The Saint did not delude himself for an instant that his interrogator was eager to know whether he had recently performed any acts of charity or beneficence. In piscatorial circles such a question has only one meaning, and Mr Jardane was very obviously a fellow fisherman. In fact, he was one of the fishingest fishermen Simon had seen for a long time, from the soles of his waders up to the crown of his special hat which was encircled with a string of small magnets to which clung a dazzling assortment of artificial flies. A plastic box of additional flies, with a magnifying lid, hung like a bib from around his neck; a creel was slung by a strap over one shoulder and a spinning tackle box by another strap over the other. He clutched both a fly rod and a spinning rod in one meaty hand, a landing net dangled down his back, and on his belt were holsters containing a hunting knife and a pair of pliers tricked out with half a dozen auxiliary gadgets. All this gear was of the finest quality, but one seldom saw so much of it on one man at one time.
Mr Jardane had the next cabin in the irregular row spread out along the high bank of the river in a parkland of tall pines between Grant’s Pass and Medford which made up the prettiest fishing camp on that stretch of water (and I have to put that in the past tense, because by the time you read this you might search for it in vain). Simon had already noticed him, as he noticed almost everyone who came within his long range of vision. Mr Jardane’s car was a Cadillac of the latest modeclass="underline" combined with his elaborate angling equipment, he gave the almost blatant impression of a man who had plenty of money to spend on anything he liked and who had no inhibitions about doing so. But fishermen are an infinitely varied crew, and the Saint could think of many more foolish or more wicked things for a rich man to splurge on.
“I got a couple this morning,” he said. “Only small ones. And I worked for them.”
“I worked,” grumbled Mr Jardane, “and didn’t get anything. Yes, I had one strike. But I lost him. Fishing’s lousy this year, anyhow. It’s those floods they had last winter. Chewed the bottom of the stream all to hell.”
“So I hear.”
“Anyhow, for me the fishing doesn’t have to be good,” said Mr Jardane defensively. “It’s just supposed to be good for me.”
If he was trying to get a raised eyebrow, he succeeded with that.
“Come again?” Simon murmured politely.
“You think I do this to eat fish? I hate fish. Except when it’s cargo. Me, I could eat steak and potatoes every day of my life. That’s cargo too. But I like cargo. I like work. So the doctors tell me I work too hard and I got to lay off at least a month out of every six and relax. They tell me to go fishing. So I go fishing. Relax? Every time I lose a fish, my blood pressure goes up out of sight. I can feel it. But you can’t argue with doctors. I’d rather try to figure a tight freight schedule any day.”
Simon grinned lazily.
“Is that your job?”
“Yes.” This was where Mr Jardane gave his name. He added, as if the additional explanation shouldn’t really have been necessary, “Transamerican Transport. The yellow trucks with the red lightning flashes painted on ’em. You must’ve seen ’em all over.”
“Oh. Those.”
“What’s wrong with ’em?”
“Aside from clogging the traffic when they’re crawling uphill, or barreling too fast down the other side, and stinking up the whole countryside with diesel fumes, I guess they’re wonderful.”
“They’re more than that. They’re necessary. Any time you eat a Maine lobster in California, or an Oregon pear in Florida, or a good steak most anywhere, as like as not Transamerican hauled it there. Think about that when you’re eating Gulf shrimp in Chicago. And you think we don’t pay for the roads? Listen, how many private individuals d’ye figure could afford to run a car if they had to take over the share of gas and highway taxes and licenses that’s paid by the trucks?”
“I’m sorry,” said the Saint amiably. “I wasn’t trying to start a fight. It’s only that I wonder sometimes if progress is worth all the things it spoils. I’m only a little crazy.”
Mr Jardane sniffed.
“All right,” he said aggrievedly. “But I made my pile out of the world the way it is, and I’ll bet I’ve done it as honestly as however you make a living.”
“That,” said the Saint mildly, “is certainly more than probable.”
The admission seemed to make Mr Jardane feel better. He watched Simon dextrously tying a tapered leader on the end of his line and asked chattily, “What sort of business are you in?”
“I used to be a sort of business investigator,” Simon told him, without feeling obliged to explain that the only sort of business he had ever investigated very deeply was funny business. “But I’m more or less retired now.”
He had said this so often that he had honestly begun to believe it, in spite of the fact that every month or two something infallibly happened to make a liar out of him.
“Retired already? And you look so much younger than me. But don’t think I envy you,” said Mr Jardane vigorously. “I’ve worked all my life, and I’ll die in harness, if those damfool doctors’ll let me. Wouldn’t know what to do with my time if I quit.”
“I go fishing,” murmured the Saint. “Like you’re doing.”
Mr Jardane blinked at him somewhat dubiously, as though he instinctively sensed a barb somewhere and was trying to locate its point. Failing in the immediate effort, he made a gesture of shrugging himself more purposefully into his manifold accouterments and said firmly, if fatuously, “Well, I guess I’ll give it another whirl. We’ll compare scores later.”
“Good luck,” Simon said pleasantly.
But he didn’t even glance up as Mr Jardane clomped away, being too intent on snipping his knot close and melting the remaining couple of millimeters of nylon into a tiny slip-proof bead with the tip of his cigarette.
When the sun dipped below the hills to the west he went down the bank and began to wade slowly up the riffle, pausing for a number of casts every few yards. There were still at least two hours of daylight left, but the direct sunlight was cut off from the water, and there was no reason why the trout shouldn’t begin biting, except for their own natural orneriness... Which, apparently, was at its worst that evening, for in the first hour the only specimen of salmo gairdnerii that rose to his fly was a fingerling of such immature dimensions that he could only release it and hope that the experience would keep it out of trouble until it grew to more edible size.
He took to a path by the water’s edge to bypass an unpromising stretch of rapids, and it brought him to a floating pier which the owner of the resort had hung some fifteen feet out into the stream to provide a place where anyone who was disinclined to wade could enjoy some limited casting. The outer end of it was already occupied by a small thin man with gold-rimmed glasses who was studiously baiting a spinning line, but Simon stopped on the pier anyway to light a cigarette and lean his rod against the handrail while he changed to the wet fly which he had decided to try next.
The alders and laurels along the bank were still green, but every gust of breeze harvested a flutter of falling leaves, and since the vanishing of the sun there was a perceptible crispness in the air. With the first russet fragrances of autumn blending with the sweet damp smell of the river, and the rush and chuckle of water playing accompaniment to the whispered arias of the treetops, and the softened light from the sky overlaying the landscape with a hint of gauze that a painter would despair of capturing, a poet might have felt that the mere catching of a fish was magnificently unimportant compared with the excuse that the attempt gave a man to enjoy so much beauty and tranquillity, and the Saint might easily have agreed with him. No doubt the relaxed and peaceful mood was even more plainly reflected in his lounging stance as he propped himself beside his rod and carefully wove his knot.