“I know. Captain O’Kevin told him that. But he wouldn’t believe it. He’s certain that you knew Captain O’Kevin would be at the Rod and Reel Club, and you planned to meet him there to make it easier for you to get close to us when you got here.”
Simon lowered himself on to the bed and leaned back against the headboard, hitching one leg up to rest an arm on his knee.
“And who are the sinister mob that’s supposed to be behind that elaborate piece of delirium?”
“I don’t know. He’s never discussed any of his business with me. And when I tried to ask him about this thing in particular, he told me it was better for me not to know. But he almost had me believing in it until a minute ago.”
“Was I the only real test? You’d never seen any other suspicious characters lurking around, with your own eyes? Nobody ever had tried to actually do anything to him?”
“Not that I ever saw.”
The Saint slowly and carefully created a perfectly formed smoke ring.
“Then it certainly does look as if your husband is at least mildly squirrelly,” he said. “If it’s any comfort to you, I can give you my word that I had no designs on him whatsoever when I met Patsy.”
“It doesn’t matter now.” She stirred with a sudden restlessness. “I was going to have to get away from him anyhow. You can’t go on looking at a man twenty times a day and wondering how blind you can have been to marry him. I already told him I’m taking the plane back to Nassau tomorrow. The only difference now is that this’ll probably be for keeps. Maybe it’s not very noble of me, but I don’t want to be around when his delusions get worse. How do I know when he might start suspecting me?”
“I can see how that might make you uncomfortable,” said the Saint, with an absolutely straight face.
“I’m even more glad I came to see you.”
“Pardon my curiosity,” he said, “but if Clinton had you half believing in his hallucinations, especially after I showed up — why did you come to see me?”
“You invited me, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And right there on the dock, you knew I wanted to accept.”
“But suppose I’d told you, yes, I really did have something unpleasant in mind for your husband? What did you figure on doing then?”
“I was going to offer to help you.”
In his position, Simon was cushioned against falling down, but he lounged a little more limply, and he was glad that he had no need to pretend that he was completely unsurprised.
“That was certainly very friendly,” he remarked, with prodigious moderation.
She stood up, and again her dark eyes had the same veiled amusement that they had held when she first came in.
“I’m sure it isn’t the first time that a woman’s wanted to team up with you.”
“Well, no,” he said.
She picked the remaining third of her cigarette out of the holder and held it up for a moment.
“You see? No lipstick. No incriminating evidence.” She stubbed the butt out in an ashtray and dropped the holder into the pocket of her robe. “I could be useful. I’m very competent. I think of things.”
“I’d noticed that.”
She came closer to the bed, near enough for him to have touched her if he moved a little.
“I suppose I should be coy,” she said. “But my time’s so short. I’m sure you know what kind of husband I’ve had all these years. I need a man. Don’t you want to make love to me?”
It had been coming to that ever since she knocked on his door, and he had always known it, but it had seldom been said to him so forthrightly. He met her unwavering gaze with a tinge of utterly immoral admiration, before his eyes were involuntarily drawn down to the valley where the green robe had fallen open to her waist.
“Yes, they’re real,” she said.
She made an almost imperceptible supple movement, and the robe slipped off her shoulders and down to her elbows. Her breasts were like alabaster where they had been covered when she sunbathed, and the startling pink-tipped whiteness of them against the rest of her bronzed skin made them look more shamelessly naked than any breasts he had ever seen. And perhaps this was also because they would rank among the most beautiful.
He would always remember it as one of the most fabulous feats of self-control in his life that kept him looking at her without moving.
“Don’t you at least think you should lock the door?” he asked steadily.
“Yes. No. Oh, I’m a fool!” She twitched the robe over her shoulders again, wrapping it tightly around her. “But you’re so right. And you do things so gracefully. Of course it’s impossible here. We’ve got to get away first, where we won’t have to feel tense. Will you come to Nassau?”
“With you, tomorrow?”
“No, that’d be too obvious, wouldn’t it? Clinton would be sure to make a scene, and either he wouldn’t let me go or he’d suddenly decide to come too.” She ran a hand through her burnished hair. “And you mustn’t stay here after I’ve gone. You’d have real trouble with Vince — you would have already, only I talked them out of it. Oh, I know you can take care of yourself, but there are so many ways to stab a man in the back, and I won’t risk that when I’ve only just found you, before we’ve even... Wait, I’ve got it! There must be a charter plane service in Miami.”
“There’s one on the MacArthur Causeway that flies small planes over here.”
“You could phone over and get one here in an hour.”
“Probably. And I announce that I’m going back to Miami, but after I’ve taken off I hand the pilot some more green stuff and tell him I’ve changed my mind and I want to be flown to Nassau.”
“And I’ll be there with you tomorrow. Please, Simon, will you?”
He tried to keep his eyes level, but there was a reckless glint in them that would not be smothered altogether.
“What about you, Gloria?”
“If I let you down,” she vowed, “you can take any Saintly revenge you can think of.”
Simon Templar grinned.
“You’ve got a deal, darling.”
She leaned over to mould her mouth against his, ignoring the looseness of the green robe. This time he could not keep quite still.
5
And so the shadows of the spindly coconut palms were growing longer and cooler as the Saint strolled westwards along the lazy curve of Bimini’s one uncongested street.
The radiophone contact with Miami had been surprisingly fast and adequate. The charter plane service had been willing and competently businesslike. For Simon Templar to pack up for a weekend or a trip around the world was practically the same operation, and he had done it so often that he could complete it in a matter of minutes without even being conscious of an interruption in whatever train of thought he was pursuing. He had plenty of time left to amble up to the Colleen and make an absolutely essential adieu.
He thumped on the deck with a bottle which he had purchased on the way, and Patsy O’Kevin came out into the cockpit blinking a little, like a groundhog prematurely disturbed from hibernation.
“Why, ’tis yerself again,” observed the captain superfluously. Then he got the bottle in good focus and went on with expanding cordiality, “An’ welcome as the tonic I think I’m seein’ there in yer hand.”
He disappeared again for what seemed like a fraction of a second, and reappeared providently armed with a couple of glasses.
“It’s only Peter Dawson,” said the Saint, removing the cap from the bottle. “They seem to be fresh out of Irish whisky today. Will you condescend to rinse out your gullet with Scotch?”