She gave him a long impenetrable scrutiny in which he could feel wheels revolving as in a primitive adding machine. There was only one arithmetical conclusion that they could reach, but the fringe benefits could transcend the limitations of mechanical bookkeeping.
He waited patiently.
“To hell with Al,” she said finally. “I like you much better, anyway.”
After the warm paint was washed off with enough food and wine, there was nothing wrong with her lips at all.
3
When the brief twilight had turned to dark, the Saint stood up and dusted off his pants.
“All good things come to an end,” he said sadly. “It’s been wonderful, but I’ve got to be moving on.”
It had become cool enough, when he was away from her, for him to be glad to put on his T-shirt again, while she rearranged the scarf over her hair. He also took his sandals out of the bag and carried them to the moscone, where he put them on the bench between the seats. Then he lifted the forward end of the nearest pontoon and pushed until the craft was well afloat again.
Lily came down to the edge of the water, carrying the bag.
“Just a minute,” he said smoothly.
She stood still, while he climbed aboard and settled in the starboard seat. He put his feet on the pedals and took a tentative turn backwards, making sure that his weight hadn’t taken the shallow draft down to the sand again.
“I hate to do this, Lily,” he said, “but I’m not taking you any farther. If you get chilly, pile some sand on yourself — it’ll keep you warm. There’ll be plenty of boats around in the morning that you can hail. I wouldn’t try to scramble out over the rocks tonight — you don’t have the right shoes for it, and in the dark you’d be likely to break a leg.”
“You’re crazy,” she gasped.
“That has been suggested before,” he admitted. “And some people have thought I’d fall for the goofiest stories. But your yarn about how you got to Cefalù and just happened to be loafing around the station was stretching the long arm of coincidence right out of its socket, even for me. I only went along with the gag because I didn’t have any choice. But I still say thanks, because it helped me out of a tough spot.”
If he needed any confirmation of his analysis, he had it in the name she called him, which cannot be quoted here, in deference to the more elderly readers of these chronicles.
“You’re a naughty girl, Lily,” he said reproachfully. “You didn’t see anything wrong with trying to finger me for the Mafia, and you’d have been just as ready to do it in Catania, and turn your back while they mowed me down. If you want to play Mata Hari, you should be a good sport about losing your bait.”
Sometime about sunset he had taken off her glasses, and verified that she actually had eyes — smoky gray ones, which by then were deliriously sleepy. Now he could no longer distinguish them in the gloom; which made liars of a whole school of authors, who he was certain would have described them as spattering sparks and flame.
She kept coming forward, regardless now of splashing into the sea over her ankles and then to the depth of her streamlined calves; and he prudently back-pedalled enough to keep the moscone always retreating beyond her reach.
“It’s an awful long swim back,” he cautioned her, “unless you’re in the Channel-crossing class. And nasty things come out in these waters at night, like slimy eels with sharp teeth. It’s not worth it, honestly. I’m sure Al will understand.”
She stopped with the water up to her knees, screaming abuse with an imaginative fluency that was in startling contrast to her usual inarticulateness, while he backed up with increasing acceleration until he had put enough distance between them to be able to come forward again in a long turn past the cove and outwards.
“Don’t spoil the memory, Lily,” he pleaded as he went by. “I said thank you, didn’t I?”
It was a wasted effort. Her invective followed him as far as her voice would carry, and made him wonder how a nice girl could have picked up that vocabulary.
He kept pointing towards the Pole Star until the shrieks faded astern, and then made a slow turn to the left.
Westwards. Towards Palermo. Not Catania.
It was an especially snide trick to add to the wrongs he had done Lily, after she had given so much to the Mafia cause, but he couldn’t afford to be sentimental. Whenever she was rescued or made her own way to a telephone, she would swear that the Saint was making for Catania. And that could make all the difference to his first hours in Palermo.
His legs pumped steadily, at a rate which he could keep up for hours and yet which pushed the moscone along at its maximum hull speed, beyond which any extra effort would have achieved nothing but churning water. Nevertheless this terminal velocity was not inconsiderable, so far as he could judge from his impression of the inky water slipping past, for a vessel that wasn’t designed for racing and relied only on muscular propulsion.
The slight evening breeze had dropped and the sea was practically dead calm. It was easy to navigate basically by keeping Polaris over his right shoulder. The twinkling illumination of small settlements on the coast, and occasional flashes of headlights on the highway, located the shore line; and he kept far enough from it to feel secure from accidental discovery by any headlights that might be turned capriciously out to sea.
Eventually, of course, when he figured that he had put enough miles behind him, he had to edge shorewards again. He had heard one train rumbling along the coastal track, and thought he had identified its cyclopean headlamp flashing between cuttings and embankments; he had to hope that the next one would not pass too soon, or be too far behind. He would be afraid to risk another bus, because the driver by that time might have heard of the adventure of another bus driver and be abnormally observant of all passengers; but a long wait at a train stop also had its hazards.
He made his final approach along a fair stretch of dark coast preceding the lights of another town, nursing the little water-bug in until the dim starlight found him a sheltered beach to run up on. He hauled the boat well up above the tide line, where it would be safe until the indignant owner could locate it, and stumbled over some rocks and through a stony patch of some unrecognizable cultivation to a road which led into the hardly less murky outskirts of the community.
The sign on the railroad station, which he located simply by turning inland until the tracks stopped him, and then following them, read CAMPOFELICE DI ROCCELLA; and the waiting room was deserted. Simon strolled in, studied the timetable on the wall, and purchased a ticket to Palermo. The next train was due in only ten minutes; and precisely on schedule it pulled in, hissed its brakes, discharged a handful of passengers, and clankingly pulled out again — a performance for which a certain Benito Mussolini once claimed all the credit.
There were only a few drowsy contadini and a couple of chattering families of sun-drenched sightseers aboard, and none of them paid any attention to the Saint during the hour’s ride into Palermo.
Disembarking there was a fairly tense moment. He was not seriously expecting a mafiosa delegation of welcome, but the penalties of excessive optimism could be too drastic to be taken lightly. He stayed close to the tourist families, using the same technique that he had tried with the students at Cefalù, and hoping that anyone who had only a description to go by would dismiss him as one of their party. But his far-ranging gaze picked out no greeters or loiterers with the malevolent aspect of Destamio’s goondoliers. The hue and cry was still far behind, apparently — and hopefully pointing in other directions.