Read Online The Saint on the Spanish Main by Leslie Charteris - Free Book Online

crescent of sand were naturally guarded by abrupt rises of jagged
coral rock.
    “Herbert is the living example of how
really stupid a successful business man can be,” Vosper said
tirelessly. “He was just an office-boy of some kind in the
Blaise outfit when he got smart enough to woo and win the boss’s
daughter. And from the flying start, he was clever enough to really pay
his way by making Blaise In dustries twice as big as even the old man himself
had been able to do. And yet he’s dumb enough to think that Lucy won’t
catch on to the extracurricular functions of that busty secretary sooner or
later—or that when she does he won’t be out on a cold doorstep in the rain…
. No, I’m not going in. I’ll hold your drink for you.”
    Simon ran down into the surf and churned
seawards for a couple of hundred yards, then turned over and paddled
lazily back, coordinating his impressions with ideal amusement. The
balmy water was still refreshing after the heat of the morning, and when he
came out the breeze had become brisk enough to give him the luxury of a
fleeting shiver as the wetness started to evaporate from his tanned skin.
    He crossed the sand to the Greek patio,
where Floyd Vosper was on duty again at the bar in a strategic posi tion to
keep his own needs supplied with a minimum of effort. Discreet
servants were setting up a buffet table. Janet Blaise and Reg Herrick had
transferred their gin rummy game and were playing at a table right
under the column where Astron had resumed his seat and his cataleptic
meditations—a weird juxtaposition of which the three members all
seemed equally unconscious.
    Simon took Lucy Wexall a Martini and said
with another glance at the tableau: “Where did you find him?”
    “The people who brought him to
California sent him to me when he had to leave the States. They gave me such a
good time when I was out there, I couldn’t refuse to do something for
them. He’s writing a book, you know, and of course he can’t go back to that
dreadful place he
came from, wherever it is, before he has a chance to finish it in reasonable
comfort.”
    Simon avoided discussing this assumption, but he said: “What’s it like, having a resident
prophet in the house?”
    “He’s very interesting. And quite as
drastic as Floyd, in his own way, in summing up people. You ought to talk to
him.”
    Arthur Gresson came over with an hors
d’oeuvre plate of smoked salmon and stuffed eggs from the buffet.
He said: “Anyone you meet at Lucy’s is interesting, Mr.
Templar. But if you don’t mind my saying so, you have it all over the
rest of ‘em. Who’d ever think we’d find the Saint looking for crime in the Bahamas?”
    “I hope no one will think I’m looking
for crime,” Si mon said deprecatingly, “any more than I take it for granted that you’re looking for oil.”
    “That’s where you’d be wrong,”
Gresson said. “As a matter of fact, I am.”
    The Saint raised an eyebrow.
    “Well, I can always learn something. I’d
never heard of oil in the Bahamas.”
    “I’m not a bit surprised. But you will,
Mr. Templar, you will.” Gresson sat down, pillowing his round
stom ach on his thighs. “Just think for a moment about some of the
places you have heard of, where there is certainly oil. Let me mention
them in a certain order. Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, and the recent strike in the
Florida Everglades. We might even include Venezuela in the south. Does that suggest
anything to you?”
    “Hm-mm,” said the Saint thoughtfully.
    “A pattern,” Gresson said. “A
vast central pool of oil somewhere under the Gulf of Mexico, with oil
wells dip ping into it from the edges of the bowl, where the geo logical
strata have also been forced up. Now think of the islands of the
Caribbean as the eastern edge of the same bowl. Why not?”
    “It’s a hell of an interesting
theory,” said the Saint.
    “Mr. Wexall thinks so too, and I hope
he’s going into partnership with me.”
    “Herbert