“Maybe you think I’m a bum,” Ned Yarn said. “Maybe I am. But what could I do? I didn’t have a penny, and I couldn’t go more than a few steps by myself. Tiltman probably thought he’d killed me with that crack on the head. He might almost as well have. It was months before I really knew what was going on. And even then I still couldn’t think straight, I guess.”
“You figured by that time everyone would have decided you’d run off with Tiltman and the money,” said the Saint.
“Even Joss. I couldn’t blame her. I was just too ashamed to try to write and explain. I didn’t think anyone would believe me. I guess I was wrong, but by the time I started to think it out properly, it was later still — that much more too late. And by then...”
The premature lines in his face softened amazingly. “By then I was in love too. I didn’t really want to go back.”
Ash tumbled from the Saint’s long-neglected cigarette as he put it to his mouth again.
“But you finally wrote to Jocelyn,” he said.
“I’m coming to that. After a while, I realized I couldn’t go on for ever doing nothing but being sorry for myself, letting Consuelo keep me on the money she made as a waitress.”
From the matter-of-fact way Yarn said it, Simon knew that the man could never have had any idea of the kind of place she worked in. He was aware of the woman’s eyes on him, but he gave no sign of it.
“Her doctor thought there might be a chance of getting my sight back if I could go to a first-class specialist,” Ned Yarn said. “But that would cost plenty of money. And I couldn’t go back to the States for treatment when it’d probably mean being put in jail. I needed even more money, to pay everybody back what I’d helped them to lose through Tiltman. I wanted to do that anyway. When I finally got my guts back, I knew that was what I had to do somehow — pay everyone off, and get my eyes fixed, and make a fresh start.”
“You still believed in that overlooked oyster bed?”
“It was the only chance I could think of. Eventually I talked Consuelo into helping me. She has a friend who’s a fisherman, and he’d let us borrow his boat sometimes. We went out as often as we could. We searched all over, everywhere.”
“You went diving, when you were blind?”
“No, Consuelo did that. With a face mask. She can swim like a fish, she tells me, I just sat in the boat. And then, when at last she found oysters, I’d haul up the baskets she filled, and help her to open them. And as I wrote to Joss, we finally did it. We found those pearls!”
“The jackpot?” Simon asked.
Ned Yarn shook his head.
“I don’t know. Quite a few, so far. Consuelo sold a few small ones, to get money to make us just a little more comfortable. And six months ago we bought a boat of our own, so we could go out more often. Of course she got practically nothing for them, because of the way she had to sell them. And she couldn’t show any of the big ones without attracting too much attention. That’s why I had to get in touch with someone who’d know their real value, and perhaps be able to sell them properly up north.”
At Simon’s side, the woman turned abruptly, her over-plucked eyebrows drawn together.
“Is he a buyer of pearls?” she asked. “Is that why he is here? You did not tell me, Ned.”
“I know.” The man smiled awkwardly. “I told you I was sending for someone who would help us to buy some real diving equipment, so we could really bring up those oysters after I taught you to use it. I was afraid of getting your hopes too high. But actually, that’s just what he might do.”
“If the pearls are not worth so much, you will use the money to buy diving equipment to look for more?”
“That’s right.”
“But if they’re worth enough,” said the Saint, “you want to pay back eleven thousand dollars to various people, and see if something can be done about your eyes?”
“Yes.”
“And then come back to Consuelo,” said the Saint softly.
“Oh, no,” Ned Yarn said. “I wouldn’t leave here unless she came with me.”
Consuelo stood up with a sudden rough movement that shook the table. She stood beside Yarn with a hand on his shoulder, and his hand went up at once to cover hers.
“I do not like it,” she said. “How do you know you can trust him?”
“I’ll have to risk it,” Yarn said grimly. “Show him the pearls, Consuelo.”
She stared at the Saint defensively, her eyes hot and hostile and shifting like the eyes of a cornered animal.
“I will not.”
“Consuelo!”
“I cannot,” she said. “I have already sold them.”
“What?”
“Sí, sí,” she said quickly. “I sold them. To a dealer I met at the Cantina. I was going to surprise you. He gave me five hundred dollars—”
“Five hundred dollars!”
“For a start. He will bring me the rest soon. I have it here.” She twisted away towards the bed and rummaged under the mattress. In a moment she was back, thrusting crumpled bills into his hands, “There! Count them. It is all there. And there will be more!”
Ned Yarn did not count the bills. He did not even hold them. They spilled over his lap and fluttered down to the floor. He had caught one of Consuelo’s wrists, and clung to it with both hands, and his blind face turned up towards her strickenly.
“What is this?” he said in a terrible hoarse voice. “I never thought you lied to me. But you’re lying now. Your voice tells me.”
“I do not lie!”
“Templar,” said Yarn, with a straining throat, “please help me. There’s a pottery jar on the top shelf, in the corner over the stove. Look in it and tell me what you find.”
Simon got to his feet, a little uncertainly. Then he crossed to the corner in three quick strides. There was only one jar that fitted the description. With his height, he could just reach it.
Consuelo writhed and twisted in Yarn’s grip like a lassoed wildcat, so that the chair he sat in rocked, and pounded on his head and shoulders with her free fist.
“No, no!” she screamed.
But the blind man’s grip held her like an anchor, and she fell still at last as the Saint tilted the jar over one cupped hand, so that the ripple of things rolling from it could be heard over the heavy breathing which was the only other thing that broke the silence.
Simon Templar looked at the dozen or so cheap beads of various sizes brought together in the hollow of his palm, and looked up from them to the defiant streaming eyes of Ned Yarn’s woman.
“I think these are the most beautiful pearls I ever saw,” he said.
5
The woman slid down to the floor beside Yarn and sat there with her face pressed against his thigh.
“Why did you lie, Consuelo?” Yarn asked puzzledly. “What on earth upset you like that?”
“I think I can guess,” said the Saint. “She was just trying to protect you. After all, neither of you knows me from Adam, and you are taking rather a lot on trust. Probably she wanted time to talk it over with you first.”
The woman sobbed.
Ned Yarn caressed her stringy hair, murmuring little soothing sounds as she clung to his legs.
“It’s all right, querida.” His face was still troubled. “But the money — the five hundred dollars. Where did that come from?”