The Saint Bids Diamonds (29 page)

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 openmouthed 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.