Leslie Charteris - The Saint on the Spanish Main

“Seriously?”

“The invocation of Legbas Atibon calls on St Anthony of Padua: Par pouvoir St-Antoine de Padoue . And take the invocation of my own patron, Ogoun Feraille. It begins: Par pouvoir St-Jacques Majeur... ”

“Isn’t that blasphemy?” said the Saint. “I mean, a kind of deliberate sacrilege, like they’re supposed to use in a Black Mass, to win the favor of devils by defiling something holy?”

Netlord’s fist crashed on the table like a thunderclap.

“No, it isn’t! The truth can’t be blasphemous. Sacrilege is a sin invented by bigots to try to keep God under contract to their own exclusive club. As if supernatural facts could be altered by human name-calling! There are a hundred sects all claiming to be the only true Christianity, and Christianity is only one of thousands of religions, all claiming to have the only genuine divine revelation. But the real truth is bigger than any one of them and includes them all!”

“I’m sorry,” said the Saint. “I forgot that you were a convert.”

“Lee told you that, of course. I don’t deny it.” The metallic-gray eyes probed the Saint like knives. “I suppose you think I’m crazy.”

“I’d rather say I was puzzled.”

“Because you wouldn’t expect a man like me to have any time for mysticism.”

“Maybe.”

Netlord poured some more wine.

“That’s where you show your own limitations. The whole trouble with Western civilization is that it’s blind in one eye. It doesn’t believe in anything that can’t be weighed and measured or reduced to a mathematical or chemical formula. It thinks it knows all the answers because it invented airplanes and television and hydrogen bombs. It thinks other cultures were backward because they fooled around with levitation and telepathy and raising the dead instead of killing the living. Well, some mighty clever people were living in Asia and Africa and Central America, thousands of years before Europeans crawled out of their caves. What makes you so sure that they didn’t discover things that you don’t understand?”

“I’m not so sure, but—”

“Do you know why I got ahead of everybody else in business? Because I never wore a blinker over one eye. If anyone said he could do anything, I never said ‘That’s impossible.’ I said ‘Show me how.’ I don’t care who I learn from, a college professor or a ditch-digger, a Chinaman or a nigger — so long as I can use what he knows.”

The Saint finished eating and picked up his glass.

“And you think you’ll find something in voodoo that you can use?”

“I have found it. Do you know what it is?”

Simon waited to be told, but apparently it was not another of Netlord’s rhetorical questions. When it was clear that a reply was expected, he said, “Why should I?”

“That’s what you were trying to find out at the Public Library.”

“I suppose I can admit that,” Simon said mildly. “I’m a seeker for knowledge, too.”

“I was afraid you would be, Templar, as soon as I heard your name. Not knowing who you were, I’d talked a little too much last night. It wouldn’t have mattered with anyone else, but as the Saint you’d be curious about me. You’d have to ask questions. Lee would tell you about my interest in voodoo. Then you’d try to find out what I could use voodoo for. I knew all that when I asked you to come here tonight.”

“And I knew you knew all that when I accepted.”

“Put your cards on the table, then. What did your reading tell you?”

Simon felt unwontedly stupid. Perhaps because he had let Netlord do most of the talking, he must have done more than his own share of eating and drinking. Now it was an effort to keep up the verbal swordplay.

“It wasn’t too much help,” he said. “The mythology of voodoo was quite fascinating, but I couldn’t see a guy like you getting a large charge out of spiritual trimmings. You’d want something that meant power, or money, or both. And the books I got hold of today didn’t have much factual material about the darker side of voodoo — the angles that I’ve seen played up in lurid fiction.”

“Don’t stop now.”

The Saint felt as if he lifted a slender blade once more against a remorseless bludgeon.

“Of course,” he said, and meant to say it lightly, “you might really have union and government trouble if it got out that Netlord Underwear was being made by American zombies.”

“So you guessed it,” Netlord said.

Simon Templar stared.

He had a sensation of utter unreality, as if at some point he had slipped from wakeful life into a nightmare without being aware of the moment when he fell asleep. A separate part of his brain seemed to hear his own voice at a distance.

“You really believe in zombies?”

“That isn’t a matter of belief. I’ve seen them. A zombie prepared and served this dinner. That’s why he was ordered not to let you see him.”

“Now I really need the cliché: this I have got to see!”

“I’m afraid he’s left for the night,” Netlord said matter-of-factly.

“But you know how to make ’em?”

“Not yet. He belongs to the houngan . But I shall know before the sun comes up tomorrow. In a little while I shall go down to the houmfort , and the houngan will admit me to the last mysteries. The brûler zin afterwards is to celebrate that.”

“Congratulations. What did you have to do to rate this?”

“I’ve promised to marry his daughter, Sibao.”

Simon felt as if he had passed beyond the capacity for surprise. A soft blanket of cotton wool was folding around his mind. Yet the other part of him kept talking.

“Do you mean that?”

“Don’t be absurd. As soon as I know all I need to, I can do without both of them.”

“But suppose they resent that.”

“Let me tell you something. Voodoo is a very practical kind of insurance. When a member is properly initiated, certain parts of a sacrifice and certain things from his body go into a little urn called the pot de tête , and after that the vulnerable element of his soul stays in the urn, which stays in the houmfort .”

“Just like a safe deposit.”

“And so, no one can lay an evil spell on him.”

“Unless they can get hold of his pot de tète .”

“So you see how easily I can destroy them if I act first.”

The Saint moved his head as if to shake and clear it. It was like trying to shake a ton weight.

“It’s very good of you to tell me all this,” he articulated mechanically. “But what makes you so confidential?”

“I had to know how you’d respond to my idea when you knew it. Now you must tell me, truthfully.”

“I think it stinks.”

“Suppose you knew that I had creatures working for me, in a factory — zombies, who’d give me back all the money they’d nominally have to earn, except the bare minimum required for food and lodging. What would you do?”

“Report it to some authority that could stop you.”

“That mightn’t be so easy. A court that didn’t believe in zombies couldn’t stop people voluntarily giving me money.”

“In that case,” Simon answered deliberately, “I might just have to kill you.”

Netlord sighed heavily.

“I expected that too,” he said. “I only wanted to be sure. That’s why I took steps in advance to be able to control you.”

The Saint had known it for some indefinite time. He was conscious of his body sitting in a chair, but it did not seem to belong to him.

“You bastard,” he said. “So you managed to feed me some kind of dope. But you’re really crazy if you think that’ll help you.”