The Saint in Trouble (6 page)

Simon was saved from finding an instant reply by the arrival of their drinks. When he had ordered their meal, he asked: “What do you do for your yacht and your suite at the hotel and that rock on your finger?”

“I peddle genius.”

“You what?”

Samantha lowered her empty glass and casually reached across and appropriated Simon’s.

“I run an employment agency called Genius Inc. We don’t handle anyone with an IQ of less than 150.”

Simon retrieved his half-empty glass and placed it well out of her reach.

“But surely geniuses don’t need people to find them jobs?”

“You’d be surprised how stupid really brilliant people can be. They’re usually working for about a third of what they’re really worth. We help them to get their market value.”

The waiter brought the artichokes barigoule, a speciality of the house, and they waited while he served it. Samantha reached over and gouged out a sample from the Saint’s plate. Simon watched in amused disbelief as she ate it and then proceeded to attack her own.

“How was it?”

“Delicious.”

“How’s yours?” Simon’s fork sped towards her plate but she parried it with the adroitness of a fencing master.

“About the same.”

“Is that why you’re here, prospecting for genius?”

“We go to all the scientific congresses, that’s the kind of talent that pays off today.”

Samantha’s hand absentmindedly moved towards the Saint’s wineglass, but he managed to capture it in time.

“It certainly seems to have paid off for you.”

“I was in a hurry. I was hungry until I was fifteen. Now I play to win.”

“You certainly play hard. When do you get your black belt?”

Samantha started, and for a moment Simon thought he was going to face a blank denial, but she only lowered her head in mock shame.

“So you guessed.”

“It wasn’t exactly the greatest piece of detection work since Sherlock Holmes. And Demmell-who, or rather what, is he?”

“Demmell is a fool, but a useful one. He works for me, mainly I think because he knows I’m not attracted to him and he’s continually trying to prove himself. Male ego and all that. All the same, I couldn’t have you beating him up. One has a duty to one’s employees, you know.”

“Of course, everyone knows that.”

If Samantha caught the Saint’s sarcasm she showed no signs of being offended by it.

“Was it your idea that he should tear my room apart?” he enquired casually.

“Oh no, never. I’m afraid he’s rather impetuous.”

Somehow the conversation was not running along the lines he had sketched out for it, and he found her mixture of businesslike frankness and wide-eyed innocence rather hard to take. Simon leaned across and took her hand in his.

“Would you like to marry me?”

Samantha helped herself to some more of the Saint’s artichoke and smiled.

“I can’t wait. But we’ll have to work out how I can divorce two husbands without convicting myself of bigamy.”

The Saint toyed with the idea of proposing an ingenious double murder, but realized that this line of badinage was getting nowhere. He decided that since she must have had her own motives for accepting his invitation, he might as well play along until she was forced to take the initiative.

But in spite of his restraint, the conversation remained on a plane of sophisticated triviality, until the meal was finished and the head waiter was routinely proposing coffee and liqueurs.

“Why don’t we go back to my suite at the hotel?” Samantha said. “It’s got a balcony with a better view than this.”

“I’d love to see it,” said the Saint, and asked for his bill.

The man was concerned, he was unaccustomed to guests who ate each other’s food, drank from each other’s glass, and then left in a hurry.

“Is everything all right, monsieur?”

Simon stood, and Samantha remained seated only long enough to finish the last of the wine.

“Everything is just fine,” he replied, peeling the requisite notes from his roll and adding a large tip. “It’s just that my wife worries if I’m late for dinner.”

The maitre d’hotel smiled uncertainly, and was still trying to decipher the Saint’s meaning long after he and Samantha had left the room, finally consoling himself with the thought that, as everyone knew, all foreigners were insane.

Gaby also was somewhat surprised to see them emerge so soon, but unlike the waiter, he didn’t look for reasons. Simon glanced at his watch as he followed Samantha into the back of the car. Only about two and a half hours had elapsed since they had left the hotel, which was not long for a dinner engagement in the circumstances. But the Saint’s intuition told him that the final good nights were not racing up on him.

Samantha nestled close, her head resting on his shoulder, and they spoke sparingly as Gaby obeyed his instructions and sent the Buick speeding back to Cannes.

Samantha’s suite occupied a comer of the floor, providing a panorama of the bay town from the floodlit prison of the Man in the Iron Mask on the island of Ste. Margu6rite on the left to the Suquet in the western background. She made no move to call for room service. Her arms hung loosely around the Saint’s shoulders, and he could feel the warmth of her breath on his cheek.

Her voice barely rose above a whisper.

“If you’re Sebastian Tombs of the blackboards and cobwebby laboratories, I’m Florence Nightingale.”

Simon’s lips brushed hers in a fleeting kiss.

“You minister most ably, Miss Nightingale.”

Samantha drew back slightly, looking directly into his eyes.

“Who are you really?”

“My name is Simon Templar.”

The revelation of his true identity had, in the past, been known to provoke a number of reactions-fear, anger, and disbelief being the usual ones. But rarely had he experienced the response that Samantha displayed. She laughed.

“Simon … The Saint! Thank God, I thought you might be the Law. But you are working for Maclett?”

“Yes.”

Samantha stopped laughing and looked thoughtful, moving away slightly.

“We must get together.”

Simon’s arms encircled her waist.

“I’m all for togetherness.”

She ignored that interpretation for the moment.

“Help me persuade him to go and work in Moscow, and I’ll split my fee with you.” Samantha removed herself from his embrace and sat on the arm of a sofa.

“You sell people to the Communists?”

Samantha lit a cigaret and considered the glowing end pensively.

“Only a few of the best. Listen, it’s not such a bad deal. The equivalent of two hundred thousand dollars a year, the big flat in Moscow, the dacha in the country, the box at the Bolshoi, and the big car, with no traffic jams because nobody else has one.”

The Saint laughed.

“Sam, I’m afraid you’re a cynic.”

“That’s just a name romantics call realists.” She walked slowly back to him, her arms sliding up the front of his jacket and resting on his shoulders. “Let’s talk it over.”

Her lips moved to meet his, stopping a fraction of an inch away.

“Keep talking,” Simon murmured. “I don’t make up my mind in a hurry.”

In the event, the ensuing conversation was less than verbose, but it still gave the Saint no indication of what else Samantha had hoped to gain from it. Or if, indeed, there was anything …

He was sleeping peacefully in his own room when he was awakened by an insistent knocking on the door. As he rolled out of bed, a glance at his wrist watch showed him that it was nine in the morning-a not unreasonable hour for visitation, except that he was not expecting one.

The visitor was Emma, and she confronted him furiously.

“Where were you all night? I kept calling you.”

“I was a bit late getting in. I had to go to an Arab chum’s bar mitzvah.”

She stormed in as he stood hospitably aside.

“What’s going on? My father got a message to meet you at the port at half-past nine-“

“Which port?”

“I don’t know, but it said opposite the Hotel Mediterranee. I found the note in his room, so I thought I’d find out if you’d already left. Why-“

The Saint reversed his welcome abruptly, turning his back towards the door.

“I’m leaving now, as soon as I can get dressed. I’m afraid I overslept. Sorry, I just haven’t time to explain. I’ll see you later.”

He physically pushed her out, unceremoniously but necessarily. As he ran an electric razor over his chin, splashed cold water on his face, and threw on the nearest shirt and slacks, he was cursing himself more than Samantha.

“Very neat.” His thoughts were racing. “You keep me occupied while your people organize a snatch.”

In front of the hotel, he looked around desperately for a taxi, for in such a locality, at that hour, the world was barely coining to life. But as if in answer to his prayer, a white Buick seemed to materialise.

“Le quai St. Pierre-et gazez!”

Gaby nodded, wrenching the wheel almost full circle and sending them squealing out of the hotel grounds. Ignoring the protesting horns and flashing lights of the cars that tried to block his way, he sped the taxi along the Boulevard.

Professor Maclett had, probably, chosen to make the rendezvous as a morning stroll along the sea front. Even now, it was not absolutely impossible for the Saint to keep his mythical appointment close to time. The early traffic on the Croisette was scanty, and in only a minimum of minutes Gaby was pulling into the parking lot beside the quay opposite the hotel.

The Saint was out of the car before it had stopped, his eyes frantically scanning the peaceful morning scene as he hurried along the wharf. Then, through a gap in the sardine-packed rows of boats, he saw an open launch creaming its way towards the open sea, and even from that distance he could identify the burly figure and flaming hair of Professor Maclett standing in the stern.

Gaby had climbed out of his cab and come up beside the Saint, following the line of his eyes. Simon turned to him.

“I need a boat. A fast boat.”

Gaby pointed towards a speedboat berthed a little farther along the jetty. It was typical of the craft that earned a living for their owners by towing water skiers around the bay. A man was kneeling in the bow adjusting a mooring rope.

Gaby called to him: “Bonjour, Albert!”

The man turned, recognised him, and came aft to climb up onto the jetty.

“I want to hire your boat,” said the Saint.

“At what time, m’sieu? I have a client at eleven.”

“Now!”

Simon thrust a roll of hundred-franc notes into the man’s hand, and had jumped down onto the boat and cast off while the startled owner was still counting them. He gunned the powerful engine into life and sent the boat purring out into the channel.

7

To avoid attracting the unwelcome attention of the maritime police, he had to make his way through the harbour at a speed that any Olympic swimmer could have surpassed without any exertion, and by the time he cleared the breakwater the launch he was following had taken a formidable lead.

s soon as he reached open water and was able to give the motor its head, the power of the propeller’s churning blades lifted the bow of the light fibre-glass hull clear of the water. He stood with his legs slightly bent to absorb the shock of the continual pounding as the keel jounced over innocent wavelets that seemed to turn into ridges of solid wood. His hands caressed the wheel as he automatically followed the creaming wake of the launch.

His borrowed speedboat was nimble and fast, but the launch he was trailing was no lumbering tugboat either. After a few minutes, he could estimate that he could be sure of overtaking it, but that it would be anything but a short, swift chase.

He was still trying to figure out the wherefores of the operation. Was Maclett actually being kidnapped at gunpoint? Or had he been told that he was only being ferried to a more secret meeting place?

The launch was headed east-southeast towards the two islands that lie in parallel off the point of the small peninsula where the Croisette ends, on a course that would take it through the channel between Ste. Marguerite and Ste. Honorat. It would certainly get there before he could catch it.

They were not the only vessels headed in that direction. Already a few much larger yachts were cruising towards the same channel, both from the old port and the Port Canto, under orders to take up the best anchorages while their owners and passengers breakfasted, for it was a favourite spot for the luxuriously seaborne community to spend the day, sunning and swimming well removed from the less favoured crowds on the beaches. For many of those millionaire cruisers, it was the longest voyage they ever took.

Simon judged speed and distance with the expert eye of a professional sailor. When he overhauled the launch it would be well into the channel, among several other statelier craft jockeying for position in addition to the boats already berthed there. Whatever were the intentions of the people on the launch, the Saint did not want to make his pursuit too obvious.

The Saint was uncomfortably aware that if his pursuit became unmistakable and he then had the temerity to try to head off the launch he would simply be run down, and drawing alongside was the easiest way he could imagine to collect a bullet.

The wind whipped the early warmth of the sun from his skin, pulling at his clothes and hair as the spray flung back by the bow stung his eyes. The Saint grinned at the sound of the hull smashing down on the water, at the protest of the wind in his ears, at the way the morning, so peaceful and tame just a few minutes before, had suddenly become wild and free, at the way the muscles of his arms reacted to hold the speedboat on course when it bucked like a skittish colt.

It was for such moments that the Saint lived. They were the reason for his existence, the antidote to the humdrum organised mundanity of modern life. It had often been suggested that the Saint was born out of his time, that he should have lived in the days when men carried swords at their sides, that he would have been better suited to captaining a privateer in search of galleons on the Spanish Main; that he had no place in the drab days of the twentieth century. But the Saint knew that it is not the time that matters but the people who live in it. He knew that those who spend their present plaintively recalling another’s past are not really yearning for those adventures so much as protecting themselves from the challenges of their own day. His own steed was a fast car, his frigate a speeding motor-boat, but his spirit was as free as that of any highwayman or privateer.