The Saint Bids Diamonds (17 page)

“I-I think I’d better go and look for that taxi,” he said at last. “We don’t want to waste any more time.”

“All right,” said Palermo contemptuously. “I’ll get all we want out of this guy.”

Aliston flushed and went white again. His mouth opened and closed once more, like a fish; and then he swallowed and went quickly to the door. Palermo watched it close behind him and turned back to the Saint with a short laugh.

“Cecil’s a good boy,” he said. “But he’s too softhearted. That’s the trouble with him. Softhearted.”

“I take it that that’s one thing you don’t suffer from, Art,” said the Saint softly.

Palermo chewed his cigar and looked down at him.

“Me? No. I’m not that way at all. Don’t kid yourself, Tombs. I get what I want, and I don’t care who gets hurt while I’m getting it. You can scream all you want while I’m burning you, and it won’t worry me a bit. I’m not sentimental. Now why don’t you have some sense and open up before I have to do any more to you?”

“People have tried to make me open up before-as the actress said to the bishop.”

“There’s a limit to how much any man can stand —”

“That was what the bishop said to the actress,” murmured the Saint, with undiminished good humour. “Besides, you’re going the wrong way about it. You’d be much more likely to make me think twice if you just threatened to stand there and make me go on looking at that nasty little moustache and wondering what your father would think if he knew about you.”

And while he spoke he was twisting his wrists round to try and reach the hilt of the knife under his left sleeve. The cords cut into his flesh with the increased tension, but his finger tips brushed the end of the carved ivory. He relaxed for a second and then strained his muscles again, without letting a trace of the agonising effort show on his face… .

Then he heard the girl coming back. She carried a kitchen spoon with the handle wrapped in a cloth: the other end of it glowed dull red. Palermo took it from her carefully and held it a little way from the palm of his other hand, satisfying himself about the temperature. The girl backed slowly away with wide, frightened eyes; but Simon knew from the sound of her footsteps that she stopped at the door of the kitchenette. She was directly behind him, and if he got his knife out of its sheath she would see it.

The Saint’s blue eyes settled into a frozen steadiness as he watched Palermo corning towards him. The other’s swarthy features were perfectly composed, as if he had been a dentist preparing for a painful operation which had got to be completed for the patient’s own good.

“She’s a nice girl,” he said in his conversational way. “A bit dumb, but you can’t get anything better here. But she’s sentimental too.”

“Everybody seems to have that complaint except you,” Simon remarked, with an effort to make his voice sound natural.

Palermo came up on his left side; and the Saint felt the warm radiation of the spoon on his cheek.

“This is your last chance,” said Palermo.

The Saint spread his legs wider around the seat of the chair and drew his feet back a little, as though he were riding a horse. He bent his elbows and strained his shoulders back so that the circle of his arms loosened as much as possible around the back of the chair.

“You can go to hell,” said the Saint, and stood up.

The heat on his cheek became scorching as he rose, touched an instant of burning agony as he came upright. His wrists caught on the back of the chair, but he shook them free. And with a lightning turn of his body he swung his right leg round like a flail at the back of Palermo’s knees.

He flung his left leg forward at the same time, in front of Palermo’s feet; and as he crashed to the floor his right leg found its mark. Palermo let out an oath as he stumbled forward. His right hand was already diving into his pocket for his gun, but he had to snatch it out again to save his face as he toppled forward. He went down with a thud; and like a flash the Saint rolled over, keeping his legs in the same relative position.

Palermo gasped. He lay flat on his stomach, with his left leg held in a torturing grip which almost paralysed him. The Saint’s right ankle was wedged firmly in behind Palermo’s knee, and the heel of the Saint’s left foot pressed remorselessly down on Palermo’s instep, doubling the lower part of his leg backwards over his thigh.

The girl screamed. Palermo groped for his gun again, and the Saint put on some more pressure. Palermo screamed too. For a moment he had felt as though his knee joint was being torn out of its socket, while the tendons of his leg seemed to glow red-hot with anguish.

“Lay off that,” said the Saint grittily, “or I’ll break your leg in half!”

He turned his body a little to make another attempt to get at the knife on his forearm, but in the position in which he was lying his weight was on top of his arms. He couldn’t shift it off sufficiently to reach his knife without giving Palermo a chance to escape. Meanwhile he had Palermo in a hold in which he might probably break his leg; which was all very well, but not well enough. The Saint’s mouth set grimly as he went on trying to reach his knife.

Palermo pressed his eyes into his clenched fists and groaned.

“Maria!” he gasped. “So loca-do something!”

“Maybe she isn’t so sentimental after all,” said the Saint, and gave Palermo’s leg another squeeze for encouragement.

He spoke a little too soon. Palermo’s second yelp of torment seemed to break the spell which had held the girl gaping at them helplessly. She rushed forward and picked up the overturned chair on which the Saint had been sitting. Simon saw it hurtling down towards his head, and rolled desperately sideways. The movement would have broken his hold anyway, so the Saint broke it himself. He yanked his right foot free and aimed a savage kick at the back of Palermo’s neck as he squirmed frantically out of the way of the falling chair. The chair crashed on the floor beside his ear, and most of its force had been lost when some other part of it caught him a glancing blow on the side of the head. Otherwise it would probably have cracked his skull-it was a good solid bourgeois wooden chair, with plenty of weight behind it.

A whole planetarium of whirling constellations swam before the Saint’s vision; but at the same time he felt the toe of his shoe sog exquisitely into Palermo’s occiput. Palermo’s pained and startled glug! prefaced another and temporarily unaccountable sharp clicking sound by a mere split second.

Simon got on to his knees and scrambled up to his feet, shaking his head to try and blink the flashing comets and swirling black mists out of his vision. The girl’s fists thumped on his face and shoulders. He pushed her up to the wall and held her there by leaning his weight on her. She went on hitting wildly at him, but he paid no attention. He screwed his head round to look for Palermo and found him lying limply on the floor, face downwards. All at once he realised the meaning of that second crisp smack which had followed so closely on the impact of his toe. Palermo must have been raising his head when the kick met him, and it had banged his chin back into violent collision with the tiled floor. He was out to the wide, and he looked as if he was intending to stay out for some time.

The girl started to scream again hysterically.

“ĄCalla!” rapped the Saint.

He saw her take breath for another yell and jerked his head quickly down at her face. It hurt her more than it hurt him, and the scream was momentarily silenced.

“You can have five hundred pesetas if you shut up,” said the Saint; and she looked at him almost intelligently.

He took a step back from her, when he saw that the lull was well-established, and turned half round.

“Cut off these ropes.”

She glanced fearfully at Palermo.

“He will kill me.”

“Does he look like killing anybody?” asked the Saint. “You can say that you fainted and I cut them off myself.”

She took a knife from the table and sawed at the cords. Simon felt the ropes give, dragged one wrist free and finished the job himself. She stood looking at him anxiously; and the Saint dug into his pocket and peeled five bills off the roll he carried. The anxiety faded out of her face, and she resumed her normal expression of bovine disinterest.

“Is there anyone in the apartment downstairs?” Simon asked.

She shook her head.

“Nobody.”

“That’s one consolation, anyway,” said the Saint.

He stood rubbing his wrists tenderly for a moment. Mr Palermo continued to give no signs of life. It was a pity, thought the Saint regretfully-his artistic work on Mr Palermo’s facial scenery had gone completely haywire now, and it would probably be the devil of a job to get it into shape again. However, one couldn’t have everything; and what had been done was interesting to remember. The Saint turned away and went towards the communicating door. The girl realised his intention and tried to bar his way, but Simon put her firmly aside. He opened the door, and the bulging eyes of Mr Uniatz goggled up at him over the gag which covered half his face.

3
Simon fetched a knife and went back to the bed. The girl Maria tugged at his arm.

“You cannot do that!”

“I’m not going to cut his throat,” Simon explained patiently.

“You cannot do that. They must stay here. He said -Arturo-he said he would kill me if they got away.”

The Saint straightened up wearily.

“Arturo has made so many promises,” he pointed out. “And just look at him. Besides, how could you stop me if you’d fainted, which I thought you were supposed to do. Be a sensible girl and shut up. Have you got a telephone here?”

“No.”

“Well, go out and find me a taxi. Bring it here.” He took a couple more notes out of his pocket and tore them in half. “Here. You get the other half when I get my taxi.”

She pulled up her skirt, exposing an area of beefy and black-haired thigh, and tucked the money into the top of her stocking.

“Does the seńor want a large taxi or a small taxi?”

“I don’t care if you bring a truck,” said the Saint. “But get moving and fetch something.”

He turned back to the bed and rapidly cut off the cords with which Hoppy was trussed up like a silkworm in its cocoon. He left him to remove the gag himself, and passed on to Joris Vanlinden, who lay on the other side of the bed. Mr Uniatz unwound the towel from his head and proceeded to pull a yard or two of what looked like dishcloth out of his mouth. He threw it on the floor and stood panting.

“Chees, boss,” he croaked. “Anudder hour of dat an’ I should of died. Have I got a toist?”

“You used to have one,” said the Saint. “Did anything happen to it?”

Mr Uniatz licked his dry lips.

“Chees!” he repeated piously; and Simon heard him moving stiffly out of the door.

Joris Vanlinden still lay inertly on the bed after he had been cut loose. Simon removed the gag and took out the cloth with which his mouth was stuffed in the same way that Hoppy’s had been. He gazed up at the Saint with dull and curiously apathetic eyes. Simon glanced round the room and saw a jug of water; he filled a glass and brought it to the bed, supporting the old man’s head while he drank.

“How d’you feel?” he asked.

Vanlinden took his mouth from the glass and lay back again. His mouth worked once or twice before he could speak.

“Where’s Christine?” he got out at last.

“She’s all right.”

“Did they get her?”

“No, they didn’t find her. I sent her to a friend’s apartment. She’s quite safe.”

Vanlinden was silent again. There had been vague crashing sounds emanating from the kitchenette for some little while past; and the Saint went out and found Mr Uniatz at the end of a triumphant search, with a bottle of whiskey grasped in his hand. Mr Uniatz’ mouth, which could never have been likened to a rosebud, spread even wider under the influence of the broad beam of contentment that was lighting up his face.

“Lookit what we got, boss,” he said, hospitably including the Saint in the great moment; and Simon nodded sympathetically.

“Let me open it for you.”

He detached the bottle from Hoppy’s loving paws with the dexterity acquired from many similar rescues and stripped off the seals. He poured some of the whiskey into a glass before he handed the bottle back.

“Make yourself at home, Hoppy,” he said unnecessarily and returned to the bedroom.

Joris Vanlinden was still lying quietly where the Saint had left him. His eyes were closed, but they opened when Simon came to the bed.

“Have you got a toist too?” Simon enquired with a smile.

The old man’s lips moved faintly, but he didn’t answer. Simon helped him up again and offered him the drink. He sipped a little and then he shook his head.

Simon let him down again and put the glass on the table. Still the old man didn’t speak. He seemed quite happy to lie there with his eyes resting vacantly on the Saint’s face, without talking or moving. Once he smiled weakly, as if that said all he wanted to say.

The Saint watched him for a few moments; and then he turned on his heel and went back to the living room.

Mr Uniatz was sitting on the table, with the half-empty bottle, which was tilted up to his lips and rapidly proceeding to contain less and less. He removed it from its target for long enough to say “Hi-yah, boss,” and replaced it again without any loss of time. Simon performed another of his expert feats of legerdemain and parked the bottle at the other end of the table; and Mr Uniatz wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

“Dis guy,” he said, hooking his thumb backwards at the sleeping Mr Palermo-“where does he come from?”

“He’s one of the lads who brought you here.”

“He ain’t dead,” said Hoppy, as if he found the fact not only remarkable but also to be deplored.

The Saint grinned and searched for a cigarette.

“No, he isn’t dead. He just hit the back of his head on my foot, and then he hit the front of his face on the floor, and what with one thing and another he seemed to decide that that wasn’t getting him anywhere, so he gave it up and went to sleep.”

Mr Uniatz thought it over. It was difficult for him to believe that the Saint could have been guilty of any of the lapses of memory to which ordinary mortals were subject, but he could discover no other explanation. However, from the sounds he had heard previously, Mr Uniatz was able to deduce that the Saint had been having some trouble; and he presumed that the stress of other preoccupations was responsible. Mr Uniatz’ natural courtesy and kindness of heart forbade him to make any comments, especially when the omission could so easily be rectified. Almost bashfully he fished an automatic out of his pocket.