“There are still people, especially in the country, who make their plans for ahead. Which is why they need so desperately to live to a great age.”
Salt on His Tail
by Leslie Charteris
It has often been said that letter-writing is a lost art. Don’t you believe it. Your Editor is fortunate that scattered over these United States is a band of bloodhound enthusiasts who find time to keep up a criminological correspondence with EQMM in general and EQ in particular. And one of the most charming letter-writers of all is our old friend Leslie Charteris. Many a bleak morning in the past we have got up on the wrong side of the bed, come downstairs to our study morose and murderous, only to find a letter from the creator of the Saint which annihilated the gloom and filled us with everlovingkindness. Leslie Charteris’s letters are irresistible, irrepressible, and in the case of the one we now quote, irrefutable. In August of 1947 Leslie wrote:
Dear Ellery:
It is my painful duty to inform you that you are a conscienceless bum.
It will always be a matter of grief to me that I solemnly let you make me listen to your criticism of my story, “Pearls Before Wine,” on the grounds that, said you, it was somewhat improbable that in spite of the Saint’s well built-up bluff the detective would still have insisted on searching the apartment.
And all the time, on the table in front of us [in the dining room of the Hotel Algonquin, New York City — Ed’s Note], was a copy of EQMM containing “The Case of the Frenchman s Gloves” by Margery Allingham, in which the whole plot depends on the fact that the detectives, with far less discouragement, fail to search an apartment.
Your copy book is so blotted that you could scarcely clean it up even by awarding me the first prize in your next contest for “Pearls Before Wine.” That temblor which was recently reported from Southern California was actually Charteris hitting the ceiling. I wish I could send you a picture of myself sneering at you.
Leslie, our face is red, you have us dead to rights, and touché. Chalk one up for your side, but definitely. We bow our head... But you readers may be wondering how Leslie Charteris’s letter pulled us out of the dumps instead of sinking us even deeper. Ah, you don’t know Leslie! That saintlike swashbuckler added one word — just one word — to his letter. And that one word was the magic word. Over his signature Leslie wrote:
Affectionately
Simon Templar propped one well-shod foot on the tarnished brass rail of the Bonanza City Hotel bar, and idly speculated on the assortment of footgear which had probably graced this brazen cylinder in its time — prospectors’ alkali-caked boots, miners’ hobnails, scouts’ buckskins, cowhands’ high heels... and now his own dully gleaming cordovan, resting there for a long cool one to break the baking monotony of the miles of steaming asphalt which had San Francisco as their goal.
But it was quite certain that none of the boots which in divers decades had parked themselves on that time-mellowed prop had ever carried a more picturesque outlaw, even though there was no skull and crossbones on his softly battered hat, and no pearl-handled six-shooters clung to his thighs. For Simon Templar had made a new business out of buccaneering, and hardly one of the lawbreakers and law-enforcers who knew him better under his sobriquet of The Saint could have given a valid reason why the source of so much trouble should ever have acquired such a name.
He was examining the mirrored reflections of sundry characters draped along the mahogany rim (which still boasted the autograph of a Prince of Wales under a screwed-down glass plate) and wondering if any of them inhabited the paintless houses outside, when he felt a touch on his arm.
“Would it be worth a drink t’see the Marvel of the Age, stranger?”
An anticipatory hash seemed to settle gradually on the small dark room. Simon could see in the mirror that each of the characters who decorated the perimeter of the horseshoe stiffened a little as the reedy voice broke the quiet.
The Saint turned to look down into a saddle-tanned seamed face studded with mild blue eyes and topped by thin gray hair. The blue jeans were faded, so was the khaki shirt and the red necktie run through a carven bone clasp. The look in the blue eyes said that their owner expected an order to get the hell from under foot — or, at best, the polite brush-off.
“I don’t know the current rate on marvels in these degenerate times,” said The Saint gently, “but one drink sounds fair enough.”
“Double?” spoke the oldtimer hopefully.
The bartender halted the bottle in midflight and again The Saint felt a tensing among the habitues along the brass rail.
“Double,” Simon agreed; and the bartender relaxed as if a great decision had been reached, and finished pouring the drink.
The little man lifted a battered canvas grip and placed it tenderly on the bar. He reached for the drink and lifted it toward his lips. Then he set the drink back on the bar and drew himself up to a dignified five feet five.
“Beggin’ your parding, mister — James Aloysius McDill, an’ your servant.”
“Simon Templar, and yours, sir,” The Saint said gravely.
He lifted his own drink and they clinked glasses in solemn ritual, after which James Aloysius McDill demonstrated just how quickly a double bourbon can slide down a human throat. Then he opened his shabby bag and took out an oblong box of lovingly polished wood.
It was very much like a small table-model radio. A pair of broad-faced dials on its upper surface sported impressive indicator-needles. There was a stirrup handle at either end of the box and a sort of sliding scale on top.
“Nice-lookin’ job, ain’t she?” the little man appealed to The Saint.
“Mighty pretty,” responded The Saint, gazing at it as intelligently as he would have surveyed a cyclotron.
The little man beamed. He spoke diffidently to the bartender.
“Got a silver dollar, Frank?”
The bartender obliged, with the air of one who has done this before, and the other customers duplicated his ennui. Once The Saint succumbed to the pitch for a double, the show was pretty well routined.
J. Aloysius McDill tossed the silver dollar across the room. It landed in the sawdust on the floor with a dull thump.
“Watch,” he said.
He turned a switch, made some adjustments, and grasped the handles on the varnished box, which thereupon emitted a low hymenopterous humming, and advanced upon the dollar like a hunter stalking skittish game. As he neared the coin, the humming began to keen up the scale. He stood still, and the sound held steady; again toward the dollar and the wail of the box slid up and up until, held directly above the coin, it gave forth the whine of a bandsaw eating into a pine knot.
“Can’t fool the Doodlebug,” said McDill complacently. “See,” — he held the box for The Saint to look at — “it works the same way for any other kind o’ metal.”
The Saint duly noted the markings etched along the sliding scale on top. He moved the indicator to “Gold” and the Doodlebug, which had been humming like a happy bee, suddenly whined like an angry mosquito. The Saint jerked back his left wrist with the gold watch on it, and the machine dropped again to a gentle hum. McDill set it on the bar, and it fell completely silent.
“Ain’t she a beauty?” the little man demanded.
“Lovely,” Simon agreed. “Just what you need any time you drop a silver dollar.”