The Saint on the Spanish Main (28 page)

“What would you suggest?” asked
the American
Governor.

“I think it would only be fair to let each party make
a thorough search of the bottom, without any
blasting,
before letting one party
change the situation so
drastically.”

“I’m not dynamiting to see what it
uncovers, sir,” Rawl said. “I’ve got to do it to kill something that
wouldn’t let anyone do any
searching.”

Simon stared down at him clinically.

“You look rather pale, Duncan, old
grampus,” he ob
served. “What was it frightened you down there?”

“Only the biggest damned octopus that
anyone here
will ever see,” snarled Rawl. “It’s thirty feet
across if it’s
an inch—and it’s sitting right where the treasure is sup
posed to
be!”

The Saint’s expression was a masterpiece of
derisive
disbelief.

“Was it a pink one,” he inquired,
“wearing a green
top-hat and tartan pants, and playing a duet with itself
now to piccolos?”

Rawl’s face turned dusky under his tan, and
his
muscles tensed as if to haul himself aboard the cutter by
the stanchion he held.

And then a light of hellish inspiration
overspread the
darkness of rage, and his snarl modulated into a sneer.

“Maybe you’d like to go down and see
for yourself,”
he said.

“I’d love to,” Simon said calmly.
“Can we take that as
an official offer—that since you’re scared to
go on with
out blowing that poor little squid to bits, you’ll step
aside while I try it for
April?”

“You’re goddam right you can,” Rawl
said trium
phantly. “And I’m going to laugh myself sick
watching
the great Saint run away from that poor little
squid.”

April was clinging to the Saint’s arm.

“I won’t let you,” she said.

“You will, honey,” he said out of
the side of his mouth. “You’ve got to. It’s your only chance.”

“Just one more thing, though,” Rawl
said. “If I let
you in ahead of your turn, time’s being
wasted, and after
the Saint comes back with his tail between his legs
we’ll
have to dynamite anyway, and then it’ll be hours before
the water
settles down again so anyone can see anything,
so I should have tomorrow to myself as
well.”

“We’ll accept that,” Simon said grimly.

The two Governors stepped aside and conferred
to
gether, but not for long. The American announced their
decision:

“Since our main object is to eliminate
or avoid a dispute, any compromise that Miss Mallory and Mr. Rawl
agree upon
must have our approval.”

5

The Saint sank gently into the cool peacock
depths,
twisting and turning like a fancy high diver in slow mo
tion to
extract the utmost sensual delight from the feel
ing of
three-dimensional freedom which only aqualung
swimmers can
experience, the nearest thing to the sensa
tion of true flying
that man has yet been able to achieve.
The twin cylinders of
compressed air on his back, so
heavy and cumbersome on a deck, were such a
negative
burden under water that a belt of small lead weights was
necessary to help him sink. Thus counterbalanced, his
body felt
almost weightless, so that he could turn in any
direction or rest
relaxed in any position without effort;
or if he wished to
move anywhere he only had to make
lazy movements with his legs, and the
rubber flippers on
his feet would propel him as smoothly as the fins of a
fish.
Breath came to him through the mouthpiece
gripped in his teeth,
as much and as often as he wanted,
so that there was none of the strain
and struggle in
separable
from ordinary swimming, no irksome re
minder
that he was in a foreign element. It was a strange
rapture which he would discover anew every time
he did
it: to feel-literally almost
as much at home in the water as a fish, yet with a buoyant exultation more like
the
ecstasy of flight that a poet
would attribute to a bird.

And like a bird he soared and glided through
water
almost as crystal clear as air, but more clinging and re
sistant
so that all movements were more languorous,
over the hills and valleys, the fantastic
groves and
gardens, of a strange silent
world. Coveys of striped and
tinted
small fry scattered and circled as he planed
through them, and among the submarine trees larger fish moved more
sluggishly; and down in the bluer
deeps,
sprawling torpid and obscene, was the ultimate
monster—the finest plastic octopus, Jack Donohue had
assured him, that any Hollywood prop department
had yet constructed.

The indispensable traditional octopus that
had a part
in every self-respecting story of sunken treasure since
fiction
discovered diving.

It was the first time Simon had seen it
properly, even
though he had helped to place it in its present location.
He and Donohue and the prop man had been out there
the day before on the
tugboat which Donohue was using
for his water work, ostensibly to scout
scenery and make
preparations
for the following week’s shooting: the
tugboat
and Donohue were already known to the Coast
Guard crew, and were allowed to approach without
being warned off as brusquely as any other boat
would
have been. Simon and the prop
man had dumped the deflated monster over the far side of the tug two hun
dred yards away and dragged it into position
under wa
ter, while Donohue took the
tug alongside the cutter and
engaged
the crew in conversation; and the keels of the
two boats, which they could look up and see, provided
a perfect marker for the position that Simon had
to find.
But then Simon had had trouble
with his air regulator
valve, and had
had to jettison his weights and swim up
wards hastily, leaving the prop man to complete the in
stallation and inflation alone. He had steered his
rise to
the side of the tug away from
the Coast Guard cutter,
and climbed aboard where the tug’s deckhouse hid
him,
and soon afterwards the prop man had
done the same,
and then Donohue had
promptly headed the tug away down the channel before they would seem to be daw
dling too long in the forbidden area.

It had all worked out as slickly as a drill; and even the
prop man had only been told that Donohue was de
termined to shoot some underwater scenes in that
par
ticular spot in spite of the
prohibition.

Now that Simon saw the monster (which in
their irreverent way the movie unit had christened Marilyn) in
its full
glory, he was ready to agree that it was a real
work of art. Some of
its tentacles which were not anchored to the rock, stirred no doubt by unseen
tidal cur
rents, moved sinuously like huge slothful snakes, and their
undulating motion transmitted an effect of pon
derously pulsing life to the bloated
purple body and the
malignant liquid eyes. He
couldn’t despise Rawl for
being
scared. If he hadn’t known what it was, he
wouldn’t have gone anywhere near it himself.

But it had worked, psychologically and with shrewd
needling, exactly as the Saint had banked on it.

Now all he had to do was pick up the gold and
load
it into the cradle which had been lowered from April’s
cruiser.

It seemed almost absurdly anticlimactic, but that was
about all there was to it.

It was the kind of sunken treasure that
salvage men
dream about. The
Santa Cecilia
had gone down in a
rocky
basin which kept her remains together as if in a
bowl. There were no
shifting sands, the bane of most
treasure hunts, to scatter and swallow them. Everything
that had not perished was within a small radius;
and he had located the area without too much trouble, as April
had said
he would, by the suggested shapes of such recognizables
as cannon and cannon balls. It was only a
matter of chipping the crusts of coral at every likely-
looking
spot, working with hammer and crowbar when
ever
he was rewarded with a yellow gleam, breaking the
gold bars loose and
dragging them to the cradle and put
ting
them in
…

In only half an hour he had collected as big
a load as
he figured the light tackle on the cruiser could com
fortably
handle.

He signaled on the rope for it to be hauled
up, and
paddled off to investigate another promising coral for
mation
still closer to the shelf on which Marilyn sat
eyeing him balefully.
Under the concealing growth of
living stone, he found another mound of
ingots.

He wished he could have been on the cruiser’s
deck, as
well as down there, to share April’s excitement when she
saw the first load.

He started to smile, almost getting himself a mouthful of water.
The excitement on the surface would not be confined to April’s cruiser. It
would spread in a flash to every other boat in the group—including Rawl’s. Some
what belatedly, he wondered what would happen
after
that.

He had told April the truth about Marilyn, of
course,
before he started down, in a brief moment when he had
her alone.
But he hadn’t had time to emphasize that the
secret must always
be kept between them. He hoped that
in her intoxication with the
last-minute victory she
wouldn’t let something out that would reach
the ears of Rawl. It would be ironic to have victory snatched from
them again on a technicality.
But if Rawl cried foul, the
Governors might
have to sustain him. Or would Rawl
prefer
to accept defeat rather than ridicule?

Simon had a partial answer about April in a
few
minutes. She came down in the empty cradle, wearing her own aqualung,
like a modern mermaid in a ham
mock. She could not smile, with the rubber
mouthpiece
deforming her lips, but as he touched her and they
shook
hands he saw her eyes shining and dancing behind
the glass of her face
mask.

Then she saw the octopus, and her eyes grew
still big
ger. Simon got her attention back by shaking her shoul
der; then as she looked at him
he pointed at the octopus,
then up towards
the surface, then put an upraised fore
finger
in front of his mouthpiece. She nodded vigor
ously, and repeated the forefinger gesture, and he fig
ured that everything was still all right.

But he looked up again, and saw Duncan Rawl
com
ing down.

There was no mistaking the glint of sunlight
on his
yellow curls. Or the glint of metal from the powerful
spear gun
couched under his arm like a lance.

The Saint’s thoughts raced in a vertiginous cascade.
Had Rawl gone completely crazy with disappointment, berserk, decided to
murder one or both of them regard
less of the almost inevitable
consequences? It seemed in
credible to the Saint even as he instinctively thrust April behind
him and poised himself for the flimsy chance of
parrying the spear with his crowbar. Rawl was swim
ming down at a steep angle towards them, but on a
course which began to look as if it would take
him down
on to Marilyn unless he pulled out of the dive at the last
moment. Then was he playing for some kind of compensating
glory? Since the Saint had made him look
foolish by ignoring the octopus and having no trouble,
was Rawl thinking of vindicating himself by killing
it
and then claiming to have saved
the Saint’s life? That
was
plausible, yet it seemed hardly enough. A boast like
that hardly seemed enough to salve a hypertrophied
ego that had taken such punctures as he had administered to Rawl’s.

And then the answer dawned on him, with the
clarity
of a
blueprint, as Rawl slowed his glide directly over the
giant cephalopod. It was written like a book in the way
Rawl glanced towards him for an instant, running
his
eye like a tape measure over the
distance between Simon
and the
octopus.