The Saint on Guard (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  He made another call at the Ascot Hotel, but Mr Baker hadn’t remembered any more overnight, and could add nothing to his information about Blatt or Black.

  “But I’m sure, Mr Titwillow, he wasn’t a local man. I’ve been here so long that I think I know all the important people in Galveston by sight.”

  Blatt, Weinbach, Maris.

  The names made no impression on anyone to whom he mentioned them. But he did find some representatives of their clans in the telephone directory, and studiously checked on each of them. Each of them had the kind of unimpeachable clearance that it would have been simply a waste of time to investigate any further.

  It was a long and strenuous day, and dusk was creeping over the city as Simon headed back towards the Alamo House. He bought an evening paper and a bottle of Peter Dawson on the way.

  The Times-Tribune carried his article on the front page, unabridged and unexpurgated, but with a box that gave a brief explanation of the Saint’s background for the benefit of the ignorant, and stated that Mr Templar’s theories were his own and did not necessarily represent the editorial opinion of The Times-Tribune.

  There was special justification for that in a short column which ran alongside his, which reported succinctly that at an inquest held that afternoon the coroner’s jury had brought in a verdict of suicide.

  Simon Templar crushed the newspaper in his hand with a grip that almost reverted it to its original pulp, and said several things which even our freedom of the Press will not allow us to print.

  So Kinglake hadn’t backed down. He had gone right out from their interview and helped to railroad that fantastic verdict through. Maybe he had a wife and children and just wanted to go on feeding them, but he had done it.

  In his room at the Alamo House, Simon sent for ice and opened his bottle, and tried to simmer down again over a highball.

  He only had one other clue to think about, and that was in another snatch of words that the dying man had managed to get out. He could hear them just as clearly now as when they had been dragged hoarsely through the charred, tortured lips.

  “Ostrich-skin…leather case…in gladstone lining…Get case…and send…send…”

  Send where?

  And why?

  And anyhow, Black or Blatt had the gladstone now.

  One of three practical killers, probably strangers to Galveston themselves, possibly from Chicago (he remembered the 606 Club match booklet) who had trailed Matson on their mission of vengeance, carried out the assignment and vanished.

  He had another drink, and didn’t get any further on that one.

  It was later still when the telephone rang.

  He had an electric moment as he went to answer it. He knew that the call had to have some bearing on the case, since he had no personal friends in Galveston, but the exquisite suspense was in wondering—who? A soft-pedalling politician? A raging Kinglake? Or the first nibble at his bait?

  It was a voice that he knew, even if he had not known it long—a deep musical voice with appealing foreign reflections.

  “You aren’t only handsome, but you have talent,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me you were a writer too?”

  “My union doesn’t allow it.”

  “Am I going to see you again? I’d like to very much.”

  He reached for a cigarette.

  “I’m flattered. But I’ve only just paid one instalment on the Blue Goose.”

  “I don’t have to be there till ten. What are you doing for dinner?”

  “Eating with you,” he said with abrupt decision. “I’ll meet you in the lobby here at eight o’clock.”

  He hung up, and still wondered which category that belonged in.

  But anything would be better than waiting in idleness. He washed and freshened himself and changed his shirt, and went downstairs a little before eight. There was a note in his box when he turned in his key.

  “It was delivered by hand just a few minutes ago,” said the clerk. Simon slit open the envelope. The letter inside was written in pencil on a cheap lined paper of an uncommon but typical pattern.

  There was no address, but Simon knew what that would be even without the clues in the context:

  I just read, Dear Mr Templar,

  your piece in the paper, and I can tell you you sure have got it over these dumb bums. I am getting a chap to take this out for me. I can tell you a lot more about this case and I will tell you if you can fix it to talk to me alone. You are right all the way and I can prove it, but I will not talk to anyone except you. After that you can do what you like with what I tell you but I will not give these dumb cops anything.

  Yours truly,

  NICK VASCHETTI

  Simon looked up from the note because someone was practically leaning on him and breathing in his face.

  “Got a love-letter?” asked Detective Yard. “Or is it fan mail?”

  Simon put the letter in his pocket.

  The detective’s face swelled as if he were being strangled.

  “Listen, you,” he got out. “One of these days—”

  “You’re going to forget your orders and be unkind to me,” said the Saint. “So I’ll be kind to you while I can. In a few minutes I’ll be going out to dinner. I’ll try to pick a restaurant where they’ll let you in. And if I start to leave before you’ve finished, just yell and I’ll wait for you.”

  Simon thought afterwards that it was criminal negligence on his part that he was so seduced by the frustration of Detective Yard that he didn’t even notice the thin grey-blond man and the fat red-haired man who occupied chairs in the farther reaches of the lobby. But there was an excuse for him, because while he had heard their names and heard their sketchy descriptions, he had never before laid eyes on Johan Blatt and Fritzie Weinbach.

  6

  He went back up to his room and phoned the city desk of The Times-Tribune.

  “Could you work it for me to have a private chat with a prisoner in the City Gaol?”

  “It might be done,” said the editor cautiously, “if nobody knew it was you. Why—have you had a bite?”

  “I hope so,” said the Saint. “The guy’s name is Nick Vaschetti.” He spelt it out. “He says he won’t talk to anybody but me, but maybe the gaol doesn’t have to know me. See what you can do, and I’ll call you back in about an hour.”

  He sat on the bed in thought for a minute or two, and then he picked up the telephone again and asked for Washington. He hardly had to wait at all, for although the hotel operator didn’t know it the number he asked for was its own automatic priority through all long distance exchanges.

  “Hamilton,” said the phone. “I hear you’re a newspaper man now.”

  “In self-defence,” said the Saint. “If you don’t like it, I can pack up. I never asked for this job, anyway.”

  “I only hope you’re getting a good salary to credit against your expense account.”

  The Saint grinned.

  “On the contrary, you’ll probably be stuck for my union dues…Listen, Ham: I’d rather lay it in your lap, but I think I’d better bother you. These three men—”

  “Blatt, Weinbach, and Maris?”

  “Your carrier pigeons travel fast.”

  “They have to. Is there anything else on them?”

  Simon gave him the two rough descriptions.

  “There’s a good chance,” he said, “that they may have come on from Chicago. But that’s almost a guess. Anyway, try it.”

  “You never want much, do you?”

  “I don’t like you to feel left out.”

  “You’re not leaving out the beautiful swooning siren, of course.”

  “In this case, she’s a blonde.”

  “You must like variety,” Hamilton sighed. “How much longer are you expecting to take?”

  “Depending on what you can dig up about the Three Neros, and what breaks tonight,” said the Saint, “maybe not long. Don’t go to bed too early, anyhow.”

  Which left h
im laughing inwardly at the breath-taking dimensions of his own bravado. And yet it has already been recorded in many of these chronicles that some of the Saint’s tensest climaxes had often been brewing when these almost prophetic undercurrents of swashbuckling extravagance danced in his arteries…

  Olga Ivanovitch was waiting in the lobby when he came downstairs again.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “There was a letter I had to answer.”

  “Nitchevo,” she said in her low warm memorable voice. “I was late myself, and we have plenty of time.”

  He admitted to himself after he saw her that he had had some belated misgivings about the rendezvous. The lighting in the lobby of the Alamo House was a different proposition from the blue dimness of the Blue Goose: she might have looked tired and coarsened, or she might have been over-dressed and over-painted into a cheap travesty of charm. But she was none of those things. Her skin was so clear and fresh that she actually looked younger than he remembered her. She wore a long dress, but the décolletage was chastely pinned together, and she wore an inappropriate light camel-hair polo coat over it that gave her a kind of carelessly apologetic swagger. She looked like a woman that any grown man would be a little excited to take anywhere.

  “I’ve got a car,” he said. “We can take it if you can direct me.”

  “Let me drive you, and I’ll promise you a good dinner.”

  He let her drive, and sat beside her in alert relaxation. This could have been the simplest kind of trap, but if it was, it was what he had asked for, and he was ready for it. He had checked the gun in his shoulder holster once more before he left his room, and the slim two-edged knife in the sheath strapped to his right calf was almost as deadly a weapon in his hands—and even less easy to detect. It nested down under his sock with hardly a bulge, but it was accessible from any sitting or reclining position by the most innocent motion of hitching up his trouser cuff to scratch the side of his knee.

  Simon Templar was even inclined to feel cheated when the drive ended without incident.

  She steered him into a darkened bistro near the Gulf shore with bare wooden booths and marble-topped tables and sawdust on the floor.

  “You have eaten bouillabaisse in Marseilles,” she said, “and perhaps in New Orleans. Now you will try this, and you will not be too disappointed.”

  The place was bleakly bright inside, and it was busy with people who looked ordinary but sober and harmless. Simon decided that it was as safe as anything in his life ever could be to loosen up for the length of dinner.

  “What made you call me?” he asked bluntly.

  He had always felt her simple candour as the most cryptic of complexities.

  “Why shouldn’t I?” she returned. “I wanted to see you. And you turn out to be such an unusual kind of travelling salesman.”

  “There are so few things you can sell these days, a guy has to have a side line.”

  “You write very cleverly. I enjoyed your story. But when you were asking me questions, you weren’t being honest with me.”

  “I told you everything I could.”

  “And I still told you everything I knew. Why do you think I was—what do you call it?—holding out on you?”

  “I told you everything I knew, tovarich. Even if you did place me for a salesman.”

  “You didn’t ask me about Blatt, Weinbach, and Maris.”

  “Only about Blatt.”

  He had to say that, but she could still make him feel wrong. Her air of straightforwardness was so unwavering that it turned the interrogator into the suspect. He had tried every device and approach in a rather fabulous repertoire the night before, and hadn’t even scratched the surface of her. He knew exactly why even Lieutenant Kinglake might have left her alone, without any political pressure. Take her into court, and she could have made any public prosecutor feel that he was the prisoner who was being tried. It was the most flawlessly consistent stonewall act that Simon Templar had ever seen.

  “You could have asked me about the others,” she said. “If I could have told you anything, I would have. I’d like to help you.”

  “What could you have told me?”

  “Nothing.”

  At least she had told him the truth about the bouillabaisse. He gave himself up to that consolation with fearful restraint.

  It was half an hour later when he made one more attempt to drag the conversation back from the delightful flights of nothingness into which she was able to lead so adroitly.

  “Aside from my beautiful profile and my great literary gifts,” he said, “I’d still like to know what made you want to see me again.”

  “I wanted you to pay for my dinner,” she said seriously. “And I do like you—very much.”

  He remembered the way she had kissed him at her door, and forced himself to consider that if he had gone for that he would probably have been going for something as calculated as her simplicity.

  “It couldn’t have been, by any chance, because you wanted to find out if I knew any more?”

  “But why should I? I am not a detective. Do I keep asking you questions?” She was wide open and disarming. “No. I am just guilty of liking you. If you wanted to tell me things, I would listen. You see, my dear, I have that Russian feeling which you would think stupid or—corny: that a woman should be the slave of a man she admires. I am fascinated by you. So, I must be interested in what you are doing. That is all.”

  The Saint’s teeth gripped together while he smiled.

  “Then, sweetheart, you’ll be interested to know that I’m going to make an important phone call, if you’ll excuse me a minute.”

  He went to a coin phone at the rear of the restaurant and called The Times-Tribune again.

  “It’s all set,” said the flat voice of the city editor. “Any time you want to pick me up.”

  “I’m just finishing dinner,” said the Saint grimly. “If nothing happens on the way, I’ll pick you up within thirty minutes.”

  He went back to the table, and found Olga placidly powdering her perfect nose.

  “I hate to break this up,” he said, “but I have a short call to make, and I have to deliver you back to the Blue Goose in time to catch the next influx of salesmen.”

  “Whatever you like,” she replied. “I don’t have to be exactly on time though, so you do whatever you want to do.”

  It was impossible to stir her even with virtual insult.

  But he drove the Ford himself this time, knowing that it could have seemed a much better moment for ambush than before dinner. Yet even then nothing happened, in such a way that the mere failure of anything to happen was a subtle rebuke in exactly the same key as all her refusals to rise to his varied provocations.

  His sleepless sense of direction enabled him to drive without a mistake to the offices of The Times-Tribune, and he arrived there with no more alarm than a slight stiffness in muscles which had been poised too long on an uncertain fuse. But then, the egregious efficiency of Detective Yard had still conspired to blind him to the shift of concealing newspapers which had punctuated his exit from the Alamo House.

  “I have to complain to my editor about the size of my headlines,” he said. “It’s a union rule. Do you mind waiting a little while?”

  “Of course not,” she said with that sublime and demoralising pliability. “Waiting is an old Russian pastime.”

  Simon went up to the editorial floor, and this time he swept through the interceptor command without interference, powered by the certainty of his route and destination.

  The city editor saw him, and took his feet off the desk and crammed a discoloured and shapeless Panama on to the small end of his pear-shaped head.

  “I’ll have to go with you myself,” he explained. “Not that I think you’d sell out to the UP, but it’s the only way I could fix it. Let me do the talking, and you can take over when we get your man.”

  “What’s he in for?”

  “Passing a rubber cheque at his hotel. I hope you have some
idea what strings I had to pull to arrange this for you.”

  Simon handed him the note that had been delivered to the Alamo House. The editor read it while they waited for the elevator.

  “Smuggled out, eh?…Well, it might come to something.”

  “Is there a back alleyway out of the building?”

  “When I was a copy boy here, we used to know one. I haven’t noticed the building being altered since.” The city editor turned his shrewd sphinxlike face towards Simon with only the glitter of his eyes for a clue to his expression. “Are we still expecting something to happen?”

  “I hope, yes and no,” said the Saint tersely. “I left Olga in my car outside, for a front and a cover. I’m hoping she either fooled herself or she’ll fool somebody else.”

  He knew that he had seldom been so vulnerable, but he never guessed how that flaw in his guard was so mature. He just felt sure that a prisoner in the City Gaol couldn’t be the trigger of any of the potential traps that he was waiting to recognise. Provided he took the obvious precautions, like leaving Olga Ivanovitch in his car outside the newspaper building while he slipped out through a back alley…

  The Times-Tribune man’s dry bulbous presence was a key that by-passed tired clerks and opened clanging iron doors, and exacted obedience from soured disinterested gaolers, and led them eventually into a small barren and discouraging office room with barred windows where they waited through a short echoing silence until the door opened again to admit Mr Vaschetti with a turnkey behind him.

  The door closed again, leaving the turnkey outside, and Mr Vaschetti’s darting black eyes switched over the city editor’s somnolent self-effacement and made one of their touch landings on the Saint.

  “You’re Templar,” he stated. “But I said this had to be private.”

  “This is Mr Beetlespats of The Times-Tribune,” said the Saint inventively. “He published the article you read, and he organised this meeting. But we can pretend he isn’t here. Just tell me what you’ve got on your mind.”