The Saint Bids Diamonds (3 page)

“Lady,” he said solemnly, “this is a great moment. Will you shake?”

Her fingers met his almost immediately.

“But why?” she said.

“Just to keep me going till I can shake hands with Joris himself. I’ve always wanted to meet one of the boys who pulled off that job at Troschman’s-it was one of the classics of the century.”

“I don’t think I know what you’re talking about.”

He was still smiling.

“I think you do. I said your father had an uncommon name, but I knew I’d heard it before. Now it’s all come back to me. I knew I should never forget it.”

And he was speaking nothing but the most candid truth, though she might not understand it.

When some persons unknown got into Troschman’s diamond fabriek down on Maiden Lane one rainy night in April, and cleaned out a safe that had held two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of cut and uncut stones, the police were particularly interested in the fact that the raid could hardly have been better timed had the raiders been partners in the business. This was impossible, for Troschman had no partners; Troschman’s was a small concern which employed only one permanent cutter, taking on other workers when they were needed. As a matter of fact, this cutter was the nearest approach to a partner that Troschman had, for he was acknowledged to be one of the finest craftsmen in the trade, and had been with Troschman ever since the business was started. So that it was natural for him to be given more confidence than an ordinary employee would have received; and when the stones were collected to fill the biggest order that Troschman had ever secured in his career, this cutter was the only other man who knew when the collection was complete. His name was Joris Vanlinden.

The only reason he was not arrested at once was because the police hoped that, by keeping watch on him, they might net the whole gang at one swoop. And then, three days later, he vanished as if the earth had swallowed him up; and the hue and cry which followed had sought him for four years in vain. Only in various police headquarters did his name and description remain on record, with appropriate instructions. In various police headquarters-and in the almost equally relentless memory of the Saint… .

Simon Templar could have sat down and listed the authors of every important crime committed in the last fifteen years; and that list would have included a number of names that no police headquarters had on record, and a number of crimes that no police headquarters had even recognised as crimes. He could have told you when and where and how they were committed, the exact value of the boodle, and very often what had happened to it. He could have told you the personal descriptions of the participants, their habits, haunts, specialties, weaknesses, aliases, previous record and modus operandi. He had a memory for those details that would have been worth thirty years’ seniority to any police officer; but to the Saint it was worth more than that. It was half the essentials of his profession, the broad foundations on which his career had been built up, the knowledge and research on which the plans for his amazing forays against the underworld were based; and again and again ingenious felons had thought themselves safe with their booty, only to wake up too late when that unparalleled twentieth-century privateer was already sailing into their stronghold to plunder them of all that they had, until there were countless men who feared him more than the police, and unnumbered places where his justice was known to be swifter and more deadly than the Law.

The Saint said nothing about that, though there was no native modesty in his make-up. He looked the girl in the eyes and kept that frank and friendly smile on his lips.

“Don’t look so scared,” he said. “You’ve nothing to worry about. I’m in the business myself.”

“You aren’t anything to do with the police?”

“Oh, I have lots to do with them. They’re always trying to arrest me for something or other, but so far it hasn’t been a great success.”

She laughed rather hysterically, a sharp and some how jarring contrast to the panic that he had seen in her face a few moments before.

“So I needn’t try to keep up my party manners any more.”

She shook her head and rubbed a hand over her eyes with a sort of gasp; and then all at once she was serious again, desperately serious, with that queer sort of sob in her voice. “But it’s not true! It isn’t true! Joris didn’t get anything out of it. He wasn’t one of them, whatever they say.”

“That doesn’t sound like very good management.”

“He-he wasn’t one of them. Yes, he helped them. He told them what they wanted to know. He was hard up. He lost all his savings in the stock market-and more money that he couldn’t pay. And there was me… . They offered him a share, and he knew that Troschman’s insurance was all right. But they cheated him… . They took him away when they thought he’d break down if he was arrested. Besides, they could use him. They brought him out here. But they never gave him his share. There was always some excuse. The stones would take a long time to get rid of, or they couldn’t find a buyer, or something. And all the time he had to go on working for them.”

“That was Graner, I suppose?”

He was still holding her hand, and he could feel her trembling.

“Do you know him?”

“Not personally.”

“Yes, that was Reuben Graner.” She shuddered. “But if you don’t know him you couldn’t understand.

24THIEVES’ PICNIC
He’s — I can’t tell you. Sometimes I don’t think he’s human… . But how did you know?”

Simon took out his cigarette case and offered it to her. Her hand was still shaking, so that she could hardly keep the cigarette in the flame when he gave her a light. He smiled and steadied her hand with cool, strong fingers.

“Reuben isn’t here now, anyway,” he said quietly. “And if he does walk in, Hoppy and I will beat him firmly over the head with the wardrobe. So let’s take things calmly for a bit.”

“But how did you know?”

“More or less by accident. You see, I came here from Madrid.” He saw the awakening of understanding in her eyes and nodded. “Rodney Felson and George Holby were there.”

“Do you know them?”

“Not to talk to. But I know lots of people that I don’t talk to. I just happened to see them. You know Chicote’s Bar?”

“I’ve never been to Madrid.”

“If you ever go there, look in and give Pedro my love. Chicote’s is one of the great bars of the world. Everybody in Madrid goes there. So did Rodney and George. Rodney had a telegram. He talked it over with George-I wasn’t near enough to hear what they were saying, but in the end they screwed it up and dropped it under the table. Which was careless of them, because when they went out I picked it up.”

“You picked it up ?”

He grinned shamelessly.

“I told you I was in the business myself. There may be honour among thieves, but I never saw very much. I knew that Rodney and George were one of the six cleverest pairs of jewel thieves at present operating in Europe, so I just naturally thought that anything they were interested in might interest me. It did.”

He took out the telegram again and gave it to her. He watched her as she read it through, and saw a trace of colour burn for a moment in her cheeks-burn till it burnt itself out and left them white again.

“He sent it as soon as he heard,” she whispered. “I thought it would be like that. I could feel it. He never meant to let Joris and me go away. Oh, I knew!”

He would have guessed her age at barely twenty-one; but when she raised her eyes again there was an age of weariness in them that tied a strange knot in his throat. He took the telegram from her and put it away again.

“Did you want to go away?” he asked gently.

She nodded without speaking.

“Joris was working at his old job, I suppose,” he said.

“Yes. They made him work for them. He cut and polished all the stones that came from Troschman’s. Sometimes they went out and stole more, and when they brought them back he had to re-cut them so that they couldn’t be identified. He had to do what they told him, because they could always have sent him back to the police. And there was me-but I told him that that didn’t matter, only he wouldn’t believe me.”

“And now they want to replace him.”

She nodded again.

“That’s what Graner called it. We thought we might go away, somewhere like South America, where nobody would know us and we could live and be happy. But I knew we couldn’t. Graner never meant us to. So long as Joris was working for them, it was all right. But they couldn’t let him go with all that he knew. He’d never have said anything, but they couldn’t be sure of that. I knew they’d never let him go alive. They meant to kill him… . Oh, Joris!”

Her arms tightened convulsively about the old man’s frail shoulders, and the Saint saw her eyes shining again.

“Is that what they were trying to do when I butted in?” he asked doubtfully. “It didn’t look quite like that to me. After all, they could have shot him in the first place, instead of keeping their guns in their pockets till we were driving away.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if they meant to kill him then —”

“But if they never let him have any money, you couldn’t have got very far.”

She looked at him with her lip quivering; and again he saw that oddly watchful uncertainty creep into her gaze. He knew at once that she was weighing her answer, and knew also that she was going to lie.

Then he happened to glance at the old man. Joris Vanlinden had sunk back into such a stillness, and for a time they had been so carried away by other things, that they had not been noticing him. But now Simon saw that the old man’s eyes had opened, quite quietly, as if he had awakened out of a deep sleep.

Simon touched the girl’s arm.

“Look,” he said.

He stood up and went to pour some more whiskey; and Mr Uniatz watched the performance wistfully, chewing the extinct butt of his cigar. The greater part of the dialogue had passed harmlessly over Mr Uniatz’ head, which was only equipped to assimilate short and simple speeches very carefully addressed to him in the more common words of one syllable; and he had long ago started to flounder out of his depth and eventually given up the effort, seeing no reason to exhaust himself with agonising mental labour when, in the fulness of time, everything that it was good for him to know would be duly explained to him by the Saint. Besides, there was a much more urgent problem which had been occupying all his attention for some time.

“Boss,” said Mr Uniatz plaintively, as if pointing out an incomprehensible oversight, “ya left a toid of de bottle.”

“Okay,” said the Saint resignedly. “You find a home for it.”

He went back to the bedside. The old man was touching the girl’s face and hair with nervously twitching fingers, speaking in a weak husky voice:
“Where are we, Christine ? … How did we get here? … What happened?”

“It’s all right, darling. Darling, it’s all right. You’ve just got to rest.”

The old man’s eyes went back to the Saint, and his hand clutched at the girl’s arm.

“Who are these people, Christine? I haven’t seen them before. Who are they?”

“Lie still, darling.” She was comforting him with a kind of motherly tenderness, as if he was a feverish child. “They won’t hurt you, Joris. They came and saved you when the others were fighting you.”

“Yes, they were fighting. I remember. I never could fight very much. You remember, Christine-that other time ? Did they hurt you, Christine ?”

“No, darling. Not a bit.”

The old man’s eyes closed again, and for a moment he relaxed, as if the strain of talking had been too much for him. And then, suddenly, his eyes opened again.

“Did they get it?” he asked hoarsely.

“Hush, Joris. You must be quiet.”

“But did they get it?”

Vanlinden’s voice was louder, and his eyes were staring. She tried to press him back on the bed, but he flung off her hands. He began to feel in his breast pocket, unsteadily at first, and then more wildly; then he was feeling in all his pockets, turning them out again and again, in a pitiful sort of frenzy.

“No, no,” he muttered incoherently. “Not there. No. It’s gone!” His voice rose and broke on something like a scream. “It’s gone!” He stared at the Saint. “Did you take it?”

“Take what?” asked the Saint helplessly.

“My ticket!”

“Oh, a ticket. No, I haven’t seen it. D’you mean your ticket for going away from here? I shouldn’t worry about that. If you go and explain things to the shipping company or whatever it is —”

“No, no, not that!” Vanlinden’s voice had a despairing shrillness that made the Saint’s flesh creep. “My lottery ticket!”

“What?”

Christine got up suddenly from the bed. She faced the Saint like a tigress though her head barely reached his shoulder.

“Yes,” she said fiercely. “Did you take it ?”

“Me?” said the Saint blankly. He spread out his arms. “Search me and strip me if you want to. Take me apart and put me together again. I never saw his lottery ticket in my life.”

She swung round and pointed at Hoppy Uniatz.

“He was sitting in the back of the car with Jon’s all the time. Did he take it?”

“Did you take it, Hoppy?” snapped the Saint.

Mr Uniatz swallowed nervously.

“Yes, boss.”

“You took it ?” snapped the Saint incredulously.

Hoppy gulped.

“Yes, boss,” he said apologetically. “I t’ought ya said I could take it.” He pointed to the table. “Dey wasn’t so much in de bottle, at dat.”

“You immortal ass!” snarled the Saint. “We aren’t talking about the whiskey!”

He turned back to the girl.

“Hoppy didn’t take it,” he said. “And neither did I.

If you don’t believe us, you can go ahead and turn us inside out. I didn’t even know Joris had a lottery ticket. How much was it worth?”

“You may as well know now,” she said dully. “It was a ticket in the Christmas lottery. It won the first prize-fifteen million pesetas.”

II
How Simon Templar Conversed with a
Porter, and a Brace of Guardias Were
Happily Reunited

THE SAINT stared at her, and then stared again at Joris Vanlinden.