The Saint Abroad: The Art Collectors/ the Persistent Patriots (4 page)

“Let’s either sell tickets or pull out of here,” Simon said.
“If you’d like to drive I’ll tend to
your friend here.”

“I can’t,” Mademoiselle Lambrini
said. Then she noticed
that the half dozen people around the car
were cocking
their ears to listen. Her next words were in excellently
pronounced English. “I can’t drive. Will you, please? If I could
trouble you
…”

“Of course,” the Saint said, also in English.
“Would you
like to get back here with
Otto?”

She was already sliding on to the seat next to
the limp
man. He was about sixty-five with close-cropped gray
hair.

“Hans is his name,” she said.
“Please, let’s hurry.”

The Saint nodded pleasantly to the little
group of gawkers,
got into the driver’s seat, and started the automobile’s
engine.

“Where to?” he asked over his
shoulder.

“Would you mind … would it be too
much trouble to ask you to drive me home?”

“I don’t know whether it’s too much
trouble for you to ask me or not, but it won’t be too much trouble for me to
do
it.”

She flushed.

“You are making a joke about my
English.”

Simon backed the car a few inches from the curb, shifted
it into forward gear, and felt the powerful engine
move it
smoothly away from the group
of onlookers.

“I shouldn’t have made a joke,” he
said. “You speak very good English … and I’d guess about ten other
languages,
judging from the fact that I can’t place your
accent.”

He was turning the Mercedes into a main street. She met
his eyes in the rear-view mirror for an instant and
then
suddenly bent over her
chauffeur.

“Here we are chattering away as if we
were at a tea party,
with poor Hans lying here in such a terrible
condition,”
she said. “What can I do for him?”

“His breathing seems strong enough. Let
him sleep it
off.
Or when you get home you can phone a doctor.” The
Saint turned his head so as to see her again in the rear-view
mirror. “Speaking of home, where is it?”

“I’m afraid it’s fifty kilometers out of
Paris.”

Simon sighed.

“I asked for it. Fifty kilometers in any particular direc
tion?”

She told him the way.

“Are you sure you don’t mind?” she
concluded.

“No … assuming that a girl with a
house full of Leonardos has an equally good kitchen and wine cellar, or at
least a
decent bottle of scotch.”

She smiled.

“If your standards aren’t too terribly high I might be able
to satisfy you.”

The Saint returned her smile.

“I’d be willing to bet on it. And for a
start, you might
try satisfying my curiosity about these bully boys who
wanted
to borrow you along with your car.”

Her green eyes, reflected in the mirror, were
wide with
surprise at his question.

“How would I know that?” she asked.
“I didn’t invite
them for a ride, I can tell you that.”

Simon navigated a difficult forking in the
river of traffic,
kept on his course south out of the city, and then turned
his attention back to his one conscious passenger, who in the interim had
been trying to revive the unconscious one.

“And I suppose you have no idea why they
decided to
kidnap you,” he said.

“Of course. They undoubtedly wanted my
paintings. That’s
what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

“I’m trying to keep an open mind,”
he answered. “Maybe
they were going to hold you for ransom. If
these paintings
have been kept as secret as you and LeGrand seem to
think, it’s possible that what just happened wasn’t even connected
with them… but you’d know what the chances of that are much better than I would.”

There was a bitter tone in her laugh.

“Who would pay any ransom for me?”

“Your father? Brother?”

“I have no family any more,” she
told him curtly. “The
paintings—and poor Hans here—are all I have in any way
tied to the past.”

“Could they have expected you to pay
your own way out?”
Simon asked.

“No more than they might have expected
anybody else
in Paris to make it worth their trouble. I am not rich. I
own
this car and my clothes and such things …”

“Such as a few paintings worth several
million dollars,”
the Saint put in.

“But I have only a monthly income I
inherited,” she continued. “Not enough to make anyone think of kidnap
ping
me.”

“Then it must be the paintings they were
after,” Simon
said. “Paintings nobody is supposed to know about.
Which is
an interesting fact in itself. How is it that five such
fantasti
cally
rare paintings have been lying around your house all
this time without being heard of?”

“It’s even more interesting when you
know the full story,”
she replied. “I will tell you later. Now
I think that Hans
is waking up.”

The Saint caught glimpses of the revival of Mademoiselle
Lambrini’s chauffeur. Most of his attention had to
be focused
on keeping Mademoiselle
Lambrini’s Mercedes from destruc
tion
at the hands of homeward bound suburban drivers. But
before the worst of
the evening rush hour had swamped the
roads
of the city’s outskirts he had managed to get well
along the N
₇
to the south, past the
vicinity of Orly airfield
land on the
way to Fontainebleau.

“We turn soon,” Mademoiselle
Lambrini said to him presently
. “Follow the signs toward
Barbizon.”

Hans was sitting up beside her now, still
apparently too
dazed to be sure of anything except the fact that his
profes
sional duties had been taken over by somebody else.

“I drive,” he said feebly.

“Bleiben Sie
ruhig,”
the woman told him. “Relax. You
aren’t even awake yet. That is Mr Templar driving.
Mr
Templar, this is Hans Kraus. He has been with my family
since I was a girl.”

“How do you do, Hans?” said the
Saint cheerily. “Feeling
better after your nap?”

Suddenly the chauffeur seemed to come
entirely awake,
as if for the first time he fully realized where he was
and what had happened.

“A man!” he said excitedly.
“He asked me for a match,
und den ven I turned—I vas in der car—he
pushed somet’ing
over my face. I could not even shout, und everyt’ing vas
coming
very dark
…
I don’t know, then …”

“They used chloroform, or something like
it,” Simon said.

“But vy? Vat happened?”

“There were two of them,” his
mistress explained. “One
wore your hat, and then when I walked up to the car they
pulled me inside. If Mr Templar hadn’t come along
…
I
don’t know.”

“Did you get a good look at the
man?” Simon asked,
tossing the words over his shoulder.
“Was he French?”

Hans Kraus shook his head, rubbing his cheek
with one
hand.

“I don’t know. He did not speak to me.
He looked …
nothing special. But I think I vould know him.”

Mademoiselle Lambrini interrupted suddenly.

“Oh! You turn there … just ahead. To
the left. And
then go slowly. We are almost to the house.”

The Mercedes had been traveling through an area where
the land seemed cultivated more for beauty than
for agri
cultural production, and the
countryside, mostly wooded,
was
divided into small estates, each with its house scarcely
visible through tailored shrubs and trees.

Simon reduced speed.
     

“Nice neighborhood,” he said.
“Have you lived here very
long?”

“No.” She leaned forward and
pointed past his shoulder.
“Turn in there, where you see the stone
wall.”

The Saint guided the car into the drive,
which formed a
U-shaped loop from the road to the two-storeyed
brick house
that dominated the acre of property from a shallow rise.
The grounds were thickly shaded
with trees. Between the
house and the road,
on sloping leaf-covered terrain, was an
inoperative fountain watched over by a nude marble nymph, her hands
carefully arranged in the sort of modest pose affected
by marble nymphs when they watch over the
fountains o
f the respectable
well-to-do.

Simon stopped the black Mercedes at the front
door of
the house and helped his two passengers out on to the gravel d
rive.
Hans Kraus was unsteady on his feet, but when Mademoiselle
Lambrini
tried to help support him he pulled himself
up with a great
effort at dignity and made his way
with little assistance up the steps. He
held the door open
after his mistress unlocked it, and then swayed dizzily.

Simon caught his arm.

“All right?”

The man took a deep breath.

“Ja.
Better. Thank
you.”

“Off to bed with you,” Mademoiselle
Lambrini said to
him.

Kraus looked back through the trees in front of the house
as the Saint closed the door.

“But Fr
ä
ulein,
they may have found out about this place.
They may come
here!”

“A lot you could do about it in your
condition,” she said
gently. “Go to your bed,
mon vieux.
You
have taken care
of me often enough. Let me take care of you.”

The white-haired man shrugged.

“As you vill, Fr
ä
ulein. But be careful, please.” He gave
Simon a
distrustful look, bowed slightly, and moved slowly
away down the
entrance hall toward the door at its far end.
He turned to speak
once more. “Excuse me please.”

“Take care of yourself,” said the
Saint casually.

“And I shall bring you some
supper,” Mademoiselle Lambrini
said.

She led the Saint out of the dim hall into
the house’s
large front living room. A large window looked south
over
the entrance drive, the marble nymph, and her dry fountain.
The room
itself was not as richly furnished as Simon had expected. What was there fitted
harmoniously, was antique,
and gave the impression of having been there
for a long
time—and of having cost someone plenty a good many years
before. It was just that there was so little of it: a sofa,
three
chairs, a pair of small tables, an empty glass-fronted
mahogany cabinet. Yet
the room was very large, and the
empty spaces where furniture had formerly
stood were depressingly
evident. The walls, too, were bare except
for two
etchings
of hunting scenes.

The owner of the house sensed the meaning of
Simon’s
survey.

“I am selling this place,” she
said. “I have already sold
quite a few things from it, as you can
see.”

“It does seem large for a single
girl.”

“Yes,” she said very thoughtfully,
as if considering whether
or not to say something further. The decision was positive.
“If I can truly be called single.”

Simon frowned slightly.

“You’re married or have been?”

“I am married, Monsieur Templar—to
these.”

She was walking to a recessed bookcase of
about her own
height, next to the marble fireplace. Her fingers touched
something on the left side of the bookcase, and then she
easily
slid the entire bookcase, shelves and back panel, aside
into the
wall. Behind it was a space like a wide shallow
closet, containing
something that resembled an irregularly
shaped waist-high box
covered with a green cloth.