“Templar,” he said. “Of course, you must be the Saint — the fellow they call the Robin Hood of modern crime.”
“I see you read the right papers,” said the Saint pleasantly.
“I read all the papers,” Vosper said, “in order to keep in touch with the vagaries of vulgar taste. I’ve often wondered why the Robin Hood legend should have so much romantic appeal. Robin Hood, as I understand it, was a bandit who indulged in some well-publicized charity — but not, as I recall, at the expense of his own stomach. A good many unscrupulous promoters have also become generous — and with as much shrewd publicity — when their ill-gotten gains exceeded their personal spending capacity, but I don’t remember that they succeeded in being glamorized for it.”
“There may be some difference,” Simon suggested, “in who was robbed to provide the surplus spoils.”
“Then,” Vosper said challengingly, “you consider yourself an infallible judge of who should be penalized and who should be rewarded.”
“Oh, no,” said the Saint modestly. “Not at all. No more, I’m sure, than you would call yourself the infallible judge of all the people that you dissect so definitively in print.”
He felt the other’s probing glance stab at him suspiciously and almost with puzzled incredulity, as if Vosper couldn’t quite accept the idea that anyone had actually dared to cross swords with him, and moreover might have scored at least even on the riposte — or if it had happened at all, that it had been anything but a semantic accident. But the Saint’s easily inscrutable poise gave no clue to the answer at all, and before anything further could develop there was a paragraphic distraction.
This took the form of a man seated on top of a truncated column which for reasons best known to the architect had been incorporated into the design of a wall which curved out from the house to encircle a portion of the shore like a possessive arm. The man had long curly hair that fell to his shoulders, which with his delicate ascetic features would have made him look more like a woman if it had not been complemented with an equally curly and silken beard. He sat cross-legged and upright, his hands folded symmetrically in his lap, staring straight out into the blue sky a little above the horizon, so motionless and almost rigid that he might easily have been taken for a tinted statue except for the fluttering of the long flowing white robe he wore.
After rolling with the first reasonable shock of the apparition, Simon would have passed on politely without comment, but the opportunity was irresistible for Vosper to display his virtuosity again, and perhaps also to recover from his momentary confusion.
“That fugitive from a Turkish bath,” Vosper said, in the manner of a tired guide to a geek show, “calls himself Astron. He’s a nature boy from the Dardanelles who just concluded a very successful season in Hollywood. He wears a beard to cover a receding chin, and long hair to cover a hole in the head. He purifies his soul with a diet of boiled grass and prune juice. Whenever this diet lets him off the pot, he meditates. After he was brought to the attention of the Western world by some engineers of the Anglo-Mongolian Oil Company, whom he cures of stomach ulcers by persuading them not to spike their ration of sacramental wine with rubbing alcohol, he began to meditate about the evils of earthly riches.”
“Another member of our club?” Simon prompted innocuously.
“Astron maintains,” Vosper said, leaning against the pillar and giving out as oracularly as if the object of his dissertation were not sitting on it at all, “that the only way for the holders of worldly wealth to purify themselves is to get rid of as much of it as they can spare. Being himself so pure that it hurts, he is unselfishly ready to become the custodian of as much corrupting cabbage as they would like to get rid of. Of course, he would have no part of it himself, but he will take the responsibility of parking it in a shrine in the Sea of Marmora which he plans to build as soon as there is enough kraut in the kitty.”
The figure on the column finally moved. Without any waste motion, it simply expanded its crossed legs like a lazy tongs until it towered at its full height over them.
“You have heard the blasphemer,” it said. “But I say to you that his words are dust in the wind, as he himself is dust among the stars that I see.”
“I’m a blasphemer,” Vosper repeated to the Saint, with a sort of derisive pride combined with the ponderous bonhomie of a vaudeville old-timer in a routine with a talking dog. He looked back up at the figure of the white-robed mystic towering above him, and said, “So if you have this direct pipeline to the Almighty, why don’t you strike me dead?”
“Life and death are not in my hands,” Astron said, in a calm and confident voice. “Death can only come from the hands of the Giver of all Life. In His own good time He will strike you down, and the arrow of God will silence your mockeries. This I have seen in the stars.”
“Quaint, isn’t he?” Vosper said, and opened the gate between the wall and the beach.
Beyond the wall a few steps led down to a kind of Grecian courtyard open on the seaward side, where the paving merged directly into the white sand of the beach. The courtyard was furnished with gaily colored lounging chairs and a well-stocked pushcart bar, to which Vosper immediately directed himself.
“You have visitors, Lucy,” he said, without letting it interfere with the important work of reviving his highball.
Out on the sand, on a towel spread under an enormous beach umbrella, Mrs Herbert Wexall rolled over and said, “Oh, Mr Templar.”
Simon went over and shook hands with her as she stood up. It was hard to think of her as Janet Blaise’s sister, for there were at least twenty years between them and hardly any physical resemblances. She was a big woman with an open homely face and patchily sun-bleached hair and a sloppy figure, but she made a virtue of those disadvantages by the cheerfulness with which she ignored them. She was what is rather inadequately known as “a person,” which means that she had the personality to dispense with appearances and the money to back it up.
“Good to see you,” she said, and turned to the man who had been sitting beside her, as he struggled to his feet. “Do you know Arthur Gresson?”
Mr Gresson was a full head shorter than the Saint’s six foot two, but he weighed a good deal more. Unlike anyone else that Simon had encountered on the premises so far, his skin looked as if it was unaccustomed to exposure. His round body and his round balding brow, under a liberal sheen of oil, had the hot rosy blush which the kiss of the sun evokes in virgin epidermis.
“Glad to meet you, Mr Templar.” His hand was soft and earnestly adhesive.
“I expect you’d like a drink,” Lucy Wexall said. “Let’s keep Floyd working.”
They joined Vosper at the bar wagon, and after he had started to work on the orders she turned back to the Saint and said, “After this formal service, just make yourself at home. I’m so glad you could come.”
“I’m sure Mr Templar will be happy,” Vosper said. “He’s a man of the world like I am. We enjoy Lucy’s food and liquor, and in return we give her the pleasure of hitting the society columns with our names. A perfectly businesslike exchange.”
“That’s progress for you,” Lucy Wexall said breezily. “In the old days I’d have had a court jester. Now all I get is a professional stinker.”
“That’s no way to refer to Arthur,” Vosper said, handing Simon a long cold glass, “For your information, Templar, Mr Gresson — Mr Arthur Granville Gresson — is a promoter. He has a long history of selling phony oil stock behind him. He is just about to take Herb Wexall for another sucker, but since Herb married Lucy he can afford it. Unless you’re sure you can take Janet away from Reggie, I advise you not to listen to him.”