The Saint Bids Diamonds (7 page)

Graner seemed to be satisfied that the words had made no particular impression. He turned away and pressed a button switch beside the door; and the Saint was momentarily puzzled, for no lights went on or off. Then he heard a swift scurrying outside, a light thud on the door and the scratch of claws; and all at once he understood the pressing of the switch and the reason for those unusually short chains on the post to which the dogs had been fastened. Doubtless the switch released them again by some electrical mechanism after any visitor had been taken inside the house.

No other voice had spoken from the room opening off the hall, and the dead silence continued as Graner strutted towards it in his pompous, affected way and pushed open the door.

“These are some friends of mine, Mr Tombs.”

Simon took in the room with a leisured glance. It was furnished in the modern style, but with a garishness that contrived to be more eye-aching than chintz and brocades. The curtains were bright scarlet, the carpet was chequered purple and orange, the chairs were upholstered in grass-green tapestry. The solid comfort of the chairs was mixed up with little spindle-legged, glass-topped tables which looked as if a sneeze would blow them over; and every available horizontal surface was littered with a collection of cheap nondescript vases and tasteless bits of china that might have been taken straight out of an old-fashioned, middle-class drawing room. It was a room into which Reuben Graner fitted so perfectly that, after seeing him in it, it was impossible to imagine him in any other setting.

But Simon Templar was not looking so much at the room, as at the men in it. There were three of them; he suppressed a smile of unholy glee as he noted that at least two of them showed unmistakable signs of having been on a party.

“Mr Palermo,” said Graner, in his high-pitched, mincing voice.

He indicated a dark, slender gentleman with a swarthy skin and a natty little moustache, whose beauty was somewhat impaired by the radiant sunset effects surrounding his right eye and the swollen heelprint on the other side of his face
“Mr Aliston —”

Mr Aliston was tall and sandy-haired, with prominent pale blue eyes and a willowy slouch. What was left of his complexion was pink and white, like that of a freshly scrubbed schoolboy; but much of it was obscured by a raw-looking graze that ran up from his chin to terminate in a large black-and-blue lump near his left temple.

“-and Mr Lauber.”

The third member of the party was a big, raw-boned, heavy-jowled man whom Simon recognised without difficulty as his last opponent in the exchange of pleasantries that had started the picnic. He looked easily the least damaged of the trio; but the Saint knew that he would be carrying a souvenir of Mr Uniatz’ Betsy on the back of his head that would have been highly misleading to a phrenologist.

“Pleased to know you,” Lauber said heartily; and as soon as he spoke Simon knew also that he was the man whose voice he had heard as he entered the house.

The Saint’s eyes summed up the big man interestedly, without seeming to give him more attention than they gave everybody else. Certainly Lauber had been the last warrior to fling himself into the battle: he had been busily kneeling on Joris Vanlinden’s chest until the shortage of other gladiators had forced him to take part in the festivities. And a slow squirm of delight began to crawl around Simon Templar’s inside as some understanding of Lauber’s amazing protestation started to sink into his brain.

“Mr Tombs,” Graner explained, “is the friend that Felson wired us about.”

The others kept silence. They were grouped at the end of the table, with Lauber in the middle; and they stayed there without moving, as if they were still bent on keeping Lauber in a corner. Only their eyes turned to meet the Saint, and remained fixed on him with cold intentness. Even Lauber, whose solitary answering welcome hinted that it had been prompted more by relief at the temporary diversion than by any natural cordiality, relapsed into silence after that one remark, and stared at him with the same watchful expectancy. They were like a cage of wild animals summing up a new trainer.

“Sit down,” said Graner.

Palermo extended his foot without shifting any of the rest of him, and pushed a chair towards the Saint. Graner took another chair. He deposited himself primly on the edge of it and crossed his legs-a movement which disclosed an expanse of brilliant blue silk sock above the top of his spats.

“Felson said very little about you.” Graner searched through his pockets and eventually encountered a telegraph form. He read it through, pulling his long upper lip. “Didn’t he give you a letter or anything?”

Simon shook his head. —
“I didn’t see him. He phoned me in London, and I left at once.”

“You got here very quickly.”

“I flew to Seville. I tried to phone Rodney in Madrid from there, but I couldn’t get him. I couldn’t wait to get hold of him because I had to catch the boat, and he’d told me it was urgent.”

“Didn’t the boat get in this morning?” Graner’s tone held no more than conventional interest.

The Saint nodded easily.

“I made some friends on board, and they wanted to go over to Orotava for a farewell lunch party. I didn’t know it was so far away, and once I was over there I couldn’t leave until they were ready to go. And they wanted a lot of shifting. Then I had to get fixed up at a hotel, and then we had to have dinner, and then we had to have some more drinks, and then I had to see them back to the boat —” He shrugged apologetically. “You know how these parties go on. I suppose this is rather late to introduce myself, but I thought I’d better check in before I went to bed.”

Graner frowned.

“You went to a hotel?”

“Of course,” said the Saint innocently. “It’s a nice climate, but I didn’t feel like sleeping under a tree.”

Graner gazed at him steadily for a few seconds without smiling.

“We will leave that for the moment,” he said at length. “What is your experience?”

“I was fourteen years with Asscher’s, in Amsterdam.”

“You look young for that.”

“I started very young.”

“Why did you leave?”

“They missed some stones,” answered the Saint, with a sly and significant grin.

“Were you ever in the hands of the police?”

“No. It was just suspicion.”

“What have you been doing since then?”

“Odd jobs, when I could get them.”

Reuben Graner took an apple-green silk handkerchief out of his breast pocket, folded it neatly, and fanned himself delicately with it. A whiff of expensive perfume crept into the air.

“Did Felson tell you what was expected of you?” he asked.

“I gathered that you want me to cut up some stones without being too inquisitive about where they came from.”

“That is more or less correct.”

The Saint settled himself more comfortably in his chair.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s a bet,” he remarked. “But what about the strong-arm stuff?”

Graner’s thin fingers drummed on the edge of the table.

“I don’t understand you.”

“The sleeping-beauty chorus. The three little pigs.” Simon waved his hand in a lazy gesture of explanation. “They look as if they’d been up to something rougher than cutting diamonds and doing a bit of knitting on the side.”

Again that intense silence settled on the room. Palermo moved slightly in his chair, and the creak of the leather sounded deafening in the stillness. Simon could feel the eyes boring into him from four directions, rigid and unwinking in their sockets; but he filtered a streamer of smoke through his lips with languid unconcern.

“We also missed some stones,” Graner said evenly. “Your predecessor had been becoming-difficult. It was necessary to deal with him.”

Simon surveyed the other three again and raised his eyebrows admiringly.

“He must have been pretty useful with his hands, anyway,” he murmured. “He seems to have done a spot of dealing on his own.”

Aliston’s pink face became a shade pinker, but none of the men moved or answered. They just sat there, watching him steadily in silence.

Graner refolded his handkerchief, tucked it back into his pocket and occupied himself with arranging for just too much of it to peep out. Presently he spoke as if he hadn’t noticed the Saint’s comment:
“You had better leave your hotel, Tombs. There is quite enough room for you here.”

“That’s very hospitable,” Simon said dubiously. “But–”

“We need not discuss the matter. It is simply an elementary and advisable precaution. If you are staying in a hotel you are obliged to register with the police, which for our purposes may be an inconvenience. The police call for lists of all the guests staying in the hotels here, and if you’re not registered you can get into trouble. But nobody can call for a list of my guests, so nobody knows whether they have registered or not.”

The Saint nodded comprehendingly, and the movement was quite spontaneous. A few hours ago he would have said that he knew everything there was to know about the world of crime, but this was an aspect of it. that had never occurred to him. Santa Cruz de Tenerife was the last place on earth to which he would have set out on a blind search for boodle, if it had not been for the clue that had fallen accidentally into his hands. And yet the more he thought of it, now, the more perfect a location it seemed to be. A free port, where anything the gang brought with them from their expeditions in Europe could be disembarked without any of the attendant risks of a customs examination. A Spanish province that was nevertheless a long way from Spain and on the routes of some of the main seaways of the world, where anyone coming from the peninsula could land without even being asked to show identification papers at the time of landing. A place where such police as there were not only shared all the characteristic inertia and incompetence of their brethren on the mainland, but combined with them some original Canarian fatuities of their own. And, finally, the last spot on the globe where anyone would think of even starting to look for the headquarters of a gang of international thieves-even as the Saint himself had never thought of looking there before.

“You certainly have thought of everything, haven’t you?” he said lightly. “All the same, if I beetle up herefirst thing in the morning —”

“You will stay here tonight.” The Saint frowned.

“A couple of girls that I met on the boat are staying at the hotel, and I made a date to give them lunch tomorrow,” he pointed out. “They’ll think it odd if I don’t turn up.”

“You can make your excuses.”

“But —”

“You will stay here tonight.”

Graner’s tone was flat and expressionless, and yet it had a smug insolence that brought the blood to the Saint’s head. He stood up, and Graner stood up also.

“That’s all very well, dear old bird,” Simon said gently. “But what is this-a job or a prison? Even with your beauty —”

Without the flicker of an eyelash, Graner brought up his left hand and slapped the Saint sharply across the face. Almost in the same movement a gun appeared in his right, levelled quite steadily at the centre of the Saint’s chest.

Simon felt as if a sudden torrent of liquid fire poured along his veins, and every muscle in his body went tense. The fingernails cut into his palms with the violent contraction of his fists. How he ever managed to hold himself in check was a miracle beyond his understanding.

“There are one or two things you had better make up your mind to understand, Tombs,” Graner was saying, in the same flatly arrogant tone. “In the first place, I dislike flippancy-and familiarity.”

He made a slight movement with the automatic.

“Also-apart from this-it is impossible for anybody to leave this house without my permission.”

His gaze did not shift from the Saint’s face, where the marks of his fingers were printed in dark red on the tanned skin.

“If you intend to work for me, you will accept any orders I give-without question.”

Simon looked down at the gun. Without knowing how quick the other was with the trigger, he estimated that he had a sporting chance of knocking the gun aside and landing an iron, fist where it would obliterate the last traces of any beauty that Graner might ever have had, before anyone else could move. But there were still the other three men who were behind him now-besides the dogs outside, and however many more discouraging gadgets there might be outside the house.

That moment’s swift and instinctive reckoning of his chances was probably what helped to save him. And in that time he also forced himself to realise that the fleeting pleasure of pushing Graner’s front teeth through the back of his neck would ring down the curtain on his only hope of doing what he had come there to do.

The liquid fire cooled down in his veins-cooled down below normal until it was like liquid ice. The red mist cleared from before his eyes and was absorbed invisibily but indelibly by the deepest wellsprings of his will. Reuben Graner would live long enough to be dealt with. The Saint could wait; and the waiting would only make the reckoning more enjoyable when the time came.

“If you put it like that,” he said, with as much sheepishness as he could infuse into his voice, “I guess you’re probably right.”

Slowly the tension that had crept into the room relaxed. Simon almost fancied he could hear the other three draw the first breaths they had taken since the incident started. Only Graner did not need to relax, because he had never been gripped in the same tension. He put the gun away and fanned himself again with his scented handkerchief, as if nothing had happened, with his cold, unblinking eyes still fixed on the Saint.

“I will show you to your room,” he said. “In the morning I will drive you down to the hotel to collect your luggage.”

2
Which, looked at upwards or downwards or sideways, was just about as jolly a complication as one could imagine, Simon Templar reflected when he was left alone.

He sat on the side of the bed and lighted another cigarette, considering the situation.

After all, he had asked for it. If he had waited a little longer to think what his impulse might lead to, he might have realised that it was open for something like that to happen. He could see Graner’s point of view with the greatest clarity. To leave a new and untried recruit to go wandering about Santa Cruz, talking to anyone he might pick up, was a fairly obvious error to avoid. And thinking it over, the Saint feared that in his conversation with Graner he hadn’t exactly given the impression that he was a man who could be relied on to guard his tongue.