The Saint Abroad: The Art Collectors/ the Persistent Patriots (12 page)

LeGrand was fumbling with the paintings. He
propped
them up against a low table, almost knocking two half empty
coffee
cups on to the floor.

“I think you’re both jittery,” Simon
said as Annabella
helped him catch one of the cups.

LeGrand snorted negatingly.

“Excited,” he said. “Not
jittery.”

“Here is your check from this
morning,” Annabella said.

“One of the signatures was forged by the man who im
personated the professor, of course.”

LeGrand took the slip of paper and crumpled
it.

“Thank you. I have another for you
here.”

He reached into a pocket of his dark suit and
produced a check for the same amount as the discarded one. Annabella
took it and
all but kissed it.

“I
am
rich!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, my dear, you are,” LeGrand
agreed. “And now,
ah …”

He had never offered his guests seats, and he
seemed
trying to decide what to do with them.

“We … must go now, mustn’t we?”
Annabella said un
comfortably to Simon. “We’re all very tired.”

“Very tired,” Simon agreed. He was
intrigued by LeGrand’s
manner and by the two coffee cups, one of
which
had lipstick on its white rim. “I’m just sorry we couldn’t meet
your wife. Isn’t she here?”

“She is having dinner with friends,” LeGrand said.
“She
was disappointed to have to
represent me there rather than
to meet
both of you.”

“Then she’s not ill any longer?”
the Saint asked.

“No, she is feeling perfectly well now,
thank you,” the art
dealer answered distinctly.

“Good. Give her our regards. And now we
must go.”

The Saint tried to meet LeGrand’s eyes, but
the dealer
refused to look him in the face. He edged past Simon and
Annabella in order to open the door which led to the entrance hall. His
face was completely expressionless, but it had a sheen of perspiration. His two
guests went past him
into the hall and he followed them to the
front door.

Simon shook his hand.

“I’ll be seeing you again soon,” he
said.

“I hope so,” LeGrand answered
earnestly. “And you too,
Mademoiselle.”

“Mademoiselle will be on her way to
California before
morning if she has her way,” Simon replied.

“France’s loss,” said LeGrand
gallantly. “Au
revoir, alors.”

“Thank you,
m’sieur,”
Annabella
said. “Thank you so
much.
Adieu!
”

She and the Saint walked out to their car,
and LeGrand’s
house door closed behind them. Annabella bounced into the
front seat of the car, turned, and waved the check in front
of Hans’s
nose.

“It’s done!” she exulted.

“So was our dinner,” said the
Saint, with a ghostly patient
smile. “To a turn. So it was a dead
duck.”

The other two must have heard him, but it
could only
have been at the outer surface of their awareness.

“Money!” Hans grunted, with
obviously mixed emotions.

“You’ll be glad I have it when you’re
sitting under a
palm tree watching girls swim in a pool all day,”
Annabella
“consoled him.

Simon was wasting no time driving out of
LeGrand’s prop
erty to the street. As soon as he was around the corner
he
stopped and cut off the car’s headlights.

“What’s the matter?” Annabella asked, suddenly sobered.

“I have news for you,” Simon said.
“LeGrand’s latest check
may be as worthless as the first one you
picked up.”

She stared at him open-mouthed. He got out of the car,
strode around, and looked in her window.

“Excuse us, Hans, but I have to have a
little private dis
cussion
with your boss.”

He virtually hauled a stunned Annabella out
of her seat
and led her to a shadowy spot a few yards away.

“What is it?” she asked shakily.

“LeGrand had visitors. Did you notice the coffee cups?
Most likely he and his wife were taken by
surprise. His wife
was being held
hostage for his co-operation in another room
of the house.”

“Why… that’s something out of an
old television series!”
Annabella protested. “And … who would
it be?”

“I’m not dreaming this up,” Simon
assured her. “LeGrand
gave me a signal. Now you tell me
who
would
be giving him
a dastardly deal like that.”

“I?”

“Yes, you, Fr
ä
ulein
Lenscher.”

She stared. Even in the semi-darkness the
Saint could see
from
the expression on her face that his words had hit the
mark so suddenly and squarely that she was unable even to
pretend innocence.

“Where did you hear that name?”
she finally said weakly.

“A large bird told me. Now give me the
whole truth, and
nothing but the truth, or I resign and you get stuck
with a
stopped check.”

She hesitated between fury and desperation.

“All right. Do you promise not to try
to get me in trouble?”

“You’re already in trouble, but I won’t
make it any worse
—as long as I get my fair share of the profits for all
the time
I’ve
spent on you … Never mind the indignation bit. Give
me your true life story before it’s too late.”

She nodded and began to speak with frantic
precision.

“My father was not Italian. He was Austrian, and in the
army in the war. Hitler was having various
paintings shipped from Italy to a big art museum he was building in Linz. My
father
was involved in guarding the paintings, along with
some other German and Italian officers. When Italy was invaded and the
Russians were advancing from the east it be
came obvious that the Linz museum would never be finished.
Paintings were stored in salt mines for
safekeeping, and also
in other
places.”

“And your father helped himself to a
few?” Simon asked.

“He thought when the collapse came that
it was as well
he should have them as the Russians. These particular
paint
ings came
from the collection of a friend of his—an Italian
count who was killed by Communists at the end of the
war and left no heirs.” She paused.
“You may not believe that,
but
it is true.”

“It should be easy to check,”
Simon said. “But I’m less
interested in your father’s ethics than I am
in his exploits as an art collecter.”

Annabella shrugged.

“I don’t know all the details,”
she continued. “Apparently
it was quite easy in the confusion at the end
for his Italian
friend to place some of the paintings in my father’s
custody.
My father hid them away until it was safe for him to get
them and
secretly move them … and they ended up here
in France.”

Not having any evidence to contradict it,
the Saint had to
be content with her story. He was fairly satisfied. If
not
pure fact, what Annabella—or Anna Lenscher—had told him
at least
had coherence and plausibility.

“So there are no owners to return the
paintings to, and
your father left them to you?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said flatly.

“Why didn’t he try to sell them
himself?”

“I don’t know. He liked them. And he was
afraid of
getting in trouble, I suppose.”

“That’s one of his weaknesses you
unfortunately didn’t
inherit,” the Saint said drily. “Now, about something
else: this mob of aspiring hijackers that’s following you around
with drawn pistols. Who are they?”

“I don’t know. Possibly men who were
with my father in
the war and suspected what he had done.”

“And Hans?” the Saint asked.

“He has always been with my family. He
knows the truth
about the paintings.”

Simon felt there was no more time to spend
hashing the
background history. He motioned Hans to stay in the car
and then took his companion by her hand and led her down the
street and
around the corner.

“Do you mind if I keep calling you
Annabella?” he asked.
“I’m used to it.”

“Please do. And now …”

“And now look through this hedge. You
see that Volks
wagen bus?”

“Yes.”

“It belongs to the men who kidnapped
LeGrand this morn
ing,” he said softly. “Keep your eye on it. If
it should leave
while
I’m at the house, have Hans drive my car and follow it.”

“What are you going to do?” she
whispered.

“What I can. Keep out of sight!”

He disappeared from her view and made his way
through
the cover of hedges and the deep shadow of trees until he
had
re-entered LeGrand’s grounds and reached the side of
his house. A thin
blade of yellow light shone between two
curtains in a side
window. Putting one eye against the glass
of the window, Simon
could see LeGrand, a dark-haired
woman who had to be LeGrand’s wife, and two
of the men whom he had left locked in the garage that morning before
Mathieu
had interfered, otherwise known as Tweedledum
and Tweedledee.
Tweedledum was holding a gun on LeGrand
and the woman.

“Yes,” he was saying in labored
French. “I was with her
father when he took them. It can’t be denied
that I, who
took risks in smuggling them through Russian lines,
deserve a share. And now, congratulations on your performance,
Monsieur
LeGrand. If your wife will join us now we will go.”

LeGrand looked stunned.

“My wife?”

“A security precaution,” the man with the gun said.
“So
that you do not call for help. She
will be released when we
cross the
border. In the meantime, keep silent. The paintings,
Gunter? Are they in the car?”

“Yes. Gino has taken them out and will
lock them in
the steamer trunk.”

“Alone?” Tweedledum grumbled.
“I don’t trust him or
anybody else at this stage. Bring her along, and hurry!”

Simon congratulated himself on leaving
Annabella behind
to watch the Volkswagen bus. There had been no one in
sight in
its vicinity when he and she had looked at it through
the bushes.
Apparently the man with the paintings had been
going from the house
to the bus by one route while the
Saint had been going from the bus to
the house by another
way. He would just have to hope that
Annabella could take
care of any contingency in her sector while he tried to turn
the tables here.

Through the slit between the curtains he saw
glimpses
of Marcel LeGrand’s distraught face as his wife was led
from
the room at gunpoint. Simon stepped back from the window
and
hurried along the side of the house to the front, where
he had
just time to slip into the dark shelter of the shrubbery
next to the
steps before the door opened.

Madame LeGrand came out first, followed
closely by
Tweedledee, who was gripping her arm tightly from behind.
As Tweedledum emerged from the house he turned back to
speak to an
invisible LeGrand.

“Stay in there and do not cause any
trouble and your wife
will be telephoning you in a few hours.”

LeGrand’s wife and Tweedledee had stopped to
wait before
going
on down the steps to the lawn. Simon steadied him
self, muscles tensed, like a cobra ready to strike. Suddenly he
sprang forward, grabbing both the ankles of Madame
Le
Grand’s guard and sweeping the
man’s feet out from under
him. The woman half fell as the man tried to
cling to her as
he crashed full length on to
the steps. Simon, in a continuation of the same movement that had brought the
man
low, yanked him by his feet
entirely off the ground like a
long
bag of grain and banged his head forcefully against the
stone treads.