“Much too often.”
“Your candour keeps taking my breath away.”
Xavier shrugged.
“It is the truth. It is not exactly a rare complaint, even in your country. And absolute justice is a much younger idea here. We are still inclined to accept graft as the prerogative of those in power — perhaps it is the legacy of our bandit tradition. It will change, some day. But at the present, there are many times when I would personally like to see a man like you taking the law into his own hands. You will have coffee? And brandy?”
He snapped his fingers at a waiter and gave the order, and the Saint lighted a cigarette and stole another glance at the honey-blonde young woman across the room. She was still alone, and looking a good deal more impatient. It would not be much longer before the moment would be most propitious for venturing a move — if he had only been alone himself. The thought made an irksome subtraction from his full enjoyment of the fact that a police officer was not only buying his dinner but seemed to be handing him an open invitation to resume his career of outlawry.
With a slight effort, he turned again to the more uncommon of the two attractions.
“Are you really wishing I’d un-reform myself,” he asked curiously, “or are you just dissatisfied with the Government? Maybe another revolution would produce a better system.”
“By no means,” Xavier said quickly. Then, as the Saint’s blue eyes continued to rest on him levelly, he received their unspoken question, and said, “No, I do not say that because I am forced to. The change must come with time and education and growing up. I believe that the Government we have today is as good as any other we would get. No, it is better. In fact, it is already too honest for the people who are most anxious to change it. There is only one party which could seriously threaten a revolution today — and who are its sponsors?”
“You mean José Jalisco?”
“A figurehead — an orator who blows hot air wherever the most pesos tell him! I mean the men behind Jalisco.”
“Who are they?”
“The Enriquez brothers. But I do not suppose your newspapers have room for our scandals. For many years they were making millions, at the expense of the Mexican people, out of Government construction contracts. It was our new President who ordered the investigation which exposed them, and who threw out the officials who helped them. Even now, they may face imprisonment, and fines that would ruin them. They are the ones who would like to see a revolution for Jalisco... They are sitting opposite you now, at the table next to the young woman you have been staring at for the last hour.”
Simon winced very slightly, and looked carefully past the blonde.
He had noticed the two men before, observing that they also had been watching the girl and obviously discussing her assets and potentialities, but he had not paid them much attention beyond that. As competition for her favour, he figured that they would not have given him too much trouble. They were excessively well groomed and tailored and manicured, with ostentatious jewellery in their neckties and on their fingers, but their pockmarked features had a cruel and wilful cast that would hardly appeal to a nice girl at first sight. Now that Xavier identified them, the family resemblance was evident.
“The bigger one is Manuel,” Xavier said. “The smaller is Pablo. But one is as bad as the other. To protect their millions, and to make more, they would not care how many suffered.”
Waiters poured coffee and brought brandy, and Simon took advantage of the diversion to study the Enriquez brothers again. This also allowed him to keep track of the trim young blonde. And this time, when he was looking directly at her, he was able to see that she was looking at him, with what seemed to be considerable interest. It was an effort for him to suppress a growing feeling of frustration.
“Do you seriously believe they could start a revolution?” he asked Xavier.
“I know they have talked of it. Jalisco has a large following. He has the gift, which Hitler and Mussolini had, of inflaming mobs. But a mob, today, can do nothing without modern weapons. That is where the Enriquez brothers come in. They have the money to provide them. One day, I think, they will try to do that. They could be plotting it now, while we look at them.”
“For a couple of desperate conspirators,” Simon commented, “they don’t seem very embarrassed to have you watching them.”
Xavier laughed till his moustache quivered and his second chin shook. But when he could speak again, his voice was as discreetly pitched as it had been all along.
“Me? They have no idea who I am. Any more than you would have known, if I had not introduced myself at your hotel. Who knows an insignificant captain of the police? They deal with chiefs — if they can. They are too big to care whether I exist. But I know about them, as I knew about you, because it is my business to know.”
“And yet there isn’t a thing you can do.”
“It takes much proof to accuse such important men. And the bigger they are, the harder it is to get. Probably before I ever get it, it is too late. Another civil war will not be good for Mexico. But I cannot stop a flood, like the Dutch boy, with my little finger.” Xavier shrugged heavily. “That is why I can be sorry the Saint has become so respectable.”
The Saint gazed at him with an assemblage of conflicting reactions that added up to a poker-faced blankness which could hardly have been improved on deliberately. But before Simon could decide which of a dozen possible replies to make, a waiter bustled up to Xavier with a folded slip of paper on a tray.
Xavier opened it, frowned at it, and pursed his lips over it for several seconds.
“This is a tragedy,” he announced at length, and tucked the note into his pocket.
“Has the shooting started already?” Simon inquired.
“Oh, no. Merely a simple robbery. But it is at the house of a politician, so I must give it my personal attention. My lieutenant is downstairs, and I must go with him.”
Xavier stood up, but put out a restraining hand as the Saint started to rise with him.
“No, please stay here. It is only a routine matter, and would not interest you. Take time to finish your brandy. And have another. I will pay the bill as I go out. I insist.” The bright black eyes twinkled. “And perhaps after all you will be able to meet the young lady. I shall call you at your hotel soon. Hasta luego!”
And with an effusive sequence of handshakes that kept time with the somewhat frantic deluge of his parting speech, he was gone.
Simon Templar sat down again, feeling a trifle breathless by contagion, and poured himself another cup of coffee.
Not too hurriedly, he looked at the lonely young blonde again.
He was just in time to see her greeting a schmo who had to be her husband.
2
Well, that was the way life was, Simon reflected, as he chain-lit another cigarette. You could spend weeks waiting for a little gentle excitement, and then, when things started happening, there were more of them than you could handle.
A police captain, of all people, points out a couple of apparently ideal candidates for free-lance euthanasia, gives you the why and wherefore, and practically invites you to go ahead and take a crack at them — adding the almost irresistible bait that, although he will thoroughly approve of whatever you do, he is also sure that he will be able to pinch you for it afterwards. But you can’t really give your all to this sublime proposition, because you are wishing half the time that he would go away so that you could concentrate on an equally inviting but entirely different temptation to adventure.
So finally he does go away, but only after staying just long enough for the other attraction to slip out of reach.