The little inspector cleared his throat irritably.
"Madame, this is not a performance at the Comédie Française. You understand that you will have to accompany us?"
"Only too well, Alphonse," said Bertha Noversham insultingly.
She started regally towards the door; but as the two agents nervously made way for her she turned back.
"Mr. Templar," she said almost humbly, "why?"
"To use a phrase of your own," said the Saint, "you shouldn't have thrown Natalie to the wolves — or wolf. You made her out to be such an outrageous all-time phony that after I got over the first shock I started to think that if any woman could be such a colossal barefaced liar, so could any other. But I'd never caught Natalie in the smallest dishonesty, myself, whereas I always knew that there's no such person as the Duke of Camford. And once the question of credibility had come up, there was no doubt about which of you had done the hottest job of selling me the idea of robbing the other. There are several morals in this, Bertha, but I'd say the best one is that before you start beating a path to the door of a man who makes better mousetraps, you should be sure that you're not a mouse."
"Madame," said the inspector impatiently, "one cannot wait for you all night."
However, he had the grace to pause, albeit restively, before following his cohorts and their evidence and his prize.
"I am indebted for your assistance, Monsieur le Saint, and if perhaps some day I can—"
"I knew you'd think of that, Alphonse," Simon took him up cheerily; and the little man winced. "Mrs. Sheridan may be home already, or she should be at any moment, and I'm sure you won't mind waiting to vouch for the true story of the last twentyfour hours. There'll be so many other nights when you can go to bed early, and sleep like a cherub, once you know I've got something better to do than climb in and out of windows, at my age."
2. ST. TROPEZ: The Ugly ImpresarioCopyright
"That," observed Simon Templar, "is quite a sight, even for these parts."
"And that," said Maureen Herald, "is what I've got to talk to."
They lay on the dazzling sands of Pampelonne, which are the beaches of St Tropez, gazing out at the sun-drenched Mediterranean where a few white-sailed skiffs criss-crossed on lazy tacks, an assortment of speedboats with water-skiers in tow traced evanescent arabesques among them, and, much closer in, the object of Simon's comment cruised southwards along the shore line where its occupants could comfortably observe and be observed by the heliophiles on the strand.
It was an open Chris-Craft runabout which would have photographed exactly like any other similarly expensive standard model, except in color. The color was a brilliant purple which no shipyard can ever have been asked to apply to a hull before. And to offset it, the upholstery of the cockpit and the lounging pad covering the engine hatch were an equally brilliant orange. As an aid to identifying the owner of this chromatic monstrosity, the sides of the craft were emblazoned with a large capital J nestling inside a still larger capital U, the monogram being surrounded by a circle of large golden metal stars.
The owner of the boat and the initials, Sir Jasper Undine himself, sat on the port gunwhale controlling the course with one hand. Apparently to insure that he would not be eclipsed by his own setting, he wore fluorescent green shorts, a baggy fluorescent crimson windbreaker, and a long-peaked fluorescent yellow cap. Under its exaggerated eye-shade he wore a pair of huge white-plastic blue-lensed sunglasses which, with the help of a torpedo-sized cigar clamped in his mouth and the gray goatee below it, balked any analysis of his features even at that comparatively short range: one had mainly the impression of some goggle-eyed, balloon-torsoed, spindle-legged visitor from Outer Space which had arrayed itself in human garments selected to conform with the prismatic prejudices of Alpha Centauri. But no one who paid any attention to the sophisticated chatter of those times would have been so misled as to fail to identify Sir Jasper Undine, whose ostentatious eccentricities (suitably embroidered and broadcast by a tireless press agent) had established him as the most garish current character in a coterie which has seldom been distinguished by coyness and self-effacement.
Sir Jasper Undine was, in fact, at that moment one of the indisputable kingpins of the entertainment world in Europe. The story of his rise from part-time usher in a run-down movie theater in South London, to his present control of a complex of motion picture and television producing and distributing companies with ramifications in five countries, in versions flattering or calumnious according to their source, has been told too often to need repeating here. It certainly vouched for an outstanding talent; although some stuffy critics might say that this leaned more towards a ruthless dexterity at brain-picking, idea-stealing, cheating, finagling, and double-dealing, than to any creative or artistic ability. But having achieved success, he had made a second career of indulging every appetite it would gratify, up to and including the knighthood which had cost him many expensive contributions to good causes with which he had no sympathy.
"Is he really as horrible as one would think?" Simon asked.
"Even worse, I believe. But he's got the final say — so on a job that I need very much."
"Don't you have an agent to handle things like that?"
"Of course. My agent's got everything on the contract except Undine's signature. And Undine won't make up his mind about that without meeting me himself."
Maureen Herald was an actress. She had entered Simon's life with a letter from David Lewin of the Daily Express:
Dear Saint,
Enclosed please find Maureen Herald. I don't need to tell you who she is, but I can tell you that I wish everyone I know in show business was as nice a person. She has to go to St Tropez to talk to someone who is not so nice. She doesn't know anyone else there, and she can't go places alone, and she may well want a change of company. I've told her that you also are a good friend and comparatively nice and can behave yourself if you have to. No wonder some people think I'm crazy.
She had gray eyes and what he could only have described as hair-colored hair, something between brown and black with natural variations of shading that had not been submerged by the artificial uniformity of a rinse. It was a perfect complement to her rather thin patrician features, which would only have been hardened by any obvious embellishments. She had a gracefully lean-moulded figure to match, interestingly feminine but without the exaggerated curvature in the balcony which most of the reigning royalty of her profession found it necessary to possess or simulate. His first guess would have been that she had started out as a high fashion model, but he learned that in fact she had been a nurse at the Hollywood Hospital when a famous director was brought in for treatment of an acute ulcer and offered her a screen test before he left. Her rise to stardom had been swift and outwardly effortless.
"But my last two pictures were commercial flops," she told Simon candidly. "I say they were stinkers, of course, but some other people found it easier to blame it on me. A nice girl, they said, but death at the box office. And just when my first contract had run out — it was no star salary to start with — and I should have been able to ask for some real money. They just aren't bidding for me in Hollywood at the moment, and if I don't do something soon I could be washed up for good."
"That would be a pity," he said. "And nothing but a few annuities to live on."
"That isn't even half funny," she retorted. "After taxes and clothes and publicity and all the other expenses you have to go for, there's very little left out of what I took home. And I've got a mother in a sanitarium with TB and a kid brother just starting medical school. I can't afford not to get this part."