“Do you live here permanently?” Simon asked in a conversational way.
“I’ve been here for a while, and I’m staying a while,” Netlord answered equivocally. “I like the rum. How do you like it?”
“It’s strictly ambrosial.”
“You can get fine rum in the States, like that Lemon Hart from Jamaica, but you have to come here to drink Barbancourt. They don’t make enough to export.”
“I can think of worse reasons for coming here. But I might want something more to hold me indefinitely.”
Netlord chuckled.
“Of course you would. I was kidding. So do I. I’ll never retire, I like being in business. It’s my sport, my hobby, and my recreation. I’ve spent more than a year all around the Caribbean, having what everyone would say was a nice long vacation. Nuts. My mind hasn’t been off business for a single day.”
“They tell me there’s a great future in the area.”
“And I’m looking for the future. There’s none left in America. At the bottom, you’ve got your employees demanding more wages and pension funds for less work every year. At the top, you’ve got a damned paternalistic Government taxing your profits to the bone to pay for all its Utopian projects at home and abroad. The man who’s trying to literally mind his own business is in the middle, in a squeeze that wrings all the incentive out of him. I’m sick of bucking that setup.”
“What’s wrong with Puerto Rico? You can get a tax exemption there if you bring in an employing industry.”
“Sure. But the Puerto Ricans are getting spoiled, and the cost of labor is shooting up. In a few more years they’ll have it as expensive and as organized as it is back home.”
“So you’re investigating Haiti because the labor is cheaper?”
“It’s still so cheap that you could starve to death trying to sell machinery. Go visit one of the factories where they’re making wooden salad bowls, for instance. The only power tool they use is a lathe. And where does the power come from? From a man who spends the whole day cranking a big wheel. Why? Because all he costs is one dollar a day — and that’s cheaper than you can operate a motor, let alone amortizing the initial cost of it!”
“Then what’s the catch?”
“This being a foreign country: your product hits a tariff wall when you try to import it into the States, and the duty will knock you silly.”
“Things are tough all over,” Simon remarked sympathetically.
The other’s sinewy lips flexed in a tight grin.
“Any problem is tough till you lick it. Coming here showed me how to lick this one — but you’d never guess how!”
“I give up.”
“I’m sorry, I’m not telling. May I fix your drink?”
Simon glanced at his watch and shook his head.
“Thanks, but I should be on my way.” He put down his glass and stood up. “I’m glad I needn’t worry about you getting ulcers, though.”
Netlord laughed comfortably, and walked with him out on to the front verandah.
“I hope getting Sibao back here didn’t bring you too far out of your way.”
“No, I’m staying just a little below you, at the Châtelet des Fleurs.”
“Then we’ll probably run into each other.” Netlord put out his hand. “It was nice talking to you, Mr—”
“Templar. Simon Templar.”
The big man’s powerful grip held on to Simon’s.
“You’re not — by any chance — that fellow they call the Saint?”
“Yes.” The Saint smiled. “But I’m just a tourist.”
He disengaged himself pleasantly, but as he went down the steps he could feel Netlord’s eyes on his back, and remembered that for one instant he had seen in them the kind of fear from which murder is born.
3
In telling so many stories of Simon Templar, the chronicler runs a risk of becoming unduly preoccupied with the reactions of various characters to the discovery that they have met the Saint, and it may fairly be observed that there is a definite limit to the possible variety of these responses. One of the most obvious of them was the shock to a guilty conscience which could open a momentary crack in an otherwise impenetrable mask. Yet in this case it was of vital importance.
If Theron Netlord had not betrayed himself for that fleeting second, and the Saint had not been sharply aware of it, Simon might have quickly dismissed the pantie potentate from his mind, and then there might have been no story to tell at all.
Instead of which, Simon only waited to make more inquiries about Mr Netlord until he was able to corner his host, Atherton Lee, alone in the bar that night.
He had an easy gambit by casually relating the incident of Sibao.
“Theron Netlord? Oh, yes, I know him,” Lee said. “He stayed here for a while before he rented that house up the hill. He still drops in sometimes for a drink and a yarn.”
“One of the original rugged individualists, isn’t he?” Simon remarked.
“Did he give you his big tirade about wages and taxes?”
“I got the synopsis, anyway.”
“Yes, he’s a personality all right. At least he doesn’t make any bones about where he stands. What beats me is how a fellow of that type could get all wrapped up in voodoo.”
Simon did not actually choke and splutter over his drink because he was not given to such demonstrations, but he felt as close to it as he was ever likely to.
“He what?”
“Didn’t he get on to that subject? I guess you didn’t stay very long.”
“Only for one drink.”
“He’s really sold on it. That’s how he originally came up here. He’d seen the voodoo dances they put on in the tourist spots down in Port-au-Prince, but he knew they were just a night-club show. He was looking for the McCoy. Well, we sent the word around, as we do sometimes for guests who’re interested, and a bunch from around here came up and put on a show in the patio. They don’t do any of the real sacred ceremonies, of course, but they’re a lot more authentic than the professionals in town. Netlord lapped it up, but it was just an appetizer to him. He wanted to get right into the fraternity and find out what it was all about.”
“What for?”
“He said he was thinking of writing a book about it. But half the time he talks as if he really believed in it. He says that the trouble with Western civilization is that it’s too practical — it’s never had enough time to develop its spiritual potential.”
“Are you pulling my leg or is he pulling yours?”
“I’m not kidding. He rented that house, anyway, and set out to get himself accepted by the natives. He took lessons in Creole so that he could talk to them, and he speaks it a hell of a lot better than I do — and I’ve lived here a hell of a long time. He hired that girl Sibao just because she’s the daughter of the local houngan, and she’s been instructing him and sponsoring him for the houmfort. It’s all very serious and legitimate. He told me some time ago that he’d been initiated as a junior member, or whatever they call it, but he’s planning to take the full course and become a graduate witch-doctor.”
“Can he do that? I mean, can a white man qualify?”
“Haitians are very broadminded,” Atherton Lee said gently. “There’s no color bar here.”