The Saint on the Spanish Main (8 page)

At this point Simon rounded a curve in the
driveway
and caught his first sight of the speakers, all of whom
looked up
at him with reserved curiosity and two-thirds
of them with a certain hint of relief.

There was no difficulty in assigning them to
their lines —the young red-headed giant with the pleasantly rugged
face and the slim pretty blonde
girl, who sat at a
wrought-iron table on the
terrace in front of the house
with a
broken deck of cards in front of them which es
tablished an interrupted
game of gin rummy, and the
thin stringy man
reclining in a long cane chair with a
cigarette-holder
in one hand and highball glass in the
other.

Simon smiled and said: “Hello. This is
Mrs. Wexall’s
house, is it?”

The girl said “Yes,” and he said:
“My name’s
Templar, and I was invited here.”

The girl jumped up and said: “Oh, yes.
Lucy told me. I’m her sister, Janet Blaise. This is my fianc
é
, Reg Herrick
. And Mr. Vosper.”

Simon shook hands with the two men, and Janet
said:
“I think Lucy’s on the beach. I’ll take you around.”

Vosper unwound his bony length from the long
chair, looking like a slightly dissolute and acidulated mahatma
in his
white shorts and burnt chocolate tan.

“Let me do it,” he said. “I’m
sure you two ingenues
would rather be alone together. And I need another
drink.”

He led the way, not into the house but around it, by
a flagged path which struck off to the side and
mean
dered through a bower of scarlet
poinciana. A breeze
rustled in the
leaves and mixed flower scents with the sweetness of the sea. Vosper smoothed
down his sparse
gray hair; and Simon
was aware that the man’s beady
eyes
and sharp thin nose were cocked towards him with brash speculation, as if he
were already measuring an
other
target for his tongue.

“Templar,” he said. “Of
course, you must be the
Saint—the fellow they call the Robin Hood of
modern
crime.”

“I see you read the right papers,”
said the Saint pleasantly.

“I read all the papers,” Vosper
said, “in order to keep in touch with the vagaries of vulgar taste. I’ve
often
wondered why the Robin Hood legend should have so
much
romantic appeal. Robin Hood, as I understand it,
was a bandit who
indulged in some well-publicized char
ity—but not, as I recall, at the
expense of his own stom
ach. A good many unscrupulous promoters have
also become generous—and with as much shrewd publicity
—when their
ill-gotten gains exceeded their personal
spending capacity,
but I don’t remember that they suc
ceeded in being glamorized for
it.”

“There may be some difference,”
Simon suggested,
“in who was robbed to provide the surplus spoils.”

“Then,” Volper said challengingly,
“you consider
yourself an infallible judge of who should be penalized
and who should be
rewarded.”

“Oh, no,” said the Saint modestly. “Not at all. No
more, I’m sure, than you would call yourself the
in
fallible judge of all the people
that you dissect so de
finitively in
print.”

He felt the other’s probing glance stab at
him suspi
ciously and almost with puzzled incredulity, as if
Vosper
couldn’t quite accept the idea that anyone had actually dared to cross
swords with him, and moreover might
have scored at least even on the
riposte—or if it had
happened at all, that it had been anything
but a semantic
accident.
But the Saint’s easily inscrutable poise gave
no
clue to the answer at all; and before anything
further could develop
there was a paragraphic dis
traction.

This took the form of a man seated on top of
a trun
cated
column which for reasons best known to the
architect
had been incorporated into the design of a wall which curved out from the house
to encircle a portion of the shore like a possessive arm. The man had long
curly
hair that fell to his
shoulders, which with his delicate
ascetic
features would have made him look more like a
woman if it had not been complemented with an equally
curly and silken beard. He sat crosslegged and
upright,
his hands folded
symmetrically in his lap, staring
straight
out into the blue sky a little above the horizon,
so motionless and almost rigid that he might
easily have
been taken for a tinted
statue except for the fluttering of
the
long flowing white robe he wore.

After rolling with the first reasonable shock
of the apparition, Simon would have passed on politely without
comment,
but the opportunity was irresistible for
Vosper to display
his virtuosity again, and perhaps also
to recover from his
momentary confusion.

“That fugitive from a Turkish
bath,” Vosper said, in
the manner of a tired guide to a geek show,
“calls him
self Astron. He’s a nature boy from the Dardanelles
who just
concluded a very successful season in Holly
wood. He wears a
beard to cover a receding chin, and
long hair to cover a hole in the head.
He purifies his soul
with a diet of boiled grass and prune juice.
Whenever
this diet lets him off the pot, he meditates. After he
was brought to the attention of the Western world by some
engineers
of the Anglo-Mongolian Oil Company, whom
he cures of stomach
ulcers by persuading them not to
spike their ration of sacramental wine with
rubbing al
cohol, he began to meditate about the evils of earthly
riches.”

“Another member of our club?”
Simon prompted in
nocuously.

“Astron maintains,” Vosper said,
leaning against the pillar and giving out as oracularly as if the object of his
dissertation were not sitting on it at all, “That the only
way for
the holders of worldly wealth to purify them
selves is to get rid
of as much of it as they can spare.
Being himself so pure that it hurts, he is unselfishly
ready to become the custodian of as much
corrupting
cabbage as they would like
to get rid of. Of course, he
would
have no part of it himself, but he will take the
responsibility of parking it in a shrine in the Sea of Marmora which he
plans to build as soon as there is
enough
kraut in the kitty.”

The figure on the column finally moved.
Without any waste motion, it simply expanded its crossed legs like a
lazy
tongs until it towered at its full height over them.

“You have heard the blasphemer,” it
said. “But I say
to you that his words are dust in the winds,
as he himself
is dust among the stars that I see.”

“I’m a blasphemer,” Vosper repeated
to the Saint,
with a sort of derisive pride combined with the pon
derous
bonhomie of a vaudeville old-timer in a routine
with a talking dog.
He looked back up at the figure of the white-robed mystic towering above him, and
said:
“So if you have this direct pipeline to the Almighty, why
don’t you
strike me dead?”

“Life and death are not in my
hands,” Astron said, in
a calm and confident voice. “Death can
only come from the hands of the Giver of all Life. In His own good time He will
strike you down, and the arrow of God will si
lence your mockeries. This I have seen in
the stars.”

“Quaint, isn’t he?” Vosper said,
and opened the gate
between the wall and the beach.

Beyond the wall a few steps led down to a
kind of Grecian courtyard open on the seaward side, where the
paving
merged directly into the white sand of the beach.
The courtyard was
furnished with gaily colored loung
ing chairs and a well-stocked pushcart
bar, to which
Vosper immediately directed himself.

“You have visitors, Lucy,” he said,
without letting it
interfere with the important work of reviving his high
ball.

Out on the sand, on a towel spread under an
enormous
beach umbrella, Mrs. Herbert Wexall rolled
over and said:
“Oh, Mr. Templar.”

Simon went over and shook hands with her as
she stood up. It was hard to think of her as Janet Blaise’s
sister,
for there were at least twenty years between them and hardly any physical
resemblances. She was a big
woman with an open homely face and patchily
sun-bleached hair and a sloppy figure, but she made a virtue of those
disadvantages by the cheerfulness with which she ignored them. She was what is
rather inadequately
known as “a person,” which means that she had
the per
sonality to dispense with appearances and the money to
back it
up.

“Good to see you,” she said, and
turned to the man
who had been sitting beside her, as he struggled to his
feet.
“Do you know Arthur Gresson?”

Mr. Gresson was a full head shorter than the
Saint’s
six foot two, but he weighed a good deal more. Unlike
anyone
else that Simon had encountered on the premises
so far, his skin
looked as if it was unaccustomed to ex
posure. His round
body and his round balding brow,
under a liberal sheen of oil, had the hot
rosy blush which
the kiss of the sun evokes in virgin epidermis.

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Templar.”
His hand was soft
and earnestly adhesive.

“I expect you’d like a drink,” Lucy
Wexall said.
“Let’s keep Floyd working.”

They joined Vosper at the bar wagon, and
after he
had started to work on the orders she turned back to the
Saint and said: “After this formal service, just make
yourself
at home. I’m so glad you could come.”

“I’m sure Mr. Templar will be
happy,” Vosper said.
“He’s a man of the world like I am. We
enjoy Lucy’s
food and liquor, and in return we give her the pleasure
of
hitting the society columns with our names. A per
fectly businesslike
exchange.”

“That’s progress for you,” Lucy
Wexall said breezily.
“In the old days I’d have had a court jester. Now all I
get is a professional stinker.”

“That’s no way to refer to Arthur,”
Vosper said,
handing Simon a long cold glass. “For your information,
Templar, Mr. Gresson—Mr. Arthur
Granville
Gresson—is a
promoter. He has a long history of selling
phony oil stock
behind him. He is just about to take
Herb Wexall for another sucker; but
since Herb married
Lucy he can afford it. Unless you’re sure you can take
Janet away
from Reggie, I advise you not to listen to
him.”

Arthur Gresson’s elbow nudged Simon’s ribs.

“What a character!” he said, almost
proudly.

“I only give out with facts,”
Vosper said. “My advice
to you, Templar, is never be an elephant.
Resist all in
ducements. Because when you reach back into that memory,
you will only be laughed at, and the people
who should thank you will call you a
stinker.”

Gresson giggled, deep from his round pink
stomach.

“Would you like to get in a swim before
lunch?” Lucy
Wexall said. “Floyd, show him where he can
change.”

“A pleasure,” Vosper said,
“And probably a legit
imate part of the bargain.”

He thoughtfully refilled his glass before he
steered Si
mon by way of the verandah into the beachward side of
the house, and into a bedroom. He sat on the bed and watched unblinkingly while
Simon stripped down and
pulled on the trunks he had brought with him.

“It must be nice to have the Body
Beautiful,” he ob
served. “Of course, in your business it
almost ranks with
plant and machinery, doesn’t it?”

The Saint’s blue eyes twinkled.

“The main difference,” he agreed goodhumoredly,
“is
that if I get a screw loose it may not be so
noticeable.”

As they were starting back through the living
room, a small birdlike man in a dark and (for the setting outside
the broad
picture window) incongruous business suit
bustled in by another
door. He had the bright baggy
eyes behind rimless glasses, the slack but
fleshless jowls,
and the wide tight mouth which may not be common to all
lawyers, bankers, and business executives, but which
is certainly found
in very few other vocations; and he
was followed by a statuesque brunette
whose severe
tailoring failed to disguise an outstanding combination
of
curves, who carried a notebook and a sheaf of papers.