Señor Saint (The Saint Series) Page 13

  “I think there’s a better explanation. As you’ll remember, the Spanish conquistadors were here, as they were all over Central and South America. And as you know, the main thing the Spaniards were looking for was gold. It can’t have taken the priests of the Frog very long to find that out, but they must have been smarter than most of the other Indian tribes. They must have rounded up as many of the images as they could and hidden them in this cave—the entrance was so well hidden that no one could ever have found it unless he accidentally fell into it like I did. The specimen that the tourist brought to me must have been one that some individual hid on his own or that got lost somewhere, but the main collection was never found. Probably all the priests who knew where it was died under the tortures of the Inquisition without betraying the secret. Anyhow, no one can have set eyes on their treasure again until we found it.”

  “Are the other frogs all the same size?”

  “More or less, most of them. My hypothesis is that they were in the nature of icons, issued to minor priests or chieftains as a symbol of authority. But there were three images as big as footballs which must have presided over important lodges or perhaps their equivalent of cathedrals, and one absolute whopper, nearly as big as Alice, which must have been the original idol that all the others were modelled from.”

  The Saint’s lips took the shape of an awed whistle.

  “You don’t say they were solid gold?”

  “I have seen no evidence that those Indians knew the arts of plating, or making alloys,” answered the Professor dryly.

  “And to think I once started to feel sorry for you,” said the Saint. “I should apologize. If I’d known an archaeologist could hit that kind of pay dirt, I might have gone in for it myself.”

  The Professor smiled faintly.

  “Would it be impertinent to ask what your business is, Mr Tombs?”

  “I suppose you’d have to call me a speculator,” said the Saint with studious honesty. “I dabble in anything that looks interesting at the time. I may say I’ve done pretty well at playing my hunches.”

  If there could be any more mouth-watering description of the type that Professor Nestor prayed every night that Providence would send him on the morrow, the Professor had yet to hear it. Only a lifetime of professional discipline enabled him to sigh with the convincing tinge of envy that was called for at this point.

  “I wish I could say the same, Mr Tombs. I suppose I just wasn’t born under a lucky star.”

  “With a cave full of golden idols, you’ve certainly got problems. Like income tax, I suppose.”

  “But the idols are still there in the cave, Mr Tombs.”

  “Till you go back for them.”

  “Yes, yes. That, of course, is the problem.”

  “And we don’t want to lose our heads over it,” Alice said.

  Simon frowned interrogatively.

  “We’d just about taken it all in,” elaborated the Professor, “and we were heading back to camp for the cameras and flash bulbs to make a proper record before we disturbed anything, when the head-hunters attacked. It would be hard for you to believe, Mr Tombs, sitting here, but in less than an hour’s flying time you could parachute into a jungle world as untamed as it was before Columbus sailed…We’d been hearing the drums for days, but hoped they were only trying to scare us. It was a tragic underestimate. The native bearers we’d left in camp never had a chance, poor devils, but the uproar told us what had happened. We managed to cut across the river and push off in one of the canoes before we were spotted. We fought a rearguard action downstream for two days before they gave up the chase.”

  “Just you and Alice?” Simon asked, open-mouthed.

  “And Loro, our half-caste guide and interpreter. A wonderful fellow. I only hope nothing happens to him before we go back. That is,” said the Professor, coming hollowly back to earth, “if we ever do go back.”

  “If I knew where there was a cave full of golden idols,” said the Saint, “I’d like to see any drum-beating head-hunters stop me.”

  “Probably you can afford to say that,” Alice said gently. “But it costs a lot of money to organize the only kind of expedition that’d stand a chance. We’re going back to try to raise the money, of course—”

  “That shouldn’t be difficult.”

  “I hope you’re right,” said the Professor dubiously. “But as I told you, you remember, we didn’t even get any pictures. We haven’t anything to show except the one golden frog that you saw. It all depends on how much my scientific reputation is worth. Well, time will tell.”

  “They’ve got to believe you, Pappy,” Alice said.

  “Yes, indeed, my dear.” The Professor patted her hand. He had put on one of his most polished performances, not hamming it any more than the part called for, and if the audience wasn’t well hooked he should start learning his business all over again. Now it was up to her to carry the ball. “But we’ve bored Mr Tombs enough with our problems.” He consulted his watch. “And I have to call the curator of the Museum. Will you excuse me?”

  He got up and pottered vaguely out into the lobby. He had practised that gait until it had become almost a part of him—it suggested a kind of ingenuous and earnest helplessness which was peculiarly convincing. Alice’s eyes followed him protectively.

  “Poor darling,” she said. “It means so much to him.”

  Simon offered her a cigarette.

  “There’s no real chance that you won’t raise the money, is there? I should think he’d only have to wire his university—”

  “It isn’t as easy as that. You see, no one even heard of the Frog cult before he deduced that it must have existed. And you’ve no idea how sceptical scientists can be, especially about someone else’s discovery. It’s not only scientists, either. There’s a man who has a desk out in the lobby who calls himself Jungle Jim: he organizes jungle trips for tourists. If you asked him, he’d tell you there aren’t any head-hunters in Panama. Of course he doesn’t take his parties anywhere near the head-hunter country, and he doesn’t want them scared off, but you can imagine what someone who was checking up on our story might think.”

  Simon nodded.

  “Have you tried already and been turned down?”

  “No. As a matter of fact, we’ve hardly told anyone. We have to be awfully careful. If the Panamanian government heard about it and believed it, they’d claim it and send a company of soldiers to get it. That wouldn’t matter to Pappy, so long as he got the scientific credit, but you can guess how many of the frogs would mysteriously disappear on the way back. In fact, the expedition would be just as likely to come back and swear they hadn’t found anything at all—or maybe never even come back, if you see what I mean.”

  The Saint decided that it was not up to him to dispute this libellous estimate of the Panamanian militia.

  “How much would it cost to go in and get those frogs?” he asked.

  She had the figure ready arrived at by an intuition that had seldom failed her: it had to be small enough, compared with her assessment of his means, for him to consider without undue anxiety, but it should also encompass every last dollar that the operation might be good for.

  “About ten thousand dollars,” she said, and he didn’t blink.

  “Someone might go for that as a straight business gamble, in return for a fair share of the loot.”

  It was not so much a statement as the thinly veiled basis for an offer, but she shook her head.

  “That’s the trouble. Pappy would never allow it to be treated as loot. All those frogs would have to go into museums. He’d rather they stayed lost for ever than see any of them melted down, or even put up for sale.”

  “Then you certainly are looking for a philanthropist.”

  “I know, it isn’t realistic. But who could mistake my Pappy for a realist? Now, I’m different. If I could get him just a few of those frogs—enough to make one museum exhibit and a lot of pictures, and prove his theory and make him famous—I woul
dn’t care what happened to the rest.”

  Simon regarded her contemplatively, and suddenly she leaned closer and impulsively put a hand on his arm.

  “Tell me something,” she said. “I don’t know why I’m talking to you like this, except that I feel you’re a terribly wise person. But I’ve got to ask you. Suppose I managed to find some business man who was a bit of a gambler, and made a deal with him on my own.” It was consummate artlessness that continued to keep the discussion impersonal, so that she was absolved of any suspicion of propositioning him. “If I got just a few of those golden frogs for Pappy, he needn’t even know what happened to the rest, the head-hunters might have found the cave after we left and taken most of them away, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. He could write his articles and be famous and die happy. Would you think I’d done something very wrong or very good?”

  Simon pondered for long enough to calculate what the approximate value of the golden frogs that Nestor had described would be.

  “I’d think you should have a medal,” he said. “And if you decide to make anyone that sort of offer, I wish you’d give me the first chance.”

  She looked at him in a dazed and startled way as if a halo had literally appeared over his head like a neon light, and her big eyes swam with soft half-unbelieving tears.

  “I’m afraid I shall have to desert you tonight, dear,” said Professor Humphrey Nestor, noting the artistic symptoms with approval as he returned to the table. “Some former colleagues of mine from Colombia are passing through here—they happened to be calling on the curator when I telephoned, so I had to speak to them. They insisted on me joining them for dinner, but I shall not inflict that ordeal on you. I know our shop talk would bore you to death.”

  “That’s all right,” Alice said, with her eyes still on the Saint and the most tentative conspiratorial smile touching her lips. “Mr Tombs just asked me if I could get away to have dinner with him.”

  3

  She suggested the Jardín El Rancho, and as soon as he saw it he had to approve of her selection. It was like the courtyard of a Spanish hacienda, tile-roofed around three sides but uncovered to the stars in the centre, and open everywhere to the perfect mildness of the night. The service was competently unobtrusive, and the lighting was artistic enough to encourage romance without causing eyestrain. But at first they were strictly practical.

  “How would you work this scheme of yours?” he asked.

  “Remember, I was at the cave too. I know where it is as well as Pappy.”

  “You mean you’d go back there yourself—head-hunters and all?”

  “I would if I had to,” she said bravely.

  He shook his head.

  “That doesn’t sound so good.”

  “I can’t say I’m crazy about it,” she admitted. “So I don’t mind telling you I had another idea.”

  “Give.”

  “Loro—the native guide who took us into that district.”

  “Don’t tell me he’d want to go back there.”

  “He might. He just about adopted Pappy as his own father, but for some weird reason he practically worships me. Probably because I’m blonde and blue-eyed, and I treated him like a human being—oh, yes, and he got an infected foot once, and I fixed him up from the first-aid kit. It sounds ridiculous, but these natives are like children and he’s at least fifteen-sixteenths Indian. And after the head-hunters had chased us out, he told us we’d gone about it all wrong, and if he’d known what we were after he could have gone there alone and got it without any trouble.”

  Simon tenderly impaled a pink shrimp on his fork, coated it lightly with sauce, and slid it between his teeth to confirm an earlier impression that the shrimps of Panama are for some unexplored reason the most crisply ambrosial representatives of their genus in all the legendary seven seas.

  “Do you know where to find this reckless warrior?”

  “Yes, he’s still around. As a matter of fact, he came to our hotel a little while before you picked me up—Pappy had already left to meet his friends. He wanted to know if there was any chance of our making another expedition. I was just going to tell him that it wouldn’t be for a long time, if ever, because we’d spent all our money, and then I had this idea. I asked him to stop by here at nine o’clock, so you could meet him anyway.”

  They had sancocho, the rich chicken soup with vegetables that can easily become a meal in itself, but left themselves room for some excellent beef tenderloin sliced in mushroom sauce which was entirely European in conception and flavour. He asked many more details about the finding of the cave of golden frogs and the escape from the head-hunters which Professor Nestor had skipped over, but that also had been anticipated. The Professor had read many helpful books, and had schooled her so exhaustively that she was never at a loss. Simon’s admiration increased undisguisedly as the meal progressed.

  “You’ll find campus life pretty tame after this, won’t you?” he remarked.

  “Oh, I won’t be going back there with him. I’d hate to be a burden like that to him, poor dear, on his salary. I earn my own living—I’m a very good secretary. Of course I’ll have to look for a new job—I had to give up my old one when we came down here. But now I’ve developed a yen to see more of the world. I’m going to look for a business man who does a lot of travelling and who’d like to take a Girl Friday with him.”

  “It mightn’t be easy to keep him at a strictly business-like distance.”

  “Well, that mightn’t be hard to take if I really liked him,” she said frankly. “I’m not hopelessly old-fashioned.”

  It was obvious that they could have made beautiful music together.

  Loro arrived when they were having coffee, and accepted a seat and a bottle of Balboa beer. He was a pudgy brown man in a clean but unpressed white shirt and trousers, with long black hair, a single gold earring, and a wide white-toothed grin. He looked like a genial brigand, which was precisely what he was. Quite early in the Professor’s exile, he had volunteered to carry the Professor’s bag from a taxi into a hotel; turning from paying off the driver, the Professor had just been fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of his suitcase and Loro disappearing around the next corner. Mr Nestor, who could still put forth a most respectable turn of speed in an emergency, had overtaken him within two blocks, but to Loro’s even greater astonishment he had not capped his victory by calling for the police. Instead, he had given him five dollars and invited him to have a drink. Mr Nestor had already realized that a native accomplice might be almost indispensable to whatever bunco routine he finally adapted to the locale, and the problem of finding a native with the requisite guarantees of un-scrupulousness had been most happily solved.

  Loro’s larcenous instinct immediately recognized a master, and he had become a very gratifying pupil. His part was relatively simple, and he brought to it an innate flair for dramatic deceit.

  “I go back any time, señor,” he said in response to Alice’s prompting. “Bring back frogs. Me indio. No trouble.”

  “Then why did they have trouble before, when you were with them?” Simon asked.

  “Head-hunters seen me with yanquis, they think me like yanqui. Much trouble. Cut off all heads.” Loro made a graphic gesture, laughing delightedly. “Yanqui heads very valuable, but they take mine for small-change. Okeh. Me go alone, wear no clothes, they see me indio. Can be friends. No trouble.”

  “Why didn’t you go back by yourself, then, and get the frogs?”

  “Cost much money, señor. Too much for me.”

  “But I thought they were going to be your friends.”

  “Sure. All good friends. Okeh. Me go to cave. Okeh. Me take out frogs. Head-hunters see. They know gold very valuable. No more friends.”

  “Tell him how you thought of doing it, Loro,” Alice said.

  The guide leaned over his bare forearms on the table.

  “Take plenty guns, yes. But who going to shoot them? No good take soldiers, they steal everything. T
ake other indios, they no can shoot straight. Or head-hunters come, they run away. Okeh. I got better idea.”

  “What is it?”

  “Sell guns to head-hunters. For gold frogs.”

  “Do you think they’d trade?”

  “Sure. Head-hunters want guns. Get more heads, more quick.” Loro chortled tolerantly. “Not our heads, we no worry.”

  “How many guns would it take?” Simon asked.

  “I think, fifty, with bullets—can do.”

  “But that’s impossible,” Alice said. “You couldn’t bring in that many guns—the Panamanians would think you were trying to start a revolution. And you couldn’t buy that many here, for the same reason. Why, we had the worst time getting permits for our .22 and one shotgun.”

  “Give me money, I get,” Loro said. “I have friends keep guns, wait for revolution, wait too long, get tired. They take money for guns now, think maybe they buy more guns mañana. But it cost plenty. Maybe two hundred dollars each gun and bullets.”

  “Then we wouldn’t save anything,” said Alice. “It would still cost ten thousand dollars.”

  “Save much trouble. No fighting. Save heads.”

  Simon lighted a cigarette.

  “What would you want for doing this?” he asked.

  Loro’s fat cheeks dimpled on each side of his jolly bandit’s smile.

  “Me, for love, señor. For the señorita I love. But perhaps I buy some guns more cheap, not pay all two hundred dollars. Me keep some dollars for working. You will not ask me give back, okeh?”

  “Okay,” said the Saint steadily.

  Loro stood up, beaming. He bowed deeply to the girl.

  “I go now. I tell you soon, all is ready. Buenos noches, diosa.”

  He was gone, melting into the darkness of the parking lot outside the patio as he might have melted into the jungle. Professor Nestor had painstakingly taught him to do this instead of scooting out as if he had dropped a fire-cracker with a short fuse.

  Alice was looking at the Saint with misty eyes.

  “I can hardly believe that my crazy idea is coming true,” she said.