“Are we really going to Nassau?” she breathed.
“No, but we’ll head that way with all our lights on, and the boys we just left behind will tell Timonaides what we said. Whether he’ll believe it or not is another thing, but it won’t hurt for him to hear about it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s watching us right now from some rooftop eyrie. When we’re disappearing towards Nassau I’ll cut all the lights and we’ll circle back toward Freeport.”
The engines were at full power now, and Simon beaded south by the compass. If any ocean-borne pursuit from East Island Villas had been organized it was too late to catch up, particularly since the only boats available were too light and small for open seas.
“Freeport?” Jenny asked.
She was obviously still in a daze.
“You remember Freeport,” Simon said with an amused smile. “Where your plane landed on Grand Bahama. We’ll take a plane out of their first thing in the morning. There’s not much we can do back at the Villas, especially since we wouldn’t have any idea who — if anybody — we could trust. And by this time Timonaides has certainly roused them by radio. I think we’ll enjoy the remainder of our holiday much more someplace else.”
“We’re not going back to the Villas at all?” she asked stupidly.
“If you think I’m going back there and capture a gang of about twenty people with the aid of one hand gun and a kinky girl, you’ve got a mistaken idea of my heroism. I’m brave, but not crazy.”
Jenny’s eyes popped wider open.
“But my clothes are all back there!”
The Saint groaned.
“You almost tempt me to make trite comments about the female mind. Give it a little thought, and you’ll agree that your life is worth more than a closet full of dresses. I’ll take you on a shopping spree as soon as we get to the states.”
Jenny looked at him with exasperation.
“They took my money,” she said.
“They took mine too,” said the Saint, “but Grey Wyler and Halston had quite a bit.”
He showed it to her. Suddenly she laughed, a little hysterically, then got to her feet and hugged him as he stood at the wheel.
“I like you,” she said.
“I like you too,” he answered, “but there’s not much I can do about it for the moment. Why don’t you go down to the galley and get us some of that champagne the hired hands weren’t supposed to get into?”
“What a super idea! I’ll be back in a jiffy,”
She returned with a bottle of Bollinger on ice and told him there was lots of food below.
“Fine. Fix us a midnight snack.”
By the time she brought a platter of caviar, pate, boned pheasant, crackers, and cheeses, the lights of Timonaides’ personal island were only a starlike glimmer in the distance astern.
“We’ve gone far enough on our diversionary course,” Simon said. “He’ll never know where we’ve gone from here.”
He cut off all the running lights, brought the boat about in a wide turn, and set the controls on automatic for a course which would bring them back to the coast of Grand Bahama Island fifteen or twenty miles west of their earlier departure point. With no further immediate need to hold the wheel, he opened the champagne and filled the glasses. The glow of the compass light and the depth indicator, along with the bright moonlight outside provided illumination enough after their eyes had adjusted to it.
“Nothing like not getting killed to give you an appetite, is there?” commented the Saint, munching a caviar-covered cracker which Jenny had popped into his mouth.
“It’s a wonderful feeling,” she said. “Just being alive. I’m just sorry that...”
“What?”
“That we didn’t get Timonaides.”
Simon grinned and finished his first glass of champagne.
“You sound like a real pro,” he said. “You’re sorry we didn’t shoot him, I suppose, and it is regrettable, but I think we’re best off not getting involved with executing people.”
He poured another round of the icy wine.
“We’ve pretty well fouled up his operation,” he said. “Exposing this Death Game business to the light is equivalent to ending its usefulness for him. And also for Wyler and Halston. They probably wouldn’t dare show their faces where we might see them, so Timonaides will most likely shunt them off to some obscure place, possibly try to get some mileage out of them for his money, and then get rid of them. They’d be potentially embarrassing relics of a scheme that failed — and he can’t afford those kinds of living liabilities.”
“But he won’t even go to jail for what he’s done,” Jenny said.
“He’d done a lot worse before we ever met him. A man like that has a positive knack for staying out of jail — or else he never stays out of jail long enough to become a man like that.” Simon had some pate, keeping an eye out for other boats. He saw none. “Not that I wouldn’t like to see a final solution to the Timonaides problem. I think, in fact, that I’ll keep that possibility in the front of my mind till something’s been done about it. In the meanwhile, he’ll stew enough. There’s Manders, who’ll implicate him in a murder. And one of the first things I’ll do when we get to the mainland is put in a call to Inspector Teal and let him know about this end of Timonaides’ operation. Remember, Timonaides isn’t the kind of man who can drop discreetly out of sight very easily. He’s guaranteed that by being so fond of life among the Jet Set. He’ll have to fight these things in the open.”
“Tough,” said Jenny.
They spent most of the ride back to the coast of Grand Bahama rehashing the events of the evening. When they came within a mile or so of the lights of Freeport, Simon took the wheel again and headed east, parallel to the shore, turning on the running lights.
“I’ll pull in till the depth indicator shows we can anchor. In a couple of hours we can go nearer Freeport and head this thing out to sea on automatic pilot in case Timonaides has reported a stolen boat to the police, while we go ashore in the dinghy. The early plane for Miami leaves at five-thirty. I think it’s safer for us to take that than wait around till full daylight.”
Jenny had collected the glasses and scraps of their snack on the tray. She stopped and looked at Simon.
“That still leaves us quite a lot of time out here, doesn’t it?”
The Saint grinned.
“You’re so fond of games — would you like to play cribbage?”
The power artist
1
“Taxi, sir?”
Simon Templar, who had just closed the door of his house in Upper Berkeley Mews, stopped flat-footed and stared at the driver. He had seen the cab as he came out and assumed that it must be parked there on business with some neighbor. Upper Berkeley Mews was not the sort of street where any enterprising London cabman would wait in the hope of picking up a fare. For one to go even further and obtrude himself with a direct solicitation was simply not even plausible. And although he had come out with every intention of taking a taxi, he had not survived all those years of important buccaneering by dint of such naiveties as taking cabs which tried so crudely to thrust themselves upon him.
Relaxed but hair-triggered as a watchful leopard, he treated the driver to a lifted eyebrow that came somewhere between wariness and weariness.