The Saint in the Sun (13 page)

Quillen clapped him heartily and happily on the back.

“Keep it up, pal,” he said enthusiastically. “I’m late now for an interview I promised some dame who hooked me the last time I tried to sneak past the press box, but I’ll look for you at the bar shortly.”

He gave his wife’s brow a quick brush of a kiss which she had no chance to freeze off or respond to, and was in full but delightfully definitive retreat before he could be caught in any more dispute.

Cynthia looked at the Saint defensively.

“I said a lot of silly things last night,” she stated. “I wish you’d forget them.”

“Consider them forgotten.”

“Did you have fun?”

“I don’t remember,” he said, with his blandest smile.

Her eyes flashed with the involuntary exasperation of any woman caught in a trap of logic, but she was game enough to bite off any bid to wriggle out of it.

“All right,” she said. “But at least you know what I mean when I tell you I really am scared of Enrico but I can’t admit the true reason to Godfrey. You’ve got to admit it’s an impossible situation, with him being the father of-you know who. Suppose they were ganging up to get rid of me?”

“It might be rather uncomfortable,” Simon conceded soothingly. “Especially if you were bothered by wondering who thought of it first. Let’s see what they’re doing to your car now.”

The ‘pits’, which in petroleum-racing parlance are the stables in which mechanical steeds are groomed and babied for their decisive appearance on the track, were literally a figure of speech at this convocation, being completely unexcavated to any unprofessional eye. In effect, they were merely a long row of spaces divided by the pillars that supported the upper level of the ‘grandstand’ where the reserved boxes flanked the press box and control tower and bar; the competitors who wanted and could afford more amenities than could be stacked on rough shelves between the pillars had station wagons and trucks and trailers of all sizes parked behind their berths. The start-and-finish straight was directly in front, where a procession of small noisy bugs was even then buzzing and blattering past in the last laps of an opening amateur event. She led him just a little way along the line, to a smoothly squat white car that looked momentarily like some sort of carnivorous robot preparing to swallow a human tidbit, which it had already engulfed except for the helplessly dangling legs.

“This is Enrico,” Cynthia said.

After a second or two the snack squirmed back out of the gaping jaws of the monster, revealing itself to be a very short slight man with thinning hair and extraordinarily bright black eyes that were a perfect complement to his small birdlike beak of a nose.

“She is all-a ready, signora,” he said, with a completely factual detachment. “All-a you got to do is-a drive ‘er.”

He shut down the hood and carefully wiped his oily fingermarks off the spotless paint. To pull out the rag to do it, he first had to put down the wrench he had been working with, for his left arm hung with an oddly twisted slackness at his side.

“Anyhow,” Simon observed, “she must be one of the shiniest cars on the course.”

Enrico Montesino’s glance flickered over him with the same inscrutable impersonality.

“To me, signore, a car is as beautiful as a woman. More beautiful, sometimes.”

“You’re too modest,” said the Saint easily. “I’ve met your wife’s daughter.”

The black hawk’s eyes settled for a moment only.

“You too?” Montesino said enigmatically. “Yes, she is-a more beautiful than a car. But-a more crazy too, sometimes. So, I must see she is all-a right for da race.”

“Now just a minute,” Cynthia protested. “This is going too far. She’s racing against me, let me remind you-and I’m paying you!”

“She is-a my daughter, signora. I only want to be sure her car is all right so she will not get ‘urt. I can-a do no more for your car. If you drive good enough, you win-Scusi!”

He turned brusquely and walked away, limping a little with the steady rhythm of a man to whom limping has become an integral part of walking; and Cynthia stared after him with her mouth open before she turned to the Saint again.

“You see what I mean?”

“You’ve got other mechanics, haven’t you?”

“Yes, those two working on Godfrey’s Ferrari in the next stall.”

“You could have them check everything over again.”

“And make myself look like a jittery neurotic who shouldn’t drive anything faster than a golf cart.”

“Well, you are seeing a few bogeys, aren’t you?” Simon said reasonably. “So far, my criminological museum hasn’t collected any case of a father plotting a homicide to clear a track for his daughter, but I suppose there’s a first time for everything.”

“I need a drink,” Cynthia said.

“That’s a great idea. Then when you spin out, I won’t have to wonder if it was sabotage.”

She glared at him, but before she could formulate a retort the loud speakers above them were rasping an appeal for entrants in the Ladies’ Trophy to get ready to move out to the starting line. Simon grinned and said: “I could be wrong, but I don’t think you’ve any more to worry about than the next driver.”

He beat his own retreat before she could argue any more against the reassurance.

It was not that he was determined to duck responsibility at any price. Almost any human being can legitimately claim to be a potential murder victim, if you go by the statistical count of seemingly inoffensive people who somehow get murdered every year. The Saint simply didn’t think that Cynthia Quillen had more grounds for apprehension than anyone else, merely because she seemed to think more about it.

He could be wrong, as he admitted, but he had no idea how wrong when he apologetically rejoined the Bethells in their box.

“Did you find out who’s going to win this ‘Powder-puff Derby’ as they call it?” Brenda asked.

“It’d be an awful event to have to give tips on,” Simon said. “I’d be terrified of someone misunderstanding me if I told them I got it straight from the horse’s mouth.”

The cars below were already being maneuvered on to their marks, while a waggish track steward from the secure anonymity of the public-address system begged the contestants to hurry it up and remember that they were getting lined up for a race and not getting dolled up for a dance. Simon quickly located Teresa Montesino as the focal point of a jostling circle of photographers, who found her custom-tailored skin-tight jade silk coveralls the perfect counterpoint to an otherwise sexless portrait of a somber green Maserati; and he had to grant that they knew their business almost as well as she did. When Cynthia Quillen’s Bristol was manhandled into place with herself in it, they had almost run out of film.

And while Cynthia was getting herself snapped in the final scramble, Teresa was making herself comfortable in her seat and had time to sweep a long slow glance along the upper tier of spectators. Although she could only accidentally have recognized anyone from there, Simon was human enough to wonder how she would react if she saw him. But he figured it was more likely to be Godfrey Quillen that she was looking for, and he glanced casually around himself on the same quest. Almost at once he sighted the driver in a corner of the verandah near the bar at the back of the press box, where he could not have been seen from the track, in his usual kind of animated conversation with a striking auburn-haired woman whose flawless veneer of cosmetics made one think of a New York City model posing in resort clothes-but only for the smartest magazines.

“They certainly are raising a snazzy type of news-hen these days,” Simon remarked. “I’ll have to find out if that one who’s interviewing Quillen would be interested in a few quotes from me.”

“She might be,” Charlie said mildly, when he had located the subject. “But she isn’t what I think you mean by a news-hen. That’s Mrs Santander, one of the richest women on the island.”

“Oh. Pardon my ignorance.”

“She’s an ex-wife of Jose Santander, the Venezuelan oil man.”

“Now that’s more like type-casting,” said the Saint, with an air of flippant relief; but a couple of knife-thin wrinkles remained between his brows as a throbbing crescendo of revving-up engines drew their attention back to the course.

The starter’s flag dropped, and with a deafening roar the twelve tidily deployed automobiles surged forward, comfortably spread out three abreast for a bare instant before they broke ranks and crowded into one suicidal bid for position at the first bend. To the naive spectator who has never seen a shop open its doors to the first arrivals at a genuine bargain sale, or been caught on a suburban artery at the rush hour when a light turns green, these first few seconds are the most thrilling in any race of this kind. Even to Simon Templar it was still one of the peak excitements of every event.

Cynthia’s white Bristol was off in front. Teresa’s dark green Maserati, starting from one of the rear positions, shoved viciously through the pack like a bulldozing footballer, shouldering less ruthless drivers aside to left and right with an unswerving callousness which is the only ultimate factor in these jams. She was still only a close fourth at the turn, but the Saint thought she came out of it perceptibly faster than the two cars ahead of her as they flashed into the next short stretch and temporarily disappeared from view.

The track at that time was not laid out with much regard for the audience. Superimposed on the existing runways of Oakes Field, the former airport of Nassau, and making the most possible use of the already paved surfaces, it meandered off into backwaters previously known only to aviators, with little regard for the perspective of the cash customers. The most obvious thrills which the public comes to see in this kind of racing, of course, are on the corners; but practically none of these were clearly visible from the expensive boxes or the general admission stands, or accessible to either class of client. For most of the winding five-mile course, between their dashes through the short spectator stretches, the cars could be followed only in occasional tantalizing glimpses as they whizzed through the two or three fairly distant sections of which the terrain gave an unobstructed vista. This made it pleasantly painless to chat about other things or patronize the bar, without fear of missing too much of the race. On previous days, Simon had found this a fairly agreeable consolation for the inferior visibility; but this time he felt himself nagged by a faint far-down uneasiness, something like a tiny splinter might set up as it worked down into a calloused palm. He strained his eyes for the first cars to come out of the “chicane”, two consecutive sharp turns that were at a bad head-on viewing angle from the club stand, and saw the white Bristol still leading, then another car, then another, dark green one which had to be Teresa’s, the only one of that color in the competition. She had already picked up one notch, through what he knew was some tricky territory.

“Pete won his heat in the Island Race,” Brenda mentioned. “They finished just after we got here, while you were talking to the Quillens. They must have changed the starting time-we were supposed to be here for it. Don’t tell him you didn’t see that ‘Saint’ stick figure of yours on his bonnet-he only put it on for your benefit.”

“Oh, hell,” said the Saint contritely. “That’s the last thing I would have missed. Where is he?”

“He just came up from the pits. He’s in that box down there with Betty.”

Peter Bethell was one of Charlie’s brothers, and Betty was his wife. In another moment he was with them, still trying to wipe off the mask of track grime outside the stencil of his goggles.

“You shouldn’t have done it,” said the Saint. “That extra load of paint on my insignia might have cost you a track record.”

“It was lighter than paint,” Peter said boisterously. “We just had some masking tape left over when we got through putting on the numbers, and didn’t know what else to do with it. Thought it might give you a laugh. And perhaps it was lucky for me. It may have been what scared off the ruddy saboteur who was going around messing up all the cars last night.”

“The which?” Simon asked sharply.

“Some silly bugger who must ‘ve decided the races weren’t exciting enough, so he was trying to arrange a few accidents. The night watchman was just taking a little nap, of course, but he finally woke up and heard this ghoul clanking about in the pits, and yelled at him. You know, Who dat?’-as if the fellow was going to be fool enough to give his name and address. So the chap ran off, very fast, and the watchman couldn’t catch him. Anyhow, that’s what he says. I expect he was so frightened himself he was running sideways.”

“I hadn’t heard about that,” Charlie said.

“The watchman thought it was just somebody out stealing, and he knew from the way he ran off that he couldn’t be carrying much weight. But when some of the crews came out this morning they started finding wheel hubs loose, and oil drain plugs unscrewed, and nails in the tires-a lot of that nonsense. After a while it dawned on them that it wasn’t a lot of accidental coincidences, and they started making inquiries.”

The Saint had been so fascinated that he realized he had missed the one other possible glimpse of the lady drivers before they would be passing the stands again. A thunder of exhausts was even then heralding the end of the first lap; and he turned to see the Bristol come first under the Esso bridge, a Jaguar after it, and then the smoky green Maserati gaining ground like a thunderbolt, overhauling the Jag by the end of the straight and coming out of the Prince George Corner with a measurable length’s lead before they vanished again in pursuit of Cynthia’s white steed behind the next topographical obstruction.

“It’s between Quillen’s wife and the Roman figure-if they don’t kill each other,” Peter said, with professional-sounding off-handedness.

“Couldn’t the watchman give any description of this saboteur?” Simon persisted.

“Nothing that’s any use. ‘A medium small man,’ he thinks, but he doesn’t know if he was white or black. I know he must ‘ve been pretty stupid, because most of the things he did were bound to be spotted before anybody started driving. But even you couldn’t catch anyone with as few clues as that.”