“The trouble is, she won’t give me credit for having any sense—”
“He’s such a baby—”
“If she didn’t read so many detective stories—”
“He’s so damned pigheaded—”
The Saint held up his hands.
“Wait a minute,” he pleaded. “Don’t shoot the referee—he doesn’t know what it’s all about. I couldn’t help hearing what you were saying, but it isn’t my fight.”
The young man rubbed his head shamefacedly, and the girl bit her lip.
Then she said quickly, “Well, please, won’t you be a referee? Perhaps he’d listen to you. He’s lost three thousand pounds already, and it isn’t all his own money—”
“For God’s sake,” the man burst out savagely, “are you trying to make me look a complete cad?”
The girl caught her breath, and her lip trembled. And then, with a sort of sob, she picked herself up and walked quickly away without another word.
The young man gazed after her in silence, and his fist clenched on a handful of sand as if he would have liked to hurt it.
“Oh, hell,” he said expressively.
Simon drew a cigarette out of the packet beside him and tapped it meditatively on his thumbnail while the awkward hiatus made itself at home. His eyes seemed to be intent on following the movements of a small fishing cruiser far out on the emerald waters of the bay.
“It’s none of my damn business,” he remarked at length, “but isn’t there just a chance that the girlfriend may be right? It’s happened before, and a resort like this is rather a happy hunting ground for all kinds of crooks.”
“I know it is,” said the other sourly. He turned and looked at the Saint again miserably. “But I am pig-headed, and I can’t bear to admit to her that I could have been such a mug. She’s my fiancée—I suppose you guessed that. My name’s Mercer.”
“Simon Templar is mine.”
The name had a significance for Mercer that it apparently had not had for Mr Naskill. His eyes opened wide.
“Good God, you don’t mean—You’re not the Saint?”
Simon smiled. He was still immodest enough to enjoy the sensation that his name could sometimes cause.
“That’s what they call me.”
“Of course I’ve read about you, but—Well, it sort of—” The young man petered out incoherently. “And I’d have argued with you about crooks!…But—well, you ought to know. Do you think I’ve been a mug?”
The Saint’s brows slanted sympathetically. “If you took my advice,” he answered, “you’d let these birds find someone else to play with. Write it off to experience, and don’t do it again.”
“But I can’t!” Mercer’s response was desperate. “She…she was telling the truth. I’ve lost money that wasn’t mine. I’ve only got a job in an advertising agency that doesn’t pay very much, but her people are pretty well off. They’ve found me a better job here, starting in a couple of months, and they sent us down here to find a home, and they gave us four thousand quid to buy it and furnish it, and that’s the money I’ve been playing with. Don’t you see? I’ve got to go on and win it back!”
“Or go on and lose the rest.”
“Oh, I know. But I thought the luck must change before that. And yet—But everybody who plays cards isn’t a crook, is he? And I don’t see how they could have done it. After she started talking about it, I watched them. I’ve been looking for it. And I couldn’t catch them making a single move that wasn’t above board. Then I began to think about marked cards—we’ve always played with their cards. I sneaked away one of the packs we were using last night, and I’ve been looking at it this morning. I’ll swear there isn’t a mark on it. Here, I can show you.”
He fumbled feverishly in a pocket of his beach robe and pulled out a pack of cards. Simon glanced through them. There was nothing wrong with them that he could see, and it was then that he remembered Mr J. J. Naskill.
“Does either of these birds wear glasses?” he asked.
“One of them wears pince-nez,” replied the mystified young man. “But—”
“I’m afraid,” said the Saint thoughtfully, “that it looks as if you are a mug.”
Mercer swallowed.
“If I am,” he said helplessly, “what on earth am I going to do?”
Simon hitched himself up.
“Personally, I’m going to have a swim. And you’re going to be so busy apologising to your fiancée and making friends again that you won’t have time to think about anything else I’ll keep these cards and make sure about them, if you don’t mind. Then suppose we meet in the bar for a cocktail about six o’clock, and maybe I’ll be able to tell you something.”
When he returned to his own room, the Saint put on Mr Naskill’s horn-rimmed glasses and examined the cards again. Every one of them was clearly marked in the diagonally opposite corners with the value of the card and the initial of the suit, exactly like the deck that Naskill had given him, and it was then that the Saint knew that his faith in Destiny was justified again.
Shortly after six o’clock he strolled into the bar, and saw that Mercer and the girl were already there. It was clear that they had buried their quarrel.
Mercer introduced her: “Miss Grange—or you can just call her Josephine.”
She was wearing something in black and white taffeta, with a black and white hat and black and white gloves and a black and white bag, and she looked as if she had just stepped out of a fashion plate. She said, “We’re both ashamed of ourselves for having a scene in front of you this afternoon, but I’m glad we did. You’ve done Eddie a lot of good.”
“I hadn’t any right to blurt out all my troubles like that,” Mercer said sheepishly. “You were damned nice about it.”
The Saint grinned.
“I’m a pretty nice guy,” he murmured. “And now I’ve got something to show you. Here are your cards.”
He spread the deck out on the table, and then he took the horn-rimmed glasses out of his pocket and held them over the cards so that the other two could look through them. He slid the cards under the lenses one by one, face downwards, and turned them over afterwards, and for a little while they stared in breathless silence.
The girl gasped.
“I told you so!”
Mercer’s fists clenched.
“My God, if I don’t murder those swine—”
She caught his wrist as he almost jumped up from the table.
“Eddie, that won’t do you any good “
“It won’t do them any good either! When I’ve finished with them—”
“But that won’t get any of the money back.”
“I’ll beat it out of them.”
“But that’ll only get you in trouble with the police. That wouldn’t help…Wait!”
She clung to him frantically.
“I’ve got it. You could borrow Mr Templar’s glasses and play them at their own game. You could break Yoring’s glasses—sort of accidentally. They wouldn’t dare to stop playing on account of that. They’d just have to trust to luck, like you’ve been doing, and anyway they’d feel sure they were going to get it all back again later. And you could win everything back, and never see them again.” She shook his arm in her excitement. “Go on, Eddie. It’d serve them right. I’ll let you play just once more if you’ll do that!”
Mercer’s eyes turned to the Saint, and Simon pushed the glasses across the table towards him.
The young man picked them up slowly, looked at the cards through them again. His mouth twitched. And then, with a sudden hopeless gesture, he thrust them away and passed a shaky hand over his eyes.
“It’s no good,” he said wretchedly. “I couldn’t do it. They know I don’t wear glasses. And I…I’ve never done anything like that before. I’d only make a mess of it. They’d spot me in five minutes. And then there wouldn’t be anything I could say. I…I wouldn’t have the nerve. I suppose I’m just a mug after all…”
The Sain
t leaned back and put a light to a cigarette and sent a smoke ring spinning through the fronds of a potted palm. In all his life he had never missed a cue, and it seemed that this was very much like a cue. He had come to Torquay to bask in the sun and be good, but it wasn’t his fault if business was thrust upon him.
“Maybe someone with a bit of experience could do it better,” he said. “Suppose you let me meet your friends.”
Mercer looked at him, first blankly, then incredulously, and the girl’s dark eyes slowly lighted up.
Her slim fingers reached impetuously for the Saint’s hand.
“You wouldn’t really do that—help Eddie to win back what he’s lost—”
“What would you expect Robin Hood to do?” asked the Saint quizzically. “I’ve got a reputation to keep up—and I might even pay my own expenses while I’m doing it.” He drew the revealing glasses towards him and tucked them back in his pocket. “Let’s go and have some dinner and organise the details.”
But actually there were hardly any details left to organise for Josephine Grange’s inspiration had been practically complete in its first outline. The Saint, who never believed in expending any superfluous effort, devoted most of his attention to some excellent Lobster Thermidor, but he had a pleasant sense of anticipation that lent an edge to his appetite. He knew, even then, that all those interludes of virtue in which he had so often tried to indulge, those brief intervals in which he played at being an ordinary respectable citizen and promised himself to forget that there was such a thing as crime, were only harmless self-deceptions—that for him the only complete life was still the ceaseless hair-trigger battle in which he had found so much delight. And this episode had everything that he asked to make a perfect cameo.
He felt like a star actor waiting for the curtain to rise on the third act of an obviously triumphant first night when they left the girl at the Palace and drove down to the Portland Arms, “that’s where we usually meet,” Mercer explained. And a few minutes later he was being introduced to the other two members of the cast.
Mr Yoring, who wore the pince-nez, was a small pear-shaped man in a crumpled linen suit, with white hair and bloodhound jowls and a pathetically frustrated expression. He looked like a retired businessman whose wife took him to the opera. Mr Kilgarry, his partner, was somewhat taller and younger, with a wide mouth and a rich nose and a raffish manner: he looked like the kind of man that men like Mr Yoring wish they could be. Both of them welcomed Mercer with an exuberant bonhomie that was readily expanded to include the Saint. Mr Kilgarry ordered a round of drinks.
“Having a good time here, Mr Templar?”
“Pretty good.”
“Aren’t we all having a good time?” crowed Mr Yoring. “I’m gonna buy a drink.”
“I’ve just ordered a drink,” said Mr Kilgarry.
“Well, I’m gonna order another,” said Mr Yoring defiantly. No wife was going to take him to the opera tonight.
“Who said there was a Depression? What do you think, Mr Templar?”
“I haven’t found any in my affairs lately,” Simon answered truthfully.
“You in business, Mr Templar?” asked Mr Kilgarry interestedly.
The Saint smiled.
“My business is letting other people make money for me,” he said, continuing strictly in the vein of truth. He patted his pockets significantly. “The market’s been doing pretty well these days.”
Mr Kilgarry and Mr Yoring exchanged glances, while the Saint picked up his drink. It wasn’t his fault if they misunderstood him, but it had been rather obvious that the conversation was doomed to launch some tactful feelers into his financial status, and Simon saw no need to add to their coming troubles by making them work hard for their information.
“Well, that’s fine,” said Mr Yoring happily. “I’m gonna buy another drink.”
“You can’t,” said Mr Kilgarry. “It’s my turn.”
Mr Yoring looked wistful, like a small boy who has been told that he can’t go out and play with his new airgun. Then he wrapped an arm around Mercer’s shoulders.
“You gonna play tonight, Eddie?”
“I don’t know,” Mercer said hesitantly. “I’ve just been having some dinner with Mr Templar—”
“Bring him along,” boomed Mr Kilgarry heartily. “What’s the difference? Four’s better than three, any day. D’you play cards, Mr Templar?”
“Most games,” said the Saint cheerfully.
“That’s fine,” said Mr Kilgarry. “Fine,” he repeated, as if he wanted to leave no doubt that he thought it was fine.
Mr Yoring looked dubious.
“I dunno. We play rather high stakes, Mr Templar—”
“They can’t be too high for me,” said the Saint boastfully.
“Fine,” said Mr Kilgarry again, removing the last vestige of uncertainty about his personal opinion. “Then that’s settled. What’s holding us back?”
There was really nothing holding them back except the drinks that were lined up on the bar, and that deterrent was eliminated with a discreetly persuasive briskness. Under Mr Kilgarry’s breezy leadership they piled into a taxi and headed for one of the smaller hotels facing Abbey Sands, where Mr Yoring proclaimed that he had a bottle of Scotch that would save them from the agonies of thirst while they were playing. As they rode up in the lift he hooked his arm affectionately through the Saint’s.
“Say, you’re awright, ole man,” he announced. “I like to meet a young feller like you. You oughta come out fishin’ with us. Got our own boat here, hired for the season, an’ we just take out fellers we like. You like fishin’?”
“I like catching sharks,” said the Saint, with unblinking innocence.
“You ought to come out with us,” said Mr Kilgarry hospitably.
The room was large and uncomfortable, cluttered with that hideous hodge-podge of gilt and lacquer and brocade, assembled without regard to any harmony of style or period, which passes for the height of luxury in seaside hotel furnishing. In the centre of the room there was a card table already set up, adding one more discordant note to the cacophony of junk, but still looking as if it belonged there. There were bottles on a pea-green and old rose butterfly table of incredible awfulness.
Mr Kilgarry brought up chairs, and Mr Yoring patted Mercer on the shoulder.
“You fix a drink, Eddie,” he said. “Let’s all make ourselves at home.”
He lowered himself into a place at the table, took off his pince-nez, breathed on them, and began to polish them with his handkerchief.
Mercer’s tense gaze caught the Saint’s for an instant. Simon nodded imperceptibly, and settled his own glasses more firmly on the bridge of his nose.
“How’s the luck going to be tonight, Eddie?” chaffed Kilgarry, opening two new decks of cards and spilling them on the cloth.
“You’ll be surprised,” retorted the young man. “I’m going to give you two gasbags a beautiful beating tonight.”
“Attaboy,” chirped Yoring encouragingly.
Simon had taken one glance at the cards, and that had been enough to assure him that Mr Naskill would have been proud to claim them as his product. After that, he had been watching Mercer’s back as he worked over the drinks. Yoring was still polishing his pince-nez when Mercer turned to the table with a glass in each hand. He put one glass down beside Yoring, and as he reached over to place the other glass in front of the Saint the cuff of his coat-sleeve flicked the pince-nez out of Yoring’s fingers and sent them spinning. The Saint made a dive to catch them, missed, stumbled, and brought his heel down on the exact spot where they were in the act of hitting the carpet. There was a dull scrunching sound, and after that there was a thick and stifling silence.
The Saint spoke first.
“That’s torn it,” he said weakly.
Yoring blinked at him as if he was going to burst into tears.
“I’m terribly sorry,” said the Saint.
He bent down and tried to gather up some of the debr
is. Only the gold bridge of the pince-nez remained in one piece, and that was bent. He put it on the table, started to collect the scraps of glass, and then gave up the hopeless task.
“I’ll pay for them, of course,” he said.
“I’ll split it with you,” said Mercer. “It was my fault. We’ll take it out of my winnings.”
Yoring looked from one to another with watery eyes.
“I-I don’t think I can play without my glasses,” he mumbled.
Mercer flopped into the vacant chair and raked in the cards.
“Come on,” he said callously. “It isn’t as bad as all that. You can show us your hand, and we’ll tell you what you’ve got.”
“Can’t you manage?” urged the Saint. “I was going to enjoy this game, and it won’t be nearly so much fun with only three.”
The silence came back, thicker than before. Yoring’s eyes shifted despairingly from side to side. And then Kilgarry crushed his cigar-butt violently into an ashtray.
“You can’t back out now,” he said, and there was an audible growl in the fruity tones of his voice.
He broke the other pack across the baize with a vicious jerk of his hand that was as eloquent as a movement could be.
“Straight poker. Cut for deal. Let’s go.”
To Simon Templar the game had the same dizzy unreality that it would have had if he had been supernaturally endowed with a genuine gift of clairvoyance. He knew the value of every card as it was dealt, knew what was in his own hand before he picked it up. Even though there was nothing mysterious about it, the effect of the glasses he was wearing gave him a sensation of weirdness that was too instinctive to overcome. It was mechanically childish, and yet it was an unforgettable experience. When he was out of the game, watching the others bet against each other, it was like being a cat watching two blind men looking for each other in the dark.
For nearly an hour, curiously enough, the play was fairly even: when he counted his chips he had only about forty pounds more than when he started. Mercer, throwing in his hand whenever the Saint warned him by a pressure of his foot under the table that the opposition was too strong, had done slightly better, but there was nothing sensational in their advantage. Even Mr Naskill’s magic lenses had no influence over the run of the cards, and the luck of the deals slightly favoured Yoring and Kilgarry. The Saint’s clairvoyant knowledge saved him from making any disastrous errors, but now and again he had to bet out a hopeless hand to avoid giving too crude an impression of infallibility.
The Happy Highwayman (The Saint Series) Page 18