Trust the Saint (20 page)

“But if Nessie has been here all this time, why wasn’t she reported much longer ago?”

“She was. You heard that story about St Columba. And if you think only modern observations are worth paying attention to, several reliable sightings were recorded from 1871 onwards.”

“But there was no motor road along the loch until 1933,” Bastion managed to contribute at last, “and a trip like you made today would have been quite an expedition. So there weren’t many witnesses about until fairly recently, of the type that scientists would take seriously.”

Simon lighted a cigarette. The picture was clear enough. Like the flying saucers, it depended on what you wanted to believe—and whom.

Except that here there was not only fantasy to be thought of. There could be felony.

“What would you have to do to make it an official discovery?”

“We have movie and still cameras with the most powerful telephoto lenses you can buy,” said the woman. “I spend eight hours a day simply watching the lake, just like anyone might put in at a regular job, but I vary the times of day systematically. Noel sometimes puts in a few hours as well. We have a view for several miles in both directions, and by the law of averages an Niseag must come up eventually in the area we’re covering. Whenever that happens, our lenses will get close-up pictures that’ll show every detail beyond any possibility of argument. It’s simply a matter of patience, and when I came here I made up my mind that I’d spend ten years on it if necessary.”

“And now,” said the Saint, “I guess you’re more convinced than ever that you’re on the right track and the scent is hot.”

Mrs Bastion looked him in the eyes with terrifying equanimity.

“Now,” she said, “I’m going to watch with a Weatherby Magnum as well as the cameras. An Niseag can’t be much bigger than an elephant, and it isn’t any more bullet-proof. I used to think it’d be a crime to kill the last survivor of a species, but since I saw what it did to poor Golly I’d like to have it as a trophy as well as a picture.”

There was much more of this conversation, but nothing that would not seem repetitious in verbatim quotation. Mrs Bastion had accumulated numerous other books on the subject, from any of which she was prepared to read excerpts in support of her convictions.

It was hardly 8:30, however, after a supper of cold meat and salad, when she announced that she was going to bed.

“I want to get up at two o’clock and be out at the loch well before daylight—the same time when that thing must have been there this morning.”

“Okay,” said the Saint. “Knock on my door, and I’ll go with you.”

He remained to accept a nightcap of Peter Dawson, which seemed to taste especially rich and smooth in the land where they made it. Probably this was his imagination, but it gave him a pleasant feeling of drinking the wine of the country on its own home ground.

“If you’re going to be kind enough to look after her, I may sleep a bit later,” Bastion said. “I must get some work done on my book tonight, while there’s a little peace and quiet. Not that Eleanor can’t take care of herself better than most women, but I wouldn’t like her being out there alone after what’s happened.”

“You’re thoroughly sold on this monster yourself, are you?”

The other stared into his glass.

“It’s the sort of thing that all my instincts and experience would take with a grain of salt. But you’ve seen for yourself that it isn’t easy to argue with Eleanor. And I must admit that she makes a terrific case for it. But until this morning I was keeping an open mind.”

“And now it isn’t so open?”

“Quite frankly, I’m pretty shaken. I feel it’s got to be settled now, one way or the other. Perhaps you’ll have some luck tomorrow.”

It did in fact turn out to be a vigil that gave Simon goose-pimples, but they were caused almost entirely by the pre-dawn chill of the air. Daylight came slowly, through a gray and leaky-looking overcast. The lake remained unruffled, guarding its secrets under a pale pearly glaze.

“I wonder what we did wrong,” Mrs Bastion said at last, when the daylight was as broad as the clouds evidently intended to let it become. “The thing should have come back to where it made its last kill. Perhaps if we hadn’t been so sentimental we should have left Golly right where he was and built a machan over him where we could have stood watch in turns.”

Simon was not so disappointed. Indeed, if a monster had actually appeared almost on schedule under their expectant eyes, he would have been inclined to sense the hand of a Hollywood B-picture producer rather than the finger of Fate.

“As you said yesterday, it’s a matter of patience,” he observed philosophically. “But the odds are that the rest of your eight hours, now, will be just routine. So if you’re not nervous I’ll ramble around a while.”

His rambling had brought him no nearer to the house than the orchard when the sight of a coppery-rosy head on top of a shapely free-swinging figure made his pulse fluctuate enjoyably with a reminder of the remotely possible promise of romantic compensation that had started to warm his interest the day before.

Annie Clanraith’s smile was so eager and happy to see him that he might have been an old and close friend who had been away for a long time.

“Inspector Mackenzie told my father he’d left you here when he drove away. I’m so glad you stayed!”

“I’m glad you’re glad,” said the Saint, and against her ingenuous sincerity it was impossible to make the reply sound even vestigially skeptical. “But what made it so important?”

“Just having someone new and alive to talk to. You haven’t stayed long enough to find out how bored you can be here.”

“But you’ve got a job that must be a little more attractive than going back to an office in Liverpool.”

“Oh, it’s not bad. And it helps to make Father comfortable. And it’s nice to live in such beautiful scenery, I expect you’ll say. But I read books and I look at the TV, and I can’t stop having my silly dreams.”

“A gal like you,” he said teasingly, “should have her hands full, fighting off other dreamers.”

“All I get my hands full of is pages and pages of military strategy, about a man who only managed to beat Napoleon. But at least Napoleon had Josephine. The only thing Wellington gave his name to was an old boot.”

Simon clucked sympathetically.

“He may have had moments with his boots off, you know. Or has your father taught you to believe nothing good of anyone who was ever born south of the Tweed?”

“You must have thought it was terrible, the way he talked about Mr Bastion. And he’s so nice, isn’t he? It’s too bad he’s married!”

“Maybe his wife doesn’t think so.”

“I mean, I’m a normal girl and I’m not oldfashioned, and the one thing I do miss here is a man to fight off. In fact, I’m beginning to feel that if one did come along I wouldn’t even struggle.”

“You sound as if that Scottish song was written about you,” said the Saint, and he sang softly:

“Ilka lassie has her laddie,

Ne’er a ane ha’ I;

But all the lads they smile at me,

Comin’ through the rye.”

She laughed.

“Well, at least you smiled at me, and that makes today look a little better.”

“Where were you going?”

“To work. I just walked over across the fields—it’s much shorter than by the lane.”

Now that she mentioned it, he could see a glimpse of the Clanraith house between the trees. He turned and walked with her through the untidy little garden towards the Bastions’ entrance.

“I’m sorry that stops me offering to take you on a picnic.”

“I don’t have any luck, do I? There’s a dance in Fort Augustus tomorrow night, and I haven’t been dancing for months, but I don’t know a soul who’d take me.”

“I’d like to do something about that,” he said. “But it rather depends on what develops around here. Don’t give up hope yet, though.”

As they entered the hall, Bastion came out of a back room and said: “Ah, good morning, Annie. There are some pages I was revising last night on my desk. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

She went on into the room he had just come from, and he turned to the Saint.

“I suppose you didn’t see anything.”

“If we had, you’d’ve heard plenty of gunfire and hollering.”

“Did you leave Eleanor down there?”

“Yes. But I don’t think she’s in any danger in broad daylight. Did Mackenzie call?”

“Not yet. I expect you’re anxious to hear from him. The telephone’s in the drawing room—why don’t you settle down there? You might like to browse through some of Eleanor’s collection of books about the Monster.”

Simon accepted the suggestion, and soon found himself so absorbed that only his empty stomach was conscious of the time when Bastion came in and told him that lunch was ready. Mrs Bastion had akeady returned and was dishing up an agreeably aromatic lamb stew which she apologized for having only warmed up.

“You were right, it was just routine,” she said. “A lot of waiting for nothing. But one of these days it won’t be for nothing.”

“I was thinking about it myself, dear,” Bastion said, “and it seems to me that there’s one bad weakness in your eight-hour-a-day system. There are enough odds against you already in only being able to see about a quarter of the loch, which leaves the Monster another three-quarters where it could just as easily pop up. But on top of that, watching only eight hours out of the twenty-four only gives us a one-third chance of being there even if it does pop up within range of our observation post. That doesn’t add to the odds against us, it multiplies them.”

“I know; but what can we do about it?”

“Since Mr Templar pointed out that anyone should really be safe enough with a high-powered rifle in their hands and everyone else within call, I thought that three of us could divide up the watches and cover the whole day from before dawn till after dusk, as long as one could possibly see anything. That is, if Mr Templar would help out. I know he can’t stay here indefinitely, but—”

“If it’ll make anybody feel better, I’d be glad to take a turn that way,” Simon said indifferently.

It might have been more polite to sound more enthusiastic, but he could not make himself believe that the Monster would actually be caught by any such system. He was impatient for Mackenzie’s report, which he thought was the essential detail.

The call came about two o’clock, and it was climactically negative.

“The doctor canna find a trrace o’ drugs or poison in the puir animal.”

Simon took a deep breath.

“What did he think of its injuries?”

“He said he’d ne’er seen the like o’ them. He dinna ken anything in the wurruld wi’ such crrushin’ power in its jaws as yon Monster must have. If ‘twas no’ for the teeth marrks, he wad ha’ thocht it was done wi’ a club. But the autopsy mak’s that impossible.”

“So I take it you figure that rules you officially out,” said the Saint bluntly. “But give me a number where I can call you if the picture changes again.”

He wrote it down on a pad beside the telephone before he turned and relayed the report.

“That settles it,” said Mrs Bastion. “It can’t be anything else but an Niseag. And we’ve got all the more reason to try Noel’s idea of keeping watch all day.”

“I had a good sleep this morning, so I’ll start right away,” Bastion volunteered. “You’re entitled to a siesta.”

“I’ll take over after that,” she said. “I want to be out there again at twilight. I know I’m monopolizing the most promising times, but this matters more to me than to anyone else.”

Simon helped her with the dishes after they had had coffee, and then she excused herself.

“I’ll be fresher later if I do take a little nap. Why don’t you do the same? It was awfully good of you to get up in the middle of the night with me.”

“It sounds as if I won’t be needed again until later tomorrow morning,” said the Saint. “But I’ll be reading and brooding. I’m almost as interested in an Niseag now as you are.”

He went back to the book he had left in the drawing room as the house settled into stillness. Annie Clanraith had already departed, before lunch, taking a sheaf of papers with her to type at home.

Presently he put the volume down on his thighs and lay passively thinking, stretched out on the couch. It was his uniquely personal method of tackling profound problems, to let himself relax into a state of blank receptiveness in which half-subconscious impressions could grow and flow together in delicately fluid adjustments that could presently mould a conclusion almost as concrete as knowledge. For some time he gazed sightlessly at the ceiling, and then he continued to meditate with his eyes closed …

He was awakened by Noel Bastion entering the room, humming tunelessly. The biographer of Wellington was instantly apologetic.

“I’m sorry, Templar—I thought you’d be in your room.”

“That’s all right.” Simon glanced at his watch, and was mildly surprised to discover how sleepy he must have been. “I was doing some thinking, and the strain must have been too much for me.”

“Eleanor relieved me an hour ago. I hadn’t seen anything, I’m afraid.”

“I didn’t hear you come in.”

“I’m pretty quiet on my feet. Must be a habit I got from commando training. Eleanor often says that if she could stalk like me she’d have a lot more trophies.” Bastion went to the bookcase, took down a book, and thumbed through it for some reference. “I’ve been trying to do some work, but it isn’t easy to concentrate.”

Simon stood up and stretched himself.

“I guess you’ll have to get used to working under difficulties if you’re going to be a part-time monster hunter for ten years—isn’t that how long Eleanor said she was ready to spend at it?”

“I’m hoping it’ll be a good deal less than that.”

“I was reading in this book More Than A Legend that in 1934, when the excitement about the Monster was at its height, a chap named Sir Edward Mountain hired a bunch of men and organized a systematic watch like you were suggesting, but spacing them all around the lake. It went on for a month or two, and they got a few pictures of distant splashings, but nothing that was scientifically accepted.”

Bastion put his volume back on the shelf.