Saint on Guard (16 page)

“I’ll catch a plane this afternoon and meet you at the Carlton for dinner. I was just wondering what I could find to do.”

He lay on the bed for a little while longer after he had hung up, smoking his cigarette and thinking about several things or perhaps not anything much. But he kept remembering a girl with hair that had been stroked by midnight, and eyes that were all darkness, and lips that were like orchid petals. And that was no damn good at all.

He got up and began to pack.

II

THE SIZZLING SABOTEUR

Simon templar had met a lot of unusual obstructions on the highway in the course of a long and varied career of eccentric traveling. They had ranged from migrant sheep to diamond necklaces, from circus parades to damsels in distress; and he had acquired a tolerant feeling towards most of them—particularly the damsels in distress. But a partly incinerated tree, he felt, was carrying originality a little far. He thought that the Texas Highway Department should at least have been able to eliminate such exotic hazards as that.

Especially since there were no local trees in sight to account for it, so that somebody must have taken considerable trouble to import it. The surrounding country was flat, marshy, and reedy; and the sourish salty smell of the sea was a slight stench in the nostrils. The road was a graveled affair with a high crown, possibly for drainage, and not any too wide although comparatively smooth. It wound and snaked along through alternating patches I of sand and reeds like an attenuated sea serpent which had crawled out of Galveston Bay to sun itself on that desolate stretch of beach, so that Simon had seen the log a longish while before he was obliged to brake his car on account of it.

The car was a nice shiny black sedan of the 1942 or BF (Before Freezing) vintage; but it was no more incongruous on this ribbon of road than its driver. However, Simon Templar was noted for doing incongruous things. Enroute to Galveston via Texas City on Highway 146, he hadn’t even reached Texas City. Somehow, back where the highway forked left from the Southern Pacific right-of-way, Simon had taken an even lefter turn which now had him heading southwards along a most erratic observation tour of the Gulf coastline. A long way from the metropolitan crowding of New York, where he had recently wound up a job —or even of St Louis, where he had been even more recently. Now his only company was the purring motor and an occasional raucous gull that flapped or soared above the marshland on predatory business of its own. Which didn’t necessarily mean that that business was any less predatory than that of Simon Templar, who under his more publicised nickname of The Saint had once left sundry police departments and local underworlds equally flatfooted in the face of new and unchallenged records of preda-toriality—if this chronicler may inflict such a word on the long-suffering Messieurs Funk, Wagnalls, and Webster. The most immediately noticeable difference between the Saint and the seagull was the seagull’s protective parosmia, or perversion of the sense of smell… . Yet the sun was still three hours high, and it was still twenty miles to Galveston unless the cartographer who had concocted the Saint’s road map was trying in his small way to cheer the discouraged pilgrim.

And there was the smouldering blackened log laid almost squarely across the middle of the road, as if some diehard vigilante had made it his business to see that no casehardened voyager rushed through the scenery without a pause in which its deeper fascinations might have a chance to make their due impression on the soul.

Simon considered his own problem with clear blue eyes as the sedan came to a stop.

The road was too narrow for him to drive around the log; and in view of the tire rationing situation it was out of the question to try and drive over it. Which meant that somebody had to get out and move it. Which meant that the Saint had to move it himself.

Simon Templar said a few casual things about greenhorns who mislaid such sizeable chunks of their camp fires; but at the same time his eyes were glancing left and right with the endless alertness hardening in their sapphire calm, and his tanned face setting into the bronze fighting mask to which little things like that could instantly reduce it.

He knew from all the pitiless years behind him how easily this could be an effective ambush. When he got out to move the smouldering log, it would be a simple job for a couple of hirelings of the ungodly to attack him. A certain Mr Matson, for instance, might have been capable of setting such a trap—if Mr Matson had known that Simon Templar was the Saint, and was on his way to interview Mr Matson in Galveston, and if Mr Matson had had the prophetic ability to foretell that Simon Templar was going to take this coastal road. But since Simon himself hadn’t known it until about half an hour ago, it appeared that this hypothesis would have credited Mr Matson with a slightly fantastic grade of clairvoyance.

The Saint stared at the log with all these things in his mind; and while he was doing it he discovered for the first time in his life the real validity of a much handled popular phrase.

Because he sat there and literally felt his blood run cold.

Because the log moved.

Not in the way that any ordinary log would have moved, in a sort of solid rolling way. This log was flexible, and the branches stirred independently like limbs.

Simon Templar had an instant of incredulous horror and sheer disbelief. But even while he groped back into the past for any commonplace explanation of such a defection of his senses he knew that he was wasting his time. Because he had positively seen what he had seen, and that was the end of it.

Or the beginning.

Very quietly, when there was no reason to be quiet, he snappec open the door of the car and slid his seventyfour inches of whipcord muscle out on to the road. Four of his quick light strides took him to the side of the huge ember in the highway. And then he had no more doubt.

He said, involuntarily: “My God …”

For the ember was not a tree. It was human.

It had been a man.

Instead of a six-foot log of driftwood, the smouldering obstacle had been a man.

And the crowning horror was yet to come. For at the sound of the Saint’s voice, the blackened log moved again feebly and emitted a faint groan.

Simon turned back to his car, and was back again in another moment with his light topcoat and a whisky flask. He wrapped the coat around the piece of human charcoal to smother any remaining fire, and gently raised the singed black head to hold his flask to the cracked lips.

A spasm of pain contorted the man, and his face worked through a horrible crispness.

“Blue … Goose …” The voice came in a parched whisper. “Maris … contact … Olga—Ivan—Ivanovitch …”

Simon glanced around the deserted landscape, and had never felt so helpless. It was obviously impossible for him to move that sickening relict of a human being, or to render any useful first aid.

Even if any aid, first or last, would have made any difference.

“Can you hold it until I get some help—an ambulance?” he said. “I’ll hurry. Can you hear me?”

The burned man rallied slightly.

“No use,” he breathed. “I’m goner … Poured—gasoline— on me … Set fire …”

“Who did?” Simon insisted. “What happened?”

“Three men … Met last night—in bar … Blatt … Weinbach … And Maris … Going to party—at Olga’s …”

“Where?”

“Don’t know …”

“What’s your name? Who are you?”

“Henry—Stephens,” croaked the dying man. “Ostrich-skin— leather case—in gladstone lining … Get case—and send … send …”

His voice trailed off into an almost inaudible rasp that was whisked away along with his spirit on the wings of the wind that swept across the flats. Henry Stephens was dead, mercifully for him, leaving Simon Templar with a handful of unexplained names and words and a decided mess.

“And –— damn it,” said the Saint unreasonably, to no better audience than the circling gulls, “why do people like you have to read that kind of mystery story? Couldn’t one of you wait to die, just once, until after you’d finished saying what you were trying to get out?”

He knew what was the matter with him, but he said it just the same. It helped him to get back into the shell which too many episodes like that had helped to build around him.

And then he lighted a cigarette and wondered sanely what he should do.

Any further identification of Henry Stephens was impossible. His hair was all burned off, his hands were barbecued from try- ing to beat out the flames of his own pyre, and the few remnants of his clothes were charred to him in a hideous smelting. Simon debated whether to take the body with him or leave it where it was. He glanced at his watch and surveyed the lonely country about him. There was still no living person in sight, although in the distance he could see a couple of summer shacks and the indications of a town beyond.

Simon moved the body gently to one side of the road, re-entered his car, and drove carefully around it. Then his foot grew heavy on the accelerator until the side road eventually merged with the main highway and took him on to Virginia Point.

It was inevitable that the Saint’s irregular past should have given him some fundamental hesitations about going out of his way to make contact with the Law, and on top of that he had projects for his equally unpredictable future which argued almost as strongly against inviting complications and delays; but he heaved a deep sigh of resignation and found his way to the local police station.

The sergeant in charge, who was sticking his tongue out over a crossword puzzle in a prehistoric and dog-eared magazine, listened bug-eyed to the report of his find, and promptly telephoned the police across the Causeway in Galveston proper.

“I’ll have to ask you to stay here until the Homicide Squad and the ambulance comes over to pick up the corpse,” he said as he hung up.

“Why?” Simon asked wearily. “Don’t you think they’ll bring enough men to lift him? I’ve got business in Galveston.”

The sergeant looked apologetic.

“It’s—it’s a matter of law, Mr—er—”

“Templar,” supplied the Saint. “Simon Templar.”

This apparently meant no more to the local authority than John Smith or Leslie Charteris. He excavated a sheet of paper and began to construct a report along the lines which he had probably memorised in his youth, which had been a long time ago.

“You’re from where, Mr Temple?” he asked, lifting his head.

“Tem-plar,” Simon corrected him, with his hopes beginning to rise again. “I just came from St Louis, Missouri.”

The sergeant wrote this down, spelling everything carefully.

“You got any identification papers on you?”

“What for?” Simon inquired. “It’s the corpse you’re going to have to identify, not me. I know who I am.”

“I reckon so; but we don’t,” the other rejoined stolidly. “Now if you’ll just oblige me by answering my questions—

Simon sighed again, and reached for his wallet.

“I’m afraid you’re going to be difficult, so help yourself, Lieutenant.”

“Sergeant,” maintained the other, calmly squinting at the Saint’s draft cards and driving licenses and noting that the general descriptions fitted the man in front of him.

He was about to hand the wallet back without more than glancing into the compartment comfortably filled with green frogskins of the realm quaintly known as folding money when his eye was caught by the design stamped on the outside of the leather where a monogram might ordinarily have been. It was nothing but a line drawing of a skeletal figure with a cipher for a head and an elliptical halo floating above it. The pose of the figure was jaunty, with a subtle impudence that amounted almost to arrogance.

The sergeant examined it puzzledly.

“What’s this?”

“I’m a doodler,” Simon explained gravely. “That is my pet design for telephone booths, linen tablecloths, and ladies’ underwear.”

“I see,” said the sergeant quite blankly, returning the wallet. “Now if you’ll just sit down over there, Mr Templar, the Gal-veston police will be here directly. It’s only a couple of miles across the Causeway, and you can lead the way to the spot.”

“Aren’t you going to call out the posse to chase the murderers?” Simon suggested. “If they brought a horse for me, I could save some of my gas ration.”

“You got something there,” said the sergeant woodenly. “I’ll call the sheriff’s office while we’re waitin’.”

Simon Templar groaned inwardly, and saw it all closing around him again, the fantastic destiny which seemed to have ordained that nothing lawless should ever happen anywhere and let him pass by like any other peaceful citizen.

He fished out another cigarette while the second call was being made, and finally said: “I’m beginning to hope that by the time you get out there the seagulls will have beaten you to it and there won’t be any body.”

“There’ll be one if you saw one,” opined the sergeant confidently. “Nobody’ll likely come along that beach road again today. Too early in the season for picnics, and a bad day for, fishin’.”

“I trust your deductive genius is on the beam, Captain, but at least two other parties have been on that road today already—the victim and the murderers.”

“Sergeant,” grunted the other. “And I don’t know how you come to be on that road yet.”

Simon shrugged, and spread his hands slightly to indicate that under the laws of mathematical probability the point was unanswerable. Silence fell as the conversation languished.

Presently there was a noise of cars arriving, and installments of the Law filtered into the house. The sergeant put down his crossword puzzle and stood up to do the honors.

“Hi, Bill… . Howdy, Lieutenant Kinglake… . ‘Lo, Yard…, . Hiyah, Dr Quantry… . This is the man who reported that burned corpse. His name is Templar and he’s a doodler.”

Simon kept his face perfectly solemn as he weighed the men who were taking charge of the case.

Lieutenant Kinglake was a husky teak-skinned individual with gimlet gray eyes and a mouth like a thin slash above a battleship prow of jaw. He looked as if he worked hard and fast and would want to hit things that tried to slow him up. Yard, his assistant, was a lumbering impression from a familiar mould, in plain clothes that could have done nicely with a little dusting and pressing. Dr Quantry, the coroner, looked like Dr Quantry, the coroner. Bill, who wore a leather windbreaker with a deputy sheriff’s badge pinned on it, was middle-aged and heavy, with a brick-red face and a moustache like an untrimmed hedge. He had faintly popped light-blue eyes with a vague lack of focus, as if he was unused to seeing anything nearer than the horizon: he moved slowly and spoke even slower when he spoke at all.