Salvage for the Saint

1

Like so many of Simon Templar’s hair-raising adventures, it began with a beautiful girl and led him to a merry-go-round of battle and murder and sudden death, and there was booty by the ton.

All of which, from Simon Templar’s point of view, was very much as it should have been. Those were the established ingredients of his life, and he could hardly remember a time when he would have wanted it otherwise.

But the ingredients never came together in the same way twice: it was never exactly the mixture as before. And that was a blessed bounty, a sublimely serendipitous piece of good organisation for which Simon Templar — who was also known as the Saint — never ceased to offer up thanks to whatever wise providence might have been responsible. To him the exhilarating wine of adventure had it own numberless subtleties of region and vintage, so that it always tasted fresh and bracing on his palate and made every escapade different and new.

This one was to take him from the Isle of Wight, that Mecca of yachtsmen and sandcastle-builders off the south coast of England, and down through France to the Mediterranean on a freewheeling chase across land and sea, and under the sea, and into the past...

He was finishing off some vigorous bedtime calisthenics with a toothbrush when he heard the soft but insistent knocking on the door of his Cowes hotel room.

He shrugged into his dressing gown, a positively shrieking green foulard effort, and made his way to the door. The knocking stopped briefly; then it re-started. The Saint paused, with his hand hovering over the doorknob.

His immediate impulse, the impulse of his temperament, was to open up without preamble and confront the late visitor. But one result of his years of notoriety was that it was never close season on Saints these days, and there were some hard against-the-grain compromises he had had to make for the sake of staying alive, which he considered an important priority. One of these reluctant compromises was the habit of challenging people who knocked on his door — especially people who knocked on his door late at night.

He spoke, aiming a short sharp question through the wood.

“Who is it?”

He would have been the first to agree that it wasn’t a startlingly original utterance. But it did have a certain workmanlike quality to it. It was a practical and utilitarian piece of dialogue answering perfectly to the needs of the moment.

The reply came in a vibrantly confidential whisper that thrilled its way back to him after the most fractional of hesitations.

“Mata Hari.”

It was good enough for the Saint. He opened the door — and saw at once that she was as gratifyingly beautiful as all uninvited late callers ought to be.

For her part, the first thing that hit her eye was his eye-searing robe; and it was a measure of her self-control that she confined her reaction to a single blink.

“Come right in — sunshine,” he invited, and led the way.

She puzzled a moment over the endearment as she followed him into the room, which in point of strict accuracy wasn’t a room only but a suite, and wasn’t even a suite only but nothing less than the most luxurious and expensive suite in the hotel. Simon Templar was sometimes inclined to extravagance, though he used an economical gesture now to indicate a chair.

“Your drink will be — let me guess — a gin and tonic. Am I right?”

Even as he spoke he was already at work at the compact cabinet, mixing the drink with an unhurried adroitness that few men could have matched without years of professional practice. By the time she nodded her agreement with his selection the ice was already tinkling into the glass; and it seemed only a bare few seconds later that the Saint was lounging back in a chair facing her with his own choice of alcoholic refreshment in his hand.

He studied her gravely for a few moments.

“Mata Hari,” he said, by way of explaining his greeting. “Either from my encyclopaedic knowledge of eastern languages or else because I came across the fact in a magazine somewhere, I happen to know that the words come from the Malay. Where English uses the crude and unimaginative monosyllable ‘sun’, the Malays say ‘mata hari’ — literally, it means ‘eye of the day’.”

“Oh,” she said, smiling. “How poetically oriental.”

“And in your case, I’d say, quite appropriate. I’ll bet you bring a lot of sunshine to a lot of old men’s dreams simply by strolling along by the harbour wall.” He paused, eyeing her reflectively. “That is, when you’re not too busy with the binoculars.”

She laughed, softly and with a kind of lilting warmth.

Of course, she’d known all along that he must have been aware of her. Four days ago he had come to the island bringing a lithe zestful fitness and a little leashed tiger of a powerboat, and in those four days she had hardly missed a single chance of watching him in action.

The Saint, who did many things superlatively well, was tipped as an eminently watchable challenger in tomorrow’s big race to Penzance, the first since the war; and she, it seemed, had decided that he was just as watchable during the run-up period. Like most of the other serious competitors, he and his navigator had got there a few days in advance for preparatory fine-tuning of both boat and men. It was a time to get oriented to the surroundings and the race atmosphere, too — and maybe to suss out the competition a little...

Just as the girl, for reasons of her own, had been sussing out Simon Templar.

At close quarters she had watched discreetly, cool and elegant behind inscrutable dark glasses on the hotel or Yacht Club terrace or on a bench near the Southampton ferry just along from where his boat was moored. At long range she’d resorted to the binoculars, which ostensibly followed her husband’s conspicuous and massively powered yellow cruiser but panned a frequent deviation, sweeping along the Solent skyline till they found, and locked on, the creamy bow wave and flashing red hull of Simon Templar’s Privateer.

She had studied his bronze six feet two inches of superb physical condition and noted the relaxed yet alert way he carried that steel-sprung muscular frame. Her gaze had lingered on the chiselled piratical features and tried to fathom the elusive light of something like mockery that danced in his reckless blue eyes. She had measured objectively the supreme confidence and competence of his fluid movements, the style and élan and sheer exuberance with which he did even the simplest thing.

And she had approved.

Of course, she had known him before, in the legend. He was the incomparable modern swashbuckling hero, the twentieth century’s brightest buccaneer, the preposterously handsome knight errant whose exploits around the world had made more headlines than some Hollywood starlets had had affairs. His reputation, in short, was as familiar to her as to any of a hundred million of so newspaper readers — to say nothing of Charteris devotees — from Los Angeles to Liverpool, from Tasmania to Togoland.

But now she had seen him for herself, and she had approved.

And he would have had to be at least moderately unobservant — which he was not — to have been unaware of her thorough scrutiny.

“You noticed, then?” she said, because it was something to say.

The Saint didn’t reply at once — or not in words.

He allowed his glance to flit over her — rapidly, but deliberately and pointedly. The travel of that impudent gaze began at her red-gold hair, which was styled in a simple but perfect upsweep; it went on past a face that neither needed nor apparently received much help from artifice but which could still have launched a thousand powerboats; it took in a series of feminine curves which are best described as ripe, correctly positioned, and expensively coutured; and it continued to her ankles, whose sculptural virtues would have defeated the pens of much more highly paid chroniclers than this. And having completed that comprehensive downward voyage, the Saint’s shameless gaze embarked on the return.

An inspection as frank as that could easily have seemed rude, but coming from him it somehow didn’t. He had a feel for these things, seeming to know by effortless instinct how to flatter a civilised woman without running too much risk of offending her. As his eyes swept back up to her face, completing a survey the whole of which had taken a bare few seconds, she met his gaze again calmly without flinching or reddening.

He said simply:

“Yes, I noticed you. I’m sure you know just how beautiful you are.”

It could have been a barbed compliment, but wasn’t. He said it without any imputation of vanity on her part or any embarrassment for himself. He made it sound the most natural remark in the world; and he went on in the same candid way.

“Let’s face it, being inconspicuous isn’t your strong suit. And neither is modesty mine. Sure, I saw you giving me the once-over... and the twice-over. And I’d’ve been as flattered as hell except for one thing.”

She raised an eyebrow in query. She was still smiling.

“A certain notoriety,” he said. “One of whose effects is to make strangers stare a bit from time to time. Even beautiful redheads whom I might be only too pleased to imagine were interested in me simply as a man. Your inspection was certainly rather more persistent than most, though. So I had to reckon with the possibility that you’d be around knocking on my door before long. But I also had to reconcile myself to the fact that, if you did come, it almost certainly wouldn’t be on account of my irresistible manly torso... Mrs Tatenor.”

He threw out the name lightly, knowing it would be no surprise to her that he knew it.

“It’s Arabella,” she said quickly. “But of course you’ve seen me with Charles.” There was a mischievous twinkle in her eye as she went on. “In fact, I seem to remember that you were close enough to our party in the clubhouse yesterday to have seen that I was drinking... gin and tonic.” The Saint sighed.

“You have no faith in my omniscience,” he said sadly.

She eyed the tough-looking broad-shouldered figure swathed in dazzling green who lounged before her, and her lips curved in an enigmatic half-smile.

“No. Only in your — more human powers. And I’ll have you know that your irresistible manly torso does have something to do with that.”

He raised a shocked eyebrow. “You mean you’ve decided I’m man enough for — for whatever it is you have in mind?”

“Even that Noel Coward outfit can’t disguise the capabilities of the Saint,” she said lightly.

It was an agreeable enough game, he thought, this fencing with double entendres. But it wasn’t getting them very far or fast along the road she’d started on when she’d decided to call on him.

“By the way, how did you know my room number?” he asked casually.

She eyed him in amusement.

“I asked the desk clerk when I came in. Isn’t that what you’d have done?”

The Saint took a thoughtful pull at his drink.

“Probably. But I’m not a married lady with a reputation to look after.”

“Reputation phooey!” She made a face. “I don’t give a fig for that sort of notion.”

Her convention-defying stance struck a chord, and Simon grinned.

“The hell with desk clerks,” he agreed. “Anyway, you’re here, having made quite a preliminary investment in reconnaissance.”

He waited patiently. She drank deeply, taking her time.

“Yes. You have a reputation — a particular reputation — for involving yourself in all sorts of troubles. Sometimes other people’s troubles.”

He waited while she downed most of the remaining half of her drink. Then she continued, still giving an impression of some reluctance to come to the point.

“And I know that when you do get involved in something it’s usually because you’ve sniffed out some nasty bit of business for yourself — or some specimen of human vermin you just can’t resist smacking on the snout. But occasionally when you weigh into the affray, it’s because you’ve been asked.”

Simon Templar took a long pull from his own drink — he had some catching up to do — and regarded her soberly. (They were weakish drinks.) He studied her relaxed posture, her calm face, her big bright untroubled eyes.

“And you’re asking?” he queried.

“Certainly,” she said. “After all, I understand you specialise in damsels in distress.”

2

The Saint smiled inwardly as well as outwardly. It looked as if he had one very out-of-the-ordinary lady here, and he was glad he had the opportunity to get to know her better.

“Of course I do,” he answered. “Doesn’t every self-respecting redblooded knight errant? But...” The upward displacement of one dark eyebrow was minute, but sufficient to suggest a polite skepticism that was barely distinguishable from complete open-mindedness. “But... are you in distress?”

She wrung her hands helplessly and batted her eyelashes at him nineteen to the dozen.

“Is that better?”

They both laughed; and then she said seriously:

“Simon, I may not be as demonstratively in distress as some of your classic damsels. Technically you might even say I’m not in distress at all. Certainly I don’t think I’m in any kind of personal danger.” Here she looked wistful, almost as if she would have rather enjoyed being in personal danger. “All of which may seem to disqualify me as a true dyed-in-the-wool d in d. And all of which is part of the reason why it’s taken me four days to make up my mind to come and see you.”

“And the rest of the reason?”

“The first part of the rest of the reason is that I’m an independent-type girl and I don’t like asking for help. And the rest of the reason is — well, call it natural skepticism.”

“You mean when it comes to the providential arrival of a rescuing knight on a white charger that looks more like a red powerboat?”

She gave a thumbs-up sign.

“You got it in one. Where rescuing knights are concerned, I’m a total unbeliever. Or was. I’d heard and read all about the famous Saint, of course. But frankly I thought you were just too good to be true.”

She paused, draining non-existent dregs from her glass.

“But anyhow,” she continued, “I hesitated to bother you at a time when you’re — well—” She spread her hands in a vague gesture that seemed to indicate satisfactorily the island and the circumstances of his being there.

“On vacation?” he supplied.

“Something of the sort, I guess. Only I didn’t think you daredevil freelance buccaneer types went in for fixed periods of work and leisure as such.”

“We don’t,” he agreed. “Or at any rate this one doesn’t. For me the work’s a kind of vacation in itself most of the time, so it doesn’t break my heart when an earmarked vacation turns into work, as it looks like doing now.”

He was trying gently to coax her to get to the point, but he knew enough about her already to be sure that she would continue to take her time. It came, he suspected, from a kind of careful-stepping delicacy in her character; and that was something he could respect, even if it meant his bedtime was thereby delayed a little further.

He said nothing for a few moments while he repeated his legerdemain with the glasses; and then he regarded her silently for a few moments more, with a level blue gaze in which there was a shifting light she had seen before, a light that was elusively mocking and quixotic and challenging all at the same time.

He said: “So you took a good gander at me and decided that the stainless purity of my character spoke for itself — eventually?”

“I decided,” she answered slowly and deliberately, “that against all probability, everything I’d ever heard and read about you was true — or at least, all the good things — and that there’s no comparative stranger I’d be readier to trust.”

The Saint blinked.

“That was quite a speech,” he said. “Thanks. I’m flattered, I really am... Of course, if you got to know me better, disillusion would soon set in. You’d find I have to cut my toenails and wash my socks just like ordinary mortals. On occasions I burp, and I have even been—”

“Oh, give me every time a man who really knows how to burp!” she purred, clapping her hands in beautifully judged over-enthusiasm.

And she laughed again with the same rich encompassing warmth as before, a warmth that was peculiarly feminine and flattering in itself. It somehow blended intimacy and reserve and mystery and promise; and it made the Saint study her some more.

He put her age somewhere between twenty-five and thirty. Those were, from a male point of view, the best years for certain types of women, and in Simon Templar’s connoisseur opinion she was certainly one such type. She was the type whose features in rather earlier youth might well have seemed a little underformed, a shade on the doughy side. But as the years swung by and bone structure began to assert itself, as the faces of her contemporaries took on an edge of hardness hers would simply have lost its excess softness to emerge as the example of perfectly sculptured beauty it had now become.

Yes, a woman like that came into her own between twenty-five and thirty. Especially if she’d managed to keep a healthy skin, unraddled by the clogging attentions of the multitudinous offerings of chemico-cosmetic quackery on whose efficacy the greater part of credulous womankind have been induced to pin such a pathetic faith.

Arabella Tatenor had certainly managed the miracle of dermal preservation, though whether she’d done so by shunning face goo or in spite of using the stuff Simon couldn’t tell. Her skin was smooth and clear with a healthy pink glow. She had the eyes to go with it, too, translucent blue like the Saint’s own; and above them was the spun copper sweep of her hair. He wondered about her colouring; maybe there was a strong Irish, or at any rate western fringe Celtic, contingent somewhere in her pedigree. But it must have been some way back because there was no trace of Irish in her speech. He’d known at once that she was American, or at least predominantly American. It wasn’t so much from any strongly marked accent as from her choice of words. She’d said “that sort of notion”, which had a transatlantic ring, and she’d referred to the “desk clerk” where a speaker of pure British English would probably have said “receptionist”, and of course she’d said “vacation” rather than “holiday”. The Saint was sensitive to such minor differences of idiom even though his own international background meant that he had himself long since adopted a style of speech which freely mixed the usages of Britain and the US. He noticed, for instance, that she pronounced “asked” in the American way, and “clerk” to rhyme with “lurk.”

Yet at the same time there was a good deal of English English in her pronunciation. It had hardly any of the strident nasalisation of much American speech. Boston was the first likely area that came to mind, but to the Saint’s ear she sounded still more English than that.

“Fitzpatrick was my name before I married,” she remarked, latching on to his thought with near-clairvoyant accuracy. “A solid New England family and filthy rich. When I was fourteen my parents sent me over here to raise the tone of Cheltenham Ladies’ College. And then on to Oxford.”

“Where you took a brilliant double first in Byzantine history and molecular physics while ruining the academic dedication of countless slavering male students,” hazarded the Saint.

“Where I got bored after two terms of Eng. Lit,” she corrected, “and took off into the wild blue yonder.”

“Much to Daddy’s disgust, no doubt.”

“Much.”

“And then?”

“I travelled the world. Bumming around, mostly, I guess you might call it. Having a ball. Until the money ran out. I have some expensive tastes, and after Oxford — well, the milk of parental generosity just kind of dried up.”

He grinned as he made another open appraisal of her expensively tailored figure.

“I imagine your style in bumming around might be comparable to Gloria Vanderbilt.”

She fielded the grin and returned it to the accompaniment of a reproachfully levelled forefinger and the same mischievous twinkle in her eyes as he had seen there before.

“Don’t you make a mistake,” she warned, “of thinking you have me all figured out and labelled and docketed. Because let me assure you, you haven’t, Mister Saint, not by a long chalk.”

The Saint erected a momentary barricade of arms and elbows in front of his head in mock terror at her stern finger-wagging warning.

“OK,” he said penitently. “Maybe I’ll buy that. And I’ll consider myself roundly rebuked. After all, you did take four days over me. I suppose I ought to wait at least as long before making up my mind about you... But there’s one confident guess I’ll risk.”

“And what’s that?”

“That the problem that’s prompted you to call on me — after due examination of my credentials — isn’t entirely unconnected with a certain bullet-bonced Gallic leech—”

“—that’s attached itself to my connubial other half,” she cut in, smoothly finishing the sentence in almost exactly the words the Saint would have used.

He laughed, and behind the laughter was a passing inward delight which he couldn’t have expressed, though it had to do with two people’s thoughts being oddly tuneable to the same pitch, and with the rarity of that in the real world.

“You speak my kinda language, blue-eyes,” he Bogarted. “We must be using the same scriptwriter.”

“Well, he’s good and he’s cheap, isn’t he?” she Bacalled huskily. “And why should you have all the best lines?... But coming back to the Gallic leech” — she had reverted to the blended tones of Oxford and New England — “of course, you could hardly have missed him. You’ve probably heard his name too. Fournier. Maurice Fournier. Mean anything to you?”

“The name — no. But that phizog. That does ring some sort of bell.”

He had already racked his brain repeatedly in a vain struggle to recall where he had seen that unprepossessing face before. Almost the first out-of-key phenomenon to catch his attention among the varied manifestations of boating and boat-watching humanity in and around Cowes that week had been the short thick-set shaven-headed man who seemed to have no higher or more engrossing purpose in life than that of keeping himself glued limpet-like to a point approximately three inches from the elbow of Charles Tatenor.

Tatenor himself lived on the island. Squarely built, greying, fiftyish, he was a sophisticate of British sporting circles, and the faster and more expensive the sport the better he liked it. Powerboat racing fitted very well; Tatenor’s was one of the leading names around the world, and even if Simon Templar had his own ideas about who was going to win the two-hundred-mile race along the coast to Penzance, it was certain that Tatenor was the favourite in most people’s books.

Which fact made it all the more surprising to everybody else that he had suddenly decided to ditch his experienced navigator Taffy Hughes in favour of this newcomer who not only seemed to have difficulty telling the sharp end from the blunt end of a boat but gave every appearance of turning pale green as soon as he came within spitting distance of the ocean — incidentally an appropriate expression, as Fournier spat frequently.

Hughes — Simon had commiserated with him over a drink — was as mystified as anyone. Tatenor had simply told him that Fournier was an old friend from way back, and that for old times’ sake he had agreed to his friend’s joining him in the race. But in explaining this to Hughes, Tatenor had worn a face of acetic sourness that seemed at variance, in Hughes’s alcoholically emphasised opinion, with the professed friendly spirit behind the gesture. And from his own observation the Saint had to agree that Tatenor’s way of eyeing his long-lost chum was anything but chummy.

But where Tatenor went Fournier went. When Tatenor went aboard his boat, though it might only be to work on the engines, Fournier went along. When Tatenor drank in the Royal Yachtsmen’s Club — usually without Arabella in attendance — Fournier drank too. And when Tatenor went home to his extravagant hillside home above Egypt Point, just outside the town, that dogged French shadow went with him. It was as if the two men were joined by an invisible chain.

A part of the Saint’s mind was working again at the puzzle of trying to match the Frenchman’s fishy features against something obscurely out of focus in his memory; and he wondered if some circumstantial detail might give him the clue he needed.

“Just how long has Fournier been on the scene?” he asked Arabella.

“Six days,” she told him. “He just turned up at the house one night. Our place is just along the road from here. Well, when this Fournier thing showed up that evening” — she wrinkled her nose in distaste — “Charles was obviously more than a tiny bit flabbergasted, and none too delighted either. It was over twelve years since they’d met. Anyway, he stayed to dinner — Mrs Cloonan’s a miracle-worker, she can always cope with a guest at the drop of a hat — and next morning there he was again at breakfast. That’s when Charles told me Fournier’d be staying till after the race, and then the two of them’d be going off on business together for a few days. And ever since, Fournier’s hardly let Charles out of his sight. Except today.”

“What happened today?”

“Charles gave him the slip for a few hours, after the scrutineers had finished their main stint this afternoon. Charles took the boat out on his own, and he didn’t come back till the evening.”

The Saint digested the information thoughtfully.

“I suppose he didn’t say where he’d been?”

“No. Just ‘out in the boat’. I could see Fournier was livid when he’d discovered Charles had gone, but he calmed down later.”

“When he saw that Charles had come back?”

“That’s the way I read it.”

“Hmmm. Any idea what this joint business of theirs might be?”

“To do with his investments or something like that, I guess. I didn’t ask.” She shrugged. “I enjoy helping to spend Charles’s money, but I’ve never quizzed him about how he makes it. I only know he doesn’t actually have to do much... But Simon, now that you’re on the case — and you are on the case, aren’t you?” She broke off and eyed him hopefully, and then went straight on without waiting for an answer: “—now that you’re on the case there’s something I should tell you. Charles and I, we’re getting a divorce soon.”

“I shan’t pretend to be surprised,” Simon told her quietly. “I’ve seen the two of you together, and you don’t exactly radiate marital harmony and contentment, if I may say so. But I suppose this has nothing directly to do with Fournier’s intrusion into the household?”

“I’m not citing him as co-respondent, if that’s what you mean!” She laughed, but this time it was a rather more brittle laughter. “No, there are plenty enough contenders for that honour already. And save your sympathy, Simon,” she added quickly. “I’m at least half to blame. I guess the whole thing was a mistake from the start.”

“How long has it been?” he asked gently.

“Four years.”

“And he’s — twice your age?”

“He was, then. But that’s not really the problem. I liked him okay. But I liked his money too, in about equal degree.”

Simon expostulated mildly.

“Oh, come on. Aren’t you being a bit hard on yourself? You’re making yourself sound like a cold-hearted little gold-digger, while I’m sure you’re not.”

“Well... maybe not so cold-hearted.” She looked at him for what seemed a long time; one pair of blue eyes candidly searching another. “But as I’ve told you, I have expensive tastes. I like money and I like men with a lot of it. Charles fitted the bill. It wasn’t enough though.”

She smiled wryly, and for a little while her eyes were clouded with an unreadable wistfulness. Then the Saint said:

“What about his reasons for getting in tow with you?”

She laughed the brittle laugh again.

“They were as shallow as mine. Basically, he wanted, if you’ll forgive me, an attractive wife, something reasonably decorative to be seen on his arm at Brands Hatch and Le Mans and Cowes. But Charles’ll always be a womaniser, anyhow. So, all things considered, I’m for getting out of the game and cutting my losses.”

“Or is it taking your winnings?” Simon suggested mildly.

“Ouch,” she winced. “I guess I asked for that. But yes, I’ll admit that as far as money’s concerned, I do want to get out with something to the good. Though whether you call it winnings or earnings is debatable. Now, to return to Fournier. First, there’s something about him I don’t like. But it’s more than personal dislike. He’s got some sort of hold over Charles. It’s as if Charles were knuckling under, and I don’t know why. Maybe Fournier’s blackmailing him — something in his past. And Charles’s past is something I know practically nothing about. He’s never talked about it, certainly not in any detail. Anyhow he’s certainly rattled. And I’m concerned. First in a human, or even if you like in a wifely way. I really don’t want anything bad to happen to him. And secondly, and you may think this is the bigger component in my concern, I have a financial stake in Charles and I want to look alter it.”

“I think I get the picture,” Simon said, not without sympathy. “You’re afraid hubby may decide to do a bunk to escape the clutches of comrade Fournier, and you’re worried that if he does vamoose he may well get the bright idea of arranging for all the family shekels to vanish along with him, before you’ve had a chance to get your hands on your share.”

“You put it with real delicacy,” she said sarcastically. “But that about sums it up. As I told you, I know next to nothing about his money, our money, or even how or where he keeps it. As things stand I get a regular allowance, but if Charles does cut and run before the divorce hearing, well, if I know him, he’ll take every brass farthing with him. Which will mean phut to my chances of a settlement. Before long I’d probably have to take a— a job.”

She spoke the final word with a shudder.

“An obscene idea, I agree,” said the Saint.

“So,” she concluded. “That’s it. What I’d like you to do is to keep an eye on things. Maybe find out what’s going on between Fournier and Charles.”

Simon maintained a neutral uncommitted manner.

“And if they go off together after the race as planned, I suppose you want me to follow them? Or if Charles makes a run for it, you want me to follow him?”

“That’s it.”

She eyed him hopefully, but his gaze was studiously inscrutable.

“If not for me, then for yourself,” she urged, trying another tack. “Fournier, now — he’s pretty obviously, I should say, one of those human excrescences you love to squash...”

Again the hopeful glance. “Isn’t he?” she asked.

The Saint’s inscrutability was still as politely impenetrable.

“He’s a slug of a man,” she declared firmly.

The bantering lift of a dark eyebrow gave nothing away.

“A disgusting parasitical creature,” she continued. “A wart on the nose of humanity! A carbuncle on its neck! A lump of—”

The Saint held up a restraining hand.

“The trouble with you,” he said severely, “is that you’ve been reading too much of the stuff that fellow Charteris writes about me. But that’s by the way. On this occasion I happen to agree with you. If appearances are anything to go by, Fournier is indubitably a pluke of the first water.”

“Quite,” she agreed, and then reverted to her other tack before he could recover his breath. “And what’s more, a fair settlement in the divorce court is my just right. And the court won’t even get a look in if Charles decamps with the stocks and bonds and whatnot. What say you, Simon? Will you help?”

The Saint laughed, and the two pairs of candid blue eyes met again.

“I’m on the case,” he said. “To tell you the truth, I’ve been on it since yesterday.”

3

In the ten minutes before she left the hotel, he told her what he had achieved so far.

There wasn’t much to tell, since his limited labours had yet to bear fruit.

It was on the previous day that he had stood Taffy Hughes a couple of consolatory beers, and it was then, immediately after that talk with Tatenor’s supplanted race colleague, that the Saint had made up his mind to upgrade his casual interest in the pushy French interloper into something more actively investigative.

He had begun there and then.

All he had to go on was the vague feeling that he’d seen Fournier’s ugly mug somewhere before. That suggested an obvious starting point, and the Saint refused to let its obviousness put him off starting there. He ran the Privateer a few miles along the island’s coast to Ryde, a bigger and less specialised resort where the business he had in mind could be transacted more discreetly. From a locally recommended photographic dealer there he hired some valuable hardware, and then he cruised back to Cowes Harbour and took his navigator and co-driver, Vic Cullen, aboard for the afternoon’s practice session — the final one before the race.

They checked over the engines and equipment, made a couple of adjustments, and then churned their way out across the mild swell for a routine of offshore speed runs and practice starts. Little more than half an hour went by before they saw the big yellow splodge that was Tatenor’s boat, the Candecour, detach itself from the quay and cream its way in turn across Cowes Roads into the Solent proper to begin some Umbering manoeuvres of its own. And then, still keeping a cautious distance between the boats, the Saint had proceeded to indulge himself with some long-range portrait photography.

They were too far out, he judged, for this interesting recreation to be spotted even through Arabella Tatenor’s binoculars, assuming her to be deploying them as previously; and in any case the Saint’s photographic efforts were completed in a few swift seconds.

The telephoto equipment he had borrowed enabled him to get some candid if unsteady mug shots of the hairless Frenchman, who was just then looking even more woeful than usual owing to the sensation of complete inadequacy that had engulfed his digestive organs from the very first seconds of the Candecour’s motion.

The Saint had returned the photographic paraphernalia that same evening, and its estimable and conveniently incurious owner had next obliged him with some speedy developing and printing. Several among the most rather blurred shots of Fournier were passably recognisable; and these the Saint had sent, with a brief covering note, to a useful unofficial contact of his in London’s sprawlingly complex web of officialdom.

Knowing that corruptible Civil Servant to be both unrushable and thorough, the Saint was resigned to waiting several days for a report which, when it did arrive, would certainly be as informative as it could be made. If there was anything to be had on Fournier, the gentleman Simon Templar knew as Beaky would assuredly pass it on.

The Saint was content meanwhile to concentrate his mind on the race.

It was just three hours away when he woke up on the morning after Arabella Tatenor’s late visit. From his window he had a view north across the water to the mainland. He saw at once that the sea was a good bit rougher than it had been; the day was bright with some patches of blue up aloft but the sky was in continual turmoil as huge grey clouds raced before a boisterous wind.

It was one of those clear fresh gusty days which occur sometimes in England at any season; days when everything stands out with such a perfectly focused clarity that it seems almost as if the wind itself had scoured the land and sea clean of all their fuzzier outlines. The mainland at its closest point was five miles away but seemed a good deal nearer. Looking across the arms of the Solent to Southampton water the Saint could distinctly make out the figures of the individual passengers on the decks of a big P & O liner, greyish white with one ochre funnel, that was just turning east on its way out to the open sea. He watched idly for a minute or two as it ploughed into the waves with a ponderous slow-motion plunging progress, like a great anaemic whale. Beyond lay the quiet stretch of wooded coast from Hill Head up to Warsash and Bursledon, inaccessible except on foot or from the water. From his viewpoint on the island it usually appeared as a smudged mass of dark green, but now he could have counted off the thousands of trees one by one.

The English summer may not be quite as mythical as some visitors have concluded, but its reputation for unpredictability is largely deserved. Like an inconsiderate annual houseguest, it can’t be relied upon to put in an appearance on schedule, or even to show up at all; and when it does appear it may arrive without notice and depart the scene just as abruptly. By these elastic standards this year’s summer had been a good one, the Saint observed to himself. The warmth had lasted pretty well without interruption right through from mid-June until this late August morning, when the abrupt-departure habit had manifested itself in temperature a good twelve to fifteen degrees down on the previous day’s.

The wind was shifting about skittishly from moment to moment but blowing mostly from the west: which meant that the powerboats on their mainly westerly course would be headed directly into it.

All of which meterological observation the Saint summed up to himself in this way: navigation straight forward, thanks to the visibility, but in every other way a rough, tough race.

He girded up his figurative loins to meet this prognostication by consuming a leisurely and substantial hotel breakfast. As he munched his way imperturbably through grapefruit, wheat-flakes, a buttered Finnan haddock that overhung the plate, and a mountain of toast, washed down with a pint or so of coffee, he looked forward to the exertion to come.

The diet wasn’t the recipe for obesity that it might have been. He expected to burn it all up very quickly in the race. He expected to use a lot of energy in the eight or ten hours it might take him to win it. He knew that besides the drain of continued concentration on achieving every bit of non-suicidal speed the conditions might allow, there would be the constant exertion of riding the boat’s bucking motion so as to stay approximately upright and functional for all the time. He knew that he and his partner would need to draw liberally on their fitness, and he fully expected to see some of the competition drop out sooner or later for want to that same fitness.

He had dressed for the race simply and practically in tough canvas trousers and oiled-wool sweater. As he strolled out of the hotel entrance, he met a shorter strong-looking man who was similarly clad but with the addition of a dark wollen beret on his close-cropped head.

“OK, Vic?” The Saint grinned, clapped his navigator on the shoulder, and fell into step beside him.

“Positively rarin’ to go, Soimon.”

An answering grin split Vic’s broad canny face, which had the high colour of a man who had spent most of his life in the open air, summer and winter.

“Tin’t ’alf gointa be rough roide, though,” he added with a glance at the sky.

“Looks like it,” the Saint agreed. “But there’s one consolation in that. If it’s uncomfortable for us, think how uncomfortable it’s going to be for at least one member of the Tatenor team. And if that slows ’em down a fraction, I don’t suppose you and I’ll be the first to complain.”

“Reck’n not,” Vic agreed, with a broad cheerful wink and a single oblique sweep of the head that was an expressive gesture halfway between an affirmative nod and a negative shake. “But ut’s a fast boat they’ve got there, arl roight... a moighty fast boat.”

He paused as they turned to walk the last hundred yards along the harbour wall past most of the opposition to the Privateer’s mooring. “Reck’n we can beat ’em though,” he added thoughtfully.

“I reckon we can,” said the Saint.

Vic Cullen was a boatbuilder from Bursledon, across the Solent. After thirty years’ working with boats, on and off the water, there wasn’t much anybody could teach him on the subject. He had built the Privateer virtually single-handed to a design he and Simon had worked out together. His only help with the work had come from the Saint himself in the odd intervals of his exigent adventures elsewhere.

The teams of scrutineers were busy with their final inspections, and the salt breeze carried a low babble of voices from the waiting competitors, punctuated intermittently by the raucously variegated notes of motors starting up. Beneath that man-made and evanescent hubbub was something powerful and eternal — the rhythmical slap and swell of the sea. Even here against the harbour wall its motion was noticeably stronger than it had been in the last few days, and as Simon and Vic neared the short jetty where the Privateer was moored they could see her scarlet hull bobbing up and down impatiently, and hear the stretched creaking of wet rope as she tugged at her moorings.

“Strainin’ at the leash, look,” Vic said with pride; and the Saint nodded and smiled, sharing that same pride.

“Scrutineers should be with us in a few minutes,” he said. “She’ll just have to contain herself till they’ve done.”

This was her first race; and it was for racing above all that this trim compact boat had been built. She was every inch a beauty; but it was the beauty of a spare and functional design. Every line of that sleek hull, from the futuristically cutaway stern to the streamlined cockpit canopy and steeply raked bow, had been calculated for speed. She was a thoroughbred racing machine, a slim-line twenty-two-foot lightweight with a modest five litres of engine and with the irreducible minimum of fittings and frivolities allowable within the race rules, which in those days were not over-elaborate.

Those days were, roughly speaking, the beginning of the modern revivalist era of powerboating competition, before the introduction of more rigid systems of boat classification and qualification. Less than midway through the twentieth century, the sport had been enthusiastically rediscovered after a lengthy neglect, and its free-for-all freshness attracted a colourfully wide range of hopefuls.

The Cowes-to-Penzance race that year was a typical result; but the record books will be found to be mysteriously obscure on the subject if not altogether blank. The fact is, nevertheless, that there were thirty-six entrants in all: thirty-six assorted boats receiving the scrutineer’s final check on that windy August morning.

The degree of assortedness was astonishing. Simon Templar had cast an incredulous eye over many of them, and had decided that the owners’ choice of names for their boats offered a rough and ready indication of their chances.

Those blazoned with the most intimidating appellations — Thundershark, Tornado, Hell for Leather and the like — mostly turned out to be the tiny, infinitely hopeful outboarders. At the other extreme were the half dozen big thirty-five- and forty-footers representing the brute force approach: plenty of bulk and up to a thousand horses of petrol or diesel power to blast it across the waves. For some reason, maybe connected with having a faulty sense of humour, the proud owners of these jumbo-size entries tended to have given them coy names like Buckaboo, entered by Sammy Topwith of motor racing fame, Big Bouncie, a fancied US contender, and Skimmie, the great hope of the Aussies.

Somewhere in among this litter of the inept and the overpowered was the gold of real racing, boats built for the job and handled by men who knew what it took and had what it took. The names in this group had a romantic flavour that suggested their clean graceful lines: Dolphin II, Red Marlin, Silver Lady, the crack Italian boat Bellissima — and Simon Templar’s Privateer.

Moored near the Privateer was Charles Tatenor’s massive yellow boat, the Candecour. With her overall length of thirty-eight feet and her six-hundred horsepower twin Rolls-Royce diesel engines she fell decidedly into the brute-force category, although the name was an exception to the general trend, and had no obvious derivation that the Saint could see. She was a conversion rather than a purpose-built job, but in this case the work had been carefully and professionally done even though most of the luxury fittings had been preserved. Tatenor had even added to the ostentation, by having the external trim finished off with a series of intricately carved mahogany panels and an ornate figurehead in the shape of an eagle; all of which gave the Candecour an outward air of rococo excess that belied its brisk performance on the water.

Tatenor himself was standing a few yards away on the quayside with Fournier. Each of the two men was wearing a one-piece waterproof suit and carrying a bright orange crash helmet.

Though Simon had exchanged the odd word with Tatenor within the ambit of this and previous races, he preferred to dislike him cordially at a distance. But Tatenor caught his eye now, and flicked a depreciatory finger at the Privateer’s scarlet hull.

“I do hope she holds up for you,” he called across.

“You’ll be able to follow her progress for yourself, and without turning your head,” replied the Saint with even politeness.

Tatenor laughed hollowly, exposing teeth of perfect porcelain translucence whose shade matched the white of his hair and contrasted with the deep tan of his handsome weather-beaten features.

“I suggest you might care to check the boiler in that thing before we start,” he brayed, flicking another dismissive finger in the Privateer’s direction and chuckling at his own remark.

“And you,” retorted the Saint good-humouredly, “had better lash down the Chippendale and be prepared to jettison a couple of footmen when the going gets tough.”

“Boiler!” Vic exploded softly to Simon as Tatenor turned away with a frozen smile on his large brown face. “We’ll show you somethin’, Mister lah-de-dah Tatenor!”

Simon felt vaguely uncomfortable himself with Tatenor’s speech, for some reason he couldn’t quite pin down. It was a discomfort that was something more than simple dislike of the parodied form of English articulation inflicted on the rest of us by certain representatives of the old-guard sporting gent brigade, of which Tatenor seemed to be almost a founder officer. It was decidedly something more than that; it was the kind of discomfort, the kind of nebulous puzzlement, which the Saint had felt before in all manner of circumstances when something was micrometrically off-key and his senses were busy delivering messages to his understanding which that partly instinct-driven system refused to accept as making a wholly convincing picture. When Simon Templar felt this way he could be sure there was something behind it which with luck and persistence he would presently ferret out from his subconscious. But that would happen in its own time, and for the moment he had the race to think about and no intention of actively worrying away at a nagging disquiet about Charles Tatenor’s speech.

But then something reached his ears which was all the more thought-provoking for being so wholly unexpected.

He heard Charles Tatenor speaking to Fournier in perfect French.

4

Even though the two had turned away before Tatenor spoke, the Saint’s acute hearing picked up the sentence clearly. He heard Tatenor translate, for Fournier’s benefit, the last flippant remark of his own about the Chippendale and the footmen.

Whether Fournier grasped the satirical point at once is doubtful — judging from the corrugations of puzzlement that appeared on his unprepossessing brow — but incidental. The noteworthy thing to Simon Templar, himself an exceptional linguist and fluent French speaker, was Tatenor’s perfect assurance in the language. His apparently effortless impromptu translation would have been hard to better, but so would his pronunciation, accent, and — the most difficult — intonation. To the Saint’s ear, which was assuredly no mean ear at all as ears for that sort of thing went, Tatenor’s French was as indistinguishable from the French of an educated Frenchman as his English was from the English of an educated Briton.

And that reflection provoked a line of thought to which the Saint was to come back again and again, during the race and after.

During and after. Especially after. Because the race ended, for Simon Templar, in an unexpected way, and for Charles Tatenor more surprisingly still...

It began, however, in the way that was usual for the times: with a rolling start. Powerboats are only semi-controllable at sub-planing speeds when a big group of them are frothing along in a turmoil of contending washes, and to let them spin and jockey for the best positions as at the start of a race for yachts would be asking for trouble. Discipline was therefore imposed on the scene in the form of a start boat with the function of pacing the competitors up to the line for a rolling start, so that they would all cross the line more or less together and at the same speed.

The Saint manoeuvred the Privateer into her drawn lane position towards the outside of the muster area, about a mile and a quarter behind the line, with the start boat on the extreme outside, farthest from the Cowes shore and the assembled thousands who had gathered to watch what little of the race a landbound spectator could hope to see. Four minutes before the off, with a final blip of motors, the start boat set off for the line, rapidly reaching the planned speed of just over fifteen knots. As a concession to traditionalists a starting-gun was fired from the start boat just as she crossed the line; but few of the competitors could have heard it above the noise of their engines. The trick was to keep fractionally astern of the start boat — any boat crossing the line ahead of it would be disqualified.

Simon Templar kept fractionally astern of it.

He heard the gun, faintly, as they crossed the line, and then he eased the throttle open to about two-thirds maximum to get the boat up on the plane, as the jargon has it. After a minute or so he opened the throttle a little wider to raise the speed experimentally as far as he dared in that decidedly assertive sea.

The Saint looked around, through the heavy spray the Privateer was throwing up.

He was lying second. Two or three boat lengths ahead, away on their port, was the Italian entry Bellissima. It seemed to be leaping from one wave crest to the next, its propellers sometimes rising right up out of the sea. Each time it took off, the ocean seemed to fall away vertiginously beneath it — and every time it landed it hit the water with a tremendous smack and was momentarily all but obscured from sight by the rising spume. And the Saint and Vic were only too well aware that exactly the same thing was happening to the Privateer, and that to an observer outside the boat the repeated impacts probably seemed equally likely to smash it to smithereens at any moment.

The equations of propulsion and drag in a high-speed motor boat are finely balanced; every day presents its own parameters of wave rhythm and current and wind resistance. The first rule of thumb you learnt was that the less the boat was in actual contact with the water the faster it would go. But all propulsion had to be achieved through the water: airscrews or rockets would disqualify the craft as a boat. So you were dependent on your propellers and it was important that they stayed under the water as much as possible to keep the propulsion going continuously. Too little up on the plane and you followed a switchback course over the peaks and down into the troughs of the waves, with a heavy drag of water resistance on the hull. Too much up on the plane to minimise that drag, and you risked losing more than you gained as your screws clawed frequently at empty air.

And that, to the Saint’s eyes, was what was happening now to the Italian boat. While it had pulled ahead of him in the first minutes, probably by getting more rapidly and less cautiously up to its optimum speed for the conditions, it had now overshot the mark and he was very slowly gaining on it. But his judgment told him that if anything the Privateer herself was maybe erring fractionally in the same direction, and now he slackened off the throttle an almost imperceptible notch.

Vic nodded approval and agreement, then touched the Saint’s arm and pointed astern, to their nearer port. Perhaps half a dozen lengths behind was the Candecour; and it was plain to them both that the big boat was gaining on them.

Simon sighed.

“I’m afraid we’re going to have to let him past.”

He knew there was no help for it. A couple of minutes after they had inched past the Bellissima, they were in turn overtaken by the Candecour, some fifty yards on their port. The yellow-helmeted figure at the wheel, which must have been Tatenor, raised an arm as they went inexorably and infuriatingly by. He waved, though without any shadow of the gaiety that might have been conveyed by an orthodox reciprocation of the upraised hand. Tatenor’s wave was a single one-shot extension of the arm from an upright to a forward position. It was almost a salute, but with an element of gloating finality in it which seemed in some way chilling.

“Snotty bastard!” Vic snorted with feeling.

But Vic knew, with the same seamanlike feel for the interaction of boat and waves and weather as Simon Templar’s own, that there was nothing to be done. They were skimming over the water as fast as the Privateer could skim in those conditions, in that direction, on that day; and it so happened that the Candecour was travelling faster. In fact, though they hated to admit it, Tatenor’s boat was optimising that difficult equation better — for the moment — than their own.

For the moment... Those, the Saint told himself with set determination, were the operative words. For the moment, the Candecour’s great weight and bulk might suit the conditions, but much as it depressed him to see that yellow stern drawing steadily away in front, the race was a long way from won yet. For the moment, they still had the north coast of the island off their port side. But soon they would clear its western extremity, marked by the Needles, a familiar landmark of jagged rocks that stuck out of the sea like the angular protuberances of some giant sea monster’s submerged body. Beyond this point the boats would encounter a completely different series of currents. Wave amplitude would probably change too, and they would be battling into a still stronger headwind than they already faced. And then... there was more than a chance that the Privateer would come into her own.

Simon glanced around. The Bellissima had fallen steadily farther behind, and the next boat was so far back that it was impossible to hazard even a guess at which one it might be.

The Saint’s mouth set in a grim fighting line as the Needles came into view. This was the stuff of life to Simon Templar: to be thrown on his mettle, to be seemingly outrun, for the moment, but to have reserves and resources of his own as well as all the glorious imponderables of time and chance to rely on.

“We’ll catch him,” he said, with quiet certitude.

And there came a time, not many minutes later, when the Candecour ceased to open up her lead any farther from the four hundred yards it had become. And not many minutes after that, it became apparent that the gap was very slowly but steadily closing.

They were more than an hour into the race now, and with their progress westward the crowds lining the shores on both sides of the water had dwindled until now they were confined to a few loose knots of people on the beaches of the minor holiday resorts in Christchurch Bay to their starboard. Milton on Sea, then Barton with its crumbling rufous cliffs, then Highcliffe, then Mude-ford, guarding the northern side of the narrow entrance to Christchurch Harbour. That entrance was actually invisible from the Saint’s viewpoint, being almost completely closed off by the sandy promontory known as Hengistbury Head, which curled around from the south west like a beckoning finger.

They were about two hundred and fifty yards astern of the Candecour when it happened. They were battling now into a moderate sea, which means a lot of battling for small boats, and as they rose and fell with the waves they frequently lost sight of the Candecour for a few seconds at a time.

It was after one such occlusion that the yellow boat suddenly veered off right and began cutting obliquely across the Privateer’s course.

“What the blue blazes—?” Vic followed up the mild oath with a more fluent and earthy profanity, and they watched in astonishment as the Candecour tore off towards the shore, without any visible slackening of speed.

The Saint was trying to hold a steady line on the boat with his binoculars. He shook his head in puzzlement.

“At that rate she’ll plough straight into the Head... The funny thing is, she’s holding a dead-straight line, yet as far as I can see, there’s no one standing up to steer her. Which is a more than mildly interesting way to tackle a race.”

The Privateer had now passed the other boat’s point of eccentric departure, so that they now had her almost directly to starboard. As far as the needs of continuing to manage the Privateer in that demanding sea allowed, they watched the Candecour, with a fascination that afterwards seemed like foreknowledge of what must inevitably happen.

“Throttle must be jammed open,” said Vic softly. And then, when it seemed certain that big yellow boat must plough into the beach at any second, they made another abrupt turn, or half-turn, to starboard.

“She’s missed the Head,” said the Saint, “but she’s going straight for the rocks.”

The Candecour never did slow down... until those rocks compelled a deceleration as abrupt as it was spectacular. The engine note was terminated by a splintering impact. Then a moment’s suspension of time. Then it came. A white-orange flash, and two or three seconds later the sound of the blast.

After a moment’s thought, Simon Templar eased off the throttle slightly, spun the wheel hard right, and pointed the Privateer at the blazing inferno that had been Charles Tatenor’s boat.