Leslie Charteris - Señor Saint

Simon removed his gaze from Alice with undisguised reluctance.

“You mean you found more than that one frog I took a picture of?”

“To be exact, we found thirty-seven. And we found them all at once, in a cave that we literally stumbled into by the sheerest accident.”

“Some defunct witch-doctor’s Olde Frogge Shoppe?”

“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.