The Saint Bids Diamonds (20 page)

“You dirty little double-crossing rat!” he snarled.

Palermo struggled feebly in the big man’s savage grip.

“What have I done?” he demanded shrilly. “You can’t say that to me. He’s the guy who’s double-crossing us-Tombs! Why don’t you do something about him —”

Lauber drew back his free fist and knocked Palermo spinning with a brutal blow on the mouth.

“Say that again, you louse,” he grated. “Last night you were trying to make out I was double-crossing you. Now it’s Tombs. It ‘ll be Graner next.”

Simon put his hands in his pockets and made himself comfortable against the door, prepared to miss none of the riper gorgeousness of Lauber’s display of righteous indignation. The spectacle of the ungodly falling out with one another could have diverted him for some time; but Reuben Graner intervened.

“That will do, Lauber,” he said in his soft, evil voice. “Have you anything to say, Palermo?”

“It’s a frame-up!” panted the Italian. “Tombs came here and beat me up —”

“Did you have Joris and another man here?”

“I never saw them!”

“Tombs-and Maria-saw them here.”

“They’re lying.”

“Then how do you explain the ropes on the bed? And why did you bring Tombs here? And why were you going to torture Tombs?”

Palermo swallowed, but no words came from his throat for a full half minute.

“I can explain,” he began, and then the words dried up again before the concentrated malignity of Graner’s gaze.

“You have taken a long time to think of your explanation,” Graner said coldly. “We will see if you have anything better to say at the house. If not-I fear that we shall not miss you very much… .”

He turned to Lauber.

“Take him down to the car.”

Palermo gasped, hesitated, and made a sudden bolt for the door. But the hesitation lost him any chance he might have had. Lauber caught him by the coat and wrapped his arms round him in a bear hug in which Palermo writhed and kicked as futilely as a child. Palermo got one hand to the coat pocket where he had once had a gun; and when he found it empty he let out one short squeal of terror like a trapped rabbit.

Simon picked up the cord that had been cut away from his own wrists, and sorted out enough of it to tie Palermo’s hands behind his back, while Lauber kept hold of him.

“Aliston may be coming back here,” he remarked, as he went through to the bedroom to fetch one of the gags which had been left there.

“I had thought of that.” Graner held the knob of his slender cane between his thumb and forefinger and swung it like a pendulum. “They took the other car when they went out.”

“They brought me here in a car-wasn’t it outside when you arrived?”

“No.”

“Aliston must have taken it, then.”

“Where was he going?”

“I gathered that he was going to look for Christine. Anyway, that was the excuse.”

“Did he know where to look?”

Simon busied himself with carefully packing the last square inches of the dishcloth into Palermo’s mouth.

He could estimate just how hopeful a chance Aliston had-in Santa Cruz, the stand to which a taxi is allotted can be identified from the number, and business is not so brisk that a driver forgets his fares quickly. Given the number of the cab, which he knew Aliston had got, it would only be a matter of time before the chauffeur was located; and from then on the trail would be as easy to follow as if it had been blazed in luminous paint. The Saint dared not think how much time had slipped away since Aliston left; somehow, before much more of it had elapsed, he had got to find a way to ditch Graner and Lauber and leave himself free to tackle that problem. And yet Lauber was the one man in Santa Cruz to whom the Saint wanted to talk-but in private.

“I think he’s wasting his time,” answered the Saint confidently. “I got back to the hotel in a taxi, just before Aliston and Palermo caught me, and Aliston got the number. But I changed taxis a couple of times, with a walk in between, so he’s got a long hunt in front of him. When he finds the scent doesn’t lead anywhere he’ll probably be back. I’ll wait for him if you like.”

Graner thought for a moment, and then nodded.

“Yes, you had better do that. Lauber can wait with you in case he gives any trouble.”

Lauber stopped on his way to the door.

“I can’t stay here,” he said loudly; and Graner looked at him.

“Why not?”

“Because-well, what are you going to do with Palermo by yourself?”

“Take him back to the house.”

“You’ve got to drive the car.”

“Palermo is tied up and gagged. He will give no trouble. If he tried to, he would regret it.”

“I can clip him over the head again if you like,” suggested the Saint helpfully.

“That is quite unnecessary. Manoel is still waiting in the square, and I can pick him up. Since you have removed Christine there is no further need for him to remain there.”

Lauber thrust out his heavy jaw.

“Well, I still think it’s all wrong”

“Are you disputing my orders?” Graner inquired purringly.

He had his right hand in his pocket again, and his voice had the soft rustle of satin. Lauber glowered at him blackly for several seconds with his fist clenched and his mouth jammed up like a trap; but his gaze wavered before the bright menace of Graner’s eyes.

Simon’s imagination raced away again-with the domination he had established over Graner, he might still be able to bring about a change of plan. But he certainly wanted Palermo out of the way, and he wasn’t very frightened of what Palermo might say to Graner when they were alone. Manoel would doubtless be making his report sooner or later, anyhow; and it didn’t much matter if it was a little sooner. Simon wasn’t convinced that they would try to do anything about Joris on the spot, with Palermo on their hands; besides, an abduction would take a certain time to get organised, and they still had to locate Joris’ room. Meanwhile the Saint did want to talk to Lauber. It was a matter of timing by split seconds and balancing arguments without the weight of a flake of ash to choose between them, but Simon had spent his life betting on snap decisions.

“Don’t be a fool, Lauber,” he said encouragingly. “We don’t want two of us off duty looking after Palermo while there’s Aliston to be taken care of.”

Lauber seemed as though he was about to make another protest. Graner laid his stick on the table and picked his perfumed silk handkerchief out of his breast pocket to fan it gently under his nose, and his bright little eyes never shifted from the other’s face.

“All right!” Lauber gritted savagely. His sullen stare switched momentarily on to the Saint. “But if anything goes wrong it’s no good blaming me.”

He yanked Palermo round and shoved him roughly out of the door; and Graner put away his handkerchief and picked up his cane. Simon followed him out of the room.

“If Aliston comes back you will use his car to bring him back to the house,” Graner said as they went down the stairs. “If I have not heard from you in a reasonable time I shall send further instructions.”

Outside, it was still raining. They stood in the doorway and watched Lauber bundle Palermo into the back of the car. It caused no commotion. The inhabitants of the street slept in the daytime, and any chance passers-by there might have been had been driven to cover by the torrential storm. As soon as Lauber had settled the cargo and stepped back, Graner scuttled across the twelve-inch pavement and wriggled into the driving seat. The car swished away through the rivulets that bubbled between the cobblestones.

Lauber stood and glared sombrely after it until it turned the next corner and disappeared. Simon tapped him on the shoulder.

“Now,” he said, “we will go upstairs and have a little chat.”

Lauber transferred the same sultry glare to the Saint. And then, with a renewed clamping of his thick lips, he turned abruptly, thrust past him without a word and stumped heavily back up the stairs.

Simon drifted into the room after him and returned to his favourite perch on the edge of the table. He opened his cigarette case and held it out, but Lauber ignored it. He seemed to be labouring under the stress of some great emotion.

“You might as well make the best of it,” said the Saint amiably. “After all, I’ve done you a good turn.”

“You have?” Lauber ground out.

“Sure. I hope you’re not going to try and kid me now, sweetheart. You’ll only be wasting your breath. Christine told me you’d taken the ticket, and Joris told me the same thing-quite independently. And you just about admitted it when you stopped calling me a liar just now. I know you’ve got it, so you might as well come clean. Be a big-business man and take it philosophically. That’s what I’m doing. I started as one of the crowd with an eighth share. Then Christine offered a fifth, so I went for that. Palermo and Aliston bid a third, which might have been even better if they’d behaved themselves. Now you’re going to come through with a half, which will knock all the opposition back on their heels. You ought to be congratulating yourself.”

“I ought to be congratulating myself, did I?”

The Saint nodded placidly.

“I don’t know about your grammar, but your ideas are right. What did you do with the ticket, Lauber?”

Lauber’s face seemed to be turning purple. The veins stood out on his forehead, and his eyes started to look as if they had been recently boiled.

“What did I do with the ticket?” he almost shouted.

“That’s all I want you to tell me,” said the Saint comfortably. “So you’d better get used to the idea. You’ve got to let me in with you, Lauber. Because I’ve got Christine, and I’ve got Joris, and I’ve got the other guy; and if I let them loose they can raise such a shindy about the ticket being stolen that you’d find yourself in the calaboose the minute you tried to cash it. You haven’t any choice, my lad, so you’d better talk fast. And if you don’t, I’ll make you.”

The last words made no visible impression on Lauber at all. He appeared to be paying too much attention to trying to prevent himself choking to hear what he was listening to very clearly.

“I haven’t got the ticket,” he groaned; and the Saint’s eyes narrowed.

“You’ll have to think faster than that”

“I haven’t got it, I tell you.” Lauber’s voice exploded in a hoarse roar through the obstruction in his throat. “You fool-it was in the car!”

The Saint dropped off the table as if he had been swept off it. It didn’t take him the fraction of an instant to convince himself that Lauber could never have put over a lie like that. Everything led up to it. The Saint’s awakened eyes glinted like chips of ice.

“What?”

“I hid it in the car last night,” Lauber said suffocatingly. “It was the only thing I could do. I’ve been trying to get at it all day. And you let Graner go off with it!”

3
Simon took hold of himself with an effort.

“You left it in the car?”

“What else could I do? One of those swine last night hit me on the back of the head and knocked me out. I woke up in the car going home. It was the first thing that came into my head. I knew there ‘d be trouble about it, and I had to do something.”

“How d’you know it’s still there?”

“It must be. Nobody else would look for it where I put it.”

“What about the chauffeur?”

“He only cleans the car once a week-on Mondays. Even then, he only washes the outside. He’s one of these local men. He wouldn’t think of turning out the inside until it was too filthy to sit in.”

“But suppose he had found it.”

“He’d have said something. I’ve been afraid of that all day, but I couldn’t find an excuse to go to the garage or take the car out. Graner watches everything you do. When that girl rang up I tried to make him let me come here alone, but he had to come as well. I could have got the ticket back if he’d sent me to the house with Palermo, but you didn’t help me and I couldn’t go on arguing.”

The Saint remembered his cigarette and inhaled with a quiet concentration which he achieved with difficulty. He didn’t by any means share Lauber’s conviction that anyone who had found the ticket would have talked about it-the competition in double-crossing and double-double-crossing was getting too intense on every side for anything to be certain.

“Palermo and Aliston had some other old car when they picked me up,” he said. “Which car did they use this morning when they came down to look for Joris?”

“I don’t know.”

Simon didn’t remember either. He was trying to recall if anything had happened which might have given him a clue. But whichever car they had used, they would have gone to the garage; and it might have occurred to them to make a hurried search.

“Which car did the chauffeur use when he went out again last night?”

“I think that was the Buick.”

Still there was nothing definite enough to found an assumption on, either way. Even Graner himself …

“Where did you hide the ticket?” Simon asked.

Lauber was getting control of himself again. He might even have been starting to regret having said so much. A glitter of cunning twisted across his eyes.

“That’s my business. You find a way to get at the car, and I’ll find the ticket.”

“Couldn’t you have found it while you were putting Palermo in?”

“Would I have left it there if I could?”

Simon considered him dispassionately. It seemed unlikely, but he didn’t care to leave anything to chance.

“We’ll just look you over, and make sure,” he said.

“You’d better not try,” replied Lauber belligerently.

His hand went to the pocket where he had put away his gun, and a comical expression of disbelief and dismay warped itself over his face when his hand came out empty again. His gaze returned furiously to the Saint: Simon was lazily twiddling the gun around by the trigger guard, and he was smiling.

“I forgot to tell you I used to be a pickpocket,” he apologised solemnly. “Put your hands up and be a good boy while I run you over.”

Lauber had no useful argument to offer. He stood scowling churlishly while the Saint’s practised hands worked over him with an efficiency that wouldn’t have left even a postage stamp undiscovered. If Lauber had had the ticket on him, Simon would have found it; but it wasn’t there. When the Saint stepped back from his examination he was assured of it.