The Saint Bids Diamonds (The Saint Series) Page 16

  “Aliston and Palermo were going to watch that.”

  “They were watching it—when I came back. That’s how they caught me. They stuck a gun in my ribs and lugged me along here. They told me they were double-crossing you, and offered me a third share if I’d come in with them and throw Christine in the kitty.”

  Graner looked down at Palermo again for a moment, and in the pause that followed the Saint could hear Lauber’s stertorous breathing.

  “What did you tell them?” asked Graner.

  “I told them what they could do with their third share,” answered the Saint righteously. “Then they decided to make me tell them where Christine was with a hot spoon—or Palermo did. Aliston didn’t seem to have a strong stomach, so he pushed off.”

  Simon turned his head and pointed to the blister on his cheek, and then down at the spoon which Palermo had dropped. Graner stepped forward and moved it with his foot. The scrap of carpet on which it had fallen was charred black.

  The Saint could see those pieces of circumstantial evidence registering themselves on Graner’s face.

  “You didn’t tell him?”

  “He didn’t get far enough with the treatment. He’d forgotten to have my feet tied, and I managed to kick him about a bit.” Simon moved his cigarette significantly to indicate the evidence for the accuracy of that statement. “Then I promised the girl—she was here all the time, by the way, so I take it this is where Palermo keeps her—I promised her some money if she’d cut me loose, so she did. Then I sent her off to phone you, and looked around for Joris.”

  “He’s here?”

  The Saint moved his head slowly from left to right and back again.

  “He was.”

  Simon hitched himself off the table, and Lauber’s gun jerked up at him again. Simon went on elaborately ignoring it. He sauntered over to the door of the bedroom and waved his hand towards the interior. Graner and Lauber followed him. They stood there looking in at the rumpled coverlet and the pieces of cloth and cut rope which were scattered on the bed and the floor in silent testimony.

  Graner’s bright black eyes slid off the scenery and went back to the Saint.

  “What happened to them?”

  “I let them go,” said the Saint tranquilly.

  2

  It would give the chronicler, whose devotion to his Art is equalled only by his distaste for work, considerable pleasure to discourse at some length on the overpowering silence which invaded the room and the visible reactions which took place in it—besides bringing him several pages nearer to the conclusion of this seventeenth chapter of the Saint Saga. The fusillade of words which one reviewer has so lucidly likened to “a display of fancy shooting in which all the shots are beautifully grouped on the target an inch away from the bull” tugs almost irresistibly at his trigger finger. The simultaneous distension of Lauber’s and Graner’s eyes, the precise degree of roundness which shaped itself into Lauber’s heavy lips, the tightening of Graner’s thin straight mouth, the clenching of Lauber’s fists and the involuntary upward lift of Graner’s gun—all these and many other important manifestations of emotion could be the subject of an essay in descriptive prose in which the historian could wallow happily for at least a thousand words. Only his anxious concern for the tired brains of his critics forces him to stifle the impulse and deprive literature of this priceless contribution.

  But it was an impressive silence, and the Saint made the most of it. All the time he had been talking, he had known that he would inevitably have to answer Graner’s last question: it had been as inescapably foredoomed as the peal of thunder after a flash of lightning, with the only difference that he had been able to lengthen the interval and give himself time to choose his reply. There had never been more than three possibilities, and the Saint had worked them out and explored their probable consequences as far ahead as his imagination would reach in an explosive intensity of concentration that crowded a day’s work into a space of minutes.

  Now he relaxed for a moment, while the result of the explosion sent the other two spinning through mental maelstroms of their own. He read murder in Graner’s eyes, but he knew that curiosity would beat it by a short head.

  “You let them go?” Graner repeated, when he had recovered his voice.

  “Naturally,” said the Saint, with undisturbed equanimity.

  “What for?”

  Simon raised his eyebrows.

  “I’m supposed to be in cahoots with that outfit—or did I misunderstand you when we talked it over?”

  “But those two—”

  “They haven’t got the tickets. I searched every stitch on them. Besides, Christine told me—”

  “You’re a damned liar!”

  It was Lauber who interrupted, with his voice thick and choking. His gun pushed forward at the Saint’s chest, and there was a flare of desperate fury in his face that gave the Saint all the confirmation he wanted.

  Simon had foreseen it—it was one of the factors that he had weighed one against the other in his feverish analysis of the situation. If the story that Graner had taken back to the house had shaken the world of Palermo and Aliston to its foundations, it must have knocked the foundations themselves from under Lauber’s. Simon had been expecting his intervention, even more than Graner’s. He knew that for the moment he might have even more to fear from Lauber than from Graner, but he allowed none of his thoughts to move a muscle of his face.

  He looked Lauber in the eye and said with a quiet significance which he hoped only Lauber would understand, “It won’t hurt you to wait till you’ve heard what I’ve got to say before you call me a liar.”

  Doubt crept into Lauber’s face. He was caught off his balance and didn’t know how to go on, like a horse that has been sharply checked in front of a jump. The Saint had made him stop to think, and the pause was fatal. Lauber glared at him, held rigid between fear and perplexity, but he waited.

  “What did Christine tell you?” said Graner.

  “She told me herself that Joris and the other guy hadn’t got the ticket. It’s obvious, anyway—otherwise Palermo and Aliston would have had it by this time. They parked it somewhere.”

  The Saint glanced at Lauber again, with a measured meaning which could have conveyed nothing to anybody else. On the face of it, it was only the natural action of a man who wanted to keep two people in the conversation at once. But to the recipient it spoke a whole library of volumes. It told Lauber that the Saint was lying, told Lauber that the Saint meant him to know it, told Lauber that the Saint could also come out with the truth if he chose to and invited Lauber to play ball or consider the consequences. And Simon read the complete reception of the message in the way Lauber’s gun sagged again out of the horizontal.

  Graner was untouched by any such influence. He went on staring at the Saint with the vicious lines deepening on either side of his mouth.

  “Where had they put it?”

  Simon shrugged.

  “I’m blowed if I know, Reuben. It doesn’t seem to matter either, because they’ve gone off to look for it.”

  “And you sent them off…”

  The Saint lounged back against the door frame and regarded him pityingly.

  “My dear ass,” he said, “how many more times have I got to tell you that you need more of my brains? I’ve got Christine, haven’t I? And they don’t know where she is, and they haven’t an earthly chance of finding out. I told them the same thing that I told you—that she’s my hostage for a square deal. D’you think Joris will let anyone start any funny business while his daughter is in my hands?”

  The Saint’s first blow had punched Graner in the stomach and knocked the wind out of him. This one hit him under the chin. He took it with a slight involuntary backward jerk of his head which rearranged the expressive lines of his face. Comprehension hammered some of the cold malevolence out of his eyes.

  “What else did you tell them?”

  “I told them they could have till midnight to sho
w me the ticket, or it would be too bad about Christine. When they’ve produced the ticket we’ll go on talking business. It all came to me in a flash, after I’d sent the girl to phone you.”

  “Did they hear what you told her?”

  “Yes. But that only made it more effective. It was as if I’d saved their lives. I told them I’d find a way to square you, and turned ’em loose. It was a brain wave. Why shouldn’t we let them work for us? They’re holding more cards than we are—let them play the hand for us. We can still pick up the stakes. I told them the deal I’d made with Christine, and made ’em see that they’d got to accept it. They had to fall into line, and they can’t fall out. They haven’t any choice left, and I made them see it. No ticket, no Christine.”

  Graner took the words into his system one by one and kept them there. The crisp, incontrovertible logic of the Saint’s exposition crushed all the argument out of him.

  Simon watched him with encouraging affability. He was beginning to get Graner’s measure. The Saint treated his opponents like a boxer sizing up an antagonist in the ring, ruthlessly searching for the weaknesses that would open the way for a winning punch. Graner’s weakness was his conceit of himself as a strategist: the appeal to a point of generalship was a bait that brought him onto the hook every time. And once again, as on the last occasion, Simon saw the murderous suspicion in Graner’s gaze overshadowed by a glitter of unwilling respect.

  The Saint’s mocking blue eyes turned towards Lauber, and the expression on the big man’s face completed the picture in its own way.

  “I guess I’m due for an apology,” he said slowly. “You were too far ahead of me.”

  “I usually am,” said the Saint modestly. “But you get used to that after a while.”

  Graner seemed to become aware that he was still holding his automatic pointed at the Saint. He looked down at it absently and put it away in his pocket.

  “If you can go on like this,” he said, “you will have no reason to regret joining us. I can use someone like you; especially…”

  He turned slowly round as a muffled groan interrupted him. Lauber turned also. They all looked at Palermo, who was sitting up with one hand holding his jaw and the other clasping the back of his head.

  “…especially as there will be some vacancies in the organisation,” Graner said corrosively.

  Palermo stared up at them, his face grey and pasty, while the meaning of his position was borne in upon him and he made a desperate effort to drag some reply out of his numbed and aching brain. Lauber drew a deep breath, and his under lip jutted savagely. He took three steps across the room and grasped Palermo’s coat lapels in one of his big-boned hands, dragging him almost to his feet and shaking him like a rag doll.

  “You dirty little double-crossing rat!” he snarled.

  Palermo struggled feebly in the big man’s savage grip.

  “What have I done?” he demanded shrilly. “You can’t say that to me. He’s the guy who’s double-crossing us—Tombs! Why don’t you do something about him—”

  Lauber drew back his free fist and knocked Palermo spinning with a brutal blow on the mouth.

  “Say that again, you louse,” he grated. “Last night you were trying to make out I was double-crossing you. Now it’s Tombs. It’ll be Graner next.”

  Simon put his hands in his pockets and made himself comfortable against the door, prepared to miss none of the riper gorgeousness of Lauber’s display of righteous indignation. The spectacle of the ungodly falling out with one another could have diverted him for some time, but Reuben Graner intervened.

  “That will do, Lauber,” he said in his soft, evil voice. “Have you anything to say, Palermo?”

  “It’s a frame-up!” panted the Italian. “Tombs came here and beat me up—”

  “Did you have Joris and another man here?”

  “I never saw them!”

  “Tombs—and Maria—saw them here.”

  “They’re lying.”

  “Then how do you explain the ropes on the bed? And why did you bring Tombs here? And why were you going to torture Tombs?”

  Palermo swallowed, but no words came from his throat for a full half minute.

  “I can explain,” he began, and then the words dried up again before the concentrated malignity of Graner’s gaze.

  “You have taken a long time to think of your explanation,” Graner said coldly. “We will see if you have anything better to say at the house. If not—I fear that we shall not miss you very much…”

  He turned to Lauber.

  “Take him down to the car.”

  Palermo gasped, hesitated, and made a sudden bolt for the door. But the hesitation lost him any chance he might have had. Lauber caught him by the coat and wrapped his arms round him in a bear hug in which Palermo writhed and kicked as futilely as a child. Palermo got one hand to the coat pocket where he had once had a gun, and when he found it empty he let out one short squeal of terror like a trapped rabbit.

  Simon picked up the cord that had been cut away from his own wrists, and sorted out enough of it to tie Palermo’s hands behind his back, while Lauber kept hold of him.

  “Aliston may be coming back here,” he remarked, as he went through to the bedroom to fetch one of the gags which had been left there.

  “I had thought of that.” Graner held the knob of his slender cane between his thumb and forefinger and swung it like a pendulum. “They took the other car when they went out.”

  “They brought me here in a car—wasn’t it outside when you arrived?”

  “No.”

  “Aliston must have taken it, then.”

  “Where was he going?”

  “I gathered that he was going to look for Christine. Anyway, that was the excuse.”

  “Did he know where to look?”

  Simon busied himself with carefully packing the last square inches of the dishcloth into Palermo’s mouth.

  He could estimate just how hopeful a chance Aliston had—in Santa Cruz, the stand to which a taxi is allotted can be identified from the number, and business is not so brisk that a driver forgets his fares quickly. Given the number of the cab, which he knew Aliston had got, it would only be a matter of time before the chauffeur was located, and from then on the trail would be as easy to follow as if it had been blazed in luminous paint. The Saint dared not think how much time had slipped away since Aliston left; somehow, before much more of it had elapsed, he had got to find a way to ditch Graner and Lauber and leave himself free to tackle that problem. And yet Lauber was the one man in Santa Cruz to whom the Saint wanted to talk—but in private.

  “I think he’s wasting his time,” answered the Saint confidently. “I got back to the hotel in a taxi, just before Aliston and Palermo caught me, and Aliston got the number. But I changed taxis a couple of times, with a walk in between, so he’s got a long hunt in front of him. When he finds the scent doesn’t lead anywhere he’ll probably be back. I’ll wait for him if you like.”

  Graner thought for a moment, and then nodded.

  “Yes, you had better do that. Lauber can wait with you in case he gives any trouble.”

  Lauber stopped on his way to the door.

  “I can’t stay here,” he said loudly, and Graner looked at him.

  “Why not?”

  “Because—well, what are you going to do with Palermo by yourself?”

  “Take him back to the house.”

  “You’ve got to drive the car.”

  “Palermo is tied up and gagged. He will give no trouble. If he tried to, he would regret it.”

  “I can clip him over the head again if you like,” suggested the Saint helpfully.

  “That is quite unnecessary. Manoel is still waiting in the square, and I can pick him up. Since you have removed Christine there is no further need for him to remain there.”

  Lauber thrust out his heavy jaw.

  “Well, I still think it’s all wrong—”

  “Are you disputing my orders?” Gra
ner inquired purringly.

  He had his right hand in his pocket again, and his voice had the soft rustle of satin. Lauber glowered at him blackly for several seconds with his fist clenched and his mouth jammed up like a trap, but his gaze wavered before the bright menace of Graner’s eyes.

  Simon’s imagination raced away again—with the domination he had established over Graner, he might still be able to bring about a change of plan. But he certainly wanted Palermo out of the way, and he wasn’t very frightened of what Palermo might say to Graner when they were alone. Manoel would doubtless be making his report sooner or later, anyhow, and it didn’t much matter if it was a little sooner. Simon wasn’t convinced that they would try to do anything about Joris on the spot, with Palermo on their hands; besides, an abduction would take a certain time to get organised, and they still had to locate Joris’s room. Meanwhile the Saint did want to talk to Lauber. It was a matter of timing by split seconds and balancing arguments without the weight of a flake of ash to choose between them, but Simon had spent his life betting on snap decisions.

  “Don’t be a fool, Lauber,” he said encouragingly. “We don’t want two of us off duty looking after Palermo while there’s Aliston to be taken care of.”

  Lauber seemed as though he was about to make another protest. Graner laid his stick on the table and picked his perfumed silk handkerchief out of his breast pocket to fan it gently under his nose, and his bright little eyes never shifted from the other’s face.

  “All right!” Lauber gritted savagely. His sullen stare switched momentarily onto the Saint. “But if anything goes wrong it’s no good blaming me.”

  He yanked Palermo round and shoved him roughly out of the door, and Graner put away his handkerchief and picked up his cane. Simon followed him out of the room.

  “If Aliston comes back you will use his car to bring him back to the house,” Graner said as they went down the stairs. “If I have not heard from you in a reasonable time I shall send further instructions.”

  Outside, it was still raining. They stood in the doorway and watched Lauber bundle Palermo into the back of the car. It caused no commotion. The inhabitants of the street slept in the daytime, and any chance passers-by there might have been had been driven to cover by the torrential storm. As soon as Lauber had settled the cargo and stepped back, Graner scuttled across the twelve-inch pavement and wriggled into the driving seat. The car swished away through the rivulets that bubbled between the cobblestones.