The Saint on the Spanish Main

1

“One of these days,” said Simon Templar lazily, “when I decide to become Dictator of the Universe, I shall issue a law for the protection of men’s names. This modern fad of giving them to girls has got to be stopped somewhere. It was bad enough when women broke out in a rash of semi-masculine diminutives, occasionally with and just as often without some connection with the monickers they got baptized with, of which I have known for instance Bobbie, Billie, Jo, Charlie, Marty, Jackie, Jerry, Freddie, Tommy, Dickie, Stevie, Teddy, Tony—”

“Braggart,” said Tristan Brown.

“After which,” Simon continued inexorably, “I have seen the movie marquees blossom with actresses calling themselves, with or without baptismal authority, by such traditionally male labels as Toby, Dale, Gene, Jeff, Robin, Gregg, Terry, Alexis, and heaven knows what next. In my own limited acquaintance of females, I can vouch for dolls who were actually christened Franklin, Craig, Cameron, Christopher, and even George.”

“How about the men I’ve known,” Tristan inquired, “who were called Jess, Evelyn, and Shirley?”

“I think a little research would show that they had the prior claim. Only they lost it sooner. Like that guy who keeps on writing about me. He’s always getting circulars from mail-order lingerie merchants addressed to Miss Leslie Charteris. It’s getting so that about the only name you could give your son today, with reasonable certainty that no woman would be wearing it tomorrow, would be something like Gladys.”

“I think Tristan is a nice name,” she said tartly. “So did my father. Brown is dull enough for a surname, so he tried to Liven it up. I like it.”

Simon squeezed the car past a crawling truck top-heavy with sugar cane.

“I’m the old-fashioned type,” he said gloomily. “I think girls should have girls’ names. If you ever suffered through the opera, you’d remember that Tristan was a man.”

“What does the name of Morgan make you think of?” she asked.

“J. P. Morgan. A big business man. Or before him, Sir Henry Morgan — another very male go-getter, in his way.”

“But in the same legend that Tristan came from, wasn’t Morgan le Fay a woman?”

Just for a moment Simon was stopped.

“Well, as I recall it, she was the queen of the fairies,” he said, and the girl had to laugh.

It was merely an idle conversation to lighten the drive from San Juan up into the mountains of Puerto Rico, and the Saint had no idea at the time of the significance that the thought behind it would have in his always unpredictable odyssey.

Tristan Brown had entered his life during his first morning on the island, on a tour of the historic fortress of El Morro, which dominates the narrow entrance of the spacious harbor which Christopher Columbus discovered, and whence later Ponce de León, then Governor of the colony, sailed on his famous quest for the Fountain of Youth which took him only to Florida and his death. And because she was very noticeably feminine, in spite of the name which he had yet to find out, with urchin-cut mahogany hair and eager brown eyes and a figure that molded exactly the right curves into a thin cotton dress, and in fact would have been an exciting person to see even in a much less nondescript crowd, Simon automatically maneuvered himself next to her as the party moved along and thoughtfully contrived to stay there.

The guide was explaining with the aid of a map how Puerto Rico’s strategic position had once made it the natural rendezvous for the Spanish treasure convoys that fanned out on their golden quests all up and down the coasts of Central and South America, and how for the same reason it was coveted by the privateers who cruised the Caribbean to loot the looters on their homeward voyage, and she saw the Saint and could not help thinking how much like the idealized conception of a pirate he looked, with the trade wind ruffling his dark hair and the sun on his keen tanned face and a half-smile on his strong reckless mouth. Against those battlements the tall swordsman’s grace of his body and the merry insolence of his blue eyes seemed to span the centuries as easily as the weathered stone, so that with the slightest imagined change of costume she could see him as the living prototype of what the heroes of innumerable technicolor movies tried ineffectually to re-create, but with him she had a strange disturbing feeling that the resemblance was real... And she awoke to the awareness that she was still staring at him, and that he knew it.

Farther along, someone asked, “Was this fort ever captured?”

“Not until the Spanish-American War,” said the conductor, with some pride. “And then it was mostly by invitation. The English and the Dutch tried to take it for a couple of hundred years, but they weren’t good enough. In 1595, it even gave the great Sir Francis Drake a licking.”

“And I bet you won’t find that in an English history book,” Simon murmured to the girl.

By that time she had recovered from her confusion.

“Who was it said that histories are always written by the winning side?” she responded easily.

“I don’t know, but it’s probably true. Drake must have been pretty young then, and he did get his own back on the Armada. But he’d be a still bigger man if they didn’t try to make him look like a winner all the time.”

After that, when the tour was over and she asked directions back from the castle, it was easy to offer his personal guiding service, and he walked her by way of the Fortaleza up into the narrow streets of the old town. Then it was time for lunch, and the restaurant El Meson was conveniently nearby.

Over glasses of Dry Sack they exchanged names, and she recognized his at once.

“I just knew it would have to be something like that when I first saw you,” she said, but she declined to explain what she meant.

“To answer the routine question you’re dying to ask,” he said, “I’m not in the midst of any felonious business. I’m just island-hopping and amusing myself.”

“Spending your ill-gotten gains?”

“Maybe.”

“And I’m spending somebody else’s,” she said brightly.

“Does he know about it?”

“Oh, no. He’s dead.” She laughed at the restrained lift of his brows, and said, “Have you heard of the Ogden H. Kiel Foundation?”

“Of course.”

For the benefit of any unlikely person who may not have heard of him, it may be recalled that Mr Ogden H. Kiel was a shining example of free enterprise who, starting away back with a bottle of snake oil and a medicine show, parlayed himself into a patent medicine empire that loaded the drugstore shelves of the nation with an assortment of salves, lotions, potions, physics, and vitamin compounds which, if all their various claims could be believed, should have banished every human ailment from the face of this planet. The fact that this millennium did not supervene must have spurred him to continually more frenzied efforts of distribution, through the media of printed advertising, radio, and television, so that the sale of his nostrums brought him a flood of wealth which not even modern taxes could reduce to a stream of a size that even a lavish liver could spend. Wherefore he had created the Ogden H. Kiel Foundation, dedicated (to do him justice) to giving suffering humanity more substantial forms of relief than gaily colored pills — an institution which, upon probate of his will, found itself with more than eighty million dollars in the kitty and at least another million in royalties accruing every year.

“I work for it,” Tristan Brown said. “For a mere hundred dollars a week, plus my expenses, I help to give away millions.”

“How does one get a job like that?” Simon inquired with interest.

“I happen to be a lawyer. Don’t look indignant — it’s quite legal! The firm of which I’m a very junior member happens to be the trustees of the fund. It takes six of us all our time to get around and find places to leave checks. It isn’t half the life you’d think it would be, but I’m seeing a lot of the world.”

“And you’re here to hand out some of this dough in Puerto Rico?”

“It’s the kind of territory that the Foundation is set up to help, and I’m supposed to find the best channel for one of our grants.”

“How about me? A million dollars would rehabilitate me right out of sight.”

“That’s what I’d be afraid of,” she said dryly.

He sighed.

“It’s prejudices like that,” he said, “that have forced me into my life of crime.”

He introduced her to empanadas, succulent pasties filled with a mixture of ground meat, almonds, raisins, olives, and capers, and mofongo, a fried mash of green plantains mixed with cracklings, garlic, coriander, and cayenne, and she made him talk more about himself. She made it easy for him to do, revealing a most unlawyerlike delight in the motives and methods which had made the Saint almost as mythological a figure as the Robin Hood with whom he was always inevitably compared. And since there was nothing mythical at all about his reaction to any beautiful girl, it must be admitted that he thoroughly enjoyed the realization that her response to him as a person was much warmer than the basic requirements of intellectual research.

But the Saint was also an extraordinarily careful man in some ways, and a pretty girl who claimed to be a qualified attorney and moreover to be entrusted with such a fantastic responsibility as Tristan Brown was a sufficiently unusual phenomenon to draw a delicate screen of caution between his intelligence and his impulses.

Everything she said might be perfectly true. But just as possibly, everything she said might be only the groundwork for some bunko routine that would presently begin to take a familiar shape.

The Saint was no stranger to the technique of the Colossal Lie. He had used it himself, on occasion. If you say you are the sheriff of some unheard-of county in Texas, almost any reasonably suspicious citizen will check up on you. But if you say you are a Governor of the Bank of England, and pick up a telephone and invite anyone to call London and verify it, the average sucker will figure that nobody would dare to tell such a preposterous tale if his bluff could be called so easily, and will not even bother to put it to the test.

Simon permitted himself to keep a pleasantly open mind about Tristan Brown. But he also permitted himself to lead her into telling him that she had graduated from Columbia Law School, and as soon as he was back at his hotel he looked up the address of the Ogden H. Kiel Foundation in a New York directory, and that same afternoon he sent off two telegrams.

While he waited for the replies, however, there was nothing to stop him getting the maximum pleasure out of their acquaintance. He took her to dinner at the Casino, danced and played harmless roulette with her at Jack’s, and was making more plans for the next day as he strolled back with her to their hotel.

“I have to work tomorrow,” she said firmly. “I’m visiting the Guavate prison camp. They’re sending a car for me.”

“Tell ’em you’ll get there on your own,” he said. “Let me rent a car and drive you up. I’ll wait for you, and we can come back by way of El Yunque, which you ought to see.”

That was how he came to be driving her up the narrow winding road out of Caguas, making trivial banter about male and female names.

They turned into the Guavate National Forest and went on twisting upwards, glimpsing simple vacation cabins and rocky streams tumbling between the trees, and then out of the deepest shade and still winding upwards along steep slopes green with banana trees and opening on to vast blue-veiled panoramas of the lower hills, and so at last to a wide open gateway across the road where a guard was negligently taking a light for his cigarette from one of a group of convicts. Beyond, there were plain clean-looking buildings without bars or wire, and many more brown-skinned men in prison denims who worked or loafed and turned to stare at them with uninhibited and amiable curiosity.

“Don’t apologize for not asking me in,” said the Saint. “Something about me is allergic to prisons, even when they have a lovely setting like this. I’ll have lunch in Caguas and come back for you about three.”

And that was how he happened to meet Mr Elmer Quire.

2

Mr Quire was a stout man with a ruddy face and a shock of white hair, a thin beak of a nose, and bright eyes that twinkled behind heavy black spectacle frames, so that he looked rather like an elderly and benevolent owl. He had a slight tic which kept his head nodding almost imperceptibly, a movement which in combination with his bluff paternal manner made him seem ingratiatingly sympathetic and cooperative to anyone who was talking to him. It was an affliction that had proved to be anything but a disadvantage to him in his operations.

He was ready to tell anyone who asked him that he was a retired building contractor from New England, which for all it matters to this chronicle he may quite well have been. He had come to Puerto Rico ten years before, in search of a pleasant climate in which to take his well-earned ease, and had stayed ever since, which made him a relative old-timer in the current new era of the island’s development. He had taken steps to make himself widely acquainted, had taken active part in many charitable enterprises, and was generally reputed to be a pillar of the community, a natural choice for civic committees, and a philanthropist of stature. Exactly how much wealth he had retired with was a matter of conjecture, but it was even less common knowledge that he had been able to increase his assets considerably while he appeared to be devoting all his time to good works.

It could only have been the fine hand of Fate that caused the Saint to be privileged to learn how this could be done on his very first encounter with Mr Elmer Quire.

Mr Quire never dreamed that Fate was stalking him when he saw Simon Templar saunter through the Mallorquina in Caguas, where he was having lunch, and sit down at the next table. He gave the Saint a little more than a casual glance, as people usually did, dismissed him for the moment as an obvious tourist, and returned his attention to the man who sat nervously stirring a cup of coffee beside him.

“That’s the trouble with you people,” Mr Quire said severely. “One tries to help you, to bring you along and teach you to grow up. Everyone knows how hard I’ve worked for all of you. But you’re like so many of the others, Gamma. I gave you a great opportunity, and you messed it up.”

“I did my best, señor,” said the man called Gamma.

He was obviously a native borinqueño of the country, a thin middle-aged man with a lined face and anxious black eyes, and his dark clothes were neat but old and threadbare.

“Of course you say that,” Mr Quire lectured him reproachfully. “A failure always says he did his best. Therefore the failure is not his fault. He won’t admit that he failed because his best wasn’t good enough, which would force him to try harder. That is why he never becomes a success.”

“Is it my fault, señor, if my tomato seeds shoot up only a little bit and then die?”

“Certainly it is. They died because you didn’t put chemicals in the water, as I’ve been trying to explain.”

“When you tell me about this wonderful new way to grow tomatoes in water, without earth, you do not tell me I must put anything in the water.”

Mr Quire became aware intuitively that he had an additional audience in the person of the bronzed tourist with the buccaneer’s face who sat almost at his elbow, but the knowledge made him if possible only more righteous and long-suffering.

“If I told you once, I must have told you twenty times. How would you expect any plant to grow on nothing but water? You’re enough of a farmer to know better than that. It has to have something to feed on. Like the fertilizer you put on the ground. The whole principle of growing vegetables hydroponically is that you put the fertilizer directly into the tanks of water that your plants grow in.”

“You did not tell me, señor,” Gamma said doggedly.

“I told you, but you must have forgotten. Or you just weren’t paying attention. That’s what I mean about how hard it is to do anything for you people. You don’t concentrate. You half learn some-thing, and go off half cocked, and then wonder why it doesn’t work.”

The man sipped his coffee and stirred it again glumly. Mr Quire continued to eat. There was a long silence which Mr Quire quite imperturbably allowed to run its natural course.

“If I put in chemicals now, and new seed,” Gamma said at last, “will the tomatoes grow?”

“Certainly.”

“Then I must do that.”

“Exactly.”

“But,” Gamma said, “I have no money to do it.”

Mr Quire seemed surprised.

“None at all?”

“Señor, you know that the little I had, and all that you lent me, was spent to build the tanks in which the tomatoes would grow. And from my friends I already borrow all that I can to eat.”

“Then how will you go about it?” asked Mr Quire, with fatherly interest.

The man licked his lips.

“I thought, señor, perhaps, if you would lend me a little more...”

Mr Quire’s frown was almost a benediction.

“My dear man, that’s quite impossible! I lent you everything I could spare to help you start this hydroponic business.”

“But I will pay you as soon as the tomatoes grow—”

“But it’ll be weeks, even months, before they’re ready for market. Think of all the time you’ve wasted on that first crop that died. You should have been getting money from them already to meet your first payment to me, which is overdue right now. I’m not a rich man, Gamma. I need that money back. In fact, I must have it at once.”

“I cannot pay you now, señor.”

Mr Quire pursed his lips worriedly.

“That’s really too bad,” he said. “It means I shall have to take your land.”

“You cannot do that!”

“Tut, tut, man. Of course I can. Or are you forgetting again? When you borrowed that money, you signed a paper giving me the right to take your land in full settlement if you were ever behind in your payments. You’re behind now, and I have to get my money back somehow.”

“If you do that, how shall I live?”

“You’ll get a job,” Mr Quire said heartily, “like anyone else. All these new factories are crying for workers, and they train you free. I’ll be glad to give you a recommendation.”

“But my wife, señor—”

“Probably I can get her a job too,” Mr Quire said magnanimously. “Between you, you might easily earn more than you ever could from growing tomatoes.”

“She will have a new baby very soon,” Gamma said in a dull voice. “And already there are four to take care of...”

Mr Quire put a last large piece of pork chop into his mouth, and mopped his plate with a piece of bread.

“Really,” he said, “sometimes I don’t think I’ll ever understand you people. I suppose most of you are Catholics and the rest are just irresponsible. Anyway, you breed like rabbits and then you expect special consideration because you’ve got too many children to support. I’m truly sorry for you, but it isn’t my fault that you’ve got a bigger family than you can afford. You should have thought about that before you had them. Why, if I gave money away to everyone on this island who just happens to be poor, I’d be a pauper myself before dinner.”

Gamma sat with his shoulders hunched, staring haggardly at the table.

Presently he said, with a sort of frightened hesitancy, “You spoke of the new factories, señor. My land is on the main road they are building over to Ponce. Perhaps some company would like to buy it. We could sell it for a good price, and I would pay you back and have something to start over again.”

“I’ll certainly have to try and sell it to somebody,” said Mr Quire. “But it isn’t your land any more. It’s mine, to do what I like with — or will be as soon as I record that paper you signed.”

Gamma raised his eyes slowly, and they glowed with a dark pain and understanding that made them hot pools in his tense tortured face.

“Señor,” he said, “they speak of you as a good man, but now I think you are a devil!”

Mr Elmer Quire sat quite still, but a deep flush crept out of his collar and climbed up into the roots of his hair, mantling his rosy complexion with rich purple as it rose. His bright eyes were no longer twinkling, but became glassy and seemed to protrude. His head still kept up its slight monotonous nodding, but now the movement seemed to acquire a sinister and deliberate emphasis.

At last his voice came, a hoarse choking splutter of incredibly low-pitched violence.

“How dare you. How dare you speak to me like that. You ungrateful wretch. After all I’ve done for you. You made a straightforward business deal, and now because you can’t keep your end of the bargain you justify yourself by insulting me. Next thing, you’ll be going to some damned shyster lawyer and trying to wriggle out of the whole thing. Well, let me tell you something. That paper you signed is legal, and I’ll defend it all the way to the Supreme Court if I have to, if it costs me ten thousand dollars. And let me tell you something else. You go around talking like that, and I’ll have you in jail. There’s a law to stop you saying things like that about me, and you’d better find out about it damn quick. And if I ever hear that you’ve repeated a lie like that, I’ll not only have the police after you, I’ll see that you never get any kind of job as long as you live — or your wife, or your unwashed brats either!” The strangling voice paused and gathered itself for one last burst. “Now get out of my sight before I lose my temper!”

Gamma got to his feet, pale and shaken, but he managed to start to speak.

“It is not right, señor—”

“Get out!” said Mr Quire, in a whisper of such concentrated viciousness that the man turned and stumbled hurriedly away in an almost superstitious panic.

Mr Quire wiped his brow with a snowy handkerchief.

The congestion subsided slowly from his face, and he began to unwrap a cigar.

In spite of the intensity of the paroxysm, his rage had been so muted that in the general chatter and clatter of the restaurant not a word might have been audible at a distance of more than six feet.

But he remembered that the tourist with the pirate’s profile at the next table was within that range, and turned to find a disconcertingly cool gaze resting steadily on him.

“Well, bless my soul,” said Mr Quire with disarming joviality. “I do believe I was getting quite steamed up.”

“I only thought you were going to have a stroke,” said the Saint mildly, and refrained from adding that he had hoped to see it.

Mr Quire lighted his cigar.

“Some of these people would try the patience of a saint,” he remarked unconsciously. “You must have heard some of the conversation, so you may have gotten a rough idea. They’re like overgrown children — full of quick enthusiasms without the stamina to carry them through, hopelessly inefficient on details, and sulky when they upset their own apple carts.”

“Who was your problem child?”

“Pedro Gamma. A nice fellow, but a hopeless bungler. I’m afraid I’ll have to write him off as one of my failures.”

“It seemed to me,” Simon said with no expression, “that he might have been entitled to another chance.”

“You don’t know how many chances I’ve given him already,” Mr Quire said heavily. “It’s the only hobby I’ve got, trying to help these people. You’ve got to expect some disappointments. And you have to know when to take a firm line, even though it’s heartbreaking sometimes.” Mr Quire dismissed the subject with a final shrug of noble resignation. “You’re a visitor here, I take it?”

Simon nodded.

“Sort of.”

“Not in any kind of business?”

“I might get into some,” said the Saint thoughtfully.

The notion had only occurred to him in the last few minutes. Mr Quire took out his wallet, extracted a card, and passed it over.

“If I can be of any help to you, give me a call. I’ve been here for ten years, so I know my way around pretty well. And I’m really interested in anything that’s good for the island.” He stood up. “Please feel free to take me up on that, any time.”

Simon read the name and address, and put the card away carefully, and looked up to see Mr Quire chatting genially with the proprietor at the entrance as he paid his bill. It was obvious that he was a well-known and favored customer. There was a parting gust of cordial amenities as he went out, and through the window Simon watched him climb into a large black Cadillac and drive away.

The Saint finished his own meal presently, and also went to the front counter with his bill.

“Do you know Mr Quire well?” he asked, in conversational Spanish.

“Si, señor. Muy bien.”

“What sort of man is he?”

“A very respected man, señor. He does much good for Puerto Rico.”

“He rather likes to have things his own way, doesn’t he?”

The proprietor raised his shoulders discreetly.

“If he likes someone, he will do anything in the world for him. But I should not like to cross him. He has a strong character.”

“That is one way to describe him,” said the Saint.

3

“It’s a really interesting prison,” said Tristan Brown, as he drove her away. “The men almost seem happy to be there. There’s practically nothing to stop them escaping, as you saw, but when they do, they usually come back by themselves in a few days, and explain that they had to go to a funeral, or attend to some business, or maybe just needed a night out.”

“It’s probably more comfortable than home to a lot of them,” said the Saint. “And most of ’em wouldn’t be habitual criminals. Just nice normal guys who gave way to a natural impulse to stick a knife in somebody who got out of line.”

“The warden is doing quite a job of making them over, anyway. He’s a rare type — a natural philanthropist.”

Simon glanced at her.

“Could he qualify for an Ogden H. Kiel endowment?”

“He might. You see, we don’t just write checks to organized charities, and yet we obviously can’t deal with thousands of individual cases. So in each area we go into, we try to find a good local administrator, give him an allocation, and leave the handling of it to his judgment.”

“Doesn’t that get you besieged by all kinds of phonies who think what a good thing they could make for themselves out of it?”

“It would if they knew what I was doing. But you haven’t read any publicity about my visit, have you? Because I haven’t told anyone except you. For the other people I meet, I’m just a gadabout social worker nosing around.”

“And I still couldn’t qualify?”

It was the perfect cue for her to begin to hint that perhaps he might qualify after all — if, for instance, he could produce a large amount of cash as evidence of his solvency and bona fides. If that was how the routine was to go. But she shook her head.

“I’m sorry. Now please stop making me think you’re only interested in me because of Mr Kiel’s money, and tell me what you’ve been up to.”

“I’ve been studying another type who won’t qualify — even more definitely.”

He gave her a detailed account of his inadvertent eavesdropping on Mr Elmer Quire, and was grateful that she quickly grasped its implications, for the subtlety of Mr Quire was not easy to convey at second hand.

“The restaurant proprietor scored it right in the bull’s eye, whether he knew it or not,” he said at the conclusion. “ ‘He’ll do anything in the world for you if he likes you, but don’t cross him.’ It sounds fine, doesn’t it? A stalwart salty character. But think about it a bit longer, and you find it’s the perfect description of the worst kind of spoiled selfish brat. Sweet as pie if he gets his own way, and a son of a bitch if he doesn’t. The only difference is that Quire is older in years and has some power and dough to back it up. The ‘little tin god’ cliché was coined for him. He’s an arrogant, willful, egotistical chiseler masquerading as a big-hearted Lord Bountiful, a hypocrite so hungry for flattery and so terrified of the truth that any criticism turns him literally blue with rage. I saw it happen. Take it from me, Tristan — when you hear a man spoken about like that, look out. You’re getting the low-down on a bastard.”

“If you go on like that you’re going to turn blue yourself,” she said, and he suddenly grinned apology.

They drove up through the dense tropical rain-jungle, stopped to pick and taste wild strawberries that were brilliantly red and totally flavorless, and went on to the lodge near the summit, where they sat and drank beer on a terrace that looked out over a whole quadrant of the island. It was one of those rare clear days on El Yunque, which is usually wreathed with dripping clouds, and towards the north they could see all the way to the coast and the deep blue of the ocean beyond. And then the daylight was fading and a chill came in the air, and they drove down again and stopped for cocktails at a place where orchids grew in the open, and stayed to eat dinner with the city lights spread out far below them. It made a day to remember.

But as they drove down again into the soft warmth of Santurce, and she was a little sleepy, and they did not have to talk so much, he was thinking again about Elmer Quire, and she knew it telepathically.

She said, “Are you going to do something about that man?”

“I might, one of these days,” he said. “When I can’t have this much fun with you.”

“Then opportunity is just around the corner,” she said. “I’m starting off early tomorrow, to go around the island, to Mayagüez and Ponce. I’m still a working girl. I’ll be gone for a couple of days.”

“What’s wrong with this car?”

“A local judge and his wife are taking me. And I can’t get out of that, because he’s a former classmate of one of my bosses. Besides, I have to maintain some reputation.”

“The first reason was good enough. You didn’t have to add such a dull one.”

She snuggled a little closer.

“In case you think I’m a prude,” she said, “I was planning to invite you to my room for a nightcap anyway.”

When he came down to breakfast the next morning she had already left, but there were two cablegrams in his box.

The first one he opened verified that Tristan Brown was indeed a graduate of Columbia Law School. The second said:

So the improbable story was true, after all, as improbable stories occasionally could be. It made him feel even better.

But it still left him with time on his hands and nothing but the matter of Mr Elmer Quire on his mind — which, for the Saint, was a highly unstable state to be in.

Mr Quire was in the small office he maintained in San Juan, in conference with a vice-president of an Alabama textile mill, when the phone call came.

“I couldn’t think of a better location for your factory,” he was saying. “It’s right outside Caguas, on the new four-lane highway to Ponce. Electricity, water, fine transportation, and plenty of labor to draw on. Used to be a hydroponic tomato farm, but it’s nice level ground and naturally worth a lot more as an industrial site. They’re good hardworking people around there, educated enough to learn fast, and yet they still aren’t demanding the kind of wages you’re used to paying. With the tax exemption you’ll get... Excuse me.”

He picked up the phone.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes... The Mallorquina at Caguas? Yes, of course. I do remember... Certainly... Delighted...Well, I’m going to be busy this afternoon. How about a small libation later?... Fine. Suppose you meet me at the Club Náutico at six o’clock... Not at all, it’ll be a pleasure!”

4

To Mr Quire, the word “pleasure” began to seem a wholly inadequate description of their meeting. After he had listened attentively for some time, he felt like a man who had been personally introduced to Santa Claus.

“Do you mean,” he said, “that the Ogden H. Kiel Foundation would consider handing me, say, a million dollars to disburse here as I saw fit?”

“That would be the idea,” said the Saint. “You see,” he went on, glibly appropriating the speech which Tristan Brown had generously provided for him, “we don’t just write checks to organized charities, and yet we obviously can’t deal with thousands of individual cases. So in each area we go into, we try to find a good local administrator, give him an allocation, and leave the handling of it to his judgment.”

“There is certainly a lot of good to be done here,” said Mr Quire, nodding even more rapidly. “When the sugar market collapsed, the Puerto Ricans didn’t stop breeding. We’ve got the densest population on any American soil, more than six hundred to the square mile, and still growing. Even all the new industry that’s been coming in can’t absorb them. I’m afraid there will always be hardship here. But may I ask, why did you happen to think of me?”

“As soon as I started to make inquiries, I kept hearing your name mentioned as a real local philanthropist.”

“I have tried to do my small best for the island since I settled here,” Mr Quire said modestly. “Being retired from business, it keeps me occupied and helps me to feel I’m not altogether useless.” His bright eyes blinked keenly through his glasses. “Now we come to that, by the way, I don’t think I even know your name — or didn’t I hear it?”

The Saint did not hesitate for an instant.

“Brown,” he said. “Tristan Brown.” With unsurpassable confidence he added, “I know this must seem a rather fantastic situation, but it’s easy for you to check up on. Just send a wire to the Ogden H. Kiel Foundation in New York and ask them about me.”

Mr Quire continued to gaze at him shrewdly.

“Then our meeting the other day wasn’t entirely an accident?”

“No, it was purely coincidence. But when your name came up, I remembered having seen you in action, so to speak.” The Saint frowned. “To be perfectly frank, I’ve been just a little worried about that.”

“In what way, sir?”

“About the last things you said to that man.”

“Gamma?” Mr Quire smiled. The smile ripened gradually into a resonant jolly chuckle, deep in his chest, the chortle of a good guy enjoying a good joke. “My dear fellow! How you must have misunderstood me. But of course you’re new to these parts. Puerto Ricans are Latins, and they’re used to violent expressions. In fact, they don’t understand any other kind. And now and again you have to scold them, just like you would a child, and let them know you mean business. Certainly, I was putting the fear of God into Pedro, because that’s what he needed. But by this time he’s thought it over, and we’ll be able to work something out. Before we’re finished, he’ll be telling everyone I’m his best friend.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” Simon looked relieved. “Because our investigation has to be very thorough. As a matter of fact, one of our requirements is to have the person we are considering submit a list of everyone he has done any kind of business with for the past five years. Then we interview all those people, and naturally, if any one of them gives the impression that he’s had a raw deal, or been taken advantage of in any way, the application is probably dropped right there. Would you be prepared to go along with that?”

Mr Quire rubbed his chin.

“A list like that would take me a little time,” he said. “But, yes, I could let you have one.”

“There’s just one other thing,” said the Saint.

Since he had already stolen so much of Tristan Brown’s material, he saw no reason to waste the rest of the act which he had projected for her in his own skeptical mind and unjustly suspected her of leading up to.

“The late Mr Kiel,” he said, “started off keeping his money in an old sock, and never really got used to the idea of banks. And financial statements, to him, were just a way for clever accountants to make a bankrupt look prosperous. His will expressly forbids us to accept references of that kind. But obviously we have to have some guarantee that the person we’re considering is sufficiently well off not to be tempted by the opportunities we’d be giving him. So we ask him to show us a substantial amount of cash.”

“What sort of amount, Mr Brown?”

“At least twenty thousand dollars. We have to see it in actual currency. Then it’s deposited somewhere — in the applicant’s own name, of course — and has to stay there until our investigation is completed. The object is just to establish that he has that kind of money that he can get along without.”

Mr Quire put his fingertips together. Simon had the impression that if he had been a cat he would have purred.

“Of course I can meet that condition too. But you’re giving me quite a lot to do. When would you want to go into all this?”

“The sooner the better.”

Mr Quire made a rapid calculation. The Saint could visualize every step of it as if he looked into Mr Quire’s mind through a window. So long to set things right with certain people like Pedro Gamma, who might expose embarrassing angles of his philanthropy. So long to get a cable reply from New York — for although Mr Quire’s cupidity might rise to the right bait as quickly as anyone’s, he was not the volatile type that gulps down the Colossal Lie without a test. But with the wire he had himself received from New York warm in his pocket, and the exact wording of it clear in his memory, Simon could envisage that prospect with complete equanimity.

“How about the day after tomorrow?”

“That suits me,” said the Saint. “Why not meet me for lunch at my hotel?”

The hotel he named was not the one where he and Tristan were staying, but the one where he intended to register forthwith under his borrowed name.

“I’ll be there at one,” said Mr Quire. “And I’ll try to bring my deposit.”

“And I hope,” said the Saint cordially, as they shook hands, “that we’ll soon be entrusting you with a lot more than that.”

He took one of his suitcases to the other hotel and checked in, and decided to have dinner and sleep there. The rest of the evening seemed flat and unpromising. He missed Tristan Brown, and wished she had been available for some sort of celebration that would have supplied an outlet for his suppressed exhilaration — even though he knew that her providential absence was as valuable to this stage of the story as his fortunate meeting with her had been to its early development.

He was up very early the next morning, for he had certain errands to do which included another drive to Caguas and, later, the making of airplane reservations. But those things only occupied him until lunch. He drove out for a swim at Luquillo Beach and lay on the smooth sand until sundown, and went back to his original hotel hoping that Tristan would have returned. She still hadn’t come in by eight o’clock, and he went out to dinner and then to the Club 88 where he tried to divert himself with some of the amenable ladies who frequented the bar. But he couldn’t develop even a superficial interest, and gave it up early and went home. Tristan was still away.

The next morning was better. The impatient excitement that the Saint always felt at the approaching climax of a beautifully dovetailed plot, as a mechanical craftsman might be enraptured by the working of an exquisitely contrived machine, was subordinated to the solid purpose of wrapping it up and handing it over to history. He slept late and luxuriously, breakfasted, sunned, swam, shaved, showered, and dressed himself with detailed care and enjoyment, as if to make himself feel that everything behind him was perfect and ready for the crowning touch of perfection to come.

He took care to be waiting in his room at the right hotel for Mr Quire to announce his arrival from the lobby, and came down to the meeting like a buccaneer to the deck of a prize.

It made no difference to him that the basic routine was one of the oldest in the time-honored confidence game. It was the rightness, the aptness, the neatness, and the justice of the situation that made it worthwhile, and he could no more have withheld anything from his performance than an actor with grease paint in his veins could have walked through the part of Hamlet.

“Here is the list you asked for,” said Mr Quire, when they were settled in a corner of the terrace bar with a couple of tall frosted Pimm’s Cups.

Simon scanned through the closely typewritten sheet and observed that the name of Pedro Gamma was on it.

“And here,” said Mr Quire, “is the money.”

He produced a thick bundle of hundred-dollar bills. Simon nonchalantly began to count them.

“I hope you’re not worried about giving this to me,” he murmured.

“Not a bit,” said Mr Quire cheerfully. “To be honest, I did send a wire to New York, as you suggested, and I had a reply from your Mr Tantrum this morning. He gave you a good reference.”

“Just the same,” said the Saint, “I’d rather not be responsible for this much cash. Let’s put it in the hotel safe before anything happens to it.”

They went together to the hotel desk and asked for a deposit envelope. Mr Quire himself put the money in it and sealed it. The Saint took it for a moment to examine the flap and press it down more firmly, and turned very slightly to call the clerk back. In that infinitesimal moment the envelope passed under the open front of his jacket, and a duplicate which he had obtained beforehand and stuffed with a suitable number of rectangles of newspaper took its place and was handed to the clerk.

Mr Quire signed his name in the space provided on the envelope, and received the receipt. Then they went back to their drinks.

“It’s okay for you to keep the receipt,” said the Saint carelessly. “That part is only a formality anyhow. Just so long as we go to get the envelope back together and it hasn’t been touched in the meantime. That way, I can truthfully say that your bond has been on deposit, and I don’t have the responsibility for it.”

“I quite understand,” said Mr Quire. He took a healthy mouthful from his glass, and Simon was almost moved to compassion by the prodigious effort he made to appear unconcerned as he went on, “Er... would you have any idea how long it’s likely to be?”

“Before you get your money back, or before we give you some of ours?”

“Well, both.”

“If I don’t have too much trouble locating the people on your list, I might be able to make my report in a week. As soon as that’s done, I can release your deposit. The board in New York will act pretty promptly on my recommendation. Sometimes I’ve known them to send the first hundred thousand almost by return mail.”

Even if Mr Quire took steps to keep in touch with several of the names on his list, which in his eagerness to see the investigation completed he would very likely do, it would be at least two days before he became seriously perturbed by a gradual realization that nobody he checked with had yet been interviewed, and at least twenty-four hours more before growing uneasiness and busier inquiries made him suspicious enough to risk going back for a peek in the envelope where his deposit was supposedly resting. Simon could therefore figure that he had a minimum of three days, and even longer with a little luck, in which to remove himself to other hunting-grounds and cover his back trail, and in an age of air travel that gave him the whole world to get lost in. But even so, the lunch that he had to sit through was an ordeal, for it was not only an anti-climactic waste of time but it also obliged him to listen for two hours to Mr Quire’s nauseating hypocrisies about the good deeds he planned to do with his Foundation grant when he got it.

It felt more like two months before the Saint was gracefully able to escort Mr Quire through the lobby on his way out.

“Don’t expect to see much of me for a few days,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I noticed that some of the references you gave me were in Ponce and other towns, and I’ve a good mind to pack up and go touring. It’ll give me a chance to see some of the island while I look them up. I’ll probably do that first.”

They strolled through the wide entrance. In the driveway outside, a girl with her back to them was saying goodbye to a couple in a car, a middle-aged man and woman. With an exchange of hand-waves, the car drove off, and she turned. It was Tristan Brown.

“I’ll wait till I hear from you,” said Mr Quire contentedly. “And thanks for the lunch.”

She was hardly more than an arm’s length away, and her momentary surprise at coming face to face with the Saint was changing to a quick smile. The Saint had no idea what his own expression was, but he became aware that Mr Quire was holding out a hand. He took it mechanically.

“It’s been a great pleasure meeting you,” said Mr Quire, with dreadful distinctness. “Au revoir, Mr Brown.”

5

All around the Saint tourists and business men, guests and visitors, doormen and taxi drivers, crisscrossed and prattled and honked about their sundry affairs, but Simon Templar felt as if he was marooned in a crystal sphere of utter stillness and isolation that shut out all sound and bustle as if it were taking place in another parallel dimension. He could see the name hit the girl’s ears like an intangible blow, see her stop dead in her tracks with the smile fading frozenly from her face; he could feel the physical body that had once belonged to him shaking Mr Quire’s hand and muttering some commonplace farewell, and feel her stare resting on him like a searchlight, and through each long-drawn second he waited for her voice to say something, anything, the inevitable words that would lead inevitably into an unpredictable morass of disaster.

But he heard nothing.

He watched Mr Quire cross over to his large black Cadillac, get in, and drive away. And still she had not spoken.

Then he had to look at her again.

She was still standing there, with a bellhop behind her patiently holding a light valise.

“Well,” she said. “Mr Brown.”

“Fancy meeting you,” he said.

“Mr Tristan Brown, of course.”

“Of course,” said the Saint. He eyed her speculatively. “I suppose it wouldn’t even be any use telling you I wasn’t talking to Mr Quire about the Ogden H. Kiel Foundation.”

“None at all. Why perjure yourself, on top of everything else?”

“All right, tell me the rest.”

“I’m only wondering how much bond he put up, to have himself considered as a possible administrator for Puerto Rico.”

“Twenty thousand dollars, to be exact.”

“In a sealed envelope which is now full of waste paper.”

“I can see you’ve read stories.”

“Dozens of them.”

The conversation was definitely lagging.

Simon searched hazily for another approach, and suddenly it was literally thrown at him, in the person of a thin excited threadbare man who erupted from somewhere and practically flung himself on the Saint’s neck. He hugged the Saint with both arms, slapped him on the back, grasped his hands and wrung them, and gargled incoherently for several seconds before he could get a word out.

“Señor Brown! Le buscaba en todos los hoteles — I know I will find you somewhere — I had to tell you—”

He went on in a torrent of yattering Spanish.

Simon listened for a while, and finally was able to subdue him. He turned to the girl.

“Excuse me,” he said. “May I introduce Mr Pedro Gamma? I told you about him once, if you remember. He’s just telling me that Mr Quire introduced him to the vice-president of a stateside textile company who’s looking for a factory site here, and gave Pedro his mortgage back and told him to make the deal on his own and just pay back the loan. So Pedro showed him the place today, and the guy grabbed it.”

“Si, señor. And as you tell me something like this may happen when you come to see me, I ask him what you say it is worth, and he does not bargain at all. We make the escrow already — for fifteen thousand dollars!”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said the Saint. “But I’m busy right now. Why don’t you run along home and tell your wife?”

“Si, señor!” The little man beamed at Tristan. “I understand. Perdone, señora. But I had to tell...”

He scuttled away in radiant confusion.

Simon turned to the girl again.

“You see,” he explained, “I also told Quire that he’d have to give us a list of all his business deals for some years back, and that they’d all be investigated. I figured that would send him rushing around to straighten out some of his old fast shuffles.”

Then he saw that her smile had come back at last.

“We can’t just stand here all afternoon,” she said.

She looked around for the bellhop, but he had long ago put down her bag and gone off to gossip with the doorman. He came running back, but Simon gave him a coin and picked up the valise himself. He led her across the lobby to a secluded corner, and they sat down.

“Now if the defendant may ask a question,” said the Saint, prodding the bag with his toe, “what are you doing here — with this?”

“The people I made that trip with just dropped me off, and I was going to check in.”

“We had a nice cozy hotel. This is a gaudy and ghastly tourist trap, where even the newsstand has its own fancy prices on cigarettes and magazines. Why change?”

She gazed at him levelly.

“Maybe I thought I’d better stay away from someone I was getting to like too much.”

“And now, to top it all, you find you’ve got to decide whether to turn him in to the cops.”

“I don’t know why I’m even hesitating. Except that he seems to manage to do such Saintly things on the side. It’s a hell of a spot for a lawyer to be in.” She rubbed a suddenly tired hand across her eyes. “I’ll have to think...”

“Why don’t you do that?” he suggested. “Take a shower — have a nap — get rested and freshened up, and meet me for cocktails and dinner. Let’s be as sophisticated as that, anyway. Then you can decide whether I sleep in the hoosegow or—”

“But shouldn’t you be, as the phrase goes, on the lam?”

“I’m in no hurry till tomorrow. Quire won’t suspect anything for days, and when he does find out, there’s a good sporting chance that he’ll feel too foolish to squawk. The last thing a guy like that can face is looking ridiculous. I’m not gambling on it, but I’ve got plenty of time.”

“All right,” she said.

She stood up. He picked up her bag again and walked with her towards the desk.

“You’ve taken my name,” she said. “Now what can I register as?”

“How about something nice and feminine,” said the Saint, “like Isolde?”

She looked up at him, so shameless and debonair, so reckless and impudent even with the shadow of prison bars across his path and her own hand empowered to drop the gate on him, a careless corsair with nothing but laughter in his eyes, and her white teeth bit down on her lip.

“Oh, damn you,” she said. “Damn you, damn you!”