The Saint Sees it Through (The Saint Series) Page 9

  Prather blinked his over-blue eyes at Simon.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you mean.”

  “It really doesn’t matter,” the Saint said. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  He noted that Kay Natello, who had been hovering in the middle distance, took her departure at this point and vanished through the archway at the back. Had there been a signal? If so, he hadn’t caught it.

  “Mr Prather,” he said, “you must find life quite exhilarating. Contact with the major ports of the world, and all that.”

  Prather stared, his eyes more lobster-like than usual.

  “What are you talking about?”

  There was no mistaking the honest bewilderment in the prominent blue eyes, and this gave the Saint pause. According to his ideas on the organisation he was bucking, Prather would be one of the key men. Sam Jeffries had substantiated this notion, in his interrupted story to Avalon: “…and there was this guy we had to see in Shanghai.”

  That fitted in with the whole theory of “Benny sent me.” A contract was made here, instructions given, perhaps an advance made. Then the delivery of a package in the Orient or the Near East, which was returned to New York and duly turned over to James Prather or a prototype. All this made sense, made a pattern.

  But here was James Prather, obviously bewildered by the plainest kind of a lead. Was the man cleverer than he seemed? Was he putting on an act that could mislead that expert act-detector, the Saint? Or was he honestly in the dark about the Saint’s meaning? And if he was, why was he here immediately after a visit from two sailors freshly back from the Orient?

  Mr James Prather, it seemed, was in this picture somewhere, and it behoved the Saint to find out where.

  “Well,” Simon said, “no matter. We have more important things to do, such as demolishing our—But we have no drinks.” He motioned to an aproned individual, who came to the table and assumed an attitude of servility. “Three more of the same. Old Forester.”

  The waiter took the empty glasses and went away. The Saint turned his most winning smile on Prather.

  “I wasn’t really shooting in the dark,” he said. “But I guess my remarks weren’t down the right alley.”

  “Whatever you say,” Prather replied, “I like. You have a good quality of voice. Though I don’t see why you should spend any time with me.”

  “Remember?” Simon asked. “I’m still doing research on Dr Zellermann.”

  Prather laughed.

  “I’d forgotten. Ah, here come our drinks.”

  The waiter, an individual, like the village blacksmith, with brawny arms, came across the empty dance floor with a tray flattened on one upturned palm. It was obvious to the Saint’s practised eye that the man’s whole mental attitude had changed. He had gone away trailing a fretful desire to please; he approached with newfound independence.

  He was a stocky individual, broad of shoulder, lean of hip, heavy in the legs. His face was an eccentric oval, bejewelled with small turquoise eyes, crowned with an imposing nose that overhung a mouth of rather magnificent proportions. His chin was a thing of angles, on which you could hang a lantern.

  But the principal factor in his changed aspect was his independence. He carried the tray of drinks as though the nearest thing to his heart was the opportunity and reason to toss them into the face of a customer. Not only that, but each of the three glasses was that type known as “Old Fashioned.”

  Each glass was short, wide of mouth, broad of base. And in each drink was a slice of orange and a cherry impaled on a toothpick.

  “Sorry,” said the Saint as the waiter distributed the glasses, “but I ordered highballs, not Old Fashioneds.”

  “Yeh?” said the waiter. “You trying to make trouble?”

  “No. I’m merely trying to get a drink.”

  “Well, ya act like to me you’re tryin’ to make trouble. Ya order Old Fashioneds, ’n then ya yell about highballs. What’s comin’ off here?”

  “Nothing,” Simon said patiently, “is coming off here. I’m simply trying to get what I ordered.”

  “Ya realise I’ll hafta pay for this, don’t ya?” the waiter demanded.

  “I’ll pay for them,” Simon said in the same gentle voice. “If you made a mistake, it won’t cost you anything. Just bring us three Old Foresters—highballs.”

  “And what’s gonna happen to these drinks?”

  “That,” the Saint said, “I don’t know. You may rub them into the bartender’s hair, for all of me.”

  The waiter lifted his lip.

  “Lissen, the bartender’s my brother-in-law.”

  The Saint’s lips tightened.

  “Then rub them into his back. Will you get our drinks?”

  The waiter stared sullenly for a moment.

  “Well, all right. But no more cracks about my brother-in-law, see?”

  He went away. The Saint watched him for a moment, decided against any action. His attention drifted from the waiter to the Pairfield murals.

  “It’s an odd mind,” he remarked, “that can contrive such unattractive innovations in the female form divine.”

  He indicated a large sprawling figure on the far wall.

  “Take Gertie over there. Even if her hips did have Alemite lubrication points all over them, is it quite fair to let the whole world in on her secret?”

  “What I like,” Avalon said, “is the hedge for hair. That penthouse effect throws me.”

  “I’m sorry,” James Prather said, “but I feel a little uncomfortable looking at those designs. This one over here, with each lock of hair ending in a hangman’s knot. I—”

  He broke off, with an ineffectual gesture with his pale hands.

  “The poor man’s Dali,” murmured the Saint. “Here come our—what are those drinks?”

  They were pale green, in tall flared glasses, each with a twist of lime peel floating near the top.

  The Saint repeated his question to the sullen waiter.

  “Lissen,” that character said. “I got no time to be runnin’ back and forth for ya. These here are Queen Georgianas, ’n if you don’t want ’em, rub ’em in your—” He glanced at Avalon, coloured. “—Well, rub ’em.”

  “But I ordered,” the Saint said very patiently, “Old Foresters. Highballs.”

  “’N if you’re gonna be fussy,” the waiter said, “you’re lucky to get anything. Wait a minute. Here comes the manager.”

  The manager was thin, dapper, and dark, like George Raft in his halcyon days. He strode up to the table, took in the situation with an expressionless look of his dark eyes, and turned them on the Saint.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Whom do you have to know here?” Simon inquired. “I’ve been trying to get some bourbon for about thirty minutes.”

  “Why don’t you ask for it then?” suggested the manager.

  “Look,” Simon said. “I don’t mind buying your watered drinks at about three times the normal prices. All I want is the right flavour in the water. I do not want Queen Georgianas, or Old Fashioneds. I want Old Forester. It’s a simple thing. All the waiter does is remember the order until he gets back to the bar. I’ll write it out for him if he has a defective memory.”

  “Nothin’s wrong with my memory,” the waiter growled. “Maybe you’d like these drinks in your puss, smart guy. You asked for Queen Georgianas, and you’re gonna take ’em.”

  Simon clenched his hands under the rim of the table.

  “Believe me,” he said earnestly, “the last desire I have is to cause difficulty. If I must take these obscenities, I’ll take them. But will you please, please get us a round of bourbon highballs?”

  “Why don’t you go away, if the service doesn’t please you?” asked the George Raft manager.

  “The service,” the Saint said, “leaves nothing to be desired, except everything.”

  “Then why don’t you just go away?” asked the manager.

  The Saint decided to be stubborn.


  “Why?”

  “No reason,” the manager said. “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. Our sign says so.”

  He indicated a sign above the bar.

  “And you are refusing me service?”

  “No. Not if you don’t cause trouble.”

  “And?”

  The manager nodded to the waiter.

  “Get him his drinks.”

  “I’m not gonna serve him,” the waiter said.

  The manager stamped a gleaming shoe.

  “Did you hear me?”

  The waiter went away.

  “Now,” the Saint said, “where were we? Oh, yes, we were discussing,” he said to the manager, “the more obscure aspects of suicide in American night-clubs. Would you have anything to add to our data soon?”

  The manager smiled a crooked smile and departed. The Saint caught the eye of James Prather, and formed a question, “Now that we’ve gone through the preliminary moves, shall we get down to business?”

  Prather goggled rather like a fish in an aquarium tank, but before the Saint could begin to explain he caught sight of the waiter returning with a tray of pink concoctions in champagne glasses.

  “I,” Simon announced, “am beginning to become annoyed. Avec knobs on.”

  The waiter slammed the tray on the table and distributed the drinks. The Saint eyed his.

  It was definitely not a Pink Lady. Nor was it pink champagne. There was grenadine in it, judging from the viscosity apparent to the eye. There might be gin, or even water. He raised his eyes.

  “What…is…this?”

  The waiter’s eyes were like small blue marbles.

  “They bourbon and sodas, see?”

  “Pink bourbon?”

  “Ya ever see any other kind?” the waiter snarled.

  “I believe,” Simon said gently, “that I have been patient. Compared to the way I’ve conducted myself, burros are subjects for strait-jackets. You have brought four rounds of liquid abortions that no self-respecting canned-heat hound would dip a finger in. While this went on I have kept my temper. Job himself would stack up beside me like a nervous cat. I have taken all your insults with a smile. But I warn you, if you don’t bring the right order on your next trip, you are going to wish your mother had spanked the bad manners out of you before I had to.”

  “So you wanta make trouble, huh?” The waiter signalled. “Hey, Jake!”

  The bartender, who seemed to be Jake, stopped shaking a whisky sour at the top of the motion, looking something like a circus giant caught in a ballet pose. He was pushing six feet and a half with shoulders perhaps not so wide as a door, but wide enough. He had a face like the butt end of a redwood log, and hands like great brown clamps on the shaker.

  His customers turned to regard the tableau across the big room according to the stages of inebriety they’d reached. A middle-aged man with a brief moustache twirled it at Avalon. A lady of uncertain balance lifted one side of a bright mouth at the Saint. A young couple stared, and turned back to their private discussion, which, to judge from their expression, was going to wind up in the nearest bedroom.

  Jake then set down the shaker, and walked around the end of the bar. At the same moment a third man, large and aproned, came out of the archway and joined him. They marched together across the dance floor, side by side, and advanced upon the Saint. It was obvious that he was their objective.

  The Saint didn’t move. He watched the approach of the brawny gents with the bright-eyed interest of a small boy at his first circus. He noted the width of Jake’s shoulders, the practised walk bespeaking sessions in a prize-ring, and the shamble of his companion. He weighed them, mentally, and calculated the swiftness of their reflexes. He smiled.

  He could see Avalon’s clenched fists, just below the rim of the table, and from the corner of his eye he noted Prather’s bug-eyed interest.

  Jake directed a calm, steady, brown-eyed gaze at Simon Templar.

  “Get out of here. Now.”

  Simon didn’t seem to push his chair back. He seemed only to come to an astonished attention. But in that straightening motion, his chair was somehow a good three inches back from the edge of the table and he could come to his feet without being hampered.

  “Yes?” he drawled with hopeful interest. “How jolly. Ask your boss to come out and explain.”

  “The boss don’t need to explain,” said the spokesman. “We’ll do all the explainin’ necessary.”

  “Then suppose you do, my lad.”

  “What is this all about, Jake?” Avalon asked.

  “The boss don’t want him here, that’s all. And we’ll throw him out if he don’t scram.” Jake turned back to the Saint. “Look, chum, we ain’t anxious to spread your pretty face all around like gravy. But we can, and will, if’n you don’t beat it. And don’t come back.”

  The Saint gestured at the table.

  “You can see I haven’t finished my drink. Nor has my lady friend.”

  “She can stay. It’s just you that’s goin.’ ”

  The Saint smiled mockingly. “It is always a mystery to me how human beings can become so misguided as to assume impossibilities. I should think anybody would know I’m not going out of here without Miss Dexter. She has an inflexible rule; namely, ‘I’m gonna leave with the guy what brung me.’ Namely, yours truly.”

  “Can the gab,” Jake said. “You goin’ out on your feet, or would you rather pick up teeth as you crawl out?”

  Jake didn’t seem to be angry, or impatient. He was merely giving the Saint a choice. Like: do you want your nails filed round or pointed?

  Simon got lazily to his feet.

  “Sorry, Mr Prather,” he said. “I was just getting interested in our conversation. Be with you in a moment. The children, you know. They get annoying at times and have to be cut back to size…Jake, you shouldn’t be such a naughty boy, really you shouldn’t. Papa’s told you before about interrupting your elders. Run along and play now, and you won’t be chastised.”

  Jake nodded at his cohorts, and they moved at once. The Saint’s first lightning move was to remove one from the fray with a short right jab that travelled no more than three inches but carried 180 pounds of muscled steel in motion behind it. The aproned bruiser folded his bulk against the wall between the widespread feet of one of Ferdinand Pairfield’s figures and sat there with a vacuous mouth and eyes which, had they been stained, could have served as church windows.

  In this move, however, Simon’s attention was distracted for the fraction of a second from Jake, and that was enough. Jake made a flying leap over one corner of the table and clasped the Saint around his waist with a fervour that would have reduced Jake’s girlfriend to panting acquiescence.

  This threw the Saint slightly off balance, and the waiter tried to take advantage of this by kicking Simon in the groin.

  The Saint twisted, caught the man’s ankle with his free hand, wrenched his other hand loose and began to unscrew the man’s leg from the knee joint. Several welkins split asunder as the victim howled like a wounded wolf. Presently, within the space of time required to bat an eye, there was a most satisfying crack as the leg came unjointed at the hip, and the Saint turned his full attention to the leech-like Jake.

  He went about that worthy’s demolishment with a detached and unhurried calm. A left to the chin to straighten him up, a right to the stomach to bend him in the middle, another left, another right, and Jake gave the appearance of a polite man with the stomach ache bowing to a friend.

  One devastating right to the button, and Jake slid across the stamp-sized dance floor on his back. He came to a gentle stop and lay gazing empty-eyed at the ceiling.

  Sounds came from the back, sounds indicating a gathering of fresh forces. The Saint turned to Avalon.

  “Shall we go, darling?” he drawled.

  2

  Which was all highly entertaining, not to say invigorating and healthful, Simon reflected later, but it added very little progress toward t
he main objective.

  Certainly he had been given evidence that his attention was unwelcome to sundry members of the Ungodly, but that was hardly a novel phenomenon in his interfering life. Once the Saint had exhibited any definite interest in their affairs and had been identified, the Ungodly could invariably be relied on to experience some misgivings, which might lead rather logically to mayhem. Certainly the proffered mayhem had recoiled, as it usually did, upon the initiators, who would doubtless approach this form of exercise more circumspectly next time, but that could hardly be called progress. It just meant that the Saint himself would have to be more careful.

  He had failed to learn any more about Mr Prather’s precise place in the picture, or the relationship of the other characters who flitted in and out of the convolutions of the impalpable organisation which he was trying to unravel—or, for that matter, about Avalon’s real place in the whole crooked cosmogony.

  Simon forced himself ruthlessly to remember that…With all their intimacy, their swift and complete companionship, he still knew nothing. Nothing but what he felt, and better men than he had come to disaster from not drawing the distinction between belief and knowledge. The Saint had many vanities, but one of them had never been the arrogant confidence that sometime, somewhere, there could not be among the ranks of the Ungodly a man or a woman who would have the ability to make a sucker out of him. He had waited for that all his life, and he was still waiting, with the same cold and tormenting vigilance.

  And yet, when he called Avalon the next morning, there was nothing cold in his mind when her voice answered.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Good morning, darling,” she said, and her voice woke up with it. “How are you today?”

  “Excited.”

  “What about?”

  “Because I’ve got a date for lunch.”

  “Oh.”

  The voice died again.

  He laughed.

  “With a beautiful girl…named Avalon.”

  “Oh.” Such a different inflexion. As if the sun came out again. “You’re a beast. I’ve a good mind not to be there.”

  “There are arguments against it,” he admitted. “For one thing, we can’t be alone.”