The Saint Around the World (3 page)

“There are servants’ quarters where he sleeps, and he still does the gardening. He sort of goes with the place.”

“And you mean to say he hasn’t spread this juicy bit of gossip all over Bermuda?”

“Wait till you meet him!”

That was only a matter of moments. The man shipped his oars as the skiff glided in, and stood up to catch and hold on to a ring bolt set in the concrete of the landing-stage.

“Has there been another call?” Lona Dayne demanded frantically, while he was still steadying the boat alongside.

“No, ma’am.”

“Did you tell me everything they said, on the phone?”

The caretaker looked up at the Saint, through plain gold-rimmed spectacles which combined with a bony severity of jaw and the total hairlessness of his shiny black cranium to give him the air of some kind of African archdeacon.

“That was the message, ma’am,” he answered. “Not to talk to anyone.”

“Simon, this is Bob Inchpenny,” Lona said. “Bob, this is Mr. Templar. I’d already told Mr. Templar everything, before you gave me that message.”

“Oh yes, ma’am.”

The caretaker regarded Simon with even more critical reserve; and the Saint realized how ridiculous the suggestion that this man might be a wellspring of idle gossip must have sounded to anyone who knew him. Simon had seldom encountered a Negro who bore himself with such an austere and almost overpowering dinity.

They got into the dinghy, and the caretaker picked up the oars and began to row stolidly back to the island.

“What did he sound like, this person who telephoned?” Lona asked.

“Sort of muffled, like he was disguising his voice.”

“Couldn’t you guess anything about him?” Simon persisted. “For instance, what nationality would you say he was?”

The colored man pondered this for several strokes, with portentous concentration.

“I’d say he might be an American, sir.”

The Saint turned to Lona.

“You must have heard almost everything about Jolly Roger. Did you ever hear what he sounded like?”

“Not exactly. It must have been pretty ordinary English. If he’d sounded like an American, I’m sure it would’ve been mentioned.”

Simon was still thinking that ever when they reached the island dock. He stepped out and gave her a hand, and let her lead him up the alternations of steps and meandering path that wound up the slope to the house.

The living-room that she took him into was very large, but so cunningly broken up that it seemed to consist entirely of inviting corners. The formal center was an enormous fireplace flanked by a pair of huge but cozy couches; on one side of them was a spacious alcove that contained a sideboard and a modest dining table, and on the other side a bay that was almost completely walled with bookshelves encircling a built-in desk, while yet a third wing suggested relaxed entertainment with a door-sized bar niche and the cabinets and speaker fronts of a hi-fi sound system and the slotted shelves of an impressive library of records. And between all those mural features there was still room for several stretches of full-length drapes, now drawn out in neatly extended folds but promising windows for unlimited sunlight and air in the daytime. It was a room which, in far more than adequate justification of its name, asked to be lived in, offering every adjunct to a kind of timeless tranquillity that could make calenders superfluous.

“Now do you get an idea why we couldn’t resist it?” Lona Dayne said.

He, nodded, conscious of the associations that must have heightened the strain that she was fighting.

“You’ll both be enjoying it again before long,” he said quietly, “if I’m still any good at these games.”

She turned and walked briskly over to the bar.

“How about a whisky and soda?”

“Thanks. But make mine with water.”

“Going back to your last question.” she said, making herself busy with her back turned, and speaking in a resolutely clear and businesslike voice, “I’m certain now that Ivalot always passed as British. You see, one of the things that’s made him so hopelessly hard to trace is that there’s so little real information about him. In the hotels where he stayed, for instance, the only record was the name, Roger Ivalot—address, Bermuda. Only a British subject could have registered like that. If he’d been taken for a foreigner, he’d’ve had to fill out a form with a lot more questions than that, and give a passport number as well. And then we’d either have had more facts to go on, or the police would’ve been leading the hunt for him, for making false declarations.”

“Whereas right now there’s no official interest?”

“I’ve told you, there’s nothing against him except a paternity suit, and that sort of thing doesn’t concern Scotland Yard.”

With a discreet knock, the caretaker entered.

“Will it be all right if I wait in my quarters, ma’am,” he asked respectfully, “until you want me to row Mr. Templar ashore?”

Lona Daybe turned with the Saint’s drink in her hand, nonplussed for an instant; and then Simon took it and said calmly: “That won’t be necessary. I’d much rather take you ashore, Lona, to a hotel, where I think you’d be safer than out here.”

“But this is almost like a castle with a moat around it!”

“And anybody who can row, or even swim, can cross a moat. Unless it’s guarded. So if you’re determined to stay here, which you probably are, to be around for any more messages that come in, I’m going to stay and join the garrison.”

She hesitated barely an instant.

“That would be quite wonderful,” she said frankly, and he admired her for not making any half-hearted protests. “Bob, would you make sure that everything’s ship-shape in the spare room before you go to bed? And thank you for waiting up.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The caretaker withdrew, looking more than ever like an Ethiopian pontiff with a troublesome congregation.

“I’m afraid this shocks him even more than your husband’s disappearing act,” Simon remarked.

“I can’t help that. I’ll be perfectly honest now and admit that I’ve been scared for myself too. But I’d have tried not to tell you if you hadn’t mentioned at first.” She picked up her drink and brought it over to join him. “It’s true, isn’t it—a man in Ivalot’s position might do anything?”

The Saint selected a corner of one of the big settees and let himself down into it.

“That depends on how desperate he is—which means, what he has to feel desperate about. You say nobody’s filed any criminal charge against him. So that would mean that he chose to pull up stakes and vanish completely, leaving all the fleshpots that he seems to have thought were fun, just to duck a common paternity suit. But half of those suits are plain ordinary blackmail, anyway—which Jolly Roger seems to have suspected, since he offered a fairly handsome settlement. From the rest of your account, he doesn’t sound like a guy who’d be unduly concerned about his reputation, at any rate with the blue-nosed set. So if the little mother’s price was too high, why didn’t he just get himself a tough lawyer and fight it?”

“You tell me,” she said. “I’ve been going around it all by myself until my head’s swimming.”

“Well, I’d say it suggests that he had something pretty big to hide. I don’t see him being so scared of the lawsuit; but the lawyers would certainly start investigating his means before they got into court, in order to prove how much he could afford to pay, and I’m inclined to think that’s what scared him. Did anyone ever check on these uranium mines he was supposed to have an interest in?”

“Yes, we did. We contacted every Australian and South African mining company that has anything to do with uranium. None of them had ever heard of him, and his name wasn’t on any of their lists of shareholders. But of course, his shares wouldn’t necessarily have to be in his own name.”

“No. But it’s usually only millionaires and big operators who’re concerned about keeping their holdings hidden. According to Ivalot’s story, as you told it, he wasn’t in either category when he bet his shirt on the atomic future. So why would he have bought stocks then under a phony name?”

“Perhaps even in those days he didn’t want to be investigated.”

“Perhaps. But another thing. He must have done something to earn a living and save up a stake before he invested in uranium. While you were doing your research on him, didn’t you ever turn up anything on that background?”

“I tried to, naturally. But I didn’t find out anything. If anyone asked him, he must have managed to dodge the question.”

“So what this all boils down to,” said the Saint, “is that we don’t have one single solid fact about him before he exploded on London like a bomb, and everything you’ve told me except what he actually did in London before witnesses is probably pure fiction.”

“Except that he did have a lot of money.”

“He spent a good deal of money. But not millions. We don’t know how much he had left when he checked out.”

“And he is in Bermuda.”

“Apparently. Which only leads to another question: why? When things got too hot in London, he took a powder. Nothing happened to the gal who was giving him trouble. But here, it’s your husband who disappears. Why?”

She put her clenched fists to her temples.

“What are you driving at?” she pleaded. “You’re only making it seem more hopeless!”

“I have to do this, Lona,” he said steadily. “It’s the dull part of playing detective. First I have to prune off everything that we don’t actually know at all. It isn’t till we’ve trimmed off all the camouflage and confusion that we’ll get a good look at what’s really left. And raising more questions sometimes leads to more answers. For instance, that last one. The two most likely reasons why our boy hasn’t left Bermuda are either a) that he feels better able to cope with things here, or b) that it’s harder for him to leave. I wouldn’t call those sensational clues, but they might come in handy before we’re through.”

She recovered herself again, with a toss of her blond head something like a dog shaking off water.

“I’m sorry,” she said, smiling very hard. “I must remember, I told you I was tough. What next?”

“Something very important. Do you have a picture of this character?”

“No. That’s what makes it even more impossible.”

“A playboy like that never got his picture taken?”

“Photographers don’t go popping flash bulbs all over the place in England like they do in America, or at least in American films. They’d have to ask his permission, and if he didn’t want any pictures he could get out of it.”

Simon scowled thoughtfully.

“And yet he didn’t care how many people saw him making an exhibition of himself—he did everything to attract attention. Damn it, it doesn’t make sense … Wait a minute, though. Maybe it does. It means he wasn’t afraid of anyone in England recognizing him; but a news photo might go anywhere in the world.”

“Another clue?”

“Could be. But you must have a description of him.”

She screwed up her eyes a little, concentrating.

“Ordinary height—about five feet ten. Medium build, but quite muscular. The girl with the twins said he was in very fine shape for his age—and please don’t say whatever that vulgar expression is getting ready for, Simon, I think I’ve already heard every possible j6ke on that subject. He told her he was fiftythree. But a lot of people thought he looked older, because he was half bald, and the fringe of hair that he had left was very gray, and so was his beard–-“

“Oh, no,” groaned the Saint. “Not a beaver, too?”

“Not a royal growth. The kind that just carries the sideburns on down around the jawbone until they meet and make a tuft on the chin.”

“Which can be grown in two weeks and change the outline of a face completely. And I was just going to ask you what type of face he had.”

“And I was going to tell you it was round. But I see what you mean. Everyone says he was always smiling—the Jolly Roger business, of course—and that would help his face to look round, too.”

“Mouth?”

“Biggish—the smile would help that, I know, don’t tell me. And of course he had a mustache.”

“Of course. He would. Teeth?”

“Good.”

“Nose?”

She moved her hands helplessly.

“Did you ever try to make the average person describe a nose? It wasn’t a great beak and it wasn’t an Irish pug and it wasn’t broken. It was just a nose.”

“Eyes?”

“Brown. Two.”

Simon Templar unrolled and came up on his feet in an ultimate surge of exasperation.

“God burn and blast it,” he erupted, “do you realize that that adds up to practically nothing at all? A middling-sized guy with strictly conventional features—the greatest physical assets any crook could start with. Everything else could be grown or glued on and shaped and/or dyed or worn as an expression, on this foundation you still haven’t described. We don’t even have a clear picture of his age, except that I’ll bet that it’s less than fiftythree. If you want to do a good job of faking, it’s a lot easier to pretend to be older than younger—as I shouldn’t have to tell a woman. But as for all the spinach on this act …”

He groped around for an illustration, and his gaze lit on a framed photograph on the mantelpiece. He targeted it with a dynamically outthrust forefinger.

“Why,” he said, “I could pin the same shrubbery on that guy, and he’d fit your description.”

“That guy,” she said, out of an icy stillness, “happens to be my husband.”

The Saint stood transfixed, his eyes almost glazed with the fascination of the frabjous idea that his runaway train of thought had gone hurtling into. But she never noticed that teetering instant of thunderstruck rigidity, for within the same full second the telephone began to ring.

She started towards it with a tensely even step, but reached it in a rush.

Simon was beside her as she picked it up. With an arm lightly around her, he pressed his ear to the other side of the receiver.

“Hullo,” she said.

He was inappropriately aware of her hair brushing his cheek and her faint perfume in his nostrils, while he listened to the voice which he could hear thinly but quite clearly through the plastic. It had a forced and unmistakably artificial timbre, with a strong nasal twang.