The Saint and Mr. Teal: Formerly Called "Once More the Saint" (21 page)

“Hullo,” said the Saint. “Bloke seems to have fallen down.”

The respectable young man who had gone out had stumbled as he stepped down to the road, and at that moment he was sprawled in the dust just beyond the gate. He was clutching one ankle, and his face was turned back towards the veranda with a twisted expression of agony.

Mr. Smithson Smith looked out, then round to the respectable young man’s companion.

“Your friend seems to have hurt himself,” he said. “It looks as if he has sprained his ankle.”

The respectable young man came over to their table arid also looked out.

“I’ll go and see,” he said.

Simon watched him go, inhaling speculatively.

“Staying in the hotel?” he queried.

“Yes,” said Mr. Smithson Smith, with his eyes on the developments below. “They’re staying here.”

“Have they been here long?”

The question was put with perfect casualness.

“About a fortnight,” said Mr. Smithson Smith. “I don’t know much about them. They’re out most of the day-I think they go bathing, but by the look of the basket they take with them you’d think they needed towels enough to dry a regiment.”

“They aren’t very sunburnt,” said the Saint softly, almost as if he were speaking to himself.

He picked up his glass mechanically-and put it down again. The young man with the injured ankle was coming back, limping painfully and leaning on his companion’s arm.

“Silly thing to do, wasn’t it?” he said; and Mr. Smithson Smith nodded with some concern.

“Would you like me to get you a doctor?”

The young man shook his head.

“I’ll just go and bathe it with cold water and rest it for a bit. I don’t think it’s anything serious.”

The three-legged party went on through into the hotel premises; and Simon sat down again and lighted another cigarette. Mr. Smithson Smith’s gentle voice was continuing his interrupted anecdote, but the Saint scarcely heard a word. The narrative formed no more than a vague undercurrent of sound in his senses, a restful background to his working thoughts. In a life like the Saint’s, a man’s existence is prolonged from day to day by nothing but that ceaseless vigilance, that unsleeping activity of a system of question marks in the mind which are never satisfied with the obvious explanations that pass through the torpid consciousness of the average man. To him, anything out of the ordinary was a red light of possible danger, never to be dismissed as mere harmless eccentricity: nine times out of ten the alarm might be proved false, but it could never be ignored. And it seemed odd that two very respectable young men should have attracted attention by carrying an outsize basket of towels; odd, too, that after bathing every day for a fortnight they should still have the soft white bodies of men who have not been free of the muffling protection of clothes for many years… . And then the Saint’s probing suspicions came to a head in a sudden flash of inspiration, and he pulled himself swiftly out of his chair. He was across the bar in a flash, over to the closed door through which the two respectable young men had disappeared; and Mr. Smithson Smith, startled to silence by his abrupt movement, noticed in an eerie moment of perplexity that the Saint’s feet made no sound as they swung over the floor. It was like the charge of a leopard in its smooth powerful noiseless-ness; and then Simon Templar had his hand on the handle of the door, jerking it open, and the young man who had assisted the injured one stumbled and almost fell into the room.

“Come in, brother,” said the Saint heartily. “Come in and have a drink.”

The young man’s face went red, and his mouth opened in a weak grin.

“I-I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I must have tripped or something —”

A thin smile cut into the corners of the Saint’s mouth.

“Sure you must, brother.”

“I’ll-I’ll have a whisky and soda.”

“You’ll have beer!”

The Saint caught up his own glass from the table and thrust it out. He was only a yard from the other, on his toes, indefinably dangerous.

“Drink this,” he said; and the young man went white.

“I-I don’t —”

Simon’s free fist caught him on the mouth and knocked him backwards.

“I’ll have the police on you for this,” blustered the other; and the Saint smiled again.

“Go get him. And don’t be too lavish with your plurals, because there is only one. But ask Abdul what he thinks of the idea first, or you may find yourself unpopular. Now amscray-and if you value your beauty, don’t damage my beer again!”

He seized the respectable young man by the ear and propelled him deftly and vigorously out of the bar; then he turned back to face the outraged stare of Mr. Smithson Smith. The course of events had been so violently sudden and incomprehensible that the manager had been pardonably nonplussed; but by this point at least his path of duty seemed unmistakable.

“Why-really, Templar!” he said, with his quiet voice shaking. “You can’t behave like that here. I shall have to apologize to my guest. I’m afraid you’ll have to leave this bar —”

Simon took his arm calmly, and pointed.

A fly was crawling down the inside of the half-emptied glass of beer which he had just replaced on the table. It was quite unhurried about the journey, after the impudent fashion of flies: perhaps its thirst was of no great dimensions, or perhaps it had been reared in scrupulously well-mannered circumstances. It moved downwards in short little runs, pausing once to wash its hands and once to rub its feet together, in a genteel ecstasy of anticipation. Mr. Smithson Smith’s eye followed it because it was the only moving object in the direction which the Saint had indicated, and there seemed to be nothing else to look at.

Even so, it seemed an extremely trivial spectacle, and he moved his arm restlessly in the Saint’s grasp. But Simon Templar continued to point at it, and there was something dynamic about the immobility of that extended finger. Mr. Smithson Smith watched, and saw the fly reach the level of the beer. It looked around cautiously, and lowered its proboscis delicately into the liquid. For two or three seconds after that it was motionless. And then, without any kind of struggle, it pitched over in a limp somersault and floated quietly on its back, with its legs stretched stiffly upwards…

CHAPTER IV

MR. SMITHSON SMITH blinked and wiped his forehead. His arm relaxed slowly, as if it required a conscious effort to loosen the involuntary contraction of his muscles. He had no idea why the miniature drama that he had seen enacted should have had such an effect on him. It might have been the utter stillness in which it was played out, the unexplanatory silence of the man beside him-anything. But it seemed as if for the last few seconds he had forgotten to breathe, and when it was finished he expanded his chest with an inaudible sigh.

Then the Saint spoke; and his voice jarred the other’s ears by sheer contrast with the silence.

“Don’t tell me your beer’s as potent as all that!”

The manager stared at him.

“Do you mean-do you mean it was drugged?”

“No less, and possibly even some more. We’ll soon see.” With unruffled calm, the Saint fished out the fly with a matchstick and laid it in an ashtray to cool off. ” But I don’t somehow think it was sudden death-that would probably be considered too good for me.”

“But-but-damn it!” Mr. Smithson Smith felt queerly shaken under his instinctive incredulity. “You can’t tell me that Mr. Trape-“

“Is that his name?” The Saint was as cool as an ice pack. “I can’t tell you much about him, but I can tell you that. My dear chap”-he put his hand on the manager’s shoulder for a moment-“can you be expected to guarantee the morals of everyone who stays at your hotel? Can you demand a budget of references from anyone who asks for a room? Of course you can’t. You have to take them at their face value, and so long as they behave themselves while they’re here you aren’t expected to ask them whether their fingerprints are registered at Scotland Yard. No-they just had to find somewhere to stay, and you were unlucky.”

The manager frowned.

“If what you say is true, Templar, I shall have to ask for their room,” he said; and the Saint had to laugh.

“You’ve got your room now, old lad. But whether they’ve left money to pay the bill is another matter.”

He sat on the table with a glance at the fly, which was still sunken in its coma. He found it difficult to think that it could be dead-although, of course, a drug that a man would survive might be fatal to an insect. But his summary of Abdul Osman’s character didn’t fit in with such a clean conclusion. The hot irons that had scored their insult on the Egyptian’s face would call for something much more messy in the way of vengeance-Abdul Osman would not forget, nor would he be so easily satisfied when his chance came. Then why the drug? And why, anyway, the very presence of those two respectable young men, who on Smithson Smith’s own statement had been staying at the hotel for the past fortnight? It seemed improbable that Abdul Osman claimed any of the gifts of necromantic clairvoyance which popular novelists attribute to the “mysterious East.” And yet …

All at once he recognized a slim figure in wide blue trousers walking up from the harbour towards the hotel, and waved to it joyfully out of the window. He was in a state of puzzlement in which he wanted to think aloud, and he could not have hoped for a better audience. But it struck him, while he was waiting for her to arrive, that it was a remarkable thing that he had not seen the two respectable young men making their way hastily towards the harbour, even as he had seen her coming in the opposite direction.

“Look here, Templar,” began Mr. Smithson Smith worriedly; but the Saint interrupted him with a smile of seraphic blandness.

“Excuse me-I’ll be back in a sec.”

He went out and met Patricia at the gate.

“What about a spot of tea, boy?” she suggested; and then the electric gaiety of him opened her eyes, and she stopped.

“Sit down here-this is a conference, but since we aren’t politicians we can’t fix a date for it next year on the other side of the world.” The Saint pulled open the gate, seated himself on the step, and drew her down beside him. “Pat, a very respectable-looking young man, name of Trape, has just put a sleeping draught in my beer.”

“Good Lord-you haven’t drunk it, have you?”

The Saint laughed.

“I certainly haven’t. In fact, I punched the face of Mr. Trape, just to learn him, and kicked him out of the bar-to the pardonable indignation of our friend Mr. Smith. But I think he’s beginning to understand- probably more than I wanted him to. I dropped a line about Abdul Osman while interviewing Mr. Trape that must have made Smith think a bit… . I’ll tell you how it happened. I was having my drink, and these two harmless-looking birds rolled in. They ordered lemonade, or something; and then one of them went out. He walked down the path, tripped on this very spot where we’re sitting, and appeared to sprain his ankle. I saw it happen, and Smith called his pal over to the window. That was when he did it, of course. He wanted an excuse to come over to our table, with both of us looking outside, so he could slip in the dope. That’s what the whole plant was for-and damned well done it was, too. I didn’t see it at all until the injured warrior had been helped back to the hotel and away to his room, and then only because I’m naturally suspicious. I’ll tell you the things that struck me as odd later-never mind them now. But all at once it dawned on me that there was something in my beer that hadn’t been there when I started it, and also that Mr. Trape might be listening outside the door to see what happened. I opened the door, and there he was-so I pushed his teeth in. Episode over.”

“But what was the idea?”

“That’s just what I want to get-and I want it quick.” He was speaking so rapidly that it wasn’t easy for her to pick the facts and deductions out of that vital rush of vivid sentences. “I want to reconstruct what might have happened if I’d drunk the beer. Make holes in it anywhere you can.”

“Go ahead.”

“Right. I drink the beer. I appear to go groggy. Smith registers alarm. Trape hears, and walks innocently in-probably requesting brandy for wounded comrade. Apparently I’ve fainted. Cold water, keys, feathers, smelling salts-all tried and found wanting. Smith departs to summon doctor, leaving me with Trape. Whereupon I’m rushed out of the place —”

“But what happens when Smith comes back?”

“Exactly… . No, that’s easy enough. Trape returns to bewildered Smith, explains that I revived and pushed off. Maybe I saw a man I had to talk to about a dog, or anything like that. Apologies, thanks, and so forth… .Well, where do they take me? Answer: the Luxor, of course-Abdul was watching me through field glasses all the time I was on Stride’s deck. That’s all right till —”

“But there are holes everywhere!” she protested. “Suppose anyone saw him carrying you away?”

The Saint’s keen blue eyes flicked round the scene.

“Abdul’s a clever man-he doesn’t forget much. There’s a donkey and jingle two yards away, isn’t there? And probably Trape hired it for the occasion. He could also have a sack-and I become cold potatoes. Down to the harbour-into a boat-there’d be no hurry. Once he had me in the cart he could leave me there for hours if it was good dope. And even when I was missing for good, his alibi would hold water. I don’t say there was no risk, but it could have been done. And Abdul would be the man to do it. What I want to know is what the scheme is now that I haven’t drunk the beer. Those two birds have been here a fortnight, so they were put here for some other job. Have they finished that job, and are they free to get away? I expect they’d have to consult Abdul, and Abdul wouldn’t approve of bungling. I haven’t seen them come out of the hotel, though I expect they could work round the back of the town-“

He was still trying to frame his thoughts aloud, but actually the thread of them was racing away ahead of his voice. And a new light dawned on him at the same moment. His fingers clamped on Patricia’s wrist.

“Organization-that’s what it is! Gee, I’m as slow as a village concert today!”

In another second he was on his feet and sprinting back to the bar. He entered it from the path as Mr. Smithson Smith came in at the other end.