Vendetta for the Saint. (39 page)

They went through the gate and up the short
driveway together. The three soldiers from Fusco’s
scout car followed, their
boots making the noise of
a
respectable force before they fanned out across
the lawn.

Ponti produced a flashlight and shone it at
the
front door
which Simon had left half open.

“Come out with your hands up,” he
shouted
from the foot
of the steps, “or we shall come in and
take you.”

There was no answer, and the beam showed no
one in what could be seen of the hall.

“This is my job,” Ponti said, and
shoved Simon
aside as he ran
up the steps.

Fusco ran after him, and Simon had to
recover
his balance
before he could get on the Lieutenant’s
heels. But no shots greeted them, and the
hall and
staircase
showed empty to the sweep of Ponti’s
flashlight.
A flickering yellow luminance came
from the
door of the dining room, however, and
when
they reached it they saw Skullface and
Scarface
lying on the floor groaning, while the
woman
of the house tried to minister to their
bloodstained legs by the light
of a candle.

Cirano
also lay on the floor, but he was not
groaning. There was a single red stain on his shirt,
and his eyes were open and sightless. His
magnif
icent nose
stood up between them like a
tombstone.

Ponti bent over him briefly, and looked up
at the
Saint.

“Did
you do this?”

Simon shook his
head.

“No. The others, yes—with this.” He
broke the
shotgun,
extracting one spent and one unused
shell. “I didn’t have a pistol. But Destamio did,
and so did these two, and so did Florence
Night
ingale. I
broke the light”—he pointed to it—“and
they were all blazing away in the dark. It
could
have been an
accident. You will have to try
matching
bullets to guns. But there is one gun miss
ing.” He turned to the woman.
“Dov’
é
Destamio?”

She
glared at him without answering.

“There must be a back way out,”
Simon said.
“Or else—”

He turned and pushed two of the
bersaglieri
who
were crowding at the door.

“Go and watch the garage,” he snapped. “And
one of you block the driveway with you car.”

He went on across the hall and opened the
door
on the
opposite side. It led to the kitchen, which was
lit by a weak electric bulb over the sink.
He strode
across it to
another door, which was ajar. Ponti
was following him. They stepped out into darkness
and fresh air.

“Your back way,” Ponti said.
“We should have
looked
for it before we came in at the front.”

“If Al used it, he was probably gone
before you
got here,”
said the Saint. “Now, is he holed up
somewhere else in the village, or would he
try to make it out of here on foot? If Olivetti and his troops catch up soon
enough, you might still be
able
to cordon off the area.”

The detective was shining his flashlight
this way
and that. They were in a small
walled courtyard
with an old well in one
corner, garbage cans in an
other,
and an opening to a narrow alley in a third.
The light swung to the fourth corner, and a brief
pungent
malediction dropped from Ponti’s lips.

“I think we
are already much too late,” he said.

In the fourth corner, a short passage led
back to
a pair of large
wide-open doors, beyond which was a bare-walled emptiness, and at the back of
that the
inside of
another pair of doors, which were closed.

“God damn and blast it, the garage!” Simon
gritted. “With doors at both ends, and a back
alley
to drive out. What every Mafia
boss’s home should
have. And if
there was a boss-grade car in it, he
could be twenty kilometers away
already.”

They returned through the house, and Simon
went on out of the front door and across to
the
gate. Ponti stayed with him.

“The guard I incapacitated is under
those
bushes,”
Simon said, pointing as he passed them.

“Where
are you going?” Ponti asked.

Simon squeezed past the scout car which had
been moved into the opening.

“I’m taking back my car and going home,
thanking you for a delightful evening,” said the Saint.
“There’s nothing more I can do here.
But if I hap
pen to run into
Al again I will let you know.”

“I think you have an idea where to look
for him,
and I ought to
forbid you to try anything more on
your own,” Ponti grumbled. “But since you would
only deny it, I can only ask you to let me see him
alive if possible. The two whose legs you
peppered,
I know them, and they will
be good to see in the
dock, but
Destamio would make it still better.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” said
the Saint am
biguously. He
cranked up the Bugatti and climbed
in. “Which is the way to the coast road?”

“Turn to the right on the main street,
and take
the next fork
on the left. It is not very far.
Arriverderci
.”

“Ciao,”
said the Saint, and backed the great car
around and gunned it away.

It was in fact less than ten minutes to the
coast
highway, and it
was with a heartfelt sigh of relief
that he greeted its firm paving and comparatively
easy curves. In spite of his steel-wire stamina,
the accumulated exertions and shortage of sleep of the last few days had taken
their inevitable toll, and he
was
beginning to fight a conscious battle with
fatigue. Now it was less of a strain to make
speed,
and in the
next miles he broke all the speed limits and most of the traffic laws; but
fortunately it was still too early for any police cars or motorcycles to
be abroad.

The sky was paling when he roared into the
out
skirts of
Palermo and slowed up to thread through back roads that were already becoming
familiar.
There was just
one piece of evidence that he had
been cheated of, which he still needed before this
adventure could be wound up; and when he
finally
brought the
Bugatti to a stop, the gates of the cem
etery which he had visited the night before
had just
slid past the
edge of its headlights before he
switched
them off.

The gates were not locked, but the padlock on
the Destamio mausoleum had been fastened again. He
had no key this time, but he had brought a jack
handle from the car which would do just as well if
more crudely. He inserted it and twisted mightily.
Metal grated and snapped, and the
broken hasp
fell to the ground.

He knew that there was no fallacy like the
cliche that lightning never strikes in the same place twice,
but for someone else to be lurking there to
attack
him again, as
he had been waylaid on his previous
visit, would have been stretching the plausibilities
much farther than that. Secure in the confidence
that no biographer could inflict such a dull
repeti
tion on him, he walked inside
without hesitation or
trepidation,
aiming for the tomb that he had so
narrowly
missed seeing before.

His pocket flashlight had long since
vanished,
but he had
found a book of matches in the glove
compartment
of the Bugatti. He struck one that
flared
high in the windowless vault. There was a bronze casket almost at his eye level
which looked
newer than the others,
though it was itself well
aged and coated with dust. He bent close, and
brought the match near the tarnished bronze plate
on
the side.

It read:

ALESSANDRO LEONARDO DESTAMIO
1898—1931

VIII

How Dino
Cartelli Dug It,

 
and the Saint made a Deal

The
main portals of the Destamio manse stood
wide open when the Saint saw them again. It
was the first time he had seen them that way, and his
pulse accelerated by an optimistic beat at the
thought of what this
difference could portend. As
his
angle of vision improved, he discerned on the
driveway inside the shape of a small but very
modern car limned by the dim light of a bulb
over
the front door.
It had been backed around so that
it faced the gateway, as if in readiness for the speed
iest possible departure; and it did not seem
too
great a
concession to wishful thinking to visualize
it as the vehicle in which the man known as
Alessando Destamio had made his getaway from
the village hideout, and its position as indicating
that this was not for a moment intended to be
the
end of the
flight.

But, now, it seemed that it could be the end
of
the story…

Simon came on foot, after coasting the Bugatti
to a stop a good two hundred
yards away, since its stentorian voice was impossible to mute to any
level consistent with a stealthy approach
towards
apprehensive
ears. But as he cat-footed up the
drive, he began to hear from inside the villa a
steady thumping and hammering which might
well
have drowned
out any exterior noise except during
its own
occasional pauses. Yet, far from being
puzzled
by the clangor within, the Saint had an in
stantaneous uncanny intuition
of the cause of it,
and a smile of beatific
anticipation slowly widened
his eyes and his mouth.

Even while he was enjoying a moment of his
mental vision, however, his active gaze was
already
scanning the windows of the upper
floor. All of
them were dark, but one pair
of shutters was open
a few inches,
enough to show that they were not
bolted
on the inside, and those gave on to the
balcony formed by the portico over the front door.
For a graduate second-story man, it was no more
than an extension of walking up the front steps
to climb one of the supporting columns and enter the
room above.

There was a sound of heavy breathing and a
movement in the room as he crossed it, and a
light clicked on over the bed. It revealed the almost
mummified features of Lo Zio, sitting up,
the ruf
fled collar of
a nightshirt buttoned under his chin
and a genuine tasselled nightcap perched on his
head.

The
Saint smiled at him reassuringly.

“Buon giorno,”
he said. “We only wanted to be
sure you were all right. Now lie down again
until
we bring your
breakfast.”

The ancient grinned a toothless grin of
senile rec
ognition, and lay down again
obediently.

Simon
went out quickly into the corridor, where
a faint yellow light came from the stairway.
The hammering noises continued to reverberate from
below, louder now that he was inside the
building, but before he investigated them or took any more chances he had to
find out whether Gina was in the
house.
It was unlikely that she would be on that
floor, from which escape would have been too
easy, but the stairs continued up to another
smaller
landing on
which there were only four doors. Si
mon struck a match to observe them more clearly,
and his glance settled on one which had a
key on
the outside. He
tested the handle delicately, and
confirmed that it was locked, but with his ear to the panel he heard
someone stir inside. There could be
only one explanation for that anomaly, and
without another instant’s hesitation he turned the
key and went in.