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Authors: Leslie Charteris
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placed an unbelievable pressure on the fish, who
do not have similar devices on their side. Therefore there are no important
bass left to catch where anyone can go. But for some privileged sportsmen
there will always be some wilderness that is still fruitful in the old way,
which modern science can make ac cessible. Here in Florida, in spite of your
fantastic coastal developments, you are still only on the perimeter of a sports man’s
paradise to which the new key is—the helicopter!”
“You got something there, Count.”
“I am betting I have, Mr. Square. You
take off even today, in your helicopter, in spite of all the
highways and turnpikes, and in less than half an hour you can be
fishing where the fish have never seen anyone but a Seminole. I would like to show you
this. I happen to have a small private helicopter which I bought to
inspect properties; and if you like, this weekend, since I shall
not be consulting other sharkers—I beg your pardon, brokers— you should
come with me as a good fisherman and let me prove this.”
Mr. Diehl thought quickly, which he could
always do when the chips were down, and did not have to be any unusual genius to
realize that a Count of Cristamonte anywhere in the wilds with him
would certainly be worth more than the same perambulating
exchequer exposed to the sales pitch of the next grifter who might glom on
to him.
“That’s a great idea,” Mr. Diehl
said, wriggling inside his sodden shirt. “My staff will spend the
weekend getting a line on every big tract in this and the next two
counties, while you and me get a line on them bass.”
It was not to be expected that Mr. Diehl would
fail to let it leak out as widely as possible that he was going fishing in the
private plane of no less an international personage than the Count of
Cristamonte, and as a matter of fact the Saint was counting on it as a minor
but useful contribution to his plan. Nor was he disappointed or
disconcerted when Mr. Diehl’s belated qualms at the imminence of entrusting his life
to the skill of an unknown pilot, and a foreigner at that, caused the
realtor to make himself unusually conspic uous at the County
airfield by the noisy irreverence and raucous humor with which he tried to
cover up his misgivings and convince the mechanics who were servicing
the whirly- bird that such expeditions were as commonplace to him as a trip to
the bathroom. Simon Templar never omitted such factors from his
calculations, and Mr. Diehl lived up to everything that he
expected.
After a vertical take-off they first headed
roughly south, and then swung west somewhere over the outskirts of
Delray. In only a few minutes the dense development of the coastal strip had
faded into a hazy horizon and they were over a weird incredibly
flat-looking wilderness of scrubby green dappled with myriad
patches of water and sometimes scored with the thin straight slash of a
drainage canal. This was the perspective that is always a little startling,
when the blank spaces that take up most of the map of the lower Florida peninsula
become a visible wilderness, and it can actually be seen how
comparatively insignificant a rim of civilization has even yet been
established on the raw land that is still Straining to hold
itself a few precarious feet out of the sea.
Ed Diehl had seen this vista before, or other
areas indistinguishable from it, from the windows of large commercial airliners
approaching the ports of West Palm Beach or Miami, without
thinking even that much about it, for he was not an imaginative man
except when describing some property or proposition that he was trying to
sell; but before long he began to feel something radically
unfamiliar about the view he was getting of it today, and in
another little while it dawned on him that the important difference was one of altitude. The big passenger planes roared over at
speeds that dwarfed the empty
distances, and came slanting down into the serried suburbs from heights that
hardly
do not have similar devices on their side. Therefore there are no important
bass left to catch where anyone can go. But for some privileged sportsmen
there will always be some wilderness that is still fruitful in the old way,
which modern science can make ac cessible. Here in Florida, in spite of your
fantastic coastal developments, you are still only on the perimeter of a sports man’s
paradise to which the new key is—the helicopter!”
“You got something there, Count.”
“I am betting I have, Mr. Square. You
take off even today, in your helicopter, in spite of all the
highways and turnpikes, and in less than half an hour you can be
fishing where the fish have never seen anyone but a Seminole. I would like to show you
this. I happen to have a small private helicopter which I bought to
inspect properties; and if you like, this weekend, since I shall
not be consulting other sharkers—I beg your pardon, brokers— you should
come with me as a good fisherman and let me prove this.”
Mr. Diehl thought quickly, which he could
always do when the chips were down, and did not have to be any unusual genius to
realize that a Count of Cristamonte anywhere in the wilds with him
would certainly be worth more than the same perambulating
exchequer exposed to the sales pitch of the next grifter who might glom on
to him.
“That’s a great idea,” Mr. Diehl
said, wriggling inside his sodden shirt. “My staff will spend the
weekend getting a line on every big tract in this and the next two
counties, while you and me get a line on them bass.”
It was not to be expected that Mr. Diehl would
fail to let it leak out as widely as possible that he was going fishing in the
private plane of no less an international personage than the Count of
Cristamonte, and as a matter of fact the Saint was counting on it as a minor
but useful contribution to his plan. Nor was he disappointed or
disconcerted when Mr. Diehl’s belated qualms at the imminence of entrusting his life
to the skill of an unknown pilot, and a foreigner at that, caused the
realtor to make himself unusually conspic uous at the County
airfield by the noisy irreverence and raucous humor with which he tried to
cover up his misgivings and convince the mechanics who were servicing
the whirly- bird that such expeditions were as commonplace to him as a trip to
the bathroom. Simon Templar never omitted such factors from his
calculations, and Mr. Diehl lived up to everything that he
expected.
After a vertical take-off they first headed
roughly south, and then swung west somewhere over the outskirts of
Delray. In only a few minutes the dense development of the coastal strip had
faded into a hazy horizon and they were over a weird incredibly
flat-looking wilderness of scrubby green dappled with myriad
patches of water and sometimes scored with the thin straight slash of a
drainage canal. This was the perspective that is always a little startling,
when the blank spaces that take up most of the map of the lower Florida peninsula
become a visible wilderness, and it can actually be seen how
comparatively insignificant a rim of civilization has even yet been
established on the raw land that is still Straining to hold
itself a few precarious feet out of the sea.
Ed Diehl had seen this vista before, or other
areas indistinguishable from it, from the windows of large commercial airliners
approaching the ports of West Palm Beach or Miami, without
thinking even that much about it, for he was not an imaginative man
except when describing some property or proposition that he was trying to
sell; but before long he began to feel something radically
unfamiliar about the view he was getting of it today, and in
another little while it dawned on him that the important difference was one of altitude. The big passenger planes roared over at
speeds that dwarfed the empty
distances, and came slanting down into the serried suburbs from heights that
hardly
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