Two pairs of eyebrows shot up and lowered almost in unison, but it was the Saint who spoke for Mackenzie as well as himself.
“How would you do that, Mrs Bastion?” he inquired with some circumspection. “If the Monster has been well known around here for a few centuries, at least to everyone who believes in him—”
“It still hasn’t been scientifically and officially established. I’d like to have the credit for doing that, beyond any shadow of doubt, and having it named monstrum eleanoris.”
“Probably you gentlemen don’t know it,” Bastion elucidated, with a kind of quaintly protective pride, “but Mrs Bastion is a rather distinguished naturalist. She’s hunted every kind of big game there is, and even holds a couple of world’s records.”
“But I never had a trophy as important as this would be,” his better half took over again. “I expect you think I’m a little cracked — that there couldn’t really be any animal of any size in the world that hasn’t been discovered by this time. Tell them the facts of life, Noel.”
Bastion cleared his throat like a schoolboy preparing to recite, and said with much the same awkward air, “The gorilla was only discovered in 1847, the giant panda in 1869, and the okapi wasn’t discovered till 1901. Of course explorers brought back rumors of them, but people thought they were just native fairytales. And you yourselves probably remember reading about the first coelacanth being caught. That was only in 1938.”
“So why shouldn’t there still be something else left that I could be the first to prove?” Eleanor Bastion concluded for him. “The obvious thing to go after, I suppose, was the Abominable Snowman, but Mr Bastion can’t stand high altitudes. So I’m making do with the Loch Ness Monster.”
Inspector Mackenzie, who had for some time been looking progressively more confused and impatient in spite of his politely valiant efforts to conceal the fact, finally managed to interrupt the antiphonal barrage of what he could only be expected to regard as delirious irrelevancies.
“All that I’m consairrned wi’, ma’m,” he said heavily, “is tryin’ to detairrmine whether there’s a human felon to be apprehended. If it should turrn oot to be a monster, as ye’re thinkin’, it wadna be in my jurisdeection. However, in that case, pairhaps Mr Templar, who is no’ a police officer, could be o’ more help to ye.”
“Templar,” Bastion repeated slowly. “I feel as if I ought to recognize that name, now, but I was rather preoccupied with something else when I first heard it.”
“Do you have a halo on you somewhere?” quizzed Mrs Bastion, the huntress, in a tone which somehow suggested the aiming of a gun.
“Sometimes.”
“Well, by Jove!” Bastion said. “I should’ve guessed it, of course, if I’d been thinking about it. You didn’t sound like a policeman.”
Mackenzie winced faintly, but both the Bastions were too openly absorbed in re-appraising the Saint to notice it.
Simon Templar should have been hardened to that kind of scrutiny, but as the years went on it was beginning to cause him a mixture of embarrassment and petty irritation. He wished that new acquaintances could dispense with the reactions and stay with their original problems.
He said, rather roughly, “It’s just my bad luck that Mackenzie caught me as I was leaving Inverness. I was on my way to Loch Lomond, like any innocent tourist, to find out how bonnie the banks actually are. He talked me into taking the low road instead of the high road, and stopping here to stick my nose into your problem.”
“But that’s perfectly wonderful!” Mrs Bastion announced like a bugle. “Noel, ask him to stay the night. I mean, for the weekend. Or for the rest of the week, if he can spare the time.”
“Why — er — yes,” Bastion concurred obediently. “Yes, of course. We’d be delighted. The Saint ought to have some good ideas about catching a monster.”
Simon regarded him coolly, aware of the invisible glow of slightly malicious expectation emanating from Mackenzie, and made a reckless instant decision.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’d love it. I’ll bring in my things, and Mac can be on his way.”
He sauntered out without further palaver, happily conscious that only Mrs Bastion had not been moderately rocked by his casual acceptance.
They all ask for it, he thought. Cops and civilians alike, as soon as they hear the name. Well, let’s oblige them. And see how they like whatever comes of it.
Mackenzie followed him outside, with a certain ponderous dubiety which indicated that some of the joke had already evaporated.
“Ye’ll ha’ no authority in this, ye understand,” he emphasized, “except the rights o’ any private investigator — which are no’ the same in Scotland as in America, to judge by some of the books I’ve read.”
“I shall try very hard not to gang agley,” Simon assured him. “Just phone me the result of the PM as soon as you possibly can. And while you’re waiting for it, you might look up the law about shooting monsters. See if one had to take out a special license, or anything like that.”
He watched the detective drive away, and went back in with his two-suiter. He felt better already, with no official eyes and ears absorbing his most trivial responses. And it would be highly misleading to say that he found the bare facts of the case, as they had been presented to him, utterly banal and boring.
Noel Bastion showed him to a small but comfortable room upstairs, with a window that faced towards the home of Fergus Clanraith but which also afforded a sidelong glimpse of the loch. Mrs Bastion was already busy there, making up the bed.
“You can’t get any servants in a place like this,” she explained. “I’m lucky to have a woman who bicycles up from Fort Augustus once a week to do the heavy cleaning. They all want to stay in the towns where they can have what they think of as a bit of life.”
Simon looked at Bastion innocuously and remarked, “You’re lucky to find a secretary right on the spot like the one I met up the road.”
“Oh, you mean Annie Clanraith.” Bastion scrubbed a knuckle on his upper lip. “Yes. She was working in Liverpool, but she came home at Christmas to spend the holidays with her father. I had to get some typing done in a hurry, and she helped me out. It was Clanraith who talked her into staying. I couldn’t pay her as much as she’d been earning in Liverpool, but he pointed out that she’d end up with just as much in her pocket if she didn’t have to pay for board and lodging, which he’d give her if she kept house. He’s a widower, so it’s not a bad deal for him.”
“Noel’s a writer,” Mrs Bastion said. “His big book isn’t finished yet, but he works on it all the time.”
“It’s a life of Wellington,” said the writer. “It’s never been done, as I think it should be, by a professional soldier.”
“Mackenzie didn’t tell me anything about your background,” said the Saint. “What should he have called you — Colonel?”
“Only Major. But that was in the Regular Army.”
Simon did not miss the faintly defensive tone of the addendum. But the silent calculation he made was that the pension of a retired British Army major, unless augmented by some more commercial form of authorship than an unfinished biography of distinctly limited appeal, would not finance enough big-game safaris to earn an ambitious huntress a great reputation.
“There,” said Mrs Bastion finally. “Now if you’d like to settle in and make yourself at home, I’ll have some tea ready in five minutes.”