He reached out again for the telephone, but the Saint laughed amicably and put his arm aside.
“Not so quickly, Reuben,” he murmured. “You seem to have forgotten that you and I still have a few things to settle.”
Graner’s stare fastened rigidly on him again. The Saint felt it without looking up to meet it. He was engaged in tapping a cigarette on his thumbnail.
“I thought they had been settled,” Graner said at length.
“By your admitting that you’ve been double-crossing me?”
“That will be put right as soon as we get back to the house.”
“With somebody else’s gun, or have you got another one of your own?”
“Obviously we must have some confidence in each other.”
“And a hell of a lot of confidence you’ve given me for a start!”
The Saint’s blue eyes switched suddenly back to Graner’s face, very clear and cool and disparaging. This was the crucial moment of the plan of campaign which the urgent necessity of the moment had whipped out of his brain, the reason why he had induced Christine to take that expertly doctored drink, the only reason which had deprived him of the more elementally attractive solution of hitting Reuben Graner smartly on the nose and taking Christine away with an open declaration of war.
Half-a-dozen other solutions had whirled through his brain in the few seconds that he had been able to allow himself to think, and he had discarded all of them. Christine remained the one snag that had to be overcome. If he had proposed to take her up to the house when she was conscious, her reaction against him would probably have given him away. If she were taken up to the house at all, and she had to answer any questions there, her answers would probably give him away in any case. And finally, to clinch the matter, the Saint had no intention of throwing her on the mercy of Graner’s gang on any account; if Graner once had them both shut up together in that fortress of a house, the situation would take quite a different angle—Simon had a cold-blooded conviction about that. And yet he had to find a way of assuring Christine’s safety and his own, without putting his own cards on the table. For if he did that, he was cut off irrevocably from any direct contact with Aliston and Palermo, who knew where Joris and Hoppy were, and Lauber, who knew what had become of the ticket. It was like walking a mental tightrope with a fatal drop waiting on either side, but the Saint had to find his way across.
He put the cigarette in his mouth and struck his lighter without shifting his gaze.
“This girl is my insurance policy,” he said. “So long as I’ve got her, you’ve got to shoot square with me. And if you are shooting square, you don’t have to be in such a damn hurry to get me locked up again in your house.”
“But if she is going to be questioned—”
“I’ve told you—she isn’t. But she’ll talk of her own accord, which is worth twice as much.”
Graner went on watching him.
“Why should she?”
“Take a look at me. And then look in the mirror.” The Saint smoothed his dark hair. “There’s no comparison, Reuben, though I says it myself. Maybe a blind man would open his heart to you, but nobody else would. And much the same thing goes for those other beauties you’ve got at home. Besides which, she knows you all too well. But don’t you see what I’ve done?”
Graner made no answer, which Simon wasn’t expecting of him anyway. The Saint went on, in the same calm, confident tone:
“When I put her to sleep I was talking about double-crossing you and joining up with her party. When she wakes up I can go on with the same line. I can tell her I put her to sleep just to get a chance to talk to you. In fact, I can tell her everything we’ve said—with the explanation that all my side of it was just a fairy tale to keep you happy and get you out of here.”
The words came from the Saint’s lips without the waver of an inflection, without a falter, without a flicker of doubt in the level candour of his gaze. And all the time he was holding onto himself with both hands and feeling his heart leaping up and down just behind his tonsils. He had bluffed as much as any living man in his time, but he was inclined to doubt whether he had ever in his career of hairbreadth adventure gambled on such a magnificent impudence as that. Even the bluff with which he had used Christine’s presence in his room to turn the tables on Graner in the first place paled beside it.
And yet he knew that it must work again, simply because Graner or anybody else couldn’t have helped being convinced that a man who was afraid of that suspicion could never have found the nerve to bring it out before anyone else had evolved it. Things like that simply didn’t happen—they were outside the limit of human psychology and human insolence. What the Saint’s opponents could never realise was that the Saint himself was just as far outside those rules and limitations. He was the one adventurer of his age to whom no audacity was too fantastic, and nine times out of ten his audacities went unchallenged because no one with a less daring imagination could credit them.
Graner said, quite mildly, “All the same, we don’t know that you might not be tempted if she did agree to the proposition you were making.”
“You know it for any amount of reasons. What’s the difference between a fifth of two million dollars and an eighth? A hundred and fifty thousand. Well, you showed me the inside of your safe. If that’s the scale you do business on, would I be mug enough to throw in my share of your prospects for a hundred and fifty thousand? How far should I get on my own, without anyone to help me? I don’t know the town and I don’t know the people and I don’t speak the language. And how should I get away with it if I did double-cross you? There’s only one way out of Tenerife as far as I know—that harbour down there. And am I sap enough to think that I’d ever get on board a boat if I’d double-crossed you and your outfit was looking for me?”
Graner inspected the end of his cigar. It was burning a trifle unevenly, and he moistened the tip of one finger to damp the part that was burning too fast.
“I’m on the level with you,” said the Saint, “and I’m ready to stay that way, because I know you’ve got more to offer than a share in a lottery ticket. But after the way you’ve started, I want to be sure that you’re on the level with me before I take any more chances. If this turns out all right, we’ll call it quits and keep going. All of which is aside from the fact that I can get a hell of a lot more out of this girl by making love to her and kidding her that I’m on her side than you ever will with your ideas of persuading…Anyway, that’s the deal I’m offering, and if you don’t like it you can have the key and walk out just as soon as it suits you.”
Outside the window, the locomotive announced its return journey with a fresh outburst of hideous brain-searing shrieks. An unsilenced motorcycle crackled and spluttered like an inexhaustible machine gun while its rider howled his greetings to some friends two blocks away, who howled back with no less enthusiasm at him. A couple of ancient buses groaned through the square with a noise like a thousand tin cans being rattled together in a riveting yard. About forty taxis sustained an intermittent blasting on their peculiarly obnoxious horns. A tram ground and thundered up the slope, ringing a bell continuously. A knife grinder blew his mournful whistle. A donkey threw up its head and let out its sobbing asthmatic song. Apart from those echoes of the Elysian tranquillity of Santa Cruz, there was absolute silence in the room for some time.
Simon didn’t try to hurry the decision. Actually, there was only one way it could possibly be made. But what really mattered was the atmosphere.
Graner looked at him again.
“If you still want to be satisfied about me, I take it that you would have no objection to satisfying me about yourself.”
“How?”
“By letting me look after your passport.”
Without a second’s hesitation, the Saint took it out of his pocket. It was a perfectly good passport, and it was made out in the name of Sebastian Tombs.
Graner glanced at it and placed it carefully in his wallet. The po
ssession of it made a subtle difference to his manner, and the Saint knew that for that moment at any rate Graner was convinced. The immortal gorgeousness of the reversal made his ribs ache. It must have been years since anyone had stood up to Graner like that, since anyone had taken him apart and flattened him out with such sublime completeness, and when Simon thought about how he had done it he wanted to roll on the bed in a rapture of cosmic mirth that was too deep and soul-shaking for ordinary laughter. But he didn’t. Instead, he crowned the peak of his inspiration with the last and most superb audacity of all.
He produced Graner’s automatic and held it carelessly out to him, butt foremost.
“You’d better have this too,” he said gravely.
It was the climax. The man who could have remained unimpressed by a gesture like that would have been superhuman. It left Graner stripped of every other argument.
Graner put the gun away and picked up his cane. He looked down at Christine again for another moment.
“How long will that keep her quiet?”
“I gave her enough for about half an hour.” Simon took the key and unlocked the door. “You’d better be on your way.”
He accompanied Graner down the stairs. There was still the hall to be passed, and the wavy-haired boy who might smash everything again with two or three words, and the Saint sent up a silent prayer as they descended the last flight.
As his foot came off the last step he said, “Directly anything breaks, I’ll call you. Is your phone number in the directory?”
“Yes.”
“And if you or any of the boys think of anything brilliant, you’ll find me here.” The Saint’s lazy stride was deceptive: it covered the distance between the stairway and the door without the waste of a second, although to him it seemed much too slow. “In any case, we’ll keep in touch.”
“Yes.” Graner checked at the door. “By the way, what about your room?”
“I’ll tell them I’m staying—there is somebody here who speaks English.” Simon took his arm and pressed him on. “The point is that you’ve got to get your car out of the way before it puts the wind up Joris and his pals—if it hasn’t done that already.”
From the front entrance there was a flight of steps down to the street. The Saint stood at the top of the flight and watched Graner all the way down before his breathing really became normal again.
2
He turned and went back into the hotel with the humour dancing again in his eyes. And yet he wasn’t letting himself be led astray by a single overoptimistic delusion. He had only taken the first round, and there were a hell of a lot still to go. But the joy was to be in the fight, to be playing a lone hand in the most dangerous game in the world, the game which meant more to him than his own life.
He went up to the desk and buttonholed the wavy-haired boy.
“I am not leaving today,” he said in fluent Spanish. “So you need not worry about making out that bill…There is something else. It is possible that somebody may be making enquiries about me here. If they aren’t enquiring about me, they may be enquiring about the lady for whom I took the room next to me last night.”
“Sí, señor. I will tell them.”
“That’s just what you won’t do. If anybody starts asking any questions, you’ll remember that I have nothing to do with the lady next door. I don’t know her. I have never heard of her. I didn’t bring her here. Comprende?”
“Sí, señor.”
“Apart from that, you will not talk about me at all. Except that if anybody mentions it, you can say that I don’t speak Spanish.”
“Pero usted—”
“I know. I speak it better than you do, but I don’t want anyone to know. Estamos?”
“Sí, señor.”
Simon spread a hundred-peseta note on the counter.
“Perhaps that will help you to remember,” he said, and went upstairs.
In his room, Christine was still sleeping, but he only glanced at her. He went across to the window and looked down through the shutters into the square. Graner’s car was just driving off, and Simon realised that Graner himself must have taken the wheel, for the chauffeur stood on the pavement and watched the car move away. Then he strolled across to the opposite side of the plaza, propped himself up against the corner of the Casino building among the other idlers who were standing around, unfolded a newspaper from his pocket, and began to read.
Simon poured the remainder of Christine’s drink into the washbasin, and picked up Graner’s glass, which had been left untouched.
Then he remembered that he had been so confident in his deduction of what had happened to Hoppy and Joris that he hadn’t even troubled to check up on it. He put the glass down and went out again.
The door of Hoppy’s room was not locked. Simon went in and found the key on the inside. The room was empty, as he had expected. Mr Uniatz’s pajamas formed a palpitating splodge of colour on the bed that Joris had slept in, and the old man’s clothes were gone. Simon surveyed the rest of the room without finding any other clues. There were no traces even of a mild scrimmage, but the one mysterious fact was a tray laid with two breakfasts which stood on the table. Nothing on it had been touched. Simon frowned at it for some moments before the explanation dawned on him. He leaned over the bed and rang for the chambermaid.
She arrived promptly after he had rung three times.
“Did you see my friend when you brought the breakfast?” he asked.
“No, señor.”
“Como que no?”
“Because another gentleman took it. He had on a white coat like a camarero, and he said that he wanted to take it in for a joke. I gave him the tray, and I—went away when he was knocking.”
“Was he a little man with a small moustache and a black eye?”
“No, he was tall and fair, like an Englishman. He had a graze on his face.”
The Saint nodded slowly. It was simple enough, really—after it had been done.
“I may take the tray?” asked the woman.
“Go ahead. And you can do the room at the same time.”
At least there was nothing to be gained by giving her any more to gossip about.
He went back to his own room, and when he opened the door Christine was sitting up. Her mind was still clouded from the after-effects of the drug he had given her, and he saw the understanding creep gradually into her eyes as she stared at him. He closed the door behind him and smiled at her.
“I owe you an apology,” he said. “It’s the first time I ever gave a girl a drink like that.”
She shook her head, as if to try and clear away some of the mists from her brain.
“What did you do it for?” she asked huskily.
“It was either that or clipping you under the jaw, and I thought the drink would be kinder.” He crossed over to the bed and sat down beside her. “Does it feel very bad?”
She rubbed her eyes stupidly.
“My head’s splitting…”
“We can fix that in no time.”
He went to his suitcase and found another bottle, from which he tipped a spoonful of powder into a glass of water.
“I keep this for when Hoppy starts complaining about what a good time he had the night before,” he explained. “But it’s just as good for what you’ve got.”
She looked at the glass without moving.
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” he said. “If I’d wanted to keep you under I’d have given you something stronger in the first place.”
The girl shrugged.
“It doesn’t seem to matter,” she said. “I’d rather be asleep again than have this head.”
He took the glass away from her after she had finished the draught, and put it down. She lay back and closed her eyes again with a grimace, and the Saint lighted a cigarette and left her alone. With the drink he had just given her, the muzziness and the headache would pass off quickly enough.
“I was a fool to drink that whiskey,” she muttered.
“But you wait till I feel a bit stronger. I’ll make a noise then—if you haven’t put me to sleep again.”
“But you’re feeling better already.”
“Maybe I’m not going to die, if that’s what you mean.”
“Then just wait till you’re quite sure about it, and we’ll go on talking. You can still scream the roof off if you get tired of listening.”
“That’s what you said before.”
“But Reuben was here then.”
Her eyes opened, and she looked quickly round the room. Her breath came a little faster.
“Yes—he was here…Where is he?”
“I sent him home.”
“Did he have the same sort of drink that I had?”
The Saint shook his head.
“I wouldn’t give you the sort of drink I should mix for Reuben if I had a free hand,” he said. “No—I just told him to push off and he pushed off. Like a lamb. He’s really quite docile when you know how to handle him. Weren’t you watching me all the time before you went to sleep?”
She struggled up on her elbow.
“But he’ll be back—he’ll come back with the others—”
“No, I don’t think so. Not just yet, anyway. We parted like brothers. I even gave him back his gun.”
She brushed the copper-gold hair back off her face, her brows knitted with the effort to grasp his meaning.
“Let’s begin at the beginning,” he said. “After I left you last night I went out to put the car away. Once I was in the car, I found that the damn thing was taking me up to Graner’s. I couldn’t help it. It’s that sort of car. Crazy. Maybe it caught the disease from me—I don’t know. Anyway, once I got to the house I figured I might as well have a look round. I looked round. They certainly do make it difficult for a bloke to climb over their wall.”
“I could have told you—”
“But you didn’t. Never mind. I found out for myself. So, since I couldn’t get over the wall, I had one of my strokes of genius. After having tooled all the way out there, it seemed pretty silly to come home again without doing anything. So I rang the bell. Did you ever hear of anything brighter?”
The Saint Bids Diamonds (The Saint Series) Page 11
