The Saint Goes On (22 page)

The dining-room was a low raftered room looking out on to a tiny garden cut out of the sheer hillside. Simon steered Mr. Uniatz briskly into it before that unrivalled maestro of tactlessness could drop any heavier bricks in the hearing of the chief protagonists, but when he reached his sanctuary he found that it was considerably less invulnerable than he had hoped it would be. The room only held four tables, and it was so small that the four of them might have been joined together in one communal board for all the privacy they afforded. Moreover, one of the tables was already occupied by a party of four men who fell curiously silent at the Saint’s entrance.

They were in their shirtsleeves, and their shapeless trousers had an air of grubby masculine comfort, as if they were placidly prepared to crawl about on their knees or sit down on a heap of loose earth without any qualms about its effect on their appearance. At first sight they might easily have been taken for a quartet of hikers; and yet, if that was what they were, they must have started on their pilgrimage very recently, for their bare forearms were practically untouched by the sun. Their hands, in contrast to that unexpected whiteness of arm, were coarsened with the unmistakable rough griminess of manual labour, which could hardly overtake the average holiday tramper before exposure had left its mark on his skin. It was that minor contradiction of make-up, perhaps, rather than their unfriendly silence, which made Simon Templar pay particular attention to them; but there was no outward and visible sign of his interest. He took them in at one casual glance, with all their individual oddities-a big black-haired man who had not shaved, a thin fair-haired man with a weak chin, a bald burly man with a vintage-port complexion, and an incongruously small and nondescript man with a grey moustache and pince-nez. And beyond that one sweeping survey there was nothing to show that he had taken any more notice of their existence than he had of the typical country-hotel wallpaper adorned with strips of pink ribbon and bouquets of unidentifiable vegetation with which some earlier landlord had endeavoured to improve his property. He dumped Mr. Uniatz in a seat at a corner table, taking for himself the chair which commanded a full view of the room, and cast a pessimistic eye over the menu.

It offered one of those seductive bilingual repasts with which the traveller in England, whatever he may have to put up with during the day, is so richly compensated at eventide.

Potage Birmingham
Boiled Cod au Beurre
Leg de Mouton r�ti
Pommes Chips
Spinach
Suet Pudding Fromage-Biscuits
Simon put down the masterpiece with a faint sigh, and opened his cigarette-case.

“Did I ever tell you,” he asked, “about the extraordinary experience of a most respectable sheep I used to know, whose name was Percibald?”

It was plain from the expression on Mr. Uniatz’s homely pan that he had never heard the story. It was equally plain that he was ready to try dutifully to discover its precise connection with the shindig in hand. The convolutions of painful concentration carved themselves deeper into his dial.

“Boss”

“Percibald,” said the Saint firmly, “was a sheep of exceptionally distinguished appearance, as you may judge from the fact that he was once the innocent cause of a libel action in which a famous Cabinet Minister sued the president and council of the Royal Academy for damages on the grounds that a picture exhibited in their galleries portrayed him in the act of sharing the embraces of a nearly nude wench with every evidence of enjoyment. On investigation it was found that the painting had only been intended for a harmless pastoral scene featuring a few classical nymphs and shepherds, and that the artist, feeling that shepherds without any sheep might look somewhat stupid, had induced Percibald to pose with one of the nymphs in the foreground. This, however, was merely an incident in Percibald’s varied career. The extraordinary experience I was going to tell you about …”

He blurbed on, hardening his heart against the pathetic perplexity of his audience. It is one of the chronicler’s major regrets that the extraordinary experience of Percibald is not suitable for quotation in a volume which may fall into the hands of ladies and young children; but it is doubtful whether Mr. Uniatz ever saw the point. Nor was the Saint greatly concerned about whether he did or not. His main object was to shut off the spate of questions with which Mr. Uniatz’s hairy bosom was obviously overflowing.

At the same time, without ever seeming to pay any attention to them, he was quietly watching the four men in the opposite corner. After their first silence they had put their heads together so briefly and casually that if he had actually taken his eyes off them for a moment he might not have noticed it. Then an exchange of whispered words opened out into an elaborately natural argument which he had no trouble to hear even while he was talking himself.

“Well, I know it’s on the road to Yeovil. I’ve been there often enough.”

“Damn it, I was born and brought up in Crewkerne, and I ought to know.”

“I’ll bet you a pound you don’t.”

“I’ll bet you five pounds you’re talking through your hat.”

“Well, you show it to me on a map.”

“All right, who’s got a map?”

It turned out that none of them had a map. The big unshaven man finished loading his pipe and got up.

“Perhaps the landlord’s got a map.”

“He hasn’t. I asked him yesterday.”

The extraordinary experience of Percibald reached its indelicate conclusion. Mr. Uniatz looked as if he was going to cry. The Saint scanned his memory rapidly for another anecdote; and then the big man moved a little way down the mantelpiece and cleared his throat.

“Excuse me, sir-do you happen to have a map of the country around Yeovil?”

Simon put aside a plate containing a small piece of lukewarm blotting-paper which was apparently the translation of Boiled Cod au Beurre.

“I’ve got one in the car,” he said. “Are you in a hurry?”

“Oh, no. Not a bit. We just want to settle an argument- I don’t know if you know the district?”

“Vaguely.”

“Do you know Champney Castle? I say it’s between Crewkerne and Yeovil, and my friend says it’s in the other direction -on the way to Ilchester.”

The Saint had never heard of Champney Castle, and he was even inclined to doubt whether such a place existed; but it never occurred to him to interfere with anybody’s innocent amusements.

“I know it quite well,” he replied unblushingly. “There’s an entrance from the Ilchester Road and another from the Yeovil Road. So you’re both right.”

The man looked convincingly blank for a moment; and then a chuckle of laughter broke out from his companions, in which he joined. Cordial relations having thus been established, the other members of the party turned their chairs to an angle that subtly gathered up the Saint and Hoppy into their conversation. It was all very neatly and efficiently done, with a disarming geniality that would have melted the reserve of anyone less hoarily aged in sin.

“Are you staying here long?” inquired the fat man with the fruity face.

“I haven’t made any plans,” answered the Saint carelessly. “I expect we’ll hang around for a few days, if there’s anything interesting to do.”

“Do you like fishing?”

“Sometimes.”

“You get some pretty big conger off Larkstone Point.”

Simon nodded.

“I should think they’d be good sport.”

The small man with the grey moustache polished his pince-nez industriously on a napkin.

“Dangerous, of course, if you don’t know your business,” he remarked. “You don’t want to loop the gaff on your wrist -if you did that, and made a slip, I don’t suppose we’d ever see you again. But lots of things are much more dangerous.”

‘I suppose so,” agreed the Saint gravely.

“Lots of things,” repeated the thin fair-haired man, apparently addressing the tablecloth.

“For instance,” said the fat fruity man thoughtfully, “I’ve never been able to make out why everybody in America seems to be so frightened of gangsters. If any of them tried to do their stuff over here, I’m sure that would be very dangerous … for them.”

The big unshaven man struck a match.

“Wouldn’t stand an earthly, would they, Major? I don’t know how the police would react to it; but personally I wouldn’t have any compunction about tying ‘em to a rock at low tide and leaving ‘em there.”

“Nor would I,” echoed the one with the fair hair, to his audience of bread-crumbs.

“Serve them right if we did it,” said the grey moustache clearly. “I haven’t any sympathy for common thugs who try to shove their noses into other people’s business.”

Not even Mr. Uniatz’s most ardent admirers, if he ever had any, could fairly have flattered him on his lightning grasp of conversational trends; but he had a definite talent for assimilating a simple idea if it was pushed under his nose several times in a sufficient variety of ways. Even then, he was still far from knowing exactly what was going on; but it was dimly percolating into the misty twilight of what for want of a better word must be loosely termed his mind (a) that the four men at the other table were saying something uncomplimentary, and (b) that their attitude included some general disparagement of the manners and customs of his native land. It would be untrue to suggest that he knew the meaning of more than half of these words, hut they would have served to convey a fairly accurate description of his psychic impressions if he had known them. It was also a matter of elementary knowledge to him that a guy does not get uncomplimentary to another guy without he is prepared to shoot his best insults out of a rod; and that was a stage of the proceedings at which Mr. Uniatz could make up a lot of lost ground in the way of repartee. He began to grope frowningly around his hip, but Simon kicked him under the table and smiled.

“You do sound bloodthirsty,” he murmured.

The bald fruity man got up. Standing on his feet, he looked big and solid in spite of his rich complexion and extensive waist-line.

“Oh, no. Not particularly bloodthirsty. Just four old soldiers who got used to being shot at quite a long while ago. I really don’t think we’d be the best people for any gangsters to pick on-some of them would certainly get hurt. It’s worth thinking about, anyway!”

A waitress came in with the next course of the Saint’s dinner. She went over and whispered something to the grey-moustached man, who dropped his pince-nez and spoke in an undertone to the fair-haired man with the receding chin. The other two looked at them as they got up.

“You must excuse us,” said the grey moustache, rather abruptly.

He went out, and the others followed him after a second’s hesitation. Hoppy Uniatz stared at the closing door blankly- he was experiencing some of the sensations of an early Christian who, having braced himself for a slap-up martyrdom, has been rudely sniffed at by a lion and then left high and dry in the middle of the arena. Coming on top of the other incomprehensible things that had happened to him since he arrived there, this was not soothing. He turned to the Saint with a rough sketch of these complex emotions working itself out on his face.

“Boss,” he said awkwardly, “dis place makes me noivous.”

IV
Simon Templar chuckled, and probed a tentative fork into the section of warm rawhide crowned with a wodge of repulsive green mash which was apparently the local interpretation of Leg de Mouton under the influence of spinach. “I can’t imagine it, Hoppy,” he said.

Mr. Uniatz’s frown deepened.

“Ja see dose guys take a run-out powder on us?” he demanded, starting methodically at the beginning. “They do seem to have breezed on.”

“Maybe dey see me goin’ for my Betsy,” said Mr. Uniatz, passing on to the more nebulous realms of theory. “They could hardly have helped it.”

“Well, where dey t’ink dey get off pullin’ dat stuff an’ beatin’ it before we say anyt’ing?” The Saint grinned.

“I think we can say we’ve been very politely warned off. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it done in a more classical style-those birds must have been reading the smoothest detective stories. How’s your spinach? Mine tastes as if they’d been mowing the lawn this afternoon.”

He struggled through as much more of the meal as his stomach would endure, and lighted a cigarette. Mr. Uniatz was finished some time before him-Hoppy’s calloused maw would have engulfed a plateful of live toads dressed with thistles and woodpulp without noticing anything extraordinary about the menu, even in normal times, and when he was worried he was even less likely to observe what he was eating. Simon pushed back his chair and stood up cheerfully. “Let’s take a walk,” he said. Mr. Uniatz licked his lips yearningly. “I could just do wit’ a drink, boss.”

“Afterwards,” said the Saint inexorably. “I want to look over the lie of the land.”

There was no sign of the four genial diners when they went out, nor of the unpleasant ginger-haired man who had been foolish. A couple of obvious local inhabitants were poring over tankards of beer in the bar parlour off the hall- Simon caught a mere glimpse of them as he went by, but he did not see Martin Jeffroll, and there was nothing visible or audible to suggest that anything worth the attention of a modern buccaneer had happened there for the last two hundred years.

He got into his car and drove it round to the garage, a ramshackle shed dumped inartistically on to the north wall of the inn. It had never been designed to give a comfortable berth to cars of the Hirondel’s extravagantly rakish proportions, and there was a big grey lorry parked along one side which forced the Saint to go through some complicated manoeuvres before he could get in. He managed to squeeze himself into the available space with some accompaniment of bad language, and rejoined Hoppy on the road.

“We’ll go down to the waterfront and smell some ozone.” There was a rough grey stone promenade where the lowest houses straggled along the edge of the bay, and at one end of the village a similar stone causeway sloped down from it and ran out for some distance along the edge of the channel through which the river found its way seawards through the mud. Apparently it had been laid out at some time to give easier access to the boats moored in the channel at low tide. The usual fishing village’s collection of miscellaneous hardy craft was scattered out across the inlet, with here and there a hull whose brighter paint and more delicate lines spoke of some more fortunate resident’s pleasure. A little way out on the darkening water he could see a few scraps of sail, and a curiously shaped vessel at anchor which looked like a dredger.