Vendetta for the Saint

1

Simon knew how far he had come from where he had abandoned the cart, and could figure how long it would take the second automobile to climb to that spot. In his mind’s eye, as he ran, he saw the car braking, the examination of the sleeping scooterist, the reviving and questioning of the peasant. In that way he kept a sort of theoretical clock on the progress of developments behind him against which he could continuously measure his chances of reaching the coast before the pursuit turned their car around — in itself a substantially time-consuming maneuver on that narrow road — and set off to overtake him. And his spirits rose with every stride as his glimpses of the sea came closer and the picture in his mind was still not frantically ominous.

Even in his athletic prime he would have had to leave the four-minute mile to the specialists, but on a downhill course and under the spur of life preservation he thought he could come close. And on the highway there would be buses and trucks, and beside it the coastal railway as well...

Every run of bad cards must have a break, however brief, as every gambler knows; and as the Saint reached the main road at last, and his visualization of the most imminent menace still had the warriors up the hill only now looking for a place to turn their oversize chariot, it seemed to him that his turn was veritably setting in. For less than a hundred yards away on his right, a heavily laden autobus was grinding noisily towards him, with the inspiring name PALERMO on the front to indicate its destination.

There were no other vehicles in sight at this moment, and no surly characters with artillery in their pockets to bar his way. The next steps towards escape only had to be taken across the highway, and called for no additional effort beyond flagging down the driver.

Brakes protested, and the bus lurched to a stop. Simon climbed in, the door slammed behind him, and he was on his way again.

But as he paid his fare, he felt that his arrival was causing a minor stir among the passengers. It was a local bus, and the riders seemed to consist mostly of regional habitants and their produce, progeny, and purchases. Perhaps that was the cause of their interest: the Saint was a stranger and obviously a different type, and for lack of anything better to do they would study and speculate about him. Yet there seemed to be an undercurrent of tension running counter to this simple bucolic curiosity. Unless he was excessively self-conscious, he felt as if the other passengers were allowing him far more room than they gave each other. In fact, he had a distinct impression that they were moving as far away from him as the packed conditions would allow.

Considering the aromas of garlic and honest sweat which pervaded the interior in multiple combinations with other less readily recognizable perfumes, it was somewhat disturbing to speculate on what exotic odor he might be diffusing about which even the best Sicilian wouldn’t tell him. Perhaps he was being unduly sensitive; but the events of that day and the previous night would have undermined anyone’s confidence in his popularity or social magnetism.

He tried his most innocent and endearing smile on one of the women nearest to him, who was staring into his face with a fixed intensity which suggested either extreme myopia or partial hypnosis, and she crossed herself hurriedly and squirmed back into the engulfing crowd with a look of startled panic.

He hadn’t been imagining things. Someone had already identified him, and the whispered word had been passed around.

The fact could be read now in the tense lines of their bodies, their petrified immobility or nervous fidgeting, and the way their eyes fastened on him and then slid away when he looked in their direction. The Saint’s description had clearly been circulated throughout the entire district, with promises of reward for finding and/or threats of punishment for hiding him, and in every crowd there was likely to be one who had heard it.

There didn’t seem to be any Mafia hirelings on the bus itself, or they would already have gone into action; but he could expect no allies either. None of these people might actively try to attack him, nor would they give him any aid or comfort. Even if they were not sympathizers with the Mafia, they had been terrorized for so long that they would do exactly what the organization had ordered.

The bus ground protestingly up the grades and clattered recklessly down the alternating slopes that made up for them, obedient to the latent death-wish of the normal Italian driver; and with each kilometer the suspense drew tauter, but not from the inherent uncertainties of Sicilian public transportation.

Sometimes the conveyance stopped to pick up new travellers or to let others off; and Simon did not need extrasensory perception to know that as soon as telephones could be reached the wires would be humming with reports of his sighting.

And at each stop there was a rearrangement of seating and standing room, until there were only men around him, uneasy but grim. He wondered how much longer it would be before one of them might be tempted to try for a medal, and he moved his hand to rest it near the butt of the gun under his shirt.

If the pressure seemed to be creeping too close to an explosion point he would have to get off before Palermo. It might be a wise precaution in any case. He had no idea how long the full trip would take, but it would certainly be long enough for a welcoming delegation to muster at the terminus. The equation of survival that had to be solved required a blind guess at the unknown length of time he could stay with the bus to gain the maximum escape mileage, before warnings telephoned ahead would have a reception committee assembled and waiting for him at the next stop.

He had been keeping most of his attention on the other riders, who had packed themselves closer to suffocation in their desire to keep beyond contamination range of him, but he had been careful to reserve some portion of his awareness for the outside world through which they travelled. He was not concerned with noting all the spots of scenic interest, but with observing any other vehicles whose occupants might evince unusual interest in the one he rode in. And now his circumspection suddenly paid off. A large American sedan pulled around from behind the bus with a screaming horn, as if to pass it, and then simply stayed level with it, while swarthy faces carefully scanned the interior.

Trying not to make any sharp conspicuous movement, Simon edged farther towards the opposite side, bending his knees and slumping his spine to diminish his height, and trying to keep the heads of other passengers between the parallel car and the smallest segment of his face which would let him keep an eye on it and its occupants.

It was a good try, but there was a typically neutralist consensus against it. As his fellow travellers also became aware of the car keeping alongside, they separated and shrank away, either as a pharisaic way of pointing him out without pointing, or to remove themselves from the line of fire if there was to be any shooting. Either way, the result was disastrously the same. A lane opened up across the bus, with passengers trampling each other’s corns on both sides but leaving a clear space between Simon and the windows. Even the seated riders found themselves suddenly irked by the burden on their buttocks, and got up to join the sardine pack of standees.

Simon Templar, willy-nilly, was given as unobstructed a view of the men in the car as they were given of him.

But after the first glance there was only one face that held his attention: the face of the man in front, beside the driver. A fat, reddened, unshaven face that cracked in a lipless grin like a triumphant lizard as the recognition became mutual.

The face of Al Destamio.

Simon wished he had been wearing a hat, so that he could have raised it in a mocking salute that seemed to be the only possible gesture at the moment. Instead, he had to be content with giving his pursuer a radiant smile and a friendly wave which was not returned.

Destamio’s exultant travesty of a grin was replaced by a vindictive snarl. The barrel of an automatic appeared over the sill of his open window, and he steadied it with both hands to aim.

The Saint’s smile also faded as he snatched the pistol from his belt and ducked to shelter as much of himself as possible below the dubious steel of the bus’s coachwork. He had no misgivings as to who would be the victor in a straight shoot-out under those conditions; but when Destamio’s henchmen chimed in, as they would without caring how many bystanders were killed or injured in the exchange, a lot of non-combatants were likely to become monuments to another of the perils of neutralism. And pusillanimous as they might have shown themselves, and perhaps undeserving of too much consideration, Simon had to think of the consequences to himself of a lucky score on the bus driver at that speed.

The problem was providentially resolved when Destamio suddenly disappeared. His startled face slid backwards with comical abruptness, taking the car with it, as if it had been snagged by some giant hook in the pavement; it took Simon an instant to realize that it was because the driver had been forced to jam on his brakes and drop back to avoid a head-on collision with oncoming traffic. No sooner had the sedan swung in behind the bus than an immense double-trailered truck roared by in the opposite direction, followed by a long straggle of weaving honking cars that had accumulated behind it.

The Saint didn’t wait to see any more. His guardian angel was apparently trying to outdo himself, but there was no guarantee of how long that inordinate effort would continue. He had to make the most of it while it lasted — and before a break in the eastbound lane gave the Mafia chauffeur a chance to draw level again.

Through the broad windshield could be seen the outskirts of a city, and a cog-wheeled sign whipped by with its international invitation to visiting Rotarians, followed by the name CEFALÙ. Now he knew where he was, and it would do for another stage.

As he pushed towards the front again, and the door, one of the men in a seat behind the driver was leaning forward to mutter something in his ear, and the bus was slowing.

“There is no need to stop,” Simon said clearly. “No one wants to get off yet.”

He was in the right-hand front corner by then, one shoulder towards the windshield and the other towards the door, and the gun in his hand was for everyone to see but especially favored the driver.

“I am supposed to stop here,” the man mumbled, his foot wavering between the accelerator and the brake.

“That stop has just been discontinued,” said the Saint, and his forefinger moved ever so slightly on the trigger. “Keep going.”

The bus rumbled on, and its other passengers glowered at the Saint sullenly, no longer trying to avoid his gaze, plainly resenting the danger that he had brought to them more violently and immediately than if he had been the carrier of a plague, but not knowing what to do about it. Simon remained impersonally alert and let his gun do all the threatening. Everyone received the message and declined to argue with it; the driver stared fixedly ahead and gripped the wheel as if it had been a wriggling snake.

From behind came repeated blares from the horn of the following sedan, and fresh sweat beaded the driver’s already moist forehead. Through the length of the bus and over the heads of the other riders, Simon could catch glimpses of the sedan hanging on their tail and fretting for a chance to draw alongside again, but the increasing traffic of the town gave it no opening. And in the longitudinal direction, the passengers who were now crowded into the rear two-thirds of the bus could not open up a channel through which the Saint could be fired at from astern. Yet with all its advantages, it was a situation which could only be temporary: very soon, a traffic light or a traffic cop or some other hazard must intervene to change it, or the pursuing mafiosi would become more desperate and start shooting at the tires.

Simon decided that it was better to keep the initiative while he had it. He threw a long glance at the road ahead, then turned to wave the passengers back into submission before any of them could capitalize on his momentary inattention.

“Put your foot over the brake,” he told the driver, “but do not touch it until I tell you to. Then give it all your weight — which can be alive or dead, as you prefer.”

He had photographed the next quarter-mile of road on his memory, and now he waited for the first landmark he had picked to go by.

“Hold on tight, amici,” he warned the passengers. “We are going to make a sudden stop, and I do not want you to fall on your noses — or on this very hard piece of metal.”

Again, through a momentary opening in the crowd, he glimpsed the trailing sedan edging out behind the left rear corner. And the wine-shop sign he had chosen for a marker was just ahead of the driver. The timing was perfect.

“Ora!” he yelled, and braced himself.

The brakes bit, and the bus slowed shudderingly. The standing passengers stumbled and collided and cursed, but miraculously held on to various props and managed to avoid being hurled down upon him in a human avalanche. And from the rear came a muted crash and crumpling sound, accompanied by a slight secondary jolt, which was the best of all he had hoped for.

The bus had scarcely even come to a complete standstill when he reached across the driver and in a swift motion turned off the ignition and removed the key.

“Anyone who gets out in less than two minutes will probably be shot,” he announced, and pulled the lever that controlled the door next to him.

Then he was out, and one glance towards the rear confirmed that the Mafia sedan was now most satisfactorily welded to the back of the bus which it had been over-ambitiously trying to pass. Its doors were still shut, and the men in it, even if not seriously injured, were apparently still trying to pick themselves off the floor or otherwise pull themselves together. The car itself might or might not be out of the chase for a considerable time, but the bus solidly blocked any vehicular access to the alley across the entrance of which it had parked itself with a symmetry which the Saint could not have improved on if he had been driving it himself.

He had put the pistol back in his waistband under his shirt during the last second before he stepped out of the bus, so that there was nothing to make him noticeable except the fact that he was walking briskly away from the scene of an interesting accident instead of hurrying towards it like any normal native. But even so, those who passed him were probably too busy hustling to secure a front-row position in the gathering throng to pay any attention to his eccentric behavior.

He strode down the alley to where it crossed another even narrower passage, flipped a mental coin, and turned left. Half a block down on the right, a youth in a filthy apron was emptying a heaped pail of garbage into one of a group of overflowing cans, and went back through the battered door beside them, which emitted an almost palpable cloud of food and seasoning effluvia before it closed again. The Saint’s nostrils twitched as he reached it: scent confirmed sight to justify the deduction that it was the back door of a restaurant, which had to have another more prepossessing entrance on the other side. Without hesitation he opened the door and found himself in a bustling steaming kitchen, and still without a pause he walked on through it, as if he owned the place or owned the proprietor, with a jaunty wave and an affable “Ciao!” to a slightly perplexed cook who was hooking yards of spaghetti from an enormous pot, heading for the next door through which he had seen a waiter pass. It took him straight into the restaurant, where other waiters and customers disinterestedly assumed that he must have had business in the kitchen or perhaps the men’s room and hardly spared him a second look as he ambled purposefully but without unseemly haste through to the front entrance and the street beyond.

Three or four zigzagging blocks later he knew that Al Destamio and his personal goon squad would only pick up his trail again by accident. But that didn’t mean he was home safe by any means. Unless they had all been knocked cold in the collision, which was unlikely, the Mafia knew now that he was in Cefalù, and the size of the town would not make it any less of a death trap than the last mountain village.

The only remedy was to leave it again as soon as possible.

He noted the names of the cross streets at the next intersection, then bought a guide book with a map of the town at a convenient newsstand. He quickly oriented himself and headed for the railroad station, hoping that he might catch a train there before the Ungodly reorganized and bethought them of the same move.

The station was swarming with a colorful and international jumble of tourists, besides the normal complement of more stolid population statistics going about their mundane business, and Simon merged himself with a boisterous group of French students who were heading for the platform entrance gates and a train that was just loading. He did not know its destination, but that was of secondary importance. It could only be Messina or Palermo, and either would do as long as he boarded unobserved. Fortune still seemed to be smoothing his way: the students were dressed very much like he was, and if necessary he could pass for French himself. Anyone who was not too suspicious could pass him over as their tutor or guide. Only a handful of mafiosi actually knew him by sight, and a mere verbal description would hardly be enough to single him out of the group he had joined. And the odds were encouragingly reasonable against the station being staked out by one of Destamio’s hoods who had personally seen him before.

He had figured all that out to his own satisfaction just before he saw Lily standing by the barrier, at the same moment as she saw him.

2

In the fragment of a second between one step and the next, he marshalled and evaluated every possibility that could tie into her presence there, and went on to adumbrate what could follow or be filched from it. Coincidence he ruled out. Everything in her stance and positioning marked her as watching for somebody, and it was too great a stretch to imagine that that could be someone else. Although the Saint had been thinking automatically in terms of masculine malevolence, she was one of the very few in Destamio’s immediate entourage who had been qualified to pick him out of any mob. But the sketchiest calculation showed that she could not possibly have been sent there since he abandoned the bus. She could only be part of the general net that had been spread around the area; but because she could positively identify him, she had been given one of the most strategic spots.

Simon Templar put down his other foot with a chilling respect for the murderous efficiency re-demonstrated by the opposition, but knowing precisely how the score totalled at the instant that was tearing towards him, and what alternatives he could try to throw at it.

He continued to walk steadily towards her, as if they had even had a rendezvous, with a smile that not only did not falter but broadened as he came nearer.

“Well, well, well,” he murmured, with the lilt in his voice which was always gayest when everything around was most grim. “How long can it be since we met? It seems like a million years!”

He took her firmly by both hands and gazed fondly into the gigantic opaque sunglasses trimmed with plastic flowers. He wondered what her eyes would be like when and if he ever saw them. Maybe she didn’t have any. But at least the full red mouth was concealed only by lipstick. He kissed it for the second time, and it still tasted like warm paint.

“Don’t scream, or try to pretend I’m insulting you,” he said, without a change in his affectionate smile, “because if I had to I could break your nose and knock all your front teeth out before anyone could possibly come to your rescue. And it’d be a shame for a pretty face like yours to be bashed in like the wings of an old jalopy.”

He kept hold of her hands, just in case, but the resistance he felt was light and only momentary.

“Why?” she asked, in that voice that throbbed monosyllables like organ notes, and with as little individual expression.

“You mean you weren’t waiting for me here?”

“Why should I?”

“Because Al sent you.”

“Why?”

It was a perfect defense — in terms of the Maginot Line. He laughed.

“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the last message I asked you to give him. You did deliver it, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you know how Al is about these things. He’s been trying to get even ever since. Didn’t he tell you why he wanted you to put the finger on me?”

“No.”

“You tripped, Lily,” said the Saint quietly. “So you are here to point me out to the mob, and not just to see who else you could pick up in your new clothes.”

In deference to the conventions of an ordinary Italian town, she was wearing a full wraparound skirt that hid half the length of her sensational legs, but her upper structure was clearly limned by a sleeveless sweater that would have been barred at the doors of the Vatican.

“Where are the boys?” he asked, with an insistence that was outwardly emphasized only in the invisible tightening of his grip.

Her head moved a little as if she glanced around, but it was only an impression which could not be verified through those ornately floriferous blinders.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

Without letting go of her, as if it were only an unconscious waltz step in a lovers’ tryst, he had edged around to reverse their positions, so that his back was to the railings; but he saw no indication of any mafiosi closing in or watching for a cue to do so. And he was becoming increasingly fascinated by the fact that she still made no attempt to scream for help, legitimate or illegitimate. His threat might have checked her in the beginning — long enough to let him improve his strategic position and maneuver her obstructively into the line of fire — but by now she should have been thinking of some counter to that. Unless her mind was as completely barren as her dialog...

If there were any guns around, they must have been of very low caliber. But the wild idea grew stronger that there might not even be any. The railroad station at Cefalù was a way-out shot, a vague chance, the kind of improbable possibility that a doll might have been sent to cover, just for luck, but without giving her any heavy backing. It would be figured that if by some remote fluke he did show up there, she would be capable of latching on to him, overtly or covertly, until—

“We mustn’t be seen here together,” she said. “Can we go somewhere and talk?”

His hunch anchored itself solidly enough at that to provide a springboard for tentative exultation.

“Why not?” he said.

He turned her around and changed his grip more swiftly than she could have taken advantage of the instant’s liberty. Now locking the fingers of her right hand in his left, with his arm inside hers holding it tight against his side, he steered her briskly towards the station exit, as firmly attached to him as if they had been Siamese twins. But she went along as obediently as a puppet; and if any of Destamio’s men were waiting for a sign from her, they did not seem to get it.

He opened the door of the first cab on the rank outside, and followed her in without letting go her hand.

“I suppose you know this town,” he said. “Where would be a safe place to go, where we won’t be likely to run into Al or any of his pals?”

“The Hotel Baronale,” she said at once, and Simon repeated it to the driver.

Obviously the Hotel Baronale was a prime place to avoid, but Simon waited till they had whipped around the next corner before he leaned forward and pushed a bill from his stolen roll over the driver’s shoulder.

“I think my wife is having me followed,” he said hoarsely. “Try to shake off anyone behind us. And instead of the Baronale, I think it would be safer to drop us at the Cathedral, if you understand.”

“Do I understand?” said the chauffeur enthusiastically. “I have so much sympathy for you that it shames me to take your money.”

Nevertheless, he succeeded in stifling his shame sufficiently to make the currency vanish as if it had been sucked up by a starving vacuum cleaner. But he also made a conscientious effort to earn it, with an inspired disregard for the recriminations of a few deluded souls who thought that even in Sicily there were some traffic courtesies to be observed.

Looking back through the rear window, Simon became fairly satisfied that even if any second-team goons had been backing up Lily at the station, which seemed more unlikely every minute, they were now floundering in a subsiding wake.

“What are you so afraid of?” Lily asked, ingenuously.

“Mainly of being killed before I’m ready,” said the Saint. “I suppose I’m a bit fussy; but since it’s something you can only do once, I feel it should be done well. I’ve been working up to it for years, but I still think I need a few more rehearsals.”

His flippancy bounced off her like a sandbag off a pillow.

“It can only be Fate, meeting you again like this,” she said solemnly. “I never thought it would happen. I thought of you, but I didn’t know where to find you.”

It was a long speech for her, and he regarded her admiringly for having worked it out.

“Why were you thinking of me?” he inquired, resigning himself to playing it straight.

“I’ve left Al. When I found out how much he was mixed up in, I got scared.”

“You didn’t know this when you took up with him?”

“I haven’t been with him as long as that. I’m a dancer. I was with a troupe doing a tour. I met him at a club in Naples, and he talked me into quitting. I liked him at first, and I wasn’t getting on with the producer who booked the tour. Al took care of everything. But I didn’t know what I was getting into.”

In uttering so many sentences she was forced to give away clues to her mysterious accent; and with mild surprise he finally placed it as London-suburban cramped with some elocution-school affectations, and overlaid with a faint indefinable “foreign” intonation which she must have adopted for additional glamor.

“But if you’ve left Al, how did you get here to Cefalù?”

“I was afraid he’d catch me if I tried to get out of Italy by any of the ways he’d expect. You see, I took some money — I had to. I took the plane to Palermo and I thought I could take the next plane to London, but it was full up. There’s only one a day. I was afraid to wait in Palermo, because Al has friends there, so I came here to wait till tomorrow.”

The Saint had no way to know whether she was adlibbing or if her lines had been carefully taught her, but he nodded with the respectful gravity to which a good try was entitled.

“It’s lucky that I ran into you,” he said. “Luckier than you know, maybe. These men are dangerous!”

The cab shook as the driver spun it around another corner and braked it to a squealing halt in front of the Cathedral. Simon tossed another bonus into his lap, with the generosity which is best indulged from some other rogue’s misappropriated roll, and dragged Lily quickly out and across the fronting pavement.

“Why do you come here?” she protested, tottering to keep up with him on her high stiletto heels.

“Because all cathedrals have side doors. If cabdriver got inquisitive, he couldn’t cover all of them; and if anyone asks him questions, he won’t know which way we went after he dropped us.”

Inside, he slowed to a more moderate pace, and he noticed that he no longer seemed to have any resistance to overcome. He surmised that now she was temporarily parted from any protective hoodlums who may have been posted in the vicinity of the station — or the Hotel Baronale — she must feel that her most vital interest was to stay close to him rather than escape from him, for if she lost track of him now she might be in the kind of trouble that it was painful even to imagine. He felt free enough to take out his guide book and turn the pages, making like any swivel-eyed tourist.

“The columns,” he said, cribbing brazenly from the book, “take particular note of the columns, because they’re the handsomest you are going to see in a long while. And those capitals! Byzantine, by golly, intermixed with Roman, and all of them standing foursquare holding up those stilted Gothic arches. Don’t they do something to you? Or anything?”

“We can’t stay here,” Lily said, with a suppressed seethe. “If you’re in trouble with Al, you must get out of town too.”

“What do you suggest?”

“If you’re afraid of the railway, there is a bus station—”

“I came here on a bus,” he said, “and something happened that makes me feel that I’m probably passeggero non grata with the bus company.”

“What, then?”

“I must think of you, Lily. I suppose you made a reservation on the plane to London tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“Then you daren’t go back to Palermo. By this time, Al could have checked with the airlines and found out about it. So we can fool him by going the opposite way, to Catania. We can get a plane from there to Malta — and that’s British territory.”

“How do we get there?”

“You don’t feel like walking?”

She gazed at him in silent disgust.

“Maybe it is a bit far,” he admitted. “But if we try to rent a car, that’s the next thing the Ungodly will have thought of, too. There must be something left that they won’t think of — if I can only think of it...”

He riffled the pages of the guide book, fumbling for an inspiration somewhere in its recital of the antique grandeurs and modern comforts of the city. To lose themselves in a population of less than 12,000 was a very different problem from doing the same thing in New York or even Naples. But there had to be a solution, there always was.

And suddenly it was staring him in the face.

“I know,” he said. “We’ll go to the beach and cool off.”

Lily’s mouth opened in an expression not unlike that of a beached fish — an expression which the Saint had a fatal gift of provoking, and which always gave him a malicious satisfaction. With no intention of prematurely alleviating her bewilderment, he captured her hand again and led her down an aisle and out into a tree-shaded cloister. From there, a small gate let them out into what his map showed to be the Via Mandralisca, where he turned back in the direction of the sea.

Towing the baffled but obedient Lily beside him, he stopped at the first clothing store they came to and bought a knitted T-shirt in horizontal blue and white stripes and a pair of cheap sandals. He changed into them quickly in the next convenient alley, discarding his former soiled shirt and scuffed shoes in the nearest trash barrel. A little farther on, at a cubicle of tourist superfluities overflowing on to the sidewalk, he acquired a pair of sunglasses and a huge garish straw bag which he gave Lily to carry.

Only a block from the approaching vista of blue Mediterranean, he made a last stop at a well-stocked salumeria, where an apparently unsuspicious proprietor was delighted to wrap bountiful packages of cheese, ham, sausage, artichoke hearts and ripe olives, together with a loaf of crusty bread and a flagon of the sturdy purple Corvo that would agreeably moisten their passage. These were all stowed in the capacious sack with which he had thoughtfully provided Lily.

“What is all this for?” she queried plaintively.

“For either of us who gets hungry. It might be late before we get a proper dinner.”

None of the shopkeepers he had patronized seemed to have been alerted; or perhaps Destamio’s grapevine had been too busy trying to block the more obvious exits, so far, to diffuse itself over the general prospect. At any rate, they reached the beach without any alarming signals registering on Simon Templar’s ultrasensitive antennae, looking like any other tourist couple among the clutter of humanity that was reclining or romping according to age and temperament.

Once among them, he made himself even more typical and less memorable by peeling off his T-shirt, putting it with the sandals in the catchall bag, and rolling his trousers up to the knee. His bronzed torso matched the most common tint of the other vacationers; and even if his musculature was considerably more striking than the average, it was not outstandingly different from that of any weight-lifting beach boy. There was nothing much else about him for anyone to notice or describe.

Lily was a little more difficult to camouflage, but he made her roll her sweater up above her midriff until it was almost a brassiere, and unbutton her skirt to bare the maximum length of thigh as she walked barefoot like himself, with her shoes joining the other discards in the big bag. She had already tied up her dazzlingly bleached hair in a scarf, at his suggestion, while he was changing his shirt.

So they completed their crossing of the beach as reasonable facsimiles of any two commonplace holiday-makers, hand in hand, to the water’s edge where there were drawn up some of the Mediterranean’s most popular pleasure craft, those companionable catamarans made just for a couple to sit in side by side and pedal themselves lazily around with the aid of the paddle-wheel housed between the pontoons. Practically, however, they can be propelled faster and much more effortlessly than the ordinary rowboat, and are far more seaworthy and comfortable in moderately messy weather; and in fact it was the guide book’s mention of this littoral attraction which had led him there.

The concessionaire came to meet them as they arrived, beaming with mercenary optimism.

“Che bellissimo giorno, signore! And a beautiful afternoon for a ride in a moscone. This is the best time of day!”

“It is late,” Simon said dubiously. Any appearance of urgency or eagerness might kindle suspicion if there were already a spark for it to fan, and in any case would be sharply remembered later. “There will not be much more sun.”

“It is only the middle of the afternoon!” protested the operator, waving his arms to the heavens for witness. “And when the sun is going down, it is nice and cool. Besides, I will make you a special price.”

“How much?”

There followed the inevitable formality of bargaining, and a price was finally agreed on to cover the remaining duration of daylight. Simon paid it in advance.

“In case we are a little late,” he said with an elaborate wink, “you will not have to wait for us.”

The man grinned in broad fraternity.

“Capita! Grazie! E buona sorte!”

Simon handed Lily into her seat, and helped the proprietor push the paddle-cat into the water before he hopped nimbly aboard and took the tiller, turning their twin prows westward as he began to pedal in unison with her.

It was all he could do to refrain from laughing out loud. Behind him, the town would be swarming with Destamio’s minions: he formed a whimsical picture of them pouring in from all directions until they outnumbered both natives and tourists. The railroad station was probably infested with them by now, and likewise the bus depot; unless Destamio’s car had hit the bus harder than it sounded, he could have organized coverage of every outlying road and even footpath, and even the little port might not have been overlooked; but Simon was joyfully prepared to bet his life that he had hit on the one possible exit that a serious-minded creep like the former Dino Cartelli would never think of until it was too late. It had become a truly Saintly escape, outrageous in its originality — and now spiked with a bonus that he would not have tried to incorporate in his dizziest dream.

“Isn’t Catania the other way?” she said after a while.

“You’re brilliant,” he assured her reverently. “This is the way to Palermo. The moscone merchant has to see us going this way. All the clues should keep pointing to Palermo. Only you and I know where we’re really going.”

When they were far enough out for their features not to be recognizable to the naked eye, but not so far that it would look as if they were setting out on a major voyage, he held a course parallel with the coast, searching the shore line for a special kind of topography that would lend itself to what he had in mind. It was not too long before he found it: a tiny cove floored with a half-moon of sand, not much wider than the length of a moscone, walled around with sheer cliffs rising twenty feet or more, and flanked by massive falls of rock so as to be almost inaccessible except from the sea. It was at least a mile from the nearest public beach.

Simon steered towards it, appreciating its advantages more and more as it came closer, and kept on pedalling until the pontoons grounded gently on the sand. He jumped off and held Lily’s hand to balance her as she walked along a pontoon to step off daintily without wetting her feet; then he hauled the boat higher to secure it from being dislodged by the gently lapping wavelets, off-loaded the bulging bag, and sat down with it above the high-water mark.

Lily stared down at him in blank befuddlement.

“You’re not going to stay here?”

“Only until after sunset. Then we can double back past Cefalù again and keep heading towards Catania. We’ll pedal far enough to get well outside any cordon that Al may have thrown around here, and slip ashore somewhere in the dark.” He patted the sand beside him invitingly. “Meanwhile, it’s nice and shady here, and we’ve got everything we need to ward off death by thirst or starvation. Why not enjoy it?”

She sat down, slowly, while the Saint uncorked the wine, which he had kept well wrapped in the bottom of the bag for insulation from the sun and warmth, and poured some into the small plastic tumblers which the negoziante had efficiently added to his bill.

“I guess we’re in this together now, Lily,” said the Saint. “I’ll get us out of it, though. Just stick with me. I can’t help feeling responsible, in a way, for the trouble between you and Al, but I’ll try to make up for it.”

She gave him a long impenetrable scrutiny in which he could feel wheels revolving as in a primitive adding machine. There was only one arithmetical conclusion that they could reach, but the fringe benefits could transcend the limitations of mechanical bookkeeping.

He waited patiently.

“To hell with Al,” she said finally. “I like you much better, anyway.”

After the warm paint was washed off with enough food and wine, there was nothing wrong with her lips at all.

3

When the brief twilight had turned to dark, the Saint stood up and dusted off his pants.

“All good things come to an end,” he said sadly. “It’s been wonderful, but I’ve got to be moving on.”

It had become cool enough, when he was away from her, for him to be glad to put on his T-shirt again, while she rearranged the scarf over her hair. He also took his sandals out of the bag and carried them to the moscone, where he put them on the bench between the seats. Then he lifted the forward end of the nearest pontoon and pushed until the craft was well afloat again.

Lily came down to the edge of the water, carrying the bag.

“Just a minute,” he said smoothly.

She stood still, while he climbed aboard and settled in the starboard seat. He put his feet on the pedals and took a tentative turn backwards, making sure that his weight hadn’t taken the shallow draft down to the sand again.

“I hate to do this, Lily,” he said, “but I’m not taking you any farther. If you get chilly, pile some sand on yourself — it’ll keep you warm. There’ll be plenty of boats around in the morning that you can hail. I wouldn’t try to scramble out over the rocks tonight — you don’t have the right shoes for it, and in the dark you’d be likely to break a leg.”

“You’re crazy,” she gasped.

“That has been suggested before,” he admitted. “And some people have thought I’d fall for the goofiest stories. But your yarn about how you got to Cefalù and just happened to be loafing around the station was stretching the long arm of coincidence right out of its socket, even for me. I only went along with the gag because I didn’t have any choice. But I still say thanks, because it helped me out of a tough spot.”

If he needed any confirmation of his analysis, he had it in the name she called him, which cannot be quoted here, in deference to the more elderly readers of these chronicles.

“You’re a naughty girl, Lily,” he said reproachfully. “You didn’t see anything wrong with trying to finger me for the Mafia, and you’d have been just as ready to do it in Catania, and turn your back while they mowed me down. If you want to play Mata Hari, you should be a good sport about losing your bait.”

Sometime about sunset he had taken off her glasses, and verified that she actually had eyes — smoky gray ones, which by then were deliriously sleepy. Now he could no longer distinguish them in the gloom; which made liars of a whole school of authors, who he was certain would have described them as spattering sparks and flame.

She kept coming forward, regardless now of splashing into the sea over her ankles and then to the depth of her streamlined calves; and he prudently back-pedalled enough to keep the moscone always retreating beyond her reach.

“It’s an awful long swim back,” he cautioned her, “unless you’re in the Channel-crossing class. And nasty things come out in these waters at night, like slimy eels with sharp teeth. It’s not worth it, honestly. I’m sure Al will understand.”

She stopped with the water up to her knees, screaming abuse with an imaginative fluency that was in startling contrast to her usual inarticulateness, while he backed up with increasing acceleration until he had put enough distance between them to be able to come forward again in a long turn past the cove and outwards.

“Don’t spoil the memory, Lily,” he pleaded as he went by. “I said thank you, didn’t I?”

It was a wasted effort. Her invective followed him as far as her voice would carry, and made him wonder how a nice girl could have picked up that vocabulary.

He kept pointing towards the Pole Star until the shrieks faded astern, and then made a slow turn to the left.

Westwards. Towards Palermo. Not Catania.

It was an especially snide trick to add to the wrongs he had done Lily, after she had given so much to the Mafia cause, but he couldn’t afford to be sentimental. Whenever she was rescued or made her own way to a telephone, she would swear that the Saint was making for Catania. And that could make all the difference to his first hours in Palermo.

His legs pumped steadily, at a rate which he could keep up for hours and yet which pushed the moscone along at its maximum hull speed, beyond which any extra effort would have achieved nothing but churning water. Nevertheless this terminal velocity was not inconsiderable, so far as he could judge from his impression of the inky water slipping past, for a vessel that wasn’t designed for racing and relied only on muscular propulsion.

The slight evening breeze had dropped and the sea was practically dead calm. It was easy to navigate basically by keeping Polaris over his right shoulder. The twinkling illumination of small settlements on the coast, and occasional flashes of headlights on the highway, located the shore line; and he kept far enough from it to feel secure from accidental discovery by any headlights that might be turned capriciously out to sea.

Eventually, of course, when he figured that he had put enough miles behind him, he had to edge shorewards again. He had heard one train rumbling along the coastal track, and thought he had identified its cyclopean headlamp flashing between cuttings and embankments; he had to hope that the next one would not pass too soon, or be too far behind. He would be afraid to risk another bus, because the driver by that time might have heard of the adventure of another bus driver and be abnormally observant of all passengers; but a long wait at a train stop also had its hazards.

He made his final approach along a fair stretch of dark coast preceding the lights of another town, nursing the little water-bug in until the dim starlight found him a sheltered beach to run up on. He hauled the boat well up above the tide line, where it would be safe until the indignant owner could locate it, and stumbled over some rocks and through a stony patch of some unrecognizable cultivation to a road which led into the hardly less murky outskirts of the community.

The sign on the railroad station, which he located simply by turning inland until the tracks stopped him, and then following them, read CAMPOFELICE DI ROCCELLA; and the waiting room was deserted. Simon strolled in, studied the timetable on the wall, and purchased a ticket to Palermo. The next train was due in only ten minutes; and precisely on schedule it pulled in, hissed its brakes, discharged a handful of passengers, and clankingly pulled out again — a performance for which a certain Benito Mussolini once claimed all the credit.

There were only a few drowsy contadini and a couple of chattering families of sun-drenched sightseers aboard, and none of them paid any attention to the Saint during the hour’s ride into Palermo.

Disembarking there was a fairly tense moment. He was not seriously expecting a mafiosa delegation of welcome, but the penalties of excessive optimism could be too drastic to be taken lightly. He stayed close to the tourist families, using the same technique that he had tried with the students at Cefalù, and hoping that anyone who had only a description to go by would dismiss him as one of their party. But his far-ranging gaze picked out no greeters or loiterers with the malevolent aspect of Destamio’s goondoliers. The hue and cry was still far behind, apparently — and hopefully pointing in other directions.

Outside the station, he let himself be guided by the brighter lights and the busier flow of people, in order to melt as far as possible into the anonymous multitude, until the current drifted him by the kind of nook that he wanted to be washed into.

This was a small but cheerfully sparkling trattoria which provided him with a half-litre of wine and the small change for a phone call. He rang the number that Marco Ponti had given him, and knew that the cards were still running for him when the detective’s own crisp voice answered the buzz, even though it sounded tense and edgy.

“Pronto! Con chi parlo?”

“An old friend,” said the Saint, in Italian, “who has some interesting news about some older friends of yours.”

The phone booth is a refinement which has made little progress in Sicily, and he was well aware of the automatic neighborly interest of the padrone and any unoccupied customer within earshot. Even to have spoken a word of English would have aroused a curiosity which could ultimately have been fatal.

“Saint!” the earpiece rasped loudly. “What happened to you? Where are you! I was afraid you were dead. An impossibly large Bugatti was reported abandoned in the country, and was towed in here to the police garage. By a lucky accident I took the job of tracing the owner — who told me that you had hired it, and... Wait, what did you say about friends of ours? Do you mean—”

“I do. The ones we are both so fond of. But tell me first, where is the car now?”

“The owner came to the questura with an extra set of keys and wanted to take it away with him, but I did not want to release it until I found out what had happened to you, in case it should be examined again for clues, so I had it impounded.”

“Good! I was going to tell you to grab a taxi and join me, but the Bugatti might be more useful. I have a lot of news about our friends which would take too long to give you over the phone. So why not un-impound the Bug and drive it here? I am in a restaurant named Da Gemma, somewhere near the station — you probably know it. The food smells are making my mouth water, so I shall order something while I wait. But hurry, because I think we have a busy night coming up.”

The only answer was an energized click at the other end of the line; and the Saint grinned and returned to his table and an assay of the menu for some sustaining snack. Enough time and exercise had intervened since his picnic with Lily to create a fresh appetite; and fortunately, late as it was getting by northern standards, it was not at all an exceptional hour for supper in the meridional tradition.

He was chasing the last juicy morsels of a tasty lepre in salmi around his plate with a crust of bread when he heard the reverberant gurgle of an unmistakable exhaust outside, and Ponti burst through the pendant strips of plastic that curtained the door. Simon waved him to the place on the other side of the table, where a clean glass and a fresh carafe of wine had already been set up.

“I did not come here to get drunk with you,” the detective said, pouring himself a glass and draining half of it. “Be quick and tell me what has happened.”

“Among other things, I have been conked on the head, kidnaped, shot at, and chased all over by an assortment of bandits who must have a real grudge against your Chamber of Commerce. But I suppose it would bore you to hear all my private misadventures. The part that I know will interest you involves the location of a castello where you can find, if you move quickly enough, a beautiful sampling of the directors of that Company in full session, along with the chairman of the board himself, whose name seems to be Pasquale.”

Although they were talking in low voices that could hardly have carried to the nearest occupied table, it still seemed circumspect to make certain references only obliquely.

“I know all about that meeting,” Ponti said. “Everything, that is, except the location. Where is it?”

“I wouldn’t know how to give you the address, but I could take you there.” Simon refilled their glasses. “But you surprise me — you seem to know a lot more about this organization than you did the last time we talked.”

“I should claim to have done some extraordinary secret research, but I am too modest. I owe it all to the sample of one of their products that was left in your car, the one that was designed to make the loud noise. You remember, there was a certain kind of signature on the plastic. I photographed it myself, and checked it against the identification files while the clerk was at lunch. The Fates smiled, for a change, and I discovered that the marks were made by a local dealer named Niccolo who has been accused of handling similar goods before, but of course was absolved for lack of evidence. I brought him in to the office myself and managed to question him privately.”

“But I thought those people would never tell anything. The omerta, and all that. You yourself told me they would die before they talked.”

“That is the rule. But it has been broken, usually by women. In 1955, one Francesca Serio denounced four of these salesmen for putting her son out of business — permanently. They were sent to prison for life. In 1962 another, Rose Riccobono, who lost her husband and three sons to a vendetta with the same Company, gave us a list of more than 29 who were charged with controlling the business in her village. These women defied the penalty because of love, or grief. With Niccolo, I used another argument. An inspiration.”

“Worse than death?”

“For him. And more permanent that torture.”

“Do tell.”

“I put a white coat on the old man who sweeps the building — a very distinguished old fellow, but weak in the head — and laid out a row of butcher knives, and one of the masks that are kept for tear gas. I told Niccolo that we were going to anesthetize him, very humanely, but unless he talked” — Ponti leaned forward and dropped his voice even lower, almost to a sepulchral depth — “he would wake up and find he had been castrated.”

Simon regarded him with unstinted admiration.

“I felt there was a spark of genius in you, from our first meeting,” he said sincerely. “So Niccolo talked.”

“It is apparently common gossip throughout the organization that Don Pasquale’s health will soon force him to retire. And when the chairman is on his way out, the other Directors gather to compete for the succession. In such a crisis, an organization becomes a little disorganized, and the opposition has a chance to compete against weakness. All I needed was to know the meeting place. If you know it, we can proceed. Shall we go?”

The detective’s quietly controlled voice was a contrast to the creased urgency of his earnest old-young face. The Saint started to raise a quizzical eyebrow, and left it only half lifted.

“Whatever you say, Marco,” he acquiesced, and looked around for a waiter and a bill.

In a few minutes they were outside, where the gleaming masterpiece of Ettore waited at the curb; but as Simon instinctively aimed himself towards the driver’s seat, Ponti contrived to interpose himself quite inoffensively.

“You will allow me? It will be easier, since I know the way.”

“To where?”

“What I learned from Niccolo was interesting enough for me to send a prepared message to Rome, which has resulted in a picked company of bersaglieri being flown into Sicily. I wanted to have some reliable help on hand whenever I completed the information I needed to use them. You are about to do that.”

“Then I’m the one who knows the way.”

“Not to where the troops are.”

Simon nodded and went around the front of the car to crank it. It started as it had before, at the first turn of the handle, with an instancy which made electric starters seem like effete fripperies; and the Saint got in to the passenger seat.

“Do you intend to leave the police out of this altogether?” he asked, as they thundered away.

“I am the police,” Ponti said. “But I do not know which others I can trust. If I tried to work through them there would be delays, confusions, and slow mobilization. By the time we got to this castello it would be empty. I knew this before I ever came to Sicily, and arrangements were made in Rome to have these soldiers prepared for an ’emergency maneuver’ whenever I might need them.”

“And you know that they are reliable?”

“Completely. Only their commander knows their mission here, but his men are absolutely loyal to him and would follow him into hell on skis if he ordered it. As far as we can tell they have not been penetrated by the Mafia, so they should look forward to the fun of roughing up these canaglie. Now tell me everything you have been doing.”

4

Ponti himself was no slow-poke at the wheel, it turned out, and he spurred the giant Bugatti along at a gait which would have had many passengers straining on imaginary brakes and muttering silent prayers; but the Saint was fatalistic or iron-nerved enough to tell his story without faltering or losing the thread of it. The only things that he left out were certain personal details which he did not think should concern Ponti or affect his official actions.

“So,” he concluded, “they should still think they have me cordoned in at Cefalù, and even when they hear from Lily they should believe I’m making for Catania. Anyhow they ought not to have felt that they have to vacate their headquarters in a hurry. They think I’m on the run and busy trying to save my own skin. And Al would never expect me to be talking to you like this.”

“I have tried not to allow that impression,” Ponti said, “by putting out an order that I want you for personal questioning about a political conspiracy. I did that partly to try to find some trace of you, of course, and to make sure that if you were picked up you would not be beaten up by some stupid cop who would take you for a common criminal. I have found that when any political implications are mentioned, the police are inclined to proceed with caution.”

“When I think of some of my celebrated rude remarks about policemen,” said the Saint, “your thoughtfulness brings a lump to my throat. And no one would dream you had an ulterior motive.”

“I have only one motive — to show these fannulloni that they are not bigger than the law. And here we have the means to do it.”

The treacherous mountain road over which they had last been bouncing ended at a gap in a wire fence guarded by a sentry with rifle and bayonet. As he barred the way, a young officer appeared out of the darkness and saluted when Ponti gave his name.

“Il maggiore L’aspetta,” he said. “Leave your car over here.”

There was no illumination other than the lamp over the gate and their own headlights, and when the latter were switched off they stumbled through rutted dirt until a vague hut shape loomed up before them. A door opened and a white wedge of light poured out; then they were inside the bare wooden building.

“Ponti,” said an older officer in an unbuttoned field tunic, grasping the detective’s hand, “it is good to know we shall have some action. Everything is ready. When shall we move?”

“At once. This is Signor Templar, who knows the location of our objective. Major Olivetti.”

The commandant turned to Simon and acknowledged the introduction with a crunching grip. The top of his bald head hardly came to the Saint’s chin; but there was nothing small about him. He had a chest like a barrel and arms like tree-trunks. The right side of his face was a webwork of scars that stood out clearly on his swarthy skin, and a black patch covered that eye, which would have given him a highly sinister appearance but for the merry twinkle in the other.

“Piacere! I have heard of you, Signor Templar, and I am glad to have you on our side. Over here I have maps of all Sicily, on the largest scale. Can you show me on them where we have to go?”

“I think so,” said the Saint, and bent over the table.

The lieutenant who had brought them from the gate, together with another lieutenant and a sergeant who were already in the hut, joined Olivetti and Ponti around the map and watched intently while Simon traced his way over the contours from the junction on the coast where he had caught the bus to Cefalù, back up the dry river bed to the village and up over the mountain ridge to the other valley and the combination of remembered landmarks which enabled him to pinpoint the site of the eyrie from which he had escaped.

“This road is unpaved,” he said, running a fingernail along the route down from the house. “I haven’t been on this upper stretch, but their car came down it at speed with no trouble. I don’t know anything about this other road marked along the top of the cliff.”

Olivetti studied the terrain with professional minuteness.

“On either road, there is a risk that they may have outposts who would give warning of the approach of a force like ours. You mentioned descending this cliff in the dark. Could we send men up that way?”

“Even Alpine troops, I think, would need to use pitons, and the hammering would make too much noise. I came down that way because I had to, and some of it was just dropping and sliding and hoping for the best.”

“I could deploy my men from these points and let them make it on foot, but then I could not guarantee they would be ready to close in before dawn.”

“I know there is no logical reason why this convocation should panic and pack up in the middle of the night,” Ponti said, “but I must admit that each hour that we leave the trap open will make me more afraid of finding it empty when we close it.”

“May I make a suggestion?” asked the Saint.

“Of course. You are the only one of us who has already seen this area in daylight.”

“And I think it would be a commando’s nightmare. On the other hand, if you got there and found that the birds had flown, I should feel sillier than anyone. So I think we should try for speed rather than stealth. Of course, I would try to cut all the telephone lines in the area — and apologize to the telephone company afterwards, otherwise some Mafia sympathizer among the operators would certainly send out a warning. But after that, I would move in as fast as possible, and hang the uproar. I take it your company is mechanized, maggiore?”

“Si. That is, we have no tanks, but we have trucks and troop carriers.”

Simon pointed to the two roads to the Mafia hideout.

“Then if you split them into two units, and send one up by this road and one by this, timed to meet at the top — once they start, they themselves will be blocking the only roads that the mobsters could escape by, if they still are up there. However, if they find themselves cornered like that, the jokers might decide to fight rather than surrender. Are you prepared to go as far as a shooting war?”

“I should welcome it!” Olivetti bellowed, and struck the flimsy trestle table a great blow with his fist that threatened the support of its legs. “If Ponti has the authority—”

“That is quite a point,” Simon admitted, turning to the detective. “Can you justify launching an offensive like this?”

Ponti showed his teeth in a vulpine grin.

“I can if you are not deceiving me, and unless you let me down. In which case I would do worse to you than I promised Niccolo. But on your testimony I have plenty to charge them with — assault, kidnaping, attempted murder. Then there is a very legalistic charge involving criminal intentions, which an assembly of persons of bad repute can be assumed to be plotting, in certain circumstances. But best of all would be if one of them does fire a shot at us — then we need no more excuses.”

“So, it is decided,” Olivetti said, with ebullient enthusiasm. “The tecnici will go out first, in pairs, on motorcycles. Then, look, the first and second plotoni—”

His subalterns and the sergeant crowded up to follow his pointings on the map as he developed the plan in greater detail; and Ponti caught Simon’s eye and beckoned him away from the briefing.

“I imagine you would like to go back to your hotel and get some sleep, but that might be dangerous. Let me give you the key to my apartment. The Mafia will never look for you there. I will see you there after all this is over. You will have to identify the ones that we capture, and make a deposition to support the charges. The address is—”

Simon had already begun to shake his head, before he interrupted.

“There you go again, Marco, trying to kill me with kindness,” he murmured. “It makes me feel an ungrateful bum to turn you down, but I have sat through too many acts of this opera to be eased out before the grand finale. I shall come along and be ready with more of my brilliant advice in case the military needs it.”

“But you are a civilian. You do not have to expose yourself—”

“Someone should have told me that a few days ago. But now I still have those personal problems of my own which you know something about, and I want a chance to straighten them out before some trigger-happy bersagliere blasts away any hope of getting the answers. If you refuse me that little bit of fun, I might be so upset as to get an attack of amnesia, and be completely unable to identify any of your prisoners. Such things can happen to hysterical types like me.”

“Your blackmail is shameful. But I am forced to bow to it. However, I take no responsibility for your safety, or for any legal trouble you may get into.”

“You never did, did you?” said the Saint innocently.

The map-table conference broke up, and the lieutenants and the sergeant hurried out.

“Well, the operation will be rolling in eight minutes,” Olivetti said. “The Company was put on full alert as soon as you telephoned, Ponti — and since then there has been no telephoning.”

With a broad smile, he held up his huge hand and clicked a pantomime wire-cutter.

“I, too, take no chances,” he said, and looked at the Saint. “I am glad you are going with us. It will help to have someone who knows the layout of this castello.”

“He insists,” Ponti said wryly. “He is afraid that he may become hysterical if he is left alone. He has been through a lot, you know.”

“Now you try to explain that, Marco,” Simon grinned, and went out.

He was checking the gas and oil in the Bugatti when the advance scouts set out, the wasp-whine of their Guzzi motorcycles splitting the still night. They were followed by the snore of truck engines grumbling into life.

Satisfied that his borrowed behemoth was still fuelled for any kilometrage that it was likely to be called on to cover, he was buckling down the hood when a Fiat scout car skidded to a stop beside him with all four wheels locked. Major Olivetti was at the wheel. In the rear seat, a lieutenant and the radio-man braced themselves stoically, being no doubt inured to their commander’s mercurial pilotage; but in the other front bucket Ponti had his hands clamped to the dashboard with a pained expression which hinted that he might have preferred the vehicle which brought him to the camp.

“Follow my column,” Olivetti bawled, “and join me when we stop. Do you want a gun?”

He proferred his own automatic.

“Thank you; but it must be illegal for foreign civilians in this country to possess military firearms. And in any case I already have an illegal weapon obtained from the Mafia. But don’t tell your poliziotti friends.”

Ponti opened his mouth, but whatever contribution he may have had in mind was not forthcoming, at least in Simon’s hearing. For at that moment the grinning major snapped in the clutch, and the scout car vanished into the night with a jolt that could have whiplashed the necks of its occupants.

A column of trucks growled after it while Simon was winding up the Bugatti and turning it around. He fell in after the scout car that brought up the rear.

Strangely or naturally, according to which school of psychology you favor, he was not wondering how Lily was making out, but what had happened to Gina. Gina with the dark virginal eyes and the wickedly nymphic body and the young eagerness and unsureness, who was another part of the intricate house of Destamio, and who could be destroyed with it — if it had not already destroyed her first.