The Saint in Persuit (16 page)

“My excuses if I have offended anyone.” He handed the passport back to Vicky. “Thank you, mademoiselle. I do not see how I can doubt the testimony of a young lady with such a fresh new passport and such a charming and honest face.”

“Thank you,” she said, a little uncomfortably.

“I hope you will forgive me, too, for any insinuations, Monsieur Templar, but when the Saint is in the vicinity of any unusual happening it must be routine to make sure he is not connected with it.”

“You are absolved,” said the Saint benevolently. “Go, and my blessings be with you.”

The inspector almost smiled, but covered his embarrassment at that near slip by mumbling a few final words about Jaeger as he went to the door.

“It is possible,” he said, “that he was attempting to steal something, and fell to his death while trying to climb from one room to another outside the hotel.”

“Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?” Simon said with admiration. “I’m sure that if you follow up that theory you’ll have the case closed in no time.”

“Merci,” said Inspector Edval, and left.

Vicky collapsed into a chair and closed her eyes as Simon moved back from closing the door.

“Wonderful to watch the professional police mind at work, isn’t it?” he commented.

“To think you’ve been going through this all your life,” Vicky said. “I couldn’t even take another day of it.”

“And now I suppose you expect to be paid off for your part in this little drama we’ve just been through,” the Saint said.

Vicky looked up at him.

“You don’t have to be nasty about it,” she said.

“I’m not being nasty,” he replied. “I’m being practical.”

Vicky got up from the chair, and as she talked she meandered with conspicuous inconspicuousness to the general area of the door through which Edval had made his exit.

“You think nobody does anything without an angle, don’t you?” she asked huffily.

“Well, darling,” Simon answered, “I’m much too modest to kid myself that you lied to that rather trusting Swiss Sherlock because you just suddenly fell in love with me.”

“I should say not!” Vicky responded indignantly. “I guess it wouldn’t occur to you that I might have felt an obligation to you—because even if you did knock Jaeger or Nor-den or whoever he was out of the window, it was only what I’d have wanted to do if I’d known who he really was.”

“Maybe so,” said the Saint. “But I’m also sure you realized you couldn’t let me be pinched while I had this little package in my pocket.”

She gave him credit for accurate divination by a moment of stymied silence.

“But anyway,” she said belligerently, “you admit I got you out of a jam, so how about your obligation?”

The Saint was now lounging casually on the sofa with his long legs crossed in front of him, while the girl was still standing next to the closed door.

“First,” he said, “may I ask why you’re loitering over there on the threshold?^

“So I can get out in case you take it into your head to throw me out of the window!”

She tried to say it with the same sting that she had summoned a few seconds before.

“You forget what a mercenary pirate’s mind I have,” Simon said impudently. “I’d never toss a prize like you overboard—I’d sell you to the slave traders.” As an afterthought he added, “Or keep you for myself.”

Her eyes met Simon’s roguish blue ones, and in the next moment she blushed, but looked completely reassured.

“You changed the subject,” she said. “I’ve told you why I was standing by the door. Now you tell me what you intend to do about that stuff my father told me how to get.”

“Ill take some convincing before I’m ready to admit that it belongs to either one of us. But first let’s see what it is.”

He pulled the thin packet from inside his coat and put it on the polished mahogany surface of the coffee table in front of the sofa where he was sitting. Vicky had lost her fear so completely that she came and sat next to him.

“1 don’t care who it belonged to,” she said, “or what it is. I think I’ve earned a share of it.”

“And so have I,” he asserted. “So let’s find out if there’s enough in it for both of us—or if this is just one more of your father’s boyish pranks.”

He peeled off the adhesive tapes which secured the oilcloth package and then began to unfold the black wrapping itself. Beside him, Vicky perched on the edge of her sofa cushion and clenched her hands together in tense excitement. Simon laid back the last fold of oilcloth. There in the middle lay a slightly oversized white envelope.

“Oh no!” Vicky groaned. “Not another one!”

She let herself flop back in the sofa, and her hands fell in limp despair at her sides.

“Next stop Bangkok or Tel Aviv,” agreed the Saint. “It looks as if Dad has an almost inexhaustible sense of suspense—or maybe he figured that if he made the puzzle long enough anybody but a devoted blood-relative would give up long before he got to the end of the line.”

“You won’t want it, then,” said Vicky.

As she spoke she moved with a suddenness and speed that would have given a jaguar twinges of envy. She pounced on the envelope, snatched it up, turned the coffee table over against the Saint’s legs, and bolted for the door.

2

Before Vicky could get the door open the Saint had disengaged himself from the coffee-table obstacle she had thrown in his path and was halfway across the room after her. While she was still fumbling desperately with the lock he caught her, pinned her arms more or less at her sides with one of his arms, and tried to get the envelope out of her hand.

She struggled furiously, holding the envelope out of his reach behind her for as long as she could. Then his patiently applied superior strength paid off, and the envelope was once more in his possession.

“Trusting little soul, aren’t you?” he remarked, still gripping her firmly. “Trustworthy, too.”

Vicky squirmed helplessly and winced with rage.

“Anybody would be crazy to trust you, you … you rattlesnake!”

Simon clucked sadly and released his hold on her.

“It pains me to think that you could turn on your friend, counsellor, and protector like this, at a moment which I’d have thought would be marked by joyful gratitude and adoring thanks.”

“You’ll keep it all for yourselfl” she said accusingly, rubbing her arm where he had gripped it.

“I gather you have some advance dope on the contents of this little prize package that you haven’t shared with your faithful comrade. In that case you may not be inquisitive enough to want to stick around for the grand opening —so please feel free to leave.”

“No!” she snapped. “It’s more mine than anybody’s, and I’m going to get it, no matter what you say!”

Simon was strolling back towards the sofa again, tapping the bulging sealed envelope against the palm of one hand, and then suddenly he turned and took a threatening step towards her.

“You may get a quick trip through that window after all if you don’t mind your manners,” he said ferociously.

She gave a terrified squeak and jumped back towards the door. But she turned again at bay, clinging to the handle.

“You come one step closer and I’ll start screaming. I bet Edval’s still got a man outside. And you know whose word theyll take when I start talking.”

The Saint dissolved into helpless laughter.

“We really should take this act on the road,” he chortled. “However, to play it straight for a minute, let’s pretend that we each have the other over a barrel, which is not a state of affairs conducive to progress in any direction. Shall we declare a truce and get on with our nefarious huddle?”

She relaxed a little but did not step forward at once.

“You’re not getting me anywhere near that window,” she insisted defensively.

“And I’m not letting you anywhere near this table or any other flingable furniture,” he told her. “Maybe well have to meet from now on in a padded cell.”

He righted the table with the toe of his shoe and stripped open the envelope. It yielded a thick wad of papers. Unfolding them, he saw that there were six sheets, each almost identical to the others, but each addressed—in German—to a different bank. The names of the different cities in which the banks were located first caught his eye: Lisbon, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Madrid, Zurich, Johannesburg. Then something else attracted his attention: the sum of money held in each bank to which the letters of credit in his hand pertained. The amounts were expressed in various currencies, but quick mental calculation reduced each of them to approximately the same astonishing sum.

The Saint was accustomed to cash in large figures, having a useful quantity of it stashed away in his own accounts, so the fact that he blinked, looked in amazement at Vicky, and then stared reverently down again at the papers was a high tribute to the grandeur of their contents.

“Do you know what we’ve got here?” he said.

“Letters of credit,” Vicky replied, still a little coldly. “My father’s letter told me that, but he never saw them and didn’t know how much they were worth.”

“They are worth,” Simon said, “ten million dollars each.”

“Ten … million … dollars?”

To render typographically the awesome quality Vicky gave to each of her next words would require a surface tile size of the north face of the Eiger and the labor of a few hundred sign painters working all summer with no time off.

“Yes,” Simon confirmed simply.

“Each?” she squealed.

“Yes.”

She forgot all about the possibility of an enforced exit through the window and rushed to his side, gaping at the documents over his shoulder.

“How many are there?”

“Six,” he answered. “Six worth ten million bucks each, no questions asked, to anyone who fills in his name and signature and takes it to the bank it’s addressed to.”

Vicky absorbed the information in silence for a while, and then sighed in a masterpiece of inadequacy: “My goodness!”

“Mine too,” said the Saint. “Virtue is about to be rewarded once more, it seems, thanks to pluck, perseverance, and all the other old-fashioned nobilities—not to mention greed and your father.”

He shuffled the letters about on the table, arranging and re-arranging them in random geometrical patterns, while he continued to digest the full flavor of the prize with ripening rapture. Seldom in the history of buccaneering could any pirate have doodled with such precious playthings: never had he himself held so much concentrated capital in his hands all at once.

And besides the pure crass opulence of the booty, there were its artistic implications to enjoy: the inspiration which had hit upon such a supremely simple method of caching a Golconda so that anyone who knew the secret could claim it without revealing any past names or identifications, the ingenuity which had devised such an improbable safe deposit for the claim checks, even the macabre humour which had selected for the ultimate depository a miniature casket bearing such a name as Josef Meier. And to top that, the fact that the evil men who had put away such an insurance policy for their own uncertain future had never survived to cash it, whereas one of their victims had been able to ensure that it was at least not lost for ever.

Vicky Kinian said: “My father was risking his life for his country as a soldier, and I know he wouldn’t have betrayed it for any amount of money. But this must have seemed like something quite apart from winning the war. Whoever got this money, so long as it wasn’t the Nazis, it wouldn’t have hurt our side. Somehow, he found out about it and had a chance to leave it to me instead of getting it turned over to the Government. I honestly can’t blame him for being tempted.”

“You shouldn’t blame me either, then,” Simon averred.

She looked worried.

“Any more than I should blame you,” he concluded.

She seemed a little relieved.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

“I propose to keep one of these for my services—and please don’t embarrass both of us by telling me you can’t spare it.”

He separated the Johannesburg letter from the stack and handed the other five sheets to Vicky. Her face was white and her fingers trembled so much that the papers rustled loudly. She sank down on the sofa, gazed uncomprehend-ingly at the typed text of the documentary forms, and hugged them close against her body.

She looked up at Simon, hardly able to speak.

“So you think I’m entitled to this money?”

The Saint had already tucked his personal dividend into his pocket.

“Maybe,” he said thoughtfully. “But unfortunately I’m not the one who’ll decide whether to let you keep it. One can assume that the happy Aryans who stashed it away got it by some unsavory or illegitimate means, but where did they embezzle it or which individuals did they rob? That could keep an army of lawyers busy for another twenty years.” He sat down in a chair facing her, rested his elbows on the arms, and folded his hands underneath his chin as he considered the problem. “Remember, I’m in on this hunt because some lads in the Pentagon asked me to solve the mystery of your father and report what I could find out. If Washington releases the information, there are going to be more claimants for this dough than bees in a clover patch.”

Vicky was beginning to look more defiant than worried.

“I don’t see how any of them could prove they’ve any right to it!” she said. “How could anybody else have found it?”

“I doubt that anybody could, but both of us would be far beyond caring by the time the legal weasels finish gnawing the bones.”

“So you mean I’ve got a choice between being a sort of thief and being broke for the rest of my life,” Vicky said sulkily. “Assuming you give me any choice at all. I notice you’ve already got your share safely tucked away. I’m the only one who’ll be sitting around waiting for my reward for the next eighty years.”

Simon picked up the remaining five letters of credit and spread them like playing cards in his hands.

“Well, just in case the authorities aren’t properly grateful, I guess it’s only fair that you should have a little something to tide you over while they embroider the red tape.” He selected the letter addressed to the Zurich bank and passed it to her. “There. Sweets for the sweet. We can say there were only four letters—which, as anybody can plainly see, there are.”