and buy you drinks and show you the town--and you talk about luck! D'you think they'd do all that if they didn't know they could get you to play cards with them every night and make you lose enough to pay them back a hundred times over?'
'I won plenty from them to begin with.'
'Of course you did! They let you win--just to encourage you to play higher. And now you've lost all that back and a lot more that you can't afford to lose. And you're still going on, making it worse and worse.' She caught his arm impulsively and her voice softened. 'Oh, Eddie, I hate fighting with you like this, but can't you see what a fool you're being?'
'Well, why don't you leave me alone if you hate fighting? Anyone might think I was a kid straight out of school.'
He shrugged himself angrily away from her, and as he turned he looked straight into the Saint's eyes. Simon was so interested that the movement caught him unprepared, still watching them, as if he had been hiding behind a curtain and it had been abruptly torn down.
It was so much too late for Simon to switch his eyes away without looking even guiltier that be had to go on watching, and the young man went on scowling, at him and said uncomfortably: 'We aren't really going to cut each other's throats, but there are some things that women can't understand.'
'If a man told him that elephants laid eggs he'd believe it, just because it was a man who told him,' said the girl petulantly, and she also looked at the Saint. 'Perhaps if you told him----'
'The trouble is, she won't give me credit for having any sense----'
'He's such a baby----'
'If she didn't read so many detective stories----'
'He's so damned pig-headed----'
The Saint held up his hands.
'Wait a minute,' he pleaded. 'Don't shoot the referee--he doesn't know what it's all about. I couldn't help hearing what you were saying, but it isn't my fight.'
The young man rubbed his head shamefacedly, and the girl bit her lip.
Then she said quickly: 'Well, please, won't you be a referee? Perhaps he'd listen to you. He's lost fifteen thousand dollars already, and it isn't all his own money----'
'For God's sake,' the man burst out savagely, 'are you trying to make me look a complete heel?'
The girl caught her breath, and her lip trembled. And then, with a sort of sob, she picked herself up and walked quickly away without another word.
The young man gazed after her in silence, and his fist clenched on a handful of sand as if he would have liked to hurt it.
'Oh hell,' he said expressively.
Simon drew a cigarette out of the packet beside him and tapped it meditatively on his thumbnail while the awkward hiatus made itself at home. His eyes seemed to be intent on following the movements of a small fishing cruiser far out on the emerald waters of the Gulf Stream.
'It's none of my damn business,' he remarked at length, 'but isn't there just a chance that the girl friend may be right? It's happened before; and a resort like this is rather a happy hunting ground for all kinds of crooks.'
'I know it is,' said the other sourly. He turned and looked at the Saint again miserably. 'But I am pigheaded, and I can't bear to admit to her that I could have been such a mug. She's my fiancee--I suppose you guessed that. My name's Mercer.'
'Simon Templar is mine.'
The name had a significance for Mercer that it apparently had not had for Mr Naskill. His eyes opened wide.
'Good God, you don't mean----You're not the Saint?'
Simon smiled. He was still immodest enough to enjoy the sensation that his name could sometimes cause.
'That's what they call me.'
'Of course I've read about you, but----Well, it sort of . . .' The young man petered out incoherently. 'And I'd have argued with you about crooks! . . . But--well, you ought to know. Do you think I've been a mug?'
The Saint's brows slanted sympathetically.
'If you took my advice,' he answered, 'you'd let these birds find someone else to play with. Write it off to experience, and don't do it again.'
'But I can't!' Mercer's response was desperate. 'She--she was telling the truth. I've lost money that wasn't mine. I've only got a job in an advertising agency that doesn't pay very much, but her people are pretty well off. They've found me a better job here, starting in a couple of months, and they sent us down here to find a home, and they gave us twenty thousand dollars to buy it and furnish it, and that's the money I've been playing with. Don't you see? I've got to go on and win it back!'
'Or go on and lose the rest.'
'Oh, I know. But I thought the luck must change
before that. And yet---- But everybody who plays
cards isn't a crook, is he? And I don't see how they could have done it. After she started talking about it, I watched them. I've been looking for it. And I couldn't catch them making a single move that wasn't above-board. Then I began to think about marked cards-- we've always played with their cards. I sneaked away one of the packs we were using last night, and I've been looking at it this morning. I'll swear there isn't a mark on it. Here, I can show you.'
He fumbled feverishly in a pocket of his beach robe and pulled out a pack of cards. Simon glanced through them. There was nothing wrong with them that he could see; and it was then that he remembered Mr J. J. Naskill.
'Does either of these birds wear glasses?' he asked.
'One of them wears pince-nez,' replied the mystified young man. 'But----'
'I'm afraid,' said the Saint thoughtfully, 'that it looks as if you are a mug.'
Mercer swallowed.
'If I am,' he said helplessly, 'what on earth am I going to do?'
Simon hitched himself up.
'Personally, I'm going to have a dip in the pool. And you're going to be so busy apologizing to your fiancee and making friends again that you won't have time to think about anything else. I'll keep these cards and make sure about them, if you don't mind. Then suppose we meet in the bar for a cocktail about six o'clock, and maybe I'll be able to tell you something.'
When he returned to his own room the Saint put on Mr Naskill's horn-rimmed glasses and examined the cards again. Every one of them was clearly marked in the diagonally opposite corners with the value of the card and the initial of the suit, exactly like the deck that Naskill had given him; and it was then that the Saint knew that his faith in Destiny was justified again.
Shortly after six o'clock he strolled into the bar and saw that Mercer and the girl were already there. It was clear that they had buried their quarrel.
Mercer introduced her: 'Miss Grange--or you can just call her Josephine.'
She was wearing something in black and white taffeta, with a black and white hat and black and white gloves and a black and white bag, and she looked as if she had just stepped out of a fashion plate. She said: 'We're both ashamed of ourselves for having a scene in front of you this afternoon, but I'm glad we did. You've done Eddie a lot of good.'
'I hadn't any right to blurt out all my troubles like that,' Mercer said sheepishly. 'You were damned nice about it.'
The Saint grinned.
'I'm a pretty nice guy,' he murmured. 'And now I've got something to show you. Here are your cards.'.
He spread the deck out on the table and then he took the horn-rimmed glasses out of his pocket and held them over the cards so that the other two could look through them. He slid the cards under the lenses one by one, face downwards, and turned them over afterwards, and for a little while they stared in breathless silence.
The girl gasped.
