The Saint Sees It Through (24 page)

“I bet he did. But I never had to sleep
off a crack on the jaw
before.”

“Pat’s a strong guy. He carried you
upstairs all by himself.”

“I’ve been slugged by strong guys
before. Believe it or not.
But it never felt like this afterwards. I
feel as if I’d been
drugged.”

“You could have been. You were drinking.”

“I was cheat-drinking. I poured the last
one myself. But Zellermann
could have slipped something into my
glass.”

“I suppose he could have, in the
commotion … Stay awake,
Simon. You must!”

“I’m still awake. That’s how I know. If
I’d had it all, you wouldn’t have been able to rouse me now. Hogan stopped that
by slugging me. But Zellermann still thought I’d sleep it off. I
would have,
too, if you hadn’t worked on me.”

“Simon, are you making sense now?”

“I’m- doing everything in the wide world
I can.” It was still
an unforgettable effort to speak concisely
and intelligibly. “Give
me a chance, baby. I’m working at it. I never
was drunk tonight. I sound like it now, but I wasn’t.”

She was close to him and holding him, her
face against his,
as if she was trying to transmit her life and wakefulness
to him
from every inch of her body.

It seemed like a long time; and through all
of it he was
working through fluctuating waves of awareness to cling
on to
the wandering balloon that was his only actual link to this other
world that
he had to keep touch with against all the cruel vio
lation of a dream and
the fumes of a drug that kept creeping
back to try and steal
away his will.

She said after a few seconds or a thousand
years: “Darling,
you shouldn’t have dressed up with that
moustache.” He knew
that he had to shut out the note in her voice
that hung between
a sob and a hysterical giggle. “It tickles,” she
said.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Remind
me to get rid of it. Any time
when I know what I’m doing.”

She roused up beside him.

“Darling, you won’t go off again now,
will you?”

“No.” He rolled over and rolled up.
The movement sent his
head whirling away from his body on a weird
trajectory that
revolted his stomach. He caught it somehow as it came
back, and held it firmly in his hands. He said meticulously: “Look.
You were
dabbing my face with a wet cloth when I came to. You got the wet cloth from
somewhere. Where?”

“There’s a bathroom. Here.”

Her fingers slid into his hand. He went
stumbling through
the dark where she led him, as if his limbs didn’t belong
to him
any more.

Then he was alone for a while.

A while during which he used every trick and
help that his
experience could lend to him. Plus an overdose of aspirin
from
a bottle which he found in a cabinet over the washbowl.

Plus an effort of will that tore every nerve
in his body to
shreds and put it painstakingly together again. He never
quite
knew how he accomplished that. Part of it came from the native resilience
of a perfect physique in pluperfect condition, the in
estimable reserves of
a phenomenal athlete who hadn’t been out of training for sixteen years. Part of
it came from an uncon
querable power of mind that would have torn
every cell of its
habitation apart and remodelled it to achieve the
resuscitation
that had to be achieved. The Saint didn’t know, and had no
sort of inward power to waste on analysing it. He only knew
that it
took every atom of inward power that he could gouge
out of himself, and
left him feeling as if he had been drawn
through a steam
wringer at the end. But he had done what he
had set himself to
do; and he knew that also.

He didn’t even know how long it took; but he
knew he had done it when he was finished.

He knew it when he turned out the light in the
bathroom
and ventured back into the dark to find Avalon, feeling
strange
ly light and vacuous in his bones, but with his mind queerly
cool and
alive, as if the discipline had purged and polished it to
stratospheric
limpidity and translucence.

He knew it when she was still waiting for
him, and their
hands met in the blackness that was not blind any more,
and
they sat side by side on the edge of a bed, and he could touch
the warmth
of her hair and say: “It’s okay now, Avalon. Honestly. Everything’s under
control. Now tell me——
”

“How did you do it?” she asked,
huskily, and close to him,
but not leaning on him. “Why were you
putting on the act, and
what are you doing here?”

“I bought myself a costume and some war-paint,” he said
lightly, “and here I am, because I was invited. The important
thing is—what were you doing, trying to wake me up
in the
middle of the night?”

“I was afraid,” she said, very quietly now.

He could feel the tenseness of her like a strung wire beside
him; but he said nothing, keeping her hand
steadily in his hand
and his shoulder
lightly against hers, until she went on.

“I told you why I came here.”

“I remember.”

“I had a scare when I saw Zellermann.
Nobody had said any
thing about him, which they could hardly have helped
doing
unless they were holding out on purpose. But I didn’t want to
be silly,
so I just tried to pass it off. You heard me. And I
thought, Ferdy didn’t count at all, and
you and Pat were two
outside guys who
couldn’t have been mixed up in anything, and
nothing much could happen while you were around. But I was
scared, in a silly way, inside. And then, when
Pat picked on you
for no reason at
all, it all came up again.”

“I know,” said the Saint. “And
then?”

“Then I just tried to talk myself out of
it, but I didn’t get
very far with that. But us Dexters never know
when to say
Uncle
…
So then I went to bed when everybody
else did,
when Pat
had broken everything up anyway. I thought I could
go to sleep and forget it; but I couldn’t
…
I just lay awake
and listened… . And nobody else seemed to go to
bed. No
body tried to open my door,
which I’d locked, being a bright girl; but every time I was nearly asleep I
could hear people
creeping about and
muttering. And it never sounded like the
sort of noises they’d make if they were just trying to go
on
with a party. And I went on being afraid all the time. I’m a very
imaginative character, don’t you think?”

“No,” he said. “Not any more
than you should be.”

“So finally I thought I just had to
talk to somebody safe and
ordinary again, and I thought you and Pat
were the best bet there was. I didn’t know what on earth I’d have said to you
when I got here, but I’d have thought of something. I always
can, being
an old hardened expert… . But when I crept in
here, and had the
light on for a moment, and Pat hadn’t been
to bed at all, and you
seemed to be out for keeps as Zellermann
said you would be—I
suppose I had a moment of panic. So
…
Simon, will you forget
me being so stupid? I’m not usually like
this. But it’s sort of
ridiculous, after everything that’s gone on,
for this to be
you.”

The Saint seemed to have arms vaguely attached
to his body,
one of them pressing her against him and the other lying
across
his lap and becoming conscious of something sharp-edged and
metallic in
his pocket—something that was definably not small change creased into a fold of
his trousers. Something that both
ered his forearm and his thigh
together, so that he put his hand
into his pocket to fumble and identify
it, while he was talking.
… He still had to cling on to every item
of his hard-won
clarity, inch upon inch.

He said: “Avalon, I’ve got to tell you
two or three things as
sharply as I can make it. I’ll fill in the
details later, when we
have time. If we have time. But probably you
can do that for yourself anyway.”

She said: “Yes, darling.”

“If you can’t, you’ll have to take my
word for it. We’re right
in the middle of a situation where human life
is cheaper than
the air. I’m going to try to make sense, and I want you to
listen
closely. I’m sure I can’t do it twice.”

“I won’t interrupt,” she said.

The Saint fastened his mind on what he wanted
to say. He forced himself with tremendous effort to expand the phrase
“Benny
sent me” into a broad picture.

“The relationship between 903 Bubbling
Well Road in Shang
hai and Dean’s Dock and Warehouse Company in Brooklyn is
not
apparent on any map. But it’s there. I know it. I came along
on this
clambake to snap the cord that ties those two locations
together.
This joint is where one end of it is anchored. You’ve
got to see the theory
before you can understand the problem.”

He rested for a moment. It was still harder
than he would
have believed to marshal his thoughts.

“Once there was a man who got an idea.
For the sake of convenience let’s call him Dr. Ernst Zellermann, though it may
be
somebody else. His idea was utterly simple: If you can supply
a man with
narcotics you can make him into a tool. The war
shot the dope-smuggling racket into its
proper hell, but revival
on a large scale
was forecast when Hiroshima became a subject
for history books. And that’s where 903 Bubbling Well Road
entered the picture.”

He paused again.

“Let’s assume that some person or
persons glaumed on to the bulk of available opium in the Orient.
Collaborationists, almost certainly. They established a headquarters, stored
their supplies, and awaited the inevitable ending of hostilities. They knew
that merchant ships would soon be coming, and that many of these
ships
would have touched at New York. So Dr. Z collects a pal
or two and sets up a place
here. For the sake of clarity let’s call it Cookie’s Canteen. Merchant seamen
are invited, everything
free, even a roll of
hay with whatever hostess a boy can pro
mote. Our likely character is
wined and dined at Cookie’s Cel
lar,
everything still on the house. If he exhibits certain desirable
larcenous tendencies—which would be revealed
under question
ing by a clever psychiatrist—the
pitch is made. And the Mad
Hatter said
plaintively: ‘It was the
best
butter——
”

Avalon said: “Huh?”

The Saint took another grip on himself,
brought his con
scious mind up from whirling in dark chasms, lifted it
with
every ounce of will power he could command.

“Sorry, I wandered.
…
The pitch
was made. ‘How would
you like to make some extra money, chum, and
here’s a hundred
on account. Just go to 903 Bubbling Well Road and say
Benny sent you. Bring back the packages you’ll be given, bring them
here, and
collect some more money.’
…
So our lad does it.
Now the
sale and distribution of the dope won’t bring in
enough to pay the
overhead of a really big-scale setup like this,
so Operation B goes into effect. A doctor
can supply patients
with narcotics, can
turn them into hopheads more safely than
anybody else. Then, by shutting off the supply, he can get almost
anything in return for more dope to ease the
craving. Blackmail —or services. That’s where Dean’s Warehouse and Docking
Company
is tied up with Operation A, or Shanghai. The hop-
heads knock it over, bring in the sheaves—of furs, jewels, whis
key, whatnot. Or a bank is held up, instead. Or
anything. A
whole empire of crime
begins to spread out from one central
system.”

The Saint sighed. He was weary. Avalon took
his hand in
hers.

“So that’s it,” she said. “That explains a lot of
things I didn’t
understand before. Why they’d
go overboard for some creep
who knew
the difference between port and starboard and nothing else.”