Leslie Charteris - Señor Saint

“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. Take 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.

“I wouldn’t call it so crazy,” he said. “And I like Loro’s contribution. Now that we’re more or less partners, would you risk telling me what part of the country this cache of golden frogs is in? I bought a map this afternoon to help my feeble geography.”

He took the map from his pocket and spread it on the table between them. She moved her chair around towards him until their shoulders touched, and the perfume of her hair was sweetly close to his nostrils as she leaned over to study the tinted outlines.

“We’re here.” She pointed to the south-eastern end of the Canal. “We’d have to charter a boat — the same one that Pappy and I had, if we can get it. We go out here, past Taboga Island, and down the coast to the mouth of this river. Then we go up the river — it’s quite deep, most of the time, and Loro knows all the channels — up — up around here...” Her red lacquered fingernail traced the winding course of the stream more hesitantly, but finally settled on a definite point. “Yes, the head-hunters’ territory starts here, at this third fork. So the cave would be a little farther north, about — there.”

Simon gazed at the map as if instead of its green ink he were seeing the lush rain jungle itself. Even though he was far more familiar with such stories than most men, he felt the tug of romance in it as appreciatively as the most frustrated slave to a stock market report. There could have been no higher tribute to the cunning with which Mr Nestor had blended its ingredients.

“I’m going to enjoy this trip,” he said.

“Would you want to go along?”

She asked the question for necessary information, but he stared at her almost indignantly.

“Do I look like a guy who’d miss anything like that?”

“No — quite the contrary. That’s one thing that bothers me. You’ve got that daredevil look. So I’ll have to make a condition. You’ve got to promise me you won’t try to go beyond that third fork on the river. You’re not an Indian like Loro, and you couldn’t pretend to be. I don’t want your head cut off and shrunk and dried. I wouldn’t want anything at that price. Promise you won’t try to go all the way — or it’s no deal.”

It was a classic touch. She acknowledged and openly hero-worshipped every valiant quality and impulse that a man would like to be credited with, and in the next breath she absolved him of any uncomfortable risk of having to live up to them, and prettily made it a command. Nobody but the Saint would have been so sincerely ungrateful.

“You’re the boss,” he said curtly, for there was no doubt that she meant it. “But we go as far as damn — yanquis can. Right?”

“Right.”

“Okeh. But how are you going to explain this to Pappy?”

“You know, we’ve got reservations to fly back tomorrow night. This has all been so sudden... The only thing I can think of is that I’ll have to make some excuse and let him go alone. But what excuse is there? I can’t pretend to be sick, or he’d never go.” She was almost suddenly panic-stricken, groping desperately for an answer. “I’ve told him before about wishing I could be a travelling secretary. Could I tell him that you’ve offered me a job? Would you mind if I did that?”

Simon laughed.

“If it’s as easy as that, consider yourself hired.”

She clung to his arm impulsively for a moment.

“If Loro can do what he says he can, I wouldn’t hold you to it.”

“I might like being held,” he said. “But we’ll have plenty of time to talk about that. If your father goes for it. I’ll just have to keep my fingers crossed, because I won’t even be able to help you sell it.”

“Why?”

“I have to go over to Cristobal first thing in the morning. I’ve got an old friend in the Navy who’s stationed on that side, and he promised to show me some sensational tarpon fishing on the Chagres River. He can only get two days off, so I’ll be back on Friday. If I find you’ve checked out, I’ll know it was just one of those things.”

“I’ll be here, I promise,” she said. “And by then Loro should have lined up those guns.”

When he left her at her hotel several hours later (Professor Nestor did not make his residential headquarters at El Panamá, both for reasons of economy and because it would have been grossly out of character) she kissed him goodnight, not alarmingly, but with a spontaneous warmth which suggested that her full gratitude would be more than perfunctorily enjoyable.