The Saint Sees It Through

sight of the waiter returning with a tray of pink concoctions in champagne glasses.

'I,' Simon announced, 'am beginning to become annoyed. Avec knobs on.'

The waiter slammed the tray on the table and distributed the drinks. The Saint eyed his.

It was definitely not a Pink Lady. Nor was it pink cham­pagne. There was grenadine in it, judging from the viscosity apparent to the eye. There might be gin, or even water. He raised his eyes.

'What—is—this?'

The waiter's eyes were like small blue marbles. 'They're bourbon and sodas, see?'

'Pink bourbon?'

'Ja ever see any other kind?' the waiter snarled.

'I believe,' Simon said gently, 'that I have been patient. Compared to the way I've conducted myself, burros are subjects for straitjackets. You have brought four rounds of liquid abor­tions that no self-respecting canned-heat hound would dip a finger in. While this went on, I have kept my temper. Job him­self would stack up beside me like a nervous cat. I have taken all your insults with a smile. But I warn you, if you don't bring the right order on your next trip, you are going to wish your mother had spanked the bad manners out of you before I had to.'

'So you wanta make trouble, huh?' The waiter signalled. 'Hey, Jake!'

The bartender, who seemed to be Jake, stopped shaking a whiskey sour at the top of the motion, looking something like a circus giant caught in a ballet pose. He was pushing six feet and a half with shoulders perhaps not so wide as a door, but wide enough. He had a face like the butt end of a redwood log, and hands like great brown clamps on the shaker.

His customers turned to regard the tableau across the big room according to the stages of inebriety they'd reached. A middle-aged man with a brief moustache twirled it at Avalon. A lady of uncertain balance lifted one side of a bright mouth at the Saint. A young couple stared, and turned back to their private discussion, which, to judge from their expression, was going to wind up in the nearest bedroom.

Jake then set down the shaker, and walked around the end of the bar. At the same moment a third man, large and aproned, came out of the archway and joined him. They marched to­gether across the dance floor, side by side, and advanced upon the Saint. It was obvious that he was their objective.

The Saint didn't move. He watched the approach of the brawny gents with the bright-eyed interest of a small boy at his first circus. He noted the width of Jake's shoulders, the practiced walk bespeaking sessions in a prize ring, and the shamble of his companion. He weighed them, mentally, and calculated the swiftness of their reflexes. He smiled.

He could see Avalon's clenched fists, just below the rim of the table, and from the corner of his eye he noted Prather's bug-eyed interest.

Jake directed a calm, steady, brown-eyed gaze at Simon Templar.

'Get out of here. Now.'

Simon didn't seem to push his chair back. He seemed only to come to an astonished attention. But in that straightening mo­tion, his chair was somehow a good three inches back from the edge of the table and he could come to his feet without being hampered.

'Yes?' he drawled with hopeful interest. 'How jolly. Ask your boss to come out and explain.'

'The boss don't need to explain,' said the spokesman. 'We'll do all the explainin' necessary.'

'Then suppose you do, my lad.'

'What is this all about, Jake?' Avalon asked.

'The boss don't want him here, that's all. And we'll throw him out if he don't scram.' Jake turned back to the Saint. 'Look, chum, we ain't anxious to spread your pretty face all around like gravy. But we can, and will, if'n you don't beat it. And don't come back.'

The Saint gestured at the table.

'You can see I haven't finished my drink. Nor has my lady friend.'

'She can stay. It's just you that's goin'.'

The Saint smiled mockingly. 'It is always a mystery to me how human beings can become so misguided as to assume im­possibilities. I should think anybody would know I'm not going out of here without Miss Dexter. She has an inflexible rule; namely, 'I'm gonna leave with the guy what brung me.' Name­ly, yours truly.'

'Can the gab,' Jake said. 'You goin' out on your feet, or would you rather pick up teeth as you crawl out?'

Jake didn't seem to be angry, or impatient. He was merely giving the Saint a choice. Like: do you want your nails filed round or pointed?

Simon got lazily to his feet.

'Sorry, Mr. Prather,' he said. 'I was just getting interested -in our conversation. Be with you in a moment. The children, you know. They get annoying at times and have to be cut back to size. . . . Jake, you shouldn't be such a naughty boy, really you shouldn't. Papa's told you before about interrupting your elders. Run along and play now, and you won't be chastised.'

Jake nodded at his cohorts, and they moved at once. The Saint's first lightning move was to remove one from the fray with a short right jab that travelled no more than three inches but carried 180 pounds of muscled steel in motion behind it.

The aproned bruiser folded his bulk against the wall between the widespread feet of one of Ferdinand Pairfield's figures and sat there with a vacuous mouth and eyes which, had they been stained, could have served as church windows.

In this move, however, Simon's attention was distracted for the fraction of a second from Jake, and that was enough. Jake made a flying leap over one corner of the table and clasped the Saint around his waist with a fervor that would have reduced Jake's girl friend to panting acquiescence.

This threw the Saint slightly off balance, and the waiter tried to take advantage of this by kicking Simon in the groin.

The Saint twisted, caught the man's ankle with his free hand, wrenched his other hand loose and began to unscrew the man's leg from the knee joint. Several welkins split asunder as the victim howled like a wounded wolf. Presently, within the space of time required to bat an eye, there was a most satisfying crack as the leg came unjointed at the hip, and the Saint turned his full attention to the leech-like Jake.

He went about that worthy's demolishment with a detached and unhurried calm. A left to the chin to straighten him up, a right to the stomach to bend him in the middle, another left, another right, and Jake gave the appearance of a polite man with the stomach ache bowing to a friend.

One devastating right to the button, and Jake slid across the stamp-sized dance floor on his back. He came to a gentle stop and lay gazing empty-eyed at the ceiling.

Sounds came from the back, sounds indicating a gathering of fresh forces. The Saint turned to Avalon.

'Shall we go, darling?' he drawled.

2

Which was all highly entertaining, not to say invigorating and healthful, Simon reflected later; but it added very little progress towards the main objective.

Certainly he had been given evidence that his attention was unwelcome to sundry members of the Ungodly; but that was hardly a novel phenomenon in his interfering life. Once the Saint had exhibited any definite interest in their affairs, and had been identified, the Ungodly could invariably be relied on to experience some misgivings, which might lead rather logically to mayhem. Certainly the proffered mayhem had recoiled, as it usually did, upon the initiators, who would doubtless ap­proach this form of exercise more circumspectly next time; but that could hardly be called progress. It just meant that the Saint himself would have to be more careful.

He had failed to learn any more about Mr. Prather's precise place in the picture, or the relationship of the other characters who flitted in and out of the convolutions of the impalpable organization which he was trying to unravel—or, for that matter, about Avalon's real place in the whole crooked cos­mogony.

Simon forced himself ruthlessly to remember that. . . . With all their intimacy, their swift and complete companionship, he still knew nothing. Nothing but what he felt; and better men than he had come to disaster from not drawing the distinction between belief and knowledge. The Saint had many vanities, but one of them had never been the arrogant confidence that sometime, somewhere, there could not be among the ranks of the Ungodly a man or a woman who would have the ability to make a sucker out of him. He had waited for that all his life; and he was still waiting, with the same cold and tormenting vigilance.