Brighter Buccaneer (10 page)

“Quite,” murmured the Saint politely.

“And so,” said Sir Ambrose, patting the Saint’s knee impressively with his flabby hand, “when I heard that the path of the new by-pass road cut straight through the middle of that old widow’s property, what did I do? Did I go to her and say, ‘Madam, in another week or two you’ll be able to put your own price on this house, and any bank or building society would be glad to lend you enough to pay off this instalment of the mortgage’? Why, if I’d done anything like that I should have been a fool, sir-a sentimental old fool. Of course I didn’t. It was the old geezer’s own fault if she was too stupid and doddering to know what was going on around her. I simply foreclosed at once; and in three weeks I’d sold her house, for fifteen times as much as I gave her for it. That’s business.” Sir Ambrose chortled wheezily over the recollection. “By gad, if words could break bones I should be wheeling myself about in an invalid chair still. But that kind of thing doesn’t worry me! … Have another drink.”

“Have one with me,” suggested the Saint half-heartedly; but Sir Ambrose waved the invitation aside.

“No, sir. I never allow a young man to pay for my drinks. Have a good time with me. The same again?”

Simon nodded, and lighted a cigarette while Sir Ambrose toddled over to the bar. He was a pompous and rather tubby little man, with a waxed moustache that matched his silver-grey spats, and a well-wined complexion that matched the carnation in his button-hole; and the Saint did not like him. In fact, running over a lengthy list of gentlemen of whom he had gravely disapproved, Simon Templar found it difficult to name anyone whom he had felt less inclined to take into his bosom with vows of eternal brotherhood.

He disliked Sir Ambrose no less heartily because he had known him less than a couple of hours. With an idle evening to spend by himself, the Saint had sailed out into the West End of London to pass it as entertainingly as he could. He had no plans whatever, but his faith in the beneficence of the gods was sublime. Thus he had gone in search of adventure before, and he had rarely been disappointed. To him, the teeming thousands of assorted souls who jostled through the sky-sign area on a Saturday night were so many oysters who might be opened by a man with the clairvoyant eye and delicate touch which the Saint claimed for his genius. It was a business of drifting where the whim guided him, following an impulse and hoping that it might lead to an interest, taking a chance and not caring if it failed.

In just that spirit of careless optimism he had wandered into a small hotel in a quiet street behind the Strand and discovered an almost deserted bar where he could imbibe a glass of ale while seeking inspiration for his next move. And it was there that a casual remark about the weather had floated him into the acquaintance of Sir Ambrose, who, having presented his card, pulled out the opening chord of his theme song and said: “Have a drink?”

Simon had a drink. Even before the state of the weather arose as an introduction, he had felt a professional curiosity to know whether anybody could be quite as unsavoury a bore as Sir Ambrose looked. And he had not been disappointed. Within five minutes Sir Ambrose had him sitting in a corner listening to the details of an ingenious trick he had invented as a boy at school for swindling his contemporaries out of their weekly ration of toffee. Within ten minutes Sir Ambrose was leading on to a description of the smart deals on a larger scale which had built up his comfortable fortune. He seemed to have had several drinks on his own before he started intoning his chorus to the Saint. The effects of them had not added to his charm. And the more cordially Simon learned to detest him, the more intently Simon listened-for it had dawned on the Saint that perhaps his evening was being well spent.

Sir Ambrose returned with steps that could have been steadier, and slopped over some of the whisky as he deposited their glasses on the table. He sat down again and leaned back with a sigh of large-waisted well-being. “Yes, sir,” he resumed tirelessly. “Sentiment is no good. My uncle was sentimental, and what did it do for him?”

Not having known Sir Ambrose’s uncle, Simon found the question unanswerable.

“It made him a pest to his heirs,” said Sir Ambrose, solving the riddle. “That’s what it did. Not that he left much for us to inherit-a beggarly ten thousand odd was all that he managed to keep out of the hands of the parasites who traded on his soft heart. But what did he do with it?”

Once again the Saint was nonplussed. Sir Ambrose, however, did not really require assistance.

“Look at this,” he said.

He dragged a small brass image out of his pocket and set it up on the table between the glasses. Simon glanced at it, and recognized it at once. It was one of those pyramidal figures of a seated Buddha, miniatures of the gigantic statue at Kamakura, which find their place in every tourists’ curio shop from Karachi to Yokohama.

“That, sir,” said the sentimentalist’s nephew, “was my uncle’s. He bought it in Shanghai when he was a young man, and he called it his mascot. He used to burn a joss-stick in front of it every day-said the ju-ju wouldn’t work without it. And then, when he died, what do you think we found in his will?”

Simon was getting accustomed to Sir Ambrose’s interrogative style, but the Saint was not very easily silenced.

“A thousand quid to buy joss-sticks,” he hazarded.

Sir Ambrose shook his head rather impatiently, till both his chins wobbled.

“No, sir. Something much worse than that. We found that not a penny of his money could be touched until this ridiculous thing had been sold for two thousand pounds. He said that only a man who was prepared to pay a sum like that for it would appreciate it properly and give it the attention he wanted. Personally, I think that anyone who paid a sum like that for it could be put in a lunatic asylum without a certificate. But there it is in his will, and the lawyers say we can’t upset it. I’ve been carrying the damned thing about with me half a week, showing it to all the antique shops in London, and the best offer I’ve had is fifteen shillings.”

“But surely,” said the Saint, “you could get a friend of yours to buy it, and give him the two thousand back with a spot of interest as soon as the executors unbuttoned?”

“If anything like that could have been done, sir, I’d have done it. But the old fool thought of that himself, and he left strict instructions that the executors were to be satisfied beyond all possible doubt that the sale was a genuine one. And he made his bank the executors, damn him! If you’ve ever tried to put anything over on a bank you’ll know what a hope we’ve got of doing anything like that. No-the best thing we can ever hope to do is to find some genuine stranger and sell it to him while he’s drunk.”

Simon picked up the image and examined it closely. It was unexpectedly heavy, and he guessed that the brass casting must have been filled with lead. On the base there was a line of Chinese characters cut into the metal and filled with red.

“Funny language,” observed Sir Ambrose, leaning over to point to the characters. “I’ve often wanted to meet a Chink who could tell me what they write on things like this. Look at that thing there like a tadpole with wings. I’ll bet that’s a particularly dirty swear-it’s twice the size of the other words. Have a drink.”

The Saint looked at his watch.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to be getting home,” he observed.

“Come and see me one evening,” said Sir Ambrose. “You’ve got my address on my card, and I like your company. Come along one night next week, and I’ll invite some girls.”

Simon reached his flat in time to see Peter Quentin and Patricia Holm climbing out of a taxi. They were in evening dress, and the Saint surveyed them rudely.

“Well,” he said, “have you mugs finished pretending to be numbers one and two of the Upper Ten?”

“He’s jealous,” said Patricia, on Peter Quentin’s arm. “His own tails have been in pawn so long that the moths have done them in.”

A misguided friend had presented the Saint with tickets for the Opera. Simon Templar, in one of his fits of perversity, had stated in no uncertain terms that it was too hot to put on a starched shirt and listen to perspiring tenors dying in C flat for four hours, and Peter Quentin had volunteered to be Patricia’s escort.

61

“We thought of some bacon and eggs,” Peter said, “and we wondered if you’d like to treat us.”

“I thought you might treat me,” murmured the Saint. “As an inducement for me to be seen out with a girl whose clothes have all slipped down below her waist, and a pie-faced tough disguised as a waiter, it’s the least you can offer.”

Back in the taxi, they asked him how he had spent the evening.

“I’ve been drinking with one of the most septic specimens in London,” said the Saint thoughtfully. “And if I can’t make him wish he hadn’t told me so much about himself I won’t have another bath for six years.”

The problem of securing an adequate contribution towards his old-age pension from Sir Ambrose Grange occupied the Saint’s mind considerably for the next twenty-four hours. Sir Ambrose had gratuitously introduced himself as such a perfect example of the type of man whom the Saint prayed to meet that Simon felt that his reputation was at stake. Unless something suitably unpleasant happened to Sir Ambrose in a very short space of time, the Saint would sink down to somewhere near zero in his own estimation of himself-a possibility that was altogether too dreadful to contemplate.

He devoted most of the Sabbath to revolving various schemes in his mind, all of which were far less holy than the day; but he had not finally decided on any of them when the solution literally fell into his arms by a coincidence that seemed too good to be true.

This happened on the Monday afternoon.

He sallied out of his flat into Piccadilly in the hope of finding a paper with the winner of the Eclipse Stakes, and as he stepped on to the pavement a middle-aged man in hornrimmed spectacles and a Panama who was hurrying past suddenly staggered in his direction and would have fallen if the Saint had not caught him. Several passers-by turned and watched curiously; and Simon Templar, whose ideas of grandstanding heroism were not of that type, was tempted to deposit the middle-aged gent tenderly on the pavement and let him do his dying gladiator act alone. The man in the Panama was no human hairpin, and his legs seemed to have turned to rubber.

Then Simon saw that the man’s eyes were open. He grinned at the Saint crookedly.

“Sorry, friend,” he said, in the broadest Yankee. “I’ll be okay in a minute. Been trying to do too much after my operation, I guess-the doc told me I’d crack up if I didn’t take it easy … Gosh, look at the rubbernecks waitin’ to see me die! Say, do you live in there? Is there a foyer I can sit down in? I don’t wanna be stared at like I was the Nelson Monument.”

Simon helped the man inside and sat him on a settee beside the lift. The American tipped off his Panama and wiped his forehead with a bandanna handkerchief.

“Just four days outa the hospital and tearin’ about like a fool for two of ‘em. And missed my lunch today. That’s what’s done it. Say, is there a public telephone here? I promised to meet my wife an hour ago, and she must think I had myself a street accident.”

“I’m afraid there isn’t,” said the Saint. “This is just a block of flats.”

“Well, I guess I’ll just be bawled out. Gosh, but that poor kid’ll be worried stiff!”

Simon looked up at the clock. He was in no great hurry.

“You can phone from my flat if you like,” he said. “It’s on the second floor.”

“Say, that’s real kind of you!”

The Saint helped him into the lift, and they shot upwards. Settled in an armchair beside the telephone, the American made a reassuring call to the Savoy Hotel number. Simon thought it was excessively sloppy, but it was not his business.

“Well, that’s that,” said his guest, and when the gush was over, “I guess I owe you something for your kindness. Have a cigar?”

Simon accepted the weed. It was a large fat one, with a lovely picture on the band.

“Think of me cracking up like that in your arms!” prattled the American, whose vocal cords at least seemed unimpaired. “Gosh, you musta thought I was something out of a flower-bed. I didn’t know they could take that much outa you along with your appendix. And all this fuss to find a damn brass Buddha! Gosh, it makes you wonder what nut started this collecting game.”

The Saint, with a match half-way to his cigar, stared at him till the flame scorched his fingers.

“Brass Buddha?” he said faintly. “Who wants a brass Buddha?”

“Louis Froussard wants one, if that means anything to you, friend. But here am I in your apartment, and you don’t even know my name. Allow me.” The American dug out his wallet, extracted a card and handed it over. “James G. Amberson, at your service. Any time you want one of Napoleon’s skulls, or the original pyjamas the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon-I’m just the man to go and find ‘em. Yes, sir. That’s my job-huntin’ for missing links for museums and millionaires who feel they gotta collect something so’s they can give the reporters something to write about. That’s me.”

“And you want a brass Buddha?” said the Saint, almost caressingly.

James G. Amberson (according to his card, the G. stood for Gardiner, which the Saint thought was very modest-it might have been Gabriel) flapped a raw-boned hand deprecatingly.

“Aw, you ain’t gonna offer me the thing your auntie brought home last time she went on a world cruise, are you? Everyone in London’s got a brass Buddha, but none of ‘em is the right one. This one’s a special one-you wouldn’t know it to look at it, but it is. Some Chink emperor back in about two million b.c. had three of ‘em made for his three daughters, who were no better than they shoulda been, accordin’ to history-you don’t wanna know all that hooey, do you? I guess I’m a bit fuddled over it myself. But anyhow, Lou Froussard has got two of ‘em, and he wants the third. I gotta find it. Sounds like I’d taken on a long job, don’t it?”

Simon drew on his cigar a little less impetuously.

“How will you know this particular one when you find it?” he asked.