Saint50 - Salvage for the Saint by Leslie Charteris

Author:Leslie Charteris [Charteris, Leslie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-08-31T02:11:08+00:00

V: How Jacques Descartes played a Game, and Simon Templar went Under.

-1-

"Ah! On se revolt, Madame. Welcome! And the knight errant, eh? Bonjour aussi, Monsieur Templar. Come in, come in. Make yourselves comfortable, please!"

Descartes beamed at them over his mountainous midriff, gold dental work gleaming, and beckoned them in as if they were long-lost friends.

"Surprise, surprise," said the Saint. "And I suppose the third member of the boarding party is right behind us?"

Descartes beamed still more broadly, but Bernadotti's attempted smile came out as more of a sneer.

"You got it, Mister," he said silkily, making a fractional movement of the barrel of the automatic he was holding loosely in his lap. "And Pancho is, you know, a hotheaded kind of guy. The slightest thing scares him, he tends to let fly with that knife of his."

"And if you was-a me, you'd be pretty damned careful, huh?" said the Saint, parodying Bernadotti's Italo-American accent as he glanced behind to confirm the presence of Pancho. And to him, he said: "Now you won't be a silly boy with that thing, will you?"

At a nod from Descartes, Pancho slid forward and frisked Simon expertly. Having found nothing, he was preparing to turn his attention to a still-incredulous Arabella, but Descartes signalled him to stop.

"If Monsieur Templar has no gun, I think we can assume the lady is also unarmed." He inclined his head in a half-bow to Arabella. "Madame, we regret the intrusion upon your boat. But you must remember, our claim is older than yours. Your Charles, he owed us a great deal, which he had not paid at the time of his death. This boat, indeed, would not have been bought, I think, except for the gold which your Charles—our Karl—kept entirely for himself."

"The lady told you before," Simon said with steel in his voice. "She doesn't know about any gold."

Descartes nodded.

"It is another regret that we did not accept her statement. Perhaps, after all, he did not share with her the secret . . . the secret which lies, does it not Monsieur Templar, in the voyages of the Phoenix?"

"And what did you threaten Captain Finnegan with?" Simon enquired evenly.

The reply, an evil grin and a throat-cutting mime, came from Bernadotti.

"He would have gone the same way you're gonna go, Templar. To feed the sharks."

"Nice to know you're feeling really hospitable," Simon observed. "What a pity your chum Tranchier can't be here to complete the party. He'd have made it a quartet of physical repulsiveness. But I must say you three do get around—for a bunch of farmers."

"Who's looking after the pigs?" Arabella put in, having now partly adjusted her mind to the new development and the uncomfortable fact that the visitors were with them for the time being whether she liked it or not.

Descartes' eyes blazed with anger and his voice cut across the room like the crack of a whip.

"We are not farmers! And we have no pigs! We are very seriously seeking that gold—and we will have it!" He fixed them both for a few moments.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.