Señor Saint (The Saint Series) Page 4

  Simon had told her only the skeletal facts, omitting the amplifications and additions which were his own, and waited for her reaction, and this was it.

  “I hadn’t realized it was quite so funny,” he said stonily.

  “You couldn’t,” she choked. “My dear man, you don’t know the half of it. Here I come dragging myself down to this ghastly dump, just in case Yarn has really got on to something I couldn’t afford to miss, and all he’s got is a mulatto concubine and a few beads. And all the time, right here in my jewel case, I’ve got a string of pearls that were good enough for Catherine of Russia!”

  Simon stood very still.

  “You have?” he said.

  “Just one of those baubles that Ormond used to pass out when he was indulging his sultan complex. Like I told you. I think he only paid about fifteen grand for them at an auction. And me wasting all this time and effort, not to mention yours, on Ned Yarn’s imaginary oyster bed!”

  At last the Saint began to laugh too, very quietly.

  “It is rather delirious,” he said. “Let me fix you another drink, and let’s go on with some unfinished business.”

  THE REVOLUTION RACKET

  1

  “In my time, I’ve had all kinds of receptions from the police,” Simon Templar remarked. “Sometimes they want to give me a personal escort out of town. Sometimes they see me as a Heaven-sent fall guy for the latest big crime that they haven’t been able to pin on anybody else. Sometimes they just rumble hideous warnings of what they’ll do to me if I get out of line while I’m in their bailiwick. But your approach is certainly out of the ordinary.”

  “I try not to be an ordinary policeman,” said Captain Carlos Xavier.

  They sat in the Restaurant Larue, which has become almost as hard-worked and undefinitive a name as Ritz among ambitious food purveyors; this one was in Mexico City, but it made a courageous attempt to live up to the glamorous cosmopolitan connotations of its patronymic. There was nothing traditionally Mexican about its decor, which was rather shinily international, and the menu strove to achieve the same expensive neutrality. However, at Xavier’s suggestion, they were eating pescados blancos, the delicate little fish of Lake Pátzcuaro which are not quite like anything else in the world, washed down with a bottle of Chilean Riesling; and this, it had already been established, was at the sole invitation and expense of Captain Carlos Xavier.

  “Sometimes,” Simon suggested cautiously, “I’ve actually been asked to help the police with a problem. But the build-up has never been as lavish as this.”

  “I have nothing to ask, except the pleasure of your company,” said Captain Xavier.

  He was a large fleshy man with a balding head and a compensatingly luxuriant moustache. He ate with gusto and talked with gestures. His small black eyes were humorous and very bright, but even to Simon’s critical scrutiny they seemed to beam honestly.

  “All my life I must have been reading about you,” Xavier said. “Or perhaps I should say, about a person called the Saint. But your identity is no secret now, is it?”

  “Hardly.”

  “And for almost as long, I have hoped that one day I might have the chance to meet you. I am what I suppose you would call a fan.”

  “Coming from a policeman,” said the Saint, “I guess that tops everything.”

  Xavier shook his head vigorously.

  “In most countries, perhaps. But not in Mexico.”

  “Why?”

  “This country was created by revolutions. Many of the men who founded it, our heroes, began as little more than bandits. To this very day, the party in power officially calls itself the Revolutionary Party. So, I think, we Mexicans will always have a not-so-secret sympathy in our hearts for the outlaw—what you call the Robin Hood. For although they say you have broken many laws, you have always been the righter of wrongs—is that not true?”

  “More or less, I suppose.”

  “And now that I see you,” Xavier went on enthusiastically, and with a total lack of self-consciousness, “I am even happier. I know that what a man looks like often tells nothing of what he really is. But you are exactly as I had pictured you—tall and strong and handsome, and with the air of a pirate! It is wonderful just to be looking at you!”

  The Saint modestly averted his eyes.

  This was especially easy to do because the shift permitted him to gaze again at a woman who sat alone at a table across the room. He had noticed her as soon as she entered, and had been glancing at her as often as he could without seeming too inattentive to his host.

  With her fair colouring and the unobtrusive elegance of her clothes, she was obviously an American. She was still stretching out her first cocktail, and referring occasionally to the plain gold watch on her wrist: she was, of course, waiting for somebody. The wedding ring on her left hand suggested that it was probably a husband—no lover worthy of her time would be likely to keep such a delectable dish waiting. But, there was no harm in considering, married women did travel alone, and sometimes wait for female friends; they also came to Mexico to divorce husbands; and, as a matter of final realism, an attractive woman wearing a wedding ring abroad was not necessarily even married at all, but might wear it just as a kind of flimsy chastity belt, in the hope of discouraging a certain percentage of unwanted Casanovas. The chances were tenuous enough, but an incorrigible optimist like the Saint could always—dream…

  “And now,” Xavier was saying, “tell me what you are going to do in Mexico.”

  Simon brought his eyes and his ideas back reluctantly.

  “I’m just a tourist.” He had said it so often, in so many places, that it was getting to be like a recitation. “I’m not planning to make any trouble, or get into any. I want to see that new sensation, El Loco, fight bulls. And I’ll probably go to Cuernavaca, and Oaxaca, and try the fishing at Acapulco. Just like all the other gringos.”

  “That is almost disappointing.”

  “It ought to make you happy.”

  “It is not very exciting, being a policeman here. I should have enjoyed matching wits with you. Of course, in the end I should catch you, but for a time it would be interesting.”

  “Of course,” Simon agreed politely.

  “It would have been a great privilege to observe you in action,” Xavier said. “I have always been an admirer of your methods. Besides, before I caught you, you might even have done some good.”

  The Saint raised his eyebrows.

  “With anyone so efficient as you on the job, there can’t be much left to do.”

  “I do my best. But unfortunately, when I make an arrest, I have not always accomplished much.”

  “You mean—the court doesn’t always take it from there?”

  “Much too often.”

  “Your candour keeps taking my breath away.”

  Xavier shrugged.

  “It is the truth. It is not exactly a rare complaint, even in your country. And absolute justice is a much younger idea here. We are still inclined to accept graft as the prerogative of those in power—perhaps it is the legacy of our bandit tradition. It will change, some day. But at the present, there are many times when I would personally like to see a man like you taking the law into his own hands. You will have coffee? And brandy?”

  He snapped his fingers at a waiter and gave the order, and the Saint lighted a cigarette and stole another glance at the honey-blonde young woman across the room. She was still alone, and looking a good deal more impatient. It would not be much longer before the moment would be most propitious for venturing a move—if he had only been alone himself. The thought made an irksome subtraction from his full enjoyment of the fact that a police officer was not only buying his dinner but seemed to be handing him an open invitation to resume his career of outlawry.

  With a slight effort, he turned again to the more uncommon of the two attractions.

  “Are you really wishing I’d un-reform myself,” he asked curiously, “or are you just dissatisfied
with the Government? Maybe another revolution would produce a better system.”

  “By no means,” Xavier said quickly. Then, as the Saint’s blue eyes continued to rest on him levelly, he received their unspoken question, and said, “No, I do not say that because I am forced to. The change must come with time and education and growing up. I believe that the Government we have today is as good as any other we would get. No, it is better. In fact, it is already too honest for the people who are most anxious to change it. There is only one party which could seriously threaten a revolution today—and who are its sponsors?”

  “You mean José Jalisco?”

  “A figurehead—an orator who blows hot air wherever the most pesos tell him! I mean the men behind Jalisco.”

  “Who are they?”

  “The Enriquez brothers. But I do not suppose your newspapers have room for our scandals. For many years they were making millions, at the expense of the Mexican people, out of Government construction contracts. It was our new President who ordered the investigation which exposed them, and who threw out the officials who helped them. Even now, they may face imprisonment, and fines that would ruin them. They are the ones who would like to see a revolution for Jalisco…They are sitting opposite you now, at the table next to the young woman you have been staring at for the last hour.”

  Simon winced very slightly, and looked carefully past the blonde.

  He had noticed the two men before, observing that they also had been watching the girl and obviously discussing her assets and potentialities, but he had not paid them much attention beyond that. As competition for her favour, he figured that they would not have given him too much trouble. They were excessively well groomed and tailored and manicured, with ostentatious jewellery in their neckties and on their fingers, but their pockmarked features had a cruel and wilful cast that would hardly appeal to a nice girl at first sight. Now that Xavier identified them, the family resemblance was evident.

  “The bigger one is Manuel,” Xavier said. “The smaller is Pablo. But one is as bad as the other. To protect their millions, and to make more, they would not care how many suffered.”

  Waiters poured coffee and brought brandy, and Simon took advantage of the diversion to study the Enriquez brothers again. This also allowed him to keep track of the trim young blonde. And this time, when he was looking directly at her, he was able to see that she was looking at him, with what seemed to be considerable interest. It was an effort for him to suppress a growing feeling of frustration.

  “Do you seriously believe they could start a revolution?” he asked Xavier.

  “I know they have talked of it. Jalisco has a large following. He has the gift, which Hitler and Mussolini had, of inflaming mobs. But a mob, today, can do nothing without modern weapons. That is where the Enriquez brothers come in. They have the money to provide them. One day, I think, they will try to do that. They could be plotting it now, while we look at them.”

  “For a couple of desperate conspirators,” Simon commented, “they don’t seem very embarrassed to have you watching them.”

  Xavier laughed till his moustache quivered and his second chin shook. But when he could speak again, his voice was as discreetly pitched as it had been all along.

  “Me? They have no idea who I am. Any more than you would have known, if I had not introduced myself at your hotel. Who knows an insignificant captain of the police? They deal with chiefs—if they can. They are too big to care whether I exist. But I know about them, as I knew about you, because it is my business to know.”

  “And yet there isn’t a thing you can do.”

  “It takes much proof to accuse such important men. And the bigger they are, the harder it is to get. Probably before I ever get it, it is too late. Another civil war will not be good for Mexico. But I cannot stop a flood, like the Dutch boy, with my little finger.” Xavier shrugged heavily. “That is why I can be sorry the Saint has become so respectable.”

  The Saint gazed at him with an assemblage of conflicting reactions that added up to a poker-faced blankness which could hardly have been improved on deliberately. But before Simon could decide which of a dozen possible replies to make, a waiter bustled up to Xavier with a folded slip of paper on a tray.

  Xavier opened it, frowned at it, and pursed his lips over it for several seconds.

  “This is a tragedy,” he announced at length, and tucked the note into his pocket.

  “Has the shooting started already?” Simon inquired.

  “Oh, no. Merely a simple robbery. But it is at the house of a politician, so I must give it my personal attention. My lieutenant is downstairs, and I must go with him.”

  Xavier stood up, but put out a restraining hand as the Saint started to rise with him.

  “No, please stay here. It is only a routine matter, and would not interest you. Take time to finish your brandy. And have another. I will pay the bill as I go out. I insist.” The bright black eyes twinkled. “And perhaps after all you will be able to meet the young lady. I shall call you at your hotel soon. Hasta luego!”

  And with an effusive sequence of handshakes that kept time with the somewhat frantic deluge of his parting speech, he was gone.

  Simon Templar sat down again, feeling a trifle breathless by contagion, and poured himself another cup of coffee.

  Not too hurriedly, he looked at the lonely young blonde again.

  He was just in time to see her greeting a schmo who had to be her husband.

  2

  Well, that was the way life was, Simon reflected, as he chain-lit another cigarette. You could spend weeks waiting for a little gentle excitement, and then, when things started happening, there were more of them than you could handle.

  A police captain, of all people, points out a couple of apparently ideal candidates for free-lance euthanasia, gives you the why and wherefore, and practically invites you to go ahead and take a crack at them—adding the almost irresistible bait that, although he will thoroughly approve of whatever you do, he is also sure that he will be able to pinch you for it afterwards. But you can’t really give your all to this sublime proposition, because you are wishing half the time that he would go away so that you could concentrate on an equally inviting but entirely different temptation to adventure.

  So finally he does go away, but only after staying just long enough for the other attraction to slip out of reach.

  Then you gripe because you’ve only got one thing left, and you wanted both. Quite forgetting that you started the evening with nothing.

  Oh, what the hell, the Saint thought. He could still murder the Enriquez brothers. And maybe he should murder the blonde’s husband too.

  There was no doubt about their marital status. The man was far too typical a hard-driving Babbitt to be any girl’s secret romance. A good husband, perhaps, but too busy to be a Lothario. He was still in his forties, and not unprepossessing, with a square jaw and horn-rimmed glasses and distinguished flecks of grey at his temples; but you could see that he never left business behind, even as he brought a bulging briefcase with him to dinner.

  “Whatever kept you so long?” she asked—not anxiously, not pettishly, but with the controlled and privileged edginess of a long-suffering wife.

  “My taxi had a little fender scrape, but it had to be with a police car. You never saw so much commotion and red tape. I almost got locked up as a material witness. I’m sorry, dear—it wasn’t my fault.”

  He turned to the waiter and ordered two Martinis. The Enriquez brothers looked disappointed, but went on watching them with a kind of morbid curiosity.

  “Well,” she said graciously, but after a suitable pause, “what’s the news?”

  “I’m getting nowhere. I tell you, Doris, I’m about ready to give up and go home.”

  “That isn’t like you, Sherm.”

  “I know when I’m licked. I’ve always heard there was a trick to doing business with these South American governments. Now I can vouch for it. You’ve just got to know
the right people—and I don’t know them. That seems to be the end of it.”

  The Saint was not making any effort to eavesdrop, but he didn’t have to. The restaurant was quiet, and they were talking in clear normal voices, as if they were confident in the security of speaking a foreign language, but that very contrast made it easier for him to separate their conversation from the background tones of Spanish.

  The waiter brought him another snifter of Rémy Martin, with the parting compliments of Captain Xavier, and went on to deliver two Martinis across the room. Simon gazed innocently into space, and let his ears receive what came to them.

  “What an incredible hard-luck story it is,” the husband said glumly. “First I get a contract to supply all those rifles and machine-guns to Iran—over the heads of all the big arms companies. Then I pull all the strings in Washington to get an export permit, which everyone said couldn’t be done. Then I manage to charter a boat to carry them, which isn’t so easy these days. And then, two days after the boat sails, they have a revolution in Iran and the new government cancels the order!”

  “And you’ve paid for the guns, haven’t you? Your money’s tied up.”

  “It sure is. But I wasn’t worried until now. I’d gotten them legally out of the States, so I could still sell them anywhere in the world where I could find a buyer. And I thought Mexico would be a cinch. Their Army equipment is nearly all out of date anyhow. And yet I can’t even get to talk to anyone. I’ve got fifty thousand late-model rifles and five thousand machine-guns cruising around the Caribbean, with five million rounds of ammunition—and nobody seems to want ’em!”

  It should be recorded as a major testimonial to Simon Templar’s phenomenal self-control that for an appreciable time he did not move a muscle. But he felt as unreal as if he had been sitting still in the midst of an earthquake. It required a conscious adjustment for him to realize that the seismic shock he experienced was purely subjective, that the mutter of other voices around had not changed key or missed a beat, that the ceiling had not fallen in and all the glassware shattered in one cataclysmic crash.