The Saint Abroad: The Art Collectors/ the Persistent Patriots (9 page)

Professor Clarneau, who looked like a large
white rat in an
old-fashioned black suit, was opening and closing his
mouth
without making any noise. For that hysterical silence Simon was
grateful.

“I want you to get the police. Tell them
to come grab these boys as fast as they can.”

He and LeGrand hoisted Clarneau, who was
still opening
and closing his mouth, out of the passageway window. The
Saint then had to boost LeGrand’s ample bulk out unaided,
and it was
fortunate that he had the muscle for the job.

“Aren’t you coming?” LeGrand asked
Simon from outside.

“No. I have some work to finish up here.
Go get the
police, then go straight home and stay there. I’ll see you
there tonight—and have your check book ready if you still
want to
become the world’s most envied art dealer.”

7

Simon waited until he could no longer hear them moving
away, and then went very quietly back to the door
which led
into the garage. It was half
open, and through the opening
he could
see two men just arriving at the bottom of the
stairs carrying a large trunk. One was the driver of the station
wagon who had impersonated Clarneau, and the
other was
recognizable as the second
member of the previous day’s
unsuccessful
kidnap team—it seemed to Simon that if they
were going to keep coming back into the action he would need
to think of them in some less cumbersome way, and
decided
to call them Tweedledum and
Tweedledee.

He used the Volkswagen bus as cover to slip
through the
doorway and get nearer. In his hand was a gun he had
taken
from the pocket of Tweedledum in the room behind him.

“We’ll have to remove the frames in
order to fit the things
into this false bottom,” said the Clarneau impostor, as they
put down the trunk at the rear of the station
wagon. “But
it is worth the
trouble, I assure you. No customs man would
think of looking.”

“And no policeman, I hope.”

“Don’t worry. By the time the police
know anything about
this we’ll be over the border and halfway home.”

They began to drag the wooden crate from the
back of the
station wagon.

“Where is that dunce, Gunter?” the
substitute Clarneau
wondered aloud. “Feeding LeGrand with a silver
spoon?”

“This doesn’t weigh much, does it?”
said Tweedledee.

“Canvas is light. And yet it’s worth a
hundred times more
than solid gold.”

There was a creak of nails being tugged from
wood, and
then
stunned silence.

“Disappointing, isn’t it?”

The two men whirled to face the voice. It
belonged to
the Saint, who was standing behind them on the safe side
of a black automatic. Tweedledee made a sudden move, and
Simon sent
a shot through the edge of his coat sleeve. There
were no more
movements, sudden or otherwise.

“I know it’s disappointing,” he
murmured. “You expected
a Madonna or two, but you’ll just have to make
do with
one Saint.”

He relieved Tweedledee of another pistol,
checked the fake
Clarneau,
and backed away again.

“How
…
did you
get here?” the smaller man asked him.

“I was breathing down your neck all the
way. Now why
don’t you tell me how and why you got here?”

“We tell you nothing.”

“Well then,” Simon said,
“lead the way to the dungeon,
please.”

He indicated the way with the nose of his gun and fol
lowed them down the passage to the room where
they had
held LeGrand and the real
Clarneau prisoner. Tweedledum
was
still on the floor.

“He’s killed Gunter!” the fake
Clarneau cried in a panic.

“Not quite, I think,” said the
Saint. “But that can always
be remedied. I do sometimes get homicidal
when people try
to
keep secrets from me. Now just wait here and think what
I might do to you if you don’t come up with a good honest
chunk of autobiography in the next forty seconds.
I’ll be
right back.”

He backed into the passageway and locked the
door of
the small room. Then he froze. Coming through from the
garage were two more men. One
of them, tall and black-
haired, was the
detective who had visited LeGrand’s gallery
the day before. He was smiling.

“You remember me, Monsieur Templar?
Inspector
Mathieu.”

“I do remember,” Simon said
without relaxing his ready
grip on the automatic.

Inspector Mathieu continued to smile as he
nodded at the
gun.

“Taking the law into your own
hands?”

“Nobody else seemed to be taking care of
it,” the Saint
said mildly.

“We have been watching this
building,” Mathieu said.
“Your friend LeGrand and another fellow
came running out
in a state of shock and told us you were in here.”

The Saint’s muscles untensed slightly. But his main re
action to Mathieu, which must have been
subconsciously
developing since the first time he met him, was one of
spontaneous and unaccountable distrust.

“Where’s LeGrand now?” he asked.

“We sent him home. He was shaking like
jelly. And where
is the man who impersonated Clarneau?”

“Right through that door. And since I’m
being so co
operative, maybe you’d tell me exactly what kind of
mischief
this cast of thousands is up to.”

Mathieu shrugged.

“A simple case of thieves falling
out.”

“I hadn’t noticed any falling out,”
Simon responded.

“The girl on one side, these people on
the other.”

Mathieu stepped forward with a business-like
air toward
the door behind which the Saint’s three captives were
locked.
The key was already in Simon’s pocket. The automatic was
still in
his hand. With the most subtle kind of movement he
placed himself in the
passage in just such a way that In
spector Mathieu could not get by.

“You’re including Annabella Lambrini
among the thieves,”
Simon said questioningly.

His piercing, dangerous blue eyes met
Mathieu’s dark ones,
which gave way and pretended to glance
around the bare corridor with official interest.

“She is not Annabella Lambrini, for a
start,” Mathieu said.
“She’s no more Italian than I am…” He hesitated and
nervously indicated the locked doorway behind
the Saint.
“You’re sure those men are in there—securely? I
don’t want
to stand here talking while half the gang gets
away.”

“They’re as harmless as three blind mice,” the Saint as
sured him. “Tell me more.”

“This so-called Annabella Lambrini is
really Austrian,”
Mathieu said. “Her name is Anna Lenscher, and she is
responsible for …”

Mathieu suddenly stopped again. His
expression had
switched from the complacency of superior knowledge to
worry.

“Yes?” Simon prompted.

“Where
are
the paintings?”
Mathieu asked. “We saw an
empty crate out there as we came in.”

“There’s a trunk with a false bottom near
it,” the Saint
told him.

“Ah, a false bottom,” Mathieu said.
“Clever. Shall we go
and have a look?”

He pushed past his unintroduced and
unspeaking assistant
and led the way back into the garage. Simon
followed both of
them to the door through which the passage led into
the
garage.

“But the paintings aren’t in there
either,” he said.

Mathieu turned from the trunk, looking
plainly irritated.

“
Alors, m’sieur
, you will be so
kind as to tell me where they
are.”

Simon shook his head pleasantly.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.”

Mathieu, for the first time, seemed to be
losing his self-
possession.

“You don’t know?” he demanded.

“I didn’t say I didn’t know,”
Simon answered. “I said I
couldn’t tell you. But maybe we could trade
stories. You tell me more about Annabella, and I’ll consider telling you about
the
paintings—if I know anything.”

“Mr Templar! You are being
difficult!”

The Saint would never have suffered the
indignity of being taken off guard if his captives had not chosen that moment
to
set up a loud banging on the door of their cell. In the first
second of
the noise Simon’s attention was divided among
Mathieu, his
assistant who was standing nearby on his right,
and the noise at the
other end of the passageway. In that
instant of time the Saint, thinking in
three directions at once,
was as nearly vulnerable as he was ever likely
to be.

Mathieu’s assistant leaped forward, and
Simon—who even
at that crucial point had time to reflect that it might
be
unwise to kill a policeman, if Mathieu’s assistant really was a
policeman—half
whirled to snap off a shot at the man’s leg.
He sensed rather than
saw Mathieu hurl something at him as his head was turned. His skull was jarred
as the flying object
hit him, and darkness, like rising black
water, filled his vision.

8

Annabella Lambrini—or Anna Lenscher,
depending on whose
story the reader chooses to accept—was at the least
highly
puzzled when she realized that her protector and overnight
guest,
Simon Templar, had vanished from her house simul
taneously with the
removal of her paintings.

Any strictly materialistic worries she might have had about
the crated masterpieces were assuaged by her
possession of a
check for a very large amount of money signed by Marcel
LeGrand and his expert friend Professor Clarneau.
If the
Saint, piratical character
that he was reputed to be, chival
rously
chose to steal the paintings from Messieurs LeGrand
and Clarneau rather than from a lady, she could
only be
grateful for such old-world
consideration. But her feminine
pride
was hurt that he could have walked out and left her—
for whatever mysterious reason—without even saying
goodbye.

However, she had more practical matters to
occupy her
mind. She had no wish to put off her dream of a
California
palace any longer than was absolutely necessary. She had
already
made arrangements for the closing of her house,
and she set Hans to
work packing her luggage while she had
lunch.

About an hour later the chauffeur called to
her from
upstairs.

“Fr
ä
ulein!
Somebody comes!”

“Is it the Saint?” she called back.
And excitedly answering
her own question: “He must have done whatever
he went to
do.”

She ran to the door and opened it as a green
Renault pulled
up in the driveway. There were two men in it, and she
immediately
realized to her disappointment that neither was
Simon.

The tallest of the men approached her. His
shorter com
panion limped more slowly behind him.

“Mademoiselle Lambrini, I am Inspector
Mathieu. My identification.”

“The police?” Annabella asked in a
controlled voice.

“Yes. May we come in? Thank you.”

He stepped into the entrance hall without waiting for a
reply, and she followed him.

“I must ask you …” she began.

“You were visited by Monsieur LeGrand
and Professor
Clarneau this morning?” Mathieu asked.

“That is true.”

“And you sold them some paintings?”

“Yes. Is something the matter?”

“I regret to tell you that Professor
Clarneau was murdered
today after leaving your house,” Mathieu
said heavily.