Now, though he was all of sixty years old, this Wenner-Gren was still an attractive man, a man of silver hair and elegant movements and perceptive blue eyes of the X-ray variety, if you know what I mean. He smoked his cigarette and stared at me, not at all moved by my widowhood, while I resisted the urge to cross my arms over my chest and ask him if the rumors were true, that he was really a Nazi, that he was friends with Goering and that his real mission here in Nassau was to persuade the duke to cast his fortunes with a triumphant Germany. After all, wasn’t that exactly the kind of worldwide exclusive the Metropolitan had sent me to the Bahamas to discover? Wasn’t Axel Wenner-Gren exactly the kind of man with whom I’d been desperate to sidle myself into profitable intimacy?

He leaned his face toward mine. “This must be terribly lonely for you.”

“Oh, I keep myself busy. Not as busy as you do, of course, with your yacht and your lovely estate.”

“Ah. What do you know about my estate?”

“Isn’t it right there on Hog Island? I can just about see it from my bedroom window.”

“Can you, now?”

“And your yacht, of course. There’s no mistaking her.” I paused to sip my drink. “Where are you headed next? I hear you’re much enamored of Mexico these days. You’ve started a bank there, haven’t you? The Banco Continental.”

His eyebrows rose. He turned his face politely away to blow out a stream of smoke, and while he did so, breaking gaze for just that instant, his eyes flicked downward to appraise the sharp, deep neckline of my dress. “You seem to hear a great many things, Mrs. Randolph.”

“Oh, one keeps one’s ears open. And Nassau is terrible for gossip. It’s the favorite pastime. Everybody seems to be knee-deep in each other’s dirty business.”

“So my wife tells me. And what else have you heard about me?”

“Oh, this and that.” I shrugged. “I can’t remember most of it. But tell me more about Mexico. I’ve always wanted to go.”

He took a long, slow drag from his cigarette, examined the diminished end, and said softly, “Perhaps you might join us on our next voyage. We intend to make an archaeological expedition to South America, and then travel up to Mexico in time for Christmas.”

“How kind of you. When do you cast off?”

Wenner-Gren opened his mouth, but it wasn’t his voice that answered me.

“Any day now, isn’t that right? I’d go myself, if I wasn’t already occupied.”