1
The Hollandia is one of the best hotels in Amsterdam. The best hotels everywhere exercise a proper discretion over the guests whom they admit to their distinguished accommodations. The clerk at the Hollandia read the name that Simon Templar had filled in on the form in front of him, and his brow wrinkled as he looked up.
“Mr Templar,” he said, “are you by any chance the Saint?”
Simon sighed imperceptibly. He knew that look. As a man who had rather a weakness for the best hotels, it was sometimes a little tiresome to him.
“You guessed it,” he said.
The clerk smiled with the utmost courtesy.
“I do not know if we have a room that would suit you.”
“I’m not too hard to please.”
“Excuse me,” said the clerk.
He retired to an inner office. In a few minutes he came back, accompanied by an older and more authoritative personage.
“Good afternoon, Mr Templar,” said the personage cordially, “I am the manager. It is nice of you to come to us. But you do not have a reservation.”
“No,” said the Saint patiently. “But I wasn’t expecting any trouble. I’m still not expecting any. Not any at all. I’m on vacation.”
“Of course.”
“As a matter of fact, I only came this way to say hullo to an old friend of mine, one of your eminent citizens. You probably know him — Pieter Liefman. He makes some of the best beer in these parts. But he’s out of town, and won’t be back till tomorrow or the next day. I just want to wait over and see him.”
“You are a friend of Mr Liefman?”
“We are what you might call brothers under the suds.”
The manager studied him frankly for a while, and found it hard to see anything that threatened the peace and good name of the hotel. The Saint wore his clothes with the careless ease of a man accustomed to the best of everything, and with the confidence of one who did not have to think twice about paying for it. And at that moment the keen corsair’s face was in repose, and the imps of devilment stilled in the clear blue eyes — it was a trick of camouflage that sometimes served the Saint better than a disguise, and on those occasions almost made him seem to fit his incongruous nickname.
“I think we can find you a room,” said the manager.
So that minor problem was overcome, but not without starting a slight stir of curiosity that spread like an active virus through all levels of the human beings within the hotel, who were, after all, only human. Simon knew it when he came downstairs again, after a shower and a change, by the studiously veiled interest of the staff, the elaborately impersonal glances and politely inaudible whisperings of the other guests in the lobby. The years had given him an extrasensory perception of the subtle symptoms of recognition, but in the same time he had developed a protective tolerance for it. Let the speculations buzz: they could not embarrass him when he had nothing to hide.
For what he had told the manager was the simple truth. He had made the detour to Amsterdam in the course of an already aimless European vacation for no reason but the impulse to renew an old acquaintance and sample the products of the famous Liefman brouwerij at the source, and he had no thought of avenging any iniquities, robbing any robbers, or doing any of the other entertaining and lawless things which had made his name a nightmare to the police of four continents and given him the reputation which caused even tourists to stare furtively from behind their guidebooks.
That this peaceful project was to be short-lived was not his fault — he himself would have added, with a perfectly straight face, “as usual.”
He dined at the Lido, on a rijsttafel of heroic conception — the taste for, and the art of preparing, a true Indonesian curry being one of the few legacies left to the Netherlands from their former East Indian empire — and it was not until his appetite was on the verge of admitting defeat that he had time to become aware that he was the object of more than ordinary attention from a table across the room.
There were two people at it, a middle-aged couple whose accents, as he had unconsciously overheard them speaking to the waiter, identified them as English, and whose clothes had a dull neatness that was worn like a proud insigne of respectability. The man had a square shape, with thinning hair, rimless spectacles, and a face moulded in the lines of stolid responsibility. The woman was plump and motherly, and looked as if she would be equally at home in a kitchen or a church bazaar. They looked most obviously like a senior employee of a prosperous business house who had worked his way up from the bottom during a lifetime of loyal service, and his competent and comfortable wife. The only untypical thing about them was that instead of eating in the bored or companionable silence normally practised by such couples, they had been talking busily throughout the meal in low voices of which not a sound had reached the Saint’s sensitive ears — except, as has been said, when they spoke to the waiter. Simon Templar, whose favorite study was the mechanism of his fellow creatures, had begun to theorize about what gave them so much material for conversation, as approaching satiety released his interest from food. It was not, be concluded, an affair of connubial recriminations, which might typically have disrupted a typical taciturnity, and yet the conversation did not seem to be made up of pleasant trivialities, for the man’s air of permanent anxiety deepened as it went on, and once or twice he ran a hand over his sparse hair in a gesture almost of desperation.
It was about the same time that Simon realized, from the frequent glances in his direction, that he was somehow being made a major factor in the discussion.
He gazed out of the window at the twinkling lights reflected in the ornamental lakes of the Vondel Park and hoped that his impression was mistaken, or that they would soon find something else to argue about.
A voice at his elbow said, “Excuse me, Mr Templar — you are the Saint, aren’t you?”
He turned resignedly. It was the woman, of course.
“I suppose somebody told you at the Hollandia,” he said. “But they should have told you not to worry. I’ve promised not to murder anyone or steal their jewels while I’m here.”
“My name’s Upwater,” she said. “And I did want to talk to you about jewels. But not about your stealing them. I’ve heard that you’re really a good man, and you help people in trouble, and we’re in terrible trouble. I told my husband it seemed like Providence, your being here, just when this awful thing has happened. I said, ‘The Saint’s the only person who might be able to help us,’ and he said, ‘Why should you bother?’ and we had quite an argument, but I had to speak to you anyway. At least you’ll listen, won’t you? May I call him over?”
She had already dumped herself in a vacant chair, and the Saint did not see any way short of outright churlishness to dislodge her. In the mellow aftermath of a good meal, such violent measures were unthinkable. And he had nothing else in particular to do. That was so often what got him into things...
He grinned philosophically, and nodded.
“What’s the matter with these jewels?” he inquired.
She turned and beckoned to her husband, who started to get up from their table, looking more worried than ever.
“As a matter of fact,” she said, “it’s only one jewel. A diamond.”
“Oh.”
“We’ve lost it. And it doesn’t belong to us.”
‘That could be embarrassing,” Simon admitted. “But why should I know where to look for it?”
“It’s been stolen.”
“Not by me.”
“This is a perfect blue stone,” said Mr Upwater, sitting down heavily, “as big as the Hope diamond. It’s worth half a million dollars in your money.”
2
“I work for a very exclusive firm of jewelers in Bond Street, in London,” Mr Upwater explained, in a ponderous and painstaking way. “I’ve been with them myself for thirty years. The stone belongs to one of our clients. It is a magnificent gem, with a rather romantic name — the Angel’s Eye. But being an old stone, it isn’t too well cut. Our client decided to have it re-cut, which would improve its appearance and even enhance its value. As the oldest employee of the firm, it was entrusted to me to bring here, to one of the best cutters in Amsterdam, to have the work done.”
“And somebody swiped it from you on the way?” Simon hazarded.
“Oh, no. I delivered it to the cutter, Hendrik Jonkheer, yesterday. Today I went back to watch the start of the cutting. Mrs Upwater went with me. I’d brought her along, for a little holiday. And — tell Mr Templar what happened, Mabel.”
“Mr Jonkheer looked Mr Upwater straight in the eye,” said Mrs Upwater, “and told him he’d never seen him before and he certainly hadn’t brought him any diamond.”
Something like a phantom feather trailed up the Saint’s spine, riffling his skin with ghostly goose-pimples. And on the heels of that psychic chill came a warm pervasive glow of utter beatitude that crowned his recent feast more perfectly than the coffee and Napoleon brandy which he had not yet touched nor would ever do. His interest was no longer polite or even perfunctory. It had the vast receptive serenity of a cathedral.
For just as a musician would be electrified by a cadence of divine harmonies, so could the Saint respond to the tones of new and fabulous adventure. And about this one, he knew, there could be nothing commonplace. Suddenly he was humbly grateful for his ambiguous reputation, for the little difficulty at the hotel, for the resultant gossip, for the extravagant bonus which it had brought him. Because in a few simple unmistakable words the prosaic Mr and Mrs Upwater had placed in his hands the string to a kite of such superlatively crooked design that its flight, wherever it led, could bring only joy to his perversely artistic soul — a swindle of such originality and impudence that he contemplated it with an emotion bordering upon awe.
“That,” said the Saint at length, with transcendent understatement after so long a pause, “is a lulu.”
“I can’t get used to it yet,” Mr Upwater said dazedly. “He stood there, Mr Jonkheer did, looking straight at me just like I’m looking at you, only as if he thought I was a lunatic, and said he’d never set eyes on me before in his life. He almost had me believing I’d gone out of my mind. Only I knew I hadn’t.”
“It’s just like that story,” Mrs Upwater said. “You must know the one. About the girl and her mother who go to a hotel in Paris, and the mother’s sick, so the daughter goes out to get her some medicine, and when she gets back everybody in the hotel says they’ve never seen her before, or her mother, and when she goes to the room where she left her mother it’s a different room, and there’s nobody there.”
Simon nodded, almost in a trance himself.
“I know the story,” he said. “It turns out that the mother had the plague, or something, doesn’t it? And they got rid of her and tried to cover it up because they didn’t want to scare away the tourists... But this is a new twist!”
“That it is,” said Mr Upwater gloomily. “Only diamonds don’t get any disease. But they’re worth a lot of money.”
At last the Saint was able to control the palpitating gremlins inside him enough to reach for a cigarette.
“You’re sure you went to the right place?” he asked.
“I couldn’t go wrong. The name’s on the door.”
“And you’re sure it was Jonkheer you saw?”
“Of course I’m sure. It was the same man both times. The police knew him, too.”
“You’re been to the police already?”
“Of course I have. First thing I did, when I saw I wasn’t getting anywhere with Jonkheer. They went with me to the shop. But it was his word against mine, and they preferred his. Said he was a well-known respectable citizen, but they didn’t know the same about me. I almost got locked up myself. They as good as said I was either off my nut or trying to blackmail him.”
“Didn’t anyone else see you give him the stone?”
“No. It was just him and me. I didn’t take Mrs Upwater with me yesterday — she wanted to stay at the hotel and do our unpacking.”
“But if you say you gave it to him, Tom,” said Mrs Upwater loyally, “I know you did.”
Simon picked up his balloon glass and rolled the golden liquid around in it.
“Didn’t you get a receipt or anything?”
“Indeed I did. But this Dutchman swears it isn’t even in his writing.”
“Could someone else have disguised himself as Jonkheer?”
“If you saw him, Mr Templar, you’d know that couldn’t be done, except in a story.”
“How about a black-sheep twin brother?”
“I thought of that, too,” Mr Upwater said dourly. “I’m not a fool, and I’ve read books. He just doesn’t have one. The police vouch for that.”
The Saint sipped his cognac reverently. Everything was getting better and better.
“And you would have vouched for Jonkheer.”
“I never met him before,” Mr Upwater said carefully, “but I’ve known about him for years. Everyone knows him in the trade.”
“So you’ve no idea what would turn a man like that into a thief.”
Mr Upwater moved his hands hopelessly.
“Who knows what makes anyone go wrong? They say that every man has his price, so I suppose every man can be tempted. And that stone was big enough to tempt anyone.”
“Then,” said the Saint, “the same could be said about you.”
“That’s what he’s afraid of,” Mrs Upwater said gently.
Simon sniffed his brandy again, watching the man.
“What does your firm think about it?”
“I haven’t told them yet,” Upwater said dully. “I haven’t had the courage. You see—”
“You see,” Mrs Upwater put in, and her voice began to break, “they know Mr Jonkheer, too. They’ve done business with him for a long time. My husband’s been with them for a long time too, but he’s only an employee. Someone’s got to be guilty... They can’t prove that Tom’s lying, because he isn’t, but that’s not enough. If he can’t prove absolutely that he’s telling the truth—”
“There’d always be a doubt,” her husband finished for her. “And with a firm like I work for, in that kind of business, that’s the end. They’d let me out, and I’d never get another job. I might as well put my head in a gas oven, or jump in one of these canals.”
He pulled off his spectacles abruptly and put a trembling hand over his eyes.
Mrs Upwater patted his shoulder as if he had been a little boy, “There, there,” she said meaninglessly, and looked at the Saint with tears brimming in her eyes. “Mr Templar, you’re the only man in the world who might be able to do something about a thing like this. You must help us!”
She really didn’t have to plead. For Simon Templar to have walked away from a story like that would have been as improbable a phenomenon as a terrier ignoring the presence of a rat waltzing under his nose. There were people who thought that the Saint was a cold-blooded nemesis of crime, but altogether aside from the irresistible abstract beauty of the situation that the Upwaters had set before him, he felt genuinely sorry for them.
His human sympathy, however, detracted nothing from the delight with which he viewed the immediate future. It was true that only a few hours ago he had promised to be good, but there were limits. His evening, and in fact his whole visit to Amsterdam, was made.
He signaled to a waiter.
“I think we should all have a drink on this,” he said.
The half-incredulous joy in Mrs Upwater’s tear-dimmed eyes, to anyone else, would have been enough reward.
“You will help us?” she said breathlessly.
“There’s nothing I can do tonight. So we might as well just celebrate. But tomorrow,” Simon promised, “I will pay a call on your Mr Jonkheer.”
3
The name was on the door, as Mr Upwater had said, of a narrow-fronted three-storied brick building in a narrow street of similar buildings behind the Rijksmuseum: “HENDRIK JONKHEER,” and in smaller letters under it, “ Diamantslijper ” From the weathered stone of the doorstep to the weathered tile of the peaked roof, the house had a solid air of permanence and tradition. The only feature that distinguished it from its equally solid neighbors was the prison-like arrangement of iron bars over the two muslin-curtained ground floor windows. Definitely it bore no stigma of a potentially flashy or fly-by-night operation.
Simon tugged at the old-fashioned bell-pull, and heard it clang somewhere in the depths of the building. Presently the door opened, no more than a foot, to the limit of a chain fastened inside, and a thin young man in a knee-length gray overall coat looked out.
“May I see Mr Jonkheer?” Simon said.
“Your business, sir?”
“I’m a magazine writer, doing an article on the diamond business. I thought a man of Mr Jonkheer’s standing could give me some valuable information.”
The young man unfastened the chain and let him in to a bare narrow hall. There were doors on one side and another at the back, and a flight of uncarpeted wooden stairs led upwards. On a hard chair beside the stairs, with a newspaper on his lap and one hand under the paper, sat a burly man with blond close-cropped hair who stared at the Saint woodenly.
“One moment, please,” said the young man.
He disappeared through the door at the end of the hall. The burly man continued to stare motionlessly at the Saint, as if he were stuffed. In a little while the young man came back.
“This way, please.”
The back room was a homely sort of office, the only possible sanctum of an individualistic old-world craftsman who needed no front for his skill. It contained an ancient roll-top desk with dusty papers overflowing from its pigeonholes and littered over its surfaces, a battered swivel chair at the desk, and two overstuffed armchairs whose leather upholstery was dark and shiny with age. There were china figures and family photographs in gilt frames on the marble mantelpiece over a black iron coal fireplace. The safe stood under another barred window, and massive though it was, it would not have offered much more resistance than a matchbox to a modern cracksman.
Mr Jonkheer was a short bald man in his shirtsleeves, with a wide paunch under a leather apron and a wide multiple-chinned face. It was obvious at a glance that no make-up virtuoso could have duplicated him. His pale blue eyes looked small and bright behind thick gold-rimmed glasses.
“You are a writer, eh?” he said, with a kind of gruff affability. “Which magazine do you write for?”
“Any one that’ll buy what I write.”
“So. And what can I tell you for your article?”
The Saint sat in one of the heavy armchairs and opened a pack of cigarettes.
“Well, anything interesting about your work,” he said.
“I cut jewels — principally diamonds.”
“I know. I’m told you’re one of the best cutters in the business.”
“There are many good ones. I am good.”
“I suppose you’ve been doing it all your life?”
“Since I am an apprentice, at sixteen. I have been cutting stones, now, for forty years.”
“You must have cut some famous jewels in that time.”
A twin pair of vertical lines began to pucker between the cutter’s bushy brows.
“Famous?”
“I mean, well-known jewels, that people would like to read about.”
“I have cut many good stones.”
This was manifestly going to make no revelationary progress. Simon said, as offhandedly as he could, “You’re too modest, Mr Jonkheer. For instance, how about the Angel’s Eye?”
There was no audible sound effect like a sickening thud, but the response was much the same. In a silence that fairly hummed with hollowness, the diamond cutter’s small bright eyes hardened and froze like drops of his own gems.
The Saint exhaled cigarette smoke and tried to appear as if he noticed nothing out of the ordinary.
At last Jonkheer said, “What about the Angel’s Eye?”
“You know the stone I mean?”
“Of course. It is a famous diamond.”
“How are you going to re-cut it?”
“I am not re-cutting it.”
Jonkheer’s tone was still gruff, but no longer affable. Simon looked puzzled.
“But you have it here.”
“I do not.”
“I was told—”
“You are mistaken.”
“I don’t get it,” said the Saint, with an ingenuous frown. “The fellow who referred me to you said positively that the Angel’s Eye was brought to you for re-cutting only the other day. I don’t mean to pry into your business, but—”
The other’s steady stare was cold with suspicion.
“Who was this person?”
“It was somebody in the trade. I don’t know that I ought to mention his name. But he was very definite.”
Jonkheer gazed at him for a longer time, with no increase in friendliness. Then he turned his head slightly and called, “ Zuilen, kom tock binnen! ”
The burly blond man who had been sitting out in the hall walked in instantly, and without any preliminary sound, so that Simon realized that the door of the little office had never been fully closed and the big man must have been standing directly outside it. He brought his newspaper with him, carrying it rather awkwardly, as if he had something underneath it. With his left hand, he took a small leather folder from his pocket and showed Simon the card in it. The card carried his photograph and an inscription which Simon did not have time to read, but he recognized the official-looking seal and the word politie.
The big man, whose name was evidently Zuilen, was a very polite politieagent.
“May I see your credentials, please?”
“My passport is at the hotel,” said the Saint.
“Something, perhaps, from the magazine you write for?”
“I don’t write for any particular magazine. I just peddle my stuff wherever I can.”
“You must have something on you, some evidence of identity,” said the blond man patiently. “Please.”
He did not openly suggest that if none were produced, the matter could be continued at headquarters. That would have been superfluous.
Simon produced his wallet, and watched interestedly while Zuilen glanced at the contents. The detective’s eyes snapped from the first card that caught them to the Saint’s face as if a switch had been flicked, but his manner remained painstakingly correct.
“Mr Templar,” he said, “I did not hear that you were a writer.”
“It’s a new racket,” said the Saint easily.
The blond man handed the wallet back.
“You would do well to search for your material somewhere else,” he said. “There is nothing to interest you here.”
“Now wait a minute,” Simon argued. “I’m not making any trouble. I was told on the best authority that Mr Jonkheer had received a diamond called the Angel’s Eye to re-cut. I simply asked him about it. That isn’t a crime.”
“I am glad there is no crime,” said the burly man stolidly. “We do not like to have crime from foreigners, especially during the tourist season. Mr Jonkheer does not have any such diamond. Also he does not wish to be bothered. It is better that you do not make any trouble.” He held the door firmly open. “Good day, Mr Templar.”
A few moments later, without a harsh word having been spoken or an overt threat having been uttered, the Saint found himself indisputably out on the sidewalk, blinking at the noonday sunshine and listening to the rattle of chain and bolts being refastened on the inside of the old oak door.
4
“It was a lovely job,” Simon told the Upwaters. “I never had a chance of getting to first base.”
They sat around a lunch table in one of the crypt-like rooms of the d’Vijff Vliegen, that quaintly labyrinthine restaurant on the Spuistraat, where they had arranged to meet, although only the Saint seemed to have much appetite for the excellent kalfoesters, thin fillets of veal browned in butter and lemon juice, with stewed cucumbers and brown beans, which he had ordered for what he considered fairly earned nutriment.
“That policeman, too,” said Mrs Upwater indignantly. “That Jonkheer really must have the wool pulled over their eyes.”
“Or else they’re all in the swindle up to the neck with him,” Mr Upwater said bitterly.
“However it goes,” said the Saint, “the place is pretty well guarded. And I haven’t the faintest doubt that the Angel’s Eye is there. They were so grimly determined to deny it. I could see it gave Jonkheer a good jolt when I asked about it. I bet they’re still worrying about what my angle is, if that’s any help to you.”
“It’s there, all right,” Upwater said gloomily. “Did you see his safe?”
“Oh, yes. In his office.”
“I didn’t see it. I was taken right into his workshop, the first time, and the second time I didn’t get any further than the hall. If I’d seen the safe, I might have been able to have the policeman make him open it.”
“His office is on the ground floor, at the back of the hall.”
“The diamond probably isn’t there now, anyway,” said Mrs Upwater.
Simon took a deep pull at his beer.
“How big is this diamond?” he asked. “You said it was as big as the Hope. How big is that?”
“About a hundred carats,” Upwater said. He put the tips of his thumb and forefinger together, forming a circle, “About so big. It’d be easy to hide anywhere.”
Simon forked together the last remnants of food on his plate, and ate them with infinite enjoyment. Any lingering doubts that he might have had were gone. He knew that this was going to be an adventure to remember.
“I told you, I’m certain the Angel’s Eye is at Jonkheer’s,” he said. “That’s why the cop is staying on the premises. But I don’t think it’s hidden. I think they figure it’s well enough guarded. And an old-fashioned conservative type like Jonkheer would have complete confidence in an old-fashioned safe like that, just because it weighs a few tons and he’s had it ever since he went into business. He wouldn’t believe that any up-to-date expert could go through it like a coffee-can.”
The man and woman gazed at him uncertainly.
“What good does that do us?” Mr Upwater asked at length. “I’m no safe-cracker.”
“But I am,” said the Saint.
There was another long and pent-up silence.
“You’d burgle it?” Mrs Upwater said.
“I think you knew all along,” said the Saint gently, “that I would.”
Mrs Upwater began to cry.
“You can’t do that,” Mr Upwater protested. “That’s robbery!”
“To take back your own property?”
“But if you got caught—”
“If I only take the Angel’s Eye, which Jonkheer isn’t supposed to have anyway, how is he going to phrase his squawk?”
Mr Upwater clutched his wife’s hand, staring at the Saint with a pathetic sort of devotion.
“I never thought I’d find myself siding with anyone about breaking the law,” he said. “But you’re right, Mr Templar — Jonkheer’s got us by the short hairs, and the only way we can ever get even is to steal the diamond back, just about the same way that he got it. Only I could never’ve thought of it myself, and it beats me why you’d take a chance like that to help a total stranger.”
Simon lighted a cigarette.
“Well,” he said, and his smile was happily Mephistophelian, “suppose I did just happen to take something else besides your diamond — by way of interest, you might say — would you feel it was your duty to tell the police about me?”
“I wouldn’t,” said Mrs Upwater promptly, dabbing her eyes. “A man like Jonkheer deserves to lose everything he’s got.”
“Then that’s settled,” said the Saint cheerfully. “How about some dessert? Some oliebollen? Or the flensjes should be mildly sensational.”
Mr Upwater shook his head. He was still staring at the Saint much as a lost explorer in the Sahara would have stared at the approach of an ice wagon.
“I’m too nervous to eat,” he said. “I’ll be in a sweat until this is over. When will you do it?”
“On the stroke of midnight,” said the Saint. “I’m superstitious about the witching hour — it’s always been lucky for me. Besides, by that time our friend Jonkheer will be sound asleep, and even the police guard will be drowsy. I’m pretty sure Jonkheer lives over the shop, and he’s the type who would go to bed about ten.”
“Isn’t there anything I can do, Mr Templar? I wouldn’t be much of a hand at what you’re planning, but—”
“Not a thing. Take Mrs Upwater sightseeing. Have dinner. Go to your room, break out some cards, and send for a bottle of schnapps. When the waiter brings it, make like I’ve gone to the bathroom. If anything goes wrong, you’ll be my alibi — we were all playing cards. I’ll see you soon after midnight, with your diamond.” Simon looked at his watch. “Now, if you’re through, I’ll run along. I’ve got to shop for a few things I don’t normally carry in my luggage.”
He spent an interesting afternoon in his own way, and got back to the Hollandia about six o’clock with no particular plans for the early part of the evening. But that state of tranquil vagueness lasted only until he turned away from the desk with his key. Then a hand smacked him violently between the shoulder-blades, and he turned again to meet the merry dark horn-spectacled eyes of a slight young man who looked more like a New Yorker than any New Yorker would have done.
“Simon, you old son-of-a-gun!” cried Pieter Liefman. “What shemozzle are you up to here?”
The scion of Amsterdam’s most traditionalistic brewery had spent some years in the United States, and prided himself on his complete assimilation of the culture of the New World.
“Pete!” The Saint grinned. “You couldn’t have shown up at a better moment.”
“I’ve been out in the sticks,” Liefman said. “I just got back in town and got your message, and I came right over to try and track you down. What’s boiling?”
“Let’s get a drink somewhere and I’ll tell you.”
“My hot-shot’s outside. We can drive out to Scherpenzeel, to the De Witte.”
“Good enough. The way you drive, you can get me back in plenty of time for what I want to do later.”
As Pieter Liefman needled his Jaguar through the sparse evening traffic with an ebullient disregard for all speed laws and principles of safety that would have had most passengers gripping the seat and muttering despondent prayers, Simon Templar leaned back with a cigarette and reflected gratefully on his good fortune. Pieter’s timely arrival had made his project even neater than he had hoped.
“I guess you rate pretty high in this town, Pete,” he remarked.
“If you mean I should get a ducat for speeding, you don’t know the quarter of it. They throw the books at me about once a week.”
“But in any serious case, I imagine you’d be as influential a witness as any guy could want.”
“Quit holding up on me,” Liefman implored. “Is the Saint on the war-path again?”
Simon began his tale at the beginning.
5
The return from Scherpenzeel, after a gargantuan repast devoured with respectful deliberation, was made at the same suicidal velocity, but so coolly timed that clocks were booming the hour that Simon had fixed in his mind as the Jaguar purred to a stop in the street where Hendrik Jonkheer plied his trade, but several doors away from the house itself. The short street was deserted except for one other car parked at the opposite end.
“I only hope you’ve figured this on the button,” Pieter Liefman said.
“I am the world’s greatest practical psychologist,” said the Saint. “Go ahead with your part of the act.”
He slipped out of the car and strolled unhurriedly down the street to Jonkheer’s door. The building was dark and wrapped in silence. He turned the door handle experimentally. The door started to yawn at his touch, and no inside chain stopped it.
Simon stepped in, closing it swiftly and silently behind him. With a pencil flashlight smothered in his hand so that the bulb was almost covered by his fingers, he let a dim glow play momentarily over the inside of the frame. The chain was dangling, the hasp at one end still attached to it with fragments of freshly torn wood adhering to the screws, testifying to the inherent weakness of such devices which was no surprise to him.
He turned the same hardly more than phosphorescent illumination around the hall, and at the foot of the stairs he saw the burly bodyguard, Zuilen, lying on the floor, the wrists and ankles expertly bound and tied together and his mouth covered with adhesive tape. The big policeman seemed uninjured, except probably in his dignity, to judge by the lively glare of wrath that smouldered in his eyes.
Simon went past him without pausing for any social amenities, moving with the fluid soundlessness of a disembodied shadow.
The door of the back office was ajar, outlined with the faint luminosity of a well-shaded light within. Simon pushed it with his fingertips, and it swung wider without even an uncooperative creak.
Inside, he saw that the light came from a small professionally shrouded electric lantern on the floor beside the massive safe. The safe was open, and the means of its opening were evident in an assortment of shining tools spread on a velvet cloth in front of it.
Between Simon and the safe stood a man with a large handkerchief knotted loosely around his throat, obviously serving as an easily replaceable mask, who was in the act of stuffing a handful of small tissue-paper packages into his pocket.
“Good evening,” said the Saint, because it seemed as tactful a way of drawing attention to himself as he could think of.
He said it very quietly, too, in case his audience had a weak heart, but just the same the man spun around like a puppet jerked with a string.
The movement stopped there, because Simon was playing the beam of his flashlight pointedly on the gun in his right hand, to discourage any additional reaction. But there was enough general luminance, between that and the shielded lamp on the floor, for each of them to see the other’s face.
Mr Upwater stared at him pallidly, and licked his lips.
“You weren’t supposed to be here for an hour,” he said stupidly.
“That’s what I told you,” said the Saint calmly, “so that I’d know about what time you’d be here. Naturally you wanted to have comfortable time to do the job before I arrived, but you wouldn’t want to be too long before, in case it was discovered too soon for me to walk in and take the rap. You did the groundwork very cleverly — getting me to come here this morning and case the joint for you, while at the same time establishing myself as a prime suspect. The only thing I was a little worried about was whether you meant to really let me do the job myself, and hijack the boodle afterwards. But I decided you wouldn’t take that big a chance — you couldn’t be quite sure that with so much loot in my pockets I mightn’t yield to temptation and double-cross you. When you said yourself that every man has his price, you gave me a fix on your thinking.”
Mr Upwater’s eyes were wild and haggard.
“You’ve got it all wrong,” he said feverishly. “I was afraid you were just kidding me — that you wouldn’t really do it at all — so I made up my mind to do it myself.”
“And not like any amateur, either,” said the Saint approvingly. “Those tools of yours are first class. I suppose you wouldn’t like to tell me how you got wind of the Angel’s Eye being re-cut here? They were certainly doing their best to keep it quiet, to try and avoid having any trouble with people like us, as I could tell by the reception I got when I started to ask questions. It was nice work of yours to locate it, but you must have thought you were really in luck when you heard I was in town, all ready to be the fall guy.”
“So help me, Mr Templar, I told you the truth—”
“Oh, no, you didn’t. Not from the word Go. I knew you were lying from the moment you said you delivered the Angel’s Eye the day before yesterday and the cutting was supposed to start yesterday. Anyone who knows anything about diamonds knows that a cutter would study an important stone like that for weeks, maybe even months, before he made the first cut, because if he made any mistake about the grain he might break it into a lot of worthless fragments. And I was doubly sure that you didn’t work for any big-time jewelers when you said that the Angel’s Eye was as big as the Hope diamond and weighed about a hundred carats. For your information, the Hope diamond, good as it is, is only forty-four and a quarter. It’s my business to know things like that, and it ought to be yours.”
Upwater swallowed.
“Can’t we call it quits?” he said desperately. “There’s plenty for both of us.”
“Thank you,” said the Saint, “but this time I’ll be happy to collect a legitimate reward, with no headaches.”
“Nobody’ll believe you,” Upwater said viciously. “I’ll say you were in it with me, right up to now.”
“I’m sorry,” said the Saint, “but I’ve taken care to prove otherwise.”
There was a sudden rush of feet, and the lights went on.
Two uniformed men stood in the doorway, with Pieter Liefman crowding in past them. Pieter put an arm around the Saint’s shoulders and spoke rapidly to the policemen in Dutch, and Upwater wilted as he realized that the trap was closed.
Some time later, as they all went out into the street, with Upwater handcuffed between the two officers, Simon looked for the car that had been parked on the far corner. It was no longer there.
Pieter intercepted the glance.
“It took off when I came back with the flatfeet,” he said.
Simon read the mute entreaty in Upwater’s white face, and shrugged.
“Okay,” he said. “We won’t say anything about Mabel. After all, she was the one who really brought me into this.”
On second thought, after he saw Mr Upwater’s next expression, he wondered if that was quite the right thing to mention.