The Saint Around the World Read Free Page B

Ivalot. Then I only had to tell Havvie that I’d set my heart on a honeymoon in Bermuda, and everything was fine.”
    “You’ve given me a new concept of romance,” murmured the Saint.
    Her recital of the saga of Jolly Roger Ivalot, somewhat less succinct than it has been recapitulated here, had taken them all the way through dinner and dessert, and now they were sitting over Benedictine and coffee. Once again he lighted cigarettes for them.
    “What was your plan of campaign when you got here?”
    “We gave out a story to the local papers that the Record had unearthed a terrific clue which was expected to flush Ivalot from his cover within two or three days. I suppose that was before you got here, or you’d have read it.”
    “I guess it was. But if I’d read it, I’d have thought it was rather an old wheeze.”
    “It might still have scared Ivalot, if he was here,” she said. “I hoped it might tempt him to try to make a deal, or–-“
    “Or something more violent?”
    “That’s what Havvie was afraid of.”
    “He should have been. The rivers and ponds are full of amateurs who’ve had that kind of brilliant idea—anchored in concrete blocks.”
    “That’s why he’s in trouble now,” she said bitterly. “He’s taking my place.”
    “How?”
    “He wouldn’t let me take the risk. He insisted that if there were going to be any games like that, he was going to play the reporter and draw the fire. He said that nobody here would know Havelock Dayne as an attorney from Philadelphia, and nobody would associate Mrs. Dayne with Lona Shaw, and if there was going to be any rough stuff he could take care of himself better than I could, and if there was any real detecting to do I might find out a lot more if nobody knew I was more than an ordinary dizzy bride. He was terribly intense about it, and in some ways he made a bit of sense too, and I didn’t want to start off our married life with a quarrel, so I let him have his way. And that’s why this has happened to him.”
    “I still don’t know just what has happened,” said the Saint.
    She took a gulp from her glass.
    “The day before yesterday, I went into Hamilton after lunch, to do some shopping. Havvie decided he’d rather stay home and fish. When I got back, about five, he’d left a note. Here it is.”
    She produced it from her purse. It was crumpled and smeared from many readings.
    Fantastic break on Jolly Roger. This is It! Must get after it at once or he’ll get away. Don’t worry even if I don’t get home tonight. Love and XX.
    H.
    “You’re sure he wrote this?” Simon asked automatically.
    “Unless it’s an absolutely perfect forgery. And it would’ve had to be done by someone who knew that he always signed his letters to me with just an H.”
    Simon handed the note back, and for perhaps the first time that evening his face was completely grave, without even a give-away trace of mockery in his eyes.
    “And since then you haven’t heard another word?”
    “Nothing.” The task and distraction of drawing the complete background for him had sustained her so far, but now he could see her straining again to keep emotion from getting the upper hand. “That is, unless … I’ve got to call home now.”
    “Go ahead.”
    He finished his liqueur, his coffee, and his cigarette, with epicurean attention to each, holding his mind in complete detachment until she came back; and presently she was at the table again, but not sitting down, her face pale in the subdued lamplight and her hands twisting one over the other.
    “We’ve got to go to the house at once,” she said, in a low shaky voice. “Or I must. There’s been a message. Not Havvie. Someone who said he’ll call again, until he gets me. And he said I mustn’t talk to anyone, if I want my husband back.”
    ii
    The island lay less than a hundred yards off shore, out in the Sound. Simon judged that they were somewhere in the middle of the deep horseshoe curve that is the