Trust The Saint

The bigger game

Copyright © 1961 by Fiction Publishing Company

Because I once translated the autobiography of Juan Belmonte, one of the historically greatest bullfighters of them all, with what I hoped was an authoritative introduction, Simon Templar has by association been assumed by some readers to be an aficionado himself, or even a graduate practitioner of the art. In one interview with an English reporter, who had received disappointing replies to a few leading questions designed to show up the Saint’s devotion to bullfighting, which could in print be either pilloried or ridiculed according to the delightful convention of most English interviewing, complained peevishly, “You sound so lukewarm about it — have you lost your afición?”

“I just haven’t been in any of the countries where they do it, lately,” said the Saint.

“And you don’t miss it? I’d have expected a man like you to want to try it himself, like other people take up golf. Haven’t you ever tried to stand up to a bull with a cape?”

“If I told you about my greatest moment in that line,” said the Saint equably, “you’d either splash it all over your paper, which would be a breach of confidence, or you wouldn’t believe me, which would hurt my pride. So let’s save us both embarrassment by trying some other subject. After all, burglars can make just as big headlines as bullfighters.”

In simple fact, Simon had tried his cape-work against very-young bulls at round-up time on the fincas of a couple of breeders whom he had known in Spain, and his natural grace and superb reflexes had caused some of the privileged observers to proclaim perhaps extravagantly that he was a born phenomenon whose refusal to make it a career would be a disaster through which tauromachy would continue irreparably impoverished. But he had never taken any but a spectator’s part in any formal corrida, and in spite of the acidulous journalist’s imputation he had never felt any ambition to.

Nevertheless the Saint’s last answer, like many of his smoothest evasions, was only bald truth which it privately amused him to veil and confuse.

He did actually, once, make a quite such as no matador up to and including Belmonte ever dreamed of, or is likely to dream of since, except in nightmares.

(I must intrude myself again here to mention that what I have just italicized has no connection with the English word “quite,” meaning “moderately,” as in a phrase like “quite nice,” often pronounced “quaite naice.” This one is pronounced in Spain something like key-tay, and in a formal bullfight refers to the work of luring the bull away from a fallen picador, the lancer on the horse which the bull has felled, despite the squeals of Anglo-Saxon tourists in the stands, who as charter members of some SPCA do not regard human beings as animals that should not be cruelly treated. Aficionados, who may be more sentimental, rate the quite as a rather valiant job, sometimes almost heroic.)

Simon Templar really did think of the hunting of criminals sometimes as a sport, and infinitely more exciting than the pursuit of the much less cunning and dangerous quarry which satisfies other self-designated sportsmen. But just as devotees of the more generally accepted versions of the chase rate some forms as more challenging than others, to the Saint one of the supreme refinements was to spot the villain before he became the answer to a whodunit, or to anticipate the crime before the perpetrators had finally decided to commit it.

Sometimes, Simon maintained, a man is ineluctably marked for murder. He may be the political candidate with the reform platform in a town that doesn’t want to be reformed, the crook who has decided to squeal on a powerful racket, the inconvenient husband who stands in the way of somebody’s hot ideas for a reshuffle — there are many obvious possibilities. But since murders, like marriages, require at least two participants, the consummation requires an inexorable aggressor as well as a predestined victim.

There was an evening in London when the Saint felt sure he had met both together. This was at the bar of the White Elephant, which was a supper club where in those days you might run into anyone that you read about in the papers, and frequently did.

The slight swarthy man with the burning black eyes and the ugly scar on one temple he recognized instantly as Elías Usebio, who had been called the greatest matador since Manolete: Simon had never seen him in the ring, but that scimitar profile had been widely caricatured, especially since his sensational wedding and equally publicized retirement a year ago.

Iantha Lamb, whom he had married, or who had married him, would have been ecstatically recognized by many millions more to whom he was only a name which they were still very vague about, such being the more international scope of motion pictures and their attendant publicity. Iantha Lamb was a movie star, if not of the first magnitude, at least a luminary to gladden the box office. Although there were sour-pots who sneered that she acted better in bedrooms than before cameras, except for certain films which her first husband had spent a small fortune buying up, anything that she did was news and she had worked hard at making it newsworthy. Her assiduously advertised weakness was for men who lived with death at their elbow — racing drivers, lion tamers, deep-sea divers, test pilots, soldiers of fortune, young men on a flying trapeze, anyone whose luck had more chances to run out than that of most people. Her wild romances with these statistical bad bets had filled more columns of print than her thespian achievements ever earned, culminating with her marriage to Usebio, the torero, who until he cut his pigtail had been generally rated most likely to become an obituary.

“You were sensational then, Elías,” she said almost wistfully. “Nobody who hasn’t seen you in a corrida can imagine how wonderful you were. Every time you stepped out into the ring, I died. But you always lived, and that was more wonderful still.”

“And now I expect to go on living.” Usebio said indulgently, “until I am knocked down on the sidewalk by a runaway bus.”

“Does that mean that you lost your nerve?” asked the other man who was with them.

He was much taller and bigger, with the fine mahogany tan which develops on a certain type of Englishman, but as a rule only when he has been exiled for a long time to colonies where the sun shines more consistently than it normally does at home. He had large white teeth to contrast with his complexion, and an outdoor man’s interesting crowfoot wrinkles to point up his light gray eyes, and the ideal dusting of gray in his hair to give it all distinction, without making him seem old.

He too was recognizable — in a lesser degree, but Simon happened to have read an article about him not long before, in the kind of magazine one thumbs through in waiting-rooms. His name was Russell Vail, and he was what is rather oddly called a white hunter: that is, he guided package-priced adventurers to the haunts of wild animals, told them when to shoot, and finished off the specimens that they wounded or missed, never forgetting that a satisfied client must go home not only with a soporific supply of anecdotes but also with the hides, heads, and horns to prove them. He had chaperoned a number of Hollywood safaris into Darkish Africa and had written a book about it, which made him a personality too.

“I only decided not to be stupid,” Usebio said quietly. “It is a matter of arithmetic. Even if you are very good, every afternoon there is a chance for the bull to get you. Each time you go out, he has more chances. If you shoot at a target often enough, no matter how difficult it is, one day you must hit it. Too many bullfighters have forgotten that. They say, “In one year, three years, when I am forty, I will retire.” But before that, they meet a bull who does not know the date. There is only one time when you can say you retire and be sure of it. That is when you are alive to say you will not fight again, not even once more.”

“Quit while you’re ahead, eh?” Russell Vail said heartily. “Well, that’s how the sharpies play cards.”

“Elías was always very brave,” Iantha Lamb said. “All the critics always said that.”

“So, I had been lucky, and I was well paid, and I had not lived foolishly, as many bullfighters do. I was a rich man. I did not have to go on fighting, except for a thrill. And then I discovered a much greater thrill — to go on living, and be the husband of Iantha. That was the surprise present I gave her on our honeymoon.”

“And what a surprise,” she said pensively. “The last thing I ever expected. But don’t blame it on me. I never asked for it.”

Usebio looked up almost in pain, and said, “Who spoke of blame? I wanted to give you my life, and how could I give it if I did not have it?”

There was a slightly awkward silence, and Russell Vail ordered another round of drinks.

Simon, who had been eavesdropping unashamedly, was suddenly aware of Iantha Lamb’s huge slanting elfin eyes fixed on him with an intensity of the kind which every attractive male learns to interpret eventually, no matter how much modesty he may have started life with. He only met her gaze for a moment and then concentrated on stirring the ice in his Peter Dawson, but he could still feel her watching him.

Russell Vail took a hefty draught from his fresh glass and started up again.

“All this stuff about getting killed, Elías — honestly, aren’t you making a bit much of it? Fox-hunters get killed. Football players get killed. House painters get killed. Even ordinary pedestrians get killed on the streets. Considering how many bullfighters there must be in Spain and Mexico, do they really have such a lot of accidents?”

“It is not the same,” Usebio said patiently, though a sensitive ear could detect the underlying effort. “The fox is not trying to kill the hunter. The public does not want a house painter to come as close as he can to falling off his ladder.”

“Oh, yes, your bullfight fans want their thrill. But even a fox has a more sporting chance. The bull never gets away, does he?”

“He is not intended to. It is so difficult to explain to an Anglo-Saxon. But bullfighting is not a sport. It is an exhibition, to let the matador show his skill and courage.”

“By tormenting a wretched hunk of beef that’s doomed before he starts?”

Vail smiled all the time, blazoning good nature with gleaming incisors.

“It is no more a hunk of beef than those African buffalo I have heard you speak of,” Usebio said.

“But they aren’t shut up in a little arena, either. They’re out in the open, where I have to find them — and they’re just as likely to be hunting me!”

“And you have a big gun that can knock them over with one touch of your finger.” The ragged scar on Usebio’s forehead seemed to throb lividly as he raised a finger to it, though his voice did not change. “Did you ever come close enough to one for it to do something like this to you?”

Vail took another solid sip, and answered a little more loudly, “I’m not so bloody silly. I’m not trying to impress an audience. But even without taking unnecessary risks, a lot of chaps in my profession have got themselves killed. A lot more than toreadors, I wouldn’t mind betting,” Usebio winced.

“I do not know about toreadors, except what I have seen in a French opera, Carmen. The men who do what I do are called toreros.”

“All right, toreros — bullfighters — what’s in a name?”

“Elías is being modest,” his wife put in. “He’s a matador de toros. That’s more special than just any torero. It’s like being a star instead of just any actor.”

“I’m sorry,” Vail said, smiling more relentlessly than ever. “No offense meant. But I’d still like to know the figures.” “Well, does either of you know them?”

There was no immediate answer, and Simon Templar could not resist sneaking another glance at the trio to observe any non-verbal response. And once again, disconcertingly, the glance was trapped by Iantha Lamb’s boldly speculative gaze.

This time he couldn’t break the contact too hastily without looking foolish, and she said, while he was still caught, “Somebody should be umpiring this — how about you?”

Simon felt four more eyes converging on him simultaneously, but they didn’t bother him. He said amiably, “I’m no statistician either.”

“You don’t look like one,” she said. “You look much more interesting. What are you?”

That was one of the questions he always hated: the truth was far too complicated for ordinary purposes, and the easier falsehoods or flippancies became tedious after all the times he had tried them.

“I’ve been called a lot of things.”

“What’s your name?”

He decided that this was one situation where he might as well give it, and let the gods take it from there.

It was perhaps significant, if not surprising, that neither Vail nor Usebio had any reaction to it, other than astonishment at the reaction of Iantha Lamb, who seemed as if she would have been happy to swoon.

“My hero!” she crowed, while they looked understandably blank.

“Please,” begged the Saint, as she slid off her stool and began to move towards him.

An expression of ineffable smugness came over her internationally fabled face. She looked exactly like the cat that had one paw on the mouse’s tail.

“All right... for a price.”

“Name it.”

“Later,” she said, in the husky undertone that had throbbed from a thousand sound tracks.

Possibly because of a linguistic advantage, Russell Vail was the first of her two escorts to recover.

“That’s fine,” he said, with unflagging joviality. “But can’t we be introduced?”

She did that, formally. Usebio bowed with dignity. Vail shook hands, insisting on the grasp of his powerful paw.

“You must be something special,” he said, “if you send Iantha like that.” He might have been momentarily set back by the discovery that his consciously muscular grip was very gently but unmistakably equalled, but the check was barely perceptible. He went on, with the same geniality, “Did you ever do any big-game hunting?”

“A little,” said the Saint.

“Do you know anything about bullfighting?” Usebio asked.

“A little.”

“Well, what do you think?” asked Iantha Lamb.

Simon shrugged.

“I think you’ll never settle that argument with figures, anyhow. So X number of guys were killed at the battle of Waterloo and Y number of guys were killed at El Alamein. What formula do you use to figure who was braver?”

“In other words,” she insisted, “the only proof would be to test one against the other, like making a bullfighter go big-game hunting, or sending a big-game hunter into a bullfight.”

“I’d like to see any bullfighter take on a buffalo with his bare hands,” muttered Vail. “Or a rogue elephant. Or—”

“Or a man-eating shark,” Simon said. “Can both of them swim?... I’m not being facetious. There are different skills involved, as well as courage. A bullfighter might be a lousy shot. A big-game hunter probably wouldn’t even know how to hold a cape. If you want to match a bullfighter and a big-game hunter on equal terms — present company excepted, I hope — the only fair way would be in some field where they’re both amateurs.”

Iantha Lamb pouted.

“What would you suggest?”

It was then perhaps that the Saint felt his first truly premonitory chill. For an academic conversation, the point didn’t have to be pressed so hard. But he said lightly, “How about tiddly-winks? It’s easier to arrange than shark wrestling.”

She seemed petulantly disappointed, but Russell Vail grinned more widely as he emptied his glass.

“That’s a great idea,” he said. “But I’ve got a better one. Knives and forks and a juicy steak. Can we settle for that? I’m famished.”

While he and her husband competed amicably for the bar bill, Iantha held the Saint with a stare of dramatic malevolence which in spite of its obvious exaggeration Simon felt was not entirely in fun.

“You don’t get off so easily,” she muttered. “I’m still holding you to the bargain we made.”

“Any time,” said the Saint cheerfully.

“Where are you staying?”

“At Grosvenor House.”

“Our table is ready,” Usebio said, with rigid correctness.

And that should have been the end of it, except for an epilog that Simon might have read in the papers, for it was not the kind of situation that the Saint cared to meddle in. The sometimes fatal by-products of sharp-pointed triangles had crossed his path several times, but he did not seek them. Sometimes, however, they sought him.

He was finishing a rather late breakfast in his room the next morning when the telephone rang and a drowsy voice said, “Good morning. You see, I didn’t forget.”

“Maybe you’re dreaming,” he said. “You sound as if you were still asleep.”

“I wanted to try and catch you before you went out. Are you busy for lunch?”

As he hesitated for a second, she said, “Or are you backing out this morning? Last night you said any time.”

“I wasn’t thinking of anything so daring and dangerous as lunch,” he murmured.

She made a lazy little sound too deep to be a giggle.

“It still leaves the rest of the afternoon, doesn’t it? Shall we make it the Caprice — at one?”

Somewhat to his surprise, she was punctual, and she had a fresher and healthier air than he had half expected. It was true that she wore too much makeup for daylight, for his taste, but that was not conspicuous in itself in one of the favorite lunching-grounds of London’s show business. Even the Saint would have been less than human if he hadn’t enjoyed the knowledge that he was observed and envied by a fair majority of the males in the restaurant.

“Gossip can’t do me any harm,” he remarked, “but did you think about it when you chose this place?”

“What could be more discreet?” she asked coolly. “If I’d suggested some cozy little hideaway, and anyone happened to see us there, they’d have something to talk about. But everybody meets everybody here — on business. It’s so open that nobody wonders about anything.”

“I see that you’ve studied the subject,” he said respectfully. “And where is Elías?”

“Having lunch with a lawyer, in the sort of place lawyers go to.”

“What kind of lawyer?”

She gave a short brittle laugh.

“About making a will. Not what you’re thinking. Elías is a Catholic, of course. I’m not, but he’s as serious as they make ’em. He couldn’t ask for a divorce if I slept with his whole cuadrilla and broke a bottle over his head any time he came near me. When these Papists get married, they really mean till death do us part.”

Mario the presiding genius came to their table himself and said, “Did you ever try kid liver? It’s much more delicate than calf’s liver. I have a little, enough for two portions.”

“I couldn’t bear it,” said Iantha, emoting. “A poor little baby goat!... I’ll just have some vichyssoise and lamb chops.”

“My heart bleeds for that poor little lamb,” said the Saint. “I’ll try the kid liver.”

It was delicious, too, worthy of a place in any gourmet’s memory, but he knew that she hadn’t forced that meeting merely for gastronomic exploration.

“I suppose we’re all inconsistent,” he said, “but do you try to rationalize your choice of animals to be sentimental about?”

“Of course not. I just know how I feel.”

“I suppose lamb is a meat, a kind of food you see in markets and restaurants. You don’t associate it with a live animal. You’re not used to eating goat, so you visualize it alive, gambolling cutely when it’s young. But you don’t think of fighting bulls as beef, and I don’t expect you’re used to eating lions.”

“That’s different. Lions and fighting bulls can kill you. So a man can prove something when he kills one. You should be an analyst — you’ve found my complex. There’s something about danger and courage that gives me a terrific thrill.”

“You’d’ve loved it in ancient Rome, with the gladiators.”

“I might have.”

“And when they killed each other, it would’ve been even more thrilling.”

She bit her lip, but it was only a teasing play of little pearly incisors on a provocative frame of flesh.

“I’ve often wondered. I wish I could have seen it just once, for real, instead of in Cinemascope. I’ve always had this thing about brave men.”

“Don’t look at me. I’d like to be a coward, but I’m too scared.”

“You don’t have to make dialog. I can be honest. You fascinate me. You always have, ever since I first read about you.”

This was the moment of truth — to borrow a phrase from the clichés of tauromachy. The inevitable preliminary chit-chat had run its course, perhaps rather rapidly, in spite of the convenient restaurant punctuations for sampling and savoring. But now he was going to be cut off from the easier evasions. It was imminent in the velvet glow of her faintly Mongolian eyes.

He took a carefully copious sip of the rosé which he had ordered for their accompaniment — it was a Château Ste Roseline, delicately fruity, and an uncommon find in England, where the warm weather which fosters the appreciation of such summery wines is normally rarer yet.

“Tell me the worst,” he said.

“I’d like to have an affair with you.”

Simon Templar put down his glass with extreme caution.

“Does Russell Vail know about this?” he inquired.

“Yesterday I might have cared. Today I don’t.”

“But he kills lions. Even elephants.”

“But you’ve killed men, haven’t you?”

“Not for fun.”

“But you have. And you will again — if someone doesn’t do it to you first. That makes you bigger than either of them.”

“I’m glad you brought in that ‘either,’ ” said the Saint. “Let’s not forget your husband. Sometimes there’s another angle on the ‘till death do us part’ bit, especially among Latins. Sometimes the husband provides the necessary death — and it isn’t his own.”

“Don’t try to pretend that frightens you.”

“Some things do. Like the idea that you must be serious.”

“Because I don’t make any bones about it? Life is too short. This is something I want, and I hoped you might like it too. Why not make it easy for you?”

It is of course well known to all readers of noble and uplifting fiction, if there still are any, that any self-respecting hero’s response to such a proposition is to smack the tramp sharply on the rump and tell her to go peddle her assets elsewhere. But how much saintliness can be reasonably asked of anyone, when the tramp happens to be an Iantha Lamb?

“May I think it over?” said the Saint.

She nodded calmly.

“But don’t think too long — I’m leaving for Rome next week to start a picture. Unless you’re in a travelling mood.”

He wondered long afterwards what decision he might eventually have come to — he was not hidebound by any of the usual conventions, but there was something about the manner of her offer which reminded him uncomfortably of a decadent empress requesting the services of a vassal, a request that was almost a command and at the same time a favor. The impediment to reacting with proper indignation was that she actually was a kind of empress in the echelons of the twentieth century in which he was a kind of buccaneer, and her favor was an impossible pipedream for which millions of men would have deliriously given everything that they owned. In all honesty, he sometimes thought that the only thing that stopped him from capitulating on the spot might have been an absurd reluctance to be the pushover which she had so many good reasons to expect.

More fortunately than he probably deserved, the dilemma was resolved for him that time at what could have been the last moment before it became crucial.

Two evenings later when he returned to Grosvenor House from the movie where he had finished the afternoon — it was a recent Iantha Lamb picture for which a billboard had caught his eye after lunch, and the curiosity of seeing it in this peculiar context had been too much for him — he found three telephone messages in his box recording attempts by Russell Vail to reach him during the day. The latest was time-stamped only minutes before, and Simon yielded to another curiosity and called the number it asked him to directly he got to his room.

“Glad I got you at last,” boomed the hunter. “It’s a bit late, I know, but I was hoping you could have dinner with us tonight. I mean, with Iantha and Elías. We all thought you’d make a good fourth.”

Simon reserved the observation that only an Iantha Lamb would consider herself and three men a good foursome. The breezy tone of Vail’s voice seemed to dispose of a possibility which he had been half prepared for when he returned the call, that Vail might have had the phantasmagoric notion of warning him that trespassing rights on Elías Usebio’s marital property were already bespoke. He had nothing else planned, and seeing Iantha again under the maximum conceivable chaperonage might help, somehow, to produce a solution to the problem which he had been trying to ignore.

“That’s nice of you,” he said.

“Fine. Suppose we pick you up at seven.”

“I’ll be downstairs.”

“Don’t dress up. We thought we’d drive out to a place in the country.”

“Suits me.”

“And one other thing. Could you bring along some of your professional gear — I mean, something to pick a lock with?”

The Saint’s eyebrows edged upwards.

“There’s something funny about this telephone,” he said. “It sounded exactly as if you said you wanted me to bring something to pick a lock with.”

“I did.”

“What sort of lock?”

“On a big iron gate. Don’t worry — we’re not going to steal anything. We’ll explain it all later. But bring something. See you at seven.”

Simon was waiting in the lobby when Vail came in, shook hands heartily, and looked around as if in search of some luggage that the Saint should have had with him.

“You didn’t think I was joking about that lock, did you, old boy?”

Simon touched his breast pocket.

“If this gate isn’t on a bank vault, I can probably handle it. If you’ve got a good reason.”

“Later. I think it might appeal to you. But first, dinner.”

In the back courtyard there was a shiny new Jaguar with Iantha Lamb at the wheel and a vacant seat beside her. As Simon approached it, he saw that Elías Usebio was already sitting in the back. The commissionaire opened the off-side front door with a flourish, and Vail nudged the Saint forward.

“The place of honor for the guest of honor,” he said. “No argument, old boy. That’s the drill.”

Simon had no desire to argue. He made himself comfortable beside Iantha, and hoped that her husband and Vail were equally relaxed in the back seat.

“Are you afraid of women drivers?” she asked, as they ploughed into the traffic complex of Marble Arch.

“Not so much when I’m on their side,” he replied. “And when there’s nothing to worry about but their own car — this is your own, I hope?”

“Elías just gave it to me the other day, to take to Rome. You notice it’s built for driving on the right.”

“I’m glad you’ve noticed that they drive on the left here,” he said. “Elías might have to put off his retirement to buy you another if you broke it up.”

“He wouldn’t, but I would. He’s the rich one. He’s earned a lot more than I have, and hardly spent a peseta.”

“I was not brought up to treat money like old newspapers,” said Usebio gently.

“Or pay ninety per cent income taxes,” retorted his wife.

They were heading north, and the car moved as if it held the road only because it was perfectly disciplined, not because it didn’t have the power to lift up and fly if it wanted to.

“Where are we going?” Simon inquired presently.

“St Albans, first,” said Iantha.

He thought that over.

“They’ve got some Roman ruins there,” he said, “but you’ll see much better ones when you get to Rome.”

“They’ve got a good pub, too, Russell says.”

“Is it so exclusive that we have to break into it?”

“We’ll tell you about the lock business afterwards,” said Vail. “We’ll give you a good dinner first, and then see if you feel like tackling it.”

The pub was quaintly named The Noke, but it had the air of substantial serenity which the connoisseur of English hostelries recognizes at once. They had cold dry martinis in the pleasantly timbered bar, except for Usebio, who would take nothing stronger than St Raphaël. They ordered smoked salmon and roast grouse, which were excellent, as was the Château Smith Haut Lafitte which the proprietor suggested.

The conversation was brightly enjoyable but totally unimportant; only Usebio seemed a little apart and preoccupied with serious private thoughts, though his rare responses were unfailingly courteous. It would have been a perfectly pleasant and unquoteworthy dinner party except for the enigma that went with it, the motivation under which Simon had been included, which nobody would refer to any more. He had to reach back deliberately for the first psychic hunch he had had, and remind himself that both the other men were dealers in death by training and vocation.

For Russell Vail, in the ultimate analysis, was only a kind of professional butcher glamorized by the fact that he used a rifle instead of an ax, and the word matador, in Spanish, most literally means simply “killer”...

Simon could only wait, and at last Vail paid the bill and they went outside. It was one of those cloudless summer nights that England can produce sometimes, in spite of her inclement reputation and the bad luck that dogs her meteorologists on the rare occasions when they venture to predict one, with a full moon that hung overhead like a stage lantern. Vail looked up at it with satisfaction, and said, “It couldn’t be brighter in Kenya. Let’s make the most of it.”

As they approached the car, Iantha said to the Saint, “Would you like to drive?”

Without waiting for an answer, she slipped into the other front seat. Simon got in behind the wheel, and moved his seat back.

“Where to?”

“I’ll have to look at the map.”

She directed him out on A5, the highway historically known by the oddly prosaic name of Watling Street, which runs north-westwards across the countryside almost as straight as the proverbial crow’s flight all the way to Shrewsbury, on foundations laid out by Roman surveyors in the days when Caesar’s legions knew St Albans by the name of Verulam. Simon bore down with his right foot, and the Jaguar responded in a way that reminded him of the mighty Hirondel which had been his beloved chariot in the young days of more uncomplicated adventure. But he was only able to enjoy that reminiscent exhilaration for a few minutes and half again as many miles before Iantha was warning him to slow down for a turning on the left. He saw the signpost as they swung into the secondary road, and had a wild preposterous presentiment that every sober habit of thought tried to reject. But after a couple more turnings in a couple of more crooked miles taken at more sedate speed, he knew that this was going to be a bad night for sober thinking when Russell Vail leaned forward behind him and said, “I think you’d better stop about here, old boy, wherever you can find a good place to park.”

Simon brought the car to a stop, and said, “Is this where you want me to pick a lock?”

“We’re close enough. We’d better walk the rest of the way.”

“To Whipsnade?”

“You guessed it.”

Whipsnade, it must be explained here for the benefit of readers who are not familiar with the British scene, is the pride of England’s zoos — a pack in which an assortment of animals acclimated from every continent on the globe roam in their suitably landscaped enclosures, behind bars and moats as tidily camouflaged as possible, from which sanctuaries they are privileged to study human beings in a seminatural habitat.

The Saint did not move.

“I suppose it might be fun to steal a giraffe,” he said. “But it’ll be hard work getting it in this car.”

“We aren’t going to steal anything.”

“Then you’ll have to tell me what the game is, before we go any farther.”

Elías Usebio stirred and said, “We are going to settle an argument — the argument we began the other night. He has challenged me to try my cape against an animal with horns that he will choose.”

“And what does he do to prove anything?”

“I’ll tackle anything with claws that Elías chooses, just using a native spear,” answered Vail.

“And I thought there ought to be an impartial umpire, like when we picked you at the White Elephant,” said Iantha. “Besides, we couldn’t think of anyone else who could get us in.”

For a few seconds Simon Templar was silent. The idea was as outrageous as anything he had ever heard, but that was not enough to take his breath away. Contemplated as a pure spectacle, it was an invitation that no epicure of thrills could have refused. The impudence of the assumption that he would be a party to its illicit procurement he could shrug off. He hesitated only while he thought of the reasons why it might be an honest and Saintly duty to put a stop to the whole project, and in the same space of time he realized absolutely that the contest would be decided sometime, somewhere, with or without him and that the best thing he could do was to be there.

“All right,” he said. “But we can’t do it by the front gates.”

“You mean you can’t?” said Vail, in the jovially disparaging tone which he used so masterfully, which almost dared you to reveal yourself such a lout as to take offense. “And I’d heard you were the greatest cracksman since Raffles.”

“I’m better,” Simon said calmly. “But the main entrance would just be stupid. There are keepers’ cottages all around there. The only animals we’d be likely to get near would be watchdogs.”

“There speaks the expert. But I’m sure he’d know how to cope with the problem.”

“I was there once, years ago,” said the Saint slowly. “I remember that on the far side of the grounds, that would be to the north-east, there were some enclosures that ran downhill, and you could walk around them, and then you were outside on a long slope with a fine view but only fields and pastures between you and a road I could see at the bottom. I think, since we’ve got to walk anyhow, if we found that road, there wouldn’t be much to stop us hiking up the hill and into the back of the park.”

Iantha handed him the map, and he studied it under the dashboard light.

Then he drove on again.

Nobody spoke another word before he stopped a second time. He got out and studied the skyline over a gate.

“This ought to do it,” he said.

Usebio opened the trunk of the car and took out a folded bundle of cloth, and a short leaf-bladed spear which he handed to Vail. Simon unlatched the gate, and they followed Iantha through.

It was a steady climb of about three-quarters of a mile over rough grass. Simon set a pace which was intentionally geared to his estimate of the legs of Usebio, whom he didn’t want to exhaust before his trial; he figured that no exertion of that kind should bother Vail. Iantha Lamb, who had worn a loose peasant skirt and flat-heeled shoes which he now realized must have been chosen less for modest simplicity than in shrewd preparedness for any eventuality, kept up without complaining. They negotiated three wire fences on the way, without much difficulty: after the first fifty yards, the moonlight seemed bright enough for a night football game.

Then presently it was not so bright as they approached the black shadows of the trees and shrubbery that capped the last acres of the rise, and suddenly, startlingly close, belled out a fabulously guttural warning that reverberated in the deepest chords of the human fear-instinct.

“A lion.” Russell Vail whispered lightly. “We picked a good guide.”

“I got you in,” said the Saint. “Now you take over.”

In a moment they were on a narrow road, one of the painlessly macadamized trails on which safaris of short-winded suburbanites and their spoiled progeny were permitted, for an additional fee, to cruise among the fauna in their own little cars.

“I know where I am now,” said Vail. “I came up this morning to look around.”

He led them briskly along the road and then off to the right on another path that branched off it. The going was slower for a while under the shade of some trees and presently of a building from which came the grunts and rustlings of unseen beasts; then quite soon they were in the open again, and next to them was a fence of massive timber. The fence enclosed a very uncertain oblong about a hundred yards in its greatest length and half of that at its widest, on one side of which was an equally massive rough-hewn structure like a stable.

And standing out in the full glare of the moon, rotund, enormous, glistening, primeval, motionless, but evidently sensing their presence, was the animal.

Vail waved his hand towards it.

“There you are, Elías,” he said. “Let’s see what you can do with him.”

“A rhinoceros,” Iantha breathed.

“A beauty. Just arrived last week, and still not housebroken.”

“But that isn’t—”

“It has horns,” Vail pointed out. “Two of ’em. You can see ’em from here. Just arranged tandem, instead of sideways like a bull. That might even make it easier. But it fits the terms of the dare. Of course, if Elías is scared to take it on...”

The matador stood looking at it, as immobile as the monster itself. The moonlight could not have shown any change of color, and his thin hawk’s face was like a mask of graven metal in which the eyes gleamed like moist stones.

Then he climbed carefully over the barrier and began to walk slowly forward, opening his cape.

In the stillness, Simon could hear the breathing of his companions.

The rhinoceros allowed Usebio to advance several yards, with its glinting porcine stare turned directly towards him. Simon thought he had read somewhere that rhinos were nearsighted, but if so this one had certainly caught a scent that told it which way to look. Yet it stood for seconds like a grotesque prehistoric relic, with no movement except a stiffening of its absurdly disproportionate little piggy tail.”

Usebio stopped with his feet together, turned partly sideways, and spread the cape, holding it up by the shoulders, in the classic position of citing a bull.

And with a snort the rhino exploded into motion.

Its short chunky legs seemed to achieve no more than an ungainly trot, but the appearance was deceptive. There was barely time to realize what an acceleration it generated before it was right on top of Usebio. And Usebio stood his ground, turning harmoniously with the cape and leading the brute past him, gracefully but a little wide. Iantha gasped, almost inaudibly.

The rhino blundered on a little way, turning in an astonishingly tight circle, and charged again. And again Usebio led it past him, a trifle closer, as if its nose were magnetized to the cloth, in a formal verónica.

The rhino scrambled around again, it seemed even faster, and launched itself at the lure a third time without a pause.

And suddenly Iantha Lamb screamed, a small sharp cry as if something clammy had touched her.

It may have been that Usebio started to turn his head at the sound, or that it only divided his concentration for a fractional instant; certainly he was trying to work still closer to his animal, and he had not yet perfectly judged or adapted himself to the dimensions of a three-ton beast that was as broad as a boat. He carried the horns and the head safely past him, but it caught him solidly with its shoulder and flung him aside much as the fender of a speeding truck might have done. He fell eight feet away and lay still with his face in the dirt.

There are things that happen in decimals of the time that it takes to report or read them. Like this:

Simon looked at Vail and said, “Your cue?”

Vail showed his teeth and said, “Not me, old boy. I only bet I’d take on claws.”

Simon grabbed the spear with one hand and smashed Vail’s lips against his teeth with the other. Vail stumbled back, falling. Iantha’s face was enraptured. Simon vaulted the rails, and came down running. And all that had happened while the rhinoceros hesitated imperceptibly over renewing its assault on an object that had become limp and prostrate.

Then it caught sight of the Saint racing towards it, yelling insanely, and found a more interesting target for its fury. With a slobbery whroosh! it veered to meet him.

Simon tried the trick that he had seen banderilleros use when planting their darts in a bull during their phase of the fight. He swerved a little to his right, Usebio and the fallen cape being to his left, and then at the last moment that he dared he dug in his heels and broke back diagonally to the left, at the same time hurling the spear towards the oncoming rhino’s left jowl. The point could have made no more than a pinprick in the pachyderm’s vulcanized hide, but it added its distraction to the surprise of the Saint’s change of course, and the behemoth thundered by him with a momentum that even its own colossal power needed time to check.

In that dreadfully evanescent respite the Saint reached the cape, snatched it up, and spread it as he had been taught to do by friendly toreros at the testing of calves. In the one sideways glance that he could spare, he saw Usebio rolling over and struggling to rise up on his hands and knees.

“A la barrera!” Simon shouted, and went on in Spanish, which would most clearly penetrate Usebio’s daze, “I will keep him off. But hurry!”

Then the rhino was bearing down on him like an express train. He would not have apologized for the cliché. It seemed to shake the earth like the biggest locomotive that ever ran on rails. But somehow he led it past him with the cape, not stylishly, but as best he recalled the movement.

It lurched and grunted and skidded around and came again. And again he made it follow the cloth instead of his body.

If Iantha Lamb had screamed again he would have laughed without a flicker of his eyes.

But he did get a glimpse of Usebio crawling painfully but with increasing strength towards the fence, and knew that he hadn’t misinterpreted the collision which had felled the matador. Usebio had only been winded by a glancing blow, perhaps with a couple of cracked ribs, but nothing worse. If he could only get out of the corral.

Three, four, five, six more times the Saint gave his best simulated verónicas to a rampaging homicidal quadruped which whirled and came back for more with a terrifying swiftness and relentless persistence that even the bravest Andalusian bull never matched. But neither would his technique and configurations have brought olés from the captious critics in the Plaza de toros at Seville. This was a reproach that Simon had no leisure to fret about. He was busy enough keeping the most mean-tempered Diceros africanus that ever had the privilege of an introduction to European culture from eviscerating him with one of its anachronistic horns.

Somehow he was able to keep the performance going until Usebio had rolled under the low bar of the stockade, safely to one side of the segment towards which Simon was baiting the rhino, until he knew everything was all right and he shamelessly dropped the cape over its head and sprawled over the top banister just as his paleolithic playmate crashed into the posts like a berserk baby tank.

There were many more people outside than he had left there — men in uniforms and parts of uniforms and other clothes. He had been distantly aware of their arrival during his last passes but had been far too occupied to take much note of it.

“What d’you think you’re doing?” demanded the ranking one unnecessarily.

“Settling a silly bet,” Simon replied placatingly. “I know it was naughty of us, but there’s no harm done.”

The keeper turned his flashlight from Usebio who was now standing up brushing off his clothes, to Vail, who was dabbing his mouth with a red-stained handkerchief.

“Oh, no? What about him?”

“He slipped trying to get over the fence first, when he saw the other fellow in trouble. It’s nothing serious.”

The beam swung on to Iantha Lamb and rested there, and someone sucked in his breath sharply.

“Why, isn’t that—”

“Yes, it is,” said the Saint. “And I’m sure you wouldn’t want to get her a lot of bad publicity. Now if we made up to you for the trouble we’ve given you, couldn’t we forget the whole thing?”

There was no conversation whatever on the way back to town, after Simon had walked down the hill and brought the car around to the main entrance. Iantha drove, again with the Saint beside her, though he had tried to offer the seat to Usebio.

“No,” said the matador. “I shall be quite comfortable. The front is better for you, with your long legs.”

He said nothing about the long legs of Russell Vail. He may have felt instinctively that it would be diplomatic not to make Vail and the Saint sit together, though he had asked no questions about Vail’s puffy mouth. And Vail seemed to think it best not to reopen the subject in front of Usebio.

“You can drop me off at my sister’s.” Vail said, as they came down Abbey Road, and Iantha obviously knew where that was. Vail got out and said, “Goodnight. I’ll call you tomorrow.” He looked in at the Saint and said, “I hope I see you again soon.”

“Any time,” said the Saint, exactly as he had once said to Iantha.

She drove to Claridge’s, and Usebio said, “I will get out, but you must take Mr Templar home.”

“Nonsense,” said the Saint. “I’ll get a taxi. Or I’d just as soon walk. She has to take care of you.”

“To that, I say nonsense,” said Usebio. “I am all right. Only a few bruises. I will sit in a hot bath and tomorrow I am all right. It is nothing like a cornada.” He was out of the car already, and put his hand in at Simon’s window. “I insist. Tonight you saved my life. Is it so much to take you home? Va con Diós, amigo.” The thin lips smiled coldly, but the dark eyes glowed like hot coals. “You would have made a good bullfighter. You understand what is pundonor.”

The Jaguar pulled away, and Simon Templar leaned back at the fullest length that his seat would let him.

“Do you understand what is pundonor?” she asked at length.

“It’s a sort of romantic-chivalric concept of an honor that’s bigger than just ordinary honor, or honesty,” he said very quietly and remotely. “A sort of inflexible pride that would make you go through with a bet to dive off the Brooklyn Bridge even after you found out that the East River was frozen solid.”

She said, “Or that would make you try to live up to your reputation because a hero was needed, and there was nobody else around?”

“Russell isn’t a coward,” said the Saint. “Don’t sell him short.”

“Then why didn’t he fight you after you hit him?”

“Because it was safer to be consistent, and go on looking like someone who couldn’t have helped Elías. Why did you scream?”

“I couldn’t help it. Something touched me, and with all those jungle creatures around I naturally thought of snakes, and—”

“And that was all you could think of.”

“Russell must have goosed me.”

The Saint sighed.

“It’s possible. I wouldn’t ask him, because he’d deny it anyhow. But somebody must have wanted Elías to die. It was thrilling, wasn’t it?”

“You were wonderful.”

“Morituri te salutamus — we who are about to die salute you. I think I said you were born in the wrong century. And if Elías had been killed, Russell and I could have fought it out. And if I killed him, some day some new young upstart would be challenging me. Just like the cave men.”

They turned into the Grosvenor House courtyard off Park Street and she braked the Jaguar and said, “Ask me in.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want to be one of your gladiators.”

In one smooth movement he was outside the car and she was staring out at him like a perplexed and perverse pixie.

“Nobody,” she said in a low unbelieving voice — “nobody ever turned me down.”

“That’s why I’ll be the one man in your life that you’ll never forget,” he said wickedly. “And there’s one other thing I want you to remember.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s none of my business how you work out your personal problems with Elías. But if I ever hear of him having a fatal accident, it had better be very convincing. Or you can be sure that whatever the jury says, I shall take the trouble to arrange another accident for you. Please never forget that — darling.”

He blew her a kiss off his fingertips, and smiled, and walked into the hotel.