18 The Saint Bids Diamonds (Thieves' Picnic) Page 10

  "If you try to stop me," she said steadily, "I'll make enough noise to bring everyone in the hotel up here."

  Graner glanced at the Saint. Simon knew exactly what the glance was intended to convey. He had demonstrated his resourcefulness in a similar situation before, and it was his cue to repeat the performance. But just as he had known what he was doing then, he knew what he was doing now.

  He got up off the bed; but it was Graner's wrist that he took hold of, closing his fingers on it in a ring of steel that numbed the nerves and sinews. He laid the flat of his hand on Graner's face and pushed him back against the door.

  "You mind your own business, Reuben," he said paternally.

  He had turned round with the movement so that his back was towards Christine, and as he spoke his left eyelid drooped in a broad wink.

  "And I'll have your gun-in case you're still feeling nasty," he added.

  He took the weapon out of Graner's pocket and transferred it to his own, and as he did so he glared at him warningly and winked again. Graner stared back at him without a change in the venomous glitter of his eyes, but the Saint took no notice. He locked the door and took out the key and gave it to Christine.

  "Listen," he said. "You've got nothing to worry about. This punk won't lay a hand on you again while I'm around. We'll peel him off the door and let you out any time you want to go. But I wish you'd stop and talk for a few minutes more. I'm just working round to a proposition that might interest you." She hesitated. The Saint's back was towards Graner now, and he gave Christine the same encouraging wink and pushed her gently towards the bed.

  "Sit down and have a drink," he said. "You look as if you needed one. And just let me talk for three minutes. You can still scream your head off if anyone tries to stop you going out after that."

  "You can't say anything that I want to listen to."

  "Don't be too sure, darling. I have beautiful ideas sometimes."

  He left her and went across the room to rummage in one of his suitcases. It yielded a bottle of whiskey -and something which no one else saw him pick up.

  "It's like this," said the Saint, as he poured out three glasses. "You say you've lost your lottery ticket. Well, things like that do happen. People lose jewelry, and so forth. They don't often lose two million bucks' worth at one go, but that doesn't alter the general principle. When they lose something and they want it back, they mostly offer a reward."

  "They don't offer a reward to the thieves who stole it.'

  "Even that has been known to happen."

  The Saint squirted soda into the glasses and picked up two of them. He carried one of them over to Graner, and as he gave it to him he winked again. He handed the other to Christine. Then he went back to the table and picked up his own.

  "In any case," he resumed, "the question doesn't arise. I didn't steal your ticket-if I'd got it, I shouldn't be messing around here. Surely you're not going to say that if I got it back for you I shouldn't be entitled to a commission?"

  She took another drink from her glass, watching him rather perplexedly.

  "Now if you've been listening to my recent chat with Reuben," Simon went on, "you'll have gathered that he hasn't been playing ball with me. So if he's ready to double-cross me, I'm quite ready to do some double-crossing on my own. From what I've made out, there are Reuben and three other guys up at the house wait­ing for a split in this ticket. Then there are a couple more in Madrid who'll probably expect to be cut in. And at least a couple of minor thugs who may be worth one share between them. So the best I can hope for is to come in for an eighth, even if they don't try to gyp me out of that. And you don't get anything."

  He moved a little towards her. She drank again, and leaned her head back against the end of the bed. Once or twice her eyes closed, and she seemed to make an effort to open them.

  "You're a nice kid, Christine, and I wouldn't mind doing something for you-if it doesn't cost me anything. From what I hear, there are only three other people in your outfit: Joris and his two pals. Well, if you cut me in there, including yourself, I'd be due for a fifth, which looks a whole lot better to me. If that looks like a proposition to you, you just say the word and I'll wring this bum Graner's neck. . . ."

  The girl's head slid suddenly sideways, and Simon Caught the glass from her hand before it fell.

  He put it on the table and eased her gently down until she was lying on the bed. She lay there limp and relaxed, breathing evenly and peacefully, with her eyes closed, as if she were in a natural sleep. Simon studied her for a few moments; and then he turned round to Graner with a flash of triumph in his eyes.

  "What you've been needing in your outfit all along, Reuben," he said kindly, "is a little less melodrama and a lot more of my brains."

  V How Reuben Graner Took Back His Gun, and a Taxi Driver Was Unconvinced REUBEN GRANER stepped delicately up to the bed and gazed down at the girl for a while without expression, tapping his mouth with the chased gold knob of his cane.

  Presently he looked at the Saint.

  "Yes, that was good," he said complacently. "Otherwise we might have had some trouble."

  He reached over for the telephone.

  "What d'you think you're doing now?" asked the Saint.

  "Sending for the others to come down and fetch her."

  Simon stretched out a long arm and put his finger on the hook.

  "Ixnay," he said succinctly. "D'you still want to turn the hotel upside down, or are you just daft?"

  "There will be no excitement," said Graner, "When I sent Palermo and Aliston down this morning, they had two large trunks to carry the luggage they expected to bring back. They can bring one of the trunks down again. You have told the hotel you are leaving, and one extra trunk will not disturb them unduly."

  So that was how it had been done, Simon reflected. He had been wondering about that point-it was hardly conceivable that two unconscious men could have been dragged out of the Hotel Orotava into the main square of Santa Cruz in broad daylight without starting a train of gossip that Palermo and Aliston would have been the last to desire. He didn't know about Joris, but he would have bet that Hoppy Uniatz would never have gone out on his own feet. Graner's explanation had cleared up another minor mystery.

  The Saint kept his satisfaction to himself. He took the telephone out of Graner's hand and hung it up again.

  "As I was saying," he remarked, "you still need a lot more of my brains."

  Graner's stony eyes settled on his face.

  "Why?"

  "What d'you think would happen if you took her back to the house?"

  "She would be persuaded to tell us what she knew."

  "That's what you think."

  "I can assure you there would be no question about that," Graner said significantly.

  Simon's gaze dissected him contemptuously.

  "If I'm right about what you're thinking," he said, "you can forget it again. That's something I don't stand for. But in any case you're talking like a fool as well as a louse. Did you ever invent any way of proving whether anyone was telling the truth when they were being what you call persuaded?"

  "It would be proved eventually."

  "Now you're talking like a spick, on top of everything else. Why wait for 'eventually'-whenever that is? Hasn't it occurred to you that Joris wouldn't have ditched his daughter here? If there's anything in this party that looks certain to me, it's that Joris will get in touch with her again, sooner or later. Maybe he'd have done it already if he hadn't seen your car outside."

  Graner's face hardened with concentration. The thoughts that were going on under the mask were unreadable, but the Saint didn't need to read them. He could make a pretty good guess about Graner's next reaction; and he was perfectly right.

  "There is something in what you say. Perhaps it would be better to leave her here for the present. I will tell Palermo to come down and watch her, and we can go back to the house."

  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 compaign 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 on to 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 carefuly in his wallet. The possession 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, s
ince 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.