Vendetta for the Saint

1

If the Saint had expected some pyrotechnically dramatic response, he would have been disappointed. Either the name meant nothing to Destamio, or he had been waiting for the question and knew in advance how he would field it. The racketeer only grunted and shook his head.

“Cartelli? Don’t know him. Why ask me? What makes you so nosey about me, anyhow? All the time I get reports how you’re asking questions about me. A man in my position don’t like that. Lotta people would like to see me in trouble, and I gotta take precautions.”

“Like having my clothes cut up?” Simon inquired icily.

Destamio grunted again — a porcine reflex that seemed to be his opening gambit to all conversation.

“Maybe. Somg guys get too nosey, they get worse than that cut up. You ain’t answered my question: why should I know about this Cartelli?”

“Because that’s what a man called you at the Arcate the other night. He seemed certain that you were Dino Cartelli. I heard him.”

Simon waited for the grunt, and it was more explosive than ever.

“Is that all you got on your mind? The guy was nuts. The world’s full of nuts.” Destamio snapped his fingers and squinted at the Saint. “Say — now I recognize you! You were the guy at the next table who gave Rocco the squeeze. I didn’t recognize you till now. I pulled out because I try to stay outa trouble here. I got enough trouble.” He sat back and chewed the black and dreadful stump of his cigar, staring at the Saint with piggy eyes. “You swear that’s all the interest you got in my affairs? Because some nut calls me by a wrong name?”

“That’s all,” Simon told him calmly. “Because this nut, as you call him, was murdered that night. So he may have known something that would make a lot more trouble for you.”

For a long silent moment Destamio rolled the cigar between his fingers, glaring coldly at the Saint.

“And you think I bumped him to shut him up,” he said finally. He flicked ashes over the balcony rail, towards the sea far below, and suddenly laughed. “Hell, is that all? You know, Saint, I believe you. Maybe I’m nuts, but I believe you. So you thought you had to do something to get justice for that poor dope! What’s your first name — Simon? Call me Al, Simon — all my friends call me Al. And pour us another drink.”

He was relaxed now, almost genial in a crude way.

“Then your name never was Dino Cartelli?” Simon persisted, obviously unimpressed by the other’s abrupt change of manner.

“Never was and never will be. And I didn’t knock that nut off, neither. You let coincidence make a sucker outa you. Here, let me show you something.”

Destamio heaved himself up and led the way back into the living room. He pointed to what at first appeared to be a decorative panel on the wall.

“Lotta bums go to the States change their names and don’t care, because their names never meant nothing. But I’m Alessandro Leonardo Destamio and I’m proud of it. My family goes as far back as they ever had names, and I think the old king was an eighty-second cousin or something. Look for yourself!”

Simon realized that the panel was a genealogical chart complete with coats of arms and many branchings and linkings. The scrolls of names climbed and intertwined like cognominal foliage on a flowering tree of which the final fruit bore the glorious label of Lorenzo Michele Destamio.

“That was my papa. He was always proud of the family. And there’s my birth certificate.”

Destamio stabbed a thick thumb at another frame which held a beribboned and sealing-waxed document which proclaimed that the offspring of Lorenzo Michele Destamio would go through life hailed as Alessandro Leonardo. It looked authentic enough — as a document.

“And you’ve no idea why this man, what was his name — William Charing-Cross — should have been killed?” Simon asked.

“No idea,” Destamio said blandly. “I never saw him before. Wouldn’t have known his name unless you told me. But if you’re worried about him, I can ask a few questions around. Find out if anyone knows anything. Anything to make you happy... Hey!” He snapped his fingers as he was reminded of something else. “I was forgetting what the boys did. Be right back.”

He walked into an adjoining room, and after a while Simon heard the unmistakable thunk of a safe door closing. Destamio came back with a thick wad of currency in his hand.

“Here,” he said, holding it out. “Some guys working here get too enthusiastic. That wasn’t my idea, all they did to your stuff. So take this and buy some more. If it ain’t enough, let me know.”

Simon took the offering. On top of the stack was an American hundred-dollar bill, and when he flicked his finger across the edges other hundreds flashed by in a twinkling parade of zeros.

“Thank you,” he said without shame, and put the money in his pocket.

Destamio smiled benevolently, and chewed another half-inch from his mangled cigar.

“Let’s eat,” he said, waving a pudgy hand towards a table already decked with silver and crystal in another alcove. “And we can talk about things. A guy can go crazy here with no one to talk to.”

He sat down and shook a small hand bell noisily, and the service began even before the ornamental Lily arrived to join them.

Al Destamio did most of the talking, and Simon Templar was quite content to listen. Whatever Lily’s other talents might have been, aside from her hair-raising ways with a car, they were obviously not conversational. She applied herself to the food with a ravenous concentration which proved that her svelte figure could only be a metabolic miracle; and Simon had to summon some self-control not to emulate her, for in spite of his grossness Destamio employed an exceptional cook.

There was only one topic of conversation, or monologue to describe it more accurately, and that was the depravity of the US Department of Justice and its vicious persecution of innocent immigrants who succeeded in rising above the status of common laborers. But about all that Destamio revealed of himself was his remarkable mastery of the ramifications of the income tax laws, which seemed a trifle inconsistent with his claim to have only violated them through well-meaning ignorance. Simon was not called upon to do more than eat, drink, and occasionally make some lifelike sounds to show that he was paying attention, since the oracle was clearly entranced enough with the gargled splendor of his own voice.

Hence the Saint was able to disguise an occasional unfocusing of the eyes, when his mind wandered underneath the monotonous discourse, groping for another missing item of information which he felt might provide a key to some of the riddles of the past two days, but which kept eluding him as exasperatingly as an itch that could not be scratched.

At last the coffee wound up the repast, and Destamio yawned and belched and announced his readiness for a siesta. Simon took this as his cue for an exit, and was given no argument.

“Glad I could get to know you, Saint,” Destamio said, pumping his hand with the heartiness of a professional politician. “You have any more problems, you come to me. Don’t try to be a big shot by yourself.”

The incredibly discreet Lily appeared once more in the role of chauffeuse, now wearing a cashmere sweater and Capri pants so tight that if she had been tattooed the mark would have shown through. Simon was delighted to observe that she was not tattooed.

As she resumed her attempts to make the Alfa-Romeo behave like a scared mountain goat, he felt that he had to make one parting effort to discover whether she ever talked at all.

“Do you live here or are you just visiting?” he queried chattily.

“Yes.”

He gazed at her for quite a long time, figuring this out, but what could be seen of her face gave him no help. He decided to try again.

“Do you ever get away?”

“Sometimes.”

That was a little better. Perhaps it only required perseverance.

“I hope I’ll see you again somewhere.”

“Why?”

“I’d like to know what your face looks like. Would I recognize you without glasses?”

“No.”

Always the same pulse-stirring voice, vibrantly disinterested in everything.

“Is Al a jealous type?”

“I don’t know.”

The Saint sighed. Perhaps after all his charm was not absolutely irresistible. It was a solemn thought. At any rate, she was evidently capable of holding out for the duration of the short ride to the heliport. But he had to keep on talking, because the other haunting hint of knowledge that he had been seeking had suddenly given up its evasive tactics and dropped out of the recess where it had been hiding.

“Do you know why he was called ‘Gopher’?” he asked.

“No.”

“Well, I won’t burden your mind with it. When you go back just tell him that I know. I suddenly remembered. Will you do that?”

“Yes.”

They were at the heliport, and a flight was about to leave, the vanes of the ’copter swishing lazily around. But the Saint wanted to be sure that his message would get through. As he levered himself out of the bucket seat, he stopped with the door still open and pulled out the sheaf of crisp greenery that Destamio had given him, fanning the leaves under her nose while he ostentatiously peeled off one of them.

“Tell him, I liked these samples. The only thing wrong is, there weren’t enough of them. Show him this so he knows what you’re talking about. Tell him it’s going to cost a lot more now, because of the ‘Gopher’ business. Do you think you’ll get that straight?”

She nodded placidly.

“Congratulations,” said the Saint.

He shut the car door, and leaned over it. There was one final touch he could not forego, vain as it might seem. Although it should certainly help to make his point.

“And if you want to find out whether he’s jealous, tell him I did this,” he said.

He bent further and kissed her on the lips. They tasted like warm paint.

2

The helicopter leaped skywards, and Simon’s spirits soared with it. What had begun as the most trivial happenstance, sharpened by a curt sequel in the newspaper, had grown into the adumbration of a full-scale intrigue.

He had some of the sensations of an angler who was expecting to play with a sardine and instead has hooked a tuna. What he would do with the tuna on such a flimsy thread was something else again; and no one but Simon Templar would have made such a point of setting the barb so solidly. But it was one of the elementary tricks of fishing to make the fish work for you, and the Saint felt cheerfully confident that his fish would not waste much time sulking on the bottom. As soon as the ‘Gopher’ barb sank in...

To share that optimism, some readers may have to overcome the limitations of a sheltered life, and be informed of its connotations in some circles where they may not ordinarily revolve. In some of the far-fetched variations of American slang, a gopher (aside from his primitive zoological determination to be a small rodent of retiring but horticulturally destructive habits) can also be a bumpkin, a ruffian, or a toady. These are general terms, not confined to the so-called “under”-world with which Destamio must have had some illustrious connections. But in the idiom of that nether clique, a ’gopher’ is either an iron or steel safe, or the technician who specializes in blowing open such containers in order to obtain illegal possession of their contents.

This was the idiomatic detail which gave the lie to everything Destamio had tried to sell him, and which had to connect with the sudden demise of James Euston, Esquire, a former bank clerk. And the certainty of it added no little brilliance to Simon’s esthetic appreciation of the golden afternoon clouds gathering behind Ischia.

When the helicopter landed at the Naples harbor station, he remained in his seat until the pilot came and said courteously: “This is the destination of your ticket, signore.”

“I’ve decided to go on to Capodichino.”

“Then there is an extra charge.”

“How much?” Simon asked carelessly.

He was not nearly so concerned about being branded an arrogant plutocrat, which he could survive, as about being caught in an even swifter riposte by Al Destamio, which he might not. Even in the few minutes for which he had been airborne, Lily could have returned to the villa, Destamio could have picked up a telephone and contacted henchmen on the mainland, and the Naples heliport might be no safer than a booby-trapped quagmire.

On the other hand, an arrival at Capodichino might confuse the Ungodly still more, and possibly leave them standing flatfooted.

Once he had decided on that detour, Simon realized that he had no need to return to Naples at all. His baggage had been rendered practically worthless anyhow, and from a phone booth at the airport he promised to come back later for whatever was worth salvaging. There was anguished disbelief in the manager’s voice when Simon guaranteed that he would take care of the bill at the same time; but the Saint allowed his heart to be hardened by the thought of how much more joyfully surprised that entrepreneur would be when the payment actually arrived.

A kiosk sold him a book about the glories of Sicily, after some argument, for very little more than the price printed on the cover, and left him just enough time to catch the evening plane to Palermo.

Palermo was even hotter than Naples, and there are few airconditioned hotel rooms in Sicily, despite the suffocating need for them; but by a combination of seasoned instinct, determination, good luck, and extravagant bribery, the Saint succeeded in securing one. This involved staying at a hotel with the hideously inappropriate name of The Jolly, which was anything but. However, it gave him a restful night, and he was able to console himself for the cost with the reflection that it only made a small dent in Al Destamio’s advance donation.

In the morning, after a leisurely breakfast, a shave with a cut-throat razor borrowed from the valet, and in relatively clean and spruce linen by courtesy of the ingenious manufacturers of wash-and-wear synthetics, he strolled over to the local office of the City & Continental Bank (Foreign Division) Limited, to which the hotel porter had only been able to direct him after his memory was refreshed by a reasonable honorarium. In fact it was such a modest building, evidently maintained principally as a convenience for touring clients, that there was barely room for its impressive name to spread across the frontage.

A dark-haired girl with Botticelli eyes smiled up at him from behind the counter and asked what she could do for him, and it required some discipline not to give her a truthful answer.

“I’m trying to contact one of your employees,” he said. “It’s several years since he worked here, so he may have been transferred.”

“And his name?”

“Dino Cartelli.”

“Madre mia!” the girl gasped, rolling her doe eyes and turning pale. “One moment—”

She went over and spoke to a man working at another desk, who dropped his pen without even noticing the splotch of ink it made on his ledger. He gave Simon a startled suspicious look, and hurried behind a partition at the rear of the office. In another minute he came back to the Saint.

“Would you like to speak to the manager, sir?”

Simon wanted nothing more. He followed the clerk to the inner sanctum, where he was left to repeat his question, feeling rather like the man in the Parisian story who has a note in French that no one will read to him. This time the reaction was less exaggerated, except for the altitude to which it raised the manager’s eyebrows.

“Did you know Dino Cartelli well, sir?”

“I never even met him,” Simon admitted cheerfully. “An old friend of his, James Euston, whom you might remember, told me to look him up when I was in Sicily.”

“Ah, Yes. Mr. Euston. Perhaps that explains it.”

The manager stared gloomily at his hands folded on the desk. He was a very old man, with wispy gray hair and a face that had almost abdicated in favor of his skull.

“That was so long ago,” he said. “He couldn’t have known.”

“What couldn’t who have known?” Simon demanded, feeling more and more like the man with the mysterious note.

“Dino Cartelli is dead. Heroically dead,” said the manager, in the professionally hushed voice of an undertaker.

“How did he do that?”

“It happened one night in the winter of 1949. A tragic night I shall never forget. Dino was alone in the bank, working late, getting his books in order for the following day. The bank inspectors were coming then, and everything had to be brought up to date. He was a very conscientious chap. And he died for the bank, even though it was to no avail.”

“Do you mean he died from overwork?”

“No, no. He was murdered.”

“Would you mind telling me exactly what happened?” Simon asked patiently.

The manager lowered his head for a moment of silence.

“No one will ever know exactly. He was dead when I found him in the morning, with ghastly wounds on his hands and face. I shall never forget the sight. And the vault was blown open, and everything of value gone. The way the police reconstructed it, he must have been surprised by the thieves. He knew the combination to the vault, but he did not give it to them. Instead, he must have tried to grab their gun — a shotgun — and that was when his hands were blown to shreds. But even that didn’t stop poor Dino. He must have gone on struggling with them, until they shot him in the face and he died.”

“And how much did they get?”

“New and used lira notes, to the value of about a hundred thousand pounds, as well as some negotiable bonds and other things. Some of it has turned up since then, but most of it was never traced. And the criminals have never been caught.”

Simon asked a few more questions, but elicited nothing more that was important or relevant. As soon as he found that he had exhausted all the useful information that that source could give him, he thanked the manager and excused himself.

“Please give Euston my regards,” the manager said. “I’m afraid he will be shocked to hear the story. He and Dino were quite good friends.”

“If Dino hasn’t told him already,” said the Saint, “I wouldn’t quite know how to get the news to him.”

The manager looked painfully blank.

“Euston is dead too,” Simon explained. “He got himself murdered in Naples the other night.”

“Dear me!” The manager was stunned. “What a tragic coincidence — there couldn’t be any connection, of course?”

“Of course,” said the Saint, who saw no point in wasting time discussing his nebulous suspicions with this interlocutor.

Outside, the heat of the day was already filling the street, but Simon hardly noticed it. His brain was too busy with the new thread that had been added to the tangled web.

At least one detail had been confirmed: the large parcel of boodle about which he had theorized had now become a historical fact and could be identified as the proceeds of the bank robbery. The question remained whether it had been dispersed or whether it was still hidden somewhere. But in exchange, another part of the puzzle became more obscure: if Destamio was not Cartelli, how did he fit into the picture?

“Scusi, signore — ha un fiammifero?”

A thin man stopped him at the mouth of a narrow passageway leading off the main street, holding up an unlit cigarette in one hand. The other hand was inside his jacket as he gave a small polite bow. The everyday bustle of the street flowed around them as Simon took out his lighter.

“Will this do?”

He flicked the lighter into flame and held it, almost unthinkingly, his mind still occupied with other things. The man bent forward with his cigarette, and at the same time brought his other hand out and plunged a knife straight into Simon’s midriff.

Or rather, that was his intention, and anyone but the Saint would have been dying with six inches of steel in his stomach. But Simon had not been unthinking for quite long enough, and the significance of the thin man’s concealed hand sparked his lightning reflexes in the nick of time to twist aside from the slashing blade. Even so, it was so close that the point caught in his coat and tore a long gash.

Simon Templar would not often have gone berserk over a little damage to a garment, but it must be remembered what had so recently happened to the rest of his wardrobe. Now he was wearing his only remaining suit, and this too had been wrecked, leaving him with literally nothing but rags to his name. Combined with a natural resentment towards strangers who took advantage of his kindly instincts to try to stick daggers into his digestive apparatus, it was the last straw.

But instead of blinding him, anger only made his actions more precise. He grasped the wrist of the knife hand as it went by, and pivoted, locking the thin man’s arm under his own. He held that position with cold calculation, just long enough to make sure that an adequate quorum of witnesses had stopped and stared and thoroughly registered the fact of which one was holding the knife; and then he made another swift sharp movement that resulted in a crack of breaking bone and a short scream from his victim. The stiletto fell to the pavement.

Without releasing his grip on the thin man’s wrist, Simon freed his other hand, carefully adjusted the position of his target, and put all his weight into a piston stroke that planted his left fist squarely in the center of the other’s face. Under the impact, nose and face gave way with a most satisfying crunch, but the man went down without another vocal sound, and lay still. All things considered, Simon decided, as his fury subsided as quickly as it had flared, it had been only a humane anesthetic for a fractured ulna.

The whole incident had taken only a few seconds. Looking around warily for any possible second assault wave, he saw a small Fiat standing at the other end of the alley where it connected with the next parallel street. The door on the near side was open, and a blue-chinned bandit sat at the wheel, staring towards the Saint with his jaw still sagging. Then he suddenly came to life, slammed the door, and stepped frantically on the gas.

Simon picked up the fallen stiletto, ignoring the gathering crowd which gesticulated and jabbered around him but kept a safe distance. It was perfectly balanced, the blade honed to a shaving edge, a deadly tool in the hands of an expert. The Saint was not sorry to think that at least one such virtuoso would not be working for some time.

A policeman finally came pushing through the mob, one hand on his holstered pistol, and Simon coolly tendered him the hilt of the souvenir.

3

“This is what I was attacked with,” he said, taking none of the risks of undue diffidence. “All these people saw me disarm him. I shall be happy to help you take him to the police station and sign the charges against him.”

The policeman swivelled a coldly professional eye over the crowd, whose members immediately began a circulatory movement as the spectators in front were stirred by a sudden desire to be in the rear. Simon saw his witnesses rapidly evaporating; but before the last law-shy personality could melt away the polizie, inured to coping with the evasiveness inspired by his vocation, had stepped forward and collared two of them — a pimply youth with an acute case of strabismus, and a portly matron bedizened with bangles like an animated junk stall. The only things they had in common were their observation of the knifing attempt and a profound reluctance to admit this to the constabulary. Nevertheless, the policeman quarried from them a grudging admission that they had seen some of the events which had occurred; though the ocular abnormality of the younger one might have cast doubts on the value of his testimony. He then appropriated their identity cards, which they could redeem only by appearing at the police station to make depositions. Dismissed, they retired gratefully into the background; and the policeman brought his functionally jaundiced scrutiny back to the Saint.

“Why did you kill him?” he asked, looking gloomily from the knife in his hand to the recumbent figure on the sidewalk.

“I didn’t kill him,” Simon insisted patiently. “He tried to murder me, but I didn’t feel like letting him. So I disarmed him and knocked him out. The knife you’re holding is his, not mine.”

The policeman examined the weapon once more, flicking open the mechanism of the blade with his thumb nail. He closed it again with one hand and pushed the safety button into place with an automatic motion which revealed long familiarity with such devices.

Behind him, two more police officers appeared, causing the crowd to lose all further interest and disperse. The one who had been first on the scene saluted the more lavishly gold-braided of the newcomers and mumbled an explanation in dialect. His superior stared at the Saint darkly, but showed no inclination to discuss the crime further in the public street. Simon accepted their glum detachment with seraphic indifference, and even allowed himself to be jammed into the rear of an undersized police car without further protest. Whatever consequences were to develop next would have to reveal themselves at the questura.

Once inside that ancient building, the recording and annotating of the fracas proceeded with ponderous solemnity. There was an incredible amount of laborious writing on multiple forms, and the continual thumping of rubber stamps accompanied it like a symbolic drum-roll of bureaucracy. The only ripple in the remorseless impersonality of the routine occurred when the Saint presented his passport for examination, and raised eyebrows and knowing glances informed him that his reputation was not entirely unknown even there.

When the knife-wielding citizen was brought in, Simon saw that his injuries had been partly patched up by a police sugeon: one splinted arm hung in a sling, and a large wad of gauze was taped over his nose. From behind the edges of it, a pair of bloodshot eyes glared hatred at the Saint, who responded with a beatific smile.

With the preliminary recordings completed, another door opened and the maresciallo del carabinieri made his impressive entrance.

His elaborately decorated and braided jacket and cap, worn even in the heat of the office, left no doubt of the eminence of his rank. His head was nobly Roman and graying at the temples, not unlike the average man’s mental picture of a Caesar; though the softness of the lower lip suggested Nero rather than Julius.

He stared coldly down the straight length of his nose at Simon; then swivelled his eyes, like the black orifices of cannons coming to bear, towards the bandaged knife-wielder.

“Well, Tonio,” he said stolidly, “you were not out of trouble very long this time.”

“I did nothing, maresciallo, nothing! I swear on my mother’s tomb. It was this fannullone” — the man called Tonio jerked the thumb of his good hand towards Simon — “who caused the trouble. He is a madman, perhaps. He comes up to me on the street, insults me, pulls out a knife. I had done nothing!”

The maresciallo glanced through the papers which had been written up, and turned his imperial gaze on Simon.

“What have you to say about this?”

“Nothing — except that Tonio must have very little respect for his mother,” said the Saint calmly. “There were a dozen people around when he attacked me with the knife. They all saw me disarm him. Some of them may also have noticed his accomplice waiting near by in a car, who left rather hurriedly when Tonio was detained. If that is not enough, ask him how my coat was cut if I was trying to stab him, or why I did not use the knife on him instead of my hands. After that, you might ask him who hired him to kill me.”

The maresciallo heard the words with pursed lips and mask-like impassibility. He poked at Simon’s passport on the desk before him.

“We do not like international criminals who pose as simple tourists,” he said. “Who come here and attack people.”

Simon Templar’s eyes widened for an instant as he took the shock. Then they narrowed into chips of blue ice as cold as the edge that crept into his voice.

“Are you suggesting that there is one grain of truth in that creature’s story, or that there is one shred of evidence to support it?”

Under the pressure of the challenge the maresciallo’s imperial manner slipped a bit. He squirmed inside his gorgeous jacket and seemed to find it a relief to switch his gaze to Tonio at frequent intervals.

“That is not the point. I mean to say, this is an investigation, and we must consider all possibilities. There is some doubt among the witnesses as to exactly what happened. And you must admit, Signor Templar, that your reputation is not spotless.”

Simon glanced around at the carabinieri, who stared stolidly back, registering neither approval nor disapproval of their officer’s attitude. The Saint had never cherished any childlike faith in the impartiality of the police, but he did not have to be excessively cynical to realize that there was something more here than a normal suspiciousness of his honesty and respectable intentions. And an insubstantial but chilling draught seemed to touch his spine as it dawned on him that something more dangerous to him than any knifeman’s blade might lie beneath the surface of that impersonal hostility.

Then yet another man came in, in ordinary clothes but with a subtle air of authority that invisibly outranked the maresciallo’s gold-encrusted magnificence, and the tension that had begun to build up dissolved as if it had all been an illusion.

He was a man of medium build, flat-bellied, with the gray eyes and curly blond hair that are native only to northern Italy. His browned features seemed almost boyish at first, until one discovered the intermingled lines etched among them by twenty years more than was suggested by their youthful contours. But he walked with an athletic spring in his step which again belied those skin-deep foreshadowings of middle age.

He stopped in front of Tonio, studying him carefully, and said: “I am glad to see someone has worked on your ugly face, piece of filth.”

He added some more vivid epithets which would have invited a duel to the death in any tavern in Sicily, but the wounded Tonio only glowered and kept his lips buttoned.

No one else spoke either as the newcomer turned to the maresciallo’s desk and flicked through the papers on it.

“Simon Templar!” he said, looking up and laughing. “We seem to have landed a big one this time.”

He came towards Simon and offered his hand.

“Let me introduce myself, Signor Saint: my name is Marco Ponti. I am the agente investigativo here, what you would call a police detective. Now you know all about me, because I am sure you know all about detectives. But I also know something about you. And since you are here, it is my business to ask what brings you to Sicily?”

“Only the same attractions that bring thousands of other tourists here,” answered the Saint, relaxing guardedly. “Which of course did not include having one of your problem paisani try to knife me.”

“Ah, poor Italy — and poorer Sicily! Many are in want here and turn to crime to fill their stomachs. Though of course that is no excuse. Be assured that justice will be done. We ask you only to be available to support your charges.”

“With pleasure. But there seems to be some difficulty.”

“Difficulty?” Ponti’s eyebrows lifted elaborately. He turned back to the desk and riffled through the papers again. “Everything looks in order to me — is that not right, maresciallo?”

The officer shrugged.

“No difficulties. I was only asking a few questions.”

“Ebbene! Then I suggest that you, Signor Templar, give us the name of your hotel — but you have already done that, I see in your statement. That is all we need for now. We will notify you when the case appears before the giudice instruttore, the magistrate. Unless the maresciallo has anything more to ask?”

The maresciallo could not have lost interest more completely. A gesture that combined a shrug, a small throwing-away motion of the hands, and a regal tilt of the head, conveyed that he was finished, bored, and only wished to be spared further tedium.

“And you, Signor Templar, have nothing more to say here?”

Ponti’s eyes looked directly into the Saint’s, and for an instant the engaging boyishness no longer seemed to be the dominant characteristic of his face. Instead, there was only an intense and urgent seriousness. As clearly as if the lines in his forehead had spelt it out in capital letters, it changed his words, for Simon’s reception only, from a question to a command.

“Nothing more,” said the Saint steadily.

His acceptance of the silent order was instinctive. Whatever had been going wrong before, Ponti’s arrival had temporarily diverted it, and Simon Templar was not one to scorn a lifeboat until unfathomed waters closed over his head. Besides which, he sensed an essential difference between Ponti’s implied warning and the kind that had menaced him a little earlier. But the questions which it raised would have to wait. For the present, the opportunity to leave the police station was satisfaction enough. He was already suffering some of the feeling of claustrophobia which was inclined to afflict him in places that had a direct connection with prisons.

Ponti’s ready smile returned as he retrieved Simon’s passport and handed it to him.

“I’m sorry we have kept you so long,” he said. “It must be already past your accustomed lunch hour. I hope it will only improve your appetite for our Sicilian cooking.”

“Where would you recommend me to try it?” Simon asked.

“The Caprice is near by, and they have the first eggplant of the season. You should not leave Palermo without trying their caponata di melanzane. And a bottle of Ciclope dell’Etna.”

“I can taste it already,” Simon said. They shook hands again, and one of the stoical carabinieri opened the door for him.

After the suffocating atmosphere of the police station the fresh air was revivifying, even as redolent as it was of the rich effluvia of Palermo. The Caprice, which Simon found without much difficulty, was a cool cavern of refuge from the cascade of glare and heat outside, and he entered its depths gratefully, selecting a strategically located table with a wall behind and an unobstructed vista in front.

“The signore would like an aperitivo?” queried the nonagenarian waiter.

“Campari-soda. With plenty of ice and a twist of lemon.”

“And afterwards?”

“I will order presently. I am waiting for a friend.”

The Saint was as sure of this as he could be of anything. He could not imagine for a moment that Investigator Marco Ponti had taken the trouble to recommend this restaurant for no reason but pure gastronomic enthusiasm. And as he sipped the astringent coolness of his drink, he hoped that this private meeting would throw some light on the knife attack and the peculiar antipathy of the maresciallo.

Very shortly the street door opened again; but it was not the expected form of the detective that stepped in. This, however, proved to be no disappointment to the Saint at all.

It was a girl... if the writer may perpetrate one of the most inadequate statements in contemporary literature.

There seems to be a balance of nature in Italy which compensates in advance with extraordinary youthful beauty for the excessive deterioration which awaits most of her women in later years. Long before middle age, most of them have succumbed to superabundant flesh expanded in the dropsical mould that follows uncontrolled motherhood, and for which their tent-like black dresses are perhaps the only decent covering; and their faces tend to develop hirsute adornments which would be envied by many a junior Guards officer. But the perfection of face and form which a compassionate fate may grant them before that has been observed by most modern movie-goers. And this specimen was astounding proof that the nets of pandering producers had by no means scooped all the cream of the crop.

Her hair was stygian midnight, a shining metallic black that wreathed a delicate oval face with the texture of magnolias, full-lipped and kohl-eyed. The simple silk confection that she wore offered more emphasis than concealment to the form it covered but could scarcely contain. It was obvious that no trickery of supporting garments was needed or was used to exploit the burgeoning figure, rounded almost to excess in the breasts above and the flanks below, yet bisected by a waist of wasp-like delicacy. To complete the entrancing inventory, Simon allowed his gaze to slide down the sweet length of leg to the small sandalled feet and drift appreciatively back up again.

Whereupon he received a glance of withering disdain of the kind that had obviously had much practice in shrivelling the presumptuous and freezing the extremities of the lecherous, and which made it depressingly apparent that like many other beautiful Italian girls she was also impregnably respectable. Only the Saint’s unjustified faith in the purity of his admiration enabled him to meet the snub with a smile of seraphic impenitence until it was she who looked away.

The cashier nodded to her in beaming recognition, and after a brief exchange of words picked up the telephone. Simon realized with regret that the girl had not come in to eat, but to ask for a taxi to be called — a common enough method in those parts where the quest for a public phone can be a major project.

After another word of thanks she started out again, and an entering customer stood aside and held the door for her. She swept past him, accepting the service as if it were hers by divine right, and he had to content himself for reward with the pleasure of watching her all the way into the cab, which providentially was an old-fashioned one with a high step. It was only after Simon had shared this treat with him, and the man finally let the door close and came towards him, that the Saint noticed who it was.

“Marco Ponti — what a surprise,” he murmured, with no visible sign of that reaction. “Will you join me in a mess of eggplant? Although I can’t compete as an attraction with what you were just leering at.”

Ponti made the classic gesture, hands spread at shoulder level, palms up, with which an Italian can say practically anything — in this case, combined with a slight upward roll of the eyes, it signified “Who wouldn’t leer at something like that? But what a waste of time” — and sat down.

“I fear the Swiss convent where she has been receiving her final polish has chilled her southern blood for a while,” he said. “But one day it will be warmed again. I have been hoping to make her acquaintance since she returned, but Gina Destamio and I do not rotate in the same social circles.”

“What did you call her?” Simon asked with unconcealed astonishment.

“The name means something to you?”

“Only if she is related to a certain Al Destamio, whose dubious hospitality I enjoyed on Capri yesterday.”

The detective’s smile was mask-like again, but behind it Simon could sense a stony grimness.

“She is his niece,” Ponti said.

4

The Saint had received so many shocks lately that he was becoming habituated to absorbing them without expression.

“After all, it’s a small country,” he remarked. He looked down into the rhodamine effervescence of his aperitif, and beckoned the waiter. “Would you like one of these before we eat?”

“With your permission, I will have a brandy. Buton Vecchio, since that is their most expensive — as an underpaid public servant I have few opportunities to enjoy such extravagance.” Ponti waited until the waiter had shuffled off before he said: “What was your business with Destamio?”

The question was asked in the same casual tone, but his eyes bored into the Saint unblinkingly.

“I’ve been wondering about that myself,” Simon replied coolly. “We met completely by chance the other day, and we seem to have rather quickly developed some differences of opinion. So radical, in fact, that I wouldn’t be surprised if he was responsible for Tonio’s attack on me this morning.”

The other considered this carefully, before his smile flashed on again.

“I have heard many stories about you, Saint, some undoubtedly false and perhaps some of them true. But in all of them I have heard nothing to suggest that your relations with these people would be likely to be cordial. But it would have been interesting to hear precisely what the differences were that you refer to.”

At this moment the waiter tottered back with the brandy. Before he could escape again, Simon seized the opportunity to order their lunch, or rather to let Ponti order it, for he was quite content to follow the lead of the counsellor who had directed him here.

By the time the waiter had retired again out of earshot, the Saint was conveniently able to forget the last implied question and resume the conversation with one of his own.

“Would you mind telling me just what you meant by ’these people’?” he asked.

“The Mafia,” Ponti said calmly.

This time, Simon allowed himself to blink.

“You mean Tonio was hired from them?”

“That cretino is one of them, of course. A small one. But I am sure that Al Destamio is a big one, though I cannot prove it.”

“That,” said the Saint, “makes it really interesting.”

Ponti sipped his brandy.

“Do you know anything about the Mafia?”

“Only what I’ve read in the papers, like everyone else. And some more fanciful enlargements in paperback novels. But on the factual side, I don’t even know what mafia means.”

“It is a very old word, and no one can be quite sure where it came from. One legend says that it originated here in Palermo in the thirteenth century, when the French ruled the Two Sicilies. The story is that a young man was leaving the church after his wedding, and was separated from his bride for a few minutes while he talked to the priest. In that time she was seized by a drunken French sergeant, who dragged her away and assaulted her — and when she tried to escape, killed her. The bridegroom arrived too late to save her, but he attacked and killed the sergeant, shouting ‘Morte alia Francia! — Death to France!’ Palermo had suffered cruelly during the occupation, and this was all that the people needed to hear. A revolt started, and in a few days all the French in the city had been hunted down and slain. ‘Morte alia Francia. Italia anela!’ was the battle-cry: Italy wishes death to France! Of course, soon after, the French came back and killed most of the rebels, and the survivors fled into the mountains. But they kept the initials of their battle-cry, M-A-F-I-A, as their name... At least, that is one explanation.”

“It’s hard to think of the Mafia as a sort of thirteenth-century Resistance movement.”

“It is, now; but that is truly what they were like in the beginning. Right up to the unification of Italy, the Mafia was usually on the side of the oppressed. Only after that it turned to extortion and murder.”

“I seem to have heard that something like that happened to the original Knights Templar,” said the Saint reflectively. “But aside from that, I don’t see why you should connect them with me.”

Ponti waited while the caponata di melanzane was served and the wine poured. Then he answered as if there had been no interruption.

“It is very simple. Whether you knew what you were doing or not, you have become involved with the Mafia. A little while ago I told you that justice would be done to Tonio. But if he was under the orders of Destamio, and not merely defending himself because you caught him picking your pocket, I should not be so optimistic. Witnesses will be found to swear that it was you who attacked him. And nothing will make him confess that he even knows Destamio. That is the omerta, the noble silence. He will die before he speaks. Not for a noble reason, perhaps, but because if he talked there would be no place for him to hide, no place in the world. There are no traitors to the Mafia — live traitors, that is — and the death that comes to them is not an easy one.”

Simon tasted the Ciclope dell’Etna. It was light and faintly acid, but a cool and refreshing accompaniment to the highly seasoned eggplant.

“At the questura,” he said, “Tonio already seemed to be in better standing than I was. Does the Mafia’s long arm reach even into the ranks of the incorruptible police on this island?”

“Such things are possible,” Ponti said with great equanimity. “The Mafia is very strong on this impoverished island. That is why I gave you the hint in the questura that if you had any more to say to me we should talk elsewhere.”

“And I am supposed to know that you are the one member of the police who is above suspicion.”

The detective took no umbrage, but only dispensed with his smile, so that Simon was aware again of what an effective mask it was, behind which anything could be hidden.

“Let me tell you another story, Signor Templar, which is not a legend. It is about a man who came from Bergamo, in the north, to open a shop on this sunny island. It was difficult at first, but after a time he had a business that kept his family in modest comfort. Then the mafia came to demand tribute, and through ignorance or pride he refused to pay. When they sent an enforcer to beat him with a club in his own shop, he took away the club and beat the enforcer. But he was a little too strong and angry, and the enforcer died. There is only one thing that happens then: the vendetta and murder. The man and his wife and daughter were killed, and only the little son escaped because he had been sent to visit his grandparents in Bergamo, and when they heard what had happened they gave him to friends who took him to another town and pretended he was their own. But the boy knew all the story, and he grew up with a hatred strong enough to start a vendetta against all the Mafia. But when he was old enough to do anything he knew that that was not the way.”

“And so he joined the police to try to do something legally?”

“A poorly paid job, as I said before, and a dangerous one if it is done honestly. But do you think a man with such memories could be on the side of those murderers?”

“But if your police station is a nest of mafiosi, how can you get anything done? That two-faced maresciallo almost had me convicted of attempting to murder myself, before you came in. Then everything changed. Do they suspect that you may be investigating them too?”

“Not yet. They think I am a happy fool who bumbles into the wrong places — an honest fool who refuses bribes and reports any offer of one. Men in my job are always being transferred, and so they hide what they can from me and wait patiently for me to be transferred again. But being from the north, it has taken me many years and much pulling of strings to get here, and I have no intention of being moved again before I have achieved some of my purpose.”

If ever the Saint had heard and seen sincerity, he had to feel that he was in the presence of it now.

“So you want to hear what I can tell you,” he said slowly. “But knowing my reputation, would you believe me? And aren’t you a bit interested in the chance that I might incriminate myself?”

“I am not playing a game, signore,” the detective said harshly. “I do not ask for any of your other secrets. You can tell me you have murdered thirteen wives, if you like, and it would mean nothing to me if you helped in the one other thing that matters more to me than life.”

Perhaps the first commandment of any outlaw should be, Thou shall keep thy trap shut at all times; but on the other hand he would not be plying his lonely trade if he were not a breaker of rules, and this sometimes means his own rules as well. Simon knew that this was one time when he had to gamble.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s see what you make of this...”

He related the events of the past few days with eidetic objectiveness. He left nothing out and drew no conclusions, waiting to see what Ponti would make of it.

“It is as clear as minestrone,” said the detective, at the end of the recital. “You thought the Englishman Euston was killed in Naples because he recognized Destamio as being someone named Dino Cartelli. Yet Destamio showed you proof of his identity, and you learned here in Palermo that Cartelli has been dead for many years. That seems to show that you are — as the Americans say — woofing up the wrong tree.”

“Perhaps.” Simon finished his meal and his wine. “But in that case how do you explain the coincidence of Euston’s murder, Destamio’s sudden interest in me, the money he gave me, and the attempt to kill me?”

“If you assume there is a connection, only two explanations are possible. Either Destamio was Cartelli, or Cartelli is Destamio.”

“Exactly.”

“But an imposter could not take the place of Destamio, one of the chieftains of the Mafia. And if the man who died in the bank was not Cartelli, who was he?”

“Those are the puzzles I have to solve, and I intend to keep digging until I do.”

“Or until someone else digs for you — a grave,” Ponti snorted, then puffed explosively on a cigarette.

Simon smiled, and ordered coffee.

“For me it is very good that you get involved,” Ponti said after a pause. “You stir things up, and in the stirring things may come to the surface which may be valuable to me. In my position, I am forced to be too careful. You are not careful enough. Perhaps you do not believe how powerful and vicious these people are, though I do not think that would make any difference to you. But I will help you as much as I can. In return, I ask you to tell me everything you learn that concerns the Mafia.”

“With pleasure,” Simon said.

He did not think it worth while to mention a small mental reservation, that while he would be glad to share any facts he gleaned, he would consider any substantial booty he stumbled upon to be a privateer’s legitimate perquisite.

“You could start by telling me how much you know about Destamio,” he said.

“Not much that is any use. It is all guessing and association. Everyone here is either a member of the Mafia or too frightened of them to talk. But I am forced to deduce, from the people he meets, and where he goes, and the money he can spend, and the awe that he inspires, that he must be in the upper councils of the organization. The rest of his family does not seem to be involved, which is unusual; but I keep an eye on them.”

“After seeing the niece, Gina, I can understand about that eye of yours. What others are there?”

“His sister, Donna Maria, a real faccia tosta. And an ancient uncle well gone into senility. They have a country house outside the town, an old baronial mansion, very grim and run down.”

“You must tell me how to get there.”

“You would like to see Gina again?” Ponti asked, with a knowing Latin grin.

“I might have better luck than you,” said the Saint brazenly. “And that seems the most logical place to start probing into Al’s family background and past life. Besides which, think how excited he’ll be when he hears I have been calling at his ancestral home and getting to know his folks.”

Ponti looked at him long and soberly.

“One of us is mad, or perhaps both,” he said. “But I will draw you a map to show you how to get there.”