“Sit down at my table for a minute,” Simon said, guiding him in that direction even while he spoke. “Have a drop of wine.” He poured a glass. “Or something stronger, if you feel like it. That was quite a dirty poke you took.”
“Thank you. I’ll be all right in a jiffy.”
Color returned slowly to the other’s face while he sipped — a little too much, perhaps, Simon realized, as it ripened towards the masculine cousin of a blush. Mr. Euston had not only suffered a public humiliation, but he found himself indebted to someone to whom he had not even been introduced.
“My name’s Euston,” he mumbled unnecessarily. “Jolly decent of you to come to the rescue, Mr.—”
Alternative replies flashed through the circuits of Simon Templar’s mind with an electronic speed developed from much similar experience, to be weighed and compared and chosen from according to the circumstances. He could give his real name, and risk a recognitive “Not the chap they call The Saint? The Robin Hood of Modern Crime? Well, bless my soul!” — and so forth. Or he could give one of the aliases to which he had become sentimentally attached — so much so that even some of them ran a fifty-fifty chance of recognition in certain circles. Or he could improvise a new identity — a creative effort which the present situation might hardly justify... So quickly that no one would even have noticed any hesitation, he selected the middle course.
“Tombs,” he said, and won the toss-up gamble. “Sebastian Tombs.” It struck no spark from James Euston. “Think nothing of it. But next time you make a mistaken identification, it might be a good idea not to insist on it too hard.”
“But it wasn’t a mistake,” Euston said, mopping his brow. “I’ll swear he was Dino Cartelli, a chap I worked with in Sicily before the war. I was training for the foreign department of the City and Continental then, and a year at their branch in Palermo was part of the course. Dino worked next to me, and we were fairly good friends. Except for the time when he got that scar.”
“How did that happen?”
“I gave it to him. It was a difference of opinion, Latin temperament and all that, over some girl. He opened a knife and I had to hit him. I wasn’t an amateur champion or anything like that, but my signet ring cut him.”
Simon’s interested regard took a quizzical slant.
“Well, that might account for why he didn’t see you as a long-lost buddy.”
“Oh, no, we didn’t start a vendetta. The girl ran off with somebody else and left us both feeling silly. We apologized to each other and made up, and we were still good friends again when I was sent to another post. And yet now he not only pretends he doesn’t know me, but he — or the fellow with him — they behave like gangsters!”
“They did seem to have some of the mannerisms,” Simon admitted thoughtfully. “Are you absolutely certain you couldn’t have been wrong?”
“Absolutely.”
“After all those years, even a thing like a small scar—”
“I’m positive it was Cartelli, and still more so after hearing his voice. I used to tease him about sounding like a frog instead of a Caruso. No; it only shows you,” said Mr. Euston, taking a brooding refuge in one of the cardinal tenets of a true-blue Briton, “you never really know where you are with foreigners.”
This line of thought was punctuated by the arrival of the lobster that Simon had been awaiting, mounted on a wheeled trolley, attended by a retinue of waiters, and trailing clouds of elysian fragrance. He made a hospitable gesture.
“Would you care to join me? We can share this while they fix another one.”
Mr. Euston, however, seemed to feel that he had already shared more than enough confidences for such an informal acquaintance. He pushed his chair back and climbed hurriedly to his feet.
“It’s very kind of you, Mr. Tombs, but I’ve already imposed on you too much. Besides, I don’t think I could eat anything for a while.” He pulled out his wallet and extracted a card. “If you’re ever in London and I can do anything for you, please give me a ring. And again, thanks awfully for your help.”
He pumped Simon’s hand vigorously, turned, and marched firmly away and out of Simon’s world for ever; and with a shrug Simon dismissed the encounter from his mind and devoted to the aragosta the whole-hearted attention which it deserved. Mr. Euston’s enlargements on the theme of the nasty surprises which could befall anyone who ventured outside the counties and clans of Albion might have provided a fascinating accompaniment to lunch, but not so much that to be deprived of it would impair his appetite. As for the incident that had brought them together, Simon was still half inclined to write it off as a simple case of human error. The most interesting feature of it was that Euston had had the bad luck to pick on a character who had all the earmarks of having spent some time in the USA in associations which are not highly approved of by the Immigration Service.
That is, he thought so until the next morning.
Breakfasting in his room, he was trying to utilize the exercise of reading an Italian newspaper to divert his attention from the vile taste of the coffee, without much success in spite of the normal quota of international crises and local scandals. Until he reached a small item low down on the second page.
TURISTA INGLESE TROVATO ASSASSINATO, Said the headline.
A silent relay closed in his brain, setting off a peal of soundless alarm bells in his inner ear, even before he came to the second paragraph, where the murdered man was identified as James Euston, of London.
2
A number of reasons have been suggested at different times for Simon Templar’s superficially incongruous title of The Saint, and there may be a kernel of truth in all of them, while not one is the complete answer. The sobriquet is a derivative and outgrowth of so many contributory and contradictory factors attempting to crystallize the supreme paradox of the man himself. But one truly sanctified quality which had never been imputed to him was a forgiving disposition.
James Euston had never been his friend, and probably never could have been. With all his possibly sterling virtues, Mr. Euston had the essential ingredients of a crashing bore. His demise would be no great loss to anyone, except perhaps his nearest kin, if he had any. And Simon had no personal obligation to protect him, beyond a basic civilized responsibility which he had already more than fulfilled. Yet by not taking the Englishman’s earnestness seriously enough, and blithely ascribing the gangsterish reflexes of Not-Dino and his bully boy to an almost amusing coincidence, he had let Euston go bumbling off to a death which might easily have been averted. He had been made an accomplice, however unwittingly, in the slaughter of a harmless innocent; and even if his involvement had been unintentional, he could not forgive his own blindness. And therefore he could not forgive the men who had profited by it.
Which meant especially the one who must after all have been Dino Cartelli.
That at least was a viable assumption. In the light of what Simon had witnessed the day before, it seemed as if James Euston’s vacation could only have been so violently terminated because he had identified Cartelli. If it had only been an accidental and unfounded resemblance, Euston would not have had to be killed. The newspaper, of course, gave robbery as the obvious motive. Euston’s corpse, with its head beaten in and its clothing emptied of cash, had been found in an alley a few blocks from his hoteclass="underline" it seemed self-evident that he had had the bad luck to be waylaid by footpads on his way home. And such a coincidence could not be ruled out — though all the Saint’s instincts, belatedly sharpened as they had now become, rejected it with hoots of derision. To him, the aroma of double-distilled skulduggery had been unmistakably added to the other noisome and omniprevalent effluvia of Naples.