The Saint on the Spanish Main (33 page)

“I’m not so sure, but——
”

“Do you know why I got ahead of
everybody else in
business? Because I never wore a blinker over one eye. If
anyone said he could do anything, I never said ‘That’s
impossible.’
I said ‘Show me how.’ I don’t care who I
learn from, a
college professor or a ditch-digger, a Chi
naman or a nigger—so
long as I can use what he
knows.”

The Saint finished eating and picked up his
glass.

“And you think you’ll find something in
voodoo that
you
can use?”

“I have found it. Do you know what it
is?”

Simon waited to be told, but apparently it
was not
another of Netlord’s rhetorical questions. When it was
clear
that a reply was expected, he said: “Why should
I?”

“That’s what you were trying to find
out at the Public
Library.”

“I suppose I can admit that,” Simon
said mildly. “I’m
a seeker for knowledge,too.”

“I was afraid you would be, Templar, as soon as I
heard your name. Not knowing who you were, I’d
talked a little too much last night. It wouldn’t
have mat
tered with anyone else, but
as the Saint you’d be curious
about
me. You’d have to ask questions. Lee would tell you about my interest in
voodoo. Then you’d try to find
out
what I could use voodoo for. I knew all that when I
asked you to come here tonight.”

“And I knew you knew all that when I
accepted.”

“Put your cards on the table, then.
What did your
reading tell you?”

Simon felt unwontedly stupid. Perhaps because he had let Netlord
do most of the talking, he must have
done
more than his own share of eating and drinking.
Now it was an effort to
keep up the verbal swordplay.

“It wasn’t too much help,” he said. “The mythology
of voodoo was quite fascinating, but I couldn’t
see a guy
like you getting a large charge out of spiritual trim
mings. You’d want something that meant power, or
money, or both. And the books I got hold of today
didn’t have much factual material about the
darker side
of voodoo—the angles that
I’ve seen played up in lurid
fiction”

“Don’t stop now.”

The Saint felt as if he lifted a slender
blade once more
against a remorseless bludgeon.

“Of course,” he said, and meant to
say it lightly, “you might really have union and government trouble if it
got out that Netlord Underwear was being made by Ameri
can zombies.”

“So you guessed it,” Netlord said.

5

Simon Templar stared.

He had a sensation of utter unreality, as if
at some
point he had slipped from wakeful life into a nightmare
without
being aware of the moment when he fell asleep.
A separate part of
his brain seemed to hear his own
voice at a distance.

“You really believe in zombies?”

“That isn’t a matter of belief. I’ve
seen them. A zombie prepared and served this dinner. That’s why he was
ordered
not to let you see him.”

“Now I really need the cliché: this I
have got to see!”

“I’m afraid he’s left for the
night,” Netlord said
matter-of-factly.

“But you know how to make ‘em?”

“Not yet. He belongs to the
houngan.
But
I shall know
before the sun comes up tomorrow. In a little while I
shall go
down to the
houmfort,
and the
hougan
will admit
me to the
last mysteries. The
br
û
ler zin
afterwards
is to
celebrate that.”

“Congratulations. What did you have to
do to rate
this?”

“I’ve promised to marry his daughter,
Sibao.”

Simon felt as if he had passed beyond the
capacity for
surprise. A soft blanket of cotton wool was folding
around his
mind. Yet the other part of him kept talking.

“Do you mean that?”

“Don’t be absurd. As soon as I know all
I need to, I
can do without both of them.”

“But suppose they resent that.”

“Let me tell you something. Voodoo is a
very practical kind of insurance. When a member is properly in
itiated, certain parts of a
sacrifice and certain things
from his body
go into a little urn called the
pot de t
ê
te,
and after that the vulnerable
element of his soul stays in
the urn, which stays in the
houmfort.”

“Just like a safe deposit.”

“And so, no one can lay an evil spell on
him.”

“Unless they can get hold of his
pot
de t
ê
te.”

“So you see how easily I can destroy
them if I act first.”

The Saint moved his head as if to shake and
clear it.
It was like trying to shake a ton weight.

“It’s very good of you to tell me all
this,” he
articulated mechanically. “But what makes you so con
fidential?”

“I had to know how you’d respond to my
idea when
you knew it. Now you must tell me, truthfully.”

“I think it stinks.”

“Suppose you knew that I had creatures
working for
me, in a factory—zombies, who’d give me back all the
money
they’d nominally have to earn, except the bare
minimum required for
food and lodging. What would
you do?”

“Report it to some authority that could
stop you.”

“That mightn’t be so easy. A court that
didn’t believe in zombies couldn’t stop people voluntarily giving me
money.”

“In that case,” Simon answered deliberately, “I
might
just have to kill you.”

Netlord sighed heavily.

“I expected that too,” he said.
“I only wanted to be
sure. That’s why I took steps in advance to
be able to
control you.”

The Saint had known it for some indefinite
time. He
was conscious of his body sitting in a chair, but it did
not seem to belong
to him.

“You bastard,” he said. “So
you managed to feed me
some kind of dope. But you’re really crazy if
you think
that’ll help you.”

Theron Netlord put a hand in his coat pocket
and
took out a small automatic. He leveled it at the Saint’s
chest, resting his forearm on
the table.

“It’s very simple,” he said
calmly. “I could kill you
now, and easily account for your
disappearance. But I like the idea of having you work for me. As a zombie, you
could retain many of your unusual abilities. So I could kill you, and, after
I’ve learned a little more to
night, restore you to living death. But that
would impair your usefulness in certain ways. So I’d rather apply what
I know
already, if I can, and make you my creature without harming you
physically.”

“That’s certainly considerate of
you,” Simon scoffed.

He didn’t know what unquenchable spark of
defiance
gave him
the will to keep up the hopeless bluff. He
seemed
to have no contact with any muscles below his
neck. But as long as he didn’t try to move, and fail,
Netlord couldn’t be sure of that.

“The drug is only to relax you,”
Netlord said. “Now
look at this.”

He dipped his left hand in the ashtray beside
him, and
quickly began drawing a pattern with his fingertips on
the white
tablecloth—a design of crisscross diagonal
lines with other
vertical lines rising through the
diamonds they formed, the verticals
tipped with stars
and curlicues, more than anything like the picture of an
ornate wrought-iron gate. And as he drew it he intoned
in a
strange chanting voice:

“Par pouvoir St.-Jacques Majeur, Ogoun
Badagris n
è
g
Baguidi,
Bago, Ogoun Feraille n
è
g fer, n
è
g feraille, n
è
g
tagnifer nago, Ogoun batala, n
è
g,
n
è
g Ossagne malor, ossangne
aquiquan, Ossangne agouelingui, Jupiter tonnerre,
n
è
g blabla, n
è
g
oloncoun, n
è
g vant
é
-m pas
fie’m… .Aocher nago, aocher nago, aocher
nago!”

The voice had risen, ending on a kind of muted shout,
and there was a glaze of fanatic excitement and
some
thing weirder than that in
Netlord’s dilated eyes.

Simon wanted to laugh. He said: “What’s
that—a sequel to the Hutsut Song?” Or he said: “I prefer
“Twas
brillig and the slithy toves.’ ”
Or perhaps he said
neither,
for the thoughts and the ludicrousness and the laugh
were
suddenly chilled arid empty, and it was like a
hollowness and a
darkness, like stepping into noth
ingness and a quicksand opening under
his feet, sucking
him down, only it was the mind that went down, the
lines of
the wrought-iron gate pattern shimmering and
blinding before his
eyes, and a black horror such as he
had never known rising around him…
.

Out of some untouched reserve of will power he
wrung the strength to clear his vision again for a mo
ment, and
to shape words that he knew came out, even
though they came
through stiff clumsy lips.

“Then I’ll have to kill you right
now,” he said.

He tried to get up. He had to try now. He
couldn’t
pretend any longer that he was immobile from choice. His
limbs felt like lead. His body was encased in in
visible concrete. The
triumphant fascinated face of Theron Netlord blurred in his sight.

The commands of his brain went out along
nerves
that swallowed them in enveloping numbness. His mind was drowning in
the swelling dreadful dark. He thought:
“Sibao, your
Maîtresse Eruzlie must be the weak sister
in this league.”

And suddenly, he moved.

As if taut wires had snapped, he moved. He
was on his
feet. Uncertainly, like a thawing out, like a painful return
of circulation, he felt connections with his body
linking up again. He
saw the exultation in Netlord’s face
crumple into rage and incredulous terror.

“Fooled you, didn’t I?” said the
Saint croakily. “You
must still need some coaching on your hex
technique.”

Netlord moved his hand a little, rather
carefully, and
his knuckle whitened on the trigger of the automatic.
The range was point-blank.

Simon’s eardrums rang with the shot, and
something struck him a stunning blinding blow over the heart. He
had an
impression of being hurled backwards as if by
the blow of a giant
fist; and then with no recollection of
falling he knew that
he was lying on the floor, half under
the table, and he had no strength to
move any more.

6

Theron Netlord rose from his chair and
looked down, shaken by the pounding of his own heart. He had done
many
brutal things in his life, but he had never killed
anyone before. It
had been surprisingly easy to do, and he had been quite deliberate about it. It
was only afterwards that the shock shook him, with his first understanding of
the new loneliness into which he had ir
revocably stepped,
the apartness from all other men that
only murderers know.

Then a whisper and a stir of movement caught
his eye
and ear together, and he turned his head and saw Sibao. She wore the
white dress and the white handkerchief on
her head, and the
necklaces of threaded seeds and grain,
that were prescribed
for what was to be done that night.

“What are you doing here?” he
snarled in Creole. “I
said I would meet you at the
houmfort.”

“I felt there was need for me.”

She knelt by the Saint, touching him with her
sensitive
hands. Netlord put the gun in his pocket and turned to
the
sideboard. He uncorked a bottle of rum, poured
some into a glass,
and drank.