The Saint Bids Diamonds (16 page)

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.

“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.

“You talk fast,” he said.

“I think like that,” said the Saint easily. “It didn’t even take me long to figure out that you aren’t only double-crossing me-you’re double-crossing Graner as well.”

There was a certain period of silence, during which the girl’s knife and fork clinked softly as she continued to eat with wholehearted concentration. Aliston’s chair creaked a nervous rhythm as he swayed backwards and forwards. Palermo went on looking at the Saint for several moments and then continued eating.

“Graner hasn’t done anything much for you, has he?” he said. “I wouldn’t have stood for him hitting me like he hit you last night.”

“You’d have had to stand for it if you’d been in my place.”

“Still, did you like it?”

The Saint shrugged, watching him thoughtfully.

Palermo went on, with an air of friendly decision: “I’m going to be frank with you, Tombs. You’re a good fellow, and I’d rather have it that way. We are double-crossing Graner. You guessed right. He’s tried to do things to us like he did to you, and Cecil and me have been getting tired of it. Graner’s all right-he’s a great organiser and he’s done plenty for us. But he’s too bossy. Cecil and me, we’re what you might call independent. When this lottery-ticket business came along, we thought it was about time to quit. So we had to ditch Graner. See?”

“And ditch me,” added the Saint mildly.

Palermo was unabashed. He went on cleaning up his plate with hearty thoroughness.

“Sure. I’m being frank with you, see? That was how it was. We didn’t know you much then, and we were just going to split the ticket between us. Well, now it seems you’ve got Christine and you’ve been talking to her. We’ve got to keep her quiet, and we want to know what she’s told you. So maybe we have to pay for it. I’m not saying we like it, but business is business and we’ve got to make the best of it. You’ve got to look at it the same way. If you stick with Graner you can’t collect more than two million pesetas, and you’ll lucky if you get that. Come in with us, give us all you know, and we’ll give you a square deal that ‘ll bring you five million. That’s fair enough, isn’t it?”

“I think it’s a lovely idea,” said the Saint slowly.

Palermo leaned back and shifted his belt with a satisfied gesture.

“That’s fine,” he said. “Well, where did you take Christine?”

Simon pushed his plate away and smiled at him no less complacently.

“Oh no,” he said. “That isn’t fine at all.”

“What d’you mean ?” demanded Palermo abruptly. “We’re partners now, aren’t we?”

“For the moment.”

“Well, what are you putting in ?”

“What are you putting in, if it comes to that ?”

Palermo pointed his cigar at the closed communicating door.

“You know what we’re putting in. That’s what you were talking about just now. Christine told you, didn’t she? You don’t have to play innocent any more.”

“You’ve got them here ?”

“Sure we have.”

The Saint eased a short cylinder of ash on to the side of his plate.

“And I’ve got Christine-where I’ve got her,” he said equably. “So we’re all square. I’m not wanting to take Joris away from you, and you needn’t want to take Christine away from me. You’ve already told me that you’ve taken up double-crossing for a living, and you don’t know much about my morals either. So if we each keep what we’ve got we can work together without being afraid that we’re double-crossing each other. That seems sound enough for a start, anyway. Besides, why put all our eggs in one basket? If Joris managed to get away, he’d take Christine; or if Graner got wise to this place he’d have ‘em both; or if Joris’ friends got on to you —”

“You made a stall like that to Graner,” Palermo said coldly. “It’s not good enough. If you’re coming in with us, you come in without any strings. Where’s Christine?”

“I took her to another hotel.”

“Which one?”

“The Quisisana.”

Palermo made a sign to Aliston. Aliston got up and wilted towards the door. He seemed glad to be relieved from the strain of sitting still.

“I’ll see if I can find the taxi as well,” he said.

Simon turned the cigarette between his fingers.

“Where’s he going?” he rapped.

“To see if Christine is really at the Quisisana,” answered Palermo flatly. “And to look for the taxi you came back to the hotel in and see how much the driver remembers. If you’re telling the truth, all right. If not …”

He didn’t trouble to finish the sentence.

“You’re wasting your time,” said the Saint evenly. “I changed taxis two or three times. And if Christine sees Aliston, it ‘ll only scare her away.”

“Then why don’t you go and fetch her?” suggested Palermo, with his greenish eyes fixed unwaveringly on the Saint.

“I’ve told you why,” retorted the Saint heatedly. “You’re being a couple of suckers and doing the best you can to gum up the whole works. If that’s the kind of partners you are, you don’t interest me so much. What difference does it make where Christine is? She’s safe enough where I put her. If you started talking about where the ticket is, it’d be more to the point.”

Palermo leaned forward a little.

“I’ve told you our terms,” he said. “If you bring Christine here and tell us what she’s told you, the deal is on. Otherwise it’s off. Don’t you think that’s fair?”

The Saint sent a curling plume of smoke drifting slowly through his half-smiling lips. So Palermo was asking for it. The Saint would have liked to keep him happy, to play him with the same bait that Graner had so successfully been induced to take. He had even less faith in the security of Palermo’s partnership than he had in Graner’s, and he would have had fewer scruples about lying to him, if possible; but the situation would have had its practical advantages apart from its appeal to his sense of humour. It was a pity that it couldn’t have been organised that way. But Palermo was in quite a different frame of mind from the one in which Graner had accepted the Saint’s terms; and Simon knew when he was wasting his time.

Palermo had got him in a corner which left no room for evasions; and it was obvious enough that Palermo meant to keep him there. The immutable fact was registered beyond mistaking in every glitter of Palermo’s intent bright eyes, in the whole atmosphere of his expectant stillness. And the Saint knew that every extra moment of hesitation was only hardening Palermo’s suspicions, bringing them a degree closer to the crystal sharpness of conviction. … It was all very sad, but Simon Templar’s philosophy held no room for vain regrets.

“If that’s how you put it, I think it stinks,” he said pleasantly, and looked into the muzzle of Palermo’s gun.

2
“You’re a fool,” Palermo said thickly.

“We can’t all have your brains,” said the Saint deprecatingly. “Besides, you need a few compensations, with a face like yours.”

The greenish glow darkened in Palermo’s eyes, but he made no immediate reply. He beckoned to Aliston with his other hand without looking round.

“Tie his hands behind his back.”

Aliston detached himself from the door and undulated into the kitchenette. Simon heard him moving about and surmised that he was removing the washing from the line. The Saint went on smoking unconcernedly and measured the distance to Palermo’s chin. It was about five feet, with Palermo sitting where he was; and besides that there was the corner of the table to get round. He slipped one hand under the table and tested its weight speculatively, but Palermo felt the infinitesimal movement.

“Keep your hands on top of the table.”

Aliston came back from his errand; and Palermo took the cigar out of his mouth and put it back again.

“Put your hands behind the back of the chair,” he said.

Simon took a final pull from his cigarette and put it carefully down before he obeyed. Aliston worked silently at tying his wrists together. He used all the rope, and the knots felt tight. When he had finished, Palermo put his automatic away and came round and tested them.

“How do they feel to you, Art?” Simon enquired genially. “I think he did pretty well-he must have learnt some tricks when he was at crochet school.”

The girl sat on the other side of the table, watching them stupidly. Palermo strolled back and jerked his head at her.

“Make a spoon hot on the fire,” he said. “Make it red-hot. żTú comprendes?”

The girl stared at him blankly, and Palermo thumped his fist on the table.

“żTú has oído?” he snarled.

Aliston’s face twitched nervously as the girl hurried out. He had turned several shades whiter, so that the graze that ran up his left cheek showed more vividly against the sickly pallor of his skin. He opened his mouth once or twice, as if he was on the point of protesting, and closed it again without saying anything, as if he had already heard the inevitable answers.