Wakeforth’s was the newest and largest and unquestionably the ugliest department store in the town. Its Edwardian builders had contrived to make it look more like a four-storey mausoleum than an emporium by giving it a portico of classical dimensions and covering the façade with carvings depicting commerce throughout the Empire. But the goods displayed in the huge windows at street level were attractive enough, and inside there was at least room to move between the multitude of counters stacked with brightly packaged gifts.
The Saint browsed through the departments on the ground and first floors until he reached the second. It had been given over entirely to toys and children’s clothing, and he was about to carry straight on up the stairs when a banner strung between two pillars in the centre of the floor caught his eye:
Simon grinned as he read it and decided that in the circumstances it was an invitation he could not refuse.
The Christmas grotto took up one complete corner of the floor, and consisted of a hardboard cave enclosed by cardboard cutouts of a fairy castle. The children handed their money to a bored-looking girl dressed as a pixie in a booth at the castle entrance and then walked up to where Santa sat on his sleigh in the entrance to the cave. Everything had been covered in tinsel and artificial snow and the result was obviously approved of by the line of eager children queuing at the pay booth. After their brief chat with Father Christmas the children left by a one-way turnstile at the side of the cave.
The Saint walked around the grotto and leaned against the wall beside the turnstile where he could watch the Santa at work. Close to, he looked rather less imposing than when seen from outside the grotto. Simon had no idea whether there was a regulation height for Santas but, had there been, this one would definitely not have measured up. He was little more than five feet four, and despite the bulging padding beneath his tunic quite clearly of slim build. The tunic hung loose about the shoulders and the trousers bagged at the knees. After going to so much trouble to make the grotto look attractive, it seemed strange that the management had not paid the same attention to its star attraction.
But it was not the clothes or the physique which made the Saint’s eyes narrow with suspicion as he scrutinised the man. It was the face. True, the cheeks were the required rosy red, but the grease paint looked as if it had been applied with a trowel. The hood of the costume hid the forehead, and the fake cotton-wool eyebrows and luxuriant white beard contrived to conceal eighty per cent of the face. But there was no hiding the eyes, which were small and dark. He looked for final confirmation at the hands, but they were encased in thick knitted woollen gloves.
The Saint smiled thoughtfully as he nevertheless penetrated the disguise. Santa was not a he but a she.
3
The girl soon became aware that she was being watched. She pulled the hood further down over her face and shifted sideways on her sleigh so that as much of her as possible was hidden from him. Using her body to mask the gesture, she waved to the pixie in the pay booth. It was obviously a prearranged signal, for the assistant immediately closed the gate leading to the grotto and hung a notice on it promising that Father Christmas would return in thirty minutes. Santa jumped nimbly from the sleigh and with the pixie hurried towards a door marked “Staff Only.”
The Saint skirted the grotto wall and followed. He was just in time to see the pixie disappearing into the lavatory a few yards along the corridor, while Santa darted through a door marked rest room directly opposite.
Simon paused for a moment to be sure that the corridor was not about to be used by other members of the staff, who might be curious as to his presence, before he opened the rest-room door.
The girl was standing in the middle of the room. She had pulled off the false beard and eyebrows. She still wore the boots and red breeches, but the fur trimmed tunic had been discarded and thrown across a chair on which also rested the cushion she had used to pad out her figure to the required traditional plumpness.
He smiled with open approval.
“Darling,” he murmured, “you can come down my chimney any night of the year.”
She was young, trim, and beautiful, small-featured under the now ridiculous ruddy make-up. Straight black hair slid past slender shoulders. Her eyes transmitted that combination of mystery and innocence which is the birthright of so many Eastern women.
She snatched up the tunic and clutched it modestly to her chest.
“Go away, please,” she blustered indignantly. “I have to change.”
“Carry on,” he said coolly. “I won’t watch.”
He made a play of turning and closing the door and studiously averting his gaze to give her time to pull on a sweater snug enough to emphasise the charms he had already glimpsed. He read the fire regulations pinned to the wall beside him while she exchanged the boots and breeches for a pair of shoes and a skirt.
At last he turned and appraised the result.
“Well, it certainly beats the Father Christmas costume,” he said.
She tried to hide her embarrassment by dabbing cold cream on her face and scrubbing it with tissues to remove the grease paint. The skin that it revealed was the colour of honey and as smooth as silk. She looked at him sullenly and spoke with a defiant edge to her voice.
“What do you want?”
The Saint perched himself on the corner of a table. It was a good question, and one to which he did not have a ready answer. He toyed with a number of possible replies before deciding on the most direct approach.
“I’m curious about why Wakeforth’s employ a Miss instead of the usual Mr. Claus. Not that I’m complaining, you understand — just very interested.”
She hesitated, as if she considered telling him to mind his own business, but something in his casually confident attitude told her he would not be so easily dismissed.
“If I told you, would you tell the manager?”
“I never tell on a lady,” he assured her, and added: “Especially when I know her name.”
His friendly tone and lighthearted manner, as much as his words, seemed to provide the reassurance she was seeking.
“My name is Chantek Alam.”
“And mine is Simon Templar,” he responded with a smile. “I must compliment your parents on such an apt choice of a name for you.”
The Saint’s knowledge of the Malay language was not comprehensive, but he remembered enough from early adventures to know that Chantek means “beautiful.”
For the first time her tenseness began to dissolve.
“Thank you.”
“Now, do I get my explanation?”
“I am a student at St. Enoch’s from Singapore and I am working here during the holiday. That is all.”
St. Enoch’s was unique in Cambridge in those days for admitting both male and female students.
“But not as Father Christmas,” said the Saint.
Chantek shook her head.
“No, as an assistant in the doll department.”
At that moment a rasping snore reverberated through the air. Chantek walked across and pulled aside a curtain which cut off one corner of the room, to reveal a day bed on which was curled the slumbering form of a portly white-haired gentleman of pensionable age. His suit was crumpled and stained, the collar had come adrift from his shirt, and his face had not seen soap, water, or razor for at least twenty-four hours. The atmosphere surrounding him smelt like the discharge from a brewhouse chimney.