The Saint Goes West s-23 Read online

  The Saint could be reckless enough, but he had no suicidal inclinations.. He stood motionless for several minutes in difнferent bays of shadow, scanning the slopes with the unblinking patience of a headhunter. But nothing moved, and presently he went back in by the front door and found Angelo.

  "Well?" he said.

  "I no find anything, sir. Everything all lock up. You come see yourself."

  Simon made the circuit with him. Where there were glass doors they were all metal framed, with sturdy locking handles and bolts in addition. All the windows were screened, and the screen frames fastened on the inside. None of them showed a sign of having been forced or tampered with in any way; and the Saint was a good enough burglar in his own right to know that doors and casements of that type could not have been fastened from outside without leaving a sign that any such thing had been done-particularly by a man who was trying to depart from the premises in a great hurry.

  His tour ended back in Lissa's room, where the rest of the house party was now gathered. He paused in the doorway.

  "All right, Angelo," he said. "You can go back to your beauty sleep... Oh, yes, you could bring me a drink first"

  "I've got one for you already," Freddie called out.

  Simon went on in.

  "That's fine." He stood by the portable bar, which had alнready been set up for business, and watched Freddie manipuнlating a bottle. It was a feat which Freddie could apparently perform in any condition short of complete unconsciousness. All things considered, he had really staged quite a comeback. Of course, he had had some sleep. The Saint looked at his watch, and saw that it was a few minutes after four. He said: "I think it's so nice to get up early and catch the best part of the morning, don't you?"

  "Did you find out anything?" Freddie demanded.

  "Not a thing," said the Saint. "But that might add up to quite something."

  He took the highball that Freddie handed him, and strolled over to the windows. They were the only ones in the house he had not yet examined. But they were exactly like the others- the screens latched and intact.

  Lissa still sat up in the bed, the covers huddled up under her chin, staring now and again at the knife driven into the matнtress, as if it were a snake that somebody was trying to frighten her with and she wasn't going to be frightened. Simon turned back and sat down beside her. He also looked at the knife.

  "It looks like a kitchen knife," he remarked.

  "I wouldn't let anyone touch it," she said, "on account of fingerprints."

  Simon nodded and smiled, and took a handkerchief from the pocket of his robe. Using the cloth for insulation, he pulled the knife out and held it delicately while he inspected it. It was a kitchen knife-a cheap piece of steel with a riveted wooden handle, but sharp and pointed enough to have done all the lethal work of the most expensive blade.

  "Probably there aren't any prints on it," he said, "but it doesn't cost anything to try. Even most amateurs have heard about fingerprints these days, and they all wear gloves. Still, well see if we have any luck."

  He wrapped the knife carefully in the handkerchief and laid in on a Carter Dickson mystery on the bedside table.

  "You're going to get tired of telling the story," he said, "but I haven't heard it yet. Would you like to tell me what hapнpened?"

  "I don't really know," she said. "I'd been asleep. And then suddenly for no reason at all I woke up. At least I thought I woke up, but maybe I didn't, anyway it was just like a nightнmare. But I just knew there was somebody in my room, and I went cold all over, it was just as if a lot of spiders were crawling all over me, and I didn't feel as if I could move or scream or anything, and I just lay there hardly breathing and my heart was thumping away till I thought it would burst."

  "Does that always happen when somebody comes into your room?" Ginny asked interestedly.

  "Shut up," said the Saint.

  "I was trying to listen," Lissa said, "to see if I couldn't hear something, I mean if he was really moving or if I'd just woken up with the frights and imagined it, and my ears were humнming so that it didn't seem as if I could hear anything. But I did hear him. I could hear him breathing."

  "Was that when you screamed?"

  "No. Well, I don't know. It all happened at once. But suddenly I knew he was awful close, right beside the bed, and then I knew I was wide awake and it wasn't just a bad dream, and then I screamed the first time and tried to wriggle out of bed on the other side from where he was, to get away from him, and he actually touched my shoulder, and then there was a sort of thump right beside me-that must have been the knife-and then he ran away and I heard him rush through one of the doors, and I lay there and screamed again beнcause I thought that would bring you or somebody, and beнsides if I made enough noise it would help to scare him and make him so busy trying to get away that he wouldn't wait to have another try at me."

  "So you never actually saw him at all?" She shook her head.

  "I had the shades drawn, so it was quite dark. I couldn't see anything. That's what made it more like a nightmare. It was like being blind."

  "But when he opened one of these doors to rush out- there might have been a little dim light on the other side-"

  "Well, I could just barely see something, but it was so quick, it was just a blurred shadow and then he was gone. I don't think I've even got the vaguest idea how big he was."

  "But you call him 'he'," said the Saint easily, "so you saw that much, anyway."

  She stared at him with big round blue eyes. "I didn't," she said blankly. "No, I didn't. I just naturally thought it was 'he'. Of course it was 'he'. It had to be." She swallowed, and added almost pleadingly: "didn't it?"

  "I don't know," said the Saint, flatly and dispassionately.

  "Now wait a minute," said Freddie Pellman, breaking one of the longest periods of plain listening that Simon had yet known him to maintain. "What is this?"

  The Saint took a cigarette from a package on the bedside table and lighted it with care and deliberation. He knew that their eyes were all riveted on him now, but he figured that a few seconds' suspense would do them no harm.

  "I've walked around outside," he said, "and I didn't see anyone making a getaway. That wasn't conclusive, of course, but it was an interesting start. Since then I've been through the whole house. I've checked every door and window in the place. Angelo did it first, but I did it again to make sure. Nothнing's been touched. There isn't an opening anywhere where even a cat could have got in and got out again. And I looked in all the closets and under the beds too, and I didn't find any strangers hiding around."

  "But somebody was here!" Freddie protested. "There's the knife. You can see it with your own eyes. That proves that Lissa wasn't dreaming."

  Simon nodded, and his blue eyes were crisp and sardonic.

  "Sure it does," he agreed conversationally. "So it's a comнfort to know that we don't have to pick a prospective murderer out of a hundred and thirty million people outside. We know that this is strictly a family affair, and you're going to be killed by somebody who's living here now."

  4 IT WAS nearly nine o'clock when the Saint woke up again, and the sun, which had been bleaching the sky before he got back to bed, was slicing brilliantly through the Venetian blinds. He felt a lot better than he had expected to. In fact, he decided, after a few minutes of lazy rolling and stretching, he felt surprisingly good. He got up, sluiced himself under a cold shower, brushed his hair, pulled on a pair of swimming trunks and a bath robe, and went out in search of breakfast.

  Through the trench windows of the living-room he saw Ginny sitting alone at the long table in the patio beside the barbecue. He went out and stood over her.

  "Hullo," she said.

  "Hullo," he agreed. "You don't mind if I join you?"

  "Not a bit," she said. "Why should I?"

  "We could step right into a Van Druten play," he observed.

  She looked at him rather vaguely. He sat down, and in a moment Angelo was at his elbow, i
mmaculate and impassive now in a white jacket and a black bow tie.

  "Yes, sir?"

  "Tomato juice," said the Saint. "With Worcestershire sauce. Scrambled eggs, and ham. And coffee."

  "Yes, sir."

  The Filipino departed; and Simon lighted a cigarette and slipped the robe off his shoulders.

  "Isn't this early for you to be up?"

  "I didn't sleep so well." She pouted. "Esther does snore. You'll find out."

  Before the part broke up for the second time, there had been some complex but uninhibited arguments about how the rest of the night should be organized with a view to mutual protection, which Simon did not want revived at that hour.

  "I'll have to thank her," he said tactfully. "She's saved me from having to eat breakfast alone. Maybe she'll do it for us again."

  "You could wake me up yourself just as well," said Ginny.

  The Saint kept his face noncommittal and tried again.

  "Aren't you eating?"

  She was playing with a glass of orange juice as if it were a medicine that she didn't want to take.

  "I don't know. I sort of don't have any appetite."

  "Why?"

  "Well... you are sure that it was someone in the house last night, aren't you?"

  "Quite sure."

  "I meanннone of us. Or the servants, or somebody."

  "Yes."

  "So why couldn't we just as well be poisoned?"

  He thought for a moment, and chuckled.

  "Poison isn't so easy. In the first place, you have to buy it. And there are problems about that. Then, you have to put it in something. And there aren't so many people handling food that you can do that just like blowing out a match. It's an awfully dangerous way of killing people. I think probably more poisoners get caught than any other kind of murderer. And any smart killer knows it."

  "How do you know this one is smart?"

  "It follows. You don't send warnings to your victims unless you think you're pretty smart--ннyou have to be quite an egotist and a show-off to get that far--ннand anyone who thinks he's really smart usually has at least enough smartness to be able to kid himself. Besides, nobody threatened to kill you."

  "Nobody threatened to kill Lissa."

  "Nobody did kill her."

  "But they tried."

  "I don't think we know that they were trying for Lissa."

  "Then if they were so halfway smart, how did they get in the wrong room?"

  "They might have thought Freddie would be with her."

  "Yeah?" she scoffed. "If they knew anything, they'd know he'd be in his own room. He doesn't visit. He has visitors."

  Simon felt that he was at some disadvantage. He said with a grin: "You can tie me up, Ginny, but that doesn't alter anything. Freddie is the guy that the beef is about. The inнtended murderer has very kindly told us the motive. And that automatically establishes that there's no motive for killing anyone else. I'll admit that the attack on Lissa last night is pretty confusing, and I just haven't got any theories about it yet that I'd want to bet on; but I still know damn well that nobody except Freddie is going to be in much danger unless they accidentally find out who the murderer is, and personally I'm not going to starve myself until that happens."

  He proved it by taking a healthy sip from the glass of tomato juice which Angelo set in front of him, and a couple of minutes later he was carving into his ham and eggs with healthy enthusiasm.

  The girl watched him moodily.

  "Anyway," she said, "I never can eat anything much for breakfast. I have to watch my figure."

  "It looks very nice to me," he said, and was able to say it without the slightest effort.

  "Yes, but it has to stay that way. There's always competiнtion."

  Simon could appreciate that. He was curious. He had been very casual all the time about the whole organisation and mechanics of the mщnage, as casual as Pellman himself, but there just wasn't any way to stop wondering about the details of a set-up like that. The Saint put it in the scientific category of post-graduate education. Or he was trying to.

  He said, leading her on with a touch so light and apparently disinterested that it could have been broken with a breath: "It must be quite a life."

  "It is."

  "If I hadn't seen it myself, I wouldn't have believed it was really possible."

  "Why not?"

  "It's just something out of this world."

  "Sheiks and sultans do it."

  "I know," he said delicately. "But their women are brought up differently. They're brought up to look forward to a place in a harem as a perfectly normal life. American girls aren't."

  One of her eyebrows went up a little in a tired way.

  "They are where I came from. And probably most everyнwhere else, if you only knew. Nearly every man is a wanderнing wolf at heart, and if he's got enough money there isn't much to stop him. Nearly every woman knows it. Only they don't admit it. So what? You wouldn't think there was anyнthing freakish about it if Freddie kept us all in different apartнments and visited around. What's the difference if he keeps us all together?"

  The Saint shrugged.

  "Nothing much," he conceded. "Except, I suppose, a cerнtain amount of conventional illusion."

  "Phooey," she said. "What can you do with an illusion?"

  He couldn't think of an answer to that.

  "Well," he said, "it might save a certain amount of domesнtic strife."

  "Oh, sure," she said. "We bicker and squabble a bit."

  "I've heard you."

  "But it doesn't often get too serious."

  "That's the point. That's what fascinates me, in a way. Why doesn't anybody ever break the rules? Why doesn't anyнbody try to ride the others off and marry him, for instance?"

  She laughed shortly.

  "That's two questions. But I'll tell you. Nobody goes too far because they wouldn't be here if they did. Or they'd only do it once. And then-out. No guy wants to live in the middle of a mountain feud; and after all, Freddie's the meal ticket. He's got a right to have some peace for his money. So everybody behaves pretty well. As for marrying him-that's funny."

  "Guys have been married before."

  "Not Freddie Pellman. He can't afford to."

  "One thing that we obviously have in common," said the Saint, "is a sense of humor."

  She shook her head.

  "I'm not kidding. Didn't you know about him?"

  "No. I didn't know about him."

  "There's a will," she said. "All his money is in a trust fund. He just gets the income. I guess Papa Pellman knew Freddie pretty well, and so he didn't trust him. He sewed everything up tight. Freddie never will be able to touch most of the capital, but he gets two or three million to play with when he's thirty-five. On one condition. He mustn't marry beнfore that. I guess Papa knew all about girls like me. If Freddie marries before he's thirty-five, he doesn't get another penny. Ever. Income or anything. It all goes to a fund to feed stray cats or something like that."

  "So." The Saint poured himself some coffee. "I suppose Papa thought that Freddie would have attained a certain amount of discretion by that time. How long does that keep him safe for, by the way?"

  "As a matter of fact," she said, "it's only a few more months."

  "Well, cheer up," he said. "If you can last that long you may still have a chance."

  "Maybe by that time I wouldn't want it," she said, with her disturbing eyes dwelling on him.

  Simon lighted a cigarette and looked up across the patio as a door opened and Lissa and Esther came out. Lissa carried a book, with her forefinger marking a place: she put it down open on the table beside her, as if she was ready to go back to it at any moment. She looked very gay and fresh in a play suit that matched her eyes.

  "Have you and Ginny solved it yet?" she asked.

  "I'm afraid not," said the Saint. "As a matter of fact, we were mostly talking about other things."

  "I'll take two guesses," said Esther.
<
br />   "Why two?" snapped Ginny. "I thought there was only one thing you could think of."

  The arrival of Angelo for their orders fortunately stopped that train of thought. And then, almost as soon as the Filipino had disappeared again and the cast were settling themselves and digging their toes in for another jump, Freddie Pellman made his entrance.

  Like the Saint, he wore swimming trunks and a perfunctory terry-cloth robe. But the exposed portions of him were not built to stand the comparison. He had pale blotchy skin and the flesh under it looked spongy, as if it had softened up with inward fermentation. Which was not improbable. But he seemed totally unconscious of it. He was very definitely himнself, even if he was nothing else.

  "How do you feel?" Simon asked unnecessarily.

  "Lousy," said Freddie Pellman, no less unnecessarily. He sank into a chair and squinted wearily over the table. Ginny still had some orange juice in her glass. Freddie drank it, and made a face. He said: "Simon, you should have let the murderer go on with the job. If he'd killed me last night, I'd have felt a lot better this morning."

  "Would you have left me a thousand dollars a day in your will?" Simon inquired.

  Freddie started to shake his head. The movement hurt him too much, so he clutched his skull in both hands to stop it.

  "Look," he said. "Before I die and you have to bury me, who is behind all this?"

  "I don't know," said the Saint patiently. "I'm only a bodyнguard of sorts. I didn't sell myself to you as a detective."

  "But you must have some idea."

  "No more than I had last night."

  A general quietness came down again, casting a definite shadow as if a cloud had slid over the sun. Even Freddie Pell man became still, holding his head carefully in the hands braced on either side of his jawbones.

  "Last night," he said soggily, "you told us you were sure it was someone inside the house. Isn't that what he said, Esther? He said it was someone who was here already."

  "That's right," said the Saint. "And it still goes."