“In my time, I’ve had all kinds of receptions from the police,” Simon Templar remarked. “Sometimes they want to give me a personal escort out of town. Sometimes they see me as a Heaven-sent fall guy for the latest big crime that they haven’t been able to pin on anybody else. Sometimes they just rumble hideous warnings of what they’ll do to me if I get out of line while I’m in their bailiwick. But your approach is certainly out of the ordinary.”
“I try not to be an ordinary policeman,” said Captain Carlos Xavier.
They sat in the Restaurant Larue, which has become almost as hard-worked and undefinitive a name as Ritz among ambitious food purveyors; this one was in Mexico City, but it made a courageous attempt to live up to the glamorous cosmopolitan connotations of its patronymic. There was nothing traditionally Mexican about its decor, which was rather shinily international, and the menu strove to achieve the same expensive neutrality. However, at Xavier’s suggestion, they were eating pescados blancos, the delicate little fish of Lake Pátzcuaro which are not quite like anything else in the world, washed down with a bottle of Chilean Riesling; and this, it had already been established, was at the sole invitation and expense of Captain Carlos Xavier.
“Sometimes,” Simon suggested cautiously, “I’ve actually been asked to help the police with a problem. But the build-up has never been as lavish as this.”
“I have nothing to ask, except the pleasure of your company,” said Captain Xavier.
He was a large fleshy man with a balding head and a compensatingly luxuriant moustache. He ate with gusto and talked with gestures. His small black eyes were humorous and very bright, but even to Simon’s critical scrutiny they seemed to beam honestly.
“All my life I must have been reading about you,” Xavier said. “Or perhaps I should say, about a person called the Saint. But your identity is no secret now, is it?”
“Hardly.”
“And for almost as long, I have hoped that one day I might have the chance to meet you. I am what I suppose you would call a fan.”
“Coming from a policeman,” said the Saint, “I guess that tops everything.”
Xavier shook his head vigorously.
“In most countries, perhaps. But not in Mexico.”
“Why?”
“This country was created by revolutions. Many of the men who founded it, our heroes, began as little more than bandits. To this very day, the party in power officially calls itself the Revolutionary Party. So, I think, we Mexicans will always have a not-so-secret sympathy in our hearts for the outlaw — what you call the Robin Hood. For although they say you have broken many laws, you have always been the righter of wrongs — is that not true?”
“More or less, I suppose.”
“And now that I see you,” Xavier went on enthusiastically, and with a total lack of self-consciousness, “I am even happier. I know that what a man looks like often tells nothing of what he really is. But you are exactly as I had pictured you — tall and strong and handsome, and with the air of a pirate! It is wonderful just to be looking at you!”
The Saint modestly averted his eyes.
This was especially easy to do because the shift permitted him to gaze again at a woman who sat alone at a table across the room. He had noticed her as soon as she entered, and had been glancing at her as often as he could without seeming too inattentive to his host.
With her fair colouring and the unobtrusive elegance of her clothes, she was obviously an American. She was still stretching out her first cocktail, and referring occasionally to the plain gold watch on her wrist: she was, of course, waiting for somebody. The wedding ring on her left hand suggested that it was probably a husband — no lover worthy of her time would be likely to keep such a delectable dish waiting. But, there was no harm in considering, married women did travel alone, and sometimes wait for female friends; they also came to Mexico to divorce husbands; and, as a matter of final realism, an attractive woman wearing a wedding ring abroad was not necessarily even married at all, but might wear it just as a kind of flimsy chastity belt, in the hope of discouraging a certain percentage of unwanted Casanovas. The chances were tenuous enough, but an incorrigible optimist like the Saint could always — dream...
“And now,” Xavier was saying, “tell me what you are going to do in Mexico.”
Simon brought his eyes and his ideas back reluctantly.
“I’m just a tourist.” He had said it so often, in so many places, that it was getting to be like a recitation. “I’m not planning to make any trouble, or get into any. I want to see that new sensation, El Loco, fight bulls. And I’ll probably go to Cuernavaca, and Oaxaca, and try the fishing at Acapulco. Just like all the other gringos.”
“That is almost disappointing.”
“It ought to make you happy.”
“It is not very exciting, being a policeman here. I should have enjoyed matching wits with you. Of course, in the end I should catch you, but for a time it would be interesting.”
“Of course,” Simon agreed politely.
“It would have been a great privilege to observe you in action,” Xavier said. “I have always been an admirer of your methods. Besides, before I caught you, you might even have done some good.”
The Saint raised his eyebrows.
“With anyone so efficient as you on the job, there can’t be much left to do.”
“I do my best. But unfortunately, when I make an arrest, I have not always accomplished much.”
“You mean — the court doesn’t always take it from there?”
“Much too often.”
“Your candour keeps taking my breath away.”
Xavier shrugged.
“It is the truth. It is not exactly a rare complaint, even in your country. And absolute justice is a much younger idea here. We are still inclined to accept graft as the prerogative of those in power — perhaps it is the legacy of our bandit tradition. It will change, some day. But at the present, there are many times when I would personally like to see a man like you taking the law into his own hands. You will have coffee? And brandy?”
He snapped his fingers at a waiter and gave the order, and the Saint lighted a cigarette and stole another glance at the honey-blonde young woman across the room. She was still alone, and looking a good deal more impatient. It would not be much longer before the moment would be most propitious for venturing a move — if he had only been alone himself. The thought made an irksome subtraction from his full enjoyment of the fact that a police officer was not only buying his dinner but seemed to be handing him an open invitation to resume his career of outlawry.
With a slight effort, he turned again to the more uncommon of the two attractions.
“Are you really wishing I’d un-reform myself,” he asked curiously, “or are you just dissatisfied with the Government? Maybe another revolution would produce a better system.”
“By no means,” Xavier said quickly. Then, as the Saint’s blue eyes continued to rest on him levelly, he received their unspoken question, and said, “No, I do not say that because I am forced to. The change must come with time and education and growing up. I believe that the Government we have today is as good as any other we would get. No, it is better. In fact, it is already too honest for the people who are most anxious to change it. There is only one party which could seriously threaten a revolution today — and who are its sponsors?”
“You mean José Jalisco?”
“A figurehead — an orator who blows hot air wherever the most pesos tell him! I mean the men behind Jalisco.”
“Who are they?”
“The Enriquez brothers. But I do not suppose your newspapers have room for our scandals. For many years they were making millions, at the expense of the Mexican people, out of Government construction contracts. It was our new President who ordered the investigation which exposed them, and who threw out the officials who helped them. Even now, they may face imprisonment, and fines that would ruin them. They are the ones who would like to see a revolution for Jalisco... They are sitting opposite you now, at the table next to the young woman you have been staring at for the last hour.”
Simon winced very slightly, and looked carefully past the blonde.
He had noticed the two men before, observing that they also had been watching the girl and obviously discussing her assets and potentialities, but he had not paid them much attention beyond that. As competition for her favour, he figured that they would not have given him too much trouble. They were excessively well groomed and tailored and manicured, with ostentatious jewellery in their neckties and on their fingers, but their pockmarked features had a cruel and wilful cast that would hardly appeal to a nice girl at first sight. Now that Xavier identified them, the family resemblance was evident.
“The bigger one is Manuel,” Xavier said. “The smaller is Pablo. But one is as bad as the other. To protect their millions, and to make more, they would not care how many suffered.”
Waiters poured coffee and brought brandy, and Simon took advantage of the diversion to study the Enriquez brothers again. This also allowed him to keep track of the trim young blonde. And this time, when he was looking directly at her, he was able to see that she was looking at him, with what seemed to be considerable interest. It was an effort for him to suppress a growing feeling of frustration.
“Do you seriously believe they could start a revolution?” he asked Xavier.
“I know they have talked of it. Jalisco has a large following. He has the gift, which Hitler and Mussolini had, of inflaming mobs. But a mob, today, can do nothing without modern weapons. That is where the Enriquez brothers come in. They have the money to provide them. One day, I think, they will try to do that. They could be plotting it now, while we look at them.”
“For a couple of desperate conspirators,” Simon commented, “they don’t seem very embarrassed to have you watching them.”
Xavier laughed till his moustache quivered and his second chin shook. But when he could speak again, his voice was as discreetly pitched as it had been all along.
“Me? They have no idea who I am. Any more than you would have known, if I had not introduced myself at your hotel. Who knows an insignificant captain of the police? They deal with chiefs — if they can. They are too big to care whether I exist. But I know about them, as I knew about you, because it is my business to know.”
“And yet there isn’t a thing you can do.”
“It takes much proof to accuse such important men. And the bigger they are, the harder it is to get. Probably before I ever get it, it is too late. Another civil war will not be good for Mexico. But I cannot stop a flood, like the Dutch boy, with my little finger.” Xavier shrugged heavily. “That is why I can be sorry the Saint has become so respectable.”
The Saint gazed at him with an assemblage of conflicting reactions that added up to a poker-faced blankness which could hardly have been improved on deliberately. But before Simon could decide which of a dozen possible replies to make, a waiter bustled up to Xavier with a folded slip of paper on a tray.
Xavier opened it, frowned at it, and pursed his lips over it for several seconds.
“This is a tragedy,” he announced at length, and tucked the note into his pocket.
“Has the shooting started already?” Simon inquired.
“Oh, no. Merely a simple robbery. But it is at the house of a politician, so I must give it my personal attention. My lieutenant is downstairs, and I must go with him.”
Xavier stood up, but put out a restraining hand as the Saint started to rise with him.
“No, please stay here. It is only a routine matter, and would not interest you. Take time to finish your brandy. And have another. I will pay the bill as I go out. I insist.” The bright black eyes twinkled. “And perhaps after all you will be able to meet the young lady. I shall call you at your hotel soon. Hasta luego!”
And with an effusive sequence of handshakes that kept time with the somewhat frantic deluge of his parting speech, he was gone.
Simon Templar sat down again, feeling a trifle breathless by contagion, and poured himself another cup of coffee.
Not too hurriedly, he looked at the lonely young blonde again.
He was just in time to see her greeting a schmo who had to be her husband.
Well, that was the way life was, Simon reflected, as he chain-lit another cigarette. You could spend weeks waiting for a little gentle excitement, and then, when things started happening, there were more of them than you could handle.
A police captain, of all people, points out a couple of apparently ideal candidates for free-lance euthanasia, gives you the why and wherefore, and practically invites you to go ahead and take a crack at them — adding the almost irresistible bait that, although he will thoroughly approve of whatever you do, he is also sure that he will be able to pinch you for it afterwards. But you can’t really give your all to this sublime proposition, because you are wishing half the time that he would go away so that you could concentrate on an equally inviting but entirely different temptation to adventure.
So finally he does go away, but only after staying just long enough for the other attraction to slip out of reach.
Then you gripe because you’ve only got one thing left, and you wanted both. Quite forgetting that you started the evening with nothing.
Oh, what the hell, the Saint thought. He could still murder the Enriquez brothers. And maybe he should murder the blonde’s husband too.
There was no doubt about their marital status. The man was far too typical a hard-driving Babbitt to be any girl’s secret romance. A good husband, perhaps, but too busy to be a Lothario. He was still in his forties, and not unprepossessing, with a square jaw and horn-rimmed glasses and distinguished flecks of grey at his temples; but you could see that he never left business behind, even as he brought a bulging briefcase with him to dinner.
“Whatever kept you so long?” she asked — not anxiously, not pettishly, but with the controlled and privileged edginess of a long-suffering wife.
“My taxi had a little fender scrape, but it had to be with a police car. You never saw so much commotion and red tape. I almost got locked up as a material witness. I’m sorry, dear — it wasn’t my fault.”
He turned to the waiter and ordered two Martinis. The Enriquez brothers looked disappointed, but went on watching them with a kind of morbid curiosity.
“Well,” she said graciously, but after a suitable pause, “what’s the news?”
“I’m getting nowhere. I tell you, Doris, I’m about ready to give up and go home.”
“That isn’t like you, Sherm.”
“I know when I’m licked. I’ve always heard there was a trick to doing business with these South American governments. Now I can vouch for it. You’ve just got to know the right people — and I don’t know them. That seems to be the end of it.”
The Saint was not making any effort to eavesdrop, but he didn’t have to. The restaurant was quiet, and they were talking in clear normal voices, as if they were confident in the security of speaking a foreign language, but that very contrast made it easier for him to separate their conversation from the background tones of Spanish.
The waiter brought him another snifter of Rémy Martin, with the parting compliments of Captain Xavier, and went on to deliver two Martinis across the room. Simon gazed innocently into space, and let his ears receive what came to them.
“What an incredible hard-luck story it is,” the husband said glumly. “First I get a contract to supply all those rifles and machine-guns to Iran — over the heads of all the big arms companies. Then I pull all the strings in Washington to get an export permit, which everyone said couldn’t be done. Then I manage to charter a boat to carry them, which isn’t so easy these days. And then, two days after the boat sails, they have a revolution in Iran and the new government cancels the order!”
“And you’ve paid for the guns, haven’t you? Your money’s tied up.”
“It sure is. But I wasn’t worried until now. I’d gotten them legally out of the States, so I could still sell them anywhere in the world where I could find a buyer. And I thought Mexico would be a cinch. Their Army equipment is nearly all out of date anyhow. And yet I can’t even get to talk to anyone. I’ve got fifty thousand late-model rifles and five thousand machine-guns cruising around the Caribbean, with five million rounds of ammunition — and nobody seems to want ’em!”
It should be recorded as a major testimonial to Simon Templar’s phenomenal self-control that for an appreciable time he did not move a muscle. But he felt as unreal as if he had been sitting still in the midst of an earthquake. It required a conscious adjustment for him to realize that the seismic shock he experienced was purely subjective, that the mutter of other voices around had not changed key or missed a beat, that the ceiling had not fallen in and all the glassware shattered in one cataclysmic crash.
But nothing of the sort had happened. Nothing at all. Of course not.
“It’s not your fault, Sherm,” the wife was saying. “You’ll just have to try somewhere else. There are plenty of other countries, and I’ve always wanted to see them.”
“I don’t know what’d make it better anywhere else. I guess I don’t know the right way to approach these people.”
It began to dawn on the Saint that his continued immobility could eventually become as conspicuous, to a watchful eye, as if he had jumped out of his skin.
With infinite casualness, he removed a length of ash from his cigarette, and inhaled with heroic moderation.
Then he lifted his brandy glass, and let his eyes wander across the room.
The Enriquez brothers were watching the American couple too, and their expression made him think of a couple of Walt Disney wolves discovering a hole in the fence of a sheep corral.
“For two cents,” said the husband morosely, “I’d start looking around for someone who wants to organize a revolution here, and offer to sell him the guns. It might do me a lot more good.”
Manuel Enriquez spoke earnestly to Pablo, and Pablo nodded vehemently.
Manuel stood up and approached the adjacent table.
“Please excuse me,” he said in good English, “but I could not help hearing what you were saying.”
The couple exchanged guilty glances, but Manuel smiled reassuringly.
“I appreciate your problem. As you said, it is important to know the right people. I believe my brother and I could help you.”
“Gosh,” said the husband. “That sounds wonderful! Are you serious?”
“Absolutely. May I introduce myself? I am Manuel Enriquez. That is my brother Pablo.”
“Sherman Inkler,” said the husband, whipping out a wallet and a card from the wallet. “And of course this is Mrs Inkler.”
“Oh, Sherm!” Doris Inkler gasped. “This could be the break you’ve been waiting for!”
“We can soon find out,” Manuel said. “But this is not a good place to discuss business. You have not yet ordered your dinner. May I invite you to another place where we can talk more privately? My car is outside, and you shall be my guests.”
As the Inklers and Pablo stood up simultaneously, he waved imperiously to the head waiter and shepherded them towards the stairs, pausing only to take both checks and sign them on the way out. It was in that brief stoppage that the blonde turned and looked at the Saint again, so intently that he knew, with utter certainty, that something had clicked in her memory, and that she knew who he was.
The implications of that long deliberate look would have sprinkled goose-pimples up his spine — if there had been room for any more. But he had just so much capacity for horripilation, and all of it had already been pre-empted by the scene he had witnessed just previously. The Saint had long ago conditioned himself to accept coincidences unblinkingly that would have staggered anyone who was less accustomed to them: it was much the same as a prize-fighter becoming inured to punishment, except that it was more pleasant. He had come to regard them as no more than the recurrent evidence of his unique and blessed destiny, which had ordained that wherever he turned, whether he sought it or not, he must always collide with adventure. But the supernatural precision and consecutiveness with which everything had unfolded that evening would have been enough to send spooky tingles up a totem pole.
And yet the immediate result was to leave him sitting as impotently apart as the spectator of a play when the first-act curtain comes down. With the departure of the Enriquez brothers and the Inklers, he was as effectively cut off from the action as if it were unrolling in another world. The instinctive impulse, of course, was to follow, but cold reason instantaneously knocked that on the head. Manuel Enriquez had said they would go to a place where they could talk privately, and the Saint felt sure it would be just that. If any of them saw him again in their vicinity, it was a ten-to-one bet that they would have remembered him from the restaurant anyway, and drawn the obvious conclusion. But that last long look from the blonde had taken it out of the realm of risk into the confines of stark certainty.
He tried to analyse that look again in retrospect, to determine what else might have been in it beyond simple recognition, while another department of his mind reached for philosophical consolation for the quirk of circumstance that kept him pinned to his chair.
Why did he have to follow, anyhow? He could predict exactly what would happen next. The Enriquez brothers would offer to buy the shipload of guns. And Sherman Inkler, of course, would have his price...
The full significance of the blonde’s look eluded him. Each time he tried to reconstruct and reassess it, he was halted before an intangible wall of inscrutability.
He finished his cognac and coffee and stood up at last, and went down the stairs and through the bar out to the Paseo de la Reforma. It was raining, as it can do in Mexico City even in late spring, and the moist air had an exotic aroma of overloaded drains. One day, they say, the whole city will sink back and disappear into the swampy depths of the crater from which it arose. On such nights, as in any other city, there is always a dearth of taxis, but the Saint was fortunate enough to meet one unloading customers for the movie theatre next door.
He had had plans to go prowling in search of distraction later that evening, whenever he got rid of Xavier, but now the drive had evaporated. Opportunity had already knocked as often as it was likely to do in one night.
“Al Hotel Comee,” he said.
The Comee is not the plushest hotel in Mexico City, being a few minutes’ drive from the fashionable centre of town, but its entirely relative remoteness makes it quieter than the more publicized caravanserais, and the Saint preferred it for that reason.
He sat on his bed and turned the pages of the telephone directory.
Would Carlos Xavier have an unlisted number? But Xavier was sure to be still tied up with a burgled politico, in any case. And the Saint was far from obsessed with the idea of talking to Xavier again — just yet.
What kind of hotel would the Inklers be staying at? There could only be a limited number of possibilities.
He picked up the telephone.
“The Reforma Hotel, please,” he said.
After the usual routine of sound effects, the connection was made.
“Mr Inkler, please,” he said. “Mr Sherman Inkler. I-n-k-l-e-r.”
“One moment, please.”
It was longer than that. Then the Reforma operator said, “I’m sorry, there is no Mr Inkler here.”
“Thank you,” said the Saint.
He lighted a cigarette and stretched himself out more comfortably on the bed while he jiggled the telephone bracket. This method of search might take some time. But it was bound to succeed eventually. When he got the Comee operator back, he said, “Get me the Del Prado.”
He drew another blank there. But all it would take was patience.
He was starting to recall his own operator again when there was a knock on the door. He hung up with a frown, and stood up and opened it.
Doris Inkler stood outside.
“You don’t have to try any longer, unless you particularly want to,” she said. “May I come in?”
The Saint was not given to exaggerated reactions. He did not fall over backwards in an explosion of sparks and stars like a character in the funny papers, with his eyebrows shooting up through his hair. He may have felt rather like it, but he was able to resist the inclination. In his memoirs, he would probably list it among the finest jobs of resisting he ever did.
He waved his cigarette with an aplomb that had no counterpart in his internal sensations.
“But of course,” he said cordially. “This proves that telepathy is still better than telephones.”
She stepped in just as calmly, and he closed the door.
“I could have let you work a lot longer, if I’d wanted to make it tough for you,” she said. “But I got tired of standing outside.”
Her head and eyes made an indicative movement back and upwards, and he followed their direction to the open transom above the door. He shut it.
“You must have a very big kind heart,” he said.
“It’s a pretty tedious way to track anyone down,” she said. “I know. That’s how I located you.”
“Did you make a deal or wash out with the Enriquez brothers so quickly?”
“They dropped me off first, and just took Sherman along. I think they have an old-world prejudice against having wives sit in on business conferences. So I was probably able to start calling sooner than you did. Besides, I was lucky.”
“Where, as a matter of interest, are you staying?”
“In Room 611.”
The Saint sighed.
“And this is probably the last hotel I’d have tried. It would have seemed too easy. Whereas you, being a simple-minded woman, probably tried it first.”
“Correct. But let’s change that ‘simple-minded’ to ‘economical.’ This was the one place I could try before I started to run up a telephone bill.”
He cleared some things from a chair, and she sat down. He gave her a cigarette, lighted it, and sat on the end of the bed. At last he was actually as relaxed and at ease as he had contrived to seem from the beginning. He wondered why he had ever allowed himself to get in a stew about the apparent dead end he had run into. He should have known that such a fantastically pat and promising beginning could not possibly peter out, so long as there was such an obviously plot-conscious genius at work. Inevitably the thread would have been brought back to him even if he had done nothing but sit and wait for it.
But underneath his coolly interested repose he was as wary as if he had been closeted with a coy young tigress. Perhaps everything would remain cosy and kitteny, but he had no illusions about the basic hazards of the situation.
“It’s nice to feel that our hearts are so in tune,” he remarked. “I was determined to find you again, regardless of cost. You were a little thriftier about it, but no less determined. And so we meet. Fate failed to keep us apart, and at this moment is probably gnashing the few teeth it can have left. However, there’s still one small point. I had plenty of opportunities to hear your name. But how did you know mine?”
“I recognized you, Mr Templar — as I think you knew.”
“We haven’t met before.”
“No.”
“So you’ve seen my picture and read about me.”
“Right. And now it’s time you let me ask a question. Why were you so anxious to find me?”
Simon considered his reply.
“Any mirror would tell you better than I can. But let’s say that when I first saw you alone, I was hoping you’d stay that way for long enough for us to get acquainted. I was sort of tied up at the moment, if you remember. Then, when your husband showed up, I could see you were much too good for him. After thinking it over, I decided that he’s the dull type that it’s almost a public duty to cuckold. I was planning to find out if you agreed.”
Her eyes widened a fraction but did not blink. They were a darker blue than his own, and there were smoky shadows in their depths. Blue is conventionally a cool colour, but he realized that her shade could have the heat potential of a blowtorch flame.
“You don’t try very hard to be subtle, do you?” she said, and said it without any indignation.
“Not always. Especially when a gal seems to have similar ideas of her own. You didn’t track me down just to ask for my autograph, did you?”
“No. My turn again. What do you know about the Enriquez brothers?”
“That they’re big tycoons down here, and tough babies. That they’ve specialized in robbing the Mexican public through government contracts obtained by graft and corruption. That they were recently investigated and exposed by the present administration, and are temporarily out of business and facing a possible rest period in the hoosegow. That they would therefore like to see a fast change in the régime. That they are backing a fast-changer named José Jalisco, who has the necessary wind to rouse the rabble, and would love to buy some toys that go bang for his followers. That this makes them ideal customers for a homeless shipload of arms and ammunition.”
“You seem to have found out a lot.”
“It was poured into my ear, on what I believe to be excellent authority. Shouldn’t that make it my turn next? Why were you looking for me, if it wasn’t just to tell me how wonderful you think I am?”
“I wanted to ask how you felt about that gun deal.”
The Saint grinned.
“That’s a neat reverse,” he said appreciatively.
“Well?”
She was not smiling. The dusky warmth in her eyes was stilled and held back, perhaps like a force in reserve.
Simon gazed at her directly for several seconds while he made a decision. He stubbed out his cigarette gently in an ashtray.
“I don’t like it,” he answered.
“Do you really care whether they have one more revolution here?”
“Yes, I do,” he said. “It may be rather dreamy and sentimental of me, but I care. If I thought it had a chance of doing some good, I might feel differently. But I know about this one. Its only real objective would be to get a couple of top-flight grafters off the hook and put them back in business. To achieve that, a lot of wretched citizens and stooges would be killed and maimed, and thousands more would be made even more miserable than they are. I wouldn’t like that.”
“Not even if it dropped a very nice piece of change into your own lap?”
His mouth hardened.
“Not even if it dropped me the keys to Fort Knox,” he said coldly. “I can always steal a few million without killing anyone, or making nearly so many people unhappy.”
She flicked her cigarette jerkily. The ash made a grey splash on the carpet.
“So if you could, you’d try to stop Sherman making a deal.”
“I’ll go further. I intend to do my God-damnedest to louse it up.”
“I had an idea that was what you’d say.”
“If you’d read anything about me worth reading, you wouldn’t even have had to ask.”
She took a slow deep breath. It stirred fascinating contours under the soft silk of her dress.
“That’s good,” she said. “I just had to be sure. Now I know you’ll be with us. We don’t have any cargo of guns to sell. We’re just trying to clean up in the bunko racket, with a bit of that Robin Hood touch you used to specialize in. The whole pitch was just a build-up to take the Enriquez brothers.”
Simon Templar stood up, unfolding his length inch by inch. He felt for the packet of cigarettes in his shirt pocket. He drew out a cigarette and placed it between his lips. He stroked his lighter and put it to the cigarette. He exhaled a thin jet of smoke and put the lighter back in his pocket. All his movements were extremely slow and careful, as if he had been balancing on a tightrope over a whirling void. They had to be, while he waited for his fragmented coordinates to settle down, like a spun kaleidoscope, into a new pattern. But by this time his capacity for dizziness was fortunately a little numbed. The human system can only absorb so many jolts in one evening without losing some of its pristine vigour of response.
“I see,” he said. “I suppose I should have guessed it when your husband came bouncing in and spilled all the beans so loudly and clearly at the very next table to Manuel and Pablo — after you’d kept them watching you long enough to be quite sure they’d be listening.”
“He wasn’t meant to wait quite so long,” she said, “but he did get held up.”
“So there is no ship. And no guns.”
She shook her head.
“There is a ship. It’s cruising in the Gulf of Mexico right now. It has a lot of crates on board — full of rocks. There are also two or three on top which do have rifles and machine-guns in them, which can be opened for inspection. We weren’t expecting the Enriquez brothers to put out a lot of cash without being pretty convinced about what they were buying.”
“That sounds like quite an investment.”
“It was. But we can afford it. If it works out, we’ll pick up at least half a million dollars.”
The Saint rubbed his hands softly together, just once.
“A truly noble swindle,” he murmured with restrained rapture. “Boldly conceived, ingeniously contrived, unstintingly financed, slickly dramatized, professionally played — and one of the classics of all time for size. I wish I’d thought of it myself.”
For the first time in a long while, a trace of a smile touched her lips.
“You approve?”
“Especially in the choice of pigeons.”
“I’m glad of that. I picked them myself, and planned it all for them. I thought it made quite a Saintly set-up. In fact, I should really give you most of the credit. I was thinking of things I’d read about you, and the way you used to do jobs like this, all the time I was figuring it out.”
He studied her again, for the first time with purely intellectual appraisal.
“It begins to sound as if you were the brains of the Inkler partnership.”
“Sometimes I am. Of course, Sherm wasn’t doing so badly when I teamed up with him. But this one was my very own brain-child.”
“And was it all your own idea, too, to come and talk to me just now?”
“We agreed on it. I had a chance to get in a word with him alone, when they dropped me off. I told him I’d recognized you, and who you were. We both knew we’d have to do some fresh figuring, fast. He left it to me. As a matter of fact, he didn’t have much choice. The Enriquez brothers were waiting. He said whatever I did was okay with him, but for Christ’s sake do something.”
“Well,” said the Saint helpfully, “what are you going to do?”
She raised her eyes to his face.
“I’ve told you the whole story. And I’m hoping you’re not sore at me for trying to imitate your act.”
“Of course not,” Simon assured her heartily. “If you mean, for baiting such a beautiful trap to skin a pair of sidewinders like Manuel and Pablo, I wish a lot more people would take up the sport. However...” His brows drew together and his gaze slanted at her shrewdly. “I had my eye on them too, even if you saw them first.”
“And you should get a royalty for being my inspiration.” She put out her cigarette, escaping his steady scrutiny only for a moment, and looked at him again. “All right. Would you be satisfied if we split three ways?”
He didn’t move.
“You, me, and Sherman?” he said.
“Yes. After all, we’ve spent a lot of money, and done a lot of groundwork.”
Simon walked over to the window and looked out. It seemed to have stopped raining, but the streets below were shiny with water. He gazed over the nearer rooftops and the scattered lights to the hazy glow of illumination that hung over the city’s centre. He had seldom felt that life was so rich and bountiful.
There may well be among the varied devotees of these chronicles some favoured individual who has once experienced a certain feeling of elation upon learning that a hitherto undreamed-of uncle has gone to join the heavenly choir, leaving him a half-dozen assorted oil wells. Such a one might have a faint conception of the incandescent beatitude that was welling up in the Saint’s ecstatic soul. A very faint and protopathic conception. For the fundamentally dreary mechanics of inheriting a few mere fountains of liquid lucre cannot really be compared with the blissful largesse that the Saint saw Providence decanting on him from its upturned cornucopia. This had poetry; this fell into the kind of artistic pattern that made music in his heart.
He turned at last.
“Will you just mail me my share,” he asked, “or am I expected to help?”
“Is the deal okay?”
“You must remind me some day to warn you about being too generous, in this racket.”
She let out breath in an almost inaudible sigh, sinking a little deeper in the chair. It was the first proof she had given that she had been under tension before.
“You could help a lot.”
“Tell me.”
“Frankly,” she said, “the only thing I’ve been worried about is the payoff. First, they’ll want to be sure that we’ve really got the guns. That’s taken care of. They can take a motor-boat and go out a few miles from Veracruz or Tampico, and meet our boat. All right. Then we’ll come to the question of delivery. That cargo can’t be unloaded at a regular port. So I expect them to pick some quiet spot along the coast where it can be brought in at dead of night.”
“How do you manage to be so beautiful and have this kind of brain?” he asked admiringly.
“I’m only thinking it out the way you would.” There was nothing coy about her now: it was all business. “So we agree to do that. But we can’t count on them giving us the money and trusting that we’ll deliver. Most probably, they’ll want to pay off at the landing place, when the cargo starts coming ashore. We’d have to agree to that too. And then suppose they decided to double-cross us — to take the cargo and keep their money?”
“They’d be afraid of you tipping off the cops... But of course, if they were going that far, they could shut you up permanently.”
“And Sherman isn’t the fighting type. Even if he had a gun, he wouldn’t know how to use it.”
“How about your crew on the boat?”
“They’re only half in on the caper. We told them we were only trying to run in a batch of illegal slot machines, and hired them for a flat price. You can imagine what a cut they’d have wanted if we’d said anything about guns. They don’t think they’re taking much of a risk, and I’d hate to rely on them in a real jam.”
“But you’re paying them out of your share?”
“Call it part of the investment I mentioned. That’s why I couldn’t offer you better than a three-way split. When you work it out, you’ll really be getting closer to half of the net.”
He nodded.
“I’m afraid my lecture on the folly of being too generous isn’t going to do you much good when I get around to it, Doris.” The twist of his mouth was humorously speculative. “However, since you made the terms, I guess a little body-guarding isn’t too much help to ask in return for a cut like that.”
She stood up from the chair and moved towards him. She kept on coming towards him, slowly, until the tips of her breasts touched his chest.
“If that isn’t enough,” she said, “there might be a personal bonus... Sherman won’t be back for a long while yet. You’ve got time to think it over.”
Doris Inkler phoned him at nine o’clock, as he was stepping out of the shower, and asked him to join them in their suite for breakfast. A few minutes later he knocked on the door, and she opened it. She looked fresh and cool in a light cotton print, and her eyes were only warm and intimate for an instant, before she turned to introduce him to her husband.
“Doris has told me the deal,” Inkler said, shaking hands in the brisk business-like way which was so much a part of his act that it must have become a part of himself. “This caper is all her baby, so it’s okay with me. Glad to have you on our side.”
He looked a little tired and nervous.
“I didn’t get in till three this morning,” he explained. “These Mexicans don’t seem to care about bedtime. I guess they make up for it with their siestas. However, everything’s set.”
A waiter wheeled in a table set with three places.
“We ordered bacon and eggs for you,” Inkler said. “Hope that’s all right.”
“I’m starved,” Doris said. “While you were dining and wining with the brothers, you’d politely got rid of me.”
“I thought you’d get yourself something here,” Inkler said.
“I was too busy locating Mr Templar. And after that — too busy.”
She was pouring coffee as she said it, and she didn’t look at Simon.
“I’m sorry,” said the Saint. “I forgot all about that. I was too interested myself.”
The waiter was gone, and they ate.
“The Enriquez boys are calling for us at half past eleven,” Inkler said. “By that time they’ll have arranged for the cash. They’ll drive us to Veracruz. They’ve got a fishing boat there, and we’ll go out and look at the cargo. I sent a radio-telegram to our captain last night, telling him to meet us twenty miles out. I just hope it isn’t too rough.”
“How are you going to account for me?” Simon asked.
“That’s easy,” Doris said. “You’re Sherman’s partner, just arrived from the States. You were worried about him making no progress, and flew down unexpectedly to see whether you could help.”
“Your faith in me is almost embarrassing. How did you know I’d have the equipment to disguise myself, in case one of the brothers happened to remember seeing me at another table last night?”
“If you hadn’t, we could have lent it to you. But I couldn’t imagine the Saint being without it. I expect you have another name with you, too.”
“Tombs,” said the Saint. “Sebastian Tombs.”
He still had a sentimental attachment to the absurd alias that he had used so often, but he felt reasonably confident that the Enriquez brothers would not have heard of it.
“Have you got a gun?” Inkler asked.
Simon patted his left side, under the arm.
“I can take care of Manuel and Pablo, and maybe some of their friends, if they try any funny business,” he said. “But whether I can take care of the whole Mexican gendarmerie is another matter. Even if everything goes according to plan, it may not be long before they find out that your packing cases aren’t all full of artillery. Then they might have the cops looking for us on some phony charge — as well as Jalisco’s bully boys. I don’t think Mexico will be the ideal vacation spot for us after this. What were your plans for after you got the dough?”
Inkler looked at his wife, leaving her to answer.
“I’ve found out that there’s a night plane from here to Havana that stops at Veracruz at two o’clock in the morning,” she said. “It should be just right for us. I’ll make the reservations while you’re getting disguised, if that suits you.”
The Saint seldom used an elaborate disguise, and in this case he did not have to conceal his identity from anyone who knew him but only from two men who might possibly have recalled him from having casually noticed him the night before. With plenty of grey combed into his dark hair, and the addition of a neat grey moustache and tinted glasses, he was sure that the Enriquez brothers would see nothing familiar about him. Even the Inklers, when he first met them again, looked at him blankly.
The Enriquez brothers arrived with un-Mexican punctuality. Simon was introduced to them, in the lobby, and they accepted Inkler’s explanation of his presence with no signs of suspicion.
Outside, they had two matching light yellow Cadillacs. Chauffeurs opened the doors simultaneously as they came out. Manuel Enriquez ushered them into one of the cars, and Simon, always considerate of his own comfort on a long trip, quietly slipped into the front seat. Manuel followed the Inklers into the back. Pablo waved to them and turned away.
“He goes in the other car,” Manuel explained. “He has the money.”
He said it with a smile, almost passing it off as a joke, so that the implication was inoffensive. But it left no doubt, if there had ever been any, that the Enriquez brothers were not babes in the woods. Nor, Simon believed, were their chauffeurs. The one beside him, whom he was able to study at more length, had the shoulders of a prize-fighter and a face that had not led a sheltered life.
On the other hand, these evidences of sensible caution did not necessarily mean that there was a double-cross in prospect, and the Saint saw no reason why he should not let himself at least enjoy the trip. Manuel was a good host in his way, even if he made Simon think of a hospitable alligator, pointing out the landmarks along the way and making agreeable small talk about Mexican customs and conditions, without any reference to politics. Nor was there any mention of the object of their journey — but, after all, there was no more at that moment to discuss.
They had lunch at Puebla, and then rolled on down the long serpentine road to the coast. After a while the Saint went to sleep.
It was early evening when they reached Veracruz, and drove through the hot noisy streets out to the comparative tranquillity of the Mocambo.
“We will stay here tonight,” Manuel said. “While they take in our bags we will get something to eat. It may be late before we can have dinner.”
After sandwiches and cold beer they got into Manuel’s car again. A short drive took them to the Club Nautico. As they got out, Simon observed that Pablo’s twin Cadillac was no longer behind them.
“If all is well, we shall meet him presently,” Manuel said.
He guided them to the dock where a shiny new Chris-Craft with fishing chairs and outriggers was tied up. The crew of two who helped them aboard were identical in type with the chauffeurs, and no less efficiently taciturn. The lines were cast off at once, and the big engines came to life, one after the other, with deep hollow roars. The boat idled out into the darkening harbour.
“Tell us where we are to go,” Manuel said.
“North-east,” Inkler said, “and twenty miles out.”
Enriquez translated to the captain at the wheel.
“Let us go inside and be comfortable,” he said. “I have whisky, gin, and tequila. In an hour we should be able to see your boat.”
The time did not pass too badly, although Simon would have preferred to stay on deck. It was noisy in the cabin, with the steady drone of the engines and the rush of water, so that a certain effort had to be made to talk and to listen. But fortunately for their comfort there was very little sea, and the speeding boat did not bounce much.
He was checking his watch for the exact end of the estimated hour when the engines reduced their volume of sound suddenly and the boat sagged down and surged heavily as its own wave overtook it. They all went out with unanimous accord into the after-cockpit, and Simon saw the lights and silhouette of a ship ahead of them. A moment later, Enriquez switched on a spotlight and sent its beam sweeping over the other vessel. It was a squat and very dilapidated little coastal freighter of scarcely three hundred tons which would certainly have looked like having a rough voyage to Iran, if anybody but the Saint had been critical of such details at that moment. An answering light blinked from her bridge, three times.
“That’s it,” Inkler said.
“What you call, on the nose?” Enriquez said with solid satisfaction.
As the Chris-Craft drew alongside, the freighter lowered a boarding ladder. Doris Inkler stood beside the Saint.
“We’ll wait for you here,” she said.
They watched Inkler and Enriquez clamber up over the side and disappear. Simon lighted two cigarettes and gave her one. She stayed close to him, watching the Mexican captain and mate as they made a rope fast to the ladder and hung fenders over the rubbing strake.
“This is the first place we could have trouble,” she said in a low voice. “If Manuel wants one of the wrong cases opened...”
“Don’t worry until it happens,” he said.
But he could feel her tenseness, and he was a little tense himself for what seemed like an interminable time, but by his watch was less than a half-hour, until at last Inkler and Enriquez came down the ladder again and joined them in the smaller boat’s cockpit. Then he could tell by the subtly different confidence of both men that there had been no trouble.
Manuel spoke briefly to the captain, who yelled at the mate, and the bow line was cast off. Water widened between the two hulls, and the Chris-Craft engines grumbled again. Manuel shepherded the Inklers and the Saint below.
He poured four drinks in four clean glasses, and raised one of them.
“To our good fortunes,” he said.
“Is everything all right?” Doris asked, holding on to her glass.
“Your husband is a good business man. He has the right things for the right customers.”
Only the most captious analyst might have thought she was a fraction slow with her response.
“Oh, Sherman!”
She flung her arms around Inkler’s neck and kissed him joyously. Then she turned to the Saint and did the same to him. Inkler watched this with a steady smile.
“Your boat is now following us to a little fishing village, where I have men waiting to unload the cargo,” Manuel said.
“Is it far?”
“We have to go slower, of course. But it will not be too long. About three hours. And we have plenty to drink.”
“Pablo Enriquez is waiting there with the money,” Inkler said to the Saint.
Simon remembered that he had the privileged role of a partner.
“Exactly when is it to be paid?” he inquired. “I hope Mr Enriquez won’t be offended, but business is business. He wanted to see what we had to offer before he committed himself, and quite rightly. Now I don’t think we should have to unload all that stuff until it’s paid for.”
Manuel grinned like a genial saurian.
“As soon as I tell Pablo it’s okay, he gives you the money. Five hundred thousand American dollars. In cash!”
There was nothing more to be said; but the rest of the voyage seemed to take far more than three times as long as the trip out. The Chris-Craft wallowed along sluggishly, rolling a little with the swell; they all realized that her speed had to be cut down to let the freighter keep up with her, but still their nerves chafed against the restraint, aching impatiently and impossibly for the throttles to open and the exhaust to belch in booming crescendo and the ship to lighten and lift up and skim with all the throbbing speed of which she was capable, lancing through the time between them and the climax ahead. That was how Simon felt, and he knew that two others felt exactly as he did and worse.
There was plenty to drink, as Manuel said, but they could not even take advantage of that to deaden the consciousness of crawling minutes. Sipping lightly and at a studiously sober pace himself, Simon noted that the Inklers were doing the same. Once Sherman emptied his glass rather hurriedly, and earned an unmistakable cold stare from his wife; after that he left the refill untouched for a long time. Only Enriquez was under no inhibition, but the alcohol seemed to have no effect on him, unless it was to confirm his hard-lipped good humour.
“Perhaps one day we do some more business, but in the open,” was the closest he came to referring to the lawless purpose of their association. “It is like Prohibition in your country, is it not? When the law changes, the bootleggers become importers. But until then, it is better you forget all about tonight.”
Watching him with ruthless detachment, the Saint was unable to detect any foreshadowing of a double-cross. And, after all, it was entirely possible that the Enriquez brothers would be prepared to pay for what they thought they were getting, and even consider it cheap at the price. At the infinite end of three hours, he was almost convinced that Manuel was prepared to complete his infamous bargain. Yet he could not relax.
At last, after three eternities, there was a change of volume in the purr of the engines, and the boat seemed to be rolling less, and muffled voices shouted on deck. Manuel put down his glass and went out quickly, and they followed.
The night air was still warm and humid, but it was refreshing after the stuffy cabin. The sky overhead was an awning of rich velvet sprinkled with unrealistically brilliant stars, and on both sides Simon saw the black profiles of land sharply cut out against it over the bow. At the end of the bay, he saw the scattered yellow window lights of a small village, and closer than that there were other lights down by the water, flashlights that moved and danced. Searching around for the ugly shape of the little freighter, he found it looming so close astern that it was momentarily alarming, until he realized that it was hardly moving. The Mexican captain was yelling up at it and waving his arms. Enriquez took over, translating, “Stop here! You can’t go any farther!”
The anchor came down from the freighter with a clanking of chain and a splash. Enriquez turned to Inkler.
“We can go in to the dock, but he is too big. My men will come out in smaller boats to unload.”
Inkler relayed the information, shouting upwards at the freighter’s bridge. He added, “Don’t let ’em have the stuff till I give the signal!”
A voice shouted back, unnautically, “Okey-doke.”
The Mexican captain shoved the clutches forward, and the Chris-Craft purred away.
In a few minutes they were alongside the ramshackle dock where the flashlights bobbed. There were at least a dozen men on it, and a slight aroma of fish and sweat and garlic; the silent shadowy figures gave an impression of roughness and toughness, but only an occasional glimpse of detail could be seen when a light moved. Manuel stepped ashore first, and the Saint followed him and gave his hand to Doris Inkler to help her. Her hand was cold, and kept hold of his even after she had joined him on the rickety timbers. Sherman Inkler stumbled on to the pier after them.
Enriquez seemed to sense the defensiveness of their grouping for he said reassuringly, “They are all friends of our friend Jalisco. Don’t worry. This village is one of ours.”
He guided them through the opening ranks and off the dock. It felt good to the Saint to stretch his legs again on solid ground. The dim square outlines of several parked trucks loomed around them, then another man alone, whose face was faintly spotlighted in the darkness by the glow of a cigar. It was Pablo.
The two brothers talked quickly and briefly in Spanish, and Manuel said mostly “Sí, sí,” and “Está bien.”
“This way,” Pablo said.
He led them a little distance from the trucks, to where one of the yellow Cadillacs was parked under a tree, with one of the burly chauffeurs beside it. He went around to the back and unlocked the boot. An automatic light went on as it opened, illuminating one medium-sized suitcase inside.
“That is for you,” Pablo said.
Inkler stepped slowly forward. He opened the suitcase gingerly, as if expecting it to be booby-trapped. Simon felt Doris tremble a little at his shoulder. Then they saw the neat bundles of green bills that filled the case.
“You may count it,” Manuel said.
Inkler took out one of the packages of currency and thumbed through it methodically. He compared it with the others for thickness. Doris joined him and began to count packages, rummaging to the very bottom of the case. Sherman pulled out occasional bills and examined them very closely under the light. Most of them were twenties and fifties.
Simon Templar watched from where he stood, and also let his eyes travel all around and turned his head casually to look behind him. His muscles and reflexes were poised on a hair trigger. But he could neither see nor hear any hint of a closing ambush. The husky chauffeur stood a little apart, like a statue. The Enriquez brothers talked together in low tones, and the only scraps of their conversation that the Saint could catch were concerned entirely with their arrangements for storing and distributing the ordnance that they thought they were buying.
“I’m satisfied,” Sherman Inkler said at last.
Manuel lighted a cigar.
“Good. Then you will give the signal to your boat?”
“Of course.”
Manuel led him back into the gloom, in the direction of the pier.
Doris Inkler closed and fastened the suitcase and pulled it out of the car boot. She unbalanced a little as the full weight came on her arm, and put it down on the ground.
“It’s heavy,” she said with a nervous laugh, and as the Saint stepped up to feel it, out of curiosity, she said, “Give me a cigarette.”
He gave her one, and Pablo lighted it.
“It is a lot of money,” Pablo said. “It will buy many pretty things, if you have an appreciative husband.”
“I’ll feel safer with it when it’s turned into traveller’s cheques,” said the Saint.
Pablo laughed.
They made forced and trivial conversation until Simon heard Manuel and Sherman returning.
Now, if there was to be any treachery on the part of the Enriquez brothers, it would have to show itself. The Saint’s weight was on the balls of his feet, his right hand ready to move like a striking snake, but still the movement that he was alert for did not come.
“I am afraid it will take several hours to unload everything,” Manuel said. “Would you like to go back on the boat and have some more drinks?”
Doris looked at her husband.
“Can’t we go back to the hotel? I’m tired, and famished — and I think some mosquitoes are eating me.”
“Pablo and I must stay here,” Manuel said. “And we need all our men. Even the chauffeur should be helping. However... Would you like to take the car? One of you can drive. It is an easy road to Veracruz. You cannot get lost.”
He gave directions.
“But what about you?” Inkler protested half-heartedly.
“We will come later, on one of the trucks. Do not wait up for us.”
Almost incredulously, they found themselves getting into the Cadillac. Sherman picked up the suitcase full of money and put it in the front seat, and got in beside it, behind the wheel. “Don’t want to let it out of my sight,” he said with an empty grin. Manuel and Pablo kissed the hand of Doris, and she got in the back seat. Simon shook hands with them and got in after her. In a mere matter of seconds they were on their way.
They must have driven more than a mile in unbelieving silence. It was as if they were afraid that even there the Enriquez brothers might overhear them, or that a careless word might shatter a fragile spell...
And then suddenly, uncontrollably, Doris electrified the stillness with a wild banshee shriek.
“We did it!” she screamed. “We’ve got the money, and we’re off. We did it!”
She leaned forward and grasped her husband’s shoulders and shook them.
“Better than I ever hoped for,” Sherman said shakily. “I thought at the very least we’d have a chauffeur to get rid of. But we’re on our own already. Now pull yourself together!”
Doris fell back, giggling hysterically.
The Saint’s right hand slid unobtrusively under his coat, fingered the butt of the holstered automatic that he had not had to touch. Then it moved to the pocket where he kept his cigarettes.
“So you didn’t really need me,” he said. “The Enriquez brothers were on the level, after their fashion. They may swindle the government and send peasants out to kill and be killed for them, but they pay their own bills. I guess there is honour among certain kinds of thieves.”
Doris stopped squirming and sat up with a final cathartic gasp.
“Oh, no,” she said. “I’m glad we ran into you. Terribly glad.”
And suddenly her lips were on his mouth, hot and hungry, and her body against him and her arms winding around him, groping... And then just as quickly she tore herself away, back to the far side of the seat, and he looked down and saw the gleam of his own gun in her hand, pointing at him.
“You didn’t have to use it,” she said, a little breathlessly. “But I will, if you try anything. Pull over, Sherm. I’ve got him covered.”
The Saint didn’t move. He gazed at her steadily, and rather sadly, while the car lost speed without any abruptness that might have spoiled her aim.
“A perfect stranger,” he said, “a person who didn’t know your sweet loyal soul, would think you were going to take a mean advantage of me — to toss me aside like an old squeezed-out toothpaste tube.”
“A perfect stranger would be right,” she said. “It was mighty nice to have you with us while there was a real chance that the Enriquez brothers might have been planning to pull a fast one. But now we’re out of that danger, you’re too expensive a partner. But you can still be useful. I figure that if we leave you for them or the cops to catch, when they find out who you are they won’t care so much about trying to find us.”
“That’s how I thought you had it figured.”
She peered at him sharply, then gave a short grating laugh.
“You did?”
The car had stopped now, and Inkler turned around in the front seat.
“Don’t let’s waste any more time, Doris.”
“Hold it, Sherm. This I have got to hear!”
“You remember the lecture I promised you about your extravagant generosity, darling?” said the Saint. “That was the tip-off. When you came and offered me a third share of a prize like this, after you’d done all the groundwork, and with you and Sherman paying all the expenses out of your end, you overplayed it to a fare-thee-well. They just don’t make fairy godparents like that in the racket. If you’d offered me about twenty grand, say, just to keep my mouth shut and do this little walk-on in the last act, I might have fallen for it. But more than a hundred and sixty thousand, free and clear — that just had to be sucker bait.”
“Then why did you go for it?”
“I had to see how it would work out. And there was always an outside chance that you might just be a little crazy. But if you were a thoroughly bad girl — if you really were trying to pull something like this on the old maestro — then I’d have to teach you a lesson.”
“I’ll look forward to that,” she said.
She fumbled behind her and opened the door on her side. She got out, without ever turning away from him, and held the door open, still keeping him covered. At the same time, Sherman got out on his side.
“Come on outside, Saint,” she said.
“That’s a fighting phrase,” Simon remarked mildly.
But he followed her out, and she made him step a little away from the car. She handled the gun like a professional, and kept a safe distance from a sudden leap.
He gave her a last chance.
“You seemed to rather like me last night, if I may be so ungentlemanly as to mention it,” he said. “Why don’t we ditch your husband instead, and start a new team?”
She shook her head.
“Not my husband,” she said. “My brother. We only work as husband and wife because it makes a better act. I like you a lot that way, Saint, but you just aren’t in the running.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
He caught the flicker of her eyes and the almost imperceptible whisper of movement behind him at the same instant, and spun around. He saw Sherman Inkler with something like a blackjack in his right hand raised and already falling, and stepped in under it like a cat. The Saint’s left came up under the man’s chin with a snap like a collision of pool balls, and Sherman was probably already unconscious before the right cross that followed the uppercut slammed him against the car and dropped him at the enforced limit of his horizontal travel.
The Saint turned. And quite deliberately, Doris Inkler shot at him. He heard the click of the firing pin, but that was all.
Then he took the gun out of her hand.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “It deprives you of your last hope of sympathy. You’d have killed me if I hadn’t been careful.” He was doing something to the gun and putting it back in his shoulder holster. “You knew where I had a gun, so I knew the first thing you’d do would be to take it, so I took out the magazine while we were driving,” he explained calmly.
She spat obscenities at him, and flew at him with her fingernails, so that he had to clip her on the jaw with a loose fist, just hard enough to knock her cold for a few seconds, rather than have his last remaining pleasant memories of her ruined.
He took the aeroplane tickets, but left them some money and their tourist cards, without which they would have found it very complicated indeed to cross any Mexican border. He felt that that was pretty Saintly, considering what they would have done to him, but that would always be his weakness. Even so, their chances would be none too good.
He got into the Cadillac and drove on. At the outskirts of Veracruz he stopped for long enough to peel off his moustache and rub the grey out of his hair with a handkerchief; he put the tinted glasses in his pocket. Then he drove on again, slowly, until he found himself within a couple of blocks of bright lights. He parked the car in a dark yard, took out the suitcase of loot, and walked on. In a little while he found a taxi, and ordered it to drive him to the airport. He saw no need to risk going back to the Mocambo for his over-night bag: with what he carried in his hand, he could cheerfully consider everything it contained expendable. His watch told him he had just a comfortable margin of time to catch the plane.
He checked in at the ticket counter, but kept possession of the suitcase. It was a little larger than the size which passengers are normally permitted to carry with them, but the clerk was sleepy and let him get away with it. He was passed on to another official who stamped his tourist card.
Then a hand fell on his shoulder.
“You are leaving us so soon?” said Captain Carlos Xavier.
“Just for a few days,” said the Saint, with superhuman blandness. “Some friends of mine are honeymooning in Havana, and they begged me to hop over and see them.”
Xavier nodded.
“We still have so much to talk about. Come with me.”
He took the Saint’s arm and led him past the customs counter, under the eyes of the uniformed officer, through a door marked Entrada prohibida, and into a small shabby office. He shut the door, and pointed to the Saint’s suitcase.
“You know that if you had gone on, the officer outside would have made you open that?”
“I was just figuring how much it would cost to discourage him,” said the Saint blandly, “when you interrupted me.”
“You will let me look in it, please?”
Simon laid the case on the desk and released the locks, but did not open it. He stepped back and let Xavier raise the lid. He unbuttoned his coat, and was glad he had reloaded his gun.
Xavier stared at the money for a long time.
“I suppose this belongs to the Enriquez brothers?” he said.
“It did,” Simon replied steadily. “But they paid it over quite voluntarily, for what they thought was a shipment of arms and ammunition for Jalisco’s revolution.”
“To be supplied by the Inklers?”
It was the Saint’s turn to stare.
“How did you know?”
“Why do you think I took you to Larue last night, where I knew the Enriquez brothers would be, and where I hoped the Inklers would try to contact them? If they had not done it that night, I would have taken you wherever they went the next night. Why do you think I arranged for Inkler to be delayed, until I had had time to tell you about Manuel and Pablo? Why do you think I arranged to be called away afterwards so that you would be free to observe what happened and to act as you chose? Why do you think I have never been far away from you since then, even to watching you at sea this afternoon from an aeroplane, until it got too dark? Meeting you here, of course, was easy: I knew about your reservations as soon as they were made. But you should be grateful to me, instead of wondering whether to use the gun you have under your arm.”
“Excuse me,” said the Saint, and leaned against the wall.
“I told you I was an unusual policeman,” Xavier said. “I received word from your FBI that the Inklers were here, and what to expect from them. They have been in other Central American countries, always working on the discontented element, and usually with the story that they could influence assistance from Washington. So I knew that the Enriquez brothers would be perfect for them. I had a problem. It was my duty not to let the Inklers swindle anyone; yet I did not have much desire to protect Manuel and Pablo. That is why I was most happy that you were here. I was sure I could rely on you for a solution.”
Simon’s eyes widened in a blinding smile.
“Is anything wrong with this one?”
“It is a lot of money.” Xavier pursed his lips over it judicially. “But I have no report of any such sum being stolen. And no one has made any accusations against you. I do not see how I can prevent you leaving with it. On the other hand, I am not very well paid, and I think you owe me something.” He took out six of the neat bundles of green paper and distributed them in different pockets of his clothing. “I should like to retire, and buy a small hotel in Fortín.”
Simon Templar drew a deep breath, and straightened up.
“One day I must visit you there,” he said.
Captain Xavier closed the suitcase, and Simon picked it up. Xavier opened another door, and the Saint found himself out on the landing field. In front of him, the first passengers were boarding the plane.