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tailing us.”
    He had already observed with approval that, doubtless because of her professional background, she breakfasted with hair and clothes and make-up in shape to face the world as soon as she stood up from the table, and she joined him at the dock with a minimum of delay after their second cups of coffee. The caretaker had the Chris-Craft waiting alongside and was wiping off the seats.
    “Do you know the way, sir, or do you wish me to take you?” he inquired disinterestedly.
    “I can find it, thanks,” said the Saint. “And you’d better be here in case there are any more messages.”
    He pushed the clutch forward and opened the throttle until the light hull was planing. For less than a mile he drove the boat northeast across the Sound, and then he began to veer more to the east, towards Burgess Point and the coastline of Warwick Parish. Lona Dayne twitched his shirtsleeve and pointed.
    “Stay as you were, to the left of that island. It’s the shortest way through to Hamilton.”
    “I’ve got a call to make on the way,” he explained.
    He swung still further to starboard, to miss another larger island that emerged ahead. As they ran along its shore the facade of a Florida Keys fishing village came into view, with the functionally arched roof of an enormous hangar rising above the picturesquely weatherbeaten fronts. Simon cut the engine and laid the speedboat skilfully in beside a pier that projected from the strikingly un-Bermudain waterfront.
    “This is Darrell’s Island, where our host of last night operates,” he said. “I just want to ask him something—and we haven’t got time to show you how they make TV pictures. I’ll be right back.”
    He left her sitting in the boat and disappeared through an opening in the scenery. Having been given the tour once be—fore, on his arrival, he found his way with the faultless recall of a homing pigeon through the partitioned alleys which had miraculously created a modern television picture studio within the shell of an abandoned airport that dated back to those pessimistic days when only seaplanes and flying boats were thought suitable for air travel over water; and Dick Van Hessen looked up defensively as he crashed into the office, and then recognized him with a grin.
    “Well! What can we do for you today?”
    “You’re busy and I’m in a hurry,” said the Saint, “so I’ll leapfrog the trimmings. All I want is a good lawyer.”
    “What? Did she hook you already?”
    “Let’s try to build it into a half-hour show—some other time.”
    “The one I like best is a fellow named Fred Thearnley,” Van Hessen said. “He’s done a few things for me, and he’s a lot more on the ball than some of ‘em.”
    “Would you phone him and use your influence to see if he can squeeze a few minutes for me about as soon as I can get there?”
    “Sure.”
    Simon returned to Lona with an appointment for eleven o’clock. He started up the boat again and sent it skimming through the channel to the left of Hinson’s Island, and then threading between other smaller islands towards the north shore of the gradually narrowing bay, now sheltered between the hills of Pembroke and Paget on either side with the white-sugar roofs and pink-icing walls of fairytale candy houses studding their green slopes. He slowed up past the Princess Hotel, a birthday cake moulded in the same style, and stopped and tied up at the Yacht Club dock farther on. He looked at his watch.
    “We’ve got plenty of time to do my airline errand first,” he said.
    They cut through by the Bank of Bermuda and walked eastwards past the open wharf where the cruise boats berth in the very heart of the city, and up Front Street to the BOAC office. Their last plane left for New York at 4 pm, and he was able to get a seat on it.
    The lawyer’s office turned out to be back in the direction they had come from, a few doors from Trimingham’s, which is the biggest department store that the highly