The Saint Abroad: The Art Collectors/ the Persistent Patriots (13 page)

Tweedledum whirled, but before he could
fully realize what
was happening his comrade was a crumpled casualty
sprawled
half in the bushes, and the Saint was launching a new
attack in
the form of a leap on to the steps and a fist in the tender center of the
gunman’s solar plexus. LeGrand joined
in at the same time, hurling himself
at the man’s back from
inside the house. His attack was unorthodox
but effective: he
had jumped entirely off the ground, hooked his legs
around
the man’s waist, and was riding him with the clinging des
peration of
a boy on a bucking bronco.

After the Saint’s blow to the stomach,
however, the bronco
did not have much buck left. Simon stood back and watched
as the bizarre
equestrian act lurched down the steps and
collapsed
on the ground, the would-be kidnapper emitting a
bellows-like gust of breath as LeGrand’s weight sandwiched
him heavily against the earth.

Simon took the man’s pistol, held it on him,
and helped
LeGrand to his feet.

“Mon dieu,
I am grateful!” the art dealer gasped to the
Saint. “How can I ever thank you enough?”

Then another voice, one which should not
have been there
to chime in, spoke up with quiet irony.

“And how can I?” Then the tone of
the voice sharpened
suddenly.
“Drop the gun, Monsieur Templar!”

Simon reluctantly let the pistol slip from
his fingers to the
grass.
He and LeGrand turned to see the man who called
himself Inspector Mathieu, together with his companion
Bernard, facing the group with drawn guns from the
shadow
of a tree ten feet away.

“So we meet the forces of law and order
once again,”
Simon
said, with exaggerated reverence in his voice.

“For the last time,” Mathieu said
confidently. “You have
saved us a great deal of trouble by taking
the fight out of
these pests.” He indicated the two half-conscious
men on the
ground with a wave of his automatic. “And now you
can
retire from the battle yourself. Where are—”

He was interrupted by an excited and
innocently happy
female cry.

“Oh, Simon, you’ve got them!”

The cry was Annabella’s. She had just come
ginning around
the house without noticing Mathieu and Bernard. Now she
stopped
with a change of expression which would have been
wonderfully comical
in less catastrophic circumstances, as
Mathieu stepped into
the light.

“Don’t move, mademoiselle,” he
ordered.

He turned again to the Saint.

“Monsieur,” he said harshly,
“there are too many women
here for you to risk trifling with us. But
just to salve your conscience, I shall explain that we are not thieves. I am an
investigator for an agency in Milan which is seeking to recover art
which disappeared from Italy during the war.”

“Those are my father’s paintings!”
Annabella interrupted
fiercely.

“He looted them,” Mathieu said.

“He did
not!”

“Never mind; they are going back where
they belong.”

“Assuming you’re telling the truth,”
Simon said, “don’t
you think Mademoiselle Lambrini deserves
something? The
paintings
have been in her family for almost a generation.”

“That does not legalize her
possession,” Mathieu snapped.
“But I do not have time to waste
on quibbles! Tell me
where the paintings are, one of you, or we
shall have to twist the information out of these ladies!”

He nodded toward Annabella, and Bernard
grabbed her by
the wrist and pulled her toward him with one arm caught
up
behind her. Annabella’s eyes went wide with fear, while
LeGrand
turned pale. The dealer cast an agonized look at
his wife, and then at
the Saint

“Shouldn’t we
…
tell?” he asked weakly.

“We do not want to hurt the girl,”
Mathieu urged. “One of you will tell us shortly anyway!”

Annabella gave a hopeless sigh.

“It’s my arm he’ll break,” she said.
“If nobody else tells, I will.”

LeGrand accepted the invitation to
appeasement with relief. His nerves were obviously at breaking point.

“The paintings are locked in the false
bottom of a trunk,”
he blurted.

“Where?” Mathieu asked.

“In
…
in the
car of those men,” LeGrand said, pointing
to the dazed forms on
the ground. “I don’t know where it is.”

“Where?” Mathieu demanded of the
group in general.

“Through there—on a side road,”
Annabella said. “It’s a Volkswagen bus.”

She looked at Simon with a wretched
expression of shame
at her capitulation and then dropped her gaze to the
ground.
Mathieu noted her look with satisfaction.

“Go, Bernard,” he said. “Hurry.
Get them!”

His assistant ran away across the lawn into
the darkness.
“We may be excused now, I take it?” Simon asked
politely.

“You may not,” Mathieu replied. “Not until I know
that
you have told the truth.”

There was almost a full minute of silence
before Bernard
came running back across the grass into the light.

“They’re gone!” he panted. “I
found the trunk broken open
and a man knocked out on the ground. Somebody
had hit
him with a rock, I think.”

Mathieu expelled breath furiously. He cursed
the group in
front of him and then he cursed the world in general.
Anna
bella did not look ashamed any longer, nor the least bit
surprised.
She looked glowingly pleased.

“If you would like to have the
paintings,” she said to
Mathieu in a sweet voice, “you can bid
against Monsieur
LeGrand for them.”

“You have them?” Mathieu exploded.

“My chauffeur has them, and he won’t be
where you can
find him,” she answered calmly.

LeGrand sat down on the front steps of his
house and
cupped his chin in his hands with his elbows resting on
his
knees.

“I am not bidding on anything,” he
muttered heavily. “I am
finished with this whole affair.”

As his voice trailed off, Annabella took his
check from her
purse and handed it to him.

“This is no good anyway, I suppose,”
she said. Then
she turned to the Italian. “Monsieur Mathieu,”
she said
brightly, “do you want the paintings or do I look
for another
customer?”

“But you … you are a
thief!”
Mathieu sputtered self-
righteously.

“A defect of character most of us here
share,” said the
Saint. “Why don’t you pay mademoiselle
half the paintings’
market value as established by Monsieur LeGrand? That
takes
into account the obvious fact that neither of you can
really believe a word
the other says, and that both of you will
be lucky to get out of
this without ending up in jail.”

Mathieu pressed his lips together grimly as he
thought
over the situation. He looked piercingly at Annabella, who
presented
a front as smooth and uncommunicative as polished
crystal. He looked
at Bernard, who squirmed like a vaguely
guilty puppy.

“Twenty-five percent?” Mathieu
growled.

“Forty percent,” Annabella said
firmly.

“Thirty-five,” Mathieu sighed with resignation.

“It’s not enough,” said Annabella.

“All right!” snapped Mathieu.
“Forty! When? I want to
get this over with.”

“The sooner the better,” Annabella
said delightedly. “Tonight?”

“But don’t call us, we’ll call
you,” Simon put in. “Give us a telephone number we can reach and
we’ll tell you when and
where to come.”

“Bon,”
Mathieu
said with resignation. He indicated Twee
dledum and
Tweedledee on the ground. “And these crea
tures?”

“Have you any insecticide?” Simon asked.

Marcel LeGrand stood up in alarm.

“You can’t kill them here!” he
moaned.
.

“No one is going to kill them,”
Mathieu said. “We shall
lock them somewhere in your house, Monsieur
LeGrand, and
we shall wait here until we have the telephone call from
Monsieur Templar
and Mademoiselle Lambrini. Rather, I
shall
wait here. Bernard will go for the money. Does that suit
everyone?”

“Can you get it tonight?” Simon
asked.

“You will take
lire?”
Mathieu
asked.

“I’ll take anything as long as I can
spend it,” Annabella
replied.

“We can pay then. We can go to … We have sources.”

“Fine,” said the Saint. “We’ll
be in touch.”

“I have the VW key,” Annabella
said. “Let’s take it.”

“All right.” He walked a few yards
with her and then looked
back. “And if anybody follows us, the
deal is off—perma
nently.”

They hurried away through the shadows.

“He’s really letting us go!”
Annabella said unbelievingly.

“He’s got no choice,” Simon
replied, taking her hand and
helping her through a hedge. “Are we telling him the truth
this time or is there another layer to the
cake?”

“We’re telling him the truth,”
Annabella said. “Isn’t it
grand? I hid and watched the Volkswagen the
way you said,
and two men came and put the trunk in it. When one of
them was
standing there alone I just walked up behind
him …”

“And walloped him with a large chunk of
native lime
stone?” Simon asked.

“Exactly!” Annabella beamed.

They had come to the Volkswagen bus.
Annabella pointed
into the bushes, where a man lay gagged and trussed.

“Did you tie him?” Simon asked.

“Hans did.”

“And the paintings?”

“Hans took them in your car. I told him
to go and wait
for us at a park about a mile from here.”

“Great work,” Simon said.
“Unless, of course, Hans is
half way to the Himalayas by now.”

“Hans would never betray me,”
Annabella said confidently.
“Let’s go.”

And she was right. When Simon, following her directions, had
driven along the requisite streets, he saw his car next to a
small park across from a school building. Hans
got out of the
driver’s seat only
after the Saint and Annabella had stepped
out of the Volkswagen and
could be clearly identified by the
light of a
street lamp.

“Everything is good?” he enquired.

“Everything is good if you have the
paintings,” Simon
answered.

“Aber nat
ü
rlich!
They are here, in the back seat.”

Simon took out each of the paintings in turn and quickly
inspected them in the lamplight. They were all
there and in
perfect condition.

“Hans,” he said, “you’re a
gem. Let’s call Mathieu and get this deal over with.”

“There’s a telephone kiosk on the corner,” Annabella
said
eagerly. “I’ll do it.”

She ran away like a happy schoolgirl and
Hans shook his head admiringly.

“She is a vunderful lady,” he said.
“Like her father. As you
say, she is a chop off the old block.”

“Sometimes we say a chip off the old
joint,” Simon mur
mured.

Hans wanted to know all that had happened
back at
Marcel LeGrand’s house, so the Saint filled him in while
Annabella was in the phone box.
She returned to the car,
where the men were
standing, with a contented smile on her
face.

“They’ll be coming right away,”
she announced. “Mathieu
has already sent Bernard for the money. I told
them we’d
wait here in the car.”