Saint Goes West (7 page)

“They could ask people questions,” Esther said hopefully.

“So can we. We’ve been asking each other questions all the time. If anybody’s lying, they aren’t going to stop lying just because a guy with a badge is listening. What are they going to do-torture everybody and see what they get?”

“They’d put a man on guard, or something,” said Ginny.

“So what? Our friend has waited quite a while already. I’m sure he could wait some more. He could wait longer than any police department is going to detail a private cop to nurseнmaid Freddie. So the scare blows over, and everybody settles down, and sometime later, maybe somewhere else, Freddie gets it. Well, personally I’d rather take our chance now while we’re all warmed up.”

“That’s right,” Freddie gave his verdict. “If we scare whoнever it is off with the police, they’ll only come back another time when we aren’t watching for them. I’d rather let them get on with it while we’re ready for them.”

He looked rather proud of himself for having produced this penetrating reasoning all on his own.

And then his mind appeared to wander, and his eyes changed their focus.

“Hey,” he said in an awed voice. “Look at that, will you?” They looked, as he pointed. “The babe down by the pool. In the sarong effect. Boy, is that a chassis! Look at her!”

She was, Simon admitted, something to look at. The three girls with them seemed to admit the same thing by their rather strained and intent silence. Simon could feel an almost tangible heaviness thicken into the air.

Then Ginny sighed, as if relief had reached her rather late.

“A blonde,” she said. “Well, Lissa, it’s nice to have known you.”

Freddie didn’t even seem to hear it. He picked up his glass, still staring raptly at the vision. He put the glass to his lips.

It barely touched, and he stiffened. He took it away and stared at it frozenly. Then he pushed it across the table toнwards the Saint.

“Smell that,” he said.

Simon put it to his nostrils. The hackneyed odor of bitter almonds was as strong and unmistakable as any mystery-story fan could have desired.

“It doesn’t smell like prussic acid,” he said, with comнmendable mildness. He put the glass down and drew on his cigarette again, regarding the exhibit moodily. He was quite sure now that he was going to collect his day’s wages without much more delay. And probably the next day’s pay in adнvance, as well. At that, he thought that the job was poorly paid for what it was. He could see nothing in it at all to make him happy. But being a philosopher, he had to cast around for one little ray of sunshine. Being persistent, he found it. “So anyway,” he said, “at least we don’t have to bother about the servants any more.”

7

IT WAS a pretty slender consolation, he reflected, even after they had returned to the house and he had perfunctorily questioned the servants, only to have them jointly and severнally corroborate each other’s statements that none of them had left the place that afternoon.

After which, they had all firmly but respectfully announced that they were not used to being under suspicion, that they did not feel comfortable in a household where people were frequently getting stabbed at, shot at, and poisoned at; that in any case they would prefer a less exacting job with more regнular hours; that they had already packed their bags; and that they would like to catch the evening bus back to Los Angeles, if Mr. Pellman would kindly pay them up to date.

Freddie had obliged them with a good deal of nonchalance, being apparently not unaccustomed to the transience of doнmestic help.

After which the Saint went to his room, stripped off his riding clothes, took a shower, wrapped himself in bath robe, and lay down on the bed with a cigarette to contemplate the extreme sterility of the whole problem.

“This ought to learn you,” he told himself, “to just say NO when you don’t want to do anything, instead of making smart cracks about a thousand dollars a day.”

The servants weren’t ruled out, of course. There could be more than one person involved, taking turns to do things so that each would have an alibi in turn.

But one of the girls had to be involved. Only one of them could have poisoned Freddie’s drink at the Tennis Club. And any one of them could have done it. The table had been small enough, and everybody’s attention had been very potently concentrated on the sarong siren. A bottle small enough to be completely hidden in the hand, tipped over his glass in a casual gesture-and the trick was done.

But why do it then, when the range of possible suspects was so sharply limited?

Why do any of the other things that had happened?

He was still mired in the exasperating paradoxes of partial sense, which was so many times worse than utter nonsense. Utter nonsense was like a code: there was a key to be found somewhere which would make it clear and coherent in an inнstant, and there was only one exact key that would do it. You knew that you had it or you hadn’t. The trouble with partial sense was that while you were straightening out the twisted parts you never knew whether you were distorting the straight ones…

And somewhere beyond that point he heard the handle of his door turning, very softly.

His hand slid into the pocket of his robe where his gun was, but that was the only move he made. He lay perfectly still and relaxed, breathing at the shallow even rate of a sleeper, his eyes closed to all but a slit through which he could watch the door as it opened.

Esther came in.

She stood in the doorway hesitantly for a few seconds, looking at him, and the light behind her showed every line of her breath-taking body through the white crepe negligee she was wearing. Then she closed the door softly behind her and came a little closer. He could see both her hands, and they were empty.

He opened his eyes.

“Hullo,” she said.

“Hullo.” He stretched himself a little.

“I hope I didn’t wake you up.”

“I was just dozing.”

“I ran out of cigarettes,” she said, “and I wondered if you had one.”

“I think so.”

It was terrific dialogue.

He reached over to the bedside table, and offered her the package that lay there. She came up beside him to take it. Without rising, he struck a match. She sat down beside him to get the light. The negligee was cut down to her waist in front, and it opened more when she leaned forward to the flame.

“Thanks.” She blew out a deep inhalation of smoke. She could have made an exit with that, but she didn’t. She studied him with her dark dreamy eyes and said: “I suppose you were thinking.”

“A bit.”

“Have you any ideas yet?”

“Lots of them. Too many.”

“Why too many?”

“They contradict each other. Which means I’m not getting anywhere.”

“So you still don’t know who’s doing all these things?”

“No.”

“But you know it isn’t any of us.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Why do you keep saying that? Ginny was with you all the time this afternoon, and I couldn’t have had a gun on me, and Lissa couldn’t have followed us and been at the Tennis Club too.”

“Therefore there must be a catch in it somewhere, and that’s what I’m trying to find.”

“I’m afraid I’m not very clever,” Esther confessed.

He didn’t argue with her.

She said at last: “Do you think I did it?”

“I’ve been trying very conscientiously to figure out how you could have.”

“But I haven’t done anything.”

“Everybody else has said that too.”

She gazed at him steadily, and her lovely warm mouth richened with pouting.

“I don’t think you really like me, Simon.”

“I adore you,” he said politely.

“No, you don’t. I’ve tried to get on with you. Haven’t I?”

“You certainly have.”

“I’m not awfully clever, but I try to be nice. Really. I’m not a cat like Ginny, or all brainy and snooty like Lissa. I haven’t any background, and I know it. I’ve had a hell of a life. If I told you about it, you’d be amazed.”

“Would I? I love being amazed.”

“There you go again. You see?”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t kid you.”

“Oh, it’s all right. I haven’t got much to be serious about. I’ve got a pretty face and a beautiful body. I know I’ve got a beautiful body. So I just have to use that.”

“And you use it very nicely, too.”

“You’re still making fun of me. But it’s about all I’ve got, so I have to use it. Why shouldn’t I?”

“God knows,” said the Saint. “I didn’t say you shouldn’t.” She studied him again for a while.

“You’ve got a beautiful body, too. Alllean and muscular. But you’ve got brains as well. I’m sorry. I just like you an awнful lot.”

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

She smoked her cigarette for a few moments.

He lighted a cigarette himself. He felt uncomfortable and at a loss. As she sat there, and with everything else in the world put aside, she was something that no man with a proper supply of hormones could have been cold to. But everything else in the world couldn’t be put aside quite like that …

“You know,” she said, “this is a hell of a life.”

“It must be,” he agreed.

“I’ve been watching it. I can think a little bit. You saw what happened this afternoon. I mean—”

“The blonde at the Tennis Club?”

“Yes … Well, it just happened that she was a blonde. She could just as well have been a brunette.”

“And then-Esther starts packing.”

“That’s what it amounts to.”

“But it’s been fun while it lasted; and maybe you take someнthing with you.”

“Oh, yes. But that isn’t everything. Not the way I mean. I mean…”

“What do you mean?”

She fiddled with a seam in her negligee for a long time.

“I mean … I know you aren’t an angel, but you’re not just like Freddie. I think you’d always be sincere with peoнple. You’re sort of different, somehow. I know I haven’t got anything much, except being beautiful, but-that’s something, isn’t it? And I do really like you so much. I’d-I’d do anyнthing … If I could only stay with you and have you like me a little.”

She was very beautiful, too beautiful, and her eyes were big and aching and afraid.

Simon stared at the opposite wall. He would have given his day’s thousand dollars to be anywhere the hell out of there.

He didn’t have to.

Freddie Pellman’s hysterical yell sheared suddenly through the silent house with an electrifying urgency that brought the Saint out of bed and up on to his feet as if he had been snatched up on wires. His instinctive movement seemed to coincide exactly with the dull slam of a muffled shot that gave more horror to the moment. He leapt towards the communiнcating door, and remembered as he reached it that while he had meant to get it unlocked that morning the episode of the obliterated fingerprints had put it out of his mind. Simulнtaneously, as he turned to the outer door, he realised that the sound of a door slamming could have been exactly the same, and he cursed his own unguardedness as he catapulted out on to the screened verandah.

One glance up and down was enough to show that there was no other person in sight, and he made that survey without even a check in his winged dash to Freddie’s room.

His automatic was out in his hand when he flung the door open, to look across the room at Freddie Pellman, in black trousers and unbuttoned soft dress shirt, stretched out on the davenport, staring with a hideous grimace of terror at the rattlesnake that was coiled on his legs, its flat triangular head drawn back and poised to strike.

Behind him, the Saint heard Esther stifle a faint scream; and then the detonation of his gun blotted out every other sound.

As if it had been photographed in slow motion, Simon saw the snake’s shattered head splatter away from its body, while the rest of it kicked and whipped away in series of reнflex convulsions that spilled it still writhing spasmodically on to the floor.

Freddie pulled himself shakily up to his feet.

“Good God,” he said, and repeated it. “Good God-and it was real! Another second, and it’d have had me!”

“What happened?” Esther was asking shrilly.

“I don’t know. I was starting to get dressed-you see?-I’d got my pants and shirt on, and I sat down and had a drink, and I must have fallen asleep. And then that thing landed on my lap!”

Simon dropped the gun back into his pocket.

“Landed?” he said.

“Yes-just as if somebody had thrown it. Somebody .must have thrown it. I felt it hit. That was what woke me up. I saw what it was, and of course I let out a yell, and then the door slammed, and I looked round too late to see who it was. But I didn’t care who it was, then. All I could see was that God-damn snake leering at me. I almost thought I was seeing things again. But I knew I couldn’t be. I wouldn’t have felt it like that. I was just taking a nap, and somebody came in and threw it on top of me!”

“How long ago was this?”

“Just now! You don’t think I lay there for an hour necking with a snake, do you? As soon as it fell on me I woke up, and as soon as I woke up I saw it, and of course I let out a yell at once. You heard me yell, didn’t you, Esther? And right after that the door banged. Did you hear that?”

“Yes, I heard it,” said the Saint.

But he was thinking of something else. And for that once at least, even though she had admitted that she was not so bright, he knew that Esther was all the way there with him. He could feel her mind there with him, even without turnнing to find her eyes fastened on his face, even before she spoke.

“But that proves it, Simon! You must see that, don’t you? I couldn’t possibly have done it, could I?”

“Why, where were you?” Freddie demanded.

She drew herself up defiantly and faced him.

“I was in Simon’s room.”

Freddie stood hunched and stiff and staring at them. And yet the Saint realised that it wasn’t any positive crystallising of expression that made him look ugly. It was actually the reнverse. His puffy face was simply blank and relaxed. And on that sludgy foundation, the crinkles of unremitting feverish bonhomie, the lines and bunchings of laborious domineering enthusiasm, drained of their vital nervous activation, were left like a mass of soft sloppy scars in which the whole synopнsis of his life was hieroglyphed.