"Was this in Spanish?"
Simon shook his head and inwardly promised himself a kick in the pants at the first convenient opportunity. That made two bricks he had nearly dropped on the same dynamite; although there are few deceptions so difficult as to pretend ignorance of a familiar language.
"Maybe that was the trouble," he said. "But she said she understood. How much else did she get wrong?"
"She said you had finished with Palermo and you were going to take away the two men who were here."
Simon nodded.
"That's almost right, although I said I wanted you to take them away."
"What was she talking about?"
"Vanlinden and his pal."
"They were here?"
"Sure. This is where Aliston and Palermo brought them after they grabbed them in the hotel this morning!"
It was as if invisible nooses had been looped around the necks of his audience and suddenly tightened. Their eyes seemed to swell in their sockets, and their mouths opened as if their lungs had been unexpectedly deprived of air. Lauber's heavy, sullen features darkened, and Graner's brows drew together in an incredulous frown. Simon could see the shock he had sprung on them thump into the pits of their stomachs like a physical blow, so violent that it even robbed them of the ability to gasp.
Again Graner was the quicker to recover-although Simon reflected that this might have been partly accounted for by the fact that the announcement must have given Lauber a few extra things to think over on his own.
"How did you know?"
"Christine told me first," said the Saint. "Then Palermo and Aliston admitted it. I thought there was something fishy about their story that Joris and the other guy had cleared off on their own, when we knew they'd left Christine behind; but I didn't like to say so at the time."
"How did Christine know where they were?"
"She didn't. Aliston and Palermo brought me here."
"Why?"
The Saint rested himself sidesaddle on the edge of the table. He knew that he had his audience on a string now-whatever they might be thinking, they would drink in every word he had to say on the subject, even if they formed their own conclusions afterwards-and he saw no reason why he shouldn't make the most of his limelight while Hoppy and Joris removed themselves as far as possible from the vicinity.
"I'd better begin at the beginning," he said. "In the first place, I talked to Christine as soon as she awakened-told her the tale exactly as we arranged. She fell for it-well, like I fell down those blasted stairs. Bang! I made her believe I was serious about the proposition I was working up to when I put her to sleep, and we closed the deal on it. She told me plenty."
He paused to light a cigarette, while the other two waited impatiently. Their guns had drooped down until they were pointing at the floor, as if the two men had almost forgotten that they were still holding them.
"As far as this Joris business is concerned," he went on, "Christine told me she had a room on the floor below. She was just coming out of the bathroom when she heard Aliston's voice, and she ducked back in. She didn't dare to come out for about an hour. She stood there with the door open a crack, scared stiff and wondering what was going to happen. There were some heavy trunks brought downstairs while she was there-we can guess what they had in them. Then Palermo and Aliston came down - she could hear them talking. They went on after the trunks, and as soon as she could pull herself together she rushed up to Joris' room. He'd gone, and so had the other bloke. Once again, we can guess why and where and how. But she couldn't. She almost had a fit. Then she heard someone coming up the stairs, and she was afraid it might be Palermo or Aliston coming back. She just rushed into the nearest room, which happened to be mine. I gather that she had some sort of idea that she'd fall into the arms of anyone who was there and make him look after her. Since there wasn't anyone, she just stayed, having hysterics on and off. She didn't dare to go back to her own room, because she thought Palermo and Aliston would still be looking for her; in fact, she didn't dare to move at all. So that's how we found her."
It was a lovely story to reel off on the spur of the moment, thought the Saint, and wondered if he had really mistaken his vocation in life. One way and another, the complications of that fantastic game of beggar-my-neighbour in which he had got himself tied up were developing him into a master of the art of applied fiction beside whom Ananias would have looked like a barker outside a flea circus.
"But why did Palermo and Aliston bring you here?" Graner prompted him tensely.
"I'm getting to that. First of all, I shifted Christine. After what she told me, I guessed Palermo and Aliston might be beetling along as soon as they could after they heard your news, in case I found out they were double-crossing you. I moved her out of the hotel --"
"I told Manoel to follow you if you went out."
"I know that," said the Saint blandly. "I saw him standing on the other side of the square after you'd gone. He was frightfully decorative. But I'd already told you my terms of business, and I wasn't changing them. I took her out the back way."
"Aliston and Palermo were going to watch that."
"They were watching it-when I came back. That's how they caught me. They stuck a gun in my ribs and lugged me along here. They told me they were double-crossing you, and offered me a third share if I'd come in with them and throw Christine in the kitty."
Graner looked down at Palermo again for a moment, and in the pause that followed the Saint could hear Lauber's stertorous breathing.
"What did you tell them?" asked Graner.
"I told them what they could do with their third share," answered the Saint righteously. "Then they decided to make me tell them where Christine was with a hot spoon-or Palermo did. Aliston didn't seem to have a strong stomach, so he pushed off."
Simon turned his head and pointed to the blister on his cheek, and then down at the spoon which Palermo had dropped. Graner stepped forward and moved it with his foot. The scrap of carpet on which it had fallen was charred black.
The Saint could see those pieces of circumstantial evidence registering themselves on Graner's face.
"You didn't tell him?"
"He didn't get far enough with the treatment. He'd forgotten to have my feet tied, and I managed to kick him about a bit." Simon moved his cigarette significantly to indicate the evidence for the accuracy of that statement. "Then I promised the girl-she was here all the time, by the way, so 1 take it this is where Palermo keeps her-I promised her some money if she'd cut me loose, so she did. Then I sent her off to phone you, and looked around for Joris."
"He's here?"
The Saint moved his head slowly from left to right and back again.
"He was."
Simon hitched himself off the table, and Lauber's gun jerked up at him again. Simon went on elaborately ignoring it. He sauntered over to the door of the bedroom and waved his hand towards the interior. Graner and Lauber followed him. They stood there looking in at the rumpled coverlet and the pieces of cloth and cut rope which were scattered on the bed and the floor in silent testimony.
Graner's bright black eyes slid off the scenery and went back to the Saint.
"What happened to them?"
"I let them go," said the Saint tranquilly.
2 It would give the chronicler, whose devotion to his Art is equalled only by his distaste for work, considerable pleasure to discourse at some length on the overpowering silence which invaded the room and the visible reactions which took place in it-besides bringing him several pages nearer to the conclusion of this seventh chapter of the Saint saga. The fusillade of words which one reviewer has so lucidly likened to "a display of fancy shooting in which all the shots are beautifully grouped on the target an inch away from the bull" tugs almost irresistibly at his trigger finger. The simultaneous distension of Lauber's and Graner's eyes, the precise degree of roundness which shaped itself into Lauber's heavy lips, the tightening of Graner's thin straight mouth, the clenching of Lauber's
fists and the involuntary upward lift of Graner's gun- all these and many other important manifestations of emotion could be the subject of an essay in descriptive prose in which the historian could wallow happily for at least a thousand words. Only his anxious concern for the tired brains of his critics forces him to stifle the impulse and deprive literature of this priceless contribution.
But it was an impressive silence; and the Saint made the most of it. All the time he had been talking, he had known that he would inevitably have to answer Graner's last question: it had been as inescapably foredoomed as the peal of thunder after a flash of lightning, with the only difference that he had been able to lengthen the interval and give himself time to choose his reply. There had never been more than three posssibilities, and the Saint had worked them out and explored their probable consequences as far, ahead as his imagination would reach in an explosive intensity of concentration that crowded a day's work into a space of minutes.
Now he relaxed for a moment, while the result of the explosion sent the other two spinning through mental maelstroms of their own. He read murder in Graner's eyes, but he knew that curiosity would beat it by a short head.
"You let them go?" Graner repeated, when he had recovered his voice.
"Naturally," said the Saint, with undisturbed equanimity.
"What for?"
Simon raised his eyebrows.
"I'm supposed to be in cahoots with that outfit- or did I misunderstand you when we talked it over?"
"But those two --"
"They haven't got the tickets. I searched every stitch on them. Besides, Christine told me --"
"You're a damned liar!"
It was Lauber who interrupted, with his voice thick and choking. His gun pushed forward at the Saint's chest, and there was a flare of desperate fury in his face that gave the Saint all the confirmation he wanted.
Simon had foreseen it-it was one of the factors that he had weighed one against the other in his feverish analysis of the situation. If the story that Graner had taken back to the house had shaken the world of Palermo and Aliston to its foundations, it must have knocked the foundations themselves from under Lauber's. Simon had been expecting his intervention, even more than Graner's. He knew that for the moment he might have even more to fear from Lauber than from Graner, but he allowed none of his thoughts to move a muscle of his face.
He looked Lauber in the eye and said with a quiet significance which he hoped only Lauber would understand: "It won't hurt you to wait till you've heard what I've got to say before you call me a liar."
Doubt crept into Lauber's face. He was caught off his balance and didn't know how to go on, like a horse that has been sharply checked in front of a jump. The Saint had made him stop to think, and the pause was fatal. Lauber glared at him, held rigid between fear and perplexity; but he waited.
"What did Christine tell you?" said Graner.
"She told me herself that Joris and the other guy hadn't got the ticket. It's obvious, anyway-otherwise Palermo and Aliston would have had it by this time. They parked it somewhere."
The Saint glanced at Lauber again, with a measured meaning which could have conveyed nothing to anybody else. On the face of it, it was only the natural action of a man who wanted to keep two people in the conversation at once. But to the recipient it spoke a whole library of volumes. It told Lauber that the Saint was lying, told Lauber that the Saint meant him to know it, told Lauber that the Saint could also come out with the truth if he chose to and invited Lauber to play ball or consider the consequences. And Simon read the complete reception of the message in the way Lauber's gun sagged again out of the horizontal.
Graner was untouched by any such influence. He went on staring at the Saint with the vicious lines deepening on either side of his mouth.
"Where had they put it?"
Simon shrugged.
"I'm blowed if I know, Reuben. It doesn't seem to matter, either, because they've gone off to look for it."
"And you sent them off --"
The Saint lounged back against the door frame and regarded him pityingly.
"My dear ass," he said, "how many more times have I got to tell you that you need more of my brains? I've got Christine, haven't I? And they don't know where she is, and they haven't an earthly chance of finding out. I told them the same thing that I told you-that she's my hostage for a square deal. D'you think Joris will let anyone start any funny business while his daughter is in my hands?"
The Saint's first blow had punched Graner in the stomach and knocked the wind out of him. This one hit him under the chin. He took it with a slight involuntary backward jerk of his head which rearranged the expressive lines of his face. Comprehension hammered some of the cold malevolence out of his eyes.
"What else did you tell them?"
"I told them they could have till midnight to show me the ticket, or it would be too bad about Christine. When they've produced the ticket we'll go on talking business. It all came to me in a flash, after I'd sent the girl to phone you."
"Did they hear what you told her?"
"Yes. But that only made it more effective. It was as if I'd saved their lives. I told them I'd find a way to square you, and turned 'em loose. It was a brain wave. Why shouldn't we let them work for us? They're holding more cards than we are-let them play the hand for us. We can still pick up the stakes. I told them the deal I'd made with Christine, and made 'em see that they'd got to accept it. They had to fall into line, and they can't fall out. They haven't any choice left, and I made them see it. No ticket, no Christine."
Graner took the words into his system one by one and kept them there. The crisp, incontrovertible logic of the Saint's exposition crushed all the argument out of him.
Simon watched him with encouraging affability. He was beginning to get Graner's measure. The Saint treated his opponents like a boxer sizing up an antagonist in the ring, ruthlessly searching for the weaknesses that would open the way for a winning punch. Graner's weakness was his conceit of himself as a strategist: the appeal to a point of generalship was a bait that brought him on to the hook every time. And once again, as on the last occasion, Simon saw the murderous suspicion in Graner's gaze overshadowed by a glitter of unwilling respect.
The Saint's mocking blue eyes turned towards Lauber; and the expression on the big man's face completed the picture in its own way.
"I guess I'm due for an apology," he said slowly. "You were too far ahead of me."
"I usually am," said the Saint modestly. "But you get used to that after a while."
Graner seemed to become aware that he was still holding his automatic pointed at the Saint. He looked down at it absently and put it away in his pocket.
"If you can go on like this," he said, "you will have no reason to regret joining us. I can use someone like you; especially . . ."
He turned slowly round as a muffled groan interrupted him. Lauber turned also. They all looked at Palermo, who was sitting up with one hand holding his jaw and the other clasping the back of his head.
". . . especially as there will be some vacancies in the organisation," Graner said corrosively.
Palermo stared up at them, his face grey and pasty, while the meaning of his position was borne in upon him and he made a desperate effort to drag some reply out of his numbed and aching brain. Lauber drew a deep breath, and his under lip jutted savagely. He took three steps across the room and grasped Palermo's coat lapels in one of his big-boned hands, dragging him almost to his feet and shaking him like a rag doll.
"You dirty little double-crossing rat!" he snarled.
Palermo struggled feebly in the big man's savage grip.
"What have I done?" he demanded shrilly. "You can't say that to me. He's the guy who's double-crossing us-Tombs! Why don't you do something about him --"
Lauber drew back his free fist and knocked Palermo spinning with a brutal blow on the mouth.
"Say that again, you louse," he grated. "Last night you were trying t
o make out I was double-crossing you. Now it's Tombs. It 'll be Graner next."
Simon put his hands in his pockets and made himself comfortable against the door, prepared to miss none of the riper gorgeousness of Lauber's display of righteous indignation. The spectacle of the ungodly falling out with one another could have diverted him for some time; but Reuben Graner intervened.
"That will do, Lauber," he said in his soft, evil voice. "Have you anything to say, Palermo?"
"It's a frame-up!" panted the Italian. "Tombs came here and beat me up --"
"Did you have Joris and another man here?"
"I never saw them!"
"Tombs-and Maria-saw them here."
"They're lying."
"Then how do you explain the ropes on the bed? And why did you bring Tombs here? And why were you going to torture Tombs?"
Palermo swallowed, but no words came from his throat for a full half minute.
"I can explain," he began, and then the words dried up again before the concentrated malignity of Graner's gaze.
"You have taken a long time to think of your explanation," Graner said coldly. "We will see if you have anything better to say at the house. If not-I fear that we shall not miss you very much. . . ."
He turned to Lauber.
"Take him down to the car."
Palermo gasped, hesitated, and made a sudden bolt for the door. But the hesitation lost him any chance he might have had. Lauber caught him by the coat and wrapped his arms round him in a bear hug in which Palermo writhed and kicked as futilely as a child. Palermo got one hand to the coat pocket where he had once had a gun; and when he found it empty he let out one short squeal of terror like a trapped rabbit.
Simon picked up the cord that had been cut away from his own wrists, and sorted out enough of it to tie Palermo's hands behind his back, while Lauber kept hold of him.
"Aliston may be coming back here," he remarked, as he went through to the bedroom to fetch one of the gags which had been left there.
"I had thought of that." Graner held the knob of his slender cane between his thumb and forefinger and swung it like a pendulum. "They took the other car when they went out."
18 The Saint Bids Diamonds (Thieves' Picnic) Page 15
