The Saint on the Spanish Main (13 page)

“I still don’t see you wearing a cap and
gown,” Simon
remarked.

“Not that, either. I’m too old to start
that all over
again.
I think I did my job just the same, even without
a classroom. No, I’m retired. Some years ago we were
able to pick up quite a bargain in a small farm
out in the
hills. We rise at six and
retire well before nine, and our
one
excitement is a weekly trip to town for shopping,
golf, supper, and cinema. It’s a simple life, and
we enjoy
it very much… . However,
I can still take you to visit
the
Maroons, as I promised.”

“I’m still very interested,” Simon said.

The western outskirts of Kingston merged into
pic
turesque Spanish Town, and then they were through that and out on the
rambling highway.

“In fact,” said the Saint,
lighting a cigarette, “I seem
to keep on being reminded of the Maroons, as if Fate
was determined to keep prodding me into something.
Even on the plane coming in here, a
few minutes before we landed, a colored fellow spoke to me, whom I’d met
years ago in New York, when he was earning his way
towards college by working as
sparring partner with a pugilist friend of mine; and it turns out he’s on his
way home, which is here—and damn if he didn’t tell me he
was a Maroon.”

“What was his name?”

“Johnny… . You know, I’m ashamed to
say it, but
that’s still all I know, Just Johnny.”

“It could be his last name,”
Farnham said. “One of
the leaders of the original Maroons was
named Johnny
.”

Simon shrugged.

“But long before that, soon after I met
you, and
before I left Nassau, I ran into another bloke from Ja
maica. Name of Jerry
Dugdale.”

“I remember him. He was in the police here.”

“That’s the guy. He repeated just what
you’d told me,
almost in the very same words, about how the Maroons
had an
ancient Treaty which gave them the right to
make their own laws
and set up their own government.
Furthermore, he told me that once upon a
time he was wanting to chat with a couple of natives about a slight
case of murder, and he got word
that they’d taken off
for the Maroon
country, so he went in to look for them; and the Maroon boss man complained to
the Governor,
and the Governor had
Jerry on the carpet and chewed
him
out for violating their Treaty rights and almost
making an international
incident.”

“It’s quite possible,” Farnham
said. “The Maroons
are very touchy about their
privileges.”

“Right then,” said the Saint,
“I guess I knew that this
was.something I had to see. A little
independent state
left over for a couple of centuries, right inside the
island
of
Jamaica—that’s something I could top any tourist
story with.”

“It certainly is unique, at least in the West Indies.
But,” Farnham said, without taking his eyes
off the
road, “I hardly thought you’d be so interested in top
ping tourist stories. You wouldn’t perhaps have
been
specially intrigued by the fact
that Dugdale wasn’t al
lowed to
chase his criminals in there, would you?”

“It does give it a sort of piquant
slant,” Simon ad
mitted cheerfully. He looked at his companion again
and said: “But from the point of view of your
Government, a situation like that could have problems, couldn’t
it?”

“It could,” Farnham said steadily.
“And before
you’re much older I’ll tell you about one.”

It had taken rather a long time, so long
that the Saint
felt no electrifying change, only a deepening and en
riched
fulfillment of his faith in coincidences and the sure guiding hand of destiny.

But David Farnham seemed to feel as unhurried
as
destiny itself, and Simon did not press him. Now that he
knew for
certain that he had something to look forward
to, the Saint could
wait for it as long as anyone.

Presently they were in the hills, winding
upwards, and
Farnham
was pointing out the landmarks of his demesne with unalloyed exuberance as
they came into
view. The house itself stood
on its own hilltop, an old
Jamaican planter’s house, solidly welded to
the earth
and mellowed in its setting with
graceful age, exposed
and welcoming
to the four winds. As Simon unwound
himself
from the car and stretched his long legs, the air
he breathed in was sweet and cool.

“We’re twentyfive hundred feet
up,” Farnham said
practically. “The ideal altitude for these latitudes.”

He kissed his wife as she came out to greet
them, and
she said: “I remembered that you drank Dry Sack, Si
mon. And
I hope you’ll excuse us having dinner at sundown, but that’s how we farmers
live. Anyway, we’re
having codfish and
ackee,
which you told me you
wanted to
try.”

“You make me feel like a prodigal
son,” said the
Saint.

And after dinner, when he had cleaned his
plate of
ackee,
that hazardous
fruit which cooks up to look ex
actly like a
dish of richly scrambled eggs, but which is deathly poison if it is plucked
prematurely from the tree,
he said: “And now you could sell me
anywhere as a fatted calf.”

They had coffee on the verandah, and made
pleasant
small talk for only a short while before Ellen Farnham
quietly
excused herself. David filled another pipe, sitting
forward with his forearms on his thighs
and his head
bent in complete concentration
on the neat performance of the job. Simon knew that now it was coming, and let
him take his time.

“Well,” Farnham said at last,
“it just happens that
you’re not the only chap with a coincidence.
Only a few
days ago the Governor asked me to go and see the
Maroons.
I’d have been there already, only your wire
came immediately
afterwards, so I put it off till you got
here.”

Simon slanted a quizzical eyebrow.

“I thought you said you were all
through with Gov
ernment.”

“I am. But the Maroons know me, and trust me, and
I can talk to them. His Excellency asked me to do
it as
a personal favor, and I
couldn’t refuse.”

“So I gather this trip has to be made
right away.”

“Tomorrow, if you don’t mind.”

Simon drew on his cigarette, and watched
smoke drift
out
into the velvet night.

“I’m free and willing. And it’s nice of
you to put off this important visit until I got here. I feel quite guilty
about
having kept the Maroons waiting for a dozy chat
with you about the
weather and the banana crop.”

Farnham extinguished a match and leaned back
in
aromatic comfort.

“I’m sure you know the big thing we’re
all trying to
cope
with,” he said soberly. “In the United States, it
seems to be mainly a matter of spies and fifth columnists
in high places. In what’s left of our
poor old Empire, we
have special
complications. We were imperialists before
the word became an international insult, and we did a
pretty good job of it; but whether or not we were
ever drunk with power, we’re certainly getting the hangovers
today. Among other things, we were left with a
lot of
subject people that we just
jolly well conquered and took
over
in the days when that was a respectable thing for
the white man to do. I don’t think we did too
badly by them, as colonialism goes, but that doesn’t alter the fact
that they’re a ready-made audience for the new
propaganda against us. Well, we had to let India go. We’re
losing Africa piece by piece; and in the part
that we real
ly thought we could hang
on to, I’m sure you’ve read
about
all that Mau Mau business. The terrorists may be
natives, but you know the encouragement is Russian.
And the opportunity here isn’t so different.”

“You don’t mean you’re afraid of a kind
of Mau Mau
outbreak
in Jamaica?”

“It’s already started. There have been
three brutal,
motiveless, barbarous killings of white people in the
last six weeks.”

Simon started, frowning.

“But your colored people aren’t naked savages like
the Kikuyu. They’re as civilized as the negroes in
the
United States.”

“You’d have said that about Guiana—and
it wasn’t
so long ago, if you remember, that we had to send a
warship
there to nip a Communist coup in the bud. No, actually, there’s a lot of
difference. In some ways, our
colored people are a lot better off than they
are in Amer
ica. There’s no segregation, some of them are in big
business and make a lot of money, their children go to our best schools, and
they can go into any club or res
taurant on the island. They not only have
the vote, they hold the political power, and they’re very active with it.
Unfortunately,
some of their leaders are pretty radical.
And even more
unfortunately, in spite of a lot of good
Government intentions, there are still an
enormous
number who are desperately poor,
totally illiterate, com
pletely
ignorant—and therefore the perfect chumps for the Communists to stir up. And
that Maroon settlement
makes a rather
ideal focal point for it.”

“I’m beginning to see a few ways that it
could be
used,” Simon admitted slowly. “Do you know
anything
more about the brains of the act?—I’d hate to succumb
to the
obvious cliche of ‘the nigger in the woodpile.’ “

“A little,” Farnham said. “It
may have started several
years ago, when an English writer who’s
since become a
rather notorious apologist for the Reds came over here
and paid the Maroons a visit. Then, after a while, there
were a
couple of so-called artists with foreign accents
who moved in with the
Maroons, allegedly to paint a lot
of pictures of their life and
customs. I never saw the pictures, but I heard rumors that they were talking a
lot
of party-line poppycock to anyone who’d listen to them.
But
presently they went away. And then a few months
ago, it seems, we got
a chap we could really worry about. One of their own people.”

“You mean a Russian?”

“No. A Maroon.”

The Saint’s brows drew lower over his
quietly intent
eyes.

“I see. And of course you’re not
supposed to touch
him. But he’d naturally have more influence than any
outsider.
And if he’s an upper-echelon hammer-and-
sickle boy——
”

“I believe he is. Our Secret Service
knows a bit about
him—we aren’t quite such hopeless fuddy-duddies as some
people think. There’s no doubt that he’s a real
Maroon, but he’s
spent most of his life away from here.
He’s had a good
education—and a thoroughly bad one,
too. But he’s got plenty of brains,
and, I’m told, a ter
rific personality. He may be quite a problem.”

Farnham got up and walked across to gaze out
briefly
at the
stars, his old briar firmly gripped between his
teeth and puffing stolidly, hands deep in his pockets,
seemingly unaware of any enormity of
understatement.

He said: “I don’t expect you to be too
concerned with
our wretched colonial headaches, but a Communist base
in the
Caribbean would be rather nasty for all of us.
Frankly, I don’t
quite know how I’m going to handle
this blighter, and I thought if you
came along you might
have an idea or two.”

“I’ll be along, for whatever it’s
worth,” said the Saint.
Something more personal was troubling him: it
was
absurd, impossible within the established limits of chro
nology
and space, but … “Do you know the name of this black commissar?”
he asked.

“Oh, yes,” Farnham said. “His
background is a bit different from your Johnny’s. You probably know his
name. It’s
Mark Cuffee.”