Simon Templar had friends of his own to visit in Delray on his way down, and thus it was that his route took him past a pine wood off the main highway which was in course of being swiftly and efficiently razed in the interest of such an improvement as has just been described. He slackened his foot on the speed pedal as he saw the tallest tree in the grove, already canted at a crazy angle, rocking under the ruthless onslaughts of the gas-powered monster butting at its base.
The Florida native pine is a commercially useless tree, disdained as timber, pulpwood, and even fireplace logs. But it will grow, slowly, to a fifty-foot height of massive broad-branched thick-leaved evergreen that is one of the few arboreal majesties in a land of shallow contours and generally shallow vegetation. It may take twenty years to do this, so that it is not exactly expendable, except in the most coldly materialistic philosophy.
The Saint, thought of himself poetically quite as seldom as Edmund Diehl, but the creaks and groans of the tree and the roars and growls of the steel behemoth worrying it pierced his ears like the sounds of an animate conflict, as his car drifted slowly by, and as the struggle reached its foregone conclusion and the tree toppled and gave up the ghost in a great rending shuddering crash like a stentorian death-rattle, an actual physical hurt seemed to strike deep through his own body. He even trod the car to an abrupt full stop, with a savage insensate impulse to get out and go over and drag the driver out of the bulldozer and smash him down with a fist in the face and drive the bulldozer slowly over him. But he knew just as quickly as he controlled the reflex how stupid and unjust that would have been: the driver was only an innocent and earnest Negro, capably and methodically doing the job that he was paid to do. The man who Simon realized he really wanted was the one who hired the driver and gave him his instructions.
And at that susceptible moment, the Saint looked farther down the road and saw the enormous billboard which proclaimed that this was to be the site of “BLISS HAVEN VILLAGE — Another Contribution to Florida’s Future by ED (Square) DIEHL.”
Even if Mr Diehl had been psychically aware of the extra special attention which he had attracted, it is doubtful if it would have perturbed him. Although he had never outgrown an unquestioning loyalty to his father’s corny touch in the naming of projects, he had come a long way since the precarious days of the Heavenleigh Hills promotion. In fact, he had often thought of taking that skeleton out of his closet and burying it, but a certain stubborn cupidity could never quite let him renounce the small but steady revenue that still flaked off its bones. Aside from that, the new boom in Florida land values which began in mid-century had made fabulous profits possible even by legitimate methods, so that Mr Diehl was even accepted as an upstanding member of the community by many citizens with short memories. His dishonesties were mostly neater and mellower than they had formerly been, and always cautiously covered by shrewd legal advice, and such a brazen piece of chicanery as he had perpetrated on Jim Harris was due more than anything to an incurable attitude of mind that would always get the same kind of egotistical lift out of horn-swoggling an unsuspecting victim that a Don Juan type derives from a callous seduction.
Mr Diehl had little else in common with the picture of a Don Juan, being a large gross man with a beefy red face and small piggy eyes as bright as marbles. He wore a very large diamond ring with apparent disregard for the fact that its flashing drew particular attention to his hands, which nearly always featured a set of grimy fingernails, and he had other unpleasant personal habits which would hardly have made him welcome in the best boudoirs. But Mr Diehl, who preferred to base his self-satisfaction on his reception at the bank, was contemplating nothing but rosy futures on a certain morning when one of his underlings idled into his private office and told him that there was a potential client outside whom he might want to see.
“The Count of Cristamonte, yet. And he’s looking for a big deal.”
Mr Diehl had a plentiful staff of salesmen and secretaries to handle routine and minor transactions, but he had it understood that the most important properties were handled by himself personally. In this way he could entitle himself to pocket more of the commission, and also give himself more to brag about at the Golf Club bar.
“Then send him in, boy, send him in.”
The client had about him a quiet aroma of potential moola that Mr Diehl recognized at once. He carried himself with the graceful and unhurried confidence of one who is accustomed to deference, and his blue eyes had the easy nonchalance that nothing buttresses quite so solidly as the spare figures in a bank account, and if the trim pointed beard that outlined his lean jaw gave him a somewhat rakish and piratical appearance, that impression was softened by the mild and engaging way he spoke. It was a characterization to which the Saint had lately become quite attached, and it had yet to have its first failure.
“What kind of price range were you thinking in?” Mr Diehl asked bluntly, as soon as he could bluntly ask it.
“I don’t think there are any ordinary limits,” Simon said calmly. “I represent a syndicate of European investors who happen to have very large dollar credits to dispose of and would like to keep their capital working in this prosperous country.”
“What type of property are they interested in? Income, or development?”
“For a start, we were thinking of a country club that might be the most exclusive in America — strictly for what I think you call ‘rich millionaires.’ It would have to be on the Ocean, for the beach, and also on the waterway, for a private yacht harbor, and besides the usual bungalows and restaurant it would naturally need room for its own tennis courts, golf course, polo field, bridle trails, private airport, and so on. We could easily use two or three thousand acres. And if the property was right, we should not haggle over a million dollars one way or the other.”
Mr Diehl cleared his throat and aimed a sloppy shot at the brass cuspidor beside his desk, to prove that it was not just an antique ornament and that making light of a million dollars did not necessarily awe him.
“A hunk of property like that is going to take a bit of finding, these days, with all the subdividing that’s been, going on—”
“I’m well aware of that,” said the Saint. “And so I shall naturally be asking all the important brokers what they have to offer. You just happen to be the first one on my list. Eventually I shall have to deal with the one who has the most suitable parcel to show me. I hope there’s no misunderstanding about that.”
“Now let’s think that through, Count,” said Mr Diehl, scratching himself vigorously, which he was given to doing when he was excited. “I don’t want to talk out of turn, but you probably haven’t any idea how many highbinders here are in this business. You’re lucky you came to me first. Everyone knows what they call me around here: ‘Square’ Diehl — it’s right out there on the front of the building. But what they call some of the others I wouldn’t want to quote to you.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes, sir. And if there’s any kind of buyer they’ll gang up on worse than a Yankee, it’s a foreigner, if you’ll excuse the word. Maybe you were thinking that if you shop around, you’d have ’em all competing to offer you the best property at the best price. Well, you’d be wrong. They’ve worked out a better system than cutting each other’s throats. They’ve got an unofficial combine, and what they’d do is pass the word along, and every one would jack up the price of everything to you, and whoever you bought through they’d split the difference. In that way, everybody gets a commission — and you’d be paying all ten or fifteen of ’em instead of one.”