“Now do you get an idea why we couldn’t resist it?” Lona Dayne said.
He nodded, conscious of the associations that must have heightened the strain that she was fighting.
“You’ll both be enjoying it again before long,” he said quietly, “if I’m still any good at these games.”
She turned and walked briskly over to the bar.
“How about a whisky and soda?”
“Thanks. But make mine with water.”
“Going back to your last question,” she said, making herself busy with her back turned, and speaking in a resolutely clear and business-like voice, “I’m certain now that Ivalot always passed as British. You see, one of the things that’s made him so hopelessly hard to trace is that there’s so little real information about him. In the hotels where he stayed, for instance, the only record was the name, Roger Ivalot — address, Bermuda. Only a British subject could have registered like that. If he’d been taken for a foreigner, he’d’ve had to fill out a form with a lot more questions than that, and give a passport number as well. And then we’d either have had more facts to go on, or the police would’ve been leading the hunt for him, for making false declarations.”
“Whereas right now there’s no official interest?”
“I’ve told you, there’s nothing against him except a paternity suit, and that sort of thing doesn’t concern Scotland Yard.”
With a discreet knock, the caretaker entered.
“Will it be all right if I wait in my quarters, ma’am,” he asked respectfully, “until you want me to row Mr Templar ashore?”
Lona Dayne turned with the Saint’s drink in her hand, nonplussed for an instant, and then Simon took it and said calmly, “That won’t be necessary. I’d much rather take you ashore, Lona, to a hotel, where I think you’d be safer than out here.”
“But this is almost like a castle with a moat around it!”
“And anybody who can row, or even swim, can cross a moat. Unless it’s guarded. So if you’re determined to stay here, which you probably are, to be around for any more messages that come in, I’m going to stay and join the garrison.”
She hesitated barely an instant.
“That would be quite wonderful,” she said frankly, and he admired her for not making any half-hearted protests. “Bob, would you make sure that everything’s ship-shape in the spare room before you go to bed? And thank you for waiting up.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The caretaker withdrew, looking more than ever like an Ethiopian pontiff with a troublesome congregation.
“I’m afraid this shocks him even more than your husband’s disappearing act,” Simon remarked.
“I can’t help that. I’ll be perfectly honest now and admit that I’ve been scared for myself too. But I’d have tried not to tell you if you hadn’t mentioned it first.” She picked up her drink and brought it over to join him. “It’s true, isn’t it — a man in Ivalot’s position might do anything?”
The Saint selected a corner of one of the big settees and let himself down into it.
“That depends on how desperate he is — which means, what he has to feel desperate about. You say nobody’s filed any criminal charge against him. So that would mean that he chose to pull up stakes and vanish completely, leaving all the fleshpots that he seems to have thought were fun, just to duck a common paternity suit. But half of those suits are plain ordinary blackmail, anyway — which Jolly Roger seems to have suspected, since he offered a fairly handsome settlement. From the rest of your account, he doesn’t sound like a guy who’d be unduly concerned about his reputation, at any rate with the blue-nosed set. So if the little mother’s price was too high, why didn’t he just get himself a tough lawyer and fight it?”
“You tell me,” she said. “I’ve been going around it all by myself until my head’s swimming.”
“Well, I’d say it suggests that he had something pretty big to hide. I don’t see him being so scared of the lawsuit; but the lawyers would certainly start investigating his means before they got into court, in order to prove how much he could afford to pay, and I’m inclined to think that’s what scared him. Did anyone ever check on these uranium mines he was supposed to have an interest in?”
“Yes, we did. We contacted every Australian and South African mining company that has anything to do with uranium. None of them had ever heard of him, and his name wasn’t on any of their lists of shareholders. But of course, his shares wouldn’t necessarily have to be in his own name.”
“No. But it’s usually only millionaires and big operators who’re concerned about keeping their holdings hidden. According to Ivalot’s story, as you told it, he wasn’t in either category when he bet his shirt on the atomic future. So why would he have bought stocks then under a phony name?”
“Perhaps even in those days he didn’t want to be investigated.”
“Perhaps. But another thing. He must have done something to earn a living and save up a stake before he invested in uranium. While you were doing your research on him, didn’t you ever turn up anything on that background?”
“I tried to, naturally. But I didn’t find out anything. If anyone asked him, he must have managed to dodge the question.”
“So what this all boils down to,” said the Saint, “is that we don’t have one single solid fact about him before he exploded on London like a bomb, and everything you’ve told me except what he actually did in London before witnesses is probably pure fiction.”
“Except that he did have a lot of money.”
“He spent a good deal of money. But not millions. We don’t know how much he had left when he checked out.”
“And he is in Bermuda.”
“Apparently. Which only leads to another question: why? When things got too hot in London, he took a powder. Nothing happened to the gal who was giving him trouble. But here, it’s your husband who disappears. Why?”
She put her clenched fists to her temples.
“What are you driving at?” she pleaded. “You’re only making it seem more hopeless!”
“I have to do this, Lona,” he said steadily. “It’s the dull part of playing detective. First I have to prune off everything that we don’t actually know at all. It isn’t till we’ve trimmed off all the camouflage and confusion that we’ll get a good look at what’s really left. And raising more questions sometimes leads to more answers. For instance, that last one. The two most likely reasons why our boy hasn’t left Bermuda are either a) that he feels better able to cope with things here, or b) that it’s harder for him to leave. I wouldn’t call those sensational clues, but they might come in handy before we’re through.”
She recovered herself again, with a toss of her blonde head something like a dog shaking off water.
“I’m sorry,” she said, smiling very hard. “I must remember, I told you I was tough. What next?”
“Something very important. Do you have a picture of this character?”
“No. That’s what makes it even more impossible.”
“A playboy like that never got his picture taken?”
“Photographers don’t go popping flash bulbs all over the place in England like they do in America, or at least in American films. They’d have to ask his permission, and if he didn’t want any pictures he could get out of it.”
Simon scowled thoughtfully.
“And yet he didn’t care how many people saw him making an exhibition of himself — he did everything to attract attention. Damn it, it doesn’t make sense… Wait a minute, though. Maybe it does. It means he wasn’t afraid of anyone in England recognizing him, but a news photo might go anywhere in the world.”