The Saint Goes West
Leslie Charteris
Contents I. PALM SPRINGS II. HOLLYWOOD
THE SAINT GOES WEST
I: PALM SPRINGS
1
'LOOK,' SAID FREDDIE PELLMAN belligerently. 'Your name is Simon Templar, isn't it?'
'I think so,' Simon told him.
'You are the feller they call the Saint?'
'So I'm told.'
'The Robin Hood of modern crime?'
Simon was tolerant.
'That's a rather fancy way of putting it.'
'Okay then,' Pellman lurched slightly on his bar stool, and took hold of his highball glass more firmly for support.
'You're the man I want. I've got a job for you.'
The Saint sighed.
'Thanks. But I wasn't looking for a job. I came to Palm Springs to have fun.'
'You'll have plenty of fun. But you've got to take this job.'
'I don't want a job,' said the Saint. 'What is it?'
'I need a bodyguard,' said Pellman.
He had a loud harsh voice that made Simon think of a rusty frog. Undoubtedly it derived some of this attractive quality from his consumption of alcohol, which was considerable. Simon didn't need to have seen him drinking to know this. The blemishes of long indulgence had worked deeply into the mottled puffiness of his complexion, the pinkish smeariнness of his eyes, and the sagging lines under them. It was even more noticeable because he was not much over thirty, and could once have been quite good-looking in a very conventional way. But things like that frequently happen to spoiled young men whose only material accomplishment in life has been the by no means negligible one of arranging to be born into a family with more millions than most people hope to see thousands.
Simon Templar knew about him, of course-as did pracнtically every member of the newspaper-reading public of the United States, not to mention a number of other countries. In a very different way, Freddie Pellman was just as notorious a public figure as the Saint. He had probably financed the swalнlowing of more champagne than any other individual in the twentieth century. He had certainly been thrown out of more night clubs, and paid more bills for damage to more hotels than any other exponent of the art of uproar. And the number of complaisant show girls and models who were indebted to him for such souvenirs of a lovely friendship as mink coats, diamond bracelets, Packards, and other similar trinkets would have made the late King Solomon feel relatively sex-starved.
He travelled with a permanent entourage of three incredibly beautiful young ladies-one blonde, one brunette, and one redнhead. That is, the assortment of colorings was permanent. The personnel itself changed at various intervals, as one faithful collaborator after another would retire to a well-earned rest, to be replaced by another of even more dazzling perfections; but the vacancy was always filled by another candidate of similar complexion, so that the harmonious balance of varieties was retained, and any type of pulchritude could always be found at a glance. Freddie blandly referred to them as his secretaries; and there is no doubt that they had left a memorable trail of scandal in every playground and every capital city in Europe and the Americas.
This was the man who said he wanted a bodyguard; and the Saint looked at him with cynical speculation.
'What's the matter?' he asked coolly. 'Is somebody's husнband gunning for you?'
'No, I never mess about with married women-they're too much grief.' Pellman was delightfully insensitive and uninнhibited. 'This is serious. Look.'
He dragged a crumpled sheet of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it clumsily. Simon took it and looked it over.
It was a piece of plain paper on which a cutting had been pasted. The cutting was from Life, and from the heading it appeared to have formed part of a layout reviewing the curtain calls in the careers of certain famous public enemies. This particular picture showed a crumpled figure stretched out on a sidewalk with two policemen standing over it in attitudes faintly reminiscent of big-game hunters posing with their kill, surrounded by the usual crowd of gaping blank-faced spectators. The caption said: A village policeman's gun wrote finis to the career of 'Smoke Johnny' Implicato, three times kidnaper and killer, after Freddie Pellman, millionaire playboy, recogнnised him in a Palm Springs restaurant last Christmas Day and held him in conversation until police arrived.
Underneath it was pencilled in crude capitals: DID YOU EVER WONDER HOW JOHNNY FELT? WELL YOU'LL SOON FIND OUT. YOU GOT IT COMING MISTER.
A FRIEND OF JOHNNY.
Simon felt the paper, turned it over, and handed it back.
'A bit corny,' he observed, 'but it must be a thrill for you. How did you get it?'
'It was pushed under the front door during the night. I've rented a house here, and that's where it was. Under the front door. The Filipino boy found it in the morning. The door was locked, of course, but the note had been pushed under.'
When Freddie Pellman thought that anything he had to say was important, which was often, he was never satisfied to say it once. He said it several times over, trying it out in different phrasings, apparently in the belief that his audience was either deaf or imbecile but might accidentally grasp the point of it were presented often enough from a sufficient variety of angles.
'Have you talked to the police about it?' Simon asked.
'What, in a town like this? I'd just as soon tell the Boy Scouts. In a town like this, the police wouldn't know what to do with a murderer if he walked into the station and gave them a signed confession.'
'They got Johnny,' Simon pointed out.
'Listen, do you know who got Johnny? I got Johnny. Who recognised him? I did. I'd been reading one of those true deнtective magazines in a barber shop, and there was a story about him in it. In one of those true detective magazines. I recognised him from the picture. Did you read what it said in that clipping?'
'Yes,' said the Saint; but Freddie was not so easily headed off.
He took the paper out of his pocket again.
'You see what it says? 'A village policeman's gun wrote finis to the career. . . .''
He read the entire caption aloud, following the lines with his forefinger, with the most careful enunciation and draнmatic emphasis, to make sure that the Saint had not been baffled by any of the longer words.
'All right,' said the Saint patiently. 'So you spotted him and put the finger on him. And now one of his pals is sore about it.'
'And that's why I need a bodyguard.'
'I can tell you a good agency in Los Angeles. You can call them up, and they'll have a first-class, guaranteed, bonded bodyguard here in three hours, armed to the teeth.'
'But I don't want an ordinary agency bodyguard. I want the very best man there is. I want the Saint.'
'Thanks,' said the Saint. 'But I don't want to guard a body.'
'Look,' said Pellman aggressively, 'will you name your own salary? Anything you like. Just name it.'
Simon looked around the bar. It was starting to fill up for the cocktail session with the strange assortment of types and costumes which give Palm Springs crowds an unearthly variety that no other resort in America can approach. Everything was represented-cowboys, dudes, tourists, tripнpers, travelling salesmen, local business men, winter resiнdents, Hollywood; men and women of all shapes and sizes and ages, in levis, shorts, business suits, slack suits, sun suits, play suits, Magnin models, riding breeches, tennis outfits, swim suits, and practically nothing. This was vacation and flippancy and fun and irresponsiblity for a while; and it was what the Saint had promised himself.
'If I took a job like that,' he said, 'it'd cost you a thousand dollars a day.'
Freddie Pellman blinked at him for a moment with the inнtense concentration of the alcoholic.
