The Avenging Saint (The Saint Series) Read online

  THE ADVENTURES OF THE SAINT

  Enter the Saint (1930), The Saint Closes the Case (1930), The Avenging Saint (1930), Featuring the Saint (1931), Alias the Saint (1931), The Saint Meets His Match (1931), The Saint Versus Scotland Yard (1932), The Saint’s Getaway (1932), The Saint and Mr Teal (1933), The Brighter Buccaneer (1933), The Saint in London (1934), The Saint Intervenes (1934), The Saint Goes On (1934), The Saint in New York (1935), Saint Overboard (1936), The Saint in Action (1937), The Saint Bids Diamonds (1937), The Saint Plays with Fire (1938), Follow the Saint (1938), The Happy Highwayman (1939), The Saint in Miami (1940), The Saint Goes West (1942), The Saint Steps In (1943), The Saint on Guard (1944), The Saint Sees It Through (1946), Call for the Saint (1948), Saint Errant (1948), The Saint in Europe (1953), The Saint on the Spanish Main (1955), The Saint Around the World (1956), Thanks to the Saint (1957), Señor Saint (1958), Saint to the Rescue (1959), Trust the Saint (1962), The Saint in the Sun (1963), Vendetta for the Saint (1964), The Saint on TV (1968), The Saint Returns (1968), The Saint and the Fiction Makers (1968), The Saint Abroad (1969), The Saint in Pursuit (1970), The Saint and the People Importers (1971), Catch the Saint (1975), The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace (1976), Send for the Saint (1977), The Saint in Trouble (1978), The Saint and the Templar Treasure (1978), Count On the Saint (1980), Salvage for the Saint (1983)

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2014 Interfund (London) Ltd.

  Foreword © 2014 Jean-Marc Lofficier

  Preface first published in The Avenging Saint, Fiction Publishing edition, 1964

  Publication History and Author Biography © 2014 Ian Dickerson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  ISBN-13: 9781477842638

  ISBN-10: 1477842632

  Cover design by David Drummond, www.salamanderhill.com

  CONTENTS

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  DEDICATION

  FOREWORD TO THE NEW EDITION

  PREFACE

  CHAPTER ONE: HOW SIMON TEMPLAR SANG A SONG AND FOUND SOME OF IT TRUE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  CHAPTER TWO: HOW SIMON TEMPLAR ENTERTAINED A GUEST AND SPOKE OF TWO OLD FRIENDS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  CHAPTER THREE: HOW SONIA DELMAR ATE BACON AND EGGS AND SIMON TEMPLAR SPOKE ON THE TELEPHONE

  1

  2

  3

  CHAPTER FOUR: HOW SIMON TEMPLAR DOZED IN GREEN PARK AND DISCOVERED A NEW USE FOR TOOTHPASTE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  CHAPTER FIVE: HOW SIMON TEMPLAR TRAVELLED TO SALTHAM AND ROGER CONWAY PUT UP HIS GUN

  1

  2

  3

  4

  CHAPTER SIX: HOW SIMON TEMPLAR THREW A STONE AND THE ITALIAN DELEGATE WAS UNLUCKY

  1

  2

  3

  4

  CHAPTER SEVEN: HOW SONIA DELMAR HEARD A STORY AND ALEXIS VASSILOFF WAS INTERRUPTED

  1

  2

  3

  CHAPTER EIGHT: HOW SIMON TEMPLAR BORROWED A GUN AND THOUGHT KINDLY OF LOBSTERS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  CHAPTER NINE: HOW SIMON TEMPLAR LOOKED FOR LAND AND PROVED HIMSELF A TRUE PROPHET

  1

  2

  3

  4

  CHAPTER TEN: HOW SIR ISAAC LESSING TOOK EXERCISE AND RAYT MARIUS LIGHTED A CIGAR

  1

  2

  3

  4

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: HOW SIMON TEMPLAR ENTERTAINED THE CONGREGATION AND HERMANN ALSO HAD HIS FUN

  1

  2

  3

  4

  CHAPTER TWELVE: HOW MARIUS ORGANIZED AN ACCIDENT AND MR PROSSER PASSED ON

  1

  2

  3

  4

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: HOW SIMON TEMPLAR ENTERED A POST OFFICE AND A BOOB WAS BLISTERED

  1

  2

  3

  4

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: HOW ROGER CONWAY WAS LEFT ALONE AND SIMON TEMPLAR WENT TO HIS REWARD

  1

  2

  3

  4

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: HOW SIMON TEMPLAR PUT DOWN A BOOK

  1

  PUBLICATION HISTORY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  WATCH FOR THE SIGN OF THE SAINT!

  THE SAINT CLUB

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  The text of this book has been preserved from the original edition and includes vocabulary, grammar, style, and punctuation that might differ from modern publishing practices. Every care has been taken to preserve the author’s tone and meaning, allowing only minimal changes to punctuation and wording to ensure a fluent experience for modern readers.

  To Raymond Savage

  London, May 1930

  FOREWORD TO THE NEW EDITION

  The book you hold in your hands changed my life.

  I know that sounds rather overblown, but it’s still true. Without it, I might never have become a writer. Maybe I would have been a teacher, a lawyer, or (Heaven forbid!) a banker, but not a writer,

  Because I owe it all to Leslie Charteris—and the Saint. But not quite in the way you may think.

  A bit of context is necessary before I go any further. Please bear with me while I acquaint you with the basics of the publication of the Saint in France.

  Simon made his first appearance in a mystery imprint put out by publisher Gallimard in 1935, but it was the competing Editions Fayard which, from 1938 to 1968, popularized the character in France. Since I wasn’t born until 1954, you might well ask how this is relevant. It’s like this:

  Due to contractual obligations, Gallimard had reserved the rights to the two novels it published, Meet—the Tiger! and The Saint Closes the Case, so Fayard was obliged to start their own Saint imprint with The Saint in New York as No. 1, then The Avenging Saint as No. 2. The latter was released under the title The Heroic Adventure.

  When I discovered, and began collecting, Saint books in 1967, at age thirteen, they were one of the cheapest and most entertaining series of paperbacks available on the market, endlessly reprinted since the 1940s.

  They were virtually everywhere, on the newsstands and in the bookstores, given a boost by Roger Moore’s television series, which was then playing on our small screens.

  Graced by colorful, high-design covers by the gifted Regino Bernad, most of the later volumes were loose adaptations of the American radio-plays or The New York Herald Tribune comic strips, ably rendered into French by Madeleine Michel-Tyl, whose husband, Edmond (who passed away in 1949), was himself an author of popular novels. Edmond had not only translated the first Saint books, but also Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe mysteries for Fayard.

  For the record, my very first Saint books were No. 48, Le Saint exige la tête, and No. 18, La Marque du Saint, which contained such Charteris classics as “The Man Who Was Clever” and “The Logical Adventure.�
��

  Being the kind of person I am, I immediately decided to collect them all, and read them in what I thought was their proper, numbered order. Unfortunately, as is often the case with series, No. 1 (The Saint in New York) was hard to find. In fact, I never found a Fayard edition until much, much later, and I eventually had to satisfy myself with a Livre de Poche reprint.

  So I began the series with No. 2, The Avenging Saint.

  The problem was—one couldn’t very well follow The Avenging Saint without having first read The Saint Closes the Case!

  There was no internet back then, no Wikipedia, no books or articles where I could have looked up a complete bibliography of Leslie Charteris. And Fayard wasn’t obliging enough to list The Saint Closes the Case (and Meet—the Tiger!) in their back pages, since they had been published by one of their competitors. In fact, Fayard didn’t get to publish The Last Hero in its own imprint until No. 72!

  So, there I was, stuck with Knight Templar, without a copy of The Last Hero. While I could plainly see that something was being kept hidden from me, I couldn’t tell what. I had no clue that The Saint Closes the Case existed, only hints about the fairly cataclysmic events that had pitted Simon against Rayt Marius (“Marus” in the French edition because the name “Marius” is associated with the happy-go-lucky popular character in Marseilles fiction), Prince Rudolf, and Professor Vargan, and that it had resulted in the death of the Saint’s dearest friend, Norman Kent.

  You might say that’s really all one needs to know to tackle The Avenging Saint, but it was still a very annoying feeling to realize that half of the story had somehow already occurred before I turned the first page.

  Feeling very frustrated over that state of things, I did what any teenager in my place would have done. No, I didn’t discard the book; I decided to write my own prequel.

  I promptly embarked upon writing my own version of The Saint Closes the Case, and, with the touching hubris that only a fourteen-year-old can muster, I grabbed first credit by signing it “by Jean-Marc Lofficier & Leslie Charteris.”

  As William Goldman discovered when he abridged S. Morgenstern’s immortal classic The Princess Bride, the problem with prose fiction is that one spends a lot of time with descriptions and other boring background stuff, and that we don’t get quickly enough to the “best bits.”

  So, after a couple of pages, I switched to doing it in the comic book format, using an avant-garde artistic technique referred to by ignoramuses as “stick figures.” If there is one character, after all, whose story can be told through stick figures, isn’t it the Saint?

  Story-wise, that worked rather well. In the space of a couple of months, I filled well over a hundred notebook-sized pages with small panels telling my own version of the Saint’s adventure. If I recall correctly, in my version, Marius and Vargan belonged to a secret organization called “Shadow” led by a villain named Doctor (or was it Professor?) Skull. The story involved thuggees and idols made of a strange kind of unmelting ice and daggers that spat electron fire, and all kinds of outlandish elements.

  Through it all, the little stick figure of Simon fought bravely through countless perils, dispatching villains with his unique brand of wit and determination.

  When I was eventually lucky enough to talk to Mr. Charteris himself, in 1974, an experience which was not unlike that of a small village priest meeting the Pope, I conspicuously refrained from mentioning The Last Hero or Doctor Skull.

  But for all its faults, its naiveté and outrageous pulpishness, its shameless “borrowings” from other sources and over-melodramatic plot, this was my first long-distance narrative, with proper dialogue and plot. It was an invaluable teaching tool that later enabled me to tackle more serious works, and eventually write real books and real comics.

  If I had read The Saint Closes the Case before The Avenging Saint, would have I embarked upon such a quixotic task? Who can tell? But I can’t help feel that, if I became a writer, I owe it all to this odd case of the two books being published out of order.

  Understandably, in light of what I’ve just written, The Avenging Saint remains, to this day, my favorite Saint book—in fact, the only one which I have in both its French and English editions. I would argue it may well be the best Saint novel of all. There are so many things to like about it, from Simon’s ground-breaking triangular relationship with Sonia and Pat, with the shadow of Norman Kent’s death looming over his head, to the return of Inspector Carn, from the callous villainy of Marius (a proto-Bondian villain who surely must have inspired Fleming!), to the smooth deadliness of Prince Rudolf, and, of course, the best ending ever!

  But before you embark upon reading this thrilling novel, let me offer a word of caution:

  Make sure you read The Saint Closes the Case first.

  Because, otherwise, who knows, you might become a writer too.

  —Jean-Marc Lofficier

  PREFACE

  This book is an almost immediate sequel to The Saint Closes the Case, and was in fact written only a year later. Unfortunately for its vulnerability to some radical and justifiable criticisms from modern readers, that was still only 1930, and a lot of notions were then current, which I shared with many of my contemporaries, which seem rather naive and outmoded today.

  The belief that unscrupulously ambitious rulers were manipulated like chessmen by shadowy international billionaires to wage wars that would only enrich the armaments industry was held by not a few reasonably intelligent people, nor was it, perhaps, without some interesting facets of truth. But in the context of today’s primarily ideological conflicts, and the steady dwindling of the prospects of realizable profit from a shooting war (as against a cold war, which is still great for “defense” industries), it starts to look somewhat tired and frail.

  So also does the facility of the engineered casus belli. When this novel was written, the last of a lengthy historical series of specious pretext for launching hostilities which were politically predestined anyway was the assassination of an Austrian Archduke in 1914, which embroiled one nation after another in the “Armageddon” which has since been demoted to merely World War I. In this decade, when even the assassination of a President of the United States by an ex-Marxist and Cuban sympathiser did not even trigger a general mobilization, half of this story’s plot must seem, to a jaundiced eye, pathetically thin.

  Therefore, since the Saint is still alive and active in a contemporary world astronautically removed from the one in which this episode was laid, I feel that I again need to point out that this is really a kind of historical novel, just as a novel of the aftermath of the American Civil War might be, in a background encompassed by some living memories, but no less valid because it pre-dates the personal experience of most readers.

  You may stub your toes on other oddities. Such as the handling of an airplane towards the end, which would give any jet pilot hysterics. But flying, in those days, was like that: I can vouch for the fact, with my own pilot’s licence which I earned in 1929, which in the sublime confidence of the future which characterized those days authorized me to fly “all types” of aircraft. One day I hope to show it to the captain of a supersonic Concorde and ask if I may play around a bit…

  The “Russia” referred to in this story, I must also remind you, was not only pre-Khrushchev but pre-Stalin, at least as the world menace which he later became. So, please, by-pass the anachronisms, and enjoy what I still think was one of the Saint’s best outright adventures.

  —Leslie Charteris (1964)

  CHAPTER ONE:

  HOW SIMON TEMPLAR SANG A SONG AND FOUND SOME OF IT TRUE

  1

  The Saint sang:

  “Strange adventure! Maiden wedded

  To a groom she’d never seen—

  Never, never, never seen!

  Groom about to be beheaded,

  In an hour on Tower Green!

  Tower, Tower, Tower Green!

  Groom in dreary dungeon lying—”

  “
’Ere,” said an arm of the Law. “Not so much noise!”

  The Saint stopped, facing round, tall and smiling and debonair.

  “Good evening—or morning—as the case may be,” said the Saint politely.

  “And what d’you think you’re doing?” demanded the Law.

  “Riding on a camel in the desert,” said the Saint happily.

  The Law peered at him suspiciously. But the Saint looked very respectable. The Saint always looked so respectable that he could at any time have walked into an ecclesiastical conference without even being asked for his ticket. Dressed in rags, he could have made a bishop look like two cents at a bad rate of exchange. And in the costume that he had donned for that night’s occasion his air of virtue was overpowering. His shirt-front was of a pure and beautiful white that should have argued a pure and beautiful soul. His tuxedo, even under the poor illumination of a street lamp, was cut with such a dazzling perfection, and worn moreover with such a staggering elegance, that no tailor with a pride in his profession could have gazed unmoved upon such a stupendous apotheosis of his art. The Saint, as he stood there, might have been taken for an unemployed archangel—if he had remembered to wear his soft black felt a little less rakishly, and to lean a little less rakishly on his gold-mounted stick. As it was, he looked like a modern pugilist, the heir to a dukedom, a successful confidence man, or an advertisement for Wuggo. And the odour of sanctity about him could have been scented a hundred yards upwind by a man with a severe cold in the head and no sense of smell.

  The Law, slightly dazed by its scrutiny, pulled itself together with a visible effort.

  “You can’t,” said the Law, “go bawling about the streets like that at two o’clock in the morning.”

  “I wasn’t bawling,” said the Saint aggrievedly. “I was singing.”

  “Bawling, I call it,” said the Law obstinately.

  The Saint took out his cigarette-case; it was a very special case, and the Saint was very proud of it, and would as soon have thought of travelling without it as he would have thought of walking down Piccadilly in his pyjamas. Into that cigarette-case had been concentrated an enthusiastic ingenuity that was typical of the Saint’s flair for detail—a flair that had already enabled him to live about twenty-nine years longer than a good many people thought he ought to have. There was much more in that case than met the eye. Much more. But it wasn’t in action at that particular moment. The cigarette which the Law was prevailed upon to accept was innocent of deception, as also was the one which the Saint selected for himself.