There were some episodes in Simon Templar's life when all the component parts of a perfectly rounded diagram fell into place one by one with such a sweetly definitive succession of crisp clicks that mere coincidence was too pallid and anemic a theory with which to account for them--when he almost felt as if he was reclining passively in an armchair and watching the oiled wheels of Fate roll smoothly through the convolutions of a supernaturally engineered machine.
Two days later he was relaxing his long lean body on the private beach of the Roney Plaza, revelling in the clean sharp bite of the sun on his brown skin and lazily debating the comparative attractions of iced beer or a tinkling highball as a noon refresher, when two voices reached him sufficiently clearly to force themselves into his drowsy consciousness. They belonged to a man and a girl, and it was obvious that they were quarrelling.
Simon wasn't interested. He was at peace with the world. He concentrated on digging up a small sand castle with his toes and tried to shut them out. And then he heard the girl say: "My God, are you so dumb that you can't see that they must be crooks?"
It was the word "crooks" that did it. When the Saint heard that word, he could no more have concentrated on sand castles than a rabid egyptologist could have remained aloof while gossip of scarabs and sarcophagi shuttled across his head. A private squabble was one thing, but this was something else that to the Saint made eavesdropping not only pardonable but almost a moral obligation.
He rolled over and looked at the girl. She was only a few feet from him and even at that range it was easier to go on looking than to look away. From her loose raven hair down to her daintily enamelled toenails there wasn't an inch of her that didn't make its own demoralizing demands on the eye, and the clinging silk swimsuit she wore left very few inches any secrets.
"Why must they be crooks?" asked the man stubbornly. He was young and tow-headed but the Saint's keen survey traced hard and haggard lines in his face. "Just because I've been out of luck----"
"Luck I" The girl's voice was scornful and impatient. "You were out of luck when you met them. Two men that you know nothing about, who pick you up in a bar and suddenly discover that you're the bosom pal they've been looking for all their lives--who want to take you out to dinner every night, and take you out fishing every day, and buy you drinks and show you the town--and you talk about luck! D'you think they'd do all that if they didn't know they could get you to play cards with them every night and make you lose enough to pay them back a hundred times over?"
"I won plenty from them to begin with."
"Of course you did! They let you win--just to encourage you to play higher. And now you've lost all that back and a lot more that you can't afford to lose. And you're still going on, making it worse and worse." She caught his arm impulsively and her voice softened. "Oh, Eddie, I hate fighting with you like this, but can't you see what a fool you're being?"
"Well, why don't you leave me alone if you hate fighting? Anyone might think I was a kid straight out of school."
He shrugged himself angrily away from her, and as he turned he looked straight into the Saint's eyes. Simon was so interested that the movement caught him unprepared, still watching them, as if he had been hiding behind a curtain and it had been abruptly torn down.
It was so much too late for Simon to switch his eyes away without looking even guiltier that be had to go on watching, and the young man went on scowling, at him and said uncomfortably: "We aren't really going to cut each other's throats, but there are some things that women can't understand."
"If a man told him that elephants laid eggs he'd believe it, just because it was a man who told him," said the girl petulantly, and she also looked at the Saint. "Perhaps if you told him----"
"The trouble is, she won't give me credit for having any sense----"
"He's such a baby----"
"If she didn't read so many detective stories----"
"He's so damned pig-headed----"
The Saint held up his hands.
"Wait a minute," he pleaded. "Don't shoot the referee--he doesn't know what it's all about. I couldn't help hearing what you were saying, but it isn't my fight."
The young man rubbed his head shamefacedly, and the girl bit her lip.
Then she said quickly: "Well, please, won't you be a referee? Perhaps he'd listen to you. He's lost fifteen thousand dollars already, and it isn't all his own money----"
"For God's sake," the man burst out savagely, "are you trying to make me look a complete heel?"
The girl caught her breath, and her lip trembled. And then, with a sort of sob, she picked herself up and walked quickly away without another word.
The young man gazed after her in silence, and his fist clenched on a handful of sand as if he would have liked to hurt it.
"Oh hell," he said expressively.
Simon drew a cigarette out of the packet beside him and tapped it meditatively on his thumbnail while the awkward hiatus made itself at home. His eyes seemed to be intent on following the movements of a small fishing cruiser far out on the emerald waters of the Gulf Stream.
"It's none of my damn business," he remarked at length, "but isn't there just a chance that the girl friend may be right? It's happened before; and a resort like this is rather a happy hunting ground for all kinds of crooks."
"I know it is," said the other sourly. He turned and looked at the Saint again miserably. "But I am pigheaded, and I can't bear to admit to her that I could have been such a mug. She's my fiancee--I suppose you guessed that. My name's Mercer."
"Simon Templar is mine."
The name had a significance for Mercer that it apparently had not had for Mr Naskill. His eyes opened wide.
"Good God, you don't mean----You're not the Saint?"
Simon smiled. He was still immodest enough to enjoy the sensation that his name could sometimes cause.
"That's what they call me."
"Of course I've read about you, but----Well, it sort of . . ." The young man petered out incoherently. "And I'd have argued with you about crooks! . . . But--well, you ought to know. Do you think I've been a mug?"
The Saint's brows slanted sympathetically.
"If you took my advice," he answered, "you'd let these birds find someone else to play with. Write it off to experience, and don't do it again."
"But I can't!" Mercer's response was desperate. "She--she was telling the truth. I've lost money that wasn't mine. I've only got a job in an advertising agency that doesn't pay very much, but her people are pretty well off. They've found me a better job here, starting in a couple of months, and they sent us down here to find a home, and they gave us twenty thousand dollars to buy it and furnish it, and that's the money I've been playing with. Don't you see? I've got to go on and win it back!"
"Or go on and lose the rest."
"Oh, I know. But I thought the luck must change
before that. And yet---- But everybody who plays
cards isn't a crook, is he? And I don't see how they could have done it. After she started talking about it, I watched them. I've been looking for it. And I couldn't catch them making a single move that wasn't above-board. Then I began to think about marked cards-- we've always played with their cards. I sneaked away one of the packs we were using last night, and I've been looking at it this morning. I'll swear there isn't a mark on it. Here, I can show you."