The Saint on the Spanish Main

TO AUDREY
WITH ALL MY LOVE

THE SAINT
ON THE SPANISH MAIN

Copyright
© 1949, 1954, 1955, by Leslie Charteris.

All rights
reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in

any form or by any means,
except for the inclusion of brief

quotations
in a review, without permission in writing from the

publisher.

All
characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Published
by arrangement with Doubleday & Company, Inc.

First
Charter Printing February 1981

Published
simultaneously in Canada

Manufactured
in the United States of America

Contents

BIMINI:
              
The Effete Angler
                          
         
1

NASSAU:
            
The Arrow of God
                                   
42

JAMAICA:
          
The Black Commissar
          
         
72

PUERTO
RICO:
 
The Unkind
Philanthropist
       
129

THE VIRGIN
ISLANDS:
The Old Treasure
Story
               
162

HAITI:
.
            
The Questing Tycoon
                             
193

BIMINI:

The Effete Angler

1

It has been said by certain skeptics that
there are already
more than enough stories of Simon Templar, and that
each new
one added to his saga only adds to the in
credibility of the
rest, because it is clearly impossible
that any one man in a
finite lifetime should have been
able to find so many adventures.

Such persons only reveal their own failure
to have
grasped one of the first laws of adventure, which can
only be
stated quite platitudinously: Adventures happen
to the adventurous.

In the beginning, of course, Simon Templar
had
sought for it far and wide, and luck or his destiny had
lent a
generous hand to the finding of it. But as the tally
of his adventures
added up, and the name of the Saint,
as he called himself, became better
known, and the leg
ends about him were swollen by extravagant newspaper
headlines and even more fantastic whisperings in the underworld, and finally
his real name and likeness became
familiar to inevitably widening
circles, so the clues to
adventure that came his way multiplied. For
not only
were there those in trouble who sought him out for help
that the
Law could not give, but there were evildoers
with no fear of the
Law who feared the day when some
mischance might bring the Saint across their
path. So
that he might be anywhere, quite innocently and un
suspectingly,
in a vicinity where some well-hidden wick
edness was being
hatched, but no guilty conscience
could possibly believe that the
Saint’s appearance on the
scene could be an accident; and therefore
the ungodly,
upon merely hearing his name or glimpsing a tanned
piratical profile which was not hard to identify with photographs that had been
published several times in
eye-catching conjunction with stories not
easily for
gotten, would credit him with knowledge which he did
not have,
and would be jolted into indiscretions that
they would never have
committed at the name of Smith
or the sight of any ordinary face. In their
anxiety to re
double their camouflage or to destroy him, they actually
brought
themselves to his attention. Thus the prolifera
tion of his adventures tended to
perpetuate itself in a
kind of chain
reaction. By the time of which I am now
writing, he no longer had to
seek adventure: it found
him.

This story is as good an example as I can
think of.

Don Mucklow met him in Florida at the Miami
air
port because they had shared more than one adventure
in the Caribbean in years gone
by.

“Well, what brings you here this time, Saint?”

“Nothing in particular. I just felt in
the mood for
some winter sunshine, so I thought I’d go island-hop
ping and see what cooked.”

“God, you have a tough life.”

Don was now married, a father, and the
overworked
manager of a boatyard and yacht basin.

“So it’s back to the old Spanish Main
again, eh?”
Don said. “There must be something in that pirate
tradi
tion that you can’t get away from. Which of the islands
are you planning to raise hell
on first?”

“I haven’t even decided that yet, I may end up throw
ing darts at a map. Anyway, we’ve got to spend at
least
one night out on this town
before I take off.”

“You want to go to the Rod and Reel with
me to
night?”

“What’s on?”

“The usual Wednesday night dinner. And on this dis
tinguished occasion, the presentation to Don
Mucklow
of his badge for catching the
world’s record dolphin for
three-thread
line—thirty seven and a half beautiful
pounds
of it, even on the official certified scale.”

Simon turned and beamed at him.

“Why, you cagy old son of a gun,” he
said affectionately. “Congratulations! How did you ever manage
to stuff
all those sinkers down its throat without anyone
seeing you?”

“I just live right. But I certainly had
my fingers
crossed till the IGFA approved it.”

“Now who has the tough life? What I wouldn’t give to
tie into a really important fish!”

“Why don’t you stick around and try?
I’ll fix you up
with a good skipper.”

“Don’t tempt me. What other entertainment
is the
Rod and Reel offering, besides the privilege of seeing
Mucklow
look smug, like an Eagle Scout with his new
badge?”

“There’s a talk by Walton Smith on some
new dis
coveries they’ve made about the migration of tuna.”.

“That should be most educational.”

“And then, just to please people like
you, we’re having a girl called Lorelei, who takes her clothes off in a
fish
bowl.”

“Now you’re starting to sell it,”
said the Saint.

So by seven o’clock that evening they were
part of a
convivial mob of members and guests at the bar of the
exclusive
Rod and Reel Club on Hibiscus Island. Don,
who knew everybody,
contrived to elude conversational
ambushes until he had attained the
prime objective of
getting their first drink order filled; then, when they
each
had a tall Peter Dawson in hand, he reached into the
milling
crowd and pulled out a short broad-shouldered
man with ginger hair
surrounding a bald spot like a
tonsure.

“Patsy, who let you in here?”

“I was brought by a member an’ a foine
gentleman,” said the other with dignity. “Although judgin’ by yourself
as a member, that might sound like two different people.”

“I’ve a friend here who’s looking for
you, Patsy.”

“Indade?”

“This is Captain O’Kevin,” Don
said to the Saint.
“Patsy,
meet Simon Templar.”

O’Kevin shook hands with a strong bony grip.
His
pugnosed face was a mosaic of freckles and red sunburn that would never
blend into an even brown, out of which his faded green eyes twinkled up from a
mass of creases.

“That sounds like a name I should be
knowin’. Wait
—this
couldn’t be the fellow they call the Saint?”

“That’s him,” Don said. “And I
just hope you haven’t
got any skeletons in your locker.”

“Fortunately, I earn an honest livin’
instid of operatin’ a thievin’ boatyard.” O’Kevin’s bright little eyes
searched Simon’s face more interestedly. “Now why
would the Saint be
trailin’ a poor hard workin’ charter-
boat captain, for the Lard’s
sake?”

“Because he wants to go fishing,”
Don said. “He
isn’t satisfied with being the most successful buccaneer
since Captain Kidd, he wants to try and take my only
record
away from me. So I said I’d put him on to a good skipper. Naturally I picked
you, because your customers never catch anything. You can give him a nice boat
ride,
and I won’t have a thing to worry about.”

“Sur, an’ ‘twould be a pleasure to foind
him some
thing bigger than that overgrown mullet ye’re boastin’
about. How
long would ye be stayin’ down here, Mr. Templar?”

“Not more than a day or two,” said the
Saint.

“That’s too bad. I’ve a party waitin’
for me in Bimini
right now, an I’m leavin’ first thing in the marnin’.
I’ll be
gone three or four days.”

“What’s your hurry, Simon?” Don
protested. “Those
islands have been out there in the Caribbean
a long time.
They won’t run away.”

“Where are ye makin’ for, Mr.
Templar?” O’Kevin
asked.

Simon grinned. Only a few hours ago he had
talked
about throwing darts at a map. Now a dart had been
thrown for him. It was one of
those utterly random
choices that appealed
to his gambling instinct.