“Thanks. But I wasn’t looking for a job. I came to Palm Springs to have fun.”
“You’ll have plenty of fun. But you’ve got to take this job.”
“I don’t want a job,” said the Saint. “What is it?”
“I need a bodyguard,” said Pellman.
He had a loud harsh voice that made Simon think of a rusty frog. Undoubtedly it derived some of this attractive quality from his consumption of alcohol, which was considerable. Simon didn’t need to have seen him drinking to know this. The blemishes of long indulgence had worked deeply into the mottled puffiness of his complexion, the pinkish smeariness of his eyes, and the sagging lines under them. It was even more noticeable because he was not much over thirty, and could once have been quite good-looking in a very conventional way. But things like that frequently happen to spoiled young men whose only material accomplishment in life has been the by no means negligible one of arranging to be born into a family with more millions than most people hope to see thousands.
Simon Templar knew about him, of course — as did practically every member of the newspaper-reading public of the United States, not to mention a number of other countries. In a very different way, Freddie Pellman was just as notorious a public figure as the Saint. He had probably financed the swallowing of more champagne than any other individual in the twentieth century. He had certainly been thrown out of more night clubs, and paid more bills for damage to more hotels than any other exponent of the art of uproar. And the number of complaisant show girls and models who were indebted to him for such souvenirs of a lovely friendship as mink coats, diamond bracelets, Packards, and other similar trinkets would have made the late King Solomon feel relatively sex-starved.
He travelled with a permanent entourage of three incredibly beautiful young ladies — one blonde, one brunette, and one redhead. That is, the assortment of colorings was permanent. The personnel itself changed at various intervals, as one faithful collaborator after another would retire to a well-earned rest, to be replaced by another of even more dazzling perfections, but the vacancy was always filled by another candidate of similar complexion, so that the harmonious balance of varieties was retained, and any type of pulchritude could always be found at a glance. Freddie blandly referred to them as his secretaries, and there is no doubt that they had left a memorable trail of scandal in every playground and every capital city in Europe and the Americas.
This was the man who said he wanted a bodyguard, and the Saint looked at him with cynical speculation.
“What’s the matter?” he asked coolly. “Is somebody’s husband gunning for you?”
“No, I never mess about with married women — they’re too much grief.” Pellman was delightfully insensitive and uninhibited. “This is serious. Look.”