When they had sipped, Adrian put forward his own glass and said shyly, “Thank you.”
He and his sister toasted the Saint. And Julie asked, “Tangible?”
Simon settled back in his chair, pulled a slip of tinted paper from his coat pocket, and placed it on the table in front of them. They studied its simple but eloquent words and numerals, and stared at him in astonishment.
“Ten thousand pounds?” Julie quoted hoarsely.
“For you to divide between you,” Simon said.
“But why should you write us a check like that?” she objected.
“I wrote the check, but the money isn’t from me,” Simon told her. “When I told Lord Oldenshaw that the painting he’d given Pargit was a true and actual Rembrandt, and that we’d saved it from being hijacked, and that I could return it to him immediately, he was so anxious to get his hands on it that he could hardly wait to show his gratitude. Fifteen thousand pounds’ worth. A small enough cut out of the half a million or more he’ll get for the painting if he decides to sell it. Of course if the experts he’s no doubt got swarming all over the painting tell him it isn’t a genuine Rembrandt, the check he gave me won’t be worth tuppence in the morning. It is genuine, isn’t it, Adrian?”
He said it mainly to draw Adrian out. The young man had so far proved incapable of putting more than three words together consecutively.
“Oh, I’m certain it is. And Mr Pargit must have been sure it was or he wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble.”
Julie impulsively reached out and touched the Saint’s hand.
“Simon, it was wonderful of you to do this.”
Since Simon could only agree, he simply smiled and quietly appreciated the lingering warmth of her fingers. Adrian was obviously struggling to organise a new sentence.
“I... I’m very grateful,” he said. “Perhaps I could show it by doing a painting for you. Whom would you prefer?”
“Whom?” the Saint asked.
“Which artist?”
“Why, you, Adrian. You have money in the bank, now. You can afford to do your own work.”
“I’m afraid my only talent is imitating,” Adrian said resignedly. “Would you like a — an El Greco?”
“Something soothing,” the Saint proposed. “Gainsborough.”
Adrian beamed.
“Oh, good. I haven’t tried Gainsborough.”
“You’ve got a model in the family.”
Julie rested her chin in her hand and looked pensively at the Saint.
“I wish I had a talent, so I could show my gratitude.”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Simon responded. “For a start you could keep me company when I go back to Dorset to pick up my car. We might even find time to do a little bird-watching.”
She brightened.
“Oh, I’d love that.” Then, for his eyes alone, her mouth formed the word she had said she would never say to him: “Darling.”
The Adoring Socialite
Chapter 1
In the course of his good works, of which he himself was not the smallest beneficiary, the man so paradoxically called the Saint had assumed many roles and placed himself in such a fantastic variety of settings that the adventures of a Sinbad or a Ulysses had by comparison all the excitement of a housewife’s trip to the market. His range was the world. His identities had encompassed cowboy and playboy, poet and revolutionary, hobo and millionaire. The booty he had gathered in his years of buccaneering had certainly made the last category genuine: The assets he had salted away would have made headlines if they had been exposed to counting. He could have comfortably retired at an age when most men are still angling for their second promotion. But strong as the profit motive was as a factor in his exploits, there were other drives which would never allow him to put the gears of his mind permanently in neutral and hang up his heels on the stern rail of a yacht. He had an insatiable lust for action, in a world that squandered its energies on speeches and account books. He craved the individual expression of his own personal ideals, and his rules were not those of parliaments and judges but those of a man impatient to accomplish his purposes, according to his own lights, by the most effective means available at the moment. This does not mean that all his waking hours were consecrated to one clear-cut objective or another, attached to which there had to be the eventual prospect of some pecuniary reward. Like anyone else, he often found himself enmeshed in quite aimless activities, some of which promised nothing but entries on the debit side of his imaginary ledgers.
Like, for instance, this very Main-Line charity ball in Philadelphia, for which the tickets cost a mere $100 each against the $1,000 that many social climbers would have paid to get one. In a situation that has nothing to do with this story, Simon Templar had been offered the ineffable privilege of buying one at cost, as a favour that he could not gracefully refuse; and since he had paid his money and had nothing more exciting on his agenda at the moment, he had decided that he might as well look in, in a spirit of scientific if not wholly unmalicious curiosity, and see what cooked in this particular segment of the Upper Crust.
It was an impulse for which his first impression was that he should have had his head examined. The Adelphi Ballroom of the New Sylvania Hotel was like a claustrophobic football field thronged with players attempting to get champagne glasses from one point to another without splashing the contents over themselves or their neighbours or being toppled by dancers encroaching on drinkers’ territory. The air was dense with the essence of acres of French flowers and the effluvium of smouldering tobacco leaves. Words were lost in a whirlpool of words. Individuality was swallowed up in the mass.
The Saint stood observing the scene cynically, restless, his mind in other places, like a privateer waiting for the tide that would set him free from the shore. When a plump warm hand touched his wrist it was no surprise, even though he had given no sign of anticipating it; his life had depended so frequently on his instincts that even in surroundings as apparently safe as these, even with his mind abstracted, it would have been virtually impossible for anyone to approach him from any direction without his being aware of it well in advance of arrival.
But he looked down into the doughy pink unity that constituted the face and chins of Miss Theresa Marpeldon as if her fragrant advent had been a complete surprise. He had met her once, briefly and unmemorably, at a cocktail party in Palm Beach. Miss Theresa Marpeldon was about seventy, and the heiress of a baked-bean fortune. She was heavily powdered, soaked in cologne, and wreathed in diamonds for this occasion. In the Saint’s imagination she resembled the decorative pudding of some baronial Christmas banquet.
“Simon,” she said, “there’s a young lady here who’s dying to meet you.”
“I already like her,” the Saint said amiably. “Who is she?”
“She’s right here. She was right here. Carole?”
Miss Marpeldon kept a precautionary hold on the Saint’s arm as she turned to look for her protégé.
From behind she was all beautiful young legs and long blond hair. When Miss Marpeldon turned her round, the Saint began to feel that he was getting value for his hundred dollars. She was in her twenties, with a pert Scottish nose and wide turquoise eyes. There were many decorative women in the room, but this girl stood out like a single flower in a field of grass. The turquoise eyes met the deep blue of the Saint’s with level playfulness.
“Carole, I was just telling Mr Templar that you were dying to meet him, and then you wandered off.”