The Saint Abroad: The Art Collectors/ the Persistent Patriots (8 page)

“Voila,”
he said
happily. “It is done. They are beautiful—
beautifully
genuine!”

Annabella broke into a broad smile and then
tried to
maintain it as the Saint put in a comment.

“I thought you had to use X-rays and
chemical analysis
and all that sort of thing.”

Clarneau answered indulgently.

“Only when my own opinion is
doubtful,” he said. “In
this case I am quite satisfied. A
person who has devoted his
life to art develops an instinct for true
masterpieces. Chemi
cals have been wrong. When my eye is convinced, it has
never been mistaken.”

“I’m very happy for both of you
then,” Simon said to him
and Annabella. “Shall we start the
celebration?”

“After I have something to
celebrate,” Annabella an
swered.

Clarneau looked blank. Then his face
brightened.

“Oh, yes! The money.” He reached
into his coat pocket.
“I have here a check for the amount you
agreed on with LeGrand
. He has already signed it, and I shall
countersign it
as soon as you have signed the bill of sale. You will
want to
read it, of course. It’s rather long, but it simply says that for
the
amount we pay you, you agree to assign us all rights to the
paintings.
LeGrand and I have already put our names at the
proper place.”

He handed Annabella a long and closely
printed piece of
paper.

“While I read it I’ll have Hans pack the
paintings for
you,” she told him.

“You have crates?” he asked.

“I have a large container that holds all
five,” she said.

“I’ll help Hans,” Simon suggested.

“Wonderful. He knows where the crate is.
He’ll be in
back—through that door—somewhere.”

Simon carefully picked up one of the
paintings and carried
it away toward the back of the house. As
Annabella read
the bill of sale he and Hans appeared at intervals until
all
five of the paintings had been removed. Then Simon came
back once
more into the living room.

“Would you like to look at the crate
before we put the
cover
on, Professor?” he asked.

Clarneau shrugged as if to say it was not
necessary, but
followed the Saint to the rear of the house anyway. The
wooden
crate was in a storage room which otherwise con
tained only a large
cupboard, and the mysterious assortment
of old boxes,
cartons, battered trunks and valises, and all the
other aging junk which
irresistibly accumulates in such
limbos. The crate was about four feet high,
the same in
width, and three feet deep—large enough for what the
Saint
had in mind.

Clarneau looked at it, satisfied himself
that the five paint
ings
had been slipped properly into their slots, where they
were held by padded channels at the top and bottom, and
said he was well pleased.

“Good,” Simon said as the Professor
went back to the
living room. “Let’s get this end nailed on, then,
Hans.”

“I had a hammer here,” the chauffeur said. “I am
sure I
did.”

“I haven’t seen it,” the Saint
told him, untruthfully, having
surreptitiously spirited it into his own hip
pocket.

“Strange. I have another in the garage.
I come back in a
moment.”

Hans left the room and the Saint immediately
slid every
painting out of the packing crate and into the cupboard
by
the wall. He worked quickly but efficiently, not making a
sound as
he listened for approaching footsteps. The cup
board door creaked
slightly as he closed it, but not loudly enough to be heard in the front part
of the house. With the
paintings out of sight he dumped books from
one of the
dusty
boxes into the crate until it held the approximate
equivalent in weight of the paintings.

When Hans Kraus came back into the storage
room with a
hammer, Simon was just fitting the end cover on to the
packing
case.

“I’ll hold,” he said. “You
hammer.”

Hans began banging away.

“Not too many nails—and not too
hard,” Simon said.
“You don’t want to jar the paint off the
canvases.”

Hans looked concerned and finished the job
with a nail
at
each corner.

“Gut?”
he said with
satisfaction.

“Sehr gut,”
Simon agreed. “Let’s get it into the
station
wagon.”

Hans put down the hammer and took one end of
the
crate; Simon picked up the other.

“Heave,” he said, and they carried
the crate out of a back
door, around the house, and to the front
door.

“Shall we put it in?” Hans asked.

“By all means. Let’s give the customer
his money’s worth,”
the Saint said.

He opened the back of the station wagon and
helped
Hans shove the crate inside.

“All right,” he said. “You can
tell them it’s ready to go.”

Hans nodded and went into the house. Simon knew and
had counted on the fact that the station wagon was
not
visible from the front room
where Annabella and her cus
tomer were completing their transaction.
Without a wasted
motion the Saint jumped
into the station wagon, closed the
rear
door behind him, and jerked the hammer from his pocket. In a few seconds he had
loosened the end cover
from the crate.
He pulled it away and bent and flattened
the bared nail points into the pinewood of the cover. Then
he climbed into the crate himself, kneeling on the
books,
and tapped a pair of nails
into the inner side of the cover
so
that he could use them as handles to pull the cover
snugly into place. It was a simple matter then to
secure the
cover with another couple
of nails driven lightly at an angle from inside.

Enough light came through minor crevices of
the box to
enable the Saint to see his own hands as his eyes adjusted
themselves. He had had to work blindly while fixing the
cover in
place. Now he settled back in comfort in a sitting
position, leaning his back against the
rough inner wood of
the container with his
long legs only moderately cramped.

He waited and listened, and in a very few
minutes he
heard
voices approaching the station wagon.

“I really don’t know,” Annabella was saying. “Hans
said
he was out here.”

“Well, if you don’t mind, I must be on
my way without
saying goodbye to him,” Professor Clarneau said.
“LeGrand
will be waiting anxiously for me.”

The rest of the conversational interchange
was largely
drowned by the opening and closing of the car door and
the
starting of the engine. As the station wagon pulled away
Simon
heard only one phrase shouted merrily by the driver:

“Don’t drink too much champagne before
lunch!”

The station wagon lurched out of the driveway
and on
to the road, but it did not turn toward the main Paris road.
It turned
right instead. The Saint could tell that much by centrifugal pressures even
though he could see almost noth
ing through the tiny crevices in the crate.
But presently
instead of continuing in its original direction the
station
wagon made another right turn. It seemed to Simon that it
was
heading toward Paris all right, but by a
devious route.

He relaxed. The noontime sun sent slivers of
light across
his hands folded on his knees. The vibrating wooden box,
shaking
rhythmically now and then, had a soporific effect
that made him as
drowsy as if he had been at home in bed.
Up in the front seat
of the station wagon the driver was
whistling, and the off-key strains of
Funiculi
Funicula
blended
with the rush of warm air blowing back
through the open
windows.

The ride was not a short one. The Saint
calculated that he must be in the southern outskirts of Paris proper before the
station wagon slowed almost to a halt, made a gingerly
bumpy turn,
and honked its horn.

Simon heard a large door scrape across concrete, and the
wagon moved ahead again for a short distance.

“You got them?” somebody shouted in Austrian-accented
German.

The driver answered in foreigner’s German
which might
have had somewhat garlicky Neapolitan flavor:

“Of course! It went like clockwork. Where
is the trunk?”

“Upstairs.”

The driver got out of the station wagon and
slammed the
door hard.

“Then let’s get it down
here,
shall
we?” he said im
patiently.

Simon heard the two pairs of footsteps moving away. After
a few seconds he took his hammer and pulled out the
two
nails which held the end of the wooden crate in place. In a
moment he had pushed it open far enough to allow
him to look at his surroundings.

He was inside some sort of garage or small
warehouse
which had no windows. Next to the station wagon was an
old
Volkswagen bus. There was assorted automotive junk
scattered around the
place, none of it worth noticing twice.
The Saint rolled
quickly out of the crate and replaced its
cover, tacking it
into place with four efficient blows of his
hammer. He was just
getting out of the back of the station
wagon when he heard
someone coming down a flight of
stairs at the rear of the garage. Simon
ducked and waited,
peering
around the corner of the wagon until he had as
certained that the intruder was alone. The man was, in
fact, so preoccupied with not dropping a tray he
was carrying
that he would not have
noticed the Saint if he had been
standing bolt upright. Simon recognized
him as one of the
two characters who had put
Hans Kraus to sleep and tried to
kidnap
Annabella Lambrini outside LeGrand’s gallery the
day before.

The man with the tray opened a door on the
left side of
the garage, beyond the Volkswagen bus, and kicked it
shut
behind him. Simon followed stealthily, crossing the greasy floor of the
garage
,
after a backward glance to make certain he had left the station
wagon closed, and gently opened the
door which the man ahead of him had
entered. It led down
a short passage, at the end of which was
another door, much
stouter
than the first. It was half open, and the Saint could
hear a low-pitched voice speaking bad French.

“Here is to eat.”

It was Marcel LeGrand’s voice which answered.

“We don’t want food! When are you going
to let us out
of here?”

Another male voice, unknown to Simon, joined
in.

“This is an outrage! You can’t get away
with this!”

“Be quiet! I untie only your hands so
you eat.”

The Saint slipped quietly through the door
into the small dank room. The man who had been carrying the tray was
bending over Marcel LeGrand,
who was tied in a straight chair. Next to him, bound in another chair, was a
thin
white-haired man who would undoubtedly
turn out to be
the real Professor
Clarneau.

LeGrand’s startled expression betrayed
Simon’s entrance.
The captor turned and met the edge of the Saint’s hand.
The
chop descended with the force of an axe, and sent its victim
sprawling unconscious on the
stone floor.

“Monsieur Templar!” LeGrand cried.
“Wonderful!
How …”

“Quietly!” Simon cautioned him,
untying his hands. “Are
you all right?”

“Yes, but how did you know we were here? This is my
friend Clarneau. They stopped his car. They made
me sign a
check …”

“I can imagine,” the Saint said.
“We can talk later. For
now, get out of here through the window in
the passageway
between here and the garage. Hurry!”