Vendetta for the Saint (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  CHAPTER THREE:

  HOW SIMON TEMPLAR HIRED A MUSEUM PIECE, AND GINA DESTAMIO BECAME AVAILABLE

  1

  His decision made, Simon Templar intended to pay his call on the Destamio manor with the least possible delay—figuring that the faster he kept moving, the more he would keep Destamio off balance, and thus gain the more advantage for himself. But to make himself suitably presentable, his slashed jacket first had to be repaired.

  The cashier directed him to the nearest sartoria, where the proprietor was just unlocking after the three-hour midday break. After much energetic and colorful discussion, a price was agreed on that made allowance for the unseemly speed demanded, yet was still a little less than the cost of a new coat. Half an hour was finally set as the time for completion, and the Saint, knowing that he would be lucky to get it in three times that period, proceeded in search of his next requisite.

  The tailor directed him around the next corner to where a welcoming sign announced Servizio Eccellento di Autonoleggio. But for once in the history of advertising, the auto rental service may truly have been so excellent that all its cars had been taken. At any rate, perhaps with some help from the sheer numbers of seasonal tourists, the entire fleet of vehicles seemed to be gone. The only one left in sight was an antique and battered Fiat 500 that had been largely dismembered by the single mechanic who crawled from its oily entrails and wiped his hands on a piece of cotton waste as Simon approached.

  “You have cars to rent?” said the Saint.

  “Sissignore.” The man’s sapient eye took in his patently un-Italian appearance. “I guess mebbe you like-a rent-a one?”

  “I guess I would,” said the Saint, patiently resigning himself to haggling down a price that would be automatically doubled now that the entrepreneur had identified him as a visiting foreigner.

  “We got-a plenty cars, but all-a rent-a now, gahdam, except-a dis sonovabitch.”

  It was evident that the mechanic’s English had been acquired from the ubiquitous font of linguistic elegance, the enlisted ranks of the American armed services.

  “You mean that’s your very last machine?” Simon asked, nodding at the disembowelled Fiat.

  “Sissignore. Cute-a little turista, she built like a brick-a gabinetto. I ’ave ’er all-a ready dis evening.”

  “I wouldn’t want her, even if you do get her put together again. Not that I want to hurt her feelings, but she just wasn’t built to fit me. So could you perhaps tell me where I might find something my size?”

  “Mebbe you like-a drive-a da rich car, Alfa-Romeo or mebbe Ferrari?”

  There was a trace of a sneer in the question which Simon chose to ignore in the hope of saving time in his search.

  “I have driven them. Also Bentleys, Lagondas, Jaguars, and in the good old days a Hirondel.”

  “You drive-a da Hirondel, eh? How she go, gahdam?”

  “Like a sonovabitch,” said the Saint gravely. “But that has nothing to do with the present problem. I still need a car.”

  “You like-a see sumping gahdam especial, make-a you forget Hirondel?”

  “That I would like to see.”

  “Come-a wid me.”

  The man led the way to a door at the rear of the garage, and out into the dusty yard behind. Apart from the piles of rusty parts and old threadbare tires, there was a large amorphous object shrouded in a tarpaulin. With an air of reverence more usually reserved for the lifting of a bride’s veil preparatory to the nuptial kiss, he untied the binding cords and gently drew back the canvas. Sunlight struck upon blood-red coachwork and chromed fittings, and the Saint permitted himself the uncommon luxury of a surprised whistle.

  “Is that what I think it is?” he said.

  “It gahdam-a sure is,” the mechanic replied, with his eyes half closed in ecstatic contemplation. “You’re-a look at a Bugatti!”

  “And if I’m not mistaken, a type 41 Royale.”

  “Say, professore, you know all about-a dese bastards,” said the man, giving Simon the title of respect due to his erudition.

  There was once a body of aficionados who looked upon motoring as a sport, and not an air-conditioned power-assisted mechanical aid to bringing home the groceries, and among their ever-dwindling survivors there are still some purists who maintain that only in the golden years between 1919 and 1930 were any real automobiles constructed, and who dismiss all cars before or after that era as contemptible rubbish. The Saint was not quite such a fanatic, but he had an artist’s respect for the masterpieces of that great decade.

  He was now looking at one of the best of them. The name of Ettore Bugatti has the same magic to the motoring enthusiast as do those of Annie Besant or Karl Marx to other circles of believers. Bugatti was an eccentric genius who designed cars to suit himself and paid no attention to what other designers were doing. In 1911, when all racing cars were lumbering behemoths, a gigantic Fiat snorted to victory in the Grand Prix. This was expected, but what was totally unexpected was the second-placing of Bugatti’s first racer, looking like a mouse beside an elephant, with an engine only one-eighth the size of the monstrous winner. Bugatti continued to pull mechanical miracles like that. Then, in 1927, when everyone else was building small cars, he brought out the juggernaut on which Simon was now feasting his eyes.

  “Dey build only seven,” the owner crooned, carefully flicking a speck of dust from the glistening fender. “Bugatti ’imself bust-a one up in a wreck, and now dey only six sonovabitch in ’ole gahdam-a world.”

  Immense is an ineffective word for such a car. Over a wheel-base of more than fourteen feet, the rounded box of the coupe-de-ville shrank in perspective when seen along the unobstructed length of the brobdingnagian hood. The front fenders rose high, then swept far back to form a running-board.

  “And-a look-a dis—”

  The mechanic was manipulating the intricate locks and handles that secured the hood, and with no small effort he threw it open. He pointed with uncontainable pride to the spotless engine, which resembled the power plant of a locomotive rather than that of an automobile. It must have been more than five feet long.

  “I have heard,” Simon said, “that if a Bugatti starts at all, it will start with just one pull on the crank.”

  “Dat’s-a-right. Sono raffinate—what you call, ’igh-strung like-a race ’orse—but when she fix-a right, she always start. I show you!”

  The man turned on the ignition, adjusted the hand throttle and the spark, and slipped the gleaming brass crank-handle into its socket. Then he waved the Saint to it with an operatic gesture.

  “You try it yourself, professore!”

  Simon stepped up, grasped the handle and engaged it carefully, and with a single coordinated effort gave it a crisp turn through a half-circle. Without a cough or a choke, the engine burst into responsive life, with a roar which did not entirely drown out a strangely pleasing metallic trill not unlike a battery of sewing machines in full stitch.

  “That,” said the Saint, raising his voice slightly, “would give me a lot of fun for a few days.”

  “No, no,” protested the owner. “Dat sonovabitch not-a for rent. Much-a too valuable, shoulda be in museum. I only show you…”

  His voice ran down as he stared at the currency which the Saint was peeling off the roll in his hand. The sum at which Simon stopped was perhaps wantonly extravagant, but to the Saint it did not seem too high to pay for the fun of having such a historic toy to play with. And after all, he reflected, it was only Al Destamio’s money.

  Thus, in due course, having gone back to collect his jacket while the rental paper-work was being prepared, after signing the necessary forms and being checked out on the controls, the Saint seated himself at the wheel, engaged first gear, and let up gently on the clutch. With a tremor of joy the mighty monster gathered itself and sprang through the open gates into the alley behind while its owner waved a dramatic and emotional farewell.

  For a motorist of refined perceptions, driving
a Bugatti is an experience like hearing the definitive performance of a classical symphony. Dynamic efficiency and supreme road-holding were the qualities that Bugatti wanted before anything else, and since he was a man incapable of compromise, that was what he obtained. The steering wheel vibrated delicately in the Saint’s fingers, like a live member, sensitive to his lightest touch; guidance was like cutting butter with a hot knife. There was a little more difficulty with slowing up, since Bugatti always intended his cars to go rather than stop, but this could be overcome by adroit down-shifting and extra assistance from the hand brake. Simon happily sounded the horn, which gave out a rich tuneful note like a trombone, as he passed groups of cheering urchins and gaping adults on his way out of the town. The engine boomed with delight, and the great length of the red hood surged forth into the countryside.

  Only too quickly the details of Ponti’s sketch map spun by until at a last turning he saw the Destamio manse before him. With some reluctance he turned off the pavement and parked under the shade of a tree.

  A high wall, topped with an unfriendly crest of broken bottles and shards of tile, surrounded the grounds and hid all of the house except the roof. He pressed a button beside a pair of massive iron-bound wooden doors, and waited patiently until at long last a medieval lock grated open and a smaller door set in one of the vast ones creaked open. A short swarthy woman in a maid’s apron peered out suspiciously.

  “Buona sera,” he said pleasantly. “My name is Templar, to see Donna Maria.”

  He stepped forward confidently, and the maid let him pass through. His first strategy was to give the impression that he was expected, and to go as far as he could on that momentum, but this was not enough to get him into the house. On the balustraded terrace which ran across the full width of the building, the maid waved him towards a group of porch furniture.

  “Wait here, if you please, signore. I will tell Donna Maria. What was the name?”

  Simon repeated it, and remained standing while he surveyed the house, a typically forbidding and cumbersome box-like structure of chipped and fading pink plaster with shutters that badly needed repainting, a shabby contrast with the well-kept and ordered brilliance of the garden. He had transferred his attention to that more agreeable scene when he heard a measured and heavy tread behind him, and turned again.

  “Donna Maria?” he said, with his most engaging smile, proffering his hand. “My name is Simon Templar. I am an old friend of your brother Alessandro. When he heard that I was coming to Palermo, he insisted that I should come and see you.”

  2

  The woman stood unmoving, except to glance down at his hand as if it were a long-dead fish. This expression perfectly fitted the lines around her mouth and flared nostrils, and was obviously one that she used a great deal. Her straggly mustache was black, but the mass of her hair, pulled back into a tight bun, was a dull steel-gray. She was a head shorter than the Saint, but at least twice his diameter, and this bulk was encased in a corset of such strength and inelasticity that there was little human about the resultant shape. In the traditionally characterless black dress outside it, she reminded him of a piano-legged barrel draped for mourning.

  “I never see my brother’s friends,” she said. “He keeps his business separate from his family life.”

  Just as no ornament relieved the drabness of her robe, no trace of cordiality tempered the chill of her words. Only a person with the Saint’s self-assurance and ulterior motives could have survived that reception, but his smile was brazenly unshaken.

  “That shows you how much he values our friendship. We were in the same business in America, where I come from—almost partners. So when I was at his villa in Capri the other day, for lunch, he made me promise to call on you.”

  “Why?”

  The question was a challenge and almost a rebuttal in advance. It was clear that Al Destamio did not send his friends to the ancestral demesne out of spontaneous good-fellowship—if he ever sent them at all. Simon realized that he would have to improve his excuse, and quickly, or in a few seconds he would be outside again with nothing achieved but a glimpse of the unprepossessing facades of Donna Maria and her lair.

  “Alessandro insisted that I should get to know you,” he said, allowing a rather sinister frigidity to creep into his own voice. “He told me what a good sister you were, and how he wanted to be sure that in any time of trouble you would know which of his friends to turn to.”

  The ambiguity reached a mark of some kind: at least, there was an instant’s uncertainty in the woman’s basilisk gaze, and afterwards a very fractional unbending in her adamantine reserve.

  “It has been a hot day, and you will enjoy a cold drink before you leave.”

  “You are much too hospitable,” said the Saint, achieving the miracle of keeping all sarcasm out of his reading.

  She made a sign to the maid, who had been pointedly waiting within range, and lowered herself stiffly into one of the chairs.

  Simon turned to choose a seat for himself, and in so doing was confronted by a vision which almost equalled his wildest expectations.

  Approaching through an archway of rambler roses, from a hedged area of the garden where she had apparently been taking a sunbath, was Gina Destamio, clad only in a bikini of such minuscule proportions that its two elements concealed little more of her than did her sunglasses. Her skin was a light golden-brown in the last rays of sunlight, and the ultimate details of her figure more than fulfilled every exquisite promise they had made under the dress in which he had last seen her. It was a sight to make even a hardened old pirate like Simon Templar toy with the idea of writing just one more sonnet.

  Not so Donna Maria, who sucked in her breath like an asthmatic vacuum cleaner, then let it whoosh out in a single explosive sentence, crackling with lightning and rumbling with volcanic tension. It was in dialect, of which Simon understood hardly a word, but its themes were abundantly clear from the intonation: shamelessness, disgracing a respectable family before a total stranger, and the basic depravity of the new generation. The thunderbolts sizzled around Gina’s tousled head, and she only smiled. Whatever other effect the Swiss finishing school might have had, it had certainly finished her awe of matriarchal dragons.

  She turned the same smile on the Saint, and he basked in it.

  “You must excuse me,” she said. “I did not know we had a visitor.”

  “You must excuse me for being here,” he replied. “But I refuse to say I am sorry.”

  She slipped leisurely into the cotton jacket which she had carried over her arm, while Donna Maria painfully forced herself to perform a belated introduction.

  “My niece, Gina. This is Signor Templar from America.”

  “Haven’t I seen you before?” Gina asked innocently, in perfect English.

  “I didn’t think you’d recognize me,” he answered in the same language. “You looked right through me to the wall behind, as if I were a rather dirty window that somebody had forgotten to wash.”

  “I’m sorry. But our rules here are very old-fashioned. It’s scandalous enough that I sometimes go into town alone. If I let myself smile back at anyone who hadn’t been properly introduced, I should be ruined for life. And even a nice Sicilian would get the wrong ideas. But now I’m glad that we have another chance.”

  “Non capisco!” Donna Maria hissed.

  “My aunt doesn’t speak English,” Gina said, and reverted to Italian. “Are you here for business or pleasure?”

  “I was beginning to think it was all business, but since your uncle sent me here it has suddenly become a pleasure.”

  “Not Uncle Alessandro? I am glad you know him. He has been so good to us here—”

  “Gina,” interrupted the chatelaine, her voice as gentle as a buzz-saw cutting metal, “I am sure the gentleman is not interested in our family affairs. He is only having a little drink before he leaves.”

  The maid returned from the house, opportunely, with a tray on which were bottles of ver
mouth, a bowl of ice, a siphon, and glasses.

  “How nice,” Gina said. “I am ready for one myself. Let me pour them.”

  Her aunt shot her a venomous glance which openly expressed a bitter regret that her niece was no longer at an age when she could be bent over a knee and disciplined properly. But the girl seemed quite oblivious to it, and the Dragon Queen could only glower at her back as she proceeded to pour and mix with quite sophisticated efficiency.

  “Have you seen much of Palermo yet?” Gina asked, as if seeking a neutral topic out of respect for her guardian’s blood-pressure.

  “Nothing much,” Simon said. “What do you think I should see?”

  “Everything! The Cathedral, the Palatine Chapel, Zisa, Casa Professa—and you should drive out to Monreale, it is only a few kilometers, and see the Norman cathedral and cloisters.”

  “I must do that,” said the Saint, with surprising enthusiasm for one who, in spite of his sobriquet, seldom included cathedrals and cloisters among his sightseeing objectives. “Perhaps you could come with me and tell me all about them.”

  “I would like to—”

  “My niece cannot accompany you,” Donna Maria rasped. “There are professional guides to do that.”

  Gina opened her mouth as if to protest, then seemed to think better of it. Apparently she knew from experience that such battles could not be won by direct opposition. But she gazed thoughtfully at the Saint, biting her lip, as though inviting him to think of some way to get around or over the interdiction.

  Simon raised his glass to the chaperone with a courteous “Salute!” and sipped it, wishing there had been more choice of beverage. His palate would never learn to accept the two vermouths as drinks in their own right, instead of as mere ghostly flavorings added to gin or bourbon respectively.

  “I did not want to cause any trouble,” he said. “But it was Alessandro’s suggestion that Gina might like to show me around.”

  Donna Maria glared at him sullenly—he could not decide whether she was more resentful at having to control an impulse to call him a liar, or at a disconcerting possibility that he might be telling the truth.