The Saint Abroad

1

“In these devaluable days,” Simon Templar said, “you don’t just take your money and stash it away in some nice sturdy bank, or you may very well find yourself with a nice sturdy bank full of waste paper.”

“Knowing your reputation, Monsieur Templar, I can well believe that you have several bank vaults full of such waste paper,” said Marcel LeGrand.

LeGrand’s smile, which appeared through the thicket of his black mustache and beard like the moon seen rising through a forest, was the smile of a salesman certain that however much money his customer has at the moment, he is going to have considerably less before he leaves. The bushy-faced art dealer’s hand caressed the gilded frame of one of his salon’s more expensive offerings as he spoke. All around him, on walls and easels, were the colors and forms of the paintings that were his stock-in-trade. The displays were arranged so that direct sunlight could never touch the works of art, but flashes of light thrown by the passing traffic through the blue-tinted windows from the Paris street outside gave a kind of psychedelic motion to the whole interior.

“You underestimate me,” Simon Templar replied with a perfect gravity. “I support the Rothschilds almost single-handed. Without my deposits, the gnomes of Zürich would have to crawl back into their caves and collect mushrooms for a living.”

The Saint — the name by which the world most generally knew Simon Templar — saw no more reason to try to spike the rumors which circulated about his wealth than he saw to try to quash the legends which flourished around his reputation as a modern buccaneer, a Robin Hood whose Sherwood Forest was the world of crime in an age of industry and international finance, and whose victims were the criminals themselves. In the first place, the stories were mostly true. In the second place, efforts to refute myths tended only to have the effect of increasing belief in their validity. Thirdly, the Saint enjoyed the exaggerations, and they were useful to him. They increased the awe of potential enemies and pushed them toward elaborate precautions and nervous countermeasures which could only increase their chances of error. The same tables enhanced his powers of bluff where the police were concerned and his naturally considerable powers of attraction where women were concerned. All in all, folklore had its uses.

“I hope, then, more sincerely than ever, that you will find something here which pleases you,” LeGrand said. “You will find no better selection in France — I can promise you that. And I do not think I flatter myself when I say that my judgment as to the investment value of paintings is as sound as that of any man in the world.”

“No, you don’t flatter yourself,” the Saint said. “That is exactly why I’m here and not talking to some other dealer.”

He moved slowly through the large room, whose space for hanging paintings was increased by a number of partitions jutting out across the richly carpeted floor and reaching almost to the ceiling. LeGrand followed with calculated casualness, his hands clasped behind his back. He was a head shorter than the Saint’s lean-muscled six feet two, but he made up for it on the horizontal, without actually being fat.

“Perhaps you could suggest some amount you would like to invest,” LeGrand said. “I realize that taste, too, is involved, but we may as well be practical.”

“We may as well,” Simon said with a smile, “and therefore I’m not showing you my wallet until after you’ve shown me the price tags.”

LeGrand laughed and shrugged to acknowledge his appreciation of the Saint’s acumen as a bargainer. Simon noticed, looking over the art dealer’s shoulder, that a tall, dark-haired man had started to step into the shop from the street, had seen through the windows that LeGrand was occupied, and had stayed outside without leaving the doorway.

“This,” Simon said. “What is it?”

He had turned back to one of the framed paintings hanging on one of the partitions. Most of LeGrand’s collection was pre-nineteenth century. Along this partition were some of the exceptions — contemporary productions, non-representational.

“That is chicken feathers on lacquered axle grease,” LeGrand said impassively. “Interesting, no?”

“No,” said the Saint. “How much do you calculate it will be worth in ten years?”

“About two francs,” said LeGrand, still impassively. “Let me show you something more suitable. Something from the Renaissance — Italian, or Flemish. There is a Van Eyck...”

The dealer and Simon turned, and the dark-haired man who had been outside the doorway was standing not ten feet from them. He had entered so soundlessly that even the Saint had not heard his footsteps on the carpet.

“I am sorry to disturb you,” he said to LeGrand in French, “but I must speak with you as soon as possible.”

“As you see, I have a customer,” LeGrand said with polite deference. “But as soon as...”

“This is very urgent,” the stranger said, “and I have other duties. If you could spare just a moment... alone.”

“Very well,” LeGrand answered. “If you can excuse me...”

He was looking at the Saint, who nodded.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I may as well be going. I haven’t really seen anything that...”

LeGrand held up his hand and put on a confidential expression.

“Don’t go,” he said earnestly. “I have something... special. Special for you. Just wait a few moments...” He turned to the stranger and motioned him toward an alcove in the rear of the salon, separated from the main area by a pair of velvet curtains. “If you would step this way, please, monsieur. We must be brief.”

If the Saint had not been naturally inquisitive, he would have spent many more quiet evenings at home than in fact he did. It would not be accurate to say that he listened to the conversation between Marcel LeGrand and his stolid visitor, but he did not take, pains to avoid hearing a phrase here and there from the dialogue of hushed voices.

The first fragment was quite clear, since the newcomer uttered it before he had entered the alcove: “I am Inspector Mathieu...” LeGrand’s reactions were almost inaudible but had overtones of puzzled incomprehension. Inspector Mathieu mentioned a young woman, paintings, Leonardo da Vinci. LeGrand said, raising his voice, “But it is unbelievable...” Inspector Mathieu went on to insist, at length, that it was quite believable, but the details of his statements were lost as the street door of the salon opened and introduced a period of traffic noise from outside. Then, after a few seconds, the expensive cushioned hush of the salon was inviolate again, and the Saint moved around the end of one of the partitions to see a chic and beautiful woman of about thirty standing inside the doorway. Her outfit of brown suit and gloves did justice to a very deserving figure.

“Monsieur Marcel LeGrand?” she asked in French with a foreign accent so slight that it was impossible to identify.

Simon looked at her honey-colored hair and green eyes, and regretfully admitted that he was not Monsieur LeGrand. At that point LeGrand himself, hearing the voices, came alone very quickly out of the alcove and scurried toward the green-eyed lady. Apparently they had never seen one another before, but were otherwise acquainted. LeGrand was looking at the woman in a peculiar way as he nervously went toward her.

“You are...” he began in a low voice.

“Yes,” she said.

LeGrand was glancing meaningfully back over his shoulder without completely turning his head.

“Come back in ten minutes,” he whispered. “We can talk alone then.”

She looked at him with the first traces of indignation. Then, over his shoulder she saw the dark-haired Inspector Mathieu step between the curtains of the alcove and look toward her. Realizing that it was to him that LeGrand’s nervous glances referred she suddenly changed her expression and spoke in a completely natural voice.

“Well, if you are busy, monsieur, I shall come back later. I am thinking of something for my husband’s birthday.”

“I am certain we can furnish the perfect gift for him. Would you care to wait?”

LeGrand had regained his usual sangfroid and was speaking at normal volume.

“No, thank you,” the woman said. “Until later.”

“Au revoir, then. Thank you, madame.”

Inspector Mathieu waited by the curtains.

“I hope you have not lost a customer because of me,” he said.

“The lady was in a hurry,” LeGrand replied. “But of course the sooner we can finish this discussion, the sooner I can get on with my business.”

Mathieu looked at the Saint, who no longer had any intention of leaving LeGrand’s gallery, where so many fascinating bits of side-play took place in the course of an afternoon, until he had satisfied his curiosity as to what was going on. He stood his ground and looked mildly back at Mathieu, who seemed to grow a little uneasy under the gaze of those brilliant blue eyes.

“Well,” the Inspector said, “I believe I have given you all the facts...”

“Facts!” LeGrand said, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling. “Fantasies would be a better word.”

“We shall see,” Mathieu said.

He bowed slightly to the art dealer, granted the Saint a slight nod of his head, and walked to the door. LeGrand did not accompany him all the way, and just before stepping out on to the sidewalk the Inspector paused and spoke over his shoulder.

“We have kept this quite secret,” he said. “If you wish to speak with me on this subject, call me only at the number — I have given you.”

When he was gone, Marcel LeGrand exhaled like an underwater swimmer surfacing at the limit of his endurance. His body seemed to sag a little and he put one hand over his heart, which apparently was going a good deal faster than its normal rate.

“I think I’ve been missing something,” the Saint remarked. “I never realized there was quite so much excitement in the art business.”

“Nor did I,” LeGrand said weakly. “If I survive all this I think I shall retire.”

“You asked me to stay,” Simon said. “I hope that means you’re intending to tell me what ‘all this’ is about — or did it just mean you still want to sell me something?”

LeGrand sank down on a bright purple leather chair in the center of the display room and motioned Simon to take its yellow mate.

“Both,” he answered. “I both wanted to tell you something and at the same time interest you as a buyer. This sudden intrusion of the police was completely unexpected.”

The Saint had taken the chair which LeGrand had offered. He settled back and crossed his long legs.

“And Mata Hari?” he asked.

“Pardon?” said LeGrand.

“That lovely creature you shooed out of here a minute ago.”

“Ah, she,” the dealer said. “Yes; she is a part of what we are calling ‘all this.’ She is almost the most important part.”

“Almost?”

“Yes. What she has is the most important.”

The Saint smiled reflectively.

“Having seen her, I wouldn’t question that... except to ask if you have anything specific in mind.”

LeGrand leaned forward, his hands clasped between his knees. His voice was low, secretive, and almost melodramatically intense.

“To leave all humor aside, this is truthfully the most fantastic thing which has ever happened to me. It is an art dealer’s dream — if it is true — and the greatest art discovery of this century. The young woman you saw here may have in her possession five paintings — three Leonardo da Vincis, one Titian, and one Raphael — which until now were not known to exist, and any one of which would be worth more than all the paintings in this room put together.”

2

Marcel LeGrand had no time to continue his explanation. The door of the room opened and the same woman who had come in a few minutes before stepped from the sunlight into the strangely artificial atmosphere of the salon.

“I am sorry, Monsieur,” she said. “I am afraid I cannot continue to wait. If you...”

Marcel LeGrand was instantly on his feet, hurrying toward her and showing every sign of being ready to prostrate himself on the carpet in front of her. With simultaneous shrugs, wags of his head, and wavings of his hands he shepherded her toward the cluster of four chairs in the center of the room, apologizing every step of the way. Simon was standing, waiting with more outward nonchalance than he actually felt. His interest had been aroused, but more than that, he was experiencing that peculiar sense of involvement that had so often marked the point of no return in his adventures — a feeling of fated inclusion in a course of events in whose beginnings he had had no part, but in whose outcome he was destined to play a crucial role. He had no idea how he might become further involved in LeGrand’s business, but he suddenly had no doubt that he had had only a taste of what was to come.

“You will understand my behavior when you hear what happened,” LeGrand was saying to his new guest. “It was an impossible situation, and there was nothing I could do but ask you to leave.”

The woman looked at Simon icily.

“I see that you still have business,” she said to LeGrand. “Perhaps I should go elsewhere.”

That sent the dealer into renewed paroxysms of apology and entreaty.

“This gentleman is Monsieur Simon Templar, a most valued client and a man completely to be trusted,” LeGrand concluded. “You must have heard of him? The Saint?”

The woman’s green eyes revealed nothing.

“I lead a rather sheltered life,” she said.

“In any case, please be seated,” LeGrand implored her. “Monsieur Templar, this is Mademoiselle Lambrini.”

She did not offer her gloved hand, but acknowledged the introduction with not much more than a glance as she sat down in the chair which LeGrand offered her.

“I thought I had made it clear,” she said, “that our business was to be confidential.”

“And so it is!” LeGrand protested.

“With no exceptions,” Mademoiselle Lambrini said, looking pointedly at Simon.

“Mademoiselle,” LeGrand said, “believe me, he is to be trusted, and will perhaps play a part in our transaction. And let me add very quickly that there are already exceptions — which I knew nothing about. The man who was here when you came the first time was from the police.”

Mademoiselle Lambrini finally reacted with something other than frosty calm. Her eyes narrowed and her hands unconsciously moved over one another with nervous agitation in her lap.

“What did they want?” she asked. “The police, I mean. They could have no interest in me.”

“But they have,” LeGrand said. “The Inspector — Mathieu was his name — instructed me to telephone him if I should be approached by a woman with rare paintings to sell.”

“Why?” Mademoiselle Lambrini asked.

She seemed nervous, as Simon had noticed as soon as she heard about the investigator from the police — and yet she seemed genuinely surprised and puzzled that the police should be taking any interest. Simon felt strongly that the probings of the police were a new and unexpected factor in her plans, and a factor which she really could not explain to herself.

“He did not tell me,” LeGrand replied. “He said only that if such a person should contact me with paintings to sell I should contact the police because they wished to interview her.”

“And you told them... what?” she asked.

“Nothing. But I would appreciate an explanation from you.”

“I have none,” she said. “I can think of no reason why the police, even if they should have heard about my paintings, would have any interest in them. But of course it does seem that all the world is hearing about them very rapidly.”

She was looking at the Saint again.

“If there is no reason for the police to be interested in them, why should you be ashamed of letting the world hear about them?” Simon asked.

Mademoiselle Lambrini drew herself up haughtily.

“Monsieur, I assure you that I am not ashamed in the slightest. But I am discreet, and for good reason. Monsieur LeGrand has apparently already told you about my paintings. They are not the sort of possessions a woman, living alone, advertises for everybody on earth to hear about. If Monsieur LeGrand is unwilling to respect my wishes about this, there are plenty of other dealers in Paris who would be delighted to hear about them.”

“Mademoiselle,” LeGrand responded with dignity, “if everything is in order, we can conclude this matter tomorrow. Such things cannot be kept secret for long, especially if the police are interested. They will be contacting other dealers all over Paris. But I am willing to tell this Inspector Mathieu nothing if you are willing to trust me and the one or two people I may take into my confidence before I actually pay you for the paintings. Isn’t that fair enough?”

“Whom else would you tell — besides Monsieur Templar?” the woman asked.

“The only other I have in mind is an expert on the Italian Renaissance — an old friend of mine I would wish to corroborate my judgment of the paintings. You certainly could not object to that.”

“But I understood that you were the greatest expert in France,” Mademoiselle Lambrini said.

“In many ways,” LeGrand said matter-of-factly. “But in a situation of this sort, with masterpieces of such magnitude, I would not dare to trust my own evaluation alone.”

“You’ve seen the paintings?” Simon asked him.

“I have seen a number of color photographs,” LeGrand said. “They include extreme detail. I am already quite satisfied, tentatively, one might say. I have no doubt that Professor... my friend will agree as soon as he has seen the canvases themselves.”

“And when will this be?” Mademoiselle Lambrini asked.

“Tomorrow morning?” LeGrand suggested. “Would you prefer to have the paintings brought here?”

“I would prefer that you come to my house. Just a moment.”

She took a pen and small leather-bound pad from her purse and wrote out an address.

“I trust you can find this,” she said, giving the piece of paper to LeGrand. “It’s a white house, set back from the road, surrounded with high hedges.”

They discussed directions for finding the house while the Saint watched in silence, wondering just how he could insure that his acquaintance with Mademoiselle Lambrini could be kept active and developing. He would have had the same thoughts even if there had not been paintings and police and a couple of million dollars involved... some of which. might eventually be coaxed into his own pockets. Miss Lambrini was what in the coarser forms of detective fiction might have been called a doll. She had the sort of imperious beauty that seems challenging the world to conquer it, and the continuing sight of her had the same effect on Simon that the sight of Mount Everest must have on a dedicated mountain climber.

She got to her feet with the same crisp abruptness that had characterised all her movements.

“Very well,” she said. “Ten-thirty in the morning. I should have preferred today because I have my own plans to consider, but if you can come to a decision tomorrow I shall be satisfied.”

“I trust we shall all be satisfied,” LeGrand said. “And I shall have my check book with me.”

“Good. I hope I can trust both of you to refrain from discussing this with anyone. I have... specific reasons to worry.”

A shadow crossed her face when she spoke the last words. Simon took it as a cue.

“Maybe you should tell us more about that side of things,” he said.

“I need no help,” she replied. “Good day.”

They were at the door, and LeGrand opened it for her.

“Good day, Mademoiselle Lambrini. Monsieur Templar, if you will remain here briefly I can show you...”

“I think I’ll walk with Mademoiselle Lambrini,” the Saint told him. “You’ll hear from me later today.”

“I have told you I need no help,” the woman said. “I’m quite capable of walking unassisted.”

“I won’t offer you my protection, then,” the Saint said amiably. “Just my charming company.”

“I had hoped that you might be interested in Mademoiselle Lambrini’s paintings,” LeGrand said. “It is certainly the opportunity of a lifetime to share in.”

“At the moment I’m more interested in Mademoiselle Lambrini,” Simon said hurriedly. “I’ll telephone you. She’s getting away.”

She was in fact out of the door and walking quickly out of viewing range from the windows of the salon. The Saint ignored LeGrand’s protestations, shook the dealer’s nervously damp hand, and strode away after the woman. He could see her blonde head among the people gathered at a crossing half a block away. She turned to the left at the intersection, but the Saint was already gaining on her rapidly. She was easy to follow, taller than most women, and the afternoon sun made a beacon of the lightness of her hair.

About five doors down the new street she had taken, the Saint caught up with her. Before she noticed him he quietly fell into step alongside her. When she happened to look round and notice him she gave a start and then a short humorless laugh.

“Is there more than one of you?” she asked, still in that tantalizingly accented French. “Or are you the same gentleman I asked to leave me alone just a minute ago?”

As she spoke her sharp heels continued their staccato on the pavement. Simon needed only his most casual walking speed to keep abreast of her.

“I won’t try to match your subtle wit,” he answered with the faintest trace of sarcasm. “I’ll just ask if you would care to join me for a drink.”

She stopped beneath the awning of a jewelry shop.

“Monsieur Templar, I am not certain just what your connection with Monsieur LeGrand and his interest in my paintings is. Perhaps you are a rich American who is going to put up the money for all five, or perhaps you are a spy of his hoping to find out something which will give him an advantage in our bargaining. In either case, or whatever the case may be, I do not stand to benefit from your company.”

She moved on, and Simon continued unruffled beside her.

“Maybe I’m just lonely,” he said. “Don’t you have a soft spot in your heart for visiting art lovers?”

“There are girls in bars for that sort of thing,” she said drily. “I’ll leave you now. There is my automobile.”

They were at the entrance of a narrow one-way street. Illegally parked there was a single black Mercedes facing away from the Saint and Mademoiselle Lambrini. Through the rear window Simon could make out the peaked cap of a chauffeur.

“Well,” he said to her, “at least we have something in common: neither of us finds the other one very pleasant.”

For a moment he thought she was going to smile, but then she nodded, said “Bon jour,” and walked away toward the Mercedes.

“Au revoir,” the Saint said.

He watched her until she had reached the car, and then he started back toward LeGrand’s salon. He had scarcely taken the first step when he heard a short sharp scream. It was almost lost in the traffic noise, and the passersby near him did not seem even to notice it. He spun around in time to see Mademoiselle Lambrini being pulled into the black Mercedes. The automobile’s door was half open, and the woman’s struggles had succeeded in keeping one of her arms and one of her legs outside the car.

Simon ran toward the car. The only other witness to the scene was an old woman, her arms full of parcels, standing and gaping as dumbly as if she had been watching the whole thing on television.

The Saint reached the black car just before Mademoiselle Lambrini could be hauled inside clear of the door. He threw himself between the open door and the side of the car, so that the door could not be closed. There were two men immediately visible — one the man in the chauffeur’s cap and the other the man trying to restrain Mademoiselle Lambrini. The latter had to give up the hold of one of his hands on the woman in order to aim a punch at the Saint’s midriff. Simon evaded the jab, caught the man’s forearm, and yanked him by his outstretched arm straight out of the door, banging the kidnapper’s head and shoulder against the doorframe in the process.

Mademoiselle Lambrini swung her purse at the head of the driver as he started to throw the Mercedes into gear. The automobile lurched forward with the door still open, the Saint clinging to the outside, and its comely owner bashing its driver with a large alligator purse.

It was a short trip — not more than half a dozen yards. The driver slammed on the brake, flung open his own door, and jumped out before the car had stopped moving. In the meanwhile, his comrade had scrambled to his feet and was disappearing past the gaping old woman with the parcels. The Saint might have caught the escaping driver if the Mercedes, in coming to an abrupt halt as its wheels bumped into the curb, had not given such a jerk that he was thrown momentarily off balance. He half fell, and saw that Mademoiselle Lambrini had been thrown forward against the dashboard. Clutching her head with one hand, she slumped half out of the still rumbling car, and the Saint had to catch her in his arms and raise her back to a sitting position in the front seat. By the time he could look up both of the men were out of sight.

Simon gently took Mademoiselle Lambrini’s hand and moved it away from her forehead.

“Cut?” he asked.

“No,” she said weakly. “I am all right.”

“I thought so,” he continued with confident good cheer. “Somebody was telling me just a few minutes ago that you are the sort of girl who doesn’t need protection, and now it’s perfectly obvious that that’s true.” He straightened up and nodded. “I’ll be running along then, and...”

She let out a dismayed gasp and caught his arm.

“No! Please. Don’t leave me. I–I thought you were one of them.”

“One of them?”

“I’ll explain if you won’t leave me...”

From his standing position the Saint saw something on the floor behind the front seat of the Mercedes. He also noticed the old woman of the parcels creeping tentatively nearer, one hesitant step at a time, as several other pedestrians gathered at the end of the narrow street to look at and discuss the situation.

“I won’t leave you, then — yet,” Simon said. “But we’d better leave here. For one thing, there seems to be a body in the back scat of your car.”

3

“A body?”

Mademoiselle Lambrini turned to peer over into the back of the Mercedes as Simon opened the rear door. A middle-aged man in a black suit lay unconscious on the floor, face up, his arms sprawled awkwardly as they had fallen when he was dumped there.

“Hans!” she cried, in shocked recognition.

“One of ours?” Simon asked.

“My chauffeur,” she answered in a voice that was genuinely shaken with concern. “Have they hurt him? What...”

The Saint could see that the man was breathing deeply. There was a faint smell of chloroform on the air.

“I think they just doped him. Let’s see how his pulse is doing.”

When he had lifted the man up on to the back seat, he realized that the audience of pedestrians which had started to collect at a distance a few moments before was gathering closer around the car. At any minute some alert member of the Parisian police would stumble on the scene and begin asking questions.

“Let’s either sell tickets or pull out of here,” Simon said. “If you’d like to drive I’ll tend to your friend here.”

“I can’t,” Mademoiselle Lambrini said. Then she noticed that the half dozen people around the car were cocking their ears to listen. Her next words were in excellently pronounced English. “I can’t drive. Will you, please? If I could trouble you...”

“Of course,” the Saint said, also in English. “Would you like to get back here with Otto?”

She was already sliding on to the seat next to the limp man. He was about sixty-five with close-cropped gray hair.

“Hans is his name,” she said. “Please, let’s hurry.”

The Saint nodded pleasantly to the little group of gawkers, got into the driver’s seat, and started the automobile’s engine.

“Where to?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Would you mind... would it be too much trouble to ask you to drive me home?”

“I don’t know whether it’s too much trouble for you to ask me or not, but it won’t be too much trouble for me to do it.”

She flushed.

“You are making a joke about my English.”

Simon backed the car a few inches from the curb, shifted it into forward gear, and felt the powerful engine move it smoothly away from the group of onlookers.

“I shouldn’t have made a joke,” he said. “You speak very good English... and I’d guess about ten other languages, judging from the fact that I can’t place your accent.”

He was turning the Mercedes into a main street. She met his eyes in the rear-view mirror for an instant and then suddenly bent over her chauffeur.

“Here we are chattering away as if we were at a tea party, with poor Hans lying here in such a terrible condition,” she said. “What can I do for him?”

“His breathing seems strong enough. Let him sleep it off. Or when you get home you can phone a doctor.” The Saint turned his head so as to see her again in the rear-view mirror. “Speaking of home, where is it?”

“I’m afraid it’s fifty kilometers out of Paris.”

Simon sighed.

“I asked for it. Fifty kilometers in any particular direction?”

She told him the way.

“Are you sure you don’t mind?” she concluded.

“No... assuming that a girl with a house full of Leonardos has an equally good kitchen and wine cellar, or at least a decent bottle of scotch.”

She smiled.

“If your standards aren’t too terribly high I might be able to satisfy you.”

The Saint returned her smile.

“I’d be willing to bet on it. And for a start, you might try satisfying my curiosity about these bully boys who wanted to borrow you along with your car.”

Her green eyes, reflected in the mirror, were wide with surprise at his question.

“How would I know that?” she asked. “I didn’t invite them for a ride, I can tell you that.”

Simon navigated a difficult forking in the river of traffic, kept on his course south out of the city, and then turned his attention back to his one conscious passenger, who in the interim had been trying to revive the unconscious one.

“And I suppose you have no idea why they decided to kidnap you,” he said.

“Of course. They undoubtedly wanted my paintings. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

“I’m trying to keep an open mind,” he answered. “Maybe they were going to hold you for ransom. If these paintings have been kept as secret as you and LeGrand seem to think, it’s possible that what just happened wasn’t even connected with them... but you’d know what the chances of that are much better than I would.”

There was a bitter tone in her laugh.

“Who would pay any ransom for me?”

“Your father? Brother?”

“I have no family any more,” she told him curtly. “The paintings — and poor Hans here — are all I have in any way tied to the past.”

“Could they have expected you to pay your own way out?” Simon asked.

“No more than they might have expected anybody else in Paris to make it worth their trouble. I am not rich. I own this car and my clothes and such things...”

“Such as a few paintings worth several million dollars,” the Saint put in.

“But I have only a monthly income I inherited,” she continued. “Not enough to make anyone think of kidnapping me.”

“Then it must be the paintings they were after,” Simon said. “Paintings nobody is supposed to know about. Which is an interesting fact in itself. How is it that five such fantastically rare paintings have been lying around your house all this time without being heard of?”

“It’s even more interesting when you know the full story,” she replied. “I will tell you later. Now I think that Hans is waking up.”

The Saint caught glimpses of the revival of Mademoiselle Lambrini’s chauffeur. Most of his attention had to be focused on keeping Mademoiselle Lambrini’s Mercedes from destruction at the hands of homeward bound suburban drivers. But before the worst of the evening rush hour had swamped the roads of the city’s outskirts he had managed to get well along the N7 to the south, past the vicinity of Orly airfield land on the way to Fontainebleau.

“We turn soon,” Mademoiselle Lambrini said to him presently. “Follow the signs toward Barbizon.”

Hans was sitting up beside her now, still apparently too dazed to be sure of anything except the fact that his professional duties had been taken over by somebody else.

“I drive,” he said feebly.

“Bleiben Sie ruhig,” the woman told him. “Relax. You aren’t even awake yet. That is Mr Templar driving. Mr Templar, this is Hans Kraus. He has been with my family since I was a girl.”

“How do you do, Hans?” said the Saint cheerily. “Feeling better after your nap?”

Suddenly the chauffeur seemed to come entirely awake, as if for the first time he fully realized where he was and what had happened.

“A man!” he said excitedly. “He asked me for a match, und den ven I turned — I vas in der car — he pushed somet’ing over my face. I could not even shout, und everyt’ing vas coming very dark... I don’t know, then...”

“They used chloroform, or something like it,” Simon said.

“But vy? Vat happened?”

“There were two of them,” his mistress explained. “One wore your hat, and then when I walked up to the car they pulled me inside. If Mr Templar hadn’t come along... I don’t know.”

“Did you get a good look at the man?” Simon asked, tossing the words over his shoulder. “Was he French?”

Hans Kraus shook his head, rubbing his cheek with one hand.

“I don’t know. He did not speak to me. He looked... nothing special. But I think I vould know him.”

Mademoiselle Lambrini interrupted suddenly.

“Oh! You turn there... just ahead. To the left. And then go slowly. We are almost to the house.”

The Mercedes had been traveling through an area where the land seemed cultivated more for beauty than for agricultural production, and the countryside, mostly wooded, was divided into small estates, each with its house scarcely visible through tailored shrubs and trees.

Simon reduced speed.

“Nice neighborhood,” he said. “Have you lived here very long?”

“No.” She leaned forward and pointed past his shoulder. “Turn in there, where you see the stone wall.”

The Saint guided the car into the drive, which formed a U-shaped loop from the road to the two-storeyed brick house that dominated the acre of property from a shallow rise. The grounds were thickly shaded with trees. Between the house and the road, on sloping leaf-covered terrain, was an inoperative fountain watched over by a nude marble nymph, her hands carefully arranged in the sort of modest pose affected by marble nymphs when they watch over the fountains of the respectable well-to-do.

Simon stopped the black Mercedes at the front door of the house and helped his two passengers out on to the gravel drive. Hans Kraus was unsteady on his feet, but when Mademoiselle Lambrini tried to help support him he pulled himself up with a great effort at dignity and made his way with little assistance up the steps. He held the door open after his mistress unlocked it, and then swayed dizzily.

Simon caught his arm.

“All right?”

The man took a deep breath.

“Ja. Better. Thank you.”

“Off to bed with you,” Mademoiselle Lambrini said to him.

Kraus looked back through the trees in front of the house as the Saint closed the door.

“But Fräulein, they may have found out about this place. They may come here!”

“A lot you could do about it in your condition,” she said gently. “Go to your bed, mon vieux. You have taken care of me often enough. Let me take care of you.”

The white-haired man shrugged.

“As you vill, Fräulein. But be careful, please.” He gave Simon a distrustful look, bowed slightly, and moved slowly away down the entrance hall toward the door at its far end. He turned to speak once more. “Excuse me please.”

“Take care of yourself,” said the Saint casually.

“And I shall bring you some supper,” Mademoiselle Lambrini said.

She led the Saint out of the dim hall into the house’s large front living room. A large window looked south over the entrance drive, the marble nymph, and her dry fountain. The room itself was not as richly furnished as Simon had expected. What was there fitted harmoniously, was antique, and gave the impression of having been there for a long time — and of having cost someone plenty a good many years before. It was just that there was so little of it: a sofa, three chairs, a pair of small tables, an empty glass-fronted mahogany cabinet. Yet the room was very large, and the empty spaces where furniture had formerly stood were depressingly evident. The walls, too, were bare except for two etchings of hunting scenes.

The owner of the house sensed the meaning of Simon’s survey.

“I am selling this place,” she said. “I have already sold quite a few things from it, as you can see.”

“It does seem large for a single girl.”

“Yes,” she said very thoughtfully, as if considering whether or not to say something further. The decision was positive. “If I can truly be called single.”

Simon frowned slightly.

“You’re married or have been?”

“I am married, Monsieur Templar — to these.”

She was walking to a recessed bookcase of about her own height, next to the marble fireplace. Her fingers touched something on the left side of the bookcase, and then she easily slid the entire bookcase, shelves and back panel, aside into the wall. Behind it was a space like a wide shallow closet, containing something that resembled an irregularly shaped waist-high box covered with a green cloth.

Mademoiselle Lambrini pulled away the cloth, revealing the five paintings which stood there in a crude rack, or at least their frames, since only the front canvas was visible. At a glance the Saint recognized the style of Leonardo da Vinci. Even in the sunset light the colors had the luster of emeralds and rubies. It was the half-length portrait of a woman against a background of lakes and mountains.

One by one Mademoiselle Lambrini showed Simon the pictures and unnecessarily told him the names of the artists. Then she put the cloth back over them and slid the bookcase into place again in front of the secret compartment.

“They’re beautiful,” Simon said, “and I’m sure very valuable.”

“Very. They are worth at least eight million francs — a million and a half dollars.”

“And they’re yours,” Simon said, allowing a distinct note of doubt to come into his voice.

“Of course — until I sell them tomorrow.”

“Just a few lucky finds you picked up for a song at some little place on the Left Bank?”

She turned and glared at him coldly from near the marble fireplace.

“If you are going to make stupid remarks about them I shall be sorry I showed them to you. You gave me good reason to think I could trust you, Monsieur Templar, and...”

“Since we’re getting intimate enough to have quarrels, won’t you call me Simon? And I’ll call you...”

He stopped, questioningly.

“Annabella,” she said without relaxing.

“Anna the beautiful,” Simon translated. “Very appropriate... very true.”

She blushed slightly and tried to keep her lips from softening into the hint of a smile.

“You don’t need to flatter me, Monsieur Templar. You have already saved my life — and my paintings. That is enough for one day.”

“I’m just giving my natural honesty free rein,” the Saint said engagingly. “And you can’t blame me for feeling some curiosity too. I didn’t mean to insult you or your one-woman Louvre.”

She nodded, and this time she actually did smile, although a little tiredly.

“I apologize too. I am very nervous. This sale to Marcel LeGrand means everything to me — and I’m not accustomed to being kidnapped either, or almost kidnapped. The strain of trying to arrange this deal with LeGrand was enough before I found out today that someone else knows about these paintings and wants to steal them.”

“Do you know that for certain?” the Saint asked her.

“After what happened in Paris, it’s a reasonable assumption, isn’t it?” she replied. “I assure you I don’t know of any other reason why anybody should bother me. I have very little money and no rich relatives.”

“Maybe what seems very little money to you might seem a lot to other people,” Simon suggested.

She shook her head.

“No. I literally have just enough money to keep up appearances — though why I’m telling you all this I don’t know.”

She hesitated. Simon, lounging against the wall near the front window, looked at her across the darkening room.

“I must be a sort of rejuvenated Father Figure,” he surmised. “People always confess to me. Can’t help themselves. Luckily I’m entirely trustworthy except where money and women are concerned — so if you don’t have a bank account or a husband, both of us are safe.”

She laughed uncertainly.

“Well, I have neither. My father died just a few months ago, and he left me this house. It was heavily mortgaged, and almost all the proceeds from it will have to go to settle debts. In fact I have had to sell furniture in order to live these past weeks. I didn’t have the heart to sell the car. Hans is so fond of it, and he stays with me for nothing. He lives on his own savings.” She brightened. “Of course I’ve also known I would only have to hold out for a few more weeks, and then I would be rich — from selling the paintings.”

“Which brings us back to...”

But Simon did not have a chance to finish. Hans Kraus came running from the back rooms of the house, shouting at the top of his voice.

4

“Fräulein! Fräulein! Bitte schnell! Quickly!”

The Saint and Annabella Lambrini met the gray-haired chauffeur in the entrance hall.

“Hans!” she cried. “What is it?”

“A man! I haf seen a man from my vindow. T’rough der trees he valked! Und ven I go out after him, he ran to der front.”

Simon did not wait to hear any more of the story. He was already on his way out the front door of the house after only an instant’s glance to make certain he was not walking into an ambush. At first the most nearly human thing he saw in the golden twilight was the modest marble nymph. Then his keen eye caught a flash of color in motion far down among the trees near the main road. Although it was already obvious that he had little chance of catching up with the intruder, he went through the motions of chasing him just in case some miracle should occur that would make the effort worth while.

But when he reached the dry fountain and paused, the Saint heard the engine of a car roaring from first into second gear with a squeal of rubber on pavement. He could not see the car that was making the noise, but its sound told him that it was taking off in the general direction of Paris as fast as it could go.

Simon felt vaguely unhappy with himself. If the Mercedes had been followed while he was driving it, he should have noticed. He had in fact kept his eyes open for anybody tailing him on the way out from the city and had seen nothing that aroused his suspicions. But the roads had been crowded, and if the followers had held well back while Annabella Lambrini’s car was in the main traffic stream they would have been hard to spot. On the other hand, they might not have followed at all. Knowing as much as they appeared to, they would presumably have found out where she lived.

“Did you see anything?” she was calling to him.

He turned and strode back up the slope, where he was met by Annabella Lambrini and her chauffeur on the driveway.

“Just an art connoisseur dropping in to have a look at your collection,” he answered. “He’s shy, though. I never got near him.” He looked back down toward the road. “Too bad. I might have caught a ride back to Paris.”

The woman’s lovely green eyes were much wider when Simon turned back to meet them than they had been a few seconds before.

“You are not leaving!” she exclaimed.

“I didn’t know I was invited to stay,” he said, with the most feather-light touch of challenge.

“Oh, please do! Don’t leave us here alone tonight — the last night before I finally get these paintings off my hands. Hans isn’t feeling well, and I—”

“I feel good,” Hans said. “I am not longer ill.”

“I don’t think Hans trusts me,” murmured the Saint.

Annabella Lambrini smiled indulgently. They were moving slowly back up the front steps of the house.

“Hans is just overprotective. He’s a worrier, aren’t you, Hans?”

“I don’t know why,” Simon said. “Working for a girl with such a nice uncomplicated life as yours.”

Hans turned to the Saint as they entered the hall.

“It is no personal, ah, feeling against you, Sir,” he said stiffly. “The lady iss not safe, und only I am here to protect her. No father, no family. Und I am not young und not strong. Ve must be foresighted... dot is...”

“Careful?” Simon offered.

“Ja, careful. You understand?”

“I understand. In fact, I think your attitude is more sensible than the lady’s.” He watched her wryly as he was speaking. “Here I am, one of the most notorious pirates on the face of the earth, and she’s offering to take me under her roof for her own protection.”

She looked him in the eye.

“I trust you are an honorable man... Simon.”

The way she pronounced his first name, for the first time, would have been enough to send warm tremors up and down the spinal ganglia of a less controlled man. As it was, the Saint held himself detached from the more obvious effects of that sensuous voice and merely decided that becoming Miss Lambrini’s personal cavalier might have more rewards than he had anticipated.

“If you trust that I’m honorable, you’re very trusting,” he remarked.

“I have reason to trust you... and without you I seem quite certain to lose not only my paintings but possibly my life.”

They were in the living room now, and Hans Kraus turned on the lights. The sun was already below the horizon, and the molten glow of the sky was cooling to darkness. Annabella Lambrini drew the curtains over the large window.

“Have you any idea who these characters might be?” Simon asked her. “The ones who are so anxious to get their hands on you and your property?”

“No. Not the slightest.”

“Or how they might have found out about the paintings?”

“No.” She looked at Kraus, who was standing near the door as if waiting for orders. “Go rest now. Monsieur Templar will be staying — won’t you, Simon?”

“My fate seems to be sealed,” he said resignedly. “I will be staying.”

“Good,” the chauffeur said. “I make it certain that all is locked.”

“Are there any outside lights?” the Saint asked. “If there are, I suggest you leave them on all night. With a million and a half dollars you can afford to run up an electric bill.”

The chauffeur bowed briefly and went out.

“I am grateful, Simon,” Annabella said warmly. “I realize that it is not very... conventional to ask this of you, but the fact is, I am not a very conventional female. I have led my life as it pleased me, not wanting to be tied — at least not until I had enjoyed myself. And I knew, from my father, that I would have money coming, though I was not sure until after he died just where it was expected to come from. But I have always been independent, perhaps partly because of the idea that I would have a great deal of money some day. My relationships with men have not had to be on the careful practical basis that most women worry about. In a word, I haven’t learned to give a damn what people think of me. You are shocked?”

“I’m favorably impressed,” Simon said. “It doesn’t sound like a typically Italian attitude.”

“I am not typically Italian.” She waved him toward a chair. “Sit down, please. My father was from the Italian Tyrol, and my mother was from Munich. I was sent to Sweden when I was a little child, during the war. My mother was killed in an air raid in Munich. My father was in the Italian army on the Russian front. He disappeared completely, like so many others, as the Russians moved on Europe, but he survived as a prisoner until he was released and found me years later. I was fifteen years old by then... and yet I still remembered him.”

The Saint nodded as she paused.

“And then you came to live in France?” he said. “You’ve led quite a cosmopolitan life.”

“I’ve never really lived here for long,” she said. “I suffer from Wanderlust, you might say. In fact I have every intention of taking my money when I’ve sold these paintings and going to California and building myself a gorgeous house and living like a movie star... and marrying for love.”

“Like a movie star?” said the Saint cynically.

She smiled and went to the door.

“Would you care for some sherry before dinner? It’s all we have. The supply of alcohol is rather limited. It’s a strange feeling, living on nothing but appearances one day and expecting millions the next.”

Simon said he would like the sherry. When his hostess came back with it, after a delay caused by starting a leg of lamb roasting in the oven, she found him inspecting the sliding bookcase — which was not sliding, but still in place.

“Clever,” he said. “I assume you press one of the shelves to open it?”

Annabella handed him a bottle of Dry Sack, and put down the two glasses she carried.

“You are interested in carpentry?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Was it one of your father’s hobbies?” the Saint countered, uncorking the bottle and pouring for both of them.

He left the shelves and sat down near the woman on the sofa. She looked beautiful and he liked her — and for those reasons among others he had no intention of swiping her paintings and keeping all the loot for himself, although of course he did anticipate a reasonable material reward for the troubles he had already gone through as well as those he probably still had in store.

“I don’t know who built it,” she said. “I know very little about my father, really.”

“And the paintings?”

“Even less. My father was from an aristocratic family. Before the war they were rich and owned property in many countries. This house, for example, had been in the family for several generations. During the war, things fell apart. These paintings, as I understand it, had been in the family for a long time. To my father, they were not an investment — a way of making money. They were a trust. He made certain they were hidden before he went to fight the Communists. Then he told me as he saw the war was going to be lost, he was afraid that the Communists very possibly would take over Austria and Italy, and of course would confiscate private property. He sent instructions for the paintings to be taken out through the Alps to Switzerland by his sister. Then, as I told you, he was captured by the Russians and held for years. When he came back, his sister was dead. He didn’t tell me the details, but somehow he located the paintings. He did not want to sell them, but when he died this year he told me they were all he had to leave me, that I would find them here in this house, and that I should sell them with no publicity to a reputable dealer.”

The Saint sipped his sherry meditatively. Annabella Lambrini seemed genuinely moved as she told the end of her story. She had lowered her eyes, and now she sat without speaking.

“Don’t feel you’re smashing up the family tradition,” he said. “Three Leonardos and a Titian or two thrown in are quite a bit for any woman to live with. I think LeGrand is your best bet, unless you can afford a mansion and a small private army.”

She raised her eyes and looked at him with a new expression.

“I think you are the only army I need, or want,” she said.

“And I’ve never had a pleasanter job of guard duty,” the Saint replied.

He raised his glass, and she raised hers, and the crystal bubbles touched with the sound of tiny bells, and Simon wondered if he believed a single word of what she had told him.

5

There were no disturbances that night. Whoever was after Annabella Lambrini’s little cache of masterpieces had apparently given up trying to take them by storm, at least for the time being. By nine-thirty in the morning the Lambrini household was a picture of commonplace and cozy normality. A completely recovered Hans Kraus was out in the gravel driveway washing the Mercedes with hose and chamois, and Simon and Annabella were polishing off the last of eggs, rolls, jam, and coffee in the bright dining room. The Saint looked out through the large window at the chauffeur moving around the streaming black car and released a contented sigh.

“I must have been born with royal blood in my veins,” he said. “There’s nothing that gives me a greater sense of well-being than sitting at a late breakfast with a beautiful woman and watching other people work.”

Annabella smiled. She was not only visibly excited about the fortune the day was supposed to bring her; she seemed absolutely radiant compared with the tense tired state she had been in the evening before.

“After this morning I won’t let Hans work,” she said happily. “He deserves to retire.”

“Are you sure he wants to? Some people thrive on hard labor.”

“I can’t imagine it.”

The Saint chuckled.

“Neither can I. It makes me think of a prison sentence.” He looked at his watch. “When is it you’re going to legally raid the banks of France?”

“LeGrand said he would be here with his friend at ten-thirty. Maybe we should put the paintings out for him to see.”

“They are still there, aren’t they?”

She laughed.

“I’ve checked three times already. They’re quite safe.”

Before Simon heard or saw a car approaching the house he noticed through the window that Hans Kraus had paused in his polishing and was peering down the driveway toward the road.

“I think he’s here,” he said, getting up from the table. “Or somebody.”

Annabella was fidgeting like a schoolgirl before her first dance.

“Don’t tease me. Or somebody, indeed! It will be him. It has to be him!”

It was LeGrand. The Saint recognized his dark-bearded head as a frog-nosed blue Citroën crunched to a halt near the Mercedes. There was no one else with him in the car. Annabella Lambrini almost ran for the front door. Outside, Hans Kraus, looking fiercely protective, had taken up a position by the front steps as if preparing to repel boarders.

Still making his way at a fairly leisurely rate toward the entrance hall, Simon heard Annabella exclaiming in French as she opened the door to LeGrand.

“Oh, I am so glad to see you, monsieur! Come in, please. Did you have trouble finding my house?”

“Blind intuition would have led me here, I am sure,” LeGrand said elegantly. “What a great day this is for both of us, n’est-ce pas?”

“Vraiment, monsieur, vraiment!”

Simon joined the enthusiastic pair in the hallway, greeted LeGrand and shook hands with him.

“What a surprise!” LeGrand blurted. Then he covered his surprise smoothly. “I had no idea that you two charming people would have become friends... so...”

“So early in the morning?” Annabella said archly.

Marcel LeGrand only shrugged and smiled.

“If it were not for Monsieur Templar I would probably not be here this morning to meet you,” Annabella told him. “And neither would my paintings.”

LeGrand looked shocked, and the woman gave him a detailed account of what had happened after she had left his gallery the afternoon before.

“These men: you have seen nothing more of them since yesterday evening?” LeGrand asked nervously.

“No,” she answered, darting a fond look at the Saint. “I think that when they discovered I was not alone here with my chauffeur — who is no longer strong enough at his age to be much protection — they gave up their ideas of robbing me.”

LeGrand was stroking his beard thoughtfully. “Assuming their object was robbery,” he said.

The three of them were standing in the big front living room now, and Annabella offered them chairs. LeGrand sat down along with the Saint and his hostess and then bobbed up again and began to pace the floor after her next question.

“What other object could they have?” she asked.

“I can think only of the police,” LeGrand answered. “This Inspector Mathieu who called on me so inopportunely yesterday. Perhaps he and his fellow bureaucratic bloodhounds are going to desperate lengths to pry into your business. Such things have been known to happen — unofficially.”

“Even if that were believable,” Annabella said — “why?”

LeGrand turned from his pacing and faced her, his stubby legs apart. It was a way of standing which suggested that he needed to assure a firm support for a torso that clearly showed the cumulative result of several decades of rich cooking.

“Do we need to be surprised at anything a government does?” he asked with sudden passion. “Is there any privacy left anywhere today? When we move from our beds they take an interest!”

The Saint had relaxed totally in his softly upholstered chair. He brought the long fingers of both his hands together against his lips as LeGrand spoke, and then lowered them.

“But still,” he intervened politely, “wouldn’t these be rather peculiar cops? Your deal with Mademoiselle Lambrini has to be legal. A man of your reputation can’t afford under-the-counter games. You pay your taxes, I’m sure — or enough of them, at least. And Mademoiselle Lambrini tells me that the paintings have been in her family’s hands — legally — for many years. That hardly seems to call for special investigations.”

“Maybe they do not have your trusting nature,” Annabella said.

LeGrand, still standing at the center of the room, suddenly clapped his hands together and rubbed them briskly.

“What use is it to speculate about this?” he said. “We have more important things to do.”

“Certainly, monsieur,” Annabella replied eagerly. “It is time for the unveiling.”

She got to her feet and went to the bookshelf beside the fireplace.

“Clever,” LeGrand said with a giggle of pure nervous anticipation when she pressed the release mechanism and opened the secret compartment in the wall.

Then he froze, his eyes glittering, biting his furry underlip as he waited for Simon and Annabella to uncover the paintings. They removed the cloth covering and stepped back to show the first Leonardo da Vinci.

The art dealer’s first audible reaction was a prolonged, awed, “Ahhh...” He hurried forward and fell down on his knees in front of the painting, gazing at it with hungrily darting eyes from two or three feet away.

“Oh, exquisite. Magnificent. It is not only real, real Leonardo, but good Leonardo. Great Leonardo.”

He heaved himself back on to his feet and looked at Annabella, who was smiling joyously.

“You are rich, mademoiselle. This alone will bring... well, I don’t know how much!”

It amused Simon to see how quickly a cloud of practicality veiled the sun of LeGrand’s spontaneous enthusiasm.

“Of course,” the dealer said, “things never bring what they are worth. And then there is the interest I must pay on loans, and the problem of...”

“Later, monsieur, later,” Annabella interrupted good-naturedly. “We can bargain later. .if you are interested. Would you like to see the others?”

“Would I like to see the others!” LeGrand burbled. “That is the same as asking me if I would like to be twenty-five again! Show me, please. Show me.”

His next word was “Incroyable!” as with Annabella he brought the second masterpiece from its one-time hiding place into the clear morning light of the room. The ritual and the exclamations and ecstatic comments were repeated until all five of the paintings had been admired.

“This takes my breath away,” LeGrand said. “What can I say?”

“Say — ten million francs?” Annabella suggested.

LeGrand looked at her stoically.

“We may bargain, mademoiselle, but I do not think we shall quarrel.”

“Well, shall I leave you to haggle?” Simon asked. “I’ll take a stroll in the garden.”

“Whatever you please, m’sieur,” LeGrand said.

“Stay if you like,” Annabella said simultaneously.

Their responses to his question were entirely automatic. Their consciousnesses were almost exclusively focused on the paintings and the deal to be made, and the Saint felt about as much a part of things as the bride’s brother along on a honeymoon. When he left the room they were already so absorbed in financial discussion that they did not even notice his departure.

He went out the front door of the house and sauntered across the drive to the Mercedes, where Kraus was engrossed in putting a final burnish on the mirror-like black shell.

“Wie geht’s, Hans?” he enquired sociably.

“Ganz gut, danke, mein Herr. And you?”

The chauffeur straightened his shoulders as he turned to answer. He wiped his moist forehead with the back of the hand which held the polishing cloth.

“Very well too,” Simon said.

“And there?” Hans Kraus asked in a quieter voice, with a tilt of his head toward the house.

He seemed to have become much friendlier to the Saint now that both the paintings and their owner had come through the night unscathed.

“They’re talking price.”

“He won’t cheat her?”

“Hans, you’re an incorrigibly suspicious man I’m afraid. LeGrand will drive a hard bargain, but he’s honest.”

The chauffeur’s face became ashamedly apologetic.

“You understand... how could I know these things?” he said. “She is only a young woman, with a great responsibility, and I cannot be of much help. I worry. I cannot help it.”

“Well, you won’t have to worry much longer,” Simon told him. “Once LeGrand has the paintings and your Fräulein has her money, the Lambrini household can relax indefinitely.”

“Will she have it soon?” Kraus asked. “It is all she has thought about for months. There has been almost no sleeping.”

“I think she’ll have it soon,” Simon assured him. “LeGrand was very impressed.”

“Let us fervently hope so,” Kraus said.

Simon left him and started to stroll across the lawn, wondering just how long the other parties who had been showing such an interest in Annabella’s art hoard were going to remain inactive. Then Annabella’s own voice called his name and he turned back to the house. She and LeGrand were standing at the front door.

“All finished?” the Saint asked as he rejoined them on the steps.

“We have agreed,” the art dealer said. “There is only for my colleague to see the paintings also. He is the only expert in France whose opinion I respect above my own. While I, of course, trust Mademoiselle Lambrini completely, the money involved in this transaction is not all mine, and it is necessary to have a confirmation of my judgment.”

Simon glanced at Annabella. She seemed untroubled by any misgivings, and apparently the price they had agreed on pleased her.

“Congratulations to both of you, then,” he said. “You won’t be needing me any more. Maybe Monsieur LeGrand would be kind enough to give me a ride back into Paris.”

“Oh, but I do need you!” Annabella exclaimed.

She took his arm as they followed LeGrand to his car.

“Monsieur LeGrand’s friend just called to say he has had car trouble on the road coming out here,” she said. “I need you for protection until he comes... and then of course I shall need you for the celebration.”

The Saint inclined his head gracefully.

“Where celebrations are concerned, my availability is unlimited.”

“As you like, monsieur,” LeGrand said. “You are welcome to ride with me.”

“Monsieur Templar will stay with me,” Annabella insisted. “You will be coming back to my house with the professor in any case, won’t you?”

LeGrand looked at his wrist watch and shook his head.

“Perhaps not. My wife does not care for managing my business very long. I had to leave her in charge while I drove out here. But I shall see that Professor Clarneau comes to see you as quickly as possible.”

“I must admit that I’m impatient,” Annabella said.

They walked to LeGrand’s car. He paused to shake hands before getting into the driver’s seat.

“It was a pleasure, mademoiselle,” he said to Annabella. “And an honor, monsieur.”

“It will be an even greater pleasure for me when our deal is completed,” Annabella said. “What about delivering the paintings... and the money?”

LeGrand laughed as he settled himself and closed the car door. He looked up with his elbow on the open window frame.

“I don’t blame you for being anxious, mademoiselle. My wife is already as anxious for me to sell the paintings so that she can have a certain fur coat that has monopolized her dreams for the past ten months or so.” He made one of his shrugging gestures. “Therefore our interests are parallel. If Professor Clarneau approves the paintings — or perhaps I should say, when Professor Clarneau approves the paintings — he will be able to hand you a check on the spot. He is my partner in this transaction, and the money is in our joint account, so that you can have your payment immediately, without my having to be around. I shall countersign the check when I meet him now, and he can take the paintings with him back to Paris in his station wagon. Is that good enough?”

“Very good,” Annabella said contentedly.

LeGrand winked at her as he started his car’s engine.

“Of course, you drove such a hard bargain that Clarneau may be shocked — but I trust you can charm him into being reconciled to the price.”

“Don’t even joke about such things!” Annabella remonstrated.

LeGrand was about to pull away when Simon asserted himself the dialogue for the first time.

“Monsieur LeGrand,” he said quietly. “Are you certain it was your friend who telephoned?”

LeGrand took his hand off the gear shift lever and his bushy eyebrows suddenly arched to an almost comical extreme.

“Of course it was. What do you mean?”

Annabella gave the Saint a ferocious look which clearly said, Simon, please shut up and don’t rock the boat! but he went ahead in spite of it.

“I mean that these characters who’ve been so busy trying to swipe Mademoiselle Lambrini’s worldly goods — not to mention Mademoiselle Lambrini — might just have decided to try another angle.”

Annabella’s beautiful red lips were compressed with exasperation, and LeGrand looked more impatient than worried.

“What angle?” he asked. “What would they have to do with Paul Clarneau? Are you suggesting that he... No. That is impossible. He has been my friend since we were boys!”

“I’m not suggesting anything — and certainly not that your chum Clarneau is a crook. I’m just wondering whether or not somebody might be using him as bait for a trap that you’re about to drive right into.”

LeGrand gave a nasal snorting laugh and shook his head as he put the car in gear.

“Apparently you read too many crime stories, Monsieur Templar — or live too many. You can’t believe an ordinary automobile breakdown when you hear about one.” He gunned the engine, then looked at the Saint again sardonically. “Of course if you would like to come along to protect me, or to protect Mademoiselle Lambrini’s interests...”

Annabella firmly caught Simon’s arm and held him close beside her.

“He can protect my interests quite well enough by staying here,” she said. “Just hurry, please, and send your friend along as soon as possible.”

“A votre service!” LeGrand said, with mock humility. His car’s wheels threw up gravel. “And don’t let Monsieur Templar dream up any ghosts to steal our paintings before Clarneau comes to take them!”

6

Twenty-five minutes after Marcel LeGrand had driven away, an American station wagon of venerable vintage crunched up the drive and stopped at the front door. Simon and Annabella went outside, and the driver of the car all but ran to meet them. He was a small elderly man, but powerfully knobby, with the look of one who ate little and trotted two miles every day before breakfast.

“I am so sorry, mademoiselle, monsieur!” he cried. “The gods would of course do such a thing to me on this day!”

Simon shook his hand and Annabella protested that automobile trouble was nobody’s fault.

“She is old but usually dependable,” the man said. “In my work I need the space for carrying paintings and statues from place to place.” He suddenly stopped himself. “But I have not even introduced myself! I am Professor Paul Clarneau.”

“We guessed,” the Saint said.

“Do come in,” Annabella Lambrini urged him. “The paintings are only a few minutes older, after all.”

“Of course!”

Simon followed them into the front room and watched as Clarneau went into similar ecstacies to those of LeGrand.

“I assure you they are genuine,” Annabella said. “But you are welcome to make whatever tests you have to do in order to check.”

“I would not for a moment doubt your word,” Professor Clarneau replied gallantly. “If you don’t mind, though, I shall look more closely...”

He waited with eyebrows raised, until Annabella had given him her go-ahead. Then, blinking rapidly, as if the blink were an essential part of his investigatory technique, the little man began to crawl around on the floor peering at parts of the canvases through a magnifying glass, studying the surface of the paint at various angles, and inspecting the backs of the frames. After a few minutes, during which Annabella was speechless with suspense, he scrambled back to his feet.

“Voila,” he said happily. “It is done. They are beautiful — beautifully genuine!”

Annabella broke into a broad smile and then tried to maintain it as the Saint put in a comment.

“I thought you had to use X-rays and chemical analysis and all that sort of thing.”

Clarneau answered indulgently.

“Only when my own opinion is doubtful,” he said. “In this case I am quite satisfied. A person who has devoted his life to art develops an instinct for true masterpieces. Chemicals have been wrong. When my eye is convinced, it has never been mistaken.”

“I’m very happy for both of you then,” Simon said to him and Annabella. “Shall we start the celebration?”

“After I have something to celebrate,” Annabella answered.

Clarneau looked blank. Then his face brightened.

“Oh, yes! The money.” He reached into his coat pocket. “I have here a check for the amount you agreed on with LeGrand. He has already signed it, and I shall countersign it as soon as you have signed the bill of sale. You will want to read it, of course. It’s rather long, but it simply says that for the amount we pay you, you agree to assign us all rights to the paintings. LeGrand and I have already put our names at the proper place.”

He handed Annabella a long and closely printed piece of paper.

“While I read it I’ll have Hans pack the paintings for you,” she told him.

“You have crates?” he asked.

“I have a large container that holds all five,” she said.

“I’ll help Hans,” Simon suggested.

“Wonderful. He knows where the crate is. He’ll be in back — through that door — somewhere.”

Simon carefully picked up one of the paintings and carried it away toward the back of the house. As Annabella read the bill of sale he and Hans appeared at intervals until all five of the paintings had been removed. Then Simon came back once more into the living room.

“Would you like to look at the crate before we put the cover on, Professor?” he asked.

Clarneau shrugged as if to say it was not necessary, but followed the Saint to the rear of the house anyway. The wooden crate was in a storage room which otherwise contained only a large cupboard, and the mysterious assortment of old boxes, cartons, battered trunks and valises, and all the other aging junk which irresistibly accumulates in such limbos. The crate was about four feet high, the same in width, and three feet deep — large enough for what the Saint had in mind.

Clarneau looked at it, satisfied himself that the five paintings had been slipped properly into their slots, where they were held by padded channels at the top and bottom, and said he was well pleased.

“Good,” Simon said as the Professor went back to the living room. “Let’s get this end nailed on, then, Hans.”

“I had a hammer here,” the chauffeur said. “I am sure I did.”

“I haven’t seen it,” the Saint told him, untruthfully, having surreptitiously spirited it into his own hip pocket.

“Strange. I have another in the garage. I come back in a moment.”

Hans left the room and the Saint immediately slid every painting out of the packing crate and into the cupboard by the wall. He worked quickly but efficiently, not making a sound as he listened for approaching footsteps. The cupboard door creaked slightly as he closed it, but not loudly enough to be heard in the front part of the house. With the paintings out of sight he dumped books from one of the dusty boxes into the crate until it held the approximate equivalent in weight of the paintings.

When Hans Kraus came back into the storage room with a hammer, Simon was just fitting the end cover on to the packing case.

“I’ll hold,” he said. “You hammer.”

Hans began banging away.

“Not too many nails — and not too hard,” Simon said. “You don’t want to jar the paint off the canvases.”

Hans looked concerned and finished the job with a nail at each corner.

“Gut?” he said with satisfaction.

“Sehr gut,” Simon agreed. “Let’s get it into the station wagon.”

Hans put down the hammer and took one end of the crate; Simon picked up the other.

“Heave,” he said, and they carried the crate out of a back door, around the house, and to the front door.

“Shall we put it in?” Hans asked.

“By all means. Let’s give the customer his money’s worth,” the Saint said.

He opened the back of the station wagon and helped Hans shove the crate inside.

“All right,” he said. “You can tell them it’s ready to go.”

Hans nodded and went into the house. Simon knew and had counted on the fact that the station wagon was not visible from the front room where Annabella and her customer were completing their transaction. Without a wasted motion the Saint jumped into the station wagon, closed the rear door behind him, and jerked the hammer from his pocket. In a few seconds he had loosened the end cover from the crate. He pulled it away and bent and flattened the bared nail points into the pinewood of the cover. Then he climbed into the crate himself, kneeling on the books, and tapped a pair of nails into the inner side of the cover so that he could use them as handles to pull the cover snugly into place. It was a simple matter then to secure the cover with another couple of nails driven lightly at an angle from inside.

Enough light came through minor crevices of the box to enable the Saint to see his own hands as his eyes adjusted themselves. He had had to work blindly while fixing the cover in place. Now he settled back in comfort in a sitting position, leaning his back against the rough inner wood of the container with his long legs only moderately cramped.

He waited and listened, and in a very few minutes he heard voices approaching the station wagon.

“I really don’t know,” Annabella was saying. “Hans said he was out here.”

“Well, if you don’t mind, I must be on my way without saying goodbye to him,” Professor Clarneau said. “LeGrand will be waiting anxiously for me.”

The rest of the conversational interchange was largely drowned by the opening and closing of the car door and the starting of the engine. As the station wagon pulled away Simon heard only one phrase shouted merrily by the driver:

“Don’t drink too much champagne before lunch!”

The station wagon lurched out of the driveway and on to the road, but it did not turn toward the main Paris road. It turned right instead. The Saint could tell that much by centrifugal pressures even though he could see almost nothing through the tiny crevices in the crate. But presently instead of continuing in its original direction the station wagon made another right turn. It seemed to Simon that it was heading toward Paris all right, but by a devious route.

He relaxed. The noontime sun sent slivers of light across his hands folded on his knees. The vibrating wooden box, shaking rhythmically now and then, had a soporific effect that made him as drowsy as if he had been at home in bed. Up in the front seat of the station wagon the driver was whistling, and the off-key strains of Funiculi Funicula blended with the rush of warm air blowing back through the open windows.

The ride was not a short one. The Saint calculated that he must be in the southern outskirts of Paris proper before the station wagon slowed almost to a halt, made a gingerly bumpy turn, and honked its horn.

Simon heard a large door scrape across concrete, and the wagon moved ahead again for a short distance.

“You got them?” somebody shouted in Austrian-accented German.

The driver answered in foreigner’s German which might have had somewhat garlicky Neapolitan flavor:

“Of course! It went like clockwork. Where is the trunk?”

“Upstairs.”

The driver got out of the station wagon and slammed the door hard.

“Then let’s get it down here, shall we?” he said impatiently.

Simon heard the two pairs of footsteps moving away. After a few seconds he took his hammer and pulled out the two nails which held the end of the wooden crate in place. In a moment he had pushed it open far enough to allow him to look at his surroundings.

He was inside some sort of garage or small warehouse which had no windows. Next to the station wagon was an old Volkswagen bus. There was assorted automotive junk scattered around the place, none of it worth noticing twice. The Saint rolled quickly out of the crate and replaced its cover, tacking it into place with four efficient blows of his hammer. He was just getting out of the back of the station wagon when he heard someone coming down a flight of stairs at the rear of the garage. Simon ducked and waited, peering around the corner of the wagon until he had ascertained that the intruder was alone. The man was, in fact, so preoccupied with not dropping a tray he was carrying that he would not have noticed the Saint if he had been standing bolt upright. Simon recognized him as one of the two characters who had put Hans Kraus to sleep and tried to kidnap Annabella Lambrini outside LeGrand’s gallery the day before.

The man with the tray opened a door on the left side of the garage, beyond the Volkswagen bus, and kicked it shut behind him. Simon followed stealthily, crossing the greasy floor of the garage, after a backward glance to make certain he had left the station wagon closed, and gently opened the door which the man ahead of him had entered. It led down a short passage, at the end of which was another door, much stouter than the first. It was half open, and the Saint could hear a low-pitched voice speaking bad French.

“Here is to eat.”

It was Marcel LeGrand’s voice which answered.

“We don’t want food! When are you going to let us out of here?”

Another male voice, unknown to Simon, joined in.

“This is an outrage! You can’t get away with this!”

“Be quiet! I untie only your hands so you eat.”

The Saint slipped quietly through the door into the small dank room. The man who had been carrying the tray was bending over Marcel LeGrand, who was tied in a straight chair. Next to him, bound in another chair, was a thin white-haired man who would undoubtedly turn out to be the real Professor Clarneau.

LeGrand’s startled expression betrayed Simon’s entrance. The captor turned and met the edge of the Saint’s hand. The chop descended with the force of an axe, and sent its victim sprawling unconscious on the stone floor.

“Monsieur Templar!” LeGrand cried. “Wonderful! How...”

“Quietly!” Simon cautioned him, untying his hands. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, but how did you know we were here? This is my friend Clarneau. They stopped his car. They made me sign a check...”

“I can imagine,” the Saint said. “We can talk later. For now, get out of here through the window in the passageway between here and the garage. Hurry!”

Professor Clarneau, who looked like a large white rat in an old-fashioned black suit, was opening and closing his mouth without making any noise. For that hysterical silence Simon was grateful.

“I want you to get the police. Tell them to come grab these boys as fast as they can.”

He and LeGrand hoisted Clarneau, who was still opening and closing his mouth, out of the passageway window. The Saint then had to boost LeGrand’s ample bulk out unaided, and it was fortunate that he had the muscle for the job.

“Aren’t you coming?” LeGrand asked Simon from outside.

“No. I have some work to finish up here. Go get the police, then go straight home and stay there. I’ll see you there tonight — and have your check book ready if you still want to become the world’s most envied art dealer.”

7

Simon waited until he could no longer hear them moving away, and then went very quietly back to the door which led into the garage. It was half open, and through the opening he could see two men just arriving at the bottom of the stairs carrying a large trunk. One was the driver of the station wagon who had impersonated Clarneau, and the other was recognizable as the second member of the previous day’s unsuccessful kidnap team — it seemed to Simon that if they were going to keep coming back into the action he would need to think of them in some less cumbersome way, and decided to call them Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

He used the Volkswagen bus as cover to slip through the doorway and get nearer. In his hand was a gun he had taken from the pocket of Tweedledum in the room behind him.

“We’ll have to remove the frames in order to fit the things into this false bottom,” said the Clarneau impostor, as they put down the trunk at the rear of the station wagon. “But it is worth the trouble, I assure you. No customs man would think of looking.”

“And no policeman, I hope.”

“Don’t worry. By the time the police know anything about this we’ll be over the border and halfway home.”

They began to drag the wooden crate from the back of the station wagon.

“Where is that dunce, Gunter?” the substitute Clarneau wondered aloud. “Feeding LeGrand with a silver spoon?”

“This doesn’t weigh much, does it?” said Tweedledee.

“Canvas is light. And yet it’s worth a hundred times more than solid gold.”

There was a creak of nails being tugged from wood, and then stunned silence.

“Disappointing, isn’t it?”

The two men whirled to face the voice. It belonged to the Saint, who was standing behind them on the safe side of a black automatic. Tweedledee made a sudden move, and Simon sent a shot through the edge of his coat sleeve. There were no more movements, sudden or otherwise.

“I know it’s disappointing,” he murmured. “You expected a Madonna or two, but you’ll just have to make do with one Saint.”

He relieved Tweedledee of another pistol, checked the fake Clarneau, and backed away again.

“How... did you get here?” the smaller man asked him.

“I was breathing down your neck all the way. Now why don’t you tell me how and why you got here?”

“We tell you nothing.”

“Well then,” Simon said, “lead the way to the dungeon, please.”

He indicated the way with the nose of his gun and followed them down the passage to the room where they had held LeGrand and the real Clarneau prisoner. Tweedledum was still on the floor.

“He’s killed Gunter!” the fake Clarneau cried in a panic.

“Not quite, I think,” said the Saint. “But that can always be remedied. I do sometimes get homicidal when people try to keep secrets from me. Now just wait here and think what I might do to you if you don’t come up with a good honest chunk of autobiography in the next forty seconds. I’ll be right back.”

He backed into the passageway and locked the door of the small room. Then he froze. Coming through from the garage were two more men. One of them, tall and black-haired, was the detective who had visited LeGrand’s gallery the day before. He was smiling.

“You remember me, Monsieur Templar? Inspector Mathieu.”

“I do remember,” Simon said without relaxing his ready grip on the automatic.

Inspector Mathieu continued to smile as he nodded at the gun.

“Taking the law into your own hands?”

“Nobody else seemed to be taking care of it,” the Saint said mildly.

“We have been watching this building,” Mathieu said. “Your friend LeGrand and another fellow came running out in a state of shock and told us you were in here.”

The Saint’s muscles untensed slightly. But his main reaction to Mathieu, which must have been subconsciously developing since the first time he met him, was one of spontaneous and unaccountable distrust.

“Where’s LeGrand now?” he asked.

“We sent him home. He was shaking like jelly. And where is the man who impersonated Clarneau?”

“Right through that door. And since I’m being so cooperative, maybe you’d tell me exactly what kind of mischief this cast of thousands is up to.”

Mathieu shrugged.

“A simple case of thieves falling out.”

“I hadn’t noticed any falling out,” Simon responded.

“The girl on one side, these people on the other.”

Mathieu stepped forward with a business-like air toward the door behind which the Saint’s three captives were locked. The key was already in Simon’s pocket. The automatic was still in his hand. With the most subtle kind of movement he placed himself in the passage in just such a way that Inspector Mathieu could not get by.

“You’re including Annabella Lambrini among the thieves,” Simon said questioningly.

His piercing, dangerous blue eyes met Mathieu’s dark ones, which gave way and pretended to glance around the bare corridor with official interest.

“She is not Annabella Lambrini, for a start,” Mathieu said. “She’s no more Italian than I am...” He hesitated and nervously indicated the locked doorway behind the Saint. “You’re sure those men are in there — securely? I don’t want to stand here talking while half the gang gets away.”

“They’re as harmless as three blind mice,” the Saint assured him. “Tell me more.”

“This so-called Annabella Lambrini is really Austrian,” Mathieu said. “Her name is Anna Lenscher, and she is responsible for...”

Mathieu suddenly stopped again. His expression had switched from the complacency of superior knowledge to worry.

“Yes?” Simon prompted.

“Where are the paintings?” Mathieu asked. “We saw an empty crate out there as we came in.”

“There’s a trunk with a false bottom near it,” the Saint told him.

“Ah, a false bottom,” Mathieu said. “Clever. Shall we go and have a look?”

He pushed past his unintroduced and unspeaking assistant and led the way back into the garage. Simon followed both of them to the door through which the passage led into the garage.

“But the paintings aren’t in there either,” he said.

Mathieu turned from the trunk, looking plainly irritated.

“Alors, m’sieur, you will be so kind as to tell me where they are.”

Simon shook his head pleasantly.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.”

Mathieu, for the first time, seemed to be losing his self-possession.

“You don’t know?” he demanded.

“I didn’t say I didn’t know,” Simon answered. “I said I couldn’t tell you. But maybe we could trade stories. You tell me more about Annabella, and I’ll consider telling you about the paintings — if I know anything.”

“Mr Templar! You are being difficult!”

The Saint would never have suffered the indignity of being taken off guard if his captives had not chosen that moment to set up a loud banging on the door of their cell. In the first second of the noise Simon’s attention was divided among Mathieu, his assistant who was standing nearby on his right, and the noise at the other end of the passageway. In that instant of time the Saint, thinking in three directions at once, was as nearly vulnerable as he was ever likely to be.

Mathieu’s assistant leaped forward, and Simon — who even at that crucial point had time to reflect that it might be unwise to kill a policeman, if Mathieu’s assistant really was a policeman — half whirled to snap off a shot at the man’s leg. He sensed rather than saw Mathieu hurl something at him as his head was turned. His skull was jarred as the flying object hit him, and darkness, like rising black water, filled his vision.

8

Annabella Lambrini — or Anna Lenscher, depending on whose story the reader chooses to accept — was at the least highly puzzled when she realized that her protector and overnight guest, Simon Templar, had vanished from her house simultaneously with the removal of her paintings.

Any strictly materialistic worries she might have had about the crated masterpieces were assuaged by her possession of a check for a very large amount of money signed by Marcel LeGrand and his expert friend Professor Clarneau. If the Saint, piratical character that he was reputed to be, chivalrously chose to steal the paintings from Messieurs LeGrand and Clarneau rather than from a lady, she could only be grateful for such old-world consideration. But her feminine pride was hurt that he could have walked out and left her — for whatever mysterious reason — without even saying goodbye.

However, she had more practical matters to occupy her mind. She had no wish to put off her dream of a California palace any longer than was absolutely necessary. She had already made arrangements for the closing of her house, and she set Hans to work packing her luggage while she had lunch.

About an hour later the chauffeur called to her from upstairs.

“Fräulein! Somebody comes!”

“Is it the Saint?” she called back. And excitedly answering her own question: “He must have done whatever he went to do.”

She ran to the door and opened it as a green Renault pulled up in the driveway. There were two men in it, and she immediately realized to her disappointment that neither was Simon.

The tallest of the men approached her. His shorter companion limped more slowly behind him.

“Mademoiselle Lambrini, I am Inspector Mathieu. My identification.”

“The police?” Annabella asked in a controlled voice.

“Yes. May we come in? Thank you.”

He stepped into the entrance hall without waiting for a reply, and she followed him.

“I must ask you...” she began.

“You were visited by Monsieur LeGrand and Professor Clarneau this morning?” Mathieu asked.

“That is true.”

“And you sold them some paintings?”

“Yes. Is something the matter?”

“I regret to tell you that Professor Clarneau was murdered today after leaving your house,” Mathieu said heavily.

“Murdered!”

“He was killed in his car on a lonely country road. And the paintings were gone.”

“Stolen?” she asked dazedly.

“The crate was empty.”

“Then...”

“Then what?” Mathieu asked as Annabella’s voice trailed off.

“I have enemies who were after the paintings. Men who tried to kidnap me yesterday and came on to my property here yesterday evening. They must have killed him.”

“No, Mademoiselle. We have arrested the man who killed him. He has confessed.”

“Who?” Annabella asked breathlessly.

“His name is Simon Templar.”

Annabella’s face was drained of color and she did not say a word in response, so Mathieu continued.

“He was unlucky. The murder was witnessed by some woodsmen who followed him. He did not give up without a struggle. He shot my colleague, Sergeant Bernard here, in the leg.”

“Then you must have found the paintings.”

“No. According to Templar he never put the paintings in the car.”

Hans Kraus had come silently into the hallway and was listening. Now he interrupted.

“That is wrong. I helped him put the paintings into the box and into the automobile,” he said.

“I am sorry,” Mathieu said. “He denies that. He says he hid them here. We must at least try to confirm or disprove his story. You will not object if we search, Mademoiselle?”

“Not in the least,” Annabella said. “Look anywhere you wish. You will not find them.”

“Thank you,” Mathieu said with a slight bow. “Where were the paintings last seen in the house?”

“Show them, Hans.”

As Hans left the hall with the men his mutterings were clearly audible.

“A thousand times I tell her! Never trust strangers!”

Annabella stood in a kind of stupefied trance, and within thirty seconds, before she could rouse herself to any clear thinking, there was a call from the rear of the house.

“Mademoiselle! We have found them!”

She met Mathieu, his assistant, and Hans in the living room. Hans was carrying one of the da Vincis in front of him as if it were a gigantic cold fish he had just discovered in his bed.

“But, Fräulein,” he was intoning, “it is not possible. I put them in the box myself...”

“I am afraid that you were dealing with something of a magician,” Mathieu said. “This man Templar is not called the Saint for no reason, you know. He has shown, until now, some almost supernatural qualities. It takes experts to deal with him.”

Annabella did not find Mathieu’s smugness tolerable.

“Then deal with him,” she said snappishly, “and please leave me alone.”

All she could think of at the moment was the check in her purse on the mantelpiece. Would it be stopped now that one of the men who had signed it had been murdered? And yet she had a signed bill of sale.

“You should be glad that your property is safe, Mademoiselle,” Mathieu was saying. “Another dealer will be glad to buy them.”

“Thank you,” Annabella said flatly.

“Very well,” Mathieu said crisply. “Bernard, the other paintings, please. Put them in the back of the car.”

“What?” Annabella cried, coming to life like a lighted rocket. “What are you talking about?”

“I am taking these pictures into police custody,” Mathieu said with official dignity.

“But they’re mine!”

“I am afraid they are not, Mademoiselle. You sold them, remember?”

“Not to you,” the woman said. “There is no reason for this.”

“A murder has been committed for these paintings,” Mathieu said. “There are unanswered questions. I will give you a receipt. You can discuss who is to reclaim the paintings when the time comes. But for the moment you can comfort yourself that they will be absolutely safe at the Sûreté.”

“My God, this is too much!” Annabella exclaimed, turning her back and raising her hands to the heavens in a pantomime of utter despair.

“Into the car,” Mathieu said to his associate. “Cover them well with the car rug.”

“They are very large,” Bernard responded, “Can they be taken out of their frames?”

“Out of their frames?” Annabella cried almost incoherently. “Here? My paintings?”

“They are very large,” shrugged Bernard. “We do not need the frames.”

“So nice of you to leave me something,” Annabella said with livid sarcasm.

“Very well, we shall leave the frames,” Mathieu said callously. He gestured toward the storage room at the rear of the house. “After you, Bernard.”

Hans was blocking the door which led to the storage room, clutching the painting he held as tightly as he could.

“Fräulein?” he asked desperately.

“Let them go,” Annabella said with a weary wave of her hand. “The paintings are not ours any longer — and these are the noble police, after all. They go where they please.”

“Your pardon, mademoiselle,” Mathieu said. “I shall help Bernard if you will excuse me.”

“I believe that I can exist in my living room without you,” Annabella said.

She waited, pacing the floor and occasionally coming to rest briefly on a chair, drumming her fingers on a polished table top. She could hear the tapping of hammers in the back of her house and the rear door opening and closing several times, but she could not see the men carrying the deframed paintings into their car since it was parked out of the field of view of the living room window. Wild schemes whirled through her head like tornadoes dipping down from the clouds and then rising up again and disappearing, coming to nothing. She could do nothing but wait.

After fifteen minutes Mathieu, Bernard, and Hans, who had been hovering helplessly around the other two men like a toothless watchdog, came emptyhanded into the living room.

“All done?” Annabella asked sweetly. “Would you like the furniture now?”

“There is no point in feeling offended, mademoiselle,” Mathieu said. “No one is doing anything to you or accusing you of anything.”

His tone implied that she just might find herself accused of something if the police decided to get nasty.

“I’m not offended,” she said icily. “I am disgusted with this whole affair. The sooner I see the end of this business the happier I’ll be.”

Au revoir, then,” said Mathieu with a slight bow.

“My receipt,” she reminded him.

“Oh, yes, of course.”

Mathieu felt in his jacket pockets, and apparently found nothing usable after a lengthy search. Annabella finally produced a pen from her purse.

“Very efficient, you police,” she said as she handed it to him.

“Thank you, mademoiselle,” Mathieu said, “and now... have you any paper?”

Annabella sighed and sat down.

“Would you find them some paper, Hans? They are so busy protecting citizen’s property by carrying it away with them that they rarely have time for writing.”

Hans got the paper and Mathieu found a seat at a table. He wrote and handed the result to Annabella.

“From Mademoiselle Lambrini, paintings,” she read. “H, Mathieu, Inspector.”

She threw the paper down in front of him on the table.

“Do you take me for an idiot?” she demanded angrily. “Describe them. Name the painters!”

Mathieu sighed and pushed the paper back in her direction, offering her the pen.

“You describe them, mademoiselle. I shall sign.”

She wrote a list, Mathieu and Bernard checked her description of the confiscated paintings, and then Mathieu signed the paper again. Annabella took it, folded it, and clutched it tightly.

“Now go,” she said rudely.

Mathieu and Bernard walked to the front door.

“You are staying here, I assume?” Mathieu said. “We may need you when we bring the formal charge against Monsieur Templar. You will be available?”

“Of course,” she lied. Then her voice softened and became less self-assured. “Templar... is he hurt? Was he shot?”

“No,” said Mathieu. “He is as healthy and arrogant as always.”

She nodded. Mathieu and Bernard made stiffly formal parting bows and left the house for their car.

Annabella closed the door and walked dejectedly to the living room. Hans was watching her.

“I am sorry that you had to learn this lesson,” he said hesitantly.

“You’re right, Hans. I’ll never trust anybody again. I promise!”

“Not even your old friends?” asked a third and entirely different voice.

Annabella gave a little shriek and whirled to face the other end of the room. There stood an impeccable and nonchalant Simon Templar, not a hair of his handsome head out of place, more cheerfully arrogant and healthy than the man who called himself Inspector Mathieu could have imagined in his most fearful dreams.

9

“Simon!”

Annabella’s cry was a crazy mixture of relief and horror. The latter emotion at first had the upper hand.

“You — you killer!” she said. “How did you escape?”

She whirled to look out of the front window in time to see Mathieu’s car racing down the drive among the trees. In only a second or two it was out of sight.

Hans grabbed up a poker from beside the fireplace and put himself between the Saint and Annabella. He held the poker like a ready axe in front of him, and his hands were white and trembling. The Saint smiled at him with unperturbed amiability.

“I assure you that you’re both getting yourselves worked up for no reason,” he said quietly. “You were in much worse danger just a few minutes ago.”

“You killed a man!” Annabella said.

“You killed the professor!” Hans joined in, bracing his legs and his makeshift battle-axe defensively.

“I’ve killed a number of men,” said the Saint calmly, “but I haven’t killed anyone this morning, and Professor Clarneau is as much alive as we are. The man who came here and took the paintings, or thought he did, wasn’t Clarneau, of course.”

“You’re completely insane,” Annabella said. “You’re not making any sense.”

“It’s the gospel,” Simon said.

“But the police. The Inspector told me himself—”

“He wasn’t a real Inspector, either.”

“What?”

“A fake cop. This Mathieu is about as close to being a policeman as I am, which is about as far as you can get.”

“But I gave him the paintings!” Annabella almost shrieked.

“Then you’re a very silly girl.”

Whatever Mediterranean strains Annabella’s pedigree included went suddenly on full power. She clenched her teeth, whirled completely around, shook both fists at Simon, and with an explosive shudder began to scream at him.

“This is your fault! All of it! You idiot! You traitor! You’re behind this whole thing!”

She snatched up a vase of roses from one of the tables and hurled it at him, spilling most of the water and most of the roses over the front of her dress. Simon easily avoided the vase, which smashed against the wall beyond him, and awaited the next attack.

“Fräulein!” Hans cried.

He cast an almost imploring look at the Saint, who only shrugged and dodged Annabella’s new missile — a potted cactus from one of the bookshelves. It sailed harmlessly past Simon and crashed not at all harmlessly through the front window.

“What a woman, eh, Hans?” said the Saint admiringly. “When she wants fresh air she wants it now!”

Annabella emitted a choked whinny of fury and charged around the sofa to engage him in hand-to-hand combat, but on the way her feet got tangled up in a lamp cord and she sprawled full length on her face with her eyes just a few inches from the toes of Simon’s beautifully polished shoes.

“You’re better than a wrecking crew,” he said, leaning down to help her up.

She shook off his hand and sat on the rug bawling.

“Oh, go away!” she sobbed. “Just leave me alone.”

“All right, I will. But first I’ll give you a going-away present.”

Hans had simply settled on one of the chairs, the poker drooping loosely in his limp hands. He was obviously in a mild state of shock. Simon went past him into the adjoining room and came back with five large unframed pieces of canvas. He held up one of them for Annabella to see. She stared incredulously, then scrambled to her feet.

“Simon!” she gasped ecstatically. “You... darling!”

An instant later she had thrown her arms around his neck and was covering his face with kisses and lipstick.

“A bit changeable, aren’t you?” he remarked.

“I’m so sorry! I had no idea. I thought — I had to blame somebody. How did you get them?”

“Mathieu and his chum put them in the back of their car and tucked a blanket around them. I just took them out again and tucked the blanket back where it was while they were saying goodbye.” He interrupted her with a lifted hand as she started to speak. “I know. They may already have noticed, so let’s scoot out of here and deliver these treasures to Marcel LeGrand so you can get them off your hands and I can get you off mine.”

Hans, carrying two of the unframed canvases, joined them in hurrying out the back door of the house and through a gate in the wall which bordered Annabella’s property. Simon also carried two paintings, and Annabella brought the fifth. The Saint had parked his car in the shelter of a clump of trees in the neighboring wooded area.

“Wait,” he said abruptly. “No noise for a minute.”

They listened and heard an automobile engine roaring at high speed up the drive on the other side of the wall. Simon left Annabella and Hans in his car and peeked through the gate. He could see nothing but the back and side of her house, but he could hear shouting and the pounding of fists on the front door.

Simon trotted back to his car grinning.

“The return of Inspector Mathieu,” he said as he got into the driver’s seat. “Hold on to your Leonardos, darling.”

He rocketed off toward the main road, and if Mathieu associated the sound with his escaping prey he had no time to react before the Saint and his charges were a mile down the highway.

Hans, in the back seat, closed his eyes and heaved a sigh.

“I am too old for this,” he said. “I think I go back to Linz.”

Annabella looked over her shoulder at him.

“You’re going to California,” she bubbled. “It’s over now. You can relax.”

“Let’s hope so,” the Saint said. “We may run into a waiting line at LeGrand’s. You know there are at least two batches of people even less principled than ourselves after these paintings.”

“Two?” Annabella said.

Hans groaned and closed his eyes again.

“Mathieu’s team and another crowd that seems to be half German and half Italian,” Simon continued. “I had the international squad locked up — the ones who tried to kidnap you in Paris — but then Mathieu bopped me in the head, and when I’d worked my way out of the room he locked me in, they were gone. I was fully expecting them to show up at your house too. You wouldn’t have any idea who they are, of course.”

“No. And who is Mathieu, really?”

“I don’t know that either. But your theories should be better than mine. You know the history of the paintings — who knows about them, who might have heard about them.”

He could almost feel the distance between him and Annabella widen.

“As I told you,” she said almost defiantly, “I have not had much contact with my father. I know very little.”

That was that. The Saint could do without the whole truth as long as he cleared his fair profit, which he expected to earn very soon now. He had a kind of permanent quiet faith that anything he really needed to know would inevitably be revealed to him, and it was possible that what he already knew about the present case was all he would ever need to know: Beautiful and mysterious girl possesses valuable paintings, two competing gangs of art thieves catch up with her at the same time, but luckily the Saint is on hand to throw them all into confusion and reap his own just reward.

“Oh well,” he said to get off the subject, “maybe they’re just frustrated amateur actors who enjoy impersonating cops and art experts and such. We’ll concentrate on getting the loot to LeGrand. It’s almost six, and I haven’t eaten since breakfast. Let’s get something to eat and give him a call at the same time. When I left him this noon I told him to go home and I’d contact him tonight.”

“When did you see him?” she asked. “You haven’t told me what happened.”

“I’ll tell you all about it over a glass of something restorative. We’re not far from Barbizon, where the Bas-Bréau does a canard à- l’ananas that would tempt Donald Duck to become a cannibal.”

“I’ve lost my bearings complete,” Annabella said. “I feel as if we’ve been traveling in circles.”

“We have,” Simon told her. “At least, we did once. It’s known amongst us professional lawbreakers as shaking the tail — assuming anybody tried to tail us. You’ll have to learn to do it if you’re planning to continue with this adventurous life you’ve been leading.”

Annabella shook her head with a tired smile.

“I just want to get it over with — and carry off lots and lots of money.”

Simon nodded and returned her smile without speaking or taking his eyes from the road. He doubted whether it would be that simple.

10

After he had ordered dinner, the Saint left Annabella and Hans at the table and telephoned Marcel LeGrand at his home.

“Simon!” the dealer exclaimed with relief. “I haven’t heard from anyone!”

“You’re lucky,” the Saint informed him. “It seems that everybody you know except Professor Clarneau and possibly me is a crook. Inspector Mathieu isn’t inspecting anything but ways to get his hands on your paintings.”

“He’s not...?”

“No, he’s not. I don’t think he’d try keeping up the impersonation at this stage, but I thought you’d better know.” The Saint paused. “He’s not standing over you now, is he?”

“Of course not,” LeGrand said with surprise.

“If there’s anyone holding a gun on you, to make you tell me that nothing’s wrong, say ‘No, she’s feeling perfectly well now.’ “

LeGrand laughed.

“No need for codes. There’s only myself and my wife here.”

“Good. May we come to your house with the paintings in about a couple of hours?”

“Yes! The sooner the better.”

Simon went back to the table where Annabella and Hans were waiting to begin their aperitifs. He toasted them with a dry Martini.

“LeGrand is expecting us,” he said. “California or bust.”

Annabella smiled as she raised her glass.

“California or bust!”

An hour and a half later, replete with pineapple-garnished duck and Rausan Segla ‘59, and an ethereal epilog of orange soufflé, they left the restaurant for LeGrand’s home in the western suburbs of Paris.

The house, even seen in semi-darkness, was an impressive testimony to the success of art as being business. LeGrand’s establishment, in spaciously landscaped grounds, made Annabella Lambrini’s house seem like a cottage by comparison. As the Saint pulled his car up to the front door he noticed LeGrand’s Citroën in the porte cochere. There were no other cars. If there had been it might have given warning that LeGrand had received some unfriendly visitors since Simon had called him earlier in the evening. Of course, visitors of a really dedicated undesirability would not be very likely to have left their vehicle in plain view. There was a side road beyond LeGrand’s southern hedge where they might have parked inconspicuously.

“I’m still nervous,” Annabella said, fidgeting with her purse.

Simon let her out of the car. Hans chose to wait.

“It’s about time to stop being nervous and start celebrating — unless LeGrand’s changed his mind.”

Annabella looked stunned. Then she saw the Saint’s teasing grin in the light that fell over LeGrand’s front steps.

“Don’t joke,” she said. She looked over her shoulder. “Let’s hurry, please, before some of those horrible people come here.”

Simon rang the bell. Almost immediately LeGrand opened the door, extending a hand effusively to each of them over the threshold.

“I’m delighted to see you,” he said. “Come in, come in, please.”

“I think you are as anxious as I am,” Annabella said with a small smile. “Or do you always answer your door so promptly?”

They had stepped into a sumptuously carpeted and decorated entrance hall. LeGrand waved them toward an open door to the left.

“I am anxious,” he said. “I must admit it. I was watching from the window.”

He was as impeccably dressed as ever, even though his dark suit was more than a trifle wilted. The reception room into which he took them was as richly furnished with antiques as some state-supported seventeenth-century château.

Annabella looked around admiringly.

“But you have everything already,” she said. “Are you sure you want my poor paintings?”

LeGrand did not seem able to share her rather euphoric good humor.

“Indeed I want them,” he said with a chopped laugh. “Are these...”

He nodded toward the stack of canvases in Simon’s arms, and Simon handed them to him.

“They haven’t been damaged at all,” the Saint assured him. “They’ve been through quite a few escapes today, and during one of them they had to leave their frames behind.”

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

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

LeGrand snorted negatingly.

“Excited,” he said. “Not jittery.”

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

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

LeGrand took the slip of paper and crumpled it.

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

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

“I am rich!” she exclaimed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Simon shook his hand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s done!” she exulted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What is it?” she asked shakily.

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

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

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

“I?”

“Yes, you, Fräulein Lenscher.”

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

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

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

She hesitated between fury and desperation.

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

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

She nodded and began to speak with frantic precision.

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

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

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

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

Annabella shrugged.

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

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

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

“Yes,” she said flatly.

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

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

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

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

“And Hans?” the Saint asked.

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

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

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

“Please do. And now...”

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

“Yes.”

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

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

“What I can. Keep out of sight!”

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

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

LeGrand looked stunned.

“My wife?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, Simon, you’ve got them!”

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

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

He turned again to the Saint.

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

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

“He looted them,” Mathieu said.

“He did not!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Annabella gave a hopeless sigh.

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

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

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

“Where?” Mathieu asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You have them?” Mathieu exploded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Twenty-five percent?” Mathieu growled.

“Forty percent,” Annabella said firmly.

“Thirty-five,” Mathieu sighed with resignation.

“It’s not enough,” said Annabella.

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

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

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

“Bon,” Mathieu said with resignation. He indicated Tweedledum and Tweedledee on the ground. “And these creatures?”

“Have you any insecticide?” Simon asked.

Marcel LeGrand stood up in alarm.

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

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

“Can you get it tonight?” Simon asked.

“You will take lire?” Mathieu asked.

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

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

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

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

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

They hurried away through the shadows.

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

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

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

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

“Exactly!” Annabella beamed.

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

“Did you tie him?” Simon asked.

“Hans did.”

“And the paintings?”

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

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

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

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

“Everything is good?” he enquired.

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

“Aber natürlich! They are here, in the back seat.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Good,” said Simon. “Hans and I were discussing old English sayings while you were gone, and this situation brings to mind another one... about not putting all one’s eggs in the same automobile.”

“What do you mean?” Annabella asked.

“I mean I think I’ll wait over there across the road in the shadows in case Mathieu decides that he’d prefer spending a couple of cheap bullets rather than a lot of expensive money.”

“You think he doesn’t intend to go through with this even now?” Annabella asked in dismay.

“I think he does,” the Saint replied, “if he has to. But it won’t hurt to give the ethical side of his nature a little encouragement.”

He opened the door and let her into the front passenger seat of the car. Hans, at his indication, took the driver’s seat.

“Just finish your transaction as fast as you can and get rid of him,” Simon told them.

Annabella was groping at the dashboard of the car.

“Where is the key?” she asked. “In case—”

“In case you decide to leave me standing here holding an empty bag?” Simon drawled. “The ethical side of your nature needs a little encouragement, too.”

He tossed the key in his hand, grinned, put it back into his pocket and strolled across the street to the dark schoolyard. There was a row of large chestnut trees along the sidewalk giving perfect concealment from the eyes of anyone on the lighted street. The Saint leaned against one of the tree trunks, folded his arms comfortably, and waited.

He did not have long to wait. Apparently Mathieu’s financial resources were not only adequate but very handy. Perhaps the money had even been in his car — it was possible that Mathieu or his employers had anticipated paying for the paintings as a last resort all along. In any case, it was less than fifteen minutes until a pair of headlights flared around the corner and Mathieu’s car pulled up and stopped on Simon’s side of the street facing in the opposite direction to the car that was already there. Mathieu got out, leaving Bernard at the wheel. The engine remained running.

Simon watched from his hiding place, not ten paces away, as the pseudo-Inspector crossed the street. Annabella got out of the Saint’s car to meet him. Mathieu opened the rear door of Simon’s car and looked over the paintings. Seeming satisfied, he turned and motioned to Bernard. Bernard got out of the car with an attaché case in one hand. While he was still hidden by the car door from the view of the people across the street, he extracted a pistol from his pocket, clicked off the safety catch, and held it close to his body.

The Saint, like a fleeting shadow, was suddenly behind Bernard as he crossed the road and Mathieu’s assistant felt the hard cold nose of an automatic pressed very hard against his spine.

“What a naughty boy you are, Bernard,” Simon said so that all could hear. “Now show the nice people what you’ve got in your hand, and then drop it on the street with the safety on.”

Bernard dropped his pistol on to the pavement, and the Saint picked it up. Mathieu ground his teeth and rolled his eyes in an expression which would have fitted quite well into one of Michelangelo’s more dramatic renditions of the Last Judgement.

“Well,” Simon said to Annabella. “What shall we do with them now?”

“I did not tell him to do that!” Mathieu protested, waving both hands at the abashed Bernard. “I swear I did not. Show them the money, you fool!”

Bernard sheepishly opened the attaché case, revealing stacks of banknotes.

“To pay you with,” Mathieu said anxiously. “It is there. You can count it.”

“Stand over there, Bernard, and give me the money,” Simon said.

The currency was genuine. Annabella looked at it and then enquiringly at the Saint.

“What should I do?” she asked anxiously.

“I suggest you take it before it’s devalued,” Simon said. “And that you give the paintings to these two boobs so they’ll stay off your neck once and for all.”

There was a general sigh of relief, particularly on the Italian side of the parlay, and Mathieu anxiously received the paintings from Hans.

“You are going to let us go?” Mathieu asked, with an apprehensive look at Simon’s gun.

“No fear, Garibaldi,” Simon said. “Run along and don’t come back.”

“And good riddance!” Hans grunted after them in German.

The two Italians hurried into their car, slammed the doors with feverish haste, and roared away.

When they were gone Annabella sagged happily against the side of Simon’s car.

“I am rich!” she exulted. “I’m at least a little rich!”

“We are a little rich,” Simon corrected her.

He took a pile of lire from the glove compartment and put them into his coat pocket. Annabella’s initial look of horror faded and relaxed into a smile as she took a deep breath.

“Fair enough. You’ve earned it.” She took Hans’s hand in one of hers and Simon’s in the other and squeezed them both. “We’ve all earned it. Let’s form a team. Is Reubens bringing good prices?”

“Quite,” said Simon. “Why?”

“Well, darling, these Leonardos and things were just the beginning! There’s lots more where they came from!”

Simon looked slack-jawed at Hans, who ducked his head in affirmation and smiled modestly through the pale lamplight.