The Saint in Europe (The Saint Series) Page 3

  “All I know about him is his name, Eli Rosepierre. And he was some sort of working jeweler.”

  The Saint paused with his wine-glass half-way to his lips.

  “Was he Jewish?”

  “I think so.”

  “I told Quercy there might be something in the name,” he observed. “Of course, the name Eli fixes it. Now I get the Rosepierre. A literal translation of Rosenstein. I wonder…He must have been very brave or very foolish to stay here, with the Nazis coming.”

  “Perhaps he was only too optimistic,” she said. “You know, I’d never thought of that, about the name.”

  “Was he rich?”

  “I don’t think so. He worked very hard. But he may have been thrifty. I don’t really know. As far as I can remember we lived in an ordinary decent way, not poverty-stricken and not specially luxurious.”

  “But it’s at least a possibility.”

  “What difference does it make? Whatever he had the Nazis must have confiscated.”

  “If they could find it.”

  “I suppose,” she said, “you’re looking for a motive.”

  “There must be one. And I’ve got to find it.”

  She watched him subdividing the last succulent pieces of lobster with loving regret.

  “When did you locate your brother again?” be asked.

  “Only a few months ago. The Norths had tried from time to time, without any luck. Last winter, I thought I’d try just once more, on my own. I had an advertisement translated into French, and sent it to all the Paris newspapers. Of course, for all I knew, he might have been anywhere else in France, if he was alive at all. But just by a miracle, he saw it. We exchanged letters and snapshots. He’d thought I was probably dead, too. And then, when I won that prize on the radio, it seemed as if everything was set for a real Hollywood ending.”

  “I can see why that story would get a play in the papers,” said the Saint thoughtfully. “And the correspondents of the French news agencies would naturally pick it up and send it back here.”

  “They did. Charles’s last letter said he was quite embarrassed about the publicity he was getting.”

  “So after that, anyone with any interest in the Rosepierre family, whether they read advertisements or not, would know a good deal about both of you.”

  “I suppose so.”

  Simon shamelessly used a piece of bread to mop up the last delectable traces of the ambrosial sauce.

  “Are you reasonably sure that this Charles Rosepierre was your brother?”

  Valerie stared at him.

  “He must have been!…I mean, he seemed to remember the same things that I did. And people here knew him by that name, didn’t they? And there’s quite a resemblance—look!”

  She took out her wallet and extracted a photograph which she passed to him. It showed a dark, rather delicate-featured young man with an engaging smile. Simon dispassionately compared it, detail by detail, with the face of the girl opposite him.

  “There’s a great likeness,” he conceded finally. “It’s probably true. I was only groping in the dark.”

  “Here’s another thing.” She was fumbling in her purse again, and she came out with a small round piece of silver like a coin. “My father gave it to me just before he sent us away. It’s one of those things that stand out in this disjointed kind of childhood memory. He gave both Charles and me one. And Charles mentioned it in his first letter answering my advertisement. He said he still had his, and he wondered if I still had mine.”

  “That’s pretty convincing.”

  Simon took the piece of silver and looked at it, and a slight frown of puzzlement began to wrinkle his forehead.

  “But if he was Jewish,” he said, “why a Saint Christopher medal?”

  She shrugged.

  “Maybe he’d been converted. Or maybe he hoped it would bluff the Gestapo, if they caught us.”

  “Or maybe,” said the Saint, in a faraway voice, “it was just the handiest thing he had in the shop.”

  She gazed at him blankly, while he examined the medal more closely and turned it over, half hoping to find some inscription on the back. But on the back was only a little quarter-inch indented square, much like a hallmark, except that the indentation was filled only with what looked like a cuneiform pattern of microscopic scratches which conveyed nothing to the keenest naked eye, if they had any significance at all.

  And yet, for the first time, the darkness in which he had been groping did not seem so dark. There were vital pieces missing in the jigsaw which he was trying to put together, but at last he was beginning to perceive the outlines into which they would have to fit.

  He was very silent while they finished the meal and the wine, so that by the time he called for the check the girl was fidgeting with understandable impatience.

  “May I keep this just for a few hours?” he said at last, and dropped the medallion into his pocket without waiting for her permission.

  “Have you thought of anything?” she asked.

  He stood up.

  “A lot of things. I’m not tantalizing you just to be mysterious, but they’ll take the rest of the afternoon to check on, and I don’t want to raise any false excitement until I’ve got facts to go on.”

  He walked with her to the Boulevard Raspail, the nearest thoroughfare where they would be likely to find taxis, and only his quiet air of being so absolutely certain of what he was doing somehow forced her to control her exasperation.

  “I’m telling the driver to take you to the Place Vendôme,” he said, as he opened the door of the first cab. “You’ll find dozens of fascinating shops in all directions from there, which will keep you amused until your feet hurt. At five o’clock, wherever you are, grab another taxi and tell him to take you to a restaurant called Carrere, in the Rue Pierre Charron. Will you repeat that?” She did so. “I’ll meet you there at the bar. Until then, you must not on any account go back to the Georges Cinq.”

  “But why not?”

  “Because as long as you’re wandering around the town, the killer isn’t likely to bump into you. At the hotel, he knows where to find you. And I like your head where it is. I don’t want it cut off.”

  Her eyes grew big and round.

  “You don’t think it could happen to me?”

  “I’ll answer that when I know why it happened to your brother. Meanwhile, don’t take any chances.”

  “But remember, I promised to meet that Mr Olivant at five-thirty.”

  “I want to be around when you do it. That’s what I’m talking about.”

  Her breath broke in a gasp of incredulity.

  “You mean you suspect him?”

  “Darling,” said the Saint, “this isn’t one of those storybook mysteries, with half a dozen convenient suspects. I’ve known ever since friend Olivant showed up that he had to be a good bet. The only problem still is to find the motive and prove it on him.”

  He closed the door gently after her, and turned towards the next cab.

  5

  On a narrow street near the Odeon he found, unchanged as if the German occupation had only ended yesterday, a little stationery and book shop which in those days would have earned a spot promotion for any Gestapo officer who had uncovered its secrets. Simon Templar went in and stood browsing over the titles on the shelves, while the jangling of the vociferous little bell hung on the door he had opened died away into silence. He heard a shuffle of footsteps at the back of the shop, and a voice that he recognized said courteously, “Bonjour, m’sieu.”

  Without turning, the Saint said, in French, “Do you have, by chance, a copy of the poems of François Villon?”

  There was an instant’s pause, and the dry voice said mechanically, “I regret, but today there is so little demand for those old books.”

  “ ‘But where are the snows of yesteryear?’ ” Simon quoted sorrowfully.

  Suddenly his elbow was seized in a wiry grip, and he was spun around to face the proprietor’s sparkl
ing eyes.

  “Mon cher Saint!”

  “Mon cher Antoine!”

  They fell into an embrace.

  “It is so many years, my dear friend, since I have heard that password!”

  “But you remembered.”

  “Who of us will ever forget?”

  They held each other off at arm’s length, and the years fell away between them. And as Simon laughed in the face of Antoine Louvois it was heart-warming for him to remember that this frail-looking gray man had been the redoubtable Colonel Eglantine of the maquis, whose exploits had perforated the intestinal tracts of Himmler’s minions with even more ulcers than bullets, and he thought again that only a French hero would have had the sense of humor to hide his identity behind the name of a delicate flower. Those days, when the Saint’s commission from Washington had been as tenuously legal as anything in his career, seemed very far away now, but it was good to still have such a friend.

  “What brings you back, mon cher ami?” Louvois asked. “We shall have much to talk about.”

  “Another time, Antoine. This afternoon I am in a hurry.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “That is why I came.”

  Louvois relaxed into instant attention. As if not a day had passed, with a sobering of expression too subtle to define, he was again the sharp-witted, cold-blooded, efficient duellist of the last war’s most dangerous game.

  “Je suis toujours à ta disposition, mon vieux.”

  “Was there, in the Resistance, a man named Georges Olivant?”

  “What is he like?”

  Simon described him.

  “There were so many,” Louvois said, “and under so many names. I do not recall him myself. I can make inquiries.”

  “On the other hand, he may just as well have been a traitor.”

  “There were many of them, also, and many of them also have thought it wise to change their names. But that might be a little easier to trace.”

  Simon put down the envelope which he still carried, into which he had put the guidebook with the conveniently shiny cover which Olivant had handled.

  “On the cover of this book,” he said, “are the fingerprints of this man. But cut off the top left-hand corner, which has my own prints.”

  “That will make it very easy, if his prints are on record.”

  “You still have friends at the Prefecture?”

  “Naturally.”

  “I do not want this to become known to Inspector Quercy, of the Police Judiciaire.”

  “He is a good man.”

  “There is a personal reason.”

  “Entendu. He will know nothing about it.”

  “It is urgent.”

  “I will close the shop and take the book over at once myself. I will have a report for you within two hours.”

  The Saint fingered the medallion in his pocket.

  “There is one other thing I can do while you are gone,” he said. “Do you have an accommodating friend who is a doctor, who would have a microscope that I can use for a few minutes?”

  “I can find one. Let me telephone first.”

  Louvois retired to the back of the shop and returned in a few minutes with a name and address written on a slip of paper.

  “It is all arranged. He is expecting you.”

  “Thank you, Antoine. I will come back and wait for you. À tout à l’heure.”

  “À tout à l’heure.”

  Simon walked to the address which was only a few blocks away. The doctor, a taciturn man with an old-fashioned spade beard, showed him directly into a small laboratory and left him there, asking no questions except whether the Saint knew how to operate the microscope and whether he required anything else.

  The Saint placed the Saint Christopher medal face down on the platform, centered the square indentation on the back under the objective, and aimed the light on it.

  As he adjusted the focus, the pattern of almost invisible scratches sprang to his eye as legibly as a page of print.

  He read the words so painstakingly engraved there, and then he lighted a cigarette and sat back on the stool, and knew the answers to many questions, while pictures formed for him in the drifting smoke.

  He saw old Eli Rosepierre in his workshop, knowing that the Germans were coming, and too proud or too disheartened to run away, it didn’t matter what his reason was, but wanting to save his children. And knowing that it was hopeless to trust them with such jewels and gold as he could lay his hands on, even though they would be lost to him anyway, but wanting to give them something that the invaders could not touch, for the future. And knowing that the children were too young to be relied upon to understand or to remember anything he might tell them about the modest wealth that was still secure. And faced with the problem of giving them the key to it in a form which they might understand someday, but which would be least likely for a child to destroy.

  Anything on paper, of course, was out of the question. It was too easy to mutilate or deface, or lose, or a finder could read and take advantage of it. A tattoo might have done, but Rosepierre was not a tattooer. He was a jeweler.

  And he had found a jeweler’s solution.

  Simon saw the old man working through the night, with aching eyes, carving the most important achievement of his engraver’s art. The etching of the Lord’s prayer on the head of a pin was a mere abstract diversion by comparison. This was his testament. On a medallion, because it was most indestructible; of silver only, because it would be least likely to attract a thief; of Saint Christopher, because it might disarm racial persecutors, and because it might be treasured more carefully—as indeed it had been…

  The Saint took out the slip of paper with the doctor’s address and copied down the words from the medal on the other side.

  Then, more for idle physical distraction than anything, he wrote underneath the English translation.

  There was only one weakness in Eli Rosepierre’s ingenious ideas. Why would his children ever have been likely to discover the minute engraving on the backs of their good-luck medals?

  And in the next flash, Simon knew the answer to that one, too. There must have been someone whom Eli Rosepierre trusted, to whom Rosepierre had given an inkling of his scheme, whom Robespierre had charged to find the children again, if it were ever possible, and tell them what to look for.

  Olivant.

  Simon thanked the doctor, who still asked no questions, and went back to Louvois’s little papeterie. He paced up and down the street and almost wore himself out before the old guerrilla fighter returned. But the springy gait of the retired maquisard gave him his answer even before Louvois spoke. “We have success, mon cher!”

  Louvois insisted on unlocking the door and entering the shop before he would say any more.

  “The fingerprints are those of one Georges Orival, mon cher Saint. He was a collaborationist, and for that he was sentenced to fifteen years in prison.”

  “He has escaped, or more probably been released,” said the Saint. “And he is looking very prosperous, under the name of Georges Olivant.”

  “No doubt the sale type had plenty of blood money hidden away before they caught him.”

  “He is now preparing to collect a lot more.”

  Louvois stroked his chin meditatively.

  “Perhaps that can be prevented. There are still many of us who do not think that imprisonment was enough.”

  “Ne t’en fais pas,” said the Saint. “His goose is practically cooked already. I personally guarantee it. I must go now and take care of him, but as soon as this is finished we must have our reunion.”

  6

  To his relief, although he had consciously tried to reassure himself that he had nothing to worry about, Valerie North was waiting at the bar of the Carrere, as he had instructed her. He ordered a Martini to keep her company while she finished hers, and paid the tab, but he would not talk even though the bar was deserted at that hour.

  “All the bartenders in
this area speak English,” he said, “and I don’t want to risk even a chance of future complications. Our caravanserai is just around the corner, but I didn’t want you to go there alone.”

  As soon as they had finished, he steered her down the street to the Avenue Georges V, and turned her quickly into the Georges V Apartments, just before the hotel entrance. They rode up to her floor in the elevator of the apartment wing, and he piloted her expertly through the connecting passage to the hotel section.

  “Don’t ask me how I know these back ways,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you without incriminating myself. As far as you’re concerned, it’s good enough to fool anyone who’s naturally expecting you to use the hotel lobby.”

  He found a chambermaid to open the door for them with a pass key. Inside, Valerie fetched up short with an exclamation, so abruptly that he trod on her heels.

  The room was a shambles. Her two suitcases were open, the contents strewn all over the bed, the other furniture, and the floor. But he was not seriously surprised.

  “Did you try to unpack in a hurry when you ran up before lunch?” he inquired calmly.

  “Of course not! Who would unpack like this? There’s been a burglar here!”

  She ran aimlessly about, rummaging among her disordered effects.

  “Don’t get excited,” he murmured. “I don’t think there’s any harm done that a little ironing won’t fix. If you’d been here yourself, it might have been very different.”

  “I haven’t got much jewelry,” she protested, “but—”

  “I expect it’s all there,” he said. “The one valuable piece was safe all the time.”

  He held out the Saint Christopher medal.

  She took it, and stared at him.

  “You’ve got to talk now,” she said. “If you don’t, I’ll go crazy—or do something I may be sorry for.”

  “I’m ready now,” he said. “Turn that medal over.”

  “Yes.”

  “You see that little square impression in the back?”

  “Yes.”

  “I put it under a microscope this afternoon. There’s fine engraving in it. Here’s a copy that you can read.”

  He gave her the scrap of paper on which he had written down the inscription and its translation. While she looked at it, he cleared a space on the bed, and sat down and lighted a cigarette. He felt very placid now.