“Forget it,” said Palermo, reading his thoughts. “You haven’t a hope.”
Simon was not quite so sure—there are popular superstitions about the speed with which triggers can be pulled which the Saint was too experienced to share, and he had gambled cheerfully on those split-second exaggerations before then. But there were other thoughts coming into his mind which he did not let Mr Palermo read.
“What’s the idea?” he demanded indignantly.
“You needn’t worry about that. Come and get into the car.”
The drizzle was swelling methodically to a downpour, and the one shuffling pedestrian turned the next corner and vanished. There was nothing to stop Palermo using his gun, but that was not the factor which settled the Saint’s decision. Palermo and Aliston had taken Hoppy and Joris—somewhere. It seemed to the Saint that he was being offered an open invitation to find out where. He could make an accurate estimate of the chance he would be taking by accepting that escort, but the thought only amused him. Besides, he was getting wet.
He continued to look suspicious and indignant.
“Why should I get in the car?”
“Because you’ll get hurt if you don’t. We’re just going for a little ride.”
“It sounds like the good old days,” said the Saint.
He crossed the street and got into the car, with Palermo’s automatic still boring into his back. Aliston glanced round from the driver’s seat.
“Two sixty-seven,” he said cryptically, in his Oxford drawl. “A seven.”
“Good. We’ll find him afterwards. Let’s go.”
Palermo settled back as the car started off. He occupied himself with preening his natty little moustache, but the gun in his pocket remained levelled at the Saint. Simon went on frowning at him.
“Look here, Palermo,” he protested. “Where are we going?”
“Call me Art,” said Mr Palermo generously.
“Where are we going?”
“We’re going where we can have a talk.”
“What’s wrong with the hotel?”
“Too many people,” said Palermo blandly.
The Saint scowled.
“Did Graner send you?” he demanded, with rising fury.
Palermo’s greenish eyes studied him thoughtfully while he considered his answer. Aliston decided it for him. He spoke without turning his head.
“Shut up asking so many questions. You’ll find out soon enough.”
The Saint shrugged and relaxed in his corner. If he couldn’t talk, he could at least take advantage of the time to settle some of his own deductions.
Graner had gone back to the house and conferred with the others—that was the obvious starting point. What the face value result of the conference had been was yet to be hinted at, but Simon could guess some of the results which the individual members would wisely have refrained from making public. Graner’s good news, if that was how he had presented it, would have given Lauber and Palermo and Aliston three separate and personal sinking feelings in their stomachs which must have cost them a heroic effort to conceal. To Palermo and Aliston, the capture of Christine would mean that she might know something and say something that would blow the secret of their abduction of Joris sky-high. To Lauber it would mean that she might somehow be able to convince a questioner that the lottery ticket had really been stolen the night before, which would inevitably bring the suspicion against himself back to fever heat. To all of them it would be a staggering blow to the security of their private plans that would blaze chaotic danger signals across their reeling horizons; to all of them it would scream a call for urgent action that must have made them feel as if their chairs were turning red-hot under them while they had to sit there talking. And Simon had an idea that the arrival of Palermo and Aliston was prompted by one of those desperate reactions.
The car was twisting and turning through the sordid narrow streets of what is euphemistically known as the French Quarter. Presently it stopped in one of them, at the door of a gloomy-looking two-storied house crowded among half-a-dozen other identically squalid buildings, and Palermo’s gun prodded the Saint’s ribs again.
“Come on. And don’t make any fuss.”
Simon got out of the car. This street, like the first one, had been emptied by the rain, and the Saint knew better than to waste his energy on making a fuss. Besides, his other plans were developing very satisfactorily.
Aliston opened the door, and they went into a small dark hall redolent with the mingled smells of new and ancient cooking and mildew and stale humanity. They stumbled up the dim stairs and emerged on a bare stone landing. A shaft of greyish light fell pitilessly across it and showed up the soiled peeling scales of what had once been whitewash as Aliston opened another door.
“In here.”
Simon went into the room and summarised its topography with one glance. On the right was a small window, hermetically sealed in the Spanish fashion, and almost opaque with the accumulated grime of ages. On the left was a closed door which presumably led to the bedroom. In front of him and to the left was another door, which was open, and a girl with an apron tied round her came out of it as they entered. Behind her Simon saw the symptoms of a kitchenette in which oddments of feminine washing were strung on a line like flags. The girl had brass-coloured hair which was growing out black at the roots; she was pretty in an ordinary sort of way, though her complexion was coarse and unhealthy under the crude caked make-up. She had the broad hips and rounded stomach and big loose breasts which the national taste demands.
“Trae la comida,” said Palermo, throwing his hat into a corner, and she went out again without speaking.
Simon put a hand in his pocket for his cigarette case, but Aliston caught him.
“Wait a minute.”
While Palermo kept him covered, Aliston searched him carefully, but it still didn’t occur to him to search the Saint’s left sleeve. He was looking for something which was likely to be found in certain definite places, and when he failed to find it he scratched his head.
“Must be crazy,” he said. “He hasn’t got anything.”
“Why should I have anything?” asked the Saint ingenuously. “I admit the place looks pretty insanitary, but I haven’t been here very long.”
Palermo took his hand out of his gun pocket for the first time since their encounter outside the hotel. He waved the Saint round the table to the side farthest from the door through which they had come in.
“Sit down.”
Simon made himself as comfortable as he could on the plain wooden chair and opened his cigarette case.
“When do I know what the hell this is all about?” he enquired politely.
Palermo unwrapped the transparent paper from a local cigar, bit off the end, and lighted it. It smelt like burning straw.
The girl came back and laid an extra place at the table, and Palermo and Aliston sat down. Aliston twiddled one of his coat buttons and looked at the floor, the ceiling, the different walls, his feet, and his fingernails. Palermo seemed as absorbed in his foul cigar as if he hadn’t heard the Saint’s question.
“I suppose you know there’ll be hell to pay when Graner hears that the girl’s been left at the hotel all this time alone,” said the Saint presently.
“She isn’t at the hotel,” Aliston said sharply.
Simon raised his eyebrows.
“Well, where is she?”
“That’s what we’re hoping to hear from you,” said Palermo.
The Saint placed his cigarette in his mouth and inhaled from it without changing his expression. The girl returned again with a pan of paella and put it down in front of Palermo. Simon noticed that she went back and fetched two more plates and stood looking at him doubtfully. Palermo glared at her silently, and she left the plates and sat down, but the Saint had learnt all that he had to learn. He knew now that Joris Vanlinden and Hoppy were in the room with the closed door on his right.
He gave no sign of having observed anything, b
ut the sweet exhilaration of the fight began to creep into his nerves again. A well-aimed fist in Mr Palermo’s other eye, he was musing, would produce an agreeably symmetrical effect. Or should one be guided by a less monotonous style of composition and work diagonally downwards through the nose? It was a nice problem in practical aesthetics, and he didn’t want to decide it too hastily. He helped himself from the dish when it was passed to him, and picked up his fork.
“Why should you ask me that?” he said calmly.
Palermo kept his cigar in his left hand and ate with his right, without once getting the two mixed up. Simon could not quite determine whether he ate to suppress the taste of the cigar or whether he smoked to disguise the flavour of the food.
“Because you took her away,” he said bluntly.
“I did?”
Palermo nodded. He grabbed a mouthful of rice, a mouthful of smoke, and another mouthful of rice.
“I saw you in a taxi when we were driving down—we were in a one-way street and we couldn’t turn round in time, or we’d have stopped you. I told Graner there was probably a back way out of the hotel. How’s your chicken?”
“I expect it led a very useful life until it stopped laying,” said the Saint guardedly.
“They never kill them here before that,” said Palermo affably. “Have some more.”
He fished about in the pan and loaded the Saint’s plate with a piece of gizzard, a section of neck, and a few pieces of bone whose anatomical status it was impossible to ascertain because of the fact that the Spanish race has never learned how to carve a bird. They simply chop it up into small fragments with an axe, and you can work it out for yourself. The Saint sighed. It was only his fourth meal in Santa Cruz, but he remembered his previous visit as well, and already he was beginning to suffer from the luscious hallucinations of a starving man.
“It seems as if I did the right thing, anyway,” he said brazenly.
“Why?”
Simon looked straight at him.
“I told Graner your outfit is a swell bunch of double-crossers. And it seems as if you’ve still got plenty of it left in you. I was thinking of that when I put Christine out of the way.”
“Sure.” Palermo shovelled some more food into his mouth and drank some wine. “You ever do any double-crossing?”
Aliston’s fork clattered onto his plate.
“For heaven’s sake, Art,” he snapped. “We haven’t got all day to waste.”
“Take it easy, take it easy,” said Palermo soothingly. “Tombs and me are just getting along fine. Tombs is a good fellow. He just doesn’t understand us properly yet. Isn’t that right, Tombs?”
Simon picked a piece of cuttlefish out of his paella and chewed it laboriously. It tasted exactly like high-grade rubber.
“You’re wrong there,” he said coolly. “I think I understand you pretty well. When you’ve met one skunk, you recognise the smell of the others—whether they’re wearing an old school tie or a little piece of gigolo whisker.”
The refined face of Mr Aliston pinkened, but Palermo’s retained its swarthy impassivity. He stared at the Saint with his head cocked on one side like a sparrow.
“You talk fast,” he said.
“I think like that,” said the Saint easily. “It didn’t even take me long to figure out that you aren’t only double-crossing me—you’re double-crossing Graner as well.”
There was a certain period of silence, during which the girl’s knife and fork clinked softly as she continued to eat with wholehearted concentration. Aliston’s chair creaked a nervous rhythm as he swayed backwards and forwards. Palermo went on looking at the Saint for several moments and then continued eating.
“Graner hasn’t done anything much for you, has he?” he said. “I wouldn’t have stood for him hitting me like he hit you last night.”
“You’d have had to stand for it if you’d been in my place.”
“Still, did you like it?”
The Saint shrugged, watching him thoughtfully.
Palermo went on, with an air of friendly decision: “I’m going to be frank with you, Tombs. You’re a good fellow, and I’d rather have it that way. We are double-crossing Graner. You guessed right. He’s tried to do things to us like he did to you, and Cecil and me have been getting tired of it. Graner’s all right—he’s a great organiser and he’s done plenty for us. But he’s too bossy. Cecil and me, we’re what you might call independent. When this lottery ticket business came along, we thought it was about time to quit. So we had to ditch Graner. See?”
“And ditch me,” added the Saint mildly.
Palermo was unabashed. He went on cleaning up his plate with hearty thoroughness.
“Sure. I’m being frank with you, see? That was how it was. We didn’t know you much then, and we were just going to split the ticket between us. Well, now it seems you’ve got Christine and you’ve been talking to her. We’ve got to keep her quiet, and we want to know what she’s told you. So maybe we have to pay for it. I’m not saying we like it, but business is business and we’ve got to make the best of it. You’ve got to look at it the same way. If you stick with Graner you can’t collect more than two million pesetas, and you’ll be lucky if you get that. Come in with us, give us all you know, and we’ll give you a square deal that’ll bring you five million. That’s fair enough, isn’t it?”
“I think it’s a lovely idea,” said the Saint slowly.
Palermo leaned back and shifted his belt with a satisfied gesture.
“That’s fine,” he said. “Well, where did you take Christine?”
Simon pushed his plate away and smiled at him no less complacently.
“Oh no,” he said. “That isn’t fine at all.”
“What d’you mean?” demanded Palermo abruptly. “We’re partners now, aren’t we?”
“For the moment.”
“Well, what are you putting in?”
“What are you putting in, if it comes to that?”
Palermo pointed his cigar at the closed communicating door.
“You know what we’re putting in. That’s what you were talking about just now. Christine told you, didn’t she? You don’t have to play innocent anymore.”
“You’ve got them here?”
“Sure we have.”
The Saint eased a short cylinder of ash onto the side of his plate.
“And I’ve got Christine—where I’ve got her,” he said equably. “So we’re all square. I’m not wanting to take Joris away from you, and you needn’t want to take Christine away from me. You’ve already told me that you’ve taken up double-crossing for a living, and you don’t know much about my morals either. So if we each keep what we’ve got we can work together without being afraid that we’re double-crossing each other. That seems sound enough for a start, anyway. Besides, why put all our eggs in one basket? If Joris managed to get away, he’d take Christine; or if Graner got wise to this place he’d have ’em both; or if Joris’s friends got on to you—”
“You made a stall like that to Graner,” Palermo said coldly. “It’s not good enough. If you’re coming in with us, you come in without any strings. Where’s Christine?”
“I took her to another hotel.”
“Which one?”
“The Quisisana.”
Palermo made a sign to Aliston. Aliston got up and wilted towards the door. He seemed glad to be relieved from the strain of sitting still.
“I’ll see if I can find the taxi as well,” he said.
Simon turned the cigarette between his fingers.
“Where’s he going?” he rapped.
“To see if Christine is really at the Quisisana,” answered Palermo flatly. “And to look for the taxi you came back to the hotel in and see how much the driver remembers. If you’re telling the truth, all right. If not…”
He didn’t trouble to finish the sentence.
“You’re wasting your time,” said the Saint evenly. “I changed taxis two or three times. And if Christine sees
Aliston, it’ll only scare her away.”
“Then why don’t you go and fetch her?” suggested Palermo, with his greenish eyes fixed unwaveringly on the Saint.
“I’ve told you why,” retorted the Saint heatedly. “You’re being a couple of suckers and doing the best you can to gum up the whole works. If that’s the kind of partners you are, you don’t interest me so much. What difference does it make where Christine is? She’s safe enough where I put her. If you started talking about where the ticket is, it would be more to the point.”
Palermo leaned forward a little.
“I’ve told you our terms,” he said. “If you bring Christine here and tell us what she’s told you, the deal is on. Otherwise it’s off. Don’t you think that’s fair?”
The Saint sent a curling plume of smoke drifting slowly through his half-smiling lips. So Palermo was asking for it. The Saint would have liked to keep him happy, to play him with the same bait that Graner had so successfully been induced to take. He had even less faith in the security of Palermo’s partnership than he had in Graner’s, and he would have had fewer scruples about lying to him, if possible, but the situation would have had its practical advantages apart from its appeal to his sense of humour. It was a pity that it couldn’t have been organised that way. But Palermo was in quite a different frame of mind from the one in which Graner had accepted the Saint’s terms, and Simon knew when he was wasting his time.
Palermo had got him in a corner which left no room for evasions, and it was obvious enough that Palermo meant to keep him there. The immutable fact was registered beyond mistaking in every glitter of Palermo’s intent bright eyes, in the whole atmosphere of his expectant stillness. And the Saint knew that every extra moment of hesitation was only hardening Palermo’s suspicions, bringing them a degree closer to the crystal sharpness of conviction…It was all very sad, but Simon Templar’s philosophy held no room for vain regrets.
The Saint Bids Diamonds (The Saint Series) Page 13
