“What makes you think she’d be so amenable?” Simon asked amusedly.
“Because she’s gettin’ thoroughly tired of Uckrose, as anyone can see. Already today she’s sayin’ how bored she is wid his way o’ fishin’. But he won’t hear o’ me takin’ her out alone if it’s too rough for him. So she tells him she’s a mind to go right back to Nassau where she could do things an’ have fun. She’s as ripe an’ ready for trouble as a woman ever will be, Simon me b’y, an’ if ye don’t take advantage av it it’s a disillusioned owld man I’ll be.”
Simon accepted a cigarette and a cup of coffee, and then headed back to the hotel. By that time the cumulative effect of the food and beer on top of the long sun-drenched morning was making the ancient tropical custom of a siesta seem remarkably intelligent and inviting. He took a cold shower, closed the jalousie shutters enough to produce a restful twilight, and stretched out naked on the bed to relax and think.
Somewhere near by, some aspiring native Crosby with a guitar was rehearsing an apocryphal calypso:
Simon wondered idly what historic rhubarb was commemorated in that quaint refrain.
And that also could provide sustenance for extensive speculation.
The knocks were on his door, very softly yet quite distinctly. In a flash he was on his feet, pulling on his trousers and zipping them up. But as the knocks were repeated, even through their stealthiness he detected a certain flippancy in their odd little rhythm, a kind of conspiratorial gaiety that was persuasively reassuring. It would have taken an almost incredible Machiavelli of an assassin to have put that subtle touch into a knock. Simon was practically sure of what he would see as he turned the door knob.
Gloria Uckrose came in, wearing a green silk dressing gown and apparently nothing else.
4
“I thought,” she said, “I’d see whether you were kidding, about joining you for a drink.”
“Throw on a dress,” said the Saint agreeably, “and I’ll be waiting for you in the bar.”
“I’d be more comfortable here.”
“Then I’d have to go get something.”
“I don’t really need anything. I’ll settle for just joining.” She had come all the way into the room, walking confidently across towards the window. Now she stood with a cigarette in a short holder in her mouth, her velvet eyes resting on him a little mockingly through the trickle of smoke. “Why don’t you shut the door?”
Simon leaned on the handle, fanning the door a little wider if anything.
“Your husband mightn’t understand,” he explained ingenuously. “He might follow you here, and come bursting in, brandishing a revolver. He might even be acquitted if he shot me.”
She laughed shortly.
“My husband would be too scared of the bang to pull the trigger. Anyway, he’s snoring his head off. He had three double Daiquiris before lunch, and I know exactly what they do to him. A hurricane wouldn’t wake him up before cocktail time.”
“Which room do you have?”
“The third door along to your left. Why?”
“Would you think me unduly nervous if I went and listened to this snore myself?”
“Not at all. Go ahead.”
“In that case I don’t need to,” said the Saint cryptically. He started to shut the door, stopped again, and said, “What about Brother Innutio? Suppose he notices something that he thinks Clinton should hear about?”
“He took Dramamine on the boat. He could hardly keep his eyes open through lunch.”
Simon closed the door.
“It’s nice to meet someone as wide awake as you,” he murmured. “You probably even know already exactly what you’d say if Clinton happened to catch you coming back into the room in that costume.”
“This?” The careless gesture she made bared a few more inches of brown thigh in the opening of her robe. “Of course. I wanted some ice water, and nobody answered the bell, so I went looking for someone.”
“It’s a bore having to think of all these things, isn’t it?” he said disarmingly.
“You sound rather like a man who’s had the badger game tried on him.”
“I have,” Simon admitted. “It’s never worked, though.”
“Don’t even pretend to apologize. I expected you to be careful — I’d have been disappointed if you weren’t. We don’t have to play games, Saint. I know who you are.”
He dipped into a pack of cigarettes on the bedside table and placed one in his mouth. It was like driving an unfamiliar road full of potholes and blind curves, improvising a serpentine course from instant to instant between the minor pitfalls, while never knowing what major trap might yawn around the next bend. But his hand was light and flexible on the steering, his blue eyes relaxed and receptive for all their vigilance.
“I had a feeling you connected with the name,” he said. “Even if your gentleman companions didn’t.”
“Those idiots!” she said contemptuously. “They were so busy with their own yapping, they wouldn’t have heard your name if it had been J. Edgar Hoover.”
“Brother Innutio at least acted as if he should have recognized that one. Hoover, I mean.”
“I think Vince has just seen too many gangster movies.”
“Are you trying to tell me that that’s been his only contact?”
She shrugged.
“How should I know? He was recommended by a New York detective agency. Anyway, Clinton encourages the act. It makes him feel big, or something.”
Perfectly normal, just a common idiosyncrasy.
“And what’s Clinton’s excuse for needing a bodyguard at all?” Simon inquired conversationally.
She stared at him blankly.
“You mean you don’t know?”
“I haven’t the remotest idea.”
Although he could lie brilliantly when the occasion called for it, the truth could be told with a pellucid simplicity that it would have been almost impossible to give to a falsehood. The incredulous widening of her eyes was merely automatic: his honesty was so obvious that it would have convinced anyone. But for the moment the fact as he stated it left her speechless.
“So that’s how it is,” she said at last. “I’ve got to face it now.”
“Face what?” he asked politely.
She sat down on the arm of the chair nearest to her, careless of how the robe fell off her legs.
“What I’ve been dreading for a long time,” she said. “He’s losing his mind. I thought he was a little touched when he hired Vincent. But he swore that people were following him and spying on him. He talked about being kidnaped or murdered for something he’d known about before he retired. And when you arrived here, and it finally dawned on him who you were, he was sure that you were working for these people and you’d only come here to get him.”
“His captain could have told him that we met entirely by accident, and all I ever knew about your husband until I got here was what Patsy told me.”