“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!”
THE VIRGIN ISLANDS: THE OLD TREASURE STORY
1
The Virgin Islands are named together as one geographical group, but some of them belong to Great Britain and some to the United States. And thereby hangs this tale.
“You see, the treasure is right in the middle,” April Mallory told the Saint.
“How awkward of it,” murmured Simon Templar.
Christopher Columbus discovered the islands east of Puerto Rico on his second voyage, in 1493, but Spain did nothing about them. The British occupied Tortola in 1666, and enlarged their claim to the islands east of there. The islands of St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. John changed hands several times, but were held longest by the Danes, until Denmark sold them to the United States in 1917.
Now between the island of St. John and the island of Tortola to the northeast of
it runs a strip of water once called, rather pompously, Sir Francis Drake Channel, known to the buccaneers more picturesquely as the Virgin’s Gangway, and shown on modern charts, in a dull modern way, as The Narrows. But today’s comparatively dull name, like many prosaic modern things, is unarguably efficient, at least as a description, for the channel is most certainly very narrow, as such straits go, being in places less than two miles across.
“So what you might call the frontier runs somewhere through there,” April Mallory explained. “But even the maps only show a dotted line which they call ‘approximate.’ Apparently England and America never had a full-dress meeting to decide exactly where to draw it. They got along fine anyway, the English on one island and the Americans on the other, with nothing to squabble about in between. Until now, when it’s a question of whose sea bottom the treasure is on.”
The Saint sipped his Dry Sack.
“That isn’t in the script,” he objected.
“What script?”
“The one Jack Donohue lent me.”
“And who’s he?”
The Saint sighed.
“Someone has to be kidding somebody,” he said. “But I’ll play it straight, if you like.”
“I wish you would.”
“From the very beginning?”
“Please.”
“All right. Columbus named them the Virgin Islands because there seemed to be an awful lot of them.”
“That was in 1493.”
“Christopher was thinking specifically of the legend of St. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins from Britain,” said the Saint reprovingly. “Who were massacred by the Huns somewhere around Cologne in stalwart defense of their virtue.”
“What were they doing there?”
“I believe they’d been on a trip to Rome, among other things. A sort of medieval Girl Scouts’ junket.”
“When was this?”
“Oh, more than a thousand years before Christopher.”
“I don’t suppose England will ever replace them now,” April said. “But you don’t need to go back quite that far. Let’s get more contemporary.”
The Saint on the Spanish Main (The Saint Series) Page 15