The Saint on the Spanish Main

1

It has been said by certain skeptics that there are already more than enough stories of Simon Templar, and that each new one added to his saga only adds to the incredibility of the rest, because it is clearly impossible that any one man in a finite lifetime should have been able to find so many adventures.

Such persons only reveal their own failure to have grasped one of the first laws of adventure, which can only be stated quite platitudinously: adventures happen to the adventurous.

In the beginning, of course, Simon Templar had sought for it far and wide, and luck or his destiny had lent a generous hand to the finding of it. But as the tally of his adventures added up, and the name of the Saint, as he called himself, became better known, and the legends about him were swollen by extravagant newspaper headlines and even more fantastic whisperings in the underworld, and finally his real name and likeness became familiar to inevitably widening circles, so the clues to adventure that came his way multiplied. For not only were there those in trouble who sought him out for help that the Law could not give, but there were evildoers with no fear of the Law who feared the day when some mischance might bring the Saint across their path. So that he might be anywhere, quite innocently and unsuspectingly, in a vicinity where some well-hidden wickedness was being hatched, but no guilty conscience could possibly believe that the Saint’s appearance on the scene could be an accident, and therefore the ungodly, upon merely hearing his name or glimpsing a tanned piratical profile which was not hard to identify with photographs that had been published several times in eye-catching conjunction with stories not easily forgotten, would credit him with knowledge which he did not have, and would be jolted into indiscretions that they would never have committed at the name of Smith or the sight of any ordinary face. In their anxiety to redouble their camouflage or to destroy him, they actually brought themselves to his attention. Thus the proliferation of his adventures tended to perpetuate itself in a kind of chain reaction. By the time of which I am now writing, he no longer had to seek adventure: it found him.

This story is as good an example as I can think of.

Don Mucklow met him in Florida at the Miami airport because they had shared more than one adventure in the Caribbean in years gone by.

“Well, what brings you here this time, Saint?”

“Nothing in particular. I just felt in the mood for some winter sunshine, so I thought I’d go island-hopping and see what cooked.”

“God, you have a tough life.”

Don was now married, a father, and the overworked manager of a boatyard and yacht basin.

“So it’s back to the old Spanish Main again, eh?” Don said. “There must be something in that pirate tradition that you can’t get away from. Which of the islands are you planning to raise hell on first?”

“I haven’t even decided that yet. I may end up throwing darts at a map. Anyway, we’ve got to spend at least one night out on this town before I take off.”

“You want to go to the Rod and Reel with me tonight?”

“What’s on?”

“The usual Wednesday night dinner. And on this distinguished occasion, the presentation to Don Mucklow of his badge for catching the world’s record dolphin for three-thread line — thirty-seven and a half beautiful pounds of it, even on the official certified scale.”

Simon turned and beamed at him.

“Why, you cagey old son of a gun,” he said affectionately. “Congratulations! How did you ever manage to stuff all those sinkers down its throat without anyone seeing you?”

“I just live right. But I certainly had my fingers crossed till the IGFA approved it.”

“Now who has the tough life? What I wouldn’t give to tie into a really important fish!”

“Why don’t you stick around and try? I’ll fix you up with a good skipper.”

“Don’t tempt me. What other entertainment is the Rod and Reel offering, besides the privilege of seeing Mucklow look smug, like an Eagle Scout with his new badge?”

“There’s a talk by Walton Smith on some new discoveries they’ve made about the migration of tuna.”

“That should be most educational.”

“And then, just to please people like you, we’re having a girl called Lorelei, who takes her clothes off in a fish bowl.”

“Now you’re starting to sell it,” said the Saint.

So by seven o’clock that evening they were part of a convivial mob of members and guests at the bar of the exclusive Rod and Reel Club on Hibiscus Island. Don, who knew everybody, contrived to elude conversational ambushes until he had attained the prime objective of getting their first drink order filled; then, when they each had a tall Peter Dawson in hand, he reached into the milling crowd and pulled out a short broad-shouldered man with ginger hair surrounding a bald spot like a tonsure.

“Patsy, who let you in here?”

“I was brought by a member an’ a foine gentleman,” said the other with dignity. “Although judgin’ by yourself as a member, that might sound like two different people.”

“I’ve a friend here who’s looking for you, Patsy.”

“Indade?”

“This is Captain O’Kevin,” Don said to the Saint. “Patsy, meet Simon Templar.”

O’Kevin shook hands with a strong bony grip. His pug-nosed face was a mosaic of freckles and red sunburn that would never blend into an even brown, out of which his faded green eyes twinkled up from a mass of creases.

“That sounds like a name I should be knowin’. Wait — this couldn’t be the fellow they call the Saint?”

“That’s him,” Don said. “And I just hope you haven’t got any skeletons in your locker.”

“Fortunately, I earn an honest livin’ instid of operatin’ a thievin’ boatyard.” O’Kevin’s bright little eyes searched Simon’s face more interestedly. “Now why would the Saint be trailin’ a poor hard-workin’ charter-boat captain, for the Lard’s sake?”

“Because he wants to go fishing,” Don said. “He isn’t satisfied with being the most successful buccaneer since Captain Kidd, he wants to try and take my only record away from me. So I said I’d put him on to a good skipper. Naturally I picked you, because your customers never catch anything. You can give him a nice boat ride, and I won’t have a thing to worry about.”

“Sure, an’ ’twould be a pleasure to foind him something bigger than that overgrown mullet ye’re boastin’ about. How long would ye be stayin’ down here, Mr Templar?”

“Not more than a day or two,” said the Saint.

“That’s too bad. I’ve a party waitin’ for me in Bimini right now, an’ I’m leavin’ first thing in the marnin’. I’ll be gone three or four days.”

“What’s your hurry, Simon?” Don protested. “Those islands have been out there in the Caribbean a long time. They won’t run away.”

“Where are ye makin’ for, Mr Templar?” O’Kevin asked.

Simon grinned. Only a few hours ago he had talked about throwing darts at a map. Now a dart had been thrown for him. It was one of those utterly random choices that appealed to his gambling instinct.

“I’ve just this minute decided,” he said. “I’m going to Bimini too.”

“Then I’ll most likely run into ye over there. It’s been nice ’meetin’ ye, sorr, even though somebody should o’ warned ye about the company ye’re keepin’.”

He shook hands again, winked amiably at Don, and was swept aside by an eddy of thirsty newcomers.

“No kidding,” Don told the Saint. “Patsy’s one of the best fishing captains around here.”

“And you knew very well he was booked before you introduced me.”

“I did not. Any more than I knew you were going to Bimini. What on earth made you suddenly decide that?”

“It was the first island I’d heard mentioned since I got here,” said the Saint cheerfully. “So I let that be an omen. I had to pick one of ’em eventually, anyway. A dear old aunt of mine ruined a lot of bookies picking racehorses by a similar system.”

“Well, Patsy isn’t the only good skipper. Let’s see who else is here tonight.”

They met several dozens of other men, in an accelerating kaleidoscope whose successive patterns soon overtaxed even Simon Templar’s remarkable memory, in the good humoured turmoil of a typical stag party. But at the end of the meeting, after the dinner and the presentation of badges and the lecture and the artistic performance of the girl called Lorelei (who, I regret to inform those readers who were only staying with us for that bit, has nothing further to do with this story), the face which had impressed itself on him most sharply perhaps only because it was the first introduction of the evening sorted itself out of the dispersing crowd and approached him again.

“I’ve been thinkin’, Mr Templar,” Patsy O’Kevin said. “So long as ye’re headed for Bimini anyhow, an’ if it isn’t too soon for ye, maybe ye’d like to be goin’ over with me tomorrow? It won’t cost ye nothin’, an’ we could do a bit o’ fishin’ on the way, an’ if we’re lucky we’ll catch one that’ll make this loud-mouth Mucklow wish he’d used that sardine o’ his for live bait.”

“Take him up on it, Simon,” Don said. “You might even catch one of those pink sea-serpents he sees after a week on rum and coconut water.”

“That’s too nice an offer to pass up, Patsy,” said the Saint straightly. “Thank you. I’d love it. What time do we sail?”

So if it hadn’t happened like that he would never have met Mr Clinton Uckrose. Or (to supply a new focus of sex interest) Gloria...

2

Mr Uckrose, Simon learned on the way over, was an American, rich and retired, living in Europe. He had been in the jewelry manufacturing business in New York, but had sold out to his partner, and had become a legal resident of the principality of Monaco, by which device he escaped paying any income tax on his invested capital, since the profits from the Monte Carlo Casino absolve the happy inhabitants of Monaco from any such depressing obligation. He was so morbidly apprehensive about jeopardizing this delicate but agreeable situation that nothing would induce him to set foot in the United States again, for fear that by touching American soil he might provide the IRS with grounds for some claim against him. Although he had become a regular winter visitor in Nassau, and liked to get in some big-game fishing during his stay, he flew directly to the Bahamas via London and Bermuda, and refused to take the short fifty-minute additional flight to Miami for his sport: instead, he took a Bahamian Airways plane to Bimini, most westerly of the islands and only some fifty miles off the Florida coast, and sent for a charter boat to come over and join him there. A former business connection of Uckrose’s had recommended Patsy O’Kevin the first time, and this would make the third consecutive year that the stocky Irishman had been booked for the same assignment.

This had not made O’Kevin any more enthusiastic about it.

“It’s not that he’s stingy, Simon, which I’ll be so bowld as to call ye. An’ wid the competition these days, a captain should give thanks for ivry charter he gets. But there’s not a drap o’ real fisherman’s blood in him.” O’Kevin watched approvingly as the Saint used a sharpened brass tube to core the spine out of a ballyhoo, the slender little bait fish that looks so aptly like a miniature of some of the big billed fishes it is used to lure. “Niver would Mr Uckrose soil his hands by puttin’ thim closer to a fish than the other end av a rod.”

Simon slid the ballyhoo on to a hook and bound it with a few deft twists of leader wire. Now when it went in the water it would troll with its limp tail fluttering exactly as if it were swimming alive.

“I’m just a free-loader,” he said lightly. “If I were paying for this, I might expect service too.”

“Niver would Mr Uckrose use that rod an’ six-thread line,” O’Kevin persisted. “All he’ll use is the heaviest tackle I’ve got, so that whiniver he hooks anything, so long as the hook holds, he can just harse it in. If I had a derrick an’ a power winch, he’d be usin’ that. An’ any toime there’s a little braize blowin’, we’ll stay right at the dock, Mr Uckrose is afraid he’ll be seasick.”

“That isn’t his fault, Patsy.”

“Thin he shouldn’t be tryin’ to pretend he’s a fisherman,” said O’Kevin arbitrarily. “For it seems all he cares about is to come in wid some fish, he doesn’t care what kind it is or how it was caught, just so he can be havin’ his picture taken with it, an’ send it to his friends if it’s eatable or have it stuffed if it isn’t, so they’ll think what a great spartsman he is, when there’s no spart to it. An’ that’s the kind o’ client I’d like to be rich enough to turn down.” The captain spat forcefully to lee. “Now get that bait in the water, Simon, before I start thinkin’ ye’re a man after Uckrose’s heart rather than me own!”

Simon laughed, and put the bait over the side.

O’Kevin’s mate eased off the throttles as the Colleen knifed her trim forty-foot hull out of the green coastal water into the deep blue of the Gulf Stream, a boundary almost as sharply marked as the division between a river and its bank. He was a thin dark intense-looking young man who never opened his mouth unless he was directly spoken to, and not always then. “We call him Des,” O’Kevin said, “after the chap in those Philip Wylie stories.” His air of nervous compression suggested the mute strain of a hunting dog on a leash.

When the Saint threw the brake on his reel, O’Kevin reached for the line, nipped it in a clothes-pin, and hauled it out to the end of one of the outriggers that had already been lowered to stand out from the boat’s side like a long sensitive antenna. With the outrigger holding it clear of the Colleen’s wake, the ballyhoo wiggled and skipped enticingly through the tops of the waves far behind them. The Saint settled the butt of the rod securely in the socket between his thighs, leaned comfortably back in the fishing chair, and watched the trail of the bait lazily with his blue eyes narrowed against the glare. Patsy opened a cold can of beer and put it into his hand. “This was the life,” Simon thought, feeling the sun warm his bare back and letting his weight balance harmoniously with the gentle surge and roll of the boat, and he didn’t give a damn about Mr Uckrose or any of his shortcomings.

“Now, Mrs Uckrose is diff’rent altogether,” Patsy said presently, as if some obscure need for this amplification had been worrying him. “Gloria’s her name, an’ glorious she is to look at, though I’m thinkin’ she needs a stronger hand on the tiller than Uckrose is man enough to be givin’ her. If I were as young as yerself—”

“Sail!” shouted Des, in a sudden hysterical bark.

Simon had already seen it himself, the long dorsal fin that lanced the water behind and to one side of the diving and flirting ballyhoo. It disappeared, then showed again briefly on the other side of the bait, still following it.

Suddenly the line broke out of the light grip of the clothes-pin that held it at the end of the outrigger, and the slack of it drifted astern from the Saint’s rod tip.

It must perhaps be explained to those who have not yet been initiated into this form of angling that a member of the swordfish family does not attack a lure like a bass hitting a plug or a trout rising to a fly. It first strikes its intended victim with its bill, to kill or stun it: this is the blow that jerks the line from the outrigger, and with the line released the bait is for a few seconds no longer towed by the boat and drops back with convincing lifelessness, while the fish that struck it circles into position to take a comfortable gulp at the prospective snack. The precise timing of this wait is a matter of fine judgment curbing the excitement of a suspense that makes seconds seem to stretch out into minutes.

“Now!” howled O’Kevin, and even as he said it the Saint had flipped the drag on his reel, and was lifting his rod tip up and back. “And again!” yelled the captain, dancing a little jig, but already the Saint was rearing back again, so that the slender rod tip bowed in a sharp curve, tightening the line strongly yet with a controlled smoothness that would not snap it. “Again! That’s right! That should’ve hooked the spalpeen—”

A hundred and fifty yards astern the fish shot up out of the water, shaking its head furiously, the whole magnificent streamlined length of it seeming to walk upright on its thrashing tail. The sunlight flashed on its silver belly, shone on the sleek midnight blue of its back, stenciled the outline of the enormous spread sail of dorsal fin from which the fish took its name. Then after what seemed like an incredible period of levitation it fell back into the sea with a mighty splash. The reel under Simon’s hand whined in protest as the line tore off it.

“Holy Mother of God,” said O’Kevin reverently. “That’s the biggest grandfather av a sailfish these owld eyes iver hope to be gladdened be the sight av. If it weighs one pound it’ll weigh a hundred an’ twenty. No, it’s bigger’n that. It’s twenty pounds bigger. It’s a world’s record!.. Des! Is it dreamin’ ye are?” As if waking out of a trance himself, he scrambled back to the wheel, pushed his mate aside, hauled back on the clutches, and gunned the engines, his gnarled hands moving with the lightning accuracy of a concert pianist’s. “Howld on, Simon me boy,” he breathed. “Play him as gently as if ye had him tied to a cobweb, an’ me an’ the Colleen will do the rest!”

If this story were about nothing but fishing, the chronicler could happily devote several pages to a blow-by-blow account of the Saint’s tussle with that specimen of Istiophorus americanus, but they would be of interest mainly to fishermen. Those who have had a taste of light-tackle fishing for big-game fish know that when you have more than a hundred pounds of finny dynamite on the end of a line which is only guaranteed to support eighteen pounds of dead weight, you do not just crank the reel until you wind up your catch alongside the boat. All you can do is to apply firm and delicate pressure, keeping the line tight enough so that he cannot throw off the hook, yet not so taut that it would snap at a sudden movement. If he decides to take off for other latitudes, you cannot stop him, you can only keep this limited strain on him and wait for him to tire. But you also have only a limited length of line on your reel for him to run with, and if he takes all of it you have lost him, so the boat must follow him quickly on every run so that he never gets too far away. In this manoeuvring the boat captain’s skill is almost as vital as the fisherman’s.

Patsy O’Kevin was obviously an expert captain, but on that occasion his eagerness turned his skill into a liability. He was so anxious not to let a probable record get away, so afraid of letting the Saint put too much strain on his frail line, that he followed the fish as closely as a seasoned stock horse herding a calf — so quickly and closely that the Saint had a job to keep any pressure on the fish at all. And so there were several more jumps, and many more runs, and time went on until it seemed to have lost meaning, and then at last there was a moment when the fish turned in its tracks and came towards the boat like a torpedo, the Saint reeling in frantically, and O’Kevin for once was slow, and fumbled over throwing the clutches from reverse to forward. The bellying line passed right under the transom, right through the churning of the propellers, and as the Saint mechanically went on winding a limp frayed end of nylon lifted clear of the wake.

No more than a boat’s length off the starboard beam, the freed sailfish rose monstrously from the water for one last derisive pirouette.

“I did it,” said O’Kevin brokenly. “There’s no one to blame but me. If ye’d be kinder to me than I deserve, Simon, would ye just be cuttin’ me throat before ye throw me overboard to the sharks?”

“Forget it,” said the Saint, wiping the sweat from his face. “I was getting tired of the whole thing anyway.”

He was amazed to see by his watch that the battle had lasted more than two and a half hours.

“An’ almost all the time, that son av a whale was headin’ almost due south,” O’Kevin said. “We’re further from Bimini now than we were whin we left Miami.”

Only the taciturn mate had no comment. O’Kevin turned the helm back to him, and a certain restrained melancholy settled over the whole party as the Colleen swung around and ploughed northwards again with the stream.

After a belated lunch of sandwiches and beer had had their restorative effect, however, Patsy finally stopped shaking his head and muttering to himself and stomped aft to the bait box.

“If ye’ll allow me to bend another bait to yer line, sorr,” he said, “we may yet meet the great-grandfather o’ that tadpole I lost for ye.”

If this were really a fishing story, it would tell how the Saint presently hooked and fought and vanquished an even bigger sailfish, a leviathan that was likely to remain a world’s record for all time. Unfortunately the drab requirements of veracity to which your historian is subject will not permit him this pleasure.

In fact, most of the northward troll yielded only one medium-sized barracuda. Then, with the islands of Bimini already clearly in sight, Simon hooked another sailfish, but it was quite a small one, only about fifty pounds, as they saw on its first jump. O’Kevin allowed Des to handle the boat, which he did efficiently enough, and in something less than an hour the exhausted fish was wallowing tamely alongside. O’Kevin reached down and grasped its bill with a gloved hand and lifted it half out of the water, his other hand sliding down the wire leader. He looked at Simon inquiringly.

“Let it go,” said the Saint. “We’ll come back and catch him some day when he’s grown up.”

So this only shows exactly how and why it was that it was late afternoon when the Colleen threaded her way between the tricky reefs and shoals that guard the harbor entrance of Bimini, half a day later than she should normally have arrived, and flying from one of her raised outriggers the pennant with which a sport fisherman proclaims that a sailfish has been brought to the boat and voluntarily released.

The Commissioner was waiting to come aboard as they tied up. Acting as immigration, health, and customs officer combined, he glanced at their papers, accepted a drink and a cigarette, wished them a pleasant stay, and stepped back on the dock in less than fifteen minutes.

Simon had stayed behind in the cabin to pick up his suitcase. As he brought it out to the cockpit, O’Kevin was already on the pier talking to three people who stood there. Simon handed up his two-suiter, and as he swung himself up after it O’Kevin said, “This is the gintleman I was talkin’ about. Mr Templar — Mr and Mrs Uckrose.”

Mr Clinton Uckrose was a somewhat pear-shaped man of medium height who looked about fifty-five, dressed in an immaculate white silk shirt and white shantung trousers with a gaudy necktie knotted around the waist for a belt. Under a peaked cap of native straw, his face also had a pear-shaped aspect, compounded of broad bloodhound jowls bracketing a congenially aggrieved mouth and a pair of old-fashioned pince-nez which seemed to pull his eyes closer together with their grip on his nose. He ignored the Saint’s proffered hand and did not even seem to have heard his name.

“You’ve got a nerve!” he snarled.

Simon looked down at his hand, saw nothing obviously contaminating about it, and tried offering it to Mrs Uckrose. She took it.

Politeness required him to look into her eyes, which were interesting enough in a languorous brown-velvet way, but it was not easy to keep his gaze from wandering too pointedly over her other attractions, which were displayed as candidly as a pair of very short shorts and bra to match could do it. From the roots of her chestnut hair to the toes of her sandaled feet she was so evenly sun-tanned that she looked like a golden statue, but there was nothing statuesque about the lingering softness of her handshake. She could hardly have been more than half her husband’s age.

Simon understood exactly what she made Patsy O’Kevin think of. He was thinking the same way himself.

“What made you think you should take your friends joy-riding while I’m waiting for you here?” Uckrose was demanding of the captain.

“He was comin’ here anyhow,” Patsy said, “so I thought it’d do no harm if he came wid me. O’ course, when we got to fishin’—”

“When you got to fishing, you took the whole day instead of getting here as you were told to.” Uckrose pointed up at the nearest outrigger. “And what does that flag mean?”

“It’s a release flag, sorr.”

“It’s a release flag.” Uckrose had a trick of repeating the last thing that had been said to him in a tone that made it sound as if the speaker could only have uttered it as a gratuitous affront. “What does that mean?”

“Mr Templar had a sailfish on, an’ we turned it loose.”

“You turned it loose.” Uckrose’s jowls quivered. “How many days, how many weeks, have I fished with you, year after year, and I’ve never yet caught a sailfish?”

“That’s the luck o’ the game, sorr.”

“The luck of the game. But the very least you could have done was bring in the fish.”

“It was Mr Templar’s fish,” Patsy said, with a little more emphasis on the name. “He said to break it off, so I did.”

“It was only a little one,” Simon put in peaceably.

“It was on my boat!” Uckrose blared. “It belonged to me. I could have sent it back to be mounted. What difference does it make who caught it?”

Simon studied him with a degree of scientific incredulity.

“Do you seriously mean,” he inquired, “that you’d have had my fish stuffed, and hung over your mantelpiece, and told everyone you caught it?”

“You mind your own business!”

The Saint nodded agreeably, and turned to O’Kevin.

“I’m sorry I got you into this, Patsy,” he said. “But let’s just get you out again.” He put a hand in his pocket, brought out some money, and peeled off two fifty-dollar bills. “That should take care of today’s charter. Don’t charge Fat Stuff for it, and he can’t squawk. His time starts tomorrow. And thanks for the fishing — it was fun.”

As O’Kevin hesitated, Simon tucked the two fifties into his shirt pocket and picked up his suitcase.

Gloria Uckrose said, “Did I get the name right — Simon Templar?”

Simon nodded, looking at her again, and this time taking no pains to control where his eyes wandered. With all his audacity he was not often crudely brash: there is a difference which the cut-rate Casanovas of the Mickey Spillane school would never understand. But Clinton Uckrose’s egregious rudeness had sparked an answering insolence in him that burned up into more outrageous devilment than solemn outrage.

“I’ll be staying at the Compleat Angler,” he said. “Any time you can shake off this dull slob, let’s have a drink.”

He started to walk away.

The third member of the party who had been waiting on the pier intercepted him. He had been with the Uckroses when Simon first saw them, but standing a little behind them. He had not been introduced, and during all the talk that followed he had remained a little apart. He was a slim man of about thirty in a rumpled seersucker suit, with a light panama hat shading a long blue-chinned face and heavy-lidded black eyes. Simon had observed those details at a glance but had taken no other notice of him.

Now the man had moved so that the Saint either had to back up and make a wide detour or pass along the very edge of the dock through a space that was barely wide enough to admit him. Simon coolly kept going. The man was looking right at him and said, “Mr Uckrose don’t like fresh guys.”

Then he hit the Saint low in the belly with his left hand and pushed with his right.

The Saint’s sinewy leanness made it deceptively easy to misjudge his weight, and his reflexes worked on hair triggers. Fantastic as it seemed in that setting, the slim man’s approach had a certain standardized professional quality which had given Simon a split second’s warning. The man’s fist only grazed a set of abdominal muscles that were already braced to the consistency of a truck tire, and the push with his right hand rocked the Saint but did not send him flying off the dock as it should have. For an instant Simon was precariously off balance, and then as the other instinctively pushed again Simon ducked and twisted like a cat, and it was the slim man who incredulously found himself floating off into space to pancake on the water with a fine liquid smack.

Simon Templar looked down at him as he came spluttering to the surface, shook his head reproachfully, and sauntered on.

It was only after that that he realized intelligently what he had reacted to intuitively: that for a retired manufacturing jeweler, Mr Uckrose had a champion whose technique was extraordinarily reminiscent of a gangster’s bodyguard.

3

Simon surrendered his bag to one of an insistent troop of black boys, as the simplest way of getting rid of the rest, and walked thoughtfully along the one street of Bimini, which follows the shore of the lagoon. Any day now, perhaps, some ambitious commercial enterprise will descend on that little ridge of palm-topped coral and transform it into a tropical Coney Island, but at this time the street still led only from the neighborhood of the small trim Yacht Club, near which Simon had landed, to the vicinity of the homelike Compleat Angler hotel, with a scattering of shacks in between, some of them selling liquor or groceries or souvenirs, which had a paradoxical look of having been left over from a Hollywood picture about the South Seas. The island was still nothing much more than a stopover for yachts cruising into the Bahamas, or a base for fishermen working the eastern side of the Gulf Stream.

The Saint frowned. Having started to walk away, in a rather effective exit, he could scarcely turn back and say to the slim man, or even to Uckrose, “By the way, chum, are you some sort of gangster?” Besides, there was still something not quite right with the picture. There were plenty of gangsters in the Miami area, which had always appealed to them for the same reasons as it appealed to any other class of wealthy vacationer, but Bimini had only attracted them during Prohibition, when cargoes of potable spirits could be assembled there under the tolerant protection of the British flag, to be loaded on to fast motorboats for a quick night run to the dry coast of the United States. Now the island offered nothing either to enrich or entertain them. Anyhow, he saw no reason to disbelieve the story that Mr Uckrose came there from Europe, not from the States. And somehow he could not exactly visualize Mr Uckrose as a gangster — not even of the modern, big-business, board of directors, crime syndicate chieftain type. Furthermore, if Uckrose had been one of those, the Saint would almost certainly have recognized him.

No, he might have to take some of it back, about the “gangster” part. But the “bodyguard” feature could not be laughed away — or the fact that the blue-chinned warrior certainly hadn’t learned his methods in any lace-collar school.

Simon Templar took a leisurely shower, put on a clean pair of denim slacks and a shirt that could have been used to advertise an exotic flower show, and went down to the bar to buy himself a Dry Sack before dinner.

He was halfway through his meal when the Uckroses and the slim droopy-eyed man came in and sat down at a corner table on the other side of the dining room. If Simon had given more thought to it, he realized that he might have expected that: the island offered no variety of first-class hotels for anyone to choose from. But in the overwhelmingly civilized atmosphere of a British hotel dining room, even in such an unassuming outpost of the Empire, in the presence of soft-footed waiters and a handful of other conventional guests, a situation that might have been explosive seemed to be decisively dampened. Clinton Uckrose and his bodyguard glanced at him only once, and thereafter studiously ignored him. The conversation at their table was inaudible, but seemed to remain at a commonplace desultory level, and the faces of the two men were inexpressive, with the deliberate woodenness of poker players. Only Gloria kept on looking at the Saint, and seemed to be paying little attention to the talk of her companions. She had changed into a low-cut white dress that provided a striking contrast for her brown skin and dark copper hair, and which made her superlative torso even more intriguing than the bra top in which he had first seen it. He found her eyes on him again and again, and her gaze did not waver when he discovered it. A kind of secret smile lurked around her mouth and let him wonder whether it was meant for him to share or not.

He finished, and went out to the lounge, where he found the proprietor. They exchanged a couple of polite trivialities, and Simon said, “The younger of the two men at the corner table in there, with the show-stopper in white — I feel I’ve met him somewhere before. Do you know his name?”

The proprietor turned and picked up the register.

“Mr Vincent Innutio,” he said, pointing to the entry. “From Naples. He came here with Mr and Mrs Uckrose.”

“No bell.” Simon shook his head. “I guess it must just be a resemblance.”

Even the Saint could not know every minor malefactor on two continents, but the name sounded as if it would fit very well on some subordinate hoodlum who might have been tagged as an undesirable alien and forcibly shipped home from America to his native Italy, where Mr Uckrose could have found him and adopted him. But why Mr Uckrose would want him was still another question.

By this time, of course, the Saint knew very well that he had already reached the middle of another adventure without even having noticed the point at which it started to close around him. But he was quite happy to let it continue to enmesh him, without rushing it.

Exactly as he would have done if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, he arranged for a native guide with a skiff to take him bone-fishing early the next morning, and went to bed. As his one concession to the intrinsic hazards of the situation, he wedged the back of a chair under his door knob, after assuring himself that his window was reasonably inaccessible from outside; aside from that, he relied on his ability to sleep like a watchdog to protect him. He read Time for an hour, turned out the light, and slept tranquilly until dawn. An hour later, fortified with bacon and eggs and coffee, he was rigging a rod loaned him by the hotel proprietor, while a cheerful displaced African ferried him down the bay.

Again this is no occasion to detail his morning’s stalking of the elusive bonefish, which is esteemed to be the spookiest and at the same time the fightingest thing that swims. He was well satisfied to put two in the boat, the larger of which would scale close to six pounds. By one o’clock his eyes ached from searching the brilliant water, he was hot and thirsty and getting hungry again, and most of the mud flats were high and dry; he was glad to agree with his boatman that they should knock off until the turn of the tide.

As the boy started to row back across the lagoon, Simon saw the Colleen coming through the inlet, riding high on her step with a creaming wave at her bow. In a few minutes she was snug at her berth, and almost at once three figures were walking away from her along the pier. Even at that distance the Saint’s keen eyes could identify them by their silhouettes, and he told his boatman to change course towards the Colleen with the assurance that the Uckroses and Vincent Innutio would be well out of the way by the time he got there.

Patsy O’Kevin passed Des the hose with which he had been helping his mate to swab down, and gave Simon a hand over the side with a big grin.

“Faith, ’tis a proud man I am to be shakin’ the hand that pushed that spaghetti merchant into the drink. An’ if only it’d pushed Uckrose in after him, I’d be kissin’ it. As it is, ye can ask me for anything except the Colleen herself.”

“How about a cold beer?” Simon suggested.

With the cool nectar freshening his mouth and throat, he said, “You hadn’t warned me about Innutio. Where does he fit in?”

“I niver met him before, ayther. Uckrose calls him his secretary, but by the cut av his jib I’d say he’d be handier wid the kind o’ typewriter that only prints three letters, RIP. As ye saw for yerself!”

Simon nodded.

“Why would Uckrose need that kind of bodyguard?”

“I couldn’t be guessin’. Although ’tis likely enough he’d always be givin’ someone the notion to be takin’ a poke at him. Now that ye’ve seen him in action, there’s no more I can tell ye.”

“He is really retired, is he? Or has he ever said anything about still dabbling in business?”

“Accordin’ to him, the only jewelry he iver wants to see again is what he can hang on his wife.”

“That’s nice hanging, now you mention it. And the stuff I saw her wearing last night wasn’t colored glass.”

“Maybe he thinks he needs the wop to take care av it.”

“Insurance would cost a lot less, unless she’s going around with a maharani’s collection.”

“Maybe he can’t get insurance,” O’Kevin said.

Simon took another prolonged swallow of beer. He was feeling better all the time.

“What brought you back so early today?” he asked.

“It was like a mill-pond when we set out, which was foine, an’ Uckrose caught a dolphin, about twelve pounds. Thin it started blowin’ just enough to ruffle the water, so pretty soon he says he’s got a headache an’ he wants to go in — the way I told you it always is.” Patsy opened the fishbox aft and held up the dolphin. “But just in case we niver catch anything else, I’m to keep this frozen, an’ this hardly enough for a good dinner, an’ if it should be all he catches he’ll send it back to Miami to be stuffed.” He dropped the fish back on the ice and slammed the lid of the box disgustedly. “Would ye have a little appetite left, Simon? I got some conch last night an’ brewed a foine pot o’ chowder for the Uckroses’ lunch, but His Lard-ship wouldn’t eat while we were out, an’ it’s just goin’ to waste.”

“We can’t let it do that,” said the Saint.

It was a good chowder, rich and creamy, with plenty of chewy conch meat in it.

“If Uckrose had et some av it, he might o’ made Gloria a lot happier,” O’Kevin said as he finished his bowl.

There is a widespread belief in those parts that the flesh of that giant species of marine snail possesses aphrodisiac properties far exceeding those of the traditionally respected oyster, which was doubtless what O’Kevin was alluding to. His thoughts seemed to continue along that track, for he went on as if it were in the most natural sequence, “If ye don’t give her the benefit av it yourself, ye’re not the man I’ve heard tell ye are.”

“What makes you think she’d be so amenable?” Simon asked amusedly.

“Because she’s gettin’ thoroughly tired of Uckrose, as anyone can see. Already today she’s sayin’ how bored she is wid his way o’ fishin’. But he won’t hear o’ me takin’ her out alone if it’s too rough for him. So she tells him she’s a mind to go right back to Nassau where she could do things an’ have fun. She’s as ripe an’ ready for trouble as a woman ever will be, Simon me b’y, an’ if ye don’t take advantage av it it’s a disillusioned owld man I’ll be.”

Simon accepted a cigarette and a cup of coffee, and then headed back to the hotel. By that time the cumulative effect of the food and beer on top of the long sun-drenched morning was making the ancient tropical custom of a siesta seem remarkably intelligent and inviting. He took a cold shower, closed the jalousie shutters enough to produce a restful twilight, and stretched out naked on the bed to relax and think.

Somewhere near by, some aspiring native Crosby with a guitar was rehearsing an apocryphal calypso:

Simon wondered idly what historic rhubarb was commemorated in that quaint refrain.

And that also could provide sustenance for extensive speculation.

The knocks were on his door, very softly yet quite distinctly. In a flash he was on his feet, pulling on his trousers and zipping them up. But as the knocks were repeated, even through their stealthiness he detected a certain flippancy in their odd little rhythm, a kind of conspiratorial gaiety that was persuasively reassuring. It would have taken an almost incredible Machiavelli of an assassin to have put that subtle touch into a knock. Simon was practically sure of what he would see as he turned the door knob.

Gloria Uckrose came in, wearing a green silk dressing gown and apparently nothing else.

4

“I thought,” she said, “I’d see whether you were kidding, about joining you for a drink.”

“Throw on a dress,” said the Saint agreeably, “and I’ll be waiting for you in the bar.”

“I’d be more comfortable here.”

“Then I’d have to go get something.”

“I don’t really need anything. I’ll settle for just joining.” She had come all the way into the room, walking confidently across towards the window. Now she stood with a cigarette in a short holder in her mouth, her velvet eyes resting on him a little mockingly through the trickle of smoke. “Why don’t you shut the door?”

Simon leaned on the handle, fanning the door a little wider if anything.

“Your husband mightn’t understand,” he explained ingenuously. “He might follow you here, and come bursting in, brandishing a revolver. He might even be acquitted if he shot me.”

She laughed shortly.

“My husband would be too scared of the bang to pull the trigger. Anyway, he’s snoring his head off. He had three double Daiquiris before lunch, and I know exactly what they do to him. A hurricane wouldn’t wake him up before cocktail time.”

“Which room do you have?”

“The third door along to your left. Why?”

“Would you think me unduly nervous if I went and listened to this snore myself?”

“Not at all. Go ahead.”

“In that case I don’t need to,” said the Saint cryptically. He started to shut the door, stopped again, and said, “What about Brother Innutio? Suppose he notices something that he thinks Clinton should hear about?”

“He took Dramamine on the boat. He could hardly keep his eyes open through lunch.”

Simon closed the door.

“It’s nice to meet someone as wide awake as you,” he murmured. “You probably even know already exactly what you’d say if Clinton happened to catch you coming back into the room in that costume.”

“This?” The careless gesture she made bared a few more inches of brown thigh in the opening of her robe. “Of course. I wanted some ice water, and nobody answered the bell, so I went looking for someone.”

“It’s a bore having to think of all these things, isn’t it?” he said disarmingly.

“You sound rather like a man who’s had the badger game tried on him.”

“I have,” Simon admitted. “It’s never worked, though.”

“Don’t even pretend to apologize. I expected you to be careful — I’d have been disappointed if you weren’t. We don’t have to play games, Saint. I know who you are.”

He dipped into a pack of cigarettes on the bedside table and placed one in his mouth. It was like driving an unfamiliar road full of potholes and blind curves, improvising a serpentine course from instant to instant between the minor pitfalls, while never knowing what major trap might yawn around the next bend. But his hand was light and flexible on the steering, his blue eyes relaxed and receptive for all their vigilance.

“I had a feeling you connected with the name,” he said. “Even if your gentleman companions didn’t.”

“Those idiots!” she said contemptuously. “They were so busy with their own yapping, they wouldn’t have heard your name if it had been J. Edgar Hoover.”

“Brother Innutio at least acted as if he should have recognized that one. Hoover, I mean.”

“I think Vince has just seen too many gangster movies.”

“Are you trying to tell me that that’s been his only contact?”

She shrugged.

“How should I know? He was recommended by a New York detective agency. Anyway, Clinton encourages the act. It makes him feel big, or something.”

Perfectly normal, just a common idiosyncrasy.

“And what’s Clinton’s excuse for needing a bodyguard at all?” Simon inquired conversationally.

She stared at him blankly.

“You mean you don’t know?”

“I haven’t the remotest idea.”

Although he could lie brilliantly when the occasion called for it, the truth could be told with a pellucid simplicity that it would have been almost impossible to give to a falsehood. The incredulous widening of her eyes was merely automatic: his honesty was so obvious that it would have convinced anyone. But for the moment the fact as he stated it left her speechless.

“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 superfluously. 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 maneuvered 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 uppercut, 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.”

He leaned against the galley bulkhead and flipped ashes fastidiously into the sink.

“Of course you didn’t give yourself away by inviting me to come over with you. I didn’t begin to smell the rat until you started on the tirade against Uckrose. You had a good idea there, but you overdid it. It just didn’t ring quite true that you should be so bitter about a rich slob who only gave you a nice bit of business every year, even if he was a bum sportsman. It started me wondering what else there could be behind your attitude. And then, when we got here, you were alone with him just long enough to have tipped him off to the build-up you’d given me, and he had to carry on with the gag. Only he overdid it too. I just couldn’t see a successful retired business man being quite such an uninhibited boor... I didn’t see all this in a flash, but it filtered through gradually. And I even began to see what was developing ahead when you started the special advance work for Gloria — almost pimping for her, if I may be so rude.”

O’Kevin glared up at him with his head twisted sideways, mutely, having little choice about doing it in any other way, but the Saint was quite content to conduct a monologue.

“Now the only question is, what is the racket?” he said. “Of course I could probably get you to tell me by sticking toothpicks under your toenails, or something old-fashioned like that, but it’s more fun to make it an intellectual exercise. So I shall try first to do it in my head. Listen carefully, Patsy, because you may have to explain to the others how I did it without any help from you.”

He paused a moment for a final review of his thoughts, because he would always be proud of this feat of virtuosity if he brought it off.

“It has to involve some form of merchandise, because nothing else could pay off through Bimini. It must be very valuable to account for the guard and for all the concern about it. It should be something that a man could bring here from Europe, which he could land with in Nassau without any trouble, because the Customs there never bother with the baggage of American tourists. And then it only has to be put on board a charter boat working out of Miami, which would only get a perfunctory going-over by the Customs there if it was just coming back from Bimini. The two most compact and likely possibilities are narcotics and jewelry. Unless Uckrose has invented himself a completely phony background, which is less probable, the odds point to jewels.”

He took a last drag at his cigarette and flicked it through the porthole.

“Then where are these jewels? Not at the hotel, because Clinton and Gloria and Vincent all went out with you this morning, and they’d never have risked me burgling their rooms or even the hotel safe while they were away if there’d been anything there to find. But all kinds of work has been done to take suspicion off the Colleen — and you. Des is so obviously innocent that he’s an extra asset to the camouflage. So this boat should be the safest place in sight. And exactly where on the boat, if I’m to find them without taking her apart?”

O’Kevin seemed to lie even more motionless than his bonds required, as if frozen by an almost superstitious fascination. And the Saint smiled at him like a benevolent swami.

“Well, I remember something you mentioned more than once when you were knocking Uckrose, about how you’d have to take his fish back with you — any kind of fish. It seems like too fanciful a touch for you to have invented. Therefore you knew it was really going to happen, and you were trying to prepare me for it so that I wouldn’t be too struck by it when it did. So I am now going to bet my roll on that very fishy story.”

He went back out to the cockpit and opened the fish box. The dolphin that O’Kevin had shown him earlier still lay there on the ice. Simon squeezed its belly hard with one hand, and knew in a moment of exquisite and unforgettable elation that he had been right, all the way to this climax. It was like having forecast a chess game up to the checkmate after the first half-dozen moves.

Straight ahead of him over the transom the sun was setting, and the silhouette of a seaplane coming head-on was etched against a crimson-tinted cloud. Already he could hear the faint hum of its engine like a distant bumblebee.

With the bait-knife, Simon Templar performed a deft Caesarean section that delivered the fish of a transparent plastic bag in which many hard angular objects thinly wrapped in tissue paper could be easily felt. He returned to the saloon and showed it to O’Kevin.

“I must check on Clinton’s ex-partner in New York in a couple of years,” he remarked. “I assume he’s the receiving end of the line, and by that time they may have organized some other channel that I can hijack. But I’m afraid you’ll have to go back to legitimate fishing, Patsy me b’y.”

He rinsed the plastic bag under the pump and dried it on a dish-towel before he put it away in his pocket. The examination of its contents could afford to wait, but his plane was already coming down for its landing on the lagoon with a roar and a rush of wind overhead.

“I wish you’d give Gloria a message,” said the Saint. “Tell her she didn’t really leave me cold, but I couldn’t take everything else she offered and these jewels too. On the other hand, I mightn’t have been doing this at all if she hadn’t tried to take me like a yokel and stand me up. There has to be some self-respect among thieves.”

He went out and jumped up on to the dock and walked briskly away, wondering what he was going to write to Don Mucklow.