The Saint Bids Diamonds (15 page)

“But where else can I go?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.” He thoughtfor a moment. “Last time I was here, there was a fellow — Wait a minute.”

He skimmed rapidly through the telephone directory; and some time later, after he had managed to get the attention of the hotel operator, and the hotel operator had managed to wake the exchange out of its peaceful slumbers, and the exchange had made careful investigations to assure itself that there was such a number, he secured his connection.

“Oíga-żestá allí el seńor Keena? … David? Well, the Lord’s name be praised. This is Simon… . Yes indeed… . Yes, I know I said you’d never see me again in this God-awful hole while there was any other place left on earth to go to, but we haven’t time to go into that now. Listen. I want you to do something for me. Have you still got your apartment? … Well, how’d you like to turn out of it for a lady? … Yes, I’m sure you can’t see why, but how d’you know she’d like you ? … Anyway, it’s just one of those things, David. And it is important. I’ll tell you all about it later. She can’t go to a hotel… . That’s grand of you… . Will you meet us there in about five minutes? … Okay, fella. Be seein’ ya!”

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 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.