“Excuse me sir,” he said in passable English. “Mr. Destamio would like to meet you, and sent me with his car. He did not want to risk waking you up by telephoning, so I was told to wait here until you came down.”
The Saint regarded him expressionlessly.
“And suppose I had some other plans?” he said. “Such as going shopping for some new clothes, for instance?”
“Mr. Destamio hoped you would talk to him before you do anything else,” said the chauffeur, with equal inscrutability. “He told me to promise you will not be sorry. The car is outside. Will you come?”
A latinate flip of the hand repeated both the invitation and the direction; and yet no threat was implied by gesture, intonation, or innuendo. Having delivered his message, the chauffeur waited without a sign of impatience for Simon to make his own decision.
Well, Simon thought, some day he would almost inevitably have to guess wrong, fatally wrong. But he didn’t think this was the day. And anyhow, the opportunity of making a proper acquaintance with such a personage as Mr. Destamio was too great a temptation to resist.
“Okay,” he said recklessly. “I’ll take a chance.”
He did not have to look around for the car. There was a Cadillac berthed in the street outside which was the only conceivable vehicle, even before the chauffeur opened the door with a certain possessive pride. It was black, high-finned, gigantic, polished to the brilliance of a jewel, and completely out of place in the constricted antiquity of the street. Without hesitation Simon climbed into the cavernous interior, and was not surprised to find himself alone. Whatever Destamio might have in mind for the future, he would hardly be so idiotic as to have the Saint killed in his own car in the center of Naples. The windows were closed and an air conditioner whispered softly. Simon settled back into the deep upholstery and prepared to enjoy the ride.
4
It was not a very long journey, but it was impressive enough. Under the driver’s skillful touch, the car slid into the traffic like a leviathan into the deep. On all sides rushed schools of tiny cars, battling and honking through swarms of slow-moving pedestrians, small children, and animals. The din that arose from all this came to Simon only as the gentlest of murmurs through the thick glass and padded metal. Cool breezes laved him and wafted away his cigarette smoke even as he exhaled it.
Leviathan ploughed a majestic path through the small fry and rushed towards the bay. Without slowing, they swept through the gates of the port, and the guards saluted respectfully. The Saint looked out at the portholed flanks of the ships — only liners here, the smaller ferries were outside the fence in the public port — and had momentary qualms of a shanghaiing, until the car came to a smooth halt next to a modernistic concrete structure something like a giant’s pool table on spindly legs. It had been built since his last visit to the city, and for a few seconds it puzzled him. Then he heard the roar of rotors overhead, and the pieces clicked into place.
“Ischia or Capri?” he asked the chauffeur, as he stepped reluctantly out into the steam-bath of untreated atmosphere.
“Capri, sir. This way, please.”
The two island resorts of fun and sun are eighteen miles from the city, at the outer edge of the vast bay. They are normally reached by a varied collection of yachts, ferries, and converted fishing boats, in a voyage that takes from one to four hours depending on the prospective passenger’s ability to translate the misleading notices. Prosperity and technology have now changed this for the well-heeled few and supplied a helicopter service that covers the same distance in a few minutes. There was one that seemed to have been waiting only for the Saint: as soon as he was on board, the door shut and he was lifted as smoothly as in an elevator.
They swung out over the incredibly blue waters of the bay, giving him what he had to admit was a marvelous panorama, much as he thought it had been over-written in the travel brochures. The vertical rock walls of Capri jutting dramatically from the sea were as impressive from the air as when seen from the more usual approach. The pilot turned in over Marina Grande, circled the top of Monte Solaro so that his passenger could appreciate the best parts of the view, then dropped lightly on to the painted circle of the heliport.
This is located on the site of Damecuta, one of the many palaces which the Emperor Tiberius scattered over his favorite island, on the cliff edge just as far out of town as it is possible to get on dry land, and as Simon climbed down he wondered what transportation would be provided for the last lap of the journey. He felt sure it would be no less sumptuous than the preceding conveyances.
Something appeared wearing the minimal shorts and halter which pass for clothing on that insular lido, and the Saint leisurely surveyed the large areas of skin which they made no attempt to cover, confident in the wisdom of his years that people who undressed like that expected to be looked at. The vision of long tanned legs and golden hair floated towards him with a rotary motion that displayed its other accessories to great affect. “Mr. Templar?” it asked, in a low and throbbingly warm voice.
“None other,” he said happily. “How did you find me in all this crowd?”
The helicopter pilot and a single airport attendant — the only audience — watched appreciatively, waiting for the reverse view when the vision would retreat and in so doing display the remainder of her delectable curves. She ignored the Saint’s pleasantry and merely gestured towards the parking space.
Since the roads on Capri are barely wide enough for two beamy baby-buggies to brush past each other, only the smallest cars are used and even the buses are minuscule. Therefore he was not expecting another Cadillac; but the little cream-colored Alfa-Romeo which he boarded, with its sensationally displayed chauffeuse, was a worthy substitute.
So was her driving style, which shot it off like a compact bomb and forced it to claw its way around the turns that wound up the face of the mountain with an abandon which made the Saint hope devoutly that she knew what she was doing. He stole several dubious glances at her; but her lips were heavily painted and unmoving, while the upper part of her face was so hidden by immense flower-wreathed sunglasses that her eyes and any expression around them were completely concealed. Her attention seemed to concentrate entirely on the road; and Simon felt too gentlemanly at the time to force his attentions on her. Particularly since they were skirting the edge of vertical drops so high that the boats below looked like toys in a pond.
Fortunately for his nervous stamina, there was quite a short limit to the maximum mileage at her disposal on the island, and she had not even reached third gear when they arrived at their destination, a villa overlooking the beaches and coves of Marina Piccola.
His alertness involuntarily tautened again as he strolled up the flagged path. Now he had helped to deliver himself unresistingly exactly where Destamio wanted him, it would not be much longer before he was shown just how foolhardy he had been. He was not even ashamed to be relieved when the Vision with the legs rang the door-bell herself, thus sparing him any concern over the perils of the bell mechanism. More than once in the past it had been demonstrated to him how lethal such commonplace fixtures could be made. But this time the button activated no poisoned needles, sprays of gas, hidden guns, or bombs; if anything, the opening of the door was quite anticlimactic. Instead of unleashing mayhem, it projected only the prominent belly of Signore Destamio, dressed in a cerise shirt and purple shorts which did considerably less for his pear-shaped figure than the fancy tailoring in which Simon had first seen him.