Leslie Charteris

The Saint Bids diamonds

To

Bobbie

who went on the picnic

I

How Simon Templar took exercise,

and Hoppy Uniatz quenched his thirst

1

Simon Templar yanked the hand brake back into the last notch as the huge cream-and-red Hirondel shot past the little knot of struggling men, and stood up while the tires were still screaming for a hold on the cobblestones. The Hirondel rocked to a shuddering standstill just beyond the other car that was pulled in to the side of the road; and Simon sat on the back of the seat and swung long, immaculately trousered legs over the side. From under the jauntily tilted brim of his hat he gazed back at the inspiring scene with a glimmer of reckless delight beginning to dawn in gay blue eyes which should have seemed entirely misplaced in a man who was better known as the Saint than by any other name.

In the seat beside him, Hoppy Uniatz screwed his head round on his thick neck and also surveyed the scenery, with the strain of intense thought creasing its unmistakable contortions into the rugged contours of what, from its geographical situation rather than anything else, must reluctantly be called his face. Somewhere inside him an awe — inspiringly lucid deduction was struggling for delivery.

"Boss," said Mr Uniatz, with growing conviction, "dat looks like a fight."

"It is a fight," said the Saint contentedly, and dropped lightly to the ground.

He had made the deduction several seconds earlier than Mr Uniatz, and with much less difficulty. From the moment when the headlights of the Hirondel swept round the bend and caught the group of writhing figures in their sudden blaze of illumination, it had been comparatively obvious that the nocturnal peace of the road up to La Laguna from Santa Cruz de Tenerife was being vigorously disturbed by physical dissension and all manner of mayhem — so obvious, in fact, that the Saint was treading on the brake pedal and flicking the gear lever into neutral almost as soon as the spectacle met his eyes. He had only paused for that one brief instant to decide whether the fight was merely an ordinary vulgar brawl, or whether it possessed any features which might make it interesting to a connoisseur. And, while he perched up there on the back of his seat, he had seen the vague mass of seething bodies split up into two component nuclei. In one section, two burly males were apparently trying to hammer the insides out of a third whose hair gleamed silver under the dim light; and in the other section, which more or less clinched the matter, a girl who had been trying to help him was being dragged away, fighting like a wildcat, by another of the strong — arm deputation.

Either because the combatants were so absorbed in their own business that they hadn't noticed the stopping of his car, or else because they proposed to continue operations in defiance of any casual interference, the tempo of the conflict showed no signs of slowing up as the Saint drew nearer; and a gentle and rather speculative smile shaped itself on his lips. The man who was wrestling with the girl had one hand over her mouth, and just at that moment her teeth must have managed to find one of his fingers, for his hand moved quickly and he let out a hoarse profanity which was cut off by her sharp scream for help. The Saint's smile became even gentler.

"Not so loud, lady," he murmured. "Help has arrived."

She had a face which was definitely worth fighting for, Simon realised as the man swung her round as a shield between them; and the artistic perfection of the discovery sent blissful anthems carolling through his soul. That was just as it should be — beauty in distress, and repulsive blackguards to punch firmly in the eye…

The latter ingredient struck Simon's imagination as being particularly sound. The desire to prove whether it was as satisfactory in practice as in theory became almost simultaneously irresistible. The Saint saw no reason to resist it. He shot out an exploratory fist that whizzed past the girl's ear like a bullet, and felt his knuckles smash terrifically into something crispy-soft which could have been nothing else but the desired objective in the pan of the man behind her.

The jolt ran up his arm and spread itself throughout his body in a warm tingle of ineffable beatitude. He had not been mistaken. The sensation left nothing to be improved on. It lifted up the heart and made the world a brighter and rosier place. It was the works.

"Lend me your other eye, brother," said the Saint.

The man let go the girl and kicked at him viciously; but the Saint had learnt most of his fighting in places where there were no referees, and the savagely rearing foot that would probably have crippled anyone else, hissed harmlessly past him as he stepped smoothly aside. The foot swung on upwards under its undischarged momentum, and Simon cupped his hand under the heel and helped it enthusiastically on its way. The kicker's other leg slipped from under him and he went crashing down on his back; and the Saint trod on his face and assisted the back of his head to collide with the pavement a second time, to remove all doubt.

He took the trembling girl's hand for a moment in a cool grip.

"Get along to my car," he said. "The red-and-yellow one. I'll collect Uncle."

She stared at him for a second or two, hesitantly and, it seemed, fearfully, as if she still couldn't realise that he had helped her, and as if she was terrified of a trap. The Saint turned his head so that the light fell on his face; and there must have been something in his smile that answered her doubts, for she nodded and turned obediently away.

The Saint moved on.

Three or four paces from him the other two members of the tough brigade had made good use of their time. The old man was out, out of the fight for keeps, as Simon had known he must be after a few minutes of the treatment he had been taking. He lay sprawled on the ground like a rag doll, with his head fallen limply back over the edge of the curb. One of his opponents was kneeling on his chest; and the other turned round from the diverting pastime of kicking him in the ribs to meet the Saint's approach with a rush of savagely swinging fists.

The Saint side-stepped like a dancer, blocked one blow, ducked another, and slid in with the same movement to catch him in the exact centre of his stomach with a blow that doubled him up as if he had stepped into the path of a runaway pile driver. After which something happened that the victim could never afterwards quite believe, and was inclined to attribute to the dizziness induced by the maltreatment of his solar plexus. But in the fog of agonising nausea which numbed his brain, it felt exactly as if two hands of incredible strength took hold of him at the waist and swept him high in the air, and a voice laughed softly and mockingly before the hands let him go. After which he had a feeling of floating gracefully through the air for one or two short pulsebeats before the earth rose up and hit him a frightful blow in the back that almost shattered his spine…

Simon Templar relaxed his muscles and drew a long, deep breath of sheer content. Even viewed purely in the light of healthy exercise, the dull mechanical movements which less — adventurous souls employed to develop impressive bulges on every limb were not in the same street. This, undoubtedly, as he had always been convinced, was what the doctor ordered. This was the real McCoy. And he laughed again, softly and almost inaudibly, as the last man leapt at him.

He was the largest of them all, with shoulders like an ox, though the Saint topped him in height by a couple of inches; and he came in a swerving charge that gave him the space to jerk something dark and glistening from his hip pocket. The Saint saw it and lunged like a flash of lightning for the wrist behind it. He found it and fastened on it with a grip like iron, swinging the gun out of the line of his body. The man tried to wrench free, impatiently, as he might have done from the interference of a child; and a queer look of amazement spread over his broad face when his arm stayed riveted where it was held, as if it had been pinioned in solid rock. The Saint's teeth flashed white in the gloom, and his free fist pistoned up and cracked under the other's out — thrust jaw like a gunshot. It should have dropped the large man in his tracks, but he only grunted and shook his head and hit back. Simon slipped under the punch, and they grappled breast to breast. And then there was another sharp thud, and the big man went unexpectedly limp.

Simon let him slide to the ground; and as he folded up he revealed, like an unveiled monument, the homely but supremely happy features of Hoppy Uniatz standing behind him with an automatic in his hand. For a second the Saint's memory flashed backwards in a spurt of sobering alarm, searching for a more precise definition of the timbre of the sharp thud which had preceded his opponent's collapse.

"You didn't shoot him, did you?" he asked anxiously.

"Chees no, boss," Hoppy reassured him. "I just pat him on de roof wit' de end of my Betsy. He ain't hoit."

Simon breathed again.

"I'm not quite sure whether he'd agree with you about that," he remarked. "Although I suppose it's better than being dead… But it looked like the makings of a good fight before you butted in."

He gazed around him somewhat regretfully. The high peak of vivacity in the proceedings seemed to have gone by, leaving a certain atmosphere of anticlimax. The man with the damaged face was trying to get blindly to his feet. The man who had made the short but exciting flight through the air was leaning against the back of the sedan, holding his stomach and looking as if he would like to die. The man whose roof had been patted with the end of Mr Uniatz' Betsy appeared to sleep. What with one thing and another, a shroud of appalling tranquillity had settled upon the scene.

The Saint sighed. And then he grinned vaguely and clapped Hoppy on the shoulder.

"Anyway," he said, "let's see what we fished out of the pot."

He went over to where the old man still lay with his head in the gutter, and picked him up as if he was a child. Whatever else might develop, a strategic withdrawal from the field of victory was the first indicated move. Simon carried the old man over to the Hirondel, dumped him in the tonneau, where he told Hoppy to look after him, and opened the front door for the girl.

She hesitated with one foot on the running board; and again he glimpsed that cloud of suspicion darkening her eyes.

"Really — you needn't bother… We can walk—"

"Not with Uncle," said the Saint firmly. "He doesn't feel like walking." Without waiting for her, he slid in behind the wheel and touched the starter. "Besides, your sparring partners might start walking too — they still have some life left in them—"

Crack!

The shot whined over his head and smacked into the wall beyond, and the Saint smiled as if it amused him. He caught the girl's wrist, dragged her down into the seat beside him, slammed the door and let in the clutch more quickly than the separate movements can be described. A second shot crashed harmlessly into the night; and then Mr Uniatz' Betsy answered. Then a side turning caught the Saint's eye, and he spun the wheel and sent the Hirondel screaming round in a skidding right angle. In another moment they were coasting smoothly down into the outskirts of Santa Cruz.

A little later, he heard far behind him a ragged fusillade which puzzled him for the next twelve hours.

2

But the general aspect of the affair met with his complete approval. He had no fault to find with it — even if it had temporarily interrupted the urgent and fascinating business that brought him to the Canary Islands. Adventure was still adventure, and there was always room for more — that was the fundamental article of faith which had blazed the Saint's trail of debonair outlawry through all the continents and half the countries of the world. Besides which, there were points about this adventure which were beginning to make it look more than ordinarily interesting…

He glanced at the girl again as they turned out into the wide, open space fronting the harbour.

"Where do you live?" he enquired; and his tone was as casual as if he had been driving her home from a dance.

"Nowhere!" she said quickly. And then, as if the word had come out before she realised what a ridiculous answer it was and how many more questions must inevitably follow it, she said: "I mean — I don't want to give you any more trouble. You've been awfully kind… but you can drop us anywhere around here, and we'll be quite all right."

Simon turned the car slowly round into the Plaza de la Republica and tilted his head significantly towards the tonneau.

"I'm sure you will," he agreed patiently. "But I have to keep on reminding you about Uncle. Or will you carry him?"

"Is he all right?"

She turned round quickly, and the Saint also looked back as he brought the Hirondel to a stop outside the Hotel Orotava. The only person visible in the back seat was Hoppy Uniatz, who did not seem to have fully grasped his obligations as an administrator of first aid. Mr Uniatz was lighting a large cigar; and, for all the evidence to the contrary, he might have been sitting on his patient.

"Sure, de old buzzard is okay, miss," said Mr Uniatz cheerfully. "He just took a bit of massage, but dat's nut'n. You oughta seen what de cops done to me one time when dey had me in de kitchen."

Simon saw the pain in her eyes.

"We must take him to a doctor," she said.

"By all means," he assented amiably. "Who is your doctor?"

She passed a hand shakily over her forehead.

"I'm afraid I don't know one—"

"Nor do I. And from what I do know about Spanish doctors, if he's not dead yet they'll soon find a way to finish him off. I could look after him much better myself. Why not let's take him in here and see about fixing him up?"

"I don't want to go on bothering you."

The Saint chuckled and reached back to open the rear door.

"Take him inside, Hoppy," he ordered. "Pretend he's passed out, and get him up to my room — you'd better act a bit squiffy yourself to complete the picture. We'll follow in a few minutes so it won't look too much like a party."

Mr Uniatz nodded and hauled the patient out like a sack. As he started across the pavement, he lifted up his unmelodious voice in a song of which the distinguishable words made the Saint mildly thankful that no English — speaking residents were likely to be within earshot.

Again the girl made an involuntary movement of protest; but Simon took her by the arm.

"What's on your mind?" he asked quietly; and she shrugged helplessly.

He could feel the tenseness of her under his touch.

"Let me look at you," she said.

He took off his hat and turned towards her. Her eyes searched his face. They were brown eyes, he noticed, and her hair shone copper — brown under the lamplight. He realised that if her mouth had been happy it would have been very happy, a soft, red, full-lipped mouth that would have tantalised the imagination of any man whose impulses were human.

She saw a face coloured with the warm tan of unwalled horizons and lighted with the clearest blue eyes that she had ever seen. It was a face that might have leapt to life from the portrait of some sixteenth-century buccaneer; a face that managed to harmonise a dozen strange contradictions between the firm chin and finely chiselled lips and the broad artist's forehead, and yet altogether cast in such a gay and reckless mould that it took all contradictions in its stride and made them insignificant. It was the face of a poet with the dare-devil humour of a cavalier, the face of an unrepentant outlaw with the calm straightforwardness of an idealist. It was the sort of face that she thought Robin Hood might have had — and did not know then that a thousand newspapers had unanimously named its owner the Robin Hood of modern crime.

But Simon Templar opened his face for inspection in the main square of Santa Cruz without a twinge of anxiety even for the two guardias who were strolling by; though he knew that photographic reproductions of it were to be found in the police archives of almost every civilised country in the world. For at that particular time the Saint was not officially wanted by the police of any country — a fact which many citizens who had met him in the past had reason to regard with grave indignation.

"I'm just — rather upset," she said, as if she was satisfied with the result of her scrutiny.

"That's only natural," said the Saint lightly. "Getting beaten up by a bunch of toughs isn't what they usually recommend for soothing the nerves. Now let's go and see what we can do for Uncle."

He got out and opened the door for her; and the music that was still lilting through the depths of his being opened itself up and sent its rapturous diapasons warbling towards the moon. He knew now that his inspiration must be right.

Somewhere in the vicinity of Santa Cruz there was the material for even more fun and games than he had optimistically expected — and he had come there in the definite expectation of a good deal. And he had tumbled straight into it within a few hours of getting off the boat. Which was only the normal course of events, for him. If there was trouble brewing anywhere, he tumbled into it: it was his destiny, the sublime compensation for all the other things that his outlawry might have denied him.

It never occurred to him to doubt that it had happened again. Otherwise, why had the three toughs been so very determined to beat up the old man whom he had rescued? And why, when he interfered, did they fight to the last man for the privilege of going on with the job? And why, when he had dealt with them once, had they brought their artillery into play to try and start the fight over again? And why was the girl still so afraid even of her rescuer, still suspicious of him even after he had indicated which side he was on in no uncertain manner? And why, most intriguing point of all, hadn't she volunteered one single word of explanation about how the fight started, as anyone else would automatically have done? The whole episode fairly bristled with questions, and none of them could be satisfactorily answered by the circumstances of commonplace highway robbery.

"You know," Simon burbled genially on, "these things always make me wonder for a bit whether it's safe to look a policeman in the eye for the next few days. I remember the last time anything like this happened to me — it was in Innsbruck, but it was almost exactly the same sort of thing. A friend of mine and myself horned in on a scrap where one harmless-looking little bird was getting the hide pasted off him by three large, ferocious-looking thugs. We laid them out and heaved them into the river, and it started no end of trouble. You see, it turned out that the harmless-looking little bird was carrying a bag full of stolen jewels, and the three ferocious-looking thugs were perfectly respectable detectives trying to arrest him. It only shows you how careful you have to be with this knight-errant business. - Is anything the matter?"

Her face had gone as white as milk, and she was leaning back against the side of the lift, staring at him.

"It's nothing," she said. "Just — all these other things."

"I know."

The lift stopped at his floor, and he opened the doors for her and followed her out.

"I've got a bottle of vintage lemonade that'll have you turning cartwheels again in no time," he remarked as they walked round the passage. "That is, if Hoppy hasn't drunk it all to try and revive the invalid."

"I hope you'll turn him inside out if he has," she answered; and he was amazed by the sudden change in her voice.

She was still pale, pale as death, but the terror had gone far from her eyes as if a mask had been drawn over them. She smiled up at him — it was the first time he had seen her smile, and he couldn't help noticing that he had been right about her mouth. It was turned up to him in a way that at any other time would have put irresistible ideas into his head, and she slipped a hand through his arm as they came to the door of his room. Her small fingers moved over his biceps.

"You must be terrifically strong," she said; and the Saint shrugged.

"I can usually manage to get a glass to my mouth."

A queer ghostly tingle touched the base of his spine as he opened the door and let her into the room. It wasn't anything she had said: coming from most women, her last remark would have made him wince, but she had a fresh young voice that made it seem perfectly natural. It wasn't even the new personality which she had started to take on, for that fitted her so perfectly that it was hard to imagine her with any other. The feeling was almost subconscious, a stirring of uncompleted intuition that gave him an odd sensation of walking blindfold along the edge of a precipice; and again he knew, beyond all doubt, that he was nowhere near the end of the consequences of that night's work.

The old man lay motionless on the bed, exactly as Mr Uniatz must have dumped him. Hoppy himself, as the Saint had feared, had started the work of resuscitation on himself, and half the contents had disappeared from a bottle of Haig that had been unopened when Simon left it on the table. He arrived just in time, for Mr Uniatz had the bottle in his hand when Simon opened the door and he was on the point of repeating his previous experiments. Simon took it away from him and replaced the cork.

"Thank God for non-refillable bottles," he said fervently. "They pour so slowly. If this had been the ordinary kind there wouldn't have been a drop left by now."

He went to the bed and unbuttoned the old man's coat and shirt. His pulse was all right, making due allowances for his age, and there were no bones broken: but his body was terribly bruised and his face scratched and swollen. Whether he had internal injuries, and what the effects of shock might be, would have to be decided when he recovered consciousness. He was breathing stertorously, with his mouth hanging open, and for the moment he seemed to be in no imminent danger of death.

Simon went to the bathroom and soaked a towel in cold water. He began to bathe the old man's face and clean it up as well as he could, but the girl stopped him.

"Let me do it. Will he be all right?"

"I'll lay you odds on it," said the Saint convincingly.

He left her with the towel and went back to the table to pour out some of the whiskey which he had rescued. She held up the old man's head while he forced some of it between the puffed and bleeding lips. The old man groaned and stirred weakly.

"That ought to help him," murmured Simon. "You'd better have the rest yourself — it'll do you good."

She nodded, and he gave her the glass. There were tears in her eyes, and while he looked at her they welled over and ran down her cheeks. She drank quickly, without a grimace, and put the glass down before she turned back to the old man. She sat on the bed, holding him with his head pillowed on her breast and her arm round him, rocking a little as if she were cradling a child, wiping his grimed and battered face with the wet towel while the tears ran unheeded down her cheeks.

"Joris," she whispered. "Joris darling. Wake up, darling. It's all right now… You're all right, aren't you, Joris? Joris, my sweet…"

The Saint was on his way back to the table to pour a drink for himself, and he stopped so suddenly that if she had been looking at him she must have noticed it. For a second or two he stood utterly motionless, as if he had been turned to stone; and once again that weird uncanny tingle laid its clammy touch on the base of his spine. Only this time it didn't pass away almost as quickly as it had begun. It crept right up his back until the chill of it crawled over his scalp; and then it dropped abruptly into his stomach and left his heart thumping to make up for the time it had stood still.

To the Saint it seemed as if a century went by while he stood there petrified; but actually it could have been hardly any time at all. And at last he moved again, stretching out his hand very slowly and deliberately for the bottle that he had been about to pick up. With infinite steadiness he measured a ration of whiskey into his glass, and unhurriedly splashed soda on top of it.

"Joris," he repeated, in a voice that miraculously managed to be his own. "That's rather an unusual name… Who is he?"

The fear that flashed through her eyes was suppressed so swiftly this time that if he had not been watching her closely he would probably have missed it altogether.

"He's my father," she said, almost defiantly. "But I've always called him Joris."

"Dutch name, isn't it?" said the Saint easily. "Hullo — he seems to be coming round."

The old man was moving a little more, shaking his head mechanically from side to side and moaning like a man recovering from an anaesthetic. Simon returned to the bedside, but the girl waved him away.

"Please — leave him with me for a minute."

The Saint nodded sympathetically and sauntered over to a chair. The first breath — taking shock was gone now, and once again his mind was running as cool and clear as an alpine stream. Only the high-strung tension of his awakened nerves, a pulse of vivid expectation too deeply pitched and infinitesimal in its vibration to be perceptible to any senses but his own, remained to testify to the thunderbolt of realisation that had flamed through his brain.

He slipped a cigarette from his case, tapped it, set it between his lips without a tremor in his hands, and lighted it without haste. Then he opened his wallet and took out a folded piece of blue paper.

It was a Spanish telegram form; and he read it through again for the twentieth time since it had come into his possession, though he already knew every word of it by heart. It had been sent from Santa Cruz on the twenty-second of December, and it was addressed to a certain Mr Rodney Felson at the Palace Hotel, Madrid. The message ran:

MUST REPLACE JORIS IMMEDIATELY CAN YOU SECURE SUBSTITUTE VERY URGENT

GRANER

Simon folded the sheet and put it carefully away again, but the words still danced before his eyes. He drew the smoke of his cigarette deep into his lungs and let it trickle out towards the ceiling, "What's the rest of the name?" he enquired, as if he was merely making idle conversation.

A moment passed before she answered.

"Vanlinden," she said, in the same half-defiant way; and then the Saint knew that he had been right in the wild hunch that had come to him five nights ago in Madrid and sent him driving recklessly through the night to Cadiz to catch the boat that left for Tenerife the next day.

Simon looked up and realised that the scarecrow physiognomy of Mr Uniatz was becoming convulsed with the same sort of expression that might have been found on the face of a volcano preparing to erupt — if a volcano had a face. His eyes were bulging out of his head like a crab's, and his whole face was turning purple with such an awful congestion, that anyone who did not know him well might have thought that he was being strangled. The Saint, who was not in that innocent category, knew in a flash that these horrible symptoms were only the outward and visible signs of the dawning of a Thought somewhere in the dark unfathomed caves of Mr Uniatz' mind. His eyes blazed a warning that would have paralysed a more sensitive man; but all the sensitiveness in Mr Uniatz would have made a rhinoceros look like a wilting gazelle. Besides, Hoppy's cerebrations had gone too far to be suppressed: he had to get them out of his system or asphyxiate.

"Boss," he exploded, "dijja hear dat? Joris Vanlinden! Ain't dat de guy — "Yes, Hoppy, of course that's the guy," said the Saint soothingly.

He went quickly over to the bed and sat down facing the girl. It was a moment when he had to act faster than he could think, before Hoppy's blundering feet blotted out every trace of the fragile bridge that he had been trying to build. He held out his hand and smiled disarmingly into her eyes.

"Lady," he said solemnly, "this is a great moment. Will you shake?"

Her fingers met his almost immediately.

"But why?" she said.

"Just to keep me going till I can shake hands with Joris himself. I've always wanted to meet one of the boys who pulled off that job at Troschman's — it was one of the classics of the century."

"I don't think I know what you're talking about."

He was still smiling.

"I think you do. I said your father had an uncommon name, but I knew I'd heard it before. Now it's all come back to me. I knew I should never forget it."

And he was speaking nothing but the most candid truth, though she might not understand it.

When some persons unknown got into Troschman's diamond fabriek down on Maiden Lane one rainy night in April, and cleaned out a safe that had held two hundred thousand dollars' worth of cut and uncut stones, the police were particularly interested in the fact that the raid could hardly have been better timed had the raiders been partners in the business. This was impossible, for Troschman had no partners; Troschman's was a small concern which employed only one permanent cutter, taking on other workers when they were needed. As a matter of fact, this cutter was the nearest approach to a partner that Troschman had, for he was acknowledged to be one of the finest craftsmen in the trade, and had been with Troschman ever since the business was started. So that it was natural for him to be given more confidence than an ordinary employee would have received; and when the stones were collected to fill the biggest order that Troschman had ever secured in his career, this cutter was the only other man who knew when the collection was complete. His name was Joris Vanlinden.

The only reason he was not arrested at once was because the police hoped that, by keeping watch on him, they might net the whole gang at one swoop. And then, three days later, he vanished as if the earth had swallowed him up; and the hue and cry which followed had sought him for four years in vain. Only in various police headquarters did his name and description remain on record, with appropriate instructions. In various police headquarters — and in the almost equally relentless memory of the Saint…

Simon Templar could have sat down and listed the authors of every important crime committed in the last fifteen years; and that list would have included a number of names that no police headquarters had on record, and a number of crimes that no police headquarters had even recognised as crimes. He could have told you when and where and how they were committed, the exact value of the boodle, and very often what had happened to it. He could have told you the personal descriptions of the participants, their habits, haunts, specialties, weaknesses, aliases, previous record and modus operandi. He had a memory for those details that would have been worth thirty years' seniority to any police officer; but to the Saint it was worth more than that. It was half the essentials of his profession, the broad foundations on which his career had been built up, the knowledge and research on which the plans for his amazing forays against the underworld were based; and again and again ingenious felons had thought themselves safe with their booty, only to wake up too late when that unparalleled twentieth-century privateer was already sailing into their stronghold to plunder them of all that they had, until there were countless men who feared him more than the police, and unnumbered places where his justice was known to be swifter and more deadly than the Law.

The Saint said nothing about that, though there was no native modesty in his make-up. He looked the girl in the eyes and kept that frank and friendly smile on his lips.

"Don't look so scared," he said. "You've nothing to worry about. I'm in the business myself."

"You aren't anything to do with the police?"

"Oh, I have lots to do with them. They're always trying to arrest me for something or other, but so far it hasn't been a great success."

She laughed rather hysterically, a sharp and some how jarring contrast to the panic that he had seen in her face a few moments before.

"So I needn't try to keep up my party manners any more."

She shook her head and rubbed a hand over her eyes with a sort of gasp; and then all at once she was serious again, desperately serious, with that queer sort of sob in her voice. "But it's not true! It isn't true! Joris didn't get anything out of it. He wasn't one of them, whatever they say."

"That doesn't sound like very good management."

"He — he wasn't one of them. Yes, he helped them. He told them what they wanted to know. He was hard up. He lost all his savings in the stock market — and more money that he couldn't pay. And there was me… They offered him a share, and he knew that Troschman's insurance was all right. But they cheated him… They took him away when they thought he'd break down if he was arrested. Besides, they could use him. They brought him out here. But they never gave him his share. There was always some excuse. The stones would take a long time to get rid of, or they couldn't find a buyer, or something. And all the time he had to go on working for them."

"That was Graner, I suppose?"

He was still holding her hand, and he could feel her trembling.

"Do you know him?"

"Not personally."

"Yes, that was Reuben Graner." She shuddered. "But if you don't know him you couldn't understand. He's — I can't tell you. Sometimes I don't think he's human… But how did you know?"

Simon took out his cigarette case and offered it to her. Her hand was still shaking, so that she could hardly keep the cigarette in the flame when he gave her a light. He smiled and steadied her hand with cool, strong fingers.

"Reuben isn't here now, anyway," he said quietly. "And if he does walk in, Hoppy and I will beat him firmly over the head with the wardrobe. So let's take things calmly for a bit."

"But how did you know?"

"More or less by accident. You see, I came here from Madrid." He saw the awakening of understanding in her eyes and nodded. "Rodney Felson and George Holby were there."

"Do you know them?"

"Not to talk to. But I know lots of people that I don't talk to. I just happened to see them. You know Chicote's Bar?"

"I've never been to Madrid."

"If you ever go there, look in and give Pedro my love. Chicote's is one of the great bars of the world. Everybody in Madrid goes there. So did Rodney and George. Rodney had a telegram. He talked it over with George — I wasn't near enough to hear what they were saying, but in the end they screwed it up and dropped it under the table. Which was careless of them, because when they went out I picked it up."

"You picked it up?"

He grinned shamelessly.

"I told you I was in the business myself. There may be honour among thieves, but I never saw very much. I knew that Rodney and George were one of the six cleverest pairs of jewel thieves at present operating in Europe, so I just naturally thought that anything they were interested in might interest me. It did."

He took out the telegram again and gave it to her. He watched her as she read it through, and saw a trace of colour burn for a moment in her cheeks — burn till it burnt itself out and left them white again.

"He sent it as soon as he heard," she whispered. "I thought it would be like that. I could feel it. He never meant to let Joris and me go away. Oh, I knew!"

He would have guessed her age at barely twenty-one; but when she raised her eyes again there was an age of weariness in them that tied a strange knot in his throat. He took the telegram from her and put it away again.

"Did you want to go away?" he asked gently.

She nodded without speaking.

"Joris was working at his old job, I suppose," he said.

"Yes. They made him work for them. He cut and polished all the stones that came from Troschman's. Sometimes they went out and stole more, and when they brought them back he had to re-cut them so that they couldn't be identified. He had to do what they told him, because they could always have sent him back to the police. And there was me — but I told him that that didn't matter, only he wouldn't believe me."

"And now they want to replace him."

She nodded again.

"That's what Graner called it. We thought we might go away, somewhere like South America, where nobody would know us and we could live and be happy. But I knew we couldn't. Graner never meant us to. So long as Joris was working for them, it was all right. But they couldn't let him go with all that he knew. He'd never have said anything, but they couldn't be sure of that. I knew they'd never let him go alive. They meant to kill him… Oh, Joris!"

Her arms tightened convulsively about the old man's frail shoulders, and the Saint saw her eyes shining again.

"Is that what they were trying to do when I butted in?" he asked doubtfully. "It didn't look quite like that to me. After all, they could have shot him in the first place, instead of keeping their guns in their pockets till we were driving away."

"I don't know. I don't know if they meant to kill him then—"

"But if they never let him have any money, you couldn't have got very far."

She looked at him with her lip quivering; and again he saw that oddly watchful uncertainty creep into her gaze. He knew at once that she was weighing her answer, and knew also that she was going to lie.

Then he happened to glance at the old man. Joris Vanlinden had sunk back into such a stillness, and for a time they had been so carried away by other things, that they had not been noticing him. But now Simon saw that the old man's eyes had opened, quite quietly, as if he had awakened out of a deep sleep.

Simon touched the girl's arm.

"Look," he said.

He stood up and went to pour some more whiskey; and Mr Uniatz watched the performance wistfully, chewing the extinct butt of his cigar. The greater part of the dialogue had passed harmlessly over Mr Uniatz' head, which was only equipped to assimilate short and simple speeches very carefully addressed to him in the more common words of one syllable; and he had long ago started to flounder out of his depth and eventually given up the effort, seeing no reason to exhaust himself with agonising mental labour when, in the fulness of time, everything that it was good for him to know would be duly explained to him by the Saint. Besides, there was a much more urgent problem which had been occupying all his attention for some time.

"Boss," said Mr Uniatz plaintively, as if pointing out an incomprehensible oversight, "ya left a told of de bottle."

"Okay," said the Saint resignedly. "You find a home for it."

He went back to the bedside. The old man was touching the girl's face and hair with nervously twitching fingers, speaking in a weak husky voice: "Where are we, Christine?… How did we get here?… What happened?"

"It's all right, darling. Darling, it's all right. You've just got to rest."

The old man's eyes went back to the Saint, and his hand clutched at the girl's arm.

"Who are these people, Christine? I haven't seen them before. Who are they?"

"Lie still, darling." She was comforting him with a kind of motherly tenderness, as if he was a feverish child. "They won't hurt you, Joris. They came and saved you when the others were fighting you."

"Yes, they were fighting. I remember. I never could fight very much. You remember, Christine — that other time? Did they hurt you, Christine?"

"No, darling. Not a bit."

The old man's eyes closed again, and for a moment he relaxed, as if the strain of talking had been too much for him. And then, suddenly, his eyes opened again.

"Did they get it?" he asked hoarsely.

"Hush, Joris. You must be quiet."

"But did they get it?"

Vanlinden's voice was louder, and his eyes were staring. She tried to press him back on the bed, but he flung off her hands. He began to feel in his breast pocket, unsteadily at first, and then more wildly; then he was feeling in all his pockets, turning them out again and again, in a pitiful sort of frenzy.

"No, no," he muttered incoherently. "Not there. No. It's gone!" His voice rose and broke on something like a scream. "It's gone!" He stared at the Saint. "Did you take it?"

"Take what?" asked the Saint helplessly.

"My ticket!"

"Oh, a ticket. No, I haven't seen it. D'you mean your ticket for going away from here? I shouldn't worry about that. If you go and explain things to the shipping company or whatever it is—"

"No, no, not that!" Vanlinden's voice had a despairing shrillness that made the Saint's flesh creep. "My lottery ticket!"

"What?"

Christine got up suddenly from the bed. She faced the Saint like a tigress though her head barely reached his shoulder.

"Yes," she said fiercely. "Did you take it?"

"Me?" said the Saint blankly. He spread out his arms. "Search me and strip me if you want to. Take me apart and put me together again. I never saw his lottery ticket in my life."

She swung round and pointed at Hoppy Uniatz.

"He was sitting in the back of the car with Jon's all the time. Did he take it?"

"Did you take it, Hoppy?" snapped the Saint.

Mr Uniatz swallowed nervously.

"Yes, boss."

"You took it?" snapped the Saint incredulously.

Hoppy gulped.

"Yes, boss," he said apologetically. "I t'ought ya said I could take it." He pointed to the table. "Dey wasn't so much in de bottle, at dat."

"You immortal ass!" snarled the Saint. "We aren't talking about the whiskey!"

He turned back to the girl.

"Hoppy didn't take it," he said. "And neither did I.

If you don't believe us, you can go ahead and turn us inside out. I didn't even know Joris had a lottery ticket. How much was it worth?"

"You may as well know now," she said dully. "It was a ticket in the Christmas lottery. It won the first prize-fifteen million pesetas."

II

How Simon Templar conversed with a porter,

and a brace of guardias were happily reunited

1

The Saint stared at her, and then stared again at Joris Vanlinden.

He felt rather as if it was his own stomach, and not the receptacle of petrified leather which performed the same organic function for Mr Uniatz, that had absorbed the full effects of two thirds of a bottle of scotch. He knew all about the Christmas lottery, had bought tickets himself at various times, and shared the daydreams of almost every other man in Spain until the results were published. There is a Spanish national lottery three times every month; but the Navidad is the great event of the year, the time when nearly three million pounds sterling are distributed in prizes. Simon had read in the papers of men who had awakened to find themselves millionaires overnight; but he had never met one of them, and in his heart, like most other people, he could never quite convince himself that such things really did happen. The actual concrete proof of it, slapped right up in his face like that, made his head reel.

"Did Joris have the whole ticket?" he asked, trying to ease the shock. "He didn't just have a section?"

The girl shook her head. His blank and stunned bewilderment was so obvious that it must have satisfied her that he had been speaking the truth.

"No, he had it all. He must have been crazy, I suppose. I thought he was. But he said it was the only way. He saved up the little money they gave him now and again until he could buy it. And it won!"

Simon made a rapid mental calculation.

"Why hadn't it been paid yet?"

"Because we're in Tenerife."

He grinned wryly, half unconsciously.

"Of course, I'd forgotten that."

"The draw was on the twenty-first." She was speaking almost mechanically, and yet with an intense sort of eagerness, as if talking kept her mind from dwelling on other things. "The results were cabled here the next day. That was when Graner cabled to Madrid… But they don't pay on that. A few days ago they published a photographic reproduction of the official list; but they don't pay on that either. You could get a bank to discount it — they charge two per cent commission — but I don't suppose they could handle one of the big prizes. Otherwise you have to wait till the administration chooses to send a set of official lists here."

"It's a great piece of Spanish organisation, isn't it?" said the Saint aimlessly.

"The lists were supposed to be coming on the boat that got in today," she said.

Simon gazed at her for a moment longer; and then he lighted another cigarette from the butt of his last one and began to pace restlessly up and down the room, while Hoppy watched him with a kind of dog — like complacency.

It would be unfair to say that the primitive convolutions of what, on account of the limitations of the English language, can only be referred to as Mr Uniatz' brain were incapable of registering more than one idea at a time. To be accurate, they were capable of registering two; although it must be admitted that one of them was a more or less habitual and unconscious background to whatever else was going on. And this permanent and pervasive background was his sublime faith in the infallibility and divine inspiration of the Saint.

For the Saint, as Mr Uniatz had discovered, could think. He could concentrate upon problems and work them out without any perceptible signs of suffering. He could produce Ideas. He could make Plans. Mr Uniatz, a simple-minded citizen, whose intellectual horizons had hitherto been bounded by the logic of automatics and sub-machine guns, had, on their first meetings, observed these supernatural manifestations with perplexity and awe. When they met again in London, some years later, Mr Uniatz, who had been ruminating hazily about it ever since, had just reached the conclusion that if he could only hitch his wagon to such a scintillating star his life would hold no more worries.

Since it fitted in admirably with his plans at the time, Simon had let him do it. Whereupon Mr Uniatz had attached himself with a blind and unshakable allegiance from which, short of physical violence, it was impossible to pry him loose for more than a few weeks at a time. Left to himself, Hoppy would wander moodily about the earth, a spiritual Ishmael, until he could place his destiny once again in the hands of this superman, this invincible genius, who could find his way with such apparent ease through the terrifying and tormenting labyrinths of Thought. Whatever the problem in hand might be, then or at any other time, Hoppy Uniatz knew that the Saint would solve it.

He leaned forward and tapped Christine on the shoulder.

"It's okay, miss," he said encouragingly. "De boss 'll fix it. Wit' a nut like his, he could of bin a big shot in de States."

"I was a big shot," Simon retorted. "But there are limits."

He was beginning to get the finer details of the situation sorted out into a certain amount of order, but without making much difference to the dizzy turmoil into which his mind had been whirled. The more he thought about it, the more fantastic it became.

For a Spanish lottery ticket is a documento del portador, a bearer bond of the most comprehensive and undiscriminating kind in the world. Short of the most elaborate and irrefutable evidence to the contrary, combined with warrants and court orders and God knows how many other formalities, the ticket itself is the only legal claim under heaven to any prize which it may draw. There are not even any counterfoils to be retained by the original seller; so that, without that law, the administration of the lottery would be impossible. In other words, the piece of paper which Joris Vanlinden had lost, a folded sheet no more than seven inches long by four inches wide, with the thickness of the twenty sections into which a Navidad ticket is divided, was the strongest existing claim to a payment of fifteen million pesetas, two million dollars or four hundred thousand pounds at the most conservative rate of exchange — more than seven hundred pounds or thirty-five hundred dollars per square inch if you opened it out — one of the most compact and negotiable and untraceable concentrations of wealth that the world can ever have seen. The Saint had known boodle in almost every shape and form under the sun, had handled what everybody except himself would have called more than his fair share of it, but there was something about this new and hitherto unconsidered species of it that took his breath away.

He stopped walking and looked at Vanlinden again. The old man, shivering with nervous reaction and clinging pathetically to his daughter's hand, had sunk back exhausted on to the pillow. His weak, tired eyes stared mutely up at the Saint; but even he must have been convinced that Simon knew nothing, for the fire had died out of them and left only the anguish.

Simon turned to the girl.

"If Graner's idea was what you say it was, why did he let you go at all?"

"He didn't. He said he was going to, but I never, believed him. Every day I was terrified that something — something would happen to Joris. When I knew that the official lists were supposed to arrive tonight, I was… I was sure they… they would see that something happened to Joris before he woke up tomorrow."

"So you decided to make a dash for it."

She nodded.

"We said we were going to bed early and we got out of a window. Graner hadn't let the dogs out then…"

"There are dogs, are there?"

He heard her catch her breath.

"Yes. But they weren't out… We got away, and we ran. But they must have missed us. They came after us and caught us on the road. That was when you arrived."

The Saint blew two smoke rings, very carefully putting the second through the middle of the first.

"So they took the ticket," he said. "But they didn't have to kill Joris. Or did they?" His eyes pinned her again, very clear and level and bright like sapphires. "Does anything strike you about that?"

She pushed her fingers through her disordered hair.

"My God," she said, "how can I think?"

"Well, doesn't anything strike you? They may have wanted to put Joris away because he knew too much. But there may have been another reason. If he was running about loose after they'd pinched his ticket, he might make a fuss about it. It wouldn't be easy, but I suppose he could make a fuss. People don't buy a whole two-thousand-peseta Navidad ticket all to themselves so often, especially in a place like this, that the shop wouldn't be likely to remember him. If he was dead, anybody could say they bought it off him; but if he was alive and raising hell—"

"How could he? He couldn't go near the police—"

"That's a matter of opinion. Admittedly he'd be getting himself into trouble at the same time; but anyone who turns state's evidence can usually count on a good deal of leniency, and Joris has a lot less to lose than the others have. Just looking at it theoretically, when a bloke is in Joris' position, and a miracle has tossed him up within a finger's length of getting everything he wants most in the world, and then somebody snatches it away from him at the last moment and shoves him back again, it's liable to make him crazy enough to do anything for revenge. I don't know what sort of a psychologist Reuben Graner is, but I'd be inclined to look at it that way if I were in his place. What do you think, Hoppy?"

The unornamental features of Mr Uniatz marshalled themselves into an expression of reproachful anguish. Even in their moments of most undisturbed serenity, they tended to resemble something which an amateur sculptor had beaten out of a lump of clay with a large hammer, in the vain hope that his most polite friends would profess to recognise it as a human face; but when twisted out of repose they looked even more like an unfortunate essay in ultrafuturistic art, and could probably have commanded a high price from an advanced museum. Mr Uniatz, however, was not concerned about his beauty. A man of naive and elemental tastes, there was something about the mere sound of the word "think" which made him wince.

"What — me?" he said painfully.

"Yes, you."

Mr Uniatz bit another piece off the end of his cigar and swallowed it absent-mindedly.

"I dunno, boss," he began weakly; and then, with the Saint's clear and accusing blue eye fixed on him, he returned manfully to his torment. "Dis guy Graner," he said. "Is he de guy wit' de oughday?"

"We were hoping he had some."

"De guy wit' de ice?"

"That's right."

"De guy ya tell me about in Madrid?"

"Exactly."

"De guy we come here to take?"

"The same."

"De lottery guy?" said Hoppy, leaving no stone unturned in his anxiety to make sure of his ground before committing himself.

Simon nodded approvingly.

"You seem to have grasped some of it, anyway," he said. "I suppose you could call Graner the lottery guy for the present. Anyway, he's got the ticket. So the question is — what happens next?"

"Dat looks like a cinch," said Mr Uniatz airily; and the Saint subsided limply into a chair.

"One of two things has happened to you for the first time in your life," he said sternly. "Either the whiskey has had some effect, or an idea has got into your head."

Mr Uniatz blinked.

"Sure, it's a cinch, boss. All we gotta do is, we go to dis guy an' say 'Lookit, mug; eider you split wit' us on your racket, or we toin ya in to de cops.' Sure, he comes t'ru. It's a pipe," said Mr Uniatz, driving home his point.

The Saint gazed at him pityingly.

"You poor fathead," he said. "It isn't a racket. This is the Spanish official lottery. It's perfectly legal. Graner isn't running it. He's simply got the ticket that won it."

Mr Uniatz looked unhappy. The Spanish government, he felt, had done him a personal injury. He brooded glumly.

"I dunno, boss," he said at length, reverting to his original platform.

"It looks plain enough to me," said the Saint.

He sprang up again. To Christine Vanlinden, watching him, fascinated, there was an atmosphere of buoyant and invincible power about him like nothing she had ever felt about a man before. Whether he could be trusted or not, whatever scruples he might or might not have, his personality filled the room and absorbed everyone in it. And yet he was smiling, and his gesture had the faint half-amused swagger which was inseparable from every movement he made.

"Graner has got the ticket," he said. "But we've got Joris. So long as Joris is out of sight and an unknown quantity, I think Graner will be afraid to risk trying to cash the ticket. He'll try to get hold of Joris again to find out exactly how he stands. He can afford to wait a few days, and meanwhile he'll probably be trying to figure out some other way to get round the difficulty. But I don't think he'll be on the doorstep of the lottery agent first thing in the morning asking for the prize. So we hold exactly half the stakes each. And while Graner is trying to fill his hand, we can be trying to fill ours. Therefore, the next move from our side is to go and have a talk with Reuben."

He saw the quick pressure of white teeth on her lip.

"Talk to Graner?" she gasped. "You can't do that—"

"Can't I?" said the Saint grimly. "He's expecting me!"

2

Her eyes widened.

"You?"

"Yours sincerely. We got off the boat late, and then they didn't have any proper tackle to land the car. Every time they rigged up some gimcrack contraption the ropes broke, and then they all stood around waving their arms about and telling each other why it didn't work. When we did get off, I had to hang around for the other half of the day trying to get the carnet stamped. Tenerife again. After that was all over we came and fixed ourselves up here, and what with one thing and another we seemed to need a few drinks and a spot of food before we plunged into any more excitement. So we had them. Eventually we did make some enquiries about Graner, and after six people had given us sixteen different directions, we were on our way to try and find him when we met you." The Saint smiled. "But Reuben is expecting me all right!"

"Why?"

Simon looked at his watch.

"Do you know that it's just about midnight?" he said. "I think there are a few other things to be done before we talk any more. Joris needs some rest, if nobody else does." He took another quick turn up and down the room, and came back. "What's more, I don't think we'd better make any noise about having him here — the first thing Graner's crowd will do is to beat around the hotels. Hoppy brought him in as a drunk, and the night man doesn't know who's staying here and who isn't. So Hoppy had better keep him for tonight without any advertisement, and maybe tomorrow we'll think of something else to do with him. Is that okay with you, Hoppy? You can sleep on the floor or put yourself in the bath or something."

"Sure, boss," said Mr Uniatz obligingly. "Anyt'ing is jake wit' me."

"Good." Simon smiled at the girl again. "In that case, I'll just toddle down and organize a room for you."

He left the room and ran briskly downstairs. After Waking more noise than half-a-dozen inexperienced burglars trying to enter the hotel by knocking the front door down with a battering-ram, he finally succeeded in rousing the night porter from his slumbers and explained his requirement.

The man looked at him woodenly.

"Mañana," he said, with native resourcefulness. "Tomorrow, when there is someone who knows about rooms, you will be able to arrange it."

"Tomorrow," said the Saint, "the Teide may start to erupt, and the inhabitants of this God-forsaken place may move quickly for the first time in their lives. I want a room tonight. What about going to the office and looking at the books?"

" 'Stá cerrado," said the other pessimistically. "It is shut."

The Saint sighed.

"It is for a lady," he explained, attempting an appeal to the well — known Spanish spirit of romance.

The man continued to gape at him foggily. If it was a senorita, he appeared to be thinking, why should there be so much fuss about getting her a room?

"You have a room," he pointed out.

"I know," said the Saint patiently. "I've seen it. Now I want another. Haven't you got a list of the rooms occupied, so that you know how many people you have to check in before you lock up?"

"There is the list," admitted the porter cautiously.

"Well, where is it?"

The man rummaged behind his desk and finally produced a soiled sheet of paper. Simon looked at it.

"Now," he said, "does it occur to you that the rooms which are not on this list will be empty?"

"No," said the porter, "because they do not always put all the numbers on the list."

Simon drew a deep breath.

"Are you waiting for anybody else to come in?"

"Only number fifty-one," said the man, who apparently had his own clairvoyant method of checking the homing guests.

"Then the other keys in those boxes belong to empty rooms," persisted the Saint, whose association with Hoppy Uniatz had made him more than ordinarily skilful at making his points with pellucid clarity.

The porter sullenly acknowledged that this was probably true.

"Then I'll have one of them," said the Saint.

He reached over and helped himself to the key which hung in the box numbered forty-nine, which was the next number to his own. Then he opened the doors of the automatic elevator and got in. He pressed the button for the top floor. Nothing happened.

"No funciona," said the porter, with a certain morose satisfaction; and Simon heard him snoring again before he had climbed the first flight of stairs.

He recovered his good humour on the way back, partly because his mind was too taken up with other things to brood for long over the deficiencies of the Canary Island character. He had more things to think about than he really wanted, and already he began to feel the beginnings of a curious dread of the time which must come when certain questions could no longer be postponed…

"You ought to stay here and settle down, Hoppy," he remarked, as he re-entered the bedroom. "Compared with the natives, you'd look such a genius that they'd probably make you mayor. All the same, I got a room,"

He went over to the bed and felt Vanlinden's pulse again.

"Do you think you could walk a little way?" he said.

"I'll try."

Simon helped him up and kept an arm round him.

"Give me five minutes to get him undressed and into bed," he said to Christine, "and then Hoppy can bring you along."

Hoppy's room was two doors along the passage, with the room Simon had taken for Christine in between. Nearly all Vanlinden's emaciated weight hung on the Saint's strong arm.

"Don't you think I could look after myself?" he said when they got there; and the Saint dubiously let him go for a moment.

The old man started to take off his coat. He got one arm out of its sleeve; and then he stood still, and a queerly childish perplexity crinkled over his face, "Perhaps I'm not very well," he said huskily, and sat down suddenly on the bed.

Simon undressed him. Stripped naked, the old man was not much more than skin and bones. Where the skin was not raw or starting to turn black and blue, it was very white and almost transparent, with characteristic soft creases round the neck and shoulders that told their own story. Simon examined him again and treated his more obvious injuries with deft and amazingly gentle fingers. Then he wrapped him up in a suit of Mr Uniatz' eye-paralysing silk pajamas, and had just tucked him up when Hoppy and Christine arrived. Simon went back to his own room then returned to the bedside with a couple of tiny white tablets and a glass of water.

"Will you take these?" he said. "They'll help you to rest."

He supported the old man's head while he drank the water, and laid him gently back. Vanlinden looked up at him.

"You've been kind," he said. "And I am tired."

"Tomorrow you'll be crowing like a fighting cock," said the Saint.

He took Hoppy by the arm and drew him out of the room; but as soon as he turned away from the bed, the cheerfulness went out of his face. There was no doubt that Joris Vanlinden was an old man, old not only in body but also in mind; and Simon knew that, in that subtle process which is called growing old, the hopelessness of the last four years must have played more than their full part. What would be the effect of that night's beating on the old man's ebbing vitality? And how much more would the crowning blow of the stolen ticket drain from his failing strength?

Simon sat on the rail of the veranda and smoked down half an inch of his cigarette, quietly considering the questions. They were still unanswered when he forced his mind away from them. He pointed to the room.

"When you go back in there, Hoppy," he said, "lock the door and put the key in your pocket and keep it there. Don't let anybody in or out till I come round in the morning — not even yourself, unless you have to call me during the night."

"Okay, boss."

Mr Uniatz struck a match and relighted as much of his cigar as he had not yet eaten. He looked at the Saint with an expression which in anyone else might have been called reflective.

"Dis lottery ticket," he said. "It must be woit plenty."

"It is, Hoppy. It's worth two million dollars."

"Chees, boss—" Mr Uniatz counted on his fingers. "What I couldn't do wit' five hundred grand!"

Simon frowned at him.

"What do you mean — five hundred grand?"

"I t'ought ya might make dat my end, boss. De last time, ya cut me in two bits on de buck. Half a million for me an' one an' a half for you. Or is dat too much?" said Hoppy wistfully.

"Let's work it out when we get it," said the Saint shortly; and then the door opened and Christine came out.

She nodded in answer to his question.

"He's asleep already," she said. And then: "I don't see why I should turn your friend out of his bed. I can sleep in a chair and keep an eye on Joris quite easily."

"Good Lord, no," said the Saint breezily. "Hoppy can sleep anywhere. He sleeps on his feet most of the day. You can't even tell the difference until you get used to him. If Joris wants anything, Hoppy will fix it; and if Hoppy can't fix it he'll call me; and if it's anything serious I'll call you. But you need all the rest you can get, the same as Joris."

He pushed Hoppy gently but firmly away towards his vigil and unlocked the other room with the key he had taken from downstairs. He switched on the lights and followed her in, locking the door after him and taking the key out to give to her.

"Keep it like that — just in case of accidents. It's not so much for tonight as for tomorrow, in case Graner and company get up early. You can lock the communicating door on your side."

He unlocked it and went through into his own room to rake a dressing gown out of his suitcase. When he turned round she had followed him. He hung the robe over her arm.

"It's the best I can do," he said. "I'm afraid my pajamas would be a bit loose on you, but you can have some if you like. Can you think of anything else?"

"Have you got a spare cigarette?"

He took a packet off the dressing table and gave it to her.

"So if that's all we can do for you—"

She didn't make a move to go. She stood there with her hands in the pockets of her light coat and the dressing gown looped over her arm, looking at him with dried eyes that he suddenly realised might be impish. The light picked the burnished copper out of the curls on her russet head. Her coat was belted at the waist, and thrown open under the belt; under it the thin dress she wore flowed over slender curves that would have been disturbing to watch too closely.

"You didn't tell me why Graner's expecting you," she said.

He sank on to the end of the bed.

"That's easy. You see, I answered his telegram."

"You did?"

"Naturally. I knew Felson and Holby were jewel thieves. I recognised the name of Joris as… Well, frankly, it was associated with a rather famous job of jewel borrowing. And an unknown Mr Graner seemed to be tied up with the whole party. So I figured that Comrade Graner would be worth looking at. I wired him 'Know very man. Have phoned him. Says he will leave immediately' — and signed it 'Felson.'"

"You mean you were going to work for him?"

"I never cut a diamond in my life, darling. And I don't work with anybody. I just thought it might pay a dividend if I got to know Reuben a little better. Reuben would pay the dividend — but not for services rendered."

"I see." There was a quirk of humour in her straightforward brown eyes. "You thought you could blackmail him."

His fine brows slanted up at her in a line of gay, unscrupulous mockery.

"I shouldn't put it like that myself. It probably wouldn't even be literally true. I'm an idealist. You could call me an adjuster of unjust differences. Why should Graner have such a lot of diamonds when I haven't any? If he's anything like what he sounds like from the way you talk about him, it's almost a sacred duty to adjust him. Hence my telegram."

"But suppose Rodney wired him something different?"

The Saint smiled.

"I don't think either Rodney or George is sending any wires just now," he said carefully. "After I picked up the telegram I followed them out of Chicote's to keep an eye on them. As soon as they got outside, a couple of birds in plain clothes flashed badges at them, and then they all got into a taxi and drove away. From the smug expressions of the badge merchants and the worried looks of Rodney and George, I gathered that whatever they were doing in Madrid must have sprung a leak. Anyway, it was good enough to take a chance on."

"But the others'll recognise you."

"I doubt it. It was pretty dark on the road. I wouldn't be too sure of recognising them, apart from the identification marks I left on them — and I had a hat pulled down over my eyes. That's good enough to take a chance on too."

He put out his cigarette and stood up. The movement brought them face to face; and he put his hands on her shoulders.

"Don't worry any more tonight, Christine," he said. "I know it's pretty hard to take your mind off it, but you've got to try. In the morning we'll do some more work on it."

"Joris said it," she answered; "you've been very kind."

"For only doing half a job?" Simon asked flippantly.

"For being so confident and practical. I needed pulling together. It seems quite different now, with you helping us. It must be something about you…"

Her face was turned up to his, and she was So close that he could almost feel the warmth of her body. His pulses beat faster, irresistibly, but his mind was cool. He smiled at her; and suddenly she turned away and went out of the room without looking back.

The Saint took another cigarette and lighted it with elaborately unhurried precision. For quite half a minute he stood still where she had left him, before he strolled over to the wardrobe mirror and examined himself with dispassionate interest.

"You're being seduced," he said.

Then he remembered that the Hirondel was still parked outside the hotel. It couldn't stay there all night; and a faint frown touched his forehead at the thought that perhaps it had stood out there too long already. But that couldn't be helped, he had had too many other things to think of before. Fortunately he had located a garage during the afternoon. He opened the door of his room very quietly and went downstairs again.

Already the square was almost deserted — Santa Cruz goes to bed early, for the convincing reason that there is nothing else to do. Simon got into the car and drove up the Calle Castillo. He drove slowly, feeling the effortless purr of the powerful engine soothing and smoothing out his mind, a cigarette slanting between his lips and his finger tips lightly caressing the wheel. The deep hum of the machine distilled itself into his senses, taking possession of him until it was as if the car led him on without any direction of his will. He had had no such thoughts when he left the hotel to put the car away… But there was a turning on the right which he should have taken to go to the garage… He passed it without a glance. The Hirondel droned on, up on to the La Laguna road — towards the house of Reuben Graner.

3

Simon Templar began to sing, a faint fragment of almost inaudible melody that harmonised with the soft undertones of the engine. The cool night air was refreshing on his face. He was smiling.

Possibly he was quite mad. If so, he always had been, and it was too late in life to worry about it. But it was his creed that adventure waited for no timetables, and everything he had ever done or ever would do was built up on that reckless faith. He was bound to visit Reuben Graner sometime. At the moment he felt as fresh and wide awake as if he had just got out of a cold bath; and the brief but breezy episode by the roadside a couple of hours before had only whetted his appetite. Why should he wait for some Spanish mañana to carry on with the good work?

Not that he had a single plan of campaign in his head. His mind was a clean slate on which impulse or circumstance or destiny might write anything that happened to amuse them. The Saint was broadmindedly prepared to co-operate in the business of being amused…

A gleam of reminiscent humour touched his eyes as he recognised the spot where Joris Vanlinden had introduced himself so appropriately into the general course of events; and then he trod suddenly on the brakes in time to save the lives of a pareja, or brace, of guardias de asalto who stepped out into the path of his headlights and waved to him to stop. Looking around him he discovered that the road was littered with guardias of all shapes and sizes. He saw the sheen of the black oilcloth napoleonic hats of guardias civiles and the dull glint of carbines. There are various species of guardias in Spain, intended between them to perform the various functions of police work; and it is popularity believed that the word has no singular, since they are only seen in parejas, or braces, as inevitably as grouse. Even allowing for that, it seemed an unusual concentration; and the Saint's gaze narrowed slightly as the pareja which had stopped him closed in on either side of the car. A torch flashed in his face.

"Where are you going?" asked half the brace curtly, in Spanish; and Simon answered in the same language: "To visit a friend. He's expecting me."

"Baje usted."

Simon got out. The other guardia came round the car and attached himself again to his comrade. It was like a reunion of Siamese twins. Half the brace kept him covered while the other half searched him rapidly.

The Saint remembered that since he had left the hotel with no nefarious intent he had not even troubled to take a gun. He had only one weapon — the slim razor — edged throwing knife strapped to his left forearm under his sleeve which he would not have exchanged for all the firearms in the world — but the search was not thorough enough to discover that.

"Su documentación?"

Simon produced his passport. It was examined and returned to him.

"Turista?"

"Si."

"Bueno. Siga usted."

The Saint scratched his head.

"What is this?" he inquired curiously.

"That does not concern you," replied the talking half of the brace uncommunicatively and stepped back.

Simon got into the car again and drove on thoughtfully. Certainly, now that he recollected it, the rescue of Joris Vanlinden had not been accomplished in complete silence; in fact, he remembered that one or two shots had been fired in the later stages which would doubtless have been audible for some distance; but the convention of guardias gathered on the spot seemed somewhat disproportionate to the occasion, even under an administration which has always been convinced that posting a herd of police on the scene of a past crime is an infallible method of preventing another crime being committed somewhere else. He puzzled over it for a few moments, trying to recall some other factor which seemed to have slipped his memory; and then he saw the long white wall which he had been told to look out for, and the sight temporarily diverted his mind from other problems.

He drove slowly past it, and a hundred yards farther on he came to a narrow side turning into which he backed the car. He switched off the engine, turned out the lights and returned on foot. In the middle of the wall there was a wide gateway, wide enough to admit a big car — which it probably did, for the sidewalk was cut away in front of it. The gates were solid wood, studded and bound with iron, and they filled the whole archway so that it was impossible to get a glimpse of the garden inside. In the lower part of one of the gates was a smaller door. Simon scanned it in the subdued beam of a flashlight no larger than a fountain pen, and spelled out the name on the tarnished brass plate — "Las Mariposas." It was Graner's house.

He walked on, along the wall; and when it ended he climbed over the rough wire fence of the adjoining field and worked along the other side. In this way he made a complete circuit of the property, and presently found himself in the road again. The wall ran all the way round it without a break, two feet over his head the whole time; and the Saint smiled with professional satisfaction. In the circumstances, the household seemed to have all the hallmarks of really well-organised villainy, and Simon Templar approved of well-organised villains. They made life so much more exciting.

The house itself stood in one angle of the square, so that one corner of the surrounding wall was actually formed by the walls of the house itself; but the only opening in those walls was formed by two or three barred windows on the top floor. Apart from those small apertures, the walls rose sheer from the ground for thirty feet without any break or projection that would have given foothold to a lizard. There was no hope of feloniously entering the property by that route.

He returned to the first field he had entered, and inspected the wall again from that side. He reached up to the top, and felt a closely woven mesh of barbed wire under his fingers — anyone a little shorter than himself would have had to make a jump for the grip, and would have collected a pair of badly lacerated hands for compensation.

Simon bent down and took off his shoes. He placed them side by side on top of the wall, hooked his fingers over them, and in that way drew himself up. In that way he discovered something else.

A fine copper wire ran along the top of the wall, stretched between brackets in such a way that it projected about eight inches from the wall itself and also leaned slightly towards the outside. It had been invisible until he almost put his face into it, and he only just stopped pulling himself up in time. If he had been even a little clumsy with placing his shoes on top of the wall he would have touched it. He studied it intently for a few seconds. And then he lowered himself carefully to the ground, pulled his shoes down after him, and put them on again.

Exactly what useful purpose that wire served he didn't know, but he didn't like the look of it. It certainly didn't seem strong enough to hold anyone back who intended to go through it, and it wasn't even barbed. But it was so placed that no one could even pull himself up sufficiently to see over the wall without touching the wire; certainly it was impossible to scramble over it without doing so. A ladder placed up against the wall would have touched it just the same.

It might have been connected with some system of alarms, it might even have carried a charge of high-voltage electricity, it might have fired guns or sent up rockets or played martial music; but the one certain thing of which the Saint was profoundly convinced was that it hadn't been put there for fun. He was beginning to acquire a wholesome respect for Reuben Graner which nevertheless failed to depress his spirits.

"Life," said the Saint, to his guardian angel, "is starting to look more and more entertaining."

As he stood there under the wall, allowing the full flavour of the entertainment to circulate meditatively around his palate, he became conscious of a sound on the other side of the wall. It was hardly more than a faint rustle such as a tree might have made stirring in the breeze; and then the hairs prickled instinctively on the back of his neck as he realised that there was no breeze…

He listened, standing so still that he could feel the throbbing of the blood in his arteries. The rustling went on; and now that he could analyse it logically he knew that it was too abrupt and irregular to be caused by a wind. It was made by something alive, something heavy and yet stealthy moving about among shrubbery on the other side of the wall. He heard the sound of a subdued sniffing; and all at once the words of Christine Vanlinden rushed through his mind. "They hadn't let the dogs out then…"

He remained frozen to immobility, expecting at any moment to hear the tranquillity of the night shattered by the fierce clamour of barking; but nothing happened. He heard the muffled blare of a ship's siren away down in the harbour, and a car whined up the hill and vanished in a whispering diminuendo; but in between those sounds there was nothing but the drumming in his own ears. When at last he ventured to move, the uproar still failed to break out. Nothing broke the stillness except that occasional stealthy rustle that followed him all the way back to the road, keeping pace with him on the other side of the wall. In the unnatural muteness of that invisible following there was something eerie and horrible that set his nerves tingling.

Again he stood in front of the arched gateway, lighting a cigarette and considering the situation. Very few things seemed more certain than that it was practically impossible to get into the grounds without raising an alarm — he had discovered a fair number of reasons for that; but they only provided additional reasons for believing that there were other equally ingenious gadgets waiting on the inside of the wall for the resourceful intruder who managed to pass the first line of defence. Besides all of which, of course, there were still the dogs; and their utter and uncanny silence gave the Saint a queer chilly intuition that their purpose was not so much to give alarms as to deal in their own way with intruders…

One of the cardinal articles of Simon Templar's philosophy, however, was that the more elaborately insoluble such complex problems became, the more pellucidly simple the one and only key to the riddle became — if one could only see it. And in this case the solution was so staggeringly elementary that it left the Saint dumb with awe for a full half-minute.

And then, very deliberately and accurately, he placed the end of his forefinger on the bell beside the gateway, and pushed.

There was an interval of silence before he heard the sound of footsteps advancing over flagstones towards the gate. A grille opened in the smaller door, but it was too dark to see the face that looked out from behind it.

"Quién es?"

For the time being the Saint saw no need to advertise the fact that he spoke Spanish as well as any Castilian.

"Mr Graner is expecting me," he said.

"Who is it?" repeated the voice, in English.

"Mr Felson sent me."

"Just a minute."

There was another pause. Simon heard a low whistle, the scuffle of claws on the stone, and the tinkle and creak of chains. Then a key was turned, bolts thudded back and the small door opened.

"Come in."

Simon ducked through the narrow opening and straightened up inside. The man who had admitted him was bending to close the door and fasten the bolts. The Saint noted that there were no less than five of them — two on the lock side, one on the hinge side, and one each in the centre of the top and bottom of the door-and all of them were connected with curious bright metal contacts.

He glanced thoughtfully around him. The dogs had been tied up to a post set in the flagged pathway with short loops of chain riven through rings in their collars. They were huge, bristling grey brutes, larger than police dogs — he had no idea what breed they were. The chains scraped and rattled as they strained steadily towards him, their slavering jaws a little open and their lips curled snarling back from glistening white fangs; but even then neither of them gave tongue. They simply leaned towards him, their feet scrabbling on the paving, quivering with a voiceless intensity of lusting ferocity and power that was more vicious than anything of its kind that the Saint had ever seen before. And a grim little smile touched his lips as he mentally acknowledged the fact that if it was difficult enough to get into that garden, it would be just about as difficult to get out…

"Come this way," said the man who had let him in; and they walked along the paved pathway that ran around the house. "I'm Graner. What's your name?"

"Tombs," said the Saint.

He had cherished for years an eccentric affection for that morbid alias.

There was a light over the porch outside the front door, and for the first time he was able to inspect his host, while Graner looked at him. From Simon's side the inspection was something of a shock.

Reuben Graner was a full head shorter than himself, and as thin as a lath; and his skinny shape was accentuated by a mauve-striped suit which fitted him so tightly that it looked as if it had been shrunk on to him. Between his green suede shoes and the ends of his clinging trousers appeared a pair of bright yellow spats; and what could be seen of his shirt behind a tie like a patchwork quilt was a pale rose pink. Above that, his sallow face was as thin and sharp as an axe blade. From either side of his inordinately long and narrow nose hard, deeply graven lines ran down like brackets to enclose a mouth that was merely a horizontal slit in the tight-drawn skin, which was so smoothly stretched over the forehead and high cheek — Hones that it seemed as if there was no flesh between it and the skull. At that first inspection, only his eyes seemed to justify the uncontrollable horror with which Christine Vanlinden had spoken of him; they peered out with an odd unblinking intentness from behind large tortoise-shell spectacles, black and beady and inscrutable as damp pebbles.

"Come in," Graner said again.

He opened the door, which led into a bare narrow hall beyond which Simon could see palm trees in a dimly illuminated patio. On either side of the hall there were other doors, and one of them was ajar — Simon saw the strip of light along the edge of the frame. And as he crossed the threshold the Saint heard something that made him feel as if he had been hurled suddenly into the air and spun round three or four times before he was dumped back on the doorstep with a jar that left his heart thumping. It was a man's voice raised in blustering anger, with a subtle note of fear pulsing it in. Simon heard every word as distinctly as if the speaker had been standing next to him.

"I tell you I never had the blasted ticket. I was hunting through Joris' pockets for it when that swine jumped on me. If anybody's got it, he has!"

III

How Simon Templar read a newspaper,

and Reuben Graner put on his hat

1

By some superhuman effort of unconscious will, the Saint let his weight follow the step he had started to take. He never quite knew how it was done, but somehow he went on his way into the house without an instant's check in the natural flow of his movements; and since Graner had stood aside to let him go first it was impossible for his face to give him away. By the time he was in the hall and had turned round so that Graner could see him again, the dizzy moment had passed. He stood there lighting a cigarette, aware of the sudden sharp scrutiny of Graner's beady eyes, without giving any sign that he noticed it. He might have heard nothing more than a meaningless fragment of any commonplace conversation. Only the vertiginous whirl that was still turning his mind upside down remained to bear witness to the quality of the shock that he had received.

Graner seemed to be satisfied that the words had made no particular impression. He turned away and pressed a button switch beside the door; and the Saint was momentarily puzzled, for no lights went on or off. Then he heard a swift scurrying outside, a light thud on the door and the scratch of claws; and all at once he understood the pressing of the switch and the reason for those unusually short chains on the post to which the dogs had been fastened. Doubtless the switch released them again by some electrical mechanism after any visitor had been taken inside the house.

No other voice had spoken from the room opening off the hall, and the dead silence continued as Graner strutted towards it in his pompous, affected way and pushed open the door.

"These are some friends of mine, Mr Tombs."

Simon took in the room with a leisured glance. It was furnished in the modern style, but with a garishness that contrived to be more eye-aching than chintz and brocades. The curtains were bright scarlet, the carpet was chequered purple and orange, the chairs were upholstered in grass-green tapestry. The solid comfort of the chairs was mixed up with little spindle-legged, glass-topped tables which looked as if a sneeze would blow them over; and every available horizontal surface was littered with a collection of cheap nondescript vases and tasteless bits of china that might have been taken straight out of an old-fashioned, middle-class drawing room. It was a room into which Reuben Graner fitted so perfectly that, after seeing him in it, it was impossible to imagine him in any other setting.

But Simon Templar was not looking so much at the room, as at the men in it. There were three of them; he suppressed a smile of unholy glee as he noted that at least two of them showed unmistakable signs of having been on a party.

"Mr Palermo," said Graner, in his high-pitched, mincing voice.

He indicated a dark, slender gentleman with a swarthy skin and a natty little moustache, whose beauty was somewhat impaired by the radiant sunset effects surrounding his right eye and the swollen heelprint on the other side of his face "Mr Aliston—"

Mr Aliston was tall and sandy-haired, with prominent pale blue eyes and a willowy slouch. What was left of his complexion was pink and white, like that of a freshly scrubbed schoolboy; but much of it was obscured by a raw-looking graze that ran up from his chin to terminate in a large black-and-blue lump near his left temple.

"— and Mr Lauber."

The third member of the party was a big, raw-boned, heavy-jowled man whom Simon recognised without difficulty as his last opponent in the exchange of pleasantries that had started the picnic. He looked easily the least damaged of the trio; but the Saint knew that he would be carrying a souvenir of Mr Uniatz' Betsy on the back of his head that would have been highly misleading to a phrenologist.

"Pleased to know you," Lauber said heartily; and as soon as he spoke Simon knew also that he was the man whose voice he had heard as he entered the house.

The Saint's eyes summed up the big man interestedly, without seeming to give him more attention than they gave everybody else. Certainly Lauber had been the last warrior to fling himself into the battle: he had been busily kneeling on Joris Vanlinden's chest until the shortage of other gladiators had forced him to take part in the festivities. And a slow squirm of delight began to crawl around Simon Templar's inside as some understanding of Lauber's amazing protestation started to sink into his brain.

"Mr Tombs," Graner explained, "is the friend that Felson wired us about."

The others kept silence. They were grouped at the end of the table, with Lauber in the middle; and they stayed there without moving, as if they were still bent on keeping Lauber in a corner. Only their eyes turned to meet the Saint, and remained fixed on him with cold intentness. Even Lauber, whose solitary answering welcome hinted that it had been prompted more by relief at the temporary diversion than by any natural cordiality, relapsed into silence after that one remark, and stared at him with the same watchful expectancy. They were like a cage of wild animals summing up a new trainer.

"Sit down," said Graner.

Palermo extended his foot without shifting any of the rest of him, and pushed a chair towards the Saint. Graner took another chair. He deposited himself primly on the edge of it and crossed his legs — a movement which disclosed an expanse of brilliant blue silk sock above the top of his spats.

"Felson said very little about you." Graner searched through his pockets and eventually encountered a telegraph form. He read it through, pulling his long upper lip. "Didn't he give you a letter or anything?"

Simon shook his head. — "I didn't see him. He phoned me in London, and I left at once."

"You got here very quickly."

"I flew to Seville. I tried to phone Rodney in Madrid from there, but I couldn't get him. I couldn't wait to get hold of him because I had to catch the boat, and he'd told me it was urgent."

"Didn't the boat get in this morning?" Graner's tone held no more than conventional interest.

The Saint nodded easily.

"I made some friends on board, and they wanted to go over to Orotava for a farewell lunch party. I didn't know it was so far away, and once I was over there I couldn't leave until they were ready to go. And they wanted a lot of shifting. Then I had to get fixed up at a hotel, and then we had to have dinner, and then we had to have some more drinks, and then I had to see them back to the boat — " He shrugged apologetically. "You know how these parties go on. I suppose this is rather late to introduce myself, but I thought I'd better check in before I went to bed."

Graner frowned.

"You went to a hotel?"

"Of course," said the Saint innocently. "It's a nice climate, but I didn't feel like sleeping under a tree."

Graner gazed at him steadily for a few seconds without smiling.

"We will leave that for the moment," he said at length. "What is your experience?"

"I was fourteen years with Asscher's, in Amsterdam."

"You look young for that."

"I started very young."

"Why did you leave?"

"They missed some stones," answered the Saint, with a sly and significant grin.

"Were you ever in the hands of the police?"

"No. It was just suspicion."

"What have you been doing since then?"

"Odd jobs, when I could get them."

Reuben Graner took an apple-green silk handkerchief out of his breast pocket, folded it neatly, and fanned himself delicately with it. A whiff of expensive perfume crept into the air.

"Did Felson tell you what was expected of you?" he asked.

"I gathered that you want me to cut up some stones without being too inquisitive about where they came from."

"That is more or less correct."

The Saint settled himself more comfortably in his chair.

"As far as I'm concerned, it's a bet," he remarked. "But what about the strong-arm stuff?"

Graner's thin fingers drummed on the edge of the table.

"I don't understand you."

"The sleeping-beauty chorus. The three little pigs." Simon waved his hand in a lazy gesture of explanation. "They look as if they'd been up to something rougher than cutting diamonds and doing a bit of knitting on the side."

Again that intense silence settled on the room. Palermo moved slightly in his chair, and the creak of the leather sounded deafening in the stillness. Simon could feel the eyes boring into him from four directions, rigid and unwinking in their sockets; but he filtered a streamer of smoke through his lips with languid unconcern.

"We also missed some stones," Graner said evenly. "Your predecessor had been becoming-difficult. It was necessary to deal with him."

Simon surveyed the other three again and raised his eyebrows admiringly.

"He must have been pretty useful with his hands, anyway," he murmured. "He seems to have done a spot of dealing on his own."

Aliston's pink face became a shade pinker, but none of the men moved or answered. They just sat there, watching him steadily in silence.

Graner refolded his handkerchief, tucked it back into his pocket and occupied himself with arranging for just too much of it to peep out. Presently he spoke as if he hadn't noticed the Saint's comment: "You had better leave your hotel, Tombs. There is quite enough room for you here."

"That's very hospitable," Simon said dubiously. "But—"

"We need not discuss the matter. It is simply an elementary and advisable precaution. If you are staying in a hotel you are obliged to register with the police, which for our purposes may be an inconvenience. The police call for lists of all the guests staying in the hotels here, and if you're not registered you can get into trouble. But nobody can call for a list of my guests, so nobody knows whether they have registered or not."

The Saint nodded comprehendingly, and the movement was quite spontaneous. A few hours ago he would have said that he knew everything there was to know about the world of crime, but this was an aspect of it. that had never occurred to him. Santa Cruz de Tenerife was the last place on earth to which he would have set out on a blind search for boodle, if it had not been for the clue that had fallen accidentally into his hands. And yet the more he thought of it, now, the more perfect a location it seemed to be. A free port, where anything the gang brought with them from their expeditions in Europe could be disembarked without any of the attendant risks of a customs examination. A Spanish province that was nevertheless a long way from Spain and on the routes of some of the main seaways of the world, where anyone coming from the peninsula could land without even being asked to show identification papers at the time of landing. A place where such police as there were not only shared all the characteristic inertia and incompetence of their brethren on the mainland, but combined with them some original Canarian fatuities of their own. And, finally, the last spot on the globe where anyone would think of even starting to look for the headquarters of a gang of international thieves-even as the Saint himself had never thought of looking there before.

"You certainly have thought of everything, haven't you?" he said lightly. "All the same, if I beetle up here first thing in the morning—"

"You will stay here tonight." The Saint frowned.

"A couple of girls that I met on the boat are staying at the hotel, and I made a date to give them lunch tomorrow," he pointed out. "They'll think it odd if I don't turn up."

"You can make your excuses."

"But—"

"You will stay here tonight."

Graner's tone was flat and expressionless, and yet it had a smug insolence that brought the blood to the Saint's head. He stood up, and Graner stood up also.

"That's all very well, dear old bird," Simon said gently. "But what is this — a job or a prison? Even with your beauty—"

Without the flicker of an eyelash, Graner brought up his left hand and slapped the Saint sharply across the face. Almost in the same movement a gun appeared in his right, levelled quite steadily at the centre of the Saint's chest.

Simon felt as if a sudden torrent of liquid fire poured along his veins, and every muscle in his body went tense. The fingernails cut into his palms with the violent contraction of his fists. How he ever managed to hold himself in check was a miracle beyond his understanding.

"There are one or two things you had better make up your mind to understand, Tombs," Graner was saying, in the same flatly arrogant tone. "In the first place, I dislike flippancy — and familiarity."

He made a slight movement with the automatic.

"Also — apart from this — it is impossible for anybody to leave this house without my permission."

His gaze did not shift from the Saint's face, where the marks of his fingers were printed in dark red on the tanned skin.

"If you intend to work for me, you will accept any orders I give — without question."

Simon looked down at the gun. Without knowing how quick the other was with the trigger, he estimated that he had a sporting chance of knocking the gun aside and landing an iron, fist where it would obliterate the last traces of any beauty that Graner might ever have had, before anyone else could move. But there were still the other three men who were behind him now — besides the dogs outside, and however many more discouraging gadgets there might be outside the house.

That moment's swift and instinctive reckoning of his chances was probably what helped to save him. And in that time he also forced himself to realise that the fleeting pleasure of pushing Graner's front teeth through the back of his neck would ring down the curtain on his only hope of doing what he had come there to do.

The liquid fire cooled down in his veins-cooled down below normal until it was like liquid ice. The red mist cleared from before his eyes and was absorbed invisibily but indelibly by the deepest wellsprings of his will. Reuben Graner would live long enough to be dealt with. The Saint could wait; and the waiting would only make the reckoning more enjoyable when the time came.

"If you put it like that," he said, with as much sheepishness as he could infuse into his voice, "I guess you're probably right."

Slowly the tension that had crept into the room relaxed. Simon almost fancied he could hear the other three draw the first breaths they had taken since the incident started. Only Graner did not need to relax, because he had never been gripped in the same tension. He put the gun away and fanned himself again with his scented handkerchief, as if nothing had happened, with his cold, unblinking eyes still fixed on the Saint.

"I will show you to your room," he said. "In the morning I will drive you down to the hotel to collect your luggage."

2

Which, looked at upwards or downwards or sideways, was just about as jolly a complication as one could imagine, Simon Templar reflected when he was left alone.

He sat on the side of the bed and lighted another cigarette, considering the situation.

After all, he had asked for it. If he had waited a little longer to think what his impulse might lead to, he might have realised that it was open for something like that to happen. He could see Graner's point of view with the greatest clarity. To leave a new and untried recruit to go wandering about Santa Cruz, talking to anyone he might pick up, was a fairly obvious error to avoid. And thinking it over, the Saint feared that in his conversation with Graner he hadn't exactly given the impression that he was a man who could be relied on to guard his tongue.

But that was done, and it wasn't much use worrying about it. Anyway he was in the house, which was where he had wanted to be — only he had got there about twelve hours too early. And the only thing left was to decide what he was going to do about it.

Presently he got up and walked over to the window. It was shuttered in the Spanish style, but as far as he could discover the shutters were not made to open. The louvres could be turned up or down, to let in as much air or daylight as the inhabitant wanted; but the inhabitant would have had to slice himself into rashers to get himself out through the openings.

Simon looked around the room. It was furnished comfortably enough, although the optical effect was shattered by the same dreadful conflict of colour schemes that characterised the room downstairs. But it contained nothing which could have been used to open the shuttering — unless one heaved the bed through it, which would be difficult to do without causing a certain amount of commotion.

He moved very softly to the door and turned the handle without a sound. Somewhat to his surprise it was not locked: it opened without a creak of the hinges, and he slipped noiselessly out on to the veranda that ran round the patio. Down below he could hear a muffled mutter of voices, but it was so faint that it seemed impossible that the men who were speaking could have heard anyone moving about upstairs, even with a normal tread. The Saint didn't even take that risk. He could move as silently as a cat, and the tiled flooring ruled out the possibility of any squeaking boards that might have given him away. He stood looking at the veranda. It was enclosed from top to bottom with fine — meshed fly — netting which was almost as effective an obstacle as the window shutters. Whether he could open some of it up with his knife—

"Wanting anything?"

The voice made him spin round. He had not heard anyone come up the stairs; but Aliston was there, standing at the head of them with his hands in his pockets.

"I was just looking for the bathroom," answered the Saint calmly.

"Second door down."

The Saint went on and let himself in. He was there long enough to note that the bathroom window was also closed with a similar shutter to the one in his own room. He was ready to believe that all the windows in the house were the same; and he realised that besides making it difficult to get out, the arrangement was also another difficulty in the way of getting in.

When he came out of the bathroom Aliston was still standing at the head of the stairs. The Saint said good night to him, and Aliston answered conventionally.

Simon sat on his bed again and gazed sourly at the heliotrope-distempered walls. He was inside, all right — he didn't have to worry about that any more. And he knew now why Graner hadn't locked him up. There was nothing about the door to indicate it, but he was certain that it contained some device which gave a warning when it was opened. Graner seemed to have a weakness for electrical gadgets, and very effective the Saint had to admit they were… He also knew why Aliston had spoken to him instead of remaining hidden to watch him. They had let him use up the only plausible excuse he had for leaving the bedroom, so that any future excursions would want much more explaining.

And that made him wonder if they were only waiting for a chance to trap him. Simon faced the possibility coldbloodedly. From the beginning he had known that he was gambling on the darkness and the hat that had been pulled down over his eyes during the fight, as much as on the psychological fact that by walking straight into the lion's den immediately afterwards he was giving himself as good an alibi as he could hope to have. But one of the three men might have had suspicions, although nothing had been said when he was downstairs. Even now they might be talking about it.

He put the thought firmly out of his mind again. If they suspected him, they suspected him. But if it had been more than suspicion, he doubted whether he would have been sent to bed so peacefully. And if there was any suspicion, a lot of things could happen before it became certainty.

Meanwhile there were more urgent things to think about. Joris and Christine Vanlinden were still at the hotel, and he could do nothing about them. The only help they had was Hoppy Uniatz, and the Saint smiled a little wryly as he computed how much help Mr Uniatz was likely to be.

He undressed himself slowly, visualising every other angle of the situation that he could think of.

He was about ready for bed when he heard the noise of a car that sounded as if it stopped very close to the house, and he went to the window again and looked out. But he was on the side of the house farthest from the road, and he could see nothing. The sound of a door slamming certainly came from within the grounds. He stood there listening, and presently the car started up again. It came slowly round the corner of the house and passed underneath his window on its way to the garage; but although he waited for several minutes longer he could discover nothing else. The voices went on downstairs, and they were still talking when he fell asleep.

His problems were still unsolved when he was awakened by his door opening. Lauber put an unshaven face into the room.

"Time to get up," he said shortly, and went out again.

The sky outside, which had apparently not been informed of what the guidebooks were saying about it, was leaden and overcast, and there was a damp chill in the air that smelt like impending rain. Still, with all its defects, it was a new day; and the Saint was prepared to be hopeful about it. He went along to the bathroom, where he found and borrowed somebody else's razor; and he had just finished dressing when Lauber came in again.

"I'll show you the dining room."

"Is the weather always like this?" Simon asked as they went down the stairs.

Lauber's only response to the conversational opening was a vague mumble; and Simon wondered whether his sulky humour was solely due to the sore head from which he must have been suffering or whether it had some other contributory cause.

Graner was already in the dining room, sitting up in his prim old-maidish way behind the coffee pot and reading a book. He looked up and said good morning to the Saint, and returned at once to his reading. Palermo and Aliston were not visible.

Since there was no obvious encouragement to idle chatter, Simon picked up a newspaper that was lying on the table and glanced over it while he tried unsatisfactorily to break his fast with the insipid ration of rolls and butter which the Latin countries seem to consider sufficient foundation for a morning's work, reflecting that that was probably why they never managed to do a morning's work.

Almost as soon as he took up the sheet the headlines leapt to his eye. The press of Tenerife is accustomed to devote three or four columns inside the paper to the inexplicable gyrations of Spanish politicians; a European war can count on two or three paragraphs in the "Information from Abroad"; the front page leads are invariably devoted to a solemn discussion of the military defence of the Canary Islands, which every good Canarian is convinced that other nations are only waiting for an opportunity to seize; and the local red-hot news, the sizzling sensation of the day, rates half a column under the standard heading of "The Event of Last Night" — there never having been more than one event in a day, and that usually being something like the earth — shaking revelation that a couple of citizens started a fight in some tavern and were thrown out. But for once the military defence of the Canary Islands and the prospects of luring more misguided tourists to Tenerife had been ousted from their customary place of honour.

Under the headings of "The Shocking Outrage of Last Night" and "Unprecedented Outbreak of Gangsterismo in Tenerife" a thrilling story was unfolded. It appeared that a pareja of guardias de asalto had been patrolling the outskirts of Santa Cruz the previous night when they heard the sound of shooting. Hastening towards the nearest telephone to give the alarm, they happened to come upon two sinister individuals who were assisting a third, who appeared to be unconscious, into a car. The circumstances seeming suspicious, the guardias called on them to stop, whereupon the criminals opened fire. One of the guardias, Arturo Solona, of the Calle de la Libertad, whose father is Pedro Solona, the popular proprietor of the butcher shop in the Calle Ortega, whose younger daughter, as everyone will remember, was recently married to Don Luis Hernándéz y Perez, whose brother, Don Francisco Hernándéz y Perez is the manager of the sewage works, fell to the ground crying, "They have killed me!" (Anyone who is shot in a Spanish newspaper nearly always falls to the ground crying, "They have killed me," just for luck; but this one was right, they had killed him.) The other guardia, Baldomero Gil, who is the nephew of Ramon Jalan, who won the first prize at the recent horticultural exhibition with his three-kilo banana, advanced courageously towards a pile of stones which were a little way behind him, from which he continued to exchange shots with the fugitives, emptying his magazine twice, but apparently without hitting any of them.

At the same time, a pareja of guardias civiles, Jose Benitez and Guillermo Diaz, having heard the shooting, were on their way to headquarters to report the occurrence when they also chanced to encounter the criminals, who were driving off. They also fired many shots, apparently without effect; but at an answering volley from the gangsters, Benitez fell to the ground, endeavouring to uphold the reputation of his unit for lightning diagnosis by crying as he fell, "They have wounded me!" He had indeed got a bullet through his ear, and the paper took pains to point out that only a miracle could have saved his life, because the bullet had clearly been travelling in the direction of his head.

Unfortunately a miracle hadn't saved his life; because in the stop press it was revealed that he had subsequently died in the small hours of the morning, leaving Arturo Solona unquestionably supreme in the field of prophecy, after which the doctors had discovered that he had another bullet in his stomach which nobody had noticed until then. The bandits meanwhile had been swallowed up by the night, and the police were still searching for them.

"You understand Spanish, Mr Tombs?"

Graner's thin voice broke into the Saint's thoughts; and Simon looked up from the paper and saw that Graner's eyes were fixed on him.

"I learnt about six words on the boat coming down here," he said casually. "But I can't make head or tail of this. I suppose I'll have to learn a bit if I'm going to stay here."

"That will not be necessary—"

Graner might have been going to say more, but the shrill call of the telephone bell interrupted him. He got up, folded his napkin neatly and went out into the hall. Simon could hear him speaking outside.

"Yes… No?… You have made enquiries?" There was a longish pause. "I see. Well, you had better come back here." A briefer pause; then a curt, "All right."

The instrument rattled back on its hook, and Graner returned. The Saint saw Lauber look up at him curiously, and tried ineffectually to interpret the glance. There was nothing in what he had overheard, not even a change in the inflection of Graner's voice, that might have given him a clue; and he tried in vain to fathom the subtle tenseness which he seemed to feel in Lauber's questioning silence.

Graner himself said nothing, and his yellow face was as uncommunicative as a mummy's. He sat down again in his place and caressed the lace tablecloth mechanically with his thin fingers, gazing straight ahead of him without a trace of expression in his beady eyes.

Presently he turned to the Saint.

"When you're ready," he said, "I will show you your workroom."

"Any time you like," said the Saint.

He finished his cup of the bitter brown fluid mixed with boiled milk which the Canary Islanders fondly believe to be coffee, and got to his feet as Graner rose from the table.

They went up the stairs to the veranda above the patio, and halfway around that they came to another flight of stairs that ran up to the top floor of the house. At the top of these stairs there was a narrow landing with a door on each side. Graner unlocked one of the doors, and they went in.

The room was hardly more than an attic; and the Saint realised at once that it was lighted by one of those small barred windows which he had seen high up in the outside wall of the house. A heavy safe stood in one corner, and along one wall was a wooden bench littered with curious tools. At one end was what looked like a small electric furnace; and at the other end was a glistening machine unlike anything else that the Saint had encountered, which he took to be the principal instrument for cutting or polishing stones.

He ran his eye over the bench with what he hoped was a glance of professional approval.

"You will find everything here that you need," Graner was saying. "Everything was provided exactly as your predecessor wanted it. I will show you what you have to do."

He went over to the safe; and as he bent down and touched the combination Simon heard a faint moan something like an American police siren rising from somewhere in the house.

Graner's body concealed his movements as he turned the combination back and forth. Then he straightened up and turned the handle; and as he did so the moan of the siren, which had held evenly on its note until then, rose suddenly to a piercing scream that filled the air for fully thirty seconds. Then it stopped just as suddenly, leaving the air quivering with the abrupt contrast; and at that moment Simon knew its explanation. The same warning would sound the instant anyone touched the combination, and if he was still left undisturbed for long enough to get the safe open, the mere act of turning the handle would send the alarm whining up to that final crescendo of urgency.

Graner left the inference to make its own impression. It was not until the door was wide open that he turned round.

"Your predecessor did most of the work that we had in hand," he said. "But in a few days there will be a good deal more for you."

Simon Templar looked past him into the safe and almost gasped. From top to bottom it was divided into horizontal partitions by velvet-lined trays; and on the trays the light glittered and flamed from tier upon tier of lambent jewels, carefully sorted according to colour and species. One shelf shone with the blood-red lustre of rubies, another burned with the cold green fire of emeralds, others scintillated with the hard white brilliance and pale blue and violet half-lights of diamonds. In that amazing hoard the hues of the rainbow danced and clashed and blended in one dazzling flood of living color. It made the elaborate precautions which Reuben Graner took to guard his house suddenly seem very natural and ordinary. There was enough wealth in that safe to make any burglar think he had picked the locks on the gates of heaven.

3

Simon glanced over the tray that Graner held out to him, and fingered one or two of the stones.

"It's excellent work," he said, when he had recovered his voice.

"It was done by one of the best men in the business," Graner said complacently. "But we are hoping that you will be able to equal it."

He put the tray back again and took out a wooden box from the bottom of the safe. It held twenty or thirty diamonds, none of which could have weighed less than ten carats, and all of them perfectly matched.

"These are to be altered," he said. "It is a pity to have to break them up, but they belonged to a set which was once rather well-known."

He handed the box to the Saint, and Simon took it over to the workbench and put it down. Graner closed the door of the safe and spun the combination. He took out an ornate leather case and fitted a long cigar into an amber holder. He seemed to be in no hurry.

Simon turned over some of the implements on the bench and began to sort them out into what looked like their various categories, although he hadn't the faintest idea what any of them were.

He did as much as he could think of in that line, and then he hesitated. Graner was strutting slowly up and down the room, with his hands clasped behind his back.

"Don't pay any attention to me," he said. "I'm interested to see how you work."

Simon turned the implements over again. He felt as if a strap was being tightened about his chest.

"There isn't a chucker," he said.

Graner stopped strutting and looked at him.

"What is that?"

"It's the best tool there is for making the first cuts," said the Saint, who had just invented it. "We always cut stones with a chucker."

"Your predecessor didn't seem to find it necessary."

Simon looked surprised.

"He didn't use a chucker? How long had he been out of a job when you took him up?"

"He had been working for me for about four years," said Graner; and the Saint nodded understandingly.

"Of course — that explains it. They only came in about three years ago, but now everybody uses them. They save a tremendous amount of waste."

Graner took the cigar out of his mouth, trimmed the ash on his thumbnail, and put it back.

"We will send to England for a chucker by the next mail," he said. "But if you have been in the trade for fourteen years you will doubtless be able to use the older tools for the time being."

The Saint picked up one of the diamonds and held it to the light, peering at it from various angles. And at the same time he measured up Graner's position in the room. He knew that Graner carried a gun, and he had already seen how quickly he could draw it; he himself had nothing but his knife — but that had won split — second contests with guns before, when the Saint had been ready and waiting for them. Even so, it left the rest of the house and the outer fortifications…

The base of the cutting or polishing machine, whatever it was, consisted of a copper cup in which the diamond under operation was presumably supposed to rest. Simon took the stone he was holding along to it and began to fiddle with trying to fix it in place.

"By the way," he said, "what about my luggage?"

There was no immediate answer, and after a moment the Saint looked up. Graner was standing at the window with his back to him, looking out.

Simon felt under his left sleeve for the hilt of his little knife. His nerves were quite cool now: he knew exactly what a chance he would be taking, and how much he had to lose. But there might be no other remedy.

And then he realised why Graner was standing there. There was the sound of a car manoeuvring outside, and Graner must have been watching it. All at once the hum of the engine rose and died again rapidly, and Simon knew that it had entered the grounds.

Graner turned away from the window and stepped towards the door.

"Go on with your work," he said. "I shall be back in a few minutes."

The door closed behind him, and Simon Templar sagged back on the bench and wiped his forehead.

A few seconds later, with the irrepressible grin which was the crystallisation of all his philosophy, he took out his cigarette case and lighted a cigarette.

With the smoke going gratefully down into his lungs, he took another look at his position. And the longer he looked at it the less he liked it. The Saint was immune to panic, but he had an unflinching grasp on realities. The reality in this case was that, if one adopted the most optimistic of the two possible theories, Reuben Graner wasn't a bloke who left very much to chance. At the moment his attention was divided by the disappearance of Joris Vanlinden and his lottery ticket, and the mysterious comings and goings in the household which were undoubtedly connected with it; but that wouldn't distract him forever. In fact, from the way things had progressed by that early hour of the day, it wasn't likely to be more than a few hours before Graner's investigation of his newly acquired Mr Tombs found the spare half-hour which would be about all the time it needed.

Simon gazed morosely at the closed safe and wondered if it would relieve his emotions to weep tenderly over it for awhile. The occasion seemed to call for something of the sort. Within its unresponsive steel sides there was enough boodle to satisfy the most ambitious buccaneer, a collection of concentrated loot that deserved to be ranked with Vanlinden's lottery ticket; but for all the good it seemed likely to do him it might just as well have been a collection of empty beer bottles.

He went to the window and examined it. The bars were set solidly into the concrete of the walls — it might be possible to dig them out, but it would certainly take a good deal of time. And in any case he knew already that there was a sheer drop of thirty feet underneath it. Still, the road ran below… It was the first ray of hope he had seen since he entered the house. When he had been in Tenerife before he had made a number of incidental friends who might be useful; although if he met any of them when he was with Graner they might prove more dangerous than helpful. But that would have to be faced when the time came…

He took a piece of paper from his pocket and tore it in half. On one piece he wrote rapidly, in English:

Come and stand under the window of Las Mariposas on the La Laguna road at four o'clock. I will drop a message to you out of the window. If I'm unable to do this within half an hour, go away and come back at seven. Wait the same time. If nothing happens then, come back at nine-thirty and wait till you hear from me. This is a matter of life and death. Say nothing to anyone.

He read the message over again and grinned ruefully. It certainly read like something out of a melodrama; but that couldn't be helped. Maybe it was something out of a melodrama — his stay in Tenerife was beginning to look like that.

He signed his name to it; and on the second scrap of paper he wrote a translation in Spanish. He folded each piece of paper inside a twenty-five-peseta note and put the notes in separate pockets; he had just finished when he heard Graner's footstep again on the stairs.

Graner hardly glanced at his attempts to adjust the diamond in the copper cup under the machine.

"You can leave that for now," he said. "We will go down and collect your luggage."

His voice was sharper than it had been before, and Simon wondered what else had happened to put that grating timbre into it. There were things going on all the time that he knew nothing about, and the strain of trying to make sense of them took half the relief out of this second reprieve. Graner said nothing as they went downstairs; and all that the Saint could deduce of his state of mind had to be more intuitive than logical, which was not much satisfaction.

Through the door of the living room he had a glimpse of Aliston's boneless back while Graner stood in front of the mirror fitting on his purple hat like a woman. Presumably Aliston, and probably the natty Mr Palermo as well, had been out in the car that had returned a little while ago. Possibly it had been one or the other of them who had telephoned Graner during breakfast. It was a fairly obvious deduction that they had been scouring the town for a trace of Joris Vanlinden; and in that case the meaning of what he had overheard of the telephone conversation, and Graner's agitation, became easier to understand. But the Saint still had a queer feeling that there were gaps in the theory somewhere, a feeling that came from some kind of sixth sense for which he could not intelligently account, which told him that although the pieces of the jigsaw appeared to fit together so neatly there was something not quite right about the complete picture that they made up.

"Tombs!"

Graner's acrid voice jerked him out of the brown study, and they went outside to where the car was waiting. The chauffeur who stood beside it was unmistakably Spanish, and part of his villainous aspect might have been due to the fact that it was still only Saturday morning and the traditions of his country required him to shave only on Saturday afternoons; but the Saint doubted it. He wondered how many more of Graner's menagerie he had still to meet.

"What hotel did you go to?"

"The Orotava," answered Simon; and Graner's passionless black eyes rested on him a second or two longer before he passed the order on to the driver.

It was another of those puzzling rough edges in the smooth outline of the Saint's theory.

Simon pulled himself together with an abrupt effort. He told himself that his nerves must have been getting the better of him — he was beginning to imagine threats and suspicions in every trivial incident. After all, there were only about three hotels in Santa Cruz that could be called at all inviting, and the Orotava was the nearest to the harbour and the easiest choice for a man looking vaguely around for some place to stay. Why should the mention of it make any particular impression?

He knew that there could be only one reason, and felt as though a cold wind lapped his spine for a moment before he insisted to himself that it was absurd.

There was still a brace of guardias de asalto and a brace of guardias civiles mounting guard over the scene of the previous night's outbreak of gangsterismo, although they did not stop the car; and the Saint's mind switched back to the newspaper story he had read. That had at least explained a good many things to him without introducing any new riddles. It explained the way he had been stopped on the road when he was driving up to Graner's, and incidentally also explained the scattered volley which he had heard in the distance sometime earlier when he was driving away with Joris Vanlinden. What else it might lead to he had still to decide; but the humorous thought crossed his mind that he was probably even then riding in the very car for which the whole detective genius of Santa Cruz was at that moment searching. Only, of course, they were considerably handicapped by none of the guardias having remembered the number…

The car stopped at the hotel, and they got out. As they went up to the desk, which was now in charge of a beautiful boy with the sweetest wave in his hair, Graner turned to the Saint.

"You will remember to cancel your luncheon engagement," he said.

"Of course," said the Saint, who had never forgotten it since they left the house. "Would you ask the Fairy Queen to see if he can get me room fifty? — I don't think he speaks English."

Graner interpreted; and Simon lounged quietly against the counter while the youth went to the telephone switchboard.

His pulses were ticking over like clockwork. Now, if only by some miracle he could make Hoppy grasp the idea… He would be able to say nothing that Reuben Graner didn't overhear, and Mr Uniatz' alertness to subtlety and innuendo was approximately as quick-witted as that of a slightly imbecile frog. It was a flimsy enough chance, but it was a chance. He wished he could have called Christine, but he dared not take the risk of drawing attention to a room so close to his own… The youth seemed to be taking a long time…

He came back at last, and what he said made the Saint feel as though he had been jolted under the chin.

"No contestan."

Simon didn't move. With every trace of emotion schooled out of his face, he looked enquiringly at Graner.

"They don't answer," Graner translated.

The Saint placed his cigarette between his lips and drew at it steadily. He knew that Graner was watching him, but for once he wasn't worried about his own reaction. He knew that he couldn't be giving anything away, for the simple reason that he had nothing to give. A dull haze seemed to have filled his brain, through which one or two futile questions could only rise blurrily into his consciousness. Could it only have been that Hoppy was sleeping his usual log-like sleep? But the boy must have been ringing the room for a long time. Besides, there was Joris Vanlinden; and there could hardly be two people in the world who slept as heavily as Hoppy Uniatz. What else could have happened? Graner had been agitated before, but none of it had looked for an instant like the kind of agitation that springs from an excess of rejoicing. Besides which, he hadn't batted an eyelid when the Saint mentioned the number of the room, which he would certainly have done if… Besides which, there wasn't even a flickering indication of triumph in his attitude now. Besides which, there was the telephone call at breakfast time. Besides which…

"You had better write them a note," Graner was saying.

Simon nodded and walked through the lounge like an automaton to one of the writing desks. His mind was reeling under such a disordered inrush of questions that none of them made any individual impression. Presently he would be able to restore some sort of order and tackle them one by one, but that first insane confusion left him in a daze.

He sat down and drew a sheet of paper towards him, aware that Graner had followed him and was standing over him while he wrote. He unscrewed his fountain pen, and gained a few seconds' respite while he addressed an envelope to Miss H. Uniatz — hoping that the wavy-haired boy's knowledge of English was as incomplete as he reckoned it to be. Then he wrote:

DEAR MISS UNIATZ:

I'm terribly sorry that I shall have to break our appointment for lunch today. As you know, I am not here on a pleasure trip, and the firm I am employed by insists that I must start at once.

I'm sorry, too, that I shan't have time to help you find an apartment as I had promised; although I still think it would be the best thing for you to do. Your best plan would be to ask Camacho's Excursions about it — they are the local Cook's agents, and very useful people. I hope you'll soon be successful, because I quite see that you won't want to stay at a hotel any longer than you have to.

With more apologies, and all good wishes,

Sincerely yours,

S. Tombs.

He sealed the envelope and gave it to the boy at the desk with a silent prayer that some of its insinuations would percolate into the globe of seasoned ivory on which Mr Uniatz wore his hat — or, if they didn't, that he would ask Christine what she made of it.

"The gentleman is leaving today," Graner explained in Spanish. "Will you make out his bill and send someone up for his luggage?"

"En seguida."

Graner rode up with Simon in the elevator, which had apparently been induced to function again since the previous night. The cigar burned down evenly in the amber holder clipped between his teeth. Simon studied him inconspicuously and found it incredible that, if there was any secret jubilation going on in Reuben Graner's mind, there should be so little sign of it on his face. Besides, if Graner's suspicions had been so aroused, would he be taking the risk of going up alone to a room where he could so easily be silently and efficiently knocked over the head? Or would he have let the Saint come there at all, where he could so easily announce that he intended to stay — where Graner could do nothing to prevent him? But there was still the inexplicable failure of Hoppy Uniatz to answer the telephone… The Saint felt as if his brain was being torn apart with unanswerable questions.

They came to the door of his room, and he turned the handle and walked in — he hadn't even troubled to lock the door when he went out to put the Hirondel away the night before. And he was inside the room before he saw that Christine Vanlinden was sitting on the bed.

IV

How Simon Templar rose to the occasion,

and the Thieves' picnic got further under way

1

It was so unexpected that the Saint had no chance to do anything. He was too far into the room to draw back; and Graner was so close behind him that he knew Graner must have seen. He wondered if there was still time to pretend he had blundered into the wrong room — but then, there was his luggage. And Graner wouldn't leave it at that, anyhow, whether it was the wrong room or the right one.

Simon stared at the girl blankly.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded.

It was simply the first thing that came into his head; but the instant he had said it he knew that his instinct must have worked faster than his brain.

"I think you must have lost your way," he said coldly.

He heard the door close softly behind him, and was aware that Graner had moved up to his side. He felt something round and hard jab into his waist, and knew exactly what it was. But for the moment he pretended not to notice it.

Christine had stopped looking at him. Her eyes were fixed on Graner, and they were growing wider with terror.

"Yes, Christine." There was a catlike purr in Graner's precious accents. "You did lose your way, didn't you?"

Simon swung round on him.

"Do you know her?"

The other barely glanced at him.

"An excessively stupid question," he said drily.

"Then what's the game?" Simon shot back at him raspily. "Did you send her here?"

Graner looked at him a second time, swinging his thin little malacca cane in his left hand. His right hand bulged in the side pocket of his coat. But this time his small beady eyes didn't switch away again at once. The Saint read something in them that even Graner's self-control couldn't conceal; and at that instant he knew that nothing less than his own overworked guardian angel could have put into his head the wild inspiration on which he had acted. His unhesitating comeback had thrown Graner completely off his balance. For the first time since they had met, the other was actually at a disadvantage.

Simon drove on into the breach that his counterattack had opened up in Graner's guard.

"Is she supposed to be seeing what I've got in my luggage, or what's she doing?" he insisted furiously. "I'm telling you, Graner — there are too damn many fishy things about this job to suit me. I'll put up with a lot; but if you're not playing square with me, we're through!"

Graner's stick swung a little more jerkily.

"You have nothing to worry about," he replied harshly, as if that was intended to dismiss the subject; but the bluff lacked force, "Well, what's she doing?"

"I have no idea."

"Then how did you know she'd lost her way?"

"That is not your business."

"Then why d'you have to stick that gun in my ribs when you find her here?"

"Be quiet!"

Simon leaned one shoulder on the wall and looked down contemptuously at the gun that was still stretching Graner's pocket out of shape.

"What are you playing with it for?" he jeered. "If you want it to shut me up, you've got to use the trigger. Of course you're not at home now, so it might be a bit awkward for you."

"I'm trying to prevent you making a scene," said Graner, and his voice was not as steady as it had been. "If you will stop making so much noise, we shall be able to get this straightened out."

He turned away abruptly; and Christine Vanlinden's eyes flashed from one face to the other like the eyes of a hunted animal. Her lips were parted, and one hand was crushed against her breast as if it hurt her.

Graner began to step towards her.

"It is fortunate that we found you so soon," he said silkily. "Santa Cruz is not a good place for you to be put on your own. I trust you are ready to come home now?"

She sprang suddenly to her feet.

"No!"

"My dear Christine! You must not let yourself get hysterical. Where is Joris? Perhaps we can take him as well."

"No!" she sobbed. "I won't go back! I'm never going back. You can't take me—"

His clawlike hand made a snatch and caught her wrist.

"Perhaps you have Joris' ticket?" he snarled.

She shrank back until the wall stopped her, staring at him as if she had been hypnotised by a snake, with the breath labouring in her throat. And at that moment there was a knock on the door.

Involuntarily her eyes turned towards the sound. Simon saw her take a quick breath that could have only one purpose, and flung himself off the wall against which he had been lounging as if a spring had been released behind him.

In three strides he was across the room and between Graner and the girl. He clapped one hand over her mouth and spun her round. His other arm whipped round her waist and lifted her off her feet. The bathroom door was ajar, and he moved on towards it almost without a check.

"Tell 'em to come back presently," he snapped over his shoulder.

In another second he was inside the bathroom and kicking the door shut behind him.

He still held the girl, but the feel of her slim young body under his arm pressed against him fought a duel with his resolution that she could never have been aware of. He bent his head so that his lips touched her ear, and the smell of her hair filled his nostrils.

"For heaven's sake don't give me away!" he whispered. "This is a gag — d'you understand?"

He had no idea how much she understood or believed, but he had no chance to say more. He heard the closing of the outer door of the room, and a moment later the bathroom door opened.

"All right," said Graner.

Simon carried the girl out and let her go. He straightened his coat and opened his cigarette case.

"Now, Graner," he said, "we'll hear from you."

Graner looked at him unblinkingly. His right hand still rested in his jacket pocket, but the Saint's keyed-up senses registered every fraction of the change in his manner. The man was still intrinsically the same, but for the time being, at any rate, he had been bluffed over one point in the game. The Saint's trick of hitting back at a catastrophe with a riposte of such incredible audacity that his opponent could never make himself believe that it was nothing but the last desperate resource of a cornered man had worked for the latest of countless similar occasions in his life; even if it really provided no more than a spidery tightrope on which the abyss had still to be crossed. But it had worked; and his swift, decisive action in silencing the girl must have driven it home.

"There is nothing more to say," Graner rapped at him. "We shall take the young lady back with us — that is all."

"Why?"

"I thought we settled that last night," answered Graner stonily. "While you're working for me you will obey all my orders — without argument."

The Saint smiled at him.

"And suppose I don't?"

Graner's hand came out of his pocket.

Simon gazed at the gun with blue eyes full of mockery. He flicked his lighter and held the flame placidly under the end of his cigarette.

"I thought we'd arranged all that," he murmured. "But if you want to go over it again I suppose I can't stop you." He sauntered over to the bed, where he lay down and settled himself comfortably. "If I fix myself like this I shan't hurt myself when I fall down," he explained. "Oh, and there's just one other thing. Before you let off that little popgun and fetch all the hotel in, you must tell me the name of your tailor. I couldn't bear to die without knowing that."

Graner stared down at him without expression.

"You're being ridiculous."

"I was born that way," said the Saint regretfully.

"If you intend to go on like this," Graner said curtly, "we had better consider our arrangement at an end."

The Saint closed his eyes.

"Okay, Reuben. But leave the damsel here when you go out. I could use her."

Graner put the gun back in his pocket. The yellow cane twirled between his fingers for a few seconds' deathly silence. His eyes glistened like moist marbles behind the lenses of his spectacles.

"I am not accustomed to answering impertinent questions," he said grittily, "but on this occasion I will make an exception to save unnecessary trouble. I told you last night that your predecessor had been foolish. I might have explained that the others had been unsuccessful in bringing him back. He still has some property of ours, and we are still looking for him. This girl is his daughter, and she may help us to find him. That is the whole explanation."

"Yeah?" drawled the Saint. "And how much is this ticket worth?"

A new silence blanketed the room, so complete that with his hands clasped behind his head the Saint could hear the ticking of his watch, at the same time as he could hear the girl breathing and the faint rustle of Graner's fingers sliding over his cane. Simon lay still and let the silence spread itself around and have its fun. He might have been asleep.

"What ticket?"

Graner's voice jarred gratingly into the quiet; and Simon opened one eye at him.

"I don't know. But you mentioned it just now."

"That is quite a different matter. It really has nothing to do with what I was telling you."

"It seemed to be pretty important when Lauber was talking about it last night!"

The silence fell back again, almost substantial in its intenseness, as though the room were filled with some deadening material through which a few slight and insignificant sounds penetrated from a great distance. And then, as if to give the lie to the illusion, it was horribly shattered — not by any noise from inside the room, but by the ear-piercing shriek of the locomotive which runs through Santa Cruz between the quarries and the mole, dragging rocks to a breakwater that never gets any nearer to completion.

"In a way that is true." Graner's delayed response cut into a momentary hiatus in the din. "When he ran away, Joris also took with him a lottery ticket which we had all subscribed to buy—"

"That's a lie!"

Christine flung the accusation at him while he was still speaking; and Graner's gaze turned to her with an icy malignance.

"My dear girl—"

The locomotive, coming nearer, let out another eldritch screech which might have come from a soul in torment that was being tormented conveniently close to a powerful microphone. The Saint covered his ears.

Graner was saying: "The ticket won quite a small prize, but naturally we had no wish to lose it—"

"He's lying—"

"My dear Christine, I should advise you to be more careful of your tongue—"

"He's lying, he's lying!" The girl was shaking Simon's shoulder. "You mustn't believe him. It won the first prize — it won fifteen million pesetas—"

The engine seemed to be almost under the window; and the engineer, warming to his work, was letting out a series of toots with scarcely a second between them. If the makers of the whistle had set out to create a synthetic reproduction of the nerve racking squeak of a knife blade on a plate amplified fifty thousand times, they couldn't have succeeded more brilliantly. It was a screaming, torturing, agonising, indescribably fiendish cacophony that seemed to tear the flesh and drive stabbing needles through the eardrums. Perhaps it was just loud enough to attract the attention of a Canary Islander and induce him to move out of the way.

"Don't all talk at once," said the Saint. "I can't hear the music."

"He's lying!" Christine's voice was broken and incoherent. "Oh God — can't you see it? He'd lie to anybody!"

The Saint opened both eyes.

"Are you lying, Graner?" he asked quietly.

"The exact amount of the prize isn't material—"

"In other words, you are lying."

Graner licked his lips.

"Certainly not. Why should I be? I should think it was more obvious that this girl is lying to try and win your sympathy."

Simon sat up. The locomotive was puffing away down the mole, its ear-splitting squeals growing mercifully fainter as they receded into the distance.

"I'll tell you what I think," he said. "I heard on the boat coming down here that the Christmas lottery had been won in Tenerife, and when I was knocking about the town yesterday somebody told me that no one had been able to find out who had got it. That makes Christine's story sound more likely than yours — not to mention that I can't see why everybody should be in such a stew about this ticket if it wasn't worth much. In this room, about the first thing you wanted to ask her was where the ticket was. You didn't seem half so excited about the stones that this predecessor of mine is supposed to have knocked off. Lauber wasn't worried about them, either — all he was talking about last night was the ticket. And the others must have been pretty worked up about it, too, or he wouldn't have been talking about it to them in that tone of voice. In fact, you want to tell me that this ticket that everybody's turning handsprings about is really just chicken feed. Which just smells like good ripe sausage to me. So that makes you a part of a liar, anyway."

Graner stared at him malevolently, but there was no answer that he could make. The Saint's relentless logic had nailed him up in a corner from which there simply wasn't a back exit. And Simon Templar knew it.

"Well?"

The Saint's crisp monosyllable drove in another nail that made Graner's head jerk back.

"I may have minimised the value of the ticket a little—"

"Or in plain language, you're just a God-damn liar! So now we know where we are. That's the first point… Point two: this predecessor of mine — what did you call him — Joris? — this guy Joris has got the ticket. I can believe that, from the way all of you have been behaving. And it doesn't seem to matter very much to me who it originally belonged to. Having once been pinched, it becomes anybody's boodle; because somebody's got to pinch it back before they can get any profit out of it. That's what you and your precious gang were trying to do. And you were trying to cut me out!"

2

Graner's hand went to his breast pocket and took out his perfumed handkerchief.

"You didn't contribute to buying the ticket."

"I haven't seen any proof yet that you did, either," retorted the Saint. "But I've told you that that isn't the point. That ticket is out on the loose now, and you'd have a job to prove that it didn't belong to anybody who'd got it. The point is that you and your boys are looking for it, and you wanted to save my share."

"It has no connection with your work."

"Nor has opening safes. But Felson told me I came in for a share of everything you did, and I want to know why you were being so smart and cagey about this."

It was a shot in the dark that Simon had to take, although it was a fairly safe one. And it didn't make Graner blink.

"This is something that happened before you joined us," he said.

"But getting hold of the ticket again isn't," said the Saint. "It hasn't happened yet."

Graner went up and down on his toes. The vicious lines around his mouth had deepened; and if his eyes had possessed any lethal power the Saint would have been burned to a cinder by that time.

"In due course," he said, "the subject would probably have been mentioned—"

"Oh, Reuben darling!"

Graner made a brusque gesture.

"It was my idea to do so," he said, "but the others objected."

"I thought all your orders had to be obeyed without question."

"This was a matter of policy, not of organisation."

"So you let them talk you round."

"I had to admit that there seemed to be justice in their arguments—"

"I'll bet that wasn't difficult for you." The Saint rolled over on his elbow to douse his cigarette in an ash tray; and then his relentless blue eyes went back to the other's face. "So once again we know where we stand. You've already given up pretending you aren't a liar. Now you're going to give up pretending you aren't a cheap double-crossing skunk as well."

A dark flush appeared in Graner's sunken cheeks. He took a step towards the bed, and the stick moved in his hand.

Simon watched him without batting an eyelid.

"If you hit me again," he said gently, "I can assure you it'll hurt you more than it hurts me,"

Their stares crossed like swords. Graner's face was twisted with rage, but the Saint was smiling. It was only the shadow of a smile, but it matched the reckless, derision in his eyes.

It did something more. It gave vent to the chortle of delirious ecstasy that was swelling up inside him until his ribs ached with the strain of keeping it under control. He had to use half his muscles to keep himself from laughing in Graner's face. The tables had been turned in a way that thousands of spiritualists would have given their back teeth to achieve, if they had any back teeth. The Saint had bluffed on an empty hand against an opponent who, he knew, held at least three aces; and he was scooping the kitty away from under Graner's long nose. In fifteen or twenty minutes he had slammed Reuben Graner down from dominating the situation to trying feebly to make excuses. The unpredictable suddenness and violence of his attack had swept the other off his feet in the first exchanges, and since then the Saint hadn't let up for an instant. His voice went on, stabbing in blow after blow with the crackling precision of a machine gun, never giving Graner a second's pause in which to recover his wind.

"You thought you saw your chance to cut me out of my share of fifteen million pesetas, and you grabbed at it. That's the truth, isn't it? And that's my introduction to the privileges of joining up with your lousy outfit. I'm supposed to take that home with me and put it in the bank. You couldn't have thought up anything better, Reuben. So next time it's a matter of splitting up any boodle I'll just have to tell myself I don't have to worry. Reuben's a good guy. He's always been a square shooter. He proved it the first day I was with him. I don't have anything more to worry about. Like hell I don't!"

The flush washed itself slowly out of Graner's cheeks and left them pasty. The hand with the stick in it sank down to his side, and his weight settled down on his heels.

He cleared his throat.

"You may have some justification," he said thickly. "But I've told you — I protested about it, and I was overruled. The others have been with me for a good many years, and naturally they have some influence—"

"That's still a lie," said the Saint dispassionately. "But we've already dealt with that. The question you've got to answer is — where do we go from here?"

"Naturally I shall take it up with the others as soon as we get back to the house—"

"And naturally you'll cook up a few more fairy tales as soon as you get the chance. Let's have some more truth before you lose the habit again. Where is this Joris guy?"

"I have no idea."

"Well, what are your ideas?"

"I fail to see—"

"Give your gig lamps a wipe over. Are we through or are we not?"

Graner's stick rattled on the floor, beating a nervous tattoo on the tiles.

"I am beginning to think that that would be the best solution."

"Just as you like." The Saint stood up. "I've told you what I think about that. The door's behind you, and nobody's holding you back. But this girl stays here. If there's a fifteen-million-peseta lottery ticket knocking around Santa Cruz, and she's one of the clues, I'll keep her. I saw her first, anyway… And you can take that hand out of your pocket again. If you emptied two of those little toys into me I'd still wring your skinny neck before I went out."

Graner's finger was itching on the trigger, and Simon Templar had no illusions about it. But his poise didn't waver by so much as a fraction of an inch. He simply stood there, his hands on his hips and his shoulders lined wide and sinewy against the murky sky outside the window, looking down at Graner with careless, unimpressed blue eyes and that shadow of a sardonic smile on his lips. He knew exactly the strength of the new hand he had dealt himself, and he was ready to take a few chances to make it better while the cards were running his way.

"I don't want to do anything like that," Graner said at last. "If you are prepared to let me put this misunderstanding right—"

"I see." Simon's answer came back like a gunshot. "So you've got some good reason for wanting to keep me if you can."

"If you think you are indispensable—"

"If I wasn't something like that, why didn't you shoot me ten minutes ago?"

"Naturally I want you, if it can be arranged. That is why you were sent for."

"And why was that so urgent?"

The glimpse of an outlet did just what the Saint meant it to do. It made Graner grab for it like a fish going for a baited hook.

"That is easier to answer. As you know, Felson and another of my men, Holby, are in Madrid on business. The wife of the American ambassador there has some jewels which we have been interested in for some time. If everything goes according to plan, my men will be arriving here with them on Sunday, when, of course, we shall need you."

The Saint drew a deep silent breath. So a few more things were being explained. It was like scratching bits of gold out of a rock seam with a toothpick, but all the time he was getting somewhere. He thought about that for a moment, and stopped thinking again. The thoughts he had made him feel a trifle lightheaded. First a fifteen-million-peseta lottery ticket. Then Graner's amazing collection of stolen jewels. Then the jewels of the wife of the American ambassador in Madrid, just for good measure — although the last he had seen of Messrs Felson and Holby made their arrival as per schedule seem rather less probable than Graner fondly believed. But the sum total of what he was adding up began to make it seem as if he had butted into a thieves' picnic that made Ali Baba and his forty stooges look like so many scroungers in abandoned ash cans.

He lighted another cigarette and sat down again.

"That's a start, anyway," he murmured. "Let's keep the ball rolling. Give me the rest of the dope about this guy Joris and the lottery ticket — and give it me straight this time."

Graner laid his cane down on the dressing table and took out his cigar case. He fitted a fresh cigar into his amber holder. Simon knew that he was playing for a breathing spell, weighing one thing against another; and this time he let Graner work it out his own way. He knew that it could have only one result.

"If it will help to rectify your unfortunate impression of our methods," Graner said, "it may be best to be candid with you. I do not know where Joris is. He escaped from the house last night, taking his daughter and the lottery ticket. We discovered their absence soon afterwards, and Lauber and Palermo and Aliston went after them to bring them back. They would probably have been able to do this if some confederates of Joris, whom we knew nothing about, had not arrived in the nick of time and interfered. Joris and his accomplices escaped, but Palermo took a note of the car in which they went off, which was quite conspicuous. As soon as they reported to me, I sent my chauffeur, Manoel, to search Santa Cruz for the car. He found it outside this hotel, but he had a breakdown on his way back and did not arrive until after you had gone to bed. It was then too late to do anything; but first thing this morning I sent Palermo and Aliston down here to do what they could. They telephoned me that they had discovered that Joris and some other man, probably this confederate of his, had stayed at the hotel the night before, but they had left very early in the morning without leaving any address. That is as much as any of us know."

Simon leaned back and trickled puffs of smoke towards the ceiling, sorting the story out in his mind. Certainly it explained the car which had arrived at the house when he was undressing. Also it explained the absence of Aliston and Palermo at breakfast time. And in a way it explained what he had heard of Graner's telephone conversation at breakfast, as well as the interruption that had intervened in time to save the Saint from having to demonstrate his skill as a diamond cutter, and Graner's agitation when he returned to the workroom. All of those things fitted in very nicely and neatly.

But at the same time it let loose a cataract of new questions. It didn't explain why Graner's gang hadn't found Hoppy and Joris, once they had got that far. It didn't explain why Hoppy Uniatz hadn't answered the telephone a little more than half an hour ago. It reaped one crop of enigmas, and left whole rows of freshly germinating riddles sprouting up behind it that made the Saint feel as if his universe had been turned upside down.

His eyes raked Graner like rapiers from under lazily drooping lids, skinned him alive and turned his soul inside out. But for the first time he was convinced that Graner was telling the truth as far as he knew it. He couldn't have invented a new fairy tale like that, on the spur of the moment, that matched so flawlessly with all the circumstances — or if he could, he was an immortal genius to whom the Saint was prepared to erect an altar. Graner couldn't have been bluffing. It wasn't humanly plausible. After the treading out he had just undergone, he couldn't have revived with such supernatural speed. The fight had been licked out of him as effectively as if the Saint had been using his solar plexus for a punching bag ever since they started talking. Later on, yes, given even half an hour in which to pull himself together and iron the knots out of his crafty and vindictive brain — yes, then, by all means, he could be reckoned as crooked and slippery as ever, if not more so. The Saint had no illusions about that. The settling of accounts between them hadn't even started. But Graner wasn't in any condition to start faking the audit there and then. Simon was ready to gamble his life on it.

Therefore there must have been some other auxiliary explanation. And there was only one such explanation that came into the Saint's head. It came flying out of the great voids of space like a comet, crashing resistless through all the narrow mathematical orbits of logic, dazzling him with a sudden blaze of light that exploded like a bomb in the darkness through which he had been trying to grope his way. And yet it was so paralysingly simple that he could have gaped at himself for not having seen it before.

If Graner wasn't lying, there was only one possible inference. Somebody else was.

3

Simon Templar sat and gasped inaudibly at his own genius. It must have deserved the name, for the intuitive deduction had cut straight through his conscious reasoning. Afterwards his brain had to catch up with it, plodding laboriously over the steps that inspiration had taken in its winged stride. But every step was there, and no deliberate testing he could think of would shake them. The whole solution was one solid and articulated structure, fitting all the foundations of known fact and spanning all the gaps that had puzzled him so irritatingly before.

The cigarette smouldered down between his fingers while his mind raced on from there.

He knew that Aliston and Palermo had taken Hoppy and Joris. It was the one link that made everything else fit together. How it had been done remained to be discovered, though he could make a few guesses. But he knew that that was what had happened. He knew it as surely as he knew that Lauber had got the ticket.

That was how it had all started. The idea must have come into Lauber's head first, when he awakened in the car on the way back to the house with his brain hazy from the aftereffects of Mr Uniatz' treatment. Lauber would have made the natural efforts of a man recovering consciousness to reconstruct the events which had led up to the black-out. There had been a fight, he would remember, and somebody had hit him over the head. What had happened to the others? Of course, they had already been incapacitated. They had been fighting the intruders while he was still dealing with Joris… He had been searching Joris' pockets, looking for a ticket… He'd found the ticket, hadn't he?… Well, what else had happened? The others would tell him what had happened, and Lauber would have pieced the fragmentary accounts together. But he'd got the ticket, hadn't he? He would have felt in his pocket. Yes, it was there… And at that moment the brilliant idea had probably dawned on him. He'd got the ticket, but none of the others knew he'd got it. They'd been too busy fighting. And the fight had ended with the intruders getting away with Joris and Christine. Why shouldn't they have got away with the ticket as well? The argument must have carried Lauber away on the instant with its surpassing simplicity. All he had to do was to let the others go on believing that Joris still had the ticket — and when his head had stopped aching enough for him to pick a suitable opportunity, he, Lauber, could slide off into the wide world with two million dollars that he didn't have to share with anybody.

It was all so transparent that the Saint could analyse Lauber's mental processes as accurately as if they had been printed on the wall in front of his eyes. And it was proved — proved up to the hilt by the announcement he had heard Lauber making which had almost knocked him off his feet as he entered Graner's house the night before.

Only that the others hadn't been quite so credulous as Lauber had expected. Lauber's statement had clearly come in the middle of an argument in which he was being accused of double-crossing, and it was probably the same argument that had gone on far into the night. In the end, Lauber must somehow have managed to get himself acquitted for the time being; otherwise it was doubtful whether he would have been taking breakfast. Almost certainly he would have been searched, but certainly he would have contrived to hide the ticket by that time, which would have gone some way towards blocking a definite verdict against him. So for a while he had at least managed to get himself left alone, although his conscience might be making him feel less confident about choosing a moment for his getaway than he had anticipated.

But the idea he had started hadn't finished there. The seed must have taken root in either Palermo's or Aliston's imagination; and on the way down to the town that morning one of them would have made a proposition. If there was going to be any double-crossing, they might as well look after themselves. Joris was still a key man in the situation, wherever the lottery ticket was. If they found him, why should they be in a hurry to share him out before they knew how the rest of the deal was going? There was still time to locate the ticket, whether or not they had been wrong about Lauber — and in any case a fifty-fifty division was twice as good as a four-way split…

The Saint's glow of delight deepened as the colours and details developed in the picture. When he had inwardly labelled the party a thieves' picnic a few moments ago he hadn't realised what a perfect summary of the situation it was.

"In that case, I suppose Joris and his pal have gone off to cash the ticket," he said, principally because he felt that he had to say something after all that time.

"If they have done that, they will have been intercepted," answered Graner. "I have had one of my servants posted outside the shop where the ticket was bought ever since it opened this morning. The ticket cannot be cashed anywhere else."

And the gorgeous complications of the tangle went on tracing their fantastic convolutions in the Saint's mind.

Lauber knew where the ticket was; but he didn't know what had happened to Joris and Christine, and he knew that for the present it certainly wasn't safe for him to try and cash it. Palermo and Aliston knew where Joris was; but they didn't know what had happened to the ticket or to Christine. Graner knew where Christine was, and he might hope to find something out from her; but he didn't know yet what had happened to Joris and the ticket. Every one of them held some of the cards, and every one of them was completely in the dark about the others. And presumably every one of them was prepared to cut anybody else's throat to fill his own hand or keep what he already held. The intrusion of that two-million-dollar scrap of paper had blown the esprit de corps of the gang to smithereens and opened up the way for what must have been one of the wildest and most unscrupulous free-for-all, dog-eat-dog dissensions that the history of crime could ever have known…

"Your servant doesn't know what this pal of Joris' looks like," Simon pointed out. "Or does he?"

Graner's slit of a mouth almost smiled.

"He would scarcely need to. If anyone presented that ticket for payment, the whole street would know about it."

Not, Simon was reflecting, that he had too much to crow about himself. He held tantalising portions of all the cards, and didn't have a single complete one to himself. He knew that Lauber had got the ticket, but he didn't know where; he knew that Palermo and Aliston had got Joris and Hoppy, but he didn't know what they had done with them; he knew that Christine was there beside him, but he knew that Graner was just as much there. And within something like the next ten seconds he had got to plan out a definite campaign sequence that would take in all those points."

"Joris won't be there, and you know it," said Christine. "Because he hasn't got the ticket."

"You mean you have it?" Graner said slowly.

"Neither of us has got it, I told you. It was st—"

"Wait a minute," interrupted the Saint. "Let's take this in order. What did happen last night?"

She looked at him sullenly.

"You ought to know."

"Not me, darling," said the Saint easily. "I'm a new recruit. I wasn't in that party."

"Who were these other two men who interfered?" said Graner.

She didn't answer at once, and Graner turned to the Saint.

"We're wasting time here," he snapped. "The car's outside — we had better take her back to the house at once. When we get there we shall be able to make her answer questions."

"Try and take me there," she said.

She had had time to recover from her first terror, and the hard jaunty pose of which Simon had seen a glimpse the night before was beginning to cover her again. It was as if a brittle shell formed over her that shut out all the other side of her nature which he had seen when she wept over Joris. She seemed to gather herself together with an effort to shake off the spell of Graner's pitiless beady eyes. Suddenly she took a step away from the wall, and Graner's hand shot out and caught her wrist.

"If you try to stop me," she said steadily, "I'll make enough noise to bring everyone in the hotel up here."

Graner glanced at the Saint. Simon knew exactly what the glance was intended to convey. He had demonstrated his resourcefulness in a similar situation before, and it was his cue to repeat the performance. But just as he had known what he was doing then, he knew what he was doing now.

He got up off the bed; but it was Graner's wrist that he took hold of, closing his fingers on it in a ring of steel that numbed the nerves and sinews. He laid the flat of his hand on Graner's face and pushed him back against the door.

"You mind your own business, Reuben," he said paternally.

He had turned round with the movement so that his back was towards Christine, and as he spoke his left eyelid drooped in a broad wink.

"And I'll have your gun — in case you're still feeling nasty," he added.

He took the weapon out of Graner's pocket and transferred it to his own, and as he did so he glared at him warningly and winked again. Graner stared back at him without a change in the venomous glitter of his eyes, but the Saint took no notice. He locked the door and took out the key and gave it to Christine.

"Listen," he said. "You've got nothing to worry about. This punk won't lay a hand on you again while I'm around. We'll peel him off the door and let you out any time you want to go. But I wish you'd stop and talk for a few minutes more. I'm just working round to a proposition that might interest you." She hesitated. The Saint's back was towards Graner now, and he gave Christine the same encouraging wink and pushed her gently towards the bed.

"Sit down and have a drink," he said. "You look as if you needed one. And just let me talk for three minutes. You can still scream your head off if anyone tries to stop you going out after that."

"You can't say anything that I want to listen to."

"Don't be too sure, darling. I have beautiful ideas sometimes."

He left her and went across the room to rummage in one of his suitcases. It yielded a bottle of whiskey — and something which no one else saw him pick up.

"It's like this," said the Saint, as he poured out three glasses. "You say you've lost your lottery ticket. Well, things like that do happen. People lose jewelry, and so forth. They don't often lose two million bucks' worth at one go, but that doesn't alter the general principle. When they lose something and they want it back, they mostly offer a reward."

"They don't offer a reward to the thieves who stole it.'

"Even that has been known to happen."

The Saint squirted soda into the glasses and picked up two of them. He carried one of them over to Graner, and as he gave it to him he winked again. He handed the other to Christine. Then he went back to the table and picked up his own.

"In any case," he resumed, "the question doesn't arise. I didn't steal your ticket — if I'd got it, I shouldn't be messing around here. Surely you're not going to say that if I got it back for you I shouldn't be entitled to a commission?"

She took another drink from her glass, watching him rather perplexedly.

"Now if you've been listening to my recent chat with Reuben," Simon went on, "you'll have gathered that he hasn't been playing ball with me. So if he's ready to double-cross me, I'm quite ready to do some double-crossing on my own. From what I've made out, there are Reuben and three other guys up at the house waiting for a split in this ticket. Then there are a couple more in Madrid who'll probably expect to be cut in. And at least a couple of minor thugs who may be worth one share between them. So the best I can hope for is to come in for an eighth, even if they don't try to gyp me out of that. And you don't get anything."

He moved a little towards her. She drank again, and leaned her head back against the end of the bed. Once or twice her eyes closed, and she seemed to make an effort to open them.

"You're a nice kid, Christine, and I wouldn't mind doing something for you — if it doesn't cost me anything. From what I hear, there are only three other people in your outfit: Joris and his two pals. Well, if you cut me in there, including yourself, I'd be due for a fifth, which looks a whole lot better to me. If that looks like a proposition to you, you just say the word and I'll wring this bum Graner's neck…"

The girl's head slid suddenly sideways, and Simon Caught the glass from her hand before it fell.

He put it on the table and eased her gently down until she was lying on the bed. She lay there limp and relaxed, breathing evenly and peacefully, with her eyes closed, as if she were in a natural sleep. Simon studied her for a few moments; and then he turned round to Graner with a flash of triumph in his eyes.

"What you've been needing in your outfit all along, Reuben," he said kindly, "is a little less melodrama and a lot more of my brains."

V

How Reuben Graner took back his gun,

and a taxi driver was unconvinced

1

Reuben Graner stepped delicately up to the bed and gazed down at the girl for a while without expression, tapping his mouth with the chased gold knob of his cane.

Presently he looked at the Saint.

"Yes, that was good," he said complacently. "Otherwise we might have had some trouble."

He reached over for the telephone.

"What d'you think you're doing now?" asked the Saint.

"Sending for the others to come down and fetch her."

Simon stretched out a long arm and put his finger on the hook.

"Ixnay," he said succinctly. "D'you still want to turn the hotel upside down, or are you just daft?"

"There will be no excitement," said Graner, "When I sent Palermo and Aliston down this morning, they had two large trunks to carry the luggage they expected to bring back. They can bring one of the trunks down again. You have told the hotel you are leaving, and one extra trunk will not disturb them unduly."

So that was how it had been done, Simon reflected. He had been wondering about that point — it was hardly conceivable that two unconscious men could have been dragged out of the Hotel Orotava into the main square of Santa Cruz in broad daylight without starting a train of gossip that Palermo and Aliston would have been the last to desire. He didn't know about Joris, but he would have bet that Hoppy Uniatz would never have gone out on his own feet. Graner's explanation had cleared up another minor mystery.

The Saint kept his satisfaction to himself. He took the telephone out of Graner's hand and hung it up again.

"As I was saying," he remarked, "you still need a lot more of my brains."

Graner's stony eyes settled on his face.

"Why?"

"What d'you think would happen if you took her back to the house?"

"She would be persuaded to tell us what she knew."

"That's what you think."

"I can assure you there would be no question about that," Graner said significantly.

Simon's gaze dissected him contemptuously.

"If I'm right about what you're thinking," he said, "you can forget it again. That's something I don't stand for. But in any case you're talking like a fool as well as a louse. Did you ever invent any way of proving whether anyone was telling the truth when they were being what you call persuaded?"

"It would be proved eventually."

"Now you're talking like a spick, on top of everything else. Why wait for 'eventually' — whenever that is? Hasn't it occurred to you that Joris wouldn't have ditched his daughter here? If there's anything in this party that looks certain to me, it's that Joris will get in touch with her again, sooner or later. Maybe he'd have done it already if he hadn't seen your car outside."

Graner's face hardened with concentration. The thoughts that were going on under the mask were unreadable, but the Saint didn't need to read them. He could make a pretty good guess about Graner's next reaction; and he was perfectly right.

"There is something in what you say. Perhaps it would be better to leave her here for the present. I will tell Palermo to come down and watch her, and we can go back to the house."

He reached out again for the telephone; but the Saint laughed amicably and put his arm aside.

"Not so quickly, Reuben," he murmured. "You seem to have forgotten that you and I still have a few things to settle."

Graner's stare fastened rigidly on him again. The Saint felt it without looking up to meet it. He was engaged in tapping a cigarette on his thumbnail.

"I thought they had been settled," Graner said at length.

"By your admitting that you've been double-crossing me?"

"That will be put right as soon as we get back to the house."

"With somebody else's gun, or have you got another one of your own?"

"Obviously we must have some confidence in each other."

"And a hell of a lot of confidence you've given me for a start!"

The Saint's blue eyes switched suddenly back to Graner's face, very clear and cool and disparaging. This was the crucial moment of the plan of compaign which the urgent necessity of the moment had whipped out of his brain, the reason why he had induced Christine to take that expertly doctored drink, the only reason which had deprived him of the more elementally attractive solution of hitting Reuben Graner smartly on the nose and taking Christine away with an open declaration of war.

Half-a-dozen other solutions had whirled through his brain in the few seconds that he had been able to allow himself to think, and he had discarded all of them. Christine remained the one snag that had to be overcome. If he had proposed to take her up to the house when she was conscious, her reaction against him would probably have given him away. If she were taken up to the house at all, and she had to answer any questions there, her answers would probably give him away in any case. And finally, to clinch the matter, the Saint had no intention of throwing her on the mercy of Graner's gang on any account; if Graner once had them both shut up together in that fortress of a house, the situation would take quite a different angle — Simon had a cold-blooded conviction about that. And yet he had to find a way of assuring Christine's safety and his own, without putting his own cards on the table. For if he did that, he was cut off irrevocably from any direct contact with Aliston and Palermo, who knew where Joris and Hoppy were, and Lauber, who knew what had become of the ticket. It was like walking a mental tightrope with a fatal drop waiting on either side; but the Saint had to find his way across.

He put the cigarette in his mouth and struck his lighter without shifting his gaze.

"This girl is my insurance policy," he said. "So long as I've got her, you've got to shoot square with me. And if you are shooting square, you don't have to be in such a damn hurry to get me locked up again in your house."

"But if she is going to be questioned—"

"I've told you — she isn't. But she'll talk of her own accord, which is worth twice as much."

Graner went on watching him.

"Why should she?"

"Take a look at me. And then look in the mirror." The Saint smoothed his dark hair. "There's no comparison, Reuben, though I says it myself. Maybe a blind man would open his heart to you, but nobody else would. And much the same thing goes for those other beauties you've got at home. Besides which, she knows you all too well. But don't you see what I've done?"

Graner made no answer, which Simon wasn't expecting of him anyway. The Saint went on, in the same calm, confident tone: "When I put her to sleep I was talking about double-crossing you and joining up with her party. When she wakes up I can go on with the same line. I can tell her I put her to sleep just to get a chance to talk to you. In fact, I can tell her everything we've said — with the explanation that all my side of it was just a fairy tale to keep you happy and get you out of here."

The words came from the Saint's lips without the waver of an inflection, without a falter, without a flicker of doubt in the level candour of his gaze. And all the time he was holding on to himself with both hands and feeling his heart leaping up and down just behind his tonsils. He had bluffed as much as any living man in his time; but he was inclined to doubt whether he had ever in his career of hairbreadth adventure gambled on such a magnificent impudence as that. Even the bluff with which he had used Christine's presence in his room to turn the tables on Graner in the first place paled beside it.

And yet he knew that it must work again, simply because Graner or anybody else couldn't have helped being convinced that a man who was afraid of that suspicion could never have found the nerve to bring it out before anyone else had evolved it. Things like that simply didn't happen — they were outside the limit of human psychology and human insolence. What the Saint's opponents could never realise was that the Saint himself was just as far outside those rules and limitations. He was the one adventurer of his age to whom no audacity was too fantastic; and nine times out of ten his audacities went unchallenged because no one with a less daring imagination could credit them.

Graner said, quite mildly: "All the same, we don't know that you might not be tempted if she did agree to the proposition you were making."

"You know it for any amount of reasons. What's the difference between a fifth of two million dollars and an eighth? A hundred and fifty thousand. Well, you showed me the inside of your safe. If that's the scale you do business on, would I be mug enough to throw in my share of your prospects for a hundred and fifty thousand? How far should I get on my own, without anyone to help me? I don't know the town and I don't know the people and I don't speak the language. And how should I get away with it if I did double-cross you? There's only one way out of Tenerife as far as I know — that harbour down there. And am I sap enough to think that I'd ever get on board a boat if I'd double-crossed you and your outfit was looking for me?"

Graner inspected the end of his cigar — it was burning a trifle unevenly, and he moistened the tip of one finger to damp the part that was burning too fast.

"I'm on the level with you," said the Saint, "and I'm ready to stay that way, because I know you've got more to offer than a share in a lottery ticket.

But after the way you've started, I want to be sure that you're on the level with me before I take any more chances. If this turns out all right, we'll call it quits and keep going. All of which is aside from the fact that I can get a hell of a lot more out of this girl by making love to her and kidding her that I'm on her side than you ever will with your ideas of persuading… Anyway, that's the deal I'm offering; and if you don't like it you can have the key and walk out just as soon as it suits you."

Outside the window, the locomotive announced its return journey with a fresh outburst of hideous brain-searing shrieks. An unsilenced motorcycle crackled and spluttered like an inexhaustible machine gun while its rider howled his greetings to some friends two blocks away, who howled back with no less enthusiasm at him. A couple of ancient buses groaned through the square with a noise like a thousand tin cans being rattled together in a riveting yard. About forty taxis sustained an intermittent blasting on their peculiarly obnoxious horns. A tram ground and thundered up the slope, ringing a bell continuously. A knife grinder blew his mournful whistle. A donkey threw up its head and let out its sobbing asthmatic song. Apart from those echoes of the Elysian tranquillity of Santa Cruz, there was absolute silence in the room for some time.

Simon didn't try to hurry the decision. Actually, there was only one way it could possibly be made. But what really mattered was the atmosphere.

Graner looked at him again.

"If you still want to be satisfied about me, I take it that you would have no objection to satisfying me about yourself."

"How?"

"By letting me look after your passport."

Without a second's hesitation, the Saint took it out of his pocket. It was a perfectly good passport, and it was made out in the name of Sebastian Tombs.

Graner glanced at it and placed it carefuly in his wallet. The possession of it made a subtle difference to his manner; and the Saint knew that for that moment at any rate Graner was convinced. The immortal gorgeousness of the reversal made his ribs ache. It must have been years since anyone had stood up to Graner like that, since anyone had taken him apart and flattened him out with such sublime completeness; and when Simon thought about how he had done it he wanted to roll on the bed in a rapture of cosmic mirth that was too deep and soul-shaking for ordinary laughter. But he didn't. Instead, he crowned the peak of his inspiration with the last and most superb audacity of all.

He produced Graner's automatic and held it carelessly out to him, butt foremost.

"You'd better have this too," he said gravely.

It was the climax. The man who could have remained unimpressed by a gesture like that would have been superhuman. It left Graner stripped of every other argument.

Graner put the gun away and picked up his cane. He looked down at Christine again for another moment.

"How long will that keep her quiet?"

"I gave her enough for about half an hour." Simon took the key and unlocked the door. "You'd better be on your way."

He accompanied Graner down the stairs. There was still the hall to be passed, and the wavy-haired boy who might smash everything again with two or three words; and the Saint sent up a silent prayer as they descended the last flight.

As his foot came off the last step he said: "Directly anything breaks, I'll call you. Is your phone number in the directory?"

"Yes."

"And if you or any of the boys think of anything brilliant, you'll find me here." The Saint's lazy stride was deceptive: it covered the distance between the stairway and the door without the waste of a second, although to him it seemed much too slow. "In any case, we'll keep in touch."

"Yes." Graner checked at the door. "By the way, what about your room?"

"I'll tell them I'm staying — there is somebody here who speaks English." Simon took his arm and pressed him on. "The point is that you've got to get your car out of the way before it puts the wind up Joris and his pals — if it hasn't done that already."

From the front entrance there was a flight of steps down to the street. The Saint stood at the top of the flight and watched Graner all the way down before his breathing really became normal again.

2

He turned and went back into the hotel with the humour dancing again in his eyes. And yet he wasn't letting himself be led astray by a single overoptimistic delusion. He had only taken the first round, and there were a hell of a lot still to go. But the joy was to be in the fight, to be playing a lone hand in the most dangerous game in the world, the game which meant more to him than his own life.

He went up to the desk and buttonholed the wavy-haired boy.

"I am not leaving today," he said in fluent Spanish. "So you need not worry about making out that bill… There is something else. It is possible that somebody may be making enquiries about me here. If they aren't enquiring about me, they may be enquiring about the lady for whom I took the room next to me last night."

"Si, señor. I will tell them."

"That's just what you won't do. If anybody starts asking any questions, you'll remember that I have nothing to do with the lady next door. I don't know, her. I have never heard of her. I didn't bring her here. Comprende?"

"Si, señor."

"Apart from that, you will not talk about me at all. Except that if anybody mentions it, you can say that I don't speak Spanish."

"Pero usted—"

"I know. I speak it better than you do, but I don't want anyone to know. Estamos?"

"Si, señor."

Simon spread a hundred-peseta note on the counter.

"Perhaps that will help you to remember," he said, and went upstairs.

In his room, Christine was still sleeping, but he only glanced at her. He went across to the window and looked down through the shutters into the square. Graner's car was just driving off, and Simon realised that Graner himself must have taken the wheel, for the chauffeur stood on the pavement and watched the car move away. Then he strolled across to the opposite side of the plaza, propped himself up against the corner of the Casino building among the other idlers who were standing around, unfolded a newspaper from his pocket, and began to read.

Simon poured the remainder of Christine's drink into the washbasin, and picked up Graner's glass, which had been left untouched.

Then he remembered that he had been so confident in his deduction of what had happened to Hoppy and Joris that he hadn't even troubled to check up on it. He put the glass down and went out again.

The door of Hoppy's room was not locked. Simon went in and found the key on the inside. The room was empty, as he had expected. Mr Uniatz' pajamas formed a palpitating splodge of colour on the bed that Joris had slept in, and the old man's clothes were gone. Simon surveyed the rest of the room without finding any other clues. There were no traces even of a mild scrimmage; but the one mysterious fact was a tray laid with two breakfasts which stood on the table. Nothing on it had been touched. Simon frowned at it for some moments before the explanation dawned on him. He leaned over the bed and rang for the chambermaid.

She arrived promptly after he had rung three times.

"Did you see my friend when you brought the breakfast?" he asked.

"No, señor."

"Como que no?"

"Because another gentleman took it. He had on a white coat like a camarero, and he said that he wanted to take it in for a joke. I gave him the tray, and I went away when he was knocking."

"Was he a little man with a small moustache and a black eye?"

"No, he was tall and fair, like an Englishman. He had a graze on his face."

The Saint nodded slowly. It was simple enough, really — after it had been done.

"I may take the tray?" asked the woman.

"Go ahead. And you can do the room at the same time."

At least there was nothing to be gained by giving her any more to gossip about.

He went back to his own room, and when he opened the door Christine was sitting up. Her mind was still clouded from the aftereffects of the drug he had given her, and he saw the understanding creep gradually into her eyes as she stared at him. He closed the door behind him and smiled at her.

"I owe you an apology," he said. "It's the first time I ever gave a girl a drink like that."

She shook her head, as if to try and clear away some of the mists from her brain.

"What did you do it for?" she asked huskily.

"It was either that or clipping you under the jaw, and I thought the drink would be kinder," He crossed over to the bed and sat down beside her. "Does it feel very bad?"

She rubbed her eyes stupidly.

"My head's splitting…"

"We can fix that in no time."

He went to his suitcase and found another bottle, from which he tipped a spoonful of powder into a glass of water.

"I keep this for when Hoppy starts complaining about what a good time he had the night before," he explained. "But it's just as good for what you've got."

She looked at the glass without moving.

"There's nothing wrong with it," he said. "If I'd wanted to keep you under I'd have given you something stronger in the first place."

The girl shrugged.

"It doesn't seem to matter," she said. "I'd rather be asleep again than have this head."

He took the glass away from her after she had finished the draught, and put it down. She lay back and closed her eyes again with a grimace, and the Saint lighted a cigarette and left her alone. With the drink he had just given her, the muzziness and the headache would pass off quickly enough.

"I was a fool to drink that whiskey," she muttered. "But you wait till I feel a bit stronger. I'll make a noise then — if you haven't put me to sleep again."

"But you're feeling better already."

"Maybe I'm not going to die, if that's what you mean."

"Then just wait till you're quite sure about it, and we'll go on talking. You can still scream the roof off if you get tired of listening."

"That's what you said before."

"But Reuben was here then."

Her eyes opened, and she looked quickly round the room. Her breath came a little faster.

"Yes — he was here… Where is he?"

"I sent him home."

"Did he have the same sort of drink that I had?"

The Saint shook his head.

"I wouldn't give you the sort of drink I should mix for Reuben if I had a free hand," he said. "No — I just told him to push off and he pushed off. Like a lamb. He's really quite docile when you know how to handle him. Weren't you watching me all the time before you went to sleep?"

She struggled up on her elbow.

"But he'll be back — he'll come back with the others—"

"No, I don't think so. Not just yet, anyway. We parted like brothers. I even gave him back his gun."

She brushed the copper — gold hair back off her face, her brows knitted with the effort to grasp his meaning.

"Let's begin at the beginning," he said. "After I left you last night I went out to put the car away. Once I was in the car, I found that the damn thing was taking me up to Graner's. I couldn't help it. It's that sort of car. Crazy. Maybe it caught the disease from me — I don't know. Anyway, once I got to the house I figured I might as well have a look round. I looked round. They certainly do make it difficult for a bloke to climb over their wall."

"I could have told you—"

"But you didn't. Never mind. I found out for myself. So, since I couldn't get over the wall, I had one of my strokes of genius. After having tooled all the way out there, it seemed pretty silly to come home again without doing anything. So I rang the bell. Did you ever hear of anything brighter?"

"I think you must have been crazy."

"That's what I thought. Anyway, Graner let me in. And just as we were going into the house I heard Lauber in the middle of an argument with the other two. He was saying — I can tell you his very words — 'I never had the blasted ticket. I was hunting through Joris' pockets for it when that swine jumped on me. If anybody's got it, he has.' "

"You heard Lauber say that?" she stammered incredulously. "But you know—"

He nodded.

"Of course I know. But that was Lauber's story, and from what I've heard he's sticking to it. Didn't you hear Graner say that he'd put a man to watch the shop where the ticket came from, in case anybody tried to cash it?"

Talking about Graner reminded the Saint that he had put Graner's drink down when he went out to Hoppy's room. He fetched it and returned to the bed.

"What else did they say about it?" she asked.

"Nothing. The subject was dropped when I walked in. Reuben asked me a lot of questions, and ended up by telling me that I wasn't to come back here. I don't think he suspected me, but he just didn't want me knocking around Santa Cruz where I might hear too much or talk too much. I argued about it, but I had to stay."

He told her about his other experiences the night before, about the story he had read in the newspaper at breakfast, and about the introduction to his duties which had followed, talking in the same crisp, vivid phrases that smacked home every vital detail like bullets; until he reached the point where he had walked into the room with Graner and found her there.

"You know the rest," he said.

"But where is Joris?"

"Tell me what you know."

"I awakened rather late," she said. "About ten o'clock I went and listened at the door, but I couldn't hear anything, and I didn't want to disturb them if they were still asleep. I couldn't hear anything in your room, either. I got dressed and sent for some breakfast, and presently I went back again. I still couldn't hear anything, so I knocked on the door. They didn't answer. I went on knocking until I got scared and opened the door. There wasn't anyone there. I rushed back here, and when you didn't answer either I came in. I saw that your bed hadn't been slept in, and I simply flopped. It was only a moment or two before you came in. That's why I was sitting on your bed. I just went weak in the knees and couldn't stand up for a bit. I didn't know what to think or what to do."

"Don't you know what to think now?" said the Saint reluctantly.

He found her touching his hand.

"But Graner said they hadn't found Joris."

"They haven't — so far as he knows," said the Saint. "But remember what I told you about Lauber. A thing like that spreads, once it starts."

"But do you know?"

"I know this. Hoppy sent for breakfast this morning, before you were awake. I'd told him not to open the door to anybody, but I suppose he didn't think he was meant to starve. He didn't see any harm in having breakfast. The chambermaid brought it; but another guy who answers to Aliston's description met her at the door and said he wanted to take it in for a joke. Probably he gave her some money to make the joke seem funnier. She let him do it. He was wearing a white waiter's coat, and Hoppy wouldn't have thought anything of it. Aliston could easily have cracked Hoppy over the back of the head with something; and once Hoppy was out, Joris wouldn't have given them any trouble."

Her fingers tightened over his.

"You ought to have let me stay with him," she whispered.

"It wouldn't have done any good if they'd taken you at the same time."

"I could have looked after him… But why didn't they take me?"

"Because they didn't know. Joris came in with Hoppy last night, and you came in with me some time afterwards. They'd have been asking for you first, and that night porter is so dumb that he wouldn't have connected the two. He didn't even know that Hoppy and I had any connection. Probably they expected to find you with Joris, anyhow. When they didn't find you, they probably didn't want to waste any more time looking for you. Graner was waiting for them to call him, and as far as they were concerned Joris and Hoppy were the important people. So I guess they left it at that."

She was silent for quite a long while, but no more tears came into her eyes. He could guess what she must be feeling, but she gave no outward sign. There was an inward strength in her which he had still not measured completely. When she looked at him again, she had herself completely under control.

"So you think Aliston and Palermo have joined up with Lauber to double-cross Graner?"

"I don't think that for a minute. I think it was just that suspecting Lauber put the idea into their heads. And if they were out to do any double-crossing, why should they cut Lauber in? Why not keep it all to themselves? They've got Joris now, and they'll start by trying to find out something about the ticket from him and Hoppy. If the trail turns back to Lauber again, they'll go after him."

"And what about Graner?"

"He may start getting some suspicions of his own, and if he does he'll do something about them. It's just an open competition to see who can do the fastest and smartest double-crossing."

"How much are you doing?"

The Saint met her eyes steadily over his cigarette.

"Now you're coming to that drink I gave you," he said.

He gave her a full account of his conversation with Graner after she had gone to sleep, leaving nothing out. She was watching him all the time, but his recital never faltered.

"I couldn't have got off a quarter of that in front of you," he said. "You can see that, can't you? As far as Graner's concerned, you've got no reason to trust me any more than you'd trust the rest of his gang; so apart from everything else, I had to put you out before he began to wonder why you kept so quiet when I was talking."

"So you told him that you were going to tell me just about what you've told me now — to try and make me think you were on my side?"

He nodded without hesitation.

"Yes."

3

"I think I'm well enough to smoke a cigarette," she said.

He gave her one, and a light. She went on looking at him, with detached and contemplative brown eyes. He knew that he was being weighed in the balance, and knew just how much there was against him at the other end of the scales. It was even more than he had to overcome when he made the original suggestion to Graner; but he faced the ordeal without a trace of anxiety. Whichever way the verdict was fated to fall, so let it be.

"Do you think Graner believed you?" she asked noncommittally.

"I'm hoping so. At all events, he acted as if he did. And there's no reason why he shouldn't. He thinks I'm intending to work for him; he thinks I value my share in his other boodle more than a difference in my share of the ticket; he knows nothing against me, he's got my passport—"

"Your passport?"

"Yes. He asked for it, just for insurance, so I gave it to him to keep him happy. It's quite a good one, but I've got plenty more — only he doesn't know that… Maybe he has some suspicions about me — I don't know-but the worst you can call them is suspicions. So long as he hasn't any proof, it doesn't make much odds. I've got the bulge."

She said: "Do you think I believe you?"

He moved his shoulders in the faintest sketch of a shrug.

"I'm waiting for you to tell me, Christine."

She turned her cigarette in the ash tray, making random patterns in the ash. For a while she didn't give him an answer.

Then she looked at him again, and he realised that the detachment had gone from her eyes. He would have liked a brush and palette and canvas, and the time and talent to capture the tilt of her chin and the expressive arch of her brows. He had been aware of her beauty from the first moment he saw her, but he had not felt it so deeply before now. And yet her conscious parade of it had some of the pathetic simplicity of a child; and it was with the same childish simplicity that she said: "Don't you think I could give you more than Graner ever could?"

He tried not to look too much at the soft curve of her lips and the elusive temptation of her eyes.

"He's not very beautiful, is he?" he said lightly.

"I'm beautiful."

The sheer silk of her dress brought out the lines of her long slender legs as she swung them off the bed. She stood over him, her hands resting on her hips; the silk clung to her waist and moulded the pattern of her firm young breasts. She was all young desire, infinitely desirable… He did not want to think about that.

"I must be," she said, with the same innocent soberness. "Do you know I was only sixteen when they brought me here? I've seen them watching me as I grew up. I've seen them wanting me. Sometimes they've tried; but Joris could still help me a little. I learnt to keep them away. But I knew I couldn't keep them away always. You may be the same as they are, but you don't seem the same. I shouldn't mind so much if it was you. And if it would help Joris… if you helped him, I would give you anything you want…"

"That isn't necessary," he said roughly.

He got up quickly, without looking at her, and went to the window. He stood there for a time, without speaking, looking down into the square without seeing anything, until he felt he could trust himself to face her again. When he turned round at last, he had taken everything out of his eyes but the preoccupation of the adventure.

"The first thing you've got to do is to get out of here," he said. "Graner's been sent home for the moment, but we don't know what's going to happen next. And I'd rather you weren't around when it does happen."

"But where else can I go?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out." He thought for a moment. "Last time I was here, there was a fellow — Wait a minute."

He skimmed rapidly through the telephone directory; and some time later, after he had managed to get the attention of the hotel operator, and the hotel operator had managed to wake the exchange out of its peaceful slumbers, and the exchange had made careful investigations to assure itself that there was such a number, he secured his connection.

"Oiga — iesta alli el señor Keena?… David? Well, the Lord's name be praised. This is Simon… Yes indeed… Yes, I know I said you'd never see me again in this God — awful hole while there was any other place left on earth to go to, but we haven't time to go into that now. Listen. I want you to do something for me. Have you still got your apartment?… Well, how'd you like to turn out of it for a lady?… Yes, I'm sure you can't see why, but how d'you know she'd like you?… Anyway, it's just one of those things, David. And it is important. I'll tell you all about it later. She can't go to a hotel… That's grand of you… Will you meet us there in about five minutes?… Okay, fella. Be seein' ya!"

He hung up the telephone and turned round cheerfully.

"Well, that's settled. Now if we can find some way to smuggle you out — Joris and Hoppy went out in trunks, so I suppose that's ruled out. Wait another minute…"

"Are they watching the hotel?"

"Graner left Manoel outside — he was shining the back of his coat on the Casino when I saw him last. But we can fix that. Are you ready to move?"

"When you are."

She put a hand on his arm, and for a moment he hesitated. There were so many other things he would rather have done just then… And then, with a quick soft laugh, he touched her lips with his own and opened the door at once.

Downstairs, he beckoned the wavy-haired boy away from the desk, where there were some repulsive specimens of the young blood of England wearing their old school blazers and giggling over the priceless joke that Spaniards had a language of their own which was quite different from English.

"Have you got a back way out?" he asked.

"A back way out, señor?" repeated the boy dubiously.

"A back way out," said the Saint firmly.

The boy considered the problem and cautiously admitted that there was a back door somewhere through which garbage cans were removed.

"We want to be garbage cans," said the Saint.

He emphasised the fact with another hundred-peseta note.

They passed through stranger and stranger doors, groped their way through dark passages, circumnavigated a kitchen and finally reached another door which opened on to a mean back street. An idle waiter whom they brushed past gaped at them.

"You're learning," said the Saint appreciatively, and the boy began to grin. Simon turned back to him grimly. "But just understand this," he added. "If that waiter or anyone else says a word about our going out this way, it's your head that I'll knock off. You've got a hundred pesetas. Use them."

"Claro," said the boy, less enthusiastically; and Simon ruffled his nice wavy hair and left him to it.

David Keena was waiting for them when their taxi drew up at the building where he lived.

"There is some excitement in Tenerife, after all," he said when the Saint got out.

"You don't know the half of it." Simon waited until they were inside the house to introduce the girl. "This is playing hell with your peaceful life, I know, but I'll do the same for you one day."

They went up to the apartment. Simon scanned it approvingly. If by any chance the Graner organisation, either corporately or individually, started to search for Christine, they would draw the hotels first. She might be secure in that apartment for an indefinite time.

He took Christine's hand.

"Hasta luego," he said, and smiled at her.

She looked at him, not quite understanding.

"Are you going?"

"I must, darling. I daren't be away from the hotel a moment longer than I have to, in case Graner calls me back. But I'll be on the job. Now that I know you're safe, I'll have all my time to look for Joris and Hoppy. Just sit tight and don't worry. It won't be long before I find them."

"You'll tell me what happens?"

"Of course. There's a telephone here, and I'll call you the minute I've got anything to say. Or any other time I've got a few seconds to spare for a chat. I only wish I had the time to spare now, Christine."

He held her hand for a moment longer; and there was something in his smile which seemed quite apart from the only life in which she had ever known him. The gay zest of adventure was still there, the half-humorous welcome to danger, the careless confidence — in his own lawless ways that made up so much of his fascination; but there was something else, something like a curious regret that she was too young to understand. And before she could ask him anything else he was gone.

"Why the rush?" asked Keena, as Simon drew him down the stairs.

"For fifteen million reasons which I can't stop to tell you about now. But you know something about me, and you know the sort of troubles I get into. If you don't know any more than that it may be healthier for you."

"I read something in the Prensa about an outbreak of gangsterismo—"

"So did I, but that was the first I'd heard of it." Simon stopped at the foot of the stairs and grinned at him. "Now you'll have to be content with that until I've got time to give you the whole story. You can go back upstairs for just long enough to settle the girl in and see that she knows where everything is. Then you hustle back to your office and carry on as if nothing had happened. She's not to show her face outside this place, and you're not to behave as if you'd got anyone here; so you can stop wondering where you're going to take her to dinner. You find yourself a nice respectable hotel, and if there are any questions you can say your apartment's being painted. You don't say a word about Christine, or about me for that matter. Do you get the idea?"

"I think it's a lousy idea," Keena said gloomily.

The Saint chuckled and opened the front door.

"It'll grow on you when you get to know it better," he said. "We'll get together later and talk it over."

He had kept his taxi waiting, and a moment later he was on his way again. As they approached the Casino building he slid down in the seat until he was invisible to anyone who might have been lounging about the square, and told the driver to take him round to the corner of the Calle Doctor Allart — he had taken note of the name of the street behind the hotel when he went out with Christine.

The driver looked round at him blankly, narrowly missing a collision with a tram in the process.

"Donde esta?"

Simon explained the position of the street at length, and comprehension gradually brightened the chauffeur's face.

"Ah!" he said. "You mean the Calle el Sol."

"It has Calle Doctor Allart written on it," said the Saint.

"That is possible," said the driver phlegmatically. "But we call it the Calle el Sol."

He stopped at the required corner, and Simon got out and paid him off. He walked on towards the rear entrance of the hotel. There was a car parked in front of it, on the opposite side of the road; otherwise the street was deserted. The car seemed to be empty, and he knew at once that it bore no resemblance to Graner's gleaming Buick. It was curious that he should have overlooked the possibility of there being two cars in Graner's garage. The Saint had just put his hand on the door when he heard a step behind him, and before he could turn he felt the firm pressure of a gun barrel under his left shoulder blade.

"Don't do anything silly," said a soft voice. The Saint turned his head.

It was the elegant Mr Palermo.

VI

How Simon Templar ate without enthusiasm,

and Mr Uniatz was also troubled about his breakfast

1

The rain which had been threatening all the morning was starting to come down in a steady miserable drizzle; and under its depressing influence the street, which could never in its existence have been a busy thoroughfare vibrating with the scurry of bustling feet, had taken on an even sadder and emptier appearance. Simon looked warily up and down it. About a block and a half away one lone man was shuffling in the opposite direction, too loyal to his national traditions to bustle even before the prospect of a soaking; apart from him there was no other soul in sight except Aliston, who had become visible at the wheel of the car.

"Forget it," said Palermo, reading his thoughts. "You haven't a hope."

Simon was not quite so sure — there are popular superstitions about the speed with which triggers can be pulled which the Saint was too experienced to share, and he had gambled cheerfully on those split-second exaggerations before then. But there were other thoughts coming into his mind which he did not let Mr Palermo read.

"What's the idea?" he demanded indignantly.

"You needn't worry about that. Come and get into the car."

The drizzle was swelling methodically to a downpour, and the one shuffling pedestrian turned the next corner and vanished. There was nothing to stop Palermo using his gun; but that was not the factor which settled the Saint's decision. Palermo and Aliston had taken Hoppy and Joris — somewhere. It seemed to the Saint that he was being offered an open invitation to find out where. He could make an accurate estimate of the chance he would be taking by accepting that escort, but the thought only amused him. Besides, he was getting wet.

He continued to look suspicious and indignant.

"Why should I get in the car?"

"Because you'll get hurt if you don't. We're just going for a little ride."

"It sounds like the good old days," said the Saint.

He crossed the street and got into the car, with Palermo's automatic still boring into his back. Aliston glanced round from the driver's seat.

"Two sixty-seven," he said cryptically, in his Oxford drawl. "A seven."

"Good. We'll find him afterwards. Let's go."

Palermo settled back as the car started off. He occupied himself with preening his natty little moustache, but the gun in his pocket remained levelled at the Saint. Simon went on frowning at him.

"Look here, Palermo," he protested. "Where are we going?"

"Call me Art," said Mr Palermo generously.

"Where are we going?"

"We're going where we can have a talk."

"What's wrong with the hotel?"

"Too many people," said Palermo blandly.

The Saint scowled.

"Did Graner send you?" he demanded, with rising fury.

Palermo's greenish eyes studied him thoughtfully while he considered his answer. Aliston decided it for him. He spoke without turning his head. "Shut up asking so many questions. You'll find out soon enough."

The Saint shrugged and relaxed in his corner. If he couldn't talk, he could at least take advantage of the time to settle some of his own deductions.

Graner had gone back to the house and conferred with the others — that was the obvious starting point. What the face value result of the conference had been was yet to be hinted at; but Simon could guess some of the results which the individual members would wisely have refrained from making public. Graner's good news, if that was how he had presented it, would have given Lauber and Palermo and Aliston three separate and personal sinking feelings in their stomachs which must have cost them a heroic effort to conceal. To Palermo and Aliston, the capture of Christine would mean that she might know something and say something that would blow the secret of their abduction of Joris sky-high. To Lauber it would mean that she might somehow be able to convince a questioner that the lottery ticket had really been stolen the night before, which would inevitably bring the suspicion against himself back to fever heat. To all of them it would be a staggering blow to the security of their private plans that would blaze chaotic danger signals across their reeling horizons; to all of them it would scream a call for urgent action that must have made them feel as if their chairs were turning red-hot under them while they had to sit there talking. And Simon had an idea that the arrival of Palermo and Aliston was prompted by one of those desperate reactions.

The car was twisting and turning through the sordid narrow streets of what is euphemistically known as the French Quarter. Presently it stopped in one of them, at the door of a gloomy-looking two-storied house crowded among half-a-dozen other identically squalid buildings; and Palermo's gun prodded the Saint's ribs again.

"Come on. And don't make any fuss."

Simon got out of the car. This street, like the first one, had been emptied by the rain; and the Saint knew better than to waste his energy on making a fuss. Besides, his other plans were developing very satisfactorily.

Aliston opened the door, and they went into a small dark hall redolent with the mingled smells of new and ancient cooking and mildew and stale humanity. They stumbled up the dim stairs and emerged on a bare stone landing. A shaft of greyish light fell pitilessly across it and showed up the soiled peeling scales of what had once been whitewash as Aliston opened another door.

"In here."

Simon went into the room and summarised its topography with one glance. On the right was a small window, hermetically sealed in the Spanish fashion, and almost opaque with the accumulated grime of ages. On the left was a closed door which presumably led to the bedroom. In front of him and to the left was another door, which was open; and a girl with an apron tied round her came out of it as they entered. Behind her Simon saw the symptoms of a kitchenette in which oddments of feminine washing were strung on a line like flags. The girl had brass-coloured hair which was growing out black at the roots; she was pretty in an ordinary sort of way, though her complexion was coarse and unhealthy under the crude caked make-up. She had the broad hips and rounded stomach and big loose breasts which the national taste demands.

"Trae la comida," said Palermo, throwing his hat into a corner; and she went out again without speaking.

Simon put a hand in his pocket for his cigarette case, but Aliston caught him.

"Wait a minute."

While Palermo kept him covered, Aliston searched him carefully; but it still didn't occur to him to search the Saint's left sleeve. He was looking for something which was likely to be found in certain definite places, and when he failed to find it he scratched his head.

"Must be crazy," he said. "He hasn't got anything."

"Why should I have anything?" asked the Saint ingenuously. "I admit the place looks pretty insanitary, but I haven't been here very long."

Palermo took his hand out of his gun pocket for the first time since their encounter outside the hotel. He waved the Saint round the table to the side farthest from the door through which they had come in.

"Sit down."

Simon made himself as comfortable as he could on the plain wooden chair and opened his cigarette case.

"When do I know what the hell this is all about?" he enquired politely.

Palermo unwrapped the Cellophane from a local cigar, bit off the end and lighted it. It smelt like burning straw.

The girl came back and laid an extra place at the table; and Palermo and Aliston sat down. Aliston twiddled one of his coat buttons and looked at the floor, the ceiling, the different walls, his feet and his fingernails. Palermo seemed as absorbed in his foul Cigar as if he hadn't heard the Saint's question.

"I suppose you know there'll be hell to pay when Graner hears that the girl's been left at the hotel all this time alone," said the Saint presently.

"She isn't at the hotel," Aliston said sharply.

Simon raised his eyebrows.

"Well, where is she?"

"That's what we're hoping to hear from you," said Palermo.

The Saint placed his cigarette in his mouth and inhaled from it without changing his expression. The girl returned again with a pan of paella and put it down in front of Palermo. Simon noticed that she went back and fetched two more plates and stood looking at him doubtfully. Palermo glared at her silently, and she left the plates and sat down; but the Saint had learnt all that he had to learn. He knew now that Joris Vanlinden and Hoppy were in the room with the closed door on his right.

He gave no sign of having observed anything, but the sweet exhilaration of the fight began to creep into his nerves again. A well-aimed fist in Mr Palermo's other eye, he was musing, would produce an agreeably symmetrical effect. Or should one be guided by a less monotonous style of composition and work diagonally downwards through the nose? It was a nice problem in practical aesthetics, and he didn't want to decide it too hastily. He helped himself from the dish when it was passed to him, and picked up his fork.

"Why should you ask me that?" he said calmly.

Palermo kept his cigar in his left hand and ate with his right, without once getting the two mixed up. Simon could not quite determine whether he ate to suppress the taste of the cigar or whether he smoked to disguise the flavour of the food.

"Because you took her away," he said bluntly.

"I did?"

Palermo nodded. He grabbed a mouthful of rice, a mouthful of smoke and another mouthful of rice.

"I saw you in a taxi when we were driving down — we were in a one-way street and we couldn't turn round in time, or we'd have stopped you. I told Graner there was probably a back way out of the hotel. How's your chicken?"

"I expect it led a very useful life until it stopped laying," said the Saint guardedly.

"They never kill them here before that," said Palermo affably. "Have some more."

He fished about in the pan and loaded the Saint's plate with a piece of gizzard, a section of neck and a few pieces of bone whose anatomical status it was impossible to ascertain because of the fact that the Spanish race has never learned how to carve a bird. They simply chop it up into small fragments with an axe, and you can work it out for yourself. The Saint sighed. It was only his fourth meal in Santa Cruz, but he remembered his previous visit as well; and already he was beginning to suffer from the luscious hallucinations of a starving man.

"It seems as if I did the right thing, anyway," he said brazenly.

"Why?"

Simon looked straight at him.

"I told Graner your outfit is a swell bunch of double-crossers. And it seems as if you've still got plenty of it left in you. I was thinking of that when I put Christine out of the way."

"Sure." Palermo shovelled some more food into his mouth and drank some wine. "You ever do any double-crossing?"

Aliston's fork clattered on to his plate.

"For heaven's sake, Art," he snapped. "We haven't got all day to waste."

"Take it easy, take it easy," said Palermo soothingly. "Tombs and me are just getting along fine. Tombs is a good fellow. He just doesn't understand us properly yet. Isn't that right, Tombs?"

Simon picked a piece of cuttlefish out of his paella and chewed it laboriously. It tasted exactly like high-grade rubber.

"You're wrong there," he said coolly. "I think I understand you pretty well. When you've met one skunk, you recognise the smell of the others — whether they're wearing an old school tie or a little piece of gigolo whisker."

The refined face of Mr Aliston pinkened, but Palermo's retained its swarthy impassivity. He stared at the Saint with his head cocked on one side like a sparrow.

"You talk fast," he said.

"I think like that," said the Saint easily. "It didn't even take me long to figure out that you aren't only double-crossing me — you're double-crossing Graner as well."

There was a certain period of silence, during which the girl's knife and fork clinked softly as she continued to eat with wholehearted concentration. Aliston's chair creaked a nervous rhythm as he swayed backwards and forwards. Palermo went on looking at the Saint for several moments and then continued eating.

"Graner hasn't done anything much for you, has he?" he said. "I wouldn't have stood for him hitting me like he hit you last night."

"You'd have had to stand for it if you'd been in my place."

"Still, did you like it?"

The Saint shrugged, watching him thoughtfully.

Palermo went on, with an air of friendly decision: "I'm going to be frank with you, Tombs. You're a good fellow, and I'd rather have it that way. We are double-crossing Graner. You guessed right. He's tried to do things to us like he did to you, and Cecil and me have been getting tired of it. Graner's all right — he's a great organiser and he's done plenty for us. But he's too bossy. Cecil and me, we're what you might call independent. When this lottery-ticket business came along, we thought it was about time to quit. So we had to ditch Graner. See?"

"And ditch me," added the Saint mildly.

Palermo was unabashed. He went on cleaning up his plate with hearty thoroughness.

"Sure. I'm being frank with you, see? That was how it was. We didn't know you much then, and we were just going to split the ticket between us. Well, now it seems you've got Christine and you've been talking to her. We've got to keep her quiet, and we want to know what she's told you. So maybe we have to pay for it. I'm not saying we like it, but business is business and we've got to make the best of it. You've got to look at it the same way. If you stick with Graner you can't collect more than two million pesetas, and you'll lucky if you get that. Come in with us, give us all you know, and we'll give you a square deal that'll bring you five million. That's fair enough, isn't it?"

"I think it's a lovely idea," said the Saint slowly.

Palermo leaned back and shifted his belt with a satisfied gesture.

"That's fine," he said. "Well, where did you take Christine?"

Simon pushed his plate away and smiled at him no less complacently.

"Oh no," he said. "That isn't fine at all."

"What d'you mean?" demanded Palermo abruptly. "We're partners now, aren't we?"

"For the moment."

"Well, what are you putting in?"

"What are you putting in, if it comes to that?"

Palermo pointed his cigar at the closed communicating door.

"You know what we're putting in. That's what you were talking about just now. Christine told you, didn't she? You don't have to play innocent any more."

"You've got them here?"

"Sure we have."

The Saint eased a short cylinder of ash on to the side of his plate.

"And I've got Christine-where I've got her," he said equably. "So we're all square. I'm not wanting to take Joris away from you, and you needn't want to take Christine away from me. You've already told me that you've taken up double-crossing for a living, and you don't know much about my morals either. So if we each keep what we've got we can work together without being afraid that we're double-crossing each other. That seems sound enough for a start, anyway. Besides, why put all our eggs in one basket? If Joris managed to get away, he'd take Christine; or if Graner got wise to this place he'd have 'em both; or if Joris' friends got on to you—"

"You made a stall like that to Graner," Palermo said coldly. "It's not good enough. If you're coming in with us, you come in without any strings. Where's Christine?"

"I took her to another hotel."

"Which one?"

"The Quisisana."

Palermo made a sign to Aliston. Aliston got up and wilted towards the door. He seemed glad to be relieved from the strain of sitting still.

"I'll see if I can find the taxi as well," he said.

Simon turned the cigarette between his fingers.

"Where's he going?" he rapped.

"To see if Christine is really at the Quisisana," answered Palermo flatly. "And to look for the taxi you came back to the hotel in and see how much the driver remembers. If you're telling the truth, all right. If not…"

He didn't trouble to finish the sentence.

"You're wasting your time," said the Saint evenly. "I changed taxis two or three times. And if Christine sees Aliston, it 'll only scare her away."

"Then why don't you go and fetch her?" suggested Palermo, with his greenish eyes fixed unwaveringly on the Saint.

"I've told you why," retorted the Saint heatedly. "You're being a couple of suckers and doing the best you can to gum up the whole works. If that's the kind of partners you are, you don't interest me so much. What difference does it make where Christine is? She's safe enough where I put her. If you started talking about where the ticket is, it'd be more to the point."

Palermo leaned forward a little.

"I've told you our terms," he said. "If you bring Christine here and tell us what she's told you, the deal is on. Otherwise it's off. Don't you think that's fair?"

The Saint sent a curling plume of smoke drifting slowly through his half-smiling lips. So Palermo was asking for it. The Saint would have liked to keep him happy, to play him with the same bait that Graner had so successfully been induced to take. He had even less faith in the security of Palermo's partnership than he had in Graner's, and he would have had fewer scruples about lying to him, if possible; but the situation would have had its practical advantages apart from its appeal to his sense of humour. It was a pity that it couldn't have been organised that way. But Palermo was in quite a different frame of mind from the one in which Graner had accepted the Saint's terms; and Simon knew when he was wasting his time.

Palermo had got him in a corner which left no room for evasions; and it was obvious enough that Palermo meant to keep him there. The immutable fact was registered beyond mistaking in every glitter of Palermo's intent bright eyes, in the whole atmosphere of his expectant stillness. And the Saint knew that every extra moment of hesitation was only hardening Palermo's suspicions, bringing them a degree closer to the crystal sharpness of conviction… It was all very sad, but Simon Templar's philosophy held no room for vain regrets.

"If that's how you put it, I think it stinks," he said pleasantly, and looked into the muzzle of Palermo's gun.

2

"You're a fool," Palermo said thickly.

"We can't all have your brains," said the Saint deprecatingly. "Besides, you need a few compensations, with a face like yours."

The greenish glow darkened in Palermo's eyes, but he made no immediate reply. He beckoned to Aliston with his other hand without looking round.

"Tie his hands behind his back."

Aliston detached himself from the door and undulated into the kitchenette. Simon heard him moving about and surmised that he was removing the washing from the line. The Saint went on smoking unconcernedly and measured the distance to Palermo's chin. It was about five feet, with Palermo sitting where he was; and besides that there was the corner of the table to get round. He slipped one hand under the table and tested its weight speculatively, but Palermo felt the infinitesimal movement.

"Keep your hands on top of the table."

Aliston came back from his errand; and Palermo took the cigar out of his mouth and put it back again.

"Put your hands behind the back of the chair," he said.

Simon took a final pull from his cigarette and put it carefully down before he obeyed. Aliston worked silently at tying his wrists together. He used all the rope, and the knots felt tight. When he had finished, Palermo put his automatic away and came round and tested them.

"How do they feel to you, Art?" Simon enquired genially. "I think he did pretty well — he must have learnt some tricks when he was at crochet school."

The girl sat on the other side of the table, watching them stupidly. Palermo strolled back and jerked his head at her.

"Make a spoon hot on the fire," he said. "Make it red-hot. Tu comprendes?"

The girl stared at him blankly, and Palermo thumped his fist on the table.

"Tu has oido?" he snarled.

Aliston's face twitched nervously as the girl hurried out. He had turned several shades whiter, so that the graze that ran up his left cheek showed more vividly against the sickly pallor of his skin. He opened his mouth once or twice, as if he was on the point of protesting, and closed it again without saying anything, as if he had already heard the inevitable answers.

"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.

"Calla!" 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 señor 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.

"Shall I give him de woiks, boss?" he suggested, as if he was apologising for mentioning the matter at all.

"Not just now," said the Saint decisively. "And where did you get that thing?"

"Dis is my Betsy," said Mr Uniatz proudly. "He must of took it off me while I was in de clouds, because I find it in his pocket. He has a rock on his finger too."

He exhibited the diamond ring which he had managed to squeeze most of the way on to his little finger.

"The sort of rock you need would have R. I. P. on it," said the Saint. "How did you get into this mess?"

Mr Uniatz got on to his feet and sauntered airily round the table, cunningly gaining possession of the whiskey bottle on the way.

"Well, boss, it's like dis. I wake up in de morning, an' de old buzzard is still knockin' off de hours, so after a bit I figure I may as well see if I can promote some breakfast. I get hold of a chambermaid, an' I say 'Breakfast.' She looks at me like a parrot, as if I was nuts, so I say 'Breakfast' again. So she says 'Does I you know?' I begin to t'ink she has de bugs herself. 'Does I you know?' she says. 'What de hell kind of a jernt is dis?' I say. 'Have you gotta know me before you can get me some breakfast?' All she does is go on saying 'Does I you know?' Are all dese spicks screwy, woujja t'ink, boss?"

"Just about all of them," said the Saint. "But she was only saying desayuno. It's the Spanish for breakfast."

Mr Uniatz looked at him admiringly.

"Now woujja believe dat?" he asked of the un-answering world. "I said dey were screwy, didn't I? So what happens if dey want to say 'Do I know ya'?"

"That's something quite different," said the Saint hurriedly. "Anyway, I gathered that you got your breakfast. I saw the tray in your room."

"Sure. In de end she wakes up an' goes away, an' in about half an hour somebody knocks on de door—"

"Didn't I tell you not to open the door to anybody?"

"I know dat's what you tell me, boss, but how was I to know de waiters were in wit' dese mugs?"

"That wasn't a waiter, you ass! Apart from anything else, you can always tell a Canary Islander on sight because there just aren't any other people in the world who can look so ugly and unwashed and so pleased about it. The bloke who brought you your breakfast was one of what you call the mugs."

A pleased look of comprehension smoothed the scowl of concentration from Mr Uniatz' brow.

"Ah," he said. "Maybe dat's why he hits me on de head."

"Probably that had something to do with it," Simon agreed, with powerful restraint. "What happened after that?"

"I dunno, boss. I dunno what he hits me wit', but when I wake up I'm all tied up on de bed."

"Didn't you hear anything?"

"No, I don't hear nut'n or see nobody, only de skoit. She comes in an' takes a gander at us an' goes out again. Den I hear you talkin' when you get here, an' dat's all."

Simon slid back his sleeve to examine his watch. It seemed that the girl had been a long time finding a taxi… Hoppy Uniatz tilted his bottle again and allowed the refreshing fluid to gurgle freely down his parched throat. When he paused for breath, he made an indicative movement of his head towards the bedroom.

"De old buzzard," he said. "How's he makin' out?"

The Saint shrugged.

"He'll be all right," he said shortly.

He knew that it would only be a waste of time to attempt to explain his diagnosis of Joris Vanlinden's condition to the audience he had at his disposal. But the reminder creased two thin lines of anxiety between his brows.

Joris Vanlinden was slipping away — that was all there was to it. It wasn't from any definite physical injury; although the beating he had taken the night before, and the crack on the head which had doubtless followed the one which Hoppy's skull had received with so much less effect, had contributed their full share to his present condition. The fundamental injury was the injury to Vanlinden's mind. He was an old man, and he had already been well worn down by the things that had happened to him in the years before: now, he was simply ceasing to fight. The drive of hope and will which any man must have to survive disaster, which the instinct of self-preservation gives to nearly every man in a greater or less degree, had been exhausted in him. Simon could recognise the state even though he had never actually encountered it before. Vanlinden was sinking into the state of inert despair in which men of earlier days are said to have turned their faces to the wall and died for no other reason than that the will to live had dried up within them. And Simon knew that it was only one added reason why he must lose no time.

The girl was taking a fantastically long time to find a taxi…

Simon found a piece of paper and scribbled on it the address where he had left Christine. He gave it to Hoppy, who had drained the last drops out of his bottle and was edging towards the kitchenette to look for more.

"This is where Christine is," he said. "As soon as we get out of here, I want you to go there and stick around. Your boy friends caught me when I'd just come back from there in a taxi, and they got the number. One of them's gone off already to look for it and see what he can find out. He'd still have a job to get Christine out, but I'm not taking any chances. You're going to park yourself there, and if anybody comes prowling around you give them the works."

"Wit' my Betsy?" said Mr Uniatz, cheering up.

"With the blunt end of it," said the Saint "If you start any shooting around this town they'll turn the army out on you — the police here are very excited about shooting today, from what I read in the paper this morning."

Mr Uniatz sighed.

"Okay, boss," he said dutifully.

"And maybe by this time you'll have learnt a few lessons about who you open doors to. Or do I have to tell you again?"

"Boss," said Mr Uniatz earnestly, "I hoija de foist time. I been a sucker once, but dey won't catch me no more. De foist mug who tries to come in dat door, I'll give him de heat—"

"You won't."

"I mean I'll clop him on de tiles so hard he'll t'ink he walked under an oitquake."

"See you don't forget it," said the Saint grimly. "Because if you do, Mrs Uniatz is going to be sorry about her son."

Hoppy shook his head.

"Dey ain't no Mrs Uniatz," he said reminiscently. "My fader never knew who my ma was." Simon considered this for a moment, and decided it would be safer not to probe further into it. He consulted his watch again and took a quick turn up and down the room. What the hell could the girl be doing?… With a sudden resolution, he went back into the bedroom.

Vanlinden hadn't moved. He looked up at the Saint with the same peacefully empty eyes.

"Do you think you could walk a little way?" Simon asked gently.

The old man remained motionless, without any change in his expression.

"Christine wants to see you," said the Saint.

A pale wraith of a smile played momentarily on the other's lips. Presently he raised his head, then his body. Simon helped him to his feet. He stood holding the Saint's arm.

"Where is she?"

"We'll take you to the hotel and bring her to see you."

Simon led him into the living room, and Hoppy greeted him with a brotherly wave of his hand.

"Hi ya, pal," said Mr Uniatz genially. "Hi ya makin' out?"

Vanlinden smiled at him with the same childish serenity.

"Come on," said the Saint. "We'll be downstairs waiting for that god-damn taxi when it does get here. I want to catch up with your other boy friend."

"What about dis punk?" demurred Mr Uniatz dubiously, indicating the still unconscious Palermo. "Do I give him de—"

"No, you don't. I'll do that myself some other day. Come on."

They helped the old man down the stairs, although he needed less assistance than the Saint had feared. Physically, Vanlinden seemed to have more life than he had had the night before; only now his ability to move was more like that of a sleepwalker. It was his mind which had been drained of strength, which seemed to want nothing but to be left in timeless and effortless passivity.

As they reached the hall, Simon heard the sound of a car pulling up outside. He left Hoppy to look after the old man and went to the front door. There was a small grille in one of the panels, and the slide which should have closed it was partly open. Something made the Saint look through it as he put his hand on the latch to open the door; and that one glance was enough to make him whip his fingers away from the knob again as if it had stung him. For the car outside was not a taxi — it was Graner's Buick.

VII

How Mr Palermo continued to be unlucky,

and Hoppy Uniatz obeyed orders

1

Simon didn't wait to see any more. He spun round as he heard Hoppy coming up behind him, and his eyes blazed a warning which even Mr Uniatz couldn't misunderstand. Hoppy came to a halt, with his jaw drooping.

The Saint's glance scorched round the hall, dissecting all its possibilities in one sizzling survey. It didn't offer cover for a mouse. Upstairs was a dead end. Outside the door were the new arrivals. Around him there was nothing but the door of the ground-floor apartment. Simon felt the handle. As he had anticipated, it was locked. He drew back to arm's length and flung his weight against it, and the lock ceased to function…

The Saint caught Hoppy by the elbow with one hand and Joris Vanlinden with the other. He almost lifted them up bodily and threw them into the room.

"He'll take you to the hotel to wait for Christine," he said to Vanlinden. Then he looked at Hoppy. "Wait till the coast's clear. Take him to the Orotava, put him in the room next to mine — Christine's. Then go and look after her at the address I gave you. Don't worry about me. I'll get rid of these guys and follow along."

Hoppy's mouth opened wider as the full meaning of these orders for desertion penetrated through his ears.

"Boss—"

"Don't argue!" said the Saint, and pushed him back into the room.

He closed the door in his face and leapt silently to the foot of the stairs as the key rattled in the lock of the front door. He realised what a desperate risk he was taking in every direction, but there was no other way. He couldn't send Vanlinden with Hoppy to Keena's apartment, because Aliston was searching for that hide-out and might already have found it, in which case Hoppy would have his hands full enough without any added encumbrances. The hotel was dangerous enough, with Graner's chauffeur watching it from the other side of the road; but at least he couldn't stop them going in, and Vanlinden would be safe there for a little while — so long as the gang didn't know about Christine's room. And the Saint himself had to stay behind, because apart from the more manifest obstacles to a joint getaway there was the matter of a loud crash when he disarranged the lock of the downstairs apartment which must have been audible outside and would want accounting for.

All these things streaked through his mind like a volley of tracer bullets as he dropped himself on the ground at the foot of the stairway; and as the front door opened he began ostentatiously picking himself up. He heard quick steps coming towards him, and raised his eyes to the figures silhouetted against the light of the open door.

"Put your hands up!"

It was Graner's voice.

Simon completed the job of fetching himself upright and went on brushing the dust off his clothes.

"Oh, it's you," he said calmly, as if it had never occurred to him that the order was caused by anything but a mistake in his identity due to the dim light. "Why the hell can't they put a light on these damn stairs? I nearly broke my neck. Did you ever hear anyone come down with such a thump?"

The other man who had come in was Lauber. He ranged himself at Graner's side; and both of them kept their guns trained in the Saint.

"What are you doing?" said Graner.

Simon continued to ignore the artillery.

"Didn't the girl tell you?" he asked innocently.

He had already formed his own theory about why she had taken such a long time to find a taxi, and the response to the feeler he had put out confirmed his suspicion in the next instant.

"She said you had had a fight with Palermo."

"That's right," said the Saint coolly. "I beat the hell out of him too. Come upstairs and I'll show you."

He turned and started up the stairs so confidently that he heard the other two following him without protest.

Mr Palermo still slept. The Saint turned him over and raised him by his collar to examine him. Palermo's head lolled back limply. The new bruise on his chin was coming along nicely. He moaned in his sleep as though he might be wondering whether it was time to wake up. Simon let him flop down so that the back of his head cracked heavily on the tiles, and hoped that that would discourage the idea for a while.

Graner and Lauber kept their guns in their hands while they studied Palermo in his slumber. Graner was the first to turn back to the Saint.

"What is this about?" he demanded in his aloof sneering way.

"I told the girl to give you a message."

"She rang up for Aliston and gave the message for him."

"For sheer half-wittedness give me a spick any day. I told her to tell you that Aliston was in it, in case you knew where he was!"

"Was this in Spanish?"

Simon shook his head and inwardly promised himself a kick in the pants at the first convenient opportunity. That made two bricks he had nearly dropped on the same dynamite; although there are few deceptions so difficult as to pretend ignorance of a familiar language.

"Maybe that was the trouble," he said. "But she said she understood. How much else did she get wrong?"

"She said you had finished with Palermo and you were going to take away the two men who were here."

Simon nodded.

"That's almost right, although I said I wanted you to take them away."

"What was she talking about?"

"Vanlinden and his pal."

"They were here?"

"Sure. This is where Aliston and Palermo brought them after they grabbed them in the hotel this morning!"

It was as if invisible nooses had been looped around the necks of his audience and suddenly tightened. Their eyes seemed to swell in their sockets, and their mouths opened as if their lungs had been unexpectedly deprived of air. Lauber's heavy, sullen features darkened, and Graner's brows drew together in an incredulous frown. Simon could see the shock he had sprung on them thump into the pits of their stomachs like a physical blow, so violent that it even robbed them of the ability to gasp.

Again Graner was the quicker to recover — although Simon reflected that this might have been partly accounted for by the fact that the announcement must have given Lauber a few extra things to think over on his own.

"How did you know?"

"Christine told me first," said the Saint. "Then Palermo and Aliston admitted it. I thought there was something fishy about their story that Joris and the other guy had cleared off on their own, when we knew they'd left Christine behind; but I didn't like to say so at the time."

"How did Christine know where they were?"

"She didn't. Aliston and Palermo brought me here."

"Why?"

The Saint rested himself sidesaddle on the edge of the table. He knew that he had his audience on a string now — whatever they might be thinking, they would drink in every word he had to say on the subject, even if they formed their own conclusions afterwards — and he saw no reason why he shouldn't make the most of his limelight while Hoppy and Joris removed themselves as far as possible from the vicinity.

"I'd better begin at the beginning," he said. "In the first place, I talked to Christine as soon as she awakened — told her the tale exactly as we arranged. She fell for it — well, like I fell down those blasted stairs. Bang! I made her believe I was serious about the proposition I was working up to when I put her to sleep, and we closed the deal on it. She told me plenty."

He paused to light a cigarette, while the other two waited impatiently. Their guns had drooped down until they were pointing at the floor, as if the two men had almost forgotten that they were still holding them.

"As far as this Joris business is concerned," he went on, "Christine told me she had a room on the floor below. She was just coming out of the bathroom when she heard Aliston's voice, and she ducked back in. She didn't dare to come out for about an hour. She stood there with the door open a crack, scared stiff and wondering what was going to happen. There were some heavy trunks brought downstairs while she was there — we can guess what they had in them. Then Palermo and Aliston came down — she could hear them talking. They went on after the trunks, and as soon as she could pull herself together she rushed up to Joris' room. He'd gone, and so had the other bloke. Once again, we can guess why and where and how. But she couldn't. She almost had a fit. Then she heard someone coming up the stairs, and she was afraid it might be Palermo or Aliston coming back. She just rushed into the nearest room, which happened to be mine. I gather that she had some sort of idea that she'd fall into the arms of anyone who was there and make him look after her. Since there wasn't anyone, she just stayed, having hysterics on and off. She didn't dare to go back to her own room, because she thought Palermo and Aliston would still be looking for her; in fact, she didn't dare to move at all. So that's how we found her."

It was a lovely story to reel off on the spur of the moment, thought the Saint, and wondered if he had really mistaken his vocation in life. One way and another, the complications of that fantastic game of beggar-my-neighbour in which he had got himself tied up were developing him into a master of the art of applied fiction beside whom Ananias would have looked like a barker outside a flea circus.

"But why did Palermo and Aliston bring you here?" Graner prompted him tensely.

"I'm getting to that. First of all, I shifted Christine. After what she told me, I guessed Palermo and Aliston might be beetling along as soon as they could after they heard your news, in case I found out they were double-crossing you. I moved her out of the hotel—"

"I told Manoel to follow you if you went out."

"I know that," said the Saint blandly. "I saw him standing on the other side of the square after you'd gone. He was frightfully decorative. But I'd already told you my terms of business, and I wasn't changing them. I took her out the back way."

"Aliston and Palermo were going to watch that."

"They were watching it — when I came back. That's how they caught me. They stuck a gun in my ribs and lugged me along here. They told me they were double-crossing you, and offered me a third share if I'd come in with them and throw Christine in the kitty."

Graner looked down at Palermo again for a moment, and in the pause that followed the Saint could hear Lauber's stertorous breathing.

"What did you tell them?" asked Graner.

"I told them what they could do with their third share," answered the Saint righteously. "Then they decided to make me tell them where Christine was with a hot spoon — or Palermo did. Aliston didn't seem to have a strong stomach, so he pushed off."

Simon turned his head and pointed to the blister on his cheek, and then down at the spoon which Palermo had dropped. Graner stepped forward and moved it with his foot. The scrap of carpet on which it had fallen was charred black.

The Saint could see those pieces of circumstantial evidence registering themselves on Graner's face.

"You didn't tell him?"

"He didn't get far enough with the treatment. He'd forgotten to have my feet tied, and I managed to kick him about a bit." Simon moved his cigarette significantly to indicate the evidence for the accuracy of that statement. "Then I promised the girl — she was here all the time, by the way, so I take it this is where Palermo keeps her — I promised her some money if she'd cut me loose, so she did. Then I sent her off to phone you, and looked around for Joris."

"He's here?"

The Saint moved his head slowly from left to right and back again.

"He was."

Simon hitched himself off the table, and Lauber's gun jerked up at him again. Simon went on elaborately ignoring it. He sauntered over to the door of the bedroom and waved his hand towards the interior. Graner and Lauber followed him. They stood there looking in at the rumpled coverlet and the pieces of cloth and cut rope which were scattered on the bed and the floor in silent testimony.

Graner's bright black eyes slid off the scenery and went back to the Saint.

"What happened to them?"

"I let them go," said the Saint tranquilly.

2

It would give the chronicler, whose devotion to his Art is equalled only by his distaste for work, considerable pleasure to discourse at some length on the overpowering silence which invaded the room and the visible reactions which took place in it — besides bringing him several pages nearer to the conclusion of this seventh chapter of the Saint saga. The fusillade of words which one reviewer has so lucidly likened to "a display of fancy shooting in which all the shots are beautifully grouped on the target an inch away from the bull" tugs almost irresistibly at his trigger finger. The simultaneous distension of Lauber's and Graner's eyes, the precise degree of roundness which shaped itself into Lauber's heavy lips, the tightening of Graner's thin straight mouth, the clenching of Lauber's fists and the involuntary upward lift of Graner's gun — all these and many other important manifestations of emotion could be the subject of an essay in descriptive prose in which the historian could wallow happily for at least a thousand words. Only his anxious concern for the tired brains of his critics forces him to stifle the impulse and deprive literature of this priceless contribution.

But it was an impressive silence; and the Saint made the most of it. All the time he had been talking, he had known that he would inevitably have to answer Graner's last question: it had been as inescapably foredoomed as the peal of thunder after a flash of lightning, with the only difference that he had been able to lengthen the interval and give himself time to choose his reply. There had never been more than three posssibilities, and the Saint had worked them out and explored their probable consequences as far, ahead as his imagination would reach in an explosive intensity of concentration that crowded a day's work into a space of minutes.

Now he relaxed for a moment, while the result of the explosion sent the other two spinning through mental maelstroms of their own. He read murder in Graner's eyes, but he knew that curiosity would beat it by a short head.

"You let them go?" Graner repeated, when he had recovered his voice.

"Naturally," said the Saint, with undisturbed equanimity.

"What for?"

Simon raised his eyebrows.

"I'm supposed to be in cahoots with that outfit — or did I misunderstand you when we talked it over?"

"But those two—"

"They haven't got the tickets. I searched every stitch on them. Besides, Christine told me—"

"You're a damned liar!"

It was Lauber who interrupted, with his voice thick and choking. His gun pushed forward at the Saint's chest, and there was a flare of desperate fury in his face that gave the Saint all the confirmation he wanted.

Simon had foreseen it — it was one of the factors that he had weighed one against the other in his feverish analysis of the situation. If the story that Graner had taken back to the house had shaken the world of Palermo and Aliston to its foundations, it must have knocked the foundations themselves from under Lauber's. Simon had been expecting his intervention, even more than Graner's. He knew that for the moment he might have even more to fear from Lauber than from Graner, but he allowed none of his thoughts to move a muscle of his face.

He looked Lauber in the eye and said with a quiet significance which he hoped only Lauber would understand: "It won't hurt you to wait till you've heard what I've got to say before you call me a liar."

Doubt crept into Lauber's face. He was caught off his balance and didn't know how to go on, like a horse that has been sharply checked in front of a jump. The Saint had made him stop to think, and the pause was fatal. Lauber glared at him, held rigid between fear and perplexity; but he waited.

"What did Christine tell you?" said Graner.

"She told me herself that Joris and the other guy hadn't got the ticket. It's obvious, anyway — otherwise Palermo and Aliston would have had it by this time. They parked it somewhere."

The Saint glanced at Lauber again, with a measured meaning which could have conveyed nothing to anybody else. On the face of it, it was only the natural action of a man who wanted to keep two people in the conversation at once. But to the recipient it spoke a whole library of volumes. It told Lauber that the Saint was lying, told Lauber that the Saint meant him to know it, told Lauber that the Saint could also come out with the truth if he chose to and invited Lauber to play ball or consider the consequences. And Simon read the complete reception of the message in the way Lauber's gun sagged again out of the horizontal.

Graner was untouched by any such influence. He went on staring at the Saint with the vicious lines deepening on either side of his mouth.

"Where had they put it?"

Simon shrugged.

"I'm blowed if I know, Reuben. It doesn't seem to matter, either, because they've gone off to look for it."

"And you sent them off—"

The Saint lounged back against the door frame and regarded him pityingly.

"My dear ass," he said, "how many more times have I got to tell you that you need more of my brains? I've got Christine, haven't I? And they don't know where she is, and they haven't an earthly chance of finding out. I told them the same thing that I told you — that she's my hostage for a square deal. D'you think Joris will let anyone start any funny business while his daughter is in my hands?"

The Saint's first blow had punched Graner in the stomach and knocked the wind out of him. This one hit him under the chin. He took it with a slight involuntary backward jerk of his head which rearranged the expressive lines of his face. Comprehension hammered some of the cold malevolence out of his eyes.

"What else did you tell them?"

"I told them they could have till midnight to show me the ticket, or it would be too bad about Christine. When they've produced the ticket we'll go on talking business. It all came to me in a flash, after I'd sent the girl to phone you."

"Did they hear what you told her?"

"Yes. But that only made it more effective. It was as if I'd saved their lives. I told them I'd find a way to square you, and turned 'em loose. It was a brain wave. Why shouldn't we let them work for us? They're holding more cards than we are — let them play the hand for us. We can still pick up the stakes. I told them the deal I'd made with Christine, and made 'em see that they'd got to accept it. They had to fall into line, and they can't fall out. They haven't any choice left, and I made them see it. No ticket, no Christine."

Graner took the words into his system one by one and kept them there. The crisp, incontrovertible logic of the Saint's exposition crushed all the argument out of him.

Simon watched him with encouraging affability. He was beginning to get Graner's measure. The Saint treated his opponents like a boxer sizing up an antagonist in the ring, ruthlessly searching for the weaknesses that would open the way for a winning punch. Graner's weakness was his conceit of himself as a strategist: the appeal to a point of generalship was a bait that brought him on to the hook every time. And once again, as on the last occasion, Simon saw the murderous suspicion in Graner's gaze overshadowed by a glitter of unwilling respect.

The Saint's mocking blue eyes turned towards Lauber; and the expression on the big man's face completed the picture in its own way.

"I guess I'm due for an apology," he said slowly. "You were too far ahead of me."

"I usually am," said the Saint modestly. "But you get used to that after a while."

Graner seemed to become aware that he was still holding his automatic pointed at the Saint. He looked down at it absently and put it away in his pocket.

"If you can go on like this," he said, "you will have no reason to regret joining us. I can use someone like you; especially…"

He turned slowly round as a muffled groan interrupted him. Lauber turned also. They all looked at Palermo, who was sitting up with one hand holding his jaw and the other clasping the back of his head.

"… especially as there will be some vacancies in the organisation," Graner said corrosively.

Palermo stared up at them, his face grey and pasty, while the meaning of his position was borne in upon him and he made a desperate effort to drag some reply out of his numbed and aching brain. Lauber drew a deep breath, and his under lip jutted savagely. He took three steps across the room and grasped Palermo's coat lapels in one of his big-boned hands, dragging him almost to his feet and shaking him like a rag doll.

"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.

"D'you want your toy back?" he asked carelessly when he had finished, and held out the automatic.

Lauber took it gingerly, as if he half expected it to sting him. The brazen impudence of the gesture left him nonplussed, as it had left Graner.

But the Saint wasn't even paying any attention to Lauber's reception of it. All the mental energy he possessed was taken up with this new angle on the ticket. But there was no process of logic by which the angle could be defined — or if there was, he couldn't find it. The only certain fact was that Lauber hadn't got the ticket. None of the other possibilities could be ruled out. Palermo might have it. Or Aliston might have it. Or Manoel might have it. Or Graner might have it, or find it at any moment, if he suspected enough to make him search for it and decided to join in the popular movement and paddle his own canoe in the buccaneers' regatta. Or it might still be in the car and stay there — a possibility which made the Saint's hair stand on end when he thought how completely and catastrophically the problem might be solved if Graner had an accident on the way home and the car caught fire.

"Well, what are you going to do about it?" Lauber demanded.

The Saint shrugged.

"Palermo and Graner have gone back to the house, anyway. 80's the car. We've got to get Aliston and the chauffeur back there. Then when we've got them all rounded up together—"

He broke off abruptly, listening. They had not closed the door completely when they re-entered the room; and the Saint's keen ears caught the first sound of someone walking into the hall below. Lauber listened also in the silence which followed and they both heard footsteps coming up the stairs.

The Saint smiled again and stepped noiselessly round the table. He gripped Lauber by the arm and pushed him into the centre of the room, where he would be seen first by anyone coming through the door.

"Stay there," he breathed. "I'll get behind him."

Before Lauber could protest against this doubtful honour it was too late for him to move. The Saint had retired with the some soundless speed; and when the door was pushed open he was behind it.

A moment later he emerged again, for the man who came in was Graner's chauffeur. Simon recognized him even from his back view with the assistance of the odour of garlic and perspiration that came in with him.

"Don Reuben sent me," he explained.

"What for?" growled Lauber, with his voice edged by the reaction.

"I have been watching the Hotel Orotava. A little while ago the Señor Vanlinden and another man came there. The Señor Vanlinden stayed inside, but soon afterwards the other man came out. He got in a taxi to go to San Francisco 80. I heard the driver repeat the address."

"What else?"

"Don Reuben said one of you must go there and watch him. I am to stay here and help the other."

Lauber looked at the Saint; and Simon stepped quietly forward and pinioned the man's arms deftly behind his back. The chauffeur let out a squawk of startlement and screwed his head round until he saw the Saint. Simon grinned at him and averted his nose.

"Hurry up and go through him," he said. "I'm being gassed."

Lauber made the search, while the man squirmed ineffectually in the Saint's expert grip. He was longer and clumsier over it than the Saint would have been, but when it was over the Saint was satisfied that at least the chauffeur hadn't got the ticket on him.

"What was he saying?" Simon remembered to enquire, as he released the spluttering captive.

Lauber translated the message. He was still watching the chauffeur suspiciously.

"He might have hidden the ticket somewhere else," he concluded, reverting to his main preoccupation.

Simon thought rapidly. His own judgment was that the chance was a remote one. If the chauffeur had really found the ticket at all, it was unlikely that he would have been there. Since he was a native of the island, it was stretching plausibility a long way to credit him with sufficient intelligence and imagination to cover himself by outwardly continuing his normal life, or to have been delayed from trying to cash the ticket by any fear of Joris having communicated with the police. Simon was almost ready to rule the chauffeur out of the lists of suspects, but he saw no harm in letting Lauber keep his suspicions.

"That's quite likely," he agreed. "You'd better see if you can make him talk while I go and keep track of this other guy."

The scowl came slowly back to Lauber's face.

"We'll see if we can make him talk," he retorted heavily. "And then I'll go and keep track of the other guy."

Simon faced him crisply.

"Try not to be a bigger fool than God made you! Why d'you think Graner wants one of us to watch this fellow?"

"I don't know and I don't care—"

"Then it's time you started. You heard what I told Graner. He thinks this guy knows where the ticket is — and we know he doesn't. Graner just wants to take care they don't double-cross me — and I know they can't. They won't get scared if they see me, but they'll get scared if they see you. And this is the important place to be — this is where Aliston will be coming back—"

"But you said you'd got Joris and his friend!" The Saint almost fell backwards. That was what he felt like doing; but by some miracle of will he kept himself standing there and looking Lauber in the eye without the flinch of a muscle.

"So I have got them," he asserted steadily. "But they think I'm in with them. I don't have to lock them up. Don't you see that by letting them think they're still in the running I'm making sure that they won't go squealing to the police about the ticket having been stolen?"

"All the same," Lauber said stubbornly, "you aren't going out of here alone."

His hand was sliding down to his pocket. He meant business — there wasn't a doubt of that. The Saint regretted having given him back his gun, but there it was. Regrets wouldn't take it away again. But the Saint also meant business. He had left Christine and Hoppy alone for too long already; whereas Lauber's usefulness was temporarily exhausted.

Lauber was less than a yard away as the Saint faced him; he was not the same intellectual type as Graner. There was only one argument that would really make an impression on him.

Simon sized up the situation and the man in one of the swiftest calculations he had ever had to make in his life. He had already hit Lauber's jaw once and had discovered what it was made of. But Lauber's body had the solid paunchiness to which men of his build are subject when they begin to lead idle lives. Simon chose his mark for the second experiment with greater care.

"Tell me about it some other time, brother," he murmured; and his fist jolted out like a piston.

A kick like the piston of a locomotive went into it, built up from the shift of the Saint's weight and the scientific turning of his body and the supple muscles of his back and shoulders. Every ounce of his weight and strength from the tips of his toes up to his wrist went into the job of impregnating the punch with the power of dynamite. Simon wanted no more delays: he knew how much it took to affect Lauber's constitution and generously gave him everything that he had. The blow sogged into Lauber's stomach, just below the place where his ribs parted, with a force that drove the flesh back four inches before Simon's knuckles had finished travelling.

Lauber gave a queer sharp cough, and his knees melted. Simon jarred his right fist up under the jaw as Lauber's head came forward, just for luck; he didn't wait to see any more.

The chauffeur, who couldn't have been at all sure which side he was on by that time, made a half-hearted attempt to grab him as he ducked for the door. Simon detonated a brisk jab squarely on his nose and tripped him neatly as he staggered back. A second later he was taking the first flight of stairs at one leap.

He dodged round a couple of corners and found a taxi rank. He tossed a coin in his mind as he jerked open the door of the nearest cab.

"San Francisc' ochenta," he ordered, as the driver started his engine.

He lighted a cigarette as he settled back, and calmly considered what he had done in the last few seconds. He had dealt violently with both Lauber and Manoel: what did that lead to? Unless he ran up the skull and crossbones and declared open war on the whole gang, that interlude of entertainment would have to be accounted for somehow. And yet he had had no choice. Lauber's skull was too dense and obstinate for any other methods to have been effective — the chauffeur's nose was a minor detail. Whatever happened, Lauber had to be prevented from going where Christine was. And even now he still knew the address. Simon wondered whether he ought to have taken over the gun again and finished the job; but that opportunity had also passed by, and it was no use worrying about it.

…Already the Saint's brain was wholly occupied with the problems of the future.

The house where David Keena had his apartment looked just the same. There were no suspicious-looking vehicles parked outside or near it, none of the symptoms of recent commotion which the Saint had been half expecting to see. Simon wondered if he could allow himself to breathe again.

He left the taxi waiting and ran up the stairs. The door of the apartment was locked, of course. He knocked impatiently, and after a while the door opened a couple of inches. Simon looked through the crack, over the barrel of Mr Uniatz' Betsy, into the haunting face of Mr Uniatz.

"Oh, it's you, boss," said Mr Uniatz, unnecessarily but with simple satisfaction. "I hoped ya might be comin' dis way."

He stepped back from the door to let the Saint in. Simon took two paces into the room and stopped dead, staring at the figure which lay sprawled in the centre of the carpet.

"What happened to him?" he asked shakily.

"Aw, he ain't hoit much," said Hoppy confidently. "He tries to come in de door just after I get here, so I let him in an' bop him on de dome like ya said for me to do, boss. Ja know de guy?"

"Do I know him?"

The Saint swallowed speechlessly. After a moment he moved forward and picked David Keena up and laid him on the settee.

"Where's Christine?" he demanded. "Didn't she tell you?"

"She ain't got here yet," began Mr Uniatz untroubledly and the Saint stood very still.

"My God," he said, "Then Aliston did find that taxi!"

VIII

How Mr Uniatz was bewildered about bopping,

and Simon Templar was polite to a lady

1

To say that this was Greek to Mr Uniatz would be misleading. He would not have been quite sure whether a Greek was a guy who kept a chop house, something you got in your neck, a kind of small river, or the noise a door made when the hinges needed oiling. It would have involved a great many additional problems, all of which would have been very painful. Taking the line of least resistance, Mr Uniatz simply looked blank.

"I dunno, boss," he said, striving conscientiously to keep up with the rapid march of events. "Which taxi was dat?"

"The taxi I brought her here in, you mutt!"

"You mean you brought her here, boss?"

"Yes."

"Christine?"

"Yes."

"In a taxi?" ventured Mr Uniatz, who had made up his mind to get to the bottom of the matter.

Simon gathered all his reserves of self-control.

"Yes, Hoppy," he said. "I brought Christine here in a taxi, myself, before Palermo and Aliston picked me up — before I went to the house where I found you.. I left her here and told her she wasn't to go out. She ought to have been waiting for you when you got here."

"Maybe dis guy takes her out," suggested Mr Uniatz helpfully, hooking his thumb in the direction of the body on the couch. "Is his name Paloimo or Aliston?"

"It's neither," said the Saint. "His name's Keena. This is his apartment."

"Den how—"

"I borrowed it to give Christine a hide-out. He's a friend of mine. He turned out of the place so that Christine could stay here. And you have to bop him on the dome!"

Mr Uniatz gaped dumbly at his victim. Life, he seemed to feel, was not giving him an even break. With things like that going on, how was a guy to know who to bop on the dome and who not to bop? It filled the most ordinary incidents of everyday life I with unnatural complications.

"Chees, boss," said Mr Uniatz pathetically, "you know I wouldn't bop any guy on de dome if ya tole me he was on de rise. But how was I to know? De last time, ya tell me I should of bopped de guy I didn't; bop. Dis time—"

"I know," said the Saint. "It isn't your fault."

He turned back to the couch as David Keena began to make sounds indicative of returning consciousness. With the help of the Saint's treatment, he was soon sitting up and rubbing his head tenderly, while his eyes blearily endeavoured to take in his surroundings. Then he recognised Hoppy, and the whole story came back to him. He tried to get up, but the Saint held him down.

"Listen, David — it was all a mistake. Hoppy's a friend of mine. He didn't want to hurt you."

"Well, what did he have to hit me for?"

"I sent him to look after Christine. He didn't know who you were. You tried to get in, and he naturally thought you were one of the ungodly. I told you to keep away from here, didn't I?"

"Dat's right, boss," said Mr Uniatz anxiously. "I didn't know ya was a pal of de Saint. Why'ncha tell me?"

"Get him a drink," ordered the Saint.

"Mr Uniatz looked guilty.

"Dey was a bottle I found here—"

"Go and find it again," said the Saint sternly. "And if you don't find it I'll pick you up and wring it out of you."

Hoppy shuffled away and returned with a bottle. There was about an inch left in it. The Saint continued to regard him coldly; and Hoppy beetled off again and brought a glass. He was always forgetting the curious habit to which some people were addicted, of pouring whiskey into a glass before transferring it to the mouth — a superfluous expenditure of time and energy which Mr Uniatz had never been able to understand.

But he was eager to make amends, and even took the unprecedented step of pouring out the remains of the whiskey himself.

While David was drinking it, Simon tried to readjust himself to what had happened. Aliston must have been lucky enough to find the taxi back on its rank almost as soon as he started his search. Simon still had to wonder how he had succeeded in getting Christine away; but it had been done. She had been gone when Hoppy arrived. Therefore Aliston had had her for some time. But what could he have done with her? The Saint would have expected him to take her straight back to the house where he himself had been taken; and Aliston had a car to do it with. And yet up to the time when the Saint had left there, a long while after, Aliston still hadn't shown up. The explanation came to Simon in a flash: for three quarters of an hour or more, Graner's Buick had been standing outside the house to which Aliston would have been going. Aliston must have seen it, suspected a hitch and driven by without stopping.

Either that, or he had already decided to double-cross Palermo…

But in any case, where else could he have gone?

Simon realised at once that that was a question to which theories were unlikely to provide an answer. He had got to go out and do something to solve it, although the Lord alone knew how. At least it meant that Aliston would be unlikely to be going back and falling into Lauber's hands — if Lauber's hands were in working order again. Somewhere on the island of Tenerife he was at large, and he had got to be tracked down and rounded up.

"Are you feeling any better?" he asked David.

"If I had some more of that I might live," answered Keena doubtfully, putting down his glass.

Simon gave him a cigarette.

"We'll send you out for some more in a minute," he said. "But there are just a couple of things you might tell me first. What were you doing here when Hoppy bopped you?"

"I just came back to see how Christine was getting on."

"You remember what I told you?"

"Yes, but I didn't take that seriously. I didn't know you were going to fill the place with boppers."

"You're lucky it was only kindhearted Hoppy," said the Saint callously. "If it had been one of the ungodly we'd probably be wondering what to do with your body by now. This isn't a Children's Hour, and anyone who butts into this picnic is liable to come out feet first. I warned you."

David had been scanning the room in vague perplexity.

"Where's Christine?"

"They've got her — or one of them has," said the Saint flatly. "She was gone when Hoppy got here."

"But how could they have done that?"

"If I knew the answer I'd tell you. There isn't a trace that I've been able to see."

Simon roamed rapidly round the apartment, and it took him only two or three minutes to verify his assumption. Everything looked untouched, exactly as he-had left it — only Christine had gone.

"Was it like this when you arrived, Hoppy?"

"Yes, boss."

"The door wasn't locked?"

"No, boss. I toin de handle and I walk right in."

"It didn't look as if there had been a fight?"

"No, boss." Mr Uniatz scratched his ear. "Maybe dey wasn't no fight, at dat," he suggested brilliantly.

"Maybe there wasn't," admitted the Saint.

He went back and examined the door, but it showed none of the signs of violence or skilful wangling which would have stood out a mile to his professional eye.

He turned to David again.

"You didn't see anything when you got here?"

"I didn't have a chance to see anything — except him."

"But you didn't see anything outside, anything the least bit out of the ordinary? A crowd, or people staring — or anything?"

"Not a thing that I noticed."

Simon smoked silently for a little while and made up his mind.

"We can't do any good by staying here," he said. "Apart from which, it isn't too healthy. At least one other member of the major ungodly and a nasty specimen of the minor know this address. I just hit both of them very hard, but I don't know what they'll do when they recover. We'd better be on our way."

"That's an idea," Keena assented. "I don't like your friends. Besides, we could get some more medicine."

"You'll have to get that by yourself, old lad. I'll pay for it, but Hoppy and me are going to be busy. Besides, I'd rather not get you any more mixed up in this party than you are already."

Keena nodded.

"I don't want to be mixed up in it any more," he remarked with profound sincerity. "But when can I use my apartment again?"

"When I've cleaned up the opposition. I'll let you know. Till then, if you see us anywhere, you'd better pretend you don't know us. I'll send you enough of the boodle one day to make you think it was all worth while… Conque andando. You toddle along, and we'll give you five minutes start."

David turned at the door and pointed at Hoppy.

"I only hope he gets bopped next," he said.

Mr Uniatz watched the door close with a pained expression on his homely face. Himself a frank and openhearted soul, anxious to be friends with all the human race, it grieved him to find himself rebuffed.

"Boss," said Mr Uniatz plaintively, "dat guy don't seem to like me."

"Did you expect him to love you after you'd bopped him on the dome?" said the Saint.

Mr Uniatz relapsed into injured silence. It was all quite incomprehensible to him. A guy had to take the breaks. Suppose a guy did get shot or bopped on the dome? If it was all done in the friendliest spirit, what had he got to bear a grudge about? He took a crumpled cigar from his pocket and chewed it ruminatively over the problem.

The Saint left him to it. He himself was fully occupied with the problem of Lauber's and the chauffeur's reactions to a similar incident, although he was unable to view them in the same naive light which would presumably have illuminated them to Hoppy Uniatz' complete satisfaction. By this time, presumably, those two would be on their feet again and restored to comparatively normal functioning; and Simon did not expect them to be forgiving.

What form their vindictiveness might take was something else again. So far as whining to Graner was concerned, Lauber had no authority to give the Saint orders, and the Saint had no particular obligation not to hit him in the stomach; although an imaginative man might invent a story to justify the former and misinterpret the latter. But that still left out the chauffeur, who could relate certain inexplicable happenings which had preceded the aforesaid massage of the Stomach. Lauber would have to deal with him in some way first. But if Manoel had made the quicker recovery he might have decided to do some dealing on his own — and there would be nothing to prevent him telling Graner the whole truth as he knew it. It just introduced a few more incalculable factors into the jumble — and all of them had to be straightened out before the equation could be solved.

The Saint looked at his watch.

"Let's waft," he said.

He closed the door of the apartment and went down the stairs, with Hoppy at his heels, The street below was still undisturbed. It had stopped raining at last, and the wet cobbles glistened in the grey light of the late afternoon. A few ragged and dirty children splashed in the rivers that still coursed through the gutters and lapped the top of the pavement. Two or three sloppy-looking young men stood in a near — by doorway and laboured energetically at the traditional local occupation of doing nothing. A toothless and wrinkled hag in a black shawl leaned against a wall and scratched herself philosophically. The sordid, ineffectual and time-ignoring life of Santa Cruz pursued the unimportant tenor of its way, as it had done for the last four hundred years and would probably continue to do for the next four hundred.

They got into the Saint's taxi. As it started off, Simon looked back at the street scene. Nothing changed in it. He was certain they were not being watched or followed.

"Hotel Orotava," he said.

He had nothing to say during the journey; and Mr Uniatz, who was still brooding over the mysteries of human psychology, made no efforts to draw him into conversation. Mr Uniatz knew by experience that conversation with the Saint usually involved intense mental concentration, an affliction which he never went out to seek. He had enough troubles already, what with one thing and another…

As they reached their destination, Simon scanned the square with the same alert and penetrating survey as he had given the Calle San Francisco (which is officially designated the Calle Doctor Comenge, although nobody in Tenerife except the map makers knows it). But that also was unchanged. The usual group of loafers propped up the statue of the Virgin of Candelaria, the usual buses were picking up their usual unsavoury passengers, the usual urchins were bawling the evening newspaper, the usual taxis were unnecessarily tooting their unusually offensive horns; the only unusual circumstance — if the divine inspiration of the guide books was to be accepted — was the river of muddy yellow water which poured down the street like a miniature Yangtze Kiang from the upper reaches of the town. But there was nobody in sight whom the Saint could recognise.

Nevertheless, his heart was in his mouth as the antique elevator bore him uncertainly upwards to the top floor of the hotel. When he went through the communicating door and found Joris Vanlinden lying peacefully asleep on the bed, he felt that that at least was almost too good to be true.

Simon studied him for a few moments, and one part of his threadbare plan crystallised in his mind. He tiptoed back to his own room and unhooked the telephone.

2

Presently Graner's voice answered him — there was no mistaking the delicately poisonous accents which survived even the tinny reverberations of the Spanish instrument.

"This is Tombs," said the Saint.

"Yes?" Graner's answer came back without hesitation.

"Your chauffeur came round with the message. I went to the address. It seems to be a house with a couple of apartments, but I haven't seen my man or anybody else. Of course, he may have gone again by now — I can't find out without knocking on the doors. I'd rather not make a fuss if I can avoid it, for fear of scaring him off."

"Had you heard anything of Aliston when you left Lauber?"

"Not a word. Have you?"

"He has not been in touch with the house."

"Well, what do we do?" asked the Saint. "Why did you want someone to chase this other guy, anyway?"

"I thought it would be safer to watch him. Where are you telephoning from?"

"I'm in a shop near by."

"What is the number?"

"Three nine eight six," said the Saint, hoping that Graner didn't know anyone with that number.

"You had better wait for a while — say half an hour. If he comes out, follow him. If he has not come out in that time, try to enter the apartments and see what you can find out. If there is no trace of him, go back to Lauber. If I have any other instructions I will call you. You will tell the shop that you are expecting a call."

"Okay."

Simon replaced the telephone with a slight shrug. He was not much further on than he had been before. If Graner's share in the dialogue could be taken on trust, neither Lauber nor the chauffeur had yet been in touch with him. If any reliance could be placed on his tone of voice, Graner's suspicions were still at rest. It was flimsy enough material on which to build vital decisions, but it was all there was. And even if it was tentatively accepted as sound, it still left Lauber's next move to be prophesied.

Mechanically the Saint took out his cigarette case for the indispensable auxiliary to thought. The case was empty.

"Damn," he said, and got up off the bed. "Have you got a cigarette, Hoppy?"

"I got a zepp," said Mr Uniatz generously.

Simon looked at the cigar and shook his head tactfully.

"I'll go out and buy some," he said, and remembered something else he could do at the same time.

"Maybe we could get a drink de same place," assented Mr Uniatz, brightening.

A firm veto to that sociable idea was on the tip of the Saint's tongue when another angle on it crossed his mind. He peeped through the communicating door again. Joris was still sleeping the relaxed and utterly forgetful sleep of a child.

Simon closed the door silently.

"You can get a drink," he said. "But we can't be seen drinking together. Give me a couple of minutes, and go out on your own. You'd better go to the German Bar — it's just over the other side of the square, where you see the awning. I'll come in there myself in — let's see — in an hour and a half at the very outside. If I don't pay any attention to you, don't come and talk with me. And if I haven't shown up by half past six, come back here and hold the fort. Have you got that, or shall I say it again?"

"I got it, boss," said Mr Uniatz intelligently. "But do I bop de nex' guy who comes in or don't I?"

"I suppose you bop him," said the Saint fatalistically.

On his way down the stairs he became more convinced of the soundness of his plan. Soon enough, whatever else developed out of the situation, some one or other would be investigating the report that Joris was back at the hotel; and anything that would confuse them and add to their difficulties would be an advantage on the side of righteousness and Saintly living. It was rather like using Hoppy for live bait, but at the same time it probably made very little actual addition to the danger he was already in.

The wavy-haired boy looked up with a pleased and optimistic smile as Simon approached the desk. He was beginning to regard those approaches as a continually recurring miracle.

Simon glanced around him before he spoke, but there was nobody in the lounge.

"You remember the old man who came in with my friend a little while ago?"

"Sí, señor."

"Has anyone been enquiring for him?"

"No, señor. Nadie me ha preguntado."

"Good. Now listen. In a few minutes my friend will go out again — alone. But if anyone inquires for the old man, you will say that he went out with him. If they want to know what room he was in, you will give them the number of one of your empty rooms on the second floor. But you will be quite definite that he has left the hotel. You will also say that I have not been back here. Is that understood?"

"Sí, señor," said the boy expectantly.

He was not disappointed. Another hundred-peseta note unfurled itself under his eyes. If this went on for a few more days, he thought, he would be able to give up his job as conserje and purchase the banana plantation which, is every good Canary Islander's dream of independence and prosperity.

"And if you go off duty, see that the night man has the same orders," were the Saint's parting instructions.

He was on his way out when the boy remembered something and ran after him.

"Ha llegado una carta para usted."

Simon took the letter and examined it with a puzzled frown — he could think of no one in England who knew where he was just then. And then the postmarks gave him the explanation. It was a letter which had been addressed to him by air mail when he was in Tenerife on his last brief visit a little more than two months previously, which the unfathomable bowels of the Spanish postal system had finally decided to disgorge, having triumphantly demonstrated their ability to rise supreme over the efforts of Progress to speed up communications.

"Thank you," said the Saint, when he had recovered a little from his emotion. "There was a parcel sent to me about the same time; but that was by ordinary mail. It should be getting here any week now. Will you look out for it?"

He stuffed the letter into his pocket as he crossed the square, and made for Camacho's tourist office. The tourist trade not being what it was, the agency drummed up extra business with cigarettes and magazines.

"Holá, Jorge," he murmured, as he strolled in; and the round face of the fat Portuguese assistant opened in a broad beam as he recognised the Saint.

"Holá, senhor! Como 'sta 'ste? 'te ha vuelt' a Tenerif?"

"Yes, George, I came back. And now I want to go away again. Give me some cigarettes and then tell me what boats you've got."

" 'te quiere march'se ahora?" said George incredulously. " 'te tiene que lev' much' mas tiemp' aquí!"

The Saint shook his head with a smile.

"I've already been here too long," he said.

George handed him a packet of cigarettes and pored for a while over the collection of shipping folders.With the vista of innumerable mañanas looming in his mind, he announced presently, in his execrable mixture of Spanish and Portuguese: "Hay un barc' que sal' de aquí el día quins—"

"What, the fifteenth? Of next month? I tell you I want something at once."

" 'te quiere salir ahora mismo?"

"The sooner the better."

"Hay un barc' que sal' pasão mañan'"

"What about tonight?"

"Ay-ay-ay! 'te ten demasião pros'!"

George turned back to his sailing lists with a deep sigh; and while he was at it the Saint picked up a copy of the Tarde which was lying on the counter.

Apart from its own outbursts of indignation at the advent of gangsterismo in Tenerife, and amplifications of the original episode by means of interviews with every inhabitant of the town who had been within two miles of the shooting, the newspaper told of further developments which had been too late for the morning editions. It seemed that in the small hours of the morning, on the strength of the alarm which had gone round, a sentry on duty at the gasworks had started shooting at something, for no reason which anybody could discover. All the guards had turned out to join the party, all letting off their guns as fast as they could pull the trigger; it was not known what damage had been done to the nameless menace that they were shooting at, but they had successfully riddled a taxi which was passing in a neighbouring street, killing the driver and wounding the two passengers, who were returning from a merry evening at some cabaret. The only other known casualty consisted of half of another brace of guardias who were hurrying towards the sounds of firing: it appeared that he had been so impatient to get into action that he hadn't waited to draw his gun from its holster before he started shooting, with the result that he had shot himself neatly through the bottom.

Properly alarmed by these deplorable breaches of the peace, the civil governor had issued a ringing manifesto in the same edition, in which he proclaimed his firm intention of stamping out the aforesaid gangsterismo. With this object, he declared a state of emergency, and ordained (1) that all cafés, bars, cabarets, cinemas and other places of amusement should be closed by midnight until further notice; (2) that all private citizens must be in their homes by 12.30 A.M., and that anybody who was out after that hour would be liable to be shot without warning; (3) that in any case he would not be responsible for the lives of any persons who were out in the streets after dark; (4) that owing to the peril of their work the police would not be allowed to patrol in parejas, as heretofore, but would go out in squads of six; and (5) that it would be a criminal offence for any driver to let his car backfire.

It was an inspiring statement, which should have made the heart of any Tinerfeño swell with pride in contemplation of the resolute and capable hands to which he had entrusted his government. To Simon Templar, an intruder from the outer darkness of the civilised world, its train of thought seemed somewhat obscure; but he could form some idea of its consequences and implications. The friendly little thieves' picnic into which he had introduced himself was clearly developing a satellite public picnic of its own. For the time being their orbits were parallel; but at any moment they might start to converge, and when that happened the fun was likely to become a trifle breathless. It was just another factor that made a rapid ending seem even more important; and the Saint considered it seriously for several minutes.

"Hay un barc' que sal' esta noch' a las diez," George informed him at last, in a rather awed voice, as if the idea of a ship leaving as early as ten o'clock that night made him feel nervous; and the Saint regarded him admiringly.

"You ought to go to America, George," he said. "You've got too much natural hustle for this place… Fix me two single cabins on that boat, and two more on the boat the day after tomorrow."

He wrote down the names — the two passages for that night for Joris and Christine Vanlinden, and the two on Monday to be left open — and waited while George telephoned the agents of the line and made the arrangements.

It took some time to overcome the native prejudice against such speedy action, and even longer to get the action really acting. The tickets themselves had to be sent down from the shipping offices while George was making out bills and receipts. Simon paid in cash, which involved further delays. The fares didn't total to an even number of hundreds of pesetas, Simon was short of small change, and finding change for a hundred pesetas in Tenerife is rather more difficult than looking for brown — shirted Jews in Munich, for anybody who collects as much as twenty pesetas rushes off very quickly to put it in the bank before it melts. All the neighbouring shops had to be pressed into the search; and by the time everything had been settled and Simon had the tickets in his pocket nearly an hour had gone.

It meant that he was long overdue to return to the house where he had left Lauber, if he intended to obey Graner's instructions; but that could be covered by some story of having followed the man he was supposed to be watching. The same excuse might serve to explain his absence if Graner had tried to telephone him meanwhile at the number he had given. For some reason it never occurred to the Saint not to go back to Maria's apartment — he had decided that that was a risk that must be taken if he was going to try and learn something about what Lauber had done. There was also the possibility that Aliston might have left Christine somewhere else and gone back there before Lauber left.

With these reasonings going through his mind, but without any conscious volition, the Saint found himself threading his way through the streets which he had seen only twice before, and then without studying the route very closely. There were some minutes when he was afraid he had lost himself, for the brief tropical twilight was darkening as if curtains were being drawn in quick succession over the sky, and with the change of light the dingy alleys were softening like the faces of old women by the fireside at dusk. But presently, almost to his surprise, he found himself at the right door.

There was a little more life in the street now — a few straggling pedestrians, a few faces peering eerily put of open ground-floor windows in the age-old Spanish pastime of watching life go by, a few upper windows lighted up. But the window of Maria's apartment was not lighted, and Simon saw nobody loafing near the door as he reached it.

He pushed the door experimentally, and found it unlocked. The gloomy hall was almost in complete darkness now, and the Saint took a slim pencil flashlight from his pocket to find his way to the stairs. He moved upwards with the supple noiselessness of a cat, and switched his torch off again as he reached the upper landing.

For some time he stood motionless outside the door of the apartment, as if every nerve in his body was enlisted in the one intense concentration of listening for the slightest sound of movement inside the room which might have given him warning of a trap. He believed that he would have caught even the rustle of a sleeve if a man waiting inside had cautiously moved a cramped arm; but the utter stillness remained unbroken until he felt that he had given it a fair trial. Any further investigations would have to be made by opening the door.

Simon's hand moved instinctively to his pocket before he remembered that he had no gun, and his lips tightened with a momentary mocking grimness. So he would have to do without that asset… He slid his knife out of its sheath and held it by the tip of the blade in his right hand, ready for use. His left hand turned the doorknob, slowly and without a rattle. As soon as he felt the latch clear of its socket, he flung the door wide open.

Nothing happened. Nothing moved in the grey gloom of the room. There was no sound after the door banged wide against the wall.

On the floor between him and the table he saw a shape that looked like a man but that didn't move or speak. The attitude in which it lay offered no promise of speech or movement. Simon went into the room and flashed his torch on its face. It was Manoel, the chauffeur; and there was no doubt that he was extremely dead.

3

The bullet had made a neat round hole where it had entered near the middle of his forehead, but the back of his head was not so neat. Simon touched the man's face: it still held some warmth, and his flashlight showed that the blood on the floor was still wet.

Before he did anything else he went through and searched the bedroom, but there was no one there.

He came back and turned on the lights in the living room. With their help, he made another search that covered every inch of the room, but he found nothing to indicate who had been there. The table was exactly as he had left it, with the remains of food congealing on the plates. The overturned chair that he had been tied in was still overturned. The accumulation of cigarette ends in the ash trays and on the floor yielded nothing, although Simon picked up every one of them separately and examined it. He recognised his own brand, and another equally common — that was all. If there had been a third, it might have been useful; but Palermo had smoked only his cigar, and he did not know what Lauber and Aliston used. There was hardly any doubt that one or the other of them had fired the shot which had ensured that the chauffeur would chauffe no more: Simon had his own firm conviction about which of them it was, but he would have been glad to remove the faint element of uncertainty.

There was no means of doing that except by fingerprints, and he had no apparatus for that. But he remembered that his own prints would be among those present, and he went back to the bedroom for one of the gag cloths and carefully wiped everything that he had touched, including the whiskey bottle and the glass from which he had given Joris a drink, and everything that Hoppy might have touched in the kitchenette during his quest for liquor. The other things he left as they were. If the detective force of Santa Cruz had ever heard of fingerprints they could have a jolly time playing with them, and Graner's gang could do its own worrying.

It wasn't so quiet now…

Simon became aware of the fact almost subconsciously; and then suddenly he was wide awake. He stopped motionless for a second, without breathing, while he sought for an exact definition of the sound which had crept warningly into his brain while he was thinking about other things. In another instant he knew what it was.

Something was happening in the street outside. The symptoms of it, as they reached him through the closed windows, were almost imperceptible; and yet the sixth sense of the outlaw had distinguished them with unerring instinct. As his memory reached back he realised that a car had stopped outside with its engine running, but the other mutters went on — a faint increase in the volume of sound outside, a subtle alteration in the pitch and tempo of the normal noises of the street. Nothing that an ordinary man might have noticed before it was too late, but as unmistakable to the Saint as if the alarm had been sounded with bugles.

In two strides he was at the window, looking down through a corner of one of the smeary yellow panes.

The car, which had stopped at the door, was open, and the last of the party of guardias was getting out — Simon could see three others, and there might have been more of them too close under the wall of the house to be visible to him. A woman was still sitting in the back of the car: he saw the brassy flame of her hair and guessed at once that it was Mr Palermo's fancy lady.

Then he heard the first footfall in the hall below.

The Saint's fighting smile flickered on his lips and was reflected in the blue depths of his eyes. When something less menacing than that had happened not long ago, the thought had flashed through his mind that the upper part of the house was a dead end; and now he was in the very corner that he had avoided before. But last time he had had Joris to take care of.

He went swiftly through to the bedroom, closed the, door behind him and opened the window. Standing outside it with his toes on the sill, he could just reach the shallow parapet of the flat roof above. He drew himself up with the easy grace of a gymnast and wriggled nimbly over the edge.

By that time the last trace of the twilight had vanished altogether, and only a disheartened scrap of moon glimmering between the clouds gave him enough light to pick his way. On either side the roofs of the contiguous houses ran on in a dark plateau broken by occasional low walls. He hurried silently over them, Stopping after every few steps to listen for any warnings of pursuit. A startled milch goat tied to a shed on one of the roofs shied out of his path with a faint bleat that made him jump; and on another roof the hens in a ramshackle chicken run gargled and clucked apprehensively as he passed; Simon wondered, with a twinkle of incorrigible irrelevance, what a snooty New Yorker would think of the way Spaniards treated their penthouses and roof gardens, or conversely what a Spaniard would think of the value which was placed on them in New York.

Then a building higher than the others blocked his way, and he turned in towards the centre of the block. Below him he saw a solid-looking outhouse, and the window which overlooked it was dark. He swung himself over the parapet, hung at the full stretch of his arms, and dropped the last few feet with a prayer that the roof under him was strong. It was. He landed, on his toes with hardly a sound; below him was a sort of courtyard on to which the house on the opposite side of the block also backed, and with another short drop he reached the ground level. He tried the back door of the house opposite. It was unlocked, and let him into an unlighted kitchen. The door on the far side of the kitchen opened on to a narrow hall in which lights were burning. He had got the door open half an inch when a girl came down the stairs and went into a room beside the staircase. She had no clothes on. Simon drew a long breath and tiptoed out. The girl had almost closed the door of the room she had gone into; he could hear other girls in there, talking and laughing. From what he could hear of their conversation as he moved stealthily down the hall, he gathered that he had got into the sort of house where no Saint ought to be. He decided to get out quickly, and he was just level with the door when it opened and the girl came Out again.

A couple of seconds crawled into infinity while he looked at her and she looked at him.

She nodded pleasantly.

"Buenas noches," she said politely.

"Buenas noches," responded the Saint, with the same old-world courtesy, and groped his way out into the street as she went on up the stairs.

After a few minutes' walking he found himself in familiar surroundings and realised that he was in the street which contained the back entrance of the Hotel Orotava. He let himself in and threaded the labyrinth of passages through to the front of the hotel, running the gauntlet of the inquisitive eyes of a chef, a waiter and a pantry boy, with the impermeable aplomb of a man for whom Fate would have to work pretty hard to devise any new ordeals.

Joris Vanlinden opened his eyes as the Saint entered the room, but he did not stir. Simon went up to the bed, and the old man watched him without any expression.

"How are you feeling?" Simon asked quietly.

Vanlinden's lips moved fractionally, so that without uttering a word his face answered that he was quite contented, that he was grateful that someone was being kind to him, that he had nothing on his mind.

"You're going to see Christine," said the Saint.

A slow smile came to the old man's lips, and a little life came back into his gaze.

"When?" he whispered.

"Very soon." Simon saw the intelligence beginning to fade again, and went on quickly: "You're going away from here. On a ship. With Christine. Tonight. You and Christine are going away together."

"Now?"

"Yes."

Vanlinden nodded and tried to rise. The Saint helped him and kept an arm round him all the way down the stairs. It was like leading a man in a trance: Vanlinden would go where he was taken, once the stimulus of Christine's name had started him moving, but if Simon stopped the other stopped also, waiting for him with the patience of a man for whom time and initiative have lost all meaning.

In the hall, Simon called the conserje from behind his desk.

"This gentleman is sailing on the Alicante Star tonight. You will take him down to the boat."

"Pero señor," protested the boy, "I cannot leave the hotel—"

Simon made another contribution to the banana fund.

"You will take him down and see him into his cabin," he said. "He is not very well, and you must be careful with him. If he gives any trouble, remind him that he is going to see the Señorita Cristina. Here are the tickets. You will start as soon as I have left the hotel."

"Bueno," said the boy obediently; and the Saint turned to Vanlinden.

"He's going to take you to the boat," he said. "You stay with him and do just what he tells you. Then you wait for Christine on board — she won't be long now."

The old man smiled at him again with the same tranquil faith, and Simon turned quickly away before his own face betrayed him. If he failed that childish trust, Vanlinden's mind might never be restored. He would go on sinking deeper and deeper into that protective oblivion, while his vital forces gradually ebbed like a falling tide until one day he made the easy crossing from dusk to eternal darkness. No medical skill could do anything for him. Only one thing could bring him back to the light; and only the Saint knew what a fantastic task he had undertaken to conclude in the time he had set for himself.

He looked at his watch as he went down the steps, and saw that he had just about three and a half hours left.

For a few moments he stood on the pavement outside the hotel, leisurely lighting a cigarette. Then he set off diagonally upwards across the square. If anyone was watching the hotel now, they could take a walk with him while Joris was getting clear.

He sauntered round the Casino block, stopped to inspect the photographs of homely and buxom artistes displayed outside the Cafe Zanzibar, stopped again to examine every article in the window of a tobacconist's on the next corner, and only turned into the German Bar when he estimated that Joris and the wavy-haired boy had had time to get out of sight.

The first thing he noticed was that Hoppy Uniatz was not there.

Simon frowned as he sat down. He had given Hoppy directions which should have been explicit enough, although it was difficult to set limits to Mr Uniatz' capacity for getting his orders mixed up. Unless a slight discrepancy between their watches had sent Hoppy back to the hotel while he had been walking round the block, or unless Hoppy had consumed all the whiskey on the premises and gone elsewhere to look for more, or unless even more natural causes had dictated a temporary absence from which Hoppy might return at any moment.

The Saint ordered a drink and decided to wait for a few minutes. He had several things to think about for which he could use a little solitude.

The rising temperature of police excitement of which he had been reminded at Camacho's not long ago had taken another upward lift. Simon wondered whether the girl Maria had been prompted to bring in the police by anyone at Graner's, and finally rejected the idea. It would have been too obviously wiser for the Graner syndicate to remove the body without any publicity. A simpler explanation was that Maria had returned later to find out what had happened and had seen the same thing that the Saint had seen. Even so, it didn't make the outlook any brighter. She could give them the Saint's description, and probably that would be the first thing she would do; the newspapers would have to think up a whole lot of new words to express their horror; the civil governor would issue some more inspiring proclamations; and the police would dash hither and thither in a perfect frenzy of zeal which would probably last for quite two days.

Meanwhile the situation at Graner's was probably altering every minute. Whether Lauber had suggested a partnership to the chauffeur and had been refused, or whether he hadn't even troubled to do that, Simon had no doubt that he had shot the man to keep his mouth shut. Just as certainly, he had no doubt that Lauber had gone back to Graner with quite a different story; and it was not much harder to guess whom Lauber would have accused of the shooting…

"Muy buenas!"

Simon looked up with a start. A bootblack who leaned on a crutch on the side where his trouser was cut off at the knee was standing over the table, grinning with incredulous delight; and the Saint's face broke into an answering smile in spite of his preoccupations.

"Hola, Julian!" He held out his hand. "Que tal?"

"Muy bien. Y usted?"

"Como siempre."

The lad went on grinning at him inarticulately.

"And the boy?" Simon asked.

"Estupendo! Every day he is bigger and stronger…"

Simon Templar's queer friends had always been legion: there was hardly a corner of the world where they could not be found in the most unexpected places, telling stories of the Saint which Scotland Yard would have been surprised to hear. On the first day of a more peaceful visit to Tenerife, the Saint's attention had been drawn to a ragged and crippled youth who shined his shoes and gave him one of the frankest and happiest smiles he had ever seen. He had learnt that Julian was married, that his wife was expecting a baby; one day he had gone to their home, a single room with hardly space to turn round, and had seen a poverty that made him feel small. Simon had never spoken about what he had done for them; but there were at least two people in Santa Cruz who thought. of him as something like God, and one lusty infant who had been baptised Simon to bear witness to the miracle.

The Saint was forced to forget other things while he talked — even with all that he was facing, he couldn't have snubbed that welcome. He had to ask a dozen trivial questions and listen to a dozen answers, conscious all the while that the time was passing.

"You are staying longer this time?" Julian asked presently.

Simon shrugged.

"I don't know. It depends on a lot of things."

"You will come up and see Simonito?" said the lad eagerly. "I will tell my wife you are coming. She will not believe me, she will be so glad."

"Yes, I will come very soon—"

The sentence died on the Saint's lips and the friendly warmth faded out of his eyes for Reuben Graner had entered the bar and was walking towards his table.

IX

How Simon Templar enjoyed a joke,

and how Mr Lauber was not amused

1

In moments of crisis the human brain flies off on curious tangents. There was one freezing moment in which Simon wondered whether Graner could have heard him talking Spanish, while the last words he had spoken re-echoed in his own ears like thunderclaps, and then he realised that the other patrons of the bar were making more than enough noise to drown what he was saying. They were only discussing the prospects for the next banana crop, but their heredity and upbringing made it impossible to lower their voices below a shout; and since they all knew that nobody else had anything to say worth listening to, they were all shouting at once. A split second later, another of those wildly disjointed flights of thought reminded Simon of something he had forgotten all day — the messages he had written and folded up in twenty-five-peseta notes in Graner's attic that morning.

Without any visible interruption, the Saint put his hand in his pocket and took out one of the notes. He could hardly have said why he did it, but it never occurred to him to hesitate. It was the only thing to do. Graner's thin-drawn yellowish face showed no warning expression that could have been read at the distance, his dandified strut was exactly the same, his eyes were the same unwinking beads behind his glasses, like the eyes of a lizard; and yet the Saint knew. He knew, by the reflex bristle of his nerves, more surely than logic could have told him, that the gong was sounding for the final round. Whatever Graner's manner might be, whatever was said between them, the curtains were going up for the last time; and at a moment like that, knowing all the odds against him, the Saint left nothing more to chance than he had to leave.

He held out the note to Julian. The lad tried to wave it away.

"Toma!" said the Saint imperatively. It was the last word he could say before Graner was within earshot. He added in English: "Get me some change."

"El señor quiere cambio," Graner interpreted, with sneering distinctness, as the bootblack stood smiling sheepishly.

The lad nodded and grinned again, and hobbled nimbly off on his one leg and his crutch; and the Saint waved his hand hospitably towards a chair.

"Sit down, Reuben," he murmured. "What are you drinking?"

"A sherry." Graner gave the order to the waiter, and fitted a cigar into his amber holder. "It was lucky I saw you as I was driving by. Where have you been?"

Simon lighted the cigar for him, and the action gave him a spare moment to consider his reply. There were half-a-dozen different approaches that he might have subconsciously expected Graner to make, but this was not one of them. It gave him an odd, ridiculous impression that Graner was feeling his ground as cautiously as he wanted to himself, and he wondered if his instincts were starting to play tricks with him.

"I hung around the Calle San Francisco for a bit," he said vaguely. "Then our friend came out, and I followed him. He's a great walker — led me a chase all over the town. He went into three or four shops and bought things. Then he went into the Casino. I stayed outside for sometime, until I got scared there might be a back way out. I went in and made enquiries, and there was. I toured all over the place, but he'd gone."

"Did you go back to Lauber after that?"

"Yes."

"What happened there?"

The Saint gave himself another breather while he lighted a cigarette. He was beginning to feel as if all his co-ordinates of reality were giving way, as if he were wading in grotesque slow motion through a sea of thick and glutinous soup, like a man on a marijuana jag. But he had made up his mind that the safest thing was to let Graner give him the lead; and meanwhile he didn't see why he shouldn't play the same game as he assumed Lauber had been playing.

He said, with deliberately measured bluntness: "It might have been the last job I could have done for you for a long time. If I hadn't been lucky you'd have been looking for a new diamond cutter."

"Why?"

"Because in any case you're going to have to look for a new chauffeur. He was the only guy I found when I got there, and he was dead."

"Manoel?"

The Saint nodded.

"Shot. Right between the eyes. He was still warm when I found him. The apartment was quite dark. I searched through it, but there wasn't anyone there, I couldn't do any more, because just then the police rolled up. I heard them coming and looked out of the window. Palermo's girl was with them, so I suppose she found Manoel and turned in the alarm. I climbed out of a back window as they came in the door, and beat it over the roofs."

Graner's face registered no emotion. He gripped the amber holder between his teeth and drew the end of his cigar to an even red. His sharp snaky eyes watched Simon intently through the smoke.

"Would you be surprised to hear that Lauber said you had shot him?" he said.

"Su cambio, senior."

The bootblack had returned. He laid five duros on the marble table in front of the Saint. Simon handed him a peseta and looked at him as he did so. Julian's smile was uncertain, and his eyes were troubled: it was enough to tell the Saint that the lad had found his message and read it. He was still afraid that Julian might try to say something to him. about it, and turned his shoulder on him quickly before that disaster could happen.

"No," he answered Graner blandly. "It wouldn't surprise me very much. But it would make me a little more sure that Lauber had done it himself."

"You don't like Lauber?"

The Saint shrugged.

"I expect you've already made up your own mind who did it. I'm just telling you what I think. What was Lauber's story?"

"He told me that when Manoel arrived with the message you were so insistent on going to the Calle San Francisco yourself that he became suspicious. When he tried to prevent you going, you hit him and knocked him out; and then he thinks you shot Manoel when he tried to stop you."

"It's a good story," said the Saint unconcernedly, "even if it is a god-damn lie. Lauber was the bloke who insisted that he wanted to wait there for Aliston. But if you believe him, why don't you call the police?"

"I'll talk about that in a minute," said Graner. He inspected his cigar for a few seconds, then looked up from it to add: "I have already seen Aliston."

A ball of lead formed in the Saint's stomach and made his diaphragm feel as if it was being dragged down out of its rightful place. He had to check himself for a moment before he spoke, to make sure that his voice was under control.

"That's something, anyway," he conceded coolly. "Was he looking pretty fit?"

"He had Christine with him."

Simon knew how Lauber must have felt when he received that shattering jolt in the solar plexus, having seen it coming and yet only having had time to realise that he couldn't possibly move fast enough to ward it off. He had had fair warning, but the shock was none the less deadly for that. He knew that he was hearing the truth — a fabrication that would have fitted so neatly into his own deductions would have been too wild a coincidence. The shock numbed every physical sense he commanded; but somehow it left his brain aloof and unshaken by the chaos of his nerves.

"Better and better," he said, and was amazed at the naturalness of his own voice. "Where was this?"

"At the house."

The third shock was wasted — it had no reactions left to work on.

"When?"

"Aliston was there when I got back with Palermo."

"And who did he say I'd killed?"

"I will tell you exactly what he told me. He told me that he traced your taxi back to the Calle San Francisco. He found Christine there — at the address where Joris' friend went to after you let him go."

"That's impossible," said the Saint, with unruffled assurance. "Unless she got out of the place where I left her. Besides, this was before Joris' pal went there, wasn't it? Well, if he'd gone there expecting to find Christine, and she'd disappeared, would he have calmly gone off on a shopping tour like the one I followed him on?"

"That is what he did according to your story," Graner reminded him.

"And according to Aliston's story I'm a liar again. You know, I'm taking quite a shine to this outfit of yours, Reuben. It's such a relief to know you're among friends."

Graner nodded.

"I said I would tell you exactly what Aliston told me."

"And I suppose he'd got another bright theory that I snatched Joris and his pal and parked them with Palermo's slut."

"Oh no. Aliston did not deny that he and Palermo had taken them. He was very perturbed when he heard that they had been permitted to escape."

"I'll bet he was," said the Saint grimly. "And how did he make that sound all right — about double-crossing the rest of us?" Graner paused to trim the ash on his cigar; and again his hard, pebbly gaze rested on the Saint with the same unaccountable calculativeness that had been puzzling Simon ever since he sat down.

"I will go on telling you what he told me. He said that it was because he and Palermo were suspicious of you. They were afraid to argue with me because they were too familiar with my objection to having my orders questioned, but they were convinced that for once I was making a mistake. They did not like the way I had accepted you and accepted your terms this morning. They were certain that it would be dangerous to take Joris and the other man back to the house while you were there. They decided to make sure of their ground before they tried to dispute the wisdom of my instructions; meanwhile they felt that Joris and the other man would be quite safe where they had taken them. Then they captured you to see if they could force you to give them any more information. Aliston pointed out that it was absurd to think that they were trying to double-cross me, when he had brought Christine straight to the house as soon as he found her. He said that once he had her in his hands, believing that Joris and the other man and yourself were safely held at the same time, he saw no further need for secrecy, and went to the house at once to tell me the whole story, bringing Christine as evidence of his good faith."

"What about Palermo?"

"He more or less corroborated the story — as much of it as he knew."

"And why didn't he tell it you in the first place?"

"He said that he lost his nerve, that he was dazed by the beating you had given him and did not quite know what he was doing."

The Saint blew a smoke ring and annihilated it with his next gesture.

"I won't bother to point out that that's the story anybody else would probably have told if they were in the same spot," he said. "So it wouldn't be such a fluke if Palermo hit on it as well. I expect you've thought all that out for yourself, and you know what you're going to believe."

"Nevertheless, I should like your opinion."

Simon had to restrain the impulse to stare at him. What the devil could Graner be driving at? Simon had been watching him every instant for the first sign of hostility, racking his brain to try and predict what form it would take so that he could be prepared to forestall it; and he had been baffled from beginning to end. The feeling of unreality came back to him so strongly that the whole interview seemed like a nightmare. Any of the things he had been expecting would have been less disturbing than that precarious fencing in the dark. But he had to make the best of the situation as it stood.

"If you're really asking me," he said slowly, "I should say that Lauber was the first double-crosser. The others seemed to think he had the ticket last night, didn't they? Well, he might have had it. My first guess would be that for some reason or other he was trying to strike some bargain with Manoel to get him in with him, and Manoel turned him down and threatened to tell you, so Lauber shot him to keep his mouth shut."

"And Aliston's story?"

"That's even easier. It's so wet that it takes my breath away. I think that Aliston found Christine all right, and was taking her back to Maria's. Meanwhile you'd got there, and he saw your car outside. That was enough to tell him that something had sprung a leak somewhere. He drove right past without stopping, and I'll bet he had about half an hour's continuous heart failure before he made up his mind what to do. He was on the spot. He had to think of some way to wriggle out, and wriggle out quick, before the rest of us caught up with him. Being rather a weak-kneed bloke, and scared stiff at that, the only thing he could think of was to wriggle backwards — to scuttle back into the fold and try to pretend it was all a joke. I think his story is the feeblest cock-and-bull yarn I ever heard in my life; and if you'd swallow that I guess you'd swallow anything. But that's your funeral. I can't help it if your brain's softening."

"My brain is not softening," Graner said suavely. "I had already reached the same conclusion."

Simon Templar didn't know whether to believe his ears. The ground seemed to be rocking under his feet.

"You mean," he said carefully, "that it's beginning to dawn on you that this precious gang of yours is just about the finest collection of double-crossing rats that was ever gathered together under one roof?"

Graner nodded.

"That is what I mean. And that is why I hope you will help me to deal with them."

2

Something began to bubble deep down in the Saint's inside, so that he had to clench his teeth to keep it down. The leaden weight in his stomach suddenly turned into an airy balloon which swelled up until it almost choked him. His ribs ached with the strain of suppressing that ferment of Homeric laughter. The tears started to his eyes.

It was stupendous, sublime, epoch-making, phenomenal, colossal — no thesaurus ever compiled held enough words for it. It was superb, prodigious, transcendental, gosh-gorgeous and gloatworthy. It was the last perfect touch that was needed to turn that hilarious thieves' picnic into the most climactic comedy in the history of the universe.

And yet after all — why not? Everybody else had done it. Lauber had done it. Aliston and Palermo had done it. He himself had been doing it all the time. Everybody in the cast had been scooting backwards and forwards through a tangle of intrigue and temporary alliances and propositions and cross-double-crossing that made European international politics look like a simple nursery game, fairly falling over each other to tread on somebody else's face and scramble on to their own band wagons. Why shouldn't Graner wake up eventually to what was going on all around him, and decide to look after himself?

He had plenty of justification too. From his point of view, the one member of the party whose stories had been credible all the time, who had given the impression of being the one lone pillar of honesty and square dealing in the debacle, whose every action seemed to have been transparently open and above-board, was the Saint. That this was simply due to the Saint's superior strategy and readiness of wit was a fact and an explanation that Graner need not have thought of. The one conviction that would have been left in his mind was that unless he took swift action he was in danger of being left high and dry by the defection of his subordinates; and his instinct of self-preservation would have done the rest. To him, the Saint would have seemed like the one tower of strength around which he could start to rebuild his kingdom — a kingdom which the Saint's proven ingenuity and generalship might make even greater than the old.

At the risk of bursting a blood vessel, the Saint kept his face perfectly straight.

"You'd like us to give them a dose of their own medicine," he said.

"That is what I propose to do," said Graner. "There appears to be no other remedy. They have completely lost their heads over this lottery ticket, and when anything like that happens an organisation like mine is finished. I propose that you and I should make a fresh start — it seems obvious to me that you have been wasting your time as a diamond cutter. Perhaps you have never realised your own abilities. In combination, we should be invincible."

Graner's manner was deferential, almost ingratiating although the change was not much of an improvement. Simon felt that he was rather less objectionable when he was being his ordinary repulsive self than when he was bending over backwards in the unaccustomed exercise of making himself agreeable. But that only enriched the heroic and majestic fruitiness of the joke.

"In other words, we get what we can out of these birds and then ditch them?" suggested the Saint.

Graner inclined his head hopefully.

"I think you will agree that they deserve it."

"It seems fair enough to me. But what have you told them?"

"I pretended to believe Aliston and Palermo, I locked Christine up and left them while I went to my own room to think. It was a long time before I could make up my mind."

"When did I ring you up?"

"That was just before I had finished talking to them. I still hadn't decided what was the best thing for me to do, even though I was sure they were lying to me. Then Lauber arrived with his story."

"And you pretended to believe him."

"I felt that that was the wisest course. So long as they all believed they were successfully taking me in, I had a certain advantage. I left them all together and told them I would go out and see if I could bring you back. I told them that you would be less suspicious of me than you would be of any of them."

"That would still be a smart move, anyway," said the Saint shrewdly.

Graner nodded frankly.

"I appreciate your point of view. But I am not trying to induce you to do anything. If you accept my proposition, you would have a free hand to take whatever action you think best."

The Saint smoked for a little while in thoughtful silence. He wanted to leave nothing overlooked.

"How did Aliston get hold of Christine?" he asked.

"He told her — I am only quoting his own story — that Joris and the other man and yourself had all been captured. He said that we knew where she was, which was proved by his visit, and that we were on our way to take her. He also said that he had quarrelled with us, and that we were looking for him at the same time. He was able to convince her that she had no one left to help her, and that he himself was in terror of bur vengeance, and that their only hope was for them to join forces — I might mention that Aliston was on the stage before he made a slip which brought him to me. You might not think it, but he is a brilliant actor when he exerts himself."

"But when he wanted to take her to the house—"

"He said that he was taking her somewhere else, He drove her out on to the road to San Andres, which is very lonely, and there he was able to overpower her without much difficulty."

Simon could believe that Aliston had exerted himself in his acting. He was inclined to revise his own earlier theory about that abduction. It now seemed more likely that after Aliston had located Keena's apartment he had gone back to tell Palermo, and that it was then that he had seen Graner's car and realised that everything had blown up. Quite probably his offer to Christine had had the persuasive advantage of obvious sincerity; it was only when Aliston had realised that he had nowhere else to go, and that he was not equipped to fight a singlehanded feud of that kind, that he had panicked and done what he had done… Not that a detail like that mattered very much.

"And Joris?" said the Saint.

"I left the others to discuss the best way to get hold of him again. We can attend to that ourselves when we have settled with them. I think you are in the best position to arrange that."

"And the other man?"

"I know nothing more about him. But doubtless he will be getting in touch with you as you arranged."

Simon filled his lungs with a sense of deep and dizzy contentment. So the tangle had all worked out, the various pieces in the jigsaw had all shaken down into their final and perfect combination, all the permutations and combinations had been tried, all the explanations made and all the moves accounted for. Now at last the Saint felt that all the threads were in his hands, and it only remained to wind them up and tie the conclusive knot. Joris was on the boat. Hoppy, by that time, was certainly back at the hotel. It only left Christine — and the ticket…

Graner was watching him with an anxiety over which his habitual pose of inscrutable dominance was wearing very thin. And the Saint smiled at him beatifically.

"It sounds fine to me," he said. "Let's go."

"Do you know what you intend to do?"

Simon beckoned the waiter and counted coins to pay for their drinks.

"I guess we go up to the house," he said. "That's where all the other vultures are roosting, isn't it? After all, they're expecting you to bring me back, and I'd hate to disappoint them."

"They will be waiting to hold you up."

"Good. Let 'em. But they won't interfere with you just yet, because they're still divided among themselves. And neither side is sure enough of the other for them to act together against you. So they'll keep on pretending to play in with you. You can play their game and pretend to help them hold me up. All I want you to do is to see that I have a chance to grab your gun at the right moment; and don't get the wind up if I point it at you for the sake of appearances. Just see that I get it when I want it, and you can leave the rest to me. Now let's get moving before they have a chance to organise any new combinations between themselves."

He pocketed his change and stood up decisively; and Graner followed his lead without question. The reversal was complete — even more so than when the Saint had turned him upside down in the hotel that morning. If he had had time to think about it, the Saint would have suffered the agonies of another bottled-up internal explosion at the supreme climax of Graner's submission.

The Saint led the way out of the bar with a spring in his step and an impudent swagger in the set of his shoulders. He was on his way to the great moment which he had been living for for nearly twenty-four hours, the time when he could sweep the board clear of all niggling chicaneries and complex deceptions and sail into battle as a buccaneer should sail, with the Jolly Roger nailed to the mast and the trumpets of outlawry sounding in his ears. It was for things like this that the Saint had lived all his life.

And as they crossed the road to where Graner's car was parked, he saw that it was the Buick.

It was the one thing needed to complete his ecstasy. The one lurking doubt in his mind had been what Lauber might be doing up at the house while Graner was away. If for any reason Graner had used the other car… But Graner. hadn't. And Lauber would be fuming and sweating, roaming the house like a caged lion in a frenzy of impotent rage. Meanwhile a great many of the inhabitants of Santa Cruz had been ambling innocently around what had probably been the most valuable car in the history of automobile engineering, untroubled by the thought that they could have stretched out their hands and helped themselves to wealth beyond their wildest dreams.

The idea filled the Saint's whole horizon as Graner started the car and drove it round to speed up the square. Was the ticket still in the same place?

Where had Lauber ridden when he was picked up the night before? If he had been in the front, where the Saint was now sitting, he could have done something about the ticket when he was driving down with Graner that afternoon. Or had he been too uncertain of his own position, too afraid that Graner might catch him, to take the risk?

Simon's hands explored all the hiding places which might have been reached by a man sitting in the same seat. He felt in the door pocket, under the floor mat, around the cushions.

He found nothing.

Therefore the ticket must be somewhere in the back, and Lauber had had to leave it there when he was putting Palermo in for fear that Palermo might see him take it.

The Saint stretched out his legs and relaxed comfortably as the car purred up the La Laguna road. It was pleasant to think that he was riding in company with two million dollars, which he could have transferred to his own pocket whenever he chose. He could have put one hand around Graner's scraggy neck, switched off the engine and choked him gently but firmly off the wheel; after which he could have dropped him in a ditch and taken the car away to dissect it at his leisure. But he had to get Christine out of the house first. He had to discipline himself, to make a virtue of spinning out the luscious anticipation.

Always assuming that the ticket was still there…

He tried not to think too much about that; and he was still diligently keeping his mind off such unwelcome complications when the car stopped outside the house. Graner held out a key.

"Will you open the gates?"

"What about the dogs?" said the Saint dubiously.

"I left them chained up. If you stay out of their reach you will be quite safe."

Simon went forward into the flare of the headlights, unlocked the big doors, and pushed them back. The car turned into the drive and flowed past him. He closed the gates again and rammed the bolts home with a series of thuds which Graner would be able to hear. What Graner would not notice was that the thud of each bolt sinking into its socket concealed the noise of another bolt being withdrawn again.

The car had gone on around the house when he finished, and the Saint walked after it. Behind him he heard the sinister snuffling of the dogs straining against the chains that held them to the electrically operated mooring post.

The lights were on in the living room which opened off the hall, and the door was open, but any conversation that might have been going on was silenced at the sound of their approaching footsteps. Simon sauntered in ahead of Graner and cast his blithe and genial glance over the three men who were already there.

"Good evening, boys," he murmured amicably. "It's nice to see all your smiling faces gathered together again."

Their faces were not smiling. There was something about their silent and menacing immobility which reminded him of the first time he had seen them, and the impression was heightened by the fact that they were grouped around the table in the same way as before. They sat facing the door, with their faces turned towards him, watching him like wild beasts crouched for a spring. One of Palermo's evil-smelling cigars polluted the atmosphere, and his one open eye was fixed on the Saint in a steady stare of venomous hatred. The scenic effects on his face had been augmented by a blackened bruise that spread over his chin beyond the edges of a piece of sticking plaster and a pair of painfully swollen lips for which the Saint was not really to blame. Aliston drooped opposite him, in his flabby way, with the pallor of anxiety making his aristocratic countenance look like a milky mask. Between them sat Lauber, with his heavy brows drawn down in a vicious scowl. He was the only one who moved as the Saint came in. He put a hand inside the breast of his coat and brought out a gun to level it across the table.

"Put 'em high," he said harshly.

Simon put them high. Aliston got up and undulated round the table to get behind him. His hands slid over the Saint's pockets.

The Saint grinned at Graner with conspiratorial glee.

"Is this the way you always receive your guests, Reuben?" he drawled.

Graner's eyes gave back no answering gleam of sympathy.

"I am not receiving a guest, Mr Tombs," he said, and there was just something about the way he said it that made the Saint's heart stop beating.

Graner might have been going to say something more, but whatever might have been on the tip of his tongue was cut off by Aliston's sudden exclamation.

The Saint looked round, and his heart started off again. It started so violently that his pulses raced.

Aliston was backing away from him, and he held an envelope in his hand. Simon recognised it at the first glance. It was the belated letter which had been handed to him at the hotel, which he had stuffed carelessly into his pocket and completely forgotten under the pressure of the other things that were on his mind. Aliston was gaping at it with dilated eyes, and his face had gone even whiter. With an abrupt jerky movement he flung it on the table in front of the others.

"Tombs!" he said hoarsely. "His name isn't Tombs! Look at that. His name's Simon Templar. You know what that means, don't you? He's the Saint!"

3

Simon could feel the ripple of electricity that quivered through the room, and was philosophical enough to recognise that there were advantages as well as disadvantages in possessing a reputation like his. Palermo and Lauber seemed to be clinging to their chairs as if the revelation had brought them a stronger feeling of apprehension than of triumph. Aliston was frankly trembling.

Graner stepped forward and peered closely into the Saint's face.

"You!" he barked.

Even he was shaken by the shock which had hammered the others back to silence. The Saint nodded imperturbably.

"That's right." He knew that it would be a waste of time to try and deny it. "I don't mind letting you in on the secret — I was getting tired of being called Tombs, anyway."

A moment went by before Graner recovered himself.

"In that case," he said, with his voice smooth and sneering again, "it only makes our success more satisfying."

"Oh yes," said the Saint. "Nobody's going to stop you collecting your medals. It was a nifty piece of work, Reuben — very nifty."

He needed no further confirmation of that. The intuitive comprehension of Graner's cunning which had cramped his intestines a few seconds ago was now settled into his understanding as one of the immutable facts of life.

He had been caught — very niftily. Graner had opened his parlour door, and the fly had walked in on its toes. Simon realised that he had underrated Reuben Graner's talents as a strategist. If he had been a little less sure of himself, he would have stopped to admit that a man whose plotting had amassed the collection of jewels which he had seen in the safe upstairs couldn't be the complete sucker which Graner had sometimes appeared to be. Graner had been on the wrong track, that was all. When he got moving in the right direction, he had a beautiful style. The Saint admitted it. Only a consummate tactician, a past master of the arts of psychology and guile, could have thought up the story which had led him so neatly into the trap — the one story in all the realms of unwritten fiction which could possibly have hooked an old fish like the Saint. It had been so adroitly put together that Graner hadn't even suggested going to the house, If he had shown the least sign of eagerness for that move, the Saint might have been put on his guard. But Graner hadn't needed to. The Saint had proposed the visit himself, which was exactly what a consummate psychologist and tactician would have known he would do; and Graner had even been able to raise a few halfhearted objections to the proposal… Oh yes; Graner was entitled to help himself to his medal. Simon bore no malice about it. It had been a grand story, and he still liked it.

After which perfunctory raising of the mental hat, he passed rapidly on to consider the next move. And nothing was more obvious than that it would have to be made quickly.

Graner's recovery was having a restorative effect on the others. Simon could feel their relaxation in the diminishing tension of the atmosphere. Aliston was regaining control of his jittered nerves. Palermo was pulling again at his unsavoury cigar, and the red lights in his one good eye were burning hotter. Only Lauber was still hunched stiffly over his gun, as though he could not quite convince himself that the alarming situation was well in hand.

"Perhaps you would like to sit down, Mr Templar," Graner said softly.

"That's quite an idea, Reuben, since we're booked for a conference. This position does get a bit tiring—"

"You can quit that line of talk, see?"

Palermo jumped out of his chair, with one clenched fist raised. Graner checked him.

"Wait a minute."

"I'll knock that grin off his face"

"I said wait a minute. There will be plenty of time for that."

"That's right, Art," said the Saint kindly. "Sit down and save what's left of your nasty little face. It's the only one you've got, and if you hit me I shall certainly hit you again."

"If you try to hit anyone," grated Lauber,"I'll—"

"You'll put your gun away and hope for the best. You're not going to shoot me if you can possibly help it, because you still want to ask me too many questions."

Graner drew up a chair.

"I should not advise you to rely too much on that," he remarked sleekly. "If you attempt to fight anybody you will certainly be shot."

Palermo subsided slowly into his chair. He was still shaking with passion. The Saint opened his cigarette case on the table and continued to smile at him.

"That's something for you to look forward to, Art. And believe me, It does the heart good to see you so full of virtue and esprit de corps again." He glanced back at Graner. "In a way, you disappoint me, Reuben. I told you I thought you'd be a mug to swallow all the tales these birds have been telling you, and I'm still thinking it."

"Seems to me that this proves we did the right thing," Aliston contradicted him aggressively.

Graner giggled — a queerly incongruous sound that was not at all comic to listen to.

"I think you are still wasting your time, Templar," be said.

The Saint shook his head reproachfully, although inwardly he was nodding. If you looked at it that way, the revelation of his identity did seem to have thinned away the chances of picking holes in Aliston's story. In fact, it must almost have made Aliston seem entitled to a medal of his own; but the Saint wasn't going to award it.

"You jump to too many conclusions, brother. Certainly I've been interfering with all of you. But I didn't start it. You were all so busy double-crossing each other that the obvious thing seemed to be to join in. Just because you've discovered that I wasn't the one dumb innocent in the party doesn't make the rest of you into a lot of little mothers' darlings. Now suppose you look at each other — if you can stand the strain for a few minutes."

"Suppose you let me do the talking," Graner put in acidly.

Simon spread out his hands.

"But my dear soul, I know it all so well. I've listened to it so many times that I've lost count of them. You're going to say that you want to ask me some questions."

"Which you are going to answer."

"Which I'm not going to answer if I don't feel like it. Then you look at me with an evil leer and say, 'Ha-ha, me proud beauty, but I have ways of making people feel like it!' The audience goes into a cold sweat and waits for you to bring on the trained cobras."

"I expect you will find our methods effective enough."

"I doubt it, Reuben. I take an awful lot of persuading. Besides, what are 'our' methods? Are you speaking as royalty, or who else is 'we'?"

"You can see us," snapped Aliston.

The Saint nodded without shifting his benign and patient smile. He was playing his last cards and he meant to make the most of them. With all of them united against him, he hadn't a chance; but he knew on what fragile foundations their newly recovered unity was based. He had to break them up again, quickly and finally, and hope that a loophole would open for himself in the break-up.

"I know, darling," he said nicely. "I can see all of you. And very beautiful you are. But four people have to have some good reason for calling themselves 'we.' And the question is, have you got it? Are you four minds with but a single thought, four hearts that beat as one?… We've already spoken about you, Cecil. Now suppose we speak reverently for a moment about Comrade Palermo. There he is, with his beautiful piebald face—"

Palermo started up again.

"You son of a—"

"Bishop is the word you want," said the Saint helpfully. "But you ought to have known my grandmother. She was a female archdeacon, and could she dead!"

"When I get at you," Palermo said lividly, "you're going to wish you hadn't been so funny."

"Sit down, Art." Simon's voice was coldly tranquil. "Uncle Reuben will spank you if you don't behave. We'll leave you alone for a while if you're so sensitive — you go under the same heading as Aliston, anyway. Let's talk about Comrade Lauber instead."

"I wouldn't," Lauber advised him grimly.

The Saint sighed.

"You see?" he said. "If you didn't have any secrets from each other, if you were just a happy band of brothers, you wouldn't be nearly so scared. But you aren't Even Uncle Reuben made me a proposition—"

"Only for one reason," Graner said stolidly.

"I know. But it was a proposition. And you put it over so earnestly that I can't help feeling you rather liked it, even if it was just supposed to be a stall. If things had gone differently—"

Graner rapped his knuckles on the table.

"I think you've talked long enough," he said. "You will now listen to what I have to say."

There was an audible tightness in his throat which had not been there before — it was hardly noticeable enough to define, but it told the Saint that his last shot had gone very near the mark. And other indications were reaching him at the same time from the surrounding atmosphere, like electrical vibrations impinging on a sensitive instrument. The tension which had started to relax was coming back. The other three, Aliston and Palermo and Lauber, were leaning unconsciously towards him, sitting stiffly from the tautness of their muscles, watching him as if they were watching a smouldering fuse that might explode a charge of dynamite at any instant.

The Saint shrugged contentedly.

"By all manner of means, Reuben," he said obligingly. "But who's going to listen?"

"We'll all listen," snarled Lauber.

"And will you all be quite sure that it's safe for the rest of you to hear? I'm not promising anything, but you might get some valuable information out of me; and then one of you might use it for himself."

Graner put the tips of his fingers together in his old-maidish way.

"That will not concern yon," he said ironically.

"But I think it concerns all of us," said the Saint. "Get your senses together and look at it. We've all been dashing about in different directions, trying to cut each other's throats. Now we seem to have got joined up again. Let's stay that way. You've got Christine. I've still got the other two. Let's put our cards on the table and see how the hand plays out."

Aliston's sharp falsetto laugh twittered across the room.

"You must think we're a lot of fools," he said scornfully.

"Would you be a bigger fool to trust me than to trust a little punk like Palermo? Would Graner be a bigger fool to trust me than to trust a thickheaded windbag like Lauber? You, Art — after the way Aliston ratted on you when he thought things were getting too hot — d'you still feel he's your soul mate? Have you forgotten that clout Lauber gave you on the kisser? Lauber — do you remember how Palermo and Aliston wanted to kiss you and put you to bed the first night I came here? And Graner — what has he done—"

"That is enough!"

The shrillness in Graner's voice had gone up a note or two. He stood up, as if in that position he felt it would be easier to re-establish the dominance that was slipping away from him.

"All right!" The Saint's voice also rose, intentionally, as he played into the rising tempo of the situation. "Then you do the talking. And you take the consequences. I don't care much if you all double-cross each other to death. I'll help you!"

"Are you going to answer my questions?"

"Anything you like. But don't blame me if the answers don't please everybody."

"Where's Joris?"

"When I last saw him he was at the hotel."

"And the other man?"

"I told you I lost him at the Casino."

"Was that the truth?"

"No, Reuben. It wasn't."

"Where is he?"

"I haven't the foggiest idea. He might be roaming around anywhere. He may be at the hotel too."

"When are you supposed to meet them?"

"I'm not. I've done all the meeting I have to do."

"What do you know about the ticket?"

"Nearly everything," said the Saint quietly.

Lauber's chair grated on the floor as he pushed it back. He got up like a whale rising to the surface.

"Let me talk to him," he said; and the Saint laughed at him.

"I'll bet you'd like to! But I warned you my answers wouldn't please everybody. You all asked for it. Now you can have it."

"You—"

Graner swung round.

"Be quiet, Lauber. I am doing the questioning." He turned back to the Saint, with his eyes hard and glittering behind his glasses. "You can go on answering me, Templar. Where is the ticket?"

"So far as I know, it's where Lauber put it."

"You god — damn liar!" Lauber roared savagely.

The Saint's cool blue eyes rested on him unruffledly, and the whole of the Saint's mind was at peace with the prevision of triumph. He could feel the volcanic pressure in the air, the clash of antagonised minds locked in a silent struggle with themselves and each other.

"Naturally you'd say that," he murmured. "I think you said much the same thing to Aliston and Palermo last night, but it didn't seem to upset them. They didn't think it was such a fool idea then."

"Graner!" Lauber faced thunderously across the table. "Are you going to let this—"

"There should be no harm in hearing his answer." Graner's voice had gone cold again, but the nervous tightness was still thinning its sarcastic nasal accents. "Perhaps you can justify your statement, Templar. It should be easy to verify. Where do you think Lauber put the ticket?"

"In the car."

"Which car?"

"The Buick. That's the car they chased Joris in last night, isn't it?"

"If it is there, it's because he put it there," said Lauber furiously. "The whole story's a plant." He turned to the others. "Don't you see what he's trying to do? He's trying to set us against each other—"

"I don't have to do that," said the Saint mildly.

"You did that yourselves. But why argue about it? The car's outside. Why doesn't one of you go and have a look? — if there is one of you that the others'll trust that far. You'll find the ticket where Lauber put it, after he'd taken it from Joris, when he woke up in the car coming back here—"

"You mean where you put it!"

Simon looked him in the eye.

"I mean where you put it," he said steadily, and turned his eyes towards Aliston. "Cecil, where did Lauber ride last night?"

Aliston swallowed.

"In the back," he answered hesitantly.

"And that's where Lauber hid the ticket when he thought of double-crossing the lot of you. Somewhere in the back — I don't know where. Under the cushion, or under the floor mat, or in the side pocket. But it won't take long to find it."

"Let him find it!" shouted Lauber. "He knows where he hid it."

Simon raised his eyebrows.

"In the back?" he repeated gently. His gaze swung through a half circle. "You tell him, Reuben. After all, you were with me. Could I have reached the back of the car to hide anything there when we were driving up here? Was I ever alone with the car? I was beside you all the time. You stayed at the wheel when I opened the gates. We came into the house together. Did I have a chance to hide the ticket where you're going to find it?"

The eyes of Aliston and Palermo turned on to Graner. They seemed to slide forward on to the edges of their chairs as they waited breathlessly for the answer.

Graner stared at the Saint for a long moment; and Simon felt that he could read Graner's mind as if it were moving in front of him like a picture on a television screen. Unless the Saint had lost every last gift he had ever had for divining the thoughts of his opponents, Graner was wishing that after all he had kept the bargain he had proposed at the German Bar.

At last Graner's lips shaped their answer.

"No."

The monosyllable dropped into the quivering silence like the plop of a dropped stone reaching the bottom of a well. And after it, like an echo, came the reflex catch of Aliston's and Palermo's breath… Palermo's sleeve rasped the edge of the table with a faint scuff as he jerked his hand back towards his pocket.

Lauber was quicker — he had an advantage, because his gun had been out all the time.

"Stop that!" he yelled.

He flung himself round the table, past Aliston; and Palermo stopped moving suddenly. Lauber's automatic was no longer trained on the Saint alone — it was swivelling from side to side in an arc that embraced everyone else in the room.

Out of the whole gathering, Simon Templar was the only one who remained at ease. Since he had carefully organised the development, it was presumably up to him to. enjoy it; and he did his best, lounging round with one elbow on the table and the other arm looped over the back of his chair, and watching with kindly interest as Lauber backed slowly towards the door, covering them all with his gun.

There was nothing else for Lauber to do, arid Lauber had been quick enough to see it. If he had gone on denying all knowledge of the whereabouts of the ticket, the others would still have searched where the Saint told them; and Lauber couldn't help knowing how much his life would have been worth if it had been proved that the Saint was telling the truth. And even if he had contrived to save his own skin, everything that he had gambled for would have been lost. Whatever happened, Lauber had to stop a deputation of the others going out to search the car. It would certainly shift the proceedings on to a totally different plane; but if the process of disrupting the newly found unity of the ungodly could be continued…

"All right, damn you!" Lauber's heels had reached the door to the hall, and his dark face was flushed with fierce defiance. "I did put the ticket in the car. I'm just a smart double-crosser like the rest of you — only I got more out of it than you will. And I'm keeping what I've got! The first one of you who sticks his face outside the house will get what I'm giving the Saint—"

Simon flung himself sideways as Lauber's gun banged, and heard the plonk of the bullet lodging in the polished table as he spilled over, taking the chair with him. As he rolled over he heard the slam of the door.

Aliston took two steps forward before wisdom stopped him; but Graner reached the door. He grabbed the handle, but the door stayed closed. Graner took out his gun, and a bullet crashed into the lock.

The slam of the front door whanged into the series of explosions as Graner smashed his way out into the hall.

"Don't do it!" screamed Aliston. "He knows where you're coming from, and we don't know where he is!"

Graner grinned back at him, and his drawn yellow face was like a death's — head mask.

"You don't understand," he said.

As Simon drew his legs stealthily up under him, he saw Graner bolting across the hall, straight in line with the open door. Graner's manicured forefinger stabbed at the switch in the opposite wall; and Graner stood there, with that diabolical grin frozen on his face…

The muffled crack of a single shot came from outside; and then there was a dull bellow that rose into a shrill wail of terror and then died. There was no other sound, and Simon remembered that the dogs hunted in silence…

It was the last thing he did remember. Aliston was a couple of yards away, with his back turned and his gun dangling in one uncertain hand… As the Saint braced his toes into the pile of the carpet for a spring, something smacked into the back of his head… There was an instant of vivid brain — splitting agony, a sprinkle of jagged lightning across his eyeballs, and then darkness.

X

How Simon Templar paid his debt,

and Christine Vanlinden remembered hers

1

"Are you hurt?" said Christine.

"My vanity is suffering," said the Saint sourly. "When I pull two sap boners in an hour it makes me shudder. It's my own fault I got hit — I was concentrating so hard on Aliston that I lost sight of Palermo for a minute."

He was lying on the floor of the attic workroom, which was not the most comfortable couch for a man to lie on and suffer. But for the moment he could do nothing to improve it, because both his hands and feet were securely tied. Christine Vanlinden was just as safely trussed, although she had the slight advantage of being tied in a chair.

The actual physical damage which Simon had sustained was not so serious. As a matter of fact, his mind had started to rise towards the surface of the opaque fog which had swallowed it up while he was being carried into the room, and the shock of being dropped on the floor had completed his return to consciousness in time for him to hear the door closing again. He estimated that he could have been out for only a few minutes.

"I was a fool too," Christine said bitterly; and the Saint smiled up at her encouragingly.

"We all do these things occasionally. But you had more excuse than I had."

"Where have they kept you all this time?"

"They haven't been keeping me — that was a fairy tale. Not that it makes much difference. But this is the second time I've been collected."

He went on to tell her the truth of what had happened.

And while he talked he was starting to see if he could reach his knife. This time he was not being watched, as he had been before. He rolled over and twisted his wrist back, forcing it upwards against the bind of the ropes in the supple corkscrew turn which he had practised so many times in the past. He felt the hilt of the knife under the tips of his long fingers, and began to work it down. It moved slowly at first, then more easily as he was able to improve his grip…

"I told you Graner was clever," she said. "You were clever enough to fool him for a little while, but as soon as he knew what was going on it was hopeless."

"You're not flattering," grunted the Saint.

He had the handle of the knife fully into his fingers now, clear of the sheath; and he was turning it back to saw at the cords around his wrists. The muscles of his forearms were beginning to cramp and ache, but his spirits were taking a new lease of optimism which made the pain seem negligible.

One other thing was troubling him much more. It gnawed irritatingly at a third fraction of his mind which was left unoccupied by what he was saying and what he was doing. As he went on talking almost mechanically, the half-formed fear took firmer shape and made his voice sound self-conscious to himself. But he went on with his story, up to the statement of what had happened downstairs.

"… so Reuben pressed the button and set the dogs loose. I suppose Lauber had forgotten about them in his excitement. There was an excuse for him too — if I'd been in his place I don't know that I should have seen any other way to save my bacon. I banked on him doing what he did, and I hadn't forgotten the dogs. I had a reminder when I came in with Reuben, and I was only hoping Reuben hadn't forgotten them as well. It was the last part of my drama that didn't go according to plan."

"The dogs got him?"

"The last thing I heard, it sounded as if he was getting chewed. I guess Graner let them go on chewing."

The effort of reaching the cords round his wrists in the awkward position in which he had to hold his knife was making him wriggle on the floor in a way that must have been strange and alarming to watch, for the girl was staring at him curiously.

"Are you sure you aren't hurt?"

"Not a bit."

The Saint was smiling. He felt another strand of rope give way, and his movements became easier. He relaxed for a instant and then sawed more quickly.

The third thought in his mind went on. Why, after all, was he in that attic with Christine? Undoubtedly the dogs had gone on making a meal of Lauber, and Reuben wouldn't have ventured out to interfere with them until he was sure that Lauber was no longer dangerous. Undoubtedly, also, Palermo had several grudges to pay off, towards which that bang on the back of the Saint's head would only have looked like a reduced preliminary instalment; undoubtedly it would only have seemed an elementary precaution to tie the Saint up until Lauber had been disposed of and the ticket recovered. But just as undoubtedly the next move would be to ask the Saint some questions about Joris and the other man… So why not leave him in the living room, ready for further treatment?

"What happened to Joris?" said Christine.

Simon had known that that was coming. He said: "I left him at the Orotava."

He winked at her as he said it; and at the same time he felt his wrists coming free. He brought his hands round from behind him and laid one finger warningly on his lips before she could speak.

"I thought they'd never look for him there again, since they'd grabbed him there once before."

A couple of quick slashes set his legs free. She was staring at him, breathlessly, incredulously, with a wild light of amazed hope dawning in her face. He whipped out a pencil and a piece of paper, and scrawled quickly:

Don't say anything to give the show away. This place is full of electrical gadgets.

I've got an idea somebody may be listening in.

She nodded her understanding. She was almost laughing with dazed relief.

"There's an aeroplane from Las Palmas to Sevilla on Monday," he said. "I've booked him a berth on it. He'll leave here for Las Palmas tomorrow night on the local interisland boat."

While he was talking he wrote on his scrap of paper:

Booked both of you on the Alicante Star. Leaves at ten tonight. Joris already on board.

He cut her loose from the chair while she was reading it. She looked at him again, her lips parted, half laughing and half crying. As she stood up, her arms went round his neck. The warm young softness of her pressed against him. She was trembling.

"You've done so much," she breathed. - He shook his head.

"We aren't out of the woods yet," he said.

He disengaged himself gently and went to the window. It was a quarter to eight; and the message he had passed to Julian had told him that he could go away at seven-thirty if nothing had happened. But he knew that Julian had never possessed a watch, and he was praying that the characteristically vague Spanish ideas of time would work for once to his advantage… He could have shouted with triumph when he saw the bootblack leaning patiently on his crutch in the shadows under the wall.

Simon tore off a clean piece of paper and wrote on it in Spanish:

Get a taxi and take this to the Señor Uniatz, at the Hotel Orotava. Have it sent to Room 50. Wait for him and bring him here.

Underneath he wrote in English:

I'm at Graner's and in a jam. Grab a taxi and beat it out here. The bearer is oke and will steer you. Bring your Betsy. Get in and raise hell. If you see any dogs, burn them. They're killers.

He signed the message with the impish skeleton figure surmounted by a studiously elliptical halo which was the one signature that would leave Hoppy no doubts — the mark of the Saint. And he let Christine read it while he searched his pockets for a coin. Fortunately they had left him his money. He found a duro, and wrapped it up in the paper as he returned to the window. He whistled softly through the bars and saw Julian look up.

The fluttering white scrap fell at the lad's foot. Simon watched him pick it up, unwrap it and peer at the writing. Then Julian looked up again, touched the peak of his shabby cap and was off, swinging down the road on his crutch as quickly as any other man could have travelled on two sound legs…

The Saint's eyes met Christine's again, and each of them could read one message that needed no words to express it. If the note reached Hoppy quickly, and Mr Uniatz acted on it with equal speed, the adventure might have one ending; if nothing like that happened, there might be quite a different one. It was on the lap of the gods.

Simon Templar smiled. He was free; but Christine was there with him, and in the house below there were three men who now held the ticket for which they had all risked their lives many times. Outside, presumably, there were still the dogs; and all over the house, all around them and even around the garden through which they would still have to escape before they could find freedom, were all the accumulated electrical ingenuities with which Reuben Graner guarded his fortress. Even in that room they couldn't consider themselves out of the network of defensive devices with which the house probably bristled from roof to basement. And it might not be long before Graner and Aliston and Palermo became tired of listening for hints and reverted to direct action…

Curiously, the Saint was concerned with none of those things. In all his life, he had never planned anything that was dictated by the possibilities of defeat. He had always prepared for victory.

And in that room he was locked up with something that interested him profoundly.

His gaze turned away from Christine's towards the safe in the corner. Once again he was marooned with that incalculable treasure which had tantalised him so much before, separated from him by nothing more than a few inches of special steel and a combination lock which to most other brigands might have been just as discouraging, but which to the Saint was merely an interesting puzzle that might need twenty minutes to half an hour of uninterrupted concentration to solve. Except that even to touch it would set off another of those electrically operated alarms — the muted siren which he had listened to when Graner was opening it.

In fact, just about everything in the house that mattered seemed to be electrified. Which was all very modern and scientific and efficient, but it also had the corresponding weakness of centralisationallied with the Spanish inefficiency that had doubtless put the house together in the first place. For instance, it was extremely unlikely that a Tenerife builder would have installed a system of independent fuses. He would have been bursting with pride in his own up-to-date technique if he had even put in one…

Simon wandered over to the lamp that hung low above the workbench and contemplated it with a glimmer of impudent challenge. The longer he played with the idea, the more its ramifications appealed to him: With the same reckless half-smile lingering on his lips, he took a perra chica out of his pocket and unscrewed the bulb. A moment later he had slipped the coin into the socket and was screwing the bulb back again on top of it. There was the hissing crack of a spark, and the other light went out.

2

In the darkness, Christine's hand touched his sleeve and fumbled up his arm.

"Did you do that?" she whispered uncertainly.

He chuckled softly in the gloom.

"Yeah. That was Edison Junior. Blew out their fuse. Let's hope it's the only one they've got. Wait a minute."

He left her again and tiptoed towards the door. A little way from it he fell on one knee and lowered his head until his cheek touched the floor. Not a gleam of light came from the threshold — and the bulb on the stairway must have been switched on when he was brought upstairs, unless the carrying party had stumbled up in the dark. Even then, some faint glow should have filtered up from the landing below… But he saw nothing.

He rose, went on to the door and rested one ear lightly against the panels. Somewhere away below he could hear a confused murmur of voices and movement which sounded to him like heavenly music. Even though he had to strain to hear it, it was enough to tell him what he wanted to know.

The lights downstairs had also gone out. It was safe to assume that every other light in the house was also out of action. And if that had happened, the whole of Graner's elaborate system of electrical alarms had ceased to function at the same time.

There was one way to turn the theory into certain knowledge, and it was an experiment which would have to be made anyway.

Simon moved stealthily towards the safe.

His eyes had the cat's trick of adjusting themselves instantly to darkness, and he had the same feline gift of noiseless movement without effort. He crossed the room until he could feel the safe looming in front of him. He put out his hand and touched it delicately with the tips of his fingers, holding his breath while he did so. The silence was still unbroken. His finger tips slithered down over the smooth surface until they found the handle and shaped themselves around it, With a sudden summoning of his resolution, he tightened his fingers and grasped it firmly.

The siren remained mute.

"Where are you?"

Christine's question reached him in a frightened breath as he crouched down in front of the safe door. Simon answered quietly but in his natural voice: "Here."

He put out his hand and touched her as she searched for him and guided her down to his side. His right hand was already turning the knob of the combination, "What are you doing?"

Her voice was still unsteady.

"Opening the safe," he said practically.

"Can you wait for that?"

"Lady," said the Saint firmly, "when I last looked inside this tin can it was bulging with a collection of jools that made me feel giddy to look at. I don't say they're worth quite as much as your lottery ticket, but they wouldn't come far behind it. I can always wait for a box of boodle like that."

"But Graner will be coming—"

"Not yet — I hope. After all, they left me tied up, and they didn't know I had a knife. The first thing they ought to think of is that the fuse blew out by itself. They'll try to repair it, which ought to keep them out of mischief for a bit. It won't do them any good, because as soon as they put a new fuse in it'll blow out again. Then they may start to smell a rat and wonder how we're getting on. But not until… Now be a good girl and keep quiet for a minute while I give my celebrated imitation of a burglar."

His ear was pressed against the chill steel, listening for the click of the tumblers; his sensitive fingers twirled the dial backwards and forwards, fraction by fraction, probing the secrets of the lock like a physiologist finding his way through an exquisitely fine dissection. To Christine, the quiet and unflurried patience without which his manipulations would have had no posssibility of success must have been maddening. He was aware that she was shivering with the effort of crushing down the natural wild instincts of panic. His own nerves were drawn nearly to snapping point, and the haunting fear that the fuse diversion might not keep Graner and company occupied as long as he had hoped was never out of his mind; but he held himself with an iron self-control.

Christine's breath came more quickly as the irregular faint ticking of the lock pecked dustily away at the roots of her nerves like erratically falling drops of water in a refined Chinese torture. There was no other sound to relieve the fearful silence of the room — only that bafflingly syncopated tick — tick-tick of the lock, the rhythm of her own breathing and the pounding of her own heart, and the occasional rustle of the Saint's clothes as he changed his position. The minutes dragged on and on, an interminable rosary of remorseless time…

After a while the ache of nervous tension numbed her into a kind of stupor, from which she roused again to a sharper sense of intolerable torment.

She caught at his arm.

"Please!" she implored him incoherently. "Please… please…"

He laughed.

"I'm doing my best, sweetheart. Give me a chance."

"You must have been half an hour already."

"Sixteen minutes by my watch," he said cheerfully, "Hold on for a little longer and it'll all be over. You ought to be enjoying yourself. This is a demonstration of painless safe — opening by the greatest expert in the world, and I know dozens of people who'd give their back teeth to be sitting where you are."

His voice was gay and unruffled, with a magnetic confidence in it that somehow made the ordeal seem trivial. It made her feel as if she could almost see his face again in the dark, the face that was like no other face that she had ever seen in her life, which she could never have forgotten even if she had never seen it again after that first time when he took off his hat in the Plaza de la Republica to let her see it. The vision was as clear now as if she were looking at it. She could see it with the blithe cavalier lines poised on the outer brink of seriousness, the blue eyes intent, the keen lips absent — mindedly playing with a smile; and again she felt the strange spell which he had the power to cast.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Don't worry. Just think what fun Reuben and the rest of them are having hunting for candles."

"Do you think they've got the ticket?"

"I should think so — unless the dogs chewed it along with Lauber. Be quiet again, darling — I think something's going to happen."

Perhaps another five minutes went by. They might have been five hours, for the time they seemed to take out of her life.

And then the Saint sighed with profound delight; and she heard a more ponderous and solid noise from where he was working beside her.

"Got it!" he said, and his voice was sparkling with exultation. "Stand clear of the gates, madam — we're opening the lucky dip!"

The heavy steel door brushed against her as he pushed it back.

He felt in his pocket and found his pencil flashlight. Its bright slender beam stabbed into the open safe, stroked over the laden shelves, kindled tiny flashes of coloured lightning from the carpets of blazing gems on its stepped terraces, as if the bar of light was a magic wand wakening the jewels to life…

"Was it worth waiting for?" said the Saint rapturously.

She was gasping.

"I didn't know… Joris said it was full of jewels, but I couldn't imagine it."

The Saint glanced at his watch again.

"Twenty-three minutes exactly. I'm not going to try and work out what rate of pay that averages per minute, because it might put ideas into your head. But let's help ourselves. Hold the glim, will you?"

She found herself with the flashlight in her hand, watching him scoop up the jewels in handfuls and pour, them into his pockets. It was like seeing a pantomime come to life, watching somebody empty an Aladdin's cave and yet knowing that the fabulous collection of jewels was not merely a few quarts of pieces of coloured glass. Simon went on until every shelf was bare and his pockets were heavy and swollen. At the last he picked up a lone emerald the size of a bantam's egg.

"Here — you have this for a souvenir. I'll keep the rest, because you'll be able to buy all you want with the Spanish government's money—"

He stopped speaking abruptly, and she saw the grim fighting steel creep back into his averted eyes. An instant later he had taken the torch out of her hand and switched it off. The last thing she saw was that he was smiling again.

Then the darkness was back again, seeming doubly black after the temporary light; and in the darkness she heard what the Saint had heard a few seconds earlier — the sound of soft footsteps on the stairs outside.

Instinct made her stretch out her hand again for the comforting human contact of the Saint's body; but he was not where he had been when she last saw him. Her hand met nothing but the air.

The Saint was halfway across the room by then.

With hardly a check in his swift silent passing, he lowered himself for a moment to see what light there was under the door. By the brilliance and steady swing of it, he learned that it was not a candle… and he went on, with only that minor item of information to prepare him for what might be coming. At any rate, the blow-up was coming now, whichever of the ungodly had been deputed to come and investigate the attic. The men downstairs had had time enough to decide that the prolonged failure of the electrical system might be due to something more than natural causes — the Saint knew that he was lucky to have been left so long. And the one question in his mind was concerned with how much longer a margin would have to be allowed for Hoppy Uniatz to receive his message and act upon it.

The footsteps had stopped outside the door — he couldn't be sure yet whether they belonged to one man or more. But somebody was out there, listening.

"I wish they'd hurry up and do something about these lights," said the Saint, clearly and conversationally; and as if the sound of his voice had reassured the man outside, the handle rattled and the door was flung open.

The searchlight beam of a big torch blazed into the room, covering the open and empty safe before it jerked slightly to the side to catch Christine Vanlinden full in the centre of its light. The Saint was near the door, almost at right angles to the direct beam; and enough of the light was reflected back from the walls and ceiling to show him the shape of the man who held it. It was Palermo; and Simon saw the silhouette of the automatic rising in his hand.

Palermo's guttural exclamation practically coincided with the Saint's spring; and because there was about six feet between them Simon launched his knife ahead of him.

The knife was meant for the wrist behind Palermo's gun, and it flew towards its mark as straight as an arrow. It was unfortunate that the mark moved. Palermo had started to turn, his torch pivoting round, probably with the idea of locating the Saint — but concerning Mr Palermo's mental reactions at that time the historian must remain conscientiously agnostic. The only person who could speak of them with authority would be Mr Palermo himself, and this is not a spiritualistic seance. The only thing we are sure about is that Palermo started to move as the knife left the Saint's hand. He gave a queer little cough; and then Simon's flying tackle caught him around the thighs and brought him down with a thump. Palermo's gun went off at about the same time, like a clap of thunder, and in a flash Simon was grappling for it. He had got hold of the barrel when he realised that Palermo was not fighting, that Palermo was lying quite still and not resisting at all. Simon took the gun away, and held Palermo down with a knee in his stomach while he picked up the torch. He turned the light downwards and understood…

He looked up to see Christine staring at the same thing, reaching the same understanding.

"Is he… is he dead?"

"Let's say he has been taken from us," said the Saint piously. He recovered his knife and wiped it quickly and neatly on the late Mr Palermo's shirt before he returned it to its sheath. "And let's keep moving, because hell will now start to pop."

He took her hand and rushed her down the stairs. At the bottom he checked her again, before they turned the corner on to the veranda. Beyond the corner someone else was moving, and he saw a dim flicker of light.

He left Christine under cover, and turned the corner alone.

From the range of a yard he looked into the gaping popeyed face of the servant whom he had seen at breakfast, made even more ghoulish by the upward lighting of the candle which the man held in one hand. Simon smiled at him in the friendliest way.

"Buenas noches," he remarked, remembering the example of dignified politeness which had been shown to him in another place not long before.

The servant was not so ready to take the hint. He let out a bronchial wheeze and turned to run. Simon's foot shot out and tapped the man's heels together, sending him down in a sprawling slide. The candle spilled over and went out. Simon switched on his torch and hit the man twice on the back of the head with Palermo's gun, very hard…

He grasped the man under the arms and hauled him up again, holding him in front of his own body as a shield. As the beam of his flashlight swerved upwards with the movement, it flashed over the figure of Aliston, rising head and shoulders over the other flight of stairs at the end of the veranda.

"Don't shoot," advised the Saint considerately, "or you'll have to fix your own breakfast tomorrow."

It is possible that Aliston was too flustered to grasp the hint; or perhaps the light of the torch on his face was too dazzling for him to be able to appreciate the situation. For a second or two he stood frozen in open — mouthed bewilderment, while the Saint advanced quickly towards him, with the servant locked in front of him by the encircling strength of one arm. Then Aliston yelled and began to shoot. Once, twice… four times he snatched at the trigger, and Simon could hear the bullets buzzing around him like angry hornets. He kept moving forward. At the fifth shot it felt as though the man he was holding had collided with a brick wall. Simon hitched him up and pushed on. A sixth and a seventh shot went wide as Aliston's aim became wilder; then Aliston's gun was empty. He looked at it stupidly for an instant, and then flung it hysterically at the steadily advancing light in the Saint's hand. The gun clattered along the veranda, and Aliston turned to bolt down the stairs. Simon felt a warm dampness on his left hand where it was clutched around the servant's waist.

"Hey!" he called out. "Look what you've done, Cecil. I warned you!"

Aliston did not stay to look; and Simon pressed the trigger of his own gun for the first time.

The hammer clicked on a faulty cartridge.

The Saint's smile brightened recklessly. He dropped the automatic and gripped the body of the servant with both hands. He was at the head of the stairs now; and halfway down, Aliston in his headlong flight had become entangled with Graner, who was halfway up. They were clutching each other in a frantic effort to regain their balance; and Simon lifted his burden well off the ground.

"After all, it's your breakfast, boys," he said, and hurled his human cannonball downwards at them.

Then he hitched himself on to the banisters and slid downwards himself after the flailing welter of arms and legs and bodies. It seemed to him that he heard another shot, further away than it should have been to have come from Graner's gun, but in the excitement he scarcely noticed it. He reached the ground level just after the tumbling tangle of humanity hit it with a corporate thud, and he seized Graner by the scruff of the neck and lifted him out of the mess like a kitten. The Saint's smile glinted like sunshine before Graner's blazing eyes.

"You slapped me once," said the Saint reminiscently.

He slapped Graner on the left cheek, then on the right; and then he drew back his fist and punched him on the nose. He thought that he heard the bone splinter, and the jar of the blow ran exquisitely up his arm.

Graner reeled back as if he had been flung from a catapult, until he smacked into the opposite wall and slithered downwards. The Saint sprang after him joyfully; and as he did. so Aliston's hand grabbed at his ankle.

Simon's arms windmilled desperately, but the impetus of his own leap was too great. He went over in a heap, bruising his shoulder agonisingly as he fell, and kicked out furiously to free himself. But Aliston's hand kept its grip with the strength of a drowning man. Simon rolled over, with his other heel scraping savagely at Aliston's knuckles; but against the far wall, well beyond his reach, he saw Graner lifting his gun again.

The blood from Graner's flattened nose streamed down over his long upper lip and painted crimson into the thin lips drawn back snarling from his teeth. Simon Templar saw death reaching out for him, and smiled at it with all his old sardonic mockery. It had still been a grand last fight…

Crack!.. Crack!

He felt nothing, nothing at all, no pain, not even the impact of the bullets. He was aware of no change in himself, and his thoughts went on uninterrupted. The only difference was that the clutch on his ankle seemed to have gone — but that was probably because his soul could not feel such material things. It occurred to him that if death was like that, it was a very simple process.

And then he saw that Graner's hand, with the gun still grasped in it, had sagged down until it rested on the floor. Graner's chin had sunk forward on his chest; his eyes were open, but the dark flame had died out of them. While Simon watched him, Graner's head slipped sideways… His body went down with it, grotesquely slowly, as if it was crumpling under the weight, going down sideways to the ground…

The Saint looked up.

Framed in the front doorway stood a solid and bull — necked figure, beaming like a gargoyle, with its Betsy raised in one bearlike paw. As Simon stared at it in speechless gratitude, the happy beam faded gradually into a look of gloomy apprehension.

"Did I bop de wrong guys again, boss?" asked Mr Uniatz anxiously.

3

The siren of the Alicante Star boomed its last warning over the harbour. A steward walked round the deck, beating the last "All Ashore" on his little gong. The last belated tourists panted up the gangway, laden down with their last purchases of junk, and looking as ridiculous and repulsive as tourists always look, no more and no less. The last Hindu merchants waved their lace tablecloths and shawls on the wharf and bawled the praises of their expensive last-minute bargains. The last guardia at the head of the gangway settled his belt and gazed arrogantly around him, and the last rich snort and gurgle and splash with which he economised on the laundry bills of his pocket handkerchiefs resounded juicily over the mingled sound effects.

The Saint shifted himself unwillingly off the rail.

"I'll have to be on my way," he said.

"You're not staying here?" Christine said falteringly.

He smiled.

"I shouldn't have time to get the car on board. And besides, Hoppy and I are booked for a boat on Monday. I've promised to go and see a young godson tomorrow."

"You won't be safe — the police will be looking for you—"

"My dear, they've been looking for me for years. I've been chased by bigger and better cops than they'll ever grow on this island, and it never did me much harm."

She could believe it. He was invincible. She had watched him in battle for twenty-four hours, and it made all the legends about him simple to understand.

"But what's going to happen to us — to Joris and me?"

"Nothing," said the Saint. "I'll send a cable tonight to a friend of mine in London to fly out and meet you at Lisbon with a couple of brand — new passports ready to fill up in any names you like. You get off the boat at Lisbon, when everybody else gets off for an excursion, and you just forget to get on again. Then you travel overland to the Riviera, or wherever you want to settle down, and so long as you behave yourselves no one will ever bother you. The hunt for Joris has probably got tired of itself by this time, anyhow. And any bank will collect your lottery prize for you. It hasn't any name on it, and there's nobody left to make a fuss. By the way, I nearly forgot to give you the ticket."

He fished it out from among the ballast of jewels in one of his pockets. It had a slight tear in one corner and a smudged stain on the back of it, for it had been in Reuben Graner's breast pocket when Mr Uniatz used his Betsy; and the girl's hand shook a little as she took it.

"Some of this is yours," she said.

He shook his head.

"I got my share out of the safe."

"But I promised you—"

"I know. But I'll be honest with you. At the beginning of things, I wasn't at all sure that I wasn't looking for the ticket just for myself. So that makes us all square."

A steward poked his nose between them.

"Hixcuse me, sir," he said. "Har you going with us?"

"I wish I were," said the Saint.

"You'd better 'urry up, then, sir. They're going to take horf the gangway."

"Go and sit on a nail, will you?" said the Saint patiently.

The vague bustle on the deck was rising in a form-less crescendo.

"You could stay," said Christine.

"I can't, darling."

She still clung to him.

"I promised you so much."

His smile was the same, but the habitual mockery had softened in his eyes.

"It's my fault if I can't stay to claim it."

"But I want you to! My dear, don't you see? I've waited — waited all my life… You took me out of that. It was like a miracle. You can — be what you are… I'm no better. There can never be anyone else."

"You're young," said the Saint gently. "There will be."

"Last chance for the shore!" bellowed a brass-lunged steward.

"Never," she whispered.

His hands held her by the shoulders, as gentle as his voice. He smiled into her eyes.

"This is my life," he said quietly. "For me it's the best there is; but you've had too much of it already. You will find better things. One day you'll meet someone else, and you'll be glad that I didn't let you keep your promise. You must let a buccaneer have one big moment."

He drew her up to him and kissed her and she closed her eyes and pressed herself against him Presently he tore his lips away.

"Good-bye Christine."

He unlocked her arms and turned quickly away. She saw him shouldering through the crowd, vaulting the handrail, and running down the half-raised gangway to jump the last six feet to the dock. She saw him walking with his long easy stride across to the shining Hirondel where Hoppy Uniatz sat waiting for him, where he stopped and turned to wave to her, tall and smiling and debonair, one closed hand resting on his hip with all the gay lazy swagger that was the Saint, his other hand raised in farewell. So she would always remember him. And so, thought the Saint, he would always remember her. He stood there for a long time, watching the ship creep away from the mole…

Mr Uniatz took the cigar out of his mouth.

"Dese dames are all de same, boss," he said sympathetically.

"So are dese guys," said the Saint.

Content

Leslie Charteris
The Saint Bids diamonds

I How Simon Templar took exercise, and Hoppy Uniatz quenched his thirst

1

2

II How Simon Templar conversed with a porter, and a brace of guardias were happily reunited

1

2

3

III How Simon Templar read a newspaper, and Reuben Graner put on his hat

1

2

3

IV How Simon Templar rose to the occasion, and the Thieves' picnic got further under way

1

2

3

V How Reuben Graner took back his gun, and a taxi driver was unconvinced

1

2

3

VI How Simon Templar ate without enthusiasm, and Mr Uniatz was also troubled about his breakfast

1

2

3

VII How Mr Palermo continued to be unlucky, and Hoppy Uniatz obeyed orders

1

2

3

VIII How Mr Uniatz was bewildered about bopping, and Simon Templar was polite to a lady

1

2

3

IX How Simon Templar enjoyed a joke, and how Mr Lauber was not amused

1

2

3

X How Simon Templar paid his debt, and Christine Vanlinden remembered hers

1

2

3