The crowded tables of a sidewalk cafe were suddenly on both sides of him. Perhaps there, Unciello’s men might see an opportunity.
He saw a vacant table at the edge of the sidewalk, next to the street, where it would be as easy as possible for them, and sat down.
A waiter took his order. A boy came by with an armful of newspapers, and Simon bought one. The kidnaping of Sue Inverest qualified for the biggest headline on the front page, and early in the story he found himself referred to as a friend of the girl, who had been “beaten and left for dead” on the scene; with a fine disregard for obvious probabilities, which was no more inconsistent than the facts, he was later reported being held by the police for investigation of his possible complicity in the crime.
His drink came, and he paid for it but did not touch it. He extracted a grim kind of satisfaction out of realizing that the chances of any food or drink offered to him being poisoned must be increasing with every minute. He could cope with that danger easily enough, at least for a while. It was less easy to become accustomed to the crawly feeling that at any instant a knife from nowhere might strike him between the shoulder-blades, or a fusillade of shots from a passing car smash him down into bloody oblivion. But that was what he had asked for, and he was beginning to sympathize with the emotions of a goat that had not merely been staked out to attract a tiger, but was cooperating with every resource of capric coquetry to coax the tiger to the bait. And all he could do was hope he was not mistaken in his estimate of Tony Unciello’s vein of curiosity…
He read on, looking for a reference to the mysterious secret clue he was supposed to have.
And then he had company.
There were two of them, and because he had studiously avoided watching for them they might have sprung up out of the ground. They stood one on each side of him, crowding him, and at the same time practically blocking him from the sight of the other patrons of the cafe. They were men of perfectly average size and build, dressed in perfectly commonplace dark suits, with perfectly unmemorable faces distinguished only by the perfect expressionlessness of their prototypes in any gangster movie. It was just like home.
The street was behind Simon, but that opening was closed, with admirable timing, by a car which simultaneously slid in to the curb and stopped at his back.
One of the men leaned on Simon’s shoulder with a hand that was buried in his coat pocket, but what the Saint felt was harder than a hand, and he knew that the muzzle of a gun was no more than an inch from his ear.
“Let’s-a go, sport,” the man said.
Simon tried to look up with the right combination of fear, surprise, and bluster.
“What are you talking about?”
“You, sport,” said the spokesman laconically. “Get in-a da car.”
Simon flicked his cigarette into the gutter, where it was immediately the center of a scramble of vulture-eyed urchins, and stood up. It was the only stir caused by his departure.
In the car, the two men sat one on each side of him, in the back seat. Each of them kept a hand in the pocket of his coat on the side nearest the Saint, one in the right, one in the left. Their two guns pressed with equal firmness against the neighborhood of the Saint’s kidneys. Neither of them offered any conversation. The driver of the car said nothing. He drove in competent silence, like a man who already had his instructions.
There were no shades inside the car, no suggestion of blindfolding the Saint, no attempt to stop him observing the route they took. The implication that nothing he saw would ever be any use to him was too obvious to be missed, but that gave him nothing unforeseen to worry about. He could still hope that the project was to take him to Tony Unciello before the only possible intended end of the ride.
They drove down to the Tiber, crossed over the Ponte Cavour, turned by the Palace of Justice. The great white dome of St Peter’s loomed ahead against the darkening sky, and lights played on the fountains in the vast circular piazza in front of the cathedral, but they left it on their right and skimmed around the walls of the Vatican City to plunge into the maze of mean streets which lies incongruously between it and the pleasant park slopes of Monte Gianicolo. A few zigzags through narrow ill-lit alleys, and the car stopped outside a small pizzeria and bar with strings of salami tastefully displayed in the dingy window.
“Get out, sport,” said the talking man.
His partner got out first, and waited for the Saint. The two of them closed in behind Simon and prodded him towards the door of the pizzeria. They kept him moving briskly through the odorous interior, but it was only to get their job done, not because they cared about anyone in the place. The drinkers at the bar just inside the entrance, the shirtsleeve bartender wiping glasses on a filthy rag, the few diners at the stained tables in the back, the slatternly woman who looked out of the open door of the kitchen in the rear, all stared at the Saint silently as he passed, but the stares were as emotionless and impersonal as the stares of zombies.
Next to the kitchen door there was a curtained archway; beyond it, a steep flight of stairs. They climbed to a narrow landing with two doors. The man who never spoke opened one of them and pushed the Saint through.
He found himself in a small untidy bedroom, but he hardly had time to glance over it before the same man was doing something to the big old-fashioned wardrobe which caused it to roll noiselessly aside like a huge sliding door.
“Keep-a moving, sport,” said the talkative one, and the Saint was shoved on through the opening.
As he stepped into the brightness beyond, as if on to a stage set, he knew that he had at least won the first leg of the double, even before he saw the man who waited for him.
“Hullo, Tony,” he said.
5
It was the contrast of the room in which he found himself after the squalor that he had been hustled through which was theatrical. It was spacious and high-ceilinged, exquisitely decorated and furnished, like a room in a set designer’s conception of a ducal palace. The Saint’s gaze traveled leisurely around it in frank fascination. From his impression of the street outside, he realized that the interiors of several ramshackle old buildings must have been torn out to provide a shell for that luxurious hideaway—a project that only a vast secret society could have undertaken and kept secret. Even the absence of windows was almost unnoticeable, for the indirect lighting was beautifully engineered and the air was fresh and cool.
“Quite a layout you have, for such a modest address,” Simon remarked approvingly. “And with air-conditioning, yet.”
“Sure, it’s plenty comfortable,” said Tony Unciello.
He sat in an immense brocaded chair, looking like a great gross frog. The resemblance held true for his sloping hairless head, his swarthy skin and heavy-lidded reptilian eyes, his broad stomach and thin splayed legs. In fact, almost the only un-froglike things about him were his clothes, the diamond rings on his fingers, and the cigar clamped in his wide thick-lipped mouth.
“So you’re the Saint,” Unciello said. “Sit down.”
Instantly Simon was pushed forward, the seat of an upright chair hit him behind the knees, and two hands on his shoulders pushed him forcefully down on it. His two escorts stood behind him like sentries.
The Saint straightened his coat.
“Really, Tony,” he murmured, “when you get hospitable, it’s just like being caught in a reaper.”
The gangster took the cigar out of one side of his mouth and put it back in the other. “I heard a lot about you, Saint.”
“I know. And you just couldn’t wait to meet me.”
“I could of waited for ever to meet you. But now it’s different. All on account of this place.” Unciello took the cigar out again to wave it comprehensively at the surroundings. “It’s quite a layout, like you said. And comfortable, like I said. You ain’t seen a half of it. I could hole up here for years, and live just like the Ritz. Only there’s nobody supposed to know about it who don’t belong to me, body and soul. And then you com
e along, and you don’t belong to me, but it gives out that you know how to find me.”
“Why, what gave you that idea?”
“That’s what you said.”
“I’d bought a newspaper just before your reception committee picked me up,” Simon remarked thoughtfully, “but it didn’t have that story. How did you hear it so quickly? Direct from the police, maybe?”
“You catch on fast,” Unciello said. “Sure, Inspector Buono’s one of my boys. He should of kept you locked up when he had you, and saved me this trouble.”
Simon nodded. He was not greatly surprised.
“I figured him for a bad egg,” he said. “But it’s nice to have you confirm it.”
“Buono’s a good boy,” Unciello said. “He knows where I am. That’s okay. But with you it’s different.” He leaned forward a little. His manner was very patient and earnest. “I like this place. Spent a lot of dough fixing it up. I’d hate that to be all wasted. But when a fellow like you says he could find it, it bothers me. I gotta know how you got it figured. So if maybe somebody slipped up somewhere, it can be taken care of. See what I mean?”
“You couldn’t be more lucid, Tony,” Simon reassured him. “And what do you think this information would be worth?”
Unciello chuckled, a soundless quaking of his wide belly. “Why, to you it’s worth plenty. You tell me all about it, and everything’s nice and friendly. But you don’t tell me, and the boys have to go to work on you. They do a mean job. You hold out for an hour, a day, two days—depending how tough you are. But in the end you talk, just the same, only you been hurt plenty first. To a fellow with your brains, that don’t make sense. So you tell me now, and we don’t have no nastiness.”
Simon appeared to consider this briefly, but the conclusion was obvious.
“You make everything delightfully simple,” he said. “So I’ll try to do the same. I said I could find you, and this proves it. I’m here now.”
“Only because my boys brought you here.”
“Which I figured you’d have them do as soon as you heard I was claiming to know how to find you.”
Unciello’s eyes did not blink so much as deliberately close and open again, like the eyes of a lizard.
“You’re a smart fellow. Now you’re here. What’s your angle?”
“Will one of these goons behind me start shooting if I go for a cigarette?”
“Not if it’s just a cigarette.”
Simon took one from the pack in his breast pocket, moving slowly and carefully to avoid causing any alarm. In the same way he took out his lighter and kindled it.
“I’m acting as Mr Inverest’s strictly unofficial representative,” he said. “As you very well know, he can’t officially make any deal with you. In fact, for public consumption he’s got to say loudly that nobody can blackmail him, even with his daughter’s life—or else he’d probably be out of a job and have no influence at all. But as a man, of course, you’ve got him over a barrel. He’s ready to trade.”
“He’s a smart fellow, too.”
“It’ll have to be very discreetly handled, so that it looks kosher. They’ll have to arrange to dig up some startling new evidence, to give grounds for a re-trial and an acquittal.”
“That’s his worry, I don’t care how he does it, just so Mick gets out.”
“But before he starts to work, he’s got to be sure that you’ve really got his daughter and that she hasn’t been harmed.”
“The gal’s okay.”
Simon looked at him steadily.
“I have to see her myself. Then I’ll write him a note, which you can have delivered. I’ll tell you right now that it’ll have a code word in it, which is to prove that I really wrote it and that nobody was twisting my arm to make me say the right things.”
Unciello contemplated him with the immobility of a Buddha. Then his eyes switched to a point over the Saint’s head.
“Mena la giovane,” he said.
The hoodlum who never spoke came around from behind the Saint’s chair and crossed the big room to disappear through one of the doors at the other end. Unciello smoked his cigar impassively. There was no idle conversation.
Presently the man who had left came back, and with him he brought Sue Inverest.
She was so exactly like Simon had seen her last, and as he remembered her, that for a moment it felt as if they were back in the Colosseum. Only in a strange dislocation of time they now seemed to belong rather with the expendables who had once stood on the floor of the arena, while a modern but no less vicious Nero squatted like a toad on his brocaded throne and held their lives in his hands. But the girl still carried her curly fair head high, and Simon smiled into her shocked gray eyes.
“Your father sent me to see if you were all right, Sue,” he said gently. “Have they hurt you?”
She shook her head.
“No, not yet. Are they going to let me go?”
“Quite soon, I hope.”
“Write that letter,” Unciello said.
The taciturn thug brought a pad and pencil from a side table and thrust them at the Saint.
Simon balanced the pad on his knee and wrote, taking his time:
Dear Mr Inverest,
I’ve seen Sue, and she’s still as good as new. So you’d better hurry up and meet Tony’s terms, even if it isn’t exactly “for the public good.” Perhaps that would sound better to you in Latin, but it all comes to the homo sequendum. Will report again as arranged.
Simon Templar.
He held out the pad. The man who had brought it carried it across to Unciello.
Unciello read it through slowly, and looked up again at the Saint.
“What’s that homo sequendum deal?” he demanded.
“Homo means ‘same,’ as in ‘homosexual,’ ” Simon explained patiently. “Sequendum is the same root as our words ‘sequel’ or ‘consequences.’ It just means ‘the same result.’ Inverest goes for that Latin stuff.”
Unciello’s eyes swiveled up to the girl.
“That’s right,” she said in a low voice. “He does.”
“Guys like you with your education give me a pain,” Unciello said. His cold stare was on the Saint again. “And what’s that about reporting again?”
“I’m not stupid enough to expect you to turn me loose now,” Simon said. “And anyhow, Inverest is going to want another report on Sue—authenticated with our password—from me, before they finally let your brother go.”
The gang chieftain held out the pad towards his errand-boy.
“Have somebody downstairs send it,” he ordered.
He continued to study the Saint emotionlessly, but with deep curiosity.
“You’re a real smart fellow,” he said. “But you’re taking a lot of chances. What’s in it for you?”
Simon raised his eyebrows a fraction.
“Hudson Inverest is a rich man in his own right,” he said. “He’s offered a reward of a hundred thousand dollars to anyone who helps get his daughter back. Didn’t your pal Buono tell you that? Even he looked interested!”
The messenger returned and resumed his position behind the Saint’s chair, but Unciello did not even appear to notice him for several seconds. He remained sunk in an implacable and frightening immobility of meditation. And then at last his saurian eyes flicked up.
Tell Mario to serve dinner,” he said. “We’ll all eat together. And send word to Buono I want to see him—subito.”
6
They ate in a palatial dining room that was almost over-poweringly ornate with gilt and frescos, Sue and the Saint on either side of Tony Unciello at the head of a long table. One of the guards stood behind each of the involuntary guests like an attendant footman, but their function was not to serve. They kept their hands in the side pockets of their coats and their eyes on every movement that was made, particularly by the Saint.
The meal, in spite of the lavish surroundings, was only spaghetti, though with an excellent sauce. Apparently t
hat was what Unciello liked, for he tackled a huge plate of it with a practically uninterrupted series of engulfing motions, almost inhaling it in a continuous stream. Sue Inverest could only toy with hers, but the Saint ate with reasonable appetite, although the grotesque silence broken only by the clink of silverware and the voracious slurping of the host would have unnerved most other men.
“Tony doesn’t like small talk at meals,” Simon tried to encourage her, “but don’t let him put you off your feed. You’ve got to keep in good shape to go home.”
Unciello stuffed the last remnants from his plate into his mouth until his cheeks bulged, then washed them down with a draught of Chianti from a Venetian goblet. He wiped his face with the napkin tucked under his chin.
“Now I got it,” he announced, and the Saint looked at him inquiringly.
Unciello said, “I got that homo sequendum business. That’s gotta be the password you fixed up with Inverest. It’s the only phony-sounding thing in your letter. So now I don’t need you anymore. I got boys who can copy any handwriting. And with that password, now they can write letters to Inverest and tell him his daughter’s okay.”
“You mean I can go, Tony?” Simon asked hopefully.
“Yeah—to the morgue. You never was going anywhere else, because you know too much about this place. Like I told you. But now I don’t have to keep you around until they let Mick go. I guess you ain’t so smart, after all.”
Simon Templar had no argument. It would have done no good to point out that this was one occasion when he had never figured himself very smart, so far as his own personal survival was concerned. He felt lucky enough to have achieved as much as he had done. Now, if he was not going to live to see the finish, he could still hope that the gamble had not been altogether lost. As for himself, it had to come someday, and this way was as worthwhile as any.
He smiled at the girl’s comprehending horror, and his eyes were very gay and blue.
The Saint in Europe (The Saint Series) Page 18
