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

can afford it,” intruded
the metallic sneering voice of Floyd Vosper. “But before you decide to buy in, Templar, you’d better
check with New York about the time when Mr.
Gresson thought he could dig gold in
the Catskills.”
    “Shut up, Floyd,” said Mrs. Wexall,
“and get me an other Martini.”
    Arthur Granville Gresson chuckled in his
paunch like a
happy Buddha.
    “What a guy!” he said. “What
a ribber. And he gets everyone mad. He kills me!”
    Herbert Wexall came down from the verandah
and beamed around. As a sort of tacit announcement that he had put
aside his work for the day, he had changed into a sport shirt on
which various exotic animals were de picted wandering through an idealized
jungle, but he retained his business trousers and business shoes and busi ness
face.
    “Well,” he said, inspecting the
buffet and addressing the world at large. “Let’s come and get
it whenever we’re hungry.”
    As if a spell had been snapped, Astron
removed him self from the contemplation of the infinite, descended from his
pillar, and began to help himself to cottage cheese and caviar on a foundation
of lettuce leaves.
    Simon drifted in the same direction, and
found Pauline Stone beside him, saying: “What do you feel like, Mr.
Templar?”
    Her indication of having come off duty was a
good deal more radical than her employer’s. In fact, the bath ing suit
which she had changed into seemed to be based more on the French
minimums of the period than on any British tradition. There was no doubt
that she filled it opulently; and her question amplified its suggestive ness with
undertones which the Saint felt it wiser not to challenge at that moment.
    “There’s so much to drool over,”
he said, referring studiously to the buffet table. “But that green
turtle aspic looks
pretty good to me.”
    She stayed with him when he carried his plate
to a table as thoughtfully diametric as possible from the berth
chosen by Floyd Vosper, even though Astron had already settled
there in temporary solitude. They were promptly joined by
Reg Herrick and Janet Blaise, and slipped at once into an easy exchange
of banalities.
    But even then it was impossible to escape
Vosper’s tongue. It was not many minutes before his saw-edged voice whined
across the patio above the general level of harmless chatter:
    “When are you going to tell the Saint’s
fortune, Astron? That ought to be worth hearing.”
    There was a slightly embarrassed lull, and
then ev eryone went on talking again; but Astron looked at the Saint
with a gentle smile and said quietly: “You are a seeker after truth,
Mr. Templar, as I am. But when in stead of truth you find falsehood, you will destroy it with a sword. I only say ‘This is falsehood, and
God will destroy it. Do not come too
close, lest you be de stroyed with
it.’ “
    “Okay,” Herrick growled, just as
quietly. “But if you’re talking about Vosper, it’s about time
someone destroyed
it.”
    “Sometimes,” Astron said,
“God places His arrow in the hand of a man.”
    For a few moments that seemed unconscionably
long nobody said anything; and then before the silence spread
beyond their small group the Saint said casually: “Talking of
arrows—I hear that the sport this season is to go hunting sharks
with a bow and arrow.”
    Herrick nodded with a healthy grin.
    “It’s a lot of fun. Would you like to try
it?”
    “Reggie’s terrific,” Janet Blaise
said. “He shoots like a regular Howard Hill, but of course he uses
a bow that nobody
else can pull.”
    “I’d like to try,” said the Saint,
and the conversation slid harmlessly along the tangent he had provided.
    After lunch everyone went back to the beach,
with the exception of Astron, who retired to put his morning’s meditations
on paper. Chatter surrendered to an after noon torpor which even subdued Vosper.
    An indefinite while later, Herrick aroused
with a yell and
plunged roaring into the sea, followed by Janet Blaise. They were