18 The Saint Bids Diamonds (Thieves' Picnic) Page 12

  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, seńor?" 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 on to 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.

  "żDónde 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.

  VI How Simon Templar Ate without Enthusiasm, and Mr Uniatz Was Also Troubled about His Breakfast

  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.

  "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 settl
ed 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 Cellophane 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, but 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.

&nb
sp; "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 on to 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.