Catch the Saint (11 page)

“How did you get in
that place?” Julie asked.

“Oh, I decoyed a
constable, picked a lock, then just pulled out m
y flashlight and
settled down to go through Cyril’s files. Then I
put everything back just the way it had been before I got there,
locked the door behind me, and went home and had
a nightcap.”
Julie continued to
stare at him.

“I’ve been in such a
daze,” she said. “I’ve let you take charge as
if you had a
right to, and yet you still haven’t told me anything
about yourself. Except now you talk about burgling an art gallery
as if it were like making a phone call. And the
way you got that
recording—”

“I told you my real
name,” he said. “Apparently it didn’t ring
a
bell. I may have to get a new press agent. Would it help if I
mentioned
that a few people also call me the Saint?”

He hadn’t actually
expected her to give an imitation of a punctured balloon, but that was the
approximate result.

CHAPTER 8

“There it is!”
Julie cried, scooting forward on the car seat.
“There,
I can see the sign!”

“The Happy
Huntsman,” Simon acknowledged blandly, with
out easing the pressure
of his foot on the accelerator.

Julie’s head turned to keep her eyes on the old
inn as the Hirondel
sped past it. Over her
pretty face came contours of dismay
such
as might distort the countenance of a lady watching her
fallen handbag disappear in the wake of an ocean
liner.

“Why didn’t you
stop?” she asked unbelievingly.

“Terrible place,” Simon remarked,
jerking his head back in the
direction of the
now-vanished building. “Even the huntsman
wasn’t really happy there, by the look on his face.”

Julie stiffened her back
and glowered at the road, a slender
band of pavement
which had zigzagged through a brief kink
where it passed the
fieldstone structure of The Happy Huntsman,
but
now flowed smoothly as an old river through rich pastures
grazed by lazy
cows.

“You’ve been making a
joke out of this ever since we started
out
from London this morning,” she said. “I’m sorry I can’t
fancy this a picnic, as you seem to. We must have spent at
least
an hour and
a half over lunch when we could have got by just as
well on a sandwich, and at one tenth the cost. How you can even keep
this car on the road after all that wine, I can’t imagine. And
now you’ve roared right past the one place we know
of that’s
near my brother.”

“You underestimate my
capacity to incorporate wine harmo
niously into my system as much as you
underestimate my good
judgement,” said
the Saint placidly.

Julie glanced at the chiseled lines of his
tanned face against the
blurred background
of sky and green fields. His strong fingers
lay easily but with perfect control along the steering wheel of the
powerful car. She could not keep her eyes on him
without being
tempted into renewed
confidence. Her voice went on almost
pleadingly after a moment,
nervous strain giving way to an only
slightly sarcastic
supplication: “My brother. Adrian. Remember
him?
He’s a prisoner around here somewhere.”

“And we’ll have a
much better chance of finding him,” Simon answ
ered,
“if we don’t stay at an inn which Caffin considers a
landmark. If we’d stopped there we might very well get found
ourselves—by Pargit if he comes out to check on your brother’s progress in his
artistic endeavours. Also, Caffin and his mob may even have connections with
the place. And furthermore, if you’re s
till
not satisfied, I’d rather not advertise our presence in the
neighbourhood anyway.”

“I’m
satisfied,” Julie sighed grudgingly. “Where are we go
ing?”

“To the nearest hotel that offers decent
accommodation to a bird watcher and his nature-loving sister. There happens to
be
one…”

“Sister?” she
echoed.

“Yes, sister.”
He defined: “Sister: A female born to the same
parents as another
person. Also, a nun or head nurse. But I had
in mind the first meaning
of the word. Unless you’re tired of being somebody’s sister, in which case I’d
be glad to take you along
as my bride. You’ve been
Adrian’s sister for so long you might
find a change of
roles refreshing.”

She found it hard to
resist the light-hearted sparkle in his eyes, but she made herself respond
coldly.

“I think I’d better
start as your sister.”

“And work your way
up,” agreed the Saint encouragingly.
“Not
a bad idea, if you can remember not to blow the gaff by calling me ‘darling.’
“

“That’s one thing I
shall
never
call you,” she announced
primly.

The highway snaked gently
from the open pastures into a
grove of tall old trees,
where gilt lettering on the varnished wood
of another sign
announced the presence of the Golden Fleece Ho
tel.

Simon slowed down and came to a stop in front
of the building,
whose red-shuttered windows
peered as quietly out through the
trees
as did the eyes of an old man who regarded them from a
bench outside the public bar.

“Remember,” Simon
told Julie, “bird watchers. Brother and
sister.”

“What name do we
use?” she asked.

He glanced again at the
name of. the hotel.

“Jason,” he
decided. “Simon and Julie Jason.”

They strolled from the car
across the lush green lawn to the
old fellow in the chair, who
acknowledged their arrival with an almost indetectible inclination of his bald head.
His chin was less
bald than his head, for it
looked as if he had shaved himself with
a chip of poorly sharpened flint
that had left patches of stubble in
some
areas and in others had scraped away most of the skin. His
eyes were red
as he waited to see what the world and the road and
the hours would bring.

“Good afternoon,”
Simon greeted him cheerfully. “We’ve
come
from London to watch birds.”

The elder received this
news with an impassivity evolved
through many years of witnessing every form of
human folly.

“There do be birds
here,” he pronounced.

“We’ll be walking
through the woods and fields studying
them,” Simon
explained further, satisfied that this information
would
be spread throughout the countryside before nightfall.
“Are
you the owner of this establishment?”

Seeing that this Londoner
was a man of poor but flattering
judgement, the old man
brightened up a little, admitted that he had no business connection with the
hotel, and pointed the way
to the main entrance.

Simon made quick work of
getting a pair of rooms for himself
and Julie, admitting no more than their
aliases, their fictitious re
lationship, a
bogus address, and their avian interests. If the
plump soft-spoken woman who registered them had any doubts about their
identity or purposes she kept them to herself as she ushered them up the
creaking stairs to their adjoining accommo
dations.

“I hope you’ll be
comfortable,” she said, and left them, while
a
husky teen-aged girl brought in two suitcases which she would
not permit Simon to touch until she had deposited them at his
feet.

Every floorboard and timber
of the Saint’s room seemed to
have slowly gone its
separate eccentric way during the centuries since the inn had been built, but
the crazy tilts and angles of the
place had a kind of
informal friendliness that no shiny modern
motel
would ever achieve. Simon put his elbows on the warped
windowsill,
from where he could look out over his parked car
and
the surrounding landscape, and called to Julie, whose head
soon appeared at the neighbouring window.

“We’d better get
going,” he said. “The late afternoon is a very
good time for finding birds.”

The particular bird’s nest
which they were seeking was much
less elusive than many a
naturalist’s objective. First Simon had
the
directions that had brought them this far, and next he had
the benefit of a local’s knowledge of the terrain, for the old man
he had first spoken to on their arrival was still on his bench when
they came out of the hotel in their hiking clothes.

“I wonder if I could
bother you for a little information?” Simon
asked him. “I
understand that a blue-billed twit was seen recently
between here and The Happy Huntsman. An acquaintance of
mine says he heard they were nesting near an old
stone farm
house. I don’t believe
anyone lives there. A road leads up to it
between stone walls, and it has something like a red well in
front.”

The old man pursed his
lips and rubbed the top of his cranial
dome.

“Sounds like the old
Benham farm,” he mused. “But I never
heard
of no what-did-you-call-ems there.”

“Blue-billed
twits,” Simon repeated gravely. “They were sup
posed to be extinct. That’s why we’re keen to get on their
trail
right away.”

“You eat them?”
asked the elder.

“No,” Simon said
airily. “We just watch them.” The old man’s
subtle
change of expression implied that Simon had just admit
ted
to some indecency which, however, could not be openly con
demned in a foreigner. “Could you tell us how to get
to the Ben
ham farm?” the Saint asked.

“Just down the road
about a mile, on your left. You’ll see the
entrance
opposite a sign for The Happy Huntsman. But you can’t see the house from the
highway.”

Simon located the wall-bordered old side road
that the man
had described, went past it,
turned round at an inconspicuous place, and drove past the road’s entrance
again, parking a quar
ter of a mile
west of it so that he and Julie could reconnoitre with
a flanking movement through the woods.

“If you like,”
he told her, “you can wait in the car.”

She considered that
suggestion unworthy of a reply, and strode
off
ahead of Simon into the woods until she stepped in a hole and
fell to her knees. He lifted her, red-faced, to her feet,
and led the
way north from the highway along what
seemed to be a public
path. Before very long,
they came to the top of a knoll shaded by
tall
trees, and far down to the right across an open field they
could see a stone house.

“That must be
it!” Julie said excitedly.

Simon could see the trace of the old road leading
up to the
house. Lifting the field-glasses
which hung round his neck, he focussed on the house itself. Stone. Two storeys.
Facing south to
wards the highway.
And in front of it, a trace of something red
which must have been the roof of a well.

Satisfied, he stood like a
general planning a battle. The cleared
fields
to the north of the house gave no cover. But behind the
building were thick woods, extending west to join the
forested
area where they were now standing.

“When it’s dark,” he said as much to
himself as to her, “I’ll
come back
this way, cross over through those trees to the north, and come up behind the
house.”

“And then what?”
Julie challenged. “Take it by storm?”

“Take it in my own
way,” he said calmly, raising the binocu
lars
to his eyes again.

“Just knock on the
door and tell them to surrender?” she per
sisted.
“What if there are a dozen of them down there? Do you
see anybody?”

“No, but I’m sure
they’d never let Adrian get lonely. They
keep
to themselves, I imagine, in those two upstairs rooms Caffin
mentioned on the tape. Not nature-lovers, these boys.”

“Then how will you
get in, or get them out?”