Salvage for the Saint

Leslie Charteris’

Salvage for the Saint

Original teleplay by

John Kruse

Adapted by

Peter Bloxsom

G.K. HALL & CO.

Boston, Massachusetts

1988

The villains and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no actual relation to any real person or happening.

Copyright Š 1983 by Leslie Charteris. All rights reserved.

Published in Large Print by arrangement with John Farquharson Limited.

G.K. Hall Large Print Book Series. Set in 16 pt Plantin.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Charteris, Leslie, 1907-

[Salvage for the Saint]

Leslie Charteris’ Salvage for the Saint / original teleplay by John

Kruse ; developed by Peter Bloxsom.

p. cm.—(G.K. Hall large print book series)

(Nightingale series)

ISBN 0-8161-4631-4

1. Large type books. I. Kruse, John. II. Bloxsom, Peter.
   

III. Title. IV. Title: Salvage for the Saint.

[PR6005.H348S47 1988]
823’.912—dcl988—16292

Forenote

After some thought, I am making a brief intrusion here, in preference to a footnote later.

This offspring of the successive talents of John Kruse and Peter Bloxsom, whom attentive readers will recognise as seasoned veterans of the latter-day genre of Saint adventures, is linked with just one feature unique among these semi-pastiches with which I have tried to beguile you over the last few otiose years.

Besides performing my usual role of meddler with the original television script (in which I frankly had a lot less authority than I had in revising this book which is now based on it) I had on this occasion the rare pleasure of spending a couple of weeks with the crew shooting in the south of France, making myself fractionally useful in suggesting and scouting locations and so forth. I even had the privilege of making a short but necessary voyage on the luxury yacht chartered at awful expense to play the part of the Phoenix—an experience in sampling how a real millionaire can live which I shall never forget.

But to make the memory even more special, by being on the spot I was able to con the amiable director into letting me walk through a tiny and totally unimportant scene. Thereby consigning myself, for once only, to video immortality.

No prizes are offered for spotting me in this extraordinary appearance. But when the TV Movie is re-run—as it assuredly will be—this Forenote might just give you a hint of what to watch for.

Or maybe not.

St Jean — Cap Ferrat

October 1982L.C.

Contents

I How Simon Templar anticipated a Lady’s Plea,
and Charles Tatenor went Astray.1

II How Arabella began a Journey, and Simon went
Beachcombing.54

IIIHow the Saint missed the Boat, and Arabella came down to Earth.102

IVHow Inspector Lebec introduced Himself, and
Captain Finnegan accepted Coffee.148

V How Jacques Descartes played a Game, and Simon
Templar went Under.184

VI How Bernadotti was Discovered, and the Phoenix
was set loose.238

VII How there was a Three-way Reunion, and the
Saint saw more Fun Ahead.279

I: How Simon Templar anticipated a Lady’s Plea, and Charles Tatenor went Astray.

-1-

Like so many of Simon Templar’s hair-raising adventures, it began with a beautiful girl and led him to a merry-go-round of battle and murder and sudden death, and there was booty by the ton.

All of which, from Simon Templar’s point of view, was very much as it should have been. Those were the established ingredients of his life, and he could hardly remember a time when he would have wanted it otherwise.

But the ingredients never came together in the same way twice: it was never exactly the mixture as before. And that was a blessed bounty, a sublimely serendipitous piece of good organisation for which Simon Templar —who was also known as the Saint—never ceased to offer up thanks to whatever wise providence might have been responsible. To him the exhilarating wine of adventure had it own numberless subtleties of region and vintage, so that it always tasted fresh and bracing on his palate and made every escapade different and new.

This one was to take him from the Isle of Wight, that Mecca of yachtsmen and sandcastle-builders off the south coast of England, and down through France to the Mediterranean on a freewheeling chase across land and sea, and under the sea, and into the past …

He was finishing off some vigorous bedtime calisthenics with a toothbrush when he heard the soft but insistent knocking on the door of his Cowes hotel room.

He shrugged into his dressing gown, a positively shrieking green foulard effort, and made his way to the door. The knocking stopped briefly; then it re-started. The Saint paused, with his hand hovering over the doorknob.

His immediate impulse, the impulse of his temperament, was to open up without preamble and confront the late visitor. But one result of his years of notoriety was that it was never close season on Saints these days, and there were some hard against-the-grain compromises he had had to make for the sake of staying alive, which he considered an important priority. One of these reluctant compromises was the habit of challenging people who knocked on his door— especially people who knocked on his door late at night.

He spoke, aiming a short sharp question through the wood.

“Who is it?”

He would have been the first to agree that it wasn’t a startlingly original utterance. But it did have a certain workmanlike quality to it. It was a practical and utilitarian piece of dialogue answering perfectly to the needs of the moment.

The reply came in a vibrantly confidential whisper that thrilled its way back to him after the most fractional of hesitations.

“Mata Hari.”

It was good enough for the Saint. He opened the door—and saw at once that she was as gratifyingly beautiful as all uninvited late callers ought to be.

For her part, the first thing that hit her eye was his eye-searing robe; and it was a measure of her self-control that she confined her reaction to a single blink.

“Come right in—sunshine,” he invited, and led the way.

She puzzled a moment over the endearment as she followed him into the room, which in point of strict accuracy wasn’t a room only but a suite, and wasn’t even a suite only but nothing less than the most luxurious and expensive suite in the hotel. Simon Templar was sometimes inclined to extravagance, though he used an economical gesture now to indicate a chair.

“Your drink will be—let me guess—a gin and tonic. Am I right?”

Even as he spoke he was already at work at the compact cabinet, mixing the drink with an unhurried adroitness that few men could have matched without years of professional practice. By the time she nodded her agreement with his selection the ice was already tinkling into the glass; and it seemed only a bare few seconds later that the Saint was lounging back in a chair facing her with his own choice of alcoholic refreshment in his hand.

He studied her gravely for a few moments.

“Mata Hari,” he said, by way of explaining his greeting. “Either from my encyclopaedic knowledge of eastern languages or else because I came across the fact in a magazine somewhere, I happen to know that the words come from the Malay. Where English uses the crude and unimaginative monosyllable ‘sun’, the Malays say ‘mata hari’—literally, it means ‘eye of the day’.”

“Oh,” she said, smiling. “How poetically oriental.”

“And in your case, I’d say, quite appropriate. I’ll bet you bring a lot of sunshine to a lot of old men’s dreams simply by strolling along by the harbour wall.” He paused, eyeing her reflectively. “That is, when you’re not too busy with the binoculars.”

She laughed, softly and with a kind of lilting warmth.

Of course, she’d known all along that he must have been aware of her. Four days ago he had come to the island bringing a lithe zestful fitness and a little leashed tiger of a powerboat, and in those four days she had hardly missed a single chance of watching him in action.

The Saint, who did many things superlatively well, was tipped as an eminently watchable challenger in tomorrow’s big race to Penzance, the first since the war; and she, it seemed, had decided that he was just as watchable during the run-up period. Like most of the other serious competitors, he and his navigator had got there a few days in advance for preparatory fine-tuning of both boat and men. It was a time to get oriented to the surroundings and the race atmosphere, too—and maybe to suss out the competition a little …

Just as the girl, for reasons of her own, had been sussing out Simon Templar.

At close quarters she had watched discreetly, cool and elegant behind inscrutable dark glasses on the hotel or Yacht Club terrace or on a bench near the Southampton ferry just along from where his boat was moored. At long range she’d resorted to the binoculars, which ostensibly followed her husband’s conspicuous and massively powered yellow cruiser but panned a frequent deviation, sweeping along the Solent skyline till they found, and locked on, the creamy bow wave and flashing red hull of Simon Templar’s Privateer.

She had studied his bronze six feet two inches of superb physical condition and noted the relaxed yet alert way he carried that steel-sprung muscular frame. Her gaze had lingered on the chiselled piratical features and tried to fathom the elusive light of something like mockery that danced in his reckless blue eyes. She had measured objectively the supreme confidence and competence of his fluid movements, the style and elan and sheer exuberance with which he did even the simplest thing.

And she had approved.

Of course, she had known him before, in the legend. He was the incomparable modern swashbuckling hero, the twentieth century’s brightest buccaneer, the preposterously handsome knight errant whose exploits around the world had made more headlines than some Hollywood starlets had had affairs. His reputation, in short, was as familiar to her as to any of a hundred million of so newspaper readers—to say nothing of Charteris devotees—from Los Angeles to Liverpool, from Tasmania to Togoland.

But now she had seen him for herself, and she had approved.

And he would have had to be at least moderately unobservant—which he was not—to have been unaware of her thorough scrutiny.

“You noticed, then?” she said, because it was something to say.

The Saint didn’t reply at once—or not in words.

He allowed his glance to flit over her— rapidly, but deliberately and pointedly. The travel of that impudent gaze began at her red-gold hair, which was styled in a simple but perfect upsweep; it went on past a face that neither needed nor apparently received much help from artifice but which could still have launched a thousand powerboats; it took in a series of feminine curves which are best described as ripe, correctly positioned, and expensively coutured; and it continued to her ankles, whose sculptural virtues would have defeated the pens of much more highly paid chroniclers than this. And having completed that comprehensive downward voyage, the Saint’s shameless gaze embarked on the return.

An inspection as frank as that could easily have seemed rude, but coming from him it somehow didn’t. He had a feel for these things, seeming to know by effortless instinct how to flatter a civilised woman without running too much risk of offending her. As his eyes swept back up to her face, completing a survey the whole of which had taken a bare few seconds, she met his gaze again calmly without flinching or reddening.

He said simply:

“Yes, I noticed you. I’m sure you know just how beautiful you are.”

It could have been a barbed compliment, but wasn’t. He said it without any imputation of vanity on her part or any embarrassment for himself. He made it sound the most natural remark in the world; and he went on in the same candid way.

“Let’s face it, being inconspicuous isn’t your strong suit. And neither is modesty mine. Sure, I saw you giving me the onceover … and the twice-over. And I’d’ve been as flattered as hell except for one thing.”

She raised an eyebrow in query. She was still smiling.

“A certain notoriety,” he said. “One of whose effects is to make strangers stare a bit from time to time. Even beautiful redheads whom I might be only too pleased to imagine were interested in me simply as a man. Your inspection was certainly rather more persistent than most, though. So I had to reckon with the possibility that you’d be around knocking on my door before long. But I also had to reconcile myself to the fact that, if you did come, it almost certainly wouldn’t be on account of my irresistible manly torso … Mrs Tatenor.”

He threw out the name lightly, knowing it would be no surprise to her that he knew it.

“It’s Arabella,” she said quickly. “But of course you’ve seen me with Charles.” There was a mischievous twinkle in her eye as she went on. “In fact, I seem to remember that you were close enough to our party in the clubhouse yesterday to have seen that I was drinking … gin and tonic.” The Saint sighed.

“You have no faith in my omniscience,” he said sadly.

She eyed the tough-looking broad-shouldered figure swathed in dazzling green who lounged before her, and her lips curved in an enigmatic half-smile.

“No. Only in your—more human powers. And I’ll have you know that your irresistible manly torso does have something to do with that.”

He raised a shocked eyebrow. “You mean you’ve decided I’m man enough for—for whatever it is you have in mind?”

“Even that Noel Coward outfit can’t disguise the capabilities of the Saint,” she said lightly.

It was an agreeable enough game, he thought, this fencing with double entendres. But it wasn’t getting them very far or fast along the road she’d started on when she’d decided to call on him.

“By the way, how did you know my room number?” he asked casually.

She eyed him in amusement.

“I asked the desk clerk when I came in. Isn’t that what you’d have done?”

The Saint took a thoughtful pull at his drink.

“Probably. But I’m not a married lady with a reputation to look after.”