The Saint and Mr. Teal: Formerly Called "Once More the Saint" (19 page)

CHAPTER II

LAURA BERWICK came into the Saint’s life unasked, uninvited, and unintroduced; which was what one might have expected of her. She had brown hair, brown eyes, and a chin that was afraid of no dragons-not even of an outlaw so notorious and unpopular as Simon Templar. And as far as the Saint was concerned, any girl with her face and figure could have come into his life unasked, uninvited, and unintroduced every day of the week, and he would have had nothing but praise for the beneficence of a Providence that provided surprises of such quality. He was able to frame that appraisement of her physical perfections within a bare few minutes of meeting her for the first time-which in this case happens to be a far more respectable statement than it sounds.

Simon Templar had left London. The wanderlust that would never let him be still for long had filled him again with dreams of wild adventurous voyaging after an exceptionally short rest in the city that was as near home to him as anywhere else in the world. Partly be cause his rest had been so extraordinarily unrestful. In a very few months, London had loaded down his life with such a plentiful supply of excitement that he had made up his mind to take wing again promptly, before the standard of lawlessness and unrest depreciated. The house that he had chosen when he first returned was still in the hands of interior decorators who were struggling to repair the damage that can only be done by a powerful bomb exploded in a small room, and after viewing the progress of their efforts he had decided to terminate his lease and take up residence at the Dorchester for the remainder of his stay. An expensive luxury, but one which he considered he had earned. Or, if he hadn’t earned it, he would doubtless contrive to do so before he left… . And then-since this was in that memorable year when the sun shone upon England- the thermometer hopped back on top of the ninety mark, and after two days of it the Saint tore off his coat and tie and went forth into the West End swearing a quiet sirocco of wrath whose repercussions were recorded at Kew.

“Civilization be damned,” said the Saint, in one of his few lucid moments. “I saw an English Gentleman in Piccadilly yesterday. With great daring he had removed his coat, waistcoat, collar, and tie, and he was walking about in a flannel shirt and a hideous pair of braces striped with his old school colours. Under the neck of his shirt and the roll-up of his sleeves you could see the edges of his abominable woollen vest. I refuse to discuss in detail the occult reasonings which may have made him ever put on the superfluous garments that he was carrying over his arm. But when you consider the abysmal chasms of imbecility personified in that perspiring oaf, and then realize that he was only a pale pink renegade-that a real English Gentleman and Public School Man would have died before he removed a single garment-then you know that the next deluge is long overdue.”

He had a lot more to say, much of which would have made certain seaside borough councillors who spend most of their time deliberating on the minimum length of sleeve that may without peril to the public morality be permitted on bathing costumes foam at the mouth with indignation. He said it all very forcefully, using much of the language which by similarly coherent standards is judged to be harmless to an audience of three thousand men, women, and children congregated in a theatre, but definitely corrupting to the same audience if they happen to be congregated in a cinema. Also he travelled as fast and far as he possibly could on the strength of it, which perhaps has more to do with this story.

The Scilly Islands are not quite at the end of the world; but Simon Templar went there because a letter came to him which quite innocently told him something that he could scarcely ignore.

“We have about the usual number of visitors for the time of year,” wrote Mr. Smithson Smith. “They disappear just as they always do, and St. Mary’s still seems uncrowded… , The Scillonian went aground in a fog the other day, but they got her off quite safely at high tide… . They caught some Frenchmen picking up their pots inside the three-mile limit on Sunday, and fined them Ł80, . .. . There are a couple of fine yachts anchored over at Tresco-one of them belongs to an Egyptian, a man called Abdul Osman. I’ve been wondering if he’s the man I heard about once when I was in Assuan… .”

There were six pages of local gossip and general reminiscence, of the kind that Mr. Smithson Smith felt moved to write about three times a year. They had met in a dispute about a camel many years ago outside Ismailia; and the Saint, who was no letter writer, responded at equally vague intervals. But the name of Abdul Osman was not strange to him, and he had no doubts about its associations.

There was a glint in his eye when he had finished reading.

“We’re going to the Isles of Scilly, where the puffins go to breed,” he said poetically; and Patricia Holm looked at him with an air of caution.

“I’m not a puffin,” she said.

“Nevertheless, we’ll go,” said the Saint.

It may sound flippant to say that if Simon Templar had not shared some of the dim instincts of the puffin, Laura Berwick would undoubtedly have been drowned; but that is nothing but the truth.

She was sailing much too close to the wind-quite literally. Simon Templar saw it from the beginning, and had wondered whether it was pure daring or sheer foolishness. He was perched up on a comparatively smooth ledge of rock, sunning himself in a sublime vacancy of relaxation, and thinking of nothing in particular. The cool waters of the Atlantic were swishing and gurgling among the boulders a dozen feet below him, countering the pale brazen blue of the sky with a translucent intensity of colour that was as rich as anything in the Mediterranean: he had bathed in them for a few minutes, feeling the sticky heat of his walk dissolving under their icy impact with a gratitude that touched the foundations of utter physical contentment: then he had climbed up to his chosen ledge to let the sun dry his body. He wondered, lazily, whether the R.S.P.C.A. would have its views about the corruptive influence of his costume on the morals of a score of seagulls that were squabbling raucously over a scrap of food that had been left in a rocky pool by the falling tide; and he wondered also, with the same peaceful laziness, what strange discontent it was that had made Man of his own free will turn his back on the life that was always his, and take himself with his futile insatiable ambitions to the stifling cities from which the escape to his own inheritance seemed so fantastic and impossible. And out of lazily half-closed eyes he watched the white sailing dinghy dancing over the swell. Too close to the wind-much too close. …

It all happened in a flash, with the suddenness that every experienced yachtsman knows and labours to avoid. The breeze was baffling, switching around six points of the compass in strong gusts that scraped little raw patches of white foam off the tops of the ponderous rollers. The girl stood up and tried to reach something forward, steadying the tiller with one hand as she leaned away from it. The wind shifted round another point and blew a vicious puff at the flapping canvas, and the mainsail swung across with a sharp crack. The boom seemed to catch the girl on the side of the head, and she went over the side with a splash.

Simon stood up, watching for her to come up and swim back to the boat; but she didn’t rise again.

It was not a particularly sensational rescue, as rescues go. The dinghy was only about thirty yards from the shore, and the Saint was a fast swimmer. He found her in a few moments and towed her after the boat. The fitful breeze had broken down short-windedly, and it was fairly easy. Simon was able to haul her on board and slacken the sheet before it blew again; then the girl moved, coughing and choking, and the Saint slipped hurriedly over the side again.

She rubbed the side of her head tenderly; and then she opened her eyes and saw his tanned face smiling down at her, with a pair of brown forearms braced over the gunwale.

“What happened?” she asked dizzily.

“You jibed,” answered a dispassionate Saint. “A bad show-and not to be encouraged in a real wind.”

It was obvious that the power of resenting criticism had been temporarily bumped and soaked out of her- an indicative symptom which might profitably be remembered by harassed husbands who take their spouses for holidays by the sea.

“Where did you come from?”

“Off a rock,” said the Saint.

She coughed, and choked again with a grimace.

“Excuse me if I spit,” she said.

The Saint excused her. She did it to windward, which was not too successful. Simon regarded her sadly.

“You’re new to this, aren’t you?” he said mildly.

“You’ve got to begin sometime,” she said defiantly.

“I’ve had a few lessons from one of the men, and I thought I’d like to try it by myself. Nobody was using the dinghy, so I just took it.”

“There’s only one policeman in the Scilly Isles,” murmured Simon, “so if you lie low you may get away with it.”

“Oh, I didn’t steal it. It belongs to the yacht.”

Simon raised his eyebrows.

“Have you got a yacht?”

“My stepfather has. The Claudette. We’re lying over at Tresco.”

The line of black-etched eyebrows seemed to harden fractionally.

“Near Abdul Osman’s?”

“Why-how did you know?”

“Sort of bush telegraph,” said the Saint. “It’s amazing how the news travels in these wild parts.”

It was during some of this conversation that he was able to review the artistic proportions of her body; for she was dressed in nothing more than a bathing costume in the modern style, consisting largely of entrances for the priceless ultra-violet ray.

“Are you determined to stay where you are?” she inquired presently; and the Saint smiled.

“Not permanently,” he said. “But my bathing costume is even more modern than yours. You interrupted a lovely sunbath ŕ l’atlemande. However, if you like to stay here for a minute I’ll swim back and fetch some clothes.”

He slid down into the water without waiting for his suggestion to be accepted, and made for the shore again, cutting a clean line through the water and leaving a wake behind. He returned on his back, one hand holding a bundle of shirt, trousers, and shoes high and dry in the air.

“I was born without shame,” he said, heaving the bundle over the stern. ” But if you feel bashful you can go forward and talk to the fish while I use your towel.”

“I suppose you saved my life,” said the girl, staring with intense concentration at a completely empty horizon, while the boat rocked under her as he pulled himself on board.

“There is no charge,” said the Saint.

He towelled himself rapidly, and pulled on his trousers; then he set himself to bring the dinghy round and trim her on a straight course back towards Tresco. The girl turned round and watched his easy manoeuvres enviously. It was done with an effortless confidence that seemed no trouble at all; and he settled himself at the tiller and smiled at her again out of that rather reckless brown face. She saw challenging blue eyes gleaming with a ready mockery, wiry muscles that rippled under a skin like brown satin; sensed a personality that had no respect for polite conventions. She knew that the hint of antagonism that had infected her was due to nothing but her own feeling of foolishness, and knew that he knew she knew.

“I shan’t tell,” he said, and his words fitted in with her thoughts so uncannily that for a moment longer she had to continue looking at him.

“My stepfather might want to know where I picked you up,” she said.

“That’s true,” Simon admitted, and said no more until he had run the dinghy neatly alongside the rather excessively magnificent-looking yacht that was riding in the New Grimsby channel.

He made the boat fast to the gangway and helped the girl out. One of the hands had noticed their arrival, and there was a middle-aged gentleman in white flannels waiting for them on the deck. He wore a yachting cap and a blue reefer jacket with a vague air of uneasiness, as if at every moment he were expecting some rude urchin to utter shrill comments on his pretensions to the uniform.

“Where have you been, Laura?” he demanded unnecessarily.

“Out in the dinghy,” said the girl, no less unnecessarily, but with a certain impish satisfaction.

The man looked round at the Saint with a kind of restrained impatience, as though his presence had been imposed as a deliberate obstacle to the development of some plain speaking that was definitely called for.

“This hero has just saved my life,” said Laura, also looking at the Saint. “Hero, this is my stepfather, Mr. Stride.”

“Ha!” said Mr. Stride intelligently. “Hum!”

His eyes absorbed the Saint’s appearance dubiously -they were small eyes, rather surprisingly sharp when they looked at you. Simon was still only wearing his shirt in a haphazard way-he had flung it carelessly over his shoulders and knotted the sleeves loosely under his chin-and he looked quite disreputable and quite happy about it. Mr. Stride groped hesitantly for his notecase.

“I got knocked overboard,” said the girl. “I did something silly with the sails, and the boom hit me on the head —”

“It might have happened to anyone,” said the Saint airily-he had never blushed over a lie in his life. “A sudden squall can make a lot of trouble for any boat, and you get plenty of them around here.”

“Ha!” said Mr. Stride. His sharp eyes ran once up the Saint’s lean, poiseful length thoughtfully; but at the sound of the Saint’s voice he had let go his wallet as if it had grown red-hot in his fingers. “Ha!” said Mr. Stride. He tugged at his grey moustache. “Very lucky that you saw the accident, Mr.-“

Simon elegantly ignored the invitation to supply his name.

“We were just going to have lunch, Mr. —” said Stride, dangling the bait again. “Won’t you stay?”

“That’s awfully kind of you,” murmured the Saint, and thought that Mr. Stride would have been more cordial if he had refused.

He proceeded to put on his shirt, with a calm indifference to his host’s emotions that would have been boorish if it had been a shade less transparently innocent; and as he did so he was glancing over the other ships that were anchored within a hundred yards of the Claudette. There were a couple of French fishing smacks, broad-beamed sea boats, with high bows and low sterns, held idly into the wind by their great rust-red sails. Beyond them was a superb 200-ton Diesel yacht with a sweet line of clipper bow: Simon could read the name painted there-Luxor. Beside the wheel-house Simon could see a man focussing a pair of binoculars, and he knew that it was the Claudette that was the object of his attention.