Vendetta for the Saint (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  But in this case it made no difference. He was able to track down the villa without too much trouble, but il padrone had not yet arrived. No doubt he was still skimming the cream of the expense-account crop in the Thames Valley. And good luck to him—but Simon wished only gastritis on the beneficiaries.

  He lunched regally on zuppa di pesce and calamaretti, laved with a bottle of Antinori Classico, on the terrace of La Minervetta overlooking the blinding blue sea, and later swam off the rocks below in the same translucent element, and finally drove back to Naples refreshed and recharged but no wiser than he had been when he left.

  Thanks to the recommendation of a well-meaning friend, the Saint had made his reservation at a more modest hotel than the Excelsior, a short distance farther along the sea front on the Via Partenope. It had turned out to be considerably less luxurious than the class of hostelry which Simon Templar usually chose at that period of his life, but it had been late at night when he arrived, and his room looked clean and comfortable enough, and it had not seemed worth the trouble to go searching for other accommodation for the two or three days which were all he had planned to stay. Its only vital disadvantage as against the more populous and busily serviced competition was one which had not occurred to him at the time and might never have been brought home to him if he had not impulsively befriended the late Mr. Euston.

  He helped himself to his key from behind the all-purpose desk which was tended at various hours by the manageress, the porter, the floor waiter, or any chambermaid who was not otherwise occupied, and in between their shifts by a bell with a mechanical button which could be thumped for eventual attention, and took the self-service elevator to his floor. He had just stepped out when a man came running down the corridor in a frantic sprint to catch a ride before the conveyance went down again, and the Saint turned and stared at him with instant curiosity.

  Readers of this chronicle who wonder why a man running for a lift should be such an arresting spectacle are only betraying their own limited horizons. If they had taken advantage of the eight-country, twenty-two city, fifteen-day excursion rates offered by the philanthropic airlines, they would know that on the Mediterranean littoral, in summer, nobody, but nobody, runs for an elevator or anything else. Wherefore the Saint took extra note of the pointed face, the rodent teeth, the pencil-line mustache, the awning-striped suit, and a wealth of other trivia not worth recording, before the febrile eccentric squeezed into the lazy-box and disappeared from view.

  It had all taken perhaps three seconds, and it was over before a possible significance to the incident could penetrate through his first superficial astonishment. And by the time Simon reached his room, further speculation became unnecessary.

  The door was not quite shut, and he only used his key to push it open.

  To say that the room had been searched would be rather like describing a hurricane as a stiff breeze, and in fact a hurricane could have gone through it without doing much more damage. Whoever had been there—and Simon no longer had any doubt that it had been the rat-faced man in a hurry—had efficiently and enthusiastically taken it to pieces. Not content with spilling everything from drawers and suitcases, the intruder had hacked open the shoulders and split the seams of some of the finest tailoring of Savile Row. The same blade had slit the linings of valises and playfully pried the heels from shoes, besides exposing the stuffing of the mattress.

  Only a person who knew the Saint’s fastidious habits would have appreciated the calm with which he surveyed the wreckage and flicked the dead ash from his cigarette on to the midden heap before him.

  “Che cosa fa?” gasped a voice behind him, and he turned and saw a gaping chambermaid staring in from the corridor.

  “If someone stayed on the job downstairs, it might not have happened,” he said coldly. “Please get it cleaned up. The clothes that are worth repairing you can give to your husband, or your lover, wherever they will do the most good. And if the manager has any comments, he can find me in the bar.”

  Fortunately there was Peter Dawson in that dispensary, and a double measure with plenty of ice and just a little water helped to soothe the most savage edge of his anger as well as slaking the thirst which he had incubated on the drive back.

  The vandalizing of his wardrobe was only a temporary inconvenience, after all: a telegram to London would have replacements under way at once, and meanwhile there were excellent tailors in Italy and some of the world’s best shoemakers. On the plus side, the last vestige of possibility that Euston’s death was coincidental had been removed. And Cartelli, or Destamio, had been concerned enough about Simon Templar’s intervention to have ordered a complete check-up on him and a search which could only have had the object of discovering any concealed official—or criminal—association.

  A revelation that might have daunted anyone but the Saint was the speed and apparent ease with which he had been found, which indicated an organization of impressive size and competence. He seriously doubted whether even the local police, with all their authority and facilities, could have done as well. But a sober respect for the opposition and the odds had never done anything to Simon Templar except to make the game seem more exciting.

  The manager, or the husband of the manageress, eventually made an appearance. He dutifully wrung his hands over the catastrophe, and then said, “You are worried, of course, about the damage done to the bed. Do not think any more about it. I have put in a new bed, and we will just charge it in the bill.”

  “How nice of you,” said the Saint. “I hate to sound ungracious, but as a matter of fact I was more worried about the damage to my belongings, which happened because you make it so easy for robbers to get into the rooms.”

  The manager’s hands, shoulders, and eyebrows spread out simultaneously in a graphic explosion of incredulity, indignation, reproach, and dismay.

  “But, signore, I am not responsible if you have friends who perhaps do such things for a bad joke!”

  “You have an argument there,” Simon conceded. “So it might be simpler not to give me a bill at all. Otherwise I might recommend some other playful friends to come here, and they might do the same things in all your rooms.” He turned over the bar check, “Oh, and thanks for the drink.”

  He felt better for the rest of the evening; though he was careful to dine at a corner table and to examine his wine bottle carefully before it was uncorked. The fact that some back-stage Borgia might have spiked anything he ate was a risk he had to take, but in calculating it he had noted that for some abstruse reason poison had never been an accepted weapon of the fraternity of which Al Destamio was such a distinguished member. Simon had often wondered why. It would have seemed so much easier and slicker than the technique of the gun. He had never been able to decide whether the answer was in some code of twisted chivalry, calling for the actual confrontation of the enemy before his extinction, or merely because a spectacular artillery mow-down made more awesome headlines with which to keep other hesitants in line.

  But nothing even mildly disturbing happened to him that night, and when the next move came in the morning it was totally different from anything he had anticipated.

  When he came downstairs after breakfast and handed his key over the desk, a slight saturnine man in chauffeur’s uniform who had been standing near by approached him with a deferential bow.

  “Excuse me sir,” he said in passable English. “Mr. Destamio would like to meet you, and sent me with his car. He did not want to risk waking you up by telephoning, so I was told to wait here until you came down.”

  The Saint regarded him expressionlessly.

  “And suppose I had some other plans?” he said. “Such as going shopping for some new clothes, for instance?”

  “Mr. Destamio hoped you would talk to him before you do anything else,” said the chauffeur, with equal inscrutability. “He told me to promise you will not be sorry. The car is outside. Will you come?”

  A latinate flip of the hand repeated both the invitation and
the direction, and yet no threat was implied by gesture, intonation, or innuendo. Having delivered his message, the chauffeur waited without a sign of impatience for Simon to make his own decision.

  Well, Simon thought, some day he would almost inevitably have to guess wrong, fatally wrong. But he didn’t think this was the day. And anyhow, the opportunity of making a proper acquaintance with such a personage as Mr. Destamio was too great a temptation to resist.

  “Okay,” he said recklessly. “I’ll take a chance.”

  He did not have to look around for the car. There was a Cadillac berthed in the street outside which was the only conceivable vehicle, even before the chauffeur opened the door with a certain possessive pride. It was black, high-finned, gigantic, polished to the brilliance of a jewel, and completely out of place in the constricted antiquity of the street. Without hesitation Simon climbed into the cavernous interior, and was not surprised to find himself alone. Whatever Destamio might have in mind for the future, he would hardly be so idiotic as to have the Saint killed in his own car in the center of Naples. The windows were closed and an air conditioner whispered softly. Simon settled back into the deep upholstery and prepared to enjoy the ride.

  4

  It was not a very long journey, but it was impressive enough. Under the driver’s skillful touch, the car slid into the traffic like a leviathan into the deep. On all sides rushed schools of tiny cars, battling and honking through swarms of slow-moving pedestrians, small children, and animals. The din that arose from all this came to Simon only as the gentlest of murmurs through the thick glass and padded metal. Cool breezes laved him and wafted away his cigarette smoke even as he exhaled it.

  Leviathan ploughed a majestic path through the small fry and rushed towards the bay. Without slowing, they swept through the gates of the port, and the guards saluted respectfully. The Saint looked out at the portholed flanks of the ships—only liners here, the smaller ferries were outside the fence in the public port—and had momentary qualms of a shanghaiing, until the car came to a smooth halt next to a modernistic concrete structure something like a giant’s pool table on spindly legs. It had been built since his last visit to the city, and for a few seconds it puzzled him. Then he heard the roar of rotors overhead, and the pieces clicked into place.

  “Ischia or Capri?” he asked the chauffeur, as he stepped reluctantly out into the steam-bath of untreated atmosphere.

  “Capri, sir. This way, please.”

  The two island resorts of fun and sun are eighteen miles from the city, at the outer edge of the vast bay. They are normally reached by a varied collection of yachts, ferries, and converted fishing boats, in a voyage that takes from one to four hours depending on the prospective passenger’s ability to translate the misleading notices. Prosperity and technology have now changed this for the well-heeled few and supplied a helicopter service that covers the same distance in a few minutes. There was one that seemed to have been waiting only for the Saint: as soon as he was on board, the door shut and he was lifted as smoothly as in an elevator.

  They swung out over the incredibly blue waters of the bay, giving him what he had to admit was a marvelous panorama, much as he thought it had been over-written in the travel brochures. The vertical rock walls of Capri jutting dramatically from the sea were as impressive from the air as when seen from the more usual approach. The pilot turned in over Marina Grande, circled the top of Monte Solaro so that his passenger could appreciate the best parts of the view, then dropped lightly on to the painted circle of the heliport.

  This is located on the site of Damecuta, one of the many palaces which the Emperor Tiberius scattered over his favorite island, on the cliff edge just as far out of town as it is possible to get on dry land, and as Simon climbed down he wondered what transportation would be provided for the last lap of the journey. He felt sure it would be no less sumptuous than the preceding conveyances.

  Something appeared wearing the minimal shorts and halter which pass for clothing on that insular lido, and the Saint leisurely surveyed the large areas of skin which they made no attempt to cover, confident in the wisdom of his years that people who undressed like that expected to be looked at. The vision of long tanned legs and golden hair floated towards him with a rotary motion that displayed its other accessories to great effect. “Mr. Templar?” it asked, in a low and throbbingly warm voice.

  “None other,” he said happily. “How did you find me in all this crowd?”

  The helicopter pilot and a single airport attendant—the only audience—watched appreciatively, waiting for the reverse view when the vision would retreat and in so doing display the remainder of her delectable curves. She ignored the Saint’s pleasantry and merely gestured towards the parking space.

  Since the roads on Capri are barely wide enough for two beamy baby-buggies to brush past each other, only the smallest cars are used and even the buses are minuscule. Therefore he was not expecting another Cadillac, but the little cream-colored Alfa-Romeo which he boarded, with its sensationally displayed chauffeuse, was a worthy substitute.

  So was her driving style, which shot it off like a compact bomb and forced it to claw its way around the turns that wound up the face of the mountain with an abandon which made the Saint hope devoutly that she knew what she was doing. He stole several dubious glances at her, but her lips were heavily painted and unmoving, while the upper part of her face was so hidden by immense flower-wreathed sunglasses that her eyes and any expression around them were completely concealed. Her attention seemed to concentrate entirely on the road, and Simon felt too gentlemanly at the time to force his attentions on her. Particularly since they were skirting the edge of vertical drops so high that the boats below looked like toys in a pond.

  Fortunately for his nervous stamina, there was quite a short limit to the maximum mileage at her disposal on the island, and she had not even reached third gear when they arrived at their destination, a villa overlooking the beaches and coves of Marina Piccola.

  His alertness involuntarily tautened again as he strolled up the flagged path. Now he had helped to deliver himself unresistingly exactly where Destamio wanted him, it would not be much longer before he was shown just how foolhardy he had been. He was not even ashamed to be relieved when the vision with the legs rang the door-bell herself, thus sparing him any concern over the perils of the bell mechanism. More than once in the past it had been demonstrated to him how lethal such commonplace fixtures could be made. But this time the button activated no poisoned needles, sprays of gas, hidden guns, or bombs; if anything, the opening of the door was quite anticlimactic. Instead of unleashing mayhem, it projected only the prominent belly of Signore Destamio, dressed in a cerise shirt and purple shorts which did considerably less for his pear-shaped figure than the fancy tailoring in which Simon had first seen him.

  “Well, Mr. Templar! Nice of you to come,” the remembered voice rasped. Destamio put out his hand and drew Simon into the house. “I been wanting to talk to you, and I figured this spot was as good as any, better than most. Right?”

  “It could be,” said the Saint guardedly.

  He was observing all the corners and interesting angles of the interior without appearing to do so. But there were no other thugs in sight, and the situation looked transparently innocuous so far.

  “Come on and let’s sit out on the balcony, nice and cool with a great view, and Lily is gonna bring us some drinks and then she’ll get lost.”

  If Lily took offense at this rude dismissal she gave no sign of it. As soon as Destamio and the Saint were settled on either side of a glass and wrought-iron table she wheeled up a bar wagon and left. Simon heard a door close deep inside the house.

  “Help yourself,” Destamio said. “And pour me a brandy and ginger ale while you’re there.”

  As Simon selected two clean glasses and a bottle, he admired the neat and tactful way in which anxiety about a possibly-doctored drink had been eliminated. Nevertheless, he took the extra precaution of
pouring both drinks from the same bottle. The cognac was Jules Robin, he noted approvingly, though he would not normally have chosen to drink it before lunch.

  “You by any chance working for those bastards at the Bureau of Internal Revenue these days, Saint?” Destamio asked, with no change in his conversational tone.

  He stared fixedly at Simon as he spoke and afterwards, his expression controlledly empty, yet not completely hiding glints of menace deep within the eyes.

  The Saint sipped his drink and was externally just as calm—while his brain was whirring like an IBM machine. The mention of the income tax department nudged out a file card that had been waiting for hours to drop into the hopper.

  “Gopher,” he said dreamily. “Gopher Destamio—isn’t that what they called you?”

  “My friends call me Al,” growled the other. “And that’s what I wanna know about you: whose side you on?”

  “Do I have to take sides?” drawled the Saint. “I hate paying taxes as much as anyone, so I can’t help having a sort of sneaking sympathy for anyone who’s had your kind of trouble with the Internal Revenue Service. But tax evasion isn’t the worst crime you’ve been accused of, is it?”

  “You heard all about me, then.”

  Al “Gopher” Destamio pulled from his pocket a wilted package from which he extracted an object that might be humorously described as a cigar, but in fact resembled nothing so much as a piece of decomposing rope that had been soaked in tar and buried for a number of years. He sawed the thing in two with a pocket-knife and offered the Saint half of it. Simon shook his head politely, and watched in fascination as Destamio pulled a yellowed straw from the interior of one half and applied a lighted match to the truncated end. After warming it thoroughly, he raised the revolting article to his lips and proceeded to puff it to life. Simon moved his chair back a bit, out of the direct drift of the smoke, having had previous experience of the asphyxiating potency of the infamous Tuscan cheroot.