The Saint and the Happy Highwayman (23 page)

“Maybe someone with a bit of experience could do it better,” he said. “Suppose you let me meet your friends.”

Mercer looked at him, first blankly, then incredulously; and the girl’s dark eyes slowly lighted up.

Her slim fingers reached impetuously for the Saint’s hand.

“You wouldn’t really do that—help Eddie to win back what he’s lost–-“

“What would you expect Robin Hood to do?” asked the Saint quizzically. “I’ve got a reputation to keep up —and I might even pay my own expenses while I’m doing it.” He drew the revealing glasses towards him and tucked them back in his pocket. “Let’s go and have some dinner and organize the details.”

But actually there were hardly any details left to organize, for Josephine Grange’s inspiration had been practically complete in its first outline. The Saint, who never believed in expending any superfluous effort, devoted most of his attention to some excellent lobster thermidor; but he had a pleasant sense of anticipation that lent an edge to his appetite. He knew, even then, that all those interludes of virtue in which he had so often tried to indulge, those brief intervals in which he played at being an ordinary respectable citizen and promised himself to forget that there was such a thing as crime, were only harmless self-deceptions—that for him the only complete life was still the ceaseless hair-trigger battle in which he had found so much delight. And this episode had everything that he asked to make a perfect cameo.

He felt like a star actor waiting for the curtain to rise on the third act of an obviously triumphant first night when they left the girl at the Roney Plaza and walked over to the Riptide—“that’s where we usually meet,” Mercer explained. And a few minutes later he was being introduced to the other two members of the cast.

Mr Yoring, who wore the pince-nez, was a small pear-shaped man in a crumpled linen suit, with white hair and bloodhound jowls and a pathetically frustrated expression. He looked like a retired businessman whose wife took him to the opera. Mr Kilgarry, his partner, was somewhat taller and younger, with a wide mouth and a rich nose and a raffish manner: he looked like the kind of man that men like Mr Yoring wish they could be. Both of them welcomed Mercer with an exuberant bonhomie that was readily expanded to include the Saint. Mr Kilgarry ordered a round of drinks.

“Having a good time here, Mr Templar?”

“Pretty good.”

“Ain’t we all having a good time?” crowed Mr Yoring. “I’m gonna buy a drink.”

“I’ve just ordered a drink,” said Mr Kilgarry.

“Well, I’m gonna order another,” said Mr Yoring defiantly. No wife was going to take him to the opera tonight. “Who said there was a Depression? What do you think, Mr Templar?”

“I haven’t found any in my affairs lately,” Simon answered truthfully.

“You in business, Mr Templar?” asked Mr Kilgarry interestedly.

The Saint smiled.

“My business is letting other people make money for me,” he said, continuing strictly in the vein of truth. He patted his pockets significantly. “The market’s been doing pretty well these days.”

Mr Kilgarry and Mr Yoring exchanged glances, while the Saint picked up his drink. It wasn’t his fault if they misunderstood him; but it had been rather obvious that the conversation was doomed to launch some tactful feelers into his financial status, and Simon saw no need to add to their coming troubles by making them work hard for their information.

“Well, that’s fine,” said Mr Yoring happily. “I’m gonna buy another drink.”

“You can’t,” said Mr Kilgarry. “It’s my turn.”

Mr Yoring looked wistful, like a small boy who has been told that he can’t go out and play with his new air gun. Then he wrapped an arm around Mercer’s shoulders.

“You gonna play tonight, Eddie?”

“I don’t know,” Mercer said hesitantly. “I’ve just been having some dinner with Mr Templar–-“

“Bring him along,” boomed Mr Kilgarry heartily. “What’s the difference? Four’s better than three, any day. D’you play cards, Mr Templar?”

“Most games,” said the Saint cheerfully.

“That’s fine,” said Mr Kilgarry. “Fine,” he repeated, as if he wanted to leave no doubt that he thought it was fine.

Mr Yoring looked dubious.

“I dunno. We play rather high stakes, Mr Templar.”

“They can’t be too high for me,” said the Saint boastfully.

“Fine,” said Mr Kilgarry again, removing the last vestige of uncertainty about his personal opinion. “Then that’s settled. What’s holding us back?”

There was really nothing holding them back except the drinks that were lined up on the bar, and that deterrent was eliminated with a discreetly persuasive briskness. Under Mr Kilgarry’s breezy leadership they piled into a taxi and headed for one of the smaller hotels on Ocean Drive, where Mr Yoring proclaimed that he had a bottle of scotch that would save them from the agonies of thirst while they were playing. As they rode up in the elevator he hooked his arm affectionately through the Saint’s.

“Say, you’re awright, ole man,” he announced. “I like to meet a young feller like you. You oughta come out fishin’ with us. Got our own boat here, hired for the season, an’ we just take out fellers we like. You like fishin’?”

“I like catching sharks,” said the Saint, with unblinking innocence.

“You ought to come out with us,” said Mr Kilgarry hospitably.

The room was large and uncomfortable, cluttered with that hideous hodgepodge of gilt and lacquer and brocade, assembled without regard to any harmony of style or period, which passes for the height of luxury in American hotel furnishing. In the centre of the room there was a card table already set up, adding one more discordant note to the cacophony of junk, but still looking as if it belonged there. There were bottles and a pail of ice on a pea-green and old-rose butterfly table of incredible awfulness.

Mr Kilgarry brought up chairs, and Mr Yoring patted Mercer on the shoulder.

“You fix a drink, Eddie,” he said. “Let’s all make ourselves at home.”

He lowered himself into a place at the table, took off his pince-nez, breathed on them and began to polish them with his handkerchief.

Mercer’s tense gaze caught the Saint’s for an instant. Simon nodded imperceptibly and settled his own glasses more firmly on the bridge of his nose.

“How’s the luck going to be tonight, Eddie?” chaffed Kilgarry, opening two new decks of cards and spilling them on the cloth.

“You’ll be surprised,” retorted the young man. “I’m going to give you two gasbags a beautiful beating tonight.”

“Attaboy,” chirped Yoring encouragingly.

Simon had taken one glance at the cards, and that had been enough to assure him that Mr Naskill would have been proud to claim them as his product. After that, he had been watching Mercer’s back as he worked over the drinks. Yoring was still polishing his pince-nez when Mercer turned to the table with a glass in each hand. He put one glass down beside Yoring, and as he reached over to place the other glass in front of the Saint the cuff of his coat sleeve flicked the pince-nez out of Yoring’s fingers and sent them spinning. The Saint made a dive to catch them, missed, stumbled and brought his heel down on the exact spot where they were in the act of hitting the carpet. There was a dull scrunching sound, and after that there was a thick and stifling silence.

The Saint spoke first.

“That’s torn it,” he said weakly.

Yoring blinked at him as if he was going to burst into tears.

“I’m terribly sorry,” said the Saint.

He bent down and tried to gather up some of the debris. Only the gold bridge of the pince-nez remained in one piece, and that was bent. He put it on the table, started to collect the scraps of glass and then gave up the hopeless task.

“I’ll pay for them, of course,” he said.

“I’ll split it with you,” said Mercer. “It was my fault. We’ll take it out of my winnings.”

Yoring looked from one to another with watery eyes.

“I—I don’t think I can play without my glasses,” he mumbled.

Mercer flopped into the vacant chair and raked in the cards.

“Come on,” he said callously. “It isn’t as bad as all that. You can show us your hand and we’ll tell you what you’ve got.”

“Can’t you manage?” urged the Saint. “I was going: to enjoy this game, and it won’t be nearly so much fun with only three.”

The silence came back, thicker than before. Yoring’s eyes shifted despairingly from side to side. And then Kilgarry crushed his cigar butt violently into an ash tray.

“You can’t back out now,” he said, and there was an audible growl in the fruity tones of his voice.

He broke the other pack across the baize with a vicious jerk of his hand that was as eloquent as a movement could be.

“Straight poker—with the joker wild. Let’s go.”

To Simon Templar the game had the same dizzy unreality that it would have had if he had been super-naturally endowed with a genuine gift of clairvoyance. He knew the value of every card as it was dealt, knew what was in his own hand before he picked it up. Even though there was nothing mysterious about it, the effect of the glasses he was wearing gave him a sensation of weirdness that was too instinctive to overcome. It was mechanically childish, and yet it was an unforgettable experience. When he was out of the game, watching the others bet against each other, it was like being a cat watching two blind men looking for each other in the dark.

For nearly an hour, curiously enough, the play was fairly even: when he counted his chips he had only a couple of hundred dollars more than when he started. Mercer, throwing in his hand whenever the Saint warned him by a pressure of his foot under the table that the opposition was too strong, had done slightly better; but there was nothing sensational in their advantage. Even Mr Naskill’s magic lenses had no influence over the run of the cards, and the luck of the deals slightly favoured Yoring and Kilgarry. The Saint’s clairvoyant knowledge saved him from making any disastrous errors, but now and again he had to bet out a hopeless hand to avoid giving too crude an impression of infallibility.

He played a steadily aggressive game, waiting patiently for the change that he knew must come as soon as the basis of the play had had time to settle down and establish itself. His nerves were cool and serene, and he smiled often with an air of faint amusement; but something inside him was poised and gathered like a panther crouched for a spring.

Presently Kilgarry called Mercer on the third raise and lost a small jackpot to three nines. Mercer scowled as he stacked the handful of chips.

“Hell, what’s the matter with this game?” he protested. “This isn’t the way we usually play. Let’s get some life into it.”

“It does seem a bit slow,” Simon agreed. “How about raising the ante?”

“Make it a hundred dollars,” Mercer said sharply. “I’m getting tired of this. Just because my luck’s changed we don’t have to start playing for peanuts.”

Simon drew his cigarette to a bright glow.

“It suits me.”

Yoring plucked at his lower lip with fingers that were still shaky.

“I dunno, ole man–-“

“Okay.” Kilgarry pushed out two fifty-dollar chips with a kind of fierce restraint. “I’ll play for a hundred.”

He had been playing all the time with grim concentration, his shoulders hunched as if he had to give some outlet to a seethe of violence in his muscles, his jaw thrust out and tightly clamped; and as the time went by he seemed to have been regaining confidence. “Maybe the game is on the level,” was the idea expressed by every line of his body, “but I can still take a couple of mugs like this in any game.”

He said, almost with a resumption of his former heartiness:

“Are you staying long, Mr Templar?”

“I expect I’ll be here for quite a while.”

“That’s fine! Then after Mr Yoring’s got some new glasses we might have a better game.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said the Saint amiably.

He was holding two pairs. He took a card, and still had two pairs. Kilgarry stood pat on three kings. Mercer drew three cards to a pair, and was no better off afterwards. Yoring took two cards and filled a flush.

“One hundred,” said Yoring nervously.

Mercer hesitated, threw in his hand.

“And two hundred,” snapped Kilgarry.

“And five,” said the Saint.

Yoring looked at them blearily. He took a long time to make up his mind. And then, with a sigh, he pushed his hand into the discard.

“See you,” said Kilgarry.

With a wry grin, the Saint faced his hand. Kilgarry grinned also, with a sudden triumph, and faced his.

Yoring made a noise like a faint groan.

“Fix us another drink, Eddie,” he said huskily.

He took the next pack and shuffled it clumsily. His fingers were like sausages strung together. Kilgarry’s mouth opened on one side and he nudged the Saint as he made the cut.

“Lost his nerve,” he said. “See what happens when they get old.”

“Who’s old?” said Mr Yoring plaintively. “There ain’t more ‘n three years–-“

“But you’ve got old ideas,” Kilgarry jeered. “You could have beaten both of us.”

“You never had to wear glasses–-“

“Who said you wanted glasses to play poker? It isn’t always the cards that win.”

Kilgarry was smiling, but his eyes were almost glaring at Yoring as he spoke. Yoring avoided his gaze guiltily and squinted at the hand he had dealt himself. It contained the six, seven, eight and nine of diamonds, and the queen of spades. Simon held two pairs again but the card he drew made it a full house. He watched while Yoring discarded the queen of spades and felt again that sensation of supernatural omniscience as he saw that the top card of the pack, the card Yoring had to take, was the ten of hearts.

Yoring took it, fumbled his hand to the edge of the table, and turned up the corners to peep at them. For a second he sat quite still, with only his mouth working. And then, as if the accumulation of all his misfortunes had at last stung him to a wild and fearful reaction like the turning of a worm, a change seemed to come over him. He let the cards flatten out again with a defiant click and drew himself up. He began to count off hundred-dollar chips… .