“Pardon,” said Walmar casually, and went on.
Simon leapt up.
Even if he had not been interested in Mrs Nussberg’s jewels, he would probably have done the same thing. He had witnessed every phase of the incident, and at any time he would have called that carrying a joke too far. Nor did he care much for Maurice Walmar, with his too beautifully modeled face and platinum watch bracelet. He caught the young humorist by the elbow and spun him around.
“I don’t think you saw what you did,” he remarked evenly.
For a second the other was startled to incredulity. Then he glanced down at the soaked ruin of Mrs Nussberg’s gown, and back from that to the Saint. His aristocratic lips curled in their most polished insolence.
“I have apologized,” he said carelessly. “It was an accident.”
“Then so is this,” said the Saint mildly, and his fist shot over and slammed crisply into the center of the sneering mouth.
Walmar rocked on his heels. He clutched at a table and went down in a spatter of glass and splashing fluids.
There was an instant’s deathly stillness, and then a gray-haired Englishman observed quietly, “He asked for it.”
Walmar crawled up shakily. His mouth was a mess, and there was blood on his silk shirt. A covey of waiters awoke from their momentary stupor and buzzed in among the tables, interposing themselves between a resumption of the strife. The players abandoned the boule table and swarmed out towards the prospect of more primitive sport, leaving the high priest to intone his forlorn “Rien ne va plus!” to a skeleton congregation. The two inevitable policemen, who appear as if at the rubbing of a kind of Aladdin’s lamp on the scene of any French fracas, stalked ponderously into the perspective, closely followed by an agitated manager. The tableau had all the makings of a second-act musical comedy curtain, but Simon overcame the temptation to explore all the avenues of extravagant burlesque which it opened up. He spoke calmly and to the point.
“He upset this lady’s drink — purposely.”
Walmar, struggling dramatically in the grasp of a waiter whom he could have shaken off with a wave of his hand, shouted, “Messieurs! It was an accident. He attacked me—”
The larger agent turned to the waiter.
“Qu’est-ce qui est arrivé?” he demanded.
“Je n’ai rien vu,” answered the man tactfully.
It was the gray-haired Englishman who came forward with quiet corroboration, and the affair turned into a general soothing-party for Maurice Walmar, whose wealth and family entitled him to eccentricities that would rapidly have landed an ordinary visitor in jail. The jaundiced eye with which private battles are viewed in France was well known to the Saint, and he was rather relieved to be spared the unheroic sequels in which offenders against the code of peace are usually involved.
He went out on to the terrace with Mrs Nussberg, and as he left the lounge he caught sight of Myra Campion’s face among the spectators who were staring after him in the pained blank manner of a row of dowagers who have been simultaneously bitten in the fleshy part of the leg by their favorite Pomeranians. Miss Campion’s sweet symmetrical features were almost egg-like in their stupefied bewilderment, and Simon’s smile as he reached the edge of the balcony and looked out over the dark sea came quite naturally.
“You’ve seen for yourself,” he said. “I’ve just got a natural gift for getting into trouble.”
“Served him right,” blared Mrs Nussberg. “The dirty little — ”
Her comment on Maurice Walmar’s lineage was certainly inaccurate, but Simon could understand her feelings.
The orchestra wailed into another erotic symphony, and the Saint expanded his chest and flicked his cigarette over the parapet. The job had to be completed.
“Would you like to dance?” he asked.
The Spanish Cow gazed at him suspiciously, her small eyes hard and bright in the sallow puffy face. Then, without answering, she marched towards the floor.
As they completed their first circle under the fairy lights, Simon saw that the colony was following his movements with bulging eyes. It went into small huddles and buzzed, as openly as convention would permit. He began to find more innocent entertainment in his sudden notoriety than he had ever expected — and the Saint had never found the appalled reactions of respectable society dull. There were times when he derived a purely urchin satisfaction from the flouting of the self-appointed Best People, and he was quite disappointed when the Spanish Cow broke away from him after a half-dozen turns.
“I can’t stay here with my dress soaking,” she said abruptly. Take me home.”
Simon walked back with her to the Provençal. The sky was a blaze of star-dust, and a whisper of music came from the Casino terrace. Down by the water there were tiny ripples hissing and chattering on the firm sand, and a light breeze murmured in the fronds of the tall palms. Simon had a fleeting remembrance of the slim exquisite softness of Myra Campion, and, being very human, he sighed inaudibly. But business was business.
A few yards from the hotel entrance Mrs Nussberg stopped. Her ropes of diamonds flashed in the light of the rows of bulbs flaming the marquee over the doors.
Thank you for helping me,” she said with a harsh effort.
Simon’s teeth flashed. He knew that she was taking stock of his tanned keen-lined face, the set of his wide shoulders and the length of lean muscular limbs. He knew that he was interesting to look at — conquering a natural bashfulness that he always kept well under control, he admitted the fact frankly.
“Not at all,” he said.
She opened her bag and held something out to him. He took it and unfolded it — it was a ten-thousand-franc note. He folded it again carefully, and handed it back with a smile.
“I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” he said pleasantly. “You don’t owe me anything. Good night.”
3
There began for Mrs Porphyria Nussberg an interlude of peace that must have been strange to her. The glances that she encountered veiled their derision with perplexed uncertainty; the giggles when she unharnessed herself of her corsets before going in to bathe were more subdued. The impulse to weep with helpless mirth whenever she appeared was still there, human nature being what it was, but the story of the Casino episode had flown around the town and cast a damp sheet over the pristine hilarity of the jest. There was the sight of Maurice Walmar’s bruised and swollen mouth for reinforcement, and the other aspiring wits looked at it and at the Saint’s leathery torso, and merged themselves thoughtfully into the background. Even the waiters, who had been encouraged to curry favor with the sportive element by smirking and winking at the audience whenever they were called upon to serve the woman, relapsed into the supercilious impersonality with which waiters in fashionable resorts cloak their yearning for tumbrils and guillotines.
Myra Campion cornered the Saint the very next afternoon. He was paddling contentedly along in the general direction of Gibraltar, feeling himself safely insulated from the seethe of popular speculation by the half-mile of limpid water that separated him from the shore, when his head encountered a firm but yielding obstruction. He rolled over and looked into the wet face of Miss Campion.
“You’ll have to swim farther out than this if you want to dodge me,” she said.
Destiny having overtaken him, Simon reflected philosophically that it could have chosen many less agreeable vehicles.
“Darling,” he said blandly, “I’ve been searching the whole ocean for you.”