The Saint on the Spanish Main (The Saint Series)
Page 18
He signaled on the rope for it to be hauled up, and paddled off to investigate another promising coral formation still closer to the shelf on which Marilyn sat eyeing him balefully. Under the concealing growth of living stone, he found another mound of ingots.
He wished he could have been on the cruiser’s deck, as well as down there, to share April’s excitement when she saw the first load.
He started to smile, almost getting himself a mouthful of water. The excitement on the surface would not be confined to April’s cruiser. It would spread in a flash to every other boat in the group—including Rawl’s. Somewhat belatedly, he wondered what would happen after that.
He had told April the truth about Marilyn, of course, before he started down, in a brief moment when he had her alone. But he hadn’t had time to emphasize that the secret must always be kept between them. He hoped that in her intoxication with the last-minute victory she wouldn’t let something out that would reach the ears of Rawl. It would be ironic to have victory snatched from them again on a technicality. But if Rawl cried foul, the Governors might have to sustain him. Or would Rawl prefer to accept defeat rather than ridicule?
Simon had a partial answer about April in a few minutes. She came down in the empty cradle, wearing her own aqualung, like a modern mermaid in a hammock. She could not smile, with the rubber mouthpiece deforming her lips, but as he touched her and they shook hands he saw her eyes shining and dancing behind the glass of her face mask.
Then she saw the octopus, and her eyes grew still bigger. Simon got her attention back by shaking her shoulder; then as she looked at him he pointed at the octopus, then up towards the surface, then put an upraised forefinger in front of his mouthpiece. She nodded vigorously, and repeated the forefinger gesture, and he figured that everything was still all right.
But he looked up again, and saw Duncan Rawl coming down.
There was no mistaking the glint of sunlight on his yellow curls. Or the glint of metal from the powerful spear gun couched under his arm like a lance.
The Saint’s thoughts raced in a vertiginous cascade. Had Rawl gone completely crazy with disappointment, berserk, decided to murder one or both of them regardless of the almost inevitable consequences? It seemed incredible to the Saint even as he instinctively thrust April behind him and poised himself for the flimsy chance of parrying the spear with his crowbar. Rawl was swimming down at a steep angle towards them, but on a course which began to look as if it would take him down on to Marilyn unless he pulled out of the dive at the last moment. Then was he playing for some kind of compensating glory? Since the Saint had made him look foolish by ignoring the octopus and having no trouble, was Rawl thinking of vindicating himself by killing it and then claiming to have saved the Saint’s life? That was plausible, yet it seemed hardly enough. A boast like that hardly seemed enough to salve a hypertrophied ego that had taken such punctures as he had administered to Rawl’s.
And then the answer dawned on him, with the clarity of a blueprint, as Rawl slowed his glide directly over the giant cephalopod. It was written like a book in the way Rawl glanced towards him for an instant, running his eye like a tape measure over the distance between Simon and the octopus.
Rawl only expected his shaft, when he fired it, to infuriate the creature. Then it would grab Simon and April, who were well within its reach. And Duncan Rawl would take credit for having valiantly tried to save them…
The Saint’s ribs ached from the impossibility of laughing.
Duncan Rawl fired his spear.
It twinkled like a silver arrow, straight down at Marilyn’s great amorphous body. And then the thing happened that curdled and froze the laughter in Simon’s chest.
As if the monster had watched everything with its basilisk eye, and hadn’t been fooled for a second, knowing exactly where the thing that stung it had come from—but how preposterous and fantastic could anything be?—it released the rock it sprawled on and shot straight upwards like an outlandish rocket. Its tentacles lashed around Rawl like enormous whips, and where they touched they clung. He looked like a pygmy in its stupendous eight-armed grip. One of the arms coiled around his head, then writhed away again, taking with it his mask and breathing hose. The Saint and April had one last dreadful glimpse of his face, before the final horror was blotted out in a tremendous cloud of ink.
6
“It’s a good thing I only want you to do some swimming, and not as a technical expert,” Jack Donohue said caustically, “if you can’t tell a real octopus from a prop.”
“I thought it looked extraordinarily lifelike,” said the Saint. “But I’ve heard they can do anything in Hollywood. I should be more careful what publicity I read.”
They sat out on the terrace of Bluebeard’s Castle again, watching the lights kindle below them as the brief twilight deepened over the town. April was with them, but she was not talking much.
“You’re lucky I don’t have to send you a bill that’d keep you broke for three years,” Donohue said. “Some fishermen found Marilyn drifting around Cruz Bay. She wasn’t damaged much. But I’m going to be more careful the next time anyone comes to me to borrow an artificial octopus.”
“The only way I can figure it, the real one must have had an unsatisfactory tussle with her,” Simon said, “whether he saw her as an unwilling sweetheart or a rival male. Anyway, before he found out she was only a prop, he’d torn her loose from her moorings, and she floated away. The real octopus liked the look of the spot and decided to settle down there himself.”
“And why he didn’t grab you for breakfast as soon as you came within reach, I’ll never know.”
“Maybe he’d just had a good breakfast and wasn’t hungry. Didn’t you ever go fishing and wonder why sometimes they’ll bite anything and other times they seem to be on a hunger strike? Of course when Rawl shot a spear into it, that was different. Even an octopus must have its pride.”
“And it was a break for you that it was smart enough to know who shot at it.”
“It’s too bad your camera crew wasn’t there. It was a better scene than you’ll ever direct.”
April shuddered.
“Please don’t,” she said. “I know he meant it to kill us, but I’ll have nightmares every time I remember that thing wooshing up at him. I never knew they could move so fast, and his face…”
“Don’t let that Saint name fool you,” Donohue said. “He’s a ghoul. No, I take that back. He’s a thing ghouls won’t speak to.”
“He is not!” she said indignantly. “As soon as he’d got me up to the boat, he went back to see if he couldn’t do anything, even though all he had was a knife. But he couldn’t see anything.”
“All right,” Donohue said. “He’s a hero. But don’t forget to count those gold bars every time he goes near them.”
“He can have anything he wants,” April said.
Jack Donohue finished his Peter Dawson and stood up.
“I’m expecting a call from the studio, and I’ve got to work on the script tonight,” he said. “But before I ruin your evening by leaving you, would someone tell me why the Saint always ends up with a billion dollars and the most beautiful girl in sight?”
“Doesn’t that go with every old treasure story?” said the Saint.
HAITI: THE QUESTING TYCOON
1
It was intolerably hot in Port-au-Prince, for the capital city of Haiti lies at the back of a bay, a gullet twenty miles deep beyond which the opening jaws of land extend a hundred and twenty miles still farther to the west and north-west, walled in by steep high hills, and thus perfectly sheltered from every normal shift of the trade winds which temper the climate of most parts of the Antilles. The geography which made it one of the finest natural harbors in the Caribbean had doubtless appealed strongly to the French buccaneers who founded the original settlement, but three centuries later, with the wings of Pan-American Airways to replace the sails of a frigate, a no less authentic pirate could be excused fo
r being more interested in escaping from the sweltering heat pocket than in dallying to admire the anchorage.
As soon as Simon Templar had completed his errands in the town, he climbed into the jeep he had borrowed and headed back up into the hills.
Knowing what to expect of Port-au-Prince at that time of year, he had passed up the ambitious new hotels of the capital in favor of the natural air-conditioning of the Châtelet des Fleurs, an unpretentious but comfortable inn operated by an American whom he had met on a previous visit, only about fifteen miles out of the city but five thousand feet above the sea-level heat. He could feel it getting cooler as the road climbed, and in a surprisingly short time it was like being in another latitude. But the scenery did not seem to become any milder to correspond with the relief of temperature: the same brazen sun bathed rugged brownish slopes with few trees to soften their parched contours. Most of the houses he passed, whether a peasant’s one-room cottage or an occasional expensive château, were built of irregular blocks of the same native stone, so that they had an air of being literally carved out of the landscape, but sometimes in a sudden valley or clinging to a distant hillside there would be a palm-thatched cabin of rough raw timbers that looked as if it had been transplanted straight from Africa. And indisputably transplanted from Africa were the straggling files of ebony people, most of them women, a few plutocrats adding their own weight to the already fantastic burdens of incredibly powerful little donkeys, but the majority laden fabulously themselves with great baskets balanced on their heads, who bustled cheerfully along the rough shoulders of the road.
He came into the little town of Pétionville, drove past the pleasant grass-lawned square dominated by the very French-looking white church, and headed on up the corkscrew highway towards Kenscoff. And six kilometers further on he met Sibao.
As he rounded one of the innumerable curves he saw a little crowd collected, much as some fascinating obstruction would create a knot in a busy string of ants. Unlike other groups that he had passed before where a few individuals from one of the ant-lines would fall out by the wayside to rest and gossip, this cluster had a focal point and an air of gravity and concern that made him think first of an automobile accident, although there was no car or truck in sight. He slowed up automatically, trying to see what it was all about as he went by, like almost any normal traveler, but when he glimpsed the unmistakable bright color of fresh blood he pulled over and stopped, which perhaps few drivers on that road would have troubled to do.
The chocolate-skinned young woman whom the others were gathered around had a six-inch gash in the calf of one leg. From the gestures and pantomime of her companions rather than the few basic French word-sounds which his ear could pick out of their excited jabber of Creole, he concluded that a loose stone had rolled under her foot as she walked, taking it from under her and causing her to slip sideways down off the shoulder, where another sharp pointed stone happened to stick out at exactly the right place and angle to slash her like a crude dagger. The mechanics of the accident were not really important, but it was an ugly wound, and the primitive first-aid efforts of the spectators had not been able to stanch the bleeding.
Simon saw from the tint of the blood that no artery had been cut. He made a pressure bandage with his handkerchief and two strips ripped from the tail of his shirt, but it was obvious that a few stitches would be necessary for a proper repair. He picked the girl up and carried her to the jeep.
“Nous allons chercher un médecin,” he said, and he must have been understood, for there was no protest over the abduction as he turned the jeep around and headed back towards Pétionville.
The doctor whom he located was learning English and was anxious to practice it. He contrived to keep Simon around while he cleaned and sewed up and dressed the cut, and then conveniently mentioned his fee. Simon paid it, although the young woman tried to protest, and helped her back into the jeep.
His good-Samaritan gesture seemed to have become slightly harder to break off than it had been to get into, but with nothing but time on his hands he was cheerfully resigned to letting it work itself out.
“Where were you going?” he asked in French, and she pointed up the road.
“Là-haut.”
The reply was given with a curious dignity, but without presumption. He was not sure at what point he had begun to feel that she was not quite an ordinary peasant girl. She wore the same faded and formless kind of cotton dress, perhaps cleaner than some, but not cleaner than all the others, for it was not uncommon for them to be spotless. Her figure was slimmer and shapelier than most, and her features had a patrician mould that reminded him of ancient Egyptian carvings. They had remained mask-like and detached throughout the ministrations of the doctor, although Simon knew that some of it must have hurt like hell.
He drove up again to the place where he had found her. Two other older women were sitting there, and they greeted her as the jeep stopped. She smiled and answered, proudly displaying the new white bandage on her leg. She started to get out.
He saw that there were three baskets by the roadside where the two women had waited. He stopped her, and said, “You should not walk far today, especially with a load. I can take you all the way.”
“Vous êtes très gentil!”
She spoke French very stiffly and shyly and correctly, like a child remembering lessons. Then she spoke fluently to the other women in Creole, and they hoisted the third basket between them and put it in the back of the jeep. Her shoes were still on top of its miscellany of fruits and vegetables, according to the custom of the country, which regards shoes as too valuable to be worn out with mere tramping from place to place, especially over rough rocky paths.
Simon drove all the way to the Châtelet des Fleurs, where the road seems to end, but she pointed ahead and said, “Plus loin.”
He drove on around the inn. Not very far beyond it the pavement ended, but a navigable trail meandered on still further and higher towards the background peaks. He expected it to become impassable at every turn, but it teased him on for several minutes and still hadn’t petered out when a house suddenly came in sight, built out of rock and perched like a fragment of a medieval castle on a promontory a little above them. A rutted driveway branched off and slanted up to it, and the young woman pointed again.
“La maison-là.”
It was not a mansion in size, but on the other hand it was certainly no native peasant’s cottage.
“Merci beaucoup,” she said in her stilted schoolgirl French, as the jeep stopped in front of it.
“De rien,” he murmured amiably, and went around to lift out the heavy basket.
A man came out on to the verandah, and she spoke rapidly in Creole, obviously explaining about her accident and how she came to be chauffeured to the door. As Simon looked up, the man came down to meet him, holding out his hand.
“Please don’t bother with that,” he said. “I’ve got a handy man who’ll take care of it. You’ve done enough for Sibao already. Won’t you come in and have a drink? My name’s Theron Netlord.”
Simon Templar could not help looking a little surprised. For Mr Netlord was not only a white man, but he was unmistakably an American, and Simon had some vague recollection of his name.
2
It can be assumed that the birth of the girl who was later to be called Sibao took place under the very best auspices, for her father was the houngan of an houmfort in a valley that could be seen from the house where Simon had taken her, which in terms of a more familiar religion than voodoo would be the equivalent of the vicar of a parish church, and her mother was not only a mambo in her own right, but also an occasional communicant of the church in Pétionville. But after the elaborate precautionary rituals with which her birth was surrounded, the child grew up just like any of the other naked children of the hills, until she was nearly seven.
At that time, she woke up one morning and said, “Mama, I saw Uncle Zande trying to fly, but he dived into the ground.”
Two years later her grandfather fell sick with a burning fever, and his children and grandchildren gathered around to see him die. But the young girl went to him and caressed his forehead, and at that moment the sweating and shivering stopped, and the fever left him and he began to mend. After that there were others who asked for her touch, and many of them affirmed that they experienced extraordinary relief.
At least it was evident that she was entitled to admission to the houmfort without further probation. One night, with a red bandanna on her head and gay handkerchiefs knotted around her neck and arms, with a bouquet in one hand and a crucifix in the other, she sat in a chair between her four sponsors and watched the hounsis-canzo, the student priests, dance before her. Then her father took her by the hand to the President of the congregation, and she recited her first voodoo oath:
“Je jure, je jure, I swear, to respect the powers of the mystères de Guinée, to respect the powers of the houngan, of the President of the Society, and the powers of all those on whom these powers are conferred.”
And after she had made all her salutations and prostrations, and had herself been raised shoulder high and applauded, they withdrew and left her before the altar to receive whatever revelation the spirits might vouchsafe to her.
At thirteen she was a young woman, long-legged and comely, with a proud yet supple walk and prematurely steady eyes that gazed so gravely at those whom she noticed that they seemed never to rest on a person’s face but to look through into the thoughts behind it. She went faithfully to school and learned what she was told to, including a smattering of the absurdly involved and illogical version of her native tongue which they called “French,” but when her father stated that her energy could be better devoted to helping to feed the family, she ended her formal education without complaint.