Arthur Gresson’s elbow nudged Simon’s ribs.
“What a character!” he said, almost proudly.
“I only give out with facts,” Vosper said. “My advice to you, Templar, is never be an elephant. Resist all inducements. Because when you reach back into that memory, you will only be laughed at, and the people who should thank you will call you a stinker.”
Gresson giggled, deep from his round pink stomach.
“Would you like to get in a swim before lunch?” Lucy Wexall said. “Floyd, show him where he can change.”
“A pleasure,” Vosper said. “And probably a legitimate part of the bargain.”
He thoughtfully refilled his glass before he steered Simon by way of the verandah into the beachward side of the house, and into a bedroom. He sat on the bed and watched unblinkingly while Simon stripped down and pulled on the trunks he had brought with him.
“It must be nice to have the Body Beautiful,” he observed. “Of course, in your business it almost ranks with plant and machinery, doesn’t it?”
The Saint’s blue eyes twinkled.
“The main difference,” he agreed good-humouredly, “is that if I get a screw loose it may not be so noticeable.”
As they were starting back through the living room, a small bird-like man in a dark and (for the setting outside the broad picture window) incongruous business suit bustled in by another door. He had the bright baggy eyes behind rimless glasses, the slack but fleshless jowls, and the wide tight mouth which may not be common to all lawyers, bankers, and business executives, but which is certainly found in very few other vocations, and he was followed by a statuesque brunette whose severe tailoring failed to disguise an outstanding combination of curves, who carried a notebook and a sheaf of papers.
“Herb!” Vosper said. “I want you to meet Lucy’s latest addition to the menagerie which already contains Astron and me — Mr Simon Templar, known as the Saint. Templar — your host, Mr Wexall.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Herbert Wexall, shaking hands briskly.
“And this is Pauline Stone,” Vosper went on, indicating the nubile brunette. “The tired business man’s consolation. Whatever Lucy can’t supply, she can.”
“How do you do,” said the girl stoically.
Her dark eyes lingered momentarily on the Saint’s torso, and he noticed that her mouth was very full and soft.
“Going for a swim?” Wexall said, as if he had heard nothing. “Good. Then I’ll see you at lunch, in a few minutes.”
He trotted busily on his way, and Vosper ushered the Saint to the beach by another flight of steps that led directly down from the verandah. The house commanded a small half-moon bay, and both ends of the crescent of sand were naturally guarded by abrupt rises of jagged coral rock.
“Herbert is the living example of how really stupid a successful business man can be,” Vosper said tirelessly. “He was just an office-boy of some kind in the Blaise outfit when he got smart enough to woo and win the boss’s daughter. And from that flying start, he was clever enough to really pay his way by making Blaise Industries twice as big as even the old man himself had been able to do. And yet he’s dumb enough to think that Lucy won’t catch on to the extracurricular functions of that busty secretary sooner or later — or that when she does he won’t be out on a cold doorstep in the rain... No, I’m not going in. I’ll hold your drink for you.”
Simon ran down into the surf and churned seawards for a couple of hundred yards, then turned over and paddled lazily back, coordinating his impressions with idle amusement. The balmy water was still refreshing after the heat of the morning, and when he came out the breeze had become brisk enough to give him the luxury of a fleeting shiver as the wetness started to evaporate from his tanned skin.
He crossed the sand to the Greek patio, where Floyd Vosper was on duty again at the bar in a strategic position to keep his own needs supplied with a minimum of effort. Discreet servants were setting up a buffet table. Janet Blaise and Reg Herrick had transferred their gin rummy game and were playing at a table right under the column where Astron had resumed his seat and his cataleptic meditations — a weird juxtaposition of which the three members all seemed equally unconscious.
Simon took Lucy Wexall a Martini and said with another glance at the tableau, “Where did you find him?”
“The people who brought him to California sent him to me when he had to leave the States. They gave me such a good time when I was out there, I couldn’t refuse to do something for them. He’s writing a book, you know, and of course he can’t go back to that dreadful place he came from, wherever it is, before he has a chance to finish it in reasonable comfort.”
Simon avoided discussing this assumption, but he said, “What’s it like, having a resident prophet in the house?”
“He’s very interesting. And quite as drastic as Floyd, in his own way, in summing up people. You ought to talk to him.”
Arthur Gresson came over with an hors d’oeuvre plate of smoked salmon and stuffed eggs from the buffet. He said, “Anyone you meet at Lucy’s is interesting, Mr Templar. But if you don’t mind my saying so, you have it all over the rest of ’em. Who’d ever think we’d find the Saint looking for crime in the Bahamas?”
“I hope no one will think I’m looking for crime,” Simon said deprecatingly, “any more than I take it for granted that you’re looking for oil.”
“That’s where you’d be wrong,” Gresson said. “As a matter of fact, I am.”
The Saint raised an eyebrow.
“Well, I can always learn something. I’d never heard of oil in the Bahamas.”
“I’m not a bit surprised. But you will, Mr Templar, you will.” Gresson sat down, pillowing his round stomach on his thighs. “Just think for a moment about some of the places you have heard of, where there is certainly oil. Let me mention them in a certain order. Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, and the recent strike in the Florida Everglades. We might even include Venezuela in the south. Does that suggest anything to you?”
“Hm-mm,” said the Saint thoughtfully.
“A pattern,” Gresson said. “A vast central pool of oil somewhere under the Gulf of Mexico, with oil wells dipping into it from the edges of the bowl, where the geological strata have also been forced up. Now think of the islands of the Caribbean as the eastern edge of the same bowl. Why not?”
“It’s a hell of an interesting theory,” said the Saint.
“Mr Wexall thinks so too, and I hope he’s going into partnership with me.”
“Herbert can afford it,” intruded the metallic sneering voice of Floyd Vosper. “But before you decide to buy in, Templar, you’d better check with New York about the time when Mr Gresson thought he could dig gold in the Catskills.”
“Shut up, Floyd,” said Mrs Wexall, “and get me another Martini.”
Arthur Granville Gresson chuckled in his paunch like a happy Buddha.
“What a guy!” he said. “What a ribber. And he gets everyone mad. He kills me!”
Herbert Wexall came down from the verandah and beamed around. As a sort of tacit announcement that he had put aside his work for the day, he had changed into a sport shirt on which various exotic animals were depicted wandering through an idealized jungle, but he retained his business trousers and business shoes and business face.
“Well,” he said, inspecting the buffet and addressing the world at large, “Let’s come and get it whenever we’re hungry.”
As if a spell had been snapped, Astron removed himself from the contemplation of the infinite, descended from his pillar, and began to help himself to cottage cheese and caviar on a foundation of lettuce leaves.