The Saint Around the World

EVERYWHERE

HE GOES DANGER

FOLLOWS HIM

In Bermuda a blonde (36-23-35) asks the Saint to locate her missing husband. Her dearly beloved will be easy to identify. When last seen, he wore a dressing gown, slippers— and five million dollars.

In a French nudist colony the killer strikes before the Saint’s eyes. To solve the crime, only the murder weapon has to be found— but where could a nudist conceal a gun?

In England a handsome lady killer (with several dead wives to back his reputation) is on the prowl. The police know how to trap him—but it’s up to the Saint to keep the beautiful “bait” alive.

Here is excitement, unforgettable and gripping, as adventure and murder follow The Saint Around The World.

THE SAINT

AROUND

THE WORLD

Leslie Charteris

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MB

A MACFADDEN-BARTELL BOOK

THIS IS THE COMPLETE TEXT

OF THE HARDCOVER EDITION

A MACFADDEN BOOK
_
_1966

MACFADDEN BOOKS are published by

Macfadden-Bartell Corporation

205 East 42nd Street, New York, New York, 10017

All of the stories in this book have appeared in The Saint Detective Magazine. Copyright, Š, 1954, 1955, 1956, by Leslie Charteris. All rights reserved. Published by arrangement with Doubleday & Company, Inc. Printed in the U.S.A.

CONTENTS

BERMUDA: The Patient Playboy 9

ENGLAND: The Talented Husband 44

FRANCE: The Reluctant Nudist 73

MIDDLE EAST: The Lovelorn Sheik 108

MALAYA: The Pluperfect Lady 143

VANCOUVER: The Sporting Chance 180

THE SAINT

AROUND THE WORLD

THE PATIENT PLAYBOY

i

I suppose you wouldn’t be interested in helping me find my husband,” said the blonde.

“Frankly, I’ve heard a lot more exciting propositions,” Simon Templar admitted. “If he doesn’t have enough sense to appreciate you, why don’t we just let him stay lost, and have a ball?”

“But I really want him back,” she said. “You see, we’ve only been married a week, so I haven’t had time to get tired of him.”

Simon sipped his Dry Sack.

“All right,” he said. “Give me a clue. What was it about this bridegroom that impressed you so much, darling?”

“The name,” she said, “is Lona Dayne.”

“Well, that’s unusual, anyway. He must have to listen to a lot of funny cracks about it.”

“Lona Dayne is my name, idiot. Not ‘darling’.”

“Oh.”

He regarded her with pleasantly augmented interest. It had been an entirely shallow and stereotyped reaction, he realized, to identify and pigeonhole her so summarily as “the blonde”. Certainly she had the hair, of a tint much paler than straw, which his worldly eye inevitably measured against her light brown eyes and traced back from there to the alchemy of some beauty parlor—but wasn’t it a mere cliche of fiction that expensively rinsed blondes were by contrary definition cheap, while the only good ones owed their coloring solely to a lucky combination of chromosomes? The pretty face and approximately 35-23-35 vital statistics which convention also attributes to blondes appeared to be hers without any important debt to artifice. And she could get away with calling him Idiot, when she smiled in that provocatively intimate way while she said it.

“To me, you’ll still be darling.” he said. “At least, until your husband turns up. I suppose his name is Dayne too.”

“Naturally.”

“You can never be sure, these days.”

“Havelock Dayne.”

“It has rather a corny sound, but I guess his parents loved it.”

“I love your dialogue,” she said dispassionately. “But I wasn’t kidding. You are the Saint, aren’t you?”

Simon sighed. He had heard that question so often, by this time, that he seemed to have used up all the possible smooth, shocking, modest, impudent, evasive, chilling, misleading, or witty answers. Now he could only wish, belatedly, that he had had the forethought to insist on an alias. But while that might have let him enjoy one cocktail party as an anonymous guest, it wouldn’t have fitted in with the project that brought him to Bermuda.

It had been a good party, until then. The Saint had thought it a happy coincidence, for him, that a friend from many years back in Hollywood, Dick Van Hessen, was currently managing a miniature movie studio which had been improbably yet astutely set up in Bermuda to take advantage of tax privileges and lower costs to compete for the American television market. At the Van Hessens’ hillside house was therefore gathered, almost automatically, a useful cross-section of island personalities: the local bankers and bigwigs, the grim and the gay social sets, the press and the professions, the merchants and the dilettantes, and a leavening of working actors and visiting firemen on whom all the others could prove how easily they could mix with celebrities. The Saint’s cool blue eyes drifted down the long verandah that overlooked Hamilton harbor, but failed to make any pertinent identification among the convivial mob.

“I’ve met so many people tonight, I couldn’t possibly remem-ber half their names,” he confessed disarmingly, and with an unblushing lack of truth. “Does your husband have anything conspicuous about him—like a green mustache, for instance?”

“You haven’t met him tonight. He isn’t here.”

“When did you lose him, then?”

“The day before yesterday.”

“And only married five days at the time, according to what you said. It must have been a hell of a wedding. Did you have any inkling that Havelock was such a dizzy type when you agreed to let him love, honor, and pay the bills?”

“He isn’t at all. He’s lots of fun, of course, but he’s terribly ambitious and earnest too. He’s a lawyer.”

“I’m looking for a lawyer myself,” said the Saint. “Only I want one who’s already embezzled at least five million dollars. Have you known Havelock long enough to notice him flashing a lot of green stuff around?”

“I’m sorry,” she said stiffly. “I suppose I was asking for it. I should have known better. But I don’t think your dialogue is so excruciatingly funny, after all–-“

A quiver of her lips spoiled the trenchant ring that her last sentence was phrased for, and she turned away quickly, but not quickly enough for him to miss the blurring of her eyes. He moved even more swiftly to place himself beside her again where she leaned over the verandah railing with her back turned squarely to the incurious crowd.

“Pardon my two left feet,” he said reasonably. “I’m afraid the atmosphere of the place got me. I thought you were playing it strictly chin-up and British, so I was going along with the gag. Let’s start over, if you’re serious.”

She looked at him, blinking hard.

“I am!”

“All right. I know how you’re feeling, I wish I could help. But just plain wandering husbands are a bit out of my line. I expect if you asked a few discreet friends and bartenders— or even the police–-“

“But I can’t. I’ve had to cover up—tell everyone he’s laid up with a terrible cold. You’re the first person I’ve told, and I shouldn’t even have done that.”

“Then stop being silly. If he’s lost, he’s lost, and false pride won’t help you find him. Think yourself lucky he isn’t really a case up my alley, for which he’d have to be at least kidnaped or even murdered.”

“That,” she said steadily, “is exactly what I’m afraid of. Or I wouldn’t have talked to you.”

Without any change of expression, the Saint’s bronzed face seemed to become opaque, like a mask from behind which his eyes probed with a sort of rueful cynicism.

“Now I’ll begin to think you’re suffering from too much lurid literature.”

“You’d be wrong,” she said flatly. “Unless I suffered from writing it. Until a week ago, my name was Lona Shaw. Well, that doesn’t mean anything to you. But it would if you’d lived in England lately. I’ve worked for the London Daily Record since I was nineteen; and for the last four years I’ve been their star sob-sister. Do you have any idea how hard-boiled and unhysterical a girl has to be to hold that job on a newspaper like the Record?”

Simon nodded. Suddenly, as if a cloud had passed, the mask of his face was translucent again. It was the only outward sign that he had felt and recognized the icy caress of Destiny’s lingers along his spine.

“Okay,” he said soberly. “I’m sold.”

His gaze flickered over the crowded balcony again, warily conscious of the beginning of one of those unanimous re-shufflings that surge intermittently through the human molecules of every cocktail party, and even more sharply perceptive of the covetous glances of certain males within striking distance who had transparently settled on Lona Dayne as the most intriguing target for tonight and were getting set to cut in at the first opening.

Simon huddled strategically closer to her along the rail.

“I gather you came alone,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Me too. No plans for dinner?”

“No. Fay Van Hessen said I could–-“

“She won’t mind. You just made a date with me, darling. He put down his glass, took her by the arm, and steered her firmly and skillfully into an eddy that was flowing towards the exit. The frustrated wolf pack was still standing on its heels as they jostled into the line that was babbling thanks and goodbyes.

“Oh, don’t go yet,” Fay protested. “We’re going to have some food presently.”

“But Lona’s husband might get better tomorrow, and Id never get her all to myself again,” Simon said with a leer. “Well, behave yourselves.”

“There should be a taxi waiting below,” Dick Van Hessen said helpfully. “Send him back from wherever you’re going, for the next customers.” .

Then they were down the stairs, and the steep narrow driveway, and a taxi was waiting as predicted at the foot of the steep slope where the house perched. Simon put her in and said: “The Caravelle.”

“I ought to go home, really,” she said, “and see if there’s any message.”

“Which I suppose you’ve been doing for the last two days. If you’re out, he could leave a message, couldn’t he?’

“Yes—the caretaker promised he’d be around and listen for the phone.”

“Then you can call in and ask for news later. Meanwhile, you’ve got at least as much right to be out as he has.

“But–-“

A Bermuda taxi is not a vehicle in which to discuss anything confidential. Being derived from any miniature English car by the sole process of attaching a taximeter to the dashboard, the driver and passengers are huddled together as cozily as olives in a jar. The Saint nudged Lona Dayne gently, and pointed expressively at the back of the driver’s head, which he was trying not to bump with his knees.

“What’s this about a caretaker?” he said innocuously. “Aren’t you staying at a hotel?”

“We started in a hotel, of course, but we moved into this house just the day before Hav disappeared. You see, we were talking to the caretaker, and he happened to mention that his boss had just written and told him to try to rent it. The owner lives up in Canada and only comes down here in the winter; then Bob—that’s the caretaker—goes to Canada and takes care of his house there. Usually the house here just stands empty, but it seems as if the owner suddenly decided he might as well make a few dollars out of it. It’s absurdly reasonable, really, and Bob didn’t see why he couldn’t let us have it just for a month, while he’s waiting for someone who wants to take a longer lease. After we saw it, we simply couldn’t turn it down—it’s on a little island all of its own, the sort of thing you dream of. Only if we’d stayed in the hotel, perhaps we’d have been safer … But it’s the most romantic spot–-“

Simon let her go on chattering trivialities, preferring to have her overdo it rather than go on with the important subject until they were safe from any uninvited audience, or at least until he knew how seriously they should be thinking of safety. He kept her headed off from any reference to her husband until they were settled at a table in a corner of the terrace overhanging the water, and had ordered a chicken in white wine and a bottle of Bollinger to go with it.

“What am I supposed to be celebrating?” she objected halfheartedly.

“I’m prescribing it to give you a lift, which I think you could use.”

He lighted their cigarettes, and settled his elbows squarely on the table, looking at her with sympathetic but disconcertingly penetrating detachment.

“Now,” he said with sudden bluntness. “What is this all about?”

“Have you heard of Roger Ivalot?”

He winced slightly.

“No,” he said. “And if I had, I wouldn’t believe it.”

“Why?”

“The name sounds even more improbable than your husband’s.”

“If you’d been in England lately–-“

“I’m sorry. It’s already established that I’ve been spending my time in the wrong places. Just enlighten’ my ignorance.”

There was, however, some excuse for regarding anyone who had not heard of Roger Ivalot as benighted, as he soon learned.

In a country which is not by tradition or temperament adapted to the breeding of spectacular playboys, Mr. Ivalot had succeeded in racking up a number of probable records. One of these could certainly be claimed for the rocket-like trajectory of his ascent from obscurity. Nobody, in fact, seemed to have known of his existence before the day less than two years ago when he had sent engraved invitations to the entire casts of the three most popular musicals then playing in London, bidding them to a champagne supper and dance in the Dorchester’s biggest private ballroom, for which he also hired the most popular orchestra available. While some of the stars were snooty or suspicious enough to ignore the offer, almost six hundred guests (including several uninvited escorts) showed up to sample the hospitality; and when a somewhat notorious soubrette, professing indignation because no one had been asked to take a champagne bath, peeled off her clothes and had herself showered from bottles held by a flock of eager volunteers, nothing less than the simultaneous outbreak of World War III could have prevented Mr. Ivalot becoming a celebrity overnight.

“I just wanted to meet a lot of people who liked to have fun,” he said to the newspapers, which (of course with the exception of the Times) could hardly fail to note such goings-on, “and throwing a big party seemed the quickest way to do it.”