Thanks to the Saint - Leslie Charteris
the perfect sucker
"DON'T EVER run away with the idea that any fool can play the fool," Simon Templar was heard to say once, without a blush. "To turn a first-class performance as the ideal chump, the answer to the bunco artist's prayer, the way I've played it sometimes to hook them on their own line, takes more talent than ordinary actors win awards for. If you overdo it and make yourself look too utterly stupid, a con man might pass you up simply because you seem too dumb to have even the rudimentary larcenous instinct which he needs for his routine. If you strike any false note, you're likely to scare him into a dead run. You have to ad-lib all your own dialog, and you don't get any rehearsal. And the discouraging thing is that no matter how much you polish your technique, you'll never do so well as when you aren't even trying."
He was certainly not trying when he met Mr Irving Jardane, or Mr Jardane met him; for he had come to the Rogue River in Oregon with no thought of hooking anything more predatory than a few rainbow trout. At such times the Saint had to make no effort to look worthy of his often incongruous nickname. In the complete relaxation which a man can only achieve when solely preoccupied with the leisured assembling of a fly rod and reel in anticipation of a peaceful evening's fishing, all the bronze and sapphire hardness which could edge the Saint's face at some other moments was softened to an almost unbelievable innocence, which a more bemused critic than some of the sharks he had gaffed in his lifetime might have claimed was the revelation of a wonderful childishness of heart which he had never really outgrown.
...
And it was as he turned back from this ablution that he saw the wallet.
It lay on the path just a half step off the pier, where anyone who was not purblind, leaving the pier, could hardly have missed it, or if he did could scarcely have failed to trip over it.
Simon Templar picked it up. Of course.
He looked inside it. Inevitably.
It contained remarkably little of the motley miscellanea which most men accumulate in their wallets.. The remaining contents were most monotonous, consisting of eleven identical pieces of paper currency, each with a face value of $100.
One didn't have to be a detective to assume that the name of Oliphant Quigg was the private affliction of the Saint's newest acquaintance, and that the wallet had squeezed out of his hip pocket when he washed his hands.
...
"Oh, hell," he said, exerting some effort not to ham it into Aw, heck. "Don't let's go overboard about this."
"But I mean it," said Mr Quigg. "If I only had a friend that I knew was absolutely honest, it'd make all the difference in the world to my life."
...
"Look, you see that strip off the top of a newspaper, with the date on? I sealed that in with it so's I couldn't forget."
Simon could not be so ungracious as to point out that anyone who had thoughtfully hoarded a number of old newspapers could have just as easily sealed a dateline of fifty years ago in with a lettuce packaged yesterday. Instead, he regarded the Contraption again with renewed awe.
"Where could I get one of these?" he asked.
...
"What else do you know about him--aside from what he wrote on the card when he registered?"
The proprietor blinked in a shocked but rather puzzled way.
"He was a classmate of mine in college. Worked his own way through--the real hard-driving kind. I watched him start with one truck that he drove himself, and build up that Transamerican Transport System, while I was in business in Portland. He's been coming here for the last five years, ever since I retired and bought this place."
An oddly empty sensation lodged in Simon Templar's stomach like a bullet and expanded hollowly. He lighted a cigarette, moving rather slowly and stiffly, while a clammy chill stroked his skin into goose-pimples.
"Thanks, Ben," he said at length. "You just saved me from pulling the most fabulous boner of all my life. Some day I may tell you both how gorgeously ghastly it could have been, but right now I don't feel strong enough. However, I just changed my mind again, and I'm going to stay out the week in the cottage."
"Whatever you say," answered the other agreeably, if in some pardonable fog.
Simon drove back to his cabin, unloaded his gear again, and took from his suitcase the checkbook of a Swiss bank in which, for many obvious reasons, he had for some time found it convenient to carry an account in the name of Sebastian tombs. He wrote a check for $10,000 and made another pilgrimage to the cottage at the other end of the camp.
"Your bank should be able to get this cleared by airmail and cable within three days," he said. For the time being, here's the three thousand option money he was talking about."
The little man peered at the crumpled cash mistily through his bifocals.
"But according to our verbal agreement, half of this is yours."
"You know how you feel about your your ex-wife?" said the Saint lightly. "That's how I feel about tax collectors. I'm going to do this for free. Call it my contribution to the cause of the downtrodden male, which wouldn't normally be a deductible item. Or a sop to my own conscience. Just do me a favor and stop dropping your wallet and telling the story of your life to anyone who picks it up. You might make some innocent con man feel like a perfect sucker."
"I don't understand this at all," said Mr Quigg.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Thanks to the Saint - Leslie Charteris
"I'm going to show you how wrong you were."
"Don't try it, Nat," said the Saint soberly. "I can't give you a fairer warning than that."
"This isn't a warning," Grendel said.
"I'm going to kill you, you bastard. But right now. I just wanted to tell you about it, so that the last thing you know'll be that I'm doing it myself. Now."
Simon prudently moved the receiver a little further from his ear; but the detective, who was caught unprepared, jumped at the loudness of the clack that came from the diaphragm.
"What was that?"
Simon Templar listened a moment longer, to nothing, and then quietly put down the phone.
"That was the accident I was talking about. I got the idea from Shakespeare. Your remember that line about 'the Engineer hoist with his own petard'? You didn't ask me how I got rid of the petard that they fixed for me. I suppose it was rather naughty, but the only thing I could think of was to put it inside a piece of china that he was interested in and send it back to him. It wouldn't 've hurt him if he hadn't pressed the button." The Saint went back into the living room and finished his drink. "Well, I guess we'd better get in that car I told you to have waiting and go see how much mess it made."
"Don't try it, Nat," said the Saint soberly. "I can't give you a fairer warning than that."
"This isn't a warning," Grendel said.
"I'm going to kill you, you bastard. But right now. I just wanted to tell you about it, so that the last thing you know'll be that I'm doing it myself. Now."
Simon prudently moved the receiver a little further from his ear; but the detective, who was caught unprepared, jumped at the loudness of the clack that came from the diaphragm.
"What was that?"
Simon Templar listened a moment longer, to nothing, and then quietly put down the phone.
"That was the accident I was talking about. I got the idea from Shakespeare. Your remember that line about 'the Engineer hoist with his own petard'? You didn't ask me how I got rid of the petard that they fixed for me. I suppose it was rather naughty, but the only thing I could think of was to put it inside a piece of china that he was interested in and send it back to him. It wouldn't 've hurt him if he hadn't pressed the button." The Saint went back into the living room and finished his drink. "Well, I guess we'd better get in that car I told you to have waiting and go see how much mess it made."
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Thanks To The Saint - Leslie Charteris - The Good Medicine
Thanks To The Saint - Leslie Charteris
The Good Medicine
Simon looked towards the corner table again. The woman who sat there with the pale-blond, delicate-featured, expensively tailored and shirted and accessoried type, for which a previous generation's graphic term "lounge lizard" has never been bettered, was not constructed to the conventional specifications of a female tycoon. Even to refer to her as a "woman" seemed slightly heavy, although the much-abused word "girl" was equally inapplicable. She could easily have passed for much less than thirty and could not have ranked forty by the most vicious estimate: the Saint would have personally favored the lower estimate, being a man and vulnerable to certain figures, of which she had a honey, unless the couturiers had cooked up some new gimmicks which could falsify even such a candid decollete as she was wearing. Incontrovertibly above that she had a face of petulant but exciting beauty, capped by casque of darkly burnished copper hair. If she could have walked many blocks outside without eliciting an appreciative whistle, it would only have been in a blackout that coincided with a dense fog.
She was completely aware of the boldly appraising way that Simon had been looking at her, he knew, and he did not have any impression that it displeased her at all. He observed that she did not seem to have brought it to her escort's attention, as a woman will when she is annoyed by such a scrutiny.
...
"The Count of Cristamonte," Stern said with the obligatory gesture. "Mrs Ashville."
The momentary widening of her eyes might have been hard to measure without a micrometer, but Simon did not miss it. They were brown eyes with flecks of green, and there were hardly any telltale wrinkles around them. Even at close quarters her skin had the clear and silky texture coveted by the users of Dreemicreem. There was no doubt that simply as a female she was what almost any male would have classified to himself as a Dish.
..
She continued to look the Saint over, not a whit less candidly than he had been studying her a few minutes earlier.
"How long are you here for?"
..
With a last flashing glance at the Saint she swept on.
..
"But more women are natural actresses than end up in Hollywood. If they're born with the spark, and given the opportunity, they don't take long to learn the princess routines. Cinderella had to have a fairy godmother, but all the modern gal needs is the confidence that comes with a little success and a lot of money. And I say the performance can be just as much fun if you forget the pedigree."
..
"If she threw herself at me, I can't pretend it wouldn't be nice to have an excuse not to duck."
..
"Will you be long?"
"No longer than this taxi will take," he said.
One reason why Simon Templar's nervous system had survived his extraordinary life with so little damage by strain and fraying was that he had an amazing gift of closing his mind to unprofitable speculation. When there was obviously nothing to be gained by trying to foreguess a situation that would soon supply its own answers, he was able to simply switch off the futile circuit and wait with only philosophical anticipation for the future to unroll itself. He saved his prophetic energy for the occasions when life and death might depend on how many moves he could stay ahead of the game, but he felt reasonably sure that this was not that kind of game.
..
He was even more sure when she unlocked the inside door at which the automatic elevator stopped in obedience to the small green button and let him step out into a room that could only have been designed by an interior decorator who had studied his subject by watching old movies on television. It cried aloud for a sinuous slumber-eyed siren in a long clinging robe, possibly fondling a tame ocelot. Elise Ashville was too palpably charged with corpuscles and vitamins for that role, and she had not even conceded to the diaphanous negligee which any writer of a certain modern school would have considered a formal necessity for such an occasion; but the suggestion of untrammeled nakedness under the demurely neck-high and ankle-deep housecoat she had changed into was no less positive and even more effective. And her approach had a refreshing timesaving candor.
..
"Then you would not misunderstand my impatience to kiss the most exciting woman I have seen in America?"
It was a purely Arabian Nights kind of episode that the Saint would never have dared to relate to anyone who he did not already know to be convinced that in this amazing world anything can happen; but this subtracted nothing from his enjoyment of it, since he was not in the habit of telling that kind of story.
...
"You and me and the mosquitoes," she said, though his dramatic enthusiasm was so enchanting that her tone of voice was softened in spite of herself. "Darling. We'd be eaten alive!"
He shook his head.
"I had already thought of that too."
He reached for her hand and held it open, and took a small gold box from his pocket and tipped out a pill into her upturned palm.
...
Innumerable flying things fluttered and dived drunkenly around the lamps, and from the shadows came myriads of mosquitoes with a ceaseless hum of tiny tireless wings. She could even see them flickering speckily pas her eyes, and hear the rise and fall of individual hungry hoverings around her, while even tinier gnats whined thinly pas like diminutive rockets. But not once did the whine build into the typical infuriating crescendo of a gnat's kamikaze plunge directly into the earhole, and she could watch her bare gleaming arms without seeing them darkened by the settling of a single mote of disrespectful voracity. Her expectant shoulders and back and legs waited for the hair-touch of an almost weightless landing and the microscopic stab of the first probing sting, but time went on and they felt nothing. And she knew that to be first on the market with a pill that would accomplish such a miracle would make what by any standards could be literally called a fortune.
There was soft music coming from the portable player, and he was spooning caviar on to the first plates on the neatly laid table.
"Come, Elise, sit down and relax," he said. "You know by now that nothing is going to bite you."
"It's amazing," she said as she let him seat her. "I must know -- did those pill makers give you a good deal?"
..
When Mrs Elise Ashville let herself wake up by sybaritically easy stages the next morning, and finally focused her eyes on the bedside clock, it showed ten minutes past eleven.
She squirmed, yawned, stretched and sprawled again int he enormous bed, draining the last raptures of sleepy recollection, until she suddenly realized that some faint sounds of activity in the apartment should have aroused her somewhat before that. Either the new maid was going to prove as unreliable as her predecessors, or she was a potential jewel who crept in and moved around like a mouse.
Mrs Ashville yawned again and sat up, in an unwontedly agreeable and optimistic mood which could not have been solely due to the single pink vitamin-complex pill what Simon Templar had persuaded her to take the night before.
"Germaine," she called -- quite dulcetly, at first.
There was no response, even after louder repetitions. Germaine Ashville, having done her part by giving her sister-in-law a facial with almost pure ethylhexanediol, and pouring two full quarts of it into her bubble bath, and even spiking all her colognes and perfumes with the same popular odorless insect repellent, was already boarding a plane to Denver with her brother, and the Saint was seeing them off.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Senor Saint - Leslie Charteris
The Revolution Racket
The Saint modestly averted his eyes.
This was especially easy to do because the shift permitted him to gaze again at a woman who sat alone at a table across the room. He had noticed her as soon as she entered, and had been glancing at her as often as he could without seeming too inattentive to his host.
With her fair colouring and the unobtrusive elegance of her clothes, she was obviously an American. She was still stretching out her first cocktail, and referring occasionally to the plain gold watch on her wrist: she was, of course, waiting for somebody. The wedding ring on he left hand suggested that it was probably a husband - no love worthy of her time would be likely to keep such a delectable dish waiting. But, there was no harm in considering, married women did travel alone, and sometimes wait for female friends; they also came to Mexico to divorce husbands; and, as a matter of final realism, an attractive woman wearing a wedding ring abroad was not necessarily even married at all, but might wear it just as a kind of flimsy chastity belt, i the hope of discouraging a certain percentage of unwanted Casanovas. The chances were tenuous enough, but an incorrigible optimist like the Saint could always dream.
...
"The Enriquez brothers," said Xavier, "They are sitting opposite you now, at the table next to the young woman you have been staring at for the last hour."
Simon winced very slightly, and looked very carefully past the blonde.
...
"I've got fifty thousand late-model rifles and five thousand machine-guns cruising around the Caribbean, with five million rounds of ammunition - and nobody seems to want 'em!"
It should be recorded as a major testimonial to Simon Templar's phenomenal self-control that for an appreciable time he did not move a muscle. But he felt as unreal as if he had been sitting still in the midst of an earthquake. It required a conscious adjustment for him to realize that the seismic shock he experienced was purely subjective, that the mutter of other voices around had not changed key or missed a beat, that the ceiling had not fallen in and all the glassware shattered in one cataclysmic crash.
But nothing of the sort had happened. Nothing at all. Of course not.
...
It was in that brief stoppage that the blonde turned and looked at the Saint again, so intently that he knew, with utter certainly, that something had clicked in her memory, and that she knew who he was.
The implications of the long deliberate look would have sprinkled goose-pimples up his spine - if there had been room for any more. But he had just so much capacity for horripilation, and all of it had already been pre-empted by the scene he had witnessed just previously. The Saint had long ago conditioned himself to accept coincidences unblinkingly that would have staggered anyone who was less accustomed to them: it was much the same as a prizefighter becoming inured to punishment, except that it was more pleasant. He had come to regard them as no more than the recurrent evidence of his unique and blessed destiny, which had ordained that wherever he turned, whether he sought it or not, he must always collide with adventure. But the supernatural precision and consecutiveness with which everything had unfolded that evening would have been enough to send spooky tingles up a totem pole.
...
Dorise Inkler stood outside (his room)
"You don't have to try any longer, unless you particularly want to," she said. "May I come in?"
The Saint was not given to exaggerated reactions. He did not fall over backwards in an explosion of sparks and stars like a character in the funny papers, with his eyebrows shooting up through his hair. He may have felt rather like it, but he was able to resist the inclination. In his memoirs, he would probably list it among the finest jobs of resisting he ever did.
"But of course," he said cordially. "This proves that telepathy is still better than telephones."
...
He wondered why he had ever allowed himself to get in a stew about the apparent dead end he had run into. He should have known that such a fantastically pat and promising beginning could not possibly peter out, so long as there was an obviously plot-conscious genius at work. Inevitably the thread would have been brought back to him even if he had done nothing but sit and wait for it.
But underneath his coolly interested repose he was as wary as if he had been closeted with a coy young tigress. Perhaps everything would remain cosy and kitteny; but he had no illusions about the basic hazards of the situation.
She took a slow deep breath. It stirred fascinating contours under the soft silk of her dress.
Simon Templar stood up.
All his movements were extremely slow and careful, as if he had been balancing on a tightrope over a whirling void. They had to be, while he waited for his fragmented co-ordinates to settle down, like a spun kaleidoscope, into a new pattern. But by this time his capacity for dizziness was fortunately a little numbed. The human system can only absorb so many jolts in one evening without losing some of its pristine vigour of response.
"A truly noble swindle," he murmured with restraining rapture. "Boldly conceived, ingeniously contrived, unstintingly financed, slickly dramatized, professionally played - and one of the classics of all time for size. I wish I'd thought of it myself."
...
She stood up from the chair and moved towards him. She kept on coming towards him, slowly, until the tips of her breasts touched his chest.
"If that isn't enough", she said, "there might be a personal bonus . . . Sherman won't be back for a long while yet. You've got time to think it over."
________________
She had all the standard equipment - the auburn hair, the bedroom eyes, the fabulous mammary glands, the clothes that clung suggestively to her figure, the husky voice, the full moist lips that looked as if they would respond lecherously enough to satisfy any addict of that style of writing - although the Saint hadn't yet sampled them. He couldn't somehow make himself feel like the type of cut-rate Casanova who should have been cast opposite her. He couldn't shake off a sense of unreality about her perfect embodiment of the legendary super-floozy. But there was no dout that she was sensational, and in a curious way he was fascinated.
...
It was all clear to Simon now, the strangest crime that he had to put on his bizarre record.
"He will never hear another word from me. I shall just disappear. And presently it will be clear to him that I was a crook after all, as he believes you suspected from the start; and I stole them (pearls)."
"Then he will want to start looking for pearls again."
"And you will find them. From time to time I will send you a few for you to put in the oysters. Real ones."
...
"You have?" (a string of real pearls)
"Just one of those baubles that Ormond used to pass out when he was indulging his sultan complex. Like I told you. I think he only paid about fifteen grand for them at an auction. And me wasting all this time and effort, not to mention yours, on Ned Yarn's imaginary oyster bed!"
At last the Saint began to laugh too, very quietly.
"It is rather delirious," he said.
"Let me fix you another drink, and let's go on with some unfinished business.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
The Joy of Music - Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein - "The Joy of Music"
And so Beethoven came to the end of his symphonic journey, for one movement, that is. Imagine a whole lifetime of this struggle, movement after movement, symphony after symphony, sonata after quartet after concerto. Always probing and rejecting in this dedication to perfection, to the principle of inevitability. This somehow is the key to the mystery of a great artist: that for reasons unknown to him or to anyone else, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another inevitably. It seems rather an odd way to spend one's life; but it isn't so odd when we think that the composer, by doing this, leaves us at the finish with the feeling that something is right in the world, that something checks throughout, something that follows its own laws consistently, something we can trust, that will never let us down. {p. 105}
(The telecast concluded with a performance of the first movement of
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.)
-- The last sentence was borrowed from "Why Beethoven?," page 21.
And so Beethoven came to the end of his symphonic journey, for one movement, that is. Imagine a whole lifetime of this struggle, movement after movement, symphony after symphony, sonata after quartet after concerto. Always probing and rejecting in this dedication to perfection, to the principle of inevitability. This somehow is the key to the mystery of a great artist: that for reasons unknown to him or to anyone else, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another inevitably. It seems rather an odd way to spend one's life; but it isn't so odd when we think that the composer, by doing this, leaves us at the finish with the feeling that something is right in the world, that something checks throughout, something that follows its own laws consistently, something we can trust, that will never let us down. {p. 105}
(The telecast concluded with a performance of the first movement of
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.)
-- The last sentence was borrowed from "Why Beethoven?," page 21.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Vendetta for the Saint - Leslie Charteris
A number of reasons have been suggested at different times for Simon Templar's superficially incongruous title of The Saing, and there may be a kernel of truth in all of them, while not one is the complete answer. The sobriquet is a derivative and outgrowth of so many contributory and contradictory factors attempting to crystallize the supreme paradox of the man himself. But one truly sanctified quality which had never been imputed to him was a forgiving disposition.
...
Very shortly the street door opened again; but it was not the expected form of the dectective that stepped in. This, however, proved to be no disappointment to the Saint at all.
It was a girl . . . if the writer may perpetrate one of the most inadequate statements in contemporary literature.
Her hair was stygian midnight, a shining metallic black that wreathed a delicate oval face with the texture of magnolias, full-lipped and kohl eyed. The simple silk confection that she wore offered more emphasis than concealment to the form it covered but could scarcely contain. It was obvious that no trickery of supporting garments was needed or was used to exploit the burgeoning figure, rounded almost to excess in the breasts above and the flanks below, yet bisected by a waist of wasp-like delicacy. To complete the entrancing inventory, Simon allowed his gaze to slide down the sweet length of leg to the small sandalled feet and drift appreciatively back up again.
Whereupon he received a glance of withering disdain of the kind that had obviously had much practice in shrivelling the presumptuous and freezing the extremeties of the lecherous, and which made it depressingly apparent that like many other beautiful Italian girls she was also impregnably respectable. Only the Saint's unjustified faith in the purity of his admiration enabled him to meet the snub with a smile of seraphic impenitence until it was she who looked away.
...
Approaching through an archway of rambler roses, from a hedged area of the garden where she had apparently been taking a sunbath, was Gina Destamio, clad only in a bikini of such minuscule proportions that its two elements concealed little more than did her sunglasses. Her skin was a lightgolden-brown in the last rays of sunlight, and the ultimate details of her figure more than fulfilled every exquisite promise they had made under the dress in which he had last seen her. It was a sight to make even a hardened old pirate like Simon Templar toy with the idea of writing just one more sonnet.
...
Very shortly the street door opened again; but it was not the expected form of the dectective that stepped in. This, however, proved to be no disappointment to the Saint at all.
It was a girl . . . if the writer may perpetrate one of the most inadequate statements in contemporary literature.
Her hair was stygian midnight, a shining metallic black that wreathed a delicate oval face with the texture of magnolias, full-lipped and kohl eyed. The simple silk confection that she wore offered more emphasis than concealment to the form it covered but could scarcely contain. It was obvious that no trickery of supporting garments was needed or was used to exploit the burgeoning figure, rounded almost to excess in the breasts above and the flanks below, yet bisected by a waist of wasp-like delicacy. To complete the entrancing inventory, Simon allowed his gaze to slide down the sweet length of leg to the small sandalled feet and drift appreciatively back up again.
Whereupon he received a glance of withering disdain of the kind that had obviously had much practice in shrivelling the presumptuous and freezing the extremeties of the lecherous, and which made it depressingly apparent that like many other beautiful Italian girls she was also impregnably respectable. Only the Saint's unjustified faith in the purity of his admiration enabled him to meet the snub with a smile of seraphic impenitence until it was she who looked away.
...
Approaching through an archway of rambler roses, from a hedged area of the garden where she had apparently been taking a sunbath, was Gina Destamio, clad only in a bikini of such minuscule proportions that its two elements concealed little more than did her sunglasses. Her skin was a lightgolden-brown in the last rays of sunlight, and the ultimate details of her figure more than fulfilled every exquisite promise they had made under the dress in which he had last seen her. It was a sight to make even a hardened old pirate like Simon Templar toy with the idea of writing just one more sonnet.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Their Guy Versus Our Guy
I just recently read a marvelous Leslie Charteris 'Saint' story. Simon Templar comes up against a Russian spy in Canada. It starts with the Saint fly fishing on a lake in the Vancouver area. Simon approaches the Russian's cabin, and sees that a good looking woman, who turns out to be a Canadian Mountie, is handcuffed. Another bad-guy gets the drop on Templar, and he is also handcuffed to the same pole as the Mountie.
So guess how he worms his way out of being shot dead when it's time for the Russian to return to his submarine. He mocks the spy, tells him that no Russian could do anything an American could do. He uses his fly fishing as an example. He warrants that the Russian couldn't catch a fish with his gear in an hour or ever. So the Russian, steaming mad, leaves the cabin, and an hour later comes back even madder, he hadn't caught anything.
When it's time for him to leave, he uncuffs them and leads them to his boat. He conks the gal on the head and takes her unconscious to the boat, and as he's standing in the boat, with his gun pointed at Templar, instead of shooting him, he indicates that if Templar can catch a fish with the fly, he won't shoot him and will let him go. So of course guess what does Simon do? He hook the Russian in cheek and reels him in, and conks him on the head with an oar.
So guess how he worms his way out of being shot dead when it's time for the Russian to return to his submarine. He mocks the spy, tells him that no Russian could do anything an American could do. He uses his fly fishing as an example. He warrants that the Russian couldn't catch a fish with his gear in an hour or ever. So the Russian, steaming mad, leaves the cabin, and an hour later comes back even madder, he hadn't caught anything.
When it's time for him to leave, he uncuffs them and leads them to his boat. He conks the gal on the head and takes her unconscious to the boat, and as he's standing in the boat, with his gun pointed at Templar, instead of shooting him, he indicates that if Templar can catch a fish with the fly, he won't shoot him and will let him go. So of course guess what does Simon do? He hook the Russian in cheek and reels him in, and conks him on the head with an oar.
The Saint Around The World - Leslie Charteris
Bermuda: The Patient Playboy
I suppose you wouldn't be interested in helping me find my husband, said the blonde.
Frankly, I've heard a lot more exciting propositions, Simon Templar admitted. If he doesn't have enough sense to appreciate you, why don't we just let him stay lost, and have a ball?
I suppose you wouldn't be interested in helping me find my husband, said the blonde.
Frankly, I've heard a lot more exciting propositions, Simon Templar admitted. If he doesn't have enough sense to appreciate you, why don't we just let him stay lost, and have a ball?
Thursday, May 27, 2010
The Saint Errant - Leslie Charteris
IX. Dawn
Simon Templar looked up from the frying pan in which six mountain trout were developing a crisp golden tan. Above the gentle sputter of grease, the sound of feet on dry pine needles crackled through the cabin window.
It didn't cross his mind that the sound carried menace, for it was twilight in the Sierras, and the dusky calm stirred only with the rustlings of nature at peace.
The Saint also was at peace. In spite of everything his enemies would have said, there actually were times when peace was the main preoccupation of that fantastic freebooter; when hills and blue sky were high enough adventure, and baiting a hook was respite enough from baiting policemen or promoters. In such a mood he had jumped at the invitation to join a friend in a week of hunting and fishing in the High Sierras -- a friend who had been recalled to town on urgent business almost as soon as they arrived, leaving the Saint in by no means melancholy solitude, for Simon Templar could always put up with his own company.
The footsteps came nearer with a kind of desperate urgency. Simon moved the frying pan off the flames and flowed, rather than walked, to where he could see through windows in two directions.
A man came out of the pines. He was traveling on the short side of a dead run, but straining with every gasping breath to step up his speed. He came, hatless and coatless, across the pine-carpeted clearing toward the cabin door.
He burst through it; and in spite of his relaxation the Saint felt a kind of simmer of anticipation approval. If his solitude had to be intruded on, this was the way it should happen. Unannounced. At a dead run.
The visitor slammed the door, shot the bolt, whirled around, and seemed about to fold in the middle. He saw the Saint. His jaw sagged, swung adrift on its hinges for a moment, then imitated a steel trap.
After the sharp click of his teeth, he said: "How did you get in here? Where's Dawn?"
"Dawn?" Simon echoed lazily. "If you're referring to the rosy-fingered goddess who peals away the darkness each morning, she's on the twelve-hour shift, chum. She'll be around at the regular time."
"I never dreamed you here," the man said. "Who are you?"
"You dropped a word," the Saint said. "'I never dreamed you were here' makes more sense."
"Nuts, brother. You're part of my dream, and I never saw you before. You don't even have a name. All the others have, complete with backgrounds. But I can't place you. Funny, I -- Look here, you're not real, are you?"
"The last time I pinched myself, I yelped."
"This is crazy," the man muttered.
He walked across the pine floor to within a couple of feet of the Saint. He was breathing easier now, and the Saint examined him impassively.
He was big, only a shade under the Saint's six feet two, with sandy hair, a square jaw, and hard brown eyes.
"May I?" he said, and pinched the Saint. He sighed. "I was afraid this was happening. When I put my arms around Dawn Winter in my dreams, she--"
"Please," the Saint broke in. "Gentlemen don't go into lurid detail after the lady has a name."
"Oh, she's only part of my dream." The stranger stared into space, and an almost tangible aura of desire formed about him. "God!" he whispered. "I really dreamed up something in her."
"We must swap reminiscences someday," the Saint said. "But at the moment the pin-scented breeze is laden with threshings in the underbrush."
"I've got to hide. Quick! Where can I get out of sight?"
The Saint waved expressively at the single room. In its four hundred square feet, one might hide a large bird if it were camouflaged as an atlas or something, but that would be about the limit.
The two bunk beds were made with hospital precision, and even a marble would have bulged under their tight covers. The deck chairs wouldn't offer sanctuary for even an undernourished mouse, the table was high and wide open beneath the rough top, and the small bookcase was made to display its contents.
"If we had time," the Saint mused, "I could candy-stripe you -- if I had some red paint -- and put on a barber's smock. Or -- er -- you say you're dreaming all this?"
"That's right."
"Then why don't you wake up -- and vanish?"
The Saint's visitor unhappily gnawed his full underlip.
"I always have before, when the going got tough, but -- Oh, hell, I don't know what's going on, but I don't want to die - even in my dream. Death is so-so --"
"Permanent?"
"Mmm, I guess. Listen, would you be a pal and try to steer these guys away? They're after me."
"Why should I?"
"Yeah," the man said. "You don't owe me a damn thing, but I'm trying to help Dawn. She--"
He broke off to fish an object out of his watch pocket. This was a small chamois bag, and out of it he took something that pulsed with incredible fires. He handed it to the Saint.
"That's Dawn."
The circular fire opal blazed with living beauty - blue, green, gold cerise, chartreuse - and the Saint gasped with reverent wonder as he looked at the cameo head carved on the unbelievable gem.
There is beauty to which one can put a name. There is beauty that inspires awe, bravery, fear, lust, greed, passion. There is beauty that softens the savage blows of fate. There is beauty that drives to high adventure, to violence.
That stone, and above all the face cut eternally on its incandescent surface, was beauty beyond belief. No man could look on that face and ever know complete peace again.
She was the lily maid of Astolat, the lost loveliness that all men seek and never find, the nameless desire that haunts the ragged edge of sleep, that curls a lonely smile and sends vacant eyes searching far spaces.
Her face was made for - and of? the saint asked himself - dreaming.
"Count me in, old boy."
He went outside. Through the dusky stillness the far-off unseen feet pounded nearer.
The feet were four. The men, with mathematical logic, two. One might be a jockey, the other a wight lifter. They tore out of the forest and confronted the Saint.
"Did you see a kind of big dopey-lookin' lug?" the jockey asked.
The Saint pointed to the other side of the clearing where the hill pitched down.
"He went that way - in a hell of a rush."
"Thanks, pal."
They were off, hot on the imaginary trail, and the sounds of their passage soon faded. The Saint went inside.
"They'll be back," he said. "But meanwhile we can clear up a few points. Could you down a brace trout? They've probably cooled enough to eat."
"What do you mean, they'll be back?"
"It's inevitable," Simon pointed out as he put coffee on, set the table, and gathered cutlery. "They won't find you. They want to find you. So they'll be back with questions. Since those questions will be directed at me, I'd like to know what not to answer."
"Who are you?"
"Who are you?" the Saint countered.
"I'm - oh, blast it to hell and goddam. The guy you're looking at is Big Bill Holbrook. But he's only something I dreamed up. I'm really Andrew Faulks, and I'm asleep in Glendale, California."
"And I am the queen of Rumania."
"Sure, I know. You don't believe it. Who would? But since you've got me out of a tight spot for the time being, I'd like to tell you what I've never told anybody. But who am I telling?"
"I'm Simon Templar," said the Saint, and waited for a reaction.
"No!" Holbrook-Faulks breathed. "The Saint! What beautiful, wonderful luck. And isn't it just like a bank clerk to work the Saint into this dream?" He paused for breath. "The Robin Hood of Modern Crime, the twentieth century's brightest buccaneer, the devil with dames, the headache of cops and crooks alike. What a sixteen-cylinder dream this is."
"Your alliterative encomia," the Saint murmured, "leave me as awed as your inference. Don't you think you'd better give out with this - er - bedtime story? Bevore that unholy pair return with the gun-lined question marks?"
The strange man rubbed his eyes in a dazed helpless way.
"I don't know where to begin," he said conventionally.
But after a while, haltingly, he tried.
Andrew Faulks, in the normal course of events, weathered the slingshots and arrows of outrageous playmates and grew up to be a man.
As men will, he fixed his heart and eyes on a girl and eventually married her. As women will, she gave birth in due course to a boy, Andy Jr, and later a girl, Alexandria.
He became a bank clerk, and went to and from home on an immutable schedule. He got an occasional raise; he was bawled out at times by the head teller; he became a company man, a white-collar worker, and developed all the political ills that white-collared flesh is heir to.
And he dreamed. Literally.
This was what Big Bill Holbrook told the Saint in the mountain cabin to which Simon had retired to await the blowing over of a rather embarrassing situation which involved items duly registered on police records.
"In the first dream, I was coming out of this hotel, see. And whammo! Bumping into her woke me-- Oh, the hell with it. Whoever was dreaming woke up, but it was me bumped into her. And I was sorry as hell, because, brother, she was something."
Some two weeks later, Big Bill said, he bumped into her again. The dream started exactly as its predecessor, progressed exactly to the point of collision.
"But I didn't awaken this time. We each apologized all over the place and somehow we were walking along together. Just as I was about to ask her to have dinner, I woke up again."
"Or Andy did," the Saint supplied.
"Yeah. Whoever. Now this is what happened. Every ten days or two weeks, I'd be back in this dream, starting out of the hotel, crashing into her, walking along, having dinner, getting to know her better each dream. Each one started exactly the same, but each one went a little further into her life. It was like reading the same book over and over, always starting back at the beginning, but getting one chapter further every time. I got so used to it that I'd say to myself, 'This is where I woke up last time,' and then after the dream had gone on a bit further I'd begin to think, 'Well, I guess this must be getting near the end of another installment,' and sure enough, about that time I'd wake up again."
The accidental encounter began to develop sinister ramifications, picked up unsavory characters, and put Big Bill Holbrook in the role of a Robin Hood.
"Or a Saint," he amended, "rescuing a beautiful dame from a bunch of lugs."
And there was, of course, the jewel.
It had a history. The fire opal, which seemed to be eternal yet living beauty, had carved upon it the likeness of Dawn's great-great-grandmother, of whom the girl was the living image.
The talented Oriental craftsman who had chiseled those features which were the essence of beauty - that wily fellow had breathed upon the cameo gem a curse.
The curse: It must not get out of the possession of the family - or else.
Death, deprivation, and a myriad other unpleasantries were predicted if the stone fell into alien hands.
The name of Selden Appopoulis sort of slithered into the tale. This was a fat man, a lecherous fat man, a greedy fat man, who wanted - not loved - Dawn; and who wanted - and loved - the cameo opal. In some fashion that was not exactly clear to the Saint, the fat man was in a position to put a financial squeeze on her. In each succeeding dream of Andrew Faulks, Glendale bank clerk, Dawn's position became more and more untenable. In desperation she finally agreed to turn the jewel over to Appopoulis. The fat man sent for the jewel by the two henchmen whom the Saint had directed off into the Holbrook-bare woods.
"Now in this dream - this here now dream," Holbrook said, "I took it away from him, see? Andy Faulks went to sleep in Glendale Saturday night and - say, what day is it now?"
"Tuesday."
"Yeah, thats the way it seems to me too. And that's funny. If you're really part of this dream you'd naturally think it was Tuesday, because your time and my time would be the same. But you don't seem like part of a dream. I pinched you and - oh, nuts, I'm all mixed up."
"Let's try and be clear about this," said the Saint patiently. "You know that it's Tuesday here, but you think you're dreaming all this in Glendale on Saturday night."
"I don't know," said the other wearily. "You see, I never dreamed more than one day at a stretch before. But tonight it's been going on and on. It's gone way past the time when I ought to have woken up. I've tried ... My God, suppose I don't wake up! Suppose I never can wake up? Suppose I never can get back, and I have to go on and on with this, being Big Bill Holbrook --"
"You could take a trip to Glendale," Simon suggested gravely, "and try waking Faulks up."
Holbrook-Faulks stared at him with oddly unfocused eyes.
"I can't," he said huskily. "I thought of that-once. But I couldn't make myself do it. I-I'm scared ... of what I might find ... Suppose--"
He broke off, his pupils dilated with the formless horror of a glimpse of something that no mind could conceive.
Simon roused him again, gently: "So you took the jewel--"
Holbrook snapped out of his reverie
"Yeah, and I lammed out for this cabin. Dawn was supposed to meet me here. But I guess I can't control all these characters. Say," he asked suddenly, "who do you suppose I am? Faulks or Holbrook?"
"I suggest you ask your mother, old boy."
"That ain't funny. I mean, who do you really suppose I am? Andy Faulks is asleep and dreaming me but I've got all his memories, so am I a projection of Andy or am I me and him both? None of these other characters have any more memories than they need."
Simon wondered if the two men chasing Holbrook were his keepers; he could use a few. In fact Simon reflected, keepers would fit into the life of Holbrook-Faulks like thread in a needle. But he sipped his brandy and urged the man to continue.
"Well, something's happened," Holbrook-Faulks said. "It never was like this before. I never could smell things before. I never could really feel them. You know how it is in a dream. But now it seems like as if you stuck a knife in me I'd bleed real blood. You don't suppose a - a reiterated dream could become reality?"
"I," said the Saint, "am a rank amateur in that department."
"Well, I was too - or Andy was, whichever of us is me - but I read everything I could get my hands on about dreams - or Andy did - and it didn't help a bit."
Most men wouldn't have heard the faint far-off string in the forest. But the Saint's ears, attuned by long practice to detect sound that differed from what should be there, picked up evidence of movement toward the cabin.
"Some one," he said suddenly, "and I mean one, is coming. Not your pursuers - it's from the opposite direction."
Holbrook-Faulks listened.
"I don't hear anything."
"I didn't expect you to - yet. Now that it's dark, perhaps you'd better slip outside, brother, and wait. I don't pretend to believe your yarn, but that some game is afoot is so obvious that even Sherlock Holmes could detect it. I suggest that we prepare for eventualities."
The eventuality that presently manifested itself was a girl. And it was a girl who could have been no one but Dawn Winter. She came wearily into the cabin, disheveled, her dress torn provocatively so that sun-browned flesh showed through, her cloud of golden hair swirled in fairy patterns, her dark eyes brooding, her mouth a parted dream.
The Saint caught his breath and began to wonder whether he could really make Big Bill Holbrook wake up and vanish.
"Do you belong to the coffee and/or brand school of thought?" he asked.
"Please." she fell carelessly into a chair, and the Saint coined a word.
She was g[l]amorous beyond belief.
"Miss winter, pull down your dress or I'll never get this drink poured. You've turned me into an aspen. You're the most beautiful hunk of flesh I've ever seen. Have your drink and go, please."
She looked at him then, and took in the steel-cable leanness of him, the height of him, the crisp black hair, the debonair blue eyes. She smiled, and a brazen gong tolled in the Saint's head.
"Must I?" she said.
Her voice caught at the core of desire and tangled itself forever there.
"Set me some task," the Saint said uncertainly. "Name me a mountain to build, a continent to sink, a star to fetch you in the morning."
The cabin door crashed open. The spell splintered into shining shards. Holbrook-Faulks stood stony-faced against the door.
"Hello, Bill," the girl said, her eyes still on the Saint. "I came, you see."
Bill's gaze was an unwavering lance, with the Saint pinioned on its blazing tip.
"Am I gonna have trouble with you too, Saint?"
The Saint opened his mouth to answer, and stiffened as another sound reached his ears. Jockey and weight lifter were returning.
"We'll postpone any jousting over the fair lady for the moment," Simon said. "We're about to have more company."
Holbrook stared wildly around.
"Come on, Dawn. Out the window. They'll kill us."
Many times before in his checkered career the Saint had had to make decisions in a fragment of time - when a gun was leveled and a finger whitening on the trigger, when a traffic accident roared toward consummation, when a ship was sinking, when a knife flashed through candlelight. His decision now was compounded of several factors, none of which was the desire for self-preservation. The Saint rarely gave thought room to self-preservation - never when there was something more important to preserve.
He did not want this creature of tattered loveliness, this epitome of what men live for, to get out of his sight. He must therefore keep her inside the cabin. And there was no place to hide....
His eyes narrowed as he looked at the two bunks. He was tearing out the mattresses before his thought was fully formed. He tossed the mattresses in a corner where shadows had retreated from the candle on the table. Then he motioned to Holbrook.
"Climb up. Make like a mattress."
He boosted the big man into the top bunk, and his hands were like striking brawn snakes as he packed blankets around him and remade the bed so that it only looked untidily put together.
"Now you," he said to the girl.
She got into the lower bunk and lay flat on her back, her disturbing head in the far corner. The Saint deposited a swift kiss upon her full red lips. They were cool and soft, and the Saint was adrift for a second.
Then he covered her. He emptied a box of pine cones on the mattresses and arranged the whole to appear as a corner heap of cones.
He was busy cleaning the dishes when the pounding came on the door.
...
Simon Templar looked up from the frying pan in which six mountain trout were developing a crisp golden tan. Above the gentle sputter of grease, the sound of feet on dry pine needles crackled through the cabin window.
It didn't cross his mind that the sound carried menace, for it was twilight in the Sierras, and the dusky calm stirred only with the rustlings of nature at peace.
The Saint also was at peace. In spite of everything his enemies would have said, there actually were times when peace was the main preoccupation of that fantastic freebooter; when hills and blue sky were high enough adventure, and baiting a hook was respite enough from baiting policemen or promoters. In such a mood he had jumped at the invitation to join a friend in a week of hunting and fishing in the High Sierras -- a friend who had been recalled to town on urgent business almost as soon as they arrived, leaving the Saint in by no means melancholy solitude, for Simon Templar could always put up with his own company.
The footsteps came nearer with a kind of desperate urgency. Simon moved the frying pan off the flames and flowed, rather than walked, to where he could see through windows in two directions.
A man came out of the pines. He was traveling on the short side of a dead run, but straining with every gasping breath to step up his speed. He came, hatless and coatless, across the pine-carpeted clearing toward the cabin door.
He burst through it; and in spite of his relaxation the Saint felt a kind of simmer of anticipation approval. If his solitude had to be intruded on, this was the way it should happen. Unannounced. At a dead run.
The visitor slammed the door, shot the bolt, whirled around, and seemed about to fold in the middle. He saw the Saint. His jaw sagged, swung adrift on its hinges for a moment, then imitated a steel trap.
After the sharp click of his teeth, he said: "How did you get in here? Where's Dawn?"
"Dawn?" Simon echoed lazily. "If you're referring to the rosy-fingered goddess who peals away the darkness each morning, she's on the twelve-hour shift, chum. She'll be around at the regular time."
"I never dreamed you here," the man said. "Who are you?"
"You dropped a word," the Saint said. "'I never dreamed you were here' makes more sense."
"Nuts, brother. You're part of my dream, and I never saw you before. You don't even have a name. All the others have, complete with backgrounds. But I can't place you. Funny, I -- Look here, you're not real, are you?"
"The last time I pinched myself, I yelped."
"This is crazy," the man muttered.
He walked across the pine floor to within a couple of feet of the Saint. He was breathing easier now, and the Saint examined him impassively.
He was big, only a shade under the Saint's six feet two, with sandy hair, a square jaw, and hard brown eyes.
"May I?" he said, and pinched the Saint. He sighed. "I was afraid this was happening. When I put my arms around Dawn Winter in my dreams, she--"
"Please," the Saint broke in. "Gentlemen don't go into lurid detail after the lady has a name."
"Oh, she's only part of my dream." The stranger stared into space, and an almost tangible aura of desire formed about him. "God!" he whispered. "I really dreamed up something in her."
"We must swap reminiscences someday," the Saint said. "But at the moment the pin-scented breeze is laden with threshings in the underbrush."
"I've got to hide. Quick! Where can I get out of sight?"
The Saint waved expressively at the single room. In its four hundred square feet, one might hide a large bird if it were camouflaged as an atlas or something, but that would be about the limit.
The two bunk beds were made with hospital precision, and even a marble would have bulged under their tight covers. The deck chairs wouldn't offer sanctuary for even an undernourished mouse, the table was high and wide open beneath the rough top, and the small bookcase was made to display its contents.
"If we had time," the Saint mused, "I could candy-stripe you -- if I had some red paint -- and put on a barber's smock. Or -- er -- you say you're dreaming all this?"
"That's right."
"Then why don't you wake up -- and vanish?"
The Saint's visitor unhappily gnawed his full underlip.
"I always have before, when the going got tough, but -- Oh, hell, I don't know what's going on, but I don't want to die - even in my dream. Death is so-so --"
"Permanent?"
"Mmm, I guess. Listen, would you be a pal and try to steer these guys away? They're after me."
"Why should I?"
"Yeah," the man said. "You don't owe me a damn thing, but I'm trying to help Dawn. She--"
He broke off to fish an object out of his watch pocket. This was a small chamois bag, and out of it he took something that pulsed with incredible fires. He handed it to the Saint.
"That's Dawn."
The circular fire opal blazed with living beauty - blue, green, gold cerise, chartreuse - and the Saint gasped with reverent wonder as he looked at the cameo head carved on the unbelievable gem.
There is beauty to which one can put a name. There is beauty that inspires awe, bravery, fear, lust, greed, passion. There is beauty that softens the savage blows of fate. There is beauty that drives to high adventure, to violence.
That stone, and above all the face cut eternally on its incandescent surface, was beauty beyond belief. No man could look on that face and ever know complete peace again.
She was the lily maid of Astolat, the lost loveliness that all men seek and never find, the nameless desire that haunts the ragged edge of sleep, that curls a lonely smile and sends vacant eyes searching far spaces.
Her face was made for - and of? the saint asked himself - dreaming.
"Count me in, old boy."
He went outside. Through the dusky stillness the far-off unseen feet pounded nearer.
The feet were four. The men, with mathematical logic, two. One might be a jockey, the other a wight lifter. They tore out of the forest and confronted the Saint.
"Did you see a kind of big dopey-lookin' lug?" the jockey asked.
The Saint pointed to the other side of the clearing where the hill pitched down.
"He went that way - in a hell of a rush."
"Thanks, pal."
They were off, hot on the imaginary trail, and the sounds of their passage soon faded. The Saint went inside.
"They'll be back," he said. "But meanwhile we can clear up a few points. Could you down a brace trout? They've probably cooled enough to eat."
"What do you mean, they'll be back?"
"It's inevitable," Simon pointed out as he put coffee on, set the table, and gathered cutlery. "They won't find you. They want to find you. So they'll be back with questions. Since those questions will be directed at me, I'd like to know what not to answer."
"Who are you?"
"Who are you?" the Saint countered.
"I'm - oh, blast it to hell and goddam. The guy you're looking at is Big Bill Holbrook. But he's only something I dreamed up. I'm really Andrew Faulks, and I'm asleep in Glendale, California."
"And I am the queen of Rumania."
"Sure, I know. You don't believe it. Who would? But since you've got me out of a tight spot for the time being, I'd like to tell you what I've never told anybody. But who am I telling?"
"I'm Simon Templar," said the Saint, and waited for a reaction.
"No!" Holbrook-Faulks breathed. "The Saint! What beautiful, wonderful luck. And isn't it just like a bank clerk to work the Saint into this dream?" He paused for breath. "The Robin Hood of Modern Crime, the twentieth century's brightest buccaneer, the devil with dames, the headache of cops and crooks alike. What a sixteen-cylinder dream this is."
"Your alliterative encomia," the Saint murmured, "leave me as awed as your inference. Don't you think you'd better give out with this - er - bedtime story? Bevore that unholy pair return with the gun-lined question marks?"
The strange man rubbed his eyes in a dazed helpless way.
"I don't know where to begin," he said conventionally.
But after a while, haltingly, he tried.
Andrew Faulks, in the normal course of events, weathered the slingshots and arrows of outrageous playmates and grew up to be a man.
As men will, he fixed his heart and eyes on a girl and eventually married her. As women will, she gave birth in due course to a boy, Andy Jr, and later a girl, Alexandria.
He became a bank clerk, and went to and from home on an immutable schedule. He got an occasional raise; he was bawled out at times by the head teller; he became a company man, a white-collar worker, and developed all the political ills that white-collared flesh is heir to.
And he dreamed. Literally.
This was what Big Bill Holbrook told the Saint in the mountain cabin to which Simon had retired to await the blowing over of a rather embarrassing situation which involved items duly registered on police records.
"In the first dream, I was coming out of this hotel, see. And whammo! Bumping into her woke me-- Oh, the hell with it. Whoever was dreaming woke up, but it was me bumped into her. And I was sorry as hell, because, brother, she was something."
Some two weeks later, Big Bill said, he bumped into her again. The dream started exactly as its predecessor, progressed exactly to the point of collision.
"But I didn't awaken this time. We each apologized all over the place and somehow we were walking along together. Just as I was about to ask her to have dinner, I woke up again."
"Or Andy did," the Saint supplied.
"Yeah. Whoever. Now this is what happened. Every ten days or two weeks, I'd be back in this dream, starting out of the hotel, crashing into her, walking along, having dinner, getting to know her better each dream. Each one started exactly the same, but each one went a little further into her life. It was like reading the same book over and over, always starting back at the beginning, but getting one chapter further every time. I got so used to it that I'd say to myself, 'This is where I woke up last time,' and then after the dream had gone on a bit further I'd begin to think, 'Well, I guess this must be getting near the end of another installment,' and sure enough, about that time I'd wake up again."
The accidental encounter began to develop sinister ramifications, picked up unsavory characters, and put Big Bill Holbrook in the role of a Robin Hood.
"Or a Saint," he amended, "rescuing a beautiful dame from a bunch of lugs."
And there was, of course, the jewel.
It had a history. The fire opal, which seemed to be eternal yet living beauty, had carved upon it the likeness of Dawn's great-great-grandmother, of whom the girl was the living image.
The talented Oriental craftsman who had chiseled those features which were the essence of beauty - that wily fellow had breathed upon the cameo gem a curse.
The curse: It must not get out of the possession of the family - or else.
Death, deprivation, and a myriad other unpleasantries were predicted if the stone fell into alien hands.
The name of Selden Appopoulis sort of slithered into the tale. This was a fat man, a lecherous fat man, a greedy fat man, who wanted - not loved - Dawn; and who wanted - and loved - the cameo opal. In some fashion that was not exactly clear to the Saint, the fat man was in a position to put a financial squeeze on her. In each succeeding dream of Andrew Faulks, Glendale bank clerk, Dawn's position became more and more untenable. In desperation she finally agreed to turn the jewel over to Appopoulis. The fat man sent for the jewel by the two henchmen whom the Saint had directed off into the Holbrook-bare woods.
"Now in this dream - this here now dream," Holbrook said, "I took it away from him, see? Andy Faulks went to sleep in Glendale Saturday night and - say, what day is it now?"
"Tuesday."
"Yeah, thats the way it seems to me too. And that's funny. If you're really part of this dream you'd naturally think it was Tuesday, because your time and my time would be the same. But you don't seem like part of a dream. I pinched you and - oh, nuts, I'm all mixed up."
"Let's try and be clear about this," said the Saint patiently. "You know that it's Tuesday here, but you think you're dreaming all this in Glendale on Saturday night."
"I don't know," said the other wearily. "You see, I never dreamed more than one day at a stretch before. But tonight it's been going on and on. It's gone way past the time when I ought to have woken up. I've tried ... My God, suppose I don't wake up! Suppose I never can wake up? Suppose I never can get back, and I have to go on and on with this, being Big Bill Holbrook --"
"You could take a trip to Glendale," Simon suggested gravely, "and try waking Faulks up."
Holbrook-Faulks stared at him with oddly unfocused eyes.
"I can't," he said huskily. "I thought of that-once. But I couldn't make myself do it. I-I'm scared ... of what I might find ... Suppose--"
He broke off, his pupils dilated with the formless horror of a glimpse of something that no mind could conceive.
Simon roused him again, gently: "So you took the jewel--"
Holbrook snapped out of his reverie
"Yeah, and I lammed out for this cabin. Dawn was supposed to meet me here. But I guess I can't control all these characters. Say," he asked suddenly, "who do you suppose I am? Faulks or Holbrook?"
"I suggest you ask your mother, old boy."
"That ain't funny. I mean, who do you really suppose I am? Andy Faulks is asleep and dreaming me but I've got all his memories, so am I a projection of Andy or am I me and him both? None of these other characters have any more memories than they need."
Simon wondered if the two men chasing Holbrook were his keepers; he could use a few. In fact Simon reflected, keepers would fit into the life of Holbrook-Faulks like thread in a needle. But he sipped his brandy and urged the man to continue.
"Well, something's happened," Holbrook-Faulks said. "It never was like this before. I never could smell things before. I never could really feel them. You know how it is in a dream. But now it seems like as if you stuck a knife in me I'd bleed real blood. You don't suppose a - a reiterated dream could become reality?"
"I," said the Saint, "am a rank amateur in that department."
"Well, I was too - or Andy was, whichever of us is me - but I read everything I could get my hands on about dreams - or Andy did - and it didn't help a bit."
Most men wouldn't have heard the faint far-off string in the forest. But the Saint's ears, attuned by long practice to detect sound that differed from what should be there, picked up evidence of movement toward the cabin.
"Some one," he said suddenly, "and I mean one, is coming. Not your pursuers - it's from the opposite direction."
Holbrook-Faulks listened.
"I don't hear anything."
"I didn't expect you to - yet. Now that it's dark, perhaps you'd better slip outside, brother, and wait. I don't pretend to believe your yarn, but that some game is afoot is so obvious that even Sherlock Holmes could detect it. I suggest that we prepare for eventualities."
The eventuality that presently manifested itself was a girl. And it was a girl who could have been no one but Dawn Winter. She came wearily into the cabin, disheveled, her dress torn provocatively so that sun-browned flesh showed through, her cloud of golden hair swirled in fairy patterns, her dark eyes brooding, her mouth a parted dream.
The Saint caught his breath and began to wonder whether he could really make Big Bill Holbrook wake up and vanish.
"Do you belong to the coffee and/or brand school of thought?" he asked.
"Please." she fell carelessly into a chair, and the Saint coined a word.
She was g[l]amorous beyond belief.
"Miss winter, pull down your dress or I'll never get this drink poured. You've turned me into an aspen. You're the most beautiful hunk of flesh I've ever seen. Have your drink and go, please."
She looked at him then, and took in the steel-cable leanness of him, the height of him, the crisp black hair, the debonair blue eyes. She smiled, and a brazen gong tolled in the Saint's head.
"Must I?" she said.
Her voice caught at the core of desire and tangled itself forever there.
"Set me some task," the Saint said uncertainly. "Name me a mountain to build, a continent to sink, a star to fetch you in the morning."
The cabin door crashed open. The spell splintered into shining shards. Holbrook-Faulks stood stony-faced against the door.
"Hello, Bill," the girl said, her eyes still on the Saint. "I came, you see."
Bill's gaze was an unwavering lance, with the Saint pinioned on its blazing tip.
"Am I gonna have trouble with you too, Saint?"
The Saint opened his mouth to answer, and stiffened as another sound reached his ears. Jockey and weight lifter were returning.
"We'll postpone any jousting over the fair lady for the moment," Simon said. "We're about to have more company."
Holbrook stared wildly around.
"Come on, Dawn. Out the window. They'll kill us."
Many times before in his checkered career the Saint had had to make decisions in a fragment of time - when a gun was leveled and a finger whitening on the trigger, when a traffic accident roared toward consummation, when a ship was sinking, when a knife flashed through candlelight. His decision now was compounded of several factors, none of which was the desire for self-preservation. The Saint rarely gave thought room to self-preservation - never when there was something more important to preserve.
He did not want this creature of tattered loveliness, this epitome of what men live for, to get out of his sight. He must therefore keep her inside the cabin. And there was no place to hide....
His eyes narrowed as he looked at the two bunks. He was tearing out the mattresses before his thought was fully formed. He tossed the mattresses in a corner where shadows had retreated from the candle on the table. Then he motioned to Holbrook.
"Climb up. Make like a mattress."
He boosted the big man into the top bunk, and his hands were like striking brawn snakes as he packed blankets around him and remade the bed so that it only looked untidily put together.
"Now you," he said to the girl.
She got into the lower bunk and lay flat on her back, her disturbing head in the far corner. The Saint deposited a swift kiss upon her full red lips. They were cool and soft, and the Saint was adrift for a second.
Then he covered her. He emptied a box of pine cones on the mattresses and arranged the whole to appear as a corner heap of cones.
He was busy cleaning the dishes when the pounding came on the door.
...
Friday, May 14, 2010
Saint errant - Leslie Charteris
Teresa
It was his own answer, too. She was a damsel in distress--and no damsel in distress had ever called on the Saint in vain. And she was beautiful, also, which was a very desirable asset to damsels in distress. And about her there was a mystery, which to Simon Templar was the trumpet call of adventure.
Judith
At the next table the girl's gray eyes wavered in humorous despair toward him, meeting his own for an instant, which to a Simon Templar was sufficient invitation.
"Ecoute, toi!" The Saint's voice lanced through the air with a sudden quiet command, the edge of a blade so sweetly keen that it seemed to caress even while it cut, snapping the waiter's wandering eyes around like a magnet dropped within an inch of twin compass needles. "Mademoiselle desires that one mix three parts of Ron Rey with one part of sweet vermouth and a dash of angostura. After that, one will squeeze into it a very thin piece of lemon peel. It is quite simple."
The waiter nodded and moved away in a slight daze. In his philosophy, foreigners were not expected to speak his own patois better than he did himself, nor to cut short his studied obtuseness with a cool self-possession that addressed him in the familiar second person singular. In the doorway he paused to explain that at length to a fellow waiter. "Sales Americains," he said, and spat. Simon Templar was not meant to hear, but the Saint's ears were abnormally sensitive.
He smiled. It would never have occurred to him to report the waiter to the management, even though he was sure they would have been grateful to be warned about such a saboteur of good-will. To the Saint any city was an oyster for his opening, a world for conquest; anything was an adventure, even the slaying of an insolent waiter and the rescue of a damsel in distress about nothing more serious than a cocktail.
He let his cigarette smolder in absolute contentment. The Rumhattan arrived. The girl tasted it and grimaced ruefully--he decided that she had a mouth that couldn't look anything but pretty even when it tried.
It was his own answer, too. She was a damsel in distress--and no damsel in distress had ever called on the Saint in vain. And she was beautiful, also, which was a very desirable asset to damsels in distress. And about her there was a mystery, which to Simon Templar was the trumpet call of adventure.
Judith
At the next table the girl's gray eyes wavered in humorous despair toward him, meeting his own for an instant, which to a Simon Templar was sufficient invitation.
"Ecoute, toi!" The Saint's voice lanced through the air with a sudden quiet command, the edge of a blade so sweetly keen that it seemed to caress even while it cut, snapping the waiter's wandering eyes around like a magnet dropped within an inch of twin compass needles. "Mademoiselle desires that one mix three parts of Ron Rey with one part of sweet vermouth and a dash of angostura. After that, one will squeeze into it a very thin piece of lemon peel. It is quite simple."
The waiter nodded and moved away in a slight daze. In his philosophy, foreigners were not expected to speak his own patois better than he did himself, nor to cut short his studied obtuseness with a cool self-possession that addressed him in the familiar second person singular. In the doorway he paused to explain that at length to a fellow waiter. "Sales Americains," he said, and spat. Simon Templar was not meant to hear, but the Saint's ears were abnormally sensitive.
He smiled. It would never have occurred to him to report the waiter to the management, even though he was sure they would have been grateful to be warned about such a saboteur of good-will. To the Saint any city was an oyster for his opening, a world for conquest; anything was an adventure, even the slaying of an insolent waiter and the rescue of a damsel in distress about nothing more serious than a cocktail.
He let his cigarette smolder in absolute contentment. The Rumhattan arrived. The girl tasted it and grimaced ruefully--he decided that she had a mouth that couldn't look anything but pretty even when it tried.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Saint On Guard - Leslie Charteris
The Black Market
To any individual who, like the present chronicler, is acutely conscious of the need to conserve paper in order that there may never be any lack of raw materials on which the latest governmental artist can design new forms to be filled out in sesquicentuplicate, the mere thought of wasting one milligram of precious pulp which might be better devoted to the production of monogrammed kleenex is instinctively repugnant. Your correspondent therefore proposes to expend no words on describing the reactions of messieurs Varetti and Walsh, beyond mentioning that they looked as if they had been kicked three inches above the naval by an exacerbated elephant.
The Sizzling Saboteur
The Lieutenant gazed yearningly at the telephone, tightened a spartan stopper on a reawakening ebullience of questions, and got out another of his miasmic cigars.
They went down the crushed coral walk through a rambling profusion of poinsettias and bougainvillea that were only dark clusters under the moon. The Gulf waters rolled against the beach beyond the seawall with a hushed friendly roar. Simon Templar thought about Jean Lafitte again, and decided that in the line of piracy he could still look the old boy in the eye on his home ground.
To any individual who, like the present chronicler, is acutely conscious of the need to conserve paper in order that there may never be any lack of raw materials on which the latest governmental artist can design new forms to be filled out in sesquicentuplicate, the mere thought of wasting one milligram of precious pulp which might be better devoted to the production of monogrammed kleenex is instinctively repugnant. Your correspondent therefore proposes to expend no words on describing the reactions of messieurs Varetti and Walsh, beyond mentioning that they looked as if they had been kicked three inches above the naval by an exacerbated elephant.
The Sizzling Saboteur
The Lieutenant gazed yearningly at the telephone, tightened a spartan stopper on a reawakening ebullience of questions, and got out another of his miasmic cigars.
They went down the crushed coral walk through a rambling profusion of poinsettias and bougainvillea that were only dark clusters under the moon. The Gulf waters rolled against the beach beyond the seawall with a hushed friendly roar. Simon Templar thought about Jean Lafitte again, and decided that in the line of piracy he could still look the old boy in the eye on his home ground.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Prelude for War - Leslie Charteris
The logic of the Saint's argument was irrefutable, but there was in Chief Inspector Teal an ineradicable scepticism, founded on years of bitter disappointment, that fought obstinately against the premises from which that logic took its flying start. The Saint might for once be telling the truth, but there had been many other occasions when he had been no less plausible when he was lying. All of Mr teal's prejudices fought back from the dead end to which credulity inevitably led.
Chief Inspector Teal suddenly opened his baby-blue eyes and they were not bored or comatose or stupid, but unexpectedly clear and penetrating in the round placidity of his face.
...
She turned languidly and inspected him, one finely arched eyebrow slightly raised. She had lovely eyes, large and dark and sparkling, shaded by very long lashes. Her dark hair gleamed with a warm autumn richness. The poise of her exquisitely modelled head, the angle of her childishly tip-tilted nose, the curl of her pretty lips, proclaimed her utter and profound disinterest in Simon Templar.
"May I compliment you on your taste in clothes. I always did like that dress."
Lady Valerie stared at him hard for a moment and then her expression changed completely. It ceased altogether to be cold and disdainful: her features became animated with eagerness.
She seemed to be expecting sympathy.
Simon laughed.
"It must have been rather trying," he admitted. "I haven't seen my rival today. By the way, where is he?"
"It doesn't matter. It's nice to see <i>you</i> again."
She might almost have meant it.
"Next time you want rescuing, you must drop me a line," said the Saint. "I'm told I have a very delicate touch with damsels in distress. Maybe I could give you more satisfaction."
She glanced sideways at him, out of the corners of her eyes. her lips twitched slightly.
"Maybe you could," she said.
"All the same," Simon continued resolutely, "it would have been even more trying if you'd been left in your room, wouldn't it?"
...
Simon looked at Lady Valerie.
The fire that had gone into his appeal was a glowing ingot within him. It was a coiled spring that would drive him until it ran down, without regard for sentiment or obstacles. It was a power transformer for the ethereal vibrations of destiny. Earlier in the evening, the atmosphere of the Berkeley had defeated him; but this was not the Berkeley. He knew that there was only one solution, and there was too much at stake for him to hesitate. He was amazed at his own madness; and yet he was utterly calm, utterly resolute.
He nodded.
...
Chief Inspector Teal suddenly opened his baby-blue eyes and they were not bored or comatose or stupid, but unexpectedly clear and penetrating in the round placidity of his face.
...
She turned languidly and inspected him, one finely arched eyebrow slightly raised. She had lovely eyes, large and dark and sparkling, shaded by very long lashes. Her dark hair gleamed with a warm autumn richness. The poise of her exquisitely modelled head, the angle of her childishly tip-tilted nose, the curl of her pretty lips, proclaimed her utter and profound disinterest in Simon Templar.
"May I compliment you on your taste in clothes. I always did like that dress."
Lady Valerie stared at him hard for a moment and then her expression changed completely. It ceased altogether to be cold and disdainful: her features became animated with eagerness.
She seemed to be expecting sympathy.
Simon laughed.
"It must have been rather trying," he admitted. "I haven't seen my rival today. By the way, where is he?"
"It doesn't matter. It's nice to see <i>you</i> again."
She might almost have meant it.
"Next time you want rescuing, you must drop me a line," said the Saint. "I'm told I have a very delicate touch with damsels in distress. Maybe I could give you more satisfaction."
She glanced sideways at him, out of the corners of her eyes. her lips twitched slightly.
"Maybe you could," she said.
"All the same," Simon continued resolutely, "it would have been even more trying if you'd been left in your room, wouldn't it?"
...
Simon looked at Lady Valerie.
The fire that had gone into his appeal was a glowing ingot within him. It was a coiled spring that would drive him until it ran down, without regard for sentiment or obstacles. It was a power transformer for the ethereal vibrations of destiny. Earlier in the evening, the atmosphere of the Berkeley had defeated him; but this was not the Berkeley. He knew that there was only one solution, and there was too much at stake for him to hesitate. He was amazed at his own madness; and yet he was utterly calm, utterly resolute.
He nodded.
...
Friday, January 8, 2010
The Saint Goes On - Leslie Charteris
He put down his tankard untouched; for it was a girl who came through into the serving space behind the bar.
If there was to be a beauteous damsel in distress, Simon decided, the conventions insisted that it must be her role. She was tall and slender, with dark straight hair that took on an unexpected curl around her neck, steady grey eyes, and a mouth to which there was only one obvious way of paying tribute. Her skin reminded him vaguely of peaches and rose-petals, and the sway of her dress as she came in gave him a suggestion of her figure that filled his head with ideas of a kind to which he was quite amorally susceptible. She said "good evening" in a voice that scarcely intruded itself into the quiet room and turned to some mysterious business with the shelves behind her.
If there was to be a beauteous damsel in distress, Simon decided, the conventions insisted that it must be her role. She was tall and slender, with dark straight hair that took on an unexpected curl around her neck, steady grey eyes, and a mouth to which there was only one obvious way of paying tribute. Her skin reminded him vaguely of peaches and rose-petals, and the sway of her dress as she came in gave him a suggestion of her figure that filled his head with ideas of a kind to which he was quite amorally susceptible. She said "good evening" in a voice that scarcely intruded itself into the quiet room and turned to some mysterious business with the shelves behind her.
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