The Saint in the Sun

4. NASSAU: The Fast Women

"You're the Saint," said Cynthia Quillen challengingly. "You kill nasty people, don't you?"

"Sometimes," said Simon Templar tolerantly.

Over the years, he had learned to speak tolerantly, on occasion, especially such occasions as being challenged at cocktail parties by beautiful women who had absorbed a little too much festive spirit.

Of course, not all men would have rated Cynthia Quillen as beautiful. She was a blonde who conspicuously refused to conform to the pneumatic cotton-candy type beloved of Hollywood press agents, which looks as if it would melt in your mouth or any other comfortably upholstered place. She had the kind of "good" features that with enough hard wear can become bony, and the other extensions of her nicely proportioned skeleton were also sufficiently short of adipose padding to entitle a fast assessor to call her skinny. Which is one of those misleading fronts that separate the men from the boys. But Simon Templar had survived long enough to have learned that plenty of slender women were kept that way by a nervous hunger that would have scared Don Juan out of his jockstrap.

"All right," she said. "How much would you charge to wash out that nasty sample over in the corner?"

Simon peered as best he could through an intervening hedge of standing guests, towards the indicated corner, where a rather short well-knit man with a chiseled curly head almost absurdly reminiscent of an ancient Greek statue was absorbed in animated chatter with an even more statuesque brunette.

The Saint did not have to be an automobile-racing fan to recognize him, for Godfrey Quillen was one of the most highly publicized drivers of that or the preceding season, a newcomer who was reportedly crowding the pros in their ratings.

"That's no way to talk about your husband," he reproved her patiently.

"I can talk about him any way I like — that phony, conceited, two-timing, chiseling, short-changing, freeboozing—"

"Hush, darling. You are speaking about God."

" 'God' Quillen! You should see the pit crew smirking when they call him that, when he isn't around!. But I don't have to waste a good bullet on him. A good subpoena would hurt him just as much. Only I'd never divorce him either, for somebody else to have. The one I'd like you to kill is the Continental indoor sports model with the slippery clutch, who's warming him up for another qualifying lap. Her name is Teresa Montesino, if you insist on a label on every tombstone."

Simon allowed his somewhat obstructed gaze to transfer itself to the exotic pulse-perturber on whom Godfrey Quillen was exerting his highest-octane charm. This was not an unbearably painful shift. The brunette had all the more obvious attractions that Mrs. Quillen superficially lacked. She had the intense dark eyes and sensual lips that automatically inspire exploratory ideas, and the corporeal structure which it is always fun to explore. A hopeless cynic might have prognosticated that at some middle-aged future she could be just plain fat, but this was an unhappy conclusion that a less cautious soul did not have to envisage prematurely. At a similar age to Cynthia's, still safely under thirty, she offered the overwhelming sort of competition that any wife might reasonably have qualms about.

"You can't shoot him for having good eyesight," said the Saint soothingly.

"I told you, I'd rather keep him. I've been doing it for so long that I guess I've got to like the habit. How do you think he got to be a big racing driver?"

"Not by being good at it?"

"Oh, he's fairly good — for an amateur jockey who hardly knows how to change a spark plug. But General Motors doesn't build racing cars and sponsor teams like the European manufacturers. And if they did, they'd hire professionals who came up the hard way — not glamor boys with a rich wife."

"Are you a rich wife?"

"Loaded." She looked into her glass, and made a grimace. "In more ways than one. But he was what I wanted, and I could afford it, so I let him have fun spending my money. And brother, are those expensive toys! You have no idea what it costs to keep replacing those buggies, besides the care and feeding while they last. Nothing but the best of everything. Oil that Cleopatra should have a facial with, and a new set of tires every—"

"I know something about it. But most of us throw good money away on one silly plaything or another."

"And Godfrey is my bauble-boy. Thanks. I like your subtle touch, Saint. So you'll understand that if I feel like protecting my investment from that high-compression stepmother of Romulus and Remus—"

"Foster mother," Simon corrected her gently. "That is, if you're talking about the famous she-wolf. Well, it seems to me that all you'd have to do is yank the checkbook out from under him."

Cynthia Quillen exchanged her empty glass for a full one from the well-stocked tray of a hospitably roving waiter, with the dexterity of a veteran at such functions.

"You're not being very bright," she said peevishly. "If I did that, he'd sulk for weeks, and so what would that give me? You don't know what a brilliant sulker he is. Why make complications, when the obvious and effective answer is staring you in the face? Just exterminate the menace with the unsealed-beam headlights. I'd pay quite a lot for it."

The Saint permitted himself one of his sometimes well-concealed sighs. This was a hell of a way to start a visit to Nassau, where he had gone only to take in that sub-tropical island's annual Speed Week — perhaps pleasantly leavened by the social festivities that considerately coincided therewith. He had enough friends in the Bahamas to be assured of all the incidental entertainment he wanted; and although the days when he himself had burned up a few tires under a certain cream-and-red Hirondel were now approaching the realms of reminiscence if not legend, he could still feel some of the old vibrations in the blood stream awakened by the smell of Castrol and the roar of beautifully tuned engines and the sight of sleek wheeled monsters crowding each other through dizzying chicanes. But invitations to murder were even farther than those old road-racing days from anything he expected to be actively involved in on that trip.

"You're kidding, of course — I hope," he said, and had an uncomfortable presentiment of her answer before he heard it.

"Try me with a blank check and a good ball-point pen."

He shook his head.

"You can't take it with you, but don't throw it away. If Teresa is what you think, you could buy her off for much less than you could hire me."

Mrs. Quillen scowled with increasing alcoholic frustration at the fresh drink which she had already half finished.

"You won't take me seriously," she complained. "If I have to do it myself, and I swing for it, I hope you'll be sorry. You could 've got me out of that predicament. If you even only made love to her yourself, and took her away from him, which I'm sure you could do easily—"

"Now you're making sense," said the Saint, grasping the straw gratefully. "Why don't you introduce me?"

Before she could say anything else, he had taken her enthusiastically by the arm and was steering her through the throng with a firmness that was within an ounce of the closest that good manners could come to violence.

"Well," Cynthia said, almost breathlessly. "If it isn't my ever-loving husband. And the lovable Miss Montesino. Meet my new friend, Mr. Templar."

"I was hoping I'd meet you, Mr. Templar," Godfrey Quillen said, with an almost professionally fervent handshake and a wide smile of white teeth. "Sometimes I've almost wondered if you were real — my very favorite character!"

"Mine, too," said Teresa Montesino, with a softer and even warmer touch.

"That's wonderful, darling," Cynthia said, looking directly at her. "Because you just won him. Godfrey and I are late already for a dull old dinner party of respectably married couples."

Her spouse consulted his wrist watch with rather elaborate nonchalance.

"Why, so we are, sweetheart. How terribly tedious. Will you excuse us, Teresa? And Mr. Templar—" He insisted on another, even heartier handshake. "Come and see us messing about in the pits tomorrow. You might give us some new ideas. I'd like to talk to you. "

His wife practically dragged him away, amiably protesting. She could do this convincingly, for they were almost the same height, though he had a well-knit breadth that made you think of him as a bigger man when you remembered him alone.

"Well, it was nice knowing him," Simon remarked, following the rest of the exit with his eyes. "Now the next time I meet some other road-racing buffs, I'll really be able to impress them with reminiscences of my great pal Godfrey Quillen."

"Are you so unhappy to be stuck with me?" asked Teresa.

She had enough Mediterranean accent to give her voice a fascinatingly different intonation, but not enough to attract too much attention or to become quickly tiresome.

"By no means," said the Saint, and gave her another thorough inspection at this more convenient range. "I mean, am I stuck? If so, I have a sensational idea. Let's throw a dinner party of our own — for disreputably unmarried couples. And just to be sure we don't insult anybody, let's not invite anyone else."

"I must try not to wonder if you are insulting me, Simon. And if only I did not already have a date—"

"I'm sorry. I should have known that anyone as fabulous as you—"

"I should not have the embarrassment of breaking it," she concluded serenely, as if he had not interrupted. "Will you excuse me for a minute, to telephone?"

That was the beginning of an evening which he would remember for a long time. Not that he was likely to forget the important details of any adventure, but an evening with Teresa Montesino was quite an experience in its own right.

For all the tourist traffic that flows through it, Nassau is a very small town on a very, very small island, so that it has no secret dispensaries of ambrosial food and/or dionysian entertainment known only to a fortunate elite. It takes a very large community to sustain a hideaway so famous that it is a privilege to be permitted to discover it. Simon could offer her nothing that she could not have found for herself by reading a few advertisements, and out of that selection she had already covered plenty of ground in other company. But nothing about the places they went to was new to him either, except what her presence contributed.

They began almost conventionally at a white table under an artistically lighted tree in the patio of Cumberland House, over the ritual turtle pie which is the best-known gastronomic specialty of the islands, and with the equally predictable conversational probings that have to be undergone at such first encounters. He learned that aside from any personal interest in a racing driver, she was one herself.

"But not a very good one yet," she said. "I need a lot more experience, and that is hard for a woman to get. It is a stupid prejudice. You don't need to be a gorilla with great muscles to drive a modern car. All it takes is strong nerves, and a skilful touch, and good judgment. It is one of the few non-intellectual contests where a woman can start equal with a man. Perhaps that is why they make it so hard for us to prove ourselves. My own father discourages me."

"I thought the name sounded familiar." Simon was frowning. "But I couldn't place—"

"A woman. No, you were thinking of him. Enrico Montesino. He could have been one of the greatest. But he rolled over a mountain corner in the Mexico City race, trying to pass someone he thought had sneered at him. And he says I am too reckless and too emotional!"

"Is he here now?"

"Oh, yes. But not for me. Because he is a great mechanic, too, Ferrari still gave him a job when he could not drive again. And from that job, Godfrey hired him away to be his personal chief mechanic. For this his wife insults me, and perhaps I shall kill her."

Simon only blinked once, for by now the line had begun to sound faintly like a refrain.

"All by yourself?" he inquired hopefully.

"Who else would do it for me?"

He studiously evaded a direct entanglement with her witch's eyes; but after a moment she went on as she had done before, as if she would scarcely have heard anything he said anyway: "Besides, it would be most easy for me to do, in the Ladies' Trophy race. If there is an accident, you will be quite right to suspect me — but that is the most you will be able to do."

The Saint devoted himself to maintaining a sangfroid which would have been rated commendable by the sternest British standards.

"I didn't know she was a driver too," he said.

"She isn't. At least, not for any kind of professional racing. But she wants to prove something, and she has learned enough to get through a few qualifying laps. Godfrey is letting her drive his Ace Bristol. He can hardly refuse, since she bought it. She would drive his Ferrari if she could, but it is too big for the class. Another discrimination against women — we can only be trusted with smaller cars. But in my Maserati I shall show her some tricks. Do you know what a real driver can do to an amateur?"

Simon raptly allowed her to embroider some examples, while he made the most of his dinner. He was wise enough at that age not to take the initiative in convulsing his digestion.

Thus the rest of the meal meandered through pleasant trivialities, until over coffee and Benedictine and some background music at the Drake there came the inevitable lull in which he said: "Why do you care enough about Cynthia Quillen to want to knock her off? I gather from some things that have been said that you've got the inside track — if such a horsey metaphor isn't indecent in strictly horse-power circles—"

"To use your language, that is a position I would have to keep jockeying for, which is not dignified. I would rather have him all to myself. So I am only thinking of the kindest way to take him from her."

"Of course, how stupid of me. Not many girls I know would be so sensitive."

"If I merely steal him because I am more attractive," she went on calmly, without any hint of whether she was unconscious of his irony or ignoring it, "Cynthia would never get over the injury to her pride. She would rather die. So, it would be generous of me to let her."

Simon was glad now that he had waited for this until he had nothing in his mouth to choke on.

"And what does Godfrey think about this?"

"I have not asked. As you have seen, he is the charming type who likes a woman to tell him. The right woman, naturally."

"Yes, little mother."

"You should dance with me to this music," she said. So for a while he danced with her, as casually as it could be done with anyone of her build and cooperative zeal. Another unfriendly woman might have commented that she was not very subtle about the way she made it difficult for her partner to be unaware for a moment of her architectural assets; but to a victim with hormones it was not a completely unendurable ordeal. And then there was some other music at the Prince George, not for dancing, where he persuaded her to moderate the Benedictine to B-and-B and tapered himself into Old Curio on the rocks. She seemed to hold her fuel much more phlegmatically than Cynthia, but he wanted to be able to cope with any extra acceleration she might develop.

Thus, after many other bandyings of irrelevancies which this chronicler has no space to quote, Simon only found himself verging back on the fatal subject when he said: "You must get tired of answering this, but why didn't those Roman talent scouts think they could get more dividends from you in a movie than a motor-car?"

"I have had those offers. And perhaps I would be as good as some others who have taken them." She was just brash enough to pull back her shoulders a trifle and take a slightly deeper breath, which on her was a seismic combination. Yet the Saint was far more devastated by the absolute certainty that he detected a downright twinkle in her gaze. "But the competition is much tougher, and I am very lazy. There are a thousand pretty girls who want to be movie stars, but so few who want to drive the Mille Miglia. So, while they scramble for the photographers' attention, the photographers scramble for mine. And while they must submit to many horrible people with influence, I can choose my important people."

"Thank you," said the Saint gravely. "But if Godfrey heard all that I have this evening, do you think his respiration would be running at the same r-p-m?"

"It might be accelerated a lot. But being a gentleman, you will not tell him. And if you did, being the kind of man he is, he would not believe you, and only punch your nose."

"Now I'm feeling miserable too. Where would you like to go next?"

She was in the mood then for some of the more boisterous native entertainment, so he walked her a couple of blocks up Bay Street to the Junkanoo, where it was noisy enough to make any but the most succinct and rudimentary forms of conversation impossible. It was a respite of sorts, if not exactly a soporific; and when she suggested another move after the deafening climax of the floor show that they had walked in on, he would have hated to be called for an appraisal of just how grateful he was.

"This is all wonderful for me," he said, with ingenious congeniality. "But I don't have to be needle-eyed and full of reflexes tomorrow."

"I know, you think I should go home. Very well, take me."

It would have been only another fairly short walk, and pleasant in the mild freshness of the night, but the little car he had rented was even closer, and he put her in and drove her up to the Royal Victoria, where she was quartered. "I think that is the word," she said. "The invited drivers are all guests of the meeting, and they deal us to the hotels like a pack of cards."

"A lot of people like it here," he said. "Personally, when I come to Nassau, I'm not looking for a sterling-area Miami Beach."

"Yes, it is a different atmosphere. But if one could choose whom to be near—"

"One might ask for trouble. Would you be really happy if the Quillens were here too?"

"They are at the Country Club."

"Are they? So am I. Now when I see you there, I'll have to wonder what brought you."

She looked up, through the car window on her side, at the four tiers of deep Colonial verandahs overlooking the driveway where he had stopped.

"My room is that corner one, on the second balcony."

"I'll wave to you, Juliet."

She turned closer to him, one arm partly on the back of the seat and partly on his shoulder, her eyes big and darkly luminous in the distant light from the entrance.

"Could you not be even a little interested in getting rid of Cynthia for me?" she asked. "You must be so clever at such things, you would not make the mistakes I might make."

"Such as talking so much about it," he said amusedly.

"You think I am drunk? A little, perhaps. But sober enough to know I can deny anything you say I said. But you too can deny anything you like. So, why not be honest?"

Simon reminded himself to remember next time that in alcoholic reaction some steady starters could ride a wild finish. But for that moment he could only fall back on the faintly flippant equanimity developed from some past experience of such challenges.

"All right, darling, what's in it for me? After I've freed Godfrey from his encumbrance, but he's inherited her money, and you've married him—"

"We could console ourselves," she said, "until he had an accident."

There must be extravagances for which plain silence is ineffectual and a guffaw is inadequate. Simon decided that they were close enough to that pinnacle. He said lightly: "This, I must think over."

"Come upstairs and think."

"The management wouldn't like that. And in the morning, you might be sorry too."

She leaned on him even more overwhelmingly, bringing her full relaxed lips within an inch of his mouth. He waited, well aware of the softness that pressed against him. Then she drew back sharply, and slapped his face.

"Thank you, dear," said the Saint, reaching across her to open the other door. "And happy dreams."

She got out of the car. And as she did so, there was one inevitably perfect moment in which she offered a transient target that the most careful posing could never have improved. With the palm of his hand, he gave it an accolade that added an unpremeditated zip to her disembarcation and left her in stinging stupefaction for long enough for him to shut the car door again and get it moving out of range of retribution.

Almost as soon as he turned the next corner he had cooled off. He had a violent aversion to being slapped, and the smack with which he had reciprocated had been uninhibitedly meant to hurt, but he realized that she had some material for self-justification. Any woman who candidly offers all her physical potential to a man, and has as much to offer as Teresa Montesino, and is rejected with even goodnatured urbanity, can be expected to respond rather primitively.

Simon Templar had no virtuous feelings about the rejection. He was quite animal enough to be keenly aware of what she had in stock for the male animal, and he no longer had any lowercase saintly scruples about taking advantage of a grown woman whose natural impulses came more readily to the surface in the glow of certain liquid refreshments. He hadn't for one moment seriously contemplated making love to Teresa for any reward that Cynthia Quillen might have offered, but neither did that mean that he was resolved to fight to the death against letting her drag him into bed. He hadn't expected her to make any such effort, but when it happened he had found himself chilled by an unprecedented caution.

Recalling every one of the pertinent exchanges of their brief acquaintance, the slant of every second word that had been spoken, the Saint admitted to himself that he had been just plain scared. Discretion he could admire, and go along with; but a partnership in deception is another basis. He knew better than most people how many graveyards contain the headstones of men who listened too accommodatingly to the siren song which begins "If only something would happen to. " And Teresa had revealed herself much too acutely conscious of the rules of evidence for a free-wheeling freebooter's peace of mind. Getting into her bedroom might have been delightfully easy; but getting out again, unhooked by any whimsical barbs of her alcoholically precarious mood, might have been another deal altogether, and much more complicated than anything he had envisaged for that excursion.

"I must be getting old," he told himself wryly. And then he wondered how old you had to get before two totally differently attractive women each asked your advice about murdering the other, during the same evening. He thought that life might get really dull when there was no proposition you could afford to turn down and be satisfied with your own estimate of what you had passed up. He could see Teresa's last stunned expression as starkly frozen as a flash photo in his mind's eye, and was still laughing when he fell asleep.

He did not see the Quillens at breakfast in the dining room the next morning, or while he swam and sunned himself on the beach. But they could as well have breakfasted in their room, and immediately afterwards have had mechanical details to concern themselves with at the track before the general public came to watch the vehicles vehicling. Simon did not concern himself unduly with the thought that there might be a fairly fresh cadaver on the premises somewhere, and he was right. Charlie and Brenda Bethell, who had offered him a seat in their box for that afternoon, lunched with him at the Club and drove him out to the track, and among the first people he saw as they came down off the bridge at the end of the grandstand were Cynthia and Godfrey Quillen, both very much alive, even to a degree of visible vigor.

In fact, from their gestures and attitudes, one might have thought at a distance that they were having a heated argument; and as Simon excused himself and strolled along the front of the pits towards them, they greeted him with a simultaneous cordiality which suggested that he might have been a welcome interruption.

"I suppose this is a tactical conference," said the Saint, with smiling tactlessness. "I'm sure that racing pilots don't commit back-seat driving, even by remote control."

"Hah!" Cynthia said tersely. "I was just asking the wizard, here, to stop nagging our boss mechanic about something that went wrong yesterday, as long as he's got to service the car I'm driving today."

"That's why I want to keep him up to the mark, sweetheart," Quillen said. "If he's going to take thirty-two seconds over a routine wheel change—"

"Besides fixing something in the ignition that might have left you waiting to be towed home from the next lap."

"So he says. I don't know. I'm a driver, not an engineer. Anyhow, that was when Moss passed me, and I never had a hope of catching him again."

"That wasn't Enrico's fault. You were the driver, my dear. But now he's sulking again, and he might easily feel mean enough to do something to the Bristol that'd make it crack up this afternoon, with me in it. Everybody knows about these Italian vendettas and the stiletto in your back."

Godfrey Quillen appealed to Simon with a deprecating grin that was a model of husbandly tolerance, effortless savoir faire, and older-boyish charm.

"Please tell her that all Italians aren't members of the Mafia or Sicilian bandits and all that nonsense."

"I've personally known at least five who weren't," Simon said solemnly. "And even if Enrico is a bad one, I'm sure his native chivalry wouldn't let him work off a grudge on you. When Godfrey loses a wheel in the chicane, you might start worrying."

Quillen clapped him heartily and happily on the back.

"Keep it up, pal," he said enthusiastically. "I'm late now for an interview I promised some dame who hooked me the last time I tried to sneak past the press box, but I'll look for you at the bar shortly."

He gave his wife's brow a quick brush of a kiss which she had no chance to freeze off or respond to, and was in full but delightfully definitive retreat before he could be caught in any more dispute.

Cynthia looked at the Saint defensively.

"I said a lot of silly things last night," she stated. "I wish you'd forget them."

"Consider them forgotten."

"Did you have fun?"

"I don't remember," he said, with his blandest smile.

Her eyes flashed with the involuntary exasperation of any woman caught in a trap of logic, but she was game enough to bite off any bid to wriggle out of it.

"All right," she said. "But at least you know what I mean when I tell you I really am scared of Enrico but I can't admit the true reason to Godfrey. You've got to admit it's an impossible situation, with him being the father of — you know who. Suppose they were ganging up to get rid of me?"

"It might be rather uncomfortable," Simon conceded soothingly. "Especially if you were bothered by wondering who thought of it first. Let's see what they're doing to your car now."

The 'pits', which in petroleum-racing parlance are the stables in which mechanical steeds are groomed and babied for their decisive appearance on the track, were literally a figure of speech at this convocation, being completely unexcavated to any unprofessional eye. In effect, they were merely a long row of spaces divided by the pillars that supported the upper level of the 'grandstand' where the reserved boxes flanked the press box and control tower and bar; the competitors who wanted and could afford more amenities than could be stacked on rough shelves between the pillars had station wagons and trucks and trailers of all sizes parked behind their berths. The start-and-finish straight was directly in front, where a procession of small noisy bugs was even then buzzing and blattering past in the last laps of an opening amateur event. She led him just a little way along the line, to a smoothly squat white car that looked momentarily like some sort of carnivorous robot preparing to swallow a human tidbit, which it had already engulfed except for the helplessly dangling legs.

"This is Enrico," Cynthia said.

After a second or two the snack squirmed back out of the gaping jaws of the monster, revealing itself to be a very short slight man with thinning hair and extraordinarily bright black eyes that were a perfect complement to his small birdlike beak of a nose.

"She is all-a ready, signora," he said, with a completely factual detachment. "All-a you got to do is-a drive 'er."

He shut down the hood and carefully wiped his oily fingermarks off the spotless paint. To pull out the rag to do it, he first had to put down the wrench he had been working with, for his left arm hung with an oddly twisted slackness at his side.

"Anyhow," Simon observed, "she must be one of the shiniest cars on the course."

Enrico Montesino's glance flickered over him with the same inscrutable impersonality.

"To me, signore, a car is as beautiful as a woman. More beautiful, sometimes."

"You're too modest," said the Saint easily. "I've met your wife's daughter."

The black hawk's eyes settled for a moment only.

"You too?" Montesino said enigmatically. "Yes, she is-a more beautiful than a car. But-a more crazy too, sometimes. So, I must see she is all-a right for da race."

"Now just a minute," Cynthia protested. "This is going too far. She's racing against me, let me remind you — and I'm paying you!"

"She is-a my daughter, signora. I only want to be sure her car is all right so she will not get 'urt. I can-a do no more for your car. If you drive good enough, you win — Scusi!"

He turned brusquely and walked away, limping a little with the steady rhythm of a man to whom limping has become an integral part of walking; and Cynthia stared after him with her mouth open before she turned to the Saint again.

"You see what I mean?"

"You've got other mechanics, haven't you?"

"Yes, those two working on Godfrey's Ferrari in the next stall."

"You could have them check everything over again."

"And make myself look like a jittery neurotic who shouldn't drive anything faster than a golf cart."

"Well, you are seeing a few bogeys, aren't you?" Simon said reasonably. "So far, my criminological museum hasn't collected any case of a father plotting a homicide to clear a track for his daughter, but I suppose there's a first time for everything."

"I need a drink," Cynthia said.

"That's a great idea. Then when you spin out, I won't have to wonder if it was sabotage."

She glared at him, but before she could formulate a retort the loud speakers above them were rasping an appeal for entrants in the Ladies' Trophy to get ready to move out to the starting line. Simon grinned and said: "I could be wrong, but I don't think you've any more to worry about than the next driver."

He beat his own retreat before she could argue any more against the reassurance.

It was not that he was determined to duck responsibility at any price. Almost any human being can legitimately claim to be a potential murder victim, if you go by the statistical count of seemingly inoffensive people who somehow get murdered every year. The Saint simply didn't think that Cynthia Quillen had more grounds for apprehension than anyone else, merely because she seemed to think more about it.

He could be wrong, as he admitted, but he had no idea how wrong when he apologetically rejoined the Bethells in their box.

"Did you find out who's going to win this 'Powder-puff Derby' as they call it?" Brenda asked.

"It'd be an awful event to have to give tips on," Simon said. "I'd be terrified of someone misunderstanding me if I told them I got it straight from the horse's mouth."

The cars below were already being maneuvered on to their marks, while a waggish track steward from the secure anonymity of the public-address system begged the contestants to hurry it up and remember that they were getting lined up for a race and not getting dolled up for a dance. Simon quickly located Teresa Montesino as the focal point of a jostling circle of photographers, who found her custom-tailored skin-tight jade silk coveralls the perfect counterpoint to an otherwise sexless portrait of a somber green Maserati; and he had to grant that they knew their business almost as well as she did. When Cynthia Quillen's Bristol was manhandled into place with herself in it, they had almost run out of film.

And while Cynthia was getting herself snapped in the final scramble, Teresa was making herself comfortable in her seat and had time to sweep a long slow glance along the upper tier of spectators. Although she could only accidentally have recognized anyone from there, Simon was human enough to wonder how she would react if she saw him. But he figured it was more likely to be Godfrey Quillen that she was looking for, and he glanced casually around himself on the same quest. Almost at once he sighted the driver in a corner of the verandah near the bar at the back of the press box, where he could not have been seen from the track, in his usual kind of animated conversation with a striking auburn-haired woman whose flawless veneer of cosmetics made one think of a New York City model posing in resort clothes — but only for the smartest magazines.

"They certainly are raising a snazzy type of news-hen these days," Simon remarked. "I'll have to find out if that one who's interviewing Quillen would be interested in a few quotes from me."

"She might be," Charlie said mildly, when he had located the subject. "But she isn't what I think you mean by a news-hen. That's Mrs. Santander, one of the richest women on the island."

"Oh. Pardon my ignorance."

"She's an ex-wife of Jose Santander, the Venezuelan oil man."

"Now that's more like type-casting," said the Saint, with an air of flippant relief; but a couple of knife-thin wrinkles remained between his brows as a throbbing crescendo of revving-up engines drew their attention back to the course.

The starter's flag dropped, and with a deafening roar the twelve tidily deployed automobiles surged forward, comfortably spread out three abreast for a bare instant before they broke ranks and crowded into one suicidal bid for position at the first bend. To the naive spectator who has never seen a shop open its doors to the first arrivals at a genuine bargain sale, or been caught on a suburban artery at the rush hour when a light turns green, these first few seconds are the most thrilling in any race of this kind. Even to Simon Templar it was still one of the peak excitements of every event.

Cynthia's white Bristol was off in front. Teresa's dark green Maserati, starting from one of the rear positions, shoved viciously through the pack like a bulldozing footballer, shouldering less ruthless drivers aside to left and right with an unswerving callousness which is the only ultimate factor in these jams. She was still only a close fourth at the turn, but the Saint thought she came out of it perceptibly faster than the two cars ahead of her as they flashed into the next short stretch and temporarily disappeared from view.

The track at that time was not laid out with much regard for the audience. Superimposed on the existing runways of Oakes Field, the former airport of Nassau, and making the most possible use of the already paved surfaces, it meandered off into backwaters previously known only to aviators, with little regard for the perspective of the cash customers. The most obvious thrills which the public comes to see in this kind of racing, of course, are on the corners; but practically none of these were clearly visible from the expensive boxes or the general admission stands, or accessible to either class of client. For most of the winding five-mile course, between their dashes through the short spectator stretches, the cars could be followed only in occasional tantalizing glimpses as they whizzed through the two or three fairly distant sections of which the terrain gave an unobstructed vista. This made it pleasantly painless to chat about other things or patronize the bar, without fear of missing too much of the race. On previous days, Simon had found this a fairly agreeable consolation for the inferior visibility; but this time he felt himself nagged by a faint far-down uneasiness, something like a tiny splinter might set up as it worked down into a calloused palm. He strained his eyes for the first cars to come out of the "chicane", two consecutive sharp turns that were at a bad head-on viewing angle from the club stand, and saw the white Bristol still leading, then another car, then another, dark green one which had to be Teresa's, the only one of that color in the competition. She had already picked up one notch, through what he knew was some tricky territory.

"Pete won his heat in the Island Race," Brenda mentioned. "They finished just after we got here, while you were talking to the Quillens. They must have changed the starting time — we were supposed to be here for it. Don't tell him you didn't see that 'Saint' stick figure of yours on his bonnet — he only put it on for your benefit."

"Oh, hell," said the Saint contritely. "That's the last thing I would have missed. Where is he?"

"He just came up from the pits. He's in that box down there with Betty."

Peter Bethell was one of Charlie's brothers, and Betty was his wife. In another moment he was with them, still trying to wipe off the mask of track grime outside the stencil of his goggles.

"You shouldn't have done it," said the Saint. "That extra load of paint on my insignia might have cost you a track record."

"It was lighter than paint," Peter said boisterously. "We just had some masking tape left over when we got through putting on the numbers, and didn't know what else to do with it. Thought it might give you a laugh. And perhaps it was lucky for me. It may have been what scared off the ruddy saboteur who was going around messing up all the cars last night."

"The which?" Simon asked sharply.

"Some silly bugger who must 've decided the races weren't exciting enough, so he was trying to arrange a few accidents. The night watchman was just taking a little nap, of course, but he finally woke up and heard this ghoul clanking about in the pits, and yelled at him. You know, Who dat?' — as if the fellow was going to be fool enough to give his name and address. So the chap ran off, very fast, and the watchman couldn't catch him. Anyhow, that's what he says. I expect he was so frightened himself he was running sideways."

"I hadn't heard about that," Charlie said.

"The watchman thought it was just somebody out stealing, and he knew from the way he ran off that he couldn't be carrying much weight. But when some of the crews came out this morning they started finding wheel hubs loose, and oil drain plugs unscrewed, and nails in the tires — a lot of that nonsense. After a while it dawned on them that it wasn't a lot of accidental coincidences, and they started making inquiries."

The Saint had been so fascinated that he realized he had missed the one other possible glimpse of the lady drivers before they would be passing the stands again. A thunder of exhausts was even then heralding the end of the first lap; and he turned to see the Bristol come first under the Esso bridge, a Jaguar after it, and then the smoky green Maserati gaining ground like a thunderbolt, overhauling the Jag by the end of the straight and coming out of the Prince George Corner with a measurable length's lead before they vanished again in pursuit of Cynthia's white steed behind the next topographical obstruction.

"It's between Quillen's wife and the Roman figure — if they don't kill each other," Peter said, with professional-sounding off-handedness.

"Couldn't the watchman give any description of this saboteur?" Simon persisted.

"Nothing that's any use. 'A medium small man,' he thinks, but he doesn't know if he was white or black. I know he must 've been pretty stupid, because most of the things he did were bound to be spotted before anybody started driving. But even you couldn't catch anyone with as few clues as that."

There was a leaden feeling in the Saint's stomach, a sort of dull premonition of a premonition that was too essentially shocking to take complete form suddenly.

"Don't bet me, or I might have to go to work," he said mechanically.

"You've done your job, old boy. My buggy wasn't touched. This clot obviously saw your mark on it and got panicked. He knew that if he fooled around with that one, the vengeance of the Saint would land on him."

"What time was this?"

"About four o'clock in the morning. Ouf! I wonder if I'll ever get all this dust out of my mouth."

Simon's eyes shifted towards the back balcony again. The expensively glamorous Mrs. Santander had disappeared, but Godfrey Quillen was still there, finishing a coke from the bottle and paying no immediate attention to anything else.

"Let's see what we can find to rinse it out," Simon suggested.

But he started moving towards the dispensing counter without waiting to see who would go with him. But Quillen saw him at once, and awaited his approach with expansive cordiality.

"Hi-yah, pal! This is the pause that refreshes, isn't it? — letting the back-seat drivers fight it out."

"Well, it's no strain on me," Simon assented amiably. "But I don't have a wife or a girl friend driving right after some creep has been out in the small hours doing funny things to the hardware.

He knew by the switch of Quillen's eyes, without turning, that at least one of the Bethells had come with him, and went on: "I suppose you didn't tell Cynthia about that."

"Of course not. The poor girl was having the jitters badly enough already. Besides, this mysterious character can only have been a bit nutty. As Peter must have told you, the things he did weren't clever enough to be likely to cause any real damage."

"Or else he was being very cunning indeed," said the Saint. "Suppose there was only one particular car he wanted to wreck. No matter how clever he was about gaffing it, there was always a remote chance that an investigation would show that the accident mightn't 've been quite accidental. It's those remote chances that give amateur plotters nightmares. Because the next phase of an inquiry, naturally, would be to ask who could have a motive for wanting that particular car to crash. So that's where our conspirator becomes a small-time genius. He figures that if it's established that some screwball was out monkeying with a whole lot of cars, in various ways, the question of motive will be knocked out before it comes up. It'll just be accepted that this crackpot managed to sabotage one car in a way that unfortunately wasn't discovered in time."

"That's an interesting theory," said Charlie, who had come up on Simon's other side. "But what if the night watchman hadn't been asleep?"

"That wasn't much of a risk," Peter scoffed. "It's ten to one any night watchman would be taking a nap by that time, if he had any sense. Although this one didn't wake up until the prowler knocked over a couple of empty oil drums, or something like that."

"Which," Simon pointed out, "makes the prowler either extremely clumsy, extraordinarily unlucky — or a pretty cool operator. How do you sleep, Godfrey?"

"Me?" Quillen seemed slightly confused. "Like the proverbial top, pal. And spinning a bit, sometimes, especially after a night like last night. Man, those parties were rugged!"

He held his head graphically, and then all the sunny outgoing personality revived again as he said: "And me still waiting for the big race, so I can't even have a hair of the dog. You've done your stuff, haven't you, Peter? And nobody else has to abstain. Step up, gents, and name it. Take advantage of me."

Simon eased up to the bar with the others, and took part in the ordering. But it was one of the toughest exercises in restraint that he had ever undertaken. In his mind an hour-glass was running out, and the last grains were pure explosive.

He swirled a shot of Peter Dawson around its crystal rocks, and said: "How about Cynthia?"

"Who?" Quillen said puzzledly. "Why?"

"How does she sleep?"

"Like a log, pal. Worse than me. Every morning I wonder if she's dead, and I have to try all sorts of things to find out."

"I don't know where your room is, but when I came in last night I tripped over some loose matting on the upstairs verandah, and nearly fell flat on my face. I was sure I'd woken up the whole joint."

"Not us, pal," Quillen said heartily. "It'd take an atomic bomb to do that."

Charlie Bethell said, in his diffident way: "I don't know how serious you meant to be about this prowler, Simon; but if you're right, it mightn't be so funny. Do you have any other ideas?"

" 'A medium-small man'," Peter quoted. "Can't you tell us his name?"

Simon ignored them to look Quillen slowly up and down, and the driver had a sudden inspiration.

"Wait a minute! Could it have been a medium-big woman?"

"It ran away, didn't it, Peter?" Simon said. "Don't tell me that even this local Rip Van Winkle couldn't tell the difference between a man and a woman running."

"I don't know how many women he's chased," Peter said, "but I expect he'd 've noticed."

"So if it was a man—"

"Oh, come now," Quillen protested. "You sound almost ready to buy that bee in Cynthia's bonnet. I know that Italians are hot-blooded, and all that, but I'll stand up for Enrico. Whatever the evidence is against him—"

"I don't know of any," Simon said gently. "I can imagine someone hoping he'd be a suspect, and trying to build that up on the side. An expert mechanic would be a wonderful fall guy for a job like this. But the evidence says that this prowler ran away, and the watchman couldn't catch him. I've seen Enrico walk, and I don't think he can run."

Quillen's teeth gleamed good-humoredly.

"Well, then, what's the answer, Sherlock?"

The Saint's gaze searched the baffling back stretches of the course with aching intensity. He had never felt that so much lost time had to be caught up so fast, but so smoothly. He had taken so long to be convinced that there was anything to be seriously perturbed about, and now he knew that any squandered second might be ticked off in blood. But only the most leisured nonchalance would convince a shrewd adversary that all his last cards were trumps.

"Don't ask me to be too brilliant," he said. "I was out rather late myself — as you may imagine."

"I don't imagine any more than I have to," Quillen said cheerfully. "But Teresa does tend to keep one up a bit."

"However, I did not trip on the matting when I came in."

"Good for you, pal. But don't feel guilty. Cynthia and I wouldn't 've known the difference if you'd knocked over a row of ashcans."

Simon lighted a cigarette.

"But when I did come home, I felt so good, and the moonlight was so fabulous, that I just couldn't go in at once. I had to stay out in the balmy air and soak it up. That's the thing I specially like about the Country Club, as against the other hotels: you've got all those rooms overlooking the beach from which you can get straight out into the gardens, or on to a communal balcony with stairs at each end, and you can come and go as you please without having to pass through a formal lobby or be clocked in and out by any hired busybodies. So I was making the most of this, at about four-thirty this morning, when I saw you sneaking in… pal.

It was one of the most outrageous lies he had ever told in his life, but to his immoral credit he achieved it without a waver of expression. It was Godfrey Quillen whose face flushed and fluctuated through a fatal pause.

"I got restless," Quillen said. "You know, sometimes you get a bit keyed up before a big race. I went outside to smoke a cigarette, so as not to disturb Cynthia—"

"But I thought you slept like a spinning top," said the Saint innocently, "and nothing less than the crack of doom would wake Cynthia. On the other hand, if she does sleep so soundly, you might get away to do almost anything without her knowing. But why go to such lengths for a cigarette? When I saw you, you were just getting out of a car, which you'd just driven in and parked." With the basic fiction safely sold, there was no reason not to clinch it with trimmings. "Did you have to drive far enough away so that she wouldn't hear you strike the match? Were you afraid she'd think you were lighting some Venezuelan oil?"

Quillen's mouth opened and shut, without saying anything. His eyes went from side to side, from Simon to Charlie and to Peter. His face seemed uncertain whether to laugh or bluster, but it did neither; and that damning indecision was as good as a confession that was irrevocably underlined by each lengthening second of silence.

The silence was only relative, against the background of a thousand nondescript voices and noises, above which came the rising drone of more machinery approaching. Looking over Quillen's shoulder, Simon saw a dark green car come around the Esso bend into what they call Sassoon's Straight, which runs a furlong or so behind the box stand and very slightly off parallel to it. Teresa had stolen the lead somewhere in the back reaches. But the white Bristol was still in the running: it came out of the turn next, a couple of lengths behind and swinging a little wide and wild, but gathering itself and pouring on the coal for a screaming pursuit that began eating up the lost ground at an electrifying rate. The Saint's stroboscopic flash of relief at seeing both cars still rolling winked out as the new picture became as clear and steady to his mind as if he had been sitting beside: Cynthia in the cockpit. He could see with clairvoyant vividness her mouth drawn into a gash, her teeth clenched, her eyes blazing, her knuckles white, her right foot flat on the floor. Furious at having been passed, perhaps goaded even more by some professional trick that Teresa might have used to accomplish it, Cynthia Quillen had simply seen red and was determined to even the score regardless of anything she might have been taught about race driving. One basic tenet of which is that there may be more dangerous places in which to lose one's temper than at the helm of a hot pan in a road race, but not much is known about them, because the experimenters who discover them seldom survive to describe them.

Cynthia was recklessly feeding her horses all the gas they needed to overtake the Maserati, and they were doing it at a rate which drew a vague kind of communal shout from the crowd. But to anyone who could make an educated estimate of the ballistic and dynamic factors involved, it was a performance to bring a cold sweat to the palms. For all straights come to an end; and this one ended at the extreme northeast tip of the course with two approximately right-angled turns which reversed it like a broad hairpin to run back into the starting and finishing stretch. At Cynthia's rate of acceleration she could pass Teresa, all right; but in doing it she would build up a velocity that no braking system might be able to cut down again fast enough to navigate the next corner against the immutable drag of centrifugal force. even without any mechanical failure.

"He needn't 've gone to all that trouble," Peter said, as if half hypnotized. "They'll kill each other anyhow."

"We'd better stop the race," Charlie said, with quiet tenseness.

"You talk to the stewards," Simon snapped.

It may have been a somewhat superfluous directive, for Charlie was already turning towards the press box. But the Saint had a chill fear that even that procedure might be too slow — might perhaps be already too late. At this stage in his career he had become a trifle diffident about some of the more flamboyant performances which he once found irresistible. But this was one situation in which what could be literally called a grandstand play seemed to be forced on him.

With an almost instantaneous assessment of the physical and formal obstacles between him and the track via the nearest stairway, he swung his long legs over the nearest balcony rail and dropped an easy ten feet to the ground between some only moderately startled camp followers. With hardly a pause in motion he raced through an empty pit stall and across the open tarmac to the assortment of signal flags in their row of sockets beside the starter's box. He grabbed the red one which means "The race has been stopped", and in his other hand the yellow one which says "Caution", and stepped out into the track, waving them both frantically.

Even so, he was only just in time to get an acknowledging lift of one of Teresa Montesino's green-gloved hands as the Maserati streaked by and he saw its brakes begin to smoke.

But the Bristol did not follow; and as he moved farther out into the fairway, ignoring the frenzied injunctions of the P-A system, his heart sank as he saw a car of a different color swooping down towards the bridge, while in the distance a few tiny figures could be seen running like perturbed ants towards some undiscernible center of fascination behind the far turn.

"The biggest joke of it is," Peter commented later, "that if Cynthia 'd tried to make that turn, at the speed she was going, she'd 've been practically certain to spin out and roll over and probably break her neck. But that loose nut on the steering arm just happened to fall off in the straight, and she already had the brakes on as hard as she could, and when she tried to turn the wheel nothing happened at all, and so she went ploughing right on off the track into a lot of soft sand that stopped her like a feather pillow. Well, almost. Anyway, if Godfrey hadn't been so bloody clever, she'd probably be stone cold dead in de market, instead of just nursing a few bruises."

"That should make him feel a lot better," said the Saint. "What else will he have to worry about?"

"Oh, the stewards and some other people had quite a talk with him," Charlie said impersonally. "It isn't the sort of thing we want a lot of publicity about. He'll be leaving the island on the next plane — but I don't think Cynthia will be with him."

"Or Mrs. Santander either," Brenda put in. "You may think you were awfully discreet, but I bet the story's all over Nassau before midnight."

"You've got to admit he was no piker," Peter mused. "It even shook me a bit when we found the Montesino gal's steering fixed the same way, except that hers was still holding by half a thread. One more rough corner, and she could 've been another wreck. The kind of sabotage that even a first-class mechanic mightn't spot — and him pretending he didn't know one end of an engine from the other. If it hadn't been for this suspicious Templar character, he might 've got rid of all his problems in one happy afternoon."

"Poor Simon," Betty Bethell said. "Now you'll be hounded to death by grateful women."

The Saint grinned untroubledly, and waved a languid hand at a white-coated waiter who was conveniently headed in their direction across the Country Club lounge.

"Let's have another round of that Old Curio," he said.

"Yes, Mr. Templar," said the man. "Right away, sir. But I was comin' to tell you you're wanted on the phone, sir. Some lady callin', sir."