The Saint Bids Diamonds (Thieves' Picnic)

She struggled up on her elbow.

"But he'll be back-he'll come back with the others --"

"No, I don't think so. Not just yet, anyway. We parted like brothers. I even gave him back his gun."

She brushed the copper-gold hair back off her face, her brows knitted with the effort to grasp his meaning.

"Let's begin at the beginning," he said. "After I left you last night I went out to put the car away. Once I was in the car, I found that the damn thing was taking me up to Graner's. I couldn't help it. It's that sort of car. Crazy. Maybe it caught the disease from me-I don't know. Anyway, once I got to the house I figured I might as well have a look round. I looked round. They certainly do make it difficult for a bloke to climb over their wall."

"I could have told you --"

"But you didn't. Never mind. I found out for myself. So, since I couldn't get over the wall, I had one of my strokes of genius. After having tooled all the way out there, it seemed pretty silly to come home again without doing anything. So I rang the bell. Did you ever hear of anything brighter?"

"I think you must have been crazy."

"That's what I thought. Anyway, Graner let me in. And just as we were going into the house I heard Lauber in the middle of an argument with the other two. He was saying-I can tell you his very words- 'I never had the blasted ticket. I was hunting through Joris' pockets for it when that swine jumped on me. If anybody's got it, he has.' "

"You heard Lauber say that?" she stammered incredulously. "But you know --"

He nodded.

"Of course I know. But that was Lauber's story, and from what I've heard he's sticking to it. Didn't you hear Graner say that he'd put a man to watch the shop where the ticket came from, in case anybody tried to cash it?"

Talking about Graner reminded the Saint that he had put Graner's drink down when he went out to Hoppy's room. He fetched it and returned to the bed.

"What else did they say about it?" she asked.

"Nothing. The subject was dropped when I walked in. Reuben asked me a lot of questions, and ended up by telling me that I wasn't to come back here. I don't think he suspected me, but he just didn't want me knocking around Santa Cruz where I might hear too much or talk too much. I argued about it, but I had to stay."

He told her about his other experiences the night before, about the story he had read in the newspaper at breakfast, and about the introduction to his duties which had followed, talking in the same crisp, vivid phrases that smacked home every vital detail like bul­lets; until he reached the point where he had walked into the room with Graner and found her there.

"You know the rest," he said.

"But where is Joris?"

"Tell me what you know."

"I awakened rather late," she said. "About ten o'clock I went and listened at the door, but I couldn't hear anything, and I didn't want to disturb them if they were still asleep. I couldn't hear anything in your room, either. I got dressed and sent for some break­fast, and presently I went back again. I still couldn't hear anything, so I knocked on the door. They didn't answer. I went on knocking until I got scared and opened the door. There wasn't anyone there. I rushed back here, and when you didn't answer either I came in. I saw that your bed hadn't been slept in, and I simply flopped. It was only a moment or two before you came in. That's why I was sitting on your bed. I just went weak in the knees and couldn't stand up for a bit. I didn't know what to think or what to do."

"Don't you know what to think now?" said the Saint reluctantly.

He found her touching his hand.

"But Graner said they hadn't found Joris."

"They haven't-so far as he knows," said the Saint. "But remember what I told you about Lauber. A thing like that spreads, once it starts."

"But do you know?"

"I know this. Hoppy sent for breakfast this morn­ing, before you were awake. I'd told him not to open the door to anybody, but I suppose he didn't think he was meant to starve. He didn't see any harm in having breakfast. The chambermaid brought it; but another guy who answers to Aliston's description met her at the door and said he wanted to take it in for a joke. Probably he gave her some money to make the joke seem funnier. She let him do it. He was wear­ing a white waiter's coat, and Hoppy wouldn't have thought anything of it. Aliston could easily have cracked Hoppy over the back of the head with some­thing; and once Hoppy was out, Joris wouldn't have given them any trouble."

Her fingers tightened over his.

"You ought to have let me stay with him," she whispered.

"It wouldn't have done any good if they'd taken you at the same time."

"I could have looked after him. . . . But why didn't they take me?"

"Because they didn't know. Joris came in with Hoppy last night, and you came in with me some time afterwards. They'd have been asking for you first, and that night porter is so dumb that he wouldn't have connected the two. He didn't even know that Hoppy and I had any connection. Probably they expected to find you with Joris, anyhow. When they didn't find you, they probably didn't want to waste any more time looking for you. Graner was waiting for them to call him, and as far as they were concerned Joris and Hoppy were the important people. So I guess they left it at that."

She was silent for quite a long while, but no more tears came into her eyes. He could guess what she must be feeling, but she gave no outward sign. There was an inward strength in her which he had still not measured completely. When she looked at him again, she had herself completely under control.

"So you think Aliston and Palermo have joined up with Lauber to double-cross Graner?"

"I don't think that for a minute. I think it was just that suspecting Lauber put the idea into their heads. And if they were out to do any double-crossing, why should they cut Lauber in? Why not keep it all to themselves? They've got Joris now, and they'll start by trying to find out something about the ticket from him and Hoppy. If the trail turns back to Lauber again, they'll go after him."

"And what about Graner?"

"He may start getting some suspicions of his own, and if he does he'll do something about them. It's just an open competition to see who can do the fastest and smartest double-crossing."

"How much are you doing?"

The Saint met her eyes steadily over his cigarette.

"Now you're coming to that drink I gave you," he said.

He gave her a full account of his conversation with Graner after she had gone to sleep, leaving nothing out. She was watching him all the time, but his recital never faltered.

"I couldn't have got off a quarter of that in front of you," he said. "You can see that, can't you? As far as Graner's concerned, you've got no reason to trust me any more than you'd trust the rest of his gang; so apart from everything else, I had to put you out be­fore he began to wonder why you kept so quiet when I was talking."

"So you told him that you were going to tell me just about what you've told me now-to try and make me think you were on my side?"

He nodded without hesitation.

"Yes."

3 "I think I'm well enough to smoke a cigarette," she said.

He gave her one, and a light. She went on looking at him, with detached and contemplative brown eyes. He knew that he was being weighed in the balance, and knew just how much there was against him at the other end of the scales. It was even more than he had to overcome when he made the original suggestion to Graner; but he faced the ordeal without a trace of anxiety. Whichever way the verdict was fated to fall, so let it be.

"Do you think Graner believed you?" she asked noncommittally.

"I'm hoping so. At all events, he acted as if he did. And there's no reason why he shouldn't. He thinks I'm intending to work for him; he thinks I value my share in his other boodle more than a difference in my share of the ticket; he knows nothing against me, he's got my passport --"

"Your passport?"

"Yes. He asked for it, just for insurance, so I gave it to him to keep him happy. It's quite a good one, but I've got plenty more-only he doesn't know that. . . . Maybe he has some suspicions about me-I don't know-but the worst you can call them is suspicions. So long as he hasn't any proof, it doesn't make much odds. I've got the bulge."

She said: "Do you think I believe you?"

He moved his shoulders in the faintest sketch of a shrug.

"I'm waiting for you to tell me, Christine."

She turned her cigarette in the ash tray, making random patterns in the ash. For a while she didn't give him an answer.

Then she looked at him again, and he realised that the detachment had gone from her eyes. He would have liked a brush and palette and canvas, and the time and talent to capture the tilt of her chin and the expressive arch of her brows. He had been aware of her beauty from the first moment he saw her, but he had not felt it so deeply before now. And yet her conscious parade of it had some of the pathetic simplicity of a child; and it was with the same childish simplicity that she said: "Don't you think I could give you more than Graner ever could?"

He tried not to look too much at the soft curve of her lips and the elusive temptation of her eyes.

"He's not very beautiful, is he?" he said lightly.

"I'm beautiful."

The sheer silk of her dress brought out the lines of her long slender legs as she swung them off the bed. She stood over him, her hands resting on her hips; the silk clung to her waist and moulded the pattern of her firm young breasts. She was all young desire, infinitely desirable. . . . He did not want to think about that.

"I must be," she said, with the same innocent sober­ness. "Do you know I was only sixteen when they brought me here? I've seen them watching me as I grew up. I've seen them wanting me. Sometimes they've tried; but Joris could still help me a little. I learnt to keep them away. But I knew I couldn't keep them away always. You may be the same as they are, but you don't seem the same. I shouldn't mind so much if it was you. And if it would help Joris ... if you helped him, I would give you anything you want. . . ."

"That isn't necessary," he said roughly.

He got up quickly, without looking at her, and went to the window. He stood there for a time, without speaking, looking down into the square without seeing anything, until he felt he could trust himself to face her again. When he turned round at last, he had taken everything out of his eyes but the preoccupation of the adventure.

"The first thing you've got to do is to get out of here," he said. "Graner's been sent home for the moment, but we don't know what's going to happen next. And I'd rather you weren't around when it does happen."

"But where else can I go?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out." He thoughtfor a moment. "Last time I was here, there was a fellow -- Wait a minute."

He skimmed rapidly through the telephone direc­tory; and some time later, after he had managed to get the attention of the hotel operator, and the hotel operator had managed to wake the exchange out of its peaceful slumbers, and the exchange had made careful investigations to assure itself that there was such a number, he secured his connection.

"Oíga-żestá allí el seńor Keena? . . . David? Well, the Lord's name be praised. This is Simon. . . . Yes indeed. . . . Yes, I know I said you'd never see me again in this God-awful hole while there was any other place left on earth to go to, but we haven't time to go into that now. Listen. I want you to do some­thing for me. Have you still got your apartment? . . . Well, how'd you like to turn out of it for a lady? . . . Yes, I'm sure you can't see why, but how d'you know she'd like you ? . . . Anyway, it's just one of those things, David. And it is important. I'll tell you all about it later. She can't go to a hotel. . . . That's grand of you. . . . Will you meet us there in about five minutes? . . . Okay, fella. Be seein' ya!"

He hung up the telephone and turned round cheer­fully.

"Well, that's settled. Now if we can find some way to smuggle you out-Joris and Hoppy went out in trunks, so I suppose that's ruled out. Wait another minute . . ."

"Are they watching the hotel?"

"Graner left Manoel outside-he was shining the back of his coat on the Casino when I saw him last. But we can fix that. Are you ready to move?"

"When you are."

She put a hand on his arm, and for a moment he hesitated. There were so many other things he would rather have done just then. . . . And then, with a quick soft laugh, he touched her lips with his own and opened the door at once.

Downstairs, he beckoned the wavy-haired boy away from the desk, where there were some repulsive specimens of the young blood of England wearing their old school blazers and giggling over the priceless joke that Spaniards had a language of their own which was quite different from English.

"Have you got a back way out?" he asked.

"A back way out, seńor?" repeated the boy dubiously.

"A back way out," said the Saint firmly.

The boy considered the problem and cautiously admitted that there was a back door somewhere through which garbage cans were removed.

"We want to be garbage cans," said the Saint.

He emphasised the fact with another hundred-peseta note.

They passed through stranger and stranger doors, groped their way through dark passages, circumnavigated a kitchen and finally reached another door which opened on to a mean back street. An idle waiter whom they brushed past gaped at them.

"You're learning," said the Saint appreciatively, and the boy began to grin. Simon turned back to him grimly. "But just understand this," he added. "If that waiter or anyone else says a word about our going out this way, it's your head that I'll knock off. You've got a hundred pesetas. Use them."

"Claro," said the boy, less enthusiastically; and Simon ruffled his nice wavy hair and left him to it.

David Keena was waiting for them when their taxi drew up at the building where he lived.

"There is some excitement in Tenerife, after all," he said when the Saint got out.

"You don't know the half of it." Simon waited until they were inside the house to introduce the girl. "This is playing hell with your peaceful life, I know, but I'll do the same for you one day."

They went up to the apartment. Simon scanned it approvingly. If by any chance the Graner organisation, either corporately or individually, started to search for Christine, they would draw the hotels first. She might be secure in that apartment for an indefinite time.

He took Christine's hand.

"Hasta luego," he said, and smiled at her.

She looked at him, not quite understanding.

"Are you going?"

"I must, darling. I daren't be away from the hotel a moment longer than I have to, in case Graner calls me back. But I'll be on the job. Now that I know you're safe, I'll have all my time to look for Joris and Hoppy. Just sit tight and don't worry. It won't be long before I find them."

"You'll tell me what happens?"

"Of course. There's a telephone here, and I'll call you the minute I've got anything to say. Or any other time I've got a few seconds to spare for a chat. I only wish I had the time to spare now, Christine."

He held her hand for a moment longer; and there was something in his smile which seemed quite apart from the only life in which she had ever known him. The gay zest of adventure was still there, the half-humorous welcome to danger, the careless confidence -in his own lawless ways that made up so much of his fascination; but there was something else, something like a curious regret that she was too young to understand. And before she could ask him anything else he was gone.

"Why the rush?" asked Keena, as Simon drew him down the stairs.

"For fifteen million reasons which I can't stop to tell you about now. But you know something about me, and you know the sort of troubles I get into. If you don't know any more than that it may be healthier for you."

"I read something in the Prensa about an outbreak of gangsterismo --"

"So did I, but that was the first I'd heard of it." Simon stopped at the foot of the stairs and grinned at him. "Now you'll have to be content with that until I've got time to give you the whole story. You can go back upstairs for just long enough to settle the girl in and see that she knows where everything is. Then you hustle back to your office and carry on as if nothing had happened. She's not to show her face outside this place, and you're not to behave as if you'd got anyone here; so you can stop wondering where you're going to take her to dinner. You find yourself a nice respectable hotel, and if there are any questions you can say your apartment's being painted. You don't say a word about Christine, or about me for that mat­ter. Do you get the idea?"

"I think it's a lousy idea," Keena said gloomily.

The Saint chuckled and opened the front door.

"It 'll grow on you when you get to know it better," he said. "We'll get together later and talk it over."

He had kept his taxi waiting, and a moment later he was on his way again. As they approached the Casino building he slid down in the seat until he was invisible to anyone who might have been lounging about the square, and told the driver to take him round to the corner of the Calle Doctor Allart-he had taken note of the name of the street behind the hotel when he went out with Christine.

The driver looked round at him blankly, narrowly missing a collision with a tram in the process.

"żDónde está?"

Simon explained the position of the street at length, and comprehension gradually brightened the chauffeur's face.

"Ah!" he said. "You mean the Calle el Sol."

"It has Calle Doctor Allart written on it," said the Saint.

"That is possible," said the driver phlegmatically. "But we call it the Calle el Sol."

He stopped at the required corner, and Simon got out and paid him off. He walked on towards the rear entrance of the hotel. There was a car parked in front of it, on the opposite side of the road; otherwise the street was deserted. The car seemed to be empty, and he knew at once that it bore no resemblance to Graner's gleaming Buick. It was curious that he should have overlooked the possibility of there being two cars in Graner's garage. The Saint had just put his hand on the door when he heard a step behind him, and before he could turn he felt the firm pressure of a gun barrel under his left shoulder blade.

"Don't do anything silly," said a soft voice. The Saint turned his head.

It was the elegant Mr Palermo.

VI How Simon Templar Ate without Enthusiasm, and Mr Uniatz Was Also Troubled about His Breakfast

THE RAIN which had been threatening all the morning was starting to come down in a steady miserable drizzle; and under its depressing influence the street, which could never in its existence have been a busy thoroughfare vibrating with the scurry of bustling feet, had taken on an even sadder and emptier appearance. Simon looked warily up and down it. About a block and a half away one lone man was shuffling in the opposite direction, too loyal to his national traditions to bustle even before the prospect of a soaking; apart from him there was no other soul in sight except Aliston, who had become visible at the wheel of the car.

"Forget it," said Palermo, reading his thoughts. "You haven't a hope."

Simon was not quite so sure-there are popular superstitions about the speed with which triggers can be pulled which the Saint was too experienced to share, and he had gambled cheerfully on those split-second exaggerations before then. But there were other thoughts coming into his mind which he did not let Mr Palermo read.

"What's the idea?" he demanded indignantly.

"You needn't worry about that. Come and get into the car."

The drizzle was swelling methodically to a downpour, and the one shuffling pedestrian turned the next corner and vanished. There was nothing to stop Palermo using his gun; but that was not the factor which settled the Saint's decision. Palermo and Aliston had taken Hoppy and Joris-somewhere. It seemed to the Saint that he was being offered an open invitation to find out where. He could make an accurate estimate of the chance he would be taking by accepting that escort, but the thought only amused him. Besides, he was getting wet.

He continued to look suspicious and indignant.

"Why should I get in the car?"

"Because you'll get hurt if you don't. We're just going for a little ride."

"It sounds like the good old days," said the Saint.

He crossed the street and got into the car, with Palermo's automatic still boring into his back. Aliston glanced round from the driver's seat.

"Two sixty-seven," he said cryptically, in his Oxford drawl. "A seven."

"Good. We'll find him afterwards. Let's go."

Palermo settled back as the car started off. He oc­cupied himself with preening his natty little moustache, but the gun in his pocket remained levelled at the Saint. Simon went on frowning at him.

"Look here, Palermo," he protested. "Where are we going?"

"Call me Art," said Mr Palermo generously.

"Where are we going?"

"We're going where we can have a talk."

"What's wrong with the hotel?"

"Too many people," said Palermo blandly.

The Saint scowled.

"Did Graner send you?" he demanded, with rising fury.

Palermo's greenish eyes studied him thoughtfully while he considered his answer. Aliston decided it for him. He spoke without turning his head. "Shut up asking so many questions. You'll find out soon enough."

The Saint shrugged and relaxed in his corner. If he couldn't talk, he could at least take advantage of the time to settle some of his own deductions.

Graner had gone back to the house and conferred with the others-that was the obvious starting point. What the face value result of the conference had been was yet to be hinted at; but Simon could guess some of the results which the individual members would wisely have refrained from making public. Graner's good news, if that was how he had presented it, would have given Lauber and Palermo and Aliston three separate and personal sinking feelings in their stomachs which must have cost them a heroic effort to conceal. To Palermo and Aliston, the capture of Christine would mean that she might know something and say something that would blow the secret of their abduction of Joris sky-high. To Lauber it would mean that she might somehow be able to convince a questioner that the lottery ticket had really been stolen the night before, which would inevitably bring the suspicion against himself back to fever heat. To all of them it would be a staggering blow to the security of their private plans that would blaze chaotic danger signals across their reeling horizons; to all of them it would scream a call for urgent action that must have made them feel as if their chairs were turning red-hot under them while they had to sit there talking. And Simon had an idea that the arrival of Palermo and Aliston was prompted by one of those desperate reactions.

The car was twisting and turning through the sordid narrow streets of what is euphemistically known as the French Quarter. Presently it stopped in one of them, at the door of a gloomy-looking two-storied house crowded among half-a-dozen other identically squalid buildings; and Palermo's gun prodded the Saint's ribs again.

"Come on. And don't make any fuss."

Simon got out of the car. This street, like the first one, had been emptied by the rain; and the Saint knew better than to waste his energy on making a fuss. Be­sides, his other plans were developing very satisfac­torily.

Aliston opened the door, and they went into a small dark hall redolent with the mingled smells of new and ancient cooking and mildew and stale humanity. They stumbled up the dim stairs and emerged on a bare stone landing. A shaft of greyish light fell pitilessly across it and showed up the soiled peeling scales of what had once been whitewash as Aliston opened another door.

"In here."

Simon went into the room and summarised its topography with one glance. On the right was a small window, hermetically sealed in the Spanish fashion, and almost opaque with the accumulated grime of ages. On the left was a closed door which presumably led to the bedroom. In front of him and to the left was another door, which was open; and a girl with an apron tied round her came out of it as they entered. Behind her Simon saw the symptoms of a kitchenette in which odd­ments of feminine washing were strung on a line like flags. The girl had brass-coloured hair which was growing out black at the roots; she was pretty in an ordinary sort of way, though her complexion was coarse and unhealthy under the crude caked make-up. She had the broad hips and rounded stomach and big loose breasts which the national taste demands.

"Trae la comida," said Palermo, throwing his hat into a corner; and she went out again without speaking.

Simon put a hand in his pocket for his cigarette case, but Aliston caught him.

"Wait a minute."

While Palermo kept him covered, Aliston searched him carefully; but it still didn't occur to him to search the Saint's left sleeve. He was looking for something which was likely to be found in certain definite places, and when he failed to find it he scratched his head.

"Must be crazy," he said. "He hasn't got anything."

"Why should I have anything?" asked the Saint ingenuously. "I admit the place looks pretty insanitary, but I haven't been here very long."

Palermo took his hand out of his gun pocket for the first time since their encounter outside the hotel. He waved the Saint round the table to the side farthest from the door through which they had come in.

"Sit down."

Simon made himself as comfortable as he could on the plain wooden chair and opened his cigarette case.

"When do I know what the hell this is all about?" he enquired politely.

Palermo unwrapped the Cellophane from a local cigar, bit off the end and lighted it. It smelt like burning straw.

The girl came back and laid an extra place at the table; and Palermo and Aliston sat down. Aliston twiddled one of his coat buttons and looked at the floor, the ceiling, the different walls, his feet and his fingernails. Palermo seemed as absorbed in his foul Cigar as if he hadn't heard the Saint's question.

"I suppose you know there 'll be hell to pay when Graner hears that the girl's been left at the hotel all this time alone," said the Saint presently.

"She isn't at the hotel," Aliston said sharply.

Simon raised his eyebrows.

"Well, where is she?"

"That's what we're hoping to hear from you," said Palermo.

The Saint placed his cigarette in his mouth and inhaled from it without changing his expression. The girl returned again with a pan of paella and put it down in front of Palermo. Simon noticed that she went back and fetched two more plates and stood looking at him doubtfully. Palermo glared at her silently, and she left the plates and sat down; but the Saint had learnt all that he had to learn. He knew now that Joris Vanlinden and Hoppy were in the room with the closed door on his right.

He gave no sign of having observed anything, but the sweet exhilaration of the fight began to creep into his nerves again. A well-aimed fist in Mr Palermo's other eye, he was musing, would produce an agreeably symmetrical effect. Or should one be guided by a less monotonous style of composition and work diagonally downwards through the nose? It was a nice problem in practical aesthetics, and he didn't want to decide it too hastily. He helped himself from the dish when it was passed to him, and picked up his fork.

"Why should you ask me that?" he said calmly.

Palermo kept his cigar in his left hand and ate with his right, without once getting the two mixed up. Simon could not quite determine whether he ate to suppress the taste of the cigar or whether he smoked to disguise the flavour of the food.

"Because you took her away," he said bluntly.

"I did?"

Palermo nodded. He grabbed a mouthful of rice, a mouthful of smoke and another mouthful of rice.

"I saw you in a taxi when we were driving down- we were in a one-way street and we couldn't turn round in time, or we'd have stopped you. I told Graner there was probably a back way out of the hotel. How's your chicken?"

"I expect it led a very useful life until it stopped laying," said the Saint guardedly.

"They never kill them here before that," said Palermo affably. "Have some more."

He fished about in the pan and loaded the Saint's plate with a piece of gizzard, a section of neck and a few pieces of bone whose anatomical status it was impossible to ascertain because of the fact that the Spanish race has never learned how to carve a bird. They simply chop it up into small fragments with an axe, and you can work it out for yourself. The Saint sighed. It was only his fourth meal in Santa Cruz, but he remembered his previous visit as well; and already he was beginning to suffer from the luscious hallucinations of a starving man.

"It seems as if I did the right thing, anyway," he said brazenly.

"Why?"

Simon looked straight at him.

"I told Graner your outfit is a swell bunch of double-crossers. And it seems as if you've still got plenty of it left in you. I was thinking of that when I put Christine out of the way."

"Sure." Palermo shovelled some more food into his mouth and drank some wine. "You ever do any double-crossing?"

Aliston's fork clattered on to his plate.

"For heaven's sake, Art," he snapped. "We haven't got all day to waste."

"Take it easy, take it easy," said Palermo sooth­ingly. "Tombs and me are just getting along fine. Tombs is a good fellow. He just doesn't understand us properly yet. Isn't that right, Tombs?"

Simon picked a piece of cuttlefish out of his paella and chewed it laboriously. It tasted exactly like high-grade rubber.

"You're wrong there," he said coolly. "I think I understand you pretty well. When you've met one skunk, you recognise the smell of the others-whether they're wearing an old school tie or a little piece of gigolo whisker."

The refined face of Mr Aliston pinkened, but Palermo's retained its swarthy impassivity. He stared at the Saint with his head cocked on one side like a sparrow.

"You talk fast," he said.

"I think like that," said the Saint easily. "It didn't even take me long to figure out that you aren't only double-crossing me-you're double-crossing Graner as well."

There was a certain period of silence, during which the girl's knife and fork clinked softly as she contin­ued to eat with wholehearted concentration. Aliston's chair creaked a nervous rhythm as he swayed back­wards and forwards. Palermo went on looking at the Saint for several moments and then continued eating.

"Graner hasn't done anything much for you, has he?" he said. "I wouldn't have stood for him hitting me like he hit you last night."

"You'd have had to stand for it if you'd been in my place."

"Still, did you like it?"

The Saint shrugged, watching him thoughtfully.

Palermo went on, with an air of friendly decision: "I'm going to be frank with you, Tombs. You're a good fellow, and I'd rather have it that way. We are double-crossing Graner. You guessed right. He's tried to do things to us like he did to you, and Cecil and me have been getting tired of it. Graner's all right-he's a great organiser and he's done plenty for us. But he's too bossy. Cecil and me, we're what you might call independent. When this lottery-ticket business came along, we thought it was about time to quit. So we had to ditch Graner. See?"

"And ditch me," added the Saint mildly.

Palermo was unabashed. He went on cleaning up his plate with hearty thoroughness.

"Sure. I'm being frank with you, see? That was how it was. We didn't know you much then, and we were just going to split the ticket between us. Well, now it seems you've got Christine and you've been talking to her. We've got to keep her quiet, and we want to know what she's told you. So maybe we have to pay for it. I'm not saying we like it, but business is business and we've got to make the best of it. You've got to look at it the same way. If you stick with Graner you can't collect more than two million pesetas, and you'll lucky if you get that. Come in with us, give us all you know, and we'll give you a square deal that 'll bring you five million. That's fair enough, isn't it?"

"I think it's a lovely idea," said the Saint slowly.

Palermo leaned back and shifted his belt with a satisfied gesture.

"That's fine," he said. "Well, where did you take Christine?"

Simon pushed his plate away and smiled at him no less complacently.

"Oh no," he said. "That isn't fine at all."

"What d'you mean ?" demanded Palermo abruptly. "We're partners now, aren't we?"

"For the moment."

"Well, what are you putting in ?"

"What are you putting in, if it comes to that ?"

Palermo pointed his cigar at the closed communicat­ing door.

"You know what we're putting in. That's what you were talking about just now. Christine told you, didn't she? You don't have to play innocent any more."

"You've got them here ?"

"Sure we have."

The Saint eased a short cylinder of ash on to the side of his plate.

"And I've got Christine-where I've got her," he said equably. "So we're all square. I'm not wanting to take Joris away from you, and you needn't want to take Christine away from me. You've already told me that you've taken up double-crossing for a living, and you don't know much about my morals either. So if we each keep what we've got we can work together without being afraid that we're double-crossing each other. That seems sound enough for a start, anyway. Besides, why put all our eggs in one basket? If Joris managed to get away, he'd take Christine; or if Graner got wise to this place he'd have 'em both; or if Joris' friends got on to you --"

"You made a stall like that to Graner," Palermo said coldly. "It's not good enough. If you're coming in with us, you come in without any strings. Where's Christine?"

"I took her to another hotel."

"Which one?"

"The Quisisana."

Palermo made a sign to Aliston. Aliston got up and wilted towards the door. He seemed glad to be relieved from the strain of sitting still.

"I'll see if I can find the taxi as well," he said.

Simon turned the cigarette between his fingers.

"Where's he going?" he rapped.

"To see if Christine is really at the Quisisana," answered Palermo flatly. "And to look for the taxi you came back to the hotel in and see how much the driver remembers. If you're telling the truth, all right. If not . . ."

He didn't trouble to finish the sentence.

"You're wasting your time," said the Saint evenly. "I changed taxis two or three times. And if Christine sees Aliston, it 'll only scare her away."

"Then why don't you go and fetch her?" suggested Palermo, with his greenish eyes fixed unwaveringly on the Saint.

"I've told you why," retorted the Saint heatedly. "You're being a couple of suckers and doing the best you can to gum up the whole works. If that's the kind of partners you are, you don't interest me so much. What difference does it make where Christine is? She's safe enough where I put her. If you started talking about where the ticket is, it'd be more to the point."

Palermo leaned forward a little.

"I've told you our terms," he said. "If you bring Christine here and tell us what she's told you, the deal is on. Otherwise it's off. Don't you think that's fair?"

The Saint sent a curling plume of smoke drifting slowly through his half-smiling lips. So Palermo was asking for it. The Saint would have liked to keep him happy, to play him with the same bait that Graner had so successfully been induced to take. He had even less faith in the security of Palermo's partnership than he had in Graner's, and he would have had fewer scruples about lying to him, if possible; but the situation would have had its practical advantages apart from its appeal to his sense of humour. It was a pity that it couldn't have been organised that way. But Palermo was in quite a different frame of mind from the one in which Graner had accepted the Saint's terms; and Simon knew when he was wasting his time.

Palermo had got him in a corner which left no room for evasions; and it was obvious enough that Palermo meant to keep him there. The immutable fact was registered beyond mistaking in every glitter of Pa­lermo's intent bright eyes, in the whole atmosphere of his expectant stillness. And the Saint knew that every extra moment of hesitation was only hardening Pa­lermo's suspicions, bringing them a degree closer to the crystal sharpness of conviction. ... It was all very sad, but Simon Templar's philosophy held no room for vain regrets.

"If that's how you put it, I think it stinks," he said pleasantly, and looked into the muzzle of Palermo's gun.

2 "You're a fool," Palermo said thickly.

"We can't all have your brains," said the Saint deprecatingly. "Besides, you need a few compensations, with a face like yours."

The greenish glow darkened in Palermo's eyes, but he made no immediate reply. He beckoned to Aliston with his other hand without looking round.

"Tie his hands behind his back."

Aliston detached himself from the door and undulated into the kitchenette. Simon heard him moving about and surmised that he was removing the washing from the line. The Saint went on smoking unconcernedly and measured the distance to Palermo's chin. It was about five feet, with Palermo sitting where he was; and besides that there was the corner of the table to get round. He slipped one hand under the table and tested its weight speculatively, but Palermo felt the infinitesimal movement.

"Keep your hands on top of the table."

Aliston came back from his errand; and Palermo took the cigar out of his mouth and put it back again.

"Put your hands behind the back of the chair," he said.

Simon took a final pull from his cigarette and put it carefully down before he obeyed. Aliston worked si­lently at tying his wrists together. He used all the rope, and the knots felt tight. When he had finished, Palermo put his automatic away and came round and tested them.

"How do they feel to you, Art?" Simon enquired genially. "I think he did pretty well-he must have learnt some tricks when he was at crochet school."

The girl sat on the other side of the table, watching them stupidly. Palermo strolled back and jerked his head at her.

"Make a spoon hot on the fire," he said. "Make it red-hot. żTú comprendes?"

The girl stared at him blankly, and Palermo thumped his fist on the table.

"żTú has oído?" he snarled.

Aliston's face twitched nervously as the girl hurried out. He had turned several shades whiter, so that the graze that ran up his left cheek showed more vividly against the sickly pallor of his skin. He opened his mouth once or twice, as if he was on the point of protesting, and closed it again without saying anything, as if he had already heard the inevitable answers.

"I-I think I'd better go and look for that taxi," he said at last. "We don't want to waste any more time."

"All right," said Palermo contemptuously. "I'll get all we want out of this guy."

Aliston flushed and went white again. His mouth opened and closed once more, like a fish; and then he swallowed and went quickly to the door. Palermo watched it close behind him and turned back to the Saint with a short laugh.

"Cecil's a good boy," he said. "But he's too softhearted. That's the trouble with him. Softhearted."

"I take it that that's one thing you don't suffer from, Art," said the Saint softly.

Palermo chewed his cigar and looked down at him.

"Me? No. I'm not that way at all. Don't kid yourself, Tombs. I get what I want, and I don't care who gets hurt while I'm getting it. You can scream all you want while I'm burning you, and it won't worry me a bit. I'm not sentimental. Now why don't you have some sense and open up before I have to do any more to you?"

"People have tried to make me open up before-as the actress said to the bishop."

"There's a limit to how much any man can stand --"

"That was what the bishop said to the actress," murmured the Saint, with undiminished good humour. "Besides, you're going the wrong way about it. You'd be much more likely to make me think twice if you just threatened to stand there and make me go on looking at that nasty little moustache and wondering what your father would think if he knew about you."

And while he spoke he was twisting his wrists round to try and reach the hilt of the knife under his left sleeve. The cords cut into his flesh with the increased tension, but his finger tips brushed the end of the carved ivory. He relaxed for a second and then strained his muscles again, without letting a trace of the agonising effort show on his face. . . .

Then he heard the girl coming back. She carried a kitchen spoon with the handle wrapped in a cloth: the other end of it glowed dull red. Palermo took it from her carefully and held it a little way from the palm of his other hand, satisfying himself about the tempera­ture. The girl backed slowly away with wide, fright­ened eyes; but Simon knew from the sound of her footsteps that she stopped at the door of the kitchen­ette. She was directly behind him, and if he got his knife out of its sheath she would see it.

The Saint's blue eyes settled into a frozen steadiness as he watched Palermo corning towards him. The other's swarthy features were perfectly composed, as if he had been a dentist preparing for a painful operation which had got to be completed for the patient's own good.

"She's a nice girl," he said in his conversational way. "A bit dumb, but you can't get anything better here. But she's sentimental too."

"Everybody seems to have that complaint except you," Simon remarked, with an effort to make his voice sound natural.

Palermo came up on his left side; and the Saint felt the warm radiation of the spoon on his cheek.

"This is your last chance," said Palermo.

The Saint spread his legs wider around the seat of the chair and drew his feet back a little, as though he were riding a horse. He bent his elbows and strained his shoulders back so that the circle of his arms loosened as much as possible around the back of the chair.

"You can go to hell," said the Saint, and stood up.

The heat on his cheek became scorching as he rose, touched an instant of burning agony as he came upright. His wrists caught on the back of the chair, but he shook them free. And with a lightning turn of his body he swung his right leg round like a flail at the back of Palermo's knees.

He flung his left leg forward at the same time, in front of Palermo's feet; and as he crashed to the floor his right leg found its mark. Palermo let out an oath as he stumbled forward. His right hand was already diving into his pocket for his gun, but he had to snatch it out again to save his face as he toppled forward. He went down with a thud; and like a flash the Saint rolled over, keeping his legs in the same relative position.

Palermo gasped. He lay flat on his stomach, with his left leg held in a torturing grip which almost paralysed him. The Saint's right ankle was wedged firmly in behind Palermo's knee, and the heel of the Saint's left foot pressed remorselessly down on Palermo's instep, doubling the lower part of his leg backwards over his thigh.

The girl screamed. Palermo groped for his gun again, and the Saint put on some more pressure. Palermo screamed too. For a moment he had felt as though his knee joint was being torn out of its socket, while the tendons of his leg seemed to glow red-hot with anguish.

"Lay off that," said the Saint grittily, "or I'll break your leg in half!"

He turned his body a little to make another attempt to get at the knife on his forearm, but in the position in which he was lying his weight was on top of his arms. He couldn't shift it off sufficiently to reach his knife without giving Palermo a chance to escape. Meanwhile he had Palermo in a hold in which he might probably break his leg; which was all very well, but not well enough. The Saint's mouth set grimly as he went on trying to reach his knife.

Palermo pressed his eyes into his clenched fists and groaned.

"Maria!" he gasped. "So loca-do something!"

"Maybe she isn't so sentimental after all," said the Saint, and gave Palermo's leg another squeeze for encouragement.

He spoke a little too soon. Palermo's second yelp of torment seemed to break the spell which had held the girl gaping at them helplessly. She rushed forward and picked up the overturned chair on which the Saint had been sitting. Simon saw it hurtling down towards his head, and rolled desperately sideways. The move­ment would have broken his hold anyway, so the Saint broke it himself. He yanked his right foot free and aimed a savage kick at the back of Palermo's neck as he squirmed frantically out of the way of the falling chair. The chair crashed on the floor beside his ear, and most of its force had been lost when some other part of it caught him a glancing blow on the side of the head. Otherwise it would probably have cracked his skull-it was a good solid bourgeois wooden chair, with plenty of weight behind it.

A whole planetarium of whirling constellations swam before the Saint's vision; but at the same time he felt the toe of his shoe sog exquisitely into Pa­lermo's occiput. Palermo's pained and startled glug! prefaced another and temporarily unaccountable sharp clicking sound by a mere split second.

Simon got on to his knees and scrambled up to his feet, shaking his head to try and blink the flashing comets and swirling black mists out of his vision. The girl's fists thumped on his face and shoulders. He pushed her up to the wall and held her there by leaning his weight on her. She went on hitting wildly at him, but he paid no attention. He screwed his head round to look for Palermo and found him lying limply on the floor, face downwards. All at once he realised the meaning of that second crisp smack which had followed so closely on the impact of his toe. Palermo must have been raising his head when the kick met him, and it had banged his chin back into violent collision with the tiled floor. He was out to the wide, and he looked as if he was intending to stay out for some time.

The girl started to scream again hysterically.

"ĄCalla!" rapped the Saint.

He saw her take breath for another yell and jerked his head quickly down at her face. It hurt her more than it hurt him, and the scream was momentarily silenced.

"You can have five hundred pesetas if you shut up," said the Saint; and she looked at him almost intelligently.

He took a step back from her, when he saw that the lull was well-established, and turned half round.

"Cut off these ropes."

She glanced fearfully at Palermo.

"He will kill me."

"Does he look like killing anybody?" asked the Saint. "You can say that you fainted and I cut them off myself."

She took a knife from the table and sawed at the cords. Simon felt the ropes give, dragged one wrist free and finished the job himself. She stood looking at him anxiously; and the Saint dug into his pocket and peeled five bills off the roll he carried. The anxiety faded out of her face, and she resumed her normal expression of bovine disinterest.

"Is there anyone in the apartment downstairs?" Simon asked.

She shook her head.

"Nobody."

"That's one consolation, anyway," said the Saint.

He stood rubbing his wrists tenderly for a moment. Mr Palermo continued to give no signs of life. It was a pity, thought the Saint regretfully-his artistic work on Mr Palermo's facial scenery had gone completely haywire now, and it would probably be the devil of a job to get it into shape again. However, one couldn't have everything; and what had been done was interesting to remember. The Saint turned away and went towards the communicating door. The girl realised his intention and tried to bar his way, but Simon put her firmly aside. He opened the door, and the bulging eyes of Mr Uniatz goggled up at him over the gag which covered half his face.

3 Simon fetched a knife and went back to the bed. The girl Maria tugged at his arm.

"You cannot do that!"

"I'm not going to cut his throat," Simon explained patiently.

"You cannot do that. They must stay here. He said -Arturo-he said he would kill me if they got away."

The Saint straightened up wearily.

"Arturo has made so many promises," he pointed out. "And just look at him. Besides, how could you stop me if you'd fainted, which I thought you were supposed to do. Be a sensible girl and shut up. Have you got a telephone here?"

"No."

"Well, go out and find me a taxi. Bring it here." He took a couple more notes out of his pocket and tore them in half. "Here. You get the other half when I get my taxi."

She pulled up her skirt, exposing an area of beefy and black-haired thigh, and tucked the money into the top of her stocking.

"Does the seńor want a large taxi or a small taxi?"

"I don't care if you bring a truck," said the Saint. "But get moving and fetch something."

He turned back to the bed and rapidly cut off the cords with which Hoppy was trussed up like a silkworm in its cocoon. He left him to remove the gag himself, and passed on to Joris Vanlinden, who lay on the other side of the bed. Mr Uniatz unwound the towel from his head and proceeded to pull a yard or two of what looked like dishcloth out of his mouth. He threw it on the floor and stood panting.

"Chees, boss," he croaked. "Anudder hour of dat an' I should of died. Have I got a toist?"

"You used to have one," said the Saint. "Did anything happen to it?"

Mr Uniatz licked his dry lips.

"Chees!" he repeated piously; and Simon heard him moving stiffly out of the door.

Joris Vanlinden still lay inertly on the bed after he had been cut loose. Simon removed the gag and took out the cloth with which his mouth was stuffed in the same way that Hoppy's had been. He gazed up at the Saint with dull and curiously apathetic eyes. Simon glanced round the room and saw a jug of water; he filled a glass and brought it to the bed, supporting the old man's head while he drank.

"How d'you feel?" he asked.

Vanlinden took his mouth from the glass and lay back again. His mouth worked once or twice before he could speak.

"Where's Christine?" he got out at last.

"She's all right."

"Did they get her?"

"No, they didn't find her. I sent her to a friend's apartment. She's quite safe."

Vanlinden was silent again. There had been vague crashing sounds emanating from the kitchenette for some little while past; and the Saint went out and found Mr Uniatz at the end of a triumphant search, with a bottle of whiskey grasped in his hand. Mr Uniatz' mouth, which could never have been likened to a rosebud, spread even wider under the influence of the broad beam of contentment that was lighting up his face.

"Lookit what we got, boss," he said, hospitably including the Saint in the great moment; and Simon nodded sympathetically.

"Let me open it for you."

He detached the bottle from Hoppy's loving paws with the dexterity acquired from many similar rescues and stripped off the seals. He poured some of the whiskey into a glass before he handed the bottle back.

"Make yourself at home, Hoppy," he said un­necessarily and returned to the bedroom.

Joris Vanlinden was still lying quietly where the Saint had left him. His eyes were closed, but they opened when Simon came to the bed.

"Have you got a toist too?" Simon enquired with a smile.

The old man's lips moved faintly, but he didn't answer. Simon helped him up again and offered him the drink. He sipped a little and then he shook his head.

Simon let him down again and put the glass on the table. Still the old man didn't speak. He seemed quite happy to lie there with his eyes resting vacantly on the Saint's face, without talking or moving. Once he smiled weakly, as if that said all he wanted to say.

The Saint watched him for a few moments; and then he turned on his heel and went back to the living room.

Mr Uniatz was sitting on the table, with the half-empty bottle, which was tilted up to his lips and rapidly proceeding to contain less and less. He removed it from its target for long enough to say "Hi-yah, boss," and replaced it again without any loss of time. Simon performed another of his expert feats of legerdemain and parked the bottle at the other end of the table; and Mr Uniatz wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

"Dis guy," he said, hooking his thumb backwards at the sleeping Mr Palermo-"where does he come from?"

"He's one of the lads who brought you here."

"He ain't dead," said Hoppy, as if he found the fact not only remarkable but also to be deplored.

The Saint grinned and searched for a cigarette.

"No, he isn't dead. He just hit the back of his head on my foot, and then he hit the front of his face on the floor, and what with one thing and another he seemed to decide that that wasn't getting him anywhere, so he gave it up and went to sleep."

Mr Uniatz thought it over. It was difficult for him to believe that the Saint could have been guilty of any of the lapses of memory to which ordinary mortals were subject, but he could discover no other explana­tion. However, from the sounds he had heard previ­ously, Mr Uniatz was able to deduce that the Saint had been having some trouble; and he presumed that the stress of other preoccupations was responsible. Mr Uniatz' natural courtesy and kindness of heart forbade him to make any comments, especially when the omission could so easily be rectified. Almost bash­fully he fished an automatic out of his pocket.

"Shall I give him de woiks, boss?" he suggested, as if he was apologising for mentioning the matter at all.

"Not just now," said the Saint decisively. "And where did you get that thing?"

"Dis is my Betsy," said Mr Uniatz proudly. "He must of took it off me while I was in de clouds, because I find it in his pocket. He has a rock on his finger too."

He exhibited the diamond ring which he had man­aged to squeeze most of the way on to his little finger.

"The sort of rock you need would have R. I. P. on it," said the Saint. "How did you get into this mess?"

Mr Uniatz got on to his feet and sauntered airily round the table, cunningly gaining possession of the whiskey bottle on the way.

"Well, boss, it's like dis. I wake up in de morning, an' de old buzzard is still knockin' off de hours, so after a bit I figure I may as well see if I can promote some breakfast. I get hold of a chambermaid, an' I say 'Breakfast.' She looks at me like a parrot, as if I was nuts, so I say 'Breakfast' again. So she says 'Does I you know?' I begin to t'ink she has de bugs herself. 'Does I you know?' she says. 'What de hell kind of a jernt is dis?' I say. 'Have you gotta know me before you can get me some breakfast?' All she does is go on saying 'Does I you know ?' Are all dese spicks screwy, woujja t'ink, boss?"

"Just about all of them," said the Saint. "But she was only saying desayuno. It's the Spanish for breakfast."

Mr Uniatz looked at him admiringly.

"Now woujja believe dat?" he asked of the un-answering world. "I said dey were screwy, didn't I? So what happens if dey want to say 'Do I know ya'?"

"That's something quite different," said the Saint hurriedly. "Anyway, I gathered that you got your breakfast. I saw the tray in your room."

"Sure. In de end she wakes up an' goes away, an' in about half an hour somebody knocks on de door --"

"Didn't I tell you not to open the door to anybody?"

"I know dat's what you tell me, boss, but how was I to know de waiters were in wit' dese mugs?"

"That wasn't a waiter, you ass! Apart from anything else, you can always tell a Canary Islander on sight because there just aren't any other people in the world who can look so ugly and unwashed and so pleased about it. The bloke who brought you your breakfast was one of what you call the mugs."

A pleased look of comprehension smoothed the scowl of concentration from Mr Uniatz' brow.

"Ah," he said. "Maybe dat's why he hits me on de head."

"Probably that had something to do with it," Simon agreed, with powerful restraint. "What happened after that?"

"I dunno, boss. I dunno what he hits me wit', but when I wake up I'm all tied up on de bed."

"Didn't you hear anything?"

"No, I don't hear nut'n or see nobody, only de skoit. She comes in an' takes a gander at us an' goes out again. Den I hear you talkin' when you get here, an' dat's all."

Simon slid back his sleeve to examine his watch. It seemed that the girl had been a long time finding a taxi. . . . Hoppy Uniatz tilted his bottle again and allowed the refreshing fluid to gurgle freely down his parched throat. When he paused for breath, he made an indicative movement of his head towards the bedroom.

"De old buzzard," he said. "How's he makin' out?"

The Saint shrugged.

"He'll be all right," he said shortly.

He knew that it would only be a waste of time to attempt to explain his diagnosis of Joris Vanlinden's condition to the audience he had at his disposal. But the reminder creased two thin lines of anxiety between his brows.

Joris Vanlinden was slipping away-that was all there was to it. It wasn't from any definite physical injury; although the beating he had taken the night before, and the crack on the head which had doubtless followed the one which Hoppy's skull had received with so much less effect, had contributed their full share to his present condition. The fundamental injury was the injury to Vanlinden's mind. He was an old man, and he had already been well worn down by the things that had happened to him in the years before: now, he was simply ceasing to fight. The drive of hope and will which any man must have to survive disaster, which the instinct of self-preservation gives to nearly every man in a greater or less degree, had been exhausted in him. Simon could recognise the state even though he had never actually encountered it before. Vanlinden was sinking into the state of inert despair in which men of earlier days are said to have turned their faces to the wall and died for no other reason than that the will to live had dried up within them. And Simon knew that it was only one added reason why he must lose no time.

The girl was taking a fantastically long time to find a taxi. . . .

Simon found a piece of paper and scribbled on it the address where he had left Christine. He gave it to Hoppy, who had drained the last drops out of his bottle and was edging towards the kitchenette to look for more.

"This is where Christine is," he said. "As soon as we get out of here, I want you to go there and stick around. Your boy friends caught me when I'd just come back from there in a taxi, and they got the number. One of them's gone off already to look for it and see what he can find out. He'd still have a job to get Christine out, but I'm not taking any chances. You're going to park yourself there, and if anybody comes prowling around you give them the works."

"Wit' my Betsy?" said Mr Uniatz, cheering up.

"With the blunt end of it," said the Saint "If you start any shooting around this town they'll turn the army out on you-the police here are very excited about shooting today, from what I read in the paper this morning."

Mr Uniatz sighed.

"Okay, boss," he said dutifully.

"And maybe by this time you'll have learnt a few lessons about who you open doors to. Or do I have to tell you again?"

"Boss," said Mr Uniatz earnestly, "I hoija de foist time. I been a sucker once, but dey won't catch me no more. De foist mug who tries to come in dat door, I'll give him de heat --"

"You won't."

"I mean I'll clop him on de tiles so hard he'll t'ink he walked under an oitquake."

"See you don't forget it," said the Saint grimly. "Because if you do, Mrs Uniatz is going to be sorry about her son."

Hoppy shook his head.

"Dey ain't no Mrs Uniatz," he said reminiscently. "My fader never knew who my ma was." Simon considered this for a moment, and decided it would be safer not to probe further into it. He consulted his watch again and took a quick turn up and down the room. What the hell could the girl be doing? . . . With a sudden resolution, he went back into the bedroom.

Vanlinden hadn't moved. He looked up at the Saint with the same peacefully empty eyes.

"Do you think you could walk a little way?" Simon asked gently.

The old man remained motionless, without any change in his expression.

"Christine wants to see you," said the Saint.

A pale wraith of a smile played momentarily on the other's lips. Presently he raised his head,. then his body. Simon helped him to his feet. He stood holding the Saint's arm.

"Where is she?"

"We'll take you to the hotel and bring her to see you."

Simon led him into the living room, and Hoppy greeted him with a brotherly wave of his hand.

"Hi ya, pal," said Mr Uniatz genially. "Hi ya makin' out?"

Vanlinden smiled at him with the same childish serenity.

"Come on," said the Saint. "We'll be downstairs waiting for that god-damn taxi when it does get here. I want to catch up with your other boy friend."

"What about dis punk?" demurred Mr Uniatz dubiously, indicating the still unconscious Palermo. "Do I give him de --"

"No, you don't. I'll do that myself some other day. Come on."

They helped the old man down the stairs, although he needed less assistance than the Saint had feared. Physically, Vanlinden seemed to have more life than he had had the night before; only now his ability to move was more like that of a sleepwalker. It was his mind which had been drained of strength, which seemed to want nothing but to be left in timeless and effortless passivity.

As they reached the hall, Simon heard the sound of a car pulling up outside. He left Hoppy to look after the old man and went to the front door. There was a small grille in one of the panels, and the slide which should have closed it was partly open. Something made the Saint look through it as he put his hand on the latch to open the door; and that one glance was enough to make him whip his fingers away from the knob again as if it had stung him. For the car outside was not a taxi-it was Graner's Buick.

VII How Mr Palermo Continued to Be Unlucky, and Hoppy Uniatz Obeyed Orders

SIMON DIDN'T WAIT to see any more. He spun round as he heard Hoppy coming up behind him, and his eyes blazed a warning which even Mr Uniatz couldn't misunderstand. Hoppy came to a halt, with his jaw drooping.

The Saint's glance scorched round the hall, dissecting all its possibilities in one sizzling survey. It didn't offer cover for a mouse. Upstairs was a dead end. Outside the door were the new arrivals. Around him there was nothing but the door of the ground-floor apartment. Simon felt the handle. As he had anticipated, it was locked. He drew back to arm's length and flung his weight against it, and the lock ceased to function. . . .

The Saint caught Hoppy by the elbow with one hand and Joris Vanlinden with the other. He almost lifted them up bodily and threw them into the room.

"He'll take you to the hotel to wait for Christine," he said to Vanlinden. Then he looked at Hoppy. "Wait till the coast's clear. Take him to the Orotava, put him in the room next to mine-Christine's. Then go and look after her at the address I gave you. Don't worry about me. I'll get rid of these guys and follow along."

Hoppy's mouth opened wider as the full meaning of these orders for desertion penetrated through his ears.

"Boss --"

"Don't argue!" said the Saint, and pushed him back into the room.

He closed the door in his face and leapt silently to the foot of the stairs as the key rattled in the lock of the front door. He realised what a desperate risk he was taking in every direction, but there was no other way. He couldn't send Vanlinden with Hoppy to Keena's apartment, because Aliston was searching for that hide-out and might already have found it, in which case Hoppy would have his hands full enough without any added encumbrances. The hotel was dangerous enough, with Graner's chauffeur watching it from the other side of the road; but at least he couldn't stop them going in, and Vanlinden would be safe there for a little while-so long as the gang didn't know about Christine's room. And the Saint himself had to stay behind, because apart from the more manifest obstacles to a joint getaway there was the matter of a loud crash when he disarranged the lock of the downstairs apartment which must have been audible outside and would want accounting for.

All these things streaked through his mind like a volley of tracer bullets as he dropped himself on the ground at the foot of the stairway; and as the front door opened he began ostentatiously picking himself up. He heard quick steps coming towards him, and raised his eyes to the figures silhouetted against the light of the open door.

"Put your hands up!"

It was Graner's voice.

Simon completed the job of fetching himself upright and went on brushing the dust off his clothes.

"Oh, it's you," he said calmly, as if it had never occurred to him that the order was caused by anything but a mistake in his identity due to the dim light. "Why the hell can't they put a light on these damn stairs? I nearly broke my neck. Did you ever hear anyone come down with such a thump?"

The other man who had come in was Lauber. He ranged himself at Graner's side; and both of them kept their guns trained in the Saint.

"What are you doing?" said Graner.

Simon continued to ignore the artillery.

"Didn't the girl tell you?" he asked innocently.

He had already formed his own theory about why she had taken such a long time to find a taxi, and the response to the feeler he had put out confirmed his suspicion in the next instant.

"She said you had had a fight with Palermo."

"That's right," said the Saint coolly. "I beat the hell out of him too. Come upstairs and I'll show you."

He turned and started up the stairs so confidently that he heard the other two following him without protest.

Mr Palermo still slept. The Saint turned him over and raised him by his collar to examine him. Palermo's head lolled back limply. The new bruise on his chin was coming along nicely. He moaned in his sleep as though he might be wondering whether it was time to wake up. Simon let him flop down so that the back of his head cracked heavily on the tiles, and hoped that that would discourage the idea for a while.

Graner and Lauber kept their guns in their hands while they studied Palermo in his slumber. Graner was the first to turn back to the Saint.

"What is this about?" he demanded in his aloof sneering way.

"I told the girl to give you a message."

"She rang up for Aliston and gave the message for him."

"For sheer half-wittedness give me a spick any day. I told her to tell you that Aliston was in it, in case you knew where he was!"

"Was this in Spanish?"

Simon shook his head and inwardly promised himself a kick in the pants at the first convenient opportunity. That made two bricks he had nearly dropped on the same dynamite; although there are few deceptions so difficult as to pretend ignorance of a familiar language.

"Maybe that was the trouble," he said. "But she said she understood. How much else did she get wrong?"

"She said you had finished with Palermo and you were going to take away the two men who were here."

Simon nodded.

"That's almost right, although I said I wanted you to take them away."

"What was she talking about?"

"Vanlinden and his pal."

"They were here?"

"Sure. This is where Aliston and Palermo brought them after they grabbed them in the hotel this morning!"

It was as if invisible nooses had been looped around the necks of his audience and suddenly tightened. Their eyes seemed to swell in their sockets, and their mouths opened as if their lungs had been unexpectedly deprived of air. Lauber's heavy, sullen features darkened, and Graner's brows drew together in an incredulous frown. Simon could see the shock he had sprung on them thump into the pits of their stomachs like a physical blow, so violent that it even robbed them of the ability to gasp.

Again Graner was the quicker to recover-although Simon reflected that this might have been partly accounted for by the fact that the announcement must have given Lauber a few extra things to think over on his own.

"How did you know?"

"Christine told me first," said the Saint. "Then Palermo and Aliston admitted it. I thought there was something fishy about their story that Joris and the other guy had cleared off on their own, when we knew they'd left Christine behind; but I didn't like to say so at the time."

"How did Christine know where they were?"

"She didn't. Aliston and Palermo brought me here."

"Why?"

The Saint rested himself sidesaddle on the edge of the table. He knew that he had his audience on a string now-whatever they might be thinking, they would drink in every word he had to say on the subject, even if they formed their own conclusions afterwards-and he saw no reason why he shouldn't make the most of his limelight while Hoppy and Joris removed themselves as far as possible from the vicinity.

"I'd better begin at the beginning," he said. "In the first place, I talked to Christine as soon as she awakened-told her the tale exactly as we arranged. She fell for it-well, like I fell down those blasted stairs. Bang! I made her believe I was serious about the proposition I was working up to when I put her to sleep, and we closed the deal on it. She told me plenty."

He paused to light a cigarette, while the other two waited impatiently. Their guns had drooped down until they were pointing at the floor, as if the two men had almost forgotten that they were still holding them.

"As far as this Joris business is concerned," he went on, "Christine told me she had a room on the floor below. She was just coming out of the bathroom when she heard Aliston's voice, and she ducked back in. She didn't dare to come out for about an hour. She stood there with the door open a crack, scared stiff and wondering what was going to happen. There were some heavy trunks brought downstairs while she was there-we can guess what they had in them. Then Palermo and Aliston came down - she could hear them talking. They went on after the trunks, and as soon as she could pull herself together she rushed up to Joris' room. He'd gone, and so had the other bloke. Once again, we can guess why and where and how. But she couldn't. She almost had a fit. Then she heard someone coming up the stairs, and she was afraid it might be Palermo or Aliston coming back. She just rushed into the nearest room, which happened to be mine. I gather that she had some sort of idea that she'd fall into the arms of anyone who was there and make him look after her. Since there wasn't anyone, she just stayed, having hysterics on and off. She didn't dare to go back to her own room, because she thought Palermo and Aliston would still be looking for her; in fact, she didn't dare to move at all. So that's how we found her."

It was a lovely story to reel off on the spur of the moment, thought the Saint, and wondered if he had really mistaken his vocation in life. One way and another, the complications of that fantastic game of beggar-my-neighbour in which he had got himself tied up were developing him into a master of the art of applied fiction beside whom Ananias would have looked like a barker outside a flea circus.

"But why did Palermo and Aliston bring you here?" Graner prompted him tensely.

"I'm getting to that. First of all, I shifted Christine. After what she told me, I guessed Palermo and Aliston might be beetling along as soon as they could after they heard your news, in case I found out they were double-crossing you. I moved her out of the hotel --"

"I told Manoel to follow you if you went out."

"I know that," said the Saint blandly. "I saw him standing on the other side of the square after you'd gone. He was frightfully decorative. But I'd already told you my terms of business, and I wasn't changing them. I took her out the back way."

"Aliston and Palermo were going to watch that."

"They were watching it-when I came back. That's how they caught me. They stuck a gun in my ribs and lugged me along here. They told me they were double-crossing you, and offered me a third share if I'd come in with them and throw Christine in the kitty."

Graner looked down at Palermo again for a moment, and in the pause that followed the Saint could hear Lauber's stertorous breathing.

"What did you tell them?" asked Graner.

"I told them what they could do with their third share," answered the Saint righteously. "Then they decided to make me tell them where Christine was with a hot spoon-or Palermo did. Aliston didn't seem to have a strong stomach, so he pushed off."

Simon turned his head and pointed to the blister on his cheek, and then down at the spoon which Palermo had dropped. Graner stepped forward and moved it with his foot. The scrap of carpet on which it had fallen was charred black.

The Saint could see those pieces of circumstantial evidence registering themselves on Graner's face.

"You didn't tell him?"

"He didn't get far enough with the treatment. He'd forgotten to have my feet tied, and I managed to kick him about a bit." Simon moved his cigarette significantly to indicate the evidence for the accuracy of that statement. "Then I promised the girl-she was here all the time, by the way, so 1 take it this is where Palermo keeps her-I promised her some money if she'd cut me loose, so she did. Then I sent her off to phone you, and looked around for Joris."

"He's here?"

The Saint moved his head slowly from left to right and back again.

"He was."

Simon hitched himself off the table, and Lauber's gun jerked up at him again. Simon went on elaborately ignoring it. He sauntered over to the door of the bedroom and waved his hand towards the interior. Graner and Lauber followed him. They stood there looking in at the rumpled coverlet and the pieces of cloth and cut rope which were scattered on the bed and the floor in silent testimony.

Graner's bright black eyes slid off the scenery and went back to the Saint.

"What happened to them?"

"I let them go," said the Saint tranquilly.

2 It would give the chronicler, whose devotion to his Art is equalled only by his distaste for work, considerable pleasure to discourse at some length on the overpowering silence which invaded the room and the visible reactions which took place in it-besides bring­ing him several pages nearer to the conclusion of this seventh chapter of the Saint saga. The fusillade of words which one reviewer has so lucidly likened to "a display of fancy shooting in which all the shots are beautifully grouped on the target an inch away from the bull" tugs almost irresistibly at his trigger finger. The simultaneous distension of Lauber's and Graner's eyes, the precise degree of roundness which shaped it­self into Lauber's heavy lips, the tightening of Gra­ner's thin straight mouth, the clenching of Lauber's fists and the involuntary upward lift of Graner's gun- all these and many other important manifestations of emotion could be the subject of an essay in descriptive prose in which the historian could wallow happily for at least a thousand words. Only his anxious concern for the tired brains of his critics forces him to stifle the impulse and deprive literature of this priceless contribution.

But it was an impressive silence; and the Saint made the most of it. All the time he had been talking, he had known that he would inevitably have to answer Graner's last question: it had been as inescapably foredoomed as the peal of thunder after a flash of light­ning, with the only difference that he had been able to lengthen the interval and give himself time to choose his reply. There had never been more than three posssibilities, and the Saint had worked them out and explored their probable consequences as far, ahead as his imagination would reach in an explosive intensity of concentration that crowded a day's work into a space of minutes.

Now he relaxed for a moment, while the result of the explosion sent the other two spinning through mental maelstroms of their own. He read murder in Graner's eyes, but he knew that curiosity would beat it by a short head.

"You let them go?" Graner repeated, when he had recovered his voice.

"Naturally," said the Saint, with undisturbed equa­nimity.

"What for?"

Simon raised his eyebrows.

"I'm supposed to be in cahoots with that outfit- or did I misunderstand you when we talked it over?"

"But those two --"

"They haven't got the tickets. I searched every stitch on them. Besides, Christine told me --"

"You're a damned liar!"

It was Lauber who interrupted, with his voice thick and choking. His gun pushed forward at the Saint's chest, and there was a flare of desperate fury in his face that gave the Saint all the confirmation he wanted.

Simon had foreseen it-it was one of the factors that he had weighed one against the other in his feverish analysis of the situation. If the story that Graner had taken back to the house had shaken the world of Palermo and Aliston to its foundations, it must have knocked the foundations themselves from under Lauber's. Simon had been expecting his intervention, even more than Graner's. He knew that for the mo­ment he might have even more to fear from Lauber than from Graner, but he allowed none of his thoughts to move a muscle of his face.

He looked Lauber in the eye and said with a quiet significance which he hoped only Lauber would under­stand: "It won't hurt you to wait till you've heard what I've got to say before you call me a liar."

Doubt crept into Lauber's face. He was caught off his balance and didn't know how to go on, like a horse that has been sharply checked in front of a jump. The Saint had made him stop to think, and the pause was fatal. Lauber glared at him, held rigid between fear and perplexity; but he waited.

"What did Christine tell you?" said Graner.

"She told me herself that Joris and the other guy hadn't got the ticket. It's obvious, anyway-otherwise Palermo and Aliston would have had it by this time. They parked it somewhere."

The Saint glanced at Lauber again, with a measured meaning which could have conveyed nothing to anybody else. On the face of it, it was only the natural action of a man who wanted to keep two people in the conversation at once. But to the recipient it spoke a whole library of volumes. It told Lauber that the Saint was lying, told Lauber that the Saint meant him to know it, told Lauber that the Saint could also come out with the truth if he chose to and invited Lauber to play ball or consider the consequences. And Simon read the complete reception of the message in the way Lauber's gun sagged again out of the horizontal.

Graner was untouched by any such influence. He went on staring at the Saint with the vicious lines deepening on either side of his mouth.

"Where had they put it?"

Simon shrugged.

"I'm blowed if I know, Reuben. It doesn't seem to matter, either, because they've gone off to look for it."

"And you sent them off --"

The Saint lounged back against the door frame and regarded him pityingly.

"My dear ass," he said, "how many more times have I got to tell you that you need more of my brains? I've got Christine, haven't I? And they don't know where she is, and they haven't an earthly chance of finding out. I told them the same thing that I told you-that she's my hostage for a square deal. D'you think Joris will let anyone start any funny business while his daughter is in my hands?"

The Saint's first blow had punched Graner in the stomach and knocked the wind out of him. This one hit him under the chin. He took it with a slight involuntary backward jerk of his head which rearranged the expressive lines of his face. Comprehension hammered some of the cold malevolence out of his eyes.

"What else did you tell them?"

"I told them they could have till midnight to show me the ticket, or it would be too bad about Christine. When they've produced the ticket we'll go on talking business. It all came to me in a flash, after I'd sent the girl to phone you."

"Did they hear what you told her?"

"Yes. But that only made it more effective. It was as if I'd saved their lives. I told them I'd find a way to square you, and turned 'em loose. It was a brain wave. Why shouldn't we let them work for us? They're holding more cards than we are-let them play the hand for us. We can still pick up the stakes. I told them the deal I'd made with Christine, and made 'em see that they'd got to accept it. They had to fall into line, and they can't fall out. They haven't any choice left, and I made them see it. No ticket, no Christine."

Graner took the words into his system one by one and kept them there. The crisp, incontrovertible logic of the Saint's exposition crushed all the argument out of him.

Simon watched him with encouraging affability. He was beginning to get Graner's measure. The Saint treated his opponents like a boxer sizing up an antagonist in the ring, ruthlessly searching for the weaknesses that would open the way for a winning punch. Graner's weakness was his conceit of himself as a strategist: the appeal to a point of generalship was a bait that brought him on to the hook every time. And once again, as on the last occasion, Simon saw the murderous suspicion in Graner's gaze overshadowed by a glitter of unwilling respect.

The Saint's mocking blue eyes turned towards Lauber; and the expression on the big man's face completed the picture in its own way.

"I guess I'm due for an apology," he said slowly. "You were too far ahead of me."

"I usually am," said the Saint modestly. "But you get used to that after a while."

Graner seemed to become aware that he was still holding his automatic pointed at the Saint. He looked down at it absently and put it away in his pocket.

"If you can go on like this," he said, "you will have no reason to regret joining us. I can use someone like you; especially . . ."

He turned slowly round as a muffled groan inter­rupted him. Lauber turned also. They all looked at Palermo, who was sitting up with one hand holding his jaw and the other clasping the back of his head.

". . . especially as there will be some vacancies in the organisation," Graner said corrosively.

Palermo stared up at them, his face grey and pasty, while the meaning of his position was borne in upon him and he made a desperate effort to drag some reply out of his numbed and aching brain. Lauber drew a deep breath, and his under lip jutted savagely. He took three steps across the room and grasped Paler­mo's coat lapels in one of his big-boned hands, drag­ging him almost to his feet and shaking him like a rag doll.

"You dirty little double-crossing rat!" he snarled.

Palermo struggled feebly in the big man's savage grip.

"What have I done?" he demanded shrilly. "You can't say that to me. He's the guy who's double-crossing us-Tombs! Why don't you do something about him --"

Lauber drew back his free fist and knocked Palermo spinning with a brutal blow on the mouth.

"Say that again, you louse," he grated. "Last night you were trying to make out I was double-crossing you. Now it's Tombs. It 'll be Graner next."

Simon put his hands in his pockets and made him­self comfortable against the door, prepared to miss none of the riper gorgeousness of Lauber's display of righteous indignation. The spectacle of the ungodly falling out with one another could have diverted him for some time; but Reuben Graner intervened.

"That will do, Lauber," he said in his soft, evil voice. "Have you anything to say, Palermo?"

"It's a frame-up!" panted the Italian. "Tombs came here and beat me up --"

"Did you have Joris and another man here?"

"I never saw them!"

"Tombs-and Maria-saw them here."

"They're lying."

"Then how do you explain the ropes on the bed? And why did you bring Tombs here? And why were you going to torture Tombs?"

Palermo swallowed, but no words came from his throat for a full half minute.

"I can explain," he began, and then the words dried up again before the concentrated malignity of Graner's gaze.

"You have taken a long time to think of your explanation," Graner said coldly. "We will see if you have anything better to say at the house. If not-I fear that we shall not miss you very much. . . ."

He turned to Lauber.

"Take him down to the car."

Palermo gasped, hesitated, and made a sudden bolt for the door. But the hesitation lost him any chance he might have had. Lauber caught him by the coat and wrapped his arms round him in a bear hug in which Palermo writhed and kicked as futilely as a child. Palermo got one hand to the coat pocket where he had once had a gun; and when he found it empty he let out one short squeal of terror like a trapped rabbit.

Simon picked up the cord that had been cut away from his own wrists, and sorted out enough of it to tie Palermo's hands behind his back, while Lauber kept hold of him.

"Aliston may be coming back here," he remarked, as he went through to the bedroom to fetch one of the gags which had been left there.

"I had thought of that." Graner held the knob of his slender cane between his thumb and forefinger and swung it like a pendulum. "They took the other car when they went out."

"They brought me here in a car-wasn't it outside when you arrived?"

"No."

"Aliston must have taken it, then."

"Where was he going?"

"I gathered that he was going to look for Christine. Anyway, that was the excuse."

"Did he know where to look?"

Simon busied himself with carefully packing the last square inches of the dishcloth into Palermo's mouth.

He could estimate just how hopeful a chance Aliston had-in Santa Cruz, the stand to which a taxi is allot­ted can be identified from the number, and business is not so brisk that a driver forgets his fares quickly. Given the number of the cab, which he knew Aliston had got, it would only be a matter of time before the chauffeur was located; and from then on the trail would be as easy to follow as if it had been blazed in luminous paint. The Saint dared not think how much time had slipped away since Aliston left; somehow, before much more of it had elapsed, he had got to find a way to ditch Graner and Lauber and leave him­self free to tackle that problem. And yet Lauber was the one man in Santa Cruz to whom the Saint wanted to talk-but in private.

"I think he's wasting his time," answered the Saint confidently. "I got back to the hotel in a taxi, just before Aliston and Palermo caught me, and Aliston got the number. But I changed taxis a couple of times, with a walk in between, so he's got a long hunt in front of him. When he finds the scent doesn't lead anywhere he'll probably be back. I'll wait for him if you like."

Graner thought for a moment, and then nodded.

"Yes, you had better do that. Lauber can wait with you in case he gives any trouble."

Lauber stopped on his way to the door.

"I can't stay here," he said loudly; and Graner looked at him.

"Why not?"

"Because-well, what are you going to do with Palermo by yourself?"

"Take him back to the house."

"You've got to drive the car."

"Palermo is tied up and gagged. He will give no trouble. If he tried to, he would regret it."

"I can clip him over the head again if you like," suggested the Saint helpfully.

"That is quite unnecessary. Manoel is still waiting in the square, and I can pick him up. Since you have removed Christine there is no further need for him to remain there."

Lauber thrust out his heavy jaw.

"Well, I still think it's all wrong"

"Are you disputing my orders?" Graner inquired purringly.

He had his right hand in his pocket again, and his voice had the soft rustle of satin. Lauber glowered at him blackly for several seconds with his fist clenched and his mouth jammed up like a trap; but his gaze wavered before the bright menace of Graner's eyes.

Simon's imagination raced away again-with the domination he had established over Graner, he might still be able to bring about a change of plan. But he certainly wanted Palermo out of the way, and he wasn't very frightened of what Palermo might say to Graner when they were alone. Manoel would doubt­less be making his report sooner or later, anyhow; and it didn't much matter if it was a little sooner. Simon wasn't convinced that they would try to do any­thing about Joris on the spot, with Palermo on their hands; besides, an abduction would take a certain time to get organised, and they still had to locate Joris' room. Meanwhile the Saint did want to talk to Lauber. It was a matter of timing by split seconds and bal­ancing arguments without the weight of a flake of ash to choose between them, but Simon had spent his life betting on snap decisions.

"Don't be a fool, Lauber," he said encouragingly. "We don't want two of us off duty looking after Palermo while there's Aliston to be taken care of."

Lauber seemed as though he was about to make another protest. Graner laid his stick on the table and picked his perfumed silk handkerchief out of his breast pocket to fan it gently under his nose, and his bright little eyes never shifted from the other's face.

"All right!" Lauber gritted savagely. His sullen stare switched momentarily on to the Saint. "But if anything goes wrong it's no good blaming me."

He yanked Palermo round and shoved him roughly out of the door; and Graner put away his handkerchief and picked up his cane. Simon followed him out of the room.

"If Aliston comes back you will use his car to bring him back to the house," Graner said as they went down the stairs. "If I have not heard from you in a reasonable time I shall send further instructions."

Outside, it was still raining. They stood in the door­way and watched Lauber bundle Palermo into the back of the car. It caused no commotion. The inhabitants of the street slept in the daytime, and any chance passers-by there might have been had been driven to cover by the torrential storm. As soon as Lauber had settled the cargo and stepped back, Graner scuttled across the twelve-inch pavement and wriggled into the driving seat. The car swished away through the rivulets that bubbled between the cobblestones.

Lauber stood and glared sombrely after it until it turned the next corner and disappeared. Simon tapped him on the shoulder.

"Now," he said, "we will go upstairs and have a little chat."

Lauber transferred the same sultry glare to the Saint. And then, with a renewed clamping of his thick lips, he turned abruptly, thrust past him without a word and stumped heavily back up the stairs.

Simon drifted into the room after him and returned to his favourite perch on the edge of the table. He opened his cigarette case and held it out, but Lauber ignored it. He seemed to be labouring under the stress of some great emotion.

"You might as well make the best of it," said the Saint amiably. "After all, I've done you a good turn."

"You have?" Lauber ground out.

"Sure. I hope you're not going to try and kid me now, sweetheart. You'll only be wasting your breath. Christine told me you'd taken the ticket, and Joris told me the same thing-quite independently. And you just about admitted it when you stopped calling me a liar just now. I know you've got it, so you might as well come clean. Be a big-business man and take it philosophically. That's what I'm doing. I started as one of the crowd with an eighth share. Then Christine offered a fifth, so I went for that. Palermo and Aliston bid a third, which might have been even better if they'd behaved themselves. Now you're going to come through with a half, which will knock all the opposition back on their heels. You ought to be con­gratulating yourself."

"I ought to be congratulating myself, did I?"

The Saint nodded placidly.

"I don't know about your grammar, but your ideas are right. What did you do with the ticket, Lauber?"

Lauber's face seemed to be turning purple. The veins stood out on his forehead, and his eyes started to look as if they had been recently boiled.

"What did I do with the ticket?" he almost shouted.

"That's all I want you to tell me," said the Saint comfortably. "So you'd better get used to the idea. You've got to let me in with you, Lauber. Because I've got Christine, and I've got Joris, and I've got the other guy; and if I let them loose they can raise such a shindy about the ticket being stolen that you'd find yourself in the calaboose the minute you tried to cash it. You haven't any choice, my lad, so you'd better talk fast. And if you don't, I'll make you."

The last words made no visible impression on Lauber at all. He appeared to be paying too much attention to trying to prevent himself choking to hear what he was listening to very clearly.

"I haven't got the ticket," he groaned; and the Saint's eyes narrowed.

"You'll have to think faster than that"

"I haven't got it, I tell you." Lauber's voice exploded in a hoarse roar through the obstruction in his throat. "You fool-it was in the car!"

The Saint dropped off the table as if he had been swept off it. It didn't take him the fraction of an in­stant to convince himself that Lauber could never have put over a lie like that. Everything led up to it. The Saint's awakened eyes glinted like chips of ice.

"What?"

"I hid it in the car last night," Lauber said suffocatingly. "It was the only thing I could do. I've been trying to get at it all day. And you let Graner go off with it!"

3 Simon took hold of himself with an effort.

"You left it in the car?"

"What else could I do? One of those swine last night hit me on the back of the head and knocked me out. I woke up in the car going home. It was the first thing that came into my head. I knew there 'd be trouble about it, and I had to do something."

"How d'you know it's still there?"

"It must be. Nobody else would look for it where I put it."

"What about the chauffeur?"

"He only cleans the car once a week-on Mondays. Even then, he only washes the outside. He's one of these local men. He wouldn't think of turning out the inside until it was too filthy to sit in."

"But suppose he had found it."

"He'd have said something. I've been afraid of that all day, but I couldn't find an excuse to go to the garage or take the car out. Graner watches everything you do. When that girl rang up I tried to make him let me come here alone, but he had to come as well. I could have got the ticket back if he'd sent me to the house with Palermo, but you didn't help me and I couldn't go on arguing."

The Saint remembered his cigarette and inhaled with a quiet concentration which he achieved with difficulty. He didn't by any means share Lauber's convic­tion that anyone who had found the ticket would have talked about it-the competition in double-crossing and double-double-crossing was getting too intense on every side for anything to be certain.

"Palermo and Aliston had some other old car when they picked me up," he said. "Which car did they use this morning when they came down to look for Joris?"

"I don't know."

Simon didn't remember either. He was trying to recall if anything had happened which might have given him a clue. But whichever car they had used, they would have gone to the garage; and it might have occurred to them to make a hurried search.

"Which car did the chauffeur use when he went out again last night?"

"I think that was the Buick."

Still there was nothing definite enough to found an assumption on, either way. Even Graner himself . . .

"Where did you hide the ticket?" Simon asked.

Lauber was getting control of himself again. He might even have been starting to regret having said so much. A glitter of cunning twisted across his eyes.

"That's my business. You find a way to get at the car, and I'll find the ticket."

"Couldn't you have found it while you were putting Palermo in?"

"Would I have left it there if I could?"

Simon considered him dispassionately. It seemed un­likely, but he didn't care to leave anything to chance.

"We'll just look you over, and make sure," he said.

"You'd better not try," replied Lauber belligerently.

His hand went to the pocket where he had put away his gun, and a comical expression of disbelief and dis­may warped itself over his face when his hand came out empty again. His gaze returned furiously to the Saint: Simon was lazily twiddling the gun around by the trigger guard, and he was smiling.

"I forgot to tell you I used to be a pickpocket," he apologised solemnly. "Put your hands up and be a good boy while I run you over."

Lauber had no useful argument to offer. He stood scowling churlishly while the Saint's practised hands worked over him with an efficiency that wouldn't have left even a postage stamp undiscovered. If Lauber had had the ticket on him, Simon would have found it; but it wasn't there. When the Saint stepped back from his examination he was assured of it.

"D'you want your toy back?" he asked carelessly when he had finished, and held out the automatic.

Lauber took it gingerly, as if he half expected it to sting him. The brazen impudence of the gesture left him nonplussed, as it had left Graner.

But the Saint wasn't even paying any attention to Lauber's reception of it. All the mental energy he possessed was taken up with this new angle on the ticket. But there was no process of logic by which the angle could be defined-or if there was, he couldn't find it. The only certain fact was that Lauber hadn't got the ticket. None of the other possibilities could be ruled out. Palermo might have it. Or Aliston might have it. Or Manoel might have it. Or Graner might have it, or find it at any moment, if he suspected enough to make him search for it and decided to join in the popular movement and paddle his own canoe in the buccaneers' regatta. Or it might still be in the car and stay there-a possibility which made the Saint's hair stand on end when he thought how completely and catastrophically the problem might be solved if Graner had an accident on the way home and the car caught fire.

"Well, what are you going to do about it?" Lauber demanded.

The Saint shrugged.

"Palermo and Graner have gone back to the house, anyway. So's the car. We've got to get Aliston and the chauffeur back there. Then when we've got them all rounded up together --"

He broke off abruptly, listening. They had not closed the door completely when they re-entered the room; and the Saint's keen ears caught the first sound of someone walking into the hall below. Lauber listened also in the silence which followed and they both heard footsteps coming up the stairs.

The Saint smiled again and stepped noiselessly round the table. He gripped Lauber by the arm and pushed him into the centre of the room, where he would be seen first by anyone coming through the door.

"Stay there," he breathed. "I'll get behind him."

Before Lauber could protest against this doubtful honour it was too late for him to move. The Saint had retired with the some soundless speed; and when the door was pushed open he was behind it.

A moment later he emerged again, for the man who came in was Graner's chauffeur. Simon recognized him even from his back view with the assistance of the odour of garlic and perspiration that came in with him.

"Don Reuben sent me," he explained.

"What for?" growled Lauber, with his voice edged by the reaction.

"I have been watching the Hotel Orotava. A little while ago the Seńor Vanlinden and another man came there. The Seńor Vanlinden stayed inside, but soon afterwards the other man came out. He got in a taxi to go to San Francisco 80. I heard the driver repeat the address."

"What else?"

"Don Reuben said one of you must go there and watch him. I am to stay here and help the other."

Lauber looked at the Saint; and Simon stepped quietly forward and pinioned the man's arms deftly behind his back. The chauffeur let out a squawk of startlement and screwed his head round until he saw the Saint. Simon grinned at him and averted his nose.

"Hurry up and go through him," he said. "I'm being gassed."

Lauber made the search, while the man squirmed ineffectually in the Saint's expert grip. He was longer and clumsier over it than the Saint would have been, but when it was over the Saint was satisfied that at least the chauffeur hadn't got the ticket on him.

"What was he saying?" Simon remembered to enquire, as he released the spluttering captive.

Lauber translated the message. He was still watching the chauffeur suspiciously.

"He might have hidden the ticket somewhere else," he concluded, reverting to his main preoccupation.

Simon thought rapidly. His own judgment was that the chance was a remote one. If the chauffeur had really found the ticket at all, it was unlikely that he would have been there. Since he was a native of the island, it was stretching plausibility a long way to credit him with sufficient intelligence and imagination to cover himself by outwardly continuing his normal life, or to have been delayed from trying to cash the ticket by any fear of Joris having communicated with the police. Simon was almost ready to rule the chauffeur out of the lists of suspects, but he saw no harm in letting Lauber keep his suspicions.

"That's quite likely," he agreed. "You'd better see if you can make him talk while I go and keep track of this other guy."

The scowl came slowly back to Lauber's face.

"We'll see if we can make him talk," he retorted heavily. "And then I'll go and keep track of the other guy."

Simon faced him crisply.

"Try not to be a bigger fool than God made you! Why d'you think Graner wants one of us to watch this fellow?"

"I don't know and I don't care --"

"Then it's time you started. You heard what I told Graner. He thinks this guy knows where the ticket is -and we know he doesn't. Graner just wants to take care they don't double-cross me-and I know they can't. They won't get scared if they see me, but they'll get scared if they see you. And this is the important place to be-this is where Aliston will be coming back --"

"But you said you'd got Joris and his friend!" The Saint almost fell backwards. That was what he felt like doing; but by some miracle of will he kept himself standing there and looking Lauber in the eye without the flinch of a muscle.

"So I have got them," he asserted steadily. "But they think I'm in with them. I don't have to lock them up. Don't you see that by letting them think they're still in the running I'm making sure that they won't go squealing to the police about the ticket having been stolen?"

"All the same," Lauber said stubbornly, "you aren't going out of here alone."

His hand was sliding down to his pocket. He meant business-there wasn't a doubt of that. The Saint regretted having given him back his gun, but there it was. Regrets wouldn't take it away again. But the Saint also meant business. He had left Christine and Hoppy alone for too long already; whereas Lauber's usefulness was temporarily exhausted.

Lauber was less than a yard away as the Saint faced him; he was not the same intellectual type as Graner. There was only one argument that would really make an impression on him.

Simon sized up the situation and the man in one of the swiftest calculations he had ever had to make in his life. He had already hit Lauber's jaw once and had discovered what it was made of. But Lauber's body had the solid paunchiness to which men of his build are subject when they begin to lead idle lives. Simon chose his mark for the second experiment with greater care.

"Tell me about it some other time, brother," he murmured; and his fist jolted out like a piston.

A kick like the piston of a locomotive went into it, built up from the shift of the Saint's weight and the scientific turning of his body and the supple muscles of his back and shoulders. Every ounce of his weight and strength from the tips of his toes up to his wrist went into the job of impregnating the punch with the power of dynamite. Simon wanted no more delays: he knew how much it took to affect Lauber's constitution and generously gave him everything that he had. The blow sogged into Lauber's stomach, just below the place where his ribs parted, with a force that drove the flesh back four inches before Simon's knuckles had finished travelling.

Lauber gave a queer sharp cough, and his knees melted. Simon jarred his right fist up under the jaw as Lauber's head came forward, just for luck; he didn't wait to see any more.

The chauffeur, who couldn't have been at all sure which side he was on by that time, made a half-hearted attempt to grab him as he ducked for the door. Simon detonated a brisk jab squarely on his nose and tripped him neatly as he staggered back. A second later he was taking the first flight of stairs at one leap.

He dodged round a couple of corners and found a taxi rank. He tossed a coin in his mind as he jerked open the door of the nearest cab.

"San Francisc' ochenta," he ordered, as the driver started his engine.

He lighted a cigarette as he settled back, and calmly considered what he had done in the last few seconds. He had dealt violently with both Lauber and Manoel: what did that lead to? Unless he ran up the skull and crossbones and declared open war on the whole gang, that interlude of entertainment would have to be accounted for somehow. And yet he had had no choice. Lauber's skull was too dense and obstinate for any other methods to have been effective-the chauffeur's nose was a minor detail. Whatever happened, Lauber had to be prevented from going where Christine was. And even now he still knew the address. Simon wondered whether he ought to have taken over the gun again and finished the job; but that opportunity had also passed by, and it was no use worrying about it.

...Already the Saint's brain was wholly occupied with the problems of the future.

The house where David Keena had his apartment looked just the same. There were no suspicious-looking vehicles parked outside or near it, none of the symptoms of recent commotion which the Saint had been half expecting to see. Simon wondered if he could allow himself to breathe again.

He left the taxi waiting and ran up the stairs. The door of the apartment was locked, of course. He knocked impatiently, and after a while the door opened a couple of inches. Simon looked through the crack, over the barrel of Mr Uniatz' Betsy, into the haunting face of Mr Uniatz.

"Oh, it's you, boss," said Mr Uniatz, unnecessarily but with simple satisfaction. "I hoped ya might be comin' dis way."

He stepped back from the door to let the Saint in. Simon took two paces into the room and stopped dead, staring at the figure which lay sprawled in the centre of the carpet.

"What happened to him?" he asked shakily.

"Aw, he ain't hoit much," said Hoppy confidently. "He tries to come in de door just after I get here, so I let him in an' bop him on de dome like ya said for me to do, boss. Ja know de guy?"

"Do I know him?"

The Saint swallowed speechlessly. After a moment he moved forward and picked David Keena up and laid him on the settee.

"Where's Christine?" he demanded. "Didn't she tell you?"

"She ain't got here yet," began Mr Uniatz untroubledly and the Saint stood very still.

"My God," he said, "Then Aliston did find that taxi!"

VIII How Mr Uniatz Was Bewildered about Bopping, and Simon Templar Was Polite to a Lady.

TO SAY that this was Greek to Mr Uniatz would be misleading. He would not have been quite sure whether a Greek was a guy who kept a chop house, something you got in your neck, a kind of small river, or the noise a door made when the hinges needed oiling. It would have involved a great many additional prob­lems, all of which would have been very painful. Tak­ing the line of least resistance, Mr Uniatz simply looked blank.

"I dunno, boss," he said, striving conscientiously to keep up with the rapid march of events. "Which taxi was dat?"

"The taxi I brought her here in, you mutt !"

"You mean you brought her here, boss?"

"Yes."

"Christine?"

"Yes."

"In a taxi?" ventured Mr Uniatz, who had made up his mind to get to the bottom of the matter.

Simon gathered all his reserves of self-control.

"Yes, Hoppy," he said. "I brought Christine here in a taxi, myself, before Palermo and Aliston picked me up-before I went to the house where I found you.. I left her here and told her she wasn't to go out. She ought to have been waiting for you when you got here."

"Maybe dis guy takes her out," suggested Mr Uniatz helpfully, hooking his thumb in the direction of the body on the couch. "Is his name Paloimo or Aliston?"

"It's neither," said the Saint. "His name's Keena. This is his apartment." -- "Den how --"

"I borrowed it to give Christine a hide-out. He's a friend of mine. He turned out of the place so that Christine could stay here. And you have to bop him on the dome!"

Mr Uniatz gaped dumbly at his victim. Life, he seemed to feel, was not giving him an even break. With things like that going on, how was a guy to know who to bop on the dome and who not to bop? It filled the most ordinary incidents of everyday life I with unnatural complications.

"Chees, boss," said Mr Uniatz pathetically, "you know I wouldn't bop any guy on de dome if ya tole me he was on de rise. But how was I to know? De last time, ya tell me I should of bopped de guy I didn't; bop. Dis time --"

"I know," said the Saint. "It isn't your fault."

He turned back to the couch as David Keena began to make sounds indicative of returning consciousness. With the help of the Saint's treatment, he was soon sitting up and rubbing his head tenderly, while his eyes blearily endeavoured to take in his surroundings. Then he recognised Hoppy, and the whole story came back to him. He tried to get up, but the Saint held him down.

"Listen, David-it was all a mistake. Hoppy's a friend of mine. He didn't want to hurt you."

"Well, what did he have to hit me for?"

"I sent him to look after Christine. He didn't know who you were. You tried to get in, and he naturally thought you were one of the ungodly. I told you to keep away from here, didn't I?"

"Dat's right, boss," said Mr Uniatz anxiously. "I didn't know ya was a pal of de Saint. Why'ncha tell me?"

"Get him a drink," ordered the Saint.

"Mr Uniatz looked guilty.

"Dey was a bottle I found here --"

"Go and find it again," said the Saint sternly. "And if you don't find it I'll pick you up and wring it out of you."

Hoppy shuffled away and returned with a bottle. There was about an inch left in it. The Saint continued to regard him coldly; and Hoppy beetled off again and brought a glass. He was always forgetting the curious habit to which some people were addicted, of pouring whiskey into a glass before transferring it to the mouth-a superfluous expenditure of time and energy which Mr Uniatz had never been able to understand.

But he was eager to make amends, and even took the unprecedented step of pouring out the remains of the whiskey himself.

While David was drinking it, Simon tried to readjust himself to what had happened. Aliston must have been lucky enough to find the taxi back on its rank almost as soon as he started his search. Simon still had to wonder how he had succeeded in getting Christine away; but it had been done. She had been gone when Hoppy arrived. Therefore Aliston had had her for some time. But what could he have done with her? The Saint would have expected him to take her straight back to the house where he himself had been taken; and Aliston had a car to do it with. And yet up to the time when the Saint had left there, a long while after, Aliston still hadn't shown up. The explanation came to Simon in a flash: for three quarters of an hour or more, Graner's Buick had been standing outside the house to which Aliston would have been going. Aliston must have seen it, suspected a hitch and driven by without stopping.

Either that, or he had already decided to double-cross Palermo. . . .

But in any case, where else could he have gone ?

Simon realised at once that that was a question to which theories were unlikely to provide an answer. He had got to go out and do something to solve it, although the Lord alone knew how. At least it meant that Aliston would be unlikely to be going back and falling into Lauber's hands-if Lauber's hands were in working order again. Somewhere on the island of Tenerife he was at large, and he had got to be tracked down and rounded up.

"Are you feeling any better?" he asked David.

"If I had some more of that I might live," an­swered Keena doubtfully, putting down his glass.

Simon gave him a cigarette.

"We'll send you out for some more in a minute," he said. "But there are just a couple of things you might tell me first. What were you doing here when Hoppy bopped you?"

"I just came back to see how Christine was getting on."

"You remember what I told you?"

"Yes, but I didn't take that seriously. I didn't know you were going to fill the place with boppers."

"You're lucky it was only kindhearted Hoppy," said the Saint callously. "If it had been one of the ungodly we'd probably be wondering what to do with your body by now. This isn't a Children's Hour, and anyone who butts into this picnic is liable to come out feet first. I warned you."

David had been scanning the room in vague perplexity.

"Where's Christine?"

"They've got her-or one of them has," said the Saint flatly. "She was gone when Hoppy got here."

"But how could they have done that?"

"If I knew the answer I'd tell you. There isn't a trace that I've been able to see."

Simon roamed rapidly round the apartment, and it took him only two or three minutes to verify his assumption. Everything looked untouched, exactly as he-had left it-only Christine had gone.

"Was it like this when you arrived, Hoppy?"

"Yes, boss."

"The door wasn't locked?"

"No, boss. I toin de handle and I walk right in."

"It didn't look as if there had been a fight?"

"No, boss." Mr Uniatz scratched his ear. "Maybe dey wasn't no fight, at dat," he suggested brilliantly.

"Maybe there wasn't," admitted the Saint.

He went back and examined the door, but it showed none of the signs of violence or skilful wangling which would have stood out a mile to his professional eye.

He turned to David again.

"You didn't see anything when you got here?"

"I didn't have a chance to see anything-except him."

"But you didn't see anything outside, anything the least bit out of the ordinary? A crowd, or people staring-or anything?"

"Not a thing that I noticed."

Simon smoked silently for a little while and made up his mind.

"We can't do any good by staying here," he said. "Apart from which, it isn't too healthy. At least one other member of the major ungodly and a nasty specimen of the minor know this address. I just hit both of them very hard, but I don't know what they'll do when they recover. We'd better be on our way."

"That's an idea," Keena assented. "I don't like your friends. Besides, we could get some more medi­cine."

"You'll have to get that by yourself, old lad. I'll pay for it, but Hoppy and me are going to be busy. Besides, I'd rather not get you any more mixed up in this party than you are already."

Keena nodded.

"I don't want to be mixed up in it any more," he remarked with profound sincerity. "But when can I use my apartment again?"

"When I've cleaned up the opposition. I'll let you know. Till then, if you see us anywhere, you'd better pretend you don't know us. I'll send you enough of the boodle one day to make you think it was all worth while. . . . Conque andando. You toddle along, and we'll give you five minutes start."

David turned at the door and pointed at Hoppy.

"I only hope he gets bopped next," he said.

Mr Uniatz watched the door close with a pained expression on his homely face. Himself a frank and openhearted soul, anxious to be friends with all the human race, it grieved him to find himself rebuffed.

"Boss," said Mr Uniatz plaintively, "dat guy don't seem to like me."

"Did you expect him to love you after you'd bopped him on the dome?" said the Saint.

Mr Uniatz relapsed into injured silence. It was all quite incomprehensible to him. A guy had to take the breaks. Suppose a guy did get shot or bopped on the dome ? If it was all done in the friendliest spirit, what had he got to bear a grudge about? He took a crum­pled cigar from his pocket and chewed it ruminatively over the problem.

The Saint left him to it. He himself was fully occu­pied with the problem of Lauber's and the chauffeur's reactions to a similar incident, although he was unable to view them in the same naive light which would pre­sumably have illuminated them to Hoppy Uniatz' complete satisfaction. By this time, presumably, those two would be on their feet again and restored to com­paratively normal functioning; and Simon did not expect them to be forgiving.

What form their vindictiveness might take was something else again. So far as whining to Graner was concerned, Lauber had no authority to give the Saint orders, and the Saint had no particular obligation not to hit him in the stomach; although an imaginative man might invent a story to justify the former and misinterpret the latter. But that still left out the chauf­feur, who could relate certain inexplicable happenings which had preceded the aforesaid massage of the Stomach. Lauber would have to deal with him in some way first. But if Manoel had made the quicker recov­ery he might have decided to do some dealing on his own-and there would be nothing to prevent him tell­ing Graner the whole truth as he knew it. It just introduced a few more incalculable factors into the jumble -and all of them had to be straightened out before the equation could be solved.

The Saint looked at his watch.

"Let's waft," he said.

He closed the door of the apartment and went down the stairs, with Hoppy at his heels, The street below was still undisturbed. It had stopped raining at last, and the wet cobbles glistened in the grey light of the late afternoon. A few ragged and dirty children splashed in the rivers that still coursed through the gutters and lapped the top of the pavement. Two or three sloppy-looking young men stood in a near-by doorway and laboured energetically at the traditional local occupation of doing nothing. A toothless and wrinkled hag in a black shawl leaned against a wall and scratched herself philosophically. The sordid, ineffectual and time-ignoring life of Santa Cruz pursued the unimportant tenor of its way, as it had done for the last four hundred years and would probably continue to do for the next four hundred.

They got into the Saint's taxi. As it started off, Simon looked back at the street scene. Nothing changed in it. He was certain they were not being watched or followed.

"Hotel Orotava," he said.

He had nothing to say during the journey; and Mr Uniatz, who was still brooding over the mysteries of human psychology, made no efforts to draw him into conversation. Mr Uniatz knew by experience that conversation with the Saint usually involved intense mental concentration, an affliction which he never went out to seek. He had enough troubles already, what with one thing and another. . . .

As they reached their destination, Simon scanned the square with the same alert and penetrating survey as he had given the Calle San Francisco (which is officially designated the Calle Doctor Comenge, although nobody in Tenerife except the map makers knows it). But that also was unchanged. The usual group of loaf­ers propped up the statue of the Virgin of Candelaria, the usual buses were picking up their usual unsavoury passengers, the usual urchins were bawling the evening newspaper, the usual taxis were unnecessarily tooting their unusually offensive horns; the only unusual cir­cumstance-if the divine inspiration of the guide books was to be accepted-was the river of muddy yellow water which poured down the street like a miniature Yangtze Kiang from the upper reaches of the town. But there was nobody in sight whom the Saint could recognise.

Nevertheless, his heart was in his mouth as the antique elevator bore him uncertainly upwards to the top floor of the hotel. When he went through the communicating door and found Joris Vanlinden lying peacefully asleep on the bed, he felt that that at least was almost too good to be true.

Simon studied him for a few moments, and one part of his threadbare plan crystallised in his mind. He tip­toed back to his own room and unhooked the tele­phone.

2 Presently Graner's voice answered him-there was no mistaking the delicately poisonous accents which survived even the tinny reverberations of the Spanish instrument.

"This is Tombs," said the Saint.

"Yes?" Graner's answer came back without hesitation.

"Your chauffeur came round with the message. I went to the address. It seems to be a house with a couple of apartments, but I haven't seen my man or anybody else. Of course, he may have gone again by now-I can't find out without knocking on the doors. I'd rather not make a fuss if I can avoid it, for fear of scaring him off."

"Had you heard anything of Aliston when you left Lauber?"

"Not a word. Have you?"

"He has not been in touch with the house."

"Well, what do we do?" asked the Saint. "Why did you want someone to chase this other guy, anyway?"

"I thought it would be safer to watch him. Where are you telephoning from?"

"I'm in a shop near by."

"What is the number?"

"Three nine eight six," said the Saint, hoping that Graner didn't know anyone with that number.

"You had better wait for a while-say half an hour. If he comes out, follow him. If he has not come out in that time, try to enter the apartments and see what you can find out. If there is no trace of him, go back to Lauber. If I have any other instructions I will call you. You will tell the shop that you are expecting a call."

"Okay."

Simon replaced the telephone with a slight shrug. He was not much further on than he had been before. If Graner's share in the dialogue could be taken on trust, neither Lauber nor the chauffeur had yet been in touch with him. If any reliance could be placed on his tone of voice, Graner's suspicions were still at rest. It was flimsy enough material on which to build vital decisions, but it was all there was. And even if it was tentatively accepted as sound, it still left Lauber's next move to be prophesied.

Mechanically the Saint took out his cigarette case for the indispensable auxiliary to thought. The case was empty.

"Damn," he said, and got up off the bed. "Have you got a cigarette, Hoppy?"

"I got a zepp," said Mr Uniatz generously.

Simon looked at the cigar and shook his head tactfully.

"I'll go out and buy some," he said, and remembered something else he could do at the same time.

"Maybe we could get a drink de same place," assented Mr Uniatz, brightening.

A firm veto to that sociable idea was on the tip of the Saint's tongue when another angle on it crossed his mind. He peeped through the communicating door again. Joris was still sleeping the relaxed and utterly forgetful sleep of a child.

Simon closed the door silently.

"You can get a drink," he said. "But we can't be seen drinking together. Give me a couple of minutes, and go out on your own. You'd better go to the German Bar-it's just over the other side of the square, where you see the awning. I'll come in there myself in-let's see-in an hour and a half at the very outside. If I don't pay any attention to you, don't come and talk with me. And if I haven't shown up by half past six, come back here and hold the fort. Have you got that, or shall I say it again?"

"I got it, boss," said Mr Uniatz intelligently. "But do I bop de nex' guy who comes in or don't I?"

"I suppose you bop him," said the Saint fatalistically.

On his way down the stairs he became more convinced of the soundness of his plan. Soon enough, whatever else developed out of the situation, some one or other would be investigating the report that Joris was back at the hotel; and anything that would confuse them and add to their difficulties would be an advantage on the side of righteousness and Saintly living. It was rather like using Hoppy for live bait, but at the same time it probably made very little actual addition to the danger he was already in.

The wavy-haired boy looked up with a pleased and optimistic smile as Simon approached the desk. He was beginning to regard those approaches as a continually recurring miracle.

Simon glanced around him before he spoke, but there was nobody in the lounge.

"You remember the old man who came in with my friend a little while ago?"

"Sí, seńor."

"Has anyone been enquiring for him?"

"No, seńor. Nadie me ha preguntado."

"Good. Now listen. In a few minutes my friend will go out again-alone. But if anyone inquires for the old man, you will say that he went out with him. If they want to know what room he was in, you will give them the number of one of your empty rooms on the second floor. But you will be quite definite that he has left the hotel. You will also say that I have not been back here. Is that understood?"

"Sí, seńor," said the boy expectantly.

He was not disappointed. Another hundred-peseta note unfurled itself under his eyes. If this went on for a few more days, he thought, he would be able to give up his job as conserje and purchase the banana plantation which, is every good Canary Islander's dream of independence and prosperity.

"And if you go off duty, see that the night man has the same orders," were the Saint's parting instructions.

He was on his way out when the boy remembered something and ran after him.

"Ha llegado una carta para usted."

Simon took the letter and examined it with a puzzled frown-he could think of no one in England who knew where he was just then. And then the postmarks gave him the explanation. It was a letter which had been addressed to him by air mail when he was in Tenerife on his last brief visit a little more than two months previously, which the unfathomable bowels of the Spanish postal system had finally decided to disgorge, having triumphantly demonstrated their ability to rise supreme over the efforts of Progress to speed up communications.

"Thank you," said the Saint, when he had recovered a little from his emotion. "There was a parcel sent to me about the same time; but that was by ordinary mail. It should be getting here any week now. Will you look out for it?"

He stuffed the letter into his pocket as he crossed the square, and made for Camacho's tourist office. The tourist trade not being what it was, the agency drummed up extra business with cigarettes and magazines.

"Holá, Jorge," he murmured, as he strolled in; and the round face of the fat Portuguese assistant opened in a broad beam as he recognised the Saint.

"ĄHolá, senhor! żcomo 'sta 'ste? ż'Te ha vuelt' a Tenerif?"

"Yes, George, I came back. And now I want to go away again. Give me some cigarettes and then tell me what boats you've got."

"ż'Te quiere march' se ahora?" said George incredulously. "Ą'Te tiene que lev' much' mas tiemp' aquí!"

The Saint shook his head with a smile.

"I've already been here too long," he said.

George handed him a packet of cigarettes and pored for a while over the collection of shipping folders.With the vista of innumerable mańanas looming in his mind, he announced presently, in his execrable mixture of Spanish and Portuguese: "Hay un bare' que sal' de aquí el dío quins --"

"What, the fifteenth? Of next month? I tell you I want something at once."

"ż 'Te quiere salir ahora mismo?"

''The sooner the better."

"Hay un bare' que sal' pasao mańan'"

"What about tonight?"

"ĄAy-ay-ay! Ą'Te ten demasiao pris'!"

George turned back to his sailing lists with a deep sigh; and while he was at it the Saint picked up a copy of the Tarde which was lying on the counter.

Apart from its own outbursts of indignation at the advent of gangsterismo in Tenerife, and amplifications of the original episode by means of interviews with every inhabitant of the town who had been within two miles of the shooting, the newspaper told of further developments which had been too late for the morning editions. It seemed that in the small hours of the morning, on the strength of the alarm which had gone round, a sentry on duty at the gasworks had started shooting at something, for no reason which anybody could discover. All the guards had turned out to join the party, all letting off their guns as fast as they could pull the trigger; it was not known what damage had been done to the nameless menace that they were shooting at, but they had successfully riddled a taxi which was passing in a neighbouring street, killing the driver and wounding the two passengers, who were returning from a merry evening at some cabaret. The only other known casualty consisted of half of another brace of guardias who were hurrying towards the sounds of firing: it appeared that he had been so impatient to get into action that he hadn't waited to draw his gun from its holster before he started shooting, with the result that he had shot himself neatly through the bottom.

Properly alarmed by these deplorable breaches of the peace, the civil governor had issued a ringing mani­festo in the same edition, in which he proclaimed his firm intention of stamping out the aforesaid gangster­ismo. With this object, he declared a state of emer­gency, and ordained (1) that all cafés, bars, cabarets, cinemas and other places of amusement should be closed by midnight until further notice; (2) that all private citizens must be in their homes by 12.30 A.M., and that anybody who was out after that hour would be liable to be shot without warning; (3) that in any case he would not be responsible for the lives of any persons who were out in the streets after dark; (4) that owing to the peril of their work the police would not be allowed to patrol in parejas, as heretofore, but would go out in squads of six; and (5) that it would be a criminal offence for any driver to let his car backfire.

It was an inspiring statement, which should have made the heart of any Tinerfeńo swell with pride in contemplation of the resolute and capable hands to which he had entrusted his government. To Simon Templar, an intruder from the outer darkness of the civilised world, its train of thought seemed somewhat obscure; but he could form some idea of its conse­quences and implications. The friendly little thieves' picnic into which he had introduced himself was clearly developing a satellite public picnic of its own. For the time being their orbits were parallel; but at any moment they might start to converge, and when that happened the fun was likely to become a trifle breathless. It was just another factor that made a rapid ending seem even more important; and the Saint considered it seriously for several minutes.

"Hay un barc' que sal' esta noch' a las diez," George informed him at last, in a rather awed voice, as if the idea of a ship leaving as early as ten o'clock that night made him feel nervous; and the Saint re­garded him admiringly.

"You ought to go to America, George," he said. "You've got too much natural hustle for this place. . . . Fix me two single cabins on that boat, and two more on the boat the day after tomorrow."

He wrote down the names-the two passages for that night for Joris and Christine Vanlinden, and the two on Monday to be left open-and waited while George telephoned the agents of the line and made the arrangements.

It took some time to overcome the native prejudice against such speedy action, and even longer to get the action really acting. The tickets themselves had to be sent down from the shipping offices while George was making out bills and receipts. Simon paid in cash, which involved further delays. The fares didn't total to an even number of hundreds of pesetas, Simon was short of small change, and finding change for a hun­dred pesetas in Tenerife is rather more difficult than looking for brown-shirted Jews in Munich, for anybody who collects as much as twenty pesetas rushes off very quickly to put it in the bank before it melts. All the neighbouring shops had to be pressed into the search; and by the time everything had been settled and Simon had the tickets in his pocket nearly an hour had gone.

It meant that he was long overdue to return to the house where he had left Lauber, if he intended to obey Graner's instructions; but that could be covered by some story of having followed the man he was supposed to be watching. The same excuse might serve to explain his absence if Graner had tried to telephone him meanwhile at the number he had given. For some reason it never occurred to the Saint not to go back to Maria's apartment-he had decided that that was a risk that must be taken if he was going to try and learn something about what Lauber had done. There was also the possibility that Aliston might have left Christine somewhere else and gone back there before Lauber left.

With these reasonings going through his mind, but without any conscious volition, the Saint found himself threading his way through the streets which he had seen only twice before, and then without studying the route very closely. There were some minutes when he was afraid he had lost himself, for the brief tropical twilight was darkening as if curtains were being drawn in quick succession over the sky, and with the change of light the dingy alleys were softening like the faces of old women by the fireside at dusk. But presently, almost to his surprise, he found himself at the right door.

There was a little more life in the street now--a few straggling pedestrians, a few faces peering eerily put of open ground-floor windows in the age-old Spanish pastime of watching life go by, a few upper windows lighted up. But the window of Maria's apartment was not lighted, and Simon saw nobody loafing near the door as he reached it.

He pushed the door experimentally, and found it unlocked. The gloomy hall was almost in complete darkness now, and the Saint took a slim pencil flash­light from his pocket to find his way to the stairs. He moved upwards with the supple noiselessness of a cat, and switched his torch off again as he reached the upper landing.

For some time he stood motionless outside the door of the apartment, as if every nerve in his body was enlisted in the one intense concentration of listening for the slightest sound of movement inside the room which might have given him warning of a trap. He believed that he would have caught even the rustle of a sleeve if a man waiting inside had cautiously moved a cramped arm; but the utter stillness remained unbroken until he felt that he had given it a fair trial. Any further investigations would have to be made by opening the door.

Simon's hand moved instinctively to his pocket before he remembered that he had no gun, and his lips tightened with a momentary mocking grimness. So he would have to do without that asset. . . . He slid his knife out of its sheath and held it by the tip of the blade in his right hand, ready for use. His left hand turned the doorknob, slowly and without a rattle. As soon as he felt the latch clear of its socket, he flung the door wide open.

Nothing happened. Nothing moved in the grey gloom of the room. There was no sound after the door banged wide against the wall.

On the floor between him and the table he saw a shape that looked like a man but that didn't move or speak. The attitude in which it lay offered no promise of speech or movement. Simon went into the room and flashed his torch on its face. It was Manoel, the chauffeur; and there was no doubt that he was extremely dead.

3 The bullet had made a neat round hole where it had entered near the middle of his forehead, but the back of his head was not so neat. Simon touched the man's face: it still held some warmth, and his flashlight showed that the blood on the floor was still wet.

Before he did anything else he went through and searched the bedroom, but there was no one there.

He came back and turned on the lights in the living room. With their help, he made another search that covered every inch of the room, but he found nothing to indicate who had been there. The table was exactly as he had left it, with the remains of food congealing on the plates. The overturned chair that he had been tied in was still overturned. The accumulation of cigarette ends in the ash trays and on the floor yielded nothing, although Simon picked up every one of them separately and examined it. He recognised his own brand, and another equally common-that was all. If there had been a third, it might have been useful; but Palermo had smoked only his cigar, and he did not know what Lauber and Aliston used. There was hardly any doubt that one or the other of them had fired the shot which had ensured that the chauffeur would chauffe no more: Simon had his own firm conviction about which of them it was, but he would have been glad to remove the faint element of uncertainty.

There was no means of doing that except by fingerprints, and he had no apparatus for that. But he remembered that his own prints would be among those present, and he went back to the bedroom for one of the gag cloths and carefully wiped everything that he had touched, including the whiskey bottle and the glass from which he had given Joris a drink, and everything that Hoppy might have touched in the kitchenette during his quest for liquor. The other things he left as they were. If the detective force of Santa Cruz had ever heard of fingerprints they could have a jolly time playing with them, and Graner's gang could do its own worrying.

It wasn't so quiet now. . . .

Simon became aware of the fact almost subconsciously; and then suddenly he was wide awake. He stopped motionless for a second, without breathing, while he sought for an exact definition of the sound which had crept warningly into his brain while he was thinking about other things. In another instant he knew what it was.

Something was happening in the street outside. The symptoms of it, as they reached him through the closed windows, were almost imperceptible; and yet the sixth sense of the outlaw had distinguished them with unerring instinct. As his memory reached back he realised that a car had stopped outside with its engine running, but the other mutters went on-a faint increase in the volume of sound outside, a subtle alteration in the pitch and tempo of the normal noises of the street. Nothing that an ordinary man might have noticed before it was too late, but as unmistakable to the Saint as if the alarm had been sounded with bugles.

In two strides he was at the window, looking down through a corner of one of the smeary yellow panes.

The car, which had stopped at the door, was open, and the last of the party of guardias was getting out -Simon could see three others, and there might have been more of them too close under the wall of the house to be visible to him. A woman was still sitting in the back of the car: he saw the brassy flame of her hair and guessed at once that it was Mr Palermo's fancy lady.

Then he heard the first footfall in the hall below.

The Saint's fighting smile flickered on his lips and was reflected in the blue depths of his eyes. When something less menacing than that had happened not long ago, the thought had flashed through his mind that the upper part of the house was a dead end; and now he was in the very corner that he had avoided before. But last time he had had Joris to take care of.

He went swiftly through to the bedroom, closed the, door behind him and opened the window. Standing outside it with his toes on the sill, he could just reach the shallow parapet of the flat roof above. He drew himself up with the easy grace of a gymnast and wriggled nimbly over the edge.

By that time the last trace of the twilight had vanished altogether, and only a disheartened scrap of moon glimmering between the clouds gave him enough light to pick his way. On either side the roofs of the contiguous houses ran on in a dark plateau broken by occasional low walls. He hurried silently over them, Stopping after every few steps to listen for any warn­ings of pursuit. A startled milch goat tied to a shed on one of the roofs shied out of his path with a faint bleat that made him jump; and on another roof the hens in a ramshackle chicken run gargled and clucked apprehensively as he passed; Simon wondered, with a twinkle of incorrigible irrelevance, what a snooty New Yorker would think of the way Spaniards treated their penthouses and roof gardens, or conversely what a Spaniard would think of the value which was placed on them in New York.

Then a building higher than the others blocked his way, and he turned in towards the centre of the block. Below him he saw a solid-looking outhouse, and the window which overlooked it was dark. He swung himself over the parapet, hung at the full stretch of his arms, and dropped the last few feet with a prayer that the roof under him was strong. It was. He landed, on his toes with hardly a sound; below him was a sort of courtyard on to which the house on the opposite side of the block also backed, and with another short drop he reached the ground level. He tried the back door of the house opposite. It was unlocked, and let him into an unlighted kitchen. The door on the far side of the kitchen opened on to a narrow hall in which lights were burning. He had got the door open half an inch when a girl came down the stairs and went into a room beside the staircase. She had no clothes on. Simon drew a long breath and tiptoed out. The girl had almost closed the door of the room she had gone into; he could hear other girls in there, talking and laughing. From what he could hear of their conversation as he moved stealthily down the hall, he gathered that he had got into the sort of house where no Saint ought to be. He decided to get out quickly, and he was just level with the door when it opened and the girl came Out again.

A couple of seconds crawled into infinity while he looked at her and she looked at him.

She nodded pleasantly.

"Buenas noches," she said politely.

"Buenas noches," responded the Saint, with the same old-world courtesy, and groped his way out into the street as she went on up the stairs.

After a few minutes' walking he found himself in familiar surroundings and realised that he was in the street which contained the back entrance of the Hotel Orotava. He let himself in and threaded the labyrinth of passages through to the front of the hotel, running the gauntlet of the inquisitive eyes of a chef, a waiter and a pantry boy, with the impermeable aplomb of a man for whom Fate would have to work pretty hard to devise any new ordeals.

Joris Vanlinden opened his eyes as the Saint entered the room, but he did not stir. Simon went up to the bed, and the old man watched him without any expression.

"How are you feeling?" Simon asked quietly.

Vanlinden's lips moved fractionally, so that without uttering a word his face answered that he was quite contented, that he was grateful that someone was being kind to him, that he had nothing on his mind.

"You're going to see Christine," said the Saint.

A slow smile came to the old man's lips, and a little life came back into his gaze.

"When?" he whispered.

"Very soon." Simon saw the intelligence beginning to fade again, and went on quickly: "You're going away from here. On a ship. With Christine. Tonight. You and Christine are going away together."

"Now?"

"Yes."

Vanlinden nodded and tried to rise. The Saint helped him and kept an arm round him all the way down the stairs. It was like leading a man in a trance: Vanlinden would go where he was taken, once the stimulus of Christine's name had started him mov­ing, but if Simon stopped the other stopped also, waiting for him with the patience of a man for whom time and initiative have lost all meaning.

In the hall, Simon called the conserje from behind his desk.

"This gentleman is sailing on the Alicante Star to­night. You will take him down to the boat."

"Pero seńor," protested the boy, "I cannot leave the hotel --"

Simon made another contribution to the banana fund.

"You will take him down and see him into his cabin," he said. "He is not very well, and you must be careful with him. If he gives any trouble, remind him that he is going to see the Seńorita Cristina. Here are the tickets. You will start as soon as I have left the hotel."

"Bueno," said the boy obediently; and the Saint turned to Vanlinden.

"He's going to take you to the boat," he said. "You stay with him and do just what he tells you. Then you wait for Christine on board-she won't be long now."

The old man smiled at him again with the same tranquil faith, and Simon turned quickly away before his own face betrayed him. If he failed that childish trust, Vanlinden's mind might never be restored. He would go on sinking deeper and deeper into that protective oblivion, while his vital forces gradually ebbed like a falling tide until one day he made the easy crossing from dusk to eternal darkness. No medical skill could do anything for him. Only one thing could bring him back to the light; and only the Saint knew what a fantastic task he had undertaken to conclude in the time he had set for himself.

He looked at his watch as he went down the steps, and saw that he had just about three and a half hours left.

For a few moments he stood on the pavement out­side the hotel, leisurely lighting a cigarette. Then he set off diagonally upwards across the square. If anyone was watching the hotel now, they could take a walk with him while Joris was getting clear.

He sauntered round the Casino block, stopped to inspect the photographs of homely and buxom artistes displayed outside the Cafe Zanzibar, stopped again to examine every article in the window of a tobacconist's on the next corner, and only turned into the German Bar when he estimated that Joris and the wavy-haired boy had had time to get out of sight.

The first thing he noticed was that Hoppy Uniatz was not there.

Simon frowned as he sat down. He had given Hoppy directions which should have been explicit enough, although it was difficult to set limits to Mr Uniatz' capacity for getting his orders mixed up. Unless a slight discrepancy between their watches had sent Hoppy back to the hotel while he had been walk­ing round the block, or unless Hoppy had consumed all the whiskey on the premises and gone elsewhere to look for more, or unless even more natural causes had dictated a temporary absence from which Hoppy might return at any moment.

The Saint ordered a drink and decided to wait for a few minutes. He had several things to think about for which he could use a little solitude.

The rising temperature of police excitement of which he had been reminded at Camacho's not long ago had taken another upward lift. Simon wondered whether the girl Maria had been prompted to bring in the police by anyone at Graner's, and finally rejected the idea. It would have been too obviously wiser for the Graner syndicate to remove the body without any publicity. A simpler explanation was that Maria had returned later to find out what had happened and had seen the same thing that the Saint had seen. Even so, it didn't make the outlook any brighter. She could give them the Saint's description, and probably that would be the first thing she would do ; the newspapers would have to think up a whole lot of new words to express their horror; the civil governor would issue some more inspiring proclamations; and the police would dash hither and thither in a perfect frenzy of zeal which would probably last for quite two days.

Meanwhile the situation at Graner's was probably altering every minute. Whether Lauber had suggested a partnership to the chauffeur and had been refused, or whether he hadn't even troubled to do that, Simon had no doubt that he had shot the man to keep his mouth shut. Just as certainly, he had no doubt that Lauber had gone back to Graner with quite a different story; and it was not much harder to guess whom Lauber would have accused of the shooting. . . .

"ĄMuy buenas!"

Simon looked up with a start. A bootblack who leaned on a crutch on the side where his trouser was cut off at the knee was standing over the table, grinning with incredulous delight; and the Saint's face broke into an answering smile in spite of his preoccupations.

"ĄHolá, Julian!" He held out his hand. "żQue tal?"

"Muy bien. żY usted?"

"Como siempre."

The lad went on grinning at him inarticulately.

"And the boy?" Simon asked.

"ĄEstupendo! Every day he is bigger and stronger. . . ."

Simon Templar's queer friends had always been legion: there was hardly a corner of the world where they could not be found in the most unexpected places, telling stories of the Saint which Scotland Yard would have been surprised to hear. On the first day of a more peaceful visit to Tenerife, the Saint's attention had been drawn to a ragged and crippled youth who shined his shoes and gave him one of the frankest and happiest smiles he had ever seen. He had learnt that Julian was married, that his wife was expecting a baby; one day he had gone to their home, a single room with hardly space to turn round, and had seen a poverty that made him feel small. Simon had never spoken about what he had done for them; but there were at least two people in Santa Cruz who thought. of him as something like God, and one lusty infant who had been baptised Simon to bear witness to the miracle.

The Saint was forced to forget other things while he talked-even with all that he was facing, he couldn't have snubbed that welcome. He had to ask a dozen trivial questions and listen to a dozen answers, conscious all the while that the time was passing.

"You are staying longer this time?" Julian asked presently.

Simon shrugged.

"I don't know. It depends on a lot of things."

"You will come up and see Simonito ?" said the lad eagerly. "I will tell my wife you are coming. She will not believe me, she will be so glad."

"Yes, I will come very soon --"

The sentence died on the Saint's lips and the friendly warmth faded out of his eyes for Reuben Graner had entered the bar and was walking towards his table.

IX How Simon Templar Enjoyed a Joke, and How Mr Lauber Was Not Amused IN MOMENTS OF CRISIS the human brain flies off on curious tangents. There was one freezing moment in which Simon wondered whether Graner could have heard him talking Spanish, while the last words he had spoken re-echoed in his own ears like thunderclaps, and then he realised that the other patrons of the bar were making more than enough noise to drown what he was saying. They were only discussing the prospects for the next banana crop, but their heredity and up­bringing made it impossible to lower their voices be­low a shout; and since they all knew that nobody else had anything to say worth listening to, they were all shouting at once. A split second later, another of those wildly disjointed flights of thought reminded Simon of something he had forgotten all day-the messages he had written and folded up in twenty-five-peseta notes in Graner's attic that morning.

Without any visible interruption, the Saint put his hand in his pocket and took out one of the notes. He could hardly have said why he did it, but it never oc­curred to him to hesitate. It was the only thing to do. Graner's thin-drawn yellowish face showed no warning expression that could have been read at the distance, his dandified strut was exactly the same, his eyes were the same unwinking beads behind his glasses, like the eyes of a lizard; and yet the Saint knew. He knew, by the reflex bristle of his nerves, more surely than logic could have told him, that the gong was sounding for the final round. Whatever Graner's manner might be, whatever was said between them, the curtains were going up for the last time; and at a moment like that, knowing all the odds against him, the Saint left noth­ing more to chance than he had to leave.

He held out the note to Julian. The lad tried to wave it away.

"ĄToma!" said the Saint imperatively. It was the last word he could say before Graner was within earshot. He added in English: "Get me some change."

"El seńor quiere cambio," Graner interpreted, with sneering distinctness, as the bootblack stood smiling sheepishly.

The lad nodded and grinned again, and hobbled nimbly off on his one leg and his crutch; and the Saint waved his hand hospitably towards a chair.

"Sit down, Reuben," he murmured. "What are you drinking?"

"A sherry." Graner gave the order to the waiter, and fitted a cigar into his amber holder. "It was lucky I saw you as I was driving by. Where have you been?"

Simon lighted the cigar for him, and the action gave him a spare moment to consider his reply. There were half-a-dozen different approaches that he might have subconsciously expected Graner to make, but this was not one of them. It gave him an odd, ridiculous impression that Graner was feeling his ground as cautiously as he wanted to himself, and he wondered if his instincts were starting to play tricks with him.

"I hung around the Calle San Francisco for a bit," he said vaguely. "Then our friend came out, and I followed him. He's a great walker-led me a chase all over the town. He went into three or four shops and bought things. Then he went into the Casino. I stayed outside for sometime, until I got scared there might be a back way out. I went in and made enquiries, and there was. I toured all over the place, but he'd gone."

"Did you go back to Lauber after that?"

"Yes."

"What happened there?"

The Saint gave himself another breather while he lighted a cigarette. He was beginning to feel as if all his co-ordinates of reality were giving way, as if he were wading in grotesque slow motion through a sea of thick and glutinous soup, like a man on a marijuana jag. But he had made up his mind that the safest thing was to let Graner give him the lead; and meanwhile he didn't see why he shouldn't play the same game as he assumed Lauber had been playing.

He said, with deliberately measured bluntness: "It might have been the last job I could have done for you for a long time. If I hadn't been lucky you'd have been looking for a new diamond cutter."

"Why?"

"Because in any case you're going to have to look for a new chauffeur. He was the only guy I found when I got there, and he was dead."

"Manoel?"

The Saint nodded.

"Shot. Right between the eyes. He was still warm when I found him. The apartment was quite dark. I searched through it, but there wasn't anyone there, I couldn't do any more, because just then the police rolled up. I heard them coming and looked out of the window. Palermo's girl was with them, so I suppose she found Manoel and turned in the alarm. I climbed out of a back window as they came in the door, and beat it over the roofs."

Graner's face registered no emotion. He gripped the amber holder between his teeth and drew the end of his cigar to an even red. His sharp snaky eyes watched Simon intently through the smoke.

"Would you be surprised to hear that Lauber said you had shot him?" he said.

"Su cambio, senior."

The bootblack had returned. He laid five duros on the marble table in front of the Saint. Simon handed him a peseta and looked at him as he did so. Julian's smile was uncertain, and his eyes were troubled: it was enough to tell the Saint that the lad had found his message and read it. He was still afraid that Julian might try to say something to him. about it, and turned his shoulder on him quickly before that disaster could happen.

"No," he answered Graner blandly. "It wouldn't surprise me very much. But it would make me a little more sure that Lauber had done it himself."

"You don't like Lauber?"

The Saint shrugged.

"I expect you've already made up your own mind who did it. I'm just telling you what I think. What was Lauber's story?"

"He told me that when Manoel arrived with the message you were so insistent on going to the Calle San Francisco yourself that he became suspicious. When he tried to prevent you going, you hit him and knocked him out; and then he thinks you shot Manoel when he tried to stop you."

"It's a good story," said the Saint unconcernedly, "even if it is a god-damn lie. Lauber was the bloke who insisted that he wanted to wait there for Aliston. But if you believe him, why don't you call the police?"

"I'll talk about that in a minute," said Graner. He inspected his cigar for a few seconds, then looked up from it to add: "I have already seen Aliston."

A ball of lead formed in the Saint's stomach and made his diaphragm feel as if it was being dragged down out of its rightful place. He had to check himself for a moment before he spoke, to make sure that his voice was under control.

"That's something, anyway," he conceded coolly. "Was he looking pretty fit?"

"He had Christine with him."

Simon knew how Lauber must have felt when he received that shattering jolt in the solar plexus, having seen it coming and yet only having had time to realise that he couldn't possibly move fast enough to ward it off. He had had fair warning, but the shock was none the less deadly for that. He knew that he was hearing the truth-a fabrication that would have fitted so neatly into his own deductions would have been too wild a coincidence. The shock numbed every physical sense he commanded; but somehow it left his brain aloof and unshaken by the chaos of his nerves.

"Better and better," he said, and was amazed at the naturalness of his own voice. "Where was this?"

"At the house."

The third shock was wasted-it had no reactions left to work on.

"When?"

"Aliston was there when I got back with Palermo."

"And who did he say I'd killed?"

"I will tell you exactly what he told me. He told me that he traced your taxi back to the Calle San Fran­cisco. He found Christine there-at the address where Joris' friend went to after you let him go."

"That's impossible," said the Saint, with unruffled assurance. "Unless she got out of the place where I left her. Besides, this was before Joris' pal went there, wasn't it? Well, if he'd gone there expecting to find Christine, and she'd disappeared, would he have calmly gone off on a shopping tour like the one I followed him on ?"

"That is what he did according to your story," Graner reminded him.

"And according to Aliston's story I'm a liar again. You know, I'm taking quite a shine to this outfit of yours, Reuben. It's such a relief to know you're among friends."

Graner nodded.

"I said I would tell you exactly what Aliston told me."

"And I suppose he'd got another bright theory that I snatched Joris and his pal and parked them with Palermo's slut."

"Oh no. Aliston did not deny that he and Palermo had taken them. He was very perturbed when he heard that they had been permitted to escape."

"I'll bet he was," said the Saint grimly. "And how did he make that sound all right-about double-crossing the rest of us?" Graner paused to trim the ash on his cigar; and again his hard, pebbly gaze rested on the Saint with the same unaccountable calculativeness that had been puzzling Simon ever since he sat down.

"I will go on telling you what he told me. He said that it was because he and Palermo were suspicious of you. They were afraid to argue with me because they were too familiar with my objection to having my orders questioned, but they were convinced that for once I was making a mistake. They did not like the way I had accepted you and accepted your terms this morning. They were certain that it would be dangerous to take Joris and the other man back to the house while you were there. They decided to make sure of their ground before they tried to dispute the wisdom of my instructions; meanwhile they felt that Joris and the other man would be quite safe where they had taken them. Then they captured you to see if they could force you to give them any more information. Aliston pointed out that it was absurd to think that they were trying to double-cross me, when he had brought Christine straight to the house as soon as he found her. He said that once he had her in his hands, believing that Joris and the other man and yourself were safely held at the same time, he saw no further need for secrecy, and went to the house at once to tell me the whole story, bringing Christine as evidence of his good faith."

"What about Palermo?"

"He more or less corroborated the story-as much of it as he knew."

"And why didn't he tell it you in the first place?"

"He said that he lost his nerve, that he was dazed by the beating you had given him and did not quite know what he was doing."

The Saint blew a smoke ring and annihilated it with his next gesture.

"I won't bother to point out that that's the story anybody else would probably have told if they were in the same spot," he said. "So it wouldn't be such a fluke if Palermo hit on it as well. I expect you've thought all that out for yourself, and you know what you're going to believe."

"Nevertheless, I should like your opinion."

Simon had to restrain the impulse to stare at him. What the devil could Graner be driving at? Simon had been watching him every instant for the first sign of hostility, racking his brain to try and predict what form it would take so that he could be prepared to forestall it; and he had been baffled from beginning to end. The feeling of unreality came back to him so strongly that the whole interview seemed like a night­mare. Any of the things he had been expecting would have been less disturbing than that precarious fencing in the dark. But he had to make the best of the situation as it stood.

"If you're really asking me," he said slowly, "I should say that Lauber was the first double-crosser. The others seemed to think he had the ticket last night, didn't they? Well, he might have had it. My first guess would be that for some reason or other he was trying to strike some bargain with Manoel to get him in with him, and Manoel turned him down and threatened to tell you, so Lauber shot him to keep his mouth shut."

"And Aliston's story?"

"That's even easier. It's so wet that it takes my breath away. I think that Aliston found Christine all right, and was taking her back to Maria's. Meanwhile you'd got there, and he saw your car outside. That was enough to tell him that something had sprung a leak somewhere. He drove right past without stopping, and I'll bet he had about half an hour's continuous heart failure before he made up his mind what to do. He was on the spot. He had to think of some way to wriggle out, and wriggle out quick, before the rest of us caught up with him. Being rather a weak-kneed bloke, and scared stiff at that, the only thing he could think of was to wriggle backwards-to scuttle back into the fold and try to pretend it was all a joke. I think his story is the feeblest cock-and-bull yarn I ever heard in my life; and if you'd swallow that I guess you'd swallow anything. But that's your funeral. I can't help it if your brain's softening."

"My brain is not softening," Graner said suavely. "I had already reached the same conclusion."

Simon Templar didn't know whether to believe his ears. The ground seemed to be rocking under his feet.

"You mean," he said carefully, "that it's beginning to dawn on you that this precious gang of yours is just about the finest collection of double-crossing rats that was ever gathered together under one roof?"

Graner nodded.

"That is what I mean. And that is why I hope you will help me to deal with them."

2 Something began to bubble deep down in the Saint's inside, so that he had to clench his teeth to keep it down. The leaden weight in his stomach suddenly turned into an airy balloon which swelled up until it almost choked him. His ribs ached with the strain of suppressing that ferment of Homeric laughter. The tears started to his eyes.

It was stupendous, sublime, epoch-making, phenomenal, colossal-no thesaurus ever compiled held enough words for it. It was superb, prodigious, transcendental, gosh-gorgeous and gloatworthy. It was the last perfect touch that was needed to turn that hilarious thieves' picnic into the most climactic comedy in the history of the universe.

And yet after all-why not? Everybody else had done it. Lauber had done it. Aliston and Palermo had done it. He himself had been doing it all the time. Everybody in the cast had been scooting backwards and forwards through a tangle of intrigue and temporary alliances and propositions and cross-double-crossing that made European international politics look like a simple nursery game, fairly falling over each other to tread on somebody else's face and scramble on to their own band wagons. Why shouldn't Graner wake up eventually to what was going on all around him, and decide to look after himself ?

He had plenty of justification too. From his point of view, the one member of the party whose stories had been credible all the time, who had given the impression of being the one lone pillar of honesty and square dealing in the debacle, whose every action seemed to have been transparently open and above-board, was the Saint. That this was simply due to the Saint's superior strategy and readiness of wit was a fact and an explanation that Graner need not have thought of. The one conviction that would have been left in his mind was that unless he took swift action he was in danger of being left high and dry by the defection of his subordinates; and his instinct of self-preservation would have done the rest. To him, the Saint would have seemed like the one tower of strength around which he could start to rebuild his kingdom-a kingdom which the Saint's proven ingenuity and generalship might make even greater than the old.

At the risk of bursting a blood vessel, the Saint kept his face perfectly straight.

"You'd like us to give them a dose of their own medicine," he said.

"That is what I propose to do," said Graner. "There appears to be no other remedy. They have completely lost their heads over this lottery ticket, and when anything like that happens an organisation like mine is finished. I propose that you and I should make a fresh start-it seems obvious to me that you have been wasting your time as a diamond cutter. Perhaps you have never realised your own abilities. In combination, we should be invincible."

Graner's manner was deferential, almost ingratiating although the change was not much of an improvement. Simon felt that he was rather less objec­tionable when he was being his ordinary repulsive self than when he was bending over backwards in the un­accustomed exercise of making himself agreeable. But that only enriched the heroic and majestic fruitiness of the joke.

"In other words, we get what we can out of these birds and then ditch them?" suggested the Saint.

Graner inclined his head hopefully.

"I think you will agree that they deserve it."

"It seems fair enough to me. But what have you told them?"

"I pretended to believe Aliston and Palermo, I locked Christine up and left them while I went to my own room to think. It was a long time before I could make up my mind."

"When did I ring you up?"

"That was just before I had finished talking to them. I still hadn't decided what was the best thing for me to do, even though I was sure they were lying to me. Then Lauber arrived with his story."

"And you pretended to believe him."

"I felt that that was the wisest course. So long as they all believed they were successfully taking me in, I had a certain advantage. I left them all together and told them I would go out and see if I could bring you back. I told them that you would be less suspicious of me than you would be of any of them."

"That would still be a smart move, anyway," said the Saint shrewdly.

Graner nodded frankly.

"I appreciate your point of view. But I am not trying to induce you to do anything. If you accept my proposition, you would have a free hand to take whatever action you think best."

The Saint smoked for a little while in thoughtful silence. He wanted to leave nothing overlooked.

"How did Aliston get hold of Christine?" he asked.

"He told her-I am only quoting his own story-- that Joris and the other man and yourself had all been captured. He said that we knew where she was, which was proved by his visit, and that we were on our way to take her. He also said that he had quarrelled with us, and that we were looking for him at the same time. He was able to convince her that she had no one left to help her, and that he himself was in terror of bur vengeance, and that their only hope was for them to join forces-I might mention that Aliston was on the stage before he made a slip which brought him to me. You might not think it, but he is a brilliant actor when he exerts himself."

"But when he wanted to take her to the house --"

"He said that he was taking her somewhere else, He drove her out on to the road to San Andres, which is very lonely, and there he was able to overpower her without much difficulty."

Simon could believe that Aliston had exerted himself in his acting. He was inclined to revise his own earlier theory about that abduction. It now seemed more likely that after Aliston had located Keena's apartment he had gone back to tell Palermo, and that it was then that he had seen Graner's car and realised that everything had blown up. Quite probably his offer to Christine had had the persuasive advantage of obvious sincerity; it was only when Aliston had realised that he had nowhere else to go, and that he was not equipped to fight a singlehanded feud of that kind, that he had panicked and done what he had done. . . , Not that a detail like that mattered very much.

"And Joris?" said the Saint.

"I left the others to discuss the best way to get hold of him again. We can attend to that ourselves when we have settled with them. I think you are in the best position to arrange that."

"And the other man?"

"I know nothing more about him. But doubtless he will be getting in touch with you as you arranged."

Simon filled his lungs with a sense of deep and dizzy contentment. So the tangle had all worked out, the various pieces in the jigsaw had all shaken down into their final and perfect combination, all the permutations and combinations had been tried, all the explana­tions made and all the moves accounted for. Now at last the Saint felt that all the threads were in his hands, and it only remained to wind them up and tie the conclusive knot. Joris was on the boat. Hoppy, by that time, was certainly back at the hotel. It only left Christine-and the ticket. ...

Graner was watching him with an anxiety over which his habitual pose of inscrutable dominance was wearing very thin. And the Saint smiled at him beatifi­cally.

"It sounds fine to me," he said. "Let's go."

"Do you know what you intend to do ?"

Simon beckoned the waiter and counted coins to pay for their drinks.

"I guess we go up to the house," he said. "That's where all the other vultures are roosting, isn't it? After all, they're expecting you to bring me back, and I'd hate to disappoint them."

"They will be waiting to hold you up."

"Good. Let 'em. But they won't interfere with you just yet, because they're still divided among themselves. And neither side is sure enough of the other for them to act together against you. So they'll keep on pretending to play in with you. You can play their game and pretend to help them hold me up. All I want you to do is to see that I have a chance to grab your gun at the right moment; and don't get the wind up if I point it at you for the sake of appearances. Just see that I get it when I want it, and you can leave the rest to me. Now let's get moving before they have a chance to organise any new combinations between themselves."

He pocketed his change and stood up decisively; and Graner followed his lead without question. The reversal was complete-even more so than when the Saint had turned him upside down in the hotel that morning. If he had had time to think about it, the Saint would have suffered the agonies of another bottled-up internal explosion at the supreme climax of Graner's submission.

The Saint led the way out of the bar with a spring in his step and an impudent swagger in the set of his shoulders. He was on his way to the great moment which he had been living for for nearly twenty-four hours, the time when he could sweep the board clear of all niggling chicaneries and complex deceptions and sail into battle as a buccaneer should sail, with the Jolly Roger nailed to the mast and the trumpets of outlawry sounding in his ears. It was for things like this that the Saint had lived all his life.

And as they crossed the road to where Graner's car was parked, he saw that it was the Buick.

It was the one thing needed to complete his ecstasy. The one lurking doubt in his mind had been what Lauber might be doing up at the house while Graner was away. If for any reason Graner had used the other car . . . But Graner. hadn't. And Lauber would be fuming and sweating, roaming the house like a caged lion in a frenzy of impotent rage. Meanwhile a great many of the inhabitants of Santa Cruz had been ambling innocently around what had probably been the most valuable car in the history of automobile engineering, untroubled by the thought that they could have stretched out their hands and helped themselves to wealth beyond their wildest dreams.

The idea filled the Saint's whole horizon as Graner started the car and drove it round to speed up the square. Was the ticket still in the same place ?

Where had Lauber ridden when he was picked up the night before? If he had been in the front, where the Saint was now sitting, he could have done something about the ticket when he was driving down with Graner that afternoon. Or had he been too uncertain of his own position, too afraid that Graner might catch him, to take the risk?

Simon's hands explored all the hiding places which might have been reached by a man sitting in the same seat. He felt in the door pocket, under the floor mat, around the cushions.

He found nothing.

Therefore the ticket must be somewhere in the back, and Lauber had had to leave it there when he was putting Palermo in for fear that Palermo might see him take it.

The Saint stretched out his legs and relaxed com­fortably as the car purred up the La Laguna road. It was pleasant to think that he was riding in company with two million dollars, which he could have transferred to his own pocket whenever he chose. He could have put one hand around Graner's scraggy neck, switched off the engine and choked him gently but firmly off the wheel; after which he could have dropped him in a ditch and taken the car away to dissect it at his leisure. But he had to get Christine out of the house first. He had to discipline himself, to make a virtue of spinning out the luscious anticipation.

Always assuming that the ticket was still there. . . .

He tried not to think too much about that; and he was still diligently keeping his mind off such unwelcome complications when the car stopped outside the house. Graner held out a key.

"Will you open the gates?"

"What about the dogs?" said the Saint dubiously.

"I left them chained up. If you stay out of their reach you will be quite safe."

Simon went forward into the flare of the headlights, unlocked the big doors, and pushed them back. The car turned into the drive and flowed past him. He closed the gates again and rammed the bolts home with a series of thuds which Graner would be able to hear. What Graner would not notice was that the thud of each bolt sinking into its socket concealed the noise of another bolt being withdrawn again.

The car had gone on around the house when he finished, and the Saint walked after it. Behind him he heard the sinister snuffling of the dogs straining against the chains that held them to the electrically operated mooring post.

The lights were on in the living room which opened off the hall, and the door was open, but any conversation that might have been going on was silenced at the sound of their approaching footsteps. Simon sauntered in ahead of Graner and cast his blithe and genial glance over the three men who were already there.

"Good evening, boys," he murmured amicably. "It's nice to see all your smiling faces gathered together again."

Their faces were not smiling. There was something about their silent and menacing immobility which reminded him of the first time he had seen them, and the impression was heightened by the fact that they were grouped around the table in the same way as before. They sat facing the door, with their faces turned towards him, watching him like wild beasts crouched for a spring. One of Palermo's evil-smelling cigars polluted the atmosphere, and his one open eye was fixed on the Saint in a steady stare of venomous hatred. The scenic effects on his face had been augmented by a blackened bruise that spread over his chin beyond the edges of a piece of sticking plaster and a pair of painfully swollen lips for which the Saint was not really to blame. Aliston drooped opposite him, in his flabby way, with the pallor of anxiety making his aristocratic countenance look like a milky mask. Between them sat Lauber, with his heavy brows drawn down in a vicious scowl. He was the only one who moved as the Saint came in. He put a hand inside the breast of his coat and brought out a gun to level it across the table.

"Put 'em high," he said harshly.

Simon put them high. Aliston got up and undulated round the table to get behind him. His hands slid over the Saint's pockets.

The Saint grinned at Graner with conspiratorial glee.

"Is this the way you always receive your guests, Reuben?" he drawled.

Graner's eyes gave back no answering gleam of sympathy.

"I am not receiving a guest, Mr Tombs," he said, and there was just something about the way he said it that made the Saint's heart stop beating.

Graner might have been going to say something more, but whatever might have been on the tip of his tongue was cut off by Aliston's sudden exclamation.

The Saint looked round, and his heart started off again. It started so violently that his pulses raced.

Aliston was backing away from him, and he held an envelope in his hand. Simon recognised it at the first glance. It was the belated letter which had been handed to him at the hotel, which he had stuffed carelessly into his pocket and completely forgotten under the pressure of the other things that were on his mind. Aliston was gaping at it with dilated eyes, and his face had gone even whiter. With an abrupt jerky movement he flung it on the table in front of the others.

"Tombs!" he said hoarsely. "His name isn't Tombs! Look at that. His name's Simon Templar. You know what that means, don't you? He's the Saint!"

3 Simon could feel the ripple of electricity that quivered through the room, and was philosophical enough to recognise that there were advantages as well as disadvantages in possessing a reputation like his. Palermo and Lauber seemed to be clinging to their chairs as if the revelation had brought them a stronger feeling of apprehension than of triumph. Aliston was frankly trembling.

Graner stepped forward and peered closely into the Saint's face.

"You!" he barked.

Even he was shaken by the shock which had hammered the others back to silence. The Saint nodded imperturbably.

"That's right." He knew that it would be a waste of time to try and deny it. "I don't mind letting you in on the secret-I was getting tired of being called Tombs, anyway."

A moment went by before Graner recovered himself.

"In that case," he said, with his voice smooth and sneering again, "it only makes our success more satisfying."

"Oh yes," said the Saint. "Nobody's going to stop you collecting your medals. It was a nifty piece of work, Reuben-very nifty."

He needed no further confirmation of that. The intuitive comprehension of Graner's cunning which had cramped his intestines a few seconds ago was now settled into his understanding as one of the immutable facts of life.

He had been caught-very niftily. Graner had opened his parlour door, and the fly had walked in on its toes. Simon realised that he had underrated Reuben Graner's talents as a strategist. If he had been a little less sure of himself, he would have stopped to admit that a man whose plotting had amassed the collection of jewels which he had seen in the safe upstairs couldn't be the complete sucker which Graner had sometimes appeared to be. Graner had been on the wrong track, that was all. When he got moving in the right direction, he had a beautiful style. The Saint admitted it. Only a consummate tactician, a past master of the arts of psychology and guile, could have thought up the story which had led him so neatly into the trap-the one story in all the realms of unwritten fiction which could possibly have hooked an old fish like the Saint. It had been so adroitly put together that Graner hadn't even suggested going to the house, If he had shown the least sign of eagerness for that move, the Saint might have been put on his guard. But Graner hadn't needed to. The Saint had proposed the visit himself, which was exactly what a consummate psychologist and tactician would have known he would do; and Graner had even been able to raise a few halfhearted objections to the proposal. . . . Oh yes; Graner was entitled to help himself to his medal. Simon bore no malice about it. It had been a grand story, and he still liked it.

After which perfunctory raising of the mental hat,.he passed rapidly on to consider the next move. And nothing was more obvious than that it would have to be made quickly.

Graner's recovery was having a restorative effect on the others. Simon could feel their relaxation in the diminishing tension of the atmosphere. Aliston was regaining control of his jittered nerves. Palermo was pulling again at his unsavoury cigar, and the red lights in his one good eye were burning hotter. Only Lauber was still hunched stiffly over his gun, as though he could not quite convince himself that the alarming situation was well in hand.

"Perhaps you would like to sit down, Mr Templar," Graner said softly.

"That's quite an idea, Reuben, since we're booked for a conference. This position does get a bit tiring --"

"You can quit that line of talk, see ?"

Palermo jumped out of his chair, with one clenched fist raised. Graner checked him.

"Wait a minute."

"I'll knock that grin off his face"

"I said wait a minute. There will be plenty of time for that."

"That's right, Art," said the Saint kindly. "Sit down and save what's left of your nasty little face. It's the only one you've got, and if you hit me I shall certainly hit you again."

"If you try to hit anyone," grated Lauber,"I'll --"

"You'll put your gun away and hope for the best. You're not going to shoot me if you can possibly help it, because you still want to ask me too many questions."

Graner drew up a chair.

"I should not advise you to rely too much on that," he remarked sleekly. "If you attempt to fight anybody you will certainly be shot."

Palermo subsided slowly into his chair. He was still shaking with passion. The Saint opened his cigarette case on the table and continued to smile at him.

"That's something for you to look forward to, Art. And believe me, It does the heart good to see you so full of virtue and esprit de corps again." He glanced back at Graner. "In a way, you disappoint me, Reuben. I told you I thought you'd be a mug to swallow all the tales these birds have been telling you, and I'm still thinking it."

"Seems to me that this proves we did the right thing," Aliston contradicted him aggressively.

Graner giggled-a queerly incongruous sound that was not at all comic to listen to.

"I think you are still wasting your time, Templar," be said.

The Saint shook his head reproachfully, although inwardly he was nodding. If you looked at it that way, the revelation of his identity did seem to have thinned away the chances of picking holes in Aliston's story. In fact, it must almost have made Aliston seem entitled to a medal of his own; but the Saint wasn't going to award it.

"You jump to too many conclusions, brother. Certainly I've been interfering with all of you. But I didn't start it. You were all so busy double-crossing each other that the obvious thing seemed to be to join in. Just because you've discovered that I wasn't the one dumb innocent in the party doesn't make the rest of you into a lot of little mothers' darlings. Now suppose you look at each other-if. you can stand the strain for a few minutes"

"Suppose you let me do the talking," Graner put in acidly.

Simon spread out his hands.

"But my dear soul, I know it all so well. I've listened to it so many times that I've lost count of them. You're going to say that you want to ask me some questions."

"Which you are going to answer."

"Which I'm not going to answer if I don't feel like it. Then you look at me with an evil leer and say, 'Ha-ha, me proud beauty, but I have ways of making people feel like it!' The audience goes into a cold sweat and waits for you to bring on the trained cobras."

"I expect you will find our methods effective enough."

"I doubt it, Reuben. I take an awful lot of persuading. Besides, what are 'our' methods? Are you speaking as royalty, or who else is 'we'?"

"You can see us," snapped Aliston.

The Saint nodded without shifting his benign and patient smile. He was playing his last cards and he meant to make the most of them. With all of them united against him, he hadn't a chance; but he knew on what fragile foundations their newly recovered unity was based. He had to break them up again, quickly and finally, and hope that a loophole would open for himself in the break-up.

"I know, darling," he said nicely. "I can see all of you. And very beautiful you are. But four people have to have some good reason for calling themselves 'we.' And the question is, have you got it? Are you four minds with but a single thought, four hearts that beat as one? . . . We've already spoken about you, Cecil. Now suppose we speak reverently for a moment about Comrade Palermo. There he is, with his beautiful piebald face --"

Palermo started up again.

"You son of a --"

"Bishop is the word you want," said the Saint helpfully. "But you ought to have known my grandmother. She was a female archdeacon, and could she deac!"

"When I get at you," Palermo said lividly, "you're going to wish you hadn't been so funny."

"Sit down, Art." Simon's voice was coldly tranquil. "Uncle Reuben will spank you if you don't behave. We'll leave you alone for a while if you're so sensitive-you go under the same heading as Aliston, anyway. Let's talk about Comrade Lauber instead."

"I wouldn't," Lauber advised him grimly.

The Saint sighed.

"You see?" he said. "If you didn't have any secrets from each other, if you were just a happy band of brothers, you wouldn't be nearly so scared. But you aren't Even Uncle Reuben made me a proposition------"

"Only for one reason," Graner said stolidly.

"I know. But it was a proposition. And you put it over so earnestly that I can't help feeling you rather liked it, even if it was just supposed to be a stall. If things had gone differently --"

Graner rapped his knuckles on the table.

"I think you've talked long enough," he said. "You will now listen to what I have to say."

There was an audible tightness in his throat which had not been there before-it was hardly noticeable enough to define, but it told the Saint that his last shot had gone very near the mark. And other indications were reaching him at the same time from the surrounding atmosphere, like electrical vibrations impinging on a sensitive instrument. The tension which had started to relax was coming back. The other three, Aliston and Palermo and Lauber, were leaning unconsciously towards him, sitting stiffly from the tautness of their muscles, watching him as if they were watching a smouldering fuse that might explode a charge of dynamite at any instant.

The Saint shrugged contentedly.

"By all manner of means, Reuben," he said oblig­ingly. "But who's going to listen?"

"We'll all listen," snarled Lauber.

"And will you all be quite sure that it's safe for the rest of you to hear? I'm not promising anything, but you might get some valuable information out of me; and then one of you might use it for himself."

Graner put the tips of his fingers together in his old-maidish way.

"That will not concern yon," he said ironically.

"But I think it concerns all of us," said the Saint. "Get your senses together and look at it. We've all been dashing about in different directions, trying to cut each other's throats. Now we seem to have got joined up again. Let's stay that way. You've got Christine. I've still got the other two. Let's put our cards on the table and see how the hand plays out."

Aliston's sharp falsetto laugh twittered across the room.

"You must think we're a lot of fools," he said scornfully.

"Would you be a bigger fool to trust me than to trust a little punk like Palermo? Would Graner be a bigger fool to trust me than to trust a thickheaded windbag like Lauber? You, Art-after the way Aliston ratted on you when he thought things were getting too hot-d'you still feel he's your soul mate? Have you forgotten that clout Lauber gave you on the kisser? Lauber-do you remember how Palermo and Aliston wanted to kiss you and put you to bed the first night I came here? And Graner-what has he done --"

"That is enough!"

The shrillness in Graner's voice had gone up a note or two. He stood up, as if in that position he felt it would be easier to re-establish the dominance that was slipping away from him.

"All right!" The Saint's voice also rose, intentionally, as he played into the rising tempo of the situation. "Then you do the talking. And you take the consequences. I don't care much if you all double-cross each other to death. I'll help you!"

"Are you going to answer my questions ?"

"Anything you like. But don't blame me if the answers don't please everybody."

"Where's Joris?"

"When I last saw him he was at the hotel."

"And the other man?"

"I told you I lost him at the Casino."

"Was that the truth?"

"No, Reuben. It wasn't."

"Where is he?"

"I haven't the foggiest idea. He might be roaming around anywhere. He may be at the hotel too."

"When are you supposed to meet them?"

"I'm not. I've done all the meeting I have to do."

"What do you know about the ticket?"

"Nearly everything," said the Saint quietly.

Lauber's chair grated on the floor as he pushed it back. He got up like a whale rising to the surface.

"Let me talk to him," he said; and the Saint laughed at him.

"I'll bet you'd like to! But I warned you my answers wouldn't please everybody. You all asked for it. Now you can have it."

"You --"

Graner swung round.

"Be quiet, Lauber. I am doing the questioning." He turned back to the Saint, with his eyes hard and glittering behind his glasses. "You can go on answering me, Templar. Where is the ticket?"

"So far as I know, it's where Lauber put it."

"You god-damn liar!" Lauber roared savagely.

The Saint's cool blue eyes rested on him unruffledly, and the whole of the Saint's mind was at peace with the prevision of triumph. He could feel the volcanic pressure in the air, the clash of antagonised minds locked in a silent struggle with themselves and each other.