He too was recognizable — in a lesser degree, but Simon happened to have read an article about him not long before, in the kind of magazine one thumbs through in waiting-rooms. His name was Russell Vail, and he was what is rather oddly called a white hunter: that is, he guided package-priced adventurers to the haunts of wild animals, told them when to shoot, and finished off the specimens that they wounded or missed, never forgetting that a satisfied client must go home not only with a soporific supply of anecdotes but also with the hides, heads, and horns to prove them. He had chaperoned a number of Hollywood safaris into Darkish Africa and had written a book about it, which made him a personality too.
“I only decided not to be stupid,” Usebio said quietly. “It is a matter of arithmetic. Even if you are very good, every afternoon there is a chance for the bull to get you. Each time you go out, he has more chances. If you shoot at a target often enough, no matter how difficult it is, one day you must hit it. Too many bullfighters have forgotten that. They say, “In one year, three years, when I am forty, I will retire.” But before that, they meet a bull who does not know the date. There is only one time when you can say you retire and be sure of it. That is when you are alive to say you will not fight again, not even once more.”
“Quit while you’re ahead, eh?” Russell Vail said heartily. “Well, that’s how the sharpies play cards.”
“Elías was always very brave,” Iantha Lamb said. “All the critics always said that.”
“So, I had been lucky, and I was well paid, and I had not lived foolishly, as many bullfighters do. I was a rich man. I did not have to go on fighting, except for a thrill. And then I discovered a much greater thrill — to go on living, and be the husband of Iantha. That was the surprise present I gave her on our honeymoon.”
“And what a surprise,” she said pensively. “The last thing I ever expected. But don’t blame it on me. I never asked for it.”
Usebio looked up almost in pain, and said, “Who spoke of blame? I wanted to give you my life, and how could I give it if I did not have it?”
There was a slightly awkward silence, and Russell Vail ordered another round of drinks.
Simon, who had been eavesdropping unashamedly, was suddenly aware of Iantha Lamb’s huge slanting elfin eyes fixed on him with an intensity of the kind which every attractive male learns to interpret eventually, no matter how much modesty he may have started life with. He only met her gaze for a moment and then concentrated on stirring the ice in his Peter Dawson, but he could still feel her watching him.
Russell Vail took a hefty draught from his fresh glass and started up again.
“All this stuff about getting killed, Elías — honestly, aren’t you making a bit much of it? Fox-hunters get killed. Football players get killed. House painters get killed. Even ordinary pedestrians get killed on the streets. Considering how many bullfighters there must be in Spain and Mexico, do they really have such a lot of accidents?”
“It is not the same,” Usebio said patiently, though a sensitive ear could detect the underlying effort. “The fox is not trying to kill the hunter. The public does not want a house painter to come as close as he can to falling off his ladder.”
“Oh, yes, your bullfight fans want their thrill. But even a fox has a more sporting chance. The bull never gets away, does he?”
“He is not intended to. It is so difficult to explain to an Anglo-Saxon. But bullfighting is not a sport. It is an exhibition, to let the matador show his skill and courage.”
“By tormenting a wretched hunk of beef that’s doomed before he starts?”
Vail smiled all the time, blazoning good nature with gleaming incisors.
“It is no more a hunk of beef than those African buffalo I have heard you speak of,” Usebio said.
“But they aren’t shut up in a little arena, either. They’re out in the open, where I have to find them — and they’re just as likely to be hunting me!”
“And you have a big gun that can knock them over with one touch of your finger.” The ragged scar on Usebio’s forehead seemed to throb lividly as he raised a finger to it, though his voice did not change. “Did you ever come close enough to one for it to do something like this to you?”
Vail took another solid sip, and answered a little more loudly, “I’m not so bloody silly. I’m not trying to impress an audience. But even without taking unnecessary risks, a lot of chaps in my profession have got themselves killed. A lot more than toreadors, I wouldn’t mind betting,” Usebio winced.
“I do not know about toreadors, except what I have seen in a French opera, Carmen. The men who do what I do are called toreros.”
“All right, toreros — bullfighters — what’s in a name?”
“Elías is being modest,” his wife put in. “He’s a matador de toros. That’s more special than just any torero. It’s like being a star instead of just any actor.”
“I’m sorry,” Vail said, smiling more relentlessly than ever. “No offense meant. But I’d still like to know the figures.” “Well, does either of you know them?”
There was no immediate answer, and Simon Templar could not resist sneaking another glance at the trio to observe any non-verbal response. And once again, disconcertingly, the glance was trapped by Iantha Lamb’s boldly speculative gaze.
This time he couldn’t break the contact too hastily without looking foolish, and she said, while he was still caught, “Somebody should be umpiring this — how about you?”
Simon felt four more eyes converging on him simultaneously, but they didn’t bother him. He said amiably, “I’m no statistician either.”
“You don’t look like one,” she said. “You look much more interesting. What are you?”
That was one of the questions he always hated: the truth was far too complicated for ordinary purposes, and the easier falsehoods or flippancies became tedious after all the times he had tried them.
“I’ve been called a lot of things.”
“What’s your name?”
He decided that this was one situation where he might as well give it, and let the gods take it from there.
It was perhaps significant, if not surprising, that neither Vail nor Usebio had any reaction to it, other than astonishment at the reaction of Iantha Lamb, who seemed as if she would have been happy to swoon.
“My hero!” she crowed, while they looked understandably blank.
“Please,” begged the Saint, as she slid off her stool and began to move towards him.
An expression of ineffable smugness came over her internationally fabled face. She looked exactly like the cat that had one paw on the mouse’s tail.
“All right... for a price.”
“Name it.”
“Later,” she said, in the husky undertone that had throbbed from a thousand sound tracks.
Possibly because of a linguistic advantage, Russell Vail was the first of her two escorts to recover.
“That’s fine,” he said, with unflagging joviality. “But can’t we be introduced?”
She did that, formally. Usebio bowed with dignity. Vail shook hands, insisting on the grasp of his powerful paw.
“You must be something special,” he said, “if you send Iantha like that.” He might have been momentarily set back by the discovery that his consciously muscular grip was very gently but unmistakably equalled, but the check was barely perceptible. He went on, with the same geniality, “Did you ever do any big-game hunting?”
“A little,” said the Saint.
“Do you know anything about bullfighting?” Usebio asked.