Vendetta for the Saint. (31 page)

“How
do we get there?”

“You don’t
feel like walking?”

She
gazed at him in silent disgust.

“Maybe it is a bit far,” he admitted. “But if we
try to rent a car, that’s the next thing the
Ungodly
will have thought of, too.
There must be something
left that
they won’t think of—if I can only think of
it…”

He riffled the pages of the guide book, fumbling
for an inspiration
somewhere in its recital of the
antique
grandeurs and modern comforts of the
city. To lose themselves in a population of less than
12,000 was a very different problem from
doing the
same thing in
New York or even Naples. But there
had to be a solution, there always was.

And suddenly it was
staring him in the face.

“I know,” he said. “We’ll go
to the beach and cool off.”

Lily’s mouth opened in an expression not
unlike
that of a
beached fish—an expression which the
Saint had a fatal gift of provoking, and which
always gave him a malicious satisfaction.
With no
intention of
prematurely alleviating her bewilder
ment, he captured her hand again and led her down
an aisle and out into a tree-shaded cloister.
From there, a small gate let them out into what his map
showed to be the Via Mandralisca, where he
turned
back in the direction of the sea.

Towing the baffled but obedient Lily beside
him,
he stopped at
the first clothing store they came to
and bought a knitted T-shirt in horizontal blue and
white stripes and a pair of cheap sandals. He
changed into them quickly
in the next convenient
alley,
discarding his former soiled shirt and scuffed
shoes in the nearest trash barrel. A little
farther on, at a cubicle of tourist superfluities overflowing on
to the sidewalk, he acquired a pair of
sunglasses
and a huge
garish straw bag which he gave Lily to carry.

Only a block from the approaching vista of
blue
Mediterranean,
he made a last stop at a well-
stocked
salumeria,
where an apparently un
suspicious proprietor was delighted to wrap
bountiful packages of cheese, ham, sausage, artichoke
hearts and ripe olives, together with a loaf
of crusty
bread and a
flagon of the sturdy purple Corvo that
would agreeably moisten their passage. These
were all stowed in the capacious sack with which he had
thoughtfully provided Lily.

“What is all
this for?” she queried plaintively.

“For either of us who gets hungry. It
might be
late before we
get a proper dinner.”

None of the shopkeepers he had patronized
seemed to have been alerted; or perhaps
Destamio’s grapevine had been too busy trying to
block the more obvious exits, so far, to diffuse
itself over the general prospect. At any rate,
they reached the beach without any alarming signals
registering on Simon Templar’s ultrasensitive an
tennae, looking like any other tourist couple
among the clutter of humanity that was reclining
or romping according to age and temperament.

Once among them, he made himself even more
typical and less memorable by peeling off his
T-
shirt, putting it with the
sandals in the catchall bag, and rolling his trousers up to the knee. His
bronzed
torso matched
the most common tint of the other
vacationers; and even if his musculature was con
siderably more striking than the average, it
was not
outstandingly
different from that of any weight-lifting beach boy. There was nothing much
else about
him for anyone
to notice or describe.

Lily was a little more difficult to
camouflage, but
he made
her roll her sweater up above her midriff
until it was almost a brassiere, and
unbutton her skirt to bare the maximum length of thigh as she
walked barefoot like himself, with her shoes
join
ing the other
discards in the big bag. She had al
ready tied up her dazzlingly bleached hair in a scarf,
at his suggestion, while he was changing his
shirt.

So they completed their crossing of the beach
as
reasonable facsimiles of
any two commonplace
holiday-makers,
hand in hand, to the water’s edge
where there were drawn up some of the Medi
terranean’s most popular pleasure craft,
those
companionable
catamarans made just for a couple
to sit in side by side and pedal themselves lazily around with the aid
of the paddle-wheel housed between the pontoons. Practically, however, they can
be propelled faster and much
more effortlessly
than the ordinary rowboat, and
are far more sea
worthy and comfortable in
moderately messy
weather; and in fact
it was the guide book’s men
tion of
this littoral attraction which had led him
there.

The concessionaire
came to meet them as they
arrived, beaming
with mercenary optimism.

“Che bellissimo giorno, signore!
And a beautiful
afternoon for a ride in a
moscone.
This
is the best
time of day!”

“It is late,” Simon said dubiously.
Any ap
pearance of
urgency or eagerness might kindle sus
picion if
there were already a spark for it to fan,
and
in any case would be sharply remembered lat
er. “There will not be much more sun.”

“It is only the middle of the afternoon!” pro
tested the operator, waving his arms to the
heavens
for witness. “And when
the sun is going down, it is nice and cool. Besides, I will make you a special
price.”

“How
much?”

There
followed the inevitable formality of
bargaining, and a price was finally agreed on to cover the remaining
duration of daylight. Simon
paid it in advance.

“In case we are a little late,” he
said with an elaborate wink, “you will not have to wait for us.”

The
man grinned in broad fraternity.

“Capita!
Grazie! E buona sorte!”

Simon handed Lily into her seat, and helped
the
proprietor push
the paddle-cat into the water
before
he hopped nimbly aboard and took the
tiller, turning their twin prows westward as he
began to pedal in unison with her.

It was all he could do to refrain from
laughing
out loud.
Behind him, the town would be swarming
with Destamio’s minions: he formed a
whimsical picture of them pouring in from all directions until
they outnumbered both natives and tourists.
The
railroad station was probably
infested with them
by now, and likewise the
bus depot; unless
Destamio’s car had
hit the bus harder than it
sounded,
he could have organized coverage of ev
ery
outlying road and even footpath, and even the
little port might not have been overlooked; but Si
mon was
joyfully prepared to bet his life that he
had
hit on the one possible exit that a serious-
minded creep like the former Dino Cartelli would
never think of until it was too late. It had
become a truly Saintly escape, outrageous in its originality—
and now spiked with a bonus that he would not
have
tried to incorporate in his dizziest dream.

“Isn’t Catania the other way?” she
said after a
while.

“You’re brilliant,” he assured her reverently.
“This is the way to Palermo. The
moscone
merchant has to see us going this way. All the
clues
should keep pointing to
Palermo. Only you and I
know where
we’re really going.”

When they were far enough out for their
features
not to be
recognizable to the naked eye, but not so far that it would look as if they
were setting out on
a major
voyage, he held a course parallel with the coast, searching the shore line for
a special kind of topography that would lend itself to what he had in mind. It
was not too long before he found it: a tiny cove floored with a half-moon of
sand, not much
wider
than the length of a
moscone,
walled around
with sheer cliffs rising twenty feet or
more, and
flanked by
massive falls of rock so as to be almost
inaccessible except from the sea. It was at
least a
mile from the
nearest public beach.

Simon steered towards it, appreciating its
advantages more and more as it came closer, and kept on
pedalling until the pontoons grounded gently on
the sand. He jumped off and held Lily’s hand to
balance her as she walked along a pontoon to step
off daintily without wetting her
feet; then he hauled the boat higher to secure it from being dislodged by the
gently lapping wavelets, off-loaded the bulging
bag, and sat down with
it above the high-water
mark.

Lily
stared down at him in blank befuddlement.

“You’re
not going to stay here?”

“Only until after sunset. Then we can
double
back past
Cefal
ù
again and keep heading towards
Catania. We’ll pedal far enough to get well outside any cordon that Al
may have thrown around here,
and slip ashore somewhere in the dark.” He patted
the sand beside him invitingly. “Meanwhile, it’s
nice and shady here, and we’ve got everything we
need to ward off death by thirst or starvation. Why
not enjoy it?”

She sat down, slowly, while the Saint
uncorked
the wine,
which he had kept well wrapped in the
bottom of the bag for insulation from the sun and
warmth, and poured some into the small
plastic
tumblers which
the
negoziante
had efficiently
added to his bill.

“I guess we’re in this together now,
Lily,” said
the Saint. “I’ll get us
out of it, though. Just stick
with me. I
can’t help feeling responsible, in a way,
for the trouble between you and Al, but I’ll try to
make up for it.”

She gave him a long impenetrable scrutiny in
which he could feel wheels revolving as in a
primitive adding machine. There was only one
arithmetical conclusion
that they could reach, but the fringe benefits could transcend the limitations
of mechanical bookkeeping.

He
waited patiently.

“To hell with Al,” she said
finally. “I like you
much better,
anyway.”

After the warm paint was washed off with
enough food and wine, there was nothing
wrong
with her lips
at all.
    

 
3

When
the brief twilight had turned to dark, the
Saint stood up and dusted off his pants.

“All good things come to an end,”
he said sadly.
“It’s
been wonderful, but I’ve got to be moving
on.”

It had become cool enough, when he was away
from her, for him to be glad to put on his
T-shirt
again, while
she rearranged the scarf over her hair.
He also took his sandals out of the bag and
carried
them to the
moscone,
where he put them on the
bench
between the seats. Then he lifted the forward
end of the nearest pontoon and pushed until the
craft was well afloat again.

Lily came down to the edge of the water,
carry
ing the bag.

“Just
a minute,” he said smoothly.

She stood still, while he climbed aboard and
set
tled in the starboard
seat. He put his feet on the
pedals
and took a tentative turn backwards, making sure that his weight hadn’t taken
the shallow
draft down to
the sand again.

“I hate to do this, Lily,” he said, “but I’m not
taking you any farther. If you get chilly, pile
some
sand on yourself—it’ll keep you
warm. There’ll be plenty of boats around in the morning that you can
hail.
I wouldn’t try to scramble out over the rocks
tonight—you
don’t have the right shoes for it, and
in
the dark you’d be likely to break a leg.”