Saint Overboard (9 page)

The Saint paid for his calls and the use of
the room, and saun
tered
out. He took a roundabout route to his destination, turned three or four
corners, without once looking back, and paused to look in a shop window in the
Rue du Casino. In an angle of the
plate
glass he caught a reflection—of pale brick-red socks.

Item Two.
…
So
Vogel’s affability had not been entirely
unpremeditated.
Perhaps it had been carefully planned from the
start. It would have
been simplicity itself for the sleuth to pick
him up when he was
identified by sitting with Vogel and Yule at
the cafe.

Not that the situation was immediately
serious. The pink-
hosed
spy might have discovered that Simon Templar had rented
a room and made some telephone calls, but he wasn’t likely to
have discovered much more. And that activity was
not funda
mentally suspicious. But
with Vogel already on his guard, it
would
register in the score as a fact definitely to be accounted
for. And the
presence of the man who had observed it added its
own testimony to the thoroughness with which the fact would
doubtless be scrutinised.

The Saint’s estimation of Kurt Vogel went up
another grim
notch. In that dispassionate efficiency, that methodical
examina
tion of every loophole, that ruthless elimination of every factor
of chance
or guesswork, he recognised some of the qualities that
must have given Vogel his unique position
in the hierarchy of
racketeers—the
qualities that must have been fatally underesti
mated by those three nameless scouts of Ingerbeck’s, who had
not come home… .

And which might have been underestimated by
the fourth.

The thought checked him in his stride for an
almost imper
ceptible instant. He knew that Loretta Page was ready to
be told
that she was suspected, but was she ready for quite such an
inquisitorial surveillance as this?

He turned into the next tobacconist’s and
gained a breathing
space while he purchased a pack of cigarettes. To find
out, he
had to shake off his own shadow. And it had to be done in such a
way that
the shadow did not know he was being intentionally
shaken off, because an entirely innocent
young man in the role
Simon had set himself
would never discover that he was being
shadowed
anyway.

He came out and walked more quickly to the
corner of the
Rue
Levasseur. A disengaged taxi met him there, almost as if it
had been timed for the purpose, and he stopped it
and swung on
board without any
appearance of undue haste, but with a movement as swift and sure as an
acrobat’s on the flying trapeze.

“
À
la gare,”
he said; and the taxi was off again without having
actually
reached a standstill.

Looking back through the rear window, he saw
the pink socks
piling
into another cab a whole block behind. He leaned forward
as they rushed into the Place de la R
é
publique.

“Un moment,”
he said in
the driver’s ear.
“Il
faut que j’aille
premi
è
rement
à
la Banque Boutin.”

The driver muttered something uncomplimentary
under his breath, trod on the brakes, and spun the wheel. By his limited
lights, he
was not without reason, for the Banque de Bretagne
and Travel Agency of
M. Jules Boutin are at the eastern end of
the Rue Levasseur—in
exactly the opposite direction from the station.

They reeled dizzily round the corner of the
Rue de la Plage,
with that sublime abandon of which only French chauffeurs
and suicidal maniacs are capable, gathered speed, and hurtled around
another
right-hand hairpin into the Boulevard F
é
art.
Simon
looked back again, and saw no sign of the pursuit. There were
three
other possible turnings from the hairpin junction which
they had
just circumnavigated; and the Saint had no doubt that
his pink-socked epilogue, having lost them
completely on that
sudden swerve out of the
Place de la R
é
publique, and not ex
pecting any such treacherous manoeuvre, was by
that time franti
cally exploring
routes in the opposite direction.

They turned back into the Rue Levasseur; and
to make abso
lutely
certain the Saint changed his mind again and ordered another twist north to
the post office. He paid off the driver and
plunged
into a telephone booth.

She was in. She said she had been writing
some letters.

“Don’t post ‘em till I see you,”
said the Saint. “What’s the
number of your room?”

“Twenty-eight. But——
”

“I’ll walk up as if I owned it. Can you bear to wait?”

4

She was wearing a green silk robe with a
great silver dragon crawling round it and bursting into fire-spitting life on
her shoul
ders.
Heaven knew what she wore under it, if anything; but the
curve of her thigh sprang up in a sheer sweep of
breath-taking
line to her knee as she
turned. The physical spell of her wove a
definite hiatus in between his entrance and his first line.

“I hope I intrude,” he said.

The man who was with her scowled. He was a hard-faced,
hard-eyed individual, rather stout, rather bald,
yet with a solid
atmosphere of
competence and courage about him.

“Loretta—how d’ya know this guy’s on
the rise?”

“I don’t,” she said calmly.
“But he has such a nice clean
smile.”

“Just a home girl’s husband,”
murmured the Saint lightly. He tapped a cigarette on his thumb-nail, and
slanted his brows side
long at the objector. “Who’s the young heart’s delight?”

She shrugged.

“Name of Steve Murdoch.”

“Of Ingerbeck’s?”

“Yes.”

“Simon to you,” said the Saint,
holding out his hand.

Murdoch accepted it sullenly. Their grips
clashed, battled in a sudden straining of iron wrists; but neither of them
flinched. The
Saint’s smile twitched at his lips, and some of the
sullenness
went
out of the other’s stare.

“Okay, Saint,” Murdoch said dourly.
“I know you’re tough.
But I don’t like fresh guys.”

“I hate them, myself,” said the
Saint unblushingly. He sat on
the arm of a chair, making patterns in the
atmosphere with ciga
rette-smoke. “Been here long?”

“Landed at Cherbourg this
morning.”

“Did you ask for Loretta downstairs?”

“Yeah.”

“Notice anyone prick up his ears?”

Murdoch shook his head.

“I didn’t look.”

“You should have,” said the Saint reprovingly.
“I didn’t ask,
but I looked. There was a bloke kicking his heels in a
corner
when I arrived, and he had watchdog written across his chest in
letters a
foot high. He didn’t see me, because I walked through
with my face buried inside a newspaper; but
he must have seen
you. He’d ‘ve seen anyone
who wasn’t expecting him, and he was
placed
just right to hear who was asked for at the desk.”

There was a short silence. Loretta leaned back against a table
with her hands on the edge and her long legs
crossed.

“Did you know Steve was here?” she
asked.

“No. He only makes it more difficult.
But I discovered that a
ferret-faced bird with the most beautiful line in gent’s half hose
was sitting on my tail, and that made me
think. I slipped him
and came round
to warn you.” Simon looked at her steadily.
“There’s only a
trace of suspicion attached to me at the moment,
but Vogel’s taking no chances. He wants to make sure. There’s
probably a hell of a lot of suspicion about you.
so you weren’t
likely to be forgotten.
And apparently you haven’t been. Now
Steve
has rolled up to lend a hand—he’s branded himself by
asking for you, and he’ll be a marked man from
this moment.”

“That’s okay,” said Murdoch
phlegmatically. “I can look after myself without a nurse.”

“I’m sure you can, dear old skunk,”
said the Saint amiably.
“But that’s not the point. Loretta, at
least, isn’t supposed to be looking after herself. She’s the undercover
ingenue. She isn’t
supposed to have anything to look after except her
honour. Once
she
starts any Mata Hari business, that boat is sunk.”

“Well?”

Simon flicked ash on to the carpet.

“The only tune is the one I’m playing.
Complete and childlike
innocence. With a pan like yours, Steve,
you’ll have a job to get
your mouth round the flute, but you’ve got to
try it. Because any sucker play you make is going to hit Loretta. The first
thing is to
clean yourself up. If you’ve got a star or anything like
that of
Ingerbeck’s, flush it down the lavatory. If you’ve got anything in
writing
that could link you up, memorise it and burn it. Strip
yourself of every
mortal thing that might tie you on to this
party. That goes for
you too, Loretta, because sooner or later the
ungodly are going to
try and get a line on you from your lug
gage, if they haven’t
placed you before that. And then, Steve,
you blow.”

“What?”

“Fade. Waft. Pass out into the night.
Loretta can go down
stairs with you, and you can take a fond farewell in the
foyer,
with a few well-chosen lines of dialogue from which any listeners
can gather that you’re an old
friend of her father’s taking a holi
day in
Guernsey, and hearing she was in Dinard you hopped an
excursion and came
over for the day. And then you beetle down to the pier, catch the next ferry to
St Malo, and shoot on to the
return steamer
to St Peter Port like a cork out of a bottle. Vogel
will be there to-morrow.”

“How do you know that?” asked
Loretta quickly.

“He told me. We got into conversation
before lunch.” Simon’s
gaze lifted to hers with azure lights of
scapegrace solemnity play
ing in it. “He was trying to draw me
out, and I was just devilling him, but neither of us got very far. I think he
was telling me the
truth, though. If I chase him to St Peter Port, he’ll be
able to
put my innocence through some more tests. So when you’re say
ing goodbye to Steve, he might
ask you if you’re likely to take a
trip to
Guernsey, and you can say you don’t think you’ll be able
to—that may
make them think that you haven’t heard anything
from me.”

Murdoch took out a cigar and bit the end from
it with a bull
dog clamp of his jaws. His eyes were dark again with
distrust.

“It’s a stall, Loretta,” he said
sourly. “How d’ya know Vogel isn’t capable of having an undercover man,
the same as us. All
he wants to do is get me out of the way, so he can take you
alone.”

“You flatter yourself, brother,”
said the Saint coldly “If I
wanted to take her, you wouldn’t stop me.
Nor would you stop
Vogel.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Well, I’m not running.”

Loretta glanced from one man to the other. The
animosity
between them was creeping up again, hardening the square
obsti
nacy of Murdoch’s jaw, glittering like chips of elusive steel in
the Saint’s eyes. They were
like two jungle animals, each superb
in his
own way and conscious of his strength, but of two
different species whose feud dated back too far
into the grey
dawns of history for
any quick forgetting.
          

“Yes, you are, Steve,” said the
girl.

“When I start taking orders from that——”

“You aren’t.” Her voice was quiet
and soothing, but there was
a thread of calm decision under the silky
texture. “You’re taking
orders from me. The Saint’s right. We’d
better break off again,
and hope we can alibi this meeting.”