The Saint in Europe (The Saint Series) Page 15

  The charming damsel on his right spoke, through the daze of alarm that was rapidly enveloping him.

  “Don’t pay any attention to her,” she said. “She’s always like that.”

  “Bless you, darling,” murmured the Saint fervently. “For a moment I thought the heat had got me.”

  “Who’s always like what?” screamed Mrs Nussberg.

  The charming damsel sipped her coffee.

  “We’re off,” she remarked.

  “I can pull faces just as well as you can,” yelled Mrs Nussberg, with justifiable pride and the little imps of Satan elected that instant to enter into the Saint.

  He turned.

  “Madam,” he said generously, “you can pull them better.”

  Simon had never spoken boastfully of the encounter. He was ordinarily a very chivalrous bloke, kind to the fat and infirm, and willing to oblige a lady in any manner that was in his power, but there were moments when he ceased to be a truly responsible captain of his soul, and that was one of them.

  The result was that three minutes later he found himself strolling back to the beach with the charming damsel on his arm and a delirious bar behind him. Few people had ever been known to score off the Saint in an exchange of back-chat, and Mrs Nussberg was certainly not one of them. It was that same night, in the Casino, that he saw Mrs Nussberg plastered with all her jewels, and the modest glow of those three minutes of light-headed revelry abruptly vanished.

  Which explained his abstracted thoughtfulness on this subsequent morning.

  For it was a principle of the Saint’s sparsely principled career that one never exchanged entirely carefree badinage with anyone so liberally adorned with diamonds as Mrs Porphyria Nussberg. On the contrary, one tended to be patient—almost long-suffering. Following the example of the sun-worshippers simmering in their grease, one stewed to conquer. Diamonds so large and plentiful could not be gazed upon at any time by any honest filibuster without sentiment, and when they chanced to be hung around a woman who pulled faces and shouted wrathfully across bars, it became almost a sacred duty to give that sentiment full rein. Unfortunately Simon saw the grimaces first and the jewelry afterwards, and he had spent some days regretting that chance order of events—the more earnestly when he discovered that Myra Campion had helped to spread the fame of his achievement, and that he was widely expected to repeat the performance every time he and Mrs Nussberg passed close enough to speak.

  He hoped speechlessly that the call of Romance, which he had at last decided was the only possible approach, might be strong enough to obliterate the memory of that earlier argument. The Spanish Cow had no friends—he had had some difficulty in learning her official name, which no one had apparently troubled to inquire. From local gossip he learned that she had once had a gigolo, a noisome biped with tinted fingernails and a lisp, but even that specimen had found the penalties of his job too high, and had minced on to pastures less conspicuous. It seemed as if a cavalier with stamina to last the course might get near enough to those lavish ropes of gems to pay his expenses, and having reached that decision Simon made up his mind to go ahead with it before his nerve failed him.

  He had his chance at the Casino that evening. Miss Campion was safely settled at the boule table with a pile of chips, and the Saint looked around and saw Mrs Nussberg emerging majestically from the baccarat room and proceeding towards a table in the lounge. Simon drew a deep breath, straightened his tie, and sauntered after her.

  She stared at him belligerently.

  “What do you want?”

  “I think I owe you an apology,” said the Saint quietly.

  “You’ve found that out, have you?” she barked.

  A smirking waiter was dusting off the table. Simon sat down opposite her and ordered a fine à l’eau. Parties at adjoining tables were already glancing curiously and expectantly towards them, and the movement cost Simon a clammier effort than anything he had done for a long time.

  “That morning a few days ago,” he explained contritely, “you misunderstood me. I wasn’t being fresh. But when you called me down, I sort of forgot myself.”

  “I should think you did,” rasped Mrs Nussberg, without friendliness.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So you ought to be.”

  It dawned on the Saint that this vein of dialogue could be continued almost indefinitely, if Mrs Nussberg insisted on it. He looked around somewhat tensely for inspiration, wondering if after all the jewels could be worth the price, and by the mercy of his guardian angel the inspiration was provided.

  It was provided in the person of Maurice Walmar, who at that moment came strolling superbly across the lounge and recognized an acquaintance in the far corner. With an elegant wave of his hand he started in that direction. His route took him past the table where Simon was prayerfully groping for the light. Walmar recognized the Spanish Cow, and flashed a mean sneer towards his acquaintance. As he squeezed past the table, he deliberately swerved against Mrs Nussberg’s arm as she raised her glass. The drink spilled heavily across her lap.

  “Pardon,” said Walmar casually, and went on.

  Simon leapt up.

  Even if he had not been interested in Mrs Nussberg’s jewels, he would probably have done the same thing. He had witnessed every phase of the incident, and at any time he would have called that carrying a joke too far. Nor did he care much for Maurice Walmar, with his too beautifully modelled face and platinum watch bracelet. He caught the young humorist by the elbow and spun him around.

  “I don’t think you saw what you did,” he remarked evenly.

  For a second the other was startled to incredulity. Then he glanced down at the soaked ruin of Mrs Nussberg’s gown, and back from that to the Saint. His aristocratic lips curled in their most polished insolence.

  “I have apologized,” he said carelessly. “It was an accident.”

  “Then so is this,” said the Saint mildly, and his fist shot over and slammed crisply into the center of the sneering mouth.

  Walmar rocked on his heels. He clutched at a table and went down in a spatter of glass and splashing fluids.

  There was an instant’s deathly stillness, and then a gray-haired Englishman observed quietly, “He asked for it.”

  Walmar crawled up shakily. His mouth was a mess, and there was blood on his silk shirt. A covey of waiters awoke from their momentary stupor and buzzed in among the tables, interposing themselves between a resumption of the strife. The players abandoned the boule table and swarmed out towards the prospect of more primitive sport, leaving the high priest to intone his forlorn “Rien ne va plus!” to a skeleton congregation. The two inevitable policemen, who appear as if at the rubbing of a kind of Aladdin’s lamp on the scene of any French fracas, stalked ponderously into the perspective, closely followed by an agitated manager. The tableau had all the makings of a second-act musical comedy curtain, but Simon overcame the temptation to explore all the avenues of extravagant burlesque which it opened up. He spoke calmly and to the point.

  “He upset this lady’s drink—purposely.”

  Walmar, struggling dramatically in the grasp of a waiter whom he could have shaken off with a wave of his hand, shouted, “Messieurs! It was an accident. He attacked me—”

  The larger agent turned to the waiter.

  “Qu’est-ce qui est arrivé?” he demanded.

  “Je n’ai rien vu,” answered the man tactfully.

  It was the gray-haired Englishman who came forward with quiet corroboration, and the affair turned into a general soothing-party for Maurice Walmar, whose wealth and family entitled him to eccentricities that would rapidly have landed an ordinary visitor in jail. The jaundiced eye with which private battles are viewed in France was well known to the Saint, and he was rather relieved to be spared the unheroic sequels in which offenders against the code of peace are usually involved.

  He went out on to the terrace with Mrs Nussberg, and as he left the lounge he caught sight of Myra Campion’s face amon
g the spectators who were staring after him in the pained blank manner of a row of dowagers who have been simultaneously bitten in the fleshy part of the leg by their favorite Pomeranians. Miss Campion’s sweet symmetrical features were almost egg-like in their stupefied bewilderment, and Simon’s smile as he reached the edge of the balcony and looked out over the dark sea came quite naturally.

  “You’ve seen for yourself,” he said. “I’ve just got a natural gift for getting into trouble.”

  “Served him right,” blared Mrs Nussberg. “The dirty little —— ”

  Her comment on Maurice Walmar’s lineage was certainly inaccurate, but Simon could understand her feelings.

  The orchestra wailed into another erotic symphony, and the Saint expanded his chest and flicked his cigarette over the parapet. The job had to be completed.

  “Would you like to dance?” he asked.

  The Spanish Cow gazed at him suspiciously, her small eyes hard and bright in the sallow puffy face. Then, without answering, she marched towards the floor.

  As they completed their first circle under the fairy lights, Simon saw that the colony was following his movements with bulging eyes. It went into small huddles and buzzed, as openly as convention would permit. He began to find more innocent entertainment in his sudden notoriety than he had ever expected—and the Saint had never found the appalled reactions of respectable society dull. There were times when he derived a purely urchin satisfaction from the flouting of the self-appointed Best People, and he was quite disappointed when the Spanish Cow broke away from him after a half-dozen turns.

  “I can’t stay here with my dress soaking,” she said abruptly. Take me home.”

  Simon walked back with her to the Provençal. The sky was a blaze of star-dust, and a whisper of music came from the Casino terrace. Down by the water there were tiny ripples hissing and chattering on the firm sand, and a light breeze murmured in the fronds of the tall palms. Simon had a fleeting remembrance of the slim exquisite softness of Myra Campion, and, being very human, he sighed inaudibly. But business was business.

  A few yards from the hotel entrance Mrs Nussberg stopped. Her ropes of diamonds flashed in the light of the rows of bulbs flaming the marquee over the doors.

  Thank you for helping me,” she said with a harsh effort.

  Simon’s teeth flashed. He knew that she was taking stock of his tanned keen-lined face, the set of his wide shoulders and the length of lean muscular limbs. He knew that he was interesting to look at—conquering a natural bashfulness that he always kept well under control, he admitted the fact frankly.

  “Not at all,” he said.

  She opened her bag and held something out to him. He took it and unfolded it—it was a ten-thousand-franc note. He folded it again carefully, and handed it back with a smile.

  “I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” he said pleasantly. “You don’t owe me anything. Good night.”

  3

  There began for Mrs Porphyria Nussberg an interlude of peace that must have been strange to her. The glances that she encountered veiled their derision with perplexed uncertainty; the giggles when she unharnessed herself of her corsets before going in to bathe were more subdued. The impulse to weep with helpless mirth whenever she appeared was still there, human nature being what it was, but the story of the Casino episode had flown around the town and cast a damp sheet over the pristine hilarity of the jest. There was the sight of Maurice Walmar’s bruised and swollen mouth for reinforcement, and the other aspiring wits looked at it and at the Saint’s leathery torso, and merged themselves thoughtfully into the background. Even the waiters, who had been encouraged to curry favor with the sportive element by smirking and winking at the audience whenever they were called upon to serve the woman, relapsed into the supercilious impersonality with which waiters in fashionable resorts cloak their yearning for tumbrils and guillotines.

  Myra Campion cornered the Saint the very next afternoon. He was paddling contentedly along in the general direction of Gibraltar, feeling himself safely insulated from the seethe of popular speculation by the half-mile of limpid water that separated him from the shore, when his head encountered a firm but yielding obstruction. He rolled over and looked into the wet face of Miss Campion.

  “You’ll have to swim farther out than this if you want to dodge me,” she said.

  Destiny having overtaken him, Simon reflected philosophically that it could have chosen many less agreeable vehicles.

  “Darling,” he said blandly, “I’ve been searching the whole ocean for you.”

  She trod water, the slow swell lifting her small brown face against the intense sky, her eyes fixed on him inexorably.

  “What was the idea—lashing out at Maurice like that?”

  “Did you see what he did?”

  “I heard about it. But you didn’t have to paste him that way.”

  “I just slapped him,” said the Saint calmly. “Isn’t he on the beach today? Well, if I’d really pasted him he’d’ve spent the next six weeks in a hospital—getting his face remodelled.”

  The Saint steered himself neatly around a drifting jellyfish seeking for its mate. “My dear, if you’re really upset about my slapping a conceited daffodil like Walmar for carrying a joke to those lengths, you haven’t the good taste I thought you had.”

  There was a certain chilliness about their parting that the Saint realized was unavoidable. He swam back alone, floating leisurely through the buoyant sea and meditating as he went. He knew well enough that a set of diamonds like those displayed by Mrs Porphyria Nussberg are rarely obtained without some kind of inconvenience, but those incidental troubles were merely a part of the most enchanting game in the world.

  Back on the sands, he stretched himself out beside Mrs Nussberg’s chair and chatted with no more than ordinary politeness. On the following morning he did the same thing. There was no hint of a pressing advance about it—it was simply the way in which any normal holiday acquaintance would have been expected to behave—but the Spanish Cow’s soured belligerence had lost its sting. Sometimes she looked at him curiously, with the habitual suspicion hesitating in the background of her beady eyes, as if the impact of a more common courtesy was still too strange to be taken at its face value.

  That evening he walked with her along the beach. It was well into cocktail time, and the young brown bodies had taken themselves off the sands to refresh themselves at the Casino or the Perroquet, or to dance before dinner at Maxim’s. The last survivor was a shabby mahogany-tanned old man with a rake, engaged in his daily task of scratching the harvest of cigarette-ends and scraps of paper and orange peel out of the sand to leave it smooth and clean for the morrow’s sacrifices—a sad and apocryphal figure on the deserted shore.

  They went by the almost empty Fregate, and Simon recalled the caricature in the entrance. It was still there—a brutal, sadistically accurate burlesque. Mrs Nussberg stared fixedly ahead, as if she had forgotten it, but he knew that she had not.

  The Saint stepped aside. A lounging waiter realized what was happening too late, and started forward with an outraged yap, but the picture was out of the frame and shredded into small fragments by that time.

  Simon held them out on his open hand.

  “Do these belong to you?” he inquired gently, and the man suddenly looked up and found the Saint’s blue eyes fastened levelly upon him, as hard and wintry as frosted sapphires.

  The eyes were quite calm, utterly devoid of open menace, but there was something in them that choked his instinctive retort in his throat. Something in the eyes, and the tuned softness of the voice that spoke past them.

  He shook his head mutely, astounded at his own silence, and the Saint smiled genially and dropped the torn relics at his feet.

  On the front of the Casino there were banners and posters proclaiming the regular weekly gala.

  “Are you going?” asked Simon casually.

  The bright defensive eyes switched to him sidelong.

 
“Are you?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it.”

  They walked a few steps, and then she said, sharply, “Would you come with me?”

  Simon did not hesitate for an instant.

  “I’d love to,” he said easily, and she said nothing more until he left her at the

  Provençal.

  Before climbing into white shirt and tuxedo, the Saint packed a bag. He was travelling very light, but he still preferred not to leave his preparations for a getaway to the last minute. And he had decided that the getaway should take place that night. He did not want to delay it any longer. He was a little tired of Juan-les-Pins, and, even in that brief time, more than a little tired of the part he had to play.

  But when he collected Mrs Nussberg again there was no hint of that in his manner. Her dyed hair had been freshly waved into desperate undulations, and the powder was crusted thickly on her face and arms. Her hands and neck were a blaze of precious stones.

  He saw her hard painted lips smile for the first time.

  “You are very kind,” she said, as they walked down to the Casino.

  The Saint shook his head.

  “This gala business is a wonderful racket,” he murmured lightly. “The same place, the same food, the same music, the same floor show—but they charge you double and let out a few colored balloons, and everyone thinks they’re having a swell time.”

  As a matter of strict fact, it went a little further than colored balloons—Simon, who had attended these events before, had expected it and balanced the factor into his plans. There were rag dolls, for instance—those long-legged sophisticated puppets with which some women love to clutter up their most comfortable chairs. Simon was also able to add a large bouquet of flowers, an enormous box of chocolates, and three of the aforesaid colored balloons to the bag. When at last he escorted a supremely contented Mrs Nussberg home, he looked rather like an amateur Santa Claus.