Mr Uniatz blinked at him. Even in isolation, the face that Nature had planted on top of Mr Uniatz's bull neck could never have been mistaken for that of a matinee idol with an inclination towards intellectual pursuits and the cultivation of the soul; but when viewed in exaggerating contrast with the tanned piratical chiselling of the Saint's features it had a grotesqueness that was sometimes completely shattering to those who beheld it for the first time. To compare it with the face of a gorilla which had been in violent contact with a variety of blunt instruments during its formative years would be risking the justifiable resentment of any gorilla which had been in violent contact with a variety of blunt instruments during its formative years. The best that can be said of it is that it contained in mauled and primitive form all the usual organs of sight, smell, hearing, and ingestion, and prayerfully let it go at that. And yet it must also be said that Simon Templar had come to regard it with a fondness which even its mother could scarcely have shared. He watched it with good-humoured patience, waiting for it to answer,
"I dunno, boss," said Mr Uniatz.
He had not thought over the point very deeply. Simon knew this, because when Mr Uniatz was thinking his face screwed itself into even more frightful contortions than were stamped on it in repose. Thinking of any kind was an activity which caused Mr Uniatz excruciating pain. On this occasion he had clearly escaped much suffering because his mind — if such a word can be used without blasphemy in connection with any of Mr Uniatz's cerebral processes — had been elsewhere.
"Something is bothering you, Hoppy," said the Saint. "Don't keep it to yourself, or your head will start aching."
"Boss," said Mr Uniatz gratefully, "do I have to drink dis wit' de paper on?"
He held up the parcel he was nursing.
Simon looked at him blankly for a moment, and then felt weak in the middle.
"Of course not," he said. "They only wrapped it up because they thought we were going to take it home. They haven't got to know you yet, that's all."
An expression of sublime relief spread over Mr Uniatz's homely countenance as he pawed off the wrapping paper from the bottle of Vat 69. He pulled out the cork, placed the neck of the bottle in his mouth, and tilted his head back. The soothing fluid flowed in a cooling stream down his asbestos gullet. All his anxieties were at rest.
For the Saint, Consolation was not quite so easy. He finished his tankard and pushed it across the bar for a refill. While he was waiting for it to come back, he pulled out of his pocket and read over again the note that had brought him there. It was on a plain sheet of good notepaper, with no address.
Dear Saint,
I'm not going to write a long letter, because if you aren't going to believe me it won't make any difference how many pages I write.
I'm only writing to you at all because I'm utterly desperate.
How can I put it in the baldest possible way? I'm being forced into making myself an accomplice in one of the most gigantic frauds that can ever have been attempted, and I can't go to the police for the same reason that I'm being forced to help.
There you are. It's no use writing any more. If you can be at the Bell at Hurley at eight o'clock on Sunday evening I'll see you and tell you everything. If I can only talk to you for half an hour, I know I can make you believe me.
Please, for God's sake, at least let me talk to you.
My name is
Nothing there to encourage too many hopes in the imagination of any one whose mail was as regularly cluttered with crank letters as the Saint's; and yet the handwriting looked neat and sensible, and the brief blunt phrasing had somehow carried more conviction than a ream of protestations. All the rest had been hunch — that supernatural affinity for the dark trail of ungodliness which had pitchforked him into the middle of more brews of mischief than any four other freebooters of his day.
And for once the hunch had been wrong. If only it hadn't been for that humdrumly handsome excrescence in the striped blazer…
Simon looked up again for another tantalizing eyeful of the dark slender girl.
He was just in time to get a parting glimpse of her back as she made her way to the door, with the striped blazer hovering over her like a motherly hen. Then she was gone; and everyone else in the bar suddenly looked nondescript and obnoxious.
The Saint sighed.
He took a deep draught of his beer, and turned back to Hoppy Uniatz. The neck of the bottle was still firmly clamped in Hoppy's mouth, and there was no evidence to show that it had ever been detached therefrom since it was first inserted. His Adam's apple throbbed up and down with the regularity of a slow pulse. The angle of the bottle indicated that at least a pint of its contents had already reached his interior.
Simon gazed at him with reverence.
"You know, Hoppy," he remarked, "when you die we shan't even have to embalm you. We'll just put you straight into a glass case, and you'll keep for years."
The other customers had finally returned to their own business, except for a few who were innocently watching for Mr Uniatz to stiffen and fall backwards; and the talkative young barman edged up again with a show of wiping off the bar.
"Nothing much here to interest you tonight, sir, is there?" he began chattily.
"There was," said the Saint ruefully. "But she went home."
"You mean the dark young lady, sir?"
"Who else?"
The man nodded knowingly.
"You ought to come here more often, sir. I've often seen her in here alone. Miss Rosemary Chase, that is. Her father's Mr Marvin Chase, the millionaire. He just took the New Manor for the season. Had a nasty motor accident only a week ago…"
Simon let him go on talking, without paying much attention. The dark girl's name wasn't Nora Prescott, anyhow. That seemed to be the only important item of information — and with it went the last of his hopes. The clock over the bar crept on to twenty minutes past eight. If the girl who had written to him had been as desperate as she said, she wouldn't come as late as that — she'd have been waiting there when he arrived. The girl with the strained blue eyes had probably been suffering from nothing worse than biliousness or thwarted love. Rosemary Chase had happened merely by accident. The real writer of the letter was almost certainly some fat and frowsy female among those he had passed over without a second thought, who was doubtless still gloating over him from some obscure corner, gorging herself with the spectacle of her inhibition's hero in the flesh.
A hand grasped his elbow, turning him round, and a lightly accented voice said: "Why, Mr Templar, what are you looking so sad about?"
The Saint's smile kindled as he turned.
"Giulio," he said, "if I could be sure that keeping a pub would make anyone as cheerful as you, I'd go right out and buy a pub."
Giulio Trapani beamed at him teasingly.
"Why should you need anything to make you cheerful? You are young, strong, handsome, rich — and famous. Or perhaps you are only waiting for a new romance?"
"Giulio," said the Saint, "that's a very sore point, at the moment."
"Ah! Perhaps you are waiting for a love-letter which has not arrived?"
The Saint straightened up with a jerk. All at once he laughed. Half incredulous sunshine smashed through his despondency, lighted up his face. He extended his palm.
"You old son-of-a-gun! Give!"
The landlord brought his left hand from behind his back, holding an envelope. Simon grabbed it and ripped it open. He recognized the handwriting at a glance. The note was on a sheet of hotel paper.
Thank God you came. But I daren't be seen speaking to you after the barman recognized you.