The Saint Around the World (4 page)

“Mrs. Dayne,” it said, “I’ll let you talk to your husband as soon as Mr. Templar has left Bermuda. But if he isn’t on a plane tomorrow, you can consider yourself a widow.”

There was a soft click, and that was all.

iii

The Saint awoke early in the morning, for there had been no further reason to stay up late the night before.

He had made the only possible offer directly their eyes met after she hung up the dead telephone: “I’ll leave tomorrow, of course.”

Her face was a tortured battleground of uncertainty.

“Thank you for making it easy for me,” she said. “Even if you were the best hope I had … But you do understand, don’t you?”

“I do indeed. I know why the parents of kidnaped kids pay ransom. You couldn’t force me to go; but I can’t take advantage of that. However”—his smile was a thing of coldly dazzling deadliness—“I’ll still be working until the last plane leaves.”

He had found out that she had some sleeping pills, and had persuaded her to take one.

“We’re talked out for tonight,” he said. “At least you can be fairly sure that your husband’s alive, and that you’ll hear from him tomorrow. This is your chance to get some rest. Let me do the worrying.”

He had not worried at all, for that was a sterile indulgence of which he was constitutionally incapable. But he had been happy to find that the guest room which had been prepared for him was directly opposite the master bedroom: she had gratefully accepted the suggestion that both doors should be left ajar, and thereafter he had slept with the tranquil self-confidence of a cat. But nothing had disturbed the night; and when he opened his eyes and saw daylight, many things had sorted themselves out in his mind, and he knew that for that period there had been no real danger.

He found his way out of the house and down to the water in the dressing-gown she had lent him—it was so obviously part of a bridegroom’s going-away outfit that the loan seemed like an embarrassing kind of compliment, but he had to take it. It was easy to slip into the almost lukewarm water in a tiny cove on the seaward side of the island without benefit of swimming trunks. He churned back and forth for a while, drifted along the shore to watch the questings of a school of yellow-striped fish, and finally hoisted himself out on to a rock where the sun quickly dried him. In front of him was only the blue Sound, embraced by the main chain of islands and dotted with smaller satellite islands; local folklore claims that the Bermudas are made up of 365 islands, one for every day in the year, but the actual number is much less than half that, and a large number of those have a somewhat slender claim to be counted, being mere outcroppings of coral which have barely managed to raise their heads above high water. Small sailboats, launches, and a couple of the busy ferries that bustle endlessly to and fro to link a dozen landings spaced around the harbor and the Sound, made the view look absurdly like an animated travel-folder picture: no one is ever quite prepared for the fact that Bermuda, more than almost any other highly advertised place, looks so instantly and exactly like its postcards. But after his first appreciative survey, the Saint turned his back on the panorama and concentrated on the humped contours of the island that he was on, trying speculatively to fit them with another geological item which he recalled from a guide-book he had been reading.

After a few minutes he put on the borrowed robe again and walked back up over the close-cropped grass. Near a corner of the formal garden that surrounded the house he came upon the colored caretaker planting an oleander hedge, making a neat row of eighteen-inch cuttings bent over in interlocking arcs with both ends set in the ground, but characteristically looking more like a gravedigger than a gardener.

“Goodmorning, sir,” he said, with studiously impersonal politeness.

“Goodmorning.”

Simon paused to light a cigarette. His gaze swept around the panorama again, and from that vantage point he could see more than two-thirds of the private island.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask,” he said. “Exactly how did Mr. Dayne leave here when he disappeared? Did he get a phone call first? Or did someone come to see him? Did he say anything when he left?”

“I’m afraid I have no idea, sir. I’d gone into Somerset to do some shopping, and when I came back Mr. Dayne was gone.”

“Well, when you came back, was another of the boats from here over at the landing, besides the one you’d taken?”

“No, sir. Just the one I’d used.”

“Then someone must have come and picked him up in a boat.”

“That must be right, sir.”

The Saint rubbed his chin for a moment.

“By the way,” he said, “I noticed a small Chris-Craft tied up at the dock last night. Is that working?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I think we might use it to run into Hamilton this morning.”

“Yes, sir, of course—to get your ticket.”

Simon’s eyes flickered fractionally.

“How did you know I was going anywhere?”

“Mrs. Dayne just told me what happened last night, sir. She’s in the kitchen, fixing breakfast. I’m sorry, sir,” the caretaker said stiffly.

“So am I,” said the Saint briefly, and went on into the house.

He put his head in the kitchen door and asked: “How soon are you serving?”

“In about five minutes, or whenever you’re ready,” she answered, and added: “You’ll find an electric razor in our bathroom.”

“Thanks,”

In well under ten minutes he had shaved, rinsed himself under a shower, dressed, and was sitting down to a platter of perfectly cooked eggs and bacon.

“I see you were brought up right,” he said. “Frying an egg sounds like the easiest job in the world, but I’m always amazed how seldom it’s done properly, without making bubbles in the white and a leathery brown crust underneath. Even in France, the land of the great chefs, nobody has the faintest notion of how to fry an egg.”

“You don’t have to cover up,” she said steadily. “I know how the idea of running away must be hurting you. So I’ve decided that if you think it’s the wrong thing to do, you mustn’t do it—even if I beg you to.”

“I have to make a plane reservation anyhow,” he said. “Has it dawned on you that you’re being watched? I’d never met you till yesterday evening; and yet I was the main thing our pal had on his mind when he phoned you last night.”

Her eyes widened a little.

“You mean Ivalot himself could have been at the Van Hes-sens’—or at the restaurant where we had dinner–-” .

“Not necessarily. He may have an accomplice, or even a gang—we don’t know. But he’s pretty sure to find out whether I’ve booked myself out of here as ordered. Then if his phone call meant anything at all, he’ll be practically forced to wait and see whether I do leave. And maybe I’ll wait and see, too.”

He stared out of the window of the dining alcove with such a preoccupied air that she would have sworn that his thoughts were on anything but the view which it framed, so that it surprised her when he said presently: “This is an even dreamier spot in the daytime. I wonder why the owner doesn’t live here all year round.”

“Perhaps his home in Canada is even nicer.”

“D’you know anything about him?”

“Only that his name is Stanley Parker. And I believe he’s quite elderly. Why do you ask?”

“I’m practising—I’ve got a lot of questions to ask in a hurry today. As soon as we’re finished, I’m going to Hamilton and start in earnest. I guess you’d better come with me so I won’t have to worry about you. We’ll take the speedboat, because it’s quicker than a taxi, and it’ll make it tougher for anyone who’s thinking of tailing us.”

He had already observed with approval that, doubtless because of her professional background, she breakfasted with hair and clothes and make-up in shape to face the world as soon as she stood up from the table, and she joined him at the dock with a minimum of delay after their second cups of coffee. The caretaker had the Chris-Craft waiting alongside and was wiping off the seats.

“Do you know the way, sir, or do you wish me to take you?” he inquired disinterestedly.

“I can find it, thanks,” said the Saint. “And you’d better be here in case there are any more messages.”

He pushed the clutch forward and opened the throttle until the light hull was planing. For less than a mile he drove the boat northeast across the Sound, and then he began to veer more to the east, towards Burgess Point and the coastline of Warwick Parish. Lona Dayne twitched his shirtsleeve and pointed.

“Stay as you were, to the left of that island. It’s the shortest way through to Hamilton.”

“I’ve got a call to make on the way,” he explained.

He swung still further to starboard, to miss another larger island that emerged ahead. As they ran along its shore the facade of a Florida Keys fishing village came into view, with the functionally arched roof of an enormous hangar rising above the picturesquely weatherbeaten fronts. Simon cut the engine and laid the speedboat skilfully in beside a pier that projected from the strikingly un-Bermudain waterfront.

“This is Darrell’s Island, where our host of last night operates,” he said. “I just want to ask him something—and we haven’t got time to show you how they make TV pictures. I’ll be right back.”

He left her sitting in the boat and disappeared through an opening in the scenery. Having been given the tour once be—fore, on his arrival, he found his way with the faultless recall of a homing pigeon through the partitioned alleys which had miraculously created a modern television picture studio within the shell of an abandoned airport that dated back to those pessimistic days when only seaplanes and flying boats were thought suitable for air travel over water; and Dick Van Hessen looked up defensively as he crashed into the office, and then recognized him with a grin.

“Well! What can we do for you today?”

“You’re busy and I’m in a hurry,” said the Saint, “so I’ll leapfrog the trimmings. All I want is a good lawyer.”

“What? Did she hook you already?”

“Let’s try to build it into a half-hour show—some other time.”

“The one I like best is a fellow named Fred Thearnley,” Van Hessen said. “He’s done a few things for me, and he’s a lot more on the ball than some of ‘em.”

“Would you phone him and use your influence to see if he can squeeze a few minutes for me about as soon as I can get there?”

“Sure.”

Simon returned to Lona with an appointment for eleven o’clock. He started up the boat again and sent it skimming through the channel to the left of Hinson’s Island, and then threading between other smaller islands towards the north shore of the gradually narrowing bay, now sheltered between the hills of Pembroke and Paget on either side with the white-sugar roofs and pink-icing walls of fairytale candy houses studding their green slopes. He slowed up past the Princess Hotel, a birthday cake moulded in the same style, and stopped and tied up at the Yacht Club dock farther on. He looked at his watch.

“We’ve got plenty of time to do my airline errand first,” he said.

They cut through by the Bank of Bermuda and walked eastwards past the open wharf where the cruise boats berth in the very heart of the city, and up Front Street to the BOAC office. Their last plane left for New York at 4 pm, and he was able to get a seat on it.

The lawyer’s office turned out to be back in the direction they had come from, a few doors from Trimingham’s, which is the biggest department store that the highly conservative proportions of Hamilton have to offer. Simon escorted Lona to its entrance.

“You’ll be as safe here as you could be anywhere; and with all this merchandise to look at, unless you’re a female impersonator you won’t even miss me. Just stay away from the doors, and I’ll find you in about half an hour,” he said, and left her.

Mr. Thearnley was a large man put together of ellipsoid shapes, with a florid complexion, very bright baggy eyes, sparse sandy hair, and a mustache of such luxuriant dimensions that it would have provided a more than adequate graft to replace what was lacking from the top of his head. The upper part of him was very correctly dressed in a black alpaca coat, white shirt with starched collar, and dark pin-striped tie; but when he rose from behind his desk to shake hands he revealed that, in conformity with local custom, his lower section was clad only in knee-length shorts and long socks. The effect was inevitably reminiscent of the time-honored farce routine in which the comedian bursts into public view fully dressed except for having forgotten to put on his trousers; but Mr. Thearnley was just as unaware of anything hilarious about it.

“Well, Mr. Templar,” he said affably, “what can I do for you?”

“Answer some silly questions,” said the Saint, and sat down. “I’m sure you haven’t a lot of time to waste, so I’ll fire them as fast as I can, and I hope you won’t think I’m too blunt … One: do you know another attorney in this town by the name of–-?”

He gave the name of the attorney to whom the solicitors for Mr. Ivalot’s concubine had referred their case, which he had found out from Lona Dayne on the way over from Darrell’s Island.

“Only for about thirty years,” Mr. Thearnley said with a smile.

“Would you vouch for him without any qualification?”

“Now I’m beginning to think you were serious about asking silly questions.”

“I’ll be more specific. If he were asked to serve papers on somebody in Bermuda who accidentally happened to be a friend of his, would anything induce him. to report that he couldn’t find any trace of this defendant?”

Mr. Thearnley’s eyes had visibly congealed.

“If the person concerned were a friend of his, he would simply decline the case and give his reason. He would not tell a lie. He is the most ethical man I have the good fortune to know.”

“I’m sorry,” said the Saint. “I don’t know him, and I had to ask that to confirm that a certain person is definitely untrace-able here by any ordinary means … Let me try something less delicate: How would anyone here go about getting a passport?”

“A British subject?”

“Yes, of course.”

“He fills out an application, and submits it with a couple of photographs–-“