The Saint Around the World (5 page)

“And a birth certificate?”

“No, that isn’t required. But the form has to be attested by someone who’s known him for a certain number of years. Not just anyone; it has to be someone with a recognized professional standing. A bank manager, a doctor, or a minister, are the usual ones. Or a lawyer.”

Simon lighted a cigarette. It was an effort to subdue a flood tide of excitement that rose higher as one point after another of the framework that he had put together in his mind was tested and the whole structure still remained solid.

“The last one may be the hardest,” he said. “There’s a Canadian by the name of Stanley Parker, who owns a house on a small island, way out towards the other end of Southampton. Do you happen to know anyone who knows him?”

“This is quite a small place,” Thearnley said. “As a matter of fact, I know a little about him myself.”

“How old would you say he was?”

“That’s hard to guess. He’s certainly quite senile.”

The Saint raised his eyebrows.

“As bad as that?”

“Well, he gives that impression. It may be partly because he’s had a stroke and can’t even speak. As it happens, the agent who made the sale is a client of mine. I don’t know how Parker heard about it, but he wrote from Canada and said he’d take it and he’d be here with the cash as soon as the deed could be drawn up. The asking price was a bit steep, as usual, because people always expect to do some bargaining, but Parker didn’t haggle at all.”

“How long ago was this?”

“About six years ago. I prepared the conveyance myself, and that’s how I met him, when he came in to sign it. He just grunted and nodded to whatever was said to him, didn’t even read the papers, and scratched his name on the dotted line. Then he handed over a huge envelope full of twenty-dollar bills and waited for us to count them. The agent and myself had to count almost two thousand each. We gave him a receipt, and the keys, and he grunted again and tottered out. My friend’s conscience gave him a bit of trouble after he’d seen the man, because he hadn’t really expected to get the full price, and he wondered if he could be accused of taking advantage of imbecile. I had to tell him that we had no evidence that Parker was non compos mentis, and that a man who carried about twenty thousand pounds in an old envelope might be so rich that he just couldn’t be bothered to argue about the price of anything.”

“Have you ever seen him since?”

“I ran into him once in my dentist’s waiting-room when I was coming out, and once at the airport when I was meeting a plane. I think he must have played hermit out on his island most of the time.”

The Saint stood up.

“I’m very much obliged to you,” he said. “I may be leaving here rather soon, so would you be shocked if I offered to pay cash for this consultation?”

“Tell Dick I’ll stick it on his next bill.” The lawyer also rose, again oblivious of what his naked knees did to his dignity. He seemed to be wavering between two tormenting inward doubts, one as to whether he might have indiscreetly answered too much, the other as to how discreetly he could indulge some curiosity of his own. He said, taking a plunge: “Or we’ll call it all square if you’ll tell me what this is all about.”

“If everything works out, and I’m still here tomorrow, I’ll come back and tell you—that’s a promise.”

“You know,” Thearnley went on, “from the trend of some of your inquiries, I’m rather surprised at one question you haven’t asked.”

“What was that?”

“About Mr. Parker’s background.”

“What was it?”

“My friend the estate agent tried to find out something about him, naturally, but all he could find out was that Mr. Parker had once been a lawyer, too.”

“These woods seem to be full of them,” said the Saint gravely, and made an exit before Mr. Thearnley could decide how to respond to that.

Lona Dayne was dispiritedly trying on shoes when Simon tracked her down in the store, and he had never seen a woman so relieved to be rescued from a bewildered salesman.

“I can’t get used to being dragged around like a doll,” she said edgily, as he marched her back towards the boat. “Where are you taking me now?”

“Back to the island. But I have to make a slight detour, by way of Cambridge Beaches, which is the place where I was staying before I met you.”

Even at that moment, he couldn’t help being amused by the suddenness with which her pique became crestfallen.

“I forgot,” she said in an empty voice. “You’ve got to pack, haven’t you.”

“I want to pick up a gun,” said the Saint. “We’re going to meet Jolly Roger.”

iv

Lona Dayne maintained a taut and stubborn silence all the way out to the secluded cottage colony at Mangrove Bay, waited in the boat while he went ashore, and succeeded in prolonging that superhuman self-discipline until they had passed under Watford Bridge again on the way back.

Then at last she said resentfully: “Why do you have to be so mysterious? I think you’re deliberately trying to force me into the part of a stupid ingenue.”

“Darling,” he said, “haven’t you ever read any whodunits? Don’t you know that the detective always acts very mysterious and keeps the big surprise up his sleeve till the last few pages?”

“This isn’t a whodunit.”

“Oh, yes, it is. And I’m not a very experienced detective. So I’ve had to take advantage of my privilege because I haven’t had the nerve to come right out with my theory—in case it turned out to be really as crazy as it sounds, and I ended not only with egg on my face but with ham too.”

“Don’t get coy with me,” she said. “I’m Lona Shaw—remember?”

Simon smiled with his lips closed, his blue eyes narrowed against the brilliant blue of the sea and sky as he turned the speedboat southward and tried to get an exact bearing on the island they had to return to.

“You wouldn’t dare to send your editor a story based on my kind of deductions,” he said. “Nearly all my thinking seems to be negative—a process of clearing away the undergrowth so you can find out where the solid ground is. I’ve seldom heard a story that was so fogged up with false clues. For instance, the accent of the guy who talked to you on the phone last night.”

“It sounded very American to me.”

“And to me. In fact, exaggeratedly American. But what we have to remember is that an accent can be faked. Roger Ivalot sounded English. So an American accent cropping up here sounds like an attempt to confuse things—perhaps to suggest that he has accomplices which he hasn’t got at all. But a man who would play those tricks of dialect might very well have done it before. Therefore Ivalot’s English was probably the first fake. A man who’d lived here for several years should be able to do a very passable imitation—even if he was raised in. America.”

“Or Canada.”

“I’m glad you brought that up,” he said. “Did you ever notice how in the stories you quoted, Jolly Roger had his uranium interests in South Africa and Australia—but not a word was said about Canada, where some of the biggest uranium strikes of all have been made? That was an omission that stood out like a flat chest at a beauty contest—if I may scramble a metaphor in midstream. Almost from the moment I heard it, I would have liked to bet that Canada was the one place that our boy would turn out to have his deepest roots in.”

“You’re still keeping the riddles going,” she said sulkily. “That’s all very plausible and clever, but you must have a lot more up your sleeve.”

“But the next step takes me out on a limb. I also say that our boy is a lawyer.”

The frown darkened on her brow.

“Last night you were starting to say something–-“

“This script is full of lawyers,” he interrupted quickly. “That’s another confusing feature of it. But it set me thinking about human characteristics. Lawyers are cautious. Lawyers make a technique of procrastination. What does any smart lawyer do when he knows he’s got a very shaky case? He uses every dodge and device in the book to keep getting it postponed and continued and adjourned—because until it actually comes to a court and a verdict, he still hasn’t lost it. Your husband disappeared because our boy thought he had to do something fast and drastic; but after that, he didn’t know how to go on with it”. That’s why nothing else happened for two days. Perhaps he hadn’t finally worked anything out until last night, when you got the first message. But then I upset him again by showing up in the act. So when he talked to you later, it was to tell you to get me out of here. Another delay. That’s why I was so sure we were safe last night and today. He’s still stalling for time.”

“So are you,” she said angrily. “Will you tell me just one thing straight?”

He grinned, throttling back as they circled around to the lee side of the private island, and switched off the engine to coast to a perfect dead-stick landing at the dock.

“In a few minutes,” he said. “I have to make a phone call first.”

She walked speechlessly beside him up to the house. But now she realized that he was enjoying himself, and she would not give him the satisfaction of making her protest again.

While he was dialing a number, he said: “To give you something to go on with—does anything ring a bell with you about a man who’s excessively selfconscious about names?”

Without a word, she turned and went over to the bar cupboard.

He said to the telephone: “Mr. Van Hessen, please. This is Mr. Templar.”

He put his hand over the mouthpiece and said: “Another thing. Weren’t you surprised that a character like our boy, who was so anxious that you shouldn’t talk to anyone, would leave such a melodramatic warning with anyone who answered the phone, like your caretaker?”

The only reply was a heavily restrained clinking of glassware.

He said to the phone: “Oh, Dick. Glad I caught you. Have you gotten to know anyone in the police higher up than a traffic cop? … Good. And do you have one of the Company boats there? … Better still. Will you please call this Inspector, and persuade him to let you pick him up and bring him out to Parker’s island right away—you know, where the Daynes are staying I mean as quickly as you can get here, I can’t call him myself, because if I gave my name he’d think someone was pulling his leg … No, I don’t want to say any more on the phone, but this is the most serious thing I ever asked you … Okay, feller. Thanks.” He hung up.

Lona Dayne was standing beside him with a glass in her hand.

“A nice drop of sherry before lunch?” she suggested sweetly. He took it. “Is it poisoned?”

“If it was, no jury would convict me.”

He moved to the end of one of the davenports, studied it for a couple of seconds in relation to the doors into the room, and slid a blue-black automatic out of his hip pocket and behind a cushion.

“Tell me one thing,” he said. “If I’m quoting you correctly, you were talking to this caretaker, and his boss had just told him to try and rent the place. But how did you happen to meet him and be talking to him in the first place?”

She raised a glass of her own to her lips, holding it with a tense care that just failed to be completely casual.

“I’ve been waiting for that,” she said. “This house must have something to do with it, of course.” “How did you meet Bob?”

“He came to see us at the hotel, the same day our story came out in the papers. He said that he once worked for a Mr. Rogers here, who threw a lot of wild parties, which he couldn’t forget—you’ve seen what a strait-laced type he is. With that coincidence of names, he wondered if it could be the man we were looking for. But his description didn’t fit anywhere—his Mr. Rogers was very tall and thin with a big hooked nose. Then it was after we’d ruled that out that he went on talking about his house and the island … Please,” she said, with her voice suddenly rising a sharp third, “don’t say how half-witted you’re thinking we must have been–-“

He was at the telephone again, and did not even seem to have heard her.

“Did you ever see this trick?” he inquired.

He took off the handset, and dialed four numbers, and put the handset back again. Immediately, the telephone began to ring. He let it ring a few times, and then picked up the handset again.

“If you know the right combination, you can make any telephone ring like an incoming call,” he said. “But do you know where all the extensions are in this house? It could be done from any of them.”

He hung the instrument up and turned away. “Once upon a time,” he said, “there was an attorney in Toronto named Robert Parker Illet. He was born and educated in England, but taken to Canada after his parents died in a flu epidemic and raised there by a maternal uncle. Seven years ago he was hardly middle-aged, but he’d built an inspiring reputation. It was so good, in fact, that he had a wide-open chance to embezzle five million dollars, with no more trouble than writing a few checks. I told you I was looking for him when we first met, but I don’t think you took me seriously.”

She stared at him with her chin dropping and her mouth and eyes equally open, temporarily stunned out of any vestige of poise.

“Plenty of lawyers have had chances like that,” he went on, “but this one grabbed it. He packed the loot in a couple of suitcases, in cash and bearer bonds, and vanished into the blue. When I heard about the case a few months ago, I decided to go after him like I’d go on a treasure hunt. First, because he’d been gone so long without being caught, I figured he must have gone further than the United States. But where could he go without a passport? Spies have forged passports; big-time international crooks can get ‘em; but a previously respectable attorney wouldn’t have any idea where to buy one. That narrowed it down to Central America and the West Indies. I found out that he didn’t speak any Spanish, and I decided that that might have made him leerier of the Latin countries. Most people—even policemen—automatically think of the banana republics as the perfect place for a crook to hide, but I can tell you that there’s nothing so conspicuous down there as an obvious gringo. However, that still left plenty of British islands. But then I found out that Illet had spent a couple of vacations here, and it was the only one he seemed to have visited. I bet on another hunch that this man might be most likely to head for a place that he knew a little about, where he could melt as quickly as possible into the local scene, rather -than a place that’d be totally strange to him; and I decided to start sniffing around here first.”