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and offered her a screen test before he left. Her rise to stardom had been swift and outwardly effortless.
    “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