The Saint in Europe (16 page)

All that part of it was dazzlingly clear; and the other part was starting to grow clearer-some of it, at least.

The Saint found himself saying, almost absentmindedly: “I left the other things at the hotel. You understand, I thought we should get acquainted first.”

Somewhere outside the room he was aware of indistinct voices, but it was a rather subconscious impression which he only recalled afterwards, for at the moment it did not seem that they could concern him.

“I hope I have made a good impression,” Galen said with lively good humor. “What else did you bring?”

“I have a small Botticelli,” said the Saint slowly. He was stalling for time really, while his mind raced ahead from the knowledge it now had to fit together the pieces that still had to tie in. “It is a museum piece. And a first edition of Boccaccio, in perfect condition-“

The door behind him burst open as if a tornado had struck it, and that was when he actually remembered the premonitory sounds of argument that he had heard.

It was the Signora Ravenna, with her nubile bosom heavнing and her black eyes blazing with dark fire. Behind her followed the funereal manservant, looking apologetically helpless.

“Go on,” she said. “What else was there?”

Galen was on his feet as quickly as a big dog. He glanced at the Saint with quizzical wariness as Simon stood up more leisurely.

“Do you know this lady?”

“Certainly,” said the Saint calmly. “She is Signora Raнvenna.”

Galen almost relaxed.

“A thousand pardons. You should have told me your wife-“

“I am not his wife,” the young woman cut him short passionately. “My husband was murdered last night, by robbers who stole his briefcase with the things he brought to sell. This impostor is an American who calls himself Tombs - he is probably the employer of the men who killed my husband!”

Galen moved easily around the couch, without apparent haste or agitation.

“That is quite an extraordinary statement,” he remarked temperately. “But no doubt one of you can at least prove your identity.”

“I can,” said Signora Ravenna. She fumbled in her handbag. “I can show you my passport. Ask him to show you his!”

“I’ll save you the trouble,” said the Saint amiably, in English. “I concede that this is Signora Ravenna, and it’s true she’s been a widow for about twelve hours.”

“Then your explanation had better be worth listening to,” Galen said in the same language.

It was produced so smoothly and casually that Simon never knew where it came from, but now there was an automatic in Galen’s hand, the muzzle lined up with Simon’s midriff. The melancholy manservant remained in the doorнway, and somehow he no longer looked apologetic.

Simon’s gaze slid languidly over the barrel of the gun and up to Galen’s coldly questioning face. It was no perнformance that he scarcely seemed to notice the weapon. He was too happy with the way the other fragments of the puzzle were falling into place to care.

“I happened to see Signor Ravenna jumped on last night by the two thugs who stole his briefcase,” he said. “I imagine he was on his way to see you then. I tried to catch them, but I didn’t do so good. There’s an independent witness, a local citizen, who saw me try, and he’s on record with the police … This morning Signora Ravenna came to my room and asked me about the briefcase. She said she had no idea what was in it and couldn’t imagine why anyone would attack her husband. I told her that so far as I knew the thieves had gotten away with it.”

“A bluff, to try and make it look as if they weren’t workнing for you,” Signora Ravenna said vehemently. “You had it all the time!”

“I didn’t,” said the Saint steadily. “But after you left, I went on thinking. It occurred to me that there was just an outside chance that the fellow I nearly caught had dropped it, and then nobody had thought of looking for it-everyнbody taking it for granted that somebody else had got it. I went back to the spot and looked. Sure enough, there it was in the bushes. I took it back to my room.”

“You see, he admits it! I saw him again after that, and he didn’t say anything about finding it. He meant to steal it all the time. The only thing he doesn’t confess is that the whole thing was planned!”

“While Signora Ravenna was asking me questions,” Simon continued imperturbably, “I also asked her a few. And I knew damn well she was lying. That made me curiнous. So I opened the briefcase. I found the painting, the book, the necklace which you have-and, of course, that letter of introduction to you. It was just too much for my inquisitive nature. So I came here, using Ravenna’s name, to try and find out what was going on. You’ve been kind enough to explain the background to me. I now know that Ravenna was simply trying to turn his assets into American . money which he could use when he emigrated - which, you’ve explained to me, isn’t a crime here, whatever they think of it in Italy. So now I’m satisfied about that-but not about why Signora Ravenna told me so many lies.”

“I leave that to you, Monsieur Galen,” said the woman with a triumphant shrug. “I would not even tell the police, still less a perfect stranger.”

Galen’s dispassionate eyes rested immovably on the Saint’s face.

“And what is your business, Mr Tombs?”

“Just think of me,” said the Saint, “as a guy with a weakness for puzzles, and an incorrigible asker of questions. I have a few more.” He looked at Signora Ravenna again.

“Are you positive your husband couldn’t have discussed this deal with anyone?”

“Only with his best friend, who gave him the introduction to Monsieur Galen.”

“And you’re sure you never mentioned it to anybody?”

“Of course not.”

“But as I said this morning, the jokers who waylaid your husband knew he was carrying something valuable, and even knew it was in his briefcase. How do you account for that?”

“I don’t know how crooks like you find out these things,” she flared. “Why don’t you tell us?”

Simon shook his head.

“I suggest,” he said rather forensically, that those crooks could only have known because you told them-because you hired them to get rid of your husband and bring you back his most negotiable property.”

The servant in the doorway was pushed suddenly aside, and a short spherical man elbowed his way unceremoniнously past him into the room.

“I am Inspector Kleinhaus, of the police,” he said, “and I should also like to hear the answer to that.”

5

“You see,” he explained diffidently, “we had a friendly tip from Italy that two known Italian criminals had bought tickets to Switzerland. It was my job to keep an eye on them. I’m afraid they gave me the slip last night, for long enough to attack and rob Signor Ravenna. When I met you at the scene of the crime, Mr Tombs, I didn’t know if you might be associated with them, so I didn’t introduce myself completely. But we kept watch on you. We saw you find the briefcase and take it to your room-incidentally, we recovered it as soon as you went out, with its interesting contents.”

Galen put the automatic in his pocket and took out the necklace.

“Except this,” he said conscientiously.

“Thank you,” said Kleinhaus. “Meanwhile, Mr Tombs, we went on keeping an eye on you, to see where you’d lead us. I still didn’t know how deeply you were involved in the affair, and I was as puzzed as you seem to have been by the things Ravenna was carrying and by the motive for the robнbery. Most of that has now been cleared up. One of my men followed you here, and I followed Signora Ravenna myself after I talked to her at the police station a little while ago. Her answers seemed as suspicious to me as they apparнently did to you.”

“How long have you been listening?” Simon asked.

“Monsieur Galen’s servant was too agitated by the way Signora Ravenna behaved when he told her her husband was already here to remember to shut the front door, so I’ve been in the hall all the time. It was very illuminating.” The detective’s bright blue eyes shifted again. “Now, Signora Ravenna, I still want to hear what you were going to say.”

Her face was a white mask.

“I have nothing to say! You can’t be serious about such an accusation-and from such a person! Can you believe I would have my own husband murdered?”

“Such things have happened,” Kleinhaus said sadly. “However, we can check in another way. I’m glad to be able to tell you now that the two men have already been caught. Mr Tombs will be able to identify them. Then you can conнfront them, and we’ll see what they say when they realize there’s only one way to save their own skins.”

It was pitiful to see the false indignation drain out of her face, and the features turn ugly and formless with terror. She moistened her lips, and her throat moved, but no sound came. And then, as if she understood that in that silence she had already betrayed her own guilt for all to see, she gave an inarticulate little cry and ran past Galen, shoving him out of the way with a hysterical violence that sent him staggering, and ran out through the french windows, out on to the sunlit terrace that went to the edge of the cliff where the house perched, and kept on running…

Inspector Kleinhaus, presently, was the first to turn from looking down over the edge. With a conclusive gesture he replaced his absurdly juvenile hat.

“Perhaps that saves a lot of unpleasantness,” he reнmarked. “Well, I must still ask you to identify the two men, Mr Tombs-your name really is Tombs, is it?”

“It sounds sort of ominous, doesn’t it?” said the Saint easily.

He still had eight diamonds, six emeralds, and ten valuнable stamps in his pockets which no one was left to ask embarrassing questions about, and at such a time it would have been very foolish to draw any more attention to himнself.

VI. JUAN-LES-PINS:
The Spanish Cow

“People,” said Myra Campion languidly, “ought to have to pass an examination and get licensed beнfore they’re allowed to exhibit themselves on a bathing beach.”

Simon Templar smiled vaguely and trickled sand through his fingers. Around them spread the sun-baked shambles of Juan-les-Pins-a remarkable display of anatomy in the raw. As far as the eye could see in either direction, men and women of all nationalities, ages, shapes, sizes, and shades of color, stripped to the purely technical minimum of covering demanded by the liberal laws of France, littered themнselves along the landscape and wooed the ultra-violet ray with a unanimous concentration of effort that would have restored world prosperity if it had been turned into the channels of banking or breeding pedigree wombats or some such lucrative field of endeavor. Reclining on straw mats, under beach umbrellas, in deck chairs, or even on the well-worn sand itself, they sprawled along the margin of that fashionable stretch of water in a sizzling abandon of scorched flesh that would have made a hungry cannibal lick his lips. To the Saint’s occasionally cynical eye there was something reminiscent of an orgy of human sacrifice in that welter of burnt-offerings on the altar of the snobbery of tan. Sometimes he thought that a keen ear might have heard the old sun-god’s homeric laughter at the childish sublimation that had repopulated his shrine, as the novices turned themselves like joints on a spit, basted their blistered skin with oils and creams, and lay down to roast again, suffering patiently that they might triumph in the end. Simon looked at teak-bronzed males with beautifully lubricated hair parading themselves in magnificent disdain amongst the pink and peeling and furtively envious newcomers; and, being as brown as they were, only larger-minded, he was amused.

But not at that moment. At that moment he was interнested exclusively in Mrs Porphyria Nussberg.

Mrs Nussberg, at that moment, was methodically divestнing herself of a set of boned pink corsets, preparatory to having her swim. The corsets were successfully removed under cover of her dress, defiantly rolled up, and deposited in her canvas chair. The dress followed; and Mrs Nussberg was revealed in a bright yellow bathing costume of nineнteenth-century cut, which rose to the base of her neck and extended itself along her limbs almost to the knees and elbows. The completion of her undressing was hailed with irreverent applause from several parties in her neighbourнhood.

“I wonder,” said Myra Campion languidly, making her observation more particular in all the arrogance of her own golden slenderness, “how that woman has the nerve to come here.”

“Maybe it amuses her,” suggested the Saint lazily, with his blue eyes narrowed against the sun. “Why do fat men feel an urge to wear check suits?”

His vagueness was rather an illusion. As a matter of fact he was quite pleasantly conscious of the slim blonde grace of the girl beside him; but he had the gift of splitting his mind between two distinct occupations, and one half of his mind had been revolving steadily around Mrs Nussberg and Mrs Nussberg’s jewels for several days.

Of the late Mr Nussberg he knew little, except that he had lived in Detroit and manufactured metal buttons for attachнment to cheap overalls, and had in due course died, full of honor and indigestible food. Simon rather suspected that he had been a small man with a bald head and baggy trousers, but he admitted that this suspicion was based on nothing more substantial than the theory that women of Mrs Nussнberg’s size and demeanour are usually married by small men with bald heads and baggy trousers. The point was purely academic, anyway: it was now Porphyria Nussberg who carried the burden of a reputedly fabulous fortune on her massive shoulders, and whose well-padded physique, which in some respects did actually resemble that of a camel, should have been speculating anxiously about the size of the needle’s eye through which it might one day be called upon to pass.

Mrs Nussberg had arrived on the same day as the Saint himself; but she had since become far better known. She was popularly referred to by a variety of names, of which “The Queen of Sheba,” “Cleopatra,” and “The American Tragedy” were a fairly representative selection. But to Simon Templar she would always be the Spanish Cow.

From this it should not be hastily assumed that the Saint was unnecessarily vulgar. To those of cosmopolitan educaнtion, the Spanish Cow is an allusion hardly less classical than others that had been bestowed upon Porphyria. The Spanish Cow-la vache espagnol-is, curiously enough, a creature of the French mythology, and is indignantly repuнdiated by Spain. It is the symbol of everything clumsy, inefficient, and absurd. When a Frenchman wishes to say that he speaks English excessively badly, he will tell you that he speaks comme une vache espagnol-like a Spanish Cow. In the same simile he may dance, play bridge, butt into a petting party, or remember that he owes you a few thousand francs. For the benefit of those in search of higher education, it might be explained that this does not stem from any ancient national antagonism or occult anthropomorphic legend: it is, etymologically, a corruption of Basque esнpagnol, and originated in the belief of French purists that the Basques speak atrociously; but this is not the place to enter that argument. To Simon, the name fitted Mrs Nussberg like a glove, with a pleasing ambivalence that included her swarthy complexion and distinctly bovine build.