He shut down the hood and carefully wiped his oily finger-marks off the spotless paint. To pull out the rag to do it, he first had to put down the wrench he had been working with, for his left arm hung with an oddly twisted slackness at his side.
“Anyhow,” Simon observed, “she must be one of the shiniest cars on the course.”
Enrico Montesino’s glance flickered over him with the same inscrutable impersonality.
“To me, signore, a car is as beautiful as a woman. More beautiful, sometimes.”
“You’re too modest,” said the Saint easily. “I’ve met your wife’s daughter.”
The black hawk’s eyes settled for a moment only.
“You too?” Montesino said enigmatically. “Yes, she is-a more beautiful than a car. But-a more crazy too, sometimes. So, I must see she is all-a right for da race.”
“Now just a minute,” Cynthia protested. “This is going too far. She’s racing against me, let me remind you—and I’m paying you!”
“She is-a my daughter, signora. I only want to be sure her car is all right so she will not get ’urt. I can-a do no more for your car. If you drive good enough, you win—scusi!”
He turned brusquely and walked away, limping a little with the steady rhythm of a man to whom limping has become an integral part of walking, and Cynthia stared after him with her mouth open before she turned to the Saint again. “You see what I mean?”
“You’ve got other mechanics, haven’t you?”
“Yes, those two working on Godfrey’s Ferrari in the next stall.”
“You could have them check everything over again.”
“And make myself look like a jittery neurotic who shouldn’t drive anything faster than a golf cart.”
“Well, you are seeing a few bogeys, aren’t you?” Simon said reasonably. “So far, my criminological museum hasn’t collected any case of a father plotting a homicide to clear a track for his daughter, but I suppose there’s a first time for everything.”
“I need a drink,” Cynthia said.
“That’s a great idea. Then when you spin out, I won’t have to wonder if it was sabotage.”
She glared at him, but before she could formulate a retort the loud speakers above them were rasping an appeal for entrants in the Ladies’ Trophy to get ready to move out to the starting line. Simon grinned and said, “I could be wrong, but I don’t think you’ve any more to worry about than the next driver.”
He beat his own retreat before she could argue any more against the reassurance.
It was not that he was determined to duck responsibility at any price. Almost any human being can legitimately claim to be a potential murder victim, if you go by the statistical count of seemingly inoffensive people who somehow get murdered every year. The Saint simply didn’t think that Cynthia Quillen had more grounds for apprehension than anyone else, merely because she seemed to think more about it.
He could be wrong, as he admitted, but he had no idea how wrong when he apologetically rejoined the Bethells in their box.
“Did you find out who’s going to win this ‘Powder-puff Derby’ as they call it?” Brenda asked.
“It’d be an awful event to have to give tips on,” Simon said. “I’d be terrified of someone misunderstanding me if I told them I got it straight from the horse’s mouth.”
The cars below were already being manoeuvred on to their marks, while a waggish track steward from the secure anonymity of the public-address system begged the contestants to hurry it up and remember that they were getting lined up for a race and not getting dolled up for a dance. Simon quickly located Teresa Montesino as the focal point of a jostling circle of photographers, who found her custom-tailored skin-tight jade silk coveralls the perfect counterpoint to an otherwise sexless portrait of a somber green Maserati, and he had to grant that they knew their business almost as well as she did. When Cynthia Quillen’s Bristol was manhandled into place with herself in it, they had almost run out of film.
And while Cynthia was getting herself snapped in the final scramble, Teresa was making herself comfortable in her seat and had time to sweep a long slow glance along the upper tier of spectators. Although she could only accidentally have recognized anyone from there, Simon was human enough to wonder how she would react if she saw him. But he figured it was more likely to be Godfrey Quillen that she was looking for, and he glanced casually around himself on the same quest. Almost at once he sighted the driver in a corner of the verandah near the bar at the back of the press box, where he could not have been seen from the track, in his usual kind of animated conversation with a striking auburn-haired woman whose flawless veneer of cosmetics made one think of a New York City model posing in resort clothes—but only for the smartest magazines.
“They certainly are raising a snazzy type of news-hen these days,” Simon remarked. “I’ll have to find out if that one who’s interviewing Quillen would be interested in a few quotes from me.”
“She might be,” Charlie said mildly, when he had located the subject. “But she isn’t what I think you mean by a news-hen. That’s Mrs Santander, one of the richest women on the island.”
“Oh. Pardon my ignorance.”
“She’s an ex-wife of José Santander, the Venezuelan oil man.”
“Now that’s more like type-casting,” said the Saint, with an air of flippant relief, but a couple of knife-thin wrinkles remained between his brows as a throbbing crescendo of revving-up engines drew their attention back to the course.
The starter’s flag dropped, and with a deafening roar the twelve tidily deployed automobiles surged forward, comfortably spread out three abreast for a bare instant before they broke ranks and crowded into one suicidal bid for position at the first bend. To the naive spectator who has never seen a shop open its doors to the first arrivals at a genuine bargain sale, or been caught on a suburban artery at the rush hour when a light turns green, these first few seconds are the most thrilling in any race of this kind. Even to Simon Templar it was still one of the peak excitements of every event.
Cynthia’s white Bristol was off in front. Teresa’s dark green Maserati, starting from one of the rear positions, shoved viciously through the pack like a bulldozing footballer, shouldering less ruthless drivers aside to left and right with an unswerving callousness which is the only ultimate factor in these jams. She was still only a close fourth at the turn, but the Saint thought she came out of it perceptibly faster than the two cars ahead of her as they flashed into the next short stretch and temporarily disappeared from view.
The track at that time was not laid out with much regard for the audience. Superimposed on the existing runways of Oakes Field, the former airport of Nassau, and making the most possible use of the already paved surfaces, it meandered off into backwaters previously known only to aviators, with little regard for the perspective of the cash customers. The most obvious thrills which the public comes to see in this kind of racing, of course, are on the corners, but practically none of these were clearly visible from the expensive boxes or the general admission stands, or accessible to either class of client. For most of the winding five-mile course, between their dashes through the short spectator stretches, the cars could be followed only in occasional tantalizing glimpses as they whizzed through the two or three fairly distant sections of which the terrain gave an unobstructed vista. This made it pleasantly painless to chat about other things or patronize the bar, without fear of missing too much of the race. On previous days, Simon had found this a fairly agreeable consolation for the inferior visibility, but this time he felt himself nagged by a faint far-down uneasiness, something like a tiny splinter might set up as it worked down into a calloused palm. He strained his eyes for the first cars to come out of the “chicane,” two consecutive sharp turns that were at a bad head-on viewing angle from the club stand, and saw the white Bristol still leading, then another car, then another dark green one which had to be Teresa’s, the only one of that color in the competition. She had already
picked up one notch, through what he knew was some tricky territory.
“Pete won his heat in the Island Race,” Brenda mentioned. “They finished just after we got here, while you were talking to the Quillens. They must have changed the starting time—we were supposed to be here for it. Don’t tell him you didn’t see that ‘Saint’ stick figure of yours on his bonnet—he only put it on for your benefit.”
“Oh, hell,” said the Saint contritely. “That’s the last thing I would have missed. Where is he?”
“He just came up from the pits. He’s in that box down there with Betty.”
Peter Bethell was one of Charlie’s brothers, and Betty was his wife. In another moment he was with them, still trying to wipe off the mask of track grime outside the stencil of his goggles.
“You shouldn’t have done it,” said the Saint. “That extra load of paint on my insignia might have cost you a track record.”
“It was lighter than paint,” Peter said boisterously. “We just had some masking tape left over when we got through putting on the numbers, and didn’t know what else to do with it. Thought it might give you a laugh. And perhaps it was lucky for me. It may have been what scared off the ruddy saboteur who was going around messing up all the cars last night.”
“The which?” Simon asked sharply.
“Some silly bugger who must’ve decided the races weren’t exciting enough, so he was trying to arrange a few accidents. The night watchman was just taking a little nap, of course, but he finally woke up and heard this ghoul clanking about in the pits, and yelled at him. You know, ‘Who dat?’—as if the fellow was going to be fool enough to give his name and address. So the chap ran off, very fast, and the watchman couldn’t catch him. Anyhow, that’s what he says. I expect he was so frightened himself he was running sideways.”
“I hadn’t heard about that,” Charlie said.
“The watchman thought it was just somebody out stealing, and he knew from the way he ran off that he couldn’t be carrying much weight. But when some of the crews came out this morning they started finding wheel hubs loose, and oil drain plugs unscrewed, and nails in the tires—a lot of that nonsense. After a while it dawned on them that it wasn’t a lot of accidental coincidences, and they started making inquiries.”
The Saint had been so fascinated that he realized he had missed the one other possible glimpse of the lady drivers before they would be passing the stands again. A thunder of exhausts was even then heralding the end of the first lap, and he turned to see the Bristol come first under the Esso bridge, a Jaguar after it, and then the smoky green Maserati gaining ground like a thunderbolt, overhauling the Jag by the end of the straight and coming out of the Prince George Corner with a measurable length’s lead before they vanished again in pursuit of Cynthia’s white steed behind the next topographical obstruction.
“It’s between Quillen’s wife and the Roman figure—if they don’t kill each other,” Peter said, with professional-sounding off-handedness.
“Couldn’t the watchman give any description of this saboteur?” Simon persisted.
“Nothing that’s any use. ‘A medium small man,’ he thinks, but he doesn’t know if he was white or black. I know he must’ve been pretty stupid, because most of the things he did were bound to be spotted before anybody started driving. But even you couldn’t catch anyone with as few clues as that.”
There was a leaden feeling in the Saint’s stomach, a sort of dull premonition of a premonition that was too essentially shocking to take complete form suddenly.
“Don’t bet me, or I might have to go to work,” he said mechanically.
“You’ve done your job, old boy. My buggy wasn’t touched. This clot obviously saw your mark on it and got panicked. He knew that if he fooled around with that one, the vengeance of the Saint would land on him.”
“What time was this?”
“About four o’clock in the morning…Ouf! I wonder if I’ll ever get all this dust out of my mouth.”
Simon’s eyes shifted towards the back balcony again. The expensively glamorous Mrs Santander had disappeared, but Godfrey Quillen was still there, finishing a coke from the bottle and paying no immediate attention to anything else.
“Let’s see what we can find to rinse it out,” Simon suggested.
But he started moving towards the dispensing counter without waiting to see who would go with him. But Quillen saw him at once, and awaited his approach with expansive cordiality.
“Hi-yah, pal! This is the pause that refreshes, isn’t it?—letting the back-seat drivers fight it out.”
“Well, it’s no strain on me,” Simon assented amiably. “But I don’t have a wife or a girlfriend driving right after some creep has been out in the small hours doing funny things to the hardware.”
He knew by the switch of Quillen’s eyes, without turning, that at least one of the Bethells had come with him, and went on, “I suppose you didn’t tell Cynthia about that.”
“Of course not. The poor girl was having the jitters badly enough already. Besides, this mysterious character can only have been a bit nutty. As Peter must have told you, the things he did weren’t clever enough to be likely to cause any real damage.”
“Or else he was being very cunning indeed,” said the Saint. “Suppose there was only one particular car he wanted to wreck. No matter how clever he was about gaffing it, there was always a remote chance that an investigation would show that the accident mightn’t’ve been quite accidental. It’s those remote chances that give amateur plotters nightmares. Because the next phase of an inquiry, naturally, would be to ask who could have a motive for wanting that particular car to crash. So that’s where our conspirator becomes a small-time genius. He figures that if it’s established that some screwball was out monkeying with a whole lot of cars, in various ways, the question of motive will be knocked out before it comes up. It’ll just be accepted that this crackpot managed to sabotage one car in a way that unfortunately wasn’t discovered in time.”
“That’s an interesting theory,” said Charlie, who had come up on Simon’s other side. “But what if the night watchman hadn’t been asleep?”
“That wasn’t much of a risk,” Peter scoffed. “It’s ten to one any night watchman would be taking a nap by that time, if he had any sense. Although this one didn’t wake up until the prowler knocked over a couple of empty oil drums, or something like that.”
“Which,” Simon pointed out, “makes the prowler either extremely clumsy, extraordinarily unlucky—or a pretty cool operator. How do you sleep, Godfrey?”
“Me?” Quillen seemed slightly confused. “Like the proverbial top, pal. And spinning a bit, sometimes, especially after a night like last night. Man, those parties were rugged!”
He held his head graphically, and then all the sunny outgoing personality revived again as he said, “And me still waiting for the big race, so I can’t even have a hair of the dog. You’ve done your stuff, haven’t you, Peter? And nobody else has to abstain. Step up, gents, and name it. Take advantage of me.”
Simon eased up to the bar with the others, and took part in the ordering. But it was one of the toughest exercises in restraint that he had ever undertaken. In his mind an hourglass was running out, and the last grains were pure explosive.
He swirled a shot of Peter Dawson around its crystal rocks, and said, “How about Cynthia?”
“Who?” Quillen said puzzledly. “Why?”
“How does she sleep?”
“Like a log, pal. Worse than me. Every morning I wonder if she’s dead, and I have to try all sorts of things to find out.”
“I don’t know where your room is, but when I came in last night I tripped over some loose matting on the upstairs verandah, and nearly fell flat on my face. I was sure I’d woken up the whole joint.”
“Not us, pal,” Quillen said heartily. “It’d take an atomic bomb to do that.”
Charlie Bethell said, in his diffident way, “I don’t know how serious you meant to be abou
t this prowler, Simon, but if you’re right, it mightn’t be so funny. Do you have any other ideas?”
“ ‘A medium-small man,’ ” Peter quoted. “Can’t you tell us his name?”
Simon ignored them to look Quillen slowly up and down, and the driver had a sudden inspiration.
“Wait a minute! Could it have been a medium-big woman?”
“It ran away, didn’t it, Peter?” Simon said. “Don’t tell me that even this local Rip Van Winkle couldn’t tell the difference between a man and a woman running.”
“I don’t know how many women he’s chased,” Peter said, “but I expect he’d’ve noticed.”
“So if it was a man—”
“Oh, come now,” Quillen protested. “You sound almost ready to buy that bee in Cynthia’s bonnet. I know that Italians are hot-blooded, and all that, but I’ll stand up for Enrico. Whatever the evidence is against him—”
“I don’t know of any,” Simon said gently. “I can imagine someone hoping he’d be a suspect, and trying to build that up on the side. An expert mechanic would be a wonderful fall guy for a job like this. But the evidence says that this prowler ran away, and the watchman couldn’t catch him. I’ve seen Enrico walk, and I don’t think he can run.”
Quillen’s teeth gleamed good-humoredly.
“Well, then, what’s the answer, Sherlock?”
The Saint’s gaze searched the baffling back stretches of the course with aching intensity. He had never felt that so much lost time had to be caught up so fast, but so smoothly. He had taken so long to be convinced that there was anything to be seriously perturbed about, and now he knew that any squandered second might be ticked off in blood. But only the most leisured nonchalance would convince a shrewd adversary that all his last cards were trumps.
“Don’t ask me to be too brilliant,” he said. “I was out rather late myself—as you may imagine.”
“I don’t imagine any more than I have to,” Quillen said cheerfully. “But Teresa does tend to keep one up a bit.”
“However, I did not trip on the matting when I came in.”
The Saint in the Sun (The Saint Series) Page 11