“Ned,” Consuelo said very clearly, “I have brought the Americano you sent for.”
The man sat in the one big chair in the room. It was an overstuffed chair of old-fashioned shape, with a heavily patched slip cover, but he looked comfortable in it, as if he had used it a lot. He had untidy blond hair and a powerful frame, but the flesh on his big bones was soft and shrunken and unhealthy, although his skin had a good tan, and his clean cotton shirt and trousers hung loosely on him. His face had the cragginess of a skull, an impression which was accentuated by the shadows of the dark glasses he wore even though the only light was an oil lamp turned down so low that it gave no more illumination than a candle. He turned only his head.
“I was afraid no one was ever coming,” he said.
“My name is Templar,” said the Saint. “I was sent by — the party you wrote to.”
“My wife,” the man said. “You don’t have to be tactful. Consuelo knows about her.”
“Your ex-wife,” said the Saint.
Ned Yarn sat still, and the dark lenses over his eyes were a mask.
“I guess I’d sort of expected that. How did she get it? Desertion, I suppose.”
“Yes.”
“Is she...”
“She was married again, to a man named Ormond.”
“I don’t know him.”
“They’re divorced now.”
“I see.” Yarn’s bony fingers moved nervously. “And you?”
“Just an acquaintance. Nothing more. What with changing her name, and changing her address several times, apparently your letter took a long time to find her. And then she didn’t want to come here alone, and couldn’t decide who else to trust. Now I seem to be it.”
“Sit down,” Ned Yarn said.
Simon sat on a plain wooden chair by the oilcloth-covered table. Yarn looked around and said, “Do we have anything to drink, Consuelo?”
“Some tequila.”
She brought a half-empty bottle and three small jelly glasses, and poured a little for each of them. She put one of the glasses on the edge of the table nearest to Yarn. Yarn stretched out his hand, touched the edge of the table, and slid his fingers along it until they closed on the glass.
“You must excuse me seeming so helpless,” he said harshly. “But you see, I’m blind.”
4
The Saint lighted a cigarette, and put his lighter away very quietly. He glanced at Consuelo for a moment as she sat down slowly on the other wooden chair at the table, and then he looked at Ned Yarn again.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “How long ago did that happen?”
“Almost as soon as I got here.” The other gave a kind of short two-toned grunt that might have been meant for a laugh. “How much did she tell you about all this?”
“As much as she knows, I think.”
“I can figure what else she thinks. And what everybody else thinks. But you know as much now as I knew when I came down here with Tiltman. That’s the truth, so help me.”
“I hope you’ll tell me the rest.”
Yarn sipped his drink, and put it down without a grimace, as if he was completely inured to the vile taste.
“We flew down here from Tijuana, and I thought it was all on the level. A chance to make some big money legitimately — that is, if we weren’t bothered about bribing a few Mexicans not to watch us too closely. I’m just a sucker, I guess, but I fell for it like all the others. I was even carrying the money myself. We checked in at a hotel, the Perla.”
“And yet the American vice-consul and the police couldn’t find any trace of you. That seems like an obvious place for them to have started asking.”
“Tiltman registered for us both — only he didn’t use our names. If you want to check up on me, ask if they’ve got a record of Thompson and Young. He told me that later.”
“How long did he play it straight?”
“We had dinner. Tiltman was supposed to have arranged for a boat before we left Los Angeles. I was all excited and raring to go, of course. I didn’t even want to wait till morning to look it over. I wanted to see it that night. He tried to stall me a bit, and then he gave in. We set out walking from the hotel. He led me through all kinds of back streets — I haven’t the faintest idea where. Presently, in one of the darkest of them, we came to a bar, and he said, ‘Let’s stop in for a drink.’ ”
“The Cantina de las Flores?”
“No. I didn’t even know the name of it. But, anyway, we went in. We had a drink. And then, as calmly as anything, he said, ‘Look, Ned, I’m going to stop beating about the bush. There isn’t any boat. There isn’t any diving equipment — all that stuff we ordered sent down here from Los Angeles, I cancelled the order and got your money back.’ ”
“And the great lost bed of pearl oysters?”
“He said, ‘That’s just a rumour I heard when I was down here, sort of a local legend. But I don’t know where it is, and nobody else does. It just gave me the idea for a good story to pick up a nice lot of money with. All that money you’ve got in your pocket,’ he said.”
“That must have called for another drink,” murmured the Saint.
“At first I thought he was kidding. But I soon knew he wasn’t. He said, ‘I could’ve taken it from you tonight and left you holding the bag. But I like you, Ned, and I could use a partner. I’ve got tickets for both of us on a plane to Mazatlán. Let’s split the money and go on and make a lot more like it.’ ”
Simon barely touched his glass to his lips.
“And you said no?”
“I swear it. I told him he’d never get his hands on any of the money I had. I was taking it right back to Los Angeles, and I’d see what the police here could do about getting back the refund he’d gotten on the diving equipment. And I walked out.” Ned Yarn twisted his knuckles tensely together. “I didn’t get very far. He must have followed me and crept up behind me. Something hit me on the head, and I was out like a light. It’s been lights out for me ever since.”
“The money was gone, of course.”
Yarn nodded. He said, “You tell him, Consuelo.”
She said, “I found him. It was just outside here. I was going to work. I thought he was drunk. Then I saw the blood. I could not leave him to die. I took him in my house. Then, when he did not get well quickly, I was afraid. I thought, if I call the police, they will say I did it to rob him. I sent for a doctor I know. Together we took care of him. He was sick for a long time. And then I could not turn him out, because he was blind.”
“And you’ve looked after him ever since,” said the Saint, and deliberately averted his eyes.
“I was glad to.” He heard only her voice. “Because then I had fallen in love.”
And now the Saint understood at least a part of that strange story, with a fullness that left him for a little while without speech.
Ned Yarn had never seen Consuelo. He had met her only as a voice, a voice of indescribable sweetness, just as the Saint had first met her; but Ned Yarn had never been able to turn his eyes and have the mental vision that the voice created shattered by the sight of her coarse raddled face. And the woman who spoke with the voice had been kind to him in a way that fulfilled all the promise of its rich tenderness. Her figure would have been better then, and perhaps even her face less marred. And his fingers, when they clumsily explored her features, would that have been sensitive enough to trace them as they really were? They could easily have confirmed to him a picture that his imagination had already formed and was determined to believe. And in his perpetual darkness there could be no disillusion...