Vendetta for the Saint (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  “I’m trying to contact one of your employees,” he said. “It’s several years since he worked here, so he may have been transferred.”

  “And his name?”

  “Dino Cartelli.”

  “Madre mia!” the girl gasped, rolling her doe eyes and turning pale. “One moment—”

  She went over and spoke to a man working at another desk, who dropped his pen without even noticing the splotch of ink it made on his ledger. He gave Simon a startled suspicious look, and hurried behind a partition at the rear of the office. In another minute he came back to the Saint.

  “Would you like to speak to the manager, sir?”

  Simon wanted nothing more. He followed the clerk to the inner sanctum, where he was left to repeat his question, feeling rather like the man in the Parisian story who has a note in French that no one will read to him. This time the reaction was less exaggerated, except for the altitude to which it raised the manager’s eyebrows.

  “Did you know Dino Cartelli well, sir?”

  “I never even met him,” Simon admitted cheerfully. “An old friend of his, James Euston, whom you might remember, told me to look him up when I was in Sicily.”

  “Ah, yes. Mr. Euston. Perhaps that explains it.”

  The manager stared gloomily at his hands folded on the desk. He was a very old man, with wispy gray hair and a face that had almost abdicated in favor of his skull.

  “That was so long ago,” he said. “He couldn’t have known.”

  “What couldn’t who have known?” Simon demanded, feeling more and more like the man with the mysterious note.

  “Dino Cartelli is dead. Heroically dead,” said the manager, in the professionally hushed voice of an undertaker.

  “How did he do that?”

  “It happened one night in the winter of 1949. A tragic night I shall never forget. Dino was alone in the bank, working late, getting his books in order for the following day. The bank inspectors were coming then, and everything had to be brought up to date. He was a very conscientious chap. And he died for the bank, even though it was to no avail.”

  “Do you mean he died from overwork?”

  “No, no. He was murdered.”

  “Would you mind telling me exactly what happened?” Simon asked patiently.

  The manager lowered his head for a moment of silence.

  “No one will ever know exactly. He was dead when I found him in the morning, with ghastly wounds on his hands and face. I shall never forget the sight. And the vault was blown open, and everything of value gone. The way the police reconstructed it, he must have been surprised by the thieves. He knew the combination to the vault, but he did not give it to them. Instead, he must have tried to grab their gun—a shotgun—and that was when his hands were blown to shreds. But even that didn’t stop poor Dino. He must have gone on struggling with them, until they shot him in the face and he died.”

  “And how much did they get?”

  “New and used lira notes, to the value of about a hundred thousand pounds, as well as some negotiable bonds and other things. Some of it has turned up since then, but most of it was never traced. And the criminals have never been caught.”

  Simon asked a few more questions, but elicited nothing more that was important or relevant. As soon as he found that he had exhausted all the useful information that that source could give him, he thanked the manager and excused himself.

  “Please give Euston my regards,” the manager said. “I’m afraid he will be shocked to hear the story. He and Dino were quite good friends.”

  “If Dino hasn’t told him already,” said the Saint, “I wouldn’t quite know how to get the news to him.”

  The manager looked painfully blank.

  “Euston is dead too,” Simon explained. “He got himself murdered in Naples the other night.”

  “Dear me!” The manager was stunned. “What a tragic coincidence—there couldn’t be any connection, of course?”

  “Of course,” said the Saint, who saw no point in wasting time discussing his nebulous suspicions with this interlocutor.

  Outside, the heat of the day was already filling the street, but Simon hardly noticed it. His brain was too busy with the new thread that had been added to the tangled web.

  At least one detail had been confirmed: the large parcel of boodle about which he had theorized had now become a historical fact and could be identified as the proceeds of the bank robbery. The question remained whether it had been dispersed or whether it was still hidden somewhere. But in exchange, another part of the puzzle became more obscure: if Destamio was not Cartelli, how did he fit into the picture?

  “Scusi, signore—ha un fiammifero?”

  A thin man stopped him at the mouth of a narrow passageway leading off the main street, holding up an unlit cigarette in one hand. The other hand was inside his jacket as he gave a small polite bow. The everyday bustle of the street flowed around them as Simon took out his lighter.

  “Will this do?”

  He flicked the lighter into flame and held it, almost unthinkingly, his mind still occupied with other things. The man bent forward with his cigarette, and at the same time brought his other hand out and plunged a knife straight into Simon’s midriff.

  Or rather, that was his intention, and anyone but the Saint would have been dying with six inches of steel in his stomach. But Simon had not been unthinking for quite long enough, and the significance of the thin man’s concealed hand sparked his lightning reflexes in the nick of time to twist aside from the slashing blade. Even so, it was so close that the point caught in his coat and tore a long gash.

  Simon Templar would not often have gone berserk over a little damage to a garment, but it must be remembered what had so recently happened to the rest of his wardrobe. Now he was wearing his only remaining suit, and this too had been wrecked, leaving him with literally nothing but rags to his name. Combined with a natural resentment towards strangers who took advantage of his kindly instincts to try to stick daggers into his digestive apparatus, it was the last straw.

  But instead of blinding him, anger only made his actions more precise. He grasped the wrist of the knife hand as it went by, and pivoted, locking the thin man’s arm under his own. He held that position with cold calculation, just long enough to make sure that an adequate quorum of witnesses had stopped and stared and thoroughly registered the fact of which one was holding the knife, and then he made another swift sharp movement that resulted in a crack of breaking bone and a short scream from his victim. The stiletto fell to the pavement.

  Without releasing his grip on the thin man’s wrist, Simon freed his other hand, carefully adjusted the position of his target, and put all his weight into a piston stroke that planted his left fist squarely in the center of the other’s face. Under the impact, nose and face gave way with a most satisfying crunch, but the man went down without another vocal sound, and lay still. All things considered, Simon decided, as his fury subsided as quickly as it had flared, it had been only a humane anesthetic for a fractured ulna.

  The whole incident had taken only a few seconds. Looking around warily for any possible second assault wave, he saw a small Fiat standing at the other end of the alley where it connected with the next parallel street. The door on the near side was open, and a blue-chinned bandit sat at the wheel, staring towards the Saint with his jaw still sagging. Then he suddenly came to life, slammed the door, and stepped frantically on the gas.

  Simon picked up the fallen stiletto, ignoring the gathering crowd which gesticulated and jabbered around him but kept a safe distance. It was perfectly balanced, the blade honed to a shaving edge, a deadly tool in the hands of an expert. The Saint was not sorry to think that at least one such virtuoso would not be working for some time.

  A policeman finally came pushing through the mob, one hand on his holstered pistol, and Simon coolly tendered him the hilt of the souvenir.

  3

  “This is what I was attacked with,” he said, tak
ing none of the risks of undue diffidence. “All these people saw me disarm him. I shall be happy to help you take him to the police station and sign the charges against him.”

  The policeman swivelled a coldly professional eye over the crowd, whose members immediately began a circulatory movement as the spectators in front were stirred by a sudden desire to be in the rear. Simon saw his witnesses rapidly evaporating, but before the last law-shy personality could melt away the polizie, inured to coping with the evasiveness inspired by his vocation, had stepped forward and collared two of them—a pimply youth with an acute case of strabismus, and a portly matron bedizened with bangles like an animated junk stall. The only things they had in common were their observation of the knifing attempt and a profound reluctance to admit this to the constabulary. Nevertheless, the policeman quarried from them a grudging admission that they had seen some of the events which had occurred; though the ocular abnormality of the younger one might have cast doubts on the value of his testimony. He then appropriated their identity cards, which they could redeem only by appearing at the police station to make depositions. Dismissed, they retired gratefully into the background, and the policeman brought his functionally jaundiced scrutiny back to the Saint.

  “Why did you kill him?” he asked, looking gloomily from the knife in his hand to the recumbent figure on the sidewalk.

  “I didn’t kill him,” Simon insisted patiently. “He tried to murder me, but I didn’t feel like letting him. So I disarmed him and knocked him out. The knife you’re holding is his, not mine.”

  The policeman examined the weapon once more, flicking open the mechanism of the blade with his thumb nail. He closed it again with one hand and pushed the safety button into place with an automatic motion which revealed long familiarity with such devices.

  Behind him, two more police officers appeared, causing the crowd to lose all further interest and disperse. The one who had been first on the scene saluted the more lavishly gold-braided of the newcomers and mumbled an explanation in dialect. His superior stared at the Saint darkly, but showed no inclination to discuss the crime further in the public street. Simon accepted their glum detachment with seraphic indifference, and even allowed himself to be jammed into the rear of an undersized police car without further protest. Whatever consequences were to develop next would have to reveal themselves at the questura.

  Once inside that ancient building, the recording and annotating of the fracas proceeded with ponderous solemnity. There was an incredible amount of laborious writing on multiple forms, and the continual thumping of rubber stamps accompanied it like a symbolic drum-roll of bureaucracy. The only ripple in the remorseless impersonality of the routine occurred when the Saint presented his passport for examination, and raised eyebrows and knowing glances informed him that his reputation was not entirely unknown even there.

  When the knife-wielding citizen was brought in, Simon saw that his injuries had been partly patched up by a police surgeon: one splinted arm hung in a sling, and a large wad of gauze was taped over his nose. From behind the edges of it, a pair of bloodshot eyes glared hatred at the Saint, who responded with a beatific smile.

  With the preliminary recordings completed, another door opened and the maresciallo del carabinieri made his impressive entrance.

  His elaborately decorated and braided jacket and cap, worn even in the heat of the office, left no doubt of the eminence of his rank. His head was nobly Roman and graying at the temples, not unlike the average man’s mental picture of a Caesar; though the softness of the lower lip suggested Nero rather than Julius.

  He stared coldly down the straight length of his nose at Simon; then swivelled his eyes, like the black orifices of cannons coming to bear, towards the bandaged knife-wielder.

  “Well, Tonio,” he said stolidly, “you were not out of trouble very long this time.”

  “I did nothing, maresciallo, nothing! I swear on my mother’s tomb. It was this fannullone”—the man called Tonio jerked the thumb of his good hand towards Simon—“who caused the trouble. He is a madman, perhaps. He comes up to me on the street, insults me, pulls out a knife. I had done nothing!”

  The maresciallo glanced through the papers which had been written up, and turned his imperial gaze on Simon.

  “What have you to say about this?”

  “Nothing—except that Tonio must have very little respect for his mother,” said the Saint calmly. “There were a dozen people around when he attacked me with the knife. They all saw me disarm him. Some of them may also have noticed his accomplice waiting near by in a car, who left rather hurriedly when Tonio was detained. If that is not enough, ask him how my coat was cut if I was trying to stab him, or why I did not use the knife on him instead of my hands. After that, you might ask him who hired him to kill me.”

  The maresciallo heard the words with pursed lips and mask-like impassibility. He poked at Simon’s passport on the desk before him.

  “We do not like international criminals who pose as simple tourists,” he said. “Who come here and attack people.”

  Simon Templar’s eyes widened for an instant as he took the shock. Then they narrowed into chips of blue ice as cold as the edge that crept into his voice.

  “Are you suggesting that there is one grain of truth in that creature’s story, or that there is one shred of evidence to support it?”

  Under the pressure of the challenge the maresciallo’s imperial manner slipped a bit. He squirmed inside his gorgeous jacket and seemed to find it a relief to switch his gaze to Tonio at frequent intervals.

  “That is not the point. I mean to say, this is an investigation, and we must consider all possibilities. There is some doubt among the witnesses as to exactly what happened. And you must admit, Signor Templar, that your reputation is not spotless.”

  Simon glanced around at the carabinieri, who stared stolidly back, registering neither approval nor disapproval of their officer’s attitude. The Saint had never cherished any childlike faith in the impartiality of the police, but he did not have to be excessively cynical to realize that there was something more here than a normal suspiciousness of his honesty and respectable intentions. And an insubstantial but chilling draught seemed to touch his spine as it dawned on him that something more dangerous to him than any knifeman’s blade might lie beneath the surface of that impersonal hostility.

  Then yet another man came in, in ordinary clothes but with a subtle air of authority that invisibly outranked the maresciallo’s gold-encrusted magnificence, and the tension that had begun to build up dissolved as if it had all been an illusion.

  He was a man of medium build, flat-bellied, with the gray eyes and curly blond hair that are native only to northern Italy. His browned features seemed almost boyish at first, until one discovered the intermingled lines etched among them by twenty years more than was suggested by their youthful contours. But he walked with an athletic spring in his step which again belied those skin-deep foreshadowings of middle age.

  He stopped in front of Tonio, studying him carefully, and said, “I am glad to see someone has worked on your ugly face, piece of filth.”

  He added some more vivid epithets which would have invited a duel to the death in any tavern in Sicily, but the wounded Tonio only glowered and kept his lips buttoned.

  No one else spoke either as the newcomer turned to the maresciallo’s desk and flicked through the papers on it.

  “Simon Templar!” he said, looking up and laughing. “We seem to have landed a big one this time.”

  He came towards Simon and offered his hand.

  “Let me introduce myself, Signor Saint: my name is Marco Ponti. I am the agente investigativo here, what you would call a police detective. Now you know all about me, because I am sure you know all about detectives. But I also know something about you. And since you are here, it is my business to ask what brings you to Sicily?”

  “Only the same attractions that bring thousands of other tourists here,” answered the Saint, relax
ing guardedly. “Which of course did not include having one of your problem paisani try to knife me.”

  “Ah, poor Italy—and poorer Sicily! Many are in want here and turn to crime to fill their stomachs. Though of course that is no excuse. Be assured that justice will be done. We ask you only to be available to support your charges.”

  “With pleasure. But there seems to be some difficulty.”

  “Difficulty?” Ponti’s eyebrows lifted elaborately. He turned back to the desk and riffled through the papers again. “Everything looks in order to me—is that not right, maresciallo?”

  The officer shrugged.

  “No difficulties. I was only asking a few questions.”

  “Ebbene! Then I suggest that you, Signor Templar, give us the name of your hotel—but you have already done that, I see in your statement. That is all we need for now. We will notify you when the case appears before the giudice instruttore, the magistrate. Unless the maresciallo has anything more to ask?”

  The maresciallo could not have lost interest more completely. A gesture that combined a shrug, a small throwing-away motion of the hands, and a regal tilt of the head, conveyed that he was finished, bored, and only wished to be spared further tedium.

  “And you, Signor Templar, have nothing more to say here?”

  Ponti’s eyes looked directly into the Saint’s, and for an instant the engaging boyishness no longer seemed to be the dominant characteristic of his face. Instead, there was only an intense and urgent seriousness. As clearly as if the lines in his forehead had spelt it out in capital letters, it changed his words, for Simon’s reception only, from a question to a command.

  “Nothing more,” said the Saint steadily.

  His acceptance of the silent order was instinctive. Whatever had been going wrong before, Ponti’s arrival had temporarily diverted it, and Simon Templar was not one to scorn a lifeboat until unfathomed waters closed over his head. Besides which, he sensed an essential difference between Ponti’s implied warning and the kind that had menaced him a little earlier. But the questions which it raised would have to wait. For the present, the opportunity to leave the police station was satisfaction enough. He was already suffering some of the feeling of claustrophobia which was inclined to afflict him in places that had a direct connection with prisons.