“So long as it’s good Gaelic liquor, I’ll not be complainin’.” O’Kevin kept his glass held out, as if by instinct, until only a miracle of surface tension kept the bulging contents from running over the rim, but his bright green eyes clung shrewdly and inquisitively to the Saint’s face. “An’ whatever it is ye’re celebratin’, Simon, ’tis happy I am to celebrate wid ye.”
The Saint filled the second glass, and looked around.
“Where’s Des?” he asked.
“He got talkin’ to Mike Lemer this afternoon — ye ought to meet him yerself, the great fisherman who lives here. I guess Mike must o’ liked the mettle av him, for he took the lad off to see his aquarium an’ the laboratory which he built for the University o’ Miami, an’ if I’m not lucky Mike will be givin’ him a job an’ I’ll be lookin’ for a new mate next month.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Simon said, and most sincerely meant it.
“Des is a good lad,” O’Kevin said grudgingly. “But not to be mentioned in the same toast wid yerself. Which, by yer leave, I shall now drink to ye.”
He raised his glass, emptied two-thirds of it, wiped his lips on the back of his hand, and exhaled a rich aromatic sigh.
“An’ now,” he persisted remorselessly, “tell me what it is that ye’re drinkin’ to.”
“This, Patsy, is a farewell drink.”
“Where are ye goin’?”
“Away.”
“Widout iver gettin’ to know Gloria?”
“No. Not quite without that.”
O’Kevin squinted at him.
“It was just like I towld ye, wasn’t it, Simon me b’y?”
“I wouldn’t call her a rock in the harbor,” said the Saint.
O’Kevin chuckled and slapped his leg.
“Faith, an’ it does me heart good to see that look in yer eye! Would ye be tellin’ me just a little more, which it should be me roight to know as the godfather av it?”
Simon lighted a cigarette and gave a comprehensive account of his interrupted siesta. That is, except for the physical details about which chivalry and good taste imposed a gentlemanly reticence which may have been quite exasperating to his audience. But he gave a very careful and methodical account of the conversation, as much to clarify his own recollection as anything.
“So tomorrow ye’ll be with her again in Nassau,” O’Kevin said wistfully, holding out his glass for a refill.
“No,” said the Saint.
The captain frowned.
“Maybe ye’re roight, an’ I shouldn’t be havin’ another drop, at that,” he said. “It sounded to me exactly as if ye said ‘No.’ ”
“I did.” Simon poured again hospitably, and put down the bottle, “You see, she hasn’t any intention of going there. The job was very delicately handled — first to establish that she was going to Nassau anyhow, then to get me interested and you might even say excited, then to dampen me down again with nervous misgivings about the obvious risks of having an affair with her then and there. I cued her a bit with that last switch, but she could easily have done it without my help if she’d had to. Then, she had to put over the argument for my leaving at once, and without her. That was fairly easy too, and I helped her again, being a kind soul under my gruff exterior.”
“Ye’re imaginin’ things, Simon. Her arguments were only good sense.”
“Of course. They had to be. I told you it was beautifully worked out. Even to the idea of my leaving ahead of her. Because if she’d left first, as a decoy, there’d always be the risk that I mightn’t follow, and then she wouldn’t be around to freshen the proposition. That gorgeous body of hers was always worth betting on. And if I’d been really tiresome, and refused to be coaxed the way they wanted at all, I could still be maneuvered into bed, or near enough to it to stage a suitable tableau for Uckrose to come busting in on, with Innutio or maybe someone else for a witness, and start pumping lead like a properly indignant husband.”
“If that was the idea, Simon, ye’d be lyin’ dead in yer room already.”
“No, because then they’d have all the fuss and bother of a trial, and a British court might give Uckrose a lot of trouble no matter how much provocation he could prove. It was much smarter to try to get me out of the way peacefully first, if it could be done. But don’t think I didn’t have goose-pimples a few times, wondering if they were as smart as I wanted them to be.”
“But ye’d towld her ye had nothin’ against Uckrose, exceptin’ perhaps his bad manners, so whoy would he be wantin’ to harm ye?”
“For fear of what I might find out, Patsy. It’s funny how scared some people get about that when they hear my name.”
“But ye don’t honestly know of anything wrong that he’s doin’?”
Simon sipped his drink.
“Not specifically; not at this instant. But I do know that there is something to know. All the effort and ingenuity that’s been put into trying to bamboozle me is the proof that there’s something for me to look for. Isn’t it silly how panic and a guilty conscience will make people put a rope around their own necks? If I’d only been left alone, I’d probably never have suspected anything.”
O’Kevin shook his head baffledly.
“Whoy should Uckrose be hidin’ anything at all?” he objected. “Whin ye towld Gloria ye weren’t after him, she towld ye herself it only proved he was crazy, as she’d been afraid he was.”
“An ordinary crackpot with delusions of persecution doesn’t hire a bodyguard of Innutio’s type. That was her clumsiest lie, when she said that he came through a New York detective agency. Licensed agencies just don’t supply characters of that kind. Innutio is a standard-brand second-string hoodlum, and Uckrose must know it: therefore Uckrose is up to no good. It’s as simple as that. Gloria came to find out exactly how much I knew, and whatever that might have been I’m sure she had a plan already worked out for coping with it, using her natural equipment, which is very persuasive indeed. When I convinced her that I had no idea what Clinton is worried about, it may have shaken her even more than if I’d known everything, but there was a prearranged plan for that situation too... What will always intrigue me is who is really the brains of the act. Gloria is a great performer, but does she write her own material? Or do we underrate Brother Uckrose?”
“Simon, me b’y, if it wasn’t for all those tales I’ve heard about ye, I’d be thinkin’ ye had the same delusions as Uckrose! Is it sensible, now, to be creditin’ him wid all kinds o’ wickedness, whin it’s more loikely he’s just a little soft in the head?”
The Saint finished the modest measure of Peter Dawson which was all he had allowed himself, and set down the glass.
“What I’ve been telling you is only the end of it, Patsy,” he said. “The tip-off really started way back in Miami.”
O’Kevin’s brow wrinkled with an effort of concentration.
“Begorra, ’tis soundin’ more like a detective story ivery blessed minute ye are. Beggin’ yer pardon for one second, I left a pot on the stove which could be b’ilin’ over while I sit here.”
He got up and ducked down the companion to the saloon. Without an instant’s hesitation, and moving with the silence of a hunting leopard, the Saint followed him.
O’Kevin turned from one of the bunk settees with an automatic that he had snatched from under the pillow in his grip, but he was not expecting to find the Saint only a foot away from him. His jaw fell slackly for a split second of pardonable paralysis, and during that interval the Saint hit it with a nicely calculated uppercut, not too light but not too obliterative. The captain dropped quietly on the bunk.
Simon picked up the gun and tossed it out through an open porthole. Then he pulled a roll of adhesive tape from his pocket, and swiftly and expertly taped O’Kevin’s wrists together behind his back, secured his ankles in the same way, and rolled him over and bent him at the knees before using several thicknesses of the remaining tape to link the wrist and ankle bindings together. The jolt with which he had lifted the captain’s chin had been so well measured that O’Kevin’s eyes were opening again as the Saint finished.