18 The Saint Bids Diamonds (Thieves' Picnic)

by Leslie Charteris

  A kick like the piston of a locomotive went into it, built up from the shift of the Saint's weight and the scientific turning of his body and the supple muscles of his back and shoulders. Every ounce of his weight and strength from the tips of his toes up to his wrist went into the job of impregnating the punch with the power of dynamite. Simon wanted no more delays: he knew how much it took to affect Lauber's constitution and generously gave him everything that he had. The blow sogged into Lauber's stomach, just below the place where his ribs parted, with a force that drove the flesh back four inches before Simon's knuckles had finished travelling.

  Lauber gave a queer sharp cough, and his knees melted. Simon jarred his right fist up under the jaw as Lauber's head came forward, just for luck; he didn't wait to see any more.

  The chauffeur, who couldn't have been at all sure which side he was on by that time, made a half-hearted attempt to grab him as he ducked for the door. Simon detonated a brisk jab squarely on his nose and tripped him neatly as he staggered back. A second later he was taking the first flight of stairs at one leap.

  He dodged round a couple of corners and found a taxi rank. He tossed a coin in his mind as he jerked open the door of the nearest cab.

  "San Francisc' ochenta," he ordered, as the driver started his engine.

  He lighted a cigarette as he settled back, and calmly considered what he had done in the last few seconds. He had dealt violently with both Lauber and Manoel: what did that lead to? Unless he ran up the skull and crossbones and declared open war on the whole gang, that interlude of entertainment would have to be accounted for somehow. And yet he had had no choice. Lauber's skull was too dense and obstinate for any other methods to have been effective-the chauffeur's nose was a minor detail. Whatever happened, Lauber had to be prevented from going where Christine was. And even now he still knew the address. Simon wondered whether he ought to have taken over the gun again and finished the job; but that opportunity had also passed by, and it was no use worrying about it.

  ...Already the Saint's brain was wholly occupied with the problems of the future.

  The house where David Keena had his apartment looked just the same. There were no suspicious-looking vehicles parked outside or near it, none of the symptoms of recent commotion which the Saint had been half expecting to see. Simon wondered if he could allow himself to breathe again.

  He left the taxi waiting and ran up the stairs. The door of the apartment was locked, of course. He knocked impatiently, and after a while the door opened a couple of inches. Simon looked through the crack, over the barrel of Mr Uniatz' Betsy, into the haunting face of Mr Uniatz.

  "Oh, it's you, boss," said Mr Uniatz, unnecessarily but with simple satisfaction. "I hoped ya might be comin' dis way."

  He stepped back from the door to let the Saint in. Simon took two paces into the room and stopped dead, staring at the figure which lay sprawled in the centre of the carpet.

  "What happened to him?" he asked shakily.

  "Aw, he ain't hoit much," said Hoppy confidently. "He tries to come in de door just after I get here, so I let him in an' bop him on de dome like ya said for me to do, boss. Ja know de guy?"

  "Do I know him?"

  The Saint swallowed speechlessly. After a moment he moved forward and picked David Keena up and laid him on the settee.

  "Where's Christine?" he demanded. "Didn't she tell you?"

  "She ain't got here yet," began Mr Uniatz untroubledly and the Saint stood very still.

  "My God," he said, "Then Aliston did find that taxi!"

  VIII How Mr Uniatz Was Bewildered about Bopping, and Simon Templar Was Polite to a Lady.

  TO SAY that this was Greek to Mr Uniatz would be misleading. He would not have been quite sure whether a Greek was a guy who kept a chop house, something you got in your neck, a kind of small river, or the noise a door made when the hinges needed oiling. It would have involved a great many additional prob­lems, all of which would have been very painful. Tak­ing the line of least resistance, Mr Uniatz simply looked blank.

  "I dunno, boss," he said, striving conscientiously to keep up with the rapid march of events. "Which taxi was dat?"

  "The taxi I brought her here in, you mutt !"

  "You mean you brought her here, boss?"

  "Yes."

  "Christine?"

  "Yes."

  "In a taxi?" ventured Mr Uniatz, who had made up his mind to get to the bottom of the matter.

  Simon gathered all his reserves of self-control.

  "Yes, Hoppy," he said. "I brought Christine here in a taxi, myself, before Palermo and Aliston picked me up-before I went to the house where I found you.. I left her here and told her she wasn't to go out. She ought to have been waiting for you when you got here."

  "Maybe dis guy takes her out," suggested Mr Uniatz helpfully, hooking his thumb in the direction of the body on the couch. "Is his name Paloimo or Aliston?"

  "It's neither," said the Saint. "His name's Keena. This is his apartment." -- "Den how --"

  "I borrowed it to give Christine a hide-out. He's a friend of mine. He turned out of the place so that Christine could stay here. And you have to bop him on the dome!"

  Mr Uniatz gaped dumbly at his victim. Life, he seemed to feel, was not giving him an even break. With things like that going on, how was a guy to know who to bop on the dome and who not to bop? It filled the most ordinary incidents of everyday life I with unnatural complications.

  "Chees, boss," said Mr Uniatz pathetically, "you know I wouldn't bop any guy on de dome if ya tole me he was on de rise. But how was I to know? De last time, ya tell me I should of bopped de guy I didn't; bop. Dis time --"

  "I know," said the Saint. "It isn't your fault."

  He turned back to the couch as David Keena began to make sounds indicative of returning consciousness. With the help of the Saint's treatment, he was soon sitting up and rubbing his head tenderly, while his eyes blearily endeavoured to take in his surroundings. Then he recognised Hoppy, and the whole story came back to him. He tried to get up, but the Saint held him down.

  "Listen, David-it was all a mistake. Hoppy's a friend of mine. He didn't want to hurt you."

  "Well, what did he have to hit me for?"

  "I sent him to look after Christine. He didn't know who you were. You tried to get in, and he naturally thought you were one of the ungodly. I told you to keep away from here, didn't I?"

  "Dat's right, boss," said Mr Uniatz anxiously. "I didn't know ya was a pal of de Saint. Why'ncha tell me?"

  "Get him a drink," ordered the Saint.

  "Mr Uniatz looked guilty.

  "Dey was a bottle I found here --"

  "Go and find it again," said the Saint sternly. "And if you don't find it I'll pick you up and wring it out of you."

  Hoppy shuffled away and returned with a bottle. There was about an inch left in it. The Saint continued to regard him coldly; and Hoppy beetled off again and brought a glass. He was always forgetting the curious habit to which some people were addicted, of pouring whiskey into a glass before transferring it to the mouth-a superfluous expenditure of time and energy which Mr Uniatz had never been able to understand.

  But he was eager to make amends, and even took the unprecedented step of pouring out the remains of the whiskey himself.

  While David was drinking it, Simon tried to readjust himself to what had happened. Aliston must have been lucky enough to find the taxi back on its rank almost as soon as he started his search. Simon still had to wonder how he had succeeded in getting Christine away; but it had been done. She had been gone when Hoppy arrived. Therefore Aliston had had her for some time. But what could he have done with her? The Saint would have expected him to take her straight back to the house where he himself had been taken; and Aliston had a car to do it with. And yet up to the time when the Saint had left there, a long while after, Aliston still hadn't shown up. The explanation came to Simon in a flash: for three quarters of an hour or more, Graner's Buick had been standing outside the
house to which Aliston would have been going. Aliston must have seen it, suspected a hitch and driven by without stopping.

  Either that, or he had already decided to double-cross Palermo. . . .

  But in any case, where else could he have gone ?

  Simon realised at once that that was a question to which theories were unlikely to provide an answer. He had got to go out and do something to solve it, although the Lord alone knew how. At least it meant that Aliston would be unlikely to be going back and falling into Lauber's hands-if Lauber's hands were in working order again. Somewhere on the island of Tenerife he was at large, and he had got to be tracked down and rounded up.

  "Are you feeling any better?" he asked David.

  "If I had some more of that I might live," an­swered Keena doubtfully, putting down his glass.

  Simon gave him a cigarette.

  "We'll send you out for some more in a minute," he said. "But there are just a couple of things you might tell me first. What were you doing here when Hoppy bopped you?"

  "I just came back to see how Christine was getting on."

  "You remember what I told you?"

  "Yes, but I didn't take that seriously. I didn't know you were going to fill the place with boppers."

  "You're lucky it was only kindhearted Hoppy," said the Saint callously. "If it had been one of the ungodly we'd probably be wondering what to do with your body by now. This isn't a Children's Hour, and anyone who butts into this picnic is liable to come out feet first. I warned you."

  David had been scanning the room in vague perplexity.

  "Where's Christine?"

  "They've got her-or one of them has," said the Saint flatly. "She was gone when Hoppy got here."

  "But how could they have done that?"

  "If I knew the answer I'd tell you. There isn't a trace that I've been able to see."

  Simon roamed rapidly round the apartment, and it took him only two or three minutes to verify his assumption. Everything looked untouched, exactly as he-had left it-only Christine had gone.

  "Was it like this when you arrived, Hoppy?"

  "Yes, boss."

  "The door wasn't locked?"

  "No, boss. I toin de handle and I walk right in."

  "It didn't look as if there had been a fight?"

  "No, boss." Mr Uniatz scratched his ear. "Maybe dey wasn't no fight, at dat," he suggested brilliantly.

  "Maybe there wasn't," admitted the Saint.

  He went back and examined the door, but it showed none of the signs of violence or skilful wangling which would have stood out a mile to his professional eye.

  He turned to David again.

  "You didn't see anything when you got here?"

  "I didn't have a chance to see anything-except him."

  "But you didn't see anything outside, anything the least bit out of the ordinary? A crowd, or people staring-or anything?"

  "Not a thing that I noticed."

  Simon smoked silently for a little while and made up his mind.

  "We can't do any good by staying here," he said. "Apart from which, it isn't too healthy. At least one other member of the major ungodly and a nasty specimen of the minor know this address. I just hit both of them very hard, but I don't know what they'll do when they recover. We'd better be on our way."

  "That's an idea," Keena assented. "I don't like your friends. Besides, we could get some more medi­cine."

  "You'll have to get that by yourself, old lad. I'll pay for it, but Hoppy and me are going to be busy. Besides, I'd rather not get you any more mixed up in this party than you are already."

  Keena nodded.

  "I don't want to be mixed up in it any more," he remarked with profound sincerity. "But when can I use my apartment again?"

  "When I've cleaned up the opposition. I'll let you know. Till then, if you see us anywhere, you'd better pretend you don't know us. I'll send you enough of the boodle one day to make you think it was all worth while. . . . Conque andando. You toddle along, and we'll give you five minutes start."

  David turned at the door and pointed at Hoppy.

  "I only hope he gets bopped next," he said.

  Mr Uniatz watched the door close with a pained expression on his homely face. Himself a frank and openhearted soul, anxious to be friends with all the human race, it grieved him to find himself rebuffed.

  "Boss," said Mr Uniatz plaintively, "dat guy don't seem to like me."

  "Did you expect him to love you after you'd bopped him on the dome?" said the Saint.

  Mr Uniatz relapsed into injured silence. It was all quite incomprehensible to him. A guy had to take the breaks. Suppose a guy did get shot or bopped on the dome ? If it was all done in the friendliest spirit, what had he got to bear a grudge about? He took a crum­pled cigar from his pocket and chewed it ruminatively over the problem.

  The Saint left him to it. He himself was fully occu­pied with the problem of Lauber's and the chauffeur's reactions to a similar incident, although he was unable to view them in the same naive light which would pre­sumably have illuminated them to Hoppy Uniatz' complete satisfaction. By this time, presumably, those two would be on their feet again and restored to com­paratively normal functioning; and Simon did not expect them to be forgiving.

  What form their vindictiveness might take was something else again. So far as whining to Graner was concerned, Lauber had no authority to give the Saint orders, and the Saint had no particular obligation not to hit him in the stomach; although an imaginative man might invent a story to justify the former and misinterpret the latter. But that still left out the chauf­feur, who could relate certain inexplicable happenings which had preceded the aforesaid massage of the Stomach. Lauber would have to deal with him in some way first. But if Manoel had made the quicker recov­ery he might have decided to do some dealing on his own-and there would be nothing to prevent him tell­ing Graner the whole truth as he knew it. It just introduced a few more incalculable factors into the jumble -and all of them had to be straightened out before the equation could be solved.

  The Saint looked at his watch.

  "Let's waft," he said.

  He closed the door of the apartment and went down the stairs, with Hoppy at his heels, The street below was still undisturbed. It had stopped raining at last, and the wet cobbles glistened in the grey light of the late afternoon. A few ragged and dirty children splashed in the rivers that still coursed through the gutters and lapped the top of the pavement. Two or three sloppy-looking young men stood in a near-by doorway and laboured energetically at the traditional local occupation of doing nothing. A toothless and wrinkled hag in a black shawl leaned against a wall and scratched herself philosophically. The sordid, ineffectual and time-ignoring life of Santa Cruz pursued the unimportant tenor of its way, as it had done for the last four hundred years and would probably continue to do for the next four hundred.

  They got into the Saint's taxi. As it started off, Simon looked back at the street scene. Nothing changed in it. He was certain they were not being watched or followed.

  "Hotel Orotava," he said.

  He had nothing to say during the journey; and Mr Uniatz, who was still brooding over the mysteries of human psychology, made no efforts to draw him into conversation. Mr Uniatz knew by experience that conversation with the Saint usually involved intense mental concentration, an affliction which he never went out to seek. He had enough troubles already, what with one thing and another. . . .

  As they reached their destination, Simon scanned the square with the same alert and penetrating survey as he had given the Calle San Francisco (which is officially designated the Calle Doctor Comenge, although nobody in Tenerife except the map makers knows it). But that also was unchanged. The usual group of loaf­ers propped up the statue of the Virgin of Candelaria, the usual buses were picking up their usual unsavoury passengers, the usual urchins were bawling the evening newspaper, the usual taxis were unnecessarily tooting their unusually offensive horns; the only unusual cir­cumstan
ce-if the divine inspiration of the guide books was to be accepted-was the river of muddy yellow water which poured down the street like a miniature Yangtze Kiang from the upper reaches of the town. But there was nobody in sight whom the Saint could recognise.

  Nevertheless, his heart was in his mouth as the antique elevator bore him uncertainly upwards to the top floor of the hotel. When he went through the communicating door and found Joris Vanlinden lying peacefully asleep on the bed, he felt that that at least was almost too good to be true.

  Simon studied him for a few moments, and one part of his threadbare plan crystallised in his mind. He tip­toed back to his own room and unhooked the tele­phone.

  2 Presently Graner's voice answered him-there was no mistaking the delicately poisonous accents which survived even the tinny reverberations of the Spanish instrument.

  "This is Tombs," said the Saint.

  "Yes?" Graner's answer came back without hesitation.

  "Your chauffeur came round with the message. I went to the address. It seems to be a house with a couple of apartments, but I haven't seen my man or anybody else. Of course, he may have gone again by now-I can't find out without knocking on the doors. I'd rather not make a fuss if I can avoid it, for fear of scaring him off."

  "Had you heard anything of Aliston when you left Lauber?"

  "Not a word. Have you?"

  "He has not been in touch with the house."

  "Well, what do we do?" asked the Saint. "Why did you want someone to chase this other guy, anyway?"

  "I thought it would be safer to watch him. Where are you telephoning from?"

  "I'm in a shop near by."

  "What is the number?"

  "Three nine eight six," said the Saint, hoping that Graner didn't know anyone with that number.

  "You had better wait for a while-say half an hour. If he comes out, follow him. If he has not come out in that time, try to enter the apartments and see what you can find out. If there is no trace of him, go back to Lauber. If I have any other instructions I will call you. You will tell the shop that you are expecting a call."

  "Okay."