The Saint in the Sun

2. ST. TROPEZ: The Ugly ImpresarioCopyright

"That," observed Simon Templar, "is quite a sight, even for these parts."

"And that," said Maureen Herald, "is what I've got to talk to."

They lay on the dazzling sands of Pampelonne, which are the beaches of St Tropez, gazing out at the sun-drenched Mediterranean where a few white-sailed skiffs criss-crossed on lazy tacks, an assortment of speedboats with water-skiers in tow traced evanescent arabesques among them, and, much closer in, the object of Simon's comment cruised southwards along the shore line where its occupants could comfortably observe and be observed by the heliophiles on the strand.

It was an open Chris-Craft runabout which would have photographed exactly like any other similarly expensive standard model, except in color. The color was a brilliant purple which no shipyard can ever have been asked to apply to a hull before. And to offset it, the upholstery of the cockpit and the lounging pad covering the engine hatch were an equally brilliant orange. As an aid to identifying the owner of this chromatic monstrosity, the sides of the craft were emblazoned with a large capital J nestling inside a still larger capital U, the monogram being surrounded by a circle of large golden metal stars.

The owner of the boat and the initials, Sir Jasper Undine himself, sat on the port gunwhale controlling the course with one hand. Apparently to insure that he would not be eclipsed by his own setting, he wore fluorescent green shorts, a baggy fluorescent crimson windbreaker, and a long-peaked fluorescent yellow cap. Under its exaggerated eye-shade he wore a pair of huge white-plastic blue-lensed sunglasses which, with the help of a torpedo-sized cigar clamped in his mouth and the gray goatee below it, balked any analysis of his features even at that comparatively short range: one had mainly the impression of some goggle-eyed, balloon-torsoed, spindle-legged visitor from Outer Space which had arrayed itself in human garments selected to conform with the prismatic prejudices of Alpha Centauri. But no one who paid any attention to the sophisticated chatter of those times would have been so misled as to fail to identify Sir Jasper Undine, whose ostentatious eccentricities (suitably embroidered and broadcast by a tireless press agent) had established him as the most garish current character in a coterie which has seldom been distinguished by coyness and self-effacement.

Sir Jasper Undine was, in fact, at that moment one of the indisputable kingpins of the entertainment world in Europe. The story of his rise from part-time usher in a run-down movie theater in South London, to his present control of a complex of motion picture and television producing and distributing companies with ramifications in five countries, in versions flattering or calumnious according to their source, has been told too often to need repeating here. It certainly vouched for an outstanding talent; although some stuffy critics might say that this leaned more towards a ruthless dexterity at brain-picking, idea-stealing, cheating, finagling, and double-dealing, than to any creative or artistic ability. But having achieved success, he had made a second career of indulging every appetite it would gratify, up to and including the knighthood which had cost him many expensive contributions to good causes with which he had no sympathy.

"Is he really as horrible as one would think?" Simon asked.

"Even worse, I believe. But he's got the final say — so on a job that I need very much."

"Don't you have an agent to handle things like that?"

"Of course. My agent's got everything on the contract except Undine's signature. And Undine won't make up his mind about that without meeting me himself."

Maureen Herald was an actress. She had entered Simon's life with a letter from David Lewin of the Daily Express:

She had gray eyes and what he could only have described as hair-colored hair, something between brown and black with natural variations of shading that had not been submerged by the artificial uniformity of a rinse. It was a perfect complement to her rather thin patrician features, which would only have been hardened by any obvious embellishments. She had a gracefully lean-moulded figure to match, interestingly feminine but without the exaggerated curvature in the balcony which most of the reigning royalty of her profession found it necessary to possess or simulate. His first guess would have been that she had started out as a high fashion model, but he learned that in fact she had been a nurse at the Hollywood Hospital when a famous director was brought in for treatment of an acute ulcer and offered her a screen test before he left. Her rise to stardom had been swift and outwardly effortless.

"But my last two pictures were commercial flops," she told Simon candidly. "I say they were stinkers, of course, but some other people found it easier to blame it on me. A nice girl, they said, but death at the box office. And just when my first contract had run out — it was no star salary to start with — and I should have been able to ask for some real money. They just aren't bidding for me in Hollywood at the moment, and if I don't do something soon I could be washed up for good."

"That would be a pity," he said. "And nothing but a few annuities to live on."

"That isn't even half funny," she retorted. "After taxes and clothes and publicity and all the other expenses you have to go for, there's very little left out of what I took home. And I've got a mother in a sanitarium with TB and a kid brother just starting medical school. I can't afford not to get this part."

The purple speedboat veered closer to the shore, farther along. There was another man in the cockpit, but he had hardly been noticeable as he sat down: even though he had ginger hair and a complexion exactly the tint of a boiled langouste, they could not compete with the gaudy coloration surrounding him. Now he got up and began throwing out water skis and a tow-rope. He was short and scrawny, and his torso was fish-white up to where his narrow shoulders turned the same painful pink as his face.

Three girls had come down to the water's edge nearest the boat, shouting and giggling. They had almost identical slim but bubble-bosomed figures displayed by the uttermost minimum of bikini. One was raven-haired and the two others were platinum-bleached. One of the blondes began to put on the skis while the other two girls waded out to the boat and climbed in.

"Sir Jasper seems to be casting starlets too, if I recognize the types," Simon remarked. "And he doesn't seem to have much difficulty picking them up."

"When I phoned him this morning for an appointment he said he'd be busy all day until cocktail time."

"He probably figures it's good psychology to keep you cooling your heels for a while. And after all, he is busy."

"From what I've heard, next to making money that's his favorite business."

The Saint recalled photos that he had seen published of Sir Jasper Undine in various night clubs and casinos, where he was always accompanied by at least one conspicuously glamorous damsel and frequently two or three. It was also common gossip that he did not merely cultivate the impression that he lived like a sultan but aspired to substantiate it.

"I wonder if I could resist the temptation, if I were in his position."

"You've probably had plenty of practice resisting temptations," Miss Herald said. "But I'm not looking forward to this interview."

The two dolls who were riding deployed themselves artistically on the orange coverings, the red-haired factotum scrambled down again into insignificance, the Chris-Craft's sulky muttering rose to a hearty roar, the tow-rope tightened, and the skier came up out of the water a little wobbly at first and then steadying and straightening up and skimming out of the wake as the boat came to planing speed.

Undine drove at full throttle, curling across the bay on a course that seemed coldbloodedly improvised to score as many near-misses as possible on all the pedalos, floaters, dinghies, and other slower vessels in the area.

"Do you water-ski?" Simon asked, as they watched.

"I've tried it. But I don't much like being whipped around like the tail of a kite, wherever the boat takes you. If someone would invent a way of steering the boat yourself while you're skiing, it might be fun."

"Water-skiers must be the worst kind of exhibitionists. Haven't you noticed that their whole fun is in showing off? If they just enjoyed water-skiing for its own sake, they could do it all over the ocean without bothering anyone. But no. They always have to work as close as they can to what they hope is an admiring audience, and half-swamp anyone who's only trying to have a quiet peaceful time on the water."

"But the girl who's skiing isn't doing that," Maureen pointed out. "It's Undine who's driving."

"Using her to get more attention." The skier fell off then, trying to jump the wake, and Simon sat up with a short laugh. "What a pity that wasn't him! But I'm sure he wouldn't ski himself and risk anything so undignified. Come on, let's forget him for a while and have a dunk."

She swam well and with surprising endurance for her slight build, not with the brief burst of speed fizzling out into breathlessness that he would have expected. He followed her for about five hundred yards, and when they turned around she seemed quite capable of making it five kilometers.

"I won all the athletic prizes in school," she said when he complimented her. "That's probably my trouble, being the good sister instead of the home-wrecker type."

"If I treat you like a brother," he said, "it's only because David stuck me with it."

After the sun had dried them again she said: "I don't want to spoil your day, but I'm not tanned like you are, and it might ruin everything if I meet Undine this evening looking like a raspberry sundae."

"It's lunch-time, anyway. I have an idea. Let's drive up to Ramatuelle. There's a little restaurant there, Chez Cauvière, where they make the best paella this side of the Pyrenees and perhaps the other side too. Then I'll take you back to the hotel for a siesta, and by seven o'clock you'll feel fit to cope with a carload of Undines — if you can stand the thought."

The ambrosial hodge-podge of lobster, chicken, octopus, vegetables, and saffron-tinted rice was as good as he boasted; the unlabelled rosé of the house was cool insidious nectar; and by the end of the meal they were almost old friends. He felt an almost genuinely brotherly concern when he left her and had to remember that all this had been only an interlude.

"Is there anything else I can do?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "I've been thinking about it. Do you suppose you could come by the cafe about eight o'clock, and say hullo to me? Then if it seems like a good idea by that time I can make like we had a date. It might get me out of something. Even just as a card up my sleeve, it'd do a lot for my morale. That is, if you aren't already tied up—"

"I can't think of anything better," he smiled. "You can count on me."

She had already told him which cafe was referred to. The quais which face the harbor of St Tropez are lined almost solidly with restaurants and cafes, where everyone who knows the routine turns out in the evening to be seen and to see who else is being seen; but ever since "Saint-Trop" became known as the rendezvous of a certain artistic-bohemian set for whom the Riviera westward from Cannes was either too princely or too bourgeois, "the" cafe has always been the Sénéquier, and the others have to be content with its overflow — which is usually enough to swamp them anyway. Although many of the original celebrities have since migrated to less publicized havens, the invading sightseers who put them to flight continue to swarm there and stare hopefully around, most of the time at each other. But even in this era a permanently reserved table at Sénéquier was still a status symbol which Sir Jasper Undine would inevitably have had to display, whatever the price.

Simon strolled slowly along the Quai Jean-Jaurès a little before eight, allowing himself a leisured study of the scene as he approached.

It was impossible not to spot Undine at any distance: he stood out even amidst the rainbow patchwork of holiday garb on the terrace with the help of a blazer with broad black and yellow horizontal stripes, which with the help of his oversized sunglasses' made him look something like a large bumblebee in a field of butterflies — if you could imagine a bumblebee wearing a red and white checkered tam-o'-shanter.

Besides the ginger-haired young man who had served as mate on the speedboat in the morning, and two of the shapely playthings they had picked up (or two almost indistinguishable chippies off the same block), Sir Jasper's entourage had been augmented not only by Maureen Herald, who had been privileged to sit on one side of him, but also by a reddish-blonde young woman with a voluptuous authority that made the starlet types look adolescent. As he came closer, Simon recognized the sulky sensual face as that of Dominique Rousse, a French actress whose eminence, some competitors asserted, was based mainly on certain prominences, which contrived to get uncovered in all her pictures on one pretext or another. On her other side was a black-browed heavy-set individual who seemed to be watching and absorbing everything with brooding intensity but to be deliberately withholding any contribution of his own.

As Simon came within earshot, Undine was saying: ". and rub his nose in it. The banks don't make any loans on artistic integrity, and a producer who isn't as tough as a bank better learn to print his own money. I know what I can do for anyone and I figure what they've got to do for me to pull their weight in the package, or I'm not interested—"

He broke off, cigar and goatee cocked challengingly, as the Saint stopped at the table.

Maureen Herald's face lighted up momentarily, and then masked itself with a kind of cordial restraint.

"Oh, hullo, Simon," she said, and turned smoothly to the others. "This is Mr. — Thomas." The hesitation was barely perceptible. "Sir Jasper Undine. Mr. & Mrs. Carozza — that is, Dominique Rousse." The dark withdrawn man, then, was the lush actress's husband. "I'm afraid I didn't get all the other names—"

Undine did not bother to supply them. He stared at the Saint steadily. The impenetrable sunglasses hid his eyes, but at this range it could be seen that his nose was fleshy and his mouth large-lipped and moist.

He asked brusquely: "Any relation of the Thomas brothers — Ralph and Gerald — the directors?"

"No," said the Saint pleasantly.

"Not an actor?"

"No."

"You can sit down, then. Get him a chair, Wilbert."

The carroty young man gave up his own seat and went looking for another. He was the only customer in the place who was wearing a tie, and even a shiny serge jacket as well. They were like symbols of servitude amid the surrounding riot of casual garb, and obviously defined his part in Undine's retinue.

"There's nothing wrong with actors except when they're trying to get a job, and then there's a limit to how many you can 'ave around at the same time," said Sir Jasper. His origins revealed themselves in his speech more consistently through its intonation and subject matter than by the dropping of H's, which he did only occasionally. "One day somebody 'll make a robot that you just wind up and it says what you put on a tape, and then they can all butter themselves. Get him a drink, Wilbert."

"And who would make the tape recording?" Simon inquired mildly.

"The writers would be glad to do that themselves. They always know 'ow their precious lines ought to be spoken better than anybody else — don't they, Lee?"

The taciturn Carozza, whose profession was thus revealed, gave a tight-lipped smile without answering. Now the Saint remembered having seen his name in print as one of Europe's avant‑garde new dramatists, but was vague about his actual achievements. It was not a sphere in which Simon Templar had more than a superficial interest.

"These brainy chaps can do anything," Undine pursued. "Look at him. There's Dominique, who gets made love to by all the matinée idols — on the set, of course — and papers her bathroom with mash notes from millionaires, and I could go for her myself, but she falls for his intellectual act. He's hired to work on my script, and she wants to play the lead in it, but he goes and marries her. That's what you do with brains."

"You promised me the part before that," said Dominique Rousse sullenly.

"I said you were the best bet I'd seen. But what am I betting on now? All you'll be thinking about is what Lee wants, not what I want. I'm kidding, of course."

If he was, it was with a touch that tickled like a club.

"Does that mean you were kidding when you asked me to come here for an interview?" Maureen Herald asked.

"Get me another cigar, Wilbert." Undine brought his opaque gaze back to her. "Listen, you remember in 'Ollywood about six years ago, right after the premeer of your first picture, which I saw — I was giving a party, and I sent you an invitation, but you didn't come then."

"I'd never met you, and I happened to have another date."

"I knew it couldn't 've been because you felt too grand for the likes of me. After all, you came all the way here this time, didn't you?"

"So all this was just your way of getting even?" she asked steadily.

"Now why would I go to all that trouble? I'm reminding you, that's all. I didn't let it make any difference when I told my lawyers to go ahead and draw up a contract with everything your agent was able to get out of me. I rang 'em up this afternoon and they said they'd already sent it off. It should be here in the first post tomorrow. Then all I got to do is make up my mind to be big-'earted and sign it."

"But if—"

"Who said you and Dominique couldn't both be starred? There's two female parts in the script that could be built up equal, if we can stop Lee trying to give all the best of it to his wife."

"I'm sorry," Carozza said, speaking at last. "But I don't see that." He had only a trace of accent, which was as much Oxford as Latin. "Unless Messalina dominates everything—"

Sir Jasper clutched his temples.

"There 'e goes. Just like I told you." He turned to Maureen again, and dropped a heavy hand on her knee. "But don't worry — he'll come 'round when he thinks about all that lolly I could stop paying him every week. So let's you and me go to dinner and talk about this part." He stood up, royally. "Wilbert, order one more round and pay the bill. So long, everybody."

Simon met Maureen's eyes as they looked at him, letting her take the cue, and they said as plainly as if she had spoken: "Forgive me, but I guess I am stuck with it. What else can I do?"

The Saint smiled his understanding, and said: "I'll call you tomorrow."

He accepted another Peter Dawson without compunction, and made it a double just to reciprocate the courtesy with which it had been offered. The Carozzas also shrug-nodded acceptance; but the two starlet types, after ogling the Saint speculatively and receiving little encouragement, twittered obliquely to each other and took their leave.

While Wilbert (whether that was his first or his last name, it fitted his function and personality like a glove) was twisting one way and another trying to flag down a waiter, Dominique Rousse exploded in a furious aside to her husband which was pitched too low for any other ear; but Carozza silenced her with a warning down-drift of his brows. He was studying the Saint now with the undeviating concentration which he seemed to aim at its objects like a gun.

"Did I hear Miss Herald say you were Mr. Simon Thomas?" he inquired.

"You did," Simon replied easily.

"I was wondering if it should have been Simon Templar."

"Why?"

"You have a great resemblance to a picture I saw once — of a person who is called the Saint."

"Have I?"

"I think you are being modest."

The Saint grinned at him blandly and indulgently, and drawled: "I hope that's a compliment."

The ginger-haired Wilbert had finally accomplished his assignment, which had kept him out of this exchange, and now as if he had not heard any of it he pulled a notebook and a ballpoint pen from his pocket and leaned towards the Saint like a college-magazine reporter.

"What hotel are you staying at, Mr. Thomas?"

"I'm staying in a friend's apartment. He lent it to me while he's away."

"Would you give me the address? And the telephone number, if there is one?"

The Saint was mildly surprised.

"What ever for?"

"Sir Jasper will expect me to know," Wilbert said. "If he wanted to get in touch with you again for any reason, and I didn't know where to find you, he'd skin me alive."

With his jug-handle ears and slightly protruding eyes and teeth, and the complexion that looked as if it had been sandpapered, he was so pathetically earnest, like a boy scout trying for a badge, that Simon didn't have the heart to be evasive with that information. But in return he asked where Undine was staying.

"He has a villa for the season — Les Cigales," Wilbert told him. "You take the Avenue Foch out of the town, and it's three or four kilometers out, on your left, right on the water. Sir Jasper has had signs posted along the road with his initials, so you won't have any trouble finding it if he invites you there."

"Thanks," murmured the Saint. "But I hardly think we've struck up that kind of friendship."

Carozza was still scrutinizing him with unalleviated curiosity; and to head off any further interrogation, Simon deliberately took the lead in another direction.

"What is this epic you're working on?" he asked.

"Messalina," Carozza said curtly. He was plainly irritated at being forced off at a tangent from the subject that intrigued him.

"Based on the dear old Roman mama of the same name?"

"Yes."

"I can see why it would be difficult to build up another female part and make it as important as hers."

"With any historical truth or dramatic integrity, yes. But those are never Sir Jasper's first considerations."

"His first being the box office?"

"Usually. And after that, his personal reasons."

"This Maureen Herald," Dominique Rousse said. "She is a good friend of you?"

In French, the words "good friend" applied to one of the opposite sex have a possible delicate ambiguity which Simon did not overlook.

"I only met her yesterday," he answered. "But I think she's very nice."

"Do you want her to have this part?"

"I wish her luck, but I don't wish anyone else any bad luck," said the Saint diplomatically. "I hope it all works out so that everybody's happy."

He mentally excluded Sir Jasper Undine from that general benevolence, but decided not to bring up that issue. He could see that Lee Carozza was getting set to resume his inquisition, and he was instinctively disinclined to remain available for it. He finished his drink and stood up briskly.

"Well, it was nice meeting all of you, but I must be going. Maybe I'll see you around."

Because Undine had turned to the right when he left, Simon turned the other way, to obviate any risk of running into them again and seeming to have followed. In the direction thus imposed on him, opening off a narrow and unpromising alley, was the surprisingly atmospheric and attractive patio of the Auberge des Maures, which it was no hardship to settle for. He found a table in a quiet corner; and presently over a splendid bouillabaisse and a bottle of cool rosé he found himself inevitably considering the phenomenon of Sir Jasper Undine.

It was a frustrating kind of review, because in spite of Undine's resplendent qualifications as a person on whom something unpleasant ought to be inflicted, the appropriate form of visitation was not at all easy to determine.

A simple extermination was naturally the most complete and tempting prescription, but might have seemed a bit drastic to a jury of tender hearts.

At the other end of the scale, a financial penalty, levied by such straightforward means as burglary, was not likely to be practically productive. Sir Jasper, for all his ostentation, would not be packing a load of jewels like his female equivalent would have; and in a rented villa he would not have any other personal treasures. Nor was there much chance of finding a lot of cash on the premises or on Sir Jasper's person. Wilbert had paid for the drinks from a modest wallet and entered the amount in his notebook: it was evident that among his various duties was that of personal paymaster, and he was the prim and prudent type who would be certain to keep most of the funds in the form of traveler's checks.

The only possibility in between would be one of those elaborately plotted and engineered swindles which delighted the Saint's artistic soul, but for which none of the elements of the situation seemed to offer a readymade springboard.

It was quite a problem for a buccaneer with a proper sense of responsibility to his life's mission, and Simon Templar was not much closer to a solution when he walked back to his temporary home at what for St Tropez was a comparatively rectangular hour of the night, having decided that some new factor might have to be added before an inspiration would get off the ground.

He was at the entrance when the door of one of the parked cars in the driveway opened, and quick footsteps sounded behind him, and a woman said: "Pardon, Monsieur Templar—"

The voice was halfway familiar, enough to make him turn unguardedly before he fully recognized it, and then he also recognized Dominique Rousse and it was too late.

She smiled.

"So my husband was right," she said. "You are le Saint."

"He wins the bet," Simon said resignedly. "Is he here?"

"No. He is at the Casino. He will be there until dawn. For him, gambling is a passion. I told him I had a headache and could not stand any more. Do you have an aspirin?"

The Saint contemplated her amiably for a profound moment.

"I'll see if I can find one."

He took her up in the self-service elevator, sat her down in the living room, and went foraging. He came back with Old Curio, ice cubes, water, and two tablets which he punctiliously placed beside the glass he mixed for her.

She laughed with a sudden abandon which shattered the unreal sultriness of her face.

"You are wonderful."

"I only try to oblige."

"You make this much easier for me. You know that I want something more—"

"More difficult?"

"Much more. I want to be Messalina in this film of Undine. It is the most important thing in the world."

His eyebrows slanted banteringly.

"That's a considerable statement."

"It is important for me. I am a star in Europe, yes. In England and America they have heard of me — they have seen pictures in special theaters, with subtitles or with another voice speaking for me — but I am not a star. To become a star internationally, to be paid the biggest money, I must be seen in a great picture made in English. All of us have to do this, like Lollobrigida and Loren and Bardot. Undine will make that kind of picture."

Simon swirled the amber liquid in his glass gently around the floes.

"You know I just met him for the first time. What makes you think I can influence him?"

"Perhaps you can influence Maureen Herald to look for another job."

"I'm quite sure she wouldn't listen to me. And why should she?"

"I must tell you something," she said with restrained vehemence. "I already have a contract to play Messalina. It was not spoken of this evening because it is still a secret between Undine and me. But I made him sign it before I would pay the price that he wanted." She stated it with such brutal directness that the Saint blinked. "He cannot get out of that. But if he is thinking of cheating by having another part made just as big, or bigger, I would like to see him killed."

"And have no picture at all?"

"There would still be a picture. The contract is with his company. They already have much money invested. The company would go on, but the producer would not have Undine telling him how he must change the script." She stood up, and came close. "If you can do nothing else, kill Undine for me."

He stared at her. Her arms went up, and her hands linked behind his neck, her eyes half closed and her mouth half open.

"I would be very grateful," she said.

"I'm sure you would," he said as lightly as possible. "And if the flics didn't pin it on me, your husband would only shoot me and get acquitted."

"Who would tell him? It is for his good, too, and what he does not know will not hurt him, any more than what I had to do before with Undine."

Simon realized, almost against credibility, that she was perfectly sober and completely serious. It was one of the most stunning revelations of total amorality that even he had ever encountered — and ethical revulsion made it no easier to forget that it came with the bait of a face and body that might have bothered even St Anthony.

He let his head be drawn down until their lips met and clung; and then as he responded more experimentally she drew back.

"You will do it?"

The Saint had reached an age when it seemed only common sense to avoid gratuitously tangling with the kind of woman which hell hath no fury like, but he never lied if he could avoid it.

"I'll think about it," he said truthfully.

"Do not think too long," she said. "You would do it cleverly; but another person could also do it, not so cleverly, but to be acquitted. Only then I would not owe you anything."

"You aren't offering a down payment?" he said with a shade of mockery.

"No. But I am not like Undine. I would not cheat in that way."

She looked searchingly into his eyes for some seconds longer, but the pouting mask of her beauty gave no hint of whatever she thought she found. Then abruptly she turned and walked to the door. Before he could be quite sure of her intention, she had opened it without a pause and gone out; it closed behind her, and the click of her heels went away uninterruptedly down the stone hall and ended in the metallic rattle of the elevator gate.

The Saint took a long slow breath and passed the back of a hand across his forehead.

Then he picked up his glass again and emptied it.

He knew then that his strange destiny was running true to form, and that all the apparently random and pointless incidents of the past thirty-six hours, which have been recorded here as casually as they happened, could only be building towards the kind of eruptive climax in which he was always getting involved. But now he could go to sleep peacefully, secure in the certainty that something else would have to happen and that this would quite possibly show him what he had to do.

But he never dreamed how bizarre the denouement was to be.

He made his own breakfast of eggs and instant coffee the next morning, and after that it seemed not too early to call Maureen Herald. He was prepared to have been told that there was a Do Not Disturb on her telephone, but instead the hotel operator reported eventually: "Elle ne répond pas." He was surprised enough to have it repeated, making sure there was no mistake.

He had his call transferred to the concierge, and pressed the question of when she had gone out. He was told about nine o'clock, and was happy to be ashamed of his trend of thought.

He would have to be patient a while longer, then, for the next development.

He drove to the section of the Pampelonne beach which they call "Tahiti", and walked along the sand far enough to get away from the densest crowd, which naturally clustered near the end of the road. Peeled down to his trunks, he stretched himself out to enjoy the sun and the scene with the timeless tranquillity of a lizard.

It seemed only a matter of minutes before the purple and orange Chris-Craft came around the point on his left and cruised slowly across the bay, just as it had done the day before. The same grotesque monster with blue-lensed eyes and giant cigar, clad in the same horrible combination of fluorescent green and crimson and yellow, sat up on the side and steered it in the same negligent manner, scanning the shore; only this time it was alone. The servile Wilbert had apparently been left to some other chore.

From time to time Undine's cigar waved back in response to a wave from some would-be playmate on the beach, but the speedboat purred on without swerving. It looked as if Sir Jasper was not in the mood for company today, or as if his regular wolf-promenade would be satisfied with only one specific quarry which he had not yet flushed.

The speedboat voyaged all the way down to the "Epi-Plage" at the southern end of the strand, where the more fanatical sun-worshippers regularly scandalize the conventional with their uninhibited exposures among the dunes, but even that did not seem to offer its colorific commodore what he was seeking. It turned, and retraced its course until it was almost opposite the Saint, and then suddenly poured on the power and veered out and away with a foaming arrogance that almost swamped two or three small craft which had the temerity to be near the path it had chosen, and disappeared to the northeast around the rocky salient of Cap du Pinet.

Simon glanced at his wrist watch, a habit of reference which was almost a reflex with him, and it showed a quarter to eleven.

He wondered what connection, if any, Undine's disinterest might have had with the outcome of the previous night; but he knew that this speculation was only an idle pastime.

When the heat began to become oppressive he went for a swim, and then he enjoyed the sun all over again. And it was twenty minutes to one before he felt restive — and recognized that the feeling was as much due to a plain gastric announcement of lunch time as to any psychic impatience for new events.

Then he rolled over and saw Maureen Herald coming towards him.

In sunglasses and a chiffon scarf cowled over her head and knotted under her chin in the style of that season, she was like a hundred other girls on the beach except for the distinctively long-lined greyhound figure which her wet bikini clung to like paint — until she was close enough to reveal the classical delicacy of her face.

"Hi," she said.

Simon unwound himself vertically with a delight which surprised himself.

"Hi," he said. "I was wondering where we'd catch up. I called you about half-past nine, but you'd already gone out."

"I had to see Undine. I called you as soon as I could, but your phone didn't answer. I hoped I'd find you here."

"How did it go?"

She met his eyes squarely.

"He signed the contract."

She sat down, and he gave her a cigarette.

"Was it difficult?"

"It nearly was," she said. "You were wonderful to say nothing, the way you did, when I stood you up at the Sénéquier. But later on I was wishing you hadn't been such a good sport. He wasn't so bad at the restaurant, except that it was like being out with a brass band, but after dinner we had to go to his villa."

"Not to see etchings?"

"Not quite. To see if the contract had arrived. It might have come, he sad, if it was sent special delivery. But of course it hadn't." She inhaled deeply. "Then he laid it on the line anyhow — what I'd have to do if he was going to sign. It was as corny as any old melodrama, but he was flying high by that time and he meant it. I was scared stiff."

"But Heaven will protect the working girl. the song says." She gazed out towards the horizon unseeingly, as though she were watching a movie that was being projected on a screen inside her sunglasses, and her voice was a toneless commentary on what she saw replayed.

"The only thing I could think of was just as hysterically corny. I told him about my mother and my brother, and I said: 'That's the only reason I can't say no, but I can't make myself pretend to enjoy it. If you can enjoy it like that, go ahead.' And I lay down limp like a rag doll." She turned to Simon again, and gripped his arm in a sudden gesture that was more like a convulsive release of suppressed tension than anything personal. "And it worked!"

"It licked him?"

"He told me to get out and come back in the morning for the contract. He even let me take his car to go home and come back in."

"So that's where you were when I called."

She nodded.

"Of course I was afraid he'd have changed his mind. But he hadn't. He said if he'd had a sister who would have been ready to do as much for him, he might have felt a lot differently about women. It was a real tear-jerker. But he signed the contract, and that was that. I mailed it to my agent and came looking for you."

"Did he say you could play Messalina?"

"No. But it has to be a big part, for what they're paying. And however it turns out, I'll get the money, and that's the most important thing to me."

The Saint stood up, grinning, and put out a hand to help her to her feet.

"Then we've got something to celebrate. Let's go to the Voile d'Or at St Raphaël and introduce you to Monsieur Saquet's bourride. It's only the best on the whole Coast."

"Yes. I'm starving. You always have the most wonderful ideas."

As they trudged towards the road he asked: "Do you still have Undine's car?"

"No. I was glad to return it. Do you know, it's a Rolls Royce painted exactly like his speedboat, including the big monogram on the side. I took a taxi."

"In that outfit?"

She laughed.

"I'm afraid I'm not quite emancipated enough for that." She opened the plastic zipper bag she carried and took out a roll of cloth not much bigger than his fist, which shook out into a one-piece play-suit of some wrinkle-proof synthetic. In five seconds she was what daytime St Tropez would have considered almost overdressed. "See?"

"What won't they make next," said the Saint admiringly. "So we can head straight for the fish kettle, without any footling about."

Thus it was that they made no stop in St Tropez until mid-afternoon, and had no preliminary intimation of the mystery which was going to climax Sir Jasper Undine's career with its last headlines.

Maureen Herald said she would have to find a travel agency in the town to check on her return flight to London, so the Saint stopped in the parking lot near the Casino and walked with her to the Quai de Suffren. And there they ran into, or more literally were run into by a hustling and vaguely frantic Wilbert.

"Oh, it's you," he said brilliantly, when the fact had registered. "Do you know anything about Sir Jasper?"

"Several things," said the Saint. "And nearly all of them are uncomplimentary. What aspect would you like to hear about?"

"I mean, have you seen him, or anything?"

"I saw him making his usual prowl in the speedboat this morning. But he went off without any passengers. That was about a quarter to eleven. Why, what's the excitement?"

"Hadn't you heard?" spluttered the tycoon's stooge. "Sir Jasper has disappeared!"

Simon raised his eyebrows.

"Theoretically, I'd say that was impossible," he murmured. "He must be easily the most visible man in this hemisphere. He's probably even luminous in the dark."

"But he has! The Chris-Craft was found forty miles out at sea, with nobody in it. I just got a message that a French Navy patrol boat had brought it in."

"You're headed the wrong way," Simon said. "The Navy jetty is on the north side of the port, that-a-way. Let's go and view the salvage."

As they went, Wilbert managed to calm down sufficiently to supply some details.

"He had an engagement for lunch with the manager of one of his Italian subsidiaries who was coming specially from Rome, but he never got back for it. I know it was an important meeting and nothing but an accident would have kept him away. Of course, I was a bit surprised that he'd already taken the boat out alone when I arrived at ten-thirty, he's never done that before—"

"You don't sleep at the villa?"

"No, I'm staying at a hotel in town."

"Did he say anything to the servants?"

"They don't sleep in, either. They come in at two o'clock. Sir Jasper doesn't like anyone in the house at night, except people he might invite. You know. "

The Saint thought he knew, but he avoided catching Maureen's eye.

A Naval rating and a police sergeant were jointly standing guard over Sir Jasper's effulgent sampan when they arrived and Wilbert identified himself. Both representatives of the State promptly produced notebooks and began jabbering at him at once, and Simon had to step in as interpreter. It appeared that the Navy was putting a lien on the boat for the cost of bringing it in, and at the same time considering the possibility of prosecuting the owner for endangering navigation by abandoning it on the high seas, while the Police were convinced that someone should be arrested but were trying to decide who and for what. Simon cheerfully assured them that Wilbert would take full responsibility for everything, and they were finally allowed on board.

In an open runabout of that kind there was not much to examine that could not have been seen from the wharf, but Simon switched on the ignition and pressed the starter buttons one after the other. Each engine turned over vigorously but did not fire, and he saw that the needle of the fuel gauge remained at zero.

"Ran out of gas," he remarked. "Do you suppose he tried to swim back for some?"

"He could only swim a few strokes," Wilbert said, "and the boat was forty miles out!"

"He could have been picked up by another boat," Maureen said.

"Then they'd have brought him home before this," said the Saint. "Or if it was a liner that couldn't just turn around, they'd have a radio, and he'd 've got through to Wilbert right away."

"Suppose he was kidnapped?" Wilbert suggested.

Simon rubbed his chin.

"I guess you can suppose it. But who on earth would pay anything to get him back?"

Any fingerprints that might be found on the boat would be hopelessly confused by all the sailors who must have handled it, but there were no immediately visible traces of the salvage operation, or of any unusual behavior on board. In fact, everything was commendably neat and clean, as Simon pointed out.

"I hosed her down and tidied up myself when we came in yesterday," Wilbert said. "It's one of my jobs."

The Saint frowned thoughtfully.

"I suppose he made a lot of mess with those cigars?"

"Yes — ashes everywhere—" The carroty young man caught his breath, and his Adam's apple bobbed. He looked around the boat in a startled way. "Good heavens! You mean—"

"I don't see any ashes," said the Saint.

Maureen bit her lip.

"This is fascinating," she said. "Just like playing detectives. Listen. Sir Jasper was really quite plastered last night. He must have had an awful hangover this morning. That would account for him not being in the mood to pick any girls up. And if his tummy was upset he probably couldn't stand to light a cigar. Was his cigar alight, Simon?"

"I'm damned if I know," said the Saint. "He didn't come in close enough. And who would 've noticed, anyhow?"

Then there was a new commotion on the dock, and they looked up and saw Lee Carozza and Dominique chattering with the guard detail. There was nothing more worth staying on the Chris-Craft for, and Simon and Maureen climbed back up and joined them, with Wilbert following.

"They told us at the Pinède," Carozza explained. "We were having the siesta, and they woke us up. But it's hard to believe he's been murdered."

Who said he was?" Simon asked.

"That was the rumor. It is not true?"

Wilbert repeated the facts, very precisely, with the addition of what they had observed and discussed in the boat, like a new member of an undergraduate committee making his first report.

"I am not a criminal expert," Carozza said at the end, looking very significantly at the Saint, "but how can it be anything but murder? I knew him, and he was not a man who would take a boat forty miles towards Africa by himself, with no one to admire him. He was taken out by someone who killed him and threw him overboard, and escaped in another boat."

"Why in another boat?" Simon inquired.

"To make a mystery. Like the famous Marie Celeste, the ship from which all the passengers and crew disappeared and left everything in perfect order. This was the work of an artist!"

His wife studied him fixedly.

"You are not often so quick to talk," she said. "Be careful that someone does not think you are describing yourself."

She had not given the Saint more than the most perfunctory recognition at the beginning, and she continued to ignore him as calmly as if they had never had anything but the casual introduction of the previous evening. It was hard even for him to believe in the reality of the tempting pressure of her body and the tantalization of her mouth that he had known in between, or the monstrous bargain that she had offered. Indubitably she was an actress with more intelligence than her detractors gave her credit for; and if only as a tribute to that talent he had to nudge her off a hazardous tack.

"If there's going to be any murder investigation," he said, "we might all have to look to our alibis."

"Lee and I could have nothing to do with it," she said scornfully. "All this morning we were in Nice, at the studio, where I do an interview for the television. And afterward we have lunch with a reporter from France-Soir. And we come back to our hotel, the Pinède, for the siesta. We have no time for anything else."

"Simon and I were together," Maureen said, "from — when was it? — about a quarter to one until we met Mr. Wilbert just now."

"I was at the villa," Wilbert said weakly. "Doing the petty cash accounts, going through letters, making a few phone calls—"

He was suddenly very helpless and bewildered.

"Alors," said the police sergeant, who had been trying to regain command for a long while, "there must now be a proper statement from everyone."

"By all means," said the Saint. "And let me start with a simple debunking of the whole razzmatazz. Undine was drunk last night, as witnessed by Miss Herald and doubtless many restaurateurs and waiters. This morning he had the gueule de bois. He also had an important business meeting to cope with. He went out for a spin in the speedboat to clear his head. And everyone knows he was a crazy boat driver. He made a turn too fast, and in his condition he lost his balance and fell overboard, and the boat went on without him. And let us all think kindly of him when we eat lobsters."

There was a sequel to this rambling anecdote almost a year later, when a production entitled Messalina, in Colossoscope and Kaleidocolor, was world-premiered with all the standard fanfares at the Caracalla auditorium in Rome, Italy, with simultaneous openings in six other towns called Rome in the United States.

Simon Templar, who was by nature attracted to such functions as irresistibly as he would have been drawn to a cholera epidemic, was a notable guest; and one of the first personages that he encountered was a ginger-haired bat-eared apparition upon whom a white tie and tails conferred an appallingly pasteboard dignity.

"I gather that you were able to satisfy the flics about the loose joints in your alibi," Simon greeted him genially.

"Of course, they had to accept it eventually." Wilbert inevitably reddened. "They could hardly get around the various people I'd talked to on the phone, which wouldn't have given me time to get far away from the villa. But it was rather awkward when it came out that Sir Jasper had made me the trustee of his will, and it was so loosely worded that I could do almost anything I liked."

"What did he leave his money to?"

"Most of it to found a motion picture museum, with the provision that one whole section has to be devoted to relics of himself and his productions."

"Modest to the last," murmured the Saint. "Well, you certainly gave him service while he was alive. But what I liked best was the way you cleaned up his boat the last time. If you hadn't been so conscientious, we wouldn't have had the cigar-ash clue."

"That didn't make a lot of difference, did it?"

"It helped, Wilbert. It helped."

Dominique Rousse was posing for photographers while her husband stood a little apart, watching with his usual introspective detachment.

"Good evening, Mr. Thomas," he said ironically, as Simon came towards him. "I suppose you couldn't wait to see how the picture turned out."

"I do feel a sort of personal interest," Simon confessed.

"I think you'll like what I did with Maureen Herald's part. It is big enough to justify her co-starring, without upsetting the balance of the play."

"Or upsetting Dominique, no doubt," said the Saint. "You don't need me to tell you you're a good writer. But you ought to be more careful of your own dialog."

"In what way?"

"You must know that one of the stock routines for a character to trip himself up in a detective story is to talk about a murder before he's been told that there's been one. If that police sergeant had understood English and been on the ball when you dropped that clanger, you might have had to finish your script in the pokey."

One of the photographers recognized the Saint, grabbed him unceremoniously, and dragged him over to Dominique.

With her sullen beauty, and a rope of diamonds twined in her red-blonde hair, and her stupendous figure revealed by a skintight green silk sheath cut low enough to prove to everyone that her world-famous bosom owed nothing to artificial enrichment, it took no effort at all to visualize her as a queen who could have had a pagan mob at her feet, even though she had demonstrated the moral instincts of a cat.

"Pretend to be pointing a gun at her," urged the photographer. "No, that's no good. Put a judo hold on her."

Simon took her by the wrist and twisted her arm gently behind her in such a way that she was pressed against him face to face.

"You could have done this long ago," she said in a whisper that scarcely moved her lips. "I told you I do not break my promise. Why have you not come to claim it?"

He smiled into her eyes.

"Some day I may," he said. "When I can make myself unscrupulous enough."

Finally he was able to rejoin Maureen Herald as another group of photographers tired of her.

"It was nice of you to come all this way to put up with this sort of thing," she said, taking his arm. "But I felt you ought to be here. After all, if you hadn't come up with the explanation of the Undine business, any of us might have been in an awkward spot."

"Somebody certainly owes me something," he admitted, "for helping to hide a murder."

They were moving into the theater, but she stopped to stare at him.

"You mean you've changed your mind since?"

"I always did think it was murder." He got her moving again. "It wasn't just the cigar-ash business, though that started me thinking. When Wilbert let out that Undine never took the boat out alone, I tried to fit that in. Then I remembered the clothes Undine was wearing, and that was the clincher. Undine's taste in color schemes was ghastly, but it wasn't monotonous. Undine wouldn't have just one hideous outfit, he'd 've had dozens, and he'd 've loved to knock your eye out with a different one every day. Therefore the man I saw in the boat on the second day wasn't Undine."

"Then who was it?"

"Somebody wearing his clothes and flourishing his cigar, padded out to his size with a cushion under the windbreaker. Between those huge sunglasses and the goatee, which could even have been his own hair glued on, at the distance the boat stayed out, it was easy to get away with. Hundreds of people would swear it was Undine they'd seen. But Jasper himself was probably in the bottom of the cockpit with the anchor tied to him, waiting to be dumped overboard out of sight off the cape. Then all the murderer had to do was head the boat out to sea, jump out at a safe distance, and swim back."

"But why did you—"

"I wouldn't want anyone to get in trouble for killing Undine. I can't feel he was any loss to the world."

They found their seats at last and settled down.

"Anyway," he said, "I wouldn't have missed your performance for anything."

"It's not much of a part," she said, "but it'll help me. And the money was just like Christmas."

"I'm not talking about the picture," Simon said. "I'm talking about your performance at St Tropez. Only your material wasn't quite good enough. I was having a hard time believing that a bastard like Undine had really been put off by your sob story. And then you were in just a little too much of a hurry to explain why there were no cigar ashes in the boat, when that came up. And then I realized that nobody else had a better motive for making it seem that Undine was still alive that morning. Several people had heard him say that your contract wouldn't arrive until then, and you had to wait to get it and forge his signature. Of course it took plenty of nerve; but I remembered that you'd started out as a nurse, so you wouldn't panic at the idea of handling a dead body, and I knew how well you could swim."

She turned her face to him with a kind of quiet pride.

"I didn't kill him," she said. "But when it came to the point I couldn't go through with what he wanted. I was struggling for my life, and he was like a madman — it meant that much to him, to get even for the time he thought I'd snubbed him in Hollywood. And then he suddenly collapsed. A heart attack. But all the rest is true."

"That makes it all the better," said the Saint.

He held her hand as the lights dimmed and the credit titles began.