"What about Palermo?"
"He more or less corroborated the story-as much of it as he knew."
"And why didn't he tell it you in the first place?"
"He said that he lost his nerve, that he was dazed by the beating you had given him and did not quite know what he was doing."
The Saint blew a smoke ring and annihilated it with his next gesture.
"I won't bother to point out that that's the story anybody else would probably have told if they were in the same spot," he said. "So it wouldn't be such a fluke if Palermo hit on it as well. I expect you've thought all that out for yourself, and you know what you're going to believe."
"Nevertheless, I should like your opinion."
Simon had to restrain the impulse to stare at him. What the devil could Graner be driving at? Simon had been watching him every instant for the first sign of hostility, racking his brain to try and predict what form it would take so that he could be prepared to forestall it; and he had been baffled from beginning to end. The feeling of unreality came back to him so strongly that the whole interview seemed like a nightmare. Any of the things he had been expecting would have been less disturbing than that precarious fencing in the dark. But he had to make the best of the situation as it stood.
"If you're really asking me," he said slowly, "I should say that Lauber was the first double-crosser. The others seemed to think he had the ticket last night, didn't they? Well, he might have had it. My first guess would be that for some reason or other he was trying to strike some bargain with Manoel to get him in with him, and Manoel turned him down and threatened to tell you, so Lauber shot him to keep his mouth shut."
"And Aliston's story?"
"That's even easier. It's so wet that it takes my breath away. I think that Aliston found Christine all right, and was taking her back to Maria's. Meanwhile you'd got there, and he saw your car outside. That was enough to tell him that something had sprung a leak somewhere. He drove right past without stopping, and I'll bet he had about half an hour's continuous heart failure before he made up his mind what to do. He was on the spot. He had to think of some way to wriggle out, and wriggle out quick, before the rest of us caught up with him. Being rather a weak-kneed bloke, and scared stiff at that, the only thing he could think of was to wriggle backwards-to scuttle back into the fold and try to pretend it was all a joke. I think his story is the feeblest cock-and-bull yarn I ever heard in my life; and if you'd swallow that I guess you'd swallow anything. But that's your funeral. I can't help it if your brain's softening."
"My brain is not softening," Graner said suavely. "I had already reached the same conclusion."
Simon Templar didn't know whether to believe his ears. The ground seemed to be rocking under his feet.
"You mean," he said carefully, "that it's beginning to dawn on you that this precious gang of yours is just about the finest collection of double-crossing rats that was ever gathered together under one roof?"
Graner nodded.
"That is what I mean. And that is why I hope you will help me to deal with them."
2 Something began to bubble deep down in the Saint's inside, so that he had to clench his teeth to keep it down. The leaden weight in his stomach suddenly turned into an airy balloon which swelled up until it almost choked him. His ribs ached with the strain of suppressing that ferment of Homeric laughter. The tears started to his eyes.
It was stupendous, sublime, epoch-making, phenomenal, colossal-no thesaurus ever compiled held enough words for it. It was superb, prodigious, transcendental, gosh-gorgeous and gloatworthy. It was the last perfect touch that was needed to turn that hilarious thieves' picnic into the most climactic comedy in the history of the universe.
And yet after all-why not? Everybody else had done it. Lauber had done it. Aliston and Palermo had done it. He himself had been doing it all the time. Everybody in the cast had been scooting backwards and forwards through a tangle of intrigue and temporary alliances and propositions and cross-double-crossing that made European international politics look like a simple nursery game, fairly falling over each other to tread on somebody else's face and scramble on to their own band wagons. Why shouldn't Graner wake up eventually to what was going on all around him, and decide to look after himself ?
He had plenty of justification too. From his point of view, the one member of the party whose stories had been credible all the time, who had given the impression of being the one lone pillar of honesty and square dealing in the debacle, whose every action seemed to have been transparently open and above-board, was the Saint. That this was simply due to the Saint's superior strategy and readiness of wit was a fact and an explanation that Graner need not have thought of. The one conviction that would have been left in his mind was that unless he took swift action he was in danger of being left high and dry by the defection of his subordinates; and his instinct of self-preservation would have done the rest. To him, the Saint would have seemed like the one tower of strength around which he could start to rebuild his kingdom-a kingdom which the Saint's proven ingenuity and generalship might make even greater than the old.
At the risk of bursting a blood vessel, the Saint kept his face perfectly straight.
"You'd like us to give them a dose of their own medicine," he said.
"That is what I propose to do," said Graner. "There appears to be no other remedy. They have completely lost their heads over this lottery ticket, and when anything like that happens an organisation like mine is finished. I propose that you and I should make a fresh start-it seems obvious to me that you have been wasting your time as a diamond cutter. Perhaps you have never realised your own abilities. In combination, we should be invincible."
Graner's manner was deferential, almost ingratiating although the change was not much of an improvement. Simon felt that he was rather less objectionable when he was being his ordinary repulsive self than when he was bending over backwards in the unaccustomed exercise of making himself agreeable. But that only enriched the heroic and majestic fruitiness of the joke.
"In other words, we get what we can out of these birds and then ditch them?" suggested the Saint.
Graner inclined his head hopefully.
"I think you will agree that they deserve it."
"It seems fair enough to me. But what have you told them?"
"I pretended to believe Aliston and Palermo, I locked Christine up and left them while I went to my own room to think. It was a long time before I could make up my mind."
"When did I ring you up?"
"That was just before I had finished talking to them. I still hadn't decided what was the best thing for me to do, even though I was sure they were lying to me. Then Lauber arrived with his story."
"And you pretended to believe him."
"I felt that that was the wisest course. So long as they all believed they were successfully taking me in, I had a certain advantage. I left them all together and told them I would go out and see if I could bring you back. I told them that you would be less suspicious of me than you would be of any of them."
"That would still be a smart move, anyway," said the Saint shrewdly.
Graner nodded frankly.
"I appreciate your point of view. But I am not trying to induce you to do anything. If you accept my proposition, you would have a free hand to take whatever action you think best."
The Saint smoked for a little while in thoughtful silence. He wanted to leave nothing overlooked.
"How did Aliston get hold of Christine?" he asked.
"He told her-I am only quoting his own story-- that Joris and the other man and yourself had all been captured. He said that we knew where she was, which was proved by his visit, and that we were on our way to take her. He also said that he had quarrelled with us, and that we were looking for him at the same time. He was able to convince her that she had no one left to help her, and that he himself was in terror of bur vengeance, and that their only hope was for them to join forces-I might mention that A
liston was on the stage before he made a slip which brought him to me. You might not think it, but he is a brilliant actor when he exerts himself."
"But when he wanted to take her to the house --"
"He said that he was taking her somewhere else, He drove her out on to the road to San Andres, which is very lonely, and there he was able to overpower her without much difficulty."
Simon could believe that Aliston had exerted himself in his acting. He was inclined to revise his own earlier theory about that abduction. It now seemed more likely that after Aliston had located Keena's apartment he had gone back to tell Palermo, and that it was then that he had seen Graner's car and realised that everything had blown up. Quite probably his offer to Christine had had the persuasive advantage of obvious sincerity; it was only when Aliston had realised that he had nowhere else to go, and that he was not equipped to fight a singlehanded feud of that kind, that he had panicked and done what he had done. . . , Not that a detail like that mattered very much.
"And Joris?" said the Saint.
"I left the others to discuss the best way to get hold of him again. We can attend to that ourselves when we have settled with them. I think you are in the best position to arrange that."
"And the other man?"
"I know nothing more about him. But doubtless he will be getting in touch with you as you arranged."
Simon filled his lungs with a sense of deep and dizzy contentment. So the tangle had all worked out, the various pieces in the jigsaw had all shaken down into their final and perfect combination, all the permutations and combinations had been tried, all the explanations made and all the moves accounted for. Now at last the Saint felt that all the threads were in his hands, and it only remained to wind them up and tie the conclusive knot. Joris was on the boat. Hoppy, by that time, was certainly back at the hotel. It only left Christine-and the ticket. ...
Graner was watching him with an anxiety over which his habitual pose of inscrutable dominance was wearing very thin. And the Saint smiled at him beatifically.
"It sounds fine to me," he said. "Let's go."
"Do you know what you intend to do ?"
Simon beckoned the waiter and counted coins to pay for their drinks.
"I guess we go up to the house," he said. "That's where all the other vultures are roosting, isn't it? After all, they're expecting you to bring me back, and I'd hate to disappoint them."
"They will be waiting to hold you up."
"Good. Let 'em. But they won't interfere with you just yet, because they're still divided among themselves. And neither side is sure enough of the other for them to act together against you. So they'll keep on pretending to play in with you. You can play their game and pretend to help them hold me up. All I want you to do is to see that I have a chance to grab your gun at the right moment; and don't get the wind up if I point it at you for the sake of appearances. Just see that I get it when I want it, and you can leave the rest to me. Now let's get moving before they have a chance to organise any new combinations between themselves."
He pocketed his change and stood up decisively; and Graner followed his lead without question. The reversal was complete-even more so than when the Saint had turned him upside down in the hotel that morning. If he had had time to think about it, the Saint would have suffered the agonies of another bottled-up internal explosion at the supreme climax of Graner's submission.
The Saint led the way out of the bar with a spring in his step and an impudent swagger in the set of his shoulders. He was on his way to the great moment which he had been living for for nearly twenty-four hours, the time when he could sweep the board clear of all niggling chicaneries and complex deceptions and sail into battle as a buccaneer should sail, with the Jolly Roger nailed to the mast and the trumpets of outlawry sounding in his ears. It was for things like this that the Saint had lived all his life.
And as they crossed the road to where Graner's car was parked, he saw that it was the Buick.
It was the one thing needed to complete his ecstasy. The one lurking doubt in his mind had been what Lauber might be doing up at the house while Graner was away. If for any reason Graner had used the other car . . . But Graner. hadn't. And Lauber would be fuming and sweating, roaming the house like a caged lion in a frenzy of impotent rage. Meanwhile a great many of the inhabitants of Santa Cruz had been ambling innocently around what had probably been the most valuable car in the history of automobile engineering, untroubled by the thought that they could have stretched out their hands and helped themselves to wealth beyond their wildest dreams.
The idea filled the Saint's whole horizon as Graner started the car and drove it round to speed up the square. Was the ticket still in the same place ?
Where had Lauber ridden when he was picked up the night before? If he had been in the front, where the Saint was now sitting, he could have done something about the ticket when he was driving down with Graner that afternoon. Or had he been too uncertain of his own position, too afraid that Graner might catch him, to take the risk?
Simon's hands explored all the hiding places which might have been reached by a man sitting in the same seat. He felt in the door pocket, under the floor mat, around the cushions.
He found nothing.
Therefore the ticket must be somewhere in the back, and Lauber had had to leave it there when he was putting Palermo in for fear that Palermo might see him take it.
The Saint stretched out his legs and relaxed comfortably as the car purred up the La Laguna road. It was pleasant to think that he was riding in company with two million dollars, which he could have transferred to his own pocket whenever he chose. He could have put one hand around Graner's scraggy neck, switched off the engine and choked him gently but firmly off the wheel; after which he could have dropped him in a ditch and taken the car away to dissect it at his leisure. But he had to get Christine out of the house first. He had to discipline himself, to make a virtue of spinning out the luscious anticipation.
Always assuming that the ticket was still there. . . .
He tried not to think too much about that; and he was still diligently keeping his mind off such unwelcome complications when the car stopped outside the house. Graner held out a key.
"Will you open the gates?"
"What about the dogs?" said the Saint dubiously.
"I left them chained up. If you stay out of their reach you will be quite safe."
Simon went forward into the flare of the headlights, unlocked the big doors, and pushed them back. The car turned into the drive and flowed past him. He closed the gates again and rammed the bolts home with a series of thuds which Graner would be able to hear. What Graner would not notice was that the thud of each bolt sinking into its socket concealed the noise of another bolt being withdrawn again.
The car had gone on around the house when he finished, and the Saint walked after it. Behind him he heard the sinister snuffling of the dogs straining against the chains that held them to the electrically operated mooring post.
The lights were on in the living room which opened off the hall, and the door was open, but any conversation that might have been going on was silenced at the sound of their approaching footsteps. Simon sauntered in ahead of Graner and cast his blithe and genial glance over the three men who were already there.
"Good evening, boys," he murmured amicably. "It's nice to see all your smiling faces gathered together again."
Their faces were not smiling. There was something about their silent and menacing immobility which reminded him of the first time he had seen them, and the impression was heightened by the fact that they were grouped around the table in the same way as before. They sat facing the door, with their faces turned towards him, watching him like wild beasts crouched for a spring. One of Palermo's evil-smelling cigars polluted the atmosphere, and his one open eye was fixed on the Saint in a steady stare of venomous hatred. The scenic effects on his face had been augmented by a blackened bruise that spread over his chin beyond th
e edges of a piece of sticking plaster and a pair of painfully swollen lips for which the Saint was not really to blame. Aliston drooped opposite him, in his flabby way, with the pallor of anxiety making his aristocratic countenance look like a milky mask. Between them sat Lauber, with his heavy brows drawn down in a vicious scowl. He was the only one who moved as the Saint came in. He put a hand inside the breast of his coat and brought out a gun to level it across the table.
"Put 'em high," he said harshly.
Simon put them high. Aliston got up and undulated round the table to get behind him. His hands slid over the Saint's pockets.
The Saint grinned at Graner with conspiratorial glee.
"Is this the way you always receive your guests, Reuben?" he drawled.
Graner's eyes gave back no answering gleam of sympathy.
"I am not receiving a guest, Mr Tombs," he said, and there was just something about the way he said it that made the Saint's heart stop beating.
Graner might have been going to say something more, but whatever might have been on the tip of his tongue was cut off by Aliston's sudden exclamation.
18 The Saint Bids Diamonds (Thieves' Picnic) Page 20
