Vendetta for the Saint (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  Clearly revealed by the moonlight was the print of a greasy hand.

  4

  Simon very carefully withdrew the key, stepped down to the road again, and went around to examine the hood more closely. But the print seemed to have disappeared. Bending over until his face almost touched the metal, he sighted towards the radiator and found the mark again, a dull slur in the reflected moonlight.

  A ghostly breath stirred the hairs on the nape of his neck as he realized how narrowly he might have missed that discovery. If he had come out a few minutes earlier or later, the moon would not have been striking the hood at the precise angle required to show it up. Or if he had not already been keyed to the finest pitch of vigilance, he might still have thought nothing of it. But now he could only remember how affectionately the garage owner had wiped the hood again after showing him the engine, and he knew with certainty that there could have been no such mark on it when he set out. He had not stopped anywhere on the way, to give anyone a chance to approach the machine before he parked it there. Therefore the mark had been made since he arrived, while he was enjoying Donna Maria’s hospitality.

  With the utmost delicacy he manipulated the fastenings of the hood and opened it up. The pencil flashlight that he was seldom without revealed that the mammoth engine was still there, but with a new feature added that would have puzzled Signor Bugatti.

  A large wad of something that looked like putty had been draped over the rear of the engine block and pressed into shape around it. Into this substance had been pushed a thin metal cylinder, something like a mechanical pencil, from which two slender wires looped over and lost themselves in the general tangle of electrical connections.

  With surgically steady fingers the Saint extracted the metal tube, then gently and separately pulled the wires free from their invisible attachments. Deprived of its detonator, the plastic bomb again became as harmless as the putty it so closely resembled.

  “This one almost worked, Al,” he whispered softly. “And if it had, I’d have had only myself to blame. I underestimated you. But that won’t happen again…”

  There were some excellent fingerprints in the plastic material where the demolition expert had squeezed it into place, doubtless in all confidence that there would be nothing left of them to incriminate him. Taking care not to damage them, Simon peeled the blob off the engine and put it in the trunk, wedging it securely where it could not roll around when he drove.

  He cranked up the engine and drove slowly and pensively back to Palermo, the impatient motor growling a basso accompaniment to his thoughts.

  It was easy enough now to understand everything that had been puzzling before. Donna Maria’s first absence from the terrace had given her time to telephone Al Destamio on Capri and ask for confirmation of the alleged friendship. Al’s reaction could be readily imagined. He would already have learned of the failure of the first assassination attempt, and the revelation that the Saint had had the effrontery to head straight for the Destamio mansion and blarney his way in, instead of thankfully taking the next plane for some antipodean sanctuary, must have done wondrous things to his adrenalin production. The dinner invitation must have followed on his orders, to keep the Saint there long enough for another hatchet man to be sent there to arrange a more final and effective termination of the nuisance.

  And this deduction made Donna Maria’s bit part somewhat more awesome. Throughout the dinner and crocodile congeniality, she had been setting him up like a clay pipe in a shooting gallery. That was why she could afford to give in so readily on the question of granting permission for Gina to go out with him the next day: she had been complacently certain that the Saint would not be around to hold her to the promise. Only one interesting speculation remained—had she known just how violently it had been intended to insure his non-appearance?

  Simon tooled the big car in through the garage entrance of the hotel and slipped it into an empty stall. As the thunder of the engine died away, he was aware of an even heightened resentment.

  It was bad enough to be continually sniped at himself, the perplexed target of an incomprehensible vendetta. But now these monsters had exposed the utter depths of their depravity by their willingness to destroy that historic treasure of a car merely in the process of putting a bomb under him.

  It followed imperatively that no extra effort could be spared to insure that Al Destamio spent the most troubled night that could be organized for him. Even if the effort involved the prodigious hazards of trying to inaugurate a long-distance telephone communication against the obstacles of the hour and the antiquated apparatus available.

  The phone in Simon’s room was apparently dead, and only a great deal of bopping on the button and some hearty thumps on the bell box succeeded in restoring it to a simulacrum of life. The resultant thin buzzing was presently interrupted by the yawning voice of the desk clerk, obviously resentful at being disturbed.

  “I would like to call Capri,” said the Saint.

  “It is not easy at night, signore. If you would wait until morning—”

  “It would be too late. I want the call now.”

  “Sissignore,” sibilated the clerk, in a tone of injured dignity.

  There followed a series of rasping sounds, not unlike a coarse file caressing the edge of a pane of glass, followed by a voiceless silence. Far in the distance could be heard the dim rush of an electronic waterfall, and Simon shouted into it until another voice spiralled up from the depths. It was the night operator in Palermo, who was no more enthused about trying to establish a telephonic connection at that uncivilized hour than the hotel clerk had been. Too late Simon realized the magnitude of the task he had undertaken, but he was not going to back out now.

  With grim politeness he acceded to obstructive demands for an infinitude of irrelevant information, of which the name and location of residence of the person he was calling and his own home address and passport number were merely a beginning, until the operator tired first and consented to essay the impossible.

  The line remained open while the call progressed somewhat less precipitately than Hannibal’s elephants had crossed the Alps.

  A first hazard seemed to be the water surrounding the island of Sicily. It could only have been in his imagination, but Simon had a vivid sensation of listening to hissing foam and crashing waves as the connection forced its way through a waterlogged cable, struggling with blind persistence to reach the mainland. The impression was affirmed when a mainland operator was finally reached and the watery noises died away to a frustrated background susurration.

  For a few minutes the Palermo operator and this new link in the chain exchanged formalities and incidental gossip, and at last reluctantly came to the subject of Simon’s call. A mutual agreement was reached that, though the gamble was sure to fail, the sporting thing would be at least to try whether the call could be pushed any further. Both operators laughed hollowly at the thought, but switches must have been thrown, because a hideous grumbling roar like a landslide swallowing an acre of greenhouses rose up and drowned their voices.

  Simon lighted his remaining cigarette, crumpled the empty pack, and made himself as comfortable as possible. The phone was beginning to numb his ear, and he changed to the other side.

  There was more of the ominous crunching, periodically varying in timbre and volume, and after a long while the second operator’s voice struggled back to the surface.

  “I am sorry, I have not been able to reach Naples. Would you like to cancel the call?”

  “I would not like to cancel the call,” Simon said relentlessly. “I can think of no reason why you should not reach Naples. It was there this morning, and it must be there now, unless there has been another eruption of Mount Vesuvius.”

  “I do not know about that. But all the lines to Naples are engaged.”

  “Try again,” said the Saint encouragingly. “While we are talking someone may have hung up or dropped dead. Persevere.”

  The operator mumbled s
omething indistinguishable, which Simon felt he was probably better off for not hearing, and the background of crashings and inhuman groanings returned again. But after another interminable wait, persistence was rewarded by a new voice saying “Napoli.”

  Reaching Capri from Naples was no worse than anything that had gone before, and it was with a justifiable thrill of achievement that Simon at last heard the ringing of Destamio’s phone through the overtones of din. Eventually someone answered it, and Simon shouted his quarry’s name at the top of his voice.

  “Il Signore is busy,” came the answer. “He cannot be disturbed. You must call again in the morning.”

  After all he had been through, the Saint was not going to be stopped there.

  “I do not care how busy he is,” he said coldly. “You will tell him that this call is from Sicily, and I have news that he will want to hear.”

  There was an explosive crackle as if the entire instrument at the other end had been shattered on a marble slab, and for a while Simon thought the servant had summarily disposed of the problem by hanging up, but he held on, and presently another voice spoke, with grating tones that even the telephone’s distortions could not completely disguise.

  “Parla, ascolto!”

  The Saint stubbed out the remains of his last cigarette and finally relaxed.

  “Alessandro, my dear old chum, I knew you’d be glad to hear from me, even at this hour.”

  “Who’s-a dat?”

  “This is Simon Templar, Al, you fat gob of overcooked macaroni. Just calling to tell you that your comic-opera assassins have flunked again—and that I don’t want them trying any more. I want you to call them off, chum.”

  “I dunno what ya talkin’ about, Saint.” There was a growing note of distress in the harsh voice as it assimilated the identity of the caller. “Maybe you drink too much wine tonight. Where you calling from?”

  “From my hotel in Palermo, which I’m sure you can easily find. But don’t send any more of your stooges here to annoy me. The firework they planted in my car while Donna Maria was being so hospitable didn’t go off. But I found out a lot of interesting things during my visit, to add on to what I knew before. And I wanted to tell you that I’ve just put all this information on paper and deposited it in a place from which it will be forwarded to a much less accommodating quarter than your tame maresciallo here, if anything happens to me. So tell your goons to lay off, Al.”

  “I don’t understand! Are you nuts?” blustered Destamio, almost hysterically. “What you tryin’ to do to me?”

  “You’ll find out,” said the Saint helpfully. “And I hope your bank account can stand it. Meanwhile, pleasant dreams…”

  He replaced the receiver delicately in its bracket, and then dropped the entire contraption into the wastebasket, where it whirred and buzzed furiously and finally expired.

  As if on cue, there followed a light tapping on the door.

  The Saint took his precautions about opening it. There was still the possibility that some of Destamio’s henchmen might be working on general instructions to scrub him—it would certainly take time for countermanding orders to circulate, even if the Mafia had also penetrated the telephone service. Until the word had had time to get around, he was playing it safe.

  Marco Ponti entered, and eyed with mild surprise the gun that was levelled at his abdomen. Then he calmly kicked the door shut behind him.

  “That is a little inhospitable,” he remarked. “And illegal too, unless you have an Italian license for that weapon.”

  “I was going to ask you how to get one, the next time I saw you,” said the Saint innocently, and caused the weapon to vanish and be forgotten. “But I was not expecting you to call at such an hour as this, amico.”

  “I am not being social. I wanted to hear how your visit turned out. And I have learned something that may be of value to you.”

  “I would like one of your cigarettes while you give me your news. It may have some bearing on what I can tell you.”

  “I hardly expect that,” Ponti said, throwing his pack of Nazionali on the table. “It is only that you gave me a name, and like a good policeman I have checked the records. Though you may sneer—and I sometimes sneer myself at the midden heaps of records we keep—occasionally we find a nugget in the slag. I searched for the name you gave me, the murdered bank clerk, Dino Cartelli. I found nothing about him except the facts of his death. But I also found the record of another Cartelli, his elder brother, Ernesto, who was killed by the Fascisti.”

  Simon frowned.

  “Now I’m out of my depth. Why should that be worth knowing?”

  “In his early days, Il Duce had a campaign to wipe out the Mafia—perhaps on the theory that there was only room for one gang of crooks in the country, and he wanted it to be his gang. So for a while he shot some of the small fry and hung others up in cages for people to laugh at. Later on, of course, the Mafia joined forces with him, they were birds of a feather—but that is another story. At any rate, in one of the early raids, Ernesto Cartelli shot it out with the Blackshirts, who proved to be better shots.”

  “Do you mean,” Simon ventured slowly, “that since Ernesto was a mafioso, his brother Dino may have been one too?”

  “It is almost certain—though of course it cannot be proved. But the Mafia is a closed society, very hard to enter, and when anyone is a member it usually means that his other close male relatives are members too.”

  The Saint’s eyes narrowed in thought as he inhaled abstractedly and deeply from the strong Italian cigarette—an indiscretion which he instantly regretted.

  “So the Mafia keeps coming back into the picture,” he said. “Al Destamio is in it, now it seems that Dino Cartelli was probably in it, whether or not they are the same person, and they have me at the top of their list of people to be dispensed with. I knew you would be glad to hear that they tried again tonight to put me out of the way.”

  “Not at the Destamio house?”

  “Just outside it. If they had succeeded, it might even have broken some windows.”

  Simon told the story of his macabre evening, and the fortunate discovery that had not quite ended it.

  “And there are some wonderful fingerprints in the plastic, which is still intact,” he concluded.

  “That is splendid news,” Ponti said delightedly. “These Mafia scum can usually get out of anything by producing armies of false witnesses, but it is another matter to witness away fingerprints. At least this will tell us who placed the bomb, and he may lead us to someone else.”

  “I was sure you would be happy about my narrow escape from death,” said the Saint ironically.

  “My dear friend, I am overjoyed. May you have many more such close scrapes, and each time bring back evidence like that. You did bring it back, of course?”

  Simon grinned, and tossed him the car keys.

  “You will find it in the trunk. Leave the keys under the front seat, they will be safe enough there. I think Alessandro will take time to think out his next move.”

  “I hope he does not take too long,” said the detective. “But whenever you want to get in touch with me again, I will give you a number to call.” He scribbled on a page from his notebook, tore it out, and handed it to Simon. “This is not the questura, but a place which can be trusted with any messages you leave, and which can always find me very quickly.” He turned and opened the door, with unconcealed impatience to get to the garage and the evidence there. “Goodnight, and good luck.”

  “The same to you,” said the Saint.

  He locked and bolted the door again, just on general principles, but he went to sleep as peacefully as a child. It had been a full and merry day, and the morrow was likely to be even livelier. Which only sustained his contented conviction that the world was a beautiful place to have fun in.

  CHAPTER FOUR:

  HOW THE SAINT WENT TO A GRAVEYARD AND DON PASQUALE MADE A PROPOSAL

  1

  Promptly at t
en the next morning Simon announced his arrival outside the walls of the Destamio estate with a brazen call on the Bugatti’s horn which rebounded satisfactorily from the neighboring hills, incidentally triggering the responsive barking of dogs and a rattle of wings as a startled flock of pigeons whirled overhead, before he confirmed the announcement of his arrival more conventionally with a tug on the bell-pull at the entrance.

  He did not think there was much danger that Destamio would have prepared to sacrifice his own parental portals with another charge of explosive tied to the bell, but aside from that he had no idea what he expected. Would there be another more personalized elimination squad waiting to lay on the welcome to end all welcomes, or would Destamio have refused to believe that the Saint would have the nerve to come back and claim his date with Gina? Would Donna Maria at this moment be frantically telephoning to ask what she should do now, while Gina was being hastily incarcerated in whatever version of a medieval dungeon could be found in the establishment? Or would the house simply remain inscrutably deaf and blind to him as to an unwelcome salesman until he gave up and went away? There had been only one way to find out, and that was to go there and ring the bell and see what happened.

  What happened was that the gate opened and Gina came out into the sunlight with her graceful step that was like dancing, and Simon smiled with sudden joy as he held the car door for her.

  Whatever might be coming next, at least the adventure was not going to wallow to a soggy halt.

  “This is much more than I seriously expected,” he said, once she had settled into the leather seat and the great car had made its thunderous take-off.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I was afraid your aunt would have changed her mind about letting you go on this expedition, or talked you out of it.”