The Saint and Mr Teal (Once More the Saint) Page 16

  Galbraith Stride went white, as if the blood had been drained from his face by a vacuum pump.

  "Do you know Mr. Osman?" he asked, with an effort.

  "Fairly well," said the Saint casually. "I branded him on both cheeks five years ago, and it must have cost him no end of money in plastic surgeons to put his face right again. If anyone had done that to me I shouldn't have to look at him twice through field glasses to be sure who it was."

  "Very interesting," said Galbraith Stride slowly. "Very interesting." He held out his hand. "Well, good-bye, Mr.-er-hum."

  "Templar," said the Saint. "Simon Templar. And thanks so much for the lunch."

  He shook the proffered hand cordially and went down to the boat; and he was so happy that he wanted to sing to himself all the way back to St. Mary's.

  CHAPTER III

  "IF," said Patricia Holm, "that was supposed to be another of your famous Exercises in Tact --"

  "But what else could it have been?" protested the Saint. "If I hadn't used extraordinary tact, I shouldn't have been invited to lunch; and that would have meant I'd have missed a display of caviare, lobster mayonnaise, and dry champagne that no man with a decent respect for his stomach could resist-not to mention a first-hand knowledge of the geography of Stride's boat --"

  "And by dinnertime," said Patricia, "she'll be fifty miles away, with the Luxor racing her."

  Simon shook his head.

  "Not if I know Abdul Osman. The surgeons may have refashioned his face, but there are scars inside him that he will never forget. ... I should have had to scrape an acquaintance with Laura some time, and that accident made it so beautifully easy."

  "I thought we were coming here for a holiday," said Patricia; and the Saint grinned and went in search of Mr. Smithson Smith.

  Mr. Smithson Smith was the manager of Tregar­then's, which is one of the three hotels with which the island of St. Mary's is provided. Simon Templar, whose taste in hotels could be satisfied by nothing less lavish than palaces like the Dorchester, failing which he usually plunged to the opposite extreme, had declined an invitation to stay there, and had billeted himself in a house in the village, where he had a private sitting room thrown in with the best of home-cooked meals for a weekly charge that would have maintained him in an attic at the Dorchester for about five minutes. At Tregarthen's, however, he could stay himself with draught Bass drawn from the wood, and this was one of the things of which he felt in need.

  The other thing was a few more details of local gossip, with which Mr. Smithson Smith might also be able to provide him.

  It was then half-past three in the afternoon; but by a notable oversight on the part of the efficient legislators who framed that unforgettable Defense of the Realm Act which has for so long been Britain's bulwark against the horrors of an invasion of foreign tourists, the Scilly Islands were omitted from the broad embrace of that protection, and it is still lawful to drink beer at almost any hour at which a man can reasonably raise a thirst. As Simon entered the long glass-fronted veranda over­looking the bay, he naturally expected to find it packed to suffocation with sodden islanders wallowing in the decadent excesses from which a beneficent government had not been thoughtful enough to protect them; but such (as the unspeakable newspapers say, in what they apparently believe to be the English language) was not the case. In fact, the only occupant of the bar was Mr. Smithson Smith himself, who was making out bills be­side an open window.

  "Why-good-afternoon, Templar. What can I do for you ?"

  "A pint of beer," murmured the Saint, sinking into a chair. "Possibly, if my thirst holds, two pints. And one for yourself if you feel like it."

  Mr. Smithson Smith disappeared into his serving cubicle and returned with a brimming glass. He ex­cused himself from joining in the performance.

  "I'd rather leave it till the evening, if you don't mind," he said with a smile. "What have you been doing today?"

  He was a thin, mild-mannered man with sandy grey hair, a tiny moustache, and an extraordinary gentle voice; and it was a strange thing that he was only one of many men in those islands who were more familiar with the romantic cities of the East than they were with the capital of their own country. Simon had been struck by that odd fact on his first call at Tregarthen's, and subsequent visits had confirmed it. There, on those lonely clusters of rock breaking out of the sea forty miles from Land's End, where you would expect to find men who had seen scarcely anything of the world out­side the other rocky islands around their own homes, you found instead simple men whose turns of remi­niscence recalled the streets of Damascus and Bagdad by their names. And whenever reminiscence turned that way Mr. Smithson Smith would call on his own memo­ries, with a faraway look in his eyes, and the same faraway sound in that very gentle voice, as if his dreams saw the deserts of Arabia more vividly than the blue bay beyond his windows. "I mind a time when I was in Capernaum . . ."-Simon had heard him say it, and felt that for that man at least all the best days lay in the past. It was the war, of course, that had picked men out of every sleepy hamlet in England and hurled them into the familiarity of strange sights and places as well as the flaming shadows of death, and in the end sent some of them back to those same sleepy hamlets to remember; but there was in that quiet man a mystic sensitiveness, a tenseness of poetry struggling rather puzzledly for the expression he could not give it, that made his memories more dreamy with a quaint kind of reverence than most others.

  "I've been over by Tresco," said the Saint, lifting his face presently from the beer.

  "Oh. Did you see those yachts-are they still there?"

  Simon nodded.

  "As a matter of fact, I managed to scrounge lunch on one of them."

  " Was it Abdul Osman's?"

  "No-Galbraith Stride's. I saw Osman's, though. It's a long way for him to come all the way over here."

  He knew that the other would need the least possible encouragement to delve into the past; and his expectations were founded on the soundest psychology. Mr. Smithson Smith sat down and accepted a cigarette.

  "I think I said in my letter that I thought I'd heard his name before. I was thinking about it only yesterday, and the story came back to me. He hasn't visited St. Mary's-at least, if he has, I don't think I've seen him- but I should know this Abdul Osman if he was the same man, because he was branded on both cheeks."

  The Saint's eyebrows rose in innocent surprise.

  "Really?"

  The other nodded.

  "It's quite a story-you could almost put it in a book. An Englishman did it-at least, the rumour said he was an Englishman, although they never caught him. This Abdul Osman was supposed to have a monopoly of various unpleasant things in the East-brothels and gambling dens and drug-trafficking, all that sort of thing. I don't know if it was true, but that was what they told me. He had a fine house in Cairo, anyway, so he must have made plenty of money out of it. I re­member what happened distinctly. It was a local sen­sation at the time. ... I hope I'm not boring you?"

  Mr Smithson Smith was oddly afraid of being boring, as if he felt that any mundane restlessness in his audi­ence would break the fragile glamour of those wonderful things he could remember.

  "Not a bit," said the Saint. "What happened?"

  "Well, apparently this Abdul Osman disappeared one night. He was supposed to be driving back to Cairo from Alexandria, just himself and his chauffeur. It was a beautiful car he had; I've often seen it driving past Shepheard's Hotel. Well, he didn't arrive when they were expecting him; and as the time went on, and he was three or four hours late and hadn't sent any mes­sage to say what had held him up, his household became anxious and went out to look for him. They drove all the way to Alexandria without seeing him, but when they got there they were told by the place where he'd been staying that he'd left about eight hours previously. Then they went to the police, and there was another search. No trace of him was found."

  A couple of young men in white open shirts and flannel trousers came in and sat down
. Mr. Smithson Smith excused himself to go and take their order, and while he was filling it the Saint lighted a cigarette and glanced at them disinterestedly. They were quiet, very respectable young men; but their faces were sallow and the arms exposed by their rolled-up sleeves were white above the elbows.

  "Well," said Mr. Smithson Smith, returning to his chair, "they searched for him half the night, but he seemed to have vanished into thin air. Of course, it wasn't easy to make a thorough search in the dark, so in the morning they tried again. And then they found him. His car was on the road-they found tracks that showed it had been driven off quite a long way into the desert, and brought back again; and out in the desert where it had been turned round there were the remains of a fire. The chauffeur was just recovering consciousness-he'd been knocked on the head and tied up and gagged-and Abdul Osman was in the back of the car with this brand on both his cheeks. Whoever did it had burnt it in almost to the bone with a red-hot iron-it was an Arabic word, and it meant just what this man was."

  "Stout piece of work," murmured the Saint, pushing his glass forward for replenishment.

  "Probably it was." Mr. Smithson Smith provided another pint of beer, and resumed his seat. "And the only clue they had was a sort of drawing that had been painted on the sides of Osman's beautiful car-the paint was still wet when they found it. It was a sort of figure made out of straight lines, with a round head, like you see kids drawing on walls, only this one had a circle on top like the haloes in those mediaeval church pictures. I've often wondered what it was meant to be. It couldn't have been a picture of Abdul Osman, be­cause he had no right to a halo. Perhaps it was meant for a picture of the man who did it."

  "It sounds possible," murmured the Saint.

  One of the respectable young men rose and left the bar: idly, Simon watched him going slowly down the sloping path to the gate.

  "Yes," said Mr. Smithson Smith thoughtfully. ... "I mind another time when I heard of him. This was in Beirut. A friend of mine met a girl there in a dance place-it was the sort of dance place that wouldn't be allowed at all in England. She told him a story about Abdul Osman-I don't think I should like to repeat the details to anyone, but if it was true he couldn't be painted any blacker than he is. As a matter of fact, I did tell this story to a man I met on a boat going across to Marseilles, who had just retired from the Egyptian police, and he said it was probably true. It was --"

  "Hullo," said the Saint. "Bloke seems to have fallen down."

  The respectable young man who had gone out had stumbled as he stepped down to the road, and at that moment he was sprawled in the dust just beyond the gate. He was clutching one ankle, and his face was turned back towards the veranda with a twisted ex­pression of agony.

  Mr. Smithson Smith looked out, then round to the respectable young man's companion.

  "Your friend seems to have hurt himself," he said. "It looks as if he has sprained his ankle."

  The respectable young man came over to their table arid also looked out.

  "I'll go and see," he said.

  Simon watched him go, inhaling speculatively.

  "Staying in the hotel?" he queried.

  "Yes," said Mr. Smithson Smith, with his eyes on the developments below. "They're staying here."

  "Have they been here long?"

  The question was put with perfect casualness.

  "About a fortnight," said Mr. Smithson Smith. "I don't know much about them. They're out most of the day-I think they go bathing, but by the look of the basket they take with them you'd think they needed towels enough to dry a regiment."

  "They aren't very sunburnt," said the Saint softly, almost as if he were speaking to himself.

  He picked up his glass mechanically-and put it down again. The young man with the injured ankle was coming back, limping painfully and leaning on his companion's arm.

  "Silly thing to do, wasn't it?" he said; and Mr. Smithson Smith nodded with some concern.

  "Would you like me to get you a doctor?"

  The young man shook his head.

  "I'll just go and bathe it with cold water and rest it for a bit. I don't think it's anything serious."

  The three-legged party went on through into the hotel premises; and Simon sat down again and lighted another cigarette. Mr. Smithson Smith's gentle voice was continuing his interrupted anecdote, but the Saint scarcely heard a word. The narrative formed no more than a vague undercurrent of sound in his senses, a restful background to his working thoughts. In a life like the Saint's, a man's existence is prolonged from day to day by nothing but that ceaseless vigilance, that unsleeping activity of a system of question marks in the mind which are never satisfied with the obvious expla­nations that pass through the torpid consciousness of the average man. To him, anything out of the ordinary was a red light of possible danger, never to be dismissed as mere harmless eccentricity: nine times out of ten the alarm might be proved false, but it could never be ignored. And it seemed odd that two very respectable young men should have attracted attention by carrying an outsize basket of towels; odd, too, that after bathing every day for a fortnight they should still have the soft white bodies of men who have not been free of the muffling protection of clothes for many years. . . . And then the Saint's probing suspicions came to a head in a sudden flash of inspiration, and he pulled himself swiftly out of his chair. He was across the bar in a flash, over to the closed door through which the two respectable young men had disappeared; and Mr. Smithson Smith, startled to silence by his abrupt movement, noticed in an eerie moment of perplexity that the Saint's feet made no sound as they swung over the floor. It was like the charge of a leopard in its smooth powerful noiseless-ness; and then Simon Templar had his hand on the handle of the door, jerking it open, and the young man who had assisted the injured one stumbled and almost fell into the room.

  "Come in, brother," said the Saint heartily. "Come in and have a drink."

  The young man's face went red, and his mouth opened in a weak grin.

  "I-I'm sorry," he stammered. "I must have tripped or something --"

  A thin smile cut into the corners of the Saint's mouth.

  "Sure you must, brother."

  "I'll-I'll have a whisky and soda."

  "You'll have beer!"

  The Saint caught up his own glass from the table and thrust it out. He was only a yard from the other, on his toes, indefinably dangerous.

  "Drink this," he said; and the young man went white.

  "I-I don't --"

  Simon's free fist caught him on the mouth and knocked him backwards.

  "I'll have the police on you for this," blustered the other; and the Saint smiled again.

  "Go get him. And don't be too lavish with your plurals, because there is only one. But ask Abdul what he thinks of the idea first, or you may find yourself unpopular. Now amscray-and if you value your beauty, don't damage my beer again!"

  He seized the respectable young man by the ear and propelled him deftly and vigorously out of the bar; then he turned back to face the outraged stare of Mr. Smithson Smith. The course of events had been so violently sudden and incomprehensible that the manager had been pardonably nonplussed; but by this point at least his path of duty seemed unmistakable.

  "Why-really, Templar!" he said, with his quiet voice shaking. "You can't behave like that here. I shall have to apologize to my guest. I'm afraid you'll have to leave this bar --"

  Simon took his arm calmly, and pointed.

  A fly was crawling down the inside of the half-emptied glass of beer which he had just replaced on the table. It was quite unhurried about the journey, after the impudent fashion of flies: perhaps its thirst was of no great dimensions, or perhaps it had been reared in scrupulously well-mannered circumstances. It moved downwards in short little runs, pausing once to wash its hands and once to rub its feet together, in a genteel ecstasy of anticipation. Mr. Smithson Smith's eye followed it because it was the only moving object in the direction which the Saint had indicated, and there see
med to be nothing else to look at.

  Even so, it seemed an extremely trivial spectacle, and he moved his arm restlessly in the Saint's grasp. But Simon Templar continued to point at it, and there was something dynamic about the immobility of that ex­tended finger. Mr. Smithson Smith watched, and saw the fly reach the level of the beer. It looked around cautiously, and lowered its proboscis delicately into the liquid. For two or three seconds after that it was motionless. And then, without any kind of struggle, it pitched over in a limp somersault and floated quietly on its back, with its legs stretched stiffly upwards. . .

  CHAPTER IV

  MR. SMITHSON SMITH blinked and wiped his forehead. His arm relaxed slowly, as if it required a conscious effort to loosen the involuntary contraction of his muscles. He had no idea why the miniature drama that he had seen enacted should have had such an effect on him. It might have been the utter stillness in which it was played out, the unexplanatory silence of the man beside him-anything. But it seemed as if for the last few seconds he had forgotten to breathe, and when it was finished he expanded his chest with an inaudible sigh.

  Then the Saint spoke; and his voice jarred the other's ears by sheer contrast with the silence.

  "Don't tell me your beer's as potent as all that!"

  The manager stared at him.

  "Do you mean-do you mean it was drugged?"

  "No less, and possibly even some more. We'll soon see." With unruffled calm, the Saint fished out the fly with a matchstick and laid it in an ashtray to cool off. " But I don't somehow think it was sudden death-that would probably be considered too good for me."

  "But-but-damn it!" Mr. Smithson Smith felt queerly shaken under his instinctive incredulity. "You can't tell me that Mr. Trape-"

  "Is that his name?" The Saint was as cool as an ice pack. "I can't tell you much about him, but I can tell you that. My dear chap"-he put his hand on the manager's shoulder for a moment-"can you be expected to guarantee the morals of everyone who stays at your hotel? Can you demand a budget of references from anyone who asks for a room? Of course you can't. You have to take them at their face value, and so long as they behave themselves while they're here you aren't expected to ask them whether their fingerprints are registered at Scotland Yard. No-they just had to find somewhere to stay, and you were unlucky."