The Saint in Europe (8 page)

“You put all your money in Voyson’s company?” reнpeated the Saint, with a sudden weariness.

The old man nodded.

“Dot is how I mean, I didn’t do it all by myself. If I hadn’t done that I should’ve had to vork some more years.”

Simon Templar’s eyes fell to the newspaper on his knee. For it was on that day that the collapse of the Voyson Plastics Company was exposed by the sudden disappearance of the President, and ruined investors learned for the first time that the rock on which they had been lured to found their fortunes was nothing but a quicksand. Even the local sheet which the Saint had bought devoted an entire column to the first revelations of the crack-up.

Simon drew a slow breath as if he had received a physical blow. There was nothing very novel about the story; there never will be anything very novel about these things, except for the scale of the disaster; and certainly there was nothing very novel about it in the Saint’s experience. But his heart went oddly heavy. For a second he thought that he would rather anyone but himself should bring the tragedy-anyone who hadn’t seen what he had seen, who hadn’t been taken into the warmth and radiance of the enchanted castle that had been opened to him. But he knew that the old man would have to know, sooner or later. And the girl would have to know.

He held out his paper.

“Maybe you haven’t read any news lately,” he said quietly, and turned away to the window because he preнferred not to see.

2

The lottery of travel had done a good job. It reached out into the world and threw lives and stories together, shufнfled them in a brief contact, and then left them altered forнever. An adventurer, a Rhine Maiden, an old man. Hope, romance, a crooked company promoter, a scrap of cheap newsprint, tragedy. Perhaps every route that carries human freight is the same, only one doesn’t often see the working .of it. Human beings conquering and falling and rising again, each in his own trivial little play, in the inscrutible loneliness which everything human makes for itself wherever crowds mingle and never know each other’s names. Simon Templar had loved the lottery for its own sake, because it was a gamble where such infinitely exciting things could happen; but now he thought that it looked on its handiwork and sneered. He could have punched it on the nose.

After a long time the old man was speaking to him.

“It isn’t true. It couldn’t be true. Der great big company like dot couldn’t break down!”

Simon looked into the dazed honest eyes.

“I’m afraid it must be true,” he said steadily.

“But I spoke to him only a little vhile ago. I thank him. Und he shook hands with me.” The old man’s voice was pleading, pleading tremulously for the light that wasn’t there. “No man could have acted a lie like dot… Vait! I go to him myself, und he’ll tell me it isn’t true.”

He stood up and dragged himself shakily to the door, holding the luggage rack to support himself.

Simon filled his lungs.

He fell back into the reality of it with a jolt like a plunge into cold water, which left him braced and tingling. Mentally, he shook himself like a dog. He realized that the fragнment of drama which had been flung before him had temнporarily obscured everything else; that because the tragedy had struck two people who had given him a glimpse of a rare loveliness that he had forgotten for many years, he had taken their catastrophe for his own. But they were only two of many thousands. One never feels the emotion of these things, except academically, until it touches the links of one’s own existence. Life was life. It had happened before, and it would happen again. Of the many crooked financiers whom the Saint had known to their loss, there was scarcely one whose victims he had ever considered. But Bruce Voyнson was actually on the train, and he must have been carryнing some wealth with him, and the old man knew what he looked like.

The girl was rising to follow, but Simon put his hands on her shoulders and held her back.

“I’ll look after him,” he said. “Perhaps you’d better stay here.”

He swung himself through the door and went wafting down the corridor, long-limbed and alert. A man like Bruce Voyson would be fair game for any adventurer; and it was in things like that that the Saint was most at home. The fact that he could be steered straight to his target by a man who could really recognize the financier when he saw him, in spite of his disguise, was a miracle too good to miss. Action, swift and spontaneous and masterly, was more in the Saint’s line than a contemplation of the brutal ironies of Fate; and the prospect of it took his mind resiliently away from gloom. He followed the old man along the tram at a leisured distance. At each pause where the old man stopped to peer into a compartment the Saint stopped also and lounged against the side, patient as a stalking tiger. Some time later he pushed into another carriage and found himself in the dining car, for it was an early train with provision for the breakfasts of late-rising travellers. The old man was standнing over a table half-way down; and one glance was enough to show that he had found his quarry.

Simon sank unnoticed into the adjoining booth. In a panel mirror on the opposite side he could see the man who must have been Bruce Voyson-a thin dowdily dressed man with the almost white hair and tinted glasses which the old German had described. The glasses seemed to hide most of the sallow face, so that the line of the thin straight mouth was the only expressive feature to be seen.

The old German was speaking.

“Mr Voyson, I’m asking you a question und I vant an answer. Is it true dot your company is smashed?”

Voyson hesitated for a moment, as if he was not quite sure whether he had heard the question correctly. And then, as he seemed to make up his mind, his gloved fingers twisted together on the table in front of him.

“Absolute nonsense,” he said shortly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The old man swallowed.

“Then vhy is it, Mr Voyson, dot der paper here says dot it is all smashed, und everyone vants to know where you are?”

“What paper is that?” demanded Voyson; but there was a harsh twitch in his voice.

The old man dropped it on the table.

“Dot’s der paper. If you don’t understand Cherman I translate it for you. It says: ‘Von of der biggest swindle in history vas yesterday in Maxton, Ohio, exposed-’”

Voyson bit the corner of his mouth, then swung around.

“Well, what about it?”

“But, Mr Voyson, you cannot speak of it like dot. You cannot realize vat it means. If it is true dot der money is all gone … You don’t understand. All my life I vork and vork und I safe money, und I put it all in your company. It cannot be true dot all my money is gone-dot all my life I have vork for nothing-“

“Suppose it is gone?” snapped Voyson. “There are plenty of others in the same boat.” He sighed. “It’s all in the luck of the game.”

The old man swayed and steadied himself heavily.

“Luck?” he said hoarsely. “You talk to me of luck? When I am ruined, und it says here dot it vas all a swindle -dot you are nodding but a criminal-“

Voyson’s fist hit the table.

“Now you listen to me,” he rasped. “We’re not in Amerнica now-either of us. If you’ve got any complaints you can take me back to Ohio first, and then go ahead and prove I swindled you. That’ll be soon enough for you to start shooting off your mouth about criminals. Now what d’you think you’re going to do about it? Think it over. And get the hell out of here while you do your thinking, or I’ll call the guard and have you thrown off the train!”

The Saint’s muscles hardened, and relaxed slowly. His dark head settled back almost peacefully on the upholstery behind him; but the wraith of a smile on his lips had the grim glitter of polished steel. A steward hovered over him, and he ordered a sandwich which he did not want without turning his head.

Minutes later, or it might have been hours, he saw his travelling acquaintance going past him. The old man looked neither to right nor left. His faded eyes stared sightlessly ahead, glazed with a terrible stony emptiness. His big toil-worn hands, which could have picked Voyson up and broken him across one knee, hung listlessly at his sides. His feet slouched leadenly, as if they were moved by a conscious effort of will.

Simon sat on. After another few minutes Voyson paid his bill and went past, walking jerkily. His coat was rucked up on one side, and Simon saw the tell-tale bulge on the right hip before it was straightened.

The Saint spread coins thoughtfully on the table to cover the price of his sandwich. His eyes ran over the selection of condiments which had come with it, and almost absent-mindedly he dropped the pepper-pot into his pocket. Then he picked up the sandwich as he stood up, took a bite from it, and sauntered out with it in his hand.

At the entrance of the next coach something caught the tail of his eye, and he stopped abruptly. The door at the side was open, and the bowed figure of the old German stood framed in the oblong, looking out. The broad rounded shoulders had a deathly rigidity. While Simon looked, the gnarled hands tightened on the handrails by which the figure held itself upright, stretching the skin white over the knuckles; then they let go.

Simon covered the distance in two lightning strides and dragged him back. A train passing in the opposite direction blasted his ears with its sudden crashing clamor, and went clattering by in a gale of acrid wind. The old man fought him blindly, but Simon’s lean strength pinned him against the bulkhead. The noise outside whisked by and vanished again as suddenly as it had come, giving place to the subнdued rhythmic mutter of their own passage.

“Don’t be a fool!” snapped the Saint metallically. “What sort of help is that going to be to Greta?”

The old man’s struggling arms went limp, gradually. He gazed dumbly back, trying to understand. His throat moved twice, convulsively, before his voice came.

“Dot’s right… Dot’s right… I must look after Greta. Und she is so young…”

Simon let him go, and he went weakly past, around the corner into the main corridor.

The Saint lighted a cigarette and inhaled deeply. It had been close enough …And once again he gave himself that mental shake, feathering himself down to that ice-cold clarнity of purpose in which any adventurer’s best work must be done. It was a tough break for the old Dutchman, but Simon couldn’t keep his mind solely on that. He didn’t want to. Such distractions as the rescuing of potential damn-fool suicides from sticky ends disturbed the even course of buccaneering. Voyson was on the train; and the ungodly prospered only that a modern pirate might loot them.

A little way further down the carriage Simon found the financier sitting in a first-class compartment by himself. The Saint eased back the door and stepped through, sliding it shut behind him. He stood with his sandwich in one hand and his cigarette in the other, balancing himself lightly against the sway.

“A word with you,” he said.

3

Voyson looked up.

“Who are you?” he demanded irritably.

“New York Herald Tribune, European edition,” said the Saint coolly and mendaciously. “I want an interview. Mind if I sit down?”

He took a seat next to the financier as if he had never considered the possibility of a refusal.

“Why do you think I should have anything to tell you?”

The Saint smiled.

“You’re Bruce Voyson, aren’t you?” He touched the man’s head, then looked at his finger tips. “Yes, I thought so. It’s wonderful what a difference a little powder will make. And those dark glasses help a lot, too.” His fingers patted one of Voyson’s hands. “Besides, if there’s going to be any argument, there ought to be a scar here which would settle it. Take that glove off and show me that you haven’t got a scar, and I’ll apologize and go home.”

“I’ve no statement to make,” said Voyson coldly, though the ragged edge of his nerves showed in the shift of his eyes and the flabby movement of his hands. “When I have, you’ll get it. Now d’you mind getting out?”

“A bad line,” murmured the Saint reprovingly. “Very bad. Always give the papers a break, and then they’ll see you get a good seat when the fireworks go off.” He put his left arm around the financier’s shoulders, and patted the man’s chest in a brotherly manner with his right hand. “Come along now, Mr Voyson-let’s have the dope. What’s the inside story about your company?”

Voyson shook him off savagely.

“I’ve got no statement to make, I tell you! The whole story’s a rigmarole of lies. When I get back I’ll sue every paper that’s printed it-and that goes for yours too! Now get out-d’you hear?”

“Spoken like a man,” drawled the Saint appreciatively. “We ought to have had a newsreel here to record it. Now about this trip of yours-“

“Where did you get that?” whispered Voyson.

His eyes were frozen on the booklet of colored papers which the Saint was skimming through. Simon glanced up and back to them again.

“Out of your pocket,” he answered calmly. “Just put me down as inquisitive.”

He turned the leaflets interestedly, examining them one by one until he came to the end. Then he replaced them in their neat folder, snapped the elastic, and stowed it away in his own pocket.

“Destination Batavia, I see,” he remarked genially. “Well, I’m sure you’ll be able to straighten everything out when you get back to Maxton. Putting duty before everyнthing else and going home by the shortest route, too. Indonesia is on the direct line to Ohio from here-via Australia. Are you taking in Australia? You oughtn’t to miss the wallabies … You certainly are going to have a nice long voyage to recover from the strain of trying to save your shareholders’ money. And by the way, there are quite a lot of extradition difficulties from Indonesia to the United States when a guy is wanted for your particular kind of nastiness, aren’t there?”

Voyson rubbed his chin with a shaking hand. His gaze was fixed on the Saint with the quivering intensity of a guinea-pig hypnotized by a snake.

“Picked my pocket, eh?” he got out harshly. “I’ll see your editor hears about that. I’ll have you arrested!”

He reached up for the communication cord. Simon tilted his head back and half-closed his eyes.