The Saint Bids Diamonds (Thieves' Picnic)

"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

"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 Seńor 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 centralisation-allied 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 stum-bled 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 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.

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."

"Larst charnce 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.

ĄHasta la vista !

(bm)