Leslie Charteris - The Saint in the Sun

"But my last two pictures were commercial flops," she told Simon candidly. "I say they were stinkers, of course, but some other people found it easier to blame it on me. A nice girl, they said, but death at the box office. And just when my first contract had run out — it was no star salary to start with — and I should have been able to ask for some real money. They just aren't bidding for me in Hollywood at the moment, and if I don't do something soon I could be washed up for good."

"That would be a pity," he said. "And nothing but a few annuities to live on."

"That isn't even half funny," she retorted. "After taxes and clothes and publicity and all the other expenses you have to go for, there's very little left out of what I took home. And I've got a mother in a sanitarium with TB and a kid brother just starting medical school. I can't afford not to get this part."

The purple speedboat veered closer to the shore, farther along. There was another man in the cockpit, but he had hardly been noticeable as he sat down: even though he had ginger hair and a complexion exactly the tint of a boiled langouste, they could not compete with the gaudy coloration surrounding him. Now he got up and began throwing out water skis and a tow-rope. He was short and scrawny, and his torso was fish-white up to where his narrow shoulders turned the same painful pink as his face.

Three girls had come down to the water's edge nearest the boat, shouting and giggling. They had almost identical slim but bubble-bosomed figures displayed by the uttermost minimum of bikini. One was raven-haired and the two others were platinum-bleached. One of the blondes began to put on the skis while the other two girls waded out to the boat and climbed in.

"Sir Jasper seems to be casting starlets too, if I recognize the types," Simon remarked. "And he doesn't seem to have much difficulty picking them up."

"When I phoned him this morning for an appointment he said he'd be busy all day until cocktail time."

"He probably figures it's good psychology to keep you cooling your heels for a while. And after all, he is busy."

"From what I've heard, next to making money that's his favorite business."

The Saint recalled photos that he had seen published of Sir Jasper Undine in various night clubs and casinos, where he was always accompanied by at least one conspicuously glamorous damsel and frequently two or three. It was also common gossip that he did not merely cultivate the impression that he lived like a sultan but aspired to substantiate it.

"I wonder if I could resist the temptation, if I were in his position."

"You've probably had plenty of practice resisting temptations," Miss Herald said. "But I'm not looking forward to this interview."

The two dolls who were riding deployed themselves artistically on the orange coverings, the red-haired factotum scrambled down again into insignificance, the Chris-Craft's sulky muttering rose to a hearty roar, the tow-rope tightened, and the skier came up out of the water a little wobbly at first and then steadying and straightening up and skimming out of the wake as the boat came to planing speed.

Undine drove at full throttle, curling across the bay on a course that seemed coldbloodedly improvised to score as many near-misses as possible on all the pedalos, floaters, dinghies, and other slower vessels in the area.

"Do you water-ski?" Simon asked, as they watched.

"I've tried it. But I don't much like being whipped around like the tail of a kite, wherever the boat takes you. If someone would invent a way of steering the boat yourself while you're skiing, it might be fun."

"Water-skiers must be the worst kind of exhibitionists. Haven't you noticed that their whole fun is in showing off? If they just enjoyed water-skiing for its own sake, they could do it all over the ocean without bothering anyone. But no. They always have to work as close as they can to what they hope is an admiring audience, and half-swamp anyone who's only trying to have a quiet peaceful time on the water."

"But the girl who's skiing isn't doing that," Maureen pointed out. "It's Undine who's driving."

"Using her to get more attention." The skier fell off then, trying to jump the wake, and Simon sat up with a short laugh. "What a pity that wasn't him! But I'm sure he wouldn't ski himself and risk anything so undignified. Come on, let's forget him for a while and have a dunk."

She swam well and with surprising endurance for her slight build, not with the brief burst of speed fizzling out into breathlessness that he would have expected. He followed her for about five hundred yards, and when they turned around she seemed quite capable of making it five kilometers.

"I won all the athletic prizes in school," she said when he complimented her. "That's probably my trouble, being the good sister instead of the home-wrecker type."

"If I treat you like a brother," he said, "it's only because David stuck me with it."

After the sun had dried them again she said: "I don't want to spoil your day, but I'm not tanned like you are, and it might ruin everything if I meet Undine this evening looking like a raspberry sundae."

"It's lunch-time, anyway. I have an idea. Let's drive up to Ramatuelle. There's a little restaurant there, Chez Cauvière, where they make the best paella this side of the Pyrenees and perhaps the other side too. Then I'll take you back to the hotel for a siesta, and by seven o'clock you'll feel fit to cope with a carload of Undines — if you can stand the thought."

The ambrosial hodge-podge of lobster, chicken, octopus, vegetables, and saffron-tinted rice was as good as he boasted; the unlabelled rosé of the house was cool insidious nectar; and by the end of the meal they were almost old friends. He felt an almost genuinely brotherly concern when he left her and had to remember that all this had been only an interlude.

"Is there anything else I can do?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "I've been thinking about it. Do you suppose you could come by the cafe about eight o'clock, and say hullo to me? Then if it seems like a good idea by that time I can make like we had a date. It might get me out of something. Even just as a card up my sleeve, it'd do a lot for my morale. That is, if you aren't already tied up—"

"I can't think of anything better," he smiled. "You can count on me."

She had already told him which cafe was referred to. The quais which face the harbor of St Tropez are lined almost solidly with restaurants and cafes, where everyone who knows the routine turns out in the evening to be seen and to see who else is being seen; but ever since "Saint-Trop" became known as the rendezvous of a certain artistic-bohemian set for whom the Riviera westward from Cannes was either too princely or too bourgeois, "the" cafe has always been the Sénéquier, and the others have to be content with its overflow — which is usually enough to swamp them anyway. Although many of the original celebrities have since migrated to less publicized havens, the invading sightseers who put them to flight continue to swarm there and stare hopefully around, most of the time at each other. But even in this era a permanently reserved table at Sénéquier was still a status symbol which Sir Jasper Undine would inevitably have had to display, whatever the price.

Simon strolled slowly along the Quai Jean-Jaurès a little before eight, allowing himself a leisured study of the scene as he approached.

It was impossible not to spot Undine at any distance: he stood out even amidst the rainbow patchwork of holiday garb on the terrace with the help of a blazer with broad black and yellow horizontal stripes, which with the help of his oversized sunglasses' made him look something like a large bumblebee in a field of butterflies — if you could imagine a bumblebee wearing a red and white checkered tam-o'-shanter.