“That’s why he’s in trouble now,” she said bitterly. “He’s taking my place.”
“How?”
“He wouldn’t let me take the risk. He insisted that if there were going to be any games like that, he was going to play the reporter and draw the fire. He said that nobody here would know Havelock Dayne as an attorney from Philadelphia, and nobody would associate Mrs Dayne with Lona Shaw, and if there was going to be any rough stuff he could take care of himself better than I could, and if there was any real detecting to do I might find out a lot more if nobody knew I was more than an ordinary dizzy bride. He was terribly intense about it, and in some ways he made a bit of sense too, and I didn’t want to start off our married life with a quarrel, so I let him have his way. And that’s why this has happened to him.”
“I still don’t know just what has happened,” said the Saint.
She took a gulp from her glass.
“The day before yesterday, I went into Hamilton after lunch, to do some shopping. Havvie decided he’d rather stay home and fish. When I got back, about five, he’d left a note. Here it is.”
She produced it from her purse. It was crumpled and smeared from many readings.
Fantastic break on Jolly Roger. This is It! Must get after it at once or he’ll get away. Don’t worry even if I don’t get home tonight. Love and XX.
“You’re sure he wrote this?” Simon asked automatically.
“Unless it’s an absolutely perfect forgery. And it would’ve had to be done by someone who knew that he always signed his letters to me with just an ‘H.’ ”
Simon handed the note back, and for perhaps the first time that evening his face was completely grave, without even a give-away trace of mockery in his eyes.
“And since then you haven’t heard another word?”
“Nothing.” The task and distraction of drawing the complete background for him had sustained her so far, but now he could see her straining again to keep emotion from getting the upper hand. “That is, unless… I’ve got to call home now.”
“Go ahead.”
He finished his liqueur, his coffee, and his cigarette, with epicurean attention to each, holding his mind in complete detachment until she came back; and presently she was at the table again, but not sitting down, her face pale in the subdued lamplight and her hands twisting one over the other.
“We’ve got to go to the house at once,” she said, in a low shaky voice. “Or I must. There’s been a message. Not Havvie. Someone who said he’ll call again, until he gets me. And he said I mustn’t talk to anyone, if I want my husband back.”
2
The island lay less than a hundred yards off shore, out in the Sound. Simon judged that they were somewhere in the middle of the deep horseshoe curve that is the approximate profile of the southwestern end of Bermuda, where the segmented chain of land curls all the way back over itself like a scorpion’s tail. From the tiny landing-stage just below the road, where a taxi had dropped them off, he could clearly see the outlines of the white rain-catcher roof of the house that crowned a hillock which might have been an acre overall. Overhead electric wires bridged the distance to the island by means of two intermediate poles standing in the water, and below the place where the wires took off from the little landing-stage was an ordinary bell-push which Lona Dayne pressed with her finger. Almost at once a floodlight went on over a dock on the island opposite them, and a man came down and got into one of the skiffs that was tied up there and began to row over to them.
“Usually we’d leave the dinghy we came ashore in tied up here,” she said. “But since I’ve been alone, Bob insists on ferrying me back and forth. I’m sure he doesn’t believe I can row a boat.”
“How much does he know about all this?” Simon asked.
“About as much as I’ve told you. Except that he still thinks my husband is really the reporter, like everyone else here. But obviously I couldn’t tell him the story I’ve been telling everyone else, about Havvie being in bed with a cold.”
“Why is he still caretaking, even though you’ve rented the house?”
“There are servants’ quarters where he sleeps, and he still does the gardening. He sort of goes with the place.”
“And you mean to say he hasn’t spread this juicy bit of gossip all over Bermuda?”
“Wait till you meet him!”
That was only a matter of moments. The man shipped his oars as the skiff glided in, and stood up to catch and hold on to a ring bolt set in the concrete of the landing-stage.
“Has there been another call?” Lona Dayne demanded frantically, while he was still steadying the boat alongside.
“No, ma’am.”
“Did you tell me everything they said, on the phone?”
The caretaker looked up at the Saint, through plain gold-rimmed spectacles which combined with a bony severity of jaw and the total hairlessness of his shiny black cranium to give him the air of some kind of African archdeacon.
“That was the message, ma’am,” he answered. “Not to talk to anyone.”
“Simon, this is Bob Inchpenny,” Lona said. “Bob, this is Mr Templar. I’d already told Mr Templar everything, before you gave me that message.”
“Oh yes, ma’am.”
The caretaker regarded Simon with even more critical reserve, and the Saint realized how ridiculous the suggestion that this man might be a wellspring of idle gossip must have sounded to anyone who knew him. Simon had seldom encountered a Negro who bore himself with such an austere and almost overpowering dignity.
They got into the dinghy, and the caretaker picked up the oars and began to row stolidly back to the island.
“What did he sound like, this person who telephoned?” Lona asked.
“Sort of muffled, like he was disguising his voice.”
“Couldn’t you guess anything about him?” Simon persisted. “For instance, what nationality would you say he was?”
The colored man pondered this for several strokes, with portentous concentration.
“I’d say he might be an American, sir.”
The Saint turned to Lona.
“You must have heard almost everything about Jolly Roger. Did you ever hear what he sounded like?”
“Not exactly. It must have been pretty ordinary English. If he’d sounded like an American, I’m sure it would’ve been mentioned.”
Simon was still thinking that over when they reached the island dock. He stepped out and gave her a hand, and let her lead him up the alternations of steps and meandering path that wound up the slope to the house.
The living-room that she took him into was very large, but so cunningly broken up that it seemed to consist entirely of inviting corners. The formal center was an enormous fireplace flanked by a pair of huge but cozy couches; on one side of them was a spacious alcove that contained a sideboard and a modest dining table, and on the other side a bay that was almost completely walled with bookshelves encircling a built-in desk, while yet a third wing suggested relaxed entertainment with a door-sized bar niche and the cabinets and speaker fronts of a hi-fi sound system and the slotted shelves of an impressive library of records. And between all those mural features there was still room for several stretches of full-length drapes, now drawn out in neatly extended folds but promising windows for unlimited sunlight and air in the daytime. It was a room which, in far more than adequate justification of its name, asked to be lived in, offering every adjunct to a kind of timeless tranquillity that could make calendars superfluous.