“Home?” said the Saint. “Where’s that?”
“Jamaica, sah. I was born here.” The man added, with an odd touch of pride, “I’m a Maroon.”
Perhaps hardly one listener in ten thousand would have had any answer but the equivalent of “What?” or “So what?” to such a statement, but Simon Templar was that one. It was one of those coincidences that were almost commonplace in his life that he not only knew what a Maroon was, but even had some elements of an immediate interest in that little-known political survival of the old wild history of the West Indies.
Johnny, however, had already interpreted the Saint’s minuscule stiffening of surprise as a normal reaction of perplexity, and was hastening to explain, “The original Maroons were slaves who ran away, back at the beginnin’ of the eighteenth century, an’ took to the hills. When there was enough of ’em, they kept fightin’ the British troops who tried to round ’em up, till it was just like a war. They done so well that finally the British Empire had to give up an’ make a peace treaty with ’em.”
“I’ve heard about them,” said the Saint. “They got their freedom, and a piece of the island set aside for them and their descendants for ever, sort of like an Indian reservation in the States. Only I was told that they make their own laws and appoint their own rulers and nobody can interfere with them in any way, just as if they were an independent little country of their own.”
“That’s right,” Johnny said. “And that’s our country, right underneath you now.”
Simon looked down through the window. Below them was a welter of steeply rounded hills, reminiscent in shape of a mass of old-fashioned beehives jam-packed together. Over almost every foot of surface the jungle grew like a coat of curly green wool above which only the tops of the tallest trees raised little knots like the mounds in a pebble-weave fabric. Only here and there was the denseness broken by a smoother slope that seemed to be open grass, a tiny brown patch of cultivation, the shiny specks of a banana patch, or the silver thread of a stream exposed on an outcropping of bare boulders, but most of it looked as wild and impenetrable as any terrain that the Saint had ever seen.
“They call it the Cockpit,” Johnny said. “I dunno why, ’cept that it’s sure seen a lot of fightin’. Doesn’t look like it’s changed much, though I was only twelve when my dad took me away to the States.”
“What makes you want to go back?” Simon asked.
“Well, sah, he died soon after that, so I didn’t get to go to school much more. I was too busy hustlin’ for a livin’. Bein’ a sparrin’ partner was just another job. When I found I didn’t have what it takes to be a top fighter, I gave that up. I done all kinds of things, from shoeshine boy to cook an’ butler. But by the time I met you, I’d decided I wanted to be something better, an’ I started savin’ my money an’ goin’ to night school. Presently I learned enough an’ saved up enough to pass the entrance exam to Tuskegee an’ afford to go there. Got me a degree a year ago. I know I’ll never talk like a college man, that’s a bad habit I’ve had too long, but I sure learned all I could.”
“You’ve got enough to be proud of,” said the Saint. “But that still doesn’t tell me why you aren’t going on from there to something better in the States.”
“Well, sah, you know as well as I do how it is up there. There’s a limit to what a colored man can do.” Johnny spoke with devastating candor, without inferiority or rancor. “Some of the fellows at college always think they’re goin’ to change the world. I never felt big enough for that, but I done plenty of thinkin’. After I got out an’ tried it, I knew I was always goin’ to have to just be the best I could among colored people. So then I began thinkin’, well, if that’s how it is, why don’t I go back an’ do that with my own colored people, the Maroons, where I came from? Maybe I’m needed more down here, where some negroes go to English universities, but others are more illiterate even than the poorest share-cropper in Mississippi... I dunno, I thought, maybe I can help more of ’em to be ready when that change in the world comes.”
The sincerity in his brown eyes was so cloudless and complete that Simon found himself hopelessly assaying a medley of assorted answers, afraid to utter any of them spontaneously lest he sound smug and patronizing.
In that paralysis of fumbling sensitivity, the Deadly Dowager herself came to his rescue. Both Simon and Johnny simultaneously became aware of her, freshly girdled and painted, lowering over her usurped seat, and transfixing them alternately with the daggers of her arctic eyes.
Even before the Saint himself could adjust to that unexpected additional problem, Johnny was scrambling out of the chair with the ingrained quick defensive humility that not even a degree from Tuskegee had eradicated, that was somehow a subtle humiliation to both races.
“Excuse me, ma’am. And thank you for listenin’, sah.”
There was little that the Saint could do, the world not yet having changed. The illuminated sign on the forward bulkhead was on, and the stewardess was already intoning, “Will you fasten your seat belts, please. And no smoking, please.” But little as it was, Simon did it.
He put out his hand, directly across the entering matriarch’s mid-section.
“It was nice seeing you again, Johnny. Maybe I’ll run into you again — in the Cockpit.”
Then the dame surged like a tidal wave into her seat.
“Well!” she said, condensing innumerable volumes into a single syllable.
The Saint’s only consolation was that for the remaining few minutes of the flight she stayed as far away from him as if he had been labeled the carrier of a contagious disease, which gave him a comfortable excess over the normally limited amount of elbow room.
2
David Farnham was at the airport, a sturdy and unmistakably British figure in open-necked shirt and khaki walking shorts, pipe in mouth, bright eyes and bald head shining. Under his benevolent aegis the formalities of immigration and customs passed Simon through as if on a fast-rolling conveyor belt, and in a matter of mere minutes they were in Farnham’s little English car, circling around the harbor and edging into the crowded clattering streets of the town.
“I hope my wire wasn’t too much of a shock to you,” said the Saint. “When you talked to me at that cocktail party in Nassau, you probably never thought I’d take you up on your invitation.”
“On the contrary, I’m delighted that you finally did. I always believed you would, and it’s nice of you to prove I was right.”
“I didn’t expect you to meet me, though. Won’t the Government mind you taking this time off?”
“Government has nothing to say about it,” Farnham told him sedately. “I’ve managed to retire at last. They wanted me to carry on, but having reached the age of sixty they couldn’t prevent me getting out. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.”
Simon regarded him speculatively. He knew, although David by no means told everyone, that his host had been a schoolteacher before he had been practically drafted into the service of the Colonial Secretariat, on an indefinite leave of absence from his blackboard which had been extended for so long that his original calling was often forgotten. Placed in charge of almost every activity which could be classified under the broad heading of General Progress, he had brought so much honest enthusiasm and kindly wisdom to his job that the temporary appointment had drifted into a de facto permanency.