18 The Saint Bids Diamonds (Thieves' Picnic)

by Leslie Charteris

  Graner gazed at him steadily for a few seconds without smiling.

  "We will leave that for the moment," he said at length. "What is your experience?"

  "I was fourteen years with Asscher's, in Amsterdam."

  "You look young for that."

  "I started very young."

  "Why did you leave?"

  "They missed some stones," answered the Saint, with a sly and significant grin.

  "Were you ever in the hands of the police?"

  "No. It was just suspicion."

  "What have you been doing since then?"

  "Odd jobs, when I could get them."

  Reuben Graner took an apple-green silk handker­chief out of his breast pocket, folded it neatly, and fanned himself delicately with it. A whiff of expensive perfume crept into the air.

  "Did Felson tell you what was expected of you?" he asked.

  "I gathered that you want me to cut up some stones without being too inquisitive about where they came from."

  "That is more or less correct."

  The Saint settled himself more comfortably in his chair.

  "As far as I'm concerned, it's a bet," he remarked. "But what about the strong-arm stuff?"

  Graner's thin fingers drummed on the edge of the table.

  "I don't understand you."

  "The sleeping-beauty chorus. The three little pigs." Simon waved his hand in a lazy gesture of explanation. "They look as if they'd been up to something rougher than cutting diamonds and doing a bit of knitting on the side."

  Again that intense silence settled on the room. Palermo moved slightly in his chair, and the creak of the leather sounded deafening in the stillness. Simon could feel the eyes boring into him from four directions, rigid and unwinking in their sockets; but he filtered a streamer of smoke through his lips with languid unconcern.

  "We also missed some stones," Graner said evenly. "Your predecessor had been becoming-difficult. It was necessary to deal with him."

  Simon surveyed the other three again and raised his eyebrows admiringly.

  "He must have been pretty useful with his hands, anyway," he murmured. "He seems to have done a spot of dealing on his own."

  Aliston's pink face became a shade pinker, but none of the men moved or answered. They just sat there, watching him steadily in silence.

  Graner refolded his handkerchief, tucked it back into his pocket and occupied himself with arranging for just too much of it to peep out. Presently he spoke as if he hadn't noticed the Saint's comment: "You had better leave your hotel, Tombs. There is quite enough room for you here."

  "That's very hospitable," Simon said dubiously. "But---"

  "We need not discuss the matter. It is simply an elementary and advisable precaution. If you are staying in a hotel you are obliged to register with the police, which for our purposes may be an inconvenience. The police call for lists of all the guests staying in the hotels here, and if you're not registered you can get into trouble. But nobody can call for a list of my guests, so nobody knows whether they have registered or not."

  The Saint nodded comprehendingly, and the movement was quite spontaneous. A few hours ago he would have said that he knew everything there was to know about the world of crime, but this was an aspect of it. that had never occurred to him. Santa Cruz de Tenerife was the last place on earth to which he would have set out on a blind search for boodle, if it had not been for the clue that had fallen accidentally into his hands. And yet the more he thought of it, now, the more perfect a location it seemed to be. A free port, where anything the gang brought with them from their expeditions in Europe could be disembarked without any of the attendant risks of a customs examination. A Spanish province that was nevertheless a long way from Spain and on the routes of some of the main seaways of the world, where anyone coming from the peninsula could land without even being asked to show identification papers at the time of landing. A place where such police as there were not only shared all the characteristic inertia and incompetence of their brethren on the mainland, but combined with them some original Canarian fatuities of their own. And, finally, the last spot on the globe where anyone would think of even starting to look for the headquarters of a gang of international thieves-even as the Saint himself had never thought of looking there before.

  "You certainly have thought of everything, haven't you?" he said lightly. "All the same, if I beetle up herefirst thing in the morning --"

  "You will stay here tonight." The Saint frowned.

  "A couple of girls that I met on the boat are staying at the hotel, and I made a date to give them lunch tomorrow," he pointed out. "They'll think it odd if I don't turn up."

  "You can make your excuses."

  "But --"

  "You will stay here tonight."

  Graner's tone was flat and expressionless, and yet it had a smug insolence that brought the blood to the Saint's head. He stood up, and Graner stood up also.

  "That's all very well, dear old bird," Simon said gently. "But what is this-a job or a prison? Even with your beauty --"

  Without the flicker of an eyelash, Graner brought up his left hand and slapped the Saint sharply across the face. Almost in the same movement a gun appeared in his right, levelled quite steadily at the centre of the Saint's chest.

  Simon felt as if a sudden torrent of liquid fire poured along his veins, and every muscle in his body went tense. The fingernails cut into his palms with the vio­lent contraction of his fists. How he ever managed to hold himself in check was a miracle beyond his understanding.

  "There are one or two things you had better make up your mind to understand, Tombs," Graner was say­ing, in the same flatly arrogant tone. "In the first place, I dislike flippancy-and familiarity."

  He made a slight movement with the automatic.

  "Also-apart from this-it is impossible for any­body to leave this house without my permission."

  His gaze did not shift from the Saint's face, where the marks of his fingers were printed in dark red on the tanned skin.

  "If you intend to work for me, you will accept any orders I give-without question."

  Simon looked down at the gun. Without knowing how quick the other was with the trigger, he estimated that he had a sporting chance of knocking the gun aside and landing an iron, fist where it would obliterate the last traces of any beauty that Graner might ever have had, before anyone else could move. But there were still the other three men who were behind him now-besides the dogs outside, and however many more discouraging gadgets there might be outside the house.

  That moment's swift and instinctive reckoning of his chances was probably what helped to save him. And in that time he also forced himself to realise that the fleeting pleasure of pushing Graner's front teeth through the back of his neck would ring down the curtain on his only hope of doing what he had come there to do.

  The liquid fire cooled down in his veins-cooled down below normal until it was like liquid ice. The red mist cleared from before his eyes and was absorbed invisibily but indelibly by the deepest wellsprings of his will. Reuben Graner would live long enough to be dealt with. The Saint could wait; and the waiting would only make the reckoning more enjoyable when the time came.

  "If you put it like that," he said, with as much sheepishness as he could infuse into his voice, "I guess you're probably right."

  Slowly the tension that had crept into the room relaxed. Simon almost fancied he could hear the other three draw the first breaths they had taken since the incident started. Only Graner did not need to relax, because he had never been gripped in the same tension. He put the gun away and fanned himself again with his scented handkerchief, as if nothing had happened, with his cold, unblinking eyes still fixed on the Saint.

  "I will show you to your room," he said. "In the morning I will drive you down to the hotel to collect your luggage."

  2 Which, looked at upwards or downwards or sideways, was just about as jolly a complication as one could imagine, Simon Templar reflected when h
e was left alone.

  He sat on the side of the bed and lighted another cigarette, considering the situation.

  After all, he had asked for it. If he had waited a little longer to think what his impulse might lead to, he might have realised that it was open for something like that to happen. He could see Graner's point of view with the greatest clarity. To leave a new and untried recruit to go wandering about Santa Cruz, talking to anyone he might pick up, was a fairly obvious error to avoid. And thinking it over, the Saint feared that in his conversation with Graner he hadn't exactly given the impression that he was a man who could be relied on to guard his tongue.

  But that was done, and it wasn't much use worrying about it. Anyway he was in the house, which was where he had wanted to be-only he had got there about twelve hours too early. And the only thing left was to decide what he was going to do about it.

  Presently he got up and walked over to the window. It was shuttered in the Spanish style, but as far as he could discover the shutters were not made to open. The louvres could be turned up or down, to let in as much air or daylight as the inhabitant wanted; but the inhabitant would have had to slice himself into rashers to get himself out through the openings.

  Simon looked around the room. It was furnished comfortably enough, although the optical effect was shattered by the same dreadful conflict of colour schemes that characterised the room downstairs. But it contained nothing which could have been used to open the shuttering-unless one heaved the bed through it, which would be difficult to do without caus­ing a certain amount of commotion.

  He moved very softly to the door and turned the handle without a sound. Somewhat to his surprise it was not locked: it opened without a creak of the hinges, and he slipped noiselessly out on to the veranda that ran round the patio. Down below he could hear a muffled mutter of voices, but it was so faint that it seemed impossible that the men who were speaking could have heard anyone moving about upstairs, even with a normal tread. The Saint didn't even take that risk. He could move as silently as a cat, and the tiled flooring ruled out the possibility of any squeaking boards that might have given him away. He stood looking at the veranda. It was enclosed from top to bottom with fine-meshed fly-netting which was almost as effective an obstacle as the window shutters. Whether he could open some of it up with his knife -- "Wanting anything?"

  The voice made him spin round. He had not heard anyone come up the stairs; but Aliston was there, standing at the head of them with his hands in his pockets.

  "I was just looking for the bathroom," answered the Saint calmly.

  "Second door down."

  The Saint went on and let himself in. He was there long enough to note that the bathroom window was also closed with a similar shutter to the one in his own room. He was ready to believe that all the windows in the house were the same; and he realised that be­sides making it difficult to get out, the arrangement was also another difficulty in the way of getting in.

  When he came out of the bathroom Aliston was still standing at the head of the stairs. The Saint said good night to him, and Aliston answered conventionally.

  Simon sat on his bed again and gazed sourly at the heliotrope-distempered walls. He was inside, all right -he didn't have to worry about that any more. And he knew now why Graner hadn't locked him up. There was nothing about the door to indicate it, but he was certain that it contained some device which gave a warning when it was opened. Graner seemed to have a weakness for electrical gadgets, and very effective the Saint had to admit they were. . . . He also knew why Aliston had spoken to him instead of remaining hidden to watch him. They had let him use up the only plausible excuse he had for leaving the bedroom, so that any future excursions would want much more explaining.

  And that made him wonder if they were only waiting for a chance to trap him. Simon faced the possibility cold-bloodedly. From the beginning he had known that he was gambling on the darkness and the hat that had been pulled down over his eyes during the fight, as much as on the psychological fact that by walking straight into the lion's den immediately afterwards he was giving himself as good an alibi as he could hope to have. But one of the three men might have had suspicions, although nothing had been said when he was downstairs. Even now they might be talking about it.

  He put the thought firmly out of his mind again. If they suspected him, they suspected him. But if it had been more than suspicion, he doubted whether he would have been sent to bed so peacefully. And if there was any suspicion, a lot of things could happen before it became certainty.

  Meanwhile there were more urgent things to think about. Joris and Christine Vanlinden were still at the hotel, and he could do nothing about them. The only help they had was Hoppy Uniatz, and the Saint smiled a little wryly as he computed how much help Mr Uni­atz was likely to be.

  He undressed himself slowly, visualising every other angle of the situation that he could think of.

  He was about ready for bed when he heard the noise of a car that sounded as if it stopped very close to the house, and he went to the window again and looked out. But he was on the side of the house farthest from the road, and he could see nothing. The sound of a door slamming certainly came from within the grounds. He stood there listening, and presently the car started up again. It came slowly round the corner of the house and passed underneath his window on its way to the garage; but although he waited for several minutes longer he could discover nothing else. The voices went on downstairs, and they were still talking when he fell asleep.

  His problems were still unsolved when he was awakened by his door opening. Lauber put an unshaven face into the room.

  "Time to get up," he said shortly, and went out again.

  The sky outside, which had apparently not been informed of what the guidebooks were saying about it, was leaden and overcast, and there was a damp chill in the air that smelt like impending rain. Still, with all its defects, it was a new day; and the Saint was pre­pared to be hopeful about it. He went along to the bathroom, where he found and borrowed somebody else's razor; and he had just finished dressing when Lauber came in again.

  "I'll show you the dining room."

  "Is the weather always like this?" Simon asked as they went down the stairs.

  Lauber's only response to the conversational opening was a vague mumble; and Simon wondered whether his sulky humour was solely due to the sore head from which he must have been suffering or whether it had some other contributory cause.

  Graner was already in the dining room, sitting up in his prim old-maidish way behind the coffee pot and reading a book. He looked up and said good morning to the Saint, and returned at once to his reading. Palermo and Aliston were not visible.

  Since there was no obvious encouragement to idle chatter, Simon picked up a newspaper that was lying on the table and glanced over it while he tried un­satisfactorily to break his fast with the insipid ration of rolls and butter which the Latin countries seem to consider sufficient foundation for a morning's work, reflecting that that was probably why they never man­aged to do a morning's work.

  Almost as soon as he took up the sheet the headlines leapt to his eye. The press of Tenerife is accustomed to devote three or four columns inside the paper to the inexplicable gyrations of Spanish politicians; a European war can count on two or three paragraphs in the "Information from Abroad"; the front page leads are invariably devoted to a solemn discussion of the military defence of the Canary Islands, which every good Canarian is convinced that other nations are only waiting for an opportunity to seize; and the local red-hot news, the sizzling sensation of the day, rates half a column under the standard heading of "The Event of Last Night"-there never having been more than one event in a day, and that usually being something like the earth-shaking revelation that a couple of citizens started a fight in some tavern and were thrown out. But for once the military defence of the Canary Islands and the prospects of luring more misguided tourists to Tenerife had been ousted from their customary place of honour.r />
  Under the headings of "The Shocking Outrage of Last Night" and "Unprecedented Outbreak of Gangsterismo in Tenerife" a thrilling story was unfolded. It appeared that a pareja of guardias de asalto had been patrolling the outskirts of Santa Cruz the previous night when they heard the sound of shooting. Hastening towards the nearest telephone to give the alarm, they happened to come upon two sinister individuals who were assisting a third, who appeared to be unconscious, into a car. The circumstances seeming suspicious, the guardias called on them to stop, whereupon the criminals opened fire. One of the guardias, Arturo Solona, of the Calle de la Libertad, whose father is Pedro Solona, the popular proprietor of the butcher shop in the Calle Ortega, whose younger daughter, as everyone will remember, was recently married to Don Luis Hernándéz y Perez, whose brother, Don Francisco Hernándéz y Perez is the manager of the sewage works, fell to the ground cry­ing, "They have killed me!" (Anyone who is shot in a Spanish newspaper nearly always falls to the ground crying, "They have killed me," just for luck; but this one was right, they had killed him.) The other guardia, Baldomero Gil, who is the nephew of Ramon Jalan, who won the first prize at the recent horticul­tural exhibition with his three-kilo banana, advanced courageously towards a pile of stones which were a little way behind him, from which he continued to ex­change shots with the fugitives, emptying his magazine twice, but apparently without hitting any of them.

  At the same time, a pareja of guardias civiles, Jose Benitez and Guillermo Diaz, having heard the shoot­ing, were on their way to headquarters to report the occurrence when they also chanced to encounter the criminals, who were driving off. They also fired many shots, apparently without effect; but at an answering volley from the gangsters, Benitez fell to the ground, endeavouring to uphold the reputation of his unit for lightning diagnosis by crying as he fell, "They have wounded me!" He had indeed got a bullet through his ear, and the paper took pains to point out that only a miracle could have saved his life, because the bullet had clearly been travelling in the direction of his head.

  Unfortunately a miracle hadn't saved his life; because in the stop press it was revealed that he had subsequently died in the small hours of the morning, leaving Arturo Solona unquestionably supreme in the field of prophecy, after which the doctors had discovered that he had another bullet in his stomach which nobody had noticed until then. The bandits meanwhile had been swallowed up by the night, and the police were still searching for them.