The Saint Around the World (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 Adam Rayner

  Introduction to “The Reluctant Nudist” originally published in “Instead of the Saint—V,” The Saint Mystery Magazine (USA), April 1965

  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: 9781477842904

  ISBN-10: 147784290X

  Cover design by David Drummond, www.salamanderhill.com

  CONTENTS

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  FOREWORD TO THE NEW EDITION

  THE SAINT AROUND THE WORLD

  THE PATIENT PLAYBOY

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  THE TALENTED HUSBAND

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  THE RELUCTANT NUDIST

  INTRODUCTION

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  THE LOVELORN SHEIK

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  THE PLUPERFECT LADY

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  THE SPORTING CHANCE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  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.

  FOREWORD TO THE NEW EDITION

  Proud as I am to have joined that exclusive club of nimble-eyebrowed thespians who have played the Saint on screen, I can tell you one thing for certain: it is impossible to be Simon Templar.

  You try summoning all at once superhuman reserves of charm, wit, grace, athleticism, (cash), and—most importantly—courage. It’s quite an undertaking. Even Sir Roger Moore, the original TV Saint confessed ST’s appetite for danger somewhat outstripped his own!

  But, of course, it is the impossibility of seeing all these attributes embodied in real life that makes Simon Templar such an enduring character in fiction. It is also what makes him so much fun for an actor to play. To portray Simon Templar is to indulge as a grown-up all your schoolboy fantasies of a “jet-set” life involving fine suits, fast cars, beautiful women, and exotic locations.

  The Saint Around the World is a classic representation of the “jet-set” ideal of the 1950s with the Saint near-circumnavigating the globe in six stories. That phrase seems a little dated now but the idea of flitting from one airport to the next, always ready to be swept into a new adventure, remains as glamorous as ever. All of the Saintly qualities mentioned above are on display but so is the man behind the myth: “The Pluperfect Lady,” for example, suggesting the tantalising possibility of a woman really getting under the Templar armour…

  The Saint Around the World encapsulates the advantage that the written word will always have over attempts to “bring it to life” on screen. Years can pass leaving our hero untouched by the ravages of age, the “perfect” female form can exist many times over, and exotic new locations can be visited on every page without the terrifying budgetary implications this would involve for film and television. And most of all Simon Templar need not be reduced to mere flesh and blood by an actor like me. He can remain the true ideal: the Saint of our imagination.

  —Adam Rayner

  THE PATIENT PLAYBOY

  1

  “I suppose you wouldn’t be interested in helping me find my husband,” said the blonde.

  “Frankly, I’ve heard a lot more exciting propositions,” Simon Templar admitted. “If he doesn’t have enough sense to appreciate you, why don’t we just let him stay lost, and have a ball?”

  “But I really want him back,” she said. “You see, we’ve only been married a week, so I haven’t had time to get tired of him.”

  Simon sipped his Dry Sack.

  “All right,” he said. “Give me a clue. What was it about this bridegroom that impressed you so much, darling?”

  “The name,” she said, “is Lona Dayne.”

  “Well, that’s unusual, anyway. He must have to listen to a lot of funny cracks about it.”

  “Lona Dayne is my name, idiot. Not ‘darling.’ ”

  “Oh.”

  He regarded her with pleasantly augmented interest. It had been an entirely shallow and stereotyped reaction, he realized, to identify and pigeonhole her so summarily as “the blonde.” Certainly she had the hair, of a tint much paler than straw, which his worldly eye inevitably measured against her light brown eyes and traced back from there to the alchemy of some beauty parlor—but wasn’t it a mere cliché of fiction that expensively rinsed blondes were by contrary definition cheap, while the only good ones owed their coloring solely to a lucky combination of chromosomes? The pretty face and approximately 35-23-35 vital statistics which convention also attributes to blondes appeared to be hers without any important debt to artifice. And she could get away with calling him Idiot, when she smiled in that provocatively intimate way while she said it.

  “To me, you’ll still be darlin
g,” he said. “At least, until your husband turns up. I suppose his name is Dayne too.”

  “Naturally.”

  “You can never be sure, these days.”

  “Havelock Dayne.”

  “It has rather a corny sound, but I guess his parents loved it.”

  “I love your dialogue,” she said dispassionately. “But I wasn’t kidding. You are the Saint, aren’t you?”

  Simon sighed. He had heard that question so often, by this time, that he seemed to have used up all the possible smooth, shocking, modest, impudent, evasive, chilling, misleading, or witty answers. Now he could only wish, belatedly, that he had had the forethought to insist on an alias. But while that might have let him enjoy one cocktail party as an anonymous guest, it wouldn’t have fitted in with the project that brought him to Bermuda.

  It had been a good party, until then. The Saint had thought it a happy coincidence, for him, that a friend from many years back in Hollywood, Dick Van Hessen, was currently managing a miniature movie studio which had been improbably yet astutely set up in Bermuda to take advantage of tax privileges and lower costs to compete for the American television market. At the Van Hessens’ hillside house was therefore gathered, almost automatically, a useful cross-section of island personalities: the local bankers and bigwigs, the grim and the gay social sets, the press and the professions, the merchants and the dilettantes, and a leavening of working actors and visiting firemen on whom all the others could prove how easily they could mix with celebrities. The Saint’s cool blue eyes drifted down the long verandah that overlooked Hamilton Harbor, but failed to make any pertinent identification among the convivial mob.

  “I’ve met so many people tonight, I couldn’t possibly remember half their names,” he confessed disarmingly, and with an unblushing lack of truth. “Does your husband have anything conspicuous about him—like a green mustache, for instance?”

  “You haven’t met him tonight. He isn’t here.”

  “When did you lose him, then?”

  “The day before yesterday.”

  “And only married five days at the time, according to what you said. It must have been a hell of a wedding. Did you have any inkling that Havelock was such a dizzy type when you agreed to let him love, honor, and pay the bills?”

  “He isn’t at all. He’s lots of fun, of course, but he’s terribly ambitious and earnest too. He’s a lawyer.”

  “I’m looking for a lawyer myself,” said the Saint. “Only I want one who’s already embezzled at least five million dollars. Have you known Havelock long enough to notice him flashing a lot of green stuff around?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said stiffly. “I suppose I was asking for it. I should have known better. But I don’t think your dialogue is so excruciatingly funny, after all—”

  A quiver of her lips spoiled the trenchant ring that her last sentence was phrased for, and she turned away quickly, but not quickly enough for him to miss the blurring of her eyes. He moved even more swiftly to place himself beside her again where she leaned over the verandah railing with her back turned squarely to the incurious crowd.

  “Pardon my two left feet,” he said reasonably. “I’m afraid the atmosphere of the place got me. I thought you were playing it strictly chin-up and British, so I was going along with the gag. Let’s start over, if you’re serious.”

  She looked at him, blinking hard.

  “I am!”

  “All right. I know how you’re feeling. I wish I could help. But just plain wandering husbands are a bit out of my line. I expect if you asked a few discreet friends and bartenders—or even the police—”

  “But I can’t. I’ve had to cover up—tell everyone he’s laid up with a terrible cold. You’re the first person I’ve told, and I shouldn’t even have done that.”

  “Then stop being silly. If he’s lost, he’s lost, and false pride won’t help you find him. Think yourself lucky he isn’t really a case up my alley, for which he’d have to be at least kidnaped or even murdered.”

  “That,” she said steadily, “is exactly what I’m afraid of. Or I wouldn’t have talked to you.”

  Without any change of expression, the Saint’s bronzed face seemed to become opaque, like a mask from behind which his eyes probed with a sort of rueful cynicism.

  “Now I’ll begin to think you’re suffering from too much lurid literature.”

  “You’d be wrong,” she said flatly. “Unless I suffered from writing it. Until a week ago, my name was Lona Shaw. Well, that doesn’t mean anything to you. But it would if you’d lived in England lately. I’ve worked for the London Daily Record since I was nineteen, and for the last four years I’ve been their star sob-sister. Do you have any idea how hard-boiled and unhysterical a girl has to be to hold that job on a newspaper like the Record?”

  Simon nodded. Suddenly, as if a cloud had passed, the mask of his face was translucent again. It was the only outward sign that he had felt and recognized the icy caress of Destiny’s fingers along his spine.

  “Okay.” he said soberly. “I’m sold.”

  His gaze nickered over the crowded balcony again, warily conscious of the beginning of one of those unanimous re-shufflings that surge intermittently through the human molecules of every cocktail party, and even more sharply perceptive of the covetous glances of certain males within striking distance who had transparently settled on Lona Dayne as the most intriguing target for tonight and were getting set to cut in at the first opening.

  Simon huddled strategically closer to her along the rail.

  “I gather you came alone,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Me too. No plans for dinner?”

  “No. Fay Van Hessen said I could—”

  “She won’t mind. You just made a date with me, darling.”

  He put down his glass, took her by the arm, and steered her firmly and skillfully into an eddy that was flowing towards the exit. The frustrated wolf pack was still standing on its heels as they jostled into the line that was babbling thanks and goodbyes.

  “Oh, don’t go yet,” Fay protested. “We’re going to have some food presently.”

  “But Lona’s husband might get better tomorrow, and I’d never get her all to myself again,” Simon said with a leer.

  “Well, behave yourselves.”

  “There should be a taxi waiting below.” Dick Van Hessen said helpfully. “Send him back from wherever you’re going, for the next customers.”

  Then they were down the stairs, and the steep narrow driveway, and a taxi was waiting as predicted at the foot of the steep slope where the house perched. Simon put her in and said, “The Caravelle.”

  “I ought to go home, really,” she said, “and see if there’s any message.”

  “Which I suppose you’ve been doing for the last two days. If you’re out, he could leave a message, couldn’t he?”

  “Yes—the caretaker promised he’d be around and listen for the phone.”

  “Then you can call in and ask for news later. Meanwhile, you’ve got at least as much right to be out as he has.”

  “But—”

  A Bermuda taxi is not a vehicle in which to discuss anything confidential. Being derived from any miniature English car by the sole process of attaching a taximeter to the dashboard, the driver and passengers are huddled together as cozily as olives in a jar. The Saint nudged Lona Dayne gently, and pointed expressively at the back of the driver’s head, which he was trying not to bump with his knees.

  “What’s this about a caretaker?” he said innocuously. “Aren’t you staying at a hotel?”

  “We started in a hotel, of course, but we moved into this house just the day before Hav disappeared. You see, we were talking to the caretaker, and he happened to mention that his boss had just written and told him to try to rent it. The owner lives up in Canada and only comes down here in the winter, then Bob—that’s the caretaker—goes to Canada and takes care of his house there. Usually the house here just stands empty, but it
seems as if the owner suddenly decided he might as well make a few dollars out of it. It’s absurdly reasonable, really, and Bob didn’t see why he couldn’t let us have it just for a month, while he’s waiting for someone who wants to take a longer lease. After we saw it, we simply couldn’t turn it down—it’s on a little island all of its own, the sort of thing you dream of. Only if we’d stayed in the hotel, perhaps we’d have been safer…But it’s the most romantic spot…”

  Simon let her go on chattering trivialities, preferring to have her overdo it rather than go on with the important subject until they were safe from any uninvited audience, or at least until he knew how seriously they should be thinking of safety. He kept her headed off from any reference to her husband until they were settled at a table in a corner of the terrace overhanging the water, and had ordered a chicken in white wine and a bottle of Bollinger to go with it.

  “What am I supposed to be celebrating?” she objected half-heartedly.

  “I’m prescribing it to give you a lift, which I think you could use.”

  He lighted their cigarettes, and settled his elbows squarely on the table, looking at her with sympathetic but disconcertingly penetrating detachment.

  “Now,” he said with sudden bluntness. “What is this all about?”

  “Have you heard of Roger Ivalot?”

  He winced slightly.

  “No,” he said. “And if I had, I wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Why?”

  “The name sounds even more improbable than your husband’s.”

  “If you’d been in England lately—”

  “I’m sorry. It’s already established that I’ve been spending my time in the wrong places. Just enlighten my ignorance.”

  There was, however, some excuse for regarding anyone who had not heard of Roger Ivalot as benighted, as he soon learned.

  In a country which is not by tradition or temperament adapted to the breeding of spectacular playboys, Mr Ivalot had succeeded in racking up a number of probable records. One of these could certainly be claimed for the rocket-like trajectory of his ascent from obscurity. Nobody, in fact, seemed to have known of his existence before the day less than two years ago when he had sent engraved invitations to the entire casts of the three most popular musicals then playing in London, bidding them to a champagne supper and dance in the Dorchester’s biggest private ballroom, for which he also hired the most popular orchestra available. While some of the stars were snooty or suspicious enough to ignore the offer, almost six hundred guests (including several uninvited escorts) showed up to sample the hospitality; and when a somewhat notorious soubrette, professing indignation because no one had been asked to take a champagne bath, peeled off her clothes and had herself showered from bottles held by a flock of eager volunteers, nothing less than the simultaneous outbreak of World War III could have prevented Mr Ivalot becoming a celebrity overnight.