The Saint Meets His Match (16 page)

And it might be wise to
wheedle

Baron de Bathmat Boil.’

Then the King rose up in
anger

And seared them with his
gaze:

‘You
 
have
 
taken
 
the
 
wine and
 
the
 
laughter,

The pride and the grace of
days;

‘The last fair woman is
faded,

And the last man dead for
shame,

But a dog from the gutter
shall serve me

Before this man you name.’

They heard, and did not
answer;

They heard, and did not
bend;

And he saw their frozen
stillness

And knew it was the end.

Basil de Bathmat Dilswipe
Boil

They brought upon a day,

And the King gave him the
accolade

And turned his face away.

And saw beyond his windows

The tattered flags
unfurled;

And on his brow was a
crown of iron
   

And the weariness of the
world.”

“What’s that supposed
to be?” asked the girl blankly.

“If you don’t recognize poetry when you
hear it,” said
the Saint severely,
“you are beyond salvation. But I’ll
admit it’s rather an amorphous product—my feelings got too strong for
gentle satire as I went along. If you saw a -paper the other day, you’ll notice
that a sometime pacifist has recently received a knighthood. A violent atheist
will
probably be the next Archbishop of Canterbury, and a confirmed
teetotaller is going to be the chairman of the
next Liquor Commission. After which I shall put my
head in a gas oven.”

Jill Trelawney selected two
lumps of sugar from a silver
bowl.

“Something seems to
have upset you,” she remarked.

“The bleary
organization of this wall-eyed world is
always
upsetting me. It would upset anyone who hadn’t
been
spavined from birth.”

“But apart from
that?”

“Apart from
that,” said Simon Templar luxuriously,
“I
feel that life is very good just now. I have about a hun
dred thousand francs in my pocket, waiting to be trans
lated into English as soon as the banks open in the morn
ing. I have had a drive in the country. I have discovered
that, if all else fails, I can always earn an honest living
as an inspector of typewriters. I have bathed, changed,
and refreshed myself from my toils and travels with a
trio of truly superb kippers cooked with a dexterity that
might have made me famous as a chef. My latest poetic
masterpiece gives me great satisfaction. And finally, I
have your charming company. What more could any man
ask?”

He sat at ease in the
comfortable little flat near Sloane
Square, which he
had established long ago as a reserve
base against the
day when a hue and cry might make his
home in Upper
Berkeley Mews too hot to hold him. A cup
of
coffee stood in front of him and a cigarette was be
tween
his fingers; and, across the table, he looked into
the
golden eyes of Jill Trelawney, and made his speech.

“But, Jill,” he
protested, “there is a far-away look about
you.
Is it indigestion or love?”

She smiled abstractedly.

“I’m thinking about
Essenden,” she said.

“So it’s love,”
said the Saint.

“I’m wondering——
”

“Seriously, why? In
the last twenty-four hours we’ve
devoted ourselves entirely
to Essenden. Personally, I’m
ready to give the subject
a rest. We’ve done our stuff,
for the moment. The egg,
so to speak, is on hatch. The
worm is on the hook. All
we can do now, for a while, is to
sit tight and
wait.”

“Do you think he’ll
rise?”

“I’ve told
you,” said the Saint extravagantly, “he’ll rise
like a loaf overloaded with young and vigorous yeast.
He’ll rise so high that pheasants and red herrings won’t
be in the same street with him. When he’s finished rising,
he’ll have such an altitude that he’ll have to climb a lad
der to take
his shoes off. That’s what I say. Take it from
me, Jill.”

The girl stirred her
coffee reflectively.

“All the same,”
she said, “like all fishing, it’s a gamble.”

“Not with that fish
and that bait, it isn’t,” answered
the
Saint. “It’s a cinch. Look here. We put the wind up his lordship. We fan
into his pants a vertical draught
strong enough to
lift him through his hat. There’s no
error about that.
So what can he do? He must either
(a)
sit tight and get ready to face
the music, (
b
) go out and
get run over by a bus, or
(c) prepare a counter-attack.
Well, he’s not likely to do
(a). If he does
(b),
we’re
saved a lot of
trouble and hard work. If he does
(c) ——
”

“Yes,” said the girl. “If he
does (c) ——”

“He plays right into our hands. He comes
out of balk.
And once he’s in play, we can
make our break. Burn
it——
!”

Simon put out his cigarette
and leaned forward.

“This isn’t like you,
Jill,” he said. “It isn’t like any
thing
I’ve ever heard about you; and it certainly isn’t a
bit
like the form you were showing this time last week.
Don’t tell me your
nerve’s going soft in the small of the
back,
because I shan’t believe you.”

“But what’s he likely to do?”

Simon shrugged.

“Heaven knows,”
he said. “I tell you, our job is just
to
stand around the landscape and wait. And who cares?”

Jill Trelawney lighted a
cigarette and smiled.

“You’re right, Simon
Templar,” she said. “I’m getting
morbid. I’m starting to
get the idea that things have been
just a
bit too easy for me—all along. You know how much
I’ve got away with already, and you ought to know that
nobody ever gets away with the whole works for
ever.”

“I do,” said the
Saint cheerfully.

She nodded absently. For a
moment the tawny eyes
looked right through him.
It was extraordinarily humili
ating, and at the same
time provocative, that feeling
which, the eyes gave him
for an instant—that, for a mo
ment, he was not there at
all, or she was not there at all. Although she heard him, she was quite alone
with what she was thinking.

And then she saw him again.

“Do you know, you’re
the last partner I ever thought I should have,” she said; and the Saint
inhaled gently.

“I shouldn’t be
surprised.”

“And yet … you
remember when you reminded me
of that boy of mine back
in the States?” The golden eyes
absorbed his smile.
“That was a mean crack
…
I sup
pose I deserved it.”

“You did.”

“It made a difference.”

Simon raised his eyebrows;
but the mockery was with
out malice.

“After which,” he
murmured, “you shot Stephen
Weald.”

“Wouldn’t you have
done the same?”

“I should. Exactly the same. And that’s
the point. You
might have left it to me, but
I stood aside because I
figured he was
your onion… . Which was half-witted,
if you come to think of it, because if we’d kept him we
could have made him squeal. But who am I to spoil
sport.”

“I know.”

“But we go on with
the good work, so why worry?”

She nodded slowly.

“Yes, we go on. Maybe
it won’t be long now.”

“And that boy of
yours?”

“He thinks I’m travelling around improving
my mind.”
She laughed. “I suppose
I am, if you look at it that way… .”

And there was a silence.

And in that simple silence
began an understanding
that needed no explanations. For the Saint
always knew
exactly what to leave unsaid… . And when, presently,
he reached
out a long arm to crush his last cigarette into
an ashtray, glanced at the clock, and stood up, the move
ment fitted spontaneously into the comfortable
quiet
which had settled down upon the
evening.

“Do you
realize,” he said easily, “that’s it’s nearly mid
night, and we’ve had a busy day?”

Her smile thanked him, and
he remembered it after
she had left the room and
he sat by the fire smoking a
final cigarette and
meditating the events of the last twen
ty-four
hours.

Adventures to the adventurous. Simon Templar
called
himself an adventurer. What other
people called him
is nobody’s
business. Certainly he had had what he wanted, in more ways than one, and the
standard of enterprise
and
achievement which he had set himself from the very
beginning of his career showed no signs of
slacking off. It
was only recently that he had started to realize that
there
was more for him to do in life than he
had ever known.
… And yet, just
then, he was quite contented. Simon
Templar’s
philosophical outlook on life was his strong
suit. It kept him young. As long as something interesting
was happening he was quite happy. He was quite
happy
that night.

For complete contentment he required
well-balanced
alternations of excitement and
peaceful self-satisfac
tion. At the
beginning of his cigarette he was enjoying
the peaceful self-satisfaction. Halfway through the ciga
rette, the front door bell rang curtly and
crisply, and the
Saint came slowly to
his feet with a speculative little
frown.

He was not expecting to
receive callers at that address,
apart from tradesmen,
because it had never been regis
tered in his own name. And in any case, when he
came
back to London this time there had been
no notices in
the newspapers to say that Mr. Simon Templar had re
turned to town and would be delighted to hear from
any
friends and/or acquaintances who
cared to look him up.
For obvious
reasons. The Saint had never been notorious
for hiding his light under any unnecessary bushels, but
he always knew precisely when to remain discreetly
in
the background. He had learnt the
art in his cradle, and
this was one of
the periods when he applied it energetical
ly. It was therefore a practical certainty that the visitor would be
unwelcome; but Simon opened the door with a
bland smile, for he was always interested to meet any
trouble that happened to be coming his way.

“Why, if it isn’t
Claud Eustace!” he exclaimed, and stood aside to allow the caller to
enter.

“Yes, it’s me,”
said Mr. Teal heavily.

He came in, and oozed
through the miniature hall
into the sitting room.
Simon Templar followed him in.

“What can I do for
you? Do you want a tip for the Two Thousand, or have you come to borrow
money?”

Inspector Teal carefully
unwrapped a wafer of chew
ing gum and posted -it in
his red face.

“Saint,” said
Teal drowsily, “I hear you’ve been a
naughty
boy again.”

“Not me,” said
the Saint. “You must be thinking of
someone
else. I’ll admit I’ve been to Paris, but——
”

Teal’s lower jaw ruminated
rhythmically.

“Yes,” he said,
“some of it was in Paris.”