The Saint Bids Diamonds (8 page)

But that was done, and it wasn’t much use worrying about it. Anyway he was in the house, which was where he had wanted to be-only he had got there about twelve hours too early. And the only thing left was to decide what he was going to do about it.

Presently he got up and walked over to the window. It was shuttered in the Spanish style, but as far as he could discover the shutters were not made to open. The louvres could be turned up or down, to let in as much air or daylight as the inhabitant wanted; but the inhabitant would have had to slice himself into rashers to get himself out through the openings.

Simon looked around the room. It was furnished comfortably enough, although the optical effect was shattered by the same dreadful conflict of colour schemes that characterised the room downstairs. But it contained nothing which could have been used to open the shuttering-unless one heaved the bed through it, which would be difficult to do without causing a certain amount of commotion.

He moved very softly to the door and turned the handle without a sound. Somewhat to his surprise it was not locked: it opened without a creak of the hinges, and he slipped noiselessly out on to the veranda that ran round the patio. Down below he could hear a muffled mutter of voices, but it was so faint that it seemed impossible that the men who were speaking could have heard anyone moving about upstairs, even with a normal tread. The Saint didn’t even take that risk. He could move as silently as a cat, and the tiled flooring ruled out the possibility of any squeaking boards that might have given him away. He stood looking at the veranda. It was enclosed from top to bottom with fine-meshed fly-netting which was almost as effective an obstacle as the window shutters. Whether he could open some of it up with his knife —
“Wanting anything?”

The voice made him spin round. He had not heard anyone come up the stairs; but Aliston was there, standing at the head of them with his hands in his pockets.

“I was just looking for the bathroom,” answered the Saint calmly.

“Second door down.”

The Saint went on and let himself in. He was there long enough to note that the bathroom window was also closed with a similar shutter to the one in his own room. He was ready to believe that all the windows in the house were the same; and he realised that besides making it difficult to get out, the arrangement was also another difficulty in the way of getting in.

When he came out of the bathroom Aliston was still standing at the head of the stairs. The Saint said good night to him, and Aliston answered conventionally.

Simon sat on his bed again and gazed sourly at the heliotrope-distempered walls. He was inside, all right -he didn’t have to worry about that any more. And he knew now why Graner hadn’t locked him up. There was nothing about the door to indicate it, but he was certain that it contained some device which gave a warning when it was opened. Graner seemed to have a weakness for electrical gadgets, and very effective the Saint had to admit they were… . He also knew why Aliston had spoken to him instead of remaining hidden to watch him. They had let him use up the only plausible excuse he had for leaving the bedroom, so that any future excursions would want much more explaining.

And that made him wonder if they were only waiting for a chance to trap him. Simon faced the possibility cold-bloodedly. From the beginning he had known that he was gambling on the darkness and the hat that had been pulled down over his eyes during the fight, as much as on the psychological fact that by walking straight into the lion’s den immediately afterwards he was giving himself as good an alibi as he could hope to have. But one of the three men might have had suspicions, although nothing had been said when he was downstairs. Even now they might be talking about it.

He put the thought firmly out of his mind again. If they suspected him, they suspected him. But if it had been more than suspicion, he doubted whether he would have been sent to bed so peacefully. And if there was any suspicion, a lot of things could happen before it became certainty.

Meanwhile there were more urgent things to think about. Joris and Christine Vanlinden were still at the hotel, and he could do nothing about them. The only help they had was Hoppy Uniatz, and the Saint smiled a little wryly as he computed how much help Mr Uniatz was likely to be.

He undressed himself slowly, visualising every other angle of the situation that he could think of.

He was about ready for bed when he heard the noise of a car that sounded as if it stopped very close to the house, and he went to the window again and looked out. But he was on the side of the house farthest from the road, and he could see nothing. The sound of a door slamming certainly came from within the grounds. He stood there listening, and presently the car started up again. It came slowly round the corner of the house and passed underneath his window on its way to the garage; but although he waited for several minutes longer he could discover nothing else. The voices went on downstairs, and they were still talking when he fell asleep.

His problems were still unsolved when he was awakened by his door opening. Lauber put an unshaven face into the room.

“Time to get up,” he said shortly, and went out again.

The sky outside, which had apparently not been informed of what the guidebooks were saying about it, was leaden and overcast, and there was a damp chill in the air that smelt like impending rain. Still, with all its defects, it was a new day; and the Saint was prepared to be hopeful about it. He went along to the bathroom, where he found and borrowed somebody else’s razor; and he had just finished dressing when Lauber came in again.

“I’ll show you the dining room.”

“Is the weather always like this?” Simon asked as they went down the stairs.

Lauber’s only response to the conversational opening was a vague mumble; and Simon wondered whether his sulky humour was solely due to the sore head from which he must have been suffering or whether it had some other contributory cause.

Graner was already in the dining room, sitting up in his prim old-maidish way behind the coffee pot and reading a book. He looked up and said good morning to the Saint, and returned at once to his reading. Palermo and Aliston were not visible.

Since there was no obvious encouragement to idle chatter, Simon picked up a newspaper that was lying on the table and glanced over it while he tried unsatisfactorily to break his fast with the insipid ration of rolls and butter which the Latin countries seem to consider sufficient foundation for a morning’s work, reflecting that that was probably why they never managed to do a morning’s work.

Almost as soon as he took up the sheet the headlines leapt to his eye. The press of Tenerife is accustomed to devote three or four columns inside the paper to the inexplicable gyrations of Spanish politicians; a European war can count on two or three paragraphs in the “Information from Abroad”; the front page leads are invariably devoted to a solemn discussion of the military defence of the Canary Islands, which every good Canarian is convinced that other nations are only waiting for an opportunity to seize; and the local red-hot news, the sizzling sensation of the day, rates half a column under the standard heading of “The Event of Last Night”-there never having been more than one event in a day, and that usually being something like the earth-shaking revelation that a couple of citizens started a fight in some tavern and were thrown out. But for once the military defence of the Canary Islands and the prospects of luring more misguided tourists to Tenerife had been ousted from their customary place of honour.

Under the headings of “The Shocking Outrage of Last Night” and “Unprecedented Outbreak of Gangsterismo in Tenerife” a thrilling story was unfolded. It appeared that a pareja of guardias de asalto had been patrolling the outskirts of Santa Cruz the previous night when they heard the sound of shooting. Hastening towards the nearest telephone to give the alarm, they happened to come upon two sinister individuals who were assisting a third, who appeared to be unconscious, into a car. The circumstances seeming suspicious, the guardias called on them to stop, whereupon the criminals opened fire. One of the guardias, Arturo Solona, of the Calle de la Libertad, whose father is Pedro Solona, the popular proprietor of the butcher shop in the Calle Ortega, whose younger daughter, as everyone will remember, was recently married to Don Luis Hernándéz y Perez, whose brother, Don Francisco Hernándéz y Perez is the manager of the sewage works, fell to the ground crying, “They have killed me!” (Anyone who is shot in a Spanish newspaper nearly always falls to the ground crying, “They have killed me,” just for luck; but this one was right, they had killed him.) The other guardia, Baldomero Gil, who is the nephew of Ramon Jalan, who won the first prize at the recent horticultural exhibition with his three-kilo banana, advanced courageously towards a pile of stones which were a little way behind him, from which he continued to exchange shots with the fugitives, emptying his magazine twice, but apparently without hitting any of them.

At the same time, a pareja of guardias civiles, Jose Benitez and Guillermo Diaz, having heard the shooting, were on their way to headquarters to report the occurrence when they also chanced to encounter the criminals, who were driving off. They also fired many shots, apparently without effect; but at an answering volley from the gangsters, Benitez fell to the ground, endeavouring to uphold the reputation of his unit for lightning diagnosis by crying as he fell, “They have wounded me!” He had indeed got a bullet through his ear, and the paper took pains to point out that only a miracle could have saved his life, because the bullet had clearly been travelling in the direction of his head.

Unfortunately a miracle hadn’t saved his life; because in the stop press it was revealed that he had subsequently died in the small hours of the morning, leaving Arturo Solona unquestionably supreme in the field of prophecy, after which the doctors had discovered that he had another bullet in his stomach which nobody had noticed until then. The bandits meanwhile had been swallowed up by the night, and the police were still searching for them.

“You understand Spanish, Mr Tombs?”

Graner’s thin voice broke into the Saint’s thoughts; and Simon looked up from the paper and saw that Graner’s eyes were fixed on him.

“I learnt about six words on the boat coming down here,” he said casually. “But I can’t make head or tail of this. I suppose I’ll have to learn a bit if I’m going to stay here.”

“That will not be necessary —”

Graner might have been going to say more, but the shrill call of the telephone bell interrupted him. He got up, folded his napkin neatly and went out into the hall. Simon could hear him speaking outside.

“Yes… . No? … You have made enquiries?” There was a longish pause. “I see. Well, you had better come back here.” A briefer pause; then a curt, “All right.”

The instrument rattled back on its hook, and Graner returned. The Saint saw Lauber look up at him curiously, and tried ineffectually to interpret the glance. There was nothing in what he had overheard, not even a change in the inflection of Graner’s voice, that might have given him a clue; and he tried in vain to fathom the subtle tenseness which he seemed to feel in Lauber’s questioning silence.

Graner himself said nothing, and his yellow face was as uncommunicative as a mummy’s. He sat down again in his place and caressed the lace tablecloth mechanically with his thin fingers, gazing straight ahead of him without a trace of expression in his beady eyes.

Presently he turned to the Saint.

“When you’re ready,” he said, “I will show you your workroom.”

“Any time you like,” said the Saint.

He finished his cup of the bitter brown fluid mixed with boiled milk which the Canary Islanders fondly believe to be coffee, and got to his feet as Graner rose from the table.

They went up the stairs to the veranda above the patio, and halfway around that they came to another flight of stairs that ran up to the top floor of the house. At the top of these stairs there was a narrow landing with a door on each side. Graner unlocked one of the doors, and they went in.

The room was hardly more than an attic; and the Saint realised at once that it was lighted by one of those small barred windows which he had seen high up in the outside wall of the house. A heavy safe stood in one corner, and along one wall was a wooden bench littered with curious tools. At one end was what looked like a small electric furnace; and at the other end was a glistening machine unlike anything else that the Saint had encountered, which he took to be the principal instrument for cutting or polishing stones.

He ran his eye over the bench with what he hoped was a glance of professional approval.

“You will find everything here that you need,” Graner was saying. “Everything was provided exactly as your predecessor wanted it. I will show you what you have to do.”

He went over to the safe; and as he bent down and touched the combination Simon heard a faint moan something like an American police siren rising from somewhere in the house.

Graner’s body concealed his movements as he turned the combination back and forth. Then he straightened up and turned the handle; and as he did so the moan of the siren, which had held evenly on its note until then, rose suddenly to a piercing scream that filled the air for fully thirty seconds. Then it stopped just as suddenly, leaving the air quivering with the abrupt contrast; and at that moment Simon knew its explanation. The same warning would sound the instant anyone touched the combination, and if he was still left undisturbed for long enough to get the safe open, the mere act of turning the handle would send the alarm whining up to that final crescendo of urgency.

Graner left the inference to make its own impression. It was not until the door was wide open that he turned round.

“Your predecessor did most of the work that we had in hand,” he said. “But in a few days there will be a good deal more for you.”

Simon Templar looked past him into the safe and almost gasped. From top to bottom it was divided into horizontal partitions by velvet-lined trays; and on the trays the light glittered and flamed from tier upon tier of lambent jewels, carefully sorted according to colour and species. One shelf shone with the blood-red lustre of rubies, another burned with the cold green fire of emeralds, others scintillated with the hard white brilliance and pale blue and violet half-lights of diamonds. In that amazing hoard the hues of the rainbow danced and clashed and blended in one dazzling flood of living color. It made the elaborate precautions which Reuben Graner took to guard his house suddenly seem very natural and ordinary. There was enough wealth in that safe to make any burglar think he had picked the locks on the gates of heaven.