The Saint in Action (13 page)

“I’m not afraid o’ you–-“

“Of course you aren’t, Algernon. And we don’t want you to be. But you’ve got to change your mind about answering questions, because it’s getting late.”

The man watched him stubbornly, but his fists were tightening and relaxing nervously, and there was a shining dampness of perspiration breaking out on his forehead. His eyes switched around the room and returned to the Saint’s; face in a desperate search for escape. But there was no hope there of the kind he was looking for. The Saint’s manner was light and genial, almost brotherly; it passed over unpleasant alternatives as remote and improbable contingencies that were hardly worth mentioning at all, and yet the idea of unpleasantness didn’t seem to disturb it in any way. A blusterer himself, the driver would have answered bluster in its own language, but that dispassionate imperturbability chilled him with an unfamiliar sensation of fear… .

And at that moment, with his uncanny genius for keeping his opponents in suspense, the Saint left the last word unsaid and strolled over to sit on the table, leaving the driver nothing but the threat of his own imagination.

“What’s your name, Algernon?” he asked mildly.

“Jopley.”

The word fell out after a tense pause, as if the man was fighting battles with himself.

“Been driving these trucks for long?”

“Wot’s that got–-“

“Been driving these trucks for long?”

“I bin drivin’ ‘em for a bit.”

“Do pretty well out of it?”

The driver was silent again for a space, but this time his silence was not due to obstinacy. His frown probed at the Saint distrustfully; but Simon was blowing wisps of smoke at the ceiling.

“I don’t do too bad.”

“How much is that?”

“Ten quid a week.”

“You know, you’re quite a character, aren’t you?” said the Saint. “There aren’t many people who’d let Hoppy singe their tootsies for ten quid a week. How d’you work it out—a pound a toe?”

The man dragged jerkily at his cigarette without answering. The question was hardly answerable anyway—it was more of a gentle twitch at the driver’s already overstrung nerves, a reminder of those unpleasant possibilities which were really so unthinkable.

“If I were you,” said the Saint with an air of kindly interest, “I’d be looking for another job.”

“Wot sort of job?”

“I think it ‘d be a kind of sideline,” said the Saint meditatively. “I’d look round for some nice generous bloke who wouldn’t let people toast my feet or anything like that but who’d just pay me an extra twenty quid a week for answering a few questions now and again. He might even put up fifty quid when I had anything special to tell him, and it wouldn’t hurt me a bit.”

“It’s a waste of money, boss,” said Mr Uniatz with conviction. “If de candles don’t woik I got a new one I see in de movies de udder day. You mash de guy’s shins wit’ a hammer–-“

“You won’t pay too much attention to him, will you, Algernon?” said the Saint. “He gets a lot of these ideas, you know—it’s the way he was brought up. It’s not my idea of a spare-time job, though.”

The driver shifted himself from one foot to the other. It wasn’t his idea of a spare-time job either—or even a legitimate part of the job he had. He didn’t need to have the balance of the alternatives emphasized to him. They were so clean cut that they made the palms of his hands feel clammy. But that lazily, frighteningly impersonal voice went on:

“Anyway, you don’t have to make up your mind in a hurry if you don’t want to. Hoppy ‘11 keep you company if you don’t mind waiting till I come back, so you won’t be lonely. It’s rather a lonely place otherwise, you know. We were only saying the other day that a bloke could sit here and scream the skies down, and nobody would hear him. Not that you’d have anything to scream about of course …”

“Wot is this job?” asked the man hoarsely.

Simon flicked the ash from his cigarette and hid the sparkle of excitement in his eyes.

“Just telling us some of these odd things we want to know.”

The man’s lips clamped and relaxed spasmodically, and his broad chest moved with the strain of his breathing. He stood with his chin drawn in, and his eyes peered up from under a ledge of sullen shadow.

“Well,” he said. “Go on.”

“Who was the girl friend?”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

The voice was soft and musical, startlingly unlike the harsh growl that Simon’s ears had been attuned to, and it came from behind him.

The Saint spun round.

She stood in the open doorway, her feet astride with a hint of boyish swagger, still in her soiled overalls, one hand in the trouser pocket, with the yellow curls turn-Ming around her exquisitely moulded face, a slight smile on her red lips. Her eyes, he discovered, now that Ik- saw them open for the first time, were a dark midnight grey—almost the same shade as the automatic he held steadily levelled at his chest.

For three seconds the Saint stood rigidly spellbound. And then a slow smile touched the corners of his mouth in response.

“Well, darling,” he murmured, “what is your name?”

V

“You ought to be a detective, Mr Templar,” she said. “I don’t have to ask you yours.”

“But you have an advantage. We’ve tried checking up on your lorries, but you always send them out with fake number plates and no other identification, so it’s rather difficult. I have to suffer for being honest.”

“Or for not being so careful,” she said. “By the way, will you tell your friend to do something about his hands?”

Simon looked round. Mr Uniatz was still frozen as the interruption had caught him, with his mouth hanging open and his right hand arrested halfway to the armpit holster where his Betsy nestled close to his heart. His eyes welcomed the Saint with an agonized plea for guidance, and Simon took his wrist and put his hand gently down.

“Leave it alone for a minute, Hoppy,” he said. “We don’t want the lady to start shooting… .” His gaze turned back to the girl. “That is, if she can shoot,” he added thoughtfully.

“Don’t worry,” she said calmly. “I can shoot.”

The Saint’s glance measured the distance.

“It’s about six yards,” he observed. “And a lot of people have mistaken ideas about how easy it is to pot a moving target with an automatic at six yards.”

“Would you like to try me?”

Simon poised his cigarette end between his forefinger and thumb and flipped it sideways. It struck Hoppy’s discarded bottle, over by the settee, with a faint plunk! and sent up a tiny fountain of sparks.

“Hit that,” he said.

The muzzle of the gun swung away from his body, but it was only for an instant. She fired without seeming to aim, and the automatic was aligned on the Saint’s breastbone again before the crash of the explosion had stopped rattling in his ears, but the bottle was spattered in fragments over the carpet.

The Saint nodded to Hoppy.

“She can shoot,” he remarked. “She’s been practising.”

“It’s not much use having a gun if you don’t.”

“You’ve been reading some good books,” said the Saint, and his smile was serene but watchful. “It looks as if you have what is known as the Bulge—for the time being anyway. So where do we go from here? Would you like us to sing and dance for you? Hoppy’s just discovered that he can yodel, and he’s dying for an audience.”

“I’m afraid we haven’t time for that. Jopley–-“

The driver came out of his temporary stupor. He thrust himself forward and retrieved his gun from the Saint’s pocket and shuffled crabwise around the room in the direction of the door, keeping well clear of the girl’s line of fire. Remembering the stage at which their conversation had been interrupted, the Saint could understand why he had not been so quick to seize his opportunity as might have been expected, and a malicious twinkle came into his gaze.

“What—you don’t want him, do you?” he said. “We thought we’d do you a good turn and take him off your hands.”

“I came back for him,” she said, “so I suppose I do want him.”

Simon acknowledged the argument with a slight movement of his head.

“You didn’t waste much time about it either,” he said appreciatively. “How did you track him down—by smell?”

“I followed you. I pulled into a side turning in West Holme and waited to see if you’d go that way. Then I just kept behind you. It wasn’t difficult.”

It didn’t sound very difficult when the trick was explained. The Saint sighed ruefully at the reflection of his own thoughtlessness.

“That’s the worst of lorries,” he complained. “It’s so hard to notice what’s behind you. Something ought to be done about it. … But I hope you’ll take care of Algernon if you’re borrowing him. We were just starting to get matey.”

“I heard you,” she said.

“Yus.” Jopley’s voice was loud and grating. “Goin’ ter burn me feet, that’s ‘ow they were goin’ ter get matey. I’ve a good mind–-“

“You haven’t,” said the girl evenly. “We’ll leave things like that to gentlemen like Mr Templar.”

The Saint smiled at her.

“We’ve got a secondhand rack and some thumbscrews in the cellar too,” he said. “But I prefer boiling people down with onions and a dash of white wine. It makes quite a good clear soup, rather like madrilene.”

She really did look like something out of a fairy tale, he thought, or like a moment of musical comedy dropped miraculously into the comfortable masculine furnishings of the Old Barn, with the perfect proportions of her slender body triumphing even over that shabby suit of dungarees and her face framed in its setting of spun gold; but there was nothing illusory about the unfaltering alertness of those dark grey eyes or the experienced handling of the gun she held. The only uncertain thing about her was the smile that lingered about her lips.

She said: “I’m glad you didn’t get me here.”

“But you’re here now,” said the Saint. “So couldn’t we make up for lost time?”

His hand moved towards his breast pocket, but the two guns that covered him moved more quickly. Simon raised his eyebrows.

“Can’t I have a cigarette?”

“Take them out slowly.”

Simon took out his case slowly, as he was ordered, and opened it.

“Can I offer you one?”

“We haven’t got time.”

“You’re not going?”

“I’m afraid we’ve got to.” Her acting was as light and polished as his own. “But you’re coming with us.”

The Saint was still for a moment, with the flame of his lighter burning without a quiver under the end of his cigarette. He drew the end of the cigarette to a bright red and extinguished the flame with a measured jet of smoke.

“But what about Algernon?” he said. “Are you sure he won’t be jealous?”

“You’re not coming as far as that. We’ve got to get back to your car, and we don’t want any trouble. As long as your friend stays here and doesn’t interfere we shan’t have any trouble. I just want you to come down and see us off.”

“You hear that, Hoppy?” said the Saint. “Any fancy work from you, and I get bumped off.”

“That,” said the girl grimly, “is the idea.”

Simon weighed his prospects realistically. He hadn’t exaggerated the solitude of their surroundings: a pitched battle with machine guns at the Old Barn would have caused less local commotion than letting off a handful of squibs in the deepest wastes of the Sahara. There was nothing to neutralize the value of those two automatics by the door if the fingers on their triggers chose to become dictatorial—and the experience of a lifetime had taught the Saint to be highly conservative about the chances he took in calling a bluff from the wrong side of a gun. Apart from which, he was wondering whether he wanted to make any change in the arrangements… .

As if he were trying to find arguments for accepting the bitterness of defeat his eyes turned a little away from the girl to a point in space where they would include a glimpse of the face of the lorry driver. He had sown good seed there, he knew, even if he had been ‘ balked of the quick harvest he had hoped for… . And on the outskirts of his vision, removing all doubt, he saw Jopley’s sullen features screwed up in a grotesque wink… .

“We always see our visitors off the premises,” said the Saint virtuously. “Are you sure you won’t have one for the road?”

“Not tonight.”

Either he was setting new records in immortal imbecility, Simon realized as he led the way down the steep winding lane, or the threads that had baffled him for the past three weeks were on the point of coming into his reach; and some irrational instinct seemed to tell him that it was not the former. He had no inkling then of how gruesomely and from what an unexpected angle his hunch was to be vindicated.

The beam of his own torch, held in the girl’s hand, shone steadily on his back as he walked and cast his elongated shadow in a long oval of light down the track. The decision was taken now—whatever he might have done to turn the tables back in the Old Barn, out there in the empty night with the torchlight against him and two guns at his back there was no trick he could play that would fall far short of attempted suicide.

They came down to the road, and he saw the lights of his car parked a little way past the turning. Jopley got in first and took the wheel; and then the girl slipped into the seat beside him, still holding the Saint in the centre of the flashlight’s ring of luminance. Simon stood by the side of the car and smiled into the light.

“You still haven’t told me your name, darling,” he said.

“Perhaps that’s because I don’t want you to know it.”

“But how shall I know who it is when you call me up? You are going to call me up, aren’t you? I’m in the London telephone directory, and the number here is Lyndhurst 9965.” He lingered imperceptibly over the figures—but that was for Jopley’s benefit. “Sometime when you’re not so busy I’d like to take you out in the moonlight and tell you how beautiful you are.”

“There’s no moon tonight,” she said, “so you’ll want the torch to get home with.”

The light spun towards him, and he grabbed for it automatically. By the time he had fumbled it into his hands the lights of the car were vanishing round the next bend in the road.

The Saint made his way slowly back up the hill. So that was that, and his wisdom or folly would be proved one way or the other before long. He grinned faintly at the thought of the expression that would come over Peter Quentin’s face when he heard the news. She really would be worth a stroll in the moonlight, too, if they weren’t so busy… .