Leslie Charteris - Saint in the Sun
Cannes: The Better Mousetrap
Simon Templar was not on the prowl in that way, but he never said No to anything without a second look, and his second look at Natalie was what stopped him. At the first, she was only one of the sea of faces that he automatically scanned with extraordinary selectivity while he seemed to be merely looking for a vacant table: this was the habit of a lifetime whose duration could sometimes depend on seeing everyone before anyone saw him: and her eyes were not the first in which he could sense a possibility of welcome, or her lips the only ones that seemed on the verge of a tentative smile. But these features were so exceptionally attractive that after the first comprehensive glance he had to look at them again individually. And that was when the mouth actually smiled, with a quite brazen forthrightness that was not according to protocol for that place at all, and the possibility of invitation in the eyes bared itself as almost shameless pleading.
The Saint smiled back as if he had just seen her. Dismissing with a casual gesture the intrusive attentions of a waiter who was trying to sell him a seat on the other side of the terrace, he steered as direct a course towards her as the intervening tables permitted, and watched the near-panic in her eyes relax into simple nervousness as he approached.
"Darling," he murmured. "Have you been waiting long?"
"Long enough," she said
He sat down.
"What would you have done if I hadn't shown up?"
"I don't know," she said. "Or if you'd turned out to speak nothing but French . . . But why did you speak to me in English? How did you know that I wasn't--"
"Us old roues have educated hunches that pay off sometimes."
"But you don't know, I've got to explain. I'm not the kind of girl you think!"
"Really?" Simon offered a cigarette. "Well, I've got nothing but time. Tell me the story of your life."
It could hardly cover much more than a quarter century, he estimated, and any debauchery that she might have crowded into the later years had not yet left any telltale marks on her face. Even at close quarters, her flawless skin did not betray an indebtedness to artful cosmetics. A master coiffeur had done ethereal sculpture in her hair, but would have mortgaged his sole to be able to duplicate with bleach and dye and rinse its cheerfully inconsistent shades of honey-blonde. And if her figure relied on prosthetic support or increment for its extremely interesting contours, that was a remotely potential disillusionment which in these days only nudists never have to risk. From all angles that could be determined in a respectable public place, she was as promising a temptation as any buccaneer ever made no exaggerated effort to resist.
"Natalie Sheridan," she said. "Canadian."
...
But if you would just have your drink, so that I can sit here for a little while and enjoy staring at everyone else instead of them staring at me, and let me pay for it, and then escort me out so that I can make a graceful exit--"
The Saint finally laughed, cutting off her spate of headlong clauses with a muted outburst of sheer delight. He threw back his head and shook with it irrepressibly, subduing only the sound of the guffaw, while the waiter delivered his St-Raphael and went phlegmatically away.
"Natalie, I love you. I thought I'd been picked up in every way there was, in the course of a misspent life, but you've shown me that there can always be new things to live for." He sat up again, still smiling, and not unkindly. "I'll tell you what. We'll have this drink, and then another, on me, and enjoy the passing show together."
That had been the beginning of what looked at first like the most beautifully innocuous friendship in the Saint's life story. Her ignorance of everything European was abysmal, but her lively interest made kindergarten instruction surprisingly enjoyable. Experiencing for the first time places and foods and wines that were so familiar to him, she made them new to him again with the spice of her own excitement. He got almost a proprietary kick out of first emphasizing the murky waters and overcrowded sands of the Croisette beaches, until she was as saddened as a child with a broken toy, and then taking her on a mere fifteen-minute ferry ride to the Ele Ste Marguerite and over the eucalyptus-shaded walls to the clean rocky coves on the other side which only a few fortunate tourists ever find. And when he gave her one of the glass-and-rubber masks which are almost one of the minimum garments required of Mediterranean bathers today, and she made her personal discovery of the under-water fairyland that only encumbered divers had ever glimpsed before this generation, she clung to him with real sexless tears flooding her big hazel eyes.
Except for that one spontaneous clutch, she was neither cold nor coquettish. It must be faced -- or who are we kidding? -- that few women could be with the Saint for long and want to leave him alone, and that passes had been made at him in more ways than a modest man would try to remember, and that he could scarcely help revealing even in subtle ways that he was prepared for the worst and poised for evasive action. But Natalie Sheridan gave him nothing to fight. She mad no overt attempt to bring him closer to her bed, while at the same time leaving no doubt that he might be very welcome there, some other night, when certain other conjunctions where auspicious. That alone was a refreshing change from more hackneyed hazards.
Nor was she asking to be rescued from any dragons or deadfalls, except the almost adolescent insecurity which had made her beseech him in the first place.
He had told her soon enough, inevitably, but with all the misgivings that could be rooted in a hundred prologues like this: "My name is Sebastian Tombs, believe it or not."
She had said: "Of course I believe it. People always do, when the Saint tells them that, don't they?"
It was at this memorable moment that he finally decided that the time had come at last when the pseudonym which had given him so much childish amusement for so many years must be put away in honorable retirement. He would never feel confident of fooling anyone with it again, and indeed he realized that he had been more than lucky to get away with it on the last several occasions when a perverse sentimental attachment had made him risk it just once more.
But even so, Natalie had surprised him again. She hadn't followed up the identification with the usual babble of silly questions, or embarrassing flattery, or the equally routine recollection of some flagrant injustice, public or private, which he simply must do something about. She seemed perfectly satisfied to enjoy his company as an attractive man, without pestering him for reminiscences or otherwise reminding him that he was a kind of international celebrity, in the most refreshingly natural camaraderie.
It was almost too good to be true.
