He was about to hand the wallet back without more than glancing into the compartment comfortably filled with green frogskins of the realm quaintly known as folding money when his eye was caught by the design stamped on the outside of the leather where a monogram might ordinarily have been. It was nothing but a line drawing of a skeletal figure with a cipher for a head and an elliptical halo floating above it. The pose of the figure was jaunty, with a subtle impudence that amounted almost to arrogance.
The sergeant examined it puzzledly.
"What's this?"
"I'm a doodler," Simon explained gravely. "That is my pet design for telephone booths, linen tablecloths, and ladies' underwear."
"I see," said the sergeant quite blankly, returning the wallet. "Now if you'll just sit down over there, Mr Templar, the Galveston police will be here directly. It's only a couple of miles across the Causeway, and you can lead the way to the spot."
"Aren't you going to call out the posse to chase the murderers?" Simon suggested. "If they brought a horse for me, I could save some of my gas ration."
"You got something there," said the sergeant woodenly. "I'll call the sheriff's office while we're waitin'."
Simon Templar groaned inwardly, and saw it all closing around him again, the fantastic destiny which seemed to have ordained that nothing lawless should ever happen anywhere and let him pass by like any other peaceful citizen.
He fished out another cigarette while the second call was being made, and finally said: "I'm beginning to hope that by the time you get out there the seagulls will have beaten you to it and there won't be any body."
"There'll be one if you saw one," opined the sergeant confidently. "Nobody'll likely come along that beach road again today. Too early in the season for picnics, and a bad day for, fishin'."