The Saint in Pursuit

1

All the intensely individual interests which had been launched like homing missiles in the general direction o£ Vicky Kinian from such diverse silos as Washington, Tokyo, and the American Midwest, and Simon Templar could only speculate where else, had now converged upon a single city, and even two small parts of that city: a place of accommodation for the living and a place of accommodation for the dead, the Hotel Portal and the Cimetière Internationale. And some of the personages involved in Vicky Kinian’s treasure hunt were soon to find that the shortest route between the two locations was not necessarily a straight line.

The Saint, returning to the hotel from the cemetery after observing Vicky’s fascination with a memorial to German exiles, had not for a moment forgotten the mysterious disappearance in a Lisbon alley of a vital letter that he had not had time to read, and was continuously alert to the uncomfortable fact that he himself might be under somebody else’s watchful eye. But unless he had searched behind each potted plant in the Portal’s lobby like the folkloric old spinster looking under beds, he would have had no way of knowing that Curt Jaeger, ensconced in a low chair behind the additional cover of the largest newspaper he could buy, was watching every step he took towards the elevator with an ardour that should have wilted the foliage of his verdurous ambuscade.

The Saint had one objective in his own mind at the moment, and although it had some concern with the dead it was considerably less violent than the thoughts that were reaching their logical climax in Jaeger’s head at just the same time. Jaeger was a man of quick decision who believed in the tactical value of a minimum of delay and a maximum of force. He had done his homework. He knew what Simon Templar looked like and he knew his room number. Now it was only a matter of putting a simple but utterly deadly plan into effect.

When the elevator doors had closed behind the Saint, Jaeger got up from his chair, put aside his newspaper neatly folded on a nearby table, pressed one arm close against his ribs to feel the reassuring hardness of the thing that was concealed there, and followed the path his prey had taken across the Portal’s thick carpet.

The Saint, in the meantime, had reached his room on the sixth floor and was taking from a drawer a small wooden box which opened into an inexpensive (so that it would not arouse the evaluating instincts of Customs inspectors) traveller’s chess board. When the chessmen were put aside, only a twist of the box’s catch was necessary to reveal the false bottom where — in a bed of cotton — lay certain implements designed to circumvent the locksmith’s most cunning defences. The mechanism that held the door of the German memorial tombstone closed was a good one, but there was sure to be something in the Saint’s kit that would quickly overcame its resistance.

He did not know what he would find in that macabre oversized strongbox, but he admired the ingenuity of whoever had chosen it as an open-air bank vault and he was determined to get to it ahead of Vicky Kinian. She would spend some time pondering how to break into it, and in any case she would almost certainly wait until it was dark before she took any action. While she was being cannily cautious, the Saint would exercise qualities more natural to him and open the shrine while there was still a little daylight left.

He glanced out of the window of his room as he slipped the chess box into his jacket pocket. The sun had already disappeared and the street lights down in the street six floors below were beginning to win their competition with the fading glow in the sky above. Simon felt sure that if he hurried he could be back from the burying ground in time to invite Vicky Kinian out for a truce dinner and a pipe of peace before she even began to get up her nerve to leave the hotel.

There was, however, a slight preliminary delay.

Simon turned from the window, strode to the door of his room, and opened it to find himself looking straight at the open snout of a large black automatic. Just beyond the automatic, and balanced like a man who knew and was ready for the recoil of a large-calibre pistol, was Curt Jaeger.

“Step back and let me in,” he commanded in a low voice, “or I’ll shoot you on the spot.”

He was already on the threshold, and the Saint had no encouragement to doubt that his visitor would carry out the threat with the least reasonable provocation. Simon moved backward into his room as the other man, just slightly shorter than himself, stepped inside and closed and locked the door behind without taking the concentration of either his gun or his cold eyes off the Saint’s face.

“Why, you must be Curt Jaeger!” Simon said cordially. “I was wondering when you’d be dropping in to swap a few war stories.”

“So you know who I am,” Jaeger said, not allowing himself to betray any great surprise. “That will save tiresome questions.”

The Saint had stopped near the middle of the room. Jaeger, keeping a cautious distance, held the automatic aimed steadily at his chest.

“Not entirely,” Simon said. “You must have been on this treasure hunt for a long time, if your dossier reads anything like I think it does. I just haven’t figured why the big shots of the Third Reich would’ve shared their biggest secret with a punk bully-boy like you must have been in 1945.”

“They did not,” Jaeger replied. “All who knew the details died in Berlin or Nuremberg. I happened to be in Portugal at the end, and... But why should I be telling you anything?”

“Because you must be bursting to regale somebody with tales of your exploits after all these years — and because I think you’d love to rub my nose in your colossal brilliance before you rub me out. Unless of course you just dropped in to get my autograph or tell me to be out of town by sunrise.”

Jaeger’s slight nod indicated his appreciation of the Saint’s logic.

“I happened to be in Portugal and to catch up with your Major Kinian, who had killed one of our top agents and taken information from him that was known — until then-only at the highest levels. I was lucky enough to catch Kinian and be the only one to question him — and I have waited too long to use what I learned to let you rob me!”

The Saint was completely relaxed, his hands loose at his sides.

“Apparently you aren’t such a genius at asking questions if you waited this long and still haven’t found the goodies.”

“Kinian was wounded already, and I had to use rather heavy methods to get his cooperation. Unfortunately he died before he could finish talking, but he said enough to tell me that I only had to wait until his daughter was twenty-one, and watch her.”

“Only now you don’t have the exclusive on that,” said Simon.

“In a moment I shall,” Jaeger retorted with grim quietness. “Step back and open the window.”

“It seems cool enough in here to me already,” said the Saint. “In fact the atmosphere is downright chilly.”

“Your comfort is the last thing that interests me at the moment. Do as I tell you. Step backward to the window and open it.”

Simon still stood his ground.

“It’s getting dark in here, and while I don’t want to cast any aspersions on your marksmanship I’d hate you to mess me up with a lousy shot. The light switch is right beside you.”

The harsh line of Jaeger’s lips warped into the trace of a smile.

“Thank you for your kind advice, but I have no intention of giving a shooting exhibition on a floodlit stage. Just open the window.”

The Saint stepped slowly back to the tall window, which reached from knee level almost to the ceiling. Before he reached for the handle which would swing it open he spoke to Jaeger again. He felt sure that nothing he could say would have any effect on the other’s murderous intentions, but as long as he could stall them there was at least a chance that his luck might produce some kind of accident or interruption that would throw Jaeger off guard.

“If you’re really determined to pop off that little cannon, wouldn’t you rather have the window shut so it’ll make less noise outside? I could even draw the curtains.”

“Your thoughtfulness touches me deeply,” said Jaeger. “But you must take me for an idiot.”

“A natural mistake,” Simon said apologetically. “All I really had to judge by was your face.”

Any hint of amusement which might have been on Jaeger’s lips had completely evaporated, and his voice was hard and biting.

“I am not here to waste time talking. Open it!”

The Saint opened it. As the glass swung outward, a breeze sharp with the feel and taste of Alpine ice swept into the room, rustling the heavy drapes. Even in summer the peaks which towered not far from the city let nobody forget their snowy domination. Death and the white glaciers high above clouds in the moonlight seemed brothers at this moment, and the Saint sensed that the dark wind which swept down from them had coursed through his whole life, filling every instant with the crystalline tingle of supernal frost.

The barrel of the black pistol was levelled at his chest.

“Turn around,” Jaeger said softly.

“Maybe we can make a deal,” the Saint said without moving. “Has it occurred to you that I might have some information you could use?”

“No, it has not,” Jaeger answered, “and I don’t believe that anything you say could convince me. I’ve done well enough so far on my own, and I don’t need any deals with anybody. Turn around and face the window.”

“If you shoot,” Simon said calmly, “there’ll be people all over you before you can get out of the door.”

Jaeger’s voice crackled with a tension like static electricity.

“Turn around immediately!”

The Saint obeyed, shifting his position so that he stood facing the open window. Ahead of him, across a wide void of empty air, was the tall apartment building that faced the Hotel Portal from the far side of a traffic circle. Below, just beyond the window ledge but a long way beneath it, were the canopy of the hotel’s marquee, the taxis with headlights like flashlight beams, and foreshortened views of miniature people.

Behind him, Simon could hear Curt Jaeger moving, stepping very quietly across the carpet towards the window. A sensation of warming confidence began to spread through the Saint’s veins.

“You wouldn’t be thinking of saving ammunition, would you, Curt?” he inquired. “Considering something even sneakier than a shot in the back — and less noisy?”

Jaeger, predictably, made no reply, and just as predictably he came on towards Simon’s back. The Saint’s acute hearing measured each step the other man took, plotted his distance, noted the rustle of the material of his jacket as he raised his gun arm above Simon’s head, poising the heavy barrel before smashing it down on the back of his skull.

Then, with a timing that allowed only the shaving of a second’s error, the Saint exploded into action. His whole body ducked and whirled just as Jaeger chopped down with the automatic, and it was only Jaeger’s wrist that landed on Simon’s shoulder — a harmless blunting of the blow that was to have cracked his head with a handful of steel.

In the same tornado of movement that saved him from being knocked out of the window, Simon turned from defence to offence. One of his elbows smashed into Jaeger’s ribs and sent him staggering away. With a speed and balance that left his adversary in total confusion, he continued his pivot, snatched Jaeger’s gun arm, and with a bone-shattering chop of his straightened right hand bashed the pistol out of the man’s fingers to the floor.

Jaeger gave a yelp of pain and struck out wildly with his other fist. It caught Simon harmlessly on a protective forearm, but his own fist was more effective. It made forceful contact with Jaeger’s anatomy in the vicinity of his private beer-cellar, doubling him up and flinging him back against the wall not far from the open window.

“Give up, chum,” Simon said. “You didn’t figure on having to fight for your loot, and you’ve gone too soft to handle anything tougher than a lightweight female.”

Jaeger, wheezing for breath, grabbed up a sharp-edged glass ashtray and hurled it at the Saint. It flew past Simon’s ear and thumped on to the sofa.

“If you mistreat the crockery I’ll have to ask you to leave,” said the Saint.

He went after his opponent again, and Jaeger countered by trying for a clinch, tangling Simon’s arms with his own and using all his weight to push him back towards the window. The Saint balked, braced himself, and freed a hand. He cocked back his fist and unleashed a short jab at Jaeger’s nose. Jaeger staggered, letting go his grip on Simon, and launched a vicious kick.

The Saint caught the flying foot in midair.

“Sorry to behave badly for a host,” he said, “but I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

With both hands on Jaeger’s ankle he whipped him around in a perfectly timed swing that sent the other man not against the wall this time, but straight at the open window...

And suddenly there was only one man left in the room.

Simon braced himself on the window frame and looked down, secure in the knowledge that there were no lights on to reveal his interest to anybody in the street below or in the neighbouring buildings. There was a hole in the glass outcrop of the marquee six storeys down, and great excitement among the people on the sidewalk. Jaeger’s sudden ungainly appearance in front of the hotel was already public knowledge, but nobody — unless someone had happened to be looking directly upwards as he made his unsuccessful attempt to defy the force which controlled Newton’s apple — would know from which window he had fallen.

The Saint felt no remorse. Jaeger had taken precisely what he had intended to dish out, no more and no less, and nothing could have been fairer than that.

Simon checked to make sure that his double purpose chess box was still in his jacket pocket, and went to the door — a means of egress he much preferred to the one the late Curt Jaeger had planned for him. He would be out of the hotel before the police could begin to unfurl their clumsy nets, and Curt Jaeger’s Luger — the only thing which could connect the Saint’s room with the fallen man — would go with him.

2

“Ghou!” Vicky Kinian said accusingly to herself.

“An aperitif, mademoiselle?” the white-haired waiter asked.

Vicky looked up from the spotless surface of her small table. Outside the sidewalk café of the Beau Rivage the Quai du Mont-Blanc was almost dark. Within half an hour she could safely proceed with the task ahead of her. In the meantime, she wondered, what would be the best booster for a girl who was about to do her first job of grave-robbing?

“An Old Fashioned,” she said, and then remembered she was in Switzerland and not in the Kit Kat Steak House in southern Des Moines. “Oh, I don’t guess you’d have that...”

“Of course, mademoiselle. Immediately.”

The aged cupbearer limped away to fetch her drink, and Vicky continued to meditate nervously on her immediate future. She told herself that she was not really a grave-robber, of course, since her father’s instructions clearly specified which of the urns in the cemetery shrine contained not human ashes but something — just what she still did not know — much less necromantic and much more valuable. All she had to do was break through the monument’s glass door and take the metal box marked Josef Meier, and then run — no, walk — out of the graveyard. It was not really so ghoulish, and it would all be over in a matter of minutes.

The old waiter came back with her Old Fashioned. She bypassed the vegetation and gulped down the whisky, gratefully feeling the warmth hit her stomach all at once and begin to filter through her bloodstream.

She looked out at the street again. Passing cars were using their lights and she could no longer think of any excuse to delay. She fumbled too much money on to the table and left the café without waiting for the waiter to express his appreciation. Within a few seconds she was able to hail a passing taxi. She had vaguely hoped that every means of public transport in Geneva might by some fortuitous circumstance be occupied or out of working order for the next twelve hours, thus depriving her of the opportunity of doing what she both longed to do and dreaded.

But the cab driver, against all the laws of cab drivers’ temperament, did not even twitch a querulous eyebrow when she asked him to take her to the Cimetière Internationale, much less turn her down flat as she was secretly hoping he would. He phlegmatically pushed his meter and his engine into gear, and took off towards the desired location with distressing speed by the most efficient possible route.

All Vicky’s hopes for blowouts or mechanical disasters came to naught, and within an incredibly short time she was being ferried along the almost unpopulated road on the edge of the city which led to the entrance of the cemetery.

“Cimetière Internationale?” the driver called over his shoulder, as if giving her a last chance to change her mind.

“Yes,” she answered.

A few minutes later the automobile came to a stop in front of the open gates which she had passed through earlier in the day. The area had no artificial lights, and the only illumination came from an almost full moon rising above the steep hills to the east. The many-shaped monuments in the graveyard beyond its barred fence looked like grotesque emerging creatures from an infernal world frozen in position for a moment by the sound of the car.

Again she almost changed her mind. She could simply sit where she was and tell the driver to take her back to the easy safety of the Hotel Portal. But that would also be going back to the easy dull safety of eight hours a day at the telephone office — and admitting that when her one big chance had come to make her life something more than a digit in the bottomless arithmetic of the Welfare State she had flubbed because she had the heebie-jeebies.

She got out of the taxi. She wanted desperately to ask the driver to wait, but she had already decided that that would be too risky. He could not see the shrine to German exiles from where he was parked, but the sound of breaking glass might easily carry to his ears through the quiet night, and in any case he could be a possible source of all sorts of complications. Besides he was pretending not to understand English as she questioned him about the fare, though he had understood her perfectly well when he had picked her up, which probably meant that he would have refused to comprehend that she wanted him to wait, even if she had asked him.

He took her money and drove away after giving her a final look which she was sure could only be described as pitying. She watched the red taillights disappear and then turned to face the cemetery gate. There was no sign of another living human being in any direction. On the road which circled the boundary of the graveyard there was not even the sound of an automobile to replace the frightening emptiness in her brain left by the departed taxi. Her only company was the lopsided ball of the moon which silvered the jumble of tombstones ahead of her.

Much as she disliked being alone in such a place, for strictly practical reasons she was far more worried about running into human than into ghostly interference. She thought she could safely assume that the Swiss, like most other people, had no taste for strolling in cemeteries at night.

Vicky took a deep breath and walked through the gate. She continued decisively and quickly down the gravel path towards the location of the German memorial. Something cautioned her, however, to avoid making too much noise, and as she got closer to the monument she slowed her pace and moved so quietly that she could scarcely hear her own footsteps.

Then she stopped.

She was almost within sight of the monument, and she thought that a faint scratching or scraping noise had come from its direction. Poised without breathing, she listened. The only sounds now were the background chirping and semi-musical sawing of nocturnal insects. It wouldn’t have been surprising if her imagination had tended to embellish nature a bit.

She walked on, however, more cautiously than ever. Turning a corner in the path she came within sight of the memorial silhouetted against the brilliantly moonlit sky. Its face was in deep shadow, but as she moved on towards it, approaching to within fifty yards, she saw a shadow stir. Something like true petrifaction seized her, so that she could not move even a finger. The dim shape by the monument moved again, but she could only make out that it was big enough to be human and was not a stray dog or cat.

Self-preservation almost screamed at her, urging her to run, calling in nightmare panic to set her feet moving. But Vicky Kinian had come a long way from her last schoolgirl Hallowe’en, and once having straddled life and gotten the reins in her hands she felt an even stronger instinct to hold on and not be thrown.

Suddenly anger began to replace fright. Somebody was meddling with her shrine, and she was not about to leave before she had at least seen who it was and what he was doing. She suspected that Simon Templar, true to his mystical nickname, had somehow found out the secret of the monument and was busily in the process of trying to steal her inheritance. If so, she would have no hesitation about walking up and bashing him on the head with her purse.

Her very readiness to attack the Saint in a lonely graveyard with nothing more deadly than a handbag showed a certain faith in his gallantry which she did not recognize in herself until later. But that trust did make her careless. She did not take quite the extremes of care in sneaking up for a closer look at the memorial that she might have otherwise. She tiptoed from tombstone to tombstone, working her way towards the great stone eagle that brooded on top of the exile’s monument, trying to make out what the figure at the base of the edifice was doing.

When she was within fifty feet she could make out the man’s back. The scraping noise she had heard had apparently been the sound of a glasscutter. Now, using some kind of suction device with a short handle, he was removing the whole curved sheet of glass from the memorial’s door and setting it on the ground beside him. She noticed that he did not then reach immediately for one of the metal boxes on the shelves inside, but stood there as if undecided what to do next.

Vicky decided to move nearer, and as she did the toe of her high-heeled shoe caught on a stone ridge surrounding one of the burial plots, and she almost fell. A pebble clattered. The man at the monument pivoted, stared about into the darkness, and slunk quickly away among the tombstones and scattered trees to her right.

She waited, surprised that the poacher had given up so quickly, and disturbed by a new realization: she had seen enough to know that the man beside the monument had not been the Saint. Who he was she had no idea. Nothing about him had been familiar, and though she had not seen his face as more than a shadowy blur she was sure she did not know him. Had he followed her earlier in the day, or did he have some other source of information? Crouched in the shadow of a gravestone, she turned over the possibilities in her mind while she wavered between running away as fast as she could, and waiting, as still as a terrified rabbit, until she felt the danger had passed.

The way of the rabbit seemed safer. The man had, after all, not seen her, and he might decide that the rattling stone signalled no danger to him. In that case he would come back soon and begin his work again. If he had been really frightened, though, he might leave the cemetery and give her a chance at the urns. Either way, there was no point in revealing her presence.

She waited a long time. The moon rose a short but quite perceptible distance further above the big memorial’s stone eagle than it had been when she had first stooped and hidden in the shadows. There was still no sound or other trace of her rival’s whereabouts. She decided finally, after many minutes, and when one of her legs had gone completely to sleep, that the man had done just what he had seemed to be doing: hurried away from the monument and fled as inconspicuously as possible out of the cemetery.

The thought that he had been so easily discomfited gave Vicky a new sense of her own powers. She stood up, got some circulation restored to her numbed leg, and walked with as much confidence as she could summon to the opened shrine. A musty smell came from the shelves, which were having their first exposure to fresh air for twenty-five years or more. Her eyes were becoming more and more accustomed to the darkness, and the moon was distributing more light as it rose higher, but even so she could just barely make out the name-plates on the metal funerary boxes. Luckily the position of the reputed remains of Josef Meier at the left end of the upper shelf had remained fixed in her mind since that afternoon.

Gingerly she raised her arms and touched the box with just the tips of her fingers. Finding herself still undemolished by divinely hurled thunderbolts, she took the full weight of the box in her hands and carried it into the moonlight. There was no lock holding the lid closed, only a sliding catch made of chrome, but the catch was hard to move after so many years and for several seconds she exerted all her strength in an effort to budge it.

She was so intently occupied that she did not hear the very slight rustling in the shrubs just behind her; or if she did, it remained in the periphery of her consciousness, automatically interpreted as the brushing of a wind-gust through the leaves. When the rustle suddenly became the crashing plunge of a heavy body through foliage not ten feet away from her, she was too shocked and horrified even to scream.

She whirled, and leaping at her was a shadowed figure whose face — limp-featured and grotesque like a rubber mask — was as grey as death itself in the moonlight.

Stumbling back, she would have screamed then, but the man’s hands were on her. Fingers clamped across her windpipe and closed off her nose and mouth. No trace of oxygen could get to her lungs and no cry could escape from her throat.

The man dodged behind her, pulling her back against him as he kept up his relentless deadly pressure. The small resting-place of Josef Meier fell to the ground. All she wanted now was air, but there was none for her in the whole universe.

As her sight dimmed, the moon, emotionless and cold, having seen many such things in its time, seemed to fill her whole brain like a painfully gigantic glowing bubble ready to burst.

3

The Saint walked inconspicuously out of the Hotel Portal, past a preoccupied desk clerk, and then past the swarm of excited gawkers who surrounded the broken body of Curt Jaeger which lay on the sidewalk just a few paces beyond the entrance doors. A lack of curiosity would have seemed particularly noteworthy under the circumstances, so Simon dutifully paid a last homage to his would-be murderer by momentarily craning his neck on the edge of the crowd in a mock effort to see the crumpled remains.

Then he hurried on to his rented car with as much urgency as he dared to show, and a few minutes later was speeding towards the Cimetière Internationale. He had intended to be there long before this. Now the sky was completely dark, and as he moved from traffic light to traffic light away from the center of the city he could catch glimpses of the not quite full moon above the tops of houses and between apartment blocks. If he had wasted too much time in his last waltz with Jaeger he might very well find that Vicky Kinian — or some less deserving party, such as a lieutenant of Jaeger’s — might already have scooped whatever riches lay in the multiple tomb of the German exiles.

He could not afford to stop his car too near the cemetery gate. He cut its lights and coasted to a stop as near the entrance as he dared. Running the rest of the way to the memorial would have been the most efficient but not the safest course. He could risk a sprint only as far as the gate. Then, avoiding the noisy gravel paths in favor of the damp grass, he walked unerringly through the dark maze of tombstones towards the German shrine.

When he came within sight of it he saw something that brought him to an abrupt halt. Bent low in the darkness, he could make out the form of a woman on the ground and a man getting to his feet from beside her. The man was turning his attention to something else on the ground nearby, and the Saint, as stealthily silent as a Mohican, raced forward across the uneven turf.

A few yards behind the man he stopped, and then moved forward more slowly. When he was within striking distance, he cupped his hands to his mouth and gave a shout that might conceivably have caused some alarm even six feet below the graveyard’s surface.

“Boo!”

The object of his salutation gave an unrehearsed standing high jump that would have won the admiration of an Olympic coach. Simon made no move to attack. He stood with his hands on his hips as his victim scrambled for new footing that would let him see and face the threat that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. The metal box the man had been holding when he was surprised had clattered to the ground. Now he was fumbling a weighted leather bludgeon out of his pocket as he stared around frantically for a way of escape. But the Saint, tall and confident in the darkness, had him with his back to the center of the concave memorial.

“Come now,” Simon said, “don’t you believe in ghosts? You can’t hurt me with that little bean-bag or anything else.”

His opponent was apparently the skeptical type. He squared off, raising his leather cosh threateningly.

“You’ll give yourself a heart attack if you don’t calm down,” the Saint cautioned. “Why don’t you put that thing away and tell me a few true ghost stories — such as how a zombie like you managed to get out of his crypt before Hallowe’en.”

In reply, the bludgeon lashed out, hissing in the air as its owner swung it at Simon’s head. The Saint, with an almost imperceptible leaning back and to one side, avoided the blow and let it whistle harmlessly past his chin.

“I warned you about ghosts,” he said.

The other man had thrown all his weight into the swing, and it was ridiculously easy for Simon to reach out, help his opponent to continue the motion beyond its intended limit, and hurl him off balance across an outstretched leg. The forced pirouette came to an abrupt and ungraceful conclusion when Simon’s flat stiffened hand chopped down like a guillotine on the back of his enemy’s neck and sent him sprawling unconscious on the paved path.

In the vacuum of silence that followed, Simon strode to the woman on the ground, knowing before he knelt and turned her face to the moonlight that it would be Vicky Kinian. His only immediate worry was whether she would be alive or not. With an eye out for any other night owls who might decide to crash the party, he turned the girl on to her back and reached for her wrist.

At first he could not find her pulse, and she was horribly white in the moonlight. Then, as he took a tentative new searching grip on her limp wrist she heaved a deep sigh and exhaled with the moan of a child having a bad dream.

“I guess you’ll live,” Simon murmured. “Though I can’t say you really deserve to.”

She could not have heard him, and he saw no need to rush her into consciousness. He lowered her head gently to the ground again and moved back to the man he had laid to temporary rest a short while before. Inside his jacket pocket was a Soviet passport, which Simon examined by the cupped light of a pencil flashlight.

“Mischa Ruspine,” the Saint read, and failed to fit either the name or the face into his private rogues gallery. “Mischa Ruspine of euphonious name, how do you fit into this Bald Mountain lawn-fête?”

Mischa, instead of answering, gave every indication of having sacked out for the night. Simon left him to go to the metal box that the other had flung to the ground in his moment of sudden terror. It had landed upside down and open. When the Saint lifted it, a single thin packet wrapped in oilcloth fell to the cement. There was nothing else in the container — not even a dust-particle of the chemical constituents of one Josef Meier whom the box’s name-plate advertised as resting therein.

Before the Saint could unfold the oilcloth, however, there were new signs of life from Vicky Kinian. She took several quick breaths, gave a little cry, and tried to sit up. Then she saw Simon’s face clearly in the moonlight.

“You!”

“Well, good evening,” he said soothingly. “Don’t look so scared. I’m not the guy who mugged you.”

She answered groggily.

“I... guess you weren’t. I saw him...” She suddenly was frightened. “Is he—”

“He’s still with us,” Simon told her, “but he’s had a visit from the Sandman and is now relaxing in relative peace. His name is Mischa Ruspine. Do you know him?”

With a helping arm from the Saint, Vicky sat up, propping herself with one hand.

“No,” she said. “Who is he?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea, except that he hails from Moscow. You’re lucky to be alive, you know, playing around in dark places with characters like him. You must be more lucky than clever.”

As dazed as she was, she managed to put some fire into her voice.

“And you’re the most aggravating man I’ve ever had butting into my business. I’d be a lot luckier if I’d never seen you!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Simon returned calmly. “If I hadn’t surprised Mischa while he was glomming on to this, you might have been short one clue in your treasure hunt. Or is this the summum bonum we’ve all been cracking heads to get at?”

He held up the thin package that had fallen from the metal box.

“You give me that!” cried the girl.

Simon held it out of her reach, and when she tried to get to her feet dizziness overcame her and he had to help her back to the ground again.

“Easy, now,” he said. “Wait till you’re a bit stronger before you start getting rambunctious.”

“You’ll steal it,” she mumbled.

“So will you if I let you,” said Simon. “We can discuss ethics in a better place than this, though. Take a few deep breaths and let’s get out of here, as they say at least once in every television show.”

While she recovered from her vertigo he reached for the metal box which had held the oilcloth packet and made sure there was nothing else in it, nor any markings in its interior. Then he closed the lid and put the little casket reverently back in its place on the shrine’s upper shelf.

“Alas, poor Josef! I never knew him well, and I suspect he was strictly an imaginary refugee. It would’ve been no problem to get permission to add another urn to the collection here.”

“What is it?” Vicky asked anxiously. “What’s in the package?”

“Something very light,” Simon informed her carelessly. “And knowing your father, probably something absolutely useless, like an envelope full of coded nursery rhymes giving complete instructions for finding the Matterhorn.”

“I don’t think that’s funny.”

“I do,” Simon said unblushingly. “Let’s see just what dear old dad really is up to next — back at the hotel. I’d like to get moving before Mischa wakes up or somebody else comes along.”

He helped her to her feet and supported her at his side as they walked slowly back to the cemetery gate and his car.

Behind them, glasses glinting in the pale light of the moon, a short rotund figure stepped cautiously from a group of trees, and a plump hand switched off the electrical current of a kind of hearing device.

The man with the Vandyke beard walked from his hiding place to the monument to German refugees. Out at the cemetery’s boundary he heard a car engine start and move away through four gears. He could move and talk freely now. He went over to Mischa Ruspine and prodded him with the toe of a well-polished shoe. Mischa grunted and lay still. The man with the white beard kicked him in the waist several times with increasing impatience.

Finally Mischa revived sufficiently to realize where he was and to remember what had happened. When he saw the formidable broad figure of his superior standing over him he at once began to make excuses.

“It was not my fault, Comrade Uzdanov! I had the box and he took me from behind.”

“He was not behind you when he hit you,” Comrade Uzdanov corrected him. “I saw it!”

Mischa was kneeling, holding his bowed head in both hands. Uzdanov moved slightly behind him.

“I will make up for it as soon as I can find him again,” Mischa said.

“There will be no need for that,” Uzdanov said kindly.

His words veiled the fact that he was very quietly twisting the crooked handle of his walking stick and pulling it from the main section of the cane. If Mischa had not been so busy trying to still the throbbing in his head he might have looked around and seen the short slender shaft of steel which projected from the detached handle, glinting frostily in the pallid light.

Uzdanov placed a reassuring hand on Mischa’s shoulder from behind.

“There will be no need,” he repeated. “You are now only a man who knows too much, Mischa — and I cannot trust one with such a record of failures. So goodbye!”

On the last, word he plunged the sharp steel spike deeply between Mischa’s shoulders. A moment later he withdrew the stiletto from his co-worker’s body and left him lying where he slumped. Then, on second thought, he turned and wiped the blade clean on the tail of Mischa’s jacket before replacing it in the cane and locking the sections solidly back into place.

All things neatly attended to, Uzdanov turned on his heel and walked rapidly out of the cemetery whose population he had just increased by one. He was ready to stop listening and watching now. The time had come for action.

4

“I don’t know whether to thank you or call you a rat,” Vicky Kinian said sulkily.

She was huddled in the front passenger seat of the Saint’s rented Volkswagen pouting like a disobedient little girl being whisked home by her father from the school principal’s office. During most of the drive from the Cimetière Internationale she had kept quiet, nursing her hurt pride and throbbing head. As they came to the light-fringed boulevards that bordered Lac Leman she finally gave her vocal facilities a real test and found they were still in fair working order despite the ungentle massage Mischa Ruspine had given her larynx in the graveyard.

“I think you’re horrible for following me and poking into my business,” she opined. “Even though I suppose you might’ve saved my life.”

“I suppose the deed was worth just about that much adulation,” Simon replied cheerfully. “After all, there are lots of American girl tourists in the world; one certainly wouldn’t be missed. Maybe I should just take you back to the cemetery.”

Vicky sat up as if a loose spring had penetrated her seat cushion.

“No!”

“Then try to show a little proper reverence for your mental superiors. Remember, I warned you back in Lisbon that you’d find the going rough on your own.”

“Don’t rub it in,” she answered resentfully.

“I won’t, but I’m afraid the shocks are starting to come thick and fast now. Do you think you can take another one?”

She stared at him, alarmed at his tone of voice.

“Why? Has something else happened?”

“Yes, and you’ll hear about it when you get back to the hotel anyway. It’s about your pal, Curt Jaeger.”

“What about him? And he’s not my pal. I met him on the plane from New York purely by chance.”

Simon concentrated with unusual intensity on making a left turn at an intersection.

“He’s not anybody’s pal now, because purely by chance he tried to throw me out of a window about an hour ago — and fell out himself.”

Vicky gazed at him unbelievingly.

“You mean he’s injured?”

“Quite fatally,” said the Saint, with a perceptible lack of mourning. “Which is just how he wanted me because I was sowing a few weeds in the primrose path he was leading you down.”

Vicky covered her face with her hands and started sobbing.

“You killed him!” she wailed.

“Gravity killed him, with the help of a large section of concrete pavement.” He glanced at her. “I didn’t know you cared so much about him, though.”

She lowered her hands from tear-glazed cheeks and her next words were almost a scream.

“I don’t! I’m having hysterics!”

“You’re much too sophisticated now for hysterics,” Simon intoned soothingly.

“I’m not sophisticated! I wish I’d never left Iowa!” Then she tried hard to get control of herself. “Well, tell me! Why would Curt Jaeger want to kill anybody? He’s just a watch salesman.”

“He’s more a watcher than a salesman,” said the Saint. “I told you that there were probably other competitors in this gold rush.”

“But when he got on the plane in New York he couldn’t possibly have known what I was going to do over here.”

“He’d been keeping an eye on you for years, ever since the end of the war. He was one of Hitler’s Gestapo buckos, and he was the one who was on the same trail your father was. When they met, I’m afraid your father got the worst of it.”

“You mean that’s what happened to my father? Curt Jaeger did something...”

Her words trailed off, and Simon nodded.

“I’m afraid Jaeger killed him. But before he did he found out enough about your father’s plans to make him take a long-term interest in your whereabouts.”

Vicky sat limply beside him, staring straight ahead.

“I feel numb,” she said finally.

“And I don’t blame you.”

He was pulling the car into a parking space not far from the Hotel Portal. Vicky thought a minute longer and turned to him.

“Then you won’t blame me for not trusting anybody, including you,” she said. “I won’t necessarily believe you, but why did you start following me?”

“I’m sure you won’t believe me, but it wasn’t with any idea of loot. I knew nothing about it at the start, and I’ve still got no real idea of what you’re after.” He shut off the Volkswagen’s engine and killed the lights. “Somebody in Washington asked me to get in on the fun when the Pentagon heard you were taking a short-notice Grand Tour of your dad’s old stomping grounds. Apparently some tax-supported computer has also had you in its memory bank for a long, long time.”

“Then you were tied in with that army man from the embassy in Lisbon who talked to me?”

“Yes. It was through his good offices that I almost did a swan dive from six flights up on to Lake Geneva’s moonlit shore. I did a few odd jobs for the cloak-and-dagger divisions during the Nazi war and they figured I knew my way around some old alleys better than most. As far as I can tell, they were merely assisting me to try on the old school noose again.”

“You don’t mean they wanted to see you get in trouble?”

“No. They just didn’t care. I walk through the fiery furnace, and if I come out with my skin uncrisped Colonel Wade gets another oak-leaf cluster on his good conduct ribbon.” Simon tapped the oilcloth packet inside his coat. “Which makes me hope very sincerely that more material rewards of virtue are wrapped in this little bundle from the beyond that your father has led us to.”

“I’m glad you said us,” Vicky put in. “When are you going to give those papers or whatever they are back to me?”

Simon shrugged and opened his door.

“I must quibble about the word ‘back’. After all, when did you ever have them?”

When he had helped her out of the car on her side she immediately jerked her hand out of his.

“So you’re planning to steal them from me?” she asked bitterly.

“Before we start using emotional words like ‘steal’, let’s get our ethics straight. We not only don’t know what we’ve got here, but we also have no idea who it belonged to in the first place. When we’ve settled all that we’ll worry about who’s stealing from whom.”

He took her arm, tucked it around his, and walked with her to the entrance of the Portal, purposely keeping himself between her and the dark stain on the sidewalk which was all that remained of Curt Jaeger in that immediate vicinity.

“Meanwhile,” he said, “now that you’ve heard everything I can tell you, why not come clean with the rest of your own story?”

“You know most of it already,” she answered. “My father’s letter didn’t tell me what I’d be looking for, and I don’t even know if that package you’ve confiscated is the end of the line or not.”

They passed across the hotel’s lobby to the reception desk, where Simon asked for his own and Vicky’s keys.

“You’re staying here too?” she asked. “I didn’t even think to wonder...”

“I thought it’d be cozier that way,” Simon said. “It wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out that half the guests in this joint belong to the Vicky Kinian Fan Club and Snooping Society.”

He started them towards the elevators; but just before they reached the closed doors their way was partially blocked by a grave-looking middle-aged man in a neat business suit.

“I beg your pardon,” he said in slightly accented English. “You are Monsieur Simon Templar?”

“Almost always,” the Saint replied.

The stranger held out an identity card and studied Simon’s face with a chess master’s intense grey eyes for any reaction. Simon read the card without obliging him with the slightest twitch of a muscle.

“Ah, yes, Inspector Edval,” he said coolly. “And what are you inspecting this evening?”

“What is it?” Vicky asked, her face a picture of worried confusion.

“This gentleman is a police inspector,” the Saint explained. “He has probably been so kind as to come over to report on his progress in finding our wandering mynah bird.”

Inspector Edval regarded him impassively before continuing.

“Do you know anyone named Curt Jaeger?” he asked.

“I never heard of him,” said Simon positively.

He had shifted his position slightly so that he could observe Vicky without obviously looking at her. Her cheeks had reddened. Her lips parted as if she was about to speak, and then she lowered her gaze to the floor.

“This man, Jaeger, fell to his death from a window in this hotel which could have been yours,” Inspector Edval said, with a precision which implied that his sentence had been rehearsed several times before its debut. “Have you any knowledge of any man who might have fallen from your room?”

“No,” Simon said. “Since I’ve been at the Portal I’ve never noticed anybody passing outside my window in any direction.”

“You possibly were not here when the event occurred. I have already questioned the hotel guests who were in their rooms, just afterwards, but naturally when I saw one of the names of the Saint on the register...”

He shrugged, showing that he felt there was no necessity for further explanation. The Saint agreed with an understanding nod.

“I’m sorry I can’t oblige you,” he said, “but I haven’t murdered anybody for days.”

The inspector seemed not entirely satisfied with the answer.

“Just for the sake of thoroughness, would you allow me to visit your room?” he asked.

“A sociable thought,” said the Saint agreeably. “It would seem downright caddish of me to refuse.”

He gestured towards the nearby elevators, and his two companions preceded him to the now open doors. A few moments later they stepped out and walked a short distance down a corridor to room 614. Simon tried to catch Vicky’s eye, if for no other reason than to try to judge her emotional temperature and the likelihood of her bursting into choruses of confession at the first real pressure from Inspector Edval. But Vicky kept her thoughts to herself and her eyes on the wine-coloured carpet.

“Here we are, Inspector,” said Simon, hospitably swinging open his door. “I’m not quite sure what sort of traces a man leaves behind when he jumps out of a window, but you’re welcome to try to find them if it’ll relieve your mind.”

Edval nodded and grunted his thanks. He first stood in the doorway and peered around the chambers from that vantage point like a respectably attired fox checking out a water hole before risking a direct approach. Simon observed, before closing the door, that a uniformed policeman had happened along the hall at just that moment and decided to pause in his promenade a few yards away. He gave the gendarme a jaunty wave before closing him out and turning back to the inspector.

“Good hunting?” he asked, with benevolent interest.

Edval began to nod repetitively at some agreeable thought of his own, and to shuffle towards the high window at the opposite side of the room. It was a wide window, and the only one in Simon’s quarters. It was, of course, the one through which Curt Jaeger had made his spectacular exit from this vale of tears — the one through which he had so kindly aspired to help the Saint make a similar escape.

The window was closed now. Inspector Edval noted the fact with an intense interest possible only to an investigator who is still undecided whether he is on the right track or not.

“Your Mr Jaeger must be a real magician if he went out by this window,” Simon remarked. “He closed and latched it behind him.”

The inspector scrutinized the window at close range and then opened it.

“But it would not have been a great magic trick for anyone who might have thrown him out,” he said stolidly.

He did not look accusingly at Simon as he spoke. He was leaning cautiously out, staring down through space along the approximate trajectory that Curt Jaeger’s body could have described through the air.

“Why would anybody have wanted to throw him out?” the Saint inquired, with a sidewise look at Vicky, who still refused to notice him. “Was he selling forged football tickets or something?”

Inspector Edval stepped back from the window and faced him.

“He may have been selling watches, according to his credentials,” he said humourlessly. “But I am now having a quick check on his identification made.” He took a deep breath, like a man bolstering his lungs before an unpleasant task. “In the meantime, I must look around this room for signs of a struggle — and I must also ask if I may search you for any signs of having been in a fight. You would have no objection to such a search, I hope?”

For the first time since they had met the inspector, Vicky looked up from the vicinity of her toes and darted a calculative glance at the Saint.

“That’s rather an odd request,” Simon said. “It sounds almost like an accusation.”

“I intend no offence,” Edval said politely. “But neither the concierge nor the doorman are quite sure whether you went out before or after Jaeger fell.”

Now it was Vicky Kinian’s turn to take a deep breath — a breath such as the Sphinx might have taken just before breaking its immemorial silence.

“I think I can help you with that, Inspector,” she said.