Featuring the Saint s-5 Page 8

"I'm probably more used to the sun than you are," he said. "This is merely common sense. What's the key to the situation? The government. Right. We don't propose to waste any of our good money bribing them-and if we did, they'd double-cross us. Therefore they must be removed by force. And at once, because I can't stay long. Long live the revolution!"

  "Quite," agreed Sheridan helplessly. "And the revolutionary army? This state is the only one in South America that's never had a revolution-because nobody's ever had enough energy to start one."

  The Saint fished for his cigarette case.

  "We are the revolutionary army," he said. "I ask you to remember that we march on our stomachs. So we'll just have another drink, and then some lunch, and then we'll wander along and try to enlist the mad Irishman. If we three can't make rings round six hundred and fifteen comic-opera dagoes, I'm going to retire from the fighting game and take up knitting and fancy needlework!"

  "MY dear soul," the Saint was still arguing persuasively at the close of the meal, "it's so simple. The man who manages the government of this two-by-four backyard is the man who holds the fate of Pasala Oil Products in his hands. At present Shannet is the bright boy who manages the government, and the master of P.O.P. is accordingly walking around under the Shannet hat. We'll go one better. We won't merely manage the government. We'll be the government. And POP is ours to play hell with as we like. Could anything be more straightforward? as the actress said when the bishop showed her his pass book."

  "Go on," encouraged Sheridan weakly. "Don't bother about my feelings."

  "As the actress said to the bishop shortly afterwards," murmured the Saint. "Blessed old Archie, it's obvious that three months in this enervating climate and the society of Lilla McAndrew have brought your energy down to the level of that of the natives you spoke of so contemptuously just now. I grant you it's sudden, but it's the only way. Before I knew the whole story I thought it would be good enough if we held up the post office and sent Campard a spoof cable purporting to come from Shannet, telling him the government had been kicked out, the concession revoked, and the only thing to do was to sell out his POP holdings as quickly as possible. What time our old friend Roger, back in London, snaps up the shares, discreetly, as fast as they come on the market."

  "Why won't that work now?"

  "You're forgetting the girl," said Templar. "This oil is really her property, so it isn't good enough just to make Campard unload at a loss and sell back to him at a premium when the rumour of revolution is exploded. The concession has really got to be revoked. Therefore I propose to eliminate the present government, and make Kelly, your mad Irishman, the new Minister of the Interior. That is, unless you'd take the job."

  "No, thanks," said Sheridan generously. "It's not quite in my line. Pass me up."

  The Saint lighted a cigarette.

  "In that case Kelly is elected unanimously," he remarked with charming simplicity. "So the only thing left to decide is how we start the trouble. I've been in South American revolutions before, but they've always been well under way by the time I arrived. The technique of starting the blamed things was rather missed out of my education. What does one do? Does one simply wade into the Presidential Palace, chant Time, gentlemen, please!' in the ear of his illustrious excellency, and invite him to close the door as he goes out? Or what?"

  "What, probably," said Sheridan. "That would be as safe as anything. I might get you reprieved on the grounds of insanity."

  The Saint sighed.

  "You aren't helpful, Beautiful Archibald."

  "If you'd settle down to talk seriously--"

  "I am serious."

  Sheridan stared. Then: "Is that straight, Saint?" he demanded.

  "From the horse's mouth," the Saint assured him solemnly. "Even as the crow flieth before the pubs open. Sweet cherub, did you really think I was wasting precious time with pure pickled onions?"

  Sheridan looked at him. There was another flippant rejoinder on the tip of Archie Sheridan's tongue, but somehow it was never uttered.

  The Saint was smiling. It was a mocking smile, but that was for Sheridan's incredulity. It was not the sort of smile that accompanies a test of the elasticity of a leg. And in the Saint's eyes was a light that wasn't entirely humorous.

  Archie Sheridan, with a cigarette in his mouth, fumbling for matches, realized that he had mistaken the shadow for the substance. The Saint wasn't making fun of revolutions. It was just that his sense of humour was too big to let him plan even a revolution without seeing the funny side of the show.

  Sheridan got a match to his cigarette.

  "Well?" prompted the Saint.

  "I think you're pots, bats, and bees," he said. "But if you're set on that kind of suicide-lead on. Archibald will be at your elbow with the bombs. You didn't forget the bombs?"

  The Saint grinned.

  "I had to leave them behind," he replied lightly. "They wouldn't fit into my sponge bag. Seriously, now, where and how do you think we should start the trouble?"

  They were sitting opposite one another at Sheridan's bare mahogany dining table, and at the Saint's back was the open door leading out onto the veranda and commanding an uninterrupted view of the approach to the bungalow.

  "Start the thing here and now and anyhow you like," said Sheridan, and he was looking past the Saint's shoulder towards the veranda steps.

  Simon Templar settled back a little more lazily into his chair, and a very Saintly meekness was spreading over his face.

  "Name?" he inquired laconically.

  "Shannet himself."

  The Saint's eyes were half closed.

  "I will compose a little song about him immediately," he said.

  Then a shadow fell across the table, but the Saint did not move at once. He appeared to be lost in a day-dream.

  "Buenos dias, Shannet," said Archie Sheridan. "Also, as soon as possible, adios. Hurry up and say what you've got to say before I kick you out."

  "I'll do any kicking out that's necessary, thanks," said Shannet harshly. "Sheridan, I've come to warn you off for the last time. The Andalusia berthed this morning, and she sails again on the evening tide. You've been nosing around here too long as it is. Is that plain enough?"

  "Plainer than your ugly face," drawled Sheridan. "And by what right do you kick me out? Been elected President, have you?"

  "You know me," said Shannet. "You know that what I say here goes. You'll sail on the Andalusia-either voluntarily or because you're put on board in irons. That's all. . . . What's this?"

  The Saint, perceiving himself to be the person thus referred to, awoke sufficiently to open his eyes and screw his head round so that he could view the visitor.

  He saw a tall, broad-shouldered man of indeterminate age, clad in a soiled white suit of which the coat was unbuttoned to expose a grubby singlet. Shannet had certainly not shaved for two days; and he did not appear to have brushed his hair for a like period, for a damp, sandy lock drooped in a tangle over his right eye. In one corner of his mouth a limp and dilapidated cigarette dangled tiredly from his lower lip.

  The Saint blinked.

  "Gawd!" he said offensively. "Can it be human?"

  Shannet's fists swept back his coat and rested on his hips.

  "What's your name, Cissy?" he demanded.

  The Saint flicked some ash from his cigarette and rose to his feet delicately.

  "Benito Mussolini," he answered mildly. "And you must be one of the corporation scavengers. How's the trade in garbage?" His gentle eyes swept Shannet from crown to toe. "Archie, there must have been some mistake. The real scavenger has gone sick, and one of his riper pieces of refuse is deputizing for him. I'm sorry."

  "If you--"

  "I said I was sorry," the Saint continued, in the same smooth voice, "because I'm usually very particular about the people I fight, and I hate soiling my hands on things like you."

  Shannet glowered.

  "I don't know who you are," he said, "and I don't care. But if you're looking for a fig
ht you can have it."

  "I am looking for a fight, dear one," drawled the Saint. "In fact, I'm looking for a lot of fights, and you're the first one that's offered. 'Cissy' is a name I particularly object to being called, O misbegotten of a pig!"

  The last words were spoken in colloquial Spanish, and the Saint made more of them than it is possible to report in printable English. Shannet went white, then red.

  "You--"

  His answering stream of profanity merged into a left swing to the Saint's jaw, which, if it had landed, would have ended the fight there and then. But it did not land.

  Simon Templar swayed back, and the swing missed by a couple of inches. As Shannet stumbled, momentarily off his balance, the Saint reached round and took the jug of ice water off the table behind him. Without any appearance of effort or haste, he sidestepped and poured most of the contents of the jug down the back of Shannet's neck.

  Shannet swung again. The Saint ducked, and sent the man flying with a smashing jab to the nose.

  "Look out, Saint!" Sheridan warned suddenly.

  "Naughty!" murmured the Saint, without heat.

  Shannet was getting to his feet, and his right hand was drawing something from his hip pocket.

  The Saint took two steps and a flying leap over Shannet's head, turning in the air as he did so. Shannet had only got to his knees when the Saint landed behind him and caught his opponent's throat and right wrist in hands that had the strength of steel cables in their fingers. Shannet's wrist was twisted behind his back with an irresistible wrench. . . .

  The gun cluttered to the floor simultaneously with Shannet's yelp of agony, and the Saint picked up the gun and stepped away.

  "A trophy, Archie!" he cried, and tossed the weapon over to Sheridan. "Guns I have not quite been shot with-there must be a drawer full of them at home. . . . Let's start, sweet Shannet!"

  Shannet replied with a chair, but the Saint was ten feet away by the time it crashed into the opposite wall.

  Then Shannet came in again with his fists. Any one of those whirling blows carried a kick that would have put a mule to sleep, but the Saint had forgotten more about ringcraft than many professionals ever learn. Shannet never came near touching him. Every rush Shannet made, somehow, expended itself on thin air, while he always seemed to be running his face slap into the Saint's stabbing left.

  "Want a rest?" the Saint asked kindly.

  "If you'd come in and fight like a man," gasped Shannet, his tortured chest heaving, "I'd kill you!"

  "Oh, don't be silly!" said the Saint in a bored voice, as though he had no further interest in the affair. "Hurry up and get out-I'm going to be busy."

  He turned away, but Shannet lurched after him.

  "Get out yourself!" snarled the man thickly. "D'you hear? I'm going right down to fetch the police--"

  The Saint sat down.

  "Listen to me, Shannet," he said quietly. "The less you talk about police when I'm around, the better for you. I'm telling you now that I believe you murdered a man named McAndrew not so long ago, and jumped his claim on a forged partnership agreement. I'm only waiting till I've got the proof. And then-well, it's too much to hope that the authorities of this benighted republic will execute the man who pays half their salaries, and so in the name of Justice I shall take you myself and hang you from a high tree."

  For a moment of silence the air seemed to tingle with the same electric tension as heralds the breaking of a thunder storm, while the Saint's ice-blue eyes quelled Shannet's reawakening fury; and then, with a short laugh, the Saint relaxed.

  "You're a pawn in the game," he said, with a contrasting carelessness which only emphasized the bleak implacability of his last speech. "We won't waste good melodrama on you. We reserve that for clients with really important discredit accounts. Instead, you shall hear the epitaph I've just composed for you. It commemorates a pestilent tumour named Shannet, who disfigured the face of this planet. He started some fun, but before it was done he was wishing he'd never began it. That otherwise immortal verse is marred by a grammatical error, but I'm not expecting you to know any better. . . . Archibald-the door!"

  Archie Sheridan had no reason to love Shannet, and the kick with which he launched the man into the garden was not gentle, but he seemed to derive no pleasure from it.

  He came back with a grave face and resumed his chair facing the Saint.

  "Well," he said, "you've done what you wanted. Now shall we sit down and make our wills, or shall we spend our last hours of life in drinking and song?"

  "Of course, we may be shot," admitted the Saint calmly. "That's up to us. How soon can we expect the army?"

  "Not before five. They'll all be asleep now, and an earth quake wouldn't make the Pasala policeman break off his siesta. Much less the army, who are inclined to give themselves airs. We might catch the Andalusia," he added hope fully.

  The Saint surveyed him seraphically.

  "Sweetheart," he said, "that joke may now be considered over. We've started, and we've got to keep moving. As I don't see the fun of sitting here waiting for the other side to surround us, I guess we'll bounce right along and interview Kelly. And when you two have coached me thoroughly in the habits and topography of Santa Miranda, we'll just toddle along and capture the town."

  "Just toddle along and which?" repeated Sheridan dazedly.

  The Saint spun a cigarette high into the air, and trapped it neatly between his lips as it fell.

  "That is to say, I will capture the town," he corrected him self, "while you and Kelly create a disturbance somewhere to distract their attention. Wake up, sonny! Get your hat, and let's go!"

  3

  The Saint's breezy way of saying that he would "just toddle along and capture the town" was a slight exaggeration. As a matter of fact, he spent nearly four days on the job.

  There was some spade-work to be done, and certain preparations to be made, and the Saint devoted a considerable amount of care and sober thought to these details. Though his methods, to the uninformed observer, might always have seemed to savour of the reckless, tip-and-run, hit-first-and-ask-questions-afterwards school, the truth was that he rarely stepped out of any frying pan without first taking the temperature of the fire beyond.

  Even in such a foolhardy adventure as that in which he was then engaged, he knew exactly what he was doing, and legislated against failure as well as he might; for, even in the most outlandish parts of the world, the penalty of unsuccessful revolution is death, and the Saint had no overwhelming desire to turn his interesting biography into an obituary notice.

  He explained his plan to Kelly, and found the Irishman an immediate convert to the Cause.

  "Shure, I've been thinkin' for years that it was time somebody threw out their crooked government," said that worthy, ruffling a hand like a ham through his tousled mop of flaming hair. "I'm just wonderin' now why I niver did it meself."

  "It's a desperate chance," Simon Templar admitted. "But I don't mind taking it if you're game."

  "Six years I've been here," mused Kelly ecstatically, screwing up a huge fist, "and I haven't seen a real fight. Exceptin' one or two disagreements with the natives, who run away afther the first round."

  The Saint smiled. He could not have hoped to find a more suitable ally.

  "We might easily win out," he said. "It wouldn't work in England, but in a place like this--"

  "The geography was made for us," said Kelly.

  On a scrap of paper he sketched a rough map to illustrate his point.

  Pasala is more or less in the shape of a wedge, with the base facing northeast on the seacoast. Near the centre of the base of the wedge is Santa Miranda. In the body of the wedge are the only other three towns worth mentioning-Las Flores, Rugio, and, near the apex, Esperanza. They are connected up by a cart track of a road which includes them in a kind of circular route that starts and finishes at Santa Miranda, for the State of Pasala does not yet boast a railway. This is hardly necessary, for the distance between Santa Mi
randa and Esperanza, the two towns farthest apart, is only one hundred and forty miles.

  It should also be mentioned that the wedge-shaped territory of Pasala cuts roughly into the Republic of Maduro, a much larger and more civilized country.

  "Of course, we're simply banking on the psychology of revolutions and the apathy of the natives," said the Saint, when they had finished discussing their plan of campaign. "The population aren't interested-if they're shown a man in a nice new uniform, and told that he's the man in power, they believe it, and go home and pray that they won't be any worse off than they were before. If we take off a couple of taxes, or something like that, as soon as we get in, the mob will be with us to a man. I'm sure the exchequer can stand it-I don't imagine Manuel Conception de Villega has been running this show without making a substantial profit on turnover."

  "That'll fetch 'em," Kelly averred. "They're bled dhry with taxes at present."

  "Secondly, there's the army. They're like any other army. They obey their officers because it's never occurred to them to do anything else. If they were faced with a revolution they'd fight it. So instead of that we'll present the revolution as an accomplished fact. If they're like any other South American army, they'll simply carry on under the new government- with a bonus of a few pesos per man to clinch the bargain."

  They talked for a while longer; and then they went out and joined Archie Sheridan, who had not been present at the council, being otherwise occupied with Lilla McAndrew on the veranda.

  The Saint had a little leisure to admire the girl. She was rather tall, fair-haired and blue-eyed, superbly graceful. Her sojourn in that sunny climate had coloured her skin a pale golden brown that was infinitely more becoming than mere pink-and-white; but the peachlike bloom of her complexion had not had time to suffer.

  It was plain that Archie Sheridan was fatally smitten with the inevitable affliction, and the Saint was mischievously delighted.

  "You want to be careful of him, Miss McAndrew," he advised gravely. "I've known him since he was so high, and you wouldn't believe what a past he's collected in his brief career of sin. Let's see. . . . There was Gladys, the golden-haired beauty from the front row of the Gaiety chorus, Susan, Beryl-no, two Beryls-Ethel, the artist's model, Angela, Sadie from California, Joan-two Joans-no, three Joans__"