The Saint on the Spanish Main (26 page)

“Only I didn’t realize he’d be in quite
such a hurry to
cut himself in. I suppose I was a bit presumptuous to
think I
could call on him just because I’d helped to pro
mote a couple of his
books in the line of duty. I guess I’d
have seen his point
if he’d asked for a cash fee, or even a percentage. But I’m sort of stuffy
about being told I
have
to do business in bed.”

“Makes it too hard to concentrate, doesn’t it?” said the
Saint sympathetically. “And so you parted.”

“But unfortunately I’d already shown him
the chart.”

“And let him make a copy?”

“He didn’t need to. It’s not that complicated. Look.”

She took a folded paper from her purse and
spread it
out on the bar. It was a piece of thoroughly modern
tracing
paper, but the outlines on it were quite clear and
easy to remember,
even to the location of the X that
marked the most important spot.

“This is my copy,” she said.
“I took it from the orig
inal, and left that in a safe deposit in New
York. But
Great-great-etcetera-grandfather was a good sailor, or
he had a
very good eye. If you put this next to a modern
chart, you’d almost
think that’s what it was made from.
The only difference is that the modern
chart has a dotted
line through the Narrows, here, for the ‘approximate’
boundary
between British and American territory, and
that line just about
goes through the middle of the X.
The little island up there, off the
tip of Tortola, is called
Great Thatch, and it’s British. And the
treasure seems to
be just halfway between there and St. John, which is
ours.”

Simon signed to the bartender to refill their glasses,
and glanced once more at the drawing. After that
he
could have reproduced it himself
from memory, as accurately as from a photographic plate. It would not have
been an altogether amazing accomplishment, and Dun
can Rawl would not have needed to be a genius to
dupli
cate it.

“So you located the wreck,” said
the Saint. “And then
what?”

“I’d been down with a mask and the aqualung for
nearly an hour—I’d probably have been down all day
if
my air hadn’t started to run low.
When I came up, there
was another
launch beside my boat, and it was flying the
British flag. Duncan Rawl was running it, and besides
his crew he had three native police from Road
Town, on Tortola. They claimed we were in British waters and we
had no right to be trying to salvage anything
there.”

“But it was all right for Rawl to
try?”

“He’d set up a British company with a
couple of
native
stooges, and he had a license and everything.”

“So?”

“All I could do was argue that we were
on the American
side of the line, and try to talk everything to a stand
still. I
waved the Stars and Stripes and talked fast about
Washington and
ambassadors and the President. Those British cops are honest fanatics about
legality and pro
tocol, even way out here, and I got them worried enough
to make
them decide that the only safe thing for them
was to halt
everything until somebody higher up settled
the problem. Even
Rawl couldn’t persuade them to let
him go ahead and dive. I figured the
treasure would at
least be safe for a while, and I came back here and hired
a lawyer.”

“When was that?”

“Just over a week ago.”

The Saint relaxed.

“Oh, for a moment I thought it was
urgent. Now I see
your problem. A decision will be handed down in about
forty
years, and you’re wondering how your grand
children will make
out.”

“No. It might have been that way, but
the American
Governor and the British Governor are good friends.
The
British Governor comes over here to play golf, and the American Governor goes
over there to fish. So they
got everybody together and decided they
ought to be
able to settle it without any international
complications. The first thing they said was, why didn’t we join forces
and split
fifty-fifty.”

“Duncan would have liked that, I suppose.”

“But I wouldn’t. Maybe he’s got just as
much legal
right to anything he can find as I have, but I’m preju
diced.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“So then they said, all right, suppose we agreed to
dive on alternate days, and each kept what we
brought
up.”

“Subject to taxes and other lawful
tribute, no doubt.”

“Of course. And if I hadn’t agreed to
that, you’d have
been right, everything probably would have been tied up
for forty years.”

“When does this deal go into effect?”

“On Monday. And Duncan Rawl gets first
crack!”

Simon raised his eyebrows.

“How come?”

“Those two Solomons decided that the
only impartial
way
to settle that was to flip a coin for it. And I lost.”

The blue eyes had clouded at last, and there
was a
gleam of raindrops in them.
 

“That isn’t necessarily fatal,” he said.

“In clear water, as shallow as that,
when we know
exactly where the wreck is? In one full day, they could
locate and haul up everything
that didn’t have to be
turned up with
dynamite. No, they could take out every
thing
easy in the morning, and dynamite for the hard
stuff in the afternoon. What’ll be left on the second day
won’t even pay my expenses!”

Simon scowled through a meditative
smoke-ring. Her
estimate was probably close to the truth. Assuming that
there was any such treasure to be salvaged as she had
described it, the
first party with a free hand for a day
should be able to skim all the cream off
it.

“Sounds as if we’ll either have to
whistle up a gale for
Monday,” he said, “or——
”

“Or you can still settle for half,
April,” Duncan Rawl
said.

He loomed up on the other side of the girl, leaning one elbow on
the bar. Neither of them had seen him
come
in. But the Saint knew at once who it was, even
before Rawl turned to the bartender and said “The usu
al,” and the bartender identified him with an
impersonal
“Yes, Mr. Rawl.”

There had been unkind critics who said that
few Hol
lywood actors worked as hard at looking romantic as Duncan Rawl. He had
the natural advantages of a
broad-shouldered six-foot-four-inch frame, and
a
flashing smile that could light up a handsome willful
face,
even if there was a certain telltale slackening of the important lines of waist
and jaw. But the carefully dis
ordered blond curls with a battered yachting
cap
perched on the back of them were perhaps a little too
consciously
photogenic, as was a shirt of sufficiently un
usual cut to suggest
a theatrical costume rather than a
piece of haberdashery, worn
unbuttoned almost to the waist as if intentionally to display an antique gold
locket hung on a gold necklace chain thick enough to anchor a
small
boat. At any rate, it could never have been said
that he tried self-effacingly to look like
any ordinary
Joe.

“I’m not greedy,” Rawl said
insolently. “I’ll still be
satisfied with an equal partnership.”

“Thank you,” said the girl icily.
“I don’t want any
charity from a crook. And I’m busy, if you
hadn’t no
ticed.”

“Grow up, April. There aren’t any
proprietary rights
to a treasure. It’s finders keepers. The only reason you
heard about this one first, if you’ll stop and think about
it, is
because one of your ancestors was a criminal. So
what have you got to be so righteous
about?”

“So long as you’re happy, why don’t you
just go
away?”

Rawl lounged more solidly against the bar,
and
picked up the double shot of straight whisky which the
bartender
had poured. He didn’t look a bit like moving.

Simon slid off his stool and came around on
the other
side of him.

“You heard what she said,” he
remarked pleasantly.
“Why don’t you drink that somewhere else?”

Rawl straightened up and measured him with a
deliberate eye. Tall and sinewy as the Saint was, Rawl was two inches taller
and forty pounds heavier. It was one of
those rare occasions
when the Saint looked as if he
should have had more discretion. Rawl
grinned con
fidently.

“How would you like to get it right in
the kisser?”

“I’d love you to try,” said the
Saint mildly.

Rawl raised his glass, drank it down to the
last few
drops, lowered it, and then jolted the dregs straight at
the Saint’s face.

Incredibly, the Saint’s face was not there to
receive
them. It moved aside in an almost instantaneous blur,
and the
flung liquor only sprinkled a couple of drops on
his shoulder as it passed through vacant
space.

As another integrated process of the same
general
movement, Simon’s left fist sank like a depth charge into
Rawl’s
stomach just at the bottom of his dashing dé
colletage. Rawl
grunted and leaned forward from the
middle, but he was still able to
launch one vicious swing at the Saint’s head. Only again the head was elusive.
The
swing connected with nothing but air, and Rawl’s own
forward
momentum only added a little extra verve to the
encounter between his
chin and the Saint’s right cross.
Duncan Rawl hit the bar jarringly
with his back and slid
against it for a couple of yards on his way
down, taking
a few stools with him. His eyes were glazed before he
reached
the floor, and he lay there very solidly, as if he
liked it there and had decided to stay.

3

“Please, sir,” said the bartender
courteously, “would
you mind leaving now? I’m sure you could handle him
again, but it’s bad for business. And usually he
breaks
bottles.”

“Please,” April Mallory added for herself. “I was
just
going to ask if you’d take me to dinner.”

“I just like to oblige everyone,”
said the Saint.

It hadn’t exactly been a brawl to rank with
the most homeric barroom brannigans in which Simon had ever
participated;
but it had clinched his acceptance of
April’s story, and assured him that he
would have no
sentiment to waste on Duncan Rawl. Therefore he had no
regrets about it. Besides, a flurry of that kind was
practically an
obligatory incident at a certain stage of
any good
pirate-treasure story, and the Saint was rather
a traditionalist
about his stories. He liked to feel that all
the time-honored
trimmings were in their proper place.
It encouraged a kind of light-hearted
certainty that vir
tue, which of course he represented, would be trium
phant in
the end.

In this case, however, the odds against the
conventionally satisfying outcome looked more forbidding as
he learned
more about them.

He took April to dinner at Bluebeard’s Castle,
where
he was staying, because he had decided the first time he
saw it
that the view from the hillside terrace of the hotel
over the landlocked
harbor and the town of Charlotte
Amalie could only be enjoyed to the full in
the right kind
of company, and the Saint also liked a seasoning of romance
with his stories, which was another ancient and delightful tradition that he
had no desire to violate. But
almost two hours later, while they were
enjoying the
view to the full over coffee and cigarettes and Benedic
tine, he
had to admit that the rest of what he had learned
seemed to have
closed up possible loopholes rather than
opened any.