“Does your uncle live in one of those?” Simon asked, indicating the canvas settlement.
“I’m sure he’d prefer to,” said McGeorge glumly. “But he moved all his belongings here, most of them being books, so he had to break down and put a roof over them.”
To make his aspect even more incongruous, he was clutching a large and sinister-looking weapon which resembled a cross between an ancient arquebus and something out of a science-fiction armoury. From one end of it protruded the sharp end of a wickedly barbed spear, which the rest of the contraption was apparently designed to propel.
“What can you take for a present to a simple-life maniac?” he had explained plaintively, when he showed up with it at their embarcation. “It seems that about their only entertainment here is swimming around in diving masks and shooting at wretched little fish. So I went to a tackle shop and asked them what was the latest tool for it, and they sold me this beastly thing.”
A sizeable and lively congregation stood waiting on the quay. Some of them who were more or less conventionally clothed, but sun-scorched, could be identified by their baggage as visitors who were waiting to end their stay with the return trip of the ferry. The rest were obviously residents or at least seasoned sojourners who had come to meet newly arriving friends, to collect packages from the mainland, or simply to inspect the latest specimens from the outside world. A few of those wore bikinis that would have satisfied the modest requirements of any ordinary French beach, but as the distance lessened from yards to feet and eventually to inches, it became eye-fillingly manifest that the majority were fully content with the minuscule G-string confection prescribed for wear within the city limits.
“This is just like landing on one of those South Sea islands you used to read about,” Simon remarked, surveying the reception committee with interest. “Only these natives are a hell of a lot better-looking.”
It was indeed hard to realize that they had voyaged less than an hour from Le Lavandou, and already Loulou’s assistant Corsairs had jumped ashore and were pushing through the array of bare breasts and buttocks to make fast their lines with all the indifference of long familiarity. Mr McGeorge stood gripped in a kind of paralysis in which only his eyes moved, and they swiveled frantically as if torn between the compulsion to see everything and a terror of being caught staring at anything. But at last they found something that they seemed to feel they could safely rest on.
“There’s Uncle Waldo,” he croaked.
Simon followed him on to the dock without the slightest forboding of what that innocent visit was to lead to.
3
Mr Waldo Oddington was a rather tall wiry man whose age was not too evident even to the extremely complete scrutiny which his nominal garment permitted. His hair, which was scanty, was an indefinite gray, and although his nut-brown body might have been rated on the scrawny side by some esthetic standards, its muscles looked hard and his abdomen was as flat as a board. He wrung his nephew’s hand with a vigor that made Mr McGeorge wince.
“Good to see you, my dear boy! And it’s about time. I thought you’d never run out of excuses.” His very bright hazel eyes examined McGeorge more closely. “What’s the matter with you? Have you just been sick?”
“No, we had a perfectly smooth crossing.”
“Then why are you so pale?”
“London, you know,” said McGeorge vaguely. “And New York before that.”
“Terrible places,” pronounced Mr Oddington. “Millions of imbeciles making themselves neurotic with the noise and bustle, and poisoning themselves with all the fumes they breathe. Why do you think their insanity rate and their lung cancer rate keep rising in almost parallel lines on a graph?”
Not having any ready answer to this, McGeorge somewhat desperately proffered the spear gun he had been holding.
“I brought this along for you, Uncle,” he said. “I hope you like it.”
“Now that’s what I call using your head.” Mr Oddington hefted the weapon and beamed over it like a ten-year-old who has just been presented with the newest model Space Patrol disintegrator. “I really appreciate it, dear boy. We’ll try it out this afternoon… But I know you’ve been dying to meet Nadine.”
He pushed forward a fair-haired golden-skinned girl who had been standing near him. She smiled, making dimples in a mischievous pretty face.
“How do you do,” she said, with only a little accent.
Mr McGeorge did not look as if he had been dying to meet her, but as if he might well die from doing it. His savoir faire, which probably no normal contretemps could have ruffled, was plainly unequal to the requirements of being presented to a shapely young woman who seemed quite unconscious of wearing nothing above the waist. A crimson flush swept over his face, and he groped blindly for her outstretched hand with his eyes fixed glazedly on a point just over the top of her head.
As hastily as possible, he turned to grab the Saint’s arm, as if it had frantically occurred to him that Simon might escape.
“I’d like you to meet a friend of mine — Mr Templar. I brought him with me. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Delighted!” Mr Oddington surveyed the Saint’s lean broad-shouldered lines with undisguised approval. “You look very fit, sir. I’m sure we’ll have a lot in common. And you must meet Mademoiselle Zeult.”
Simon shook hands with the girl, without especially restricting himself on where he looked. It seemed to him that she was no more displeased than any fully clothed woman would have been who sensed that her figure was being admired.
“Well, we don’t have to stand around here,” Mr Oddington said briskly. “I expect you’re dying to get out of those clothes.”
“Oh, no,” said McGeorge faintly. “I mean, we’re in no hurry. I mean, if there’s anything else you want to do…”
“We have to pick up a few groceries in the village, but that’s on our way. And of course, you’ll want to buy your slips.”
“Our what?”
“These things.” Mr Oddington indicated his own peculiarly tailored kind of sporran.
“We don’t really need those, do we?” McGeorge said.
“I’m afraid you do. It’s strictly against the law to go around the village stark naked. Damned nonsense, I think, but there it is.”
“I mean, I’ve already got trousers, and Templar’s got shorts—”
“You don’t want to be taken for tourists and have everyone staring at you, do you?” asked Mr Oddington incredulously.
He shepherded them away up a narrow deeply rutted road along which some of the crowd were already dispersing, while others were stringing out along a footpath that led along the shore in the direction of the clustered tents. The road curved up the hill without any serious attempt at easing its slant. A battered truck laden with miscellaneous cargo and with a half-dozen grinning riders perched on top slowly overtook them, and they had to step off the edge of the lane to let it by. It groaned past them in four-wheeled drive, leaving a fine haze of dust in its wake.
“Our only piece of mechanical transportation,” Mr Oddington said. “It hauls heavy stuff up from the ferry — and people who are too lazy to walk.”