Señor Saint (The Saint Series) Page 5

  But nothing of the sort had happened. Nothing at all. Of course not.

  “It’s not your fault, Sherm,” the wife was saying. “You’ll just have to try somewhere else. There are plenty of other countries, and I’ve always wanted to see them.”

  “I don’t know what’d make it better anywhere else. I guess I don’t know the right way to approach these people.”

  It began to dawn on the Saint that his continued immobility could eventually become as conspicuous, to a watchful eye, as if he had jumped out of his skin.

  With infinite casualness, he removed a length of ash from his cigarette, and inhaled with heroic moderation.

  Then he lifted his brandy glass, and let his eyes wander across the room.

  The Enriquez brothers were watching the American couple too, and their expression made him think of a couple of Walt Disney wolves discovering a hole in the fence of a sheep corral.

  “For two cents,” said the husband morosely, “I’d start looking around for someone who wants to organize a revolution here, and offer to sell him the guns. It might do me a lot more good.”

  Manuel Enriquez spoke earnestly to Pablo, and Pablo nodded vehemently.

  Manuel stood up and approached the adjacent table.

  “Please excuse me,” he said in good English, “but I could not help hearing what you were saying.”

  The couple exchanged guilty glances, but Manuel smiled reassuringly.

  “I appreciate your problem. As you said, it is important to know the right people. I believe my brother and I could help you.”

  “Gosh,” said the husband. “That sounds wonderful! Are you serious?”

  “Absolutely. May I introduce myself? I am Manuel Enriquez. That is my brother Pablo.”

  “Sherman Inkler,” said the husband, whipping out a wallet and a card from the wallet. “And of course this is Mrs Inkler.”

  “Oh, Sherm!” Doris Inkler gasped. “This could be the break you’ve been waiting for!”

  “We can soon find out,” Manuel said. “But this is not a good place to discuss business. You have not yet ordered your dinner. May I invite you to another place where we can talk more privately? My car is outside, and you shall be my guests.”

  As the Inklers and Pablo stood up simultaneously, he waved imperiously to the head waiter and shepherded them towards the stairs, pausing only to take both checks and sign them on the way out. It was in that brief stoppage that the blonde turned and looked at the Saint again, so intently that he knew, with utter certainty, that something had clicked in her memory, and that she knew who he was.

  3

  The implications of that long deliberate look would have sprinkled goose-pimples up his spine—if there had been room for any more. But he had just so much capacity for horripilation, and all of it had already been pre-empted by the scene he had witnessed just previously. The Saint had long ago conditioned himself to accept coincidences unblinkingly that would have staggered anyone who was less accustomed to them: it was much the same as a prize-fighter becoming inured to punishment, except that it was more pleasant. He had come to regard them as no more than the recurrent evidence of his unique and blessed destiny, which had ordained that wherever he turned, whether he sought it or not, he must always collide with adventure. But the supernatural precision and consecutiveness with which everything had unfolded that evening would have been enough to send spooky tingles up a totem pole.

  And yet the immediate result was to leave him sitting as impotently apart as the spectator of a play when the first-act curtain comes down. With the departure of the Enriquez brothers and the Inklers, he was as effectively cut off from the action as if it were unrolling in another world. The instinctive impulse, of course, was to follow, but cold reason instantaneously knocked that on the head. Manuel Enriquez had said they would go to a place where they could talk privately, and the Saint felt sure it would be just that. If any of them saw him again in their vicinity, it was a ten-to-one bet that they would have remembered him from the restaurant anyway, and drawn the obvious conclusion. But that last long look from the blonde had taken it out of the realm of risk into the confines of stark certainty.

  He tried to analyse that look again in retrospect, to determine what else might have been in it beyond simple recognition, while another department of his mind reached for philosophical consolation for the quirk of circumstance that kept him pinned to his chair.

  Why did he have to follow, anyhow? He could predict exactly what would happen next. The Enriquez brothers would offer to buy the shipload of guns. And Sherman Inkler, of course, would have his price…

  The full significance of the blonde’s look eluded him. Each time he tried to reconstruct and reassess it, he was halted before an intangible wall of inscrutability.

  He finished his cognac and coffee and stood up at last, and went down the stairs and through the bar out to the Paseo de la Reforma. It was raining, as it can do in Mexico City even in late spring, and the moist air had an exotic aroma of overloaded drains. One day, they say, the whole city will sink back and disappear into the swampy depths of the crater from which it arose. On such nights, as in any other city, there is always a dearth of taxis, but the Saint was fortunate enough to meet one unloading customers for the movie theatre next door.

  He had had plans to go prowling in search of distraction later that evening, whenever he got rid of Xavier, but now the drive had evaporated. Opportunity had already knocked as often as it was likely to do in one night.

  “Al Hotel Comee,” he said.

  The Comee is not the plushest hotel in Mexico City, being a few minutes’ drive from the fashionable centre of town, but its entirely relative remoteness makes it quieter than the more publicized caravanserais, and the Saint preferred it for that reason.

  He sat on his bed and turned the pages of the telephone directory.

  Would Carlos Xavier have an unlisted number? But Xavier was sure to be still tied up with a burgled politico, in any case. And the Saint was far from obsessed with the idea of talking to Xavier again—just yet.

  What kind of hotel would the Inklers be staying at? There could only be a limited number of possibilities.

  He picked up the telephone.

  “The Reforma Hotel, please,” he said.

  After the usual routine of sound effects, the connection was made.

  “Mr Inkler, please,” he said. “Mr Sherman Inkler. I-n-k-l-e-r.”

  “One moment, please.”

  It was longer than that. Then the Reforma operator said, “I’m sorry, there is no Mr Inkler here.”

  “Thank you,” said the Saint.

  He lighted a cigarette and stretched himself out more comfortably on the bed while he jiggled the telephone bracket. This method of search might take some time. But it was bound to succeed eventually. When he got the Comee operator back, he said, “Get me the Del Prado.”

  He drew another blank there. But all it would take was patience.

  He was starting to recall his own operator again when there was a knock on the door. He hung up with a frown, and stood up and opened it.

  Doris Inkler stood outside.

  “You don’t have to try any longer, unless you particularly want to,” she said. “May I come in?”

  The Saint was not given to exaggerated reactions. He did not fall over backwards in an explosion of sparks and stars like a character in the funny papers, with his eyebrows shooting up through his hair. He may have felt rather like it, but he was able to resist the inclination. In his memoirs, he would probably list it among the finest jobs of resisting he ever did.

  He waved his cigarette with an aplomb that had no counterpart in his internal sensations.

  “But of course,” he said cordially. “This proves that telepathy is still better than telephones.”

  She stepped in just as calmly, and he closed the door.

  “I could have let you work a lot longer, if I’d wanted to make it tough for you,” she said. “But I got
tired of standing outside.”

  Her head and eyes made an indicative movement back and upwards, and he followed their direction to the open transom above the door. He shut it.

  “You must have a very big kind heart,” he said.

  “It’s a pretty tedious way to track anyone down,” she said. “I know. That’s how I located you.”

  “Did you make a deal or wash out with the Enriquez brothers so quickly?”

  “They dropped me off first, and just took Sherman along. I think they have an old-world prejudice against having wives sit in on business conferences. So I was probably able to start calling sooner than you did. Besides, I was lucky.”

  “Where, as a matter of interest, are you staying?”

  “In Room 611.”

  The Saint sighed.

  “And this is probably the last hotel I’d have tried. It would have seemed too easy. Whereas you, being a simple-minded woman, probably tried it first.”

  “Correct. But let’s change that ‘simple-minded’ to ‘economical.’ This was the one place I could try before I started to run up a telephone bill.”

  He cleared some things from a chair, and she sat down. He gave her a cigarette, lighted it, and sat on the end of the bed. At last he was actually as relaxed and at ease as he had contrived to seem from the beginning. He wondered why he had ever allowed himself to get in a stew about the apparent dead end he had run into. He should have known that such a fantastically pat and promising beginning could not possibly peter out, so long as there was such an obviously plot-conscious genius at work. Inevitably the thread would have been brought back to him even if he had done nothing but sit and wait for it.

  But underneath his coolly interested repose he was as wary as if he had been closeted with a coy young tigress. Perhaps everything would remain cosy and kitteny, but he had no illusions about the basic hazards of the situation.

  “It’s nice to feel that our hearts are so in tune,” he remarked. “I was determined to find you again, regardless of cost. You were a little thriftier about it, but no less determined. And so we meet. Fate failed to keep us apart, and at this moment is probably gnashing the few teeth it can have left. However, there’s still one small point. I had plenty of opportunities to hear your name. But how did you know mine?”

  “I recognized you, Mr Templar—as I think you knew.”

  “We haven’t met before.”

  “No.”

  “So you’ve seen my picture and read about me.”

  “Right. And now it’s time you let me ask a question. Why were you so anxious to find me?”

  Simon considered his reply.

  “Any mirror would tell you better than I can. But let’s say that when I first saw you alone, I was hoping you’d stay that way for long enough for us to get acquainted. I was sort of tied up at the moment, if you remember. Then, when your husband showed up, I could see you were much too good for him. After thinking it over, I decided that he’s the dull type that it’s almost a public duty to cuckold. I was planning to find out if you agreed.”

  Her eyes widened a fraction but did not blink. They were a darker blue than his own, and there were smoky shadows in their depths. Blue is conventionally a cool colour, but he realized that her shade could have the heat potential of a blowtorch flame.

  “You don’t try very hard to be subtle, do you?” she said, and said it without any indignation.

  “Not always. Especially when a gal seems to have similar ideas of her own. You didn’t track me down just to ask for my autograph, did you?”

  “No. My turn again. What do you know about the Enriquez brothers?”

  “That they’re big tycoons down here, and tough babies. That they’ve specialized in robbing the Mexican public through government contracts obtained by graft and corruption. That they were recently investigated and exposed by the present administration, and are temporarily out of business and facing a possible rest period in the hoosegow. That they would therefore like to see a fast change in the régime. That they are backing a fast-changer named José Jalisco, who has the necessary wind to rouse the rabble, and would love to buy some toys that go bang for his followers. That this makes them ideal customers for a homeless shipload of arms and ammunition.”

  “You seem to have found out a lot.”

  “It was poured into my ear, on what I believe to be excellent authority. Shouldn’t that make it my turn next? Why were you looking for me, if it wasn’t just to tell me how wonderful you think I am?”

  “I wanted to ask how you felt about that gun deal.”

  The Saint grinned.

  “That’s a neat reverse,” he said appreciatively.

  “Well?”

  She was not smiling. The dusky warmth in her eyes was stilled and held back, perhaps like a force in reserve.

  Simon gazed at her directly for several seconds while he made a decision. He stubbed out his cigarette gently in an ashtray.

  “I don’t like it,” he answered.

  “Do you really care whether they have one more revolution here?”

  “Yes, I do,” he said. “It may be rather dreamy and sentimental of me, but I care. If I thought it had a chance of doing some good, I might feel differently. But I know about this one. Its only real objective would be to get a couple of top-flight grafters off the hook and put them back in business. To achieve that, a lot of wretched citizens and stooges would be killed and maimed, and thousands more would be made even more miserable than they are. I wouldn’t like that.”

  “Not even if it dropped a very nice piece of change into your own lap?”

  His mouth hardened.

  “Not even if it dropped me the keys to Fort Knox,” he said coldly. “I can always steal a few million without killing anyone, or making nearly so many people unhappy.”

  She flicked her cigarette jerkily. The ash made a grey splash on the carpet.

  “So if you could, you’d try to stop Sherman making a deal.”

  “I’ll go further. I intend to do my God-damnedest to louse it up.”

  “I had an idea that was what you’d say.”

  “If you’d read anything about me worth reading, you wouldn’t even have had to ask.”

  She took a slow deep breath. It stirred fascinating contours under the soft silk of her dress.

  “That’s good,” she said. “I just had to be sure. Now I know you’ll be with us. We don’t have any cargo of guns to sell. We’re just trying to clean up in the bunko racket, with a bit of that Robin Hood touch you used to specialize in. The whole pitch was just a build-up to take the Enriquez brothers.”

  4

  Simon Templar stood up, unfolding his length inch by inch. He felt for the packet of cigarettes in his shirt pocket. He drew out a cigarette and placed it between his lips. He stroked his lighter and put it to the cigarette. He exhaled a thin jet of smoke and put the lighter back in his pocket. All his movements were extremely slow and careful, as if he had been balancing on a tightrope over a whirling void. They had to be, while he waited for his fragmented coordinates to settle down, like a spun kaleidoscope, into a new pattern. But by this time his capacity for dizziness was fortunately a little numbed. The human system can only absorb so many jolts in one evening without losing some of its pristine vigour of response.

  “I see,” he said. “I suppose I should have guessed it when your husband came bouncing in and spilled all the beans so loudly and clearly at the very next table to Manuel and Pablo—after you’d kept them watching you long enough to be quite sure they’d be listening.”

  “He wasn’t meant to wait quite so long,” she said, “but he did get held up.”

  “So there is no ship. And no guns.”

  She shook her head.

  “There is a ship. It’s cruising in the Gulf of Mexico right now. It has a lot of crates on board—full of rocks. There are also two or three on top which do have rifles and machine-guns in them, which can be opened for inspection. We weren’t expecting the Enr
iquez brothers to put out a lot of cash without being pretty convinced about what they were buying.”

  “That sounds like quite an investment.”

  “It was. But we can afford it. If it works out, we’ll pick up at least half a million dollars.”

  The Saint rubbed his hands softly together, just once.

  “A truly noble swindle,” he murmured with restrained rapture. “Boldly conceived, ingeniously contrived, unstintingly financed, slickly dramatized, professionally played—and one of the classics of all time for size. I wish I’d thought of it myself.”

  For the first time in a long while, a trace of a smile touched her lips.

  “You approve?”

  “Especially in the choice of pigeons.”

  “I’m glad of that. I picked them myself, and planned it all for them. I thought it made quite a Saintly set-up. In fact, I should really give you most of the credit. I was thinking of things I’d read about you, and the way you used to do jobs like this, all the time I was figuring it out.”

  He studied her again, for the first time with purely intellectual appraisal.

  “It begins to sound as if you were the brains of the Inkler partnership.”

  “Sometimes I am. Of course, Sherm wasn’t doing so badly when I teamed up with him. But this one was my very own brain-child.”

  “And was it all your own idea, too, to come and talk to me just now?”

  “We agreed on it. I had a chance to get in a word with him alone, when they dropped me off. I told him I’d recognized you, and who you were. We both knew we’d have to do some fresh figuring, fast. He left it to me. As a matter of fact, he didn’t have much choice. The Enriquez brothers were waiting. He said whatever I did was okay with him, but for Christ’s sake do something.”

  “Well,” said the Saint helpfully, “what are you going to do?”

  She raised her eyes to his face.

  “I’ve told you the whole story. And I’m hoping you’re not sore at me for trying to imitate your act.”