The Saint in Persuit (15 page)

“He’s more a watcher than a salesman,” said the Saint. “I told you that there were probably other competitors in this gold rush.”

“But when he got on the plane in New York he couldn’t possibly have known what I was going to do over here.”

“He’d been keeping an eye on you for years, ever since the end of the war. He was one of Hitler’s Gestapo buckos, and he was the one who was on the same trail your father was. When they met, I’m afraid your father got the worst of it.”

“You mean that’s what happened to my father? Curt Jaeger did something …”

Her words trailed off, and Simon nodded.

“I’m afraid Jaeger killed him. But before he did he found out enough about your father’s plans to make him take a long-term interest in your whereabouts.”

Vicky sat limply beside him, staring straight ahead.

“I feel numb,” she said finally.

“And I don’t blame you.”

He was pulling the car into a parking space not far from the Hotel Portal. Vicky thought a minute longer and turned to him.

“Then you won’t blame me for not trusting anybody, including you,” she said. “I won’t necessarily believe you, but why did you start following me?”

“I’m sure you won’t believe me, but it wasn’t with any idea of loot. I knew nothing about it at the start, and I’ve still got no real idea of what you’re after.” He shut off the Volkswagen’s engine and killed the lights. “Somebody in Washington asked me to get in on the fun when the Pentagon heard you were taking a short-notice Grand Tour of your dad’s old stomping grounds. Apparently some tax-supported computer has also had you in its memory bank for a long, long time.”

“Then you were tied in with that army man from the embassy in Lisbon who talked to me?”

“Yes. It was through his good offices that I almost did a swan dive from six flights up on to Lake Geneva’s moonlit shore. I did a few odd jobs for the cloak-and-dagger divisions during the Nazi war and they figured I knew my way around some old alleys better than most. As far as I can tell, they were merely assisting me to try on the old school noose again.”

“You don’t mean they wanted to see you get in trouble?”

“No. They just didn’t care. I walk through the fiery furnace, and if I come out with my skin uncrisped Colonel Wade gets another oak-leaf cluster on his good conduct ribbon.” Simon tapped the oilcloth packet inside his coat. “Which makes me hope very sincerely that more material rewards of virtue are wrapped in this little bundle from the beyond that your father has led us to.”

“I’m glad you said us,” Vicky put in. “When are you going to give those papers or whatever they are back to me?”

Simon shrugged and opened his door.

“I must quibble about the word ‘back’. After all, when did you ever have them?”

When he had helped her out of the car on her side she immediately jerked her hand out of his.

“So you’re planning to steal them from me?” she asked bitterly.

“Before we start using emotional words like ‘steal’, let’s get our ethics straight. We not only don’t know what we’ve got here, but we also have no idea who it belonged to in the first place. When we’ve settled all that we’ll worry about who’s stealing from whom.”

He took her arm, tucked it around his, and walked with her to the entrance of the Portal, purposely keeping himself between her and the dark stain on the sidewalk which was all that remained of Curt Jaeger in that immediate vicinity.

“Meanwhile,” he said, “now that you’ve heard everything I can tell you, why not come clean with the rest of your own story?”

“You know most of it already,” she answered. “My father’s letter didn’t tell me what I’d be looking for, and I don’t even know if that package you’ve confiscated is the end of the line or not.”

They passed across the hotel’s lobby to the reception desk, where Simon asked for his own and Vicky’s keys.

“You’re staying here too?” she asked. “I didn’t even think to wonder …”

“I thought it’d be cozier that way,” Simon said. “It wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out that half the guests in this joint belong to the Vicky Kinian Fan Club and Snooping Society.”

He started them towards the elevators; but just before they reached the closed doors their way was partially blocked by a grave-looking middle-aged man in a neat business suit.

“I beg your pardon,” he said in slightly accented English. “You are Monsieur Simon Templar?”

“Almost always,” the Saint replied.

The stranger held out an identity card and studied Simon’s face with a chess master’s intense grey eyes for any reaction. Simon read the card without obliging him with the slightest twitch of a muscle.

“Ah, yes, Inspector Edval,” he said coolly. “And what are you inspecting this evening?”

“What is it?” Vicky asked, her face a picture of worried confusion.

“This gentleman is a police inspector,” the Saint explained. “He has probably been so kind as to come over to report on his progress in finding our wandering mynah bird.”

Inspector Edval regarded him impassively before continuing.

“Do you know anyone named Curt Jaeger?” he asked.

“I never heard of him,” said Simon positively.

He had shifted his position slightly so that he could observe Vicky without obviously looking at her. Her cheeks had reddened. Her lips parted as if she was about to speak, and then she lowered her gaze to the floor.

“This man, Jaeger, fell to his death from a window in this hotel which could have been yours,” Inspector Edval said, with a precision which implied that his sentence had been rehearsed several times before its debut. “Have you any knowledge of any man who might have fallen from your room?”

“No,” Simon said. “Since I’ve been at the Portal I’ve never noticed anybody passing outside my window in any direction.”

“You possibly were not here when the event occurred. I have already questioned the hotel guests who were in their rooms, just afterwards, but naturally when I saw one of the names of the Saint on the register …”

He shrugged, showing that he felt there was no necessity for further explanation. The Saint agreed with an understanding nod.

“I’m sorry I can’t oblige you,” he said, “but I haven’t murdered anybody for days.”

The inspector seemed not entirely satisfied with the answer.

“Just for the sake of thoroughness, would you allow me to visit your room?” he asked.

“A sociable thought,” said the Saint agreeably. “It would seem downright caddish of me to refuse.”

He gestured towards the nearby elevators, and his two companions preceded him to the now open doors. A few moments later they stepped out and walked a short distance down a corridor to room 614. Simon tried to catch Vicky’s eye, if for no other reason than to try to judge her emotional temperature and the likelihood of her bursting into choruses of confession at the first real pressure from Inspector Edval. But Vicky kept her thoughts to herself and her eyes on the wine-coloured carpet.

“Here we are, Inspector,” said Simon, hospitably swinging open his door. “I’m not quite sure what sort of traces a man leaves behind when he jumps out of a window, but you’re welcome to try to find them if it’ll relieve your mind.”

Edval nodded and grunted his thanks. He first stood in the doorway and peered around the chambers from that vantage point like a respectably attired fox checking out a water hole before risking a direct approach. Simon observed, before closing the door, that a uniformed policeman had happened along the hall at just that moment and decided to pause in his promenade a few yards away. He gave the gendarme a jaunty wave before closing him out and turning back to the inspector.

“Good hunting?” he asked, with benevolent interest.

Edval began to nod repetitively at some agreeable thought of his own, and to shuffle towards the high window at the opposite side of the room. It was a wide window, and the only one in Simon’s quarters. It was, of course, the one through which Curt Jaeger had made his spectacular exit from this vale of tears—the one through which he had so kindly aspired to help the Saint make a similar escape.

The window was closed now. Inspector Edval noted the fact with an intense interest possible only to an investigator who is still undecided whether he is on the right track or not.

“Your Mr Jaeger must be a real magician if he went out by this window,” Simon remarked. “He closed and latched it behind him.”

The inspector scrutinized the window at close range and then opened it.

“But it would not have been a great magic trick for anyone who might have thrown him out,” he said stolidly.

He did not look accusingly at Simon as he spoke. He was leaning cautiously out, staring down through space along the approximate trajectory that Curt Jaeger’s body could have described through the air.

“Why would anybody have wanted to throw him out?” the Saint inquired, with a sidewise look at Vicky, who still refused to notice him. “Was he selling forged football tickets or something?”

Inspector Edval stepped back from the window and faced him.

“He may have been selling watches, according to his credentials,” he said humourlessly. “But I am now having a quick check on his identification made.” He took a deep breath, like a man bolstering his lungs before an unpleasant task. “In the meantime, I must look around this room for signs of a struggle—and I must also ask if I may search you for any signs of having been in a fight. You would have no objection to such a search, I hope?”

For the first time since they had met the inspector, Vicky looked up from the vicinity of her toes and darted a cal-culative glance at the Saint.

“That’s rather an odd request,” Simon said. “It sounds almost like an accusation.”

“I intend no offence,” Edval said politely. “But neither the concierge nor the doorman are quite sure whether you went out before or after Jaeger fell.”

Now it was Vicky Kinian’s turn to take a deep breath—a breath such as the Sphinx might have taken just before breaking its immemorial silence.

“I think I can help you with that, Inspector,” she said.

V: How Vicky’s Inheritance was

Revealed, and Boris Uzdanov

identified Himself.

The Saint could stop a man’s fist with comparative ease, but the problem of stopping a woman’s tongue was another matter, beside which the raising of the Tower of Babel to stratospheric levels would have seemed a casual recreation.

His face, however, betrayed none of the unhappy thoughts which flashfired through his brain when Vicky announced to Inspector Edval her intention of making a statement. He looked at her with the mild resignation of a disinterested teacher to some weakwitted pupil.

Then someone knocked at the door.

“Party-crashers,” Simon said with very genuine cheerfulness.

He went to the door and opened it, revealing an excited-looking policeman—not the one he had first seen, who was still standing guard nearby—with a folded piece of paper in his hand.

“A message on the car radio, Inspector!” he said in rapid French. “It concerns the identification of the dead man.”

The policeman knew the message, and as he handed the paper to Inspector Edval he babbled a resume of its contents. Vicky, who did not understand French, looked blank, while the Saint felt—if he did not actually look—positively beatified.

“Would you mind letting us foreigners in on the secret, Inspector?” Simon asked with halting humility. “After all, you’re using my rather expensive room for your festivities.”

Edval thought for a few seconds before answering. It was already obvious from a scorching glare he had shot at his uniformed subordinate that he had no faith whatever in the Saint’s supposed lack of linguistic ability.

“Jaeger is not Jaeger,” he said, seeming to take an unofficial poetic pleasure in the lilt of the words. Perhaps he was the sort of man who read Baudelaire secretly in bed. “Or perhaps I should say, he was both Jaeger and someone else —a former Gestapo agent named Norden who operated secretly in this country during the ‘39 war. We have rather complete files on such people, including dental charts and scars.”

A transformation was taking place in Vicky’s expression that was subtle but movingly complete. She met the police inspector’s probing eyes directly as he turned to her.

“But you were about to tell me something, mademoiselle,” he said. “And this further identification of the victim certainly does not decrease the chance that he might have been pushed out of a window.”

“I can tell you that he wasn’t pushed out of this window,” Vicky replied in a completely confident voice. “At least not by Mr Templar. Mr Templar and I went out together, and there certainly wasn’t any sign then that anybody had fallen anywhere.”

“And when was that, mademoiselle?” Edval inquired.

“About a quarter to eight,” Simon answered helpfully.

“I would prefer that the lady answer my questions,” Ed-val said.

“About a quarter to eight,” said Vicky.

Edval sighed.

“May I see your passport, please?”

Vicky opened her purse and produced the booklet. Edval bowed slightly as he took it. He looked at each page closely before speaking again.

“Very good, Mademoiselle Kinian. I suppose you are a good friend of Monsieur Templar?”

“I’ve only seen him once before in my life. We met in Lisbon when I first got there and found out we were both coming here—so we made a date.”

She paused, and the Saint nodded acknowledgement.

“I’m a very lucky man, as you can see, Inspector,” he said gallantly.

“I have heard of your remarkable luck,” the inspector replied with some irony. “And this absence of yours this evening—this was because of your date?”

He spoke “date” with quotation marks around it, as a foreign word he found faintly distasteful and amusing.

“That’s right,” said Vicky.

Edval looked at his watch.

“It was not a very long date, was it?”

There was an edge of sarcasm on Simon’s voice as he interrupted.

“I was aware of Swiss efficiency,” he said, “but I never knew that it extended to timing the social engagements of tourists.”

Inspector Edval compressed his lips and exercised self-control.