There were three young men who watched her one evening as she picked pigeon peas among the bushes that her father had planted, and who were more impressed by the grace of her body than by any tales they may have heard of her supernatural gifts. As the brief mountain twilight darkened they came to seize her, but she knew what was in their minds, and ran. As the one penitent survivor told it, a cloud suddenly swallowed her: they blundered after her in the fog, following the sounds of her flight: then they saw her shadow almost within reach, and leapt to the capture, but the ground vanished from under their feet. The bodies of two of them were found at the foot of the precipice, and the third lived, though with a broken back, only because a tree caught him on the way down.
Her father knew then that she was more than qualified to become an hounsis-canzo, and she told him that she was ready. He took her to the houmfort and set in motion the elaborate seven-day ritual of purification and initiation, instructing her in all the mysteries himself. For her loa, or personal patron deity, she had chosen Erzulie, and in the baptismal ceremony of the fifth day she received the name of Sibao, the mystic mountain ridge where Erzulie mates with the Supreme Gods, the legendary place of eternal love and fertility. And when the houngan made the invocation, the goddess showed her favor by possessing Sibao, who uttered prophecies and admonitions in a language that only houngans can interpret, and with the hands and mouth of Sibao accepted and ate of the sacrificial white pigeons and white rice, and the houngan was filled with pride as he chanted:
“Les Saints mandés mangés. Genoux-terre!
Parce que gnou loa nan govi pas capab mangé,
Ou gaingnin pour mangé pour li!”
Thereafter she hoed the patches of vegetables that her father cultivated as before, and helped to grate manioc, and carried water from the spring, and went back and forth to market, like all the other young women, but the tale of her powers grew slowly and surely, and it would have been a reckless man who dared to molest her.
Then Theron Netlord came to Kenscoff, and presently heard of her through the inquiries that he made. He sent word that he would like her to work in his house, and because he offered wages that would much more than pay for a substitute to do her work at home, she accepted. She was then seventeen.
“A rather remarkable girl,” said Netlord, who had told Simon some of these things. “Believe me, to some of the people around here, she’s almost like a living saint.”
Simon just managed not to blink at the word.
“Won’t that accident this afternoon shake her pedestal a bit?” he asked.
“Does a bishop lose face if he trips over something and breaks a leg?” Netlord retorted. “Besides, you happened. Just when she needed help, you drove by, picked her up, took her to the doctor, and then brought her here. What would you say were the odds against her being so lucky? And then tell me why it doesn’t still look as if something was taking special care of her!”
He was a big thick-shouldered man who looked as forceful as the way he talked. He had iron-gray hair and metallic gray eyes, a blunt nose, a square thrusting jaw, and the kind of lips that even look muscular. You had an inevitable impression of him at the first glance, and without hesitation you would have guessed him to be a man who had reached the top ranks of some competitive business, and who had bulled his way up there with ruthless disregard for whatever obstructions might have to be trodden down or jostled aside. And trite as the physiognomy must seem, in this instance you would have been absolutely right.
Theron Netlord had made a fortune from the manufacture of bargain-priced lingerie.
The incongruity of this will only amuse those who know little about the clothing industry. It would be natural for the uninitiated to think of the trade in fragile feminine frotheries as being carried on by fragile, feminine, and frothy types, but in fact, at the wholesale manufacturing level, it is as tough and cut-throat a business as any legitimate operation in the modern world. And even in a business which has always been somewhat notorious for a lack of tenderness towards its employees, Mr Netlord had been a perennial source of ammunition for socialistic agitators. His long-standing vendetta against organized labor was an epic of its kind, and he had been named in one Congressional investigation as the man who, with a combination of gangster tactics and an ice-pick eye for loopholes in union contracts and government regulations, had come closest in the last decade to running an old-fashioned sweat-shop. It was from casually remembered references to such things in the newspapers that Simon had identified the name.
“Do you live here permanently?” Simon asked in a conversational way.
“I’ve been here for a while, and I’m staying a while,” Netlord answered equivocally. “I like the rum. How do you like it?”
“It’s strictly ambrosial.”
“You can get fine rum in the States, like that Lemon Hart from Jamaica, but you have to come here to drink Barbancourt. They don’t make enough to export.”
“I can think of worse reasons for coming here. But I might want something more to hold me indefinitely.”
Netlord chuckled.
“Of course you would. I was kidding. So do I. I’ll never retire, I like being in business. It’s my sport, my hobby, and my recreation. I’ve spent more than a year all around the Caribbean, having what everyone would say was a nice long vacation. Nuts. My mind hasn’t been off business for a single day.”
“They tell me there’s a great future in the area.”
“And I’m looking for the future. There’s none left in America. At the bottom, you’ve got your employees demanding more wages and pension funds for less work every year. At the top, you’ve got a damned paternalistic Government taxing your profits to the bone to pay for all its Utopian projects at home and abroad. The man who’s trying to literally mind his own business is in the middle, in a squeeze that wrings all the incentive out of him. I’m sick of bucking that setup.”
“What’s wrong with Puerto Rico? You can get a tax exemption there if you bring in an employing industry.”
“Sure. But the Puerto Ricans are getting spoiled, and the cost of labor is shooting up. In a few more years they’ll have it as expensive and as organized as it is back home.”
“So you’re investigating Haiti because the labor is cheaper?”
“It’s still so cheap that you could starve to death trying to sell machinery. Go visit one of the factories where they’re making wooden salad bowls, for instance. The only power tool they use is a lathe. And where does the power come from? From a man who spends the whole day cranking a big wheel. Why? Because all he costs is one dollar a day—and that’s cheaper than you can operate a motor, let alone amortizing the initial cost of it!”
“Then what’s the catch?”
“This being a foreign country: your product hits a tariff wall when you try to import it into the States, and the duty will knock you silly.”
“Things are tough all over,” Simon remarked sympathetically.
The other’s sinewy lips flexed in a tight grin.
“Any problem is tough till you lick it. Coming here showed me how to lick this one—but you’d never guess how!”
“I give up.”
“I’m sorry, I’m not telling. May I fix your drink?”
Simon glanced at his watch and shook his head.
“Thanks, but I should be on my way.” He put down his glass and stood up. “I’m glad I needn’t worry about you getting ulcers, though.”
Netlord laughed comfortably, and walked with him out on to the front verandah.
“I hope getting Sibao back here didn’t bring you too far out of your way.”
“No, I’m staying just a little below you, at the Châtelet des Fleurs.”
“Then we’ll probably run into each other.” Netlord put out his hand. “It was nice talking to you, Mr—”
“Templar. Simon Templar.”
The big man’s powerful grip held on to Simon’s.
“You’re not—by any chance—
that fellow they call the Saint?”
“Yes.” The Saint smiled. “But I’m just a tourist.”
He disengaged himself pleasantly, but as he went down the steps he could feel Netlord’s eyes on his back, and remembered that for one instant he had seen in them the kind of fear from which murder is born.
3
In telling so many stories of Simon Templar, the chronicler runs a risk of becoming unduly preoccupied with the reactions of various characters to the discovery that they have met the Saint, and it may fairly be observed that there is a definite limit to the possible variety of these responses. One of the most obvious of them was the shock to a guilty conscience which could open a momentary crack in an otherwise impenetrable mask. Yet in this case it was of vital importance.
If Theron Netlord had not betrayed himself for that fleeting second, and the Saint had not been sharply aware of it, Simon might have quickly dismissed the pantie potentate from his mind, and then there might have been no story to tell at all.
Instead of which, Simon only waited to make more inquiries about Mr Netlord until he was able to corner his host, Atherton Lee, alone in the bar that night.
He had an easy gambit by casually relating the incident of Sibao.
“Theron Netlord? Oh, yes, I know him,” Lee said. “He stayed here for a while before he rented that house up the hill. He still drops in sometimes for a drink and a yarn.”
“One of the original rugged individualists, isn’t he?” Simon remarked.
“Did he give you his big tirade about wages and taxes?”
“I got the synopsis, anyway.”
“Yes, he’s a personality all right. At least he doesn’t make any bones about where he stands. What beats me is how a fellow of that type could get all wrapped up in voodoo.”
Simon did not actually choke and splutter over his drink because he was not given to such demonstrations, but he felt as close to it as he was ever likely to.
“He what?”
“Didn’t he get on to that subject? I guess you didn’t stay very long.”
“Only for one drink.”
“He’s really sold on it. That’s how he originally came up here. He’d seen the voodoo dances they put on in the tourist spots down in Port-au-Prince, but he knew they were just a night-club show. He was looking for the McCoy. Well, we sent the word around, as we do sometimes for guests who’re interested, and a bunch from around here came up and put on a show in the patio. They don’t do any of the real sacred ceremonies, of course, but they’re a lot more authentic than the professionals in town. Netlord lapped it up, but it was just an appetizer to him. He wanted to get right into the fraternity and find out what it was all about.”
“What for?”
“He said he was thinking of writing a book about it. But half the time he talks as if he really believed in it. He says that the trouble with Western civilization is that it’s too practical—it’s never had enough time to develop its spiritual potential.”
“Are you pulling my leg or is he pulling yours?”
“I’m not kidding. He rented that house, anyway, and set out to get himself accepted by the natives. He took lessons in Creole so that he could talk to them, and he speaks it a hell of a lot better than I do—and I’ve lived here a hell of a long time. He hired that girl Sibao just because she’s the daughter of the local houngan, and she’s been instructing him and sponsoring him for the houmfort. It’s all very serious and legitimate. He told me some time ago that he’d been initiated as a junior member, or whatever they call it, but he’s planning to take the full course and become a graduate witch-doctor.”
“Can he do that? I mean, can a white man qualify?”
“Haitians are very broadminded,” Atherton Lee said gently. “There’s no color bar here.”
Simon broodingly chain-lighted another cigarette.
“He must be dreaming up something new and frightful for the underwear market,” he murmured. “Maybe he’s planning to top those perfumes that are supposed to contain mysterious smells that drive the male sniffer mad with desire. Next season he’ll come out with a negligee with a genuine voodoo spell woven in, guaranteed to give the matron of a girls’ reformatory more sex appeal than Cleopatra.”
But the strange combination of fear and menace that he had caught in Theron Netlord’s eyes came back to him with added vividness, and he knew that a puzzle confronted him that could not be dismissed with any amusing flippancy. There had to be a true answer, and it had to be of unimaginable ugliness: therefore he had to find it, or he would be haunted for ever after by the thought of the evil he might have prevented.
To find the answer, however, was much easier to resolve than to do. He wrestled with it for half the night, pacing up and down his room, but when he finally gave up and lay down to sleep, he had to admit that his brain had only carried him around in as many circles as his feet, and gotten him just as close to nowhere.
In the morning, as he was about to leave his room, something white on the floor caught his eye. It was an envelope that had been slipped under the door. He picked it up. It was sealed, but there was no writing on it. It was stiff to his touch, as if it contained some kind of card, but it was curiously heavy.
He opened it. Folded in a sheet of paper was a piece of thin bright metal, about three inches by two, which looked as if it might have been cut from an ordinary tin can, flattened out and with the edges neatly turned under so that they would not be sharp. On it had been hammered an intricate symmetrical design.
Basically, a heart. The inside of the heart filled with a precise network of vertical and horizontal lines, with a single dot in the center of each little square that they formed. The outline of the heart trimmed with a regularly scalloped edge, like a doily, with a similar dot in each of the scallops. Impaled on a mast rising from the upper V of the heart, a crest like an ornate letter M, with a star above and below it. Two curlicues like skeletal wings swooping out, one from each shoulder of the heart, and two smaller curlicues tufting from the bottom point of the heart, on either side of another sort of vertical mast projecting down from the point and ending in another star—like an infinitely stylized and painstaking doodle.
On the paper that wrapped it was written, in a careful childish script:
Pour vous protéger.
Merci.
Sibao
Simon went on down to the dining room and found Atherton Lee having breakfast.
“This isn’t Valentine’s Day in Haiti, is it?” asked the Saint.
Lee shook his head.
“Or anywhere else that I know of. That’s sometime in February.”
“Well, anyhow, I got a valentine.”
Simon showed him the rectangle of embossed metal.
“It’s native work,” Lee said. “But what is it?”
“That’s what I thought you could tell me.”
“I never saw anything quite like it.”
The waiter was bringing Simon a glass of orange juice. He stood frozen in the act of putting it down, his eyes fixed on the piece of tin and widening slowly. The glass rattled on the service plate as he held it.
Lee glanced up at him.
“Do you know what it is?”
“Vêver,” the man said.
He put the orange juice down and stepped back, still staring.
Simon did not know the word. He looked inquiringly at his host, who shrugged helplessly and handed the token back.
“What’s that?”
“Vêver,” said the waiter. “Of Maîtresse Erzulie.”
“Erzulie is the top voodoo goddess,” Lee explained. “I guess that’s her symbol, or some sort of charm.”
“If you get good way, very good,” said the waiter obscurely. “If you no should have, very bad.”
“I believe I dig you, Alphonse,” said the Saint. “And you don’t have to worry about me. I got it the good way.” He showed Lee the paper that had enclosed it. “It was slid under my door sometime this mornin
g. I guess coming from her makes it pretty special.”
“Congratulations,” Lee said. “I’m glad you’re officially protected. Is there anything you particularly need to be protected from?”
Simon dropped the little plaque into the breast pocket of his shirt.
“First off, I’d like to be protected from the heat of Port-au-Prince. I’m afraid I’ve got to go back down there. May I borrow the jeep again?”
“Of course. But we can send down for almost anything you want.”
“I hardly think they’d let you bring back the Public Library,” said the Saint. “I’m going to wade through everything they’ve got on the subject of voodoo. No, I’m not going to take it up like Netlord. But I’m just crazy enough myself to lie awake wondering what’s in it for him.”
He found plenty of material to study—so much, in fact, that instead of being frustrated by a paucity of information he was almost discouraged by its abundance. He had assumed, like any average man, that voodoo was a primitive cult that would have a correspondingly simple theology and ritual; he soon discovered that it was astonishingly complex and formalized. Obviously he wasn’t going to master it all in one short day’s study. However, that wasn’t necessarily the objective. He didn’t have to write a thesis on it, or even pass an examination. He was only looking for something, anything, that would give him a clue to what Theron Netlord was seeking.
He browsed through books until one o’clock, went out to lunch, and returned to read some more. The trouble was that he didn’t know what he was looking for. All he could do was expose himself to as many ideas as possible, and hope that the same one would catch his attention as must have caught Netlord’s.
And when the answer did strike him, it was so far-fetched and monstrous that he could not believe he was on the right track. He thought it would make an interesting plot for a story, but he could not accept it for himself. He felt an exasperating lack of accomplishment when the library closed for the day and he had to drive back up again to Kenscoff.
The Saint on the Spanish Main (The Saint Series) Page 19