Salvage for the Saint (15 page)

The reply, an evil grin and a throat-cutting mime, came from Bernadotti.

“He would have gone the same way you’re gonna go, Templar. To feed the sharks.”

“Nice to know you’re feeling really hospitable,” Simon observed. “What a pity your chum Tranchier can’t be here to complete the party. He’d have made it a quartet of physical repulsiveness. But I must say you three do get around—for a bunch of farmers.”

“Who’s looking after the pigs?” Arabella put in, having now partly adjusted her mind to the new development and the uncomfortable fact that the visitors were with them for the time being whether she liked it or not.

Descartes’ eyes blazed with anger and his voice cut across the room like the crack of a whip.

“We are not farmers! And we have no pigs! We are very seriously seeking that gold—and we will have it!” He fixed them both for a few moments. Then, ticking off the items on his fingers as he spoke, he added: “To save for you the trouble, we have smashed the radio—broken the signal lamps—thrown overboard the rifle—even the axe for fires. So—be at home with us.”

The Saint considered the invitation dispassionately and nodded to its reasonableness. He took Arabella’s arm and led her to some vacant chairs.

“Scotch and water, please,” he said expectantly.

“Gin and tonic—with ice,” Arabella added.

“Get it yourself!” growled Bernadotti.

Two hours and perhaps three or four spaced-out drinks later, Simon was just beginning yet another game of backgammon with Descartes, who had been animated by the play to a new exuberance of mood in which all other preoccupations were for the time forgotten.

“Finally, I have met a worthy opponent. Not for nothing am I titled, among the French players, Jacques du trictrac.”

“I’ve heard the name,” Simon lied, having seen at a very early stage of the proceedings that his reasonable knowledge of the game could be a valuable asset in dealing with Descartes.

“Monsieur Templar, you play very skillfully the difficult retarded game,” Descartes declared. “Have you read the Schneider book, by chance?”

The Saint hadn’t, but he had heard of the Austrian who was generally regarded as the best player in Europe.

“I’ve played a game or two with old Rudy,” he said casually.

“Played? You have actually played with Schneider?”

Simon smiled as he “captured” one of Descartes’ pieces and transferred it to the bar.

“Only backgammon.”

At Simon’s elbow, Arabella sat looking thoughtful, and occasionally swirling the drink around abstractedly in her glass. Bernadotti, black-garbed as usual, sat in a far corner plucking at his guitar. And as a background to the other sounds in the yacht’s saloon, there was a regular thwack every seven or eight seconds as Pancho threw his knife repeatedly into the once polished surface of a coffee table a few feet from where he sat. For reasons best known to himself, he had changed out of his nondescript clothes and was now sporting a light-coloured suit with a dark shirt and white tie—an outfit in which, perhaps intentionally, he looked like the stereotype of a thirties Chicago gangster.

Bernadotti abruptly stopped his strumming, put the guitar aside, and spoke.

“Sun’s almost gone down.”

“Afraid of the dark, are we?” the Saint enquired.

Descartes rolled the dice, regarded them for an instant, and pounced triumphantly back on the board with the piece that had been removed.

“I regret, Monsieur le Saint, that we are in something of a quandary regarding your status on the—expedition. The vote of my comrades is that upon darkness you shall go overboard.”

Bernadotti exposed his savage teeth in another wolfish grin, and repeated his earlier throat-cutting gesture.

To Descartes, Simon said: “That would be stupidly premature, for one simple reason.

“And what is that?” asked Descartes, who seemed willing to be convinced.

“Our Captain Finnegan is one man, usually drunk. Can any of you handle a vessel this size, in possibly heavy weather?” He looked from Descartes to Bernadotti to Pancho. “None of you, I presume. Well, I can. So, it appears I’m going to be needed— as crew. At least for the time being.”

Simon could see that the sense of his words had got through to Descartes, and he could also see the distrust in the eyes of the other two. Pancho made an unmistakable gesture towards the sea with his thumb. Bernadotti shook his head and spoke one word.

“Overboard.”

Descartes regarded the Saint for a moment longer, and then made up his mind.

“Our Mister Saint, he is right. We have need of him—for the present. The fish can feast upon him when he is to us no longer useful.”

Bernadotti hissed impatiently: “Let the fish have him now.”

Descartes flushed with anger and he stabbed a pudgy forefinger in Bernadotti’s direction.

“This is not a voting democracy! Silence, Enrico!”

“Good thought,” said the Saint approvingly: at which Bernadotti came close, gripped his shoulder, and spoke through clenched teeth.

“Just watch your tongue, Templar. You might still have an accident and fall over the rail.”

Simon addressed himself to Descartes.

“I suggest you tell this goon to remove his greasy fingers from my shoulders before I break his arm,” he said simply; and Descartes inclined his head in a gesture that instructed the goon to comply.

Bernadotti went back to his guitar with a final murderous glare at the Saint, and Simon and Descartes played on. After a while Descartes sat back in his chair, linked his fingers comfortably across that huge paunch, and regarded his opponent through narrowed eyes.

“Monsieur Templar,” he said slowly. “Please gratify my curiosity, since we are to have your company for an uncertain period. How did it happen that you arrived at the haras in such a providential manner, to rescue Madame Tatenor?” He inclined his head towards Arabella in a token bow as he mentioned her.

“That’s easy,” the Saint told him. “Her perfume is very distinctive, and I have an acutely well-developed sense of smell. I once owned a bloodhound, and from him I picked up some of the basic skills of—”

“Monsieur Templar!” Descartes cut in reprovingly. “I ask from a genuine interest. And I ask also how did you know of Tranchier? You spoke his name, and yet … and yet, that was not the name given at the time of the boat explosion. From where, I ask you, did you have the information of his name?”

“Well, let’s see,” Simon began. “There are at least two possible explanations for that. One is that I made enquiries, through contacts of my own, and got the background on the so-called ‘Fournier’, including his real name, as well as on the bullion robbery that he—and you three, and Karl Schwarzkopf—committed.”

“And the other explanation?”

The Saint glanced at Arabella, who was listening with close attention.

“You do all know that there was a sixth man involved, working from the Moroccan side?”

Descartes gestured towards the oil portrait of Tatenor.

“Only Karl knew him.”

Simon raised his glass, held it up before him towards the portrait as if offering a toast, and drank.

Descartes went very still.

“You? Were you the sixth man?”

“I only said there was another possible explanation. What do you think?”

Descartes reflected, twirling his drooping moustache.

“No,” he said finally. “I do not think it is likely that you are the sixth man.”

“But / do,” Arabella put in. “That’s how you knew all about the gold, the robbery, the names, Charles, everything. And why you found me. Why you had to find me.” She looked straight at him, with a kind of desperate sadness in her eyes. “What are you going to do with me, Simon? Overboard, like these swine have in mind for you?”

Simon returned her level gaze; and there was a sadness in his too, at the realisation that somewhere he had mishandled Arabella badly enough to have lost her trust, at least for the moment.

“Just remember,” he told her gently, “that it was you who looked me up on the island, not the other way round.” He looked at his watch. “Now I think it’s time I took a turn at the helm.”

There was a moment of tension as Bernadotti began to get up to stop him, but Descartes wagged a finger at the Italian.

“No—let Mr Templar work for his passage. And Captain Finnegan shall join our little party here.”

“Let me make a suggestion,” said the Saint. “When you pump him cleverly for information he hasn’t got”—he gestured towards the bar—“use the rye whiskey on him, will you? There’s only a bit of the good Scotch left.” He found Finnegan already part-way lubricated and keeping somewhat unhappy company with an empty hip-flask. After commiserating with him over his, and their, enforced temporary compliance with the Descartes party’s takeover, Simon sent him down for a rest and a refill, and took over the helm.

For perhaps half an hour he surrendered his thoughts to the soothing balm of the sea, as he had often done before in the course of innumerable adventures that had taken him upon it and under it. The weather was still fine and clear; the rays of the sinking sun, slanting forward from the starboard side, gilded the bows of the Phoenix as she rose and fell rhythmically on the slight swell, and the wavelets sparkled with a golden sheen that stretched ahead to the horizon. Finnegan had set a south-easterly course once they had cleared the Marseille harbour, which meant they were headed for Corsica… And so Simon’s thoughts were brought back before long to the events of the immediate past and to how they might develop, or be induced to develop, in the immediate future.

Even at the risk of further confusing or alienating Arabella for a time, he had played up the sixth-man mystery for the sake of the advantage it might be presumed to buy him with Descartes and his cronies. The Saint sensed that the more he could keep them guessing about his precise role and interest in the affair, the more time he was likely to gain. So long as he had time in hand, he had a sublime confidence that his resourcefulness, added to that generous providence which had always come up with some twist of events in his favour when he had needed it most, would win through in the end. Therefore his strategy was to play for as much time as he could: to watch and wait.

For the moment, he couldn’t be sure how much any of the other principals in the developing drama of the Phoenix and the gold of Charles Tatenor actually knew or surmised. Descartes had clearly done enough thinking in the last day or two to have come to the same conclusion as Simon himself— Corsica held the key. At any rate, Descartes had told Finnegan to set the same course he would have set for Simon and Arabella had their uninvited guests not turned up. The Saint didn’t know exactly how much Finnegan himself knew about the real purpose of those regular fishing trips to Corsica.

“Always the same little bay,” he said, without giving any sign of attaching to that consistency of destination the significance which Simon, and evidently Descartes as well, suspected it had.

The Saint had familiarised himself with the instruments and studied the chart that had been unrolled and spread out, which included Marseilles at the north-west corner. It covered one sector in a large-scale Mediterranean series, and bore the number 12. He pulled out the drawers of a massive ship’s plan-chest nearby and found them full of rolled-up charts of the same series, numbered up to 22. Number 12, of course, was missing; but so was number 18.

Which was an interesting piece of corroborative evidence, if any was needed, that they were headed in the direction most likely to yield something of interest. For the missing chart 18, according to the small-scale over-all map on the bulkhead over the chart drawers, covered an area which included the extreme south-western extremity of Corsica.

For the best part of an hour and a half more the Saint stood at the helm of the Phoenix, almost automatically making the necessary small corrections of course, as the pink and yellow of the sunset faded and the sky and sea darkened towards night.

His cogitations were interrupted when the door was opened, hesitantly, and Arabella came somewhat sheepishly into the wheel-house.

“Simon,” she began, in a small and conciliatory voice, “I’m sorry if I’ve jumped to the wrong conclusions … sorry if I’m wrong … I mean, sorry if I was wrong. But all this—being threatened, abducted, nearly gored to death by a bull … people looking for gold, people waving guns at me … It’s right outside my experience.”

Simon nodded, smiled, and put his hands on her shoulders to look directly into the eyes that matched the blue of his own.

“I know that,” he said simply. “The fact is, you’ve stood up to it all magnificently. Perhaps I should have got around to saying this before now. Very few women, or men for that matter, would have come out of that bull-ring ordeal as creditably as you did.” The Saint put a finger under her chin, and kissed her lightly—with understanding rather than passion. “The fact is,” he added, “I’ve worked alone too long now to be in the habit of sharing all my thoughts or hypotheses.”

She searched his features reflectively.

“Well, try sharing some of them,” she suggested.

Simon grinned, having seen that coming.

“I’ll try to be less mysterious,” he agreed.

“Starting now?” Arabella persisted.

“Starting right now. Fire away.”

“Right. What do you think really happened on Charles’s boat. You said you thought there was another man on board.”

“Somebody,” he said slowly, “got ashore from that boat just before she hit the rocks and blew up. I found a scuba outfit buried near the beach, and someone out of the normal run of rail passengers, someone with a French accent and without luggage, caught a train to London from the local station. It may not be much to go on, but it looks as if Fournier, as we knew him, set up the explosion to make it appear that the two of them had died in the crash.”

“What about the two bodies they found in the wreckage?”

“That can be explained,” Simon said. “Remember one thing. There was no positive identification of the bodies. Fournier could have hidden another body aboard before the race. Most likely an already dead body.”