“So that’s how it is,” she said at last. “I’ve got to face it now.”
“Face what?” he asked politely.
She sat down on the arm of the chair nearest to her, careless of how the robe fell off her legs.
“What I’ve been dreading for a long time,” she said. “He’s losing his mind. I thought he was a little touched when he hired Vincent. But he swore that people were following him and spying on him. He talked about being kidnaped or murdered for something he’d known about before he retired. And when you arrived here, and it finally dawned on him who you were, he was sure that you were working for these people and you’d only come here to get him.”
“His captain could have told him that we met entirely by accident, and all I ever knew about your husband until I got here was what Patsy told me.”
“I know. Captain O’Kevin told him that. But he wouldn’t believe it. He’s certain that you knew Captain O’Kevin would be at the Rod and Reel Club, and you planned to meet him there to make it easier for you to get close to us when you got here.”
Simon lowered himself on to the bed and leaned back against the headboard, hitching one leg up to rest an arm on his knee.
“And who are the sinister mob that’s supposed to be behind that elaborate piece of delirium?”
“I don’t know. He’s never discussed any of his business with me. And when I tried to ask him about this thing in particular, he told me it was better for me not to know. But he almost had me believing in it until a minute ago.”
“Was I the only real test? You’d never seen any other suspicious characters lurking around, with your own eyes? Nobody ever had tried to actually do anything to him?”
“Not that I ever saw.”
The Saint slowly and carefully created a perfectly formed smoke ring.
“Then it certainly does look as if your husband is at least mildly squirrelly,” he said. “If it’s any comfort to you, I can give you my word that I had no designs on him whatsoever when I met Patsy.”
“It doesn’t matter now.” She stirred with a sudden restlessness. “I was going to have to get away from him anyhow. You can’t go on looking at a man twenty times a day and wondering how blind you can have been to marry him. I already told him I’m taking the plane back to Nassau tomorrow. The only difference now is that this’ll probably be for keeps. Maybe it’s not very noble of me, but I don’t want to be around when his delusions get worse. How do I know when he might start suspecting me?”
“I can see how that might make you uncomfortable,” said the Saint, with an absolutely straight face.
“I’m even more glad I came to see you.”
“Pardon my curiosity,” he said, “but if Clinton had you half believing in his hallucinations, especially after I showed up—why did you come to see me?”
“You invited me, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And right there on the dock, you knew I wanted to accept.”
“But suppose I’d told you, yes, I really did have something unpleasant in mind for your husband? What did you figure on doing then?”
“I was going to offer to help you.”
In his position, Simon was cushioned against falling down, but he lounged a little more limply, and he was glad that he had no need to pretend that he was completely unsurprised.
“That was certainly very friendly,” he remarked, with prodigious moderation.
She stood up, and again her dark eyes had the same veiled amusement that they had held when she first came in.
“I’m sure it isn’t the first time that a woman’s wanted to team up with you.”
“Well, no,” he said.
She picked the remaining third of her cigarette out of the holder and held it up for a moment.
“You see? No lipstick. No incriminating evidence.” She stubbed the butt out in an ashtray and dropped the holder into the pocket of her robe. “I could be useful. I’m very competent. I think of things.”
“I’d noticed that.”
She came closer to the bed, near enough for him to have touched her if he moved a little.
“I suppose I should be coy,” she said. “But my time’s so short. I’m sure you know what kind of husband I’ve had all these years. I need a man. Don’t you want to make love to me?”
It had been coming to that ever since she knocked on his door, and he had always known it, but it had seldom been said to him so forthrightly. He met her unwavering gaze with a tinge of utterly immoral admiration, before his eyes were involuntarily drawn down to the valley where the green robe had fallen open to her waist.
“Yes, they’re real,” she said.
She made an almost imperceptible supple movement, and the robe slipped off her shoulders and down to her elbows. Her breasts were like alabaster where they had been covered when she sunbathed, and the startling pink-tipped whiteness of them against the rest of her bronzed skin made them look more shamelessly naked than any breasts he had ever seen. And perhaps this was also because they would rank among the most beautiful.
He would always remember it as one of the most fabulous feats of self-control in his life that kept him looking at her without moving.
“Don’t you at least think you should lock the door?” he asked steadily.
“Yes. No. Oh, I’m a fool!” She twitched the robe over her shoulders again, wrapping it tightly around her. “But you’re so right. And you do things so gracefully. Of course it’s impossible here. We’ve got to get away first, where we won’t have to feel tense. Will you come to Nassau?”
“With you, tomorrow?”
“No, that’d be too obvious, wouldn’t it? Clinton would be sure to make a scene, and either he wouldn’t let me go or he’d suddenly decide to come too.” She ran a hand through her burnished hair. “And you mustn’t stay here after I’ve gone. You’d have real trouble with Vince—you would have already, only I talked them out of it. Oh, I know you can take care of yourself, but there are so many ways to stab a man in the back, and I won’t risk that when I’ve only just found you, before we’ve even…Wait, I’ve got it! There must be a charter plane service in Miami.”
“There’s one on the MacArthur Causeway that flies small planes over here.”
“You could phone over and get one here in an hour.”
“Probably. And I announce that I’m going back to Miami, but after I’ve taken off I hand the pilot some more green stuff and tell him I’ve changed my mind and I want to be flown to Nassau.”
“And I’ll be there with you tomorrow. Please, Simon, will you?”
He tried to keep his eyes level, but there was a reckless glint in them that would not be smothered altogether.
“What about you, Gloria?”
“If I let you down,” she vowed, “you can take any Saintly revenge you can think of.”
Simon Templar grinned.
“You’ve got a deal, darling.”
She leaned over to mould her mouth against his, ignoring the looseness of the green robe. This time he could not keep quite still.
5
And so the shadows of the spindly coconut palms were growing longer and cooler as the Saint strolled westwards along the lazy curve of Bimini’s one uncongested street.
The radiophone contact with Miami had been surprisingly fast and adequate. The charter plane service had been willing and competently businesslike. For Simon Templar to pack up for a weekend or a trip around the world was practically the same operation, and he had done it so often that he could complete it in a matter of minutes without even being conscious of an interruption in whatever train of thought he was pursuing. He had plenty of time left to amble up to the Colleen and make an absolutely essential adieu.
He thumped on the deck with a bottle which he had purchased on the way, and Patsy O’Kevin came out into the cockpit blinking a little, like a groundhog prematurely disturbed from hibernation.
“Why, ’tis yerself again,” observed the captain superflu
ously. Then he got the bottle in good focus and went on with expanding cordiality, “An’ welcome as the tonic I think I’m seein’ there in yer hand.”
He disappeared again for what seemed like a fraction of a second, and reappeared providently armed with a couple of glasses.
“It’s only Peter Dawson,” said the Saint, removing the cap from the bottle. “They seem to be fresh out of Irish whisky today. Will you condescend to rinse out your gullet with Scotch?”
“So long as it’s good Gaelic liquor, I’ll not be complainin’.” O’Kevin kept his glass held out, as if by instinct, until only a miracle of surface tension kept the bulging contents from running over the rim, but his bright green eyes clung shrewdly and inquisitively to the Saint’s face. “An’ whatever it is ye’re celebratin’, Simon, ’tis happy I am to celebrate wid ye.”
The Saint filled the second glass, and looked around.
“Where’s Des?” he asked.
“He got talkin’ to Mike Lemer this afternoon—ye ought to meet him yerself, the great fisherman who lives here. I guess Mike must o’ liked the mettle av him, for he took the lad off to see his aquarium an’ the laboratory which he built for the University o’ Miami, an’ if I’m not lucky Mike will be givin’ him a job an’ I’ll be lookin’ for a new mate next month.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Simon said, and most sincerely meant it.
“Des is a good lad,” O’Kevin said grudgingly. “But not to be mentioned in the same toast wid yerself. Which, by yer leave, I shall now drink to ye.”
He raised his glass, emptied two-thirds of it, wiped his lips on the back of his hand, and exhaled a rich aromatic sigh.
“An’ now,” he persisted remorselessly, “tell me what it is that ye’re drinkin’ to.”
“This, Patsy, is a farewell drink.”
“Where are ye goin’?”
“Away.”
“Widout iver gettin’ to know Gloria?”
“No. Not quite without that.”
O’Kevin squinted at him.
“It was just like I towld ye, wasn’t it, Simon me b’y?”
“I wouldn’t call her a rock in the harbor,” said the Saint.
O’Kevin chuckled and slapped his leg.
“Faith, an’ it does me heart good to see that look in yer eye! Would ye be tellin’ me just a little more, which it should be me roight to know as the godfather av it?”
Simon lighted a cigarette and gave a comprehensive account of his interrupted siesta. That is, except for the physical details about which chivalry and good taste imposed a gentlemanly reticence which may have been quite exasperating to his audience. But he gave a very careful and methodical account of the conversation, as much to clarify his own recollection as anything.
“So tomorrow ye’ll be with her again in Nassau,” O’Kevin said wistfully, holding out his glass for a refill.
“No,” said the Saint.
The captain frowned.
“Maybe ye’re roight, an’ I shouldn’t be havin’ another drop, at that,” he said. “It sounded to me exactly as if ye said ‘No.’ ”
“I did.” Simon poured again hospitably, and put down the bottle, “You see, she hasn’t any intention of going there. The job was very delicately handled—first to establish that she was going to Nassau anyhow, then to get me interested and you might even say excited, then to dampen me down again with nervous misgivings about the obvious risks of having an affair with her then and there. I cued her a bit with that last switch, but she could easily have done it without my help if she’d had to. Then, she had to put over the argument for my leaving at once, and without her. That was fairly easy too, and I helped her again, being a kind soul under my gruff exterior.”
“Ye’re imaginin’ things, Simon. Her arguments were only good sense.”
“Of course. They had to be. I told you it was beautifully worked out. Even to the idea of my leaving ahead of her. Because if she’d left first, as a decoy, there’d always be the risk that I mightn’t follow, and then she wouldn’t be around to freshen the proposition. That gorgeous body of hers was always worth betting on. And if I’d been really tiresome, and refused to be coaxed the way they wanted at all, I could still be manoeuvred into bed, or near enough to it to stage a suitable tableau for Uckrose to come busting in on, with Innutio or maybe someone else for a witness, and start pumping lead like a properly indignant husband.”
“If that was the idea, Simon, ye’d be lyin’ dead in yer room already.”
“No, because then they’d have all the fuss and bother of a trial, and a British court might give Uckrose a lot of trouble no matter how much provocation he could prove. It was much smarter to try to get me out of the way peacefully first, if it could be done. But don’t think I didn’t have goose-pimples a few times, wondering if they were as smart as I wanted them to be.”
“But ye’d towld her ye had nothin’ against Uckrose, exceptin’ perhaps his bad manners, so whoy would he be wantin’ to harm ye?”
“For fear of what I might find out, Patsy. It’s funny how scared some people get about that when they hear my name.”
“But ye don’t honestly know of anything wrong that he’s doin’?”
Simon sipped his drink.
“Not specifically; not at this instant. But I do know that there is something to know. All the effort and ingenuity that’s been put into trying to bamboozle me is the proof that there’s something for me to look for. Isn’t it silly how panic and a guilty conscience will make people put a rope around their own necks? If I’d only been left alone, I’d probably never have suspected anything.”
O’Kevin shook his head baffledly.
“Whoy should Uckrose be hidin’ anything at all?” he objected. “Whin ye towld Gloria ye weren’t after him, she towld ye herself it only proved he was crazy, as she’d been afraid he was.”
“An ordinary crackpot with delusions of persecution doesn’t hire a bodyguard of Innutio’s type. That was her clumsiest lie, when she said that he came through a New York detective agency. Licensed agencies just don’t supply characters of that kind. Innutio is a standard-brand second-string hoodlum, and Uckrose must know it: therefore Uckrose is up to no good. It’s as simple as that. Gloria came to find out exactly how much I knew, and whatever that might have been I’m sure she had a plan already worked out for coping with it, using her natural equipment, which is very persuasive indeed. When I convinced her that I had no idea what Clinton is worried about, it may have shaken her even more than if I’d known everything, but there was a prearranged plan for that situation too…What will always intrigue me is who is really the brains of the act. Gloria is a great performer, but does she write her own material? Or do we underrate Brother Uckrose?”
“Simon, me b’y, if it wasn’t for all those tales I’ve heard about ye, I’d be thinkin’ ye had the same delusions as Uckrose! Is it sensible, now, to be creditin’ him wid all kinds o’ wickedness, whin it’s more loikely he’s just a little soft in the head?”
The Saint finished the modest measure of Peter Dawson which was all he had allowed himself, and set down the glass.
“What I’ve been telling you is only the end of it, Patsy,” he said. “The tip-off really started way back in Miami.”
O’Kevin’s brow wrinkled with an effort of concentration.
“Begorra, ’tis soundin’ more like a detective story ivery blessed minute ye are. Beggin’ yer pardon for one second, I left a pot on the stove which could be b’ilin’ over while I sit here.”
He got up and ducked down the companion to the saloon. Without an instant’s hesitation, and moving with the silence of a hunting leopard, the Saint followed him.
O’Kevin turned from one of the bunk settees with an automatic that he had snatched from under the pillow in his grip, but he was not expecting to find the Saint only a foot away from him. His jaw fell slackly for a split second of pardonable paralysis, and during that interval the Saint hit it with a nicely calculated upp
ercut, not too light but not too obliterative. The captain dropped quietly on the bunk.
Simon picked up the gun and tossed it out through an open porthole. Then he pulled a roll of adhesive tape from his pocket, and swiftly and expertly taped O’Kevin’s wrists together behind his back, secured his ankles in the same way, and rolled him over and bent him at the knees before using several thicknesses of the remaining tape to link the wrist and ankle bindings together. The jolt with which he had lifted the captain’s chin had been so well measured that O’Kevin’s eyes were opening again as the Saint finished.
“On the subject of lies,” said the Saint genially, “you’d so obviously been taking a nap when I came aboard that I couldn’t believe you had any pot cooking. Not that I blame you for the try.”
The reply which O’Kevin started to make was so manifestly irrelevant, and so offensive to the Saint’s refined ears, that Simon was obliged to use the rest of the tape to seal up O’Kevin’s mouth without further delay.
“I’m afraid it was you who made the first mistake, Patsy,” he said. “When Don Mucklow introduced us and said I was looking for you, your guilty conscience couldn’t swallow that as a figure of speech. After that, all the talk about fishing only sounded like a cover-up. And when I said I was headed for Bimini, all you could think of was that I must be on the trail of this racket you’re in.”
He lighted a cigarette and enjoyed a leisurely inhalation.
“You pounded your brains during the evening, and decided that the really smart move, if I was as close on the trail as that, was to keep me even closer. At least that might make it easier to keep track of me, and the more you could make me think I was fooling you, the better you might be able to fool me. Besides, you still had the selfish personal angle that if I didn’t know too much already, you might go on selling the idea that you weren’t really connected with Uckrose except in the most innocent and professional way, which is how the operation is set up anyhow. So if it came to a blow-up, you might yet save your own skin.”
The Saint on the Spanish Main (The Saint Series) Page 4
