The Saint Sees It Through (12 page)

Simon shook hands.

“Simon Simplon, I,” he said.
“Hello, kids. Where away?”

Avalon looked dubious.

“I’m not sure you’re invited on this
jaunt, Simon. The boys
and I were just setting out to give the town a
reddish hue.”

The Saint said: “But I’m your agent. You can’t do anything
without me.”

She raised her eyebrow.

“Anything?”

“Well——
”

The sailors snickered.

Avalon stamped a foot

“You know what I mean.”

“Miss Dexter,” Simon told her
sternly, “according to law, I
am your agent. Perhaps that phrase
carries implications which
need not be considered here. I still say that
I should be able to
advise
you on your goings about.”

She put a curl into her lip.

“Because you’re my agent?”

“Lowly though that may be, yes.”

Joe Hyman, stocky, gray-suited, and Sam
Jeffries, tall in blue,
shifted from one foot to the other.

The Saint could have kissed her. She showed
that perfect combination of camaraderie and contempt, of distrust and dec
lination,
that a temperamental artist exhibits toward her agent.

“How do you do?” the Saint said,
and shook hands.

Joe Hyman was inarticulate, with small hard
hands. He
shook as if his life depended upon it. Sam Jeffries gave
the
Saint
a handful of limp bananas.

“We were just about to go out and put
an edge on the town,”
Jeffries said.

The Saint appeared to consider.

“A sound idea, seems to me. Why don’t we
all do it?”

Each of the boys looked at Avalon. They
obviously didn’t
relish extra company. She looked at them, then at the
Saint. She
shrugged. Sam Jeffries said, “Why not?”

So they all climbed into the Saint’s cab. As
Simon followed
them into the interior, he glanced upward. He saw peering
from a window the face of James
Prather.

4

The first thing the Saint noticed, when he was seated in the
jump
seat—so he could watch through the rear window to see
if they were being
followed—was that Sam Jeffries had drawn
from his pocket a
snub-nosed revolver and pointed it unwaver
ingly at the vitals of
Simon Templar.

“My goodness,” the Saint
ejaculated mildly.

The revolver was held so that Avalon couldn’t see it. She
elevated exciting eyebrows. The Saint looked at
her, then at
Sam Jeffries. He shrugged.
“The meter,” he said, gesturing at his back. “It clicks and
clicks.”

The revolver seemed to waggle approbation.

Sam Jeffries eyed Simon for a long time.

“You’re quite a guy, ain’t you,
bud?”

Simon shrugged.

“Oh—I wouldn’t go that far.”

“We think you’re quite a guy,” Sam
insisted. “We’ve been
told you’re more’n that. You see, I
recognized you. You’ve had
too many photos printed in the papers—Saint.”

Simon smiled, a devil-may-care smile, a
smile as light as butterflies’ worries.

“So? And now that we’re putting everything on the barrel
head, why are you holding that cannon on me?”

Avalon gasped, and glanced sidewise.

“Well,” Sam Jeffries said, “I
guess it ain’t necessary. I really
wouldn’t shoot you without’n you done
more’n you’ve did.”

Simon grinned.

“Thanks. Just to get the record
straight, I really am this young la
dy’s agent. She’s a nightclub
singer.”

Stocky Joe Hyman said: “Huh?”

Sam Jeffries made a threatening motion at his pal.

” ‘F she says she’s a singer, she’s a singer, see? ‘N ‘f he
says
he’s her agent, well, shaddup,
see?”

“I didn’t mean nothing,” Joe said.

“Well, Mister?” Sam said to Simon.

The Saint eyed the gun, the neat blue suit,
the maroon tie,
the long tanned face of Sam Jeffries. He began to move
one
hand toward his inner coat pocket.

“May I smoke?”

“Sure,” Sam said.

The Saint took out his cigarette case, that
case which had
special properties that had before now helped him out of
tighter
spots than this. Not that the case seemed to differ from any
similar
case made of gold and embellished with a tasteful
amount of precious
gems. No, it seemed functional in design, if
a bit on the ornate
side. And functional it was; for one of its
edges could be used
as a razor. The toughest beard would fall
before that
redoubtable keenness. Not only was it a weapon for
cutting bonds or
throats, it contained ammunition which could be applied in sundry ways to the
confusion of the Ungodly.

Interspersed among his regular brand were
other special
cigarettes which could blind, frighten, and fling into
chaos such
unsavory members of the human race as the Saint wished to
blind, frighten, or fling into chaotic action. Each of these ex
plosive tubes consisted almost
entirely of magnesium.

His sensitive fingers felt among the case’s
cargo to light upon a bona fide smoke, which he
lighted. He puffed a
blue cloud at the ceiling and placed the case in a convenient jacket pocket.
There
might be use for it later. In doing so, he felt the outline
of the
small knife, Belle, which nestled in her case up his sleeve.

He eyed Sam Jeffries with that devilish
carelessness that had
made his name not only a by-word but a guide
to independence.

“What do you mean, what now?”

“Well,” Sam said, “I didn’t
recognize you at first. But after
we was in the cab, see, I says, ‘Sam,
that’s the Saint,’ I says. And
I asks myself what would the Saint want of the
likes of us, and
I gets no answer, see. So then I says to myself it’d be a
good
idea maybe if I didn’t take no chances, so I hauls out my rod.”

“Which fails to comfort me,” the
Saint murmured. His inaudible sigh of relief was let out carefully and
imperceptibly. His mind was concerned with one beautiful thought: Sam Jeffries
hadn’t expected him to show up.

Avalon hadn’t, then, tipped them off. If she
were one of the Ungodly, she would have warned the two sailor boys. But she
hadn’t,
and that made for singing in the veins.

He caught up his sudden joy in two mental
hands and looked
at it. It could be a treacherous kind of joy, going off
half cocked
at the most stupid stimuli. Suppose she had warned Sam
Jef
fries. Would he be clever enough to put on an act of this sort?
Perhaps not
but perhaps yes, too. At any rate, Avalon might
have been clever
enough to instigate such an act.

So the whole situation solved nothing, as far
as his estimate
of Avalon was concerned. And it was becoming increasingly
important
that he arrive at a correct estimate of her intents and
purposes.

For himself he had no fear. These were young
men—boys, really, in experience—whom he could overpower, escape from,
or capture,
if he chose to do so. But if Avalon were in this with him, his actions might
explode along a certain line; if she were not, they would certainly explode
along other and more un
comfortable lines.

Not that the end result would be affected. The
Saint felt that
he was travelling along the right road. As soon as the sea
came into the picture, he was convinced that at long last he was ap
proaching
the goal.

For he had mental visions of ships sailing out
of New York
harbour, through the Canals, Panama or Suez, heading west
or
east, but always with the Orient at one end of the run. Small
ships,
3000-ton freighters, carrying cargo to Calcutta; big ships,
20,000-ton
liners of the restless deep, taking men and women to
build a new world
from the shattered remains.

And on these ships he saw men—boys from
Glasgow, oldsters
from the Bronx, trim officers from Liverpool—with an
idea: “Benny sent me.”

That Open Sesame formula of speakeasy days applied here,
too. Benny sent me. The grilled door opened, you
could libate at the bar, the house was yours. Every prospect pleased, and
only the liquor was vile. Here, too, and now, Benny
sent me.
An agent passed over a
parcel, it was stowed away, returned to
New York and eventually to
Benny.

Benny, in this case, being James Prather.

Maybe. In any case, it was vital to learn what
these boys
knew. What cares had they while sailing the seven (Seven
? the
Saint could think of nine, offhand) seas? What errands run,
what
messages carried? Where they unwitting or willing tools
of—of whom?

That was the question.

And so the Saint said, in an effort to relax
Sam Jeffries’ upraised black brows and Joe Hyman’s corrugated forehead:
“Do
you want to see my union card?”

This had not the desired effect on Joe’s
forehead, but Sam
grinned sheepishly.

“That you’re her agent? Naw, I guess
not. Maybe I was a
little quick on the draw, but I seen times when to be
slow was
to be too
damned slow. Look, Mister, I’m sorry, I guess. What
say we forget it?”

“Would you like to shake
lefthanded,” Simon asked pleasant
ly, “or would
you like to put away that postage stamp pistol?”

Sam dropped it into his jacket pocket,
grinned anew, and gave Simon a hand that was hard as iron.

“Less just have fun, Saint.”

“A pleasure, Sam.”

Avalon went “Phew!” in an explosive
release of tension.

“Pardon my nerves,” she said,
“but these unorthodox introduc
tions have a tendency to throw
me.”

Joe looked at everybody at once, a feat that
did strange things
to his round face.

“Ya mean this guy’s d’ Saint? Th’ guy
what diddles cops
an’ crooks too, all at once? ‘Zat who he is?”

Sam Jeffries gazed patiently at his shipmate.

“Look, we been talkin’ for fifteen minutes
about who he is,
while we run up three bucks on the meter and’ll wind up in
the drink if we don’t tell the guy where to go, so shaddup.”

“I didn’t mean nothin’,” Joe
murmured. “But hell’s—hully
criminy, I mean—the Saint!”

“So he’s th’ Saint, so what? Right now
he’s a guy goin’ along
to put a few belts away. Got any
arguments?”

“Naw, but it’s like—well, you know, well,
hell, I mean
    
“

“Shaddup.” To Avalon, Sam said:
“Uh, Miss Dexter, we
asked you to come along with us, ‘n it seems
to me this oughta
be your party. Whyn’t you tell th’ helmsman where to
throw out the anchor?”

Avalon looked at the Saint. He looked away.
She turned to
Joe, who was still wandering around in wonder at the
Saint’s
being present.

“I’ll go wherever Joe wants to go.”

She was rewarded by one of the most complete
smiles she
had ever seen.

Not that Joe reminded you of a vaudeville
comic hamming romantic embarrassment; there was no calculation in his pleas
ure. It
was just that: pure pleasure. His round face took on a
glow that made it like
a lamp in a mine tunnel.

The Saint took his eyes away from the back
window, through
which he had been scrutinising traffic in their wake, and
let
them rest on Joe. Where would Joe want to go? The Stork? 21 ?
Leon and Eddie’s?
Or some waterfront joint—Bill’s Place, or
some such.

It seemed that Joe was going to require some
time to decide.
He was obviously accustomed to having decisions made for
him:
“Swab the deck,” “Coil that rope,” “Kick that
guy in the kid
neys.” Here was responsibility, and he wasn’t quite
ready for it. If Avalon had simply told him to jump out of the cab window,
there was no doubt in the world that he would have done it. He
might have asked if she wanted
him to do a jackknife or a
belly-buster, but
his final action would have been to drape him
self on the asphalt. But
now there was a choice concerned, he
was so
pleased at having his opinion asked that the fact of the
choice slipped his mind.