The Saint Around the World (17 page)

“Well, if I’m still here, I hope I can be a bit more help to you then.” The manager fumbled out a carefully folded sheet of paper and a pen. “I know it’s a frightful bore, but would you mind very much doing an autograph? I’ve got a young son who thinks you’re the greatest man who ever lived, and I’ll never hear the last of it if I let you get away without a souvenir.”

“You should have brought him up with more respectable heroes,” Simon said, writing his name.

“And that little stick-figure drawing with the halo—your Saint trademark … Would you?”

“Sure.” Simon drew it. “How do you feel about a drink?”

“Thanks, old chap, but I’ve still got a spot of work to do.” The manager recovered his pen and paper, and put out his hand. “The station officer will be looking out for you at Basra. Have a nice trip, Mr. Templar, and come back and see us.”

“Just as soon as you can make me that date with Cleopatra.”

Simon sat down again as the manager hurried away. The friendly smile faded from his tanned face as inevitably as the memory of that whole encounter would presently fade. It had been pleasant indeed, but it was still only part of the routine of travel.

And exactly three seconds later, as a direct result of it, nothing could even remotely be called routine.

His hand was grabbed off the table and practically taken away from him by a little man whom he had never seen before in his life, who pumped it and clung to it with the almost hysterical fervor of a parent greeting a- long-lost son or a politician looking for a vote.

The little man beamed from ear to ear, and his little brown eyes were bright with terror, and he said in a frantically pleading undertone: “My name’s Mortimer Usherdown. Please pretend you’re an old friend of mine. Please play along with me. Honestly, it’s one of those life-and-death things …”

“Well, Mortimer,” said the Saint automatically. “Long time no see.”

He patted Mr. Usherdown on the shoulder, and gently re-claimed his other hand. The little man with the big name sank into the nearest chair as if his knees had melted. He had a round button-nosed face that made one think of a timid gnome, topped with thinning wisps of mouse-colored hair; he might have been five years on either side of fifty. His trembling could be felt rather than seen as if he were sitting on some kind of delicate vibrator.

“Gosh, this is a break, running into you here, Simon,” he said, still with that fixed and desperate grin. “If I could have picked anyone out of the whole world to run into now, I’d have asked for you.”

He looked up abruptly, and Simon looked up with him, as two other men loomed over them, crowding close to the table with unmistakable intent to be noticed.

“Oh,” Mr. Usherdown said, as though he had momentarily forgotten them. “These are two friends of mine–-“

The two men did not look like friends of anyone, except possibly some Middle Eastern Ali ben Capone. They were obviously Arabs of some kind and did not care who knew it, since although they wore conventional Western suits of fascinatingly inaccurate fit,- with what appeared to be striped pajama tops taking the place of shirts and hanging gaily out below the hem-line of their coats, their heads were still shrouded in the traditional red-patterned cowls bound to their brows by what looked like two quoits of heavy black rope. But even making allowance for the fact that the typical seamed and aquiline Arab face, especially when bearded, has a cast of intolerant cruelty that only a Touareg mother would have no misgivings about, the two specimens that Mr. Usherdown introduced exuded less natural kindliness than any couple of their race that Simon had seen up to that date.

“This is Talib,” the little man said, indicating the taller and lankier of the two, whose suit was a couple of sizes too loose. “And Abdullah.” The other was shorter and broader, and his clothes were too tight. “This is Mr. Templar, a very old friend of mine,” Mr. Usherdown said, completing the introductions.

The two Arabs also sat down.

“I’m glad everyone’s so friendly,” murmured the Saint. “Who’s got the cards? Shall we cut for partners, Mortimer, or do you and I take these two on?”

“Talib speaks English,” Usherdown warned him quickly.

“How you do?” said the tall lanky one, to prove it.

“Mr. Templar is in the same business that I am,” Usher-down explained—or it was apparently intended for an explanation.

“Ah,” said Talib, with interest. “He is a hot dog, I bet.”

He leaned his elbows on the table with a solidity which not only underlined the impression that he was there to stay but added a certain air of possessiveness to his presence which spread out to include the Saint in its orbit.

Simon lighted a cigarette while he tried to make sure of his cue. Although Mr. Usherdown had most of the conventional earmarks of a Milquetoast type, his current state of suppressed panic reached an almost psychopathic intensity. But Talib and Abdullah, for their part, had none of the reassuring air which might have been expected even of the local counterpart of the men in white coats. They were not actually as conspicuous as their description might sound to anyone who has not seen that cosmopolitan crossroads which shuffles together not merely the costumes and countenances of Europe and Arabia but also Afghans, Indians, Pakistanis, Burmese, Thailanders, Malays, Chinese, Japanese, and every sect and subdivision in between, in what is probably the maddest mixing-bowl of this airborne age; but the aura of self-confident menace about them was as internationally obvious as that of any two dead-pan goons in a gangster movie. Yet it seemed preposterous that they could reduce even such a mild-looking person as Mr. Usherdown to something so close to quivering paralysis in such a crowded and brightly lighted modernism as the Cairo airport bar.

Simon glanced calculatingly around the swirling jabbering room, adding up a little knot of transient American GI’s, a trio of British officers identifiable even in mufti, and a couple of Egyptian policemen in uniform quietly studying everyone, and found it hard to believe that even such a frightened goblin as Mr. Usherdown wouldn’t have dared to call the bluff of two goons who tried to crowd him in such a setting. But it was still a wild possibility that had to be methodically disposed of.

He estimated the extent of Talib’s idiomatic accomplishments with another blandly analytic glance, and said: “Spill it, Mortimer. Do you want me to clobber these fugitives from a road show of Beau Geste?”

“Oh, no,” said the little man hastily. “Not on any account, please. Their religion doesn’t allow them to drink. But I’ll have a brandy, if I may.”

He was quite fast on the uptake, at any rate, or perhaps fear had lent wings to his wits as it might have to another man’s feet.

Simon stopped a passing waiter and relayed the order, along with another Peter Dawson for himself.

“What on earth are you doing here, Mort, old boy?” he asked, trying to offer another opening.

“I’ve just been up to Greece. For Hazel.”

“And how is the dear girl?”

“Who?” Mr. Usherdown looked blank for a moment. “Oh, do you mean my wife? Violet?”

“Of course,” said the Saint. “How stupid of me. I knew the name was something vegetable.”

“She’s fine. I had to leave her in Qabat.”

“That’s too bad. Or is it? Does she know about Hazel?”

Light dawned at last on Mr. Usherdown’s anxious face.

“Now I get it. You’re kidding. I was talking about hazel twigs.”

“Hazel Twiggs?” Simon repeated foggily. “I’m sorry, I still can’t seem to place her.”

“Stop pulling my leg, Simon,” pleaded the little man, with a nervous giggle. “You know what I’m talking about. Hazel twigs—for dowsing.”

“Nothing like ‘em,” agreed the Saint accommodatingly. “Although I have heard that these new-fangled fire extinguishers–-“

“People have tried a lot of new things,” said Mr. Usherdown, with beads of perspiration standing out on his upper lip. “Down in Jamaica I’ve seen it done with branches of guava. I met a chap in South Africa who did it with a clock spring. And I’ve read about a fellow in California who uses a piece of bent-up aluminum. But I still say that for sound, consistent divining, there’s nothing to beat the oldfashioned hazel twig.”

It was Simon Templar’s turn to receive a glimmer of illumination as at least a part of the dialogue suddenly lost its resemblance to an excerpt from the Mad Hatter’s tea party and became startlingly rational and clear.

“I had to see if I could get a rise out of you, Mort,” he apologized. “But you didn’t even give me a chance to ask you ‘Witch Hazel?’”

Mr. Usherdown cackled again with the giddiness of relief, and nudged Talib, whose piercing black eyes had been trying to follow the conversation from face to face like a tennis umpire watching a fast rally.

“Don’t let Mr. Templar fool you. He’s one of the best dowsers in the business—perhaps even better than I am, and there’s no one else I’d say that about. But always making a joke of it; anything for a laugh.”

“I get you,” Talib said. “Very funny man. Very wise in cracks.”

He bared his teeth in what was doubtless meant to be an appreciative grin, and succeeded in looking almost as jovial as a half-starved wolf.

The arrival of the drinks, and the business of paying for them, gave the Saint a brief respite in which to digest the exiguous crumb of information which was all that he had to show for several minutes of mild delirium.

Mr. Mortimer Usherdown, he had finally gathered, had a wife named Violet and was a water diviner by profession, and apparently wanted Simon Templar to pretend to be one too. But what this could have to do with Mr. Usherdown’s life-and-death problem, or the scarcely disguised menace of the two Arabs, was a riddle that Simon preferred to spare himself the vertigo of attempting to guess.

He sipped his Peter Dawson, while Mr. Usherdown took a large and evidently grateful gulp of brandy.

“Seriously now,” said the Saint, “what are you up to in these parts?”

“I’m working for the Emir of Qabat.”

“Should I know him too?”

“My boss,” Talib said, bowing his head and touching his forehead. “The Sheik Yusuf Loutfallah ibn Hisham. Yusuj is like in English ‘Joseph’. Loutfallah means ‘Gift of God’— like Abdullah here is ‘Servant of God’. Hisham–-“

“Never mind,” said the Saint. “Let’s just call him Joe.”

“Qabat is one of those tiny independent principalities the British helped to set up in the Middle East after the First World War,” Usherdown said. “Like Kuwait. In fact, it’s a whistle stop for some of the local planes from Basra to Kuwait … Say!” The little man’s eyes dilated with a blaze of exaggeratedly spontaneous inspiration. “I heard that BOAC man saying you might have to stop over in Basra. Why don’t you fly over to Qabat with me?”

“I don’t know,” said the Saint dubiously. “I’m still hoping I’ll be able to stay on to Karachi, and make a connection–-“

“It’s hardly anything of a side trip, by air,” Usherdown persisted, in a tone that was not’ so much persuasive as imploring. “And it’s something unique—something you’ll never run into anything like again. Besides, you might even be able to help me!”

As if suddenly afraid that he might have gone too far, he turned quickly to Talib, who was staring at him with narrowed eyes, and said: “Don’t you think the Emir would like that? Honestly, in my racket, Mr. Templar is really the greatest. If we could talk him into working with me, we might get twice as much done in half the time.”

The tall one turned and conferred in guttural Arabic with the Servant of God, whose qualifications for the job would not have been revealed by any superficial system of physiognomy; and Mr. Usherdown said to the Saint, in a voice that almost broke with the pressure of its suppressed entreaty: “If you turn me down, you can’t be the man I’ve always thought you were.”

“Very good idea,” Talib said abruptly, while Abdullah nodded. “I think the Emir will make him most welcome. You two working together must be better than one. Double or quitting, okey-doke?”

The P A system said: “Your attention, please. British Overseas Airways announces the departure of Majestic flight 904 to Karachi, Delhi, Calcutta, Rangoon, Bangkok, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, now loading from Gate One.”

Names that had woven their iridescent thread through innumerable yarns of high adventure. Simon Templar knew most of them as they really were, in their underlying squalor even more than their romantic overtones, and yet he would never quite be able to strip their syllables of a music that echoed out of a youth in which other names like Damascus and Baghdad had been only the geography of fairytales instead of their modern sordid reality. It was positively unfair, he thought, to throw those mysteriously nostalgic sounds at him when he had only been trying to get transported from one place to another with a minimum of inconvenience on the way, and a total stranger with all the appeal of a scared rabbit was trying to sucker him into some fantastic situation which he hadn’t yet begun to understand …

“Let’s talk it over on the plane,” he said, and should have known even then that he was hooked.

He took a parting swallow from his glass, while Mr. Usher-down drained the last drop from his, and stood up and led the way out.

Mr. Usherdown followed, practically clinging to his coattails like a small boy trailing his mother through a department-store sale. And in a little while they boarded the plane in the same Siamese-twin proximity, except that in jostling through one of the bureaucratic bottlenecks which still seem to be inseparable from international air travel their positions had somehow become reversed, so that it was the Saint who trailed Mr. Usherdown through the aisle of the Argonaut and was starting to follow him into a pair of seats when the tall Talib tried to push past him and take the other one. The Saint’s resistance was as decisive as a gently driven bulldozer, but it left him sitting in the chair next to Usherdown and gazing apologetically up at the Arab who glowered down at him.

“I sit here,” Talib grated.

“I don’t mind sitting here a bit, pal,” Simon insisted innocently. “You go on and get one of the good seats.”

“Plenty of room up front, gents,” sang out a cheerful steward, strategically posted to keep the passengers moving through the cabin.