“Meaning around the time we picked each other up?”
“If you can’t make it sound any more romantic.” It was true, however. An hour ago they had set eyes on each other for the first time, seated on adjacent stools at the bar of the Golden Galleon, a newly opened place of refreshment in the town of Charlotte Amalie, which is the town of the island of St. Thomas, and it can be stipulated that all eyes were taken with what they saw. She had clear blue eyes and light red-gold hair and a face and figure that any pirate who ever trod those islands would have rather captured than any galleon, and with the same clear blue eyes and bronze swashbuckler’s face the Saint looked every inch as much a pirate as any man ever could have, even in such an imitation galleon as that. So that it had been very easy to strike up the conversation which just lately seemed to have gotten slightly out of hand.
“Okay,” he said. “I know there’s an outfit from Hollywood on location here, shooting footage for an epic entitled Perilous Treasure, in gorgeous Technicolor and colossal Cinemascope.”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“Jack Donohue is the director. He happens to be an old pal of mine. As a matter of fact, he wants me to double for the star in some skin-diving shots, on account of the hired hero is worried about sharks or something. That’s why he let me read the script.”
“How interesting.”
“So if you’re trying to hook me for some gag, darling, for publicity or anything else, I’m the wrong fish.”
“I’m not talking about any movie script, and it’s no gag,” she said. “This is a real treasure.”
Simon blinked. He could see now that she was completely serious.
“From pirates, yes?”
“In a way. It was a Spanish ship, the Santa Cecilia, loaded with gold from Mexico. Blackbeard the pirate got wind of her somehow, and he was waiting for her when she left Puerto Rico. He chased her around these islands and overtook her in the Narrows. Either his gunners hit her in the powder magazine with an unlucky shot, or the Spanish captain decided to sink her rather than be captured. Anyway, she blew up and sank before the pirates could get their hands on any of the loot.”
“You look very young to remember all this so clearly.”
“One of my great-great-etcetera-grandfathers sailed with Blackbeard for a while. He kept a diary, and he drew a chart in it that shows exactly where the Santa Cecilia went down.”
“Didn’t Blackbeard or anyone else try to fish up her cargo before it got barnacles on it?”
“She sank in about eighty feet of water, and they couldn’t swim down that far. They didn’t have any diving apparatus in those days.”
“But since then.”
“The diary was handed down from father to son, and someone was always going to do something about it, but I suppose they got a little more skeptical with each generation, and somehow nobody ever quite got around to it. Until me.”
“And you spill the whole thing to the first stranger you meet in a bar,” Simon remarked pensively.
She shook her head.
“I’m not quite that dumb. I heard you give your name in that last shop you were in, and I followed you.”
“I didn’t see you.”
“I hope not. I was trying on a bathing suit in the back room. But they told me which way you’d gone. The pick-up was entirely mutual. I thought a damsel in distress could trust the Saint.”
Simon nodded, and lighted a cigarette. His astonishment was already little more than a memory. An ordinary man would probably have still been gasping and goggle-eyed, if he were able to believe the girl at all, but to Simon Templar there was nothing too fantastic about a tale of sunken pirate treasure, or that it should be told to him. In fact, the really extraordinary thing was that in all the time he had spent among those islands of the Caribbean which history and fiction had adorned with all the trappings of the Spanish Main, he had waited so long for his first direct contact with such an obvious story.
“What’s your trouble?” he asked.
2
The other ingredients were almost standard for that kind of situation.
April was the last direct descendant of the Mallory who had sailed with Blackbeard. Her father had been shot down in Libya. April grew up and went to business school, after various experiments had risen to be an editorial assistant in a publishing house, where for forty hours a week in the office and uncounted hours at home she wrestled with strictly literary if not always literate adventure. When her mother had died not long ago, and April had found herself not only relieved of the responsibility of a partial dependent but the heiress to a nest egg of almost eight thousand dollars, she had realized that such an opportunity was never likely to knock again, and had decided to take one reckless fling at real adventure before resigning herself to the relatively humdrum alternatives of marriage or career or their combination.
“So here I am,” she said, “with a couple of aqualungs, and a boat that I chartered here, and that old chart. And it’s true, Saint. The wreck’s exactly where it’s supposed to be. I saw it!”
“What did it look like?” Simon asked casually.
“Not a bit like they’d do it in the movies. But I was ready for that. You know, there’d be nothing left of a wooden hull that was sunk in these waters as long ago as that. The marine worms would have eaten it all up. And the iron rusts and gets covered with coral. I’d read all about that in books.”
She could have done that, but at least she wasn’t trying to sell him the description of a picturesque movie-studio wreck, as one sizable category of inventors would have done. He could still swallow the story.
“But you were able to recognize something.”
“The shapes of some guns, and cannon balls, things like that—even with coral growing on them. When you see it yourself, you’ll know.”
“But now,” said the Saint, “there has to be a villain.”
“There is.”
“Name?”
“You may know it. Duncan Rawl.”
Simon did know it. Duncan Rawl was a professional world traveler and self-styled adventurer who had made a very comfortable living out of his own tall tales. He had been almost everywhere and done almost everything, at least according to himself, and although there were certain spoilsports who claimed to know that his familiarity with the far places and his role in the stirring incidents which he recounted had been a lot less rich and glorious than the way he told it, their voices were practically drowned in the acclaim of the largely feminine audience which bought his books and subscribed to his profitable lecture tours.
Simon also recalled other anecdotes about Mr Rawl’s inclination to believe in and enlarge upon his own publicity, which had brought him into several news stories of unquestionable authenticity and somewhat less glamorous implication, which had prompted one sharp-tongued columnist to suggest revising his name to Drunken Brawl…Yes, Mr Rawl had the makings of a most acceptable heavy.
“You’d met him through your job with the publisher,” he said. “So when you decided to shoot your roll on this treasure hunt, you thought he was just the guy to go to for some expert advice.”
“Only I didn’t realize he’d be in quite such a hurry to cut himself in. I suppose I was a bit presumptuous to think I could call on him just because I’d helped to promote a couple of his books in the line of duty. I guess I’d have seen his point if he’d asked for a cash fee, or even a percentage. But I’m sort of stuffy about being told I have to do business in bed.”
“Makes it too hard to concentrate, doesn’t it?” said the Saint sympathetically. “And so you parted.”
“But unfortunately I’d already shown him the chart.”
“And let him make a copy?”
“He didn’t need to. It’s not that complicated. Look.”
She took a folded paper from her purse and spread it out on the bar. It was a piece of thoroughly modern tracing paper, but the outlines on it were quite clear and easy to remember, even to the lo
cation of the X that marked the most important spot.
“This is my copy,” she said. “I took it from the original, and left that in a safe deposit in New York. But Great-great-etcetera-grandfather was a good sailor, or he had a very good eye. If you put this next to a modern chart, you’d almost think that’s what it was made from. The only difference is that the modern chart has a dotted line through the Narrows, here, for the ‘approximate’ boundary between British and American territory, and that line just about goes through the middle of the X. The little island up there, off the tip of Tortola, is called Great Thatch, and it’s British. And the treasure seems to be just halfway between there and St. John, which is ours.”
Simon signed to the bartender to refill their glasses, and glanced once more at the drawing. After that he could have reproduced it himself from memory, as accurately as from a photographic plate. It would not have been an altogether amazing accomplishment, and Duncan Rawl would not have needed to be a genius to duplicate it.
“So you located the wreck,” said the Saint “And then what?”
“I’d been down with a mask and the aqualung for nearly an hour—I’d probably have been down all day if my air hadn’t started to run low. When I came up, there was another launch beside my boat, and it was flying the British flag. Duncan Rawl was running it, and besides his crew he had three native police from Road Town, on Tortola. They claimed we were in British waters and we had no right to be trying to salvage anything there.”
“But it was all right for Rawl to try?”
“He’d set up a British company with a couple of native stooges, and he had a license and everything.”
“So?”
“All I could do was argue that we were on the American side of the line, and try to talk everything to a standstill. I waved the Stars and Stripes and talked fast about Washington and ambassadors and the President. Those British cops are honest fanatics about legality and protocol, even way out here, and I got them worried enough to make them decide that the only safe thing for them was to halt everything until somebody higher up settled the problem. Even Rawl couldn’t persuade them to let him go ahead and dive. I figured the treasure would at least be safe for a while, and I came back here and hired a lawyer.”
“When was that?”
“Just over a week ago.” The Saint relaxed.
“Oh, for a moment I thought it was urgent. Now I see your problem. A decision will be handed down in about forty years, and you’re wondering how your grandchildren will make out.”
“No. It might have been that way, but the American Governor and the British Governor are good friends. The British Governor comes over here to play golf, and the American Governor goes over there to fish. So they got everybody together and decided they ought to be able to settle it without any international complications. The first thing they said was, why didn’t we join forces and split fifty-fifty.”
“Duncan would have liked that, I suppose.”
“But I wouldn’t. Maybe he’s got just as much legal right to anything he can find as I have, but I’m prejudiced.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“So then they said, all right, suppose we agreed to dive on alternate days, and each kept what we brought up.”
“Subject to taxes and other lawful tribute, no doubt.”
“Of course. And if I hadn’t agreed to that, you’d have been right, everything probably would have been tied up for forty years.”
“When does this deal go into effect?”
“On Monday. And Duncan Rawl gets first crack!”
Simon raised his eyebrows.
“How come?”
“Those two Solomons decided that the only impartial way to settle that was to flip a coin for it. And I lost.”
The blue eyes had clouded at last, and there was a gleam of raindrops in them.
“That isn’t necessarily fatal,” he said.
“In clear water, as shallow as that, when we know exactly where the wreck is? In one full day, they could locate and haul up everything that didn’t have to be turned up with dynamite. No, they could take out everything easy in the morning, and dynamite for the hard stuff in the afternoon. What’ll be left on the second day won’t even pay my expenses!”
Simon scowled through a meditative smoke-ring. Her estimate was probably close to the truth. Assuming that there was any such treasure to be salvaged as she had described it, the first party with a free hand for a day should be able to skim all the cream off it.
“Sounds as if we’ll either have to whistle up a gale for Monday,” he said, “or—”
“Or you can still settle for half, April,” Duncan Rawl said.
He loomed up on the other side of the girl, leaning one elbow on the bar. Neither of them had seen him come in. But the Saint knew at once who it was, even before Rawl turned to the bartender and said, “The usual,” and the bartender identified him with an impersonal, “Yes, Mr Rawl.”
There had been unkind critics who said that few Hollywood actors worked as hard at looking romantic as Duncan Rawl. He had the natural advantages of a broad-shouldered six-foot-four-inch frame, and a flashing smile that could light up a handsome willful face, even if there was a certain telltale slackening of the important lines of waist and jaw. But the carefully disordered blond curls with a battered yachting cap perched on the back of them were perhaps a little too consciously photogenic, as was a shirt of sufficiently unusual cut to suggest a theatrical costume rather than a piece of haberdashery, worn unbuttoned almost to the waist as if intentionally to display an antique gold locket hung on a gold necklace chain thick enough to anchor a small boat. At any rate, it could never have been said that he tried self-effacingly to look like any ordinary Joe.
“I’m not greedy,” Rawl said insolently. “I’ll still be satisfied with an equal partnership.”
“Thank you,” said the girl icily. “I don’t want any charity from a crook. And I’m busy, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“Grow up, April. There aren’t any proprietary rights to a treasure. It’s finders keepers. The only reason you heard about this one first, if you’ll stop and think about it, is because one of your ancestors was a criminal. So what have you got to be so righteous about?”
“So long as you’re happy, why don’t you just go away?”
Rawl lounged more solidly against the bar, and picked up the double shot of straight whisky which the bartender had poured. He didn’t look a bit like moving.
Simon slid off his stool and came around on the other side of him.
“You heard what she said,” he remarked pleasantly. “Why don’t you drink that somewhere else?”
Rawl straightened up and measured him with a deliberate eye. Tall and sinewy as the Saint was, Rawl was two inches taller and forty pounds heavier. It was one of those rare occasions when the Saint looked as if he should have had more discretion. Rawl grinned confidently.
“How would you like to get it right in the kisser?”
“I’d love you to try,” said the Saint mildly.
Rawl raised his glass, drank it down to the last few drops, lowered it, and then jolted the dregs straight at the Saint’s face.
Incredibly, the Saint’s face was not there to receive them. It moved aside in an almost instantaneous blur, and the flung liquor only sprinkled a couple of drops on his shoulder as it passed through vacant space.
As another integrated process of the same general movement, Simon’s left fist sank like a depth charge into Rawl’s stomach just at the bottom of his dashing décolletage. Rawl grunted and leaned forward from the middle, but he was still able to launch one vicious swing at the Saint’s head. Only again the head was elusive. The swing connected with nothing but air, and Rawl’s own forward momentum only added a little extra verve to the encounter between his chin and the Saint’s right cross. Duncan Rawl hit the bar jarringly with his back and slid against it for a couple of yards on his way down, taking a few stools with him. His eyes were glazed b
efore he reached the floor, and he lay there very solidly, as if he liked it there and had decided to stay.
3
“Please, sir,” said the bartender courteously, “would you mind leaving now? I’m sure you could handle him again, but it’s bad for business. And usually he breaks bottles.”
“Please,” April Mallory added for herself. “I was just going to ask if you’d take me to dinner.”
“I just like to oblige everyone,” said the Saint.
It hadn’t exactly been a brawl to rank with the most Homeric barroom brannigans in which Simon had ever participated, but it had clinched his acceptance of April’s story, and assured him that he would have no sentiment to waste on Duncan Rawl. Therefore he had no regrets about it. Besides, a flurry of that kind was practically an obligatory incident at a certain stage of any good pirate-treasure story, and the Saint was rather a traditionalist about his stories. He liked to feel that all the time-honored trimmings were in their proper place. It encouraged a kind of light-hearted certainty that virtue, which of course he represented, would be triumphant in the end.
In this case, however, the odds against the conventionally satisfying outcome looked more forbidding as he learned more about them.
He took April to dinner at Bluebeard’s Castle, where he was staying, because he had decided the first time he saw it that the view from the hillside terrace of the hotel over the landlocked harbor and the town of Charlotte Amalie could only be enjoyed to the full in the right kind of company, and the Saint also liked a seasoning of romance with his stories, which was another ancient and delightful tradition that he had no desire to violate. But almost two hours later, while they were enjoying the view to the full over coffee and cigarettes and Benedictine, he had to admit that the rest of what he had learned seemed to have closed up possible loopholes rather than opened any.
“My captain’s been ordered not to take me anywhere near the Narrows before Monday, and he’s too scared of losing his license to play games. Rawl’s crew is under the same orders from the Governor of the British islands,” she told him. “But I can’t even take you over for a look.”
The Saint on the Spanish Main (The Saint Series) Page 16