The Saint on Guard (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  “You say the sweetest things. But I was telling you about Milton. I know I shouldn’t talk about my own husband, but he’s ridiculously jealous. He…”

  Simon listened with the utmost interest to her description of some of the unreasonableness of Mr Milton Ourley, and while he listened he was studying the face of the woman across the table.

  He had to admit that the ideas which Uttershaw had planted were astonishingly fertile. There was a rapacious ruthlessness below the surface of gabbling imbecility which Titania Ourley displayed to the public which could make a lot of surprising pictures of her plausible. Without knowing anything else about her, he knew that she would make a dangerous enemy, and he knew that the effusive gush which enveloped her like her appalling perfume could provide a lot of study for a post-graduate student of camouflage.

  The tale of Milton Ourley’s derelictions went on and on while the Saint thought about it. He nodded regularly and made encouraging noises in the right places, and managed to look quite disappointed when the recital was interrupted by the return of Allen Uttershaw.

  “Do sit down,” said Mrs Ourley hospitably. “I was just telling Simon—I mean Mr Templar—I mean Simon—”

  “I’m sorry,” Uttershaw said suavely. “I am still a working man, you know. That call was from my office, and I’m afraid some other working men are getting impatient.”

  “You’re a meanie!”

  Mrs Ourley made a moue. This was undoubtedly something she had read about in a magazine. In her interpretation, it looked a little as if she had just detected the presence of a dead rat in the room.

  “Forgive me,” Uttershaw said. “It isn’t because I want to ‘scorn delights and live laborious days.’ ” He turned to Simon, and held out his hand with a smile that contained a hint of wicked amusement which had nothing to do with the ordinary urbanities. “I’m glad to leave you in such good company.” He glanced at Mrs Ourley again. “By the way, where is Milton?”

  “He’s down the street at the Harvard Club, having lunch with some dreary man from Washington—at least, that’s what he said he was doing,” she added darkly. “Lately, I’ve had my suspicions as to what Milton is doing when he tells me he’s doing something else, if you know what I mean. Why?”

  “I might want to get in touch with him this afternoon,” Uttershaw said casually, but his eyes returned rather conspiratorially to the Saint as he was finishing the sentence. “Well—I enjoyed our talk. Let’s meet again soon.”

  “Very soon,” Simon promised.

  He sat down again as Uttershaw sauntered out, and saw that Mrs Ourley was following this departure with a tinge of speculation that had not been in her oestrous gaze before.

  “Now, why do you suppose he might want to find Milton?” she asked.

  She was talking more to herself than to him, but the eyes that she swung back towards him were no longer vacant.

  “And he was having lunch with you…Is it something about the iridium?” she asked sharply.

  Anyone could have noticed the change in her tone, the steel showing through the whipped cream, the spikes under the feathers.

  Simon reached for his coffee and took a sip.

  “That’s rather obvious, isn’t it?” he said calmly, “You know that I’m gunning for the black market. You know that Allen Uttershaw was about the biggest dealer in iridium before the shortage. So I guess the subject may have been just accidentally mentioned.”

  Her pale and slightly protruding eyes became almost metallic. The thickly rouged lips thinned out, and the puffy features had congealed under the lacquered skin.

  “What did he tell you?” she demanded.

  The Saint didn’t answer. He merely slanted his eyebrows into a line of bland and blunt inquiry that was exactly as eloquent as a speech. Without articulating a syllable, it wanted to know just what the hell business of Titania Ourley’s it was what Allen Uttershaw had told him, and she caught the precise meaning of it like a fighter walking into a straight left. You could almost see the impact of its connecting with one of the receding tiers of chins that sagged from beneath that suddenly hard mouth.

  She recovered with a celerity that earned his reluctant admiration. When he gave her that cynical challenge of the eyebrows she had been within a hair’s breadth of menace and domineering; now, in a moment, she was leaning back again and delving into an enormous handbag to excavate a cigarette holder that looked like a jewelled pipe from a cathedral organ, and she was just as vapid as she had ever been.

  “I’m afraid I’m much too inquisitive,” she prattled. “I keep forgetting that you’re the Saint, and anything people tell you is sacred. After all, I did make you my own father confessor, didn’t I?…But I admit I am curious.” She bent forward again so that a comber of hothouse odours practically splashed into the Saint’s nostrils. “Not that I ever gossip about anybody—Heaven knows that my worst enemies can’t say that about me! But to tell you the truth, I’ve often wondered about Mr Uttershaw.”

  9

  Simon Templar replenished his cup with the last dribble from his rationed coffee-pot, and reflected that life could certainly open up a wondrous variety of perspectives when sundry citizens began to look sideways at one another. It was a sizeable item in the mental overhead which he would have preferred to leave out of his budget, but he compromised by showing no visible reaction at all and letting his mind remain passive and receptive.

  Titania Ourley, who was apparently waiting for shocked amazement to spread over his features, seemed moderately disappointed when his face remained unmoved but expectant. Nevertheless, she surged closer over the table, buffeting him with another tidal wave of exotic stenches which he decided must have been concocted in a cocktail shaker.

  “I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” she said portentously, “if somebody investigated Allen Uttershaw one of these days and found out a lot of funny things. Oh, I know he’s a marvellous dancer, and he’s always so perfectly perfect, if you know what I mean, but haven’t you noticed that there’s something secret about him? I hate to say it when he isn’t here to defend himself, but do you know, sometimes I think he isn’t quite normal!”

  “Really?” drawled the Saint. “You mean he—”

  “Oh, no—nothing like that!”

  Simon was prepared to give something to know what “that” was that Allen Uttershaw was nothing like. He suspected the worst, in Mrs Ourley’s peculiar mind.

  He applied an expression of fascinated suspense to his mask, and waited.

  “When I say that,” she elucidated, “I mean that he’s…he’s…well, I can only say that he must be anti-social.” Her voice became positively vibrant. “Do you know, out of all the times we’ve invited him to dinner, last night was the first time he’s been to see us in months!”

  She relaxed triumphantly, with the air of having furnished incontrovertible evidence that the subject under discussion was a dangerous case who should be lured into a padded cell at the earliest opportunity.

  Simon clicked his tongue gloomily, shaking his head at the dreadful realisation that his recent companion was indisputably an incurable schizophrene. His manifest distress spurred Mrs Ourley to further expansions.

  “Not only that,” she said, in confidential accents that could not possibly have been heard more than three tables away, “but I think he has a grudge against Milton. Of course, he’s just as friendly and charming as he can be when he’s with us, but he does things behind Milton’s back.”

  “How horrible,” muttered the Saint solemnly, with no qualms at all that either innuendo or sarcasm would register on that target.

  He was absolutely right, for whatever satisfaction the experiment was worth.

  “Yes, indeed,” she trilled. “For instance, when Milton was put up for one of Allen’s clubs, only a while ago, he was voted down. And I have it on very good authority that it was Allen who blackballed him. And after he’d been a guest in our home, too!”

  Simon searched for words to
express his revulsion at such perfidy, but before he had formulated the fitting phrase he was saved by the bell again. The same heaven-sent bellboy stood by the table again.

  “Telephone, Mr Templar.”

  “Thank you,” said the Saint, and really meant it.

  He went out to the booth in the lobby and said, “Hullo.”

  “What the hell,” roared the voice of Inspector Fernack, like a bursting dam, “are you doing there?”

  The Saint smiled, and picked a cigarette out of the pack in his pocket.

  “Hullo, John Henry,” he said cordially, “I’m just finishing lunch and making love to a retired Ziegfeld girl. What are you doing?”

  “How did you get loose?”

  “I didn’t. The FBI turned me loose. I promised to be a good boy, and they took one look at my cherubic countenance and knew they could trust me.”

  “If you think—”

  “I do, Henry. And don’t you send half a dozen squad cars screaming up here to grab me again, because if you do the FBI will hear about it at once, and then they’ll think I’ve violated my parole by getting into bad company and associating with policemen again, and of course they’d have to come right over and ask to have me back.”

  “I don’t believe—”

  “But you must, Comrade. If you don’t you’re liable to look awful foolish. And that would never do. Think of your dignity. Think of the prestige of the Force. And if that’s too much work for you, call Brother Eldon’s office and verify it.”

  There was an interval of silence, during which Simon could almost see the detective’s aorta labouring like a stimulated blowfish.

  Finally Fernack said, in a painful parody of his ordinary voice, “Templar, what are you doing in this set-up?”

  “You heard from Fifty-First Street?”

  “Yes.” It was a grudging admission. “But—”

  “Then at least you’ve got something.”

  “But where did you find it?”

  “I can’t tell you yet. But at least I’m giving you a break. Don’t you think I’m being good to you? I don’t think you appreciate it. Think of the glory I’m helping you to grab for yourself. And now I’m going to give you some more. By tomorrow, you’ll have half the morning paper headlines all to yourself.”

  Fernack said suspiciously, “What’s this?”

  “In just a few minutes, any bright bull who walks into my suite here will be able to pinch a couple of old-timers. Their names are Ricco Varetti and Cokey Walsh. They will be trying to steal a very handsome piece of luggage from me, and they might even be attempting some private unpleasantness on my person. You’ve got their records, no doubt.”

  “I know ’em both. But what’ve they got to do with—”

  “You’ll find out. Come on over and play some flagrante delicto.”

  “I can’t,” Fernack said tormentedly. “I’ve got to go into court on another case in just a few minutes.”

  “Then send someone else.”

  “Is this on the level?”

  “Word of honour.”

  After a second or two Fernack said, “I’ll send Kestry and Bonacci—I think you’ve met them.”

  The Saint had met them. The acquaintance dated back to the first episode in which he had met Inspector Fernack, and it had been enlightening. The recollection drew his mouth down in a tight line that still did not embitter his eyes.

  “I guess they can take care of the situation,” he admitted. “As a matter of fact, there must be very few situations in which these two goons couldn’t take care of themselves.”

  “I expect they can keep out of trouble,” Fernack agreed with ponderous deference. “But what are they supposed to hold Varetti and Walsh for?”

  “I don’t know what technical charge would be the worst they’d settle for,” said the Saint, “but if they can’t work out a good one on the spot, they must have slipped a lot since I met them. And anyhow, I’m sure they’ll be able to do some great detecting in a back room with a rubber hose. Or has this priority business gotten so tough that you can’t even buy your laboratory equipment any more?” The receiver seemed to grow hot against his ear. “You can be funny about that some other time,” Fernack grunted.

  “But I’m telling you, if this turns out to be another of your—”

  “Henry,” said the Saint patiently, “I haven’t got much more time to waste. And if you’re just trying to keep me here until your flying squad arrives, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “I haven’t got any flying squad out after you.”

  “Then why did you call me?”

  “I just wanted to find out if you’d been back, and when they put you off the wire—”

  “Your little heart had kittens. Now cancel the prowl car and carry on. I’ve got a job to do.”

  “But where did you—”

  “I’ll call you back in a little while,” said the Saint. “Keep in touch with your office, give my love to the judge, and I hope you win your case without perjuring yourself.”

  He hung up on a last imploring squawk from the other end of the wire, and went back to the dining-room to close out an interrupted chapter.

  He still wanted to hear a little more from Mrs Ourley, and yet he was conscious of time ticking away, and of the vital connections that he had to make. But there was nothing he could ignore, and no prejudice that he could permit to blind him to the reversals of new knowledge.

  He sat down again as if no counterplot at all had intervened, and picked up the conversation as smoothly as if he had never been away at all.

  “I don’t think Milton needs to worry about a little thing like a club membership,” he offered. “He must be doing pretty well these days.”

  “I can’t complain,” Mrs Ourley said smugly. “Although of course the taxes are frightful and I don’t know what we shall do next year if That Man keeps on trying to ruin everybody. But I make Milton save every penny he can, and then I take care of it for him. One of these days, when I’ve got enough put by, I’m going to buy some War Bonds. I think War Bonds are a wonderful investment…But I know you don’t want to be bored with things like that. I don’t think any young man, I mean any attractive young man, should ever be bothered about money matters.”

  “Neither do I,” Simon agreed. “But quaintly enough, there isn’t any organisation giving away free meals and clothing and alcohol to attractive young men.”

  The old gleam was in Mrs Ourley’s eyes, but her voice burbled on with the same analgesic inanity.

  “You just haven’t met the right people,” she insisted, and eyed the place next to him archly. “Or else you’re just too shy with them, making them sit out in the middle of the gangway when there’s plenty of room—”

  Simon moved the table and made room for her on the banquette beside him. Her circumambient nimbus of perfume moved in with her and pushed away the lunchers on the other side.

  “I wish you weren’t so terribly busy,” she said, and went on to develop her theme without waiting for him to confirm or deny. “You ought to find time to cultivate some people who might help you. I mean really help you. Of course, dashing about after criminals must be very exciting, but is it an altogether complete life?”

  “I don’t really know,” said the Saint mildly. “You seemed to think it was fairly complete when you came to see me and asked me to dash after Milton.”

  She giggled in a thin falsetto.

  “I was thoroughly mad with him,” she confessed. “But then I didn’t know you personally like I do now. Now I’m just thinking of you as a friend, and I do so want you to do well for yourself. So I was just wondering why you’d want to work so hard and run such frightening risks, when I imagine there’d be plenty of people who’d pay you, oh, enormous amounts of money just for being yourself.”

  Simon looked up at her, and his blue eyes were icily clear.

  “You mean there might be somebody who’d bribe me quite lavishly to leave this iridium racket alone?” he as
ked, and his voice was completely lazy.

  Mrs Ourley laughed again, making a noise which probably sounded to her like the tinkling of fairy bells. It sounded exactly like broken glass going down a garbage chute.

  “You do say the funniest things! I was only thinking how nice it would be if I could take you to see the new show at the Copacabana. And the music is just heavenly. It does the most exciting things to me. Milton told me he’d have to work late tonight, and I was hoping…”

  She babbled on, and Simon made vaguely helpful responses. But behind it his mind was far away and running like a machine. The electrification that he had felt a few minutes before, that had spread out and become pervading, was something as firmly with him now as the meal he had just eaten.

  He knew that he had almost everything in his hands now. At least, he had as much as he was likely to get. The rest of it lay with his own judgment and perception and choice. He had to read character and motive and physical possibility right. He had to take apart the things people had said, and distinguish the sinister from the stupid, and be a razor edge of separation between the stupid things that looked sinister and the sinister things that looked stupid. He had to eschew all red herrings and perceive only the one true fish.

  And he couldn’t sit there for ever while he made up his mind. He had to move. He had to move swiftly and rightly, before there was another murder to be solved, and another sacrifice to be accounted to the dull golden gods who had declared themselves for the enemy.

  And at that perfect point he raised his eyes and saw Milton Ourley standing at the entrance of the dining-room.

  10

  It is a simple fact that the Saint was not even surprised. The appearance of Mr Ourley was merely the natural and inevitable slipping of a link in a chain that had been forming for some time, a chain that must ultimately be so solid and inescapable that the failure of one link to make its appearance would have dissolved every other materialising loop. And this link was so ineluctable that it was uncannily like seeing a revival of some half-remembered play, rather than meeting a new and sudden complication.