Señor Saint

Introduction

For the benefit of readers who may not be familiar with the names of too many scientists, I should like to mention that the Dr Zetek who is mentioned in this story is not a fictitious character, and the yarn should really be dedicated to him. For, while I was in Panama, it was he who arranged for me the rare experience of a visit to Barro Colorado, the island in Gatun Lake which the Smithsonian Institute with the cooperation of the Panamanian Government has been able to preserve as virgo intacta for the study of tropical ecology, and where in the mess hall maintained for visiting naturalists I saw a brilliant color photo and learned description of his equally non-fictitious discovery, Atelopus zeteki, the golden frog (the real jumping one, that is) which started the Saint on the following adventure.

— Leslie Charteris

1

Professor Humphrey Nestor, it must be revealed ab initio, had never actually been a member of the faculty of any of the illustrious colleges whose names he liked to drop casually into his conversation, nor, to be utterly candid, did he possess any of the academic qualifications which could have made it even remotely possible that he might some day be offered such an appointment. In fact, some prejudiced persons had been heard to asseverate, perhaps wishfully, that the only chair of importance that Mr Nestor was ever likely to occupy would be wired for high-voltage electricity, but this was an exaggeration. Mr Nestor was not by nature addicted to violence.

At this time he was only fifty-five, and still spry and lean of frame, but his hair had already attained the snowy whiteness which, in the minds of the gullible, is simultaneously suggestive of both wisdom and benignity, and he had parlayed that fortunate colouration into a trim moustache and goatee which, combined with the bifocals that had been thrust upon him willy-nilly by the normal incipience of presbyopia, gave him an air of erudite distinction that only the most adamantine sceptic could resist. And though he had no right whatsoever to the title which he had adopted as a vocational convenience, he was by no means illiterate. He owned, among a unique collection of forgeries, an absolutely authentic degree from a minor university whose track team had been well repaid by his youthful gift of running very fast for short distances, and he had a predilection for magazines of the popular science and science-fiction type which gave him not only a useful repertoire of abstrusities but also invaluable models of what the public expected a Professor to be like. As a result, Professor Nestor was a much more convincing Professor than almost any ivied turret could produce — as a great many suckers had expensively learned.

Yet such are the vicissitudes to which a great talent may be subjected that on the day we are talking about Professor Humphrey Nestor was scraping the bottom of the barrel as literally as he was trying to suck the last drops of ice-diluted fluid through the straws that protruded from what had once been an ambrosial beaker of Panamanian rum punch.

“I can’t think what we’ve done to deserve such miserable luck,” he lamented.

“One thing is, you’re getting old,” said the shapely blonde who passed as his daughter Alice.

Their real relationship was of course much less conventional, but since she was almost exactly half his age, the father-daughter was far more disarming than if he had introduced her as his wife, and indeed was likely to arouse positive sympathy instead of a raised eyebrow. And there was the added advantage that this arrangement imposed no tiresome restrictions on the exploitation of her sex appeal, which was not negligible.

There were times, however, when he wished she would maintain a semblance of filial respect when they were alone, and this was one of them.

“You’re in a rut,” she said, with unsympathetic candour. “Sure, we had a good line once, but nobody’s been buying it lately. Instead of moaning about your bad luck, why don’t you start figuring out something new?”

“Because it’s still a good line,” said the Professor stubbornly. “The very best. I spent a lot of time dreaming it up. It’s worked fine for us down here — and we’re lucky to be here.”

There was much truth in that.

Some five years earlier, a purely technical error in the use of the mails had occasioned this rather abrupt deflection in a career which had long been devoted (with remarkably few interludes in jail, all things considered) to the cause of parting fools from their money with a promptness that would have gladdened the proverb-coiner’s heart. One day Professor Nestor woke up to realize that instead of a civil suit which he could have out-ranged by simply stepping over the nearest state line, he had laid himself open to federal retribution that would not be halted by any parochial boundaries within the United States. But he was a provident and foresighted man in other respects, and was never without an alternative identity sufficiently well documented to satisfy the liberal requirements of most Latin American countries, which are not inclined to make excessive difficulties for apparently solvent tourists; a banana boat happened to be sailing from New Orleans at a moment which it would be almost an understatement to call opportune, and in due course the Professor and Alice found themselves in Panama with an indefinite period of exile ahead of them.

Humphrey Nestor surveyed the situation and was not displeased. Such a precipitate departure as they had been forced to make might easily have landed them in any of the forsaken backwaters of the hemisphere, instead of which, they had been neatly unloaded on one of the world’s busiest bottlenecks. Through the Canal passed endless fleets of passenger-bearing vessels of all sizes and qualities, not to mention the coastwise trade and cruise boats of the Pacific and the Caribbean which touched the ports on either side of the isthmus, providing one of the basic essentials for the exercise of Mr Nestor’s peculiar talent: a bountiful supply of transients with time on their hands, money in the bank, a minimum of factual information about the locale, and a romantic predisposition to believe strange and wonderful tales appropriate to an exotic setting. He was reasonably sure that he had left no trail behind him, and he was not much worried about the police of the American zone, who were more concerned with the security of the Canal than with operations of his type. And there was the unique advantage of a completely invisible and unguarded frontier with the Republic of Panama, so that merely by crossing a street one could pass back and forth between jurisdictions — a convenience which he found extraordinarily comforting.

All that remained was to adapt one of their tried and proved routines to get the utmost value out of the scenery and atmosphere at their disposal, and this he had accomplished with such virtuosity that there were now twenty-three thousand dollars in a pension fund which they had accumulated by ruthlessly setting aside fifty per cent of all their killings.

Alice was the sole custodian of this fund, which she had insisted on as her price for continuing the partnership.

“We’re not going to live this way for ever,” she said. “We’re going to save up, and one day we’re going to retire and live like any other retired people, without ever having to worry again.”

There were times when the Professor wondered whether he was really included in those plans for her future. But he was forced to accept her terms, for very few bunco compositions can be played effectively as solos, and she was an invaluable confederate. This arrangement, however, explains the apparent paradox in the statement made earlier that at this moment the Professor was suffering an acute financial squeeze.

“If we don’t find a mark very soon indeed,” he said, “I’m going to have to borrow something from our retirement fund.”

“Then you’d better find a mark very soon, Pappy,” she said promptly. “Because our retirement fund is not lending.”

“But this would be an emergency,” he argued. “After all, we’ve both lived off the half share that doesn’t go into your fund, and all the other expenses came out of it too. You can’t do any good in this racket without capital.”

“Then I hope you connect while you’ve still got some,” she said. “But if I let you get your fingers into that fund on one excuse, pretty soon you’d have another, and before long there’d be no more fund, and we’d be on our way to the poorhouse in a Cadillac just like when I met you.”

“You haven’t done badly since we teamed up,” he reminded her tartly. “For a B-girl who never did anything bigger on her own than roll a drunk—”

“That’s why I went for you, Pappy,” she said sweetly. “I knew you had what it takes. Only I don’t know how I’d feel if I thought you’d lost it.”

“I could do fine if only we got a break,” he said. “I had that rich Australian solidly hooked last week, didn’t I? And then his daughter has to get polio and he turns around and flies home and that’s probably the last we’ll hear of him.”

“Anyhow, he got away,” she said. “And we didn’t get a cent out of him.”

The Professor sighed over the remorseless inflexibility of feminine logic, and looked glumly around in search of some happier conversational diversion.

They were sitting in the bar of what unschooled tourists will always call, redundantly, “The El Panamá” — at that time the newest and most luxurious (and most expensive) hotel in the Republic. Built and operated by Americans for Americans, it was the counterpart of fifty kindred air-conditioned caravanserais which had raised their uniformly modernistic façades of glass and concrete and aluminium during that generation amid every conceivable skyline from mud huts to minarets and Spanish tile to Norman towers, all dedicated to the proposition that since air travel had brought the farthest corners of the globe into everybody’s back yard, no traveller should be allowed to feel that he had ever left home. Sooner or later an inevitable nine-tenths of the best-heeled travellers were bound to stroll at least once through its patios and lobbies, and Professor Humphrey Nestor was a regular customer for reasons which happily combined business with pleasure.

“As the great Barnum said, there’ll be another along in a minute,” he remarked bravely. “Now suppose we had one more drink—”

“We’ll have six more, if you can pay for them,” said Alice accommodatingly. “Only don’t try to stick me with the tab, because you’d look awful undignified trying to race me to the door.”

They might have continued indefinitely with another bout of these genial exchanges, but at that very moment a new patron strolled into the bar whose aspect called a truce to recriminations as abruptly as a soundless bomb.

His supremely comfortable costume of featherweight slacks, sandals, and a shirt that appeared to have been designed with the help of a kaleidoscope, plus the inevitable camera slung over one shoulder, branded him frankly and cheerfully as a tourist. But not just any tourist. There were graduations in these markings for which the Professor and Alice had eyes that would have sent a vulture looking for an oculist. The slacks were tailored of the lightest Italian shantung, the shirt was a still finer silk, even the sandals were of beautiful leather and finished like expensive shoes. The camera was the newest and most costly model Leica. And his face and arms had the bone-deep kind of tan, subtly different from the superficial browning of a brief vacation, which marks a man who habitually spends most of his time out of doors. True, there are humble labourers who share that privilege with the leisured wealthy, but although this man was slim-waisted and wide-shouldered he moved with a casual grace and assurance that left no possible doubt which category he belonged in. And although an indefinable keenness of eye and rakishness of feature suggested that he might at some time have known a ruggeder form of outdoor life than a golf course or a fashionable beach, a certain spirit of adventure in the victim was a contribution rather than an obstacle to the ideal dénouement of the plot in which the Professor and Alice had so often played their profitable roles. In fact, if they had been given some kind of supernatural carte blanche to design the type of character that they would have most liked to see walk into the bar at that moment, it might well have turned out to be a recognizable facsimile of the newcomer whom we have just described.

For almost half a minute they were too distrustful of this apparently divine dispensation to be able to speak.

It was Mr Nestor who recovered his voice first. The new arrival, he finally convinced himself, was no mirage of the kind which is reported to torment the thirst-crazed wanderer in the Sahara. Mr Nestor could see him quite normally and three-dimensionally through the upper part of his bifocals. And Alice had seen the same thing at the same moment. He could tell by the pure spirituality that had descended on her rather childish face, and by the fact that she had not taken advantage of his own silence to get in any more shrewd licks.

“Well,” he said heavily, at last, “will you trust me to start this one in my old-fashioned way, or would you rather take over?”

“Go ahead, Pappy,” she said, and added almost affectionately, “Just don’t ham it up too much like you do sometimes.”

He waited with agonizing patience until his quarry’s drink was almost finished, and then he picked up his modest box camera and ambled over to the bar.

“Pardon me, sir,” he said bashfully, “but I see that you’re a photographer, and I wondered if I could impose on you — if you’d be so kind as to snap a picture of my daughter and myself with our camera?”

“Why, of course,” Simon Templar said amiably.

“There’s no hurry. Whenever you can spare a moment.”

“I’ve nothing but moments to spare right now.”

Simon laid a dollar bill on the bar and slid off his stool. The Professor turned back towards the table where he had been sitting.

“Alice, dear,” he said, “the gentleman very kindly says he’ll oblige us right away.”

As she came to join them, he said shyly, “My name is Professor Humphrey Nestor, and this is my daughter, Alice. Might I know whom we are indebted to?”

Simon had a preposterous alias which in some circumstances came almost instinctively to his lips.

“Sebastian Tombs,” said the Saint, without hesitation.

2

“It’s terribly sweet of you,” Alice said, looking up at him with big blue eyes as if he had volunteered to bring her the moon in a platinum casket. “You know how it is — usually Pappy takes a picture of me, and then I take a picture of him, but we never have one of the two of us together.”

“I know how it is,” said the Saint sympathetically.

“Really, I should get one of those timer gadgets that let you get into your own pictures,” the Professor reproached himself.

They went out into the glaring shade under the umbrella trees, and the two Nestors stood rather stiffly and naively side by side, smiling at the camera, while Simon clicked the shutter.

“We ought to have one with the Frog,” Alice said.

“Yes, yes,” agreed the Professor, frowning. “If we aren’t taking up too much of Mr Tombs’s time...”

“Not at all,” said the Saint agreeably.

It would have been almost a psychological impossibility for anyone with a shred of human curiosity to have torn himself away without waiting to see that last shot.

Alice opened her capacious purse and took from it a soft leather pouch with a drawstring. From the pouch she took a package wrapped in tissue, about the size of an orange. The Professor fussed around helping her to unwrap it, until the contents was revealed on a nest of loosened paper.

It actually was a frog. A rather slender, long-bodied frog. Or to be more accurate, a carving or moulding of a frog, very simply but excellently done. And the most startling thing was that it looked as if it might have been made of pure gold.

“Could you come a little closer,” said the Professor, “and get a good picture of the frog, perhaps with just our faces looking at it?”

Simon moved on obligingly, while they held the frog up on its wrapping between them, and clicked the shutter again.

“Hold it a moment,” he said, unslinging his Leica. “I’d like to get one for myself, for a souvenir.”

They held still briefly while he took the picture again, and then quickly helped each other to re-wrap the figurine.

“We’re very, very grateful,” said the Professor, with unsophisticated earnestness.

“We took Mr Tombs away from a nice cool drink,” Alice said. “I think we ought to get him another.”

“Of course — how stupid of me! Won’t you let us do that, Mr Tombs?”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Simon replied, with a beatifically disarming smile which made it seem unthinkable that he could actually have meant it.

They went back into the cool dimness of the bar, and a round of Panamanian punches was ordered. After which there was a kind of conversational hiatus, as if in spite of his sincerity and good intentions the Professor’s social gifts had been exhausted by the providing of refreshment. He seemed to withdraw into an unworldly introspection, and his daughter only seemed to be able to look at him devotedly and rather anxiously, as if she knew what was on his mind and would have liked to help him with it but did not know how to.

It was obviously up to the Saint to break this awkward pause, and it would have taken a positive effort to refuse the handiest and most natural gambit.

“That frog of yours,” he remarked. “That’s quite an unusual piece.”

“It is,” said the Professor, coming a few miles closer in interstellar space.

“Not that it’s any of my business, but it almost looked as if it was made of gold.”

“It is.”

“Pappy,” Alice said gently, “aren’t you being a little rude? I can see why Mr Tombs would be curious. After all, we made him take our pictures with it.”

“Yes, so we did. Pray accept my apologies, Mr Tombs,” said the Professor contritely. “I was only afraid of boring you. You couldn’t really care about our scientific troubles.”

“Never mind our scientific troubles,” Alice said. “Tell him the interesting part.”

Mr Nestor pursed his lips.

“Well,” he ventured diffidently, “did you ever hear of Atelopus zeteki?”

“Do you catch it on a rod and line,” Simon asked, “or from going barefoot in hotel bathrooms?”

“It’s the Golden Frog of Panama,” Alice explained.

The Professor dredged an inner pocket of his sagging seersucker and came out with an ancient and shabby wallet of portfolio dimensions. He fumbled, blinking nervously, through an assortment of beat-up snapshots, newspaper clippings, old envelopes, and tattered palimpsests on all kinds of paper, which bulked it to the thickness of a light novel, and extracted a documentary relic which on being gingerly unfolded proved to be a page from an old issue of Life. It carried a single photograph in full colour which centred on a large tropical leaf on which was crouched a long-bodied frog that was almost entirely a bright yellow from nose to toe.

“That’s the Golden Frog,” said the Professor. “It’s one of Nature’s oddities, which could only have evolved in the tropical rain forest around here. A beautiful creature, isn’t it? You’ll notice that that one has a certain mottling of black on it. Some of them have polka dots. The ones that are all gold are quite rare. But it’s such a fragile product of its environment that just a few minutes’ exposure to ordinary sunlight are enough to kill it!”

He was simply paraphrasing, quite accurately, the caption under the picture, but he had a way of doing it so authoritatively that he made it sound more as if the caption was quoting him. Letting the dupe handle and read that indisputably genuine page of Life at the same time was a trick that invariably clinched the acceptance of his own scientific standing, and even more subtly it extended an aura of veracity over the fable that he had to pyramid on that one fact.

“That’s very interesting,” said the Saint respectfully. “Did you discover it?”

“Oh, no. It was discovered by a former colleague of mine, Dr Zetek. That’s why it carries his name. What I discovered was the frog that you saw — what we might call Atelopus nestori.”

Professor Nestor chuckled coyly over his scholarly little joke.

“Of course, our golden frog was modelled from the real one,” Alice said.

“You can easily see how it would happen,” said the Professor. “Long before Dr Zetek or any of us came here, the real golden frog was naturally known to the aborigines. And it was the sort of phenomenon which could hardly help striking the imagination of a primitive and superstitious people. The transformation of a tadpole into a frog of any kind is almost like seeing a miracle of evolution take place under your very eyes. Then think how still more awed they must have been when they saw that some tadpoles apparently no different from the others turned into frogs that seemed to be made out of the same precious metal that they would find in rare nuggets among the gravel of their river beds. Add to that the peculiarity that these frogs were so delicate that if captured, no matter how gently they were handled, they would die for no reason that a savage could understand — and to anyone who knows anything about primitive psychology, you have all the necessary ingredients for the origination of a religious cult.”

“You mean your golden frog is a museum piece?”

“Well, at least five hundred years old. Perhaps a great deal more. The only other one that I had ever seen — before I came here — was brought to me when I was lecturing on pre-Columbian artefacts at Michigan State University, by a tourist who picked it up on the San Blas Islands. He wanted to know if it had any antique value apart from the metal in it. Of course, I recognized at once that it was not San Blas workmanship, but he could tell me no more about its history. Naturally it hadn’t occurred to him to ask the Indian who sold it to him how he had come by it. I could only tell, from certain technical indications, that it was very old, perhaps even contemporary with the Mayan culture. I tried to buy it, but the owner was much too wealthy: the cash value meant nothing to him, but he wanted it as a souvenir, and an antique to boast about as well if he could have obtained an official pedigree for it.”

“But you don’t give up so easily, do you, Pappy?” said Alice adoringly.

“I must say, I went on thinking about it. And then, quite by chance, I happened to hear of Dr Zetek’s golden frogs. One glance at a picture was enough to show me that they must have been the model for the little metal frog that I had been shown. After that, to a scientific mind with my special background, the other deductions were almost elementary. Some prehistoric culture in Panama must have made a fetish of the golden frog and used images of it in their rites... But I must be boring you.”

“Not in the least,” said the Saint truthfully. “This is something they don’t have in the guide books.”

The Professor nodded complacently.

“Not yet. I was not foolish enough to discuss my deductions with anyone at that point — except Alice.”

“You wouldn’t believe how careful a scientist has to be these days,” Alice explained. “It’s almost as bad as being an inventor. There’s so much competition for the only college jobs that pay a living wage, and so many colleges seem to hire professors just for their box-office value, according to the books they’ve written and the things they’re supposed to have discovered — so when a professor thinks he’s on the track of something really big he has to guard it like an atomic bomb so that somebody else won’t steal it.”

“You can’t blame them, considering how few decent salaries a university can pay, except to a football coach,” said the Professor, with an unworldly resignation that would have tweaked the heartstrings of the most indurated cynic. “Let’s just say that I had enough human vanity to hope that my own name might go down in history along with some discovery that I’d made all by myself. I had a little money that I’d saved up to give Alice a start in life, but she insisted we should spend it on this. Finally I took my sabbatical, and we came down here to try to find the evidence of this cult. We made three different expeditions into parts of the country that had never been explored. Some of it was really rough — especially for Alice.”

He paused to glance admiringly at his daughter, and Simon followed the glance with a raised eyebrow.

“Did you go along too?”

“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” Alice said. “Even when I was a little girl I was always pestering the boys to take me hunting and fishing with them. I only wish I could live like that all the time.”

This was one of Mr Nestor’s deadliest inspirations. He had found that the time-honoured bait value of a blue-eyed blonde with the face and the figure of a Hollywood starlet was multiplied ten-fold by the revelation that she would honestly prefer a fishing camp to a night club. In the presence of such devastating credentials, strong men became misty-eyed and indeed were sometimes hard to bring back to mundane preoccupations. Mr Nestor observed an unmistakable hint of reverence in the way Mr Tombs was looking at Alice, and hurried on before he lost his audience completely.

“I won’t bore you with all the details. But we succeeded — more than I’d even dared to hope. We not only found proof of the cult of the Golden Frog, we found perhaps all the relics of it that will ever be found.”

Simon removed his gaze from Alice with undisguised reluctance.

“You mean you found more than that one frog I took a picture of?”

“To be exact, we found thirty-seven. And we found them all at once, in a cave that we literally stumbled into by the sheerest accident.”

“Some defunct witch-doctor’s Olde Frogge Shoppe?”

“I think there’s a better explanation. As you’ll remember, the Spanish conquistadors were here, as they were all over Central and South America. And as you know, the main thing the Spaniards were looking for was gold. It can’t have taken the priests of the Frog very long to find that out, but they must have been smarter than most of the other Indian tribes. They must have rounded up as many of the images as they could and hidden them in this cave — the entrance was so well hidden that no one could ever have found it unless he accidentally fell into it like I did. The specimen that the tourist brought to me must have been one that some individual hid on his own or that got lost somewhere, but the main collection was never found. Probably all the priests who knew where it was died under the tortures of the Inquisition without betraying the secret. Anyhow, no one can have set eyes on their treasure again until we found it.”

“Are the other frogs all the same size?”

“More or less, most of them. My hypothesis is that they were in the nature of icons, issued to minor priests or chieftains as a symbol of authority. But there were three images as big as footballs which must have presided over important lodges or perhaps their equivalent of cathedrals, and one absolute whopper, nearly as big as Alice, which must have been the original idol that all the others were modelled from.”

The Saint’s lips took the shape of an awed whistle.

“You don’t say they were solid gold?”

“I have seen no evidence that those Indians knew the arts of plating, or making alloys,” answered the Professor dryly.

“And to think I once started to feel sorry for you,” said the Saint. “I should apologize. If I’d known an archaeologist could hit that kind of pay dirt, I might have gone in for it myself.”

The Professor smiled faintly.

“Would it be impertinent to ask what your business is, Mr Tombs?”

“I suppose you’d have to call me a speculator,” said the Saint with studious honesty. “I dabble in anything that looks interesting at the time. I may say I’ve done pretty well at playing my hunches.”

If there could be any more mouth-watering description of the type that Professor Nestor prayed every night that Providence would send him on the morrow, the Professor had yet to hear it. Only a lifetime of professional discipline enabled him to sigh with the convincing tinge of envy that was called for at this point.

“I wish I could say the same, Mr Tombs. I suppose I just wasn’t born under a lucky star.”

“With a cave full of golden idols, you’ve certainly got problems. Like income tax, I suppose.”

“But the idols are still there in the cave, Mr Tombs.”

“Till you go back for them.”

“Yes, yes. That, of course, is the problem.”

“And we don’t want to lose our heads over it,” Alice said.

Simon frowned interrogatively.

“We’d just about taken it all in,” elaborated the Professor, “and we were heading back to camp for the cameras and flash bulbs to make a proper record before we disturbed anything, when the head-hunters attacked. It would be hard for you to believe, Mr Tombs, sitting here, but in less than an hour’s flying time you could parachute into a jungle world as untamed as it was before Columbus sailed... We’d been hearing the drums for days, but hoped they were only trying to scare us. It was a tragic underestimate. The native bearers we’d left in camp never had a chance, poor devils, but the uproar told us what had happened. We managed to cut across the river and push off in one of the canoes before we were spotted. We fought a rearguard action downstream for two days before they gave up the chase.”

“Just you and Alice?” Simon asked, open-mouthed.

“And Loro, our half-caste guide and interpreter. A wonderful fellow. I only hope nothing happens to him before we go back. That is,” said the Professor, coming hollowly back to earth, “if we ever do go back.”

“If I knew where there was a cave full of golden idols,” said the Saint, “I’d like to see any drum-beating head-hunters stop me.”

“Probably you can afford to say that,” Alice said gently. “But it costs a lot of money to organize the only kind of expedition that’d stand a chance. We’re going back to try to raise the money, of course—”

“That shouldn’t be difficult.”

“I hope you’re right,” said the Professor dubiously. “But as I told you, you remember, we didn’t even get any pictures. We haven’t anything to show except the one golden frog that you saw. It all depends on how much my scientific reputation is worth. Well, time will tell.”

“They’ve got to believe you, Pappy,” Alice said.

“Yes, indeed, my dear.” The Professor patted her hand. He had put on one of his most polished performances, not hamming it any more than the part called for, and if the audience wasn’t well hooked he should start learning his business all over again. Now it was up to her to carry the ball. “But we’ve bored Mr Tombs enough with our problems.” He consulted his watch. “And I have to call the curator of the Museum. Will you excuse me?”

He got up and pottered vaguely out into the lobby. He had practised that gait until it had become almost a part of him — it suggested a kind of ingenuous and earnest helplessness which was peculiarly convincing. Alice’s eyes followed him protectively.

“Poor darling,” she said. “It means so much to him.”

Simon offered her a cigarette.

“There’s no real chance that you won’t raise the money, is there? I should think he’d only have to wire his university—”

“It isn’t as easy as that. You see, no one even heard of the Frog cult before he deduced that it must have existed. And you’ve no idea how sceptical scientists can be, especially about someone else’s discovery. It’s not only scientists, either. There’s a man who has a desk out in the lobby who calls himself Jungle Jim: he organizes jungle trips for tourists. If you asked him, he’d tell you there aren’t any head-hunters in Panama. Of course he doesn’t take his parties anywhere near the head-hunter country, and he doesn’t want them scared off, but you can imagine what someone who was checking up on our story might think.”

Simon nodded.

“Have you tried already and been turned down?”

“No. As a matter of fact, we’ve hardly told anyone. We have to be awfully careful. If the Panamanian government heard about it and believed it, they’d claim it and send a company of soldiers to get it. That wouldn’t matter to Pappy, so long as he got the scientific credit, but you can guess how many of the frogs would mysteriously disappear on the way back. In fact, the expedition would be just as likely to come back and swear they hadn’t found anything at all — or maybe never even come back, if you see what I mean.”

The Saint decided that it was not up to him to dispute this libellous estimate of the Panamanian militia.

“How much would it cost to go in and get those frogs?” he asked.

She had the figure ready arrived at by an intuition that had seldom failed her: it had to be small enough, compared with her assessment of his means, for him to consider without undue anxiety, but it should also encompass every last dollar that the operation might be good for.

“About ten thousand dollars,” she said, and he didn’t blink.

“Someone might go for that as a straight business gamble, in return for a fair share of the loot.”

It was not so much a statement as the thinly veiled basis for an offer, but she shook her head.

“That’s the trouble. Pappy would never allow it to be treated as loot. All those frogs would have to go into museums. He’d rather they stayed lost for ever than see any of them melted down, or even put up for sale.”

“Then you certainly are looking for a philanthropist.”

“I know, it isn’t realistic. But who could mistake my Pappy for a realist? Now, I’m different. If I could get him just a few of those frogs — enough to make one museum exhibit and a lot of pictures, and prove his theory and make him famous — I wouldn’t care what happened to the rest.”

Simon regarded her contemplatively, and suddenly she leaned closer and impulsively put a hand on his arm.

“Tell me something,” she said. “I don’t know why I’m talking to you like this, except that I feel you’re a terribly wise person. But I’ve got to ask you. Suppose I managed to find some business man who was a bit of a gambler, and made a deal with him on my own.” It was consummate artlessness that continued to keep the discussion impersonal, so that she was absolved of any suspicion of propositioning him. “If I got just a few of those golden frogs for Pappy, he needn’t even know what happened to the rest, the head-hunters might have found the cave after we left and taken most of them away, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. He could write his articles and be famous and die happy. Would you think I’d done something very wrong or very good?”

Simon pondered for long enough to calculate what the approximate value of the golden frogs that Nestor had described would be.

“I’d think you should have a medal,” he said. “And if you decide to make anyone that sort of offer, I wish you’d give me the first chance.”

She looked at him in a dazed and startled way as if a halo had literally appeared over his head like a neon light, and her big eyes swam with soft half-unbelieving tears.

“I’m afraid I shall have to desert you tonight, dear,” said Professor Humphrey Nestor, noting the artistic symptoms with approval as he returned to the table. “Some former colleagues of mine from Colombia are passing through here — they happened to be calling on the curator when I telephoned, so I had to speak to them. They insisted on me joining them for dinner, but I shall not inflict that ordeal on you. I know our shop talk would bore you to death.”

“That’s all right,” Alice said, with her eyes still on the Saint and the most tentative conspiratorial smile touching her lips. “Mr Tombs just asked me if I could get away to have dinner with him.”

3

She suggested the Jardín El Rancho, and as soon as he saw it he had to approve of her selection. It was like the courtyard of a Spanish hacienda, tile-roofed around three sides but uncovered to the stars in the centre, and open everywhere to the perfect mildness of the night. The service was competently unobtrusive, and the lighting was artistic enough to encourage romance without causing eyestrain. But at first they were strictly practical.

“How would you work this scheme of yours?” he asked.

“Remember, I was at the cave too. I know where it is as well as Pappy.”

“You mean you’d go back there yourself — head-hunters and all?”

“I would if I had to,” she said bravely.

He shook his head.

“That doesn’t sound so good.”

“I can’t say I’m crazy about it,” she admitted. “So I don’t mind telling you I had another idea.”

“Give.”

“Loro — the native guide who took us into that district.”

“Don’t tell me he’d want to go back there.”

“He might. He just about adopted Pappy as his own father, but for some weird reason he practically worships me. Probably because I’m blonde and blue-eyed, and I treated him like a human being — oh, yes, and he got an infected foot once, and I fixed him up from the first-aid kit. It sounds ridiculous, but these natives are like children and he’s at least fifteen-sixteenths Indian. And after the head-hunters had chased us out, he told us we’d gone about it all wrong, and if he’d known what we were after he could have gone there alone and got it without any trouble.”

Simon tenderly impaled a pink shrimp on his fork, coated it lightly with sauce, and slid it between his teeth to confirm an earlier impression that the shrimps of Panama are for some unexplored reason the most crisply ambrosial representatives of their genus in all the legendary seven seas.

“Do you know where to find this reckless warrior?”

“Yes, he’s still around. As a matter of fact, he came to our hotel a little while before you picked me up — Pappy had already left to meet his friends. He wanted to know if there was any chance of our making another expedition. I was just going to tell him that it wouldn’t be for a long time, if ever, because we’d spent all our money, and then I had this idea. I asked him to stop by here at nine o’clock, so you could meet him anyway.”

They had sancocho, the rich chicken soup with vegetables that can easily become a meal in itself, but left themselves room for some excellent beef tenderloin sliced in mushroom sauce which was entirely European in conception and flavour. He asked many more details about the finding of the cave of golden frogs and the escape from the head-hunters which Professor Nestor had skipped over, but that also had been anticipated. The Professor had read many helpful books, and had schooled her so exhaustively that she was never at a loss. Simon’s admiration increased undisguisedly as the meal progressed.

“You’ll find campus life pretty tame after this, won’t you?” he remarked.

“Oh, I won’t be going back there with him. I’d hate to be a burden like that to him, poor dear, on his salary. I earn my own living — I’m a very good secretary. Of course I’ll have to look for a new job — I had to give up my old one when we came down here. But now I’ve developed a yen to see more of the world. I’m going to look for a business man who does a lot of travelling and who’d like to take a Girl Friday with him.”

“It mightn’t be easy to keep him at a strictly business-like distance.”

“Well, that mightn’t be hard to take if I really liked him,” she said frankly. “I’m not hopelessly old-fashioned.”

It was obvious that they could have made beautiful music together.

Loro arrived when they were having coffee, and accepted a seat and a bottle of Balboa beer. He was a pudgy brown man in a clean but unpressed white shirt and trousers, with long black hair, a single gold earring, and a wide white-toothed grin. He looked like a genial brigand, which was precisely what he was. Quite early in the Professor’s exile, he had volunteered to carry the Professor’s bag from a taxi into a hotel; turning from paying off the driver, the Professor had just been fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of his suitcase and Loro disappearing around the next corner. Mr Nestor, who could still put forth a most respectable turn of speed in an emergency, had overtaken him within two blocks, but to Loro’s even greater astonishment he had not capped his victory by calling for the police. Instead, he had given him five dollars and invited him to have a drink. Mr Nestor had already realized that a native accomplice might be almost indispensable to whatever bunco routine he finally adapted to the locale, and the problem of finding a native with the requisite guarantees of un-scrupulousness had been most happily solved.

Loro’s larcenous instinct immediately recognized a master, and he had become a very gratifying pupil. His part was relatively simple, and he brought to it an innate flair for dramatic deceit.

“I go back any time, señor,” he said in response to Alice’s prompting. “Bring back frogs. Me indio. No trouble.”

“Then why did they have trouble before, when you were with them?” Simon asked.

“Head-hunters seen me with yanquis, they think me like yanqui. Much trouble. Cut off all heads.” Loro made a graphic gesture, laughing delightedly. “Yanqui heads very valuable, but they take mine for small-change. Okeh. Me go alone, wear no clothes, they see me indio. Can be friends. No trouble.”

“Why didn’t you go back by yourself, then, and get the frogs?”

“Cost much money, señor. Too much for me.”

“But I thought they were going to be your friends.”

“Sure. All good friends. Okeh. Me go to cave. Okeh. Me take out frogs. Head-hunters see. They know gold very valuable. No more friends.”

“Tell him how you thought of doing it, Loro,” Alice said.

The guide leaned over his bare forearms on the table.

“Take plenty guns, yes. But who going to shoot them? No good take soldiers, they steal everything. Take other indios, they no can shoot straight. Or head-hunters come, they run away. Okeh. I got better idea.”

“What is it?”

“Sell guns to head-hunters. For gold frogs.”

“Do you think they’d trade?”

“Sure. Head-hunters want guns. Get more heads, more quick.” Loro chortled tolerantly. “Not our heads, we no worry.”

“How many guns would it take?” Simon asked.

“I think, fifty, with bullets — can do.”

“But that’s impossible,” Alice said. “You couldn’t bring in that many guns — the Panamanians would think you were trying to start a revolution. And you couldn’t buy that many here, for the same reason. Why, we had the worst time getting permits for our .22 and one shotgun.”

“Give me money, I get,” Loro said. “I have friends keep guns, wait for revolution, wait too long, get tired. They take money for guns now, think maybe they buy more guns mañana. But it cost plenty. Maybe two hundred dollars each gun and bullets.”

“Then we wouldn’t save anything,” said Alice. “It would still cost ten thousand dollars.”

“Save much trouble. No fighting. Save heads.”

Simon lighted a cigarette.

“What would you want for doing this?” he asked.

Loro’s fat cheeks dimpled on each side of his jolly bandit’s smile.

“Me, for love, señor. For the señorita I love. But perhaps I buy some guns more cheap, not pay all two hundred dollars. Me keep some dollars for working. You will not ask me give back, okeh?”

“Okay,” said the Saint steadily.

Loro stood up, beaming. He bowed deeply to the girl.

“I go now. I tell you soon, all is ready. Buenos noches, diosa.”

He was gone, melting into the darkness of the parking lot outside the patio as he might have melted into the jungle. Professor Nestor had painstakingly taught him to do this instead of scooting out as if he had dropped a fire-cracker with a short fuse.

Alice was looking at the Saint with misty eyes.

“I can hardly believe that my crazy idea is coming true,” she said.

“I wouldn’t call it so crazy,” he said. “And I like Loro’s contribution. Now that we’re more or less partners, would you risk telling me what part of the country this cache of golden frogs is in? I bought a map this afternoon to help my feeble geography.”

He took the map from his pocket and spread it on the table between them. She moved her chair around towards him until their shoulders touched, and the perfume of her hair was sweetly close to his nostrils as she leaned over to study the tinted outlines.

“We’re here.” She pointed to the south-eastern end of the Canal. “We’d have to charter a boat — the same one that Pappy and I had, if we can get it. We go out here, past Taboga Island, and down the coast to the mouth of this river. Then we go up the river — it’s quite deep, most of the time, and Loro knows all the channels — up — up around here...” Her red lacquered fingernail traced the winding course of the stream more hesitantly, but finally settled on a definite point. “Yes, the head-hunters’ territory starts here, at this third fork. So the cave would be a little farther north, about — there.”

Simon gazed at the map as if instead of its green ink he were seeing the lush rain jungle itself. Even though he was far more familiar with such stories than most men, he felt the tug of romance in it as appreciatively as the most frustrated slave to a stock market report. There could have been no higher tribute to the cunning with which Mr Nestor had blended its ingredients.

“I’m going to enjoy this trip,” he said.

“Would you want to go along?”

She asked the question for necessary information, but he stared at her almost indignantly.

“Do I look like a guy who’d miss anything like that?”

“No — quite the contrary. That’s one thing that bothers me. You’ve got that daredevil look. So I’ll have to make a condition. You’ve got to promise me you won’t try to go beyond that third fork on the river. You’re not an Indian like Loro, and you couldn’t pretend to be. I don’t want your head cut off and shrunk and dried. I wouldn’t want anything at that price. Promise you won’t try to go all the way — or it’s no deal.”

It was a classic touch. She acknowledged and openly hero-worshipped every valiant quality and impulse that a man would like to be credited with, and in the next breath she absolved him of any uncomfortable risk of having to live up to them, and prettily made it a command. Nobody but the Saint would have been so sincerely ungrateful.

“You’re the boss,” he said curtly, for there was no doubt that she meant it. “But we go as far as damn — yanquis can. Right?”

“Right.”

“Okeh. But how are you going to explain this to Pappy?”

“You know, we’ve got reservations to fly back tomorrow night. This has all been so sudden... The only thing I can think of is that I’ll have to make some excuse and let him go alone. But what excuse is there? I can’t pretend to be sick, or he’d never go.” She was almost suddenly panic-stricken, groping desperately for an answer. “I’ve told him before about wishing I could be a travelling secretary. Could I tell him that you’ve offered me a job? Would you mind if I did that?”

Simon laughed.

“If it’s as easy as that, consider yourself hired.”

She clung to his arm impulsively for a moment.

“If Loro can do what he says he can, I wouldn’t hold you to it.”

“I might like being held,” he said. “But we’ll have plenty of time to talk about that. If your father goes for it. I’ll just have to keep my fingers crossed, because I won’t even be able to help you sell it.”

“Why?”

“I have to go over to Cristobal first thing in the morning. I’ve got an old friend in the Navy who’s stationed on that side, and he promised to show me some sensational tarpon fishing on the Chagres River. He can only get two days off, so I’ll be back on Friday. If I find you’ve checked out, I’ll know it was just one of those things.”

“I’ll be here, I promise,” she said. “And by then Loro should have lined up those guns.”

When he left her at her hotel several hours later (Professor Nestor did not make his residential headquarters at El Panamá, both for reasons of economy and because it would have been grossly out of character) she kissed him goodnight, not alarmingly, but with a spontaneous warmth which suggested that her full gratitude would be more than perfunctorily enjoyable.

The Professor was sitting up in bed, wearing a suit of gaudy pyjamas and reading a luridly jacketed paperback.

“We’re cooking, Pappy,” she said. “Everything went just like the script. Even better — he’s going away for a couple of days’ fishing, so there won’t be any problem about seeing you off.”

“Splendid,” said the Professor. “But I’d better go up to Santa Clara as usual until after he’s left, so there’ll be no chance of accidentally running into him.”

Santa Clara is a seaside resort on the Pacific coast which is supported mainly by Service personnel and Canal employees, and the average tourist is unlikely even to hear of it, let alone visit it. The Professor had found it a convenient and pleasant place to lie low in when he was supposed to have flown back to the States.

“This’ll be one of the long jobs,” Alice said. “He’s determined to go up the river himself as far as I’ll let him. That means I’ll have to get my hands all fishy and my shoulder sore from that blasted shotgun, and pretend I like it.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Oh well, maybe I can get his mind on to something else at least part of the time.”

“I notice your lipstick is a little smudged,” he remarked. “With a routine as good as we’ve got, I don’t think you need to develop your part so far in that direction as you’ve been doing.”

“Would you rather get someone else to do it?” she inquired. “I’ll play it the way I feel it, or quit. There isn’t much fun for me in this goddamn place. And this is one John who isn’t a bit hard to take.”

When the following Friday morning went by without any phone call, she experienced a qualm that was almost as much personal as it was mercenary. She would have sworn that it was practically a toss-up whether Sebastian Tombs was more attracted by herself or the golden frogs, but as the afternoon wore on she began to wonder how both lures could have failed simultaneously. When her phone rang at last, after five o’clock, she was so relieved to hear his voice that her tone was quite angry.

“Whatever happened to you?”

“I’ve been busy,” he said mildly. “You sound almost like a wife — or a boss.”

“I’m sorry.” She recovered herself quickly. “I guess I was getting worried. After seeing my father off and waiting here, I was starting to think how silly I’d look if you never came back.”

“Two things I never stand up, darling,” he said, “are a beautiful blonde and a chance to make easy money. How’s Loro doing?”

“He’s been calling me every hour. He’s got all the guns and ammunition, but his friends are pressing him for the money.”

“Tell him they can have it as soon as the banks open tomorrow.”

“What have you been so busy with — boss?”

“I got a tip over on the other side that should be worth a fortune,” he said. “I’ll tell you when I see you. Will you be gorgeous and hungry if I pick you up, let’s say at seven?”

She had to struggle with an assortment of vague apprehensions until she met him. There were several facts that he might have heard or learned from someone who really knew the country that could have shaken the foundations of his belief in the Professor’s imaginative story, yet he had not sounded at all hesitant or sceptical. And when he greeted her he was unrestrainedly jubilant.

“This could be the greatest break for us,” he said. “My pal on the other side is a fly boy in the Navy, a full Commander, no less, but he’s never given up hope of getting rich some day. He thinks he has all the opportunities, and all he needs is a bit of luck. He used to dream about making a forced landing on some unheard-of mountain of gold or a dry wash full of diamonds. Lately it’s uranium, and he never takes off without a small Geiger counter in one of his life raft ration cans. Well, every place he goes, he studies up on the local mining laws, because when he strikes pay dirt he doesn’t intend to be horn-swoggled out of it on some technicality. So I told him that I was thinking of scouting for some gold around here myself — without giving away any of your secrets, of course — and he told me that any minerals you find in Panama belong to the Government, unless you’ve bought a prospecting concession in advance for the exact area where you find ’em. Did you know that?”

“No,” she said with a blankness that did not have to be feigned.

“Anyway, that’s how it is. But my pal knew all the rules, so as soon as I got back here this morning I went to work to take out a prospecting concession on the area you’d shown me on the map. My trouble was, it’s such a little-known law that half the officials I talked to hadn’t heard of it themselves. Or maybe it’s just been too long since anyone did any serious prospecting around here. It took me half the day to find the right bureaucrat who could issue the concession, and it was even tougher getting him to do it on the spot, instead of mañana, or next month. But I finally made it. Look!”

He triumphantly unfolded a closely typewritten sheet of heavy paper. It was trimmed and embellished with an imposing variety of stamps, embossings, ribbons, and sealing-wax, with a number of ornate signatures, but it was all written in Spanish, and about the only words that she recognized were the name of Sebastian Tombs.

“What does it say?”

“Cutting out all the gobbledegook, and the Castilian whereases and heretofores, it simply says that I have this prospecting concession for the district you showed me, for ten days starting tomorrow. You see, to try and prevent anyone hogging a concession and doing nothing about it, they put the hell of a price on them, a hundred dollars a day, and the longest you can take ’em for is three months. Then, if you make a strike, you can renew ’em by the year, but then naturally you don’t mind the price. That’s why the area we’re interested in wasn’t tied up: nobody would pay that much rent for a prospecting licence except for the time he’d be using it. This fancy scroll cost me a thousand bucks — from what you told me, I figured ten days should be plenty. But it gives us the right to keep all the golden frogs we can find in that time.”

The release from all her apprehensions was such a let-down that she felt slightly hysterical. It took a titanic effort at that moment to gaze at him with the awed and eager appreciation which she knew was called for, but somehow she achieved it.

“You’re wonderful,” she said. “I can see now why you must be a very successful speculator. You don’t miss anything. But we shouldn’t need anything like ten days. I’ve already arranged for the boat, and we could leave tomorrow morning if you like.”

“I like,” said the Saint.

4

The departure of Loro on his intrepid mission to contact the head-hunters was in itself almost worth the price of admission. Stripped down to a leopard-skin breechclout, his hair bound in a fillet of brocade that supported a couple of brightly hued parrot feathers, with slashes and curlicues of paint on his face and chest, he would have satisfied any Hollywood studio wardrobe department.

Professor Nestor had had to work hard to persuade Loro that it was necessary to go to these theatrical extremes. It had been comparatively easy to convince him that when the sucker paid over his money, Loro should not simply disappear with all of it, for Loro could never hope to steal that kind of money again on his own, but by working loyally with the Professor and Alice he could expect to share in such killings at frequent intervals for an unlimited future. So, having shown the Saint a stack of oilcloth-wrapped bundles piled in one of the cabins of the boat, with Alice vouching that she had personally inspected and helped to wrap the guns, and having received a thick wad of hundred-dollar bills as promised, he had taken it docilely to the hired car in which Professor Nestor was waiting to leave for Santa Clara, receiving in return only $3,000 for himself and $3,500 in an envelope to be taken back to Alice.

But after the first of such divisions, Loro had taken it for granted that they would all three disappear. The Professor had explained that the victim would then complain to the police, which would be a severe handicap to any future activities. In that case, Loro had suggested cheerfully, it would perhaps be better to take the boat some distance out into the Gulf of Panama, tie the victim to some of the weighted bundles, and drop him over the side. The Professor had explained patiently that the mysterious disappearance of an American, especially a wealthy one, could hardly fail to cause an investigation which would be very likely to come embarrassingly close to them.

“The very best confidence jobs, my dear Loro,” the Professor had pontificated, “don’t even let the sucker know that he’s been taken. Isn’t it worth a little time and trouble to give our customers a real show for their money, and know that we’ll never have to worry about them hollering for the cops?”

He had eventually secured Loro’s co-operation, but had reason to doubt if he would ever completely make his point.

Even on this occasion, at the first opportunity Loro had, when the Saint was at the other end of the boat, he said to Alice, “All this waste plenty time. Much better tonight I—”

He drew an expressive forefinger across his throat. He was half serious and half teasing her, she could tell from his malicious grin, but she was surprised to feel herself shudder.

“Stop it, Loro... Anyway,” she said, in an attempt to cover up the sharpness of her reaction, “this one is a perfect example of what we’ve tried to explain to you. He’s actually taken out a prospecting licence from the Government, and he must have told a dozen people where he’s going. If he disappeared, we’d have too many tough questions to answer.”

It was only after she had said it that the fantastic thought crossed her mind that Sebastian Tombs might have done all that, and taken pains to tell her about it, as an elaborate precaution against the very thing that Loro was advocating, and a subtle warning that if perchance that was what they had in mind they had better forget it. But the implications that followed were so far-fetched that she had made herself brush the idea aside.

Now bundles of alleged rifles and ammunition had been unloaded from the boat and cached at the edge of the jungle, and Loro was ready to play out the last sequence of Professor Nestor’s ingenious script.

“You go back down river a little,” he said. “One mile, plenty, only so head-hunters no see. Mañana, this time, you come back, you find me with gold frogs.”

“Be careful, Loro,” Alice said anxiously.

“Me always careful,” Loro said, with his jolly bandit’s grin. “No worry. Hasta luego, diosa.”

He spoke in rapid dialect to the boat captain, an uncle of his who had been a fairly honest fisherman before he was conscripted into the team, who was not very bright, but who had a non-speaking part which was almost foolproof since he understood no English and hardly any Spanish. Loro cast off the lines which had held the boat to the bank, and the captain started the engine as it began to drift downstream. Loro stood and waved until it vanished around the nearest bend, and then picked up one of the oilcloth packages which had been providently ballasted with a case of rum and plodded towards the next turn upstream, where there was a village of utterly harmless Indians who were always glad to see him and whose daughters were especially hospitable. He would stay there, very pleasantly, until the boat came back for him in a week or two.

Simon stood beside Alice on the narrow deck, gazing silently at the wall of tangled greenery that slid past them until the captain turned the boat in mid-stream, aimed the bow diagonally up towards the bank, cut the engine, and shuffled forward to throw a line over a leaning tree and snub the boat to a berth as nonchalantly as any airline pilot ever made a landing.

The Saint was frowning.

“I seem to be a bit confused,” he said. “I thought when you came here before you had a lot of native bearers, who got massacred. Then you fought a rearguard action for two days down the river. And yet we came here all the way from Panama in two days, and Loro is going to make a deal with the head-hunters and be back with the golden frogs tomorrow.”

Again she was barely touched by a fleeting uneasiness, but she was ready with the answer.

“Last time, we were exploring. We went off on big swings through the jungle, covering as much ground as we could. We were on one of those hikes when we found the cave. We’d left the boat way down near the mouth of the river. When we fought our way back to it, it was along these banks, only we were on foot. We followed the river because it was the only thing that saved us from getting lost, but you can see what rough going it was.”

(“There’s a limit to how far we can go with this,” the Professor had said, when he taught her the speech. “If we gave ’em a full two-week safari, for that kind of money, we’d be almost legitimate.”)

Simon nodded uncritically.

“I should have figured that out for myself,” he said. “It must have been pretty rugged.”

“I’d rather not talk about it,” she said, and meant every word. She despised herself for the palpitation that his unreserved acceptance of her explanation had set at rest again, but she was in no hurry to expose herself to any more potentially devastating questions. “Shall we try some fishing? Loro says that snook come all the way up here to spawn.”

He was still studying the banks rather than the water, his keen eyes raking along the ragged edge of the forest as though searching for something more than timber and foliage.

“I’d prefer to tramp around on shore a bit, as soon as we’ve got some lunch under our belts. I wouldn’t want to have to go back and say I’d never set foot in this wilderness. We can take the shotgun, and maybe pick up something good to eat.”

She had only her own build-up to thank for his bland assumption that she would not want to be left behind. She thought wildly of all the facile excuses she could make, but she realized that every one of them would have a hollow ring. So far he had only heard talk about her tomboy virtues, and if she seemed to wriggle out of the first opportunity to display them he could hardly help being touched by a flicker of suspicion. And once a man started to doubt, there was no forecasting where his scepticism would turn next.

She gritted her teeth and wished that lightning would strike him, but she forced herself to say, “That would be fun.”

Four hours later she was nearly ready to strike him down herself. Following the river on foot was a minor nightmare which developed its miseries cumulatively but inexorably until their weight and blackness was smothering.

Sometimes they were stumbling over tangled roots, sometimes sinking above their ankles in thick gluey mud, almost continuously warding off branches, leaves, fronds, vines, and thorns that poked and scratched and tugged at clothing and bare skin. The only respite from that harassment was when they took to the river to circumvent a particularly impassable thicket on land: then there was the treachery of invisible hazards underfoot, the haunting fear of crocodiles, and the discomfort of boots full of water for a memento. Winged and crawling things in infinite variety tickled and bit them. She was soaked with mud up to the hips and with sweat above that; her blonde hair hung in bedraggled skeins. She swore bitterly to herself that if she survived this excursion she would insist on some basic re-writing in her part next time.

The Saint was equally hot and muddy, but his good humour seemed to feel no strain. He could be fascinated by a sloth which they came upon suspended from a cecropia bough, too sluggish to stir even when he touched it, and he could exclaim delightedly over a toucan taking off before them and speculate earnestly as to why its enormous yellow bill didn’t send it immediately into a fatal nose-dive. At other times he seemed to continue seeking for something, picking up a small rock to examine it or taking a handful of loam and gravel from the bank and crumbling it between his fingers, until she had had to ask what he was doing.

“I told you I was a speculator, didn’t I, darling? It wasn’t only your golden frogs that intrigued me. They suggested something else which you seem to have missed. The ancient frog-worshippers who made ’em had to get the gold from somewhere, and the odds are it wasn’t so very far away. Also it isn’t likely that they used it all up. If I found the mother lode I’d have a real return on my investment.”

A time came when she felt it would not be worth going any farther for any sort of wealth.

“We should be turning back,” she said, with heroically simulated reluctance. “We ought to get back to the boat before dark.”

The boat was an old forty-foot native hull on which some intermediate owner had built an oversize deckhouse and partitioned it into a crude kind of houseboat; it was cramped and dilapidated and none too clean, but it possessed screens on the windows and a primitive form of shower bath, and from her point of suffering it was starting to resemble a luxury yacht.

The Saint was staring fixedly at the river bank, and suddenly his arm and forefinger stretched out in a compelling gesture.

“Look!”

Her eyes turned where he pointed, and even she saw the metallic yellow gleams on a rock caught by the sun.

He picked up the chunk of stone and wiped it on his shirt. There were half a dozen kernels of the yellow metal embedded in it. He was able to prise one of them out with the point of a pocket knife and lay it in the palm of her hand, a nugget the size of a small pea.

He looked around, and pointed to another rock, and another. All her wretchedness and exhaustion miraculously forgotten, she too began casting around and picked up other stones herself. She discovered that they were surrounded by a score and more of similar half-buried fragments, each crusted with the same crumbs of gold. She found herself grabbing them up wildly, trying to build a stack on one outspread hand and the arm held against her chest.

“Hey, take it easy,” he said, as the top-heavy pile slipped and most of it spilled. “A couple of souvenirs is enough for now. We’ll pick up some more when we come by in the boat, if you like.”

“The boat isn’t half big enough,” she gasped distractedly.

He was laughing, an almost soundless laughter of celestial contentment.

“Sweetheart, I’m not even thinking about what we could put in that boat. It’s what can be taken out with dredger and draglines and strings of barges. This isn’t something I’ll have to work myself with a pick and shovel.”

“Do you really think it’s that big?”

“I know it. I know a lot about mining, among a number of things. This is what every prospector dreams of blundering into. This is the end of the rainbow. When you find this exact kind of geological set-up, you know that you haven’t a thing to do but file your claim, form a company, and wait for the dividends!”

She trudged all the way back to the boat in a daze that nullified fatigue and time.

“This is one time when a long cold drink isn’t going to be merely medicinal,” he said. “This will be a legitimate celebration.”

She managed to smile somehow.

“I’d enjoy it lots more if I were clean,” she said. “Will you save it for me?”

“You’ve got the best idea. Yell when you’re through with the shower, and I’ll get clean too. Then we’ll make it a party.”

What she wanted more than anything was a chance to gather her wits without the superimposed strain of maintaining a mask. But her usually agile mind seemed to have gone numb. Soap and water, brush and comb, perfume and lipstick, and lastly a minimum of fresh cool garments, made her feel physically better but for once were inadequate to restore her mentally. She was overwhelmed by the magnitude of a complication that had never entered her dizziest dreams.

Later, when he entered the forward section of the deckhouse, which served as both wheelhouse and saloon, Simon Templar found her sitting at the table, her eyes fastened in a hypnotized way on one of the gold-studded pieces of rock which she had brought back.

“A lovely hunk of mineral, isn’t it?” he remarked, as he went to work improvising lime and soda and ice with fortification from a bottle of Pimm’s Cup which he had thoughtfully contributed to the ship’s stores. “It’s a shame you had those head-hunters sniping at you the last time you went by there, or I’m sure the Professor would have spotted that formation.”

“But what a wonderful break it was that we asked you to take our picture.”

It was all she could think of to say, a forlorn attempt to be reassured that the foreboding that chilled her to the marrow was unfounded.

He set a tall tinkling glass in front of her, and raised its duplicate to the level of his own lips.

“Here’s to Loro,” he said, and drank.

He went on measuring her with a steady gaze, while he put his glass down and placed a cigarette in his mouth.

“Forgive me if I’m off the beam,” he said, “but a moment ago it sounded just as if you were assuming that we were partners in a newly discovered gold mine.”

“Aren’t we?”

“I don’t think it’s exactly up to you to say that, darling. The only partnership deal we made was that I agreed to finance a highly speculative expedition to try and recover some golden frog idols, with the understanding that if we succeeded I could keep, say, half of them.”

“But if I hadn’t brought you here, you’d never have discovered this gold mine,” she was hot-headed enough to argue.

“That’s true,” he said coolly. “And if I hadn’t been in the bar at El Panamá I might never have met you — but does that mean the bartender is entitled to cut himself in? I’m a gambler, but I play percentages. I told you this afternoon, even before we found any gold, that it wasn’t your frogs I was betting on, but the other angle, the possible gold mine, which I had figured out all by myself. Maybe you could make me feel generous about that, but I’d be uncomfortable if I felt you were grabbing.”

She looked at him speechlessly, and only the most Spartan self-discipline inhibited her from throwing her glass in his face.

He did not appear to notice the gelid malevolence in her eyes, for through her self-inflicted silence his ear was caught and held by a new sound that had been trying to creep in through the thin bulkheads and open screens. He raised a hand, his face suddenly tense and withdrawn.

“Do you hear that?” he asked, and a well-worn behaviour pattern dragged her back rather like an automaton into the script that had been so catastrophically interrupted but which was supposed to be still unreeling itself with her help.

“The drums!” she breathed.

He thrust open the screen door and stepped out on to the scanty triangle of foredeck, and in a moment she followed him. The scrawny captain was already out there, standing rigidly in the bow, with a naked machete gleaming in his hand. Dusk had been falling when Simon and Alice reached the boat, and the brief twilight had long since passed, but now a full moon had risen above the trees and flooded the boat with a cold silver-green brilliance. The river flowed past and under it like a torpidly undulant sheet of liquid lead, but the walls of jungle on each side were by contrast impenetrably black and solid except for the luminous dappling of their topmost foliage. And out of that huge formless obscurity came the monotonous menacing thump and titter of the drums, swelling and fading, shifting and drifting, muttering endless spells and abominations out of the unspeakable night. The tympani virtuosi of the nearby village, inspired by copious libations of Loro’s rum, were truly floating it out.

“Sounds like a big fiesta for Loro,” Simon said.

She clutched his arm, to make sure he would feel her shiver.

“No, it’s bad,” she said shakily. “They never play those drums for fun. Only for a blood ritual, a head chopping. I’ve heard them before — I can never forget...”

“Bad,” said the taciturn captain, in corroboration. “Muy malo!”

A single ear-splitting shriek pealed out of the blackness, hung quavering on a climax of agony, and was abruptly cut off.

“Oh, no,” Alice sobbed.

At the Saint’s first movement, she clung to him tighter.

“No, I won’t let you. There’s nothing you could do!”

Like a giant firefly, a torch blinked alight in the forest, flaring and eclipsing as it wandered among the trees. It was joined by another, and another, until there were six or seven of them shimmering and weaving towards the river, throwing weirdly moving silhouettes of deformed tree trunks and twisted jungle growth. The drums came nearer, picked up a more feverish tempo.

As the torches bobbed closer to the bank, they revealed not only the shapes of the brown men who carried them, but the gleaming leaping forms of a horde of other naked creatures that writhed and capered around them. The male population of the village where Loro sojourned didn’t do things by halves. He had explained to them that this was what the incomprehensible white tourists expected, and in return for the rum which he dispensed they were always ready to oblige. It was more fun for them than a square dance, anyway.

Then, as if at a signal, the torches drew together and became almost still. And in the midst of them, on the point of a spear, to an accompaniment of shrill yips and yells, was raised a bleeding human head.

This was Professor Humphrey Nestor’s crowning inspiration, the climactic triumph of his dramatic genius. The head, moulded in papier-mâché from a plaster matrix which the Professor had made himself, was a recognizable facsimile of Loro’s to pass at that distance and in the flickering torchlight, and the long black hair affixed to its scalp and the gold ring in one ear were clinchers of identification. The ketchup which dripped from its neck was a gruesome touch of realism which had become even more horrifyingly effective when some of the performers had discovered how good it tasted and had taken to dipping their fingers in the drips and licking them with ghoulish glee. Thus the subsidizer of the whole elaborate fraud was to be fully and incontrovertibly convinced that Loro was dead, the guns were lost, the expedition had failed, and there was nothing left but to kiss his investment goodbye and be thankful his own head was still on his shoulders. At that, he would go home with an anecdote to embroider for the rest of his life which in itself was almost worth the capital outlay, which he could take as a tax deduction, if he could get anyone to believe him.

Alice screamed.

All the torches went out as if a switch had been pulled. It had been found too dangerous to leave them alight any longer than it took to fulfil their purpose. One earlier victim had been so emotionally affected that he had fetched a gun and started blazing away, and might easily have hurt someone.

Out of the darkness that seemed to swallow the land again came a rustle like unseen wings, and a shower of arrows plonked into the bulkheads and the deck. They were shot by the best archers in the village, who could be relied on not to hit anyone accidentally.

The captain let out a yell of fear, and his machete flashed, cutting the bow rope by which they were moored with a single stroke. Instantly the boat started to move with the strong deep current. The captain scuttled into the wheelhouse, and as Simon instinctively dragged Alice down to the deck they heard the laboured grinding of the electric starter. The air quivered with bloodcurdling ululations from the Stygian shoreline. After four excruciating attempts the engine finally caught and the boat came under control, turning with increasing sureness out towards the centre of the river. Another shower of arrows fell mostly in the water behind them, and the hysterical war-whoops faded rapidly as the boat gathered speed with the stream.

Simon rose and helped Alice up, and sympathetically let her continue to hold on to him, since that was what she seemed to want.

“It’s all my fault,” she moaned. “I got Loro killed, and lost you all that money—”

“Loro got himself killed,” said the Saint sternly. “It was his own idea, and he was sure he could get away with it. Nobody was twisting his arm. As for the money, I don’t know what you think I’ve got to complain about.”

She had to force herself to recall how radically inappropriate half of her carefully rehearsed speech had become in the light of the veritable catastrophe which had intervened.

The boat, driving at full throttle down the stream which the climbing moon had turned into a floodlit highway, must already have been somewhere near the place which they had reached so laboriously that afternoon on foot. Simon pointed towards the now silent blackness of the land.

“I’m not an archaeologist, and I’ll be satisfied with what’s there,” he said. “I’ll be back with all the machinery necessary to get it out, and all the men that are needed — armed, if they have to be — to chase those head-hunters away. Before long, the head-hunters’ll probably have been scared so far off into the hills that you won’t have any trouble getting back into your frog cave. I’ll get along all right until then. I’ve still got that prospecting concession for this river — remember?”

5

“It was, literally, like an answer to prayer,” said Professor Humphrey Nestor piously. “As you know, Mr Tombs — I’m sure I must have mentioned it — I was scheduled to stop over to deliver a special lecture on Inca mythology at the University of Miami. So I had asked Michigan to forward my mail for a few days in care of the President. That is how I happened to receive this letter from the executors of this rich uncle from whom I frankly never expected to inherit so much as an old encyclopedia.”

He handed Simon the unfolded letter. It was nicely typed on a letterhead purporting to be that of a firm of New York attorneys, and informed Professor Humphrey Nestor that they were holding at his disposal a legacy of fifty thousand dollars from the estate of Hannibal Nestor, deceased, and would appreciate his instructions regarding delivery of the same.

Simon glanced at it and handed it back with a smile of congratulation. Nobody could esteem the value of an efficiently faked document higher than he.

“That’s simply wonderful,” he said whole-heartedly.

“Naturally,” said the Professor, “all I could think of was to get the money as quickly as possible and return here while we were still hot on the scent, as you might say, of those golden frogs.”

“Naturally.”

“Getting the money was only a matter of formality. Then I wired Alice, and took the next plane back here after my lecture. Of course, by that time you had already left on your ill-fated trip. No doubt you can imagine my feelings when she was forced to tell me the whole story. It would be impossible for me to forgive the bargain she made with you if I did not realize how altruistic although misguided her motives were. But both of us will always bear on our souls the burden of the death of poor faithful Loro.”

He bowed his head, and a subdued Alice, becomingly garbed in black, meekly followed suit.

“Don’t blame yourselves too much,” said the Saint. “I’ve already told her—”

The Professor raised his hand.

“Let us not discuss it,” he said. “All I ask, for my own satisfaction and peace of mind, is that you should permit me to reimburse you for your loss. Call it conscience money, or blood money, as you will. And let us consider that iniquitous compact ended, as if it had never been made.”

He took another piece of paper from his pocket and held it out to the Saint. Simon took it, and saw that it was a cashier’s cheque for ten thousand dollars which his practised eye told him was certainly not forged.

“If you put it that way, Professor,” he said, respectfully, “I hardly see how I can refuse.”

“I understand you will not be a loser, in any event. May I ask what you are proposing to do about your lucky find?”

“I haven’t had time to do anything much yet,” said the Saint. “In fact, for the present I’m keeping it right under my hat, and as you know I’ve asked Alice to do the same. I don’t want some local hotshots getting wind of it and maybe pulling some fast legal shenanigans before everything’s sewn up. I have got an attorney forming a local corporation, which will have quite a nominal capital, most of which I’ll put up myself — about a hundred grand. For operating capital, I’ll get a loan from some Texas oil men I know; in that way, the value of the original stock will skyrocket much faster as soon as we get going, and I can take a nice capital gain instead of paying a ninety per cent income tax.”

The Professor nodded.

“Alice tells me she had some misunderstanding with you about the legal and moral rights to your mining claim. She was absolutely wrong, of course—”

“I know it now,” Alice said contritely. “I was very stupid, and I apologize.”

“But,” said the Professor, “we do have a friendly interest in your venture. Your opening up of the country should eventually make it possible for us to get back to our frogs again — if they are still there. And I do claim that we contributed something, however indirectly, to your good fortune. Here I am, Mr Tombs, with what is left of this legacy, and very little knowledge of financial matters. I would like to invest something that would bring in a good return and enable me to continue my researches. Alice and I have been so close to this, and we have the best reasons to believe in it. I would like to ask you — not as a right, but as a favour — if you would consider letting us in on the ground floor.”

“How much would you want to invest?” Simon asked in a businesslike manner.

The Professor looked appealingly at Alice. She opened her purse, and then a billfold from it, and took out five cashier’s cheques, each made out simply to Bearer. It was the most liquid and compact way she had been able to think of to carry her retirement fund. She put one of them back, and handed Simon the other four. Each of them was made out for five thousand dollars.

“I told him we could speculate this much,” she said.

Simon looked at them judicially.

“I was only a little peeved because I thought Alice was jumping the gun,” he said. “When you put it this way, I couldn’t be mean enough to refuse. But I can’t take all this — it would be against a foolish principle of mine.”

He gave her back two of the cheques and put the other two away in his wallet.

“I’ll give you a receipt,” he said.

He fetched a sheet of paper and wrote on it:

Probably, he reflected, a smart lawyer could prove that such an indefinite promise was not even fraudulent. Not that the Saint intended to wait around even another twelve hours to find out.

“Will that do?” he asked.

They looked pathetically grateful and yet somewhat disappointed, so that he rather regretted the quixotic impulse that had compelled him to refuse half their money. But he felt that he had been well repaid for the time he had spent preparing that elegant “licence” for himself. As for the preliminary trip over the river, on which his Navy friend had flown him from Coco Solo and helped him dump several sackfuls of carefully salted rock, the plane and the gas had been unwittingly supplied by Uncle Sam, and the trip had been purely a joyride. The Nestors, he thought, should be taught a lesson to be more circumspect about working a routine with so many transparent fabrications in it, but they had certainly put on a first-class production, and the Saint did not want to be too cruel.