Brighter Buccaneer (19 page)

“Possibly I intrude,” murmured the Saint, very pleasantly; “but that’s just too bad.”

On the faces of the two men were expressions of mingled astonishment, fear, indignation, horror and simple wrath, which would have done credit to a pair of dyspeptic cows that had received an electric shock from a clump of succulent grass. And then Mr. Tillson’s voice returned.

“Good God!” he squeaked. “It’s the man I was telling you about —”

“The bloke I was telling you about!” ejaculated Happy Fred savagely. “The skunk who took thirty pounds of my money in the Alexandra, and then —”

The two men’s heads revolved until they looked into each other’s eyes and gazed into the souls beyond. And the Saint . hitched himself off the door and came towards them.

“A very neat piece of work, if I may say so, Fred,” he remarked. “Not so original as it might have been, perhaps, but new enough. It’s very kind of you to have worked so hard for me.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Mr. Tillson weakly.

Simon took the packet out of his hands.

“Relieve you of this encumbrance, brother. It’s a very pretty bracelet, but I don’t think you could wear it. People might think it was rather odd.”

“I’ll have the police on to you for this, you —”

Simon raised his eyebrows. “The police? To tell them that I’ve stolen your bracelet? But I understood your bracelet was in the mail, on its way to your little girl in Paris? Can I be mistaken, Alfred?”

Mr. Tillson swallowed painfully; and then Happy Fred jumped up.

“Damn the police!” he snarled. “I’ll settle with this bluffer.He wouldn’t dare to shoot —”

“Oh, but you’re quite wrong about that,” said the Saint gently. “I shouldn’t have any objection to shooting you if you asked for it. It’s quite a long time since I last shot anyone, and I often feel afraid that if I abstain for too long I may get squeamish. Don’t tempt me, Fred, because I’m feeling nervous enough already.”

But the Saint’s blue eyes were as steady as the gun in his hand, and it was Happy Fred’s gaze that wavered.

“I shall have to tie you up while I make my getaway,” said the Saint amiably, “so would you both mind turning around? You’ll be able to undo yourselves quite quickly after I’ve gone.”

“You wouldn’t be a part to a low insurance swindle, would you?” protested Happy Fred aggrievedly, as the Saint looped coils of rope over his wrists.

“I wouldn’t be a party to any kind of swindle,” said the Saint virtuously. “I’m an honest holdup man, and your insurance policies have nothing to do with me.”

He completed the roping of the two men, roughly gagged them with their own handkerchiefs, and retreated leisurely to the door.

1. The Five Thousand Pound Kiss
   

IT has been said that Simon Templar was a philanderer; but the criticism was not entirely just. A pretty face, or the turn of a slim waist, appealed to him no more-and not a bit less-than they do to the next man. Perhaps he was more honest about it. It is true that sometimes, in a particularly buccaneering mood, as he swung down a broad highway leading to infinite adventure, he would sing one of his own inimitable songs against the pompous dreariness of civilization as he saw it, with a chorus:

But if red blood runs thin with years,
By God! If I must die,
I’ll kiss red lips and drink red wine
And let the rest go by, my son,
And let the rest go by!

But there was a gesture in that, to be taken with or without salt as the audience pleased; and a fat lot the Saint cared. He was moderate in nothing that he said or did. That insurgent vitality which made him an outlaw first and last and in everything rebelled perhaps too fiercely against all moderation; and if at the same time it made him, to those who knew him best, the one glamorous and romantic figure of his day, that was the judgment which he himself would have asked for.

These chronicles are concerned mainly with episodes in which he provided himself with the bare necessities of life by cunning and strategy rather than daring; but even in those times there were occasions when his career hung on the thread of a lightning decision. That happened in the affair of Mrs. Dempster-Craven’s much-advertised pink diamond; and if the Saint philandered then, he would have told you that he had no regrets.

“The idea that such a woman should have a jool like that keeps me awake nights,” he complained. “I’ve seen her twice, and she is a Hag.”

This was at dinner one night. Peter Quentin was there; and so was Patricia Holm, who, in those days, was the lady who held the Saint’s reckless heart and knew best how to understand all his misdeeds. The subject of the “Star of Mandalay” had cropped up casually in the course of conversation; and it was worth mentioning that neither of Simon Templar’s guests bothered to raise any philosophical argument against his somewhat heterodox doctrine about the right of Hags. But it was left for Peter Quentin to put his foot in it.

Peter read behind the wistfulness of the Saint’s words, and said: “Don’t be an idiot, Simon. You don’t need the money, and you couldn’t pinch the Star of Mandalay. The woman’s got a private detective following her around wherever she goes —”

“Couldn’t I pinch it, Peter?” said the Saint, very softly.

Patricia saw the light in his eyes, and clutched Peter’s wrist.

“You idiot!” she gasped. “Now you’ve done it. He’d be fool enough to try —”

“Why ‘try’?” asked the Saint, looking round mildly. “That sounds very much like an aspersion on my genius, which I shall naturally have to —”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” protested the girl frantically. “I mean that after all, when we don’t need the money-You said you were thinking of running over to Paris for a week —”

“We can go via Amsterdam, and sell the Star of Mandalay en route,” said the Saint calmly. “You lie in your teeth, my sweetheart. You meant that the Star of Mandalay was too much of a problem for me and I’d only get in a jam, if I tried for it. Well, as a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking of having a dart at it for some time.”

Peter Quentin drank deeply of the Château Olivier to steady his nerves.

“You haven’t been thinking anything of the sort,” he said. “I’ll withdraw everything I said. You were just taking on a dare.”

Simon ordered himself a second slice of melon, and leaned back with his most seraphic and exasperating smile.

“Have I,” he inquired blandly, “ever told you my celebrated story about a bob-tailed ptarmigan named Alphonse, who lived in sin with a couple of duck-billed platypi in the tundras of Siberia? Alphonse, who suffered from asthma and was a believer in Christian Science …”

He completed his narrative at great length, refusing to be interrupted; and they knew that the die was cast. When once Simon Templar had made up his mind it was impossible to argue with him. If he didn’t proceed blandly to talk you down with one of his most fatuous and irrelevant anecdotes, he would listen politely to everything you had to say, agree with you thoroughly, and carry on exactly as he had announced his intentions from the beginning; which wasn’t helpful. And he had made up his mind, on one of his mad impulses, that the Star of Mandalay was due for a change of ownership.

It was not a very large stone, but it was reputed to be flawless; and it was valued at ten thousand pounds. Simon reckoned that it would be worth five thousand pounds to him in Van Roeper’s little shop in Amsterdam, and five thousand pounds was a sum of money that he could find a home for at any time.

But he said nothing about that to Mrs. Dempster-Craven when he saw her for the third time and spoke to her for the first. He was extremely polite and apologetic. He had good reason to be, for the rakish Hirondel which he was driving had collided with Mrs. Dempster-Craven’s Rolls Royce in Hyde Park, and the glossy symmetry of the Rolls Royce’s rear elevation had been considerably impaired.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “Your chauffeur pulled up rather suddenly, and my hand-brake cable broke when I tried to stop.”

His hand-brake cable had certainly divided itself in the middle, and the frayed ends had been produced for the chauffeur’s inspection; but no one was to know that Simon had filed it through before he started out.

“That is not my fault,” said Mrs. Dempster-Craven coldly. She was going to pay a call on the wife of a minor baronet, and she was pardonably annoyed at the damage to her impressive car. “Bagshawe, will you please find me a taxi?”

“The car’ll take you there all right, ma’am,” said the chauffeur incautiously.

Mrs. Dempster-Craven froze him through her lorgnettes.

“How,” she required to know, “can I possibly call on Lady Wiltham in a car that looks as if I had picked it up at a second-hand sale? Kindly call me a taxi immediately, and don’t argue.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the abashed chauffeur, and departed on his errand..

“I really don’t know how to apologize,” said the Saint humbly.

“Then don’t try,” said Mrs. Dempster-Craven discouragingly.

The inevitable small crowd had collected, and a policeman was advancing ponderously towards it from the distance. Mrs. Dempster-Craven liked to be stared at as she crossed the pavement to Drury Lane Theatre on a first night, but not when she was sitting in a battered car in Hyde Park. But the Saint was not so self-conscious.

“I’m afraid I can’t offer you a lift at the moment; but if my other car would be of any use to you for the reception tonight —”

“What reception?” asked Mrs. Dempster-Craven haughtily, having overcome the temptation to retort that she had three other Rolls Royces no less magnificent than the one she was sitting in.

“Prince Marco d’Ombria’s,” answered the Saint easily. “I heard you say that you were going to call on Lady Wiltham, and I had an idea that I’d heard Marco mention her name. I thought perhaps —”

“I am not going to the reception,” said Mrs. Dempster-Craven; but it was noticeable that her tone was not quite so freezing. “I have a previous engagement to dine with Lord and Lady Bredon.”

Simon chalked up the point without batting an eyelid. He had not engineered that encounter without making inquiries about his victim, and it had not taken him long to learn that Mrs. Dempster-Craven’s one ambition was to win for herself and her late husband’s millions an acknowledged position among the Very Best People. That carelessly-dropped reference to a Prince, even an Italian Prince, by his first name, had gone over like a truck-load of honey. And it was a notable fact that if Mrs. Dempster-Craven had pursued her own inquiries into the reference, she would have found that the name of Simon Templar was not only recognized but hailed effusively; for there had once been a spot of bother involving a full million pounds belonging to the Bank of Italy which had made the Saint forever persona grata at that Embassy.

The chauffeur returned with a taxi, and Mrs. Dempster-Craven’s two hundred pounds of flesh were assisted ceremoniously out of the Rolls. Having had a brief interval to consider pros and cons, she deigned to thank the Saint for his share in the operation with a smile that disclosed a superb set of expensive teeth.

“I hope your car isn’t seriously damaged,” she remarked graciously; and the Saint smiled in his most elegant manner.

“It doesn’t matter a bit. I was just buzzing down to Hurlingham for a spot of tennis, but I can easily take a taxi.” He took out his wallet and handed her a card. “As soon as you know what the damage’ll cost to put right, I do hope you’ll send me in the bill.”

“I shouldn’t dream of doing such a thing,” said Mrs. Dempster-Craven. “The whole thing was undoubtedly Bagshawe’s fault.”

With such startling volte-face, and another display of her expensive denture, she ascended regally into the cab; and Simon Templar went triumphantly back to Patricia.

“It went off perfectly, Pat! You could see the whole line sizzling down her throat till she choked on the rod. The damage to the Hirondel will cost about fifteen quid to put right, but we’ll charge that up to expenses. And the rest of it’s only a matter of time.”

The time was even shorter than he had expected; for Mrs. Dempster-Craven was not prepared to wait any longer than was necessary to see her social ambitions fulfilled, and the highest peak she had attained at that date was a week-end at the house of a younger son of a second viscount.

Three days later Simon’s mail-box yielded a scented mauve envelope, and he knew before he opened it that it was the one he had been waiting for.

118, Berkeley Square,
Mayfair, W.I.

My dear Mr. Templar,
I’m sure you must have thought me rather abrupt after our accident in Hyde Park on Tuesday, but these little upsets seem so much worse at the time than they really are. Do try and forgive my rudeness.

I am having a little party here on Tuesday next. Lord and Lady Palfrey are coming, and the Hon. Celia Mallard, and lots of other people whom I expect you’ll know. I’d take it as a great favour if you could manage to look in, any time after 9.30, just to let me know you weren’t offended. I do hope you got to Hurlingham all right.

Yours sincerely,
Gertrude Dempster-Craven.

“Who said my technique had ever failed me?” Simon demanded of Peter Quentin at lunchtime that day.

“I didn’t,” said Peter, “as I’ve told you all along. Thank God you won’t be going to prison on Thursday, anyway-if it’s only a little party she’s invited you to, I don’t suppose you’ll even see the Star of Mandalay.”

Simon grinned.

“Little party be blowed,” he said. “Gertrude has never thrown a little party in her life. When she talks about a ‘little’ party she means there’ll only be two orchestras and not more than a hundred couples. And if she doesn’t put on the Star of Mandalay for Lady Palfrey’s benefit I am a bob-tailed ptarmigan and my name is Alphonse.”

Nevertheless, when he suggested that Peter Quentin should come with him there was not much argument.

“How can you get me in?” Peter demurred. “I wasn’t invited, and I don’t known any princes.”

“You’ve got an uncle who’s a lord or something, haven’t you?”

“I’ve got an uncle who’s the Bishop of Kenya; but what does Mrs. Dempster-Craven care about South African bishops?”