying to prevent, or accomplish?”

  “Selden Appopoulis must not get his hands on the opal or Dawn. He wants both. He’ll stop at nothing to get them.”

  “I believe you mentioned a curse breathed on this gewgaw by some Oriental character.”

  Dawn Winter’s voice once more tangled itself in Simon’s heart. As long as he could remember that quality—of far-off bells at dusk, of cellos on a midnight hill—time would never again pass slowly enough.

  “Death shall swoop on him,” she chanted, “who holds this ancient gem from its true possessor, but all manner of things shall plague him before that dark dread angel shall come to rest at his shoulder. His nights shall be sleepless with terror, and hurts shall dog his accursed steps by day. Beauty shall bring an end to the vandal.”

  The mood of her strange incantation, far more than the actual words, seemed to linger on the air after she had finished, so that in spite of all rationality the Saint felt spectral fingers on his spine. He shook off the spell with conscious resolution.

  “It sounds very impressive,” he murmured, “in a gruesome sort of way. Reminds me of one of those zombie pictures. But where, may I ask, does this place me in the scheme of dire events? I have the jewel.”

  “You,” Big Bill Holbrook said, “will die, as I must, and as Trailer Mac and Jimmy must. They stole it from Dawn; I stole it from them.”

  The Saint smiled.

  “Well, if that’s settled, let’s pass on to more entertaining subjects bordering on the carnal. Miss Winter, my car is just down the hill. If Bill is resigned to his fate, suppose we leave him and his playmates to their own fantastic devices and drift off into the night.”

  Her face haloed with pleasure.

  “I’d like it,” she said. “But I…I just can’t.”

  “Why not? You’re over three years old. Nobody is sitting on your chest.”

  “I can’t do what I like,
somehow,” she said. “I can only do what I must. It’s always that way.”

  “This,” the Saint said to nobody in particular, “sounds like one of those stories that fellow Charteris might write. And what’s the matter with you?” he demanded of Holbrook. “A little earlier you were eager to get rough with me because I admired the lady. Now you sit listening with disgusting indifference to my indecent proposal. I assure you it was indecent, from your viewpoint.”

  Big Bill grinned.

  “It just occurred to me. She can’t go with you. She must do what she must. She can’t get out of my sight. Good old Andy,” he added.

  The Saint turned his eyes away and stared into space, wondering. His wandering gaze focused on a small wall mirror that reflected Dawn Winter. Her features were blurred, run together, an amorphous mass. Simon wondered what could have happened to that mirror.

  He swung back to face Bill Holbrook.

  “I’m afraid,” he said softly, but with the iron will showing through his velvet tones, “that we must have some truth in our little séance. Like the walrus, I feel the time has come to speak of many things. From this moment, you are my prisoners. The length of your durance vile depends on you. Who are you, Miss Winter?”

  The look she turned on him made his hands tingle. Hers was a face for cupping between tender palms. Dark and troubled, her eyes pleaded for understanding, for sympathy.

  “I told you all I know,” she pleaded. “I’ve tried and tried, ever since I could remember anything, to think of—well, all those things you think of at times.”

  Again she passed a hand across her face, as if wiping away veils.

  “I don’t ever remember snagging a stocking on the way to an important appointment,” she said. “And I know that girls do. I never had to fight for my”—she colored—“my honor, whatever that is. And I know that girls like me have fought for this something I don’t understand, by the time they’ve reached my age. Whatever that is,” she added pensively. “I don’t even know how old I am, or where I’ve been.”