Alias the Saint (9 page)

“I cannot live by paying national debts,” he said. “We shall have to find some other bunch of tough babies, and soak ‘em good and proper to make up for this. I was trying to think of some sheep who are ripe for the slaughter. There’s a couple of muttons in Vienna I was thinking of shearing one time.”

“Maybe I’ll be taking a holiday,” said Duncarry.

He had taken a place at the rail beside the Saint, and Simon looked at him suddenly.

“Why?” demanded the Saint. “Wouldn’t you like a trip to Vienna?”

“I’d love one—for my honeymoon,” answered the American dreamily; and the Saint groaned.

THE MAN WHO COULD NOT DIE

1

Patricia Holm raised her fair, pretty head from the Times.

“What,” she asked, “is an obiter dictum?’

“A form of foot-and-mouth disease,” said the Saint, glibly. “Obiter—one who obits; dictum—a shirt-front. Latin. Very difficult.”

“Fool,” said his lady.

The Saint grinned, and pushed back his chair. Breakfast was over; a blaze of summer sunshine was pouring through the open windows into the comfortable room; the first and best cigarette of the day was canted up between the Saint’s smiling lips; all was right with the world.

“What’s the absorbing news, anyway?” he in-quired lazily.

She passed him the paper; and, as is the way of these things, the matter which had given rise to her question was of the most ephemeral interest and yet it interested the Saint. Simon Templar had always been the despair of all those of his friends who expected him to produce Intelligent comments upon the affairs of the day; to read a newspaper not only bored him to extinction, but often gave him an actual physical pain. Therefore it followed, quite naturally, that when the mood seized him to glance at a newspaper, he usually managed to extract more meat from that one glance than the earnest regular student of the press extracts from years of daily labour.

It so happened that morning. Coincidence, of course; but how much adventure is free from all taint of coincidence? Coincidences are always coinciding—it is one of their peculiar attributes; but the adventure is born of what the man makes of his coincidences. Most people say: “How odd!”

Simon Templar said: “Well, well, well!”

But the Times really hadn’t anything exciting to say that morning; and certainly the column that Patricia had been reading was one of the most sober of all the columns of that very respectable newspaper, for it was one of the columns in which such hardy annuals as Paterfamilias, Lieut-Colonel (retired), Pro Bono Publico, Mother of Ten, unto the third and fourth generation, Abraham and his seed for ever, let loose their, weary bleats upon the world. The gentleman (“Diehard”) who had incorporated an obiter dictum in his effort was giving tongue on the subject of motorists. It was, as has been explained, pure coincidence that he should have written with special reference to a recent prosecution for dangerous driving in which the defendant had been a man in whom the Saint had .the dim beginnings of an interest;

“Aha!” said the Saint, thoughtful like.

“Haven’t you met that man—Miles Hallin?” Patricia said. “I’ve heard you mention his name.”

“And that’s all I’ve met up to date,” answered the Saint. “But I have met a bird who talks about nothing else but Miles. Although I suppose, in the circumstances, that isn’t as eccentric as it sounds.”

He had, as a matter of fact, met Nigel Perry only a fortnight before, by a slightly roundabout route. Simon Templar, being in a club in Piccadilly which for some unknown reason allowed him to continue his membership, had discovered that he was without a handkerchief. His need being vital, he had strolled over to a convenient shop—without troubling to put on a hat. The rest of the story, he insisted, was Moyna Stanford’s fault. Simon had bought his handkerchief, and the shop assistant had departed towards the cashier with the Saint’s sim-oleons, when Moyna Stanford walked in, walked straight up to the Saint, and asked if he could show her some ties. Now, Moyna Stanford was very good to look upon, and there were quantities of ties prominently displayed about the shop, and the Saint could never resist anything like that. He had shown her several ties. The rightful tie exhibitor had returned. There had been some commotion. Finally, they had lunched together. Not including the tie exhibitor.

The rest of the story, as the. Saint retailed it to Patricia Holm, was perfectly true. He had met Nigel Perry, and had liked him immediately—a tall, dark, cheery youngster, with a million-dollar smile and a two-figure bank balance. The second of those last two items Simon had not discovered until later. On the other hand, it was not very much later, for Nigel Perry had nothing approaching an inferiority complex. He talked with an engaging frankness about himself, his job, his prospects, and his idols. The idols were, at the moment, two—Moyna Stanford and Miles Hallin. It is likely that Simon Templar was shortly added to the list; perhaps at the end he headed the list—on the male side. But at the time of meeting. Miles Hallin reigned supreme.

The Saint was familiar with the name of Hallin, and he was interested in the story that Nigel Perry had to tell, for all such stories were interesting to the Saint.

At that breakfast table, under the shadow of an irrelevant obiter dictum, Simon explained.

“Hallin’s a much older man, of course. Nigel had a brother who was about Hallin’s age. Years ago Hallin and the elder Perry were prospecting some godless bit of desert in Australia. What’s more, they found real gold. And at the same time they found that one of their water barrels had sprung a leak, and there was only enough water to get one of them back to civilization. They tossed for it—and for once in his life Hallin lost. The shook hands, and Perry pushed off. After Perry had been gone some time, Hallin decided that if he sat down on the gold mine waiting to die he’d go mad first. So he made up his mind to die on the move. It didn’t occur to him to shoot himself—he just wouldn’t go out that way. And he upped his pack and shifted along in a different direction from the one that Perry had taken. Of course he found a water hole, and then he found another water hole, and he got out of the desert at last. But Perry never got out. That’s just a sample of Hallin’s luck.”

“And what happened to the gold?”

“Hallin registered the claim. When he got back to England he looked up young Nigel and insisted on giving him a half share. But it never came to much—about a couple of thousand, I believe. The lode petered out, and the mine closed down. Still, Hallin did the white thing. Taking that along with the rest, you can’t blame Nigel for worshipping him.”

And yet the Saint frowned as he spoke. He had a professional vanity that was all his own, and something in that vanity reacted unfavourably towards Miles Hallin, whom a sensational journalist had once christened “The Man Who Cannot Die.”

“Are you jealous?” teased Patricia; and the Saint scowled.

“I don’t know,” he said,

But he knew perfectly well. Miles Hallin had cropped up, and Miles Hallin had spoiled a beautiful morning.

“It annoys me,” said the Saint, with what Patricia couldn’t help thinking was an absurd pettish-ness. “No man has a right to Hallin’s reputation.”

“I’ve heard nothing against him.”

“Have you heard anything against me?”

“Lots of things.”

Simon grinned abstractedly.

“Yes, I know. But has anyone ever called me ‘The Man Who Cannot Die’?”

“Not when I’ve been listening.”

“It’s not a matter of listening,” said the Saint. “That man Hallin is a sort of public institution. Everyone knows about his luck. Now, I should think I’ve had as much luck as anyone, and I’ve always been much bigger news than Hallin will ever be, but nobody’s ever made a song and dance about that side of my claim to immortality.”

“They’ve had other things to say about you”

The Saint sighed He was still frowning.

“I know,” he said. “But I have hunches, old darling. Let me say here and now that I have absolutely nothing against Hallin. I’ve never heard a word against him, I haven’t one reasonable suspicion about him, I haven’t one single solitary fact on which I could base a suspicion. But I’ll give you one very subtle joke to laugh about. Why should a man boast that he can’t die?”

“He didn’t make the boast.”

“Well—I wonder… . But he certainly earned the name, and he’s never given it a chance to be forgotten. He’s capitalized it arid played it up for all it’s worth. So I can give you an even more subtle joke. It goes like this: ‘For whosoever will save his life shall lose it… .’”

Patricia looked at him curiously. If she had not known the Saint so well, she would have looked at him impatiently; but she knew him very well.

She said: “Let’s hear what you mean, lad. I can’t follow all your riddles.’”

“And I can’t always give the answers,” said the Saint.

His chair tilted back as he lounged in it. He inhaled intently from his cigarette, and gazed at the ceiling through a cloud of smoke,

“A hunch,” said the Saint, “isn’t a thing that goes easily to words. Words are so brutally logical, and a hunch is the reverse of logic. And a hunch, in a way, is a riddle; but it has no answer. When you get an answer, it isn’t the answer to a riddle, or the answer to a hunch; it’s the end of a story. I don’t know if that’s quite clear.”

“It isn’t,” said Patricia.

The Saint blew three smoke rings as if he had a personal grudge against them.

“My great tragedy, sweetheart,” he remarked modestly, “is that I’m completely and devastatingly sane. And the world we live in is not sane. All the insanities of the world used to worry me crazy, without exception—once upon a time. But now, in my old age, I’m more discriminating. Half the things in that newspaper, which I’m pleased to say I’ve never read from end to end, are probably of-fenses against sanity. And if you come to a rag like the Daily Record, about ninety-eight percent of its printed area is devoted to offenses against sanity. And the fact has ceased to bother me. I swear to you, Pat, that I could read a Daily Record right through without groaning aloud more than twice. That’s my discrimination. When I read that an obscure biologist in Minneapolis has said that men would easily live to be three hundred if they nourished themselves on an exclusive diet of green bananas and vaseline, I’m merely bored. The thing is a simple of tense against sanity. But when I’m always hearing about a Man Who Cannot Die, it annoys me. The thing is more than a simple offense against sanity. It sticks up and makes me stare at it. It’s like finding one straight black line in a delirious patchwork of colours. It’s more. It’s like going to a menagerie and finding a man exhibited in one of the cages. Just because a Man Who Cannot Die isn’t a simple insult to insanity. He’s an insult to a much bigger thing. He’s an insult to humanity.”

“And where does this hunch lead to?” asked Patricia, practically.

Simon shrugged.

“I wish I were sure,” he said,’

Then, suddenly, he sat upright.

“Do you know,” he said, in a kind of incomprehensible anger, “I’ve a damned good mind to see if I can’t break that man’s record! He infuriates me. And isn’t he asking for it? Isn’t he just asking someone to take up the challenge and see what can be done about it?”

The girl regarded him in bewilderment.

“Do you mean you want to try to kill him?” she asked blankly.

“I don’t,” said the Saint “I mean I want to try to make him live.”

For a long time Patricia gazed at him in silence. And then, with a little shake of her head, half laughing, half perplexed, she stood up,

“You’ve been reading too much G.K. Chesterton,” she said. “And you can’t do anything about Hallin to-day, anyway. We’re late enough as it is.”

The Saint smiled slowly, and rose to his feet.

“You’re dead right, as usual, old dear,” he murmured amiably. “I’ll go and get out the car.”

And he went; but he did not forget Miles Hallin. And he never forgot his hunch about the man who could not die. For the Saint’s hunches were nearly always unintelligible to anyone but himself, and always very real and intelligible to him; and all at once he had realized that in Miles Hallin he was going to find a strange story—he did not then know how strange.

2

Miles Hallin, as the Saint had complained, really was something very like a national institution. He was never called wealthy, but he always seemed to be able to indulge his not inexpensive hobbies without stint. It was these hobbies which had confirmed him in the reputation that Simon Templar so much disliked.

Miles Hallin was so well known that the newspapers never even troubled to mention the fact. Lesser lights in the news, Simon had discovered, were invariably accounted for. They were “the famous cricketer” or “the well-known novelist” or perhaps, with a more delicate conceit, “the actor.” Simon Templar always had an uneasy feeling that these explanations were put in as a kind of covering each-way bet—in case the person referred to should become well known without anyone knowing why. But Miles Hallin was just—Miles Hallin.

Simon Templar, even in his superlatively casual acquaintance with the newspapers, had bad every opportunity to become familiar with the face of Miles Hallin, though he had never seen the man in the flesh. That square-jawed, pugnacious profile, with the white teeth and crinkled eyes and flashing smile, had figured in more photographs than the Saint cared to remember. Mr. Miles Hallin standing beside the wreckage of his Furillac at Le Mans— Mr. Miles Hallin being taken on board a tug after his speedboat Red Lady had capsized in the Solent —Mr. Miles Hallin after his miraculous escape during the King’s Cup Air Race, when his Eiton “Dragon” caught fire at five thousand feet—Mr. Miles Hallin filming a charging buffalo in Tanganyika—Simon Templar knew them all. Miles Hallin did everything that a well-to-do sportsman could possibly include in the most versatile repertory, and all his efforts seemed to have the single aim of a spectacular suicide; but always he had escaped death by the essential hair’s breadth that had given him his name. No one could say that it was Miles Hallin’s fault.

Miles Hallin had survived being mauled by a tiger, and had killed an infuriated gorilla with a sheath knife. Miles Hallin had performed in bull fights before the King of Spain. Miles Hallin had gone into a tank and wrestled with a crocodile to oblige a Hollywood movie director. Miles Hallin had done everything dangerous that the most fertile imagination could conceive—and then some. So far as was known, Miles Hallin couldn’t walk a tight rope; but the general impression was that if Miles Hallin could have walked a tight rope he would have walked a tight rope stretched across the crater of Vesuvius as a kind of appetizer before breakfast.