Catch the Saint (15 page)

The Saint stood observing
the scene cynically, restless, his
mind in other
places, like a privateer waiting for the tide that
would
set him free from the shore. When a
plump warm hand
touched his wrist it was no surprise, even though he had given
no sign of anticipating it; his life had depended so frequently
on his instincts that even in surroundings as apparently safe as
these, even with his mind abstracted, it would have been vir
tually impossible for anyone to approach him from any direction
without his
being aware of it well in advance of arrival.

But he looked down into
the doughy pink unity that consti
tuted the face and
chins of Miss Theresa Marpeldon as if her
fragrant
advent had been a complete surprise. He had met her
once,
briefly and unmemorably, at a cocktail party in Palm
Beach. Miss Theresa
Marpeldon was about seventy, and the heiress of a baked-bean fortune. She was
heavily powdered,
soaked in cologne, and
wreathed in diamonds for this occasion. In the Saint’s imagination she
resembled the decorative pudding of some baronial Christmas banquet.

“Simon,” she
said, “there’s a young lady here who’s dying to
meet
you.”

“I already like
her,” the Saint said amiably. “Who is she?”

“She’s right here.
She
was
right here. Carole?”

Miss Marpeldon kept a
precautionary hold on the Saint’s arm as she turned to look for her protege.

From behind she was all
beautiful young legs and long blond
hair. When Miss Marpeldon turned her
round, the Saint began
to feel that he was
getting value for his hundred dollars. She
was in her twenties, with a pert Scottish nose and wide turquoise
eyes. There were many decorative women in the
room, but this
girl stood out like a single flower in a field of grass.
The tur
quoise eyes met the deep blue of the
Saint’s with level playful
ness.

“Carole, I was just
telling Mr Templar that you were dying
to
meet him, and then you wandered off.”

“I never said I was
dying to meet you,” the girl denied. “All
I
said was that if Theresa didn’t introduce us I was going to
hang myself from that chandelier during the last
waltz.”

Miss Marpeldon giggled
loudly, like any good audience for
society-ballroom
wit.

“This is Carole
Angelworth,” she said. “Carole, this is Simon Templar. I’m sure you
two can find plenty to talk about.”

Miss Marpeldon was a born
matchmaker, and was immedi
ately off to the rescue of
a gangly young man whose very costly
tuxedo seemed to
be doing him no good at all in his search for a
dancing
partner.

“I’m flattered that
you were considering suicide over me be
fore
we’d even met,” Simon said to Carole Angelworth. “It’s un
derstandable, but still flattering.”

“Oh, think nothing of
it,” she replied airily. “I’ve told her
the
same thing about at least two other men this evening.”

“What happened to
them?”

“Appearances can be
deceiving. They just didn’t live up to
their
looks.” She paused and shrugged. “So I poisoned them.”

“Naturally,”
the Saint nodded. “I have a feeling I’ll be safer if
your hands are occupied. Let’s dance.”

“Well, normally I
dance with my feet, but I’ll see what I can
do.”

“Much more of that corn and I might poison
you,”
Simon
warned her.

She slipped easily into his arms, and they
merged with the
other dancers in a slow
old-fashioned fox trot, or rather a sort
of intimate shuffle, which was about as much movement as the crowded
floor allowed. Something in the way her hand held his
belied the cool
banter of her gilt-edged accent. Before he had ever seen her, she had been
watching him. Among the other
younger males
in the ballroom—who were generally over-fed,
over-protected, and under-exercised—Simon Templar’s lean tall strength
and almost sinister handsomeness had attracted her
immediately. Now, as she danced close to him, his
magnetism
captured her even more,
and she found it hard to breathe.

“I don’t know that
much about you,” she said with an effort at
her
original nonchalance. “Do you really and truly think we
ought to run away together?”

“Give me another
half minute to think it over,” Simon said.

She leaned back a little
and looked up at him.

“Who are you?”
she asked. “I’ve never seen you at one of
these
brawls before.”

“I move round a
lot,” he told her.

“Where?”

“Wherever my business takes me.”

“What’s your business?”

“It varies,” he
said. “Mostly armed robbery, jewel thieving,
large-scale
swindles.”

“I knew you were the
kind of man who wouldn’t tell any
thing about himself. You like being
mysterious.”

“At least I’ve said
something,” Simon replied. “What about
you?”

“My name is Carole
Angelworth,” she recited with her eyes
closed.
“I am twenty-three years old. I have a degree in sociology.
My mother is dead. I live with my father, Hyram J. Angelworth,
who is very rich and generous, and spoils me rotten. I am reasonably
normal except for a mad urge to climb trees just before
the full moon. I have a passion for back-rubs and strawberries.”

“At least back-rubs
are never out of season,” Simon mused.
“But
then, I suppose neither are strawberries, when your father
is Hyram J. Angelworth.”

“You’ve heard of
him?” Carole asked.

The music ended just then,
and they strolled towards one of
the bars.

“You can’t be in
Philadelphia long without hearing about
him.
The Angelworth Foundation. The Angelworth Children’s
Clinic.
The Citizens Committee for Law Enforcement. He’s done
the
town a lot of good.”

“He’s a good
man,” Carole said earnestly. “Sometimes I’m
afraid
people take advantage of him. He worked hard for what
he’s
got, and now he gives it away right and left. You don’t even
know a fraction of the things he does—the charities. But I hate
that word. It sounds so condescending.”

“Well, there are worse
ways for a man to get his kicks,” said
the Saint. “And
from the looks of that solid-silver dress of yours,
he’s at least keeping enough cash round to pay the light bills.”

“It’s rude to comment
on the price of things,” Carole re
marked.

“Whoever said I
wasn’t rude?” Simon retorted.

Once they had met, there was no question of
their parting.
Simon could see that behind
her bantering fa
ç
ade, she really had
developed an instant crush on him; and he would
have been less
than human if he had
not responded to her dew-fresh beauty
and
youthful exuberance. They spent the evening happily to
gether. Carole turned down several requests to
dance with other men. It was only “when the ball had rolled beyond its
midnight
peak that she and Simon were
surrounded by half a dozen of her
friends
insisting that they all go off together to a livelier spot.
Simon left
it up to Carole, who had no particular fondness for
the overpowering elegance of the ballroom.

“Go ahead, and we’ll
meet you there,” she told the other
couples.
“I want to tell Daddy good night and introduce him to
Simon.”

He was mildly surprised
when, at the elevators, she pressed an
up button.

“We live here,”
she explained. “In the penthouse apartment.
Daddy
glommed on to it when the hotel was being built.”

“I’ve always wanted
to see how the under-privileged people make out,” he murmured.

“Where are you
staying?”

“Here, too, as a
matter of fact. But not in quite such grandeur.
I took a room here
because the ball was here and it seemed to save a lot of running about, and
because they have a garage in
the
basement.”

“So you don’t mind a
few modern comforts either.”

She found her father in a
book-lined library off the formal
drawing room,
sitting in leather-upholstered comfort with three
guests
of about his own age and a considerably younger fourth
—a
tall hunched man with long arms and a watchful pair of
ball-bearing
eyes deeply imbedded under dark bushy brows—
standing
behind him.
Bodyguard?
Simon immediately asked
himself,
for the standing man’s face would have seemed more at
home
on a post-office wall than here in the company of the thoroughbred rich.

“Daddy, this is Mr Templar. He’s been
taking beautiful care
of your only daughter
all evening, so I thought you’d like to ex
press your gratitude.” She turned to Simon. “Daddy’s always
petrified I’m going to fall in with evil
companions, or be kid
napped or
something.”

Angelworth put down his
liqueur and rose from his green
wing-backed chair to
shake hands. He combined an air of com
mand
with a natural modesty which made him both impressive
and
likeable at first sight. He was in his late fifties, almost as tall
as the Saint, with a carefully tended mane of white hair which
contributed to making his head seem larger than the heads of
the people around him. His mouth was broad and strong, but
softened into an almost benign smile.

“If you’ve been
making my daughter’s life happier I’m particularly pleased to meet you,”
he said.

“And I’m particularly
pleased to meet the father of the
young lady who’s
given me such a delightful evening,” Simon replied with equal
graciousness.

The names of the others,
punctiliously introduced, would have
needed no
references from Dun & Bradstreet, with the exception
of the craggy-browed fourth, whose name was Richard Hamlin
and whose handshake and grunt were as short on urbanity as
his appearance.

“My secretary and
aide-de-camp,” Angelworth explained.

Carole surveyed the other
three suspiciously.

“You string-pullers
aren’t still trying to talk my father into
running
for governor, are you?”

Hyram Angelworth sat down
with a weary smile.

“I’m afraid that’s
what they’ve been trying to do,” he said.

“Well, you just leave
him alone,” Carole said. “He doesn’t
need all those dirty
politics, and he’s doing plenty of good just
as
he is.”

“Can’t promise you
that,” one of the men said. “We need him.
There
aren’t many born winners round these days.”

Angelworth raised a hand.

“Don’t worry, dear,” he said to
Carole, “the answer will go
right on
being no. I’m better as a gadfly than a demagogue.”

“As long as that’s
understood,” his daughter said with mock
sharpness,
“Simon and I can leave you to take care of yourself.
The gang’s going out for a little hot jazz. I’ll be home in
a couple of hours.”

Her father said good-bye
in a barely perceptible tone of resig
nation, like a
would-be disciplinarian who has long ago given
up
on a recalcitrant subject.

“You notice,”
Carole murmured to Simon when they were
out
of earshot, “that I didn’t say we were going
with
the gang.”

“Oh? Do you have a
different plan?”

“I don’t need all
that noise tonight any more than my father
needs
to hornswoggle the masses into giving him the honour of
having mud slung at him for four years. Let’s just find a
quiet
dump where we won’t be noticed and have a cup of
coffee. It
isn’t every day I meet somebody
interesting enough to bother
talking to.”

“What, in these
rags?”

“After that second
crack, I’ll change into something less
gaudy.
You do the same, and I’ll meet you in the garage in ten
minutes. And I do mean ten minutes.”