He turned back to the bunk beds.
“Come on out, kids,” he said. “The big bad wolves have temporarily woofed away.”
Fear lingered in the dark depths of Dawn Winter’s eyes, making her even more hauntingly beautiful. The Saint found strange words forming on his lips, as if some other being possessed them.
He seemed to be saying, “Dawn... I’ve seen the likeness of every beauty in history or imagination. Every one of them would be a drab shadow beside you. You are so beautiful that the world would bow down and worship you — if the world knew of your existence. Yet it’s impossible that the world doesn’t know. If one single person looked at you, the word would go out. Cameramen would beat a path to your door, artists would dust off their palettes, agents would clamor with contracts. But somehow this hasn’t happened. Why? Where, to be trite, have you been all my life?”
He couldn’t define the expression which now entered her eyes. It might have been bewilderment, or worry, or fear, or an admixture.
“I... I...” She put a hand as graceful as a calla lily against her forehead. “I... don’t know.”
“Oh, don’t let’s carry this too far.” It sounded more like himself again. “Where were you born, where did you go to school, who are your parents?”
She worried at him with wide, dark eyes.
“That’s just the trouble. I... don’t remember any childhood. I remember only my great-great-grandmother. I never saw her, of course, but she’s the only family I know about.”
Big Bill’s facial contortions finally caught the Saint’s eye. They were something to watch. His mouth worked like a corkscrew, his eyebrows did a can-can.
“I gather,” said the Saint mildly, “that you are giving me the hush-hush. I’m sorry, comrade, but I’m curious. Suppose you put in your two cents.”
“I told you once,” Big Bill said, “I told you the truth.”
“Pish,” Simon said. “Also, tush.”
“It’s true,” Big Bill insisted. “I wouldn’t lie to the Saint.”
The girl echoed this in a voice of awe.
“The Saint? The Robin Hood of Modern Crime, the twentieth century’s brightest buccaneer, the” — she blushed — “the devil with dames.”
It occurred to Simon, with a shock of remembrance, that her phrases were exactly those of Big Bill’s when he learned his host’s identity. And even they had been far from new. The Saint thought of this for a moment, and rejected what it suggested. He shook his head.
“Let’s consider that fire opal then, children. It’s slightly fabulous, you know. Now, I don’t think anybody knows more than I do about famous jools. Besides such well-known items as the Cullinan and the Hope diamonds, I am familiar with the history of almost every noteworthy bauble that was ever dug up. There’s the Waters diamond, for example. No more than a half dozen persons know of its existence, its perfect golden flawless color. And the Chiang emerald, that great and beautiful stone that has been seen by only three living people, myself included. But this cameo opal is the damn warp of history. It couldn’t be hidden for three generations without word of it getting out. In the course of time, I couldn’t have helped hearing about it. But I didn’t... So it doesn’t exist. But it does. I know it exists; I’ve held it in my hand—”
“And put it in your pocket,” Big Bill said.
The Saint felt in his jacket.
“So I did.” He pulled out the chamois bag with its precious contents and made as if to toss it. “Here.”
Big Bill stopped him with flared hands.
“Please keep it for me, Mr Templar. Things will get rather bad around here soon. I don’t want Appopoulis to get his fat hands on it.”
“Soon? Surely not for a couple of hours.”
Big Bill frowned.
“Things happen so quickly in dreams. This may seem real, but it’ll still hold the screwy pattern you’d expect.”
The Saint made a gesture of annoyance.
“Still sticking to your story? Well, maybe you’re screwy or maybe you just think I am. But I’d rather face facts. As a matter of fact, I insist on it.” He turned back to the girl. “For instance, darling, I know that you exist. I’ve kissed you.”
Big Bill growled, glared, but did nothing as the Saint waited calmly.
Simon continued, “I have the evidence of my hands, lips, and eyes that you have all the common things in common with other women. In addition you have this incredible, unbelievable loveliness. When I look at you, I find it hard to believe that you’re real. But that’s only a figure of speech. My senses convince me. Yet you say you don’t remember certain things that all people remember. Why?”
She repeated her gesture of confusion.
“I... don’t know. I can’t remember any past.”
“It would be a great privilege and a rare pleasure,” the Saint said gently, “to provide you with a past to remember.”
Another low growl rumbled in Big Bill’s chest, and the Saint waited again for developments. None came, and it struck the Saint that all the characters in this muddled melodrama had one characteristic in common — a certain cowardice in the clutch. Even Dawn Winter showed signs of fear, and nobody had yet made a move to harm her. It was only another of the preposterous paradoxes that blended into the indefinable unreality of the whole.
Simon gave it up. If he couldn’t get what he thought was truth from either of these two, he could watch and wait and divine the truth. Conflict hung on the wind, and conflict drags truth out of her hiding place and casts her naked before watching eyes.
“Well, souls,” he said, “what now? The unholy three will be back sometime. You could go now. There is the wide black night to wander in.”
“No,” Big Bill said. “Now that you’re in this, give us your help, Saint. We need you.”
“Just what, then,” Simon asked, “are we trying to prevent, or accomplish?”
“Selden Appopoulis must not get his hands on the opal or Dawn. He wants both. He’ll stop at nothing to get them.”
“I believe you mentioned a curse breathed on this gewgaw by some Oriental character.”
Dawn Winter’s voice once more tangled itself in Simon’s heart. As long as he could remember that quality — of far-off bells at dusk, of cellos on a midnight hill — time would never again pass slowly enough.
“Death shall swoop on him,” she chanted, “who holds this ancient gem from its true possessor, but all manner of things shall plague him before that dark dread angel shall come to rest at his shoulder. His nights shall be sleepless with terror, and hurts shall dog his accursed steps by day. Beauty shall bring an end to the vandal.”
The mood of her strange incantation, far more than the actual words, seemed to linger on the air after she had finished, so that in spite of all rationality the Saint felt spectral fingers on his spine. He shook off the spell with conscious resolution.
“It sounds very impressive,” he murmured, “in a gruesome sort of way. Reminds me of one of those zombie pictures. But where, may I ask, does this place me in the scheme of dire events? I have the jewel.”
“You,” Big Bill Holbrook said, “will die, as I must, and as Trailer Mac and Jimmy must. They stole it from Dawn; I stole it from them.”
The Saint smiled.
“Well, if that’s settled, let’s pass on to more entertaining subjects bordering on the carnal. Miss Winter, my car is just down the hill. If Bill is resigned to his fate, suppose we leave him and his playmates to their own fantastic devices and drift off into the night.”
Her face haloed with pleasure.
“I’d like it,” she said. “But I... I just can’t.”
“Why not? You’re over three years old. Nobody is sitting on your chest.”
“I can’t do what I like, somehow,” she said. “I can only do what I must. It’s always that way.”