The Saint Bids Diamonds (25 page)

“It’s a good story,” said the Saint unconcernedly, “even if it is a god-damn lie. Lauber was the bloke who insisted that he wanted to wait there for Aliston. But if you believe him, why don’t you call the police?”

“I’ll talk about that in a minute,” said Graner. He inspected his cigar for a few seconds, then looked up from it to add: “I have already seen Aliston.”

A ball of lead formed in the Saint’s stomach and made his diaphragm feel as if it was being dragged down out of its rightful place. He had to check himself for a moment before he spoke, to make sure that his voice was under control.

“That’s something, anyway,” he conceded coolly. “Was he looking pretty fit?”

“He had Christine with him.”

Simon knew how Lauber must have felt when he received that shattering jolt in the solar plexus, having seen it coming and yet only having had time to realise that he couldn’t possibly move fast enough to ward it off. He had had fair warning, but the shock was none the less deadly for that. He knew that he was hearing the truth-a fabrication that would have fitted so neatly into his own deductions would have been too wild a coincidence. The shock numbed every physical sense he commanded; but somehow it left his brain aloof and unshaken by the chaos of his nerves.

“Better and better,” he said, and was amazed at the naturalness of his own voice. “Where was this?”

“At the house.”

The third shock was wasted-it had no reactions left to work on.

“When?”

“Aliston was there when I got back with Palermo.”

“And who did he say I’d killed?”

“I will tell you exactly what he told me. He told me that he traced your taxi back to the Calle San Francisco. He found Christine there-at the address where Joris’ friend went to after you let him go.”

“That’s impossible,” said the Saint, with unruffled assurance. “Unless she got out of the place where I left her. Besides, this was before Joris’ pal went there, wasn’t it? Well, if he’d gone there expecting to find Christine, and she’d disappeared, would he have calmly gone off on a shopping tour like the one I followed him on ?”

“That is what he did according to your story,” Graner reminded him.

“And according to Aliston’s story I’m a liar again. You know, I’m taking quite a shine to this outfit of yours, Reuben. It’s such a relief to know you’re among friends.”

Graner nodded.

“I said I would tell you exactly what Aliston told me.”

“And I suppose he’d got another bright theory that I snatched Joris and his pal and parked them with Palermo’s slut.”

“Oh no. Aliston did not deny that he and Palermo had taken them. He was very perturbed when he heard that they had been permitted to escape.”

“I’ll bet he was,” said the Saint grimly. “And how did he make that sound all right-about double-crossing the rest of us?” Graner paused to trim the ash on his cigar; and again his hard, pebbly gaze rested on the Saint with the same unaccountable calculativeness that had been puzzling Simon ever since he sat down.

“I will go on telling you what he told me. He said that it was because he and Palermo were suspicious of you. They were afraid to argue with me because they were too familiar with my objection to having my orders questioned, but they were convinced that for once I was making a mistake. They did not like the way I had accepted you and accepted your terms this morning. They were certain that it would be dangerous to take Joris and the other man back to the house while you were there. They decided to make sure of their ground before they tried to dispute the wisdom of my instructions; meanwhile they felt that Joris and the other man would be quite safe where they had taken them. Then they captured you to see if they could force you to give them any more information. Aliston pointed out that it was absurd to think that they were trying to double-cross me, when he had brought Christine straight to the house as soon as he found her. He said that once he had her in his hands, believing that Joris and the other man and yourself were safely held at the same time, he saw no further need for secrecy, and went to the house at once to tell me the whole story, bringing Christine as evidence of his good faith.”

“What about Palermo?”

“He more or less corroborated the story-as much of it as he knew.”

“And why didn’t he tell it you in the first place?”

“He said that he lost his nerve, that he was dazed by the beating you had given him and did not quite know what he was doing.”

The Saint blew a smoke ring and annihilated it with his next gesture.

“I won’t bother to point out that that’s the story anybody else would probably have told if they were in the same spot,” he said. “So it wouldn’t be such a fluke if Palermo hit on it as well. I expect you’ve thought all that out for yourself, and you know what you’re going to believe.”

“Nevertheless, I should like your opinion.”

Simon had to restrain the impulse to stare at him. What the devil could Graner be driving at? Simon had been watching him every instant for the first sign of hostility, racking his brain to try and predict what form it would take so that he could be prepared to forestall it; and he had been baffled from beginning to end. The feeling of unreality came back to him so strongly that the whole interview seemed like a nightmare. Any of the things he had been expecting would have been less disturbing than that precarious fencing in the dark. But he had to make the best of the situation as it stood.

“If you’re really asking me,” he said slowly, “I should say that Lauber was the first double-crosser. The others seemed to think he had the ticket last night, didn’t they? Well, he might have had it. My first guess would be that for some reason or other he was trying to strike some bargain with Manoel to get him in with him, and Manoel turned him down and threatened to tell you, so Lauber shot him to keep his mouth shut.”

“And Aliston’s story?”

“That’s even easier. It’s so wet that it takes my breath away. I think that Aliston found Christine all right, and was taking her back to Maria’s. Meanwhile you’d got there, and he saw your car outside. That was enough to tell him that something had sprung a leak somewhere. He drove right past without stopping, and I’ll bet he had about half an hour’s continuous heart failure before he made up his mind what to do. He was on the spot. He had to think of some way to wriggle out, and wriggle out quick, before the rest of us caught up with him. Being rather a weak-kneed bloke, and scared stiff at that, the only thing he could think of was to wriggle backwards-to scuttle back into the fold and try to pretend it was all a joke. I think his story is the feeblest cock-and-bull yarn I ever heard in my life; and if you’d swallow that I guess you’d swallow anything. But that’s your funeral. I can’t help it if your brain’s softening.”

“My brain is not softening,” Graner said suavely. “I had already reached the same conclusion.”

Simon Templar didn’t know whether to believe his ears. The ground seemed to be rocking under his feet.

“You mean,” he said carefully, “that it’s beginning to dawn on you that this precious gang of yours is just about the finest collection of double-crossing rats that was ever gathered together under one roof?”

Graner nodded.

“That is what I mean. And that is why I hope you will help me to deal with them.”

2
Something began to bubble deep down in the Saint’s inside, so that he had to clench his teeth to keep it down. The leaden weight in his stomach suddenly turned into an airy balloon which swelled up until it almost choked him. His ribs ached with the strain of suppressing that ferment of Homeric laughter. The tears started to his eyes.

It was stupendous, sublime, epoch-making, phenomenal, colossal-no thesaurus ever compiled held enough words for it. It was superb, prodigious, transcendental, gosh-gorgeous and gloatworthy. It was the last perfect touch that was needed to turn that hilarious thieves’ picnic into the most climactic comedy in the history of the universe.

And yet after all-why not? Everybody else had done it. Lauber had done it. Aliston and Palermo had done it. He himself had been doing it all the time. Everybody in the cast had been scooting backwards and forwards through a tangle of intrigue and temporary alliances and propositions and cross-double-crossing that made European international politics look like a simple nursery game, fairly falling over each other to tread on somebody else’s face and scramble on to their own band wagons. Why shouldn’t Graner wake up eventually to what was going on all around him, and decide to look after himself ?

He had plenty of justification too. From his point of view, the one member of the party whose stories had been credible all the time, who had given the impression of being the one lone pillar of honesty and square dealing in the debacle, whose every action seemed to have been transparently open and above-board, was the Saint. That this was simply due to the Saint’s superior strategy and readiness of wit was a fact and an explanation that Graner need not have thought of. The one conviction that would have been left in his mind was that unless he took swift action he was in danger of being left high and dry by the defection of his subordinates; and his instinct of self-preservation would have done the rest. To him, the Saint would have seemed like the one tower of strength around which he could start to rebuild his kingdom-a kingdom which the Saint’s proven ingenuity and generalship might make even greater than the old.

At the risk of bursting a blood vessel, the Saint kept his face perfectly straight.

“You’d like us to give them a dose of their own medicine,” he said.

“That is what I propose to do,” said Graner. “There appears to be no other remedy. They have completely lost their heads over this lottery ticket, and when anything like that happens an organisation like mine is finished. I propose that you and I should make a fresh start-it seems obvious to me that you have been wasting your time as a diamond cutter. Perhaps you have never realised your own abilities. In combination, we should be invincible.”

Graner’s manner was deferential, almost ingratiating although the change was not much of an improvement. Simon felt that he was rather less objectionable when he was being his ordinary repulsive self than when he was bending over backwards in the unaccustomed exercise of making himself agreeable. But that only enriched the heroic and majestic fruitiness of the joke.

“In other words, we get what we can out of these birds and then ditch them?” suggested the Saint.

Graner inclined his head hopefully.

“I think you will agree that they deserve it.”

“It seems fair enough to me. But what have you told them?”

“I pretended to believe Aliston and Palermo, I locked Christine up and left them while I went to my own room to think. It was a long time before I could make up my mind.”

“When did I ring you up?”

“That was just before I had finished talking to them. I still hadn’t decided what was the best thing for me to do, even though I was sure they were lying to me. Then Lauber arrived with his story.”

“And you pretended to believe him.”

“I felt that that was the wisest course. So long as they all believed they were successfully taking me in, I had a certain advantage. I left them all together and told them I would go out and see if I could bring you back. I told them that you would be less suspicious of me than you would be of any of them.”

“That would still be a smart move, anyway,” said the Saint shrewdly.

Graner nodded frankly.

“I appreciate your point of view. But I am not trying to induce you to do anything. If you accept my proposition, you would have a free hand to take whatever action you think best.”

The Saint smoked for a little while in thoughtful silence. He wanted to leave nothing overlooked.

“How did Aliston get hold of Christine?” he asked.

“He told her-I am only quoting his own story— that Joris and the other man and yourself had all been captured. He said that we knew where she was, which was proved by his visit, and that we were on our way to take her. He also said that he had quarrelled with us, and that we were looking for him at the same time. He was able to convince her that she had no one left to help her, and that he himself was in terror of bur vengeance, and that their only hope was for them to join forces-I might mention that Aliston was on the stage before he made a slip which brought him to me. You might not think it, but he is a brilliant actor when he exerts himself.”

“But when he wanted to take her to the house —”

“He said that he was taking her somewhere else, He drove her out on to the road to San Andres, which is very lonely, and there he was able to overpower her without much difficulty.”

Simon could believe that Aliston had exerted himself in his acting. He was inclined to revise his own earlier theory about that abduction. It now seemed more likely that after Aliston had located Keena’s apartment he had gone back to tell Palermo, and that it was then that he had seen Graner’s car and realised that everything had blown up. Quite probably his offer to Christine had had the persuasive advantage of obvious sincerity; it was only when Aliston had realised that he had nowhere else to go, and that he was not equipped to fight a singlehanded feud of that kind, that he had panicked and done what he had done… , Not that a detail like that mattered very much.

“And Joris?” said the Saint.

“I left the others to discuss the best way to get hold of him again. We can attend to that ourselves when we have settled with them. I think you are in the best position to arrange that.”

“And the other man?”

“I know nothing more about him. But doubtless he will be getting in touch with you as you arranged.”

Simon filled his lungs with a sense of deep and dizzy contentment. So the tangle had all worked out, the various pieces in the jigsaw had all shaken down into their final and perfect combination, all the permutations and combinations had been tried, all the explanations made and all the moves accounted for. Now at last the Saint felt that all the threads were in his hands, and it only remained to wind them up and tie the conclusive knot. Joris was on the boat. Hoppy, by that time, was certainly back at the hotel. It only left Christine-and the ticket. …