Saint Errant (The Saint Series) Page 9

  Gun metal glinted in the gray eyes.

  “Why, you chiseling…” Then she laughed a little. “So you do it to me again. Why do you always have to be bad news, stranger? It could have been so much fun.”

  “It still could be,” he said impudently, but she stood up and slipped past him towards the sideboard. He strolled lazily after her and said, “By the way, when do you expect to get that imitation?”

  “Maybe the day after tomorrow.”

  And again he felt that tenuous cold touch of disbelief, but he kept it to himself, and held out his glass for a refill.

  “On account of Wendel—that’s the name of the gendarme—I’d better not risk being seen with you in public.” He looked across the alcove into the kitchen, and said as the idea struck him, “Tell you what—if we can’t eat out together, we can still dine. I’ll bring some stuff in tomorrow and start fixing. I forgot to tell you before, but I’m as good as any chef in this town.”

  “You just got a job,” she said.

  He went back to his hotel in a haze of thought. The cool drafts of skepticism which had whispered around him began to reward him with the exhilaration of walking on the thin ice which they created. He was a fool for danger, and he always would be.

  This was danger, as real as a triggered guillotine. It was true that she had no choice about accepting his terms—out loud. But it wasn’t in keeping with her character as he knew it to accept them finally. And she had been just a little too evasive at one point and too acquiescent at another. It didn’t balance. But when the catch would show was something he could only wait for.

  He went to her apartment the next afternoon, laden with the brown paper bags of marketing. She made him a drink in the kitchen while he unpacked and went to work with quick and easy efficiency.

  “What are we having?”

  “Oxtail.” He smiled at her lift of expression. “And don’t despise it. It was always destined for something rarer than soup.”

  He was slicing onions and carrots.

  “These—browned in butter. Then we make a bed of them in a casserole, with plenty of chopped parsley and other herbs. Then, the joints packed neatly in, like the crowd at a good fire. And then, enough red wine to cover it, and let it soak for hours.”

  “When does it cook?”

  “When you come home tonight. I’ll drop in for a nightcap, and we’ll watch it get started. Then it cools overnight, and tomorrow we take off the grease and finish it…You’d better let me have a key, in case you’re late.”

  “Why don’t you just move in?” He grinned.

  “I guess you forgot to invite me. But I’ll manage.” He trimmed fat from the joints, while the frying pan hissed gently with liquescent butter. “Did the mailman deliver?”

  “It didn’t come today.”

  And once again it was like a Geiger counter clicking to the intrusion of invisible radioactivity, the way his intuition tingled deep down at her reply.

  He said, pleasantly, “I hope you really do know as much about me as you indicated once.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I shouldn’t want you to be worrying about whether I’m going to double-cross you again. I made a deal with you, and when I make deals they stay made. It’s only when someone else starts dealing from the bottom that all bets are off.”

  “Obviously,” she said, with cool indifference.

  She let him take a key to the apartment when he left, and that alone told him to save himself the trouble of returning for a search while she was out. If there was anything she didn’t want him to find, it would certainly not be there.

  He had taken routine precautions against being followed when he went to the Bienville, but as he turned into the lobby of the Hotel Monteleone the chunky figure of Lieutenant Wendel rose from an armchair to greet him.

  “Had a nice afternoon, Saint?”

  “Very nice, thank you,” Simon replied calmly, and the detective’s face began to darken.

  “I thought I warned you to stay away from Lady Offchurch.”

  The Saint raised his eyebrows.

  “I wasn’t aware that I’d been annoying her. She is at the St Charles, which is very grand and metropolitan, but the French quarter is good enough for me. I can’t help it if our hotels are only a few blocks apart. Perhaps you ought to have the city enlarged.”

  “I’m talking about this gal Jeannine Roger. What are you cooking up with her?”

  “Oxtails,” said the Saint truthfully.

  Lieutenant Wendel did not seem to be the type to appreciate a simple and straightforward answer. In fact, for some reason it appeared to affect him in much the same way as having his necktie flipped up under his nose. His eyes became slightly congested, and he grasped the Saint’s arm with a hand that could have crumbled walnuts.

  “Listen, mister,” he said, with crunching self-control. “Just because I spotted you right off didn’t mean I figured my job was done. When I found Lady Offchurch was going around with this Roger twist, I had her investigated too. And it comes right back from Washington that she’s got a record as long as your arm. So I put a man on to watch her. And whaddaya know, first thing I hear is that you’re spending time over in her apartment.”

  Simon Templar’s stomach felt as if a cold weight had been planted in it, but not the flicker of a muscle acknowledged the sensation. As though the grip on his arm hadn’t been there at all, he conveyed a cigarette to his mouth and put a light to it.

  “Thanks for the tip, chum,” he said gravely. “I just happened to pick her up in a restaurant, and she looked like fun. It only shows you, a guy can’t be too careful. Why, she might have stolen something from me!”

  The detective made a noise something like a cement mixer choking on a rock.

  “What you’d better do is get it through your head that you aren’t getting away with anything in this town. This is one caper that’s licked before it starts. You’re washed up, Saint, so get smart while you’ve got time.”

  Simon nodded.

  “I’ll certainly tell the girl we can’t go on seeing each other. A man in my position—”

  “A man in your position,” Wendel said, “ought to pack his bags and be out of town tomorrow while he has the chance.”

  “I’ll think that over,” Simon said seriously. “Are you free for dinner again tonight?—we might make it a farewell feast.”

  He was not surprised that the offer was discourteously rejected, and went on to the bar with plenty to occupy his mind.

  One question was whether Wendel would be most likely to challenge Jeannine Roger openly, as he had challenged the Saint, or whether in the slightly different circumstances he would try to expose her to Lady Offchurch, or whether he would pull out of the warning business altogether and go out for blood.

  The other question was whether Jeannine knew the score already, and what was brewing in her own elusive mind.

  At any rate, he had nothing to lose now by going openly to the Bienville, and he deliberately did that, after a leisured savoring of oysters Rockefeller and gumbo filé at Antoine’s, while the young officer who was following him worried over a bowl of onion soup and his expense account. The same shadow almost gave him a personal escort into the courtyard off St Ann Street, and Simon thought it only polite to turn back and wave to him as he went up the outside stairs to Number 27.

  From the window, he watched the shadow confer with another shape that emerged from an obscure recess of the patio. Then after a while the shadow went away, but the established watcher sidled back into his nook and stayed.

  Simon crossed the living room and peered down from a curtained window on the other side. The back overlooked an alley which was more black than dark, so that it was some time before the glimmering movement of a luminous wrist-watch dial betrayed the whereabouts of the sentinel who lurked patiently there among the garbage cans.

  Simon put on the kitchen lights and inspected his casserole. He added a little more wine, lighted the oven,
and put the dish in. He hummed a gentle tune to himself as he poured a drink in the dinette and settled down in the living room to wait.

  The apartment was very effectively covered—so effectively that only a mouse could possibly have entered or left it unobserved. So effectively that it had all the uncomfortable earmarks of a trap…

  The question now was—what was the trap set for, and how did it work?

  It was a quarter to midnight when the girl came in. He heard her quick feet on the stone steps outside, but he only moved to refill his glass while her key was turning in the lock. She came in like a light spring breeze that brought subtler scents than magnolia with it.

  “Hullo,” she said, and it seemed to him that her voice was very gay. “I hope you haven’t been waiting too long.”

  “Just long enough. There’s a bolt on the inside of the door—you’d better use it,” he said, without looking up. He heard the bolt slam, after a pause of stillness, and turned with an extra glass in his other hand. “Here’s your nightcap, baby. You may need it.”

  He thought of a foolish phrase as he looked at her—“with the wind and the rain in your hair.” Of course there was no rain, and her hair was only just enough out of trim to be interesting, but she had that kind of young, excited look, with her cheeks faintly freshened by the night and her gray eyes bright and arrested. The incongruity of it hurt him, and he said brusquely, “We don’t have any time to waste, so don’t let’s waste it.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “The joint is pinched,” he said bluntly. “The Gestapo didn’t stop at me—they checked on you too, since you were Lady Offchurch’s mysterious pal, and they know all about you. Wendel told me. They’ve got both sides of the building covered. Look out the windows if you don’t believe me.”

  “I believe you,” she said slowly. “But—why?”

  “Because Wendel means to catch somebody with the goods on them.”

  It was only an involuntary and static reaction, the whitening of her knuckles on the hand that held her purse, but it was all he needed. He said, “You had the imitation necklace today. You pulled the switch tonight. You made a deal, but you kept your fingers crossed.”

  “No,” she said.

  Now there were heavy feet stumping methodically up the stairway outside.

  “You were followed every inch of the way back. They know you haven’t ditched the stuff. They know it has to be here, and they know you can’t get it out. What are you going to do—throw it out of a window? There’s a man watching on both sides. Hide it? They may have to tear the joint to shreds, but they’ll find it. They’ve got you cold.”

  “No,” she said, and her face was haggard with guilt.

  A fist pounded on the door.

  “All right, darling,” said the Saint. “You had your chance. Give me your bag.”

  “No.”

  The fist pounded again.

  “You fool,” he said savagely, in a voice that reached no further than her ears. “What do you think that skin we love to touch would be like after ten years in the pen?”

  He took the purse from her hand and said, “Open the door.” Then he went into the kitchen.

  Lieutenant Wendel made his entrance with the ponderous elaboration of a man who knew that he had the last ounce of authority behind him and nothing on earth to hurry for. Certainty smoothed down the buzz-saw edges of his voice and invested him with the steam-roller impermeability of an entire government bureau on two feet.

  “I’m from the Police Department, Miss Roger. I’m sure Mr Templar has told you about me. I’ve come to trouble you for Lady Offchurch’s pearl necklace.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

  “Of course not.” His confidence was almost paternal. “However, it hasn’t gone out by the front since you came in, and I don’t think it’s gone out by the back. We’ll just make sure.”

  He crossed the room heavily, opened a window, and whistled.

  This was the moment that Simon Templar chose to come back.

  “Why, hullo, Lieutenant,” he murmured genially. “What are you doing—rehearsing Romeo and Juliet for the Police Follies?”

  Wendel waved to the night and turned back from the window.

  “Ah, there you are, Mr Templar. I knew you were here, of course.” His eyes fastened on the purse that swung negligently in Simon’s hand. “This may save us a lot of trouble—excuse me.”

  He grabbed the bag away, sprung the catch, and spilled the contents clattering on the dining table.

  After a few seconds the Saint said, “Would anyone mind telling me what this is all about?”

  “All right,” Wendel said grimly. “Where is it?”

  “Where is what?”

  “You know what I’m talking about. The necklace.”

  “The last time I saw it,” Jeannine Roger said, “it was on Lady Offchurch’s neck.”

  The detective set his jaw.

  “I work regular hours, Miss Roger, and I don’t want to be kept up all night. I may as well tell you that I talked to Lady Offchurch before you met her this evening. I arranged for her to give one of my men a signal if you had been suspiciously anxious to handle the necklace at any time while you were together. She gave that signal when she said good night to you. That gives me grounds to believe that while you were handling the necklace you exchanged it for a substitute. I think the original is in this apartment now, and if it is, we’ll find it. Now if one of you hands it over and saves me a lot of trouble, I mightn’t feel quite so tough as if I had to work for it.”

  “Meaning,” said the Saint, “that we mightn’t have to spend quite so much of our youth on the rock pile?”

  “Maybe.”

  The Saint took his time over lighting a cigarette.

  “All my life,” he said, “I’ve been allergic to hard labor. And it’s especially bad”—he glanced at the girl—“for what the radio calls those soft, white, romantic hands. In fact, I can’t think of any pearls that would be worth it—particularly when you don’t even get to keep the pearls…So—I’m afraid there ain’t going to be no poils.”

  “You’re nuts!” Wendel exploded. “Don’t you know when you’re licked?”

  “Not till you show me,” said the Saint peaceably. “Let’s examine the facts. Miss Roger handled the necklace. Tomorrow a jeweler may say that the string that Lady Offchurch still has is a phony. Well, Lady Offchurch can’t possibly swear that nobody else ever touched that rope of oyster fruit. Well, the substitution might have been made anywhere, anytime, by anyone—even by a chiseling maharajah. What’s the only proof you could use against Jeannine? Nothing short of finding a string of genuine pink pearls in her possession. And that’s something you can never do.”

  “No?” Wendel barked. “Well, if I have to put this whole building through a sieve, and the two of you with it—”

  “You’ll never find a pearl,” Simon stated.

  He made the statement with such relaxed confidence that a clammy hand began to caress the detective’s spine, neutralizing logic with its weird massage, and poking skeletal fingers into hypersensitive nerves.

  “No?” Wendel repeated, but his voice had a frightful uncertainty.

  Simon picked up a bottle and modestly replenished his glass.

  “The trouble with you,” he said, “is that you never learned to listen. Last night at dinner, if you remember, we discoursed on various subjects, all of which I’m sure you had heard before, and yet all you could think of was that I was full of a lot of highfalutin folderol, while I was trying to tell you that in our business a man couldn’t afford to not know anything. And when I told you this afternoon that Jeannine and I were cooking up oxtails, you only thought I was trying to be funny, instead of remembering among other things that oxtails are cooked in wine.”

  The detective lifted his head, and his nostrils dilated with sudden apperception.

  “So when you came in here,” said the Saint, “you’d have
remembered those other silly quotes I mentioned—about Cleopatra dissolving pearls in wine for Caesar—”

  “Simon—no!” The girl’s voice was almost a scream.

  “I’m afraid, yes,” said the Saint sadly. “What Cleopatra could do, I could do better—for a face that shouldn’t be used for launching ships. “

  Lieutenant Wendel moved at last, rather like a wounded carabao struggling from its wallow, and the sound that came from his throat was not unlike the cry that might have been wrung from the vocal cords of the same stricken animal.

  He plunged into the kitchen and jerked open the oven door. After burning his fingers twice, he took pot holders to pull out the dish and spill its contents into the stoppered sink.

  Simon watched him, with more exquisite pain, while he ran cold water and pawed frantically through the debris. After all, it would have been a dish fit for a queen, but all Wendel came up with was a loop of thread, about two feet long.

  “How careless of the butcher,” said the Saint, “to leave that in.”

  Lieutenant Wendel did not take the apartment apart. He would have liked to, but not for investigative reasons. For a routine search he had no heart at all. The whole picture was too completely historically founded and cohesive to give him any naïve optimism about his prospects of upsetting it.

  “I hate to suggest such a thing to a respectable officer,” said the Saint insinuatingly, “but maybe you shouldn’t even let Lady Offchurch think that her necklace was switched. With a little tact, you might be able to convince her that you scared the criminals away and she won’t be bothered any more. It may be years before she finds out, and then no one could prove that it happened here. It isn’t as if you were letting us get away with anything.”

  “What you’re getting away with should go down in history,” Wendel said with burning intensity. “But I swear to God that if either of you is still in town tomorrow morning, I’m going to frame you for murder.”

  The door slammed behind him, and Simon smiled at the girl with rather regretful philosophy.