Catch the Saint (22 page)

Angelworth suddenly gave her a penetrating,
almost brutal
look.

“I’m sure you
haven’t,” he said.

She bridled.
    

“I’m not sure what
you mean by that.”

“Simon Templar is
not exactly unknown to me. By reputation.
In
fact he’s
…
I can’t use any other word … notorious.”

Carole stood up.

“Notorious!” she
exclaimed unbelievingly. “What do you
mean,
notorious? And how do you know? Have you been check
ing
up on him because he took me out?”

Angelworth raised a soothing
hand.

“Dick checked on him,
dear. It wasn’t very difficult. The name
didn’t
register when I first met him last night, but it came back to
me later. I don’t want to upset you, but the man’s … well, an
adventurer. I can almost guarantee that his ‘business’
tonight
wouldn’t be approved by the Chamber of Commerce. And
the
longer he stays here, the more likely he is to get
in serious trou
ble.”

Hyram Angelworth was not
prepared for his daughter’s reac
tion. Her lips began to
quiver, and her eyes brimmed with tears.
And
if there was one thing that everybody knew about Hyram
Angelworth,
it was that he could not bear to see his daughter
unhappy.
He was not one of those rich men who doles out handsome allowances to his
offspring as a substitute for love. His actions and attitudes had made it
clear ever since his wife had died that his lavish generosity to his daughter
was an expression of a
love that focussed
exclusively on her. He had no other children. Now he had no wife, and any women
in his life were hired con
veniences rather than
objects of affection.

So when he saw his
daughter about to cry, Angelworth got
spontaneously to his
feet and hurried to put his arms round
her.

“Are you telling me
he’s a crook or something?” Carole asked, holding stiffly back from
co-operating in the embrace, and struggling to control her voice.

“He pretends to be
some sort of modern Robin Hood.” Angel
worth
looked into Carole’s face as he let his arm slip away from her shoulder.
“Simon Templar is well known to operate on both sides of the law, taking
the law into his own hands. He may have
some
misguided good intentions, but that doesn’t alter the fact
that he thinks nothing of breaking the law. Somehow or other
he seems to have gotten away with it very well,
financially; but
that’s no excuse for him either.”

“Well, at least he has
some
excuse!
What about Richard?” Carole pointed in the general direction of the absent
Hamlin.
“He’s a convicted criminal,
but you trust him.”

“That’s
different,” her father said. “I investigated him, got to
know him,
proved him over a long period, decided to give him
a chance, promoted him gradually. And I’m not married to
him, which is apparently what you have in mind
with Simon
Templar.”

“You might as well be
married to Richard,” Carole retorted. “He’s round here day and
night.”

Angelworth shook his head and paced across the
room and
back.

“It disappoints me
very much to see us on the verge of quarrel
ling
with one another,” he said in a new, deeper, quieter voice.
“I’m only thinking of what’s best for you, but I can
understand
that it’s hard for you to see the
other side of the picture—”

“But if what you’ve
told me is true, the police would have
done
something about it.”

“They’ve been trying to, for years. I
suppose you didn’t con
nect his real name
with things you must have read in the papers.
They usually call him The
Saint.”

It was almost as if he
had struck her physically with the revelation.

“Oh, no!” she
breathed. “The Saint…”

“Dick Hamlin
thinks—and I agree—that if he has any busi
ness
here, it’s liable to have something to do with our local crime boss, the
‘Supremo.’ And you wouldn’t want to get involved with
that,
on any side.”

Her eyes were wide, but the rest of her face
was still blank
with shock, a mask behind
which her father tried vainly to read
her
innermost feelings.

“Carole, there are
dozens of men in this town who’d give their
right
arms for a second glance from you—men with good solid
backgrounds,
homes, big futures ahead of them.”

“You know how
they’ve always bored me,” she said, as if she
was
barely listening.

Angelworth stood up and
raised both arms in a gesture of
exasperation. “I
can’t believe what I’m hearing. You’ve known
this man for
approximately one day, and I’ve just explained to
you that he’s a dubious character. Why don’t you at least take the
attitude I took with Dick Hamlin? Before you go
overboard, find
out what he’s like.
For a start, does he feel the same way about
you that you feel about him?”

“Yes, I think
so,” Carole answered, with a kind of toneless
impatience.

“Has he told
you?”

“Not exactly, but I
can tell.”

He scrutinised her then with an intensity that
made her drop
her gaze to the floor.
“Have you already … become seriously
involved with him?”

The connotation of the
question was not lost on her.

“Yes,” she
lied. “I’ll admit I threw myself at him. And I’ll die
if I don’t see him again.”

Angelworth sighed and went
back to his desk chair.

“Good heavens, the man’s just a little
late getting home to
night. You can bet it
isn’t the first time in his life, and it won’t be the last!”

“I know something’s
happened to him,” she said flatly. “I just
know
it. He’s in trouble … and now that you’ve said what
you’ve said about him, I’m more worried about him than
ever.”

Without any warning, tears suddenly overflowed.
She sank
into the chair Richard Hamlin had
vacated, let her arms and
head rest
on her father’s desk, and began to sob.

Hyram Angelworth had
never seen her cry since her mother
had died, and he
was dismayed. Like many men who have risen
to
the top of the power game, he was unnerved by feminine emo
tion. And
his devotion to Carole was the most utterly genuine
and unselfish thing in his life.

“What can I do,
Carole?” His own voice was unsteady. “What
can
I possibly do?”

“You can help me,
Daddy.” She raised her head a little and
looked
at him with reddened, flooded eyes. “If I call the police they’ll just
laugh at me. But you know everybody. They respect
you. You’ve given I
don’t know how much to police charities,
and
your committee … how could they turn you down on any
thing? Find out if they know anything about Simon
trying to
take on the Supremo. Or
work with him.”

Her father did not want to
risk bringing on another cloud
burst with more
discussion.

“All right,” he
said. “I’ll do what I can, but I’m afraid most
personal
friends of mine will be in bed by now.”

Carole stood up, dabbing
her eyes.

“Thank you,
Daddy.” She kissed him on the cheek. “Just come
tell me as soon as you hear anything, no matter what time
it is.”

“Well, I hope we’re
not going to have to sit up all night be
cause of this,”
Angelworth said, with a composure he did not
feel.

As he watched her go, he
was trying to adjust himself to the
discovery that underneath the bright
brittle front she presented
to the world she
had a secret half that he had never known or
understood.

Carole passed through the
living-room with hardly a glance
at Richard Hamlin, who sat
there turning the pages of a glossy magazine, and gave him a purely perfunctory
“Good night.” But
she felt certain in her own
mind that a few seconds before he
must have been
listening at the study door.

CHAPTER7

The Saint’s exiled
consciousness made a slow and hobbling re
turn.
First he became vaguely aware that he was waking up, al
though at first he saw and heard nothing, and when he opened
his eyes he was surprised, for just an instant, to see dusty,
scuffed wood instead of the sheets of his bed. Then he felt the pain caused
by some diabolical throbbing engine trying to drill
up
through the roof of his skull. That, after a moment’s puzzle
ment, brought back to his mind a sharp memory of the fight in
the private office of The Pear Tree, and the blow that had
knocked him out of action.

How long had he been
unconscious? Now he remembered
the one previous moment of
awareness, when something had
pricked his arm, and he
realised that he must have been injected
with
some drug designed to keep him comatose for the con
venience
of his captors.

With the past gradually
forming a pattern in his mind, the
Saint began to take
in more of his surroundings than just the
dusty
boards on which his cheek rested. He started to move, to
pick himself
up off the floor; and discovered that his wrists were tied behind him. His legs
were also immobilised by ropes, as he
could
see when he gingerly pressed his chin towards his chest
and looked down the length of his body. He felt as
if his brain
had come loose within
his skull and had the weight of a cannon-
ball; nevertheless he clenched his teeth together and endured
the
pain that resulted from the movements he had to make in
order to see round the room.

It was not large, about
the size of an ordinary living-room,
but with a much
higher ceiling, so that he guessed it was part of
a
big building, possibly an old warehouse. The walls as well as the floors were
made of rough wood. Below the tin ceiling hung a single light-bulb. There were
no windows. The only things in
the room besides himself,
other than an interested roach or two,
were
a few plywood packing crates. A door at the other end of
the room was closed.

Simon lay back and
listened. In the distance he heard the
growl
of a truck labouriously gearing up from a crawl to higher speeds. Then he heard
a rattle at the door and quickly closed his
eyes.
His captors wouldn’t be so likely to give him another
sleeping
shot if he seemed to be still out.

He could hear the door
open, and the footsteps of one man
stepping inside
the room, pausing, then retreating. Simon waited
and
at the last moment raised his eyelids just enough to get a
glimpse of a broad-backed giant—standard-issue size of the
Supremo’s army—retreating over the threshold. He closed his
eyes completely again as the guard started to turn
and lock the
door behind him.

At almost the same moment
Simon heard a new sound: the
whistle of a tugboat
shrilling its work-signals to another, which
replied
with a quick pair of toots. So he had to be somewhere
down
by a river or a harbour. The watery neighbourhood con
jured
up an unpleasant picture of Simon Templar clad in a
cement
suit, sinking swiftly to a muddy end in the company of
old
tires, slime-covered bottles, and abandoned bedsprings.

Being very fond of Simon Templar, Simon Templar
wanted
to do his best to save him from such
an unglamourous fate. One possibility was to talk himself out of the situation.
He was still,
after all, the
ostensible representative of that great power West
Coast Kelly—unless he had since been identified
as the Saint. But even that would not have automatically ruled out the
possibility that he could be connected in some pragmatic way with
West Coast Kelly. That is, if Kelly had not yet
disclaimed any
connection. Or
even—such being the Machiavellian ways of
gangland—if he had …