“You will never tell her,” said Alvarez viciously, and the rifle jerked in his hand.
The crack of the shot rattled back and forth, growing fainter and fainter, between the hills, and something like fire struck the Saint’s chest. He smiled, as if something amused him.
“You’re wasting your time,” he said. “I took all the bullets out of the shells in your gun while you were asleep last night. But you’ve told me what I wanted to know. I said that the answer was in your own hands—”
Alvarez came out of the superstitious trance which had gripped him for a moment. He snatched the rifle back and then lunged with it savagely. Simon stepped to the right, and the thrust passed under his left arm. Then he swung his right fist to Alvarez’s jaw. Alvarez was on the very edge of the path, and the force of the blow lifted him backwards with his arms sprawling...
Simon Templar stood for some time gazing down into the abyss. His face was serene and untroubled, and he felt neither pity nor remorse. His mind went on working calmly and prosaically. There was no need for Teresa Alvarez to know. Nothing would disturb her conscience if she went on believing what she had been told the night before. And she would think well of El Rojo, who to her would always be the real El Rojo whom Simon had called his friend.
He would have to think up some story to account for El Rojo deciding to waive his claim to the hundred thousand pesos she had promised. He went thoughtfully back to collect his horse.
Luella
Mr and Mrs Matthew Joyson had never heard of Paolo and Francesca, but in certain ways they could have given serious competition to those classic lovers. It would be unkind of the chronicler to suggest that this resemblance may even have extended to the technical morality of their bedded bliss, although when questioned Mrs Joyson tended to be somewhat hazy about the details of the ceremony by which she acquired the name. We prefer instead to refer to the intensity of Mr Joyson’s jealous devotion, a feature which he frequently had occasion to emphasize, and which paid him much better dividends than ever stuck to the wad of the late Paolo Malatesta.
Matt Joyson was a man of about fifty with the solidly impressive bearing that one would associate with a banker or an attorney, which had been a certain asset to him in the days when he had played parts of that type in second and third road companies. Unfortunately his thespian talents were somewhat less distinguished than his appearance, and the rigors of cheap rooming houses between jobs and even worse accommodations on the road were uncongenial to a temperament conditioned by the stage-sets in which he usually appeared, so that when he met a kindred soul in the very nubile shape of the fair Luella, an ambitious ingénue who tried to pawn a watch which he unguardedly left in his dressing room, it seemed like a good time to branch out into a more comfortable career.
They adopted into their design for living a third party, one Tod Kermein, a photographer who had fallen upon evil days on account of certain exposures to which the United States Post Office adopted a rather puritanical attitude, and Matt Joyson proceeded to develop for the troupe a cameo drama which played to extremely limited houses, but with more profit to the performers than any production in which they had previously appeared. It was still necessary to travel from time to time, but the runs in any given town were usually longer than the engagements to which they had been accustomed, and by mutual co-operation and keeping a watchful eye on each other’s sleight of hand in the division of the spoils they had achieved a very pleasant and profitable way of life by the time they reached Los Angeles and the purview of Simon Templar.
The Saint (as he was known to his friends, most of whom were still alive, and just as well to his enemies, many of whom were not so lucky) was not looking for trouble at the time. He was, as a matter of fact, looking for something a lot harder to find.
“I’m sorry, Mr Templar,” said the assistant manager at the Hollywood Plaza, “but we daren’t make any exceptions. Your five days are up tomorrow, and we must have your room.”
“Who are you going to give it to?” Simon protested.
“Probably to somebody who’s just being thrown out of the Roosevelt,” answered the manager philosophically, and added hastily, “but I don’t think it would help you to rush over there. They’ve certainly got somebody waiting who’s just being thrown out of the Ambassador.”
Patricia Holm, with her shining golden head at the Saint’s shoulder, brought her blue eyes into play.
“Isn’t there anything you could do,” she pleaded, “to let a couple of nice people into this private game of musical chambers?”
The man swooned but was helpless.
“If I could solve that one,” he said, “I wouldn’t have to work here.”
The Saint took her arm.
“Leave us drink some lunch,” he said, “and brood about life in this nation of nomads.”
The adjoining restaurant was cool and surprisingly quiet. They sat in a booth and ordered drinks. The Saint lighted cigarettes for them both.
“Well, old darling,” he said, “I suppose we could always get several reservations on the night train to San Francisco, and a lot more reservations on the train back. We could spend every second day there and every other day here, and live in a compartment. After a month, it’d be the same as spending two weeks in each place.”
“We could plant a potato in a pot,” said the girl wistfully, “and in six months we’d have vines trained over the window.”
The Saint sighed.
It was, he thought, an unjustly humiliating complication in the life of any self-respecting buccaneer. There had been other times when it had been difficult for him to stay in sundry towns, but those repulses had always been sponsored either by the police, who disapproved of him on principle, or by certain citizens who preferred to have only the police to contend with. Here he had done no harm and planned none — so far... He gazed moodily about the room, and it was at that moment, although neither of them thought anything of it at the time, that he made his first contact with the life of Luella Joyson.
She happened to be sitting at an adjoining table with an Air Force top sergeant, whose voice carried clearly to Simons ears.
“These real-estate prices have lost their altimeters,” the sergeant was saying. “But what’s a guy gonna do? This climate agrees with my kid, and my wife’s nuts about it. I’ve gotta give ’em a roof if it takes all my mustering-out and accrued pay.”
His companion smiled, and the Saint’s eyes focused on her. Her smile was one of Luella’s most valuable assets. It was fashioned with wide, fun lips exquisitely accented in a shade of shocking pink which matched the hue of her Adrian suit. The smile crinkled bewitchingly in the corners of long dark eyes. Between the red lips gleamed small even teeth, and a man instinctively wondered how it would feel to be bitten by them — lightly and without passion. This pleasing prospect was framed in shining black hair rippling to sleek square shoulders, and topped by an attractive but unnecessary scrap of hat.
When she spoke, the lazy promise in her voice brought the Saint to full attention.
“I know the spot you’re in, Sergeant — er, Bill — I can call you Bill, can’t I? The price is too high. I didn’t set it; I can’t do anything about that. But I’ll tell you what I can do. For you, Bill. I’ll knock my commission off the price.”
She laid a small white hand over the sergeant’s muscular brown paw for one brief instant, in a gesture compounded charmingly of propitiation and appeal.
A frown dwelt momentarily on the sergeant’s rugged young features. Then his gray eyes softened, and a corner of his straight-across mouth twisted upward.