“I think you must have been crazy.”
“That’s what I thought. Anyway, Graner let me in. And just as we were going into the house I heard Lauber in the middle of an argument with the other two. He was saying—I can tell you his very words—‘I never had the blasted ticket. I was hunting through Joris’s pockets for it when that swine jumped on me. If anybody’s got it, he has.’ ”
“You heard Lauber say that?” she stammered in credulously. “But you know—”
He nodded.
“Of course I know. But that was Lauber’s story, and from what I’ve heard he’s sticking to it. Didn’t you hear Graner say that he’d put a man to watch the shop where the ticket came from, in case anybody tried to cash it?”
Talking about Graner reminded the Saint that he had put Graner’s drink down when he went out to Hoppy’s room. He fetched it and returned to the bed.
“What else did they say about it?” she asked.
“Nothing. The subject was dropped when I walked in. Reuben asked me a lot of questions, and ended up by telling me that I wasn’t to come back here. I don’t think he suspected me, but he just didn’t want me knocking around Santa Cruz where I might hear too much or talk too much. I argued about it, but I had to stay.”
He told her about his other experiences the night before, about the story he had read in the newspaper at breakfast, and about the introduction to his duties which had followed, talking in the same crisp, vivid phrases that smacked home every vital detail like bullets, until he reached the point where he had walked into the room with Graner and found her there.
“You know the rest,” he said.
“But where is Joris?”
“Tell me what you know.”
“I awakened rather late,” she said. “About ten o’clock I went and listened at the door, but I couldn’t hear anything, and I didn’t want to disturb them if they were still asleep. I couldn’t hear anything in your room, either. I got dressed and sent for some breakfast, and presently I went back again. I still couldn’t hear anything, so I knocked on the door. They didn’t answer. I went on knocking until I got scared and opened the door. There wasn’t anyone there. I rushed back here, and when you didn’t answer either I came in. I saw that your bed hadn’t been slept in, and I simply flopped. It was only a moment or two before you came in. That’s why I was sitting on your bed. I just went weak in the knees and couldn’t stand up for a bit. I didn’t know what to think or what to do.”
“Don’t you know what to think now?” said the Saint reluctantly.
He found her touching his hand.
“But Graner said they hadn’t found Joris.”
“They haven’t—so far as he knows,” said the Saint. “But remember what I told you about Lauber. A thing like that spreads, once it starts.”
“But do you know?”
“I know this. Hoppy sent for breakfast this morning, before you were awake. I’d told him not to open the door to anybody, but I suppose he didn’t think he was meant to starve. He didn’t see any harm in having breakfast. The chambermaid brought it, but another guy who answers to Aliston’s description met her at the door and said he wanted to take it in for a joke. Probably he gave her some money to make the joke seem funnier. She let him do it. He was wearing a white waiter’s coat, and Hoppy wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Aliston could easily have cracked Hoppy over the back of the head with something, and once Hoppy was out, Joris wouldn’t have given them any trouble.”
Her fingers tightened over his.
“You ought to have let me stay with him,” she whispered.
“It wouldn’t have done any good if they’d taken you at the same time.”
“I could have looked after him…But why didn’t they take me?”
“Because they didn’t know. Joris came in with Hoppy last night, and you came in with me some time afterwards. They’d have been asking for you first, and that night porter is so dumb that he wouldn’t have connected the two. He didn’t even know that Hoppy and I had any connection. Probably they expected to find you with Joris, anyhow. When they didn’t find you, they probably didn’t want to waste any more time looking for you. Graner was waiting for them to call him, and as far as they were concerned Joris and Hoppy were the important people. So I guess they left it at that.”
She was silent for quite a long while, but no more tears came into her eyes. He could guess what she must be feeling, but she gave no outward sign. There was an inward strength in her which he had still not measured completely. When she looked at him again, she had herself completely under control.
“So you think Aliston and Palermo have joined up with Lauber to double-cross Graner?”
“I don’t think that for a minute. I think it was just that suspecting Lauber put the idea into their heads. And if they were out to do any double-crossing, why should they cut Lauber in? Why not keep it all to themselves? They’ve got Joris now, and they’ll start by trying to find out something about the ticket from him and Hoppy. If the trail turns back to Lauber again, they’ll go after him.”
“And what about Graner?”
“He may start getting some suspicions of his own, and if he does he’ll do something about them. It’s just an open competition to see who can do the fastest and smartest double-crossing.”
“How much are you doing?”
The Saint met her eyes steadily over his cigarette.
“Now you’re coming to that drink I gave you,” he said.
He gave her a full account of his conversation with Graner after she had gone to sleep, leaving nothing out. She was watching him all the time, but his recital never faltered.
“I couldn’t have got off a quarter of that in front of you,” he said. “You can see that, can’t you? As far as Graner’s concerned, you’ve got no reason to trust me any more than you’d trust the rest of his gang; so apart from everything else, I had to put you out before he began to wonder why you kept so quiet when I was talking.”
“So you told him that you were going to tell me just about what you’ve told me now—to try and make me think you were on my side?”
He nodded without hesitation.
“Yes.”
3
“I think I’m well enough to smoke a cigarette,” she said.
He gave her one, and a light. She went on looking at him, with detached and contemplative brown eyes. He knew that he was being weighed in the balance, and knew just how much there was against him at the other end of the scales. It was even more than he had to overcome when he made the original suggestion to Graner, but he faced the ordeal without a trace of anxiety. Whichever way the verdict was fated to fall, so let it be.
“Do you think Graner believed you?” she asked noncommittally.
“I’m hoping so. At all events, he acted as if he did. And there’s no reason why he shouldn’t. He thinks I’m intending to work for him; he thinks I value my share in his other boodle more than a difference in my share of the ticket; he knows nothing against me, he’s got my passport—”
“Your passport?”
“Yes. He asked for it, just for insurance, so I gave it to him to keep him happy. It’s quite a good one, but I’ve got plenty more—only he doesn’t know that…Maybe he has some suspicions about me—I don’t know—but the worst you can call them is suspicions. So long as he hasn’t any proof, it doesn’t make much odds. I’ve got the bulge.”
She said, “Do you think I believe you?”
He moved his shoulders in the faintest sketch of a shrug.
“I’m waiting for you to tell me, Christine.”
She turned her cigarette in the ash tray, making random patterns in the ash. For a while she didn’t give him an answer.
Then she looked at him again, and he realised that the detachment had gone from her eyes. He would have liked a brush and palette and canvas, and the time and talent to capture the tilt of her chin and the expressive arch of her brows. He had been aware of her beauty from the
first moment he saw her, but he had not felt it so deeply before now. And yet her conscious parade of it had some of the pathetic simplicity of a child, and it was with the same childish simplicity that she said, “Don’t you think I could give you more than Graner ever could?”
He tried not to look too much at the soft curve of her lips and the elusive temptation of her eyes.
“He’s not very beautiful, is he?” he said lightly.
“I’m beautiful.”
The sheer silk of her dress brought out the lines of her long slender legs as she swung them off the bed. She stood over him, her hands resting on her hips; the silk clung to her waist and moulded the pattern of her firm young breasts. She was all young desire, infinitely desirable…He did not want to think about that.
“I must be,” she said, with the same innocent soberness. “Do you know I was only sixteen when they brought me here? I’ve seen them watching me as I grew up. I’ve seen them wanting me. Sometimes they’ve tried, but Joris could still help me a little. I learnt to keep them away. But I knew I couldn’t keep them away always. You may be the same as they are, but you don’t seem the same. I shouldn’t mind so much if it was you. And if it would help Joris…if you helped him, I would give you anything you want…”
“That isn’t necessary,” he said roughly.
He got up quickly, without looking at her, and went to the window. He stood there for a time, without speaking, looking down into the square without seeing anything, until he felt he could trust himself to face her again. When he turned round at last, he had taken everything out of his eyes but the preoccupation of the adventure.
“The first thing you’ve got to do is to get out of here,” he said. “Graner’s been sent home for the moment, but we don’t know what’s going to happen next. And I’d rather you weren’t around when it does happen.”
“But where else can I go?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.” He thought for a moment. “Last time I was here, there was a fellow…Wait a minute.”
He skimmed rapidly through the telephone directory, and sometime later, after he had managed to get the attention of the hotel operator, and the hotel operator had managed to wake the exchange out of its peaceful slumbers, and the exchange had made careful investigations to assure itself that there was such a number, he secured his connection.
“Oíga—está allí el señor Keena?…David? Well, the Lord’s name be praised. This is Simon…Yes indeed…Yes, I know I said you’d never see me again in this god-awful hole while there was any other place left on earth to go to, but we haven’t time to go into that now. Listen. I want you to do something for me. Have you still got your apartment?…Well, how’d you like to turn out of it for a lady?…Yes, I’m sure you can’t see why, but how d’you know she’d like you?…Anyway, it’s just one of those things, David. And it is important. I’ll tell you all about it later. She can’t go to a hotel…That’s grand of you…Will you meet us there in about five minutes?…Okay, fella. Be seein’ ya!”
He hung up the telephone and turned round cheerfully.
“Well, that’s settled. Now if we can find some way to smuggle you out—Joris and Hoppy went out in trunks, so I suppose that’s ruled out. Wait another minute…”
“Are they watching the hotel?”
“Graner left Manoel outside—he was shining the back of his coat on the Casino when I saw him last. But we can fix that. Are you ready to move?”
“When you are.”
She put a hand on his arm, and for a moment he hesitated. There were so many other things he would rather have done just then…And then, with a quick soft laugh, he touched her lips with his own and opened the door at once.
Downstairs, he beckoned the wavy-haired boy away from the desk, where there were some repulsive specimens of the young blood of England wearing their old school blazers and giggling over the priceless joke that Spaniards had a language of their own which was quite different from English.
“Have you got a back way out?” he asked.
“A back way out, señor?” repeated the boy dubiously.
“A back way out,” said the Saint firmly.
The boy considered the problem and cautiously admitted that there was a back door somewhere through which garbage cans were removed.
“We want to be garbage cans,” said the Saint.
He emphasised the fact with another hundred-peseta note.
They passed through stranger and stranger doors, groped their way through dark passages, circumnavigated a kitchen and finally reached another door which opened onto a mean back street. An idle waiter whom they brushed past gaped at them.
“You’re learning,” said the Saint appreciatively, and the boy began to grin. Simon turned back to him grimly. “But just understand this,” he added. “If that waiter or anyone else says a word about our going out this way, it’s your head that I’ll knock off. You’ve got a hundred pesetas. Use them.”
“Claro,” said the boy, less enthusiastically, and Simon ruffled his nice wavy hair and left him to it.
David Keena was waiting for them when their taxi drew up at the building where he lived.
“There is some excitement in Tenerife, after all,” he said when the Saint got out.
“You don’t know the half of it.” Simon waited until they were inside the house to introduce the girl. “This is playing hell with your peaceful life, I know, but I’ll do the same for you one day.”
They went up to the apartment. Simon scanned it approvingly. If by any chance the Graner organisation, either corporately or individually, started to search for Christine, they would draw the hotels first. She might be secure in that apartment for an indefinite time.
He took Christine’s hand.
“Hasta luego,” he said, and smiled at her.
She looked at him, not quite understanding.
“Are you going?”
“I must, darling. I daren’t be away from the hotel a moment longer than I have to, in case Graner calls me back. But I’ll be on the job. Now that I know you’re safe, I’ll have all my time to look for Joris and Hoppy. Just sit tight and don’t worry. It won’t be long before I find them.”
“You’ll tell me what happens?”
“Of course. There’s a telephone here, and I’ll call you the minute I’ve got anything to say. Or any other time I’ve got a few seconds to spare for a chat. I only wish I had the time to spare now, Christine.”
He held her hand for a moment longer, and there was something in his smile which seemed quite apart from the only life in which she had ever known him. The gay zest of adventure was still there, the half-humorous welcome to danger, the careless confidence in his own lawless ways that made up so much of his fascination, but there was something else, something like a curious regret that she was too young to understand. And before she could ask him anything else he was gone.
“Why the rush?” asked Keena, as Simon drew him down the stairs.
“For fifteen million reasons which I can’t stop to tell you about now. But you know something about me, and you know the sort of troubles I get into. If you don’t know any more than that it may be healthier for you.”
“I read something in the Prensa about an outbreak of gangsterismo—”
“So did I, but that was the first I’d heard of it.” Simon stopped at the foot of the stairs and grinned at him. “Now you’ll have to be content with that until I’ve got time to give you the whole story. You can go back upstairs for just long enough to settle the girl in and see that she knows where everything is. Then you hustle back to your office and carry on as if nothing had happened. She’s not to show her face outside this place, and you’re not to behave as if you’d got anyone here; so you can stop wondering where you’re going to take her to dinner. You find yourself a nice respectable hotel, and if there are any questions you can say your apartment’s being painted. You don’t say a word about Christine, or about me for that matter. Do you get the idea?”
“I think it’s a lousy idea,” Keena said gloomily.
The Saint chuckled and opened the front door.
“It’ll grow on you when you get to know it better,” he said. “We’ll get together later and talk it over.”
He had kept his taxi waiting, and a moment later he was on his way again. As they approached the Casino building he slid down in the seat until he was invisible to anyone who might have been lounging about the square, and told the driver to take him round to the corner of the Calle Doctor Allart—he had taken note of the name of the street behind the hotel when he went out with Christine.
The driver looked round at him blankly, narrowly missing a collision with a tram in the process.
“Dónde está?”
Simon explained the position of the street at length, and comprehension gradually brightened the chauffeur’s face.
“Ah!” he said. “You mean the Calle el Sol.”
“It has Calle Doctor Allart written on it,” said the Saint.
“That is possible,” said the driver phlegmatically. “But we call it the Calle el Sol.”
He stopped at the required corner, and Simon got out and paid him off. He walked on towards the rear entrance of the hotel. There was a car parked in front of it, on the opposite side of the road, otherwise the street was deserted. The car seemed to be empty, and he knew at once that it bore no resemblance to Graner’s gleaming Buick. It was curious that he should have overlooked the possibility of there being two cars in Graner’s garage. The Saint had just put his hand on the door when he heard a step behind him, and before he could turn he felt the firm pressure of a gun barrel under his left shoulder blade.
“Don’t do anything silly,” said a soft voice. The Saint turned his head.
It was the elegant Mr Palermo.
CHAPTER SIX:
HOW SIMON TEMPLAR ATE WITHOUT ENTHUSIASM AND MR UNIATZ WAS ALSO TROUBLED ABOUT HIS BREAKFAST
1
The rain which had been threatening all the morning was starting to come down in a steady miserable drizzle, and under its depressing influence the street, which could never in its existence have been a busy thoroughfare vibrating with the scurry of bustling feet, had taken on an even sadder and emptier appearance. Simon looked warily up and down it. About a block and a half away one lone man was shuffling in the opposite direction, too loyal to his national traditions to bustle even before the prospect of a soaking; apart from him there was no other soul in sight except Aliston, who had become visible at the wheel of the car.
The Saint Bids Diamonds (The Saint Series) Page 12
