“You wouldn’t have to go along,” he said. “Since you showed me the chart, I could go straight to the spot from memory. Why couldn’t I hire another boat and go there tomorrow? By the same token, what’s to stop Rawl doing the same—or anyone else, for that matter?”
“Because the place has been guarded ever since this hassle started. My lawyer got the American Governor to send a Coast Guard cutter to anchor over there to protect my interests, and as soon as it got there a boatload of police from Tortola came out and tied up alongside to watch out for the British claim. The treasure couldn’t be safer until the official hunting season opens at dawn on Monday.”
It was then Saturday night.
“At least we’ve still got about thirty hours to develop an inspiration,” he said finally. “Suppose we adjourn to your hotel now, where I hear they have dancing under the stars, and see if we dream up something there.”
But when he finally left her that night, considerably later, they had still not dreamed up anything that was strictly related to the problem that had brought them together. Not that either of them felt that the time had been altogether wasted…
“Call me when you wake up in the morning,” he said, “and we’ll start again.”
“I can’t,” she said. “I’ve promised to go to Caneel Bay for the day with my attorney and his wife, and they’ve been so sweet to me that I’ve got to do it. Besides, he’s trying to come up with a last-minute inspiration too. But I’ll call you as soon as I get back.”
And that was another conventional obstruction, which at the moment he could have done without.
He was picking up his key at the desk of Bluebeard’s Castle when a large man heaved himself out of an armchair in the lounge with a prodigious yawn.
“What sort of an hour is this to come home?” boomed Jack Donohue. “If I’d had to wait for you much longer they were going to start charging me rent.”
“You’re lucky I got back at all,” said the Saint. “I might have been in hospital, or in jail. Weren’t you worried?”
“I could have been. They told me you’d had a gorgeous red-head to dinner, and then you’d gone off with her somewhere. But I knew she’d get wise to you fairly soon, and throw you out.”
They walked across to Simon’s room with a pitcher of ice, and he produced a bottle of Peter Dawson to go with it.
“Well, Jackson,” he said. “Besides bumming a free nightcap and insulting me, what’s on your mind?”
“Are you going to do that swimming and diving for me on Monday, or not?”
“Can’t you do it yourself?”
“Yes, I could do it, but it would look like hell in the picture. You’ve read the script. It calls for someone who looks svelte, meaning skinny and underfed, like you. And I’ve got to know whether I can count on you, tonight. If not, I’ve got to phone New York and have someone flown down tomorrow.”
Simon moved his head reluctantly, left to right.
“I’m sorry, chum. I’m sort of engaged for Monday.”
“Give the girl such a time tomorrow that she won’t miss you till Tuesday.”
“She’s tied up tomorrow.”
“Then to hell with her. Make her wait for you till Tuesday.”
“We have a shooting schedule for Monday, too, and it’s something I can’t change.”
“What a louse you turned out to be,” Donohue said morosely. “I should have made an actor of you when I met you in Hollywood. Then you’d have been pleading with me for a chance to work, instead of spurning me for some ginger dye job. Aren’t you getting a bit old to be chasing these dizzy dolls?”
The Saint grinned.
“Didn’t you know, Junior? When you get to be my age, you’ll really appreciate them. And they will appreciate you for your sophistication and all the money you’ll have. It’s a grand old formula. And talking of formulas—”
He broke off suddenly, his face transfigured in mid-speech by a beatific thought that had illuminated his brain like a revelation from heaven. For several seconds he rolled it rapturously around in his mind, assaying all its possibilities of perfection.
“Well?” Donohue said coldly.
“I’m thinking of your corny script. And I will double in those underwater shots for you.”
“Thank you.”
“On Tuesday.”
“Monday.”
“No, I’m booked even more solid on Monday now. Just switch your schedules for the two days. I’m sure you can do it.”
“All right, damn you,” Donohue said resignedly. “I expect you’ll sink like a stone on Tuesday, but all right. If that’s all it’s costing me, I’ll switch the schedule for you.”
“It isn’t quite all…”
The director groaned aloud.
“What else? You want real mermaids to fan you between takes?”
“I don’t want to strain your budget. But since you don’t have to worry about getting a professional swimmer tomorrow, and you’ll have nothing but time on your hands, you’re going to have to do something for me.”
4
The Narrows on Monday morning had the air of a maritime picnic ground rather than the site of a salvage operation. The US Coast Guard cutter would have been dwarfed by a destroyer, but she looked big enough to be the mother of the brood of other craft gathered around her. The police boat from Road Town and the pinnace that had brought the Governor of the British islands were tied up to one side of her, and April Mallory’s chartered cabin cruiser was tied up to the other side. Duncan Rawl’s launch was hove to only a few yards away.
It was a perfect day for a picnic or for salvage. The water was oily calm, silver blue and turquoise, as the sun took its first step up into a cloudless sky, and the variety of flags called for by the nations and services and personages represented gave the little group of boats a festive and holiday appearance.
“I’m only surprised that everything else in the Caribbean that’ll float isn’t here,” said the Saint.
“All of us tried our best to keep it quiet,” April said. “That was about the only thing everyone was agreed on, including the authorities. If it had got into the papers, it’d’ve taken the American and British navies combined to keep the channel clear.”
The American Governor was on board the cutter, where he was playing host to the British Governor, and he had courteously invited April and the Saint aboard as soon as they came within hailing distance.
It had been nine o’clock the previous night before Simon had talked to her on the phone.
“I had to have dinner with them,” she said, “and now I’m full of sun and sleepy, and we’ve got to leave tomorrow before daylight. Don’t let’s try to meet tonight.”
“Did your legal beagle produce his brainstorm?” he asked.
“No. Did you?”
“Yes.”
She was silent for a moment.
“I’m too tired to be teased, darling.”
“And I don’t want to give you any false hopes, baby. It might work, but it’s only a wild gamble. So I won’t say anything now. Get some sleep, and I’ll see you on the dock.”
But when they had met, before dawn, and the cabin cruiser droned out through Pillsbury Sound under the paling stars, he still refused to tell her any more.
“Let’s face it,” he said. “You’re prettier than most actresses, but you may not be one. And if you just act naturally, it’ll be better than any performance.”
“I think I’d rather not know, anyway,” she said listlessly. “I’ve been trying to get used to the idea that I’m licked, and it wouldn’t be much fun to start hoping and be let down all over again.”
Now, as they stood on the cutter’s deck watching Duncan Rawl preparing for his first dive, Simon could feel that she was somewhat less stoical than she might have wished to be, and he was scarcely surprised. He was aware of more than a mild tingle of anticipation himself, although it was necessarily in a different key from hers. Stripped down to his swimming trunk
s, Duncan Rawl looked like a heroic if slightly debauched and hung-over Norse god. He had declined to board the cutter or to tie up to her, cutting his engine a few lengths away and letting the launch drift by to the separate focal spot befitting the star of the show. He had ignored April and the Saint in his greetings as he passed as if he had not even seen them. He sat with his feet dangling over the side, scowling down at the water, while his helpers hung the air tanks on his shoulders and put a weighted belt around his middle.
The sun was barely high enough to send light under the water when he pulled down his mask, put on the breathing mouthpiece, and let himself down till he sank out of sight.
“I suppose it’d be wicked to hope that a shark bites him,” April said.
“Could be,” said the Saint. “But let’s hope it anyway.” He lighted a cigarette and forced himself to smoke it unhurriedly. In that way, disciplining himself against the temptation to look at his watch every few seconds, he could estimate fairly accurately that it was less than ten minutes before Rawl surfaced again, and his spirits leapt as he saw it. Rawl’s men helped him aboard and lifted off his air tank. There was a brief excited colloquy, and then one of the men took the wheel and the engine coughed and started. Rawl sprang up on to the foredeck as the launch eased over to the cutter, and as it drew alongside he was tall enough to grasp a stanchion on the cutter and hold on, mooring the launch with his own arm.
“Ahoy there, Captain, or whoever’s in charge!”
The Coast Guard skipper came to the rail, but the two Governors were at his elbow, and April and the Saint were close beside them.
“What is it, Mr Rawl?”
“You’d better get these boats moved away. I’m going to dynamite.”
“Already?” April gasped.
Simon cleared his throat, and moved in still closer.
“Pardon me, Your Excellencies,” he said to the two Governors, “but Miss Mallory asked me to come as her adviser because her attorney had to be in court this morning. And I think she has a right to protest against what Mr Rawl proposes to do.”
“On what grounds?” asked the British Governor.
“To use dynamite now, before the bottom has been thoroughly examined as it is, could obliterate a lot of treasure that otherwise might be quite easy to locate and bring up—for someone who really knows what he’s doing, I mean. Of course nobody would mind Mr Rawl making a mess down there if he were the only person concerned. But he should be obliged to leave Miss Mallory a fair chance to find something when her turn comes tomorrow.”
“What would you suggest?” asked the American Governor.
“I think it would only be fair to let each party make a thorough search of the bottom, without any blasting, before letting one party change the situation so drastically.”
“I’m not dynamiting to see what it uncovers, sir,” Rawl said. “I’ve got to do it to kill something that wouldn’t let anyone do any searching.”
Simon stared down at him clinically.
“You look rather pale, Duncan, old grampus,” he observed. “What was it frightened you down there?”
“Only the biggest damned octopus that anyone here will ever see,” snarled Rawl. “It’s thirty feet across if it’s an inch—and it’s sitting right where the treasure is supposed to be!”
The Saint’s expression was a masterpiece of derisive disbelief.
“Was it a pint one,” he inquired, “wearing a green top-hat and tartan pants, and playing a duet with itself on two piccolos?”
Rawl’s face turned dusky under his tan, and his muscles tensed as if to haul himself aboard the cutter by the stanchion he held.
And then a light of hellish inspiration overspread the darkness of rage, and his snarl modulated into a sneer.
“Maybe you’d like to go down and see for yourself,” he said.
“I’d love to,” Simon said calmly. “Can we take that as an official offer—that since you’re scared to go on without blowing that poor little squid to bits, you’ll step aside while I try it for April?”
“You’re goddam right you can,” Rawl said triumphantly. “And I’m going to laugh myself sick watching the great Saint run away from that poor little squid.”
April was clinging to the Saint’s arm.
“I won’t let you,” she said.
“You will, honey,” he said out of the side of his mouth. “You’ve got to. It’s your only chance.”
“Just one more thing, though,” Rawl said. “If I let you in ahead of your turn, time’s being wasted, and after the Saint comes back with his tail between his legs we’ll have to dynamite anyway, and then it’ll be hours before the water settles down again so anyone can see anything, so I should have tomorrow to myself as well.”
“We’ll accept that,” Simon said grimly.
The two Governors stepped aside and conferred together, but not for long. The American announced their decision:
“Since our main object is to eliminate or avoid a dispute, any compromise that Miss Mallory and Mr Rawl agree upon must have our approval.”
5
The Saint sank gently into the cool peacock depths, twisting and turning like a fancy high diver in slow motion to extract the utmost sensual delight from the feeling of three-dimensional freedom which only aqualung swimmers can experience, the nearest thing to the sensation of true flying that man has yet been able to achieve. The twin cylinders of compressed air on his back, so heavy and cumbersome on a deck, were such a negative burden under water that a belt of small lead weights was necessary to help him sink. Thus counterbalanced, his body felt almost weightless, so that he could turn in any direction or rest relaxed in any position without effort, or if he wished to move anywhere he only had to make lazy movements with his legs, and the rubber flippers on his feet would propel him as smoothly as the fins of a fish. Breath came to him through the mouthpiece gripped in his teeth, as much and as often as he wanted, so that there was none of the strain and struggle inseparable from ordinary swimming, no irksome reminder that he was in a foreign element. It was a strange rapture which he would discover anew every time he did it: to feel literally almost as much at home in the water as a fish, yet with a buoyant exultation more like the ecstasy of flight that a poet would attribute to a bird.
And like a bird he soared and glided through water almost as crystal clear as air, but more clinging and resistant so that all movements were more languorous, over the hills and valleys, the fantastic groves and gardens, of a strange silent world. Coveys of striped and tinted small fry scattered and circled as he planed through them, and among the submarine trees larger fish moved more sluggishly, and down in the bluer deeps, sprawling torpid and obscene, was the ultimate monster—the finest plastic octopus, Jack Donohue had assured him, that any Hollywood prop department had yet constructed.
The indispensable traditional octopus that had a part in every self-respecting story of sunken treasure since fiction discovered diving.
It was the first time Simon had seen it properly, even though he had helped to place it in its present location. He and Donohue and the prop man had been out there the day before on the tugboat which Donohue was using for his water work, ostensibly to scout scenery and make preparations for the following week’s shooting: the tugboat and Donohue were already known to the Coast Guard crew, and were allowed to approach without being warned off as brusquely as any other boat would have been. Simon and the prop man had dumped the deflated monster over the far side of the tug two hundred yards away and dragged it into position under water, while Donohue took the tug alongside the cutter and engaged the crew in conversation, and the keels of the two boats, which they could look up and see, provided a perfect marker for the position that Simon had to find. But then Simon had had trouble with his air regulator valve, and had had to jettison his weights and swim upwards hastily, leaving the prop man to complete the installation and inflation alone. He had steered his rise to the side of the tug away from the Coast Guard cutter, and cli
mbed aboard where the tug’s deckhouse hid him, and soon afterwards the prop man had done the same, and then Donohue had promptly headed the tug away down the channel before they would seem to be dawdling too long in the forbidden area.
It had all worked out as slickly as a drill, and even the prop man had only been told that Donohue was determined to shoot some underwater scenes in that particular spot in spite of the prohibition.
Now that Simon saw the monster (which in their irreverent way the movie unit had christened Marilyn) in its full glory, he was ready to agree that it was a real work of art. Some of its tentacles which were not anchored to the rock, stirred no doubt by unseen tidal currents, moved sinuously like huge slothful snakes, and their undulating motion transmitted an effect of ponderously pulsing life to the bloated purple body and the malignant liquid eyes. He couldn’t despise Rawl for being scared. If he hadn’t known what it was, he wouldn’t have gone anywhere near it himself.
But it had worked, psychologically and with shrewd needling, exactly as the Saint had banked on it.
Now all he had to do was pick up the gold and load it into the cradle which had been lowered from April’s cruiser.
It seemed almost absurdly anticlimactic, but that was about all there was to it.
It was the kind of sunken treasure that salvage men dream about. The Santa Cecilia had gone down in a rocky basin which kept her remains together as if in a bowl. There were no shifting sands, the bane of most treasure hunts, to scatter and swallow them. Everything that had not perished was within a small radius, and he had located the area without too much trouble, as April had said he would, by the suggested shapes of such recognizables as cannons and cannon balls. It was only a matter of chipping the crusts of coral at every likely-looking spot, working with hammer and crowbar whenever he was rewarded with a yellow gleam, breaking the gold bars loose and dragging them to the cradle and putting them in…
In only half an hour he had collected as big a load as he figured the light tackle on the cruiser could comfortably handle.
The Saint on the Spanish Main (The Saint Series) Page 17