The fog was lifting, he was glad to observe as he drove back to Upper Berkeley Mews, so there should be no disorganization of plane departures. A quick search through the international air timetables which were one of the most vital sections of his library showed him the best connections to aim for, and a phone call to BOAC secured him a seat on the 11 A.M. VC-10 to New York and a promise to work on his onward reservations.
Simon packed a single capacious suitcase, and still had time for three hours refreshing sleep before he showered and shaved and set off for the airport. He noted that no Teal — sent bloodhounds had made their conspicuously inconspicuous appearance in the vicinity of his portals, and took it as a good omen, which presently vindicated either his good luck or his craftiness when he was able to board his flight without any complications.
With the additional unpremeditated good fortune of drawing a seat neighbor of the true bulldog breed, who buried himself sarcophagally in The Times and made it pointedly plain that he never opened conversations with strangers unless a wing fell off, and perhaps not even then, the Saint was finally able to settle down to an unhurried perusal of the statistical reports which he had removed from Manders’ cabinet, while he sipped on the first of the airline’s bountifully proffered Martinis.
The unspectacular conclusions of Distribution of Homicidal Obsession in Age Groups 18 to 25 were not so interesting as the mere fact that Manders had chosen such a subject for his private collection, and also — judging from his underlinings — that he was especially concerned with the section on characteristics of murder-obsessed young people who had gone beyond obsession to actual killing.
The second report, Varieties of Emotional Response in Players of the Death Game, included a few pages of general information which apparently had been furnished Manders by an outside source, since it covered a number of different colleges. In addition to the general section, however, were several more pages almost certainly written by Manders himself; they discussed in detail, and by name, students who had reacted in various ways to taking part in the game.
Jenny Turner, for instance, was considered “clever but frivolously casual, taking the whole thing as a joke.” The report predicted that she would probably outdo most competitors but would be “of no real use.”
Simon, while he begged to differ with that pessimistic conclusion, went on to read a much more enthusiastic evaluation of Grey Wyler. Not only was he “ingenious” and “highly intelligent” but his attitudes toward “society” and “wealth” gave him “additional motivation.” He also showed happy signs of “those characteristics typical of individuals who lack any strongly developed moral sense or appreciation of the feelings of others, and may under certain circumstances almost casually perform highly anti-social acts.”
As Simon sat back to digest that slab of jargon, he felt the pleasant sensation that comes with clearly discerning a pattern in an apparent confusion of events. The word “recruit” in what must have been Timonaides’ most recent letter was a fairly solid tipoff, but the statistical reports confirmed the reality of a fantastic idea.
Kuros Timonaides, the master of legal illegality, was harnessing a student craze — whose beginnings he had probably himself encouraged — as a means of discovering and testing potential recruits for his criminal organization. He obtained the cooperation of men such as Manders with well-practiced techniques of blackmail and bribery — and if that cooperation showed signs of flagging, a more passive and permanent form could be ensured by convenient suicides or accidents — a method Timonaides’ agents had been suspected of using in the past.
And now Simon Templar was flying right into the final heat of the Greek impresario’s giant talent contest. He had one particular advantage over the rest of the contestants, however: he knew that a contest was going on. If he played the stacked deck right, he might even end up a winner.
It was only 1:30 P.M. in New York when the plane landed at Kennedy airport, and a BOAC representative met him with confirmed seating on a National flight to West Palm Beach, and after the customs and immigration formalities he was able to make the transfer very comfortably, without leaving the airport.
The plane to West Palm Beach got in time for him to catch one of the evening excursion flights to Freeport that had lately been inaugurated to ferry Florida tourists across to the gambling facilities of the emancipated British island. There was still enough daylight to enjoy the 50-minute flight out over the smooth sea at what seemed a barely drifting speed in comparison with the jets of the earlier parts of the trip. The incredibly dark blue waters of the Gulf Stream were below for a while, and then the eastern boundary of the flow was delineated by an abrupt shift to translucent green. The ocean bottom was in many places as clearly visible as if there had been no water covering it at all, and Simon wished the plane flew low enough to allow a detailed view of the colorful coral reefs and the gliding forms of their finny inhabitants.
He checked in at the Lucayan Beach Hotel, had dinner, played away a handful of chips at the Casino, and went to bed to catch up on the five-hour time change with a full night’s tranquil slumber, secure in the knowledge that he was at last out of range of Scotland Yard’s interference, at least for a while. His timetable studies had told him that the direct plane from England via Bermuda to Nassau which was bringing the Death Game prizewinners from Europe would get there too late for them to catch a plane to Freeport that night, and they would have to come on the first flight the next day.
When he woke up it was a beautiful warm sunny morning, an almost unbelievable transition from the dank gray chill that he had looked out on when he last got out of bed, and only a swim in the balmy turquoise sea before breakfast could pay it the tribute it deserved. When he went back to the airport to meet the Nassau plane, now wearing only a gay sport shirt and featherweight slacks, he felt like a new man, with all the exhilaration that only summery climes could give him.
His last lingering fragment of anxiety evaporated when he saw Jenny’s blonde head and Grey’s brown coming down the boarding stairs. But he preferred not to cause a noisy and attention-attracting reunion, so he waited until they had come through the arrival barrier before he stepped forward and greeted his London friends as they started across the lobby.
Both were absorbed in interpreting the meaning of some message they had apparently received at the information desk, which absorption did not contribute to their composure when they suddenly saw the Saint materialize, like an exceptionally tall and healthy ghost, smiling down on them.
Grey just came to a complete halt and stared. Jenny gave a little cry of surprise, then exhaled and almost laughed with relief.
“Oh, Simon, I thought you weren’t coming. You couldn’t believe how worried I was. How on earth did you get here?”
She had extended both hands, which he accepted, and then he kissed her on the cheek.
“You must not have noticed me,” he said. “I was right there on the plane with you.”
Jenny gave him a bemused stare.
“No, you weren’t. You couldn’t have...”
Wyler interrupted, with condescending boredom in his tone.
“He means his alias was supposedly with us,” he explained.
Jenny flushed.