“Not necessarily. He may have an accomplice, or even a gang—we don’t know. But he’s pretty sure to find out whether I’ve booked myself out of here as ordered. Then if his phone call meant anything at all, he’ll be practically forced to wait and see whether I do leave. And maybe I’ll wait and see, too.”
He stared out of the window of the dining alcove with such a preoccupied air that she would have sworn that his thoughts were on anything but the view which it framed, so that it surprised her when he said presently, “This is an even dreamier spot in the daytime. I wonder why the owner doesn’t live here all year round.”
“Perhaps his home in Canada is even nicer.”
“D’you know anything about him?”
“Only that his name is Stanley Parker. And I believe he’s quite elderly. Why do you ask?”
“I’m practising—I’ve got a lot of questions to ask in a hurry today. As soon as we’re finished, I’m going to Hamilton and start in earnest. I guess you’d better come with me so I won’t have to worry about you. We’ll take the speedboat, because it’s quicker than a taxi, and it’ll make it tougher for anyone who’s thinking of tailing us.”
He had already observed with approval that, doubtless because of her professional background, she breakfasted with hair and clothes and make-up in shape to face the world as soon as she stood up from the table, and she joined him at the dock with a minimum of delay after their second cups of coffee. The caretaker had the Chris-Craft waiting alongside and was wiping off the seats.
“Do you know the way, sir, or do you wish me to take you?” he inquired disinterestedly.
“I can find it, thanks,” said the Saint. “And you’d better be here in case there are any more messages.”
He pushed the clutch forward and opened the throttle until the light hull was planing. For less than a mile he drove the boat north-east across the Sound, and then he began to veer more to the east, towards Burgess Point and the coastline of Warwick Parish. Lona Dayne twitched his shirtsleeve and pointed.
“Stay as you were, to the left of that island. It’s the shortest way through to Hamilton.”
“I’ve got a call to make on the way,” he explained.
He swung still further to starboard, to miss another larger island that emerged ahead. As they ran along its shore the façade of a Florida Keys fishing village came into view, with the functionally arched roof of an enormous hangar rising above the picturesquely weather-beaten fronts. Simon cut the engine and laid the speedboat skilfully in beside a pier that projected from the strikingly un-Bermudian waterfront.
“This is Darrell’s Island, where our host of last night operates,” he said. “I just want to ask him something—and we haven’t got time to show you how they make TV pictures. I’ll be right back.”
He left her sitting in the boat and disappeared through an opening in the scenery. Having been given the tour once before, on his arrival, he found his way with the faultless recall of a homing pigeon through the partitioned alleys which had miraculously created a modern television picture studio within the shell of an abandoned airport that dated back to those pessimistic days when only seaplanes and flying boats were thought suitable for air travel over water; and Dick Van Hessen looked up defensively as he crashed into the office, and then recognized him with a grin.
“Well! What can we do for you today?”
“You’re busy and I’m in a hurry,” said the Saint, “so I’ll leapfrog the trimmings. All I want is a good lawyer.”
“What? Did she hook you already?”
“Let’s try to build it into a half-hour show—some other time.”
“The one I like best is a fellow named Fred Thearnley,” Van Hessen said. “He’s done a few things for me, and he’s a lot more on the ball than some of ’em.”
“Would you phone him and use your influence to see if he can squeeze a few minutes for me about as soon as I can get there?”
“Sure.”
Simon returned to Lona with an appointment for eleven o’clock. He started up the boat again and sent it skimming through the channel to the left of Hinson’s Island, and then threading between other smaller islands towards the north shore of the gradually narrowing bay, now sheltered between the hills of Pembroke and Paget on either side with the white-sugar roofs and pink-icing walls of fairy-tale candy houses studding their green slopes. He slowed up past the Princess Hotel, a birthday cake moulded in the same style, and stopped and tied up at the Yacht Club dock farther on. He looked at his watch.
“We’ve got plenty of time to do my airline errand first,” he said.
They cut through by the Bank of Bermuda and walked eastwards past the open wharf where the cruise boats berth in the very heart of the city, and up Front Street to the BOAC office. Their last plane left for New York at 4:00 p.m., and he was able to get a seat on it.
The lawyer’s office turned out to be back in the direction they had come from, a few doors from Trimingham’s, which is the biggest department store that the highly conservative proportions of Hamilton have to offer. Simon escorted Lona to its entrance.
“You’ll be as safe here as you could be anywhere, and with all this merchandise to look at, unless you’re a female impersonator you won’t even miss me. Just stay away from the doors, and I’ll find you in about half an hour,” he said, and left her.
Mr Thearnley was a large man put together of ellipsoid shapes, with a florid complexion, very bright baggy eyes, sparse sandy hair, and a mustache of such luxuriant dimensions that it would have provided a more than adequate graft to replace what was lacking from the top of his head. The upper part of him was very correctly dressed in a black alpaca coat, white shirt with starched collar, and dark pin-striped tie; but when he rose from behind his desk to shake hands he revealed that, in conformity with local custom, his lower section was clad only in knee-length shorts and long socks. The effect was inevitably reminiscent of the time-honored farce routine in which the comedian bursts into public view fully dressed except for having forgotten to put on his trousers, but Mr Thearnley was just as unaware of anything hilarious about it.
“Well, Mr Templar,” he said affably, “what can I do for you?”
“Answer some silly questions,” said the Saint, and sat down. “I’m sure you haven’t a lot of time to waste, so I’ll fire them as fast as I can, and I hope you won’t think I’m too blunt…One: do you know another attorney in this town by the name of —— ?”
He gave the name of the attorney to whom the solicitors for Mr Ivalot’s concubine had referred their case, which he had found out from Lona Dayne on the way over from Darrell’s Island.
“Only for about thirty years,” Mr Thearnley said with a smile.
“Would you vouch for him without any qualification?”
“Now I’m beginning to think you were serious about asking silly questions.”
“I’ll be more specific. If he were asked to serve papers on somebody in Bermuda who accidentally happened to be a friend of his, would anything induce him to report that he couldn’t find any trace of this defendant?”
Mr Thearnley’s eyes had visibly congealed.
“If the person concerned were a friend of his, he would simply decline the case and give his reason. He would not tell a lie. He is the most ethical man I have the good fortune to know.”
“I’m sorry,” said the Saint. “I don’t know him, and I had to ask that to confirm that a certain person is definitely untraceable here by any ordinary means…Let me try something less delicate: how would anyone here go about getting a passport?”
“A British subject?”
“Yes, of course.”
“He fills out an application, and submits it with a couple of photographs—”
“And a birth certificate?”
“No, that isn’t required. But the form has to be attested by someone who’s known him for a certain number of years. Not just anyone; it has to be someone with a recognized professional standing. A b
ank manager, a doctor, or a minister, are the usual ones. Or a lawyer.”
Simon lighted a cigarette. It was an effort to subdue a flood tide of excitement that rose higher as one point after another of the framework that he had put together in his mind was tested and the whole structure still remained solid.
“The last one may be the hardest,” he said. “There’s a Canadian by the name of Stanley Parker, who owns a house on a small island, way out towards the other end of Southampton. Do you happen to know anyone who knows him?”
“This is quite a small place,” Thearnley said. “As a matter of fact, I know a little about him myself.”
“How old would you say he was?”
“That’s hard to guess. He’s certainly quite senile.”
The Saint raised his eyebrows.
“As bad as that?”
“Well, he gives that impression. It may be partly because he’s had a stroke and can’t even speak. As it happens, the agent who made the sale is a client of mine. I don’t know how Parker heard about it, but he wrote from Canada and said he’d take it and he’d be here with the cash as soon as the deed could be drawn up. The asking price was a bit steep, as usual, because people always expect to do some bargaining, but Parker didn’t haggle at all.”
“How long ago was this?”
“About six years ago. I prepared the conveyance myself, and that’s how I met him, when he came in to sign it. He just grunted and nodded to whatever was said to him, didn’t even read the papers, and scratched his name on the dotted line. Then he handed over a huge envelope full of twenty-dollar bills and waited for us to count them. The agent and myself had to count almost two thousand each. We gave him a receipt, and the keys, and he grunted again and tottered out. My friend’s conscience gave him a bit of trouble after he’d seen the man, because he hadn’t really expected to get the full price, and he wondered if he could be accused of taking advantage of imbecile. I had to tell him that we had no evidence that Parker was non compos mentis, and that a man who carried about twenty thousand pounds in an old envelope might be so rich that he just couldn’t be bothered to argue about the price of anything.”
“Have you ever seen him since?”
“I ran into him once in my dentist’s waiting-room when I was coming out, and once at the airport when I was meeting a plane, I think he must have played hermit out on his island most of the time.”
The Saint stood up.
“I’m very much obliged to you,” he said. “I may be leaving here rather soon, so would you be shocked if I offered to pay cash for this consultation?”
“Tell Dick I’ll stick it on his next bill.” The lawyer also rose, again oblivious of what his naked knees did to his dignity. He seemed to be wavering between two tormenting inward doubts, one as to whether he might have indiscreetly answered too much, the other as to how discreetly he could indulge some curiosity of his own. He said, taking a plunge, “Or we’ll call it all square if you’ll tell me what this is all about.”
“If everything works out, and I’m still here tomorrow, I’ll come back and tell you—that’s a promise.”
“You know,” Thearnley went on, “from the trend of some of your inquiries, I’m rather surprised at one question you haven’t asked.”
“What was that?”
“About Mr Parker’s background.”
“What was it?”
“My friend the estate agent tried to find out something about him, naturally, but all he could find out was that Mr Parker had once been a lawyer, too.”
“These woods seem to be full of them,” said the Saint gravely, and made an exit before Mr Thearnley could decide how to respond to that.
Lona Dayne was dispiritedly trying on shoes when Simon tracked her down in the store, and he had never seen a woman so relieved to be rescued from a bewildered salesman.
“I can’t get used to being dragged around like a doll,” she said edgily, as he marched her back towards the boat. “Where are you taking me now?”
“Back to the island. But I have to make a slight detour, by way of Cambridge Beaches, which is the place where I was staying before I met you.”
Even at that moment, he couldn’t help being amused by the suddenness with which her pique became crestfallen.
“I forgot,” she said in an empty voice. “You’ve got to pack, haven’t you.”
“I want to pick up a gun,” said the Saint. “We’re going to meet Jolly Roger.”
4
Lona Dayne maintained a taut and stubborn silence all the way out to the secluded cottage colony at Mangrove Bay, waited in the boat while he went ashore, and succeeded in prolonging that superhuman self-discipline until they had passed under Watford Bridge again on the way back.
Then at last she said resentfully, “Why do you have to be so mysterious? I think you’re deliberately trying to force me into the part of a stupid ingénue.”
“Darling,” he said, “haven’t you ever read any whodunits? Don’t you know that the detective always acts very mysterious and keeps the big surprise up his sleeve till the last few pages?”
“This isn’t a whodunit.”
“Oh, yes, it is. And I’m not a very experienced detective. So I’ve had to take advantage of my privilege because I haven’t had the nerve to come right out with my theory—in case it turned out to be really as crazy as it sounds, and I ended not only with egg on my face but with ham too.”
“Don’t get coy with me,” she said. “I’m Lona Shaw—remember?”
Simon smiled with his lips closed, his blue eyes narrowed against the brilliant blue of the sea and sky as he turned the speedboat southward and tried to get an exact bearing on the island they had to return to.
“You wouldn’t dare to send your editor a story based on my kind of deductions,” he said. “Nearly all my thinking seems to be negative—a process of clearing away the undergrowth so you can find out where the solid ground is. I’ve seldom heard a story that was so fogged up with false clues. For instance, the accent of the guy who talked to you on the phone last night.”
“It sounded very American to me.”
“And to me. In fact, exaggeratedly American. But what we have to remember is that an accent can be faked. Roger Ivalot sounded English. So an American accent cropping up here sounds like an attempt to confuse things—perhaps to suggest that he has accomplices which he hasn’t got at all. But a man who would play those tricks of dialect might very well have done it before. Therefore Ivalot’s English was probably the first fake. A man who’d lived here for several years should be able to do a very passable imitation—even if he was raised in America.”
“Or Canada.”
“I’m glad you brought that up,” he said. “Did you ever notice how in the stories you quoted, Jolly Roger had his uranium interests in South Africa and Australia—but not a word was said about Canada, where some of the biggest uranium strikes of all have been made? That was an omission that stood out like a flat chest at a beauty contest—if I may scramble a metaphor in midstream. Almost from the moment I heard it, I would have liked to bet that Canada was the one place that our boy would turn out to have his deepest roots in.”
“You’re still keeping the riddles going,” she said sulkily. “That’s all very plausible and clever, but you must have a lot more up your sleeve.”
“But the next step takes me out on a limb. I also say that our boy is a lawyer.”
The frown darkened on her brow.
“Last night you were starting to say something—”
“This script is full of lawyers,” he interrupted quickly. “That’s another confusing feature of it. But it set me thinking about human characteristics. Lawyers are cautious. Lawyers make a technique of procrastination. What does any smart lawyer do when he knows he’s got a very shaky case? He uses every dodge and device in the book to keep getting it postponed and continued and adjourned—because until it actually comes to a court and a verdict, he still hasn’t lost it. Your husband
disappeared because our boy thought he had to do something fast and drastic; but after that, he didn’t know how to go on with it. That’s why nothing else happened for two days. Perhaps he hadn’t finally worked anything out until last night, when you got the first message. But then I upset him again by showing up in the act. So when he talked to you later, it was to tell you to get me out of here. Another delay. That’s why I was so sure we were safe last night and today. He’s still stalling for time.”
“So are you,” she said angrily. “Will you tell me just one thing straight?”
He grinned, throttling back as they circled around to the lee side of the private island, and switched off the engine to coast to a perfect dead-stick landing at the dock.
“In a few minutes,” he said. “I have to make a phone call first.”
She walked speechlessly beside him up to the house. But now she realized that he was enjoying himself, and she would not give him the satisfaction of making her protest again.
While he was dialing a number, he said, “To give you something to go on with—does anything ring a bell with you about a man who’s excessively self-conscious about names?”
Without a word, she turned and went over to the bar cupboard.
He said to the telephone, “Mr Van Hessen, please. This is Mr Templar.”
He put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Another thing. Weren’t you surprised that a character like our boy, who was so anxious that you shouldn’t talk to anyone, would leave such a melodramatic warning with anyone who answered the phone, like your caretaker?”
The only reply was a heavily restrained clinking of glassware.
He said to the phone, “Oh, Dick. Glad I caught you. Have you gotten to know anyone in the police higher up than a traffic cop?…Good. And do you have one of the Company boats there?…Better still. Will you please call this Inspector, and persuade him to let you pick him up and bring him out to Parker’s island right away—you know, where the Daynes are staying. I mean as quickly as you can get here, I can’t call him myself, because if I gave my name he’d think someone was pulling his leg…No, I don’t want to say any more on the phone, but this is the most serious thing I ever asked you…Okay, feller. Thanks.”
The Saint Around the World (The Saint Series) Page 4
