The Saint Abroad: The Art Collectors/ the Persistent Patriots (10 page)

“Murdered!”

“He was killed in his car on a lonely
country road. And the
paintings were gone.”

“Stolen?” she asked dazedly.

“The crate was empty.”

“Then
…”

“Then what?” Mathieu asked as
Annabella’s voice trailed
off.

“I have enemies who were after the
paintings. Men who
tried to kidnap me yesterday and came on to my property
here
yesterday evening. They must have killed him.”

“No, Mademoiselle. We have arrested the
man who killed
him. He has confessed.”

“Who?” Annabella asked breathlessly.

“His name is Simon Templar.”

Annabella’s face was drained of color and
she did not say a
word in response, so Mathieu continued.

“He was unlucky. The murder was
witnessed by some
woodsmen who followed him. He did not give up without a
struggle.
He shot my colleague, Sergeant Bernard here, in the
leg.”

“Then you must have found the
paintings.”

“No. According to Templar he never put
the paintings in
the car.”

Hans Kraus had come silently into the hallway
and was
listening. Now he interrupted.

“That is wrong. I helped him put the
paintings into the
box and into the automobile,” he said.

“I am sorry,” Mathieu said.
“He denies that. He says he hid them here. We must at least try to confirm
or disprove
his story. You will not object if we search,
Mademoiselle?”

“Not in the least,” Annabella
said. “Look anywhere you
wish. You will not find them.”

“Thank you,” Mathieu said with a
slight bow. “Where
were the paintings last seen in the
house?”

“Show them, Hans.”

As Hans left the hall with the men his mutterings were
clearly audible.

“A thousand times I tell her! Never
trust strangers!”

Annabella stood in a kind of stupefied trance, and within
thirty seconds, before she could rouse herself to
any clear
thinking, there was a call
from the rear of the house.

“Mademoiselle! We have found them!”

She met Mathieu, his assistant, and Hans in
the living
room. Hans was carrying one of the da Vincis in front of
him as if it were a gigantic cold fish he had just discovered in his
bed.

“But, Fr
ä
ulein,”
he was intoning, “it is not possible. I put
them in the box
myself …”

“I am afraid that you were dealing with
something of a
magician,”
Mathieu said. “This man Templar is not called
the Saint for no reason, you know. He has shown, until now,
some almost supernatural qualities. It takes
experts to deal
with him.”

Annabella did not find Mathieu’s smugness
tolerable.

“Then deal with him,” she said snappishly, “and
please leave me alone.”

All she could think of at the moment was the
check in her
purse on the mantelpiece. Would it be stopped now that
one
of the men who had signed it had been murdered? And yet
she had a
signed bill of sale.

“You should be glad that your property
is safe, Mademoiselle,” Mathieu was saying. “Another dealer will be
glad
to buy them.”

“Thank you,” Annabella said flatly.

“Very well,” Mathieu said crisply.
“Bernard, the other
paintings, please. Put them in the back of
the car.”

“What?”
Annabella cried, coming to life like a lighted
rocket. “What are you talking about?”

“I am taking these pictures into police
custody,” Mathieu
said with official dignity.

“But they’re
mine!”

“I am afraid they are not,
Mademoiselle. You sold them,
remember?”

“Not to you,” the woman said.
“There is no reason for
this.”

“A murder has been committed for these
paintings,”
Mathieu said. “There are unanswered questions. I
will give
you a receipt. You can discuss who is to reclaim the
paintings
when the time comes. But for the moment you can comfort
yourself
that they will be absolutely safe at the S
û
ret
é
.”

“My God, this is too much!”
Annabella exclaimed, turning her back and raising her hands to the heavens in a
pantomime
of utter despair.

“Into the car,” Mathieu said to his
associate. “Cover them
well with the car rug.”

“They are very large,” Bernard
responded, “Can they be
taken out of their frames?”

“Out of their frames?” Annabella
cried almost incoherently.
“Here?
My
paintings?”

“They are very large,” shrugged
Bernard. “We do not need
the frames.”

“So nice of you to leave me
something,” Annabella said with livid sarcasm.

“Very well, we shall leave the
frames,” Mathieu said
callously. He gestured toward the storage
room at the rear of
the house. “After you, Bernard.”

Hans was blocking the door which led to the
storage room,
clutching the painting he held as tightly as he could.

“Fr
ä
ulein?” he
asked desperately.

“Let them go,” Annabella said with
a weary wave of her hand. “The paintings are not ours any longer—and these
are the noble police, after all. They go where they please.”

“Your pardon, mademoiselle,”
Mathieu said. “I shall help
Bernard if you will excuse me.”
^;

“I believe that I can exist in my living
room without you,”
Annabella said.

She waited, pacing the floor and occasionally
coming to rest
briefly on a chair, drumming her fingers on a polished
table
top. She
could hear the tapping of hammers in the back of
her house and the rear door opening and closing several times,
but she could not see the men carrying the
de-framed paint
ings into their car
since it was parked out of the field of view
of the living room window. Wild schemes whirled through her head like
tornadoes dipping down from the clouds and
then rising up again and disappearing, coming to nothing. She
could do nothing but wait.

After fifteen minutes Mathieu, Bernard, and Hans, who
had been hovering helplessly around the other two
men like a
toothless watchdog, came
emptyhanded into the living room.

“All done?” Annabella asked
sweetly. “Would you like the
furniture now?”

“There is no point in feeling offended,
mademoiselle,” Mathieu said. “No one is doing anything to you or
accusing
you of anything.”

His tone implied that she just might find
herself accused of
something if the police decided to get nasty.

“I’m not offended,” she said
icily. “I am disgusted with this
whole affair. The sooner I see the end
of this business the
happier I’ll be.”

Au revoir,
then,” said
Mathieu with a slight bow.

“My receipt,” she reminded him.

“Oh, yes, of course.”

Mathieu felt in his jacket pockets, and
apparently found
nothing usable after a lengthy search. Annabella finally
pro
duced a pen from her purse.

“Very efficient, you police,” she
said as she handed it to
him.

“Thank you, mademoiselle,” Mathieu
said, “and now …
have you any paper?”

Annabella sighed and sat down.

“Would you find them some paper, Hans?
They are so
busy protecting citizen’s property by carrying it away
with
them that they rarely have time for writing.”

Hans got the paper and Mathieu found a seat at
a table.
He wrote and handed the result to Annabella.

“From Mademoiselle Lambrini,
paintings,”
she read. “H,
Mathieu, Inspector.”

She threw the paper down in front of him on
the table.

“Do you take me for an idiot?” she
demanded angrily.
“Describe them. Name the painters!”

Mathieu sighed and pushed the paper back in
her direction,
offering her the pen.

“You describe them, mademoiselle. I shall
sign.”

She wrote a list, Mathieu and Bernard checked
her descrip
tion
of the confiscated paintings, and then Mathieu signed
the paper again. Annabella took it, folded it, and clutched it
tightly.

“Now go,” she said rudely.

Mathieu and Bernard walked to the front door.

“You are staying here, I assume?”
Mathieu said. “We may
need you when we bring the formal charge
against Monsieur
Templar. You will be available?”

“Of course,” she lied. Then her
voice softened and became
less self-assured. “Templar … is he
hurt? Was he shot?”

“No,” said Mathieu. “He is as healthy and arrogant
as
always.”

She nodded. Mathieu and Bernard made stiffly
formal part
ing bows and left the house for their car.

Annabella closed the door and walked
dejectedly to the
living room. Hans was watching her.

“I am sorry that you had to learn this lesson,” he said
hesitantly.

“You’re right, Hans. I’ll never trust
anybody again. I
promise!”

“Not even your old friends?” asked
a third and entirely
different voice.

Annabella gave a little shriek and whirled to
face the other
end of the room. There stood an impeccable and
nonchalant
Simon Templar, not a hair of his handsome head out of
place,
more cheerfully arrogant and healthy than the man who
called
himself Inspector Mathieu could have imagined in his
most fearful dreams.

9

“Simon!”

Annabella’s cry was a crazy mixture of relief
and horror.
The latter emotion at first had the upper hand.

“You—you killer!” she said. “How did you
escape?”

She whirled to look out of the front window
in time to see
Mathieu’s car racing down the drive among the trees. In
only a
second or two it was out of sight.

Hans grabbed up a poker from beside the
fireplace and put
himself between the Saint and Annabella. He held the
poker
like a ready axe in front of him, and his hands were white
and
trembling. The Saint smiled at him with unperturbed
amiability.

“I assure you that you’re both getting yourselves worked
up for no reason,” he said quietly.
“You were in much worse
danger
just a few minutes ago.”

“You killed a man!” Annabella said.

“You killed the professor!” Hans
joined in, bracing his
legs and his makeshift battleaxe defensively.

“I’ve killed a number of men,” said
the Saint calmly,
“but I haven’t killed anyone this morning, and
Professor
Clarneau is as much alive as we are. The man who came
here and
took the paintings, or thought he did, wasn’t
Clarneau, of course.”

“You’re completely insane,”
Annabella said. “You’re not
making any sense.”

“It’s the gospel,” Simon said.

“But the police. The Inspector told me
himself—”

“He wasn’t a real Inspector,
either.”

“What?”

“A fake cop. This Mathieu is about as
close to being a
policeman as I am, which is about as far as you can
get.”

“But I gave him the paintings!”
Annabella almost shrieked.

“Then you’re a very silly girl.”

Whatever Mediterranean strains Annabella’s
pedigree in
cluded went suddenly on full power. She clenched her
teeth,
whirled completely around, shook both fists at Simon, and
with an
explosive shudder began to scream at him.