1
The lights of Lucerne were twinkling on the lake as Simon Templar strolled out towards it through the Casino gardens, and above them the craggy head of old Pilatus loomed blackly against a sky full of stars. At a jetty across the National quai a tourist launch was disgorging a load of trippers, and the clear Swiss air was temporarily raucous with the alien accents of Lancashire and London. Simon stood under a tree, enjoying a cigarette and waiting patiently for them to disperse. He had a deep aversion to mobs, and did not want to walk in the middle of one even the short distance to his hotel: something perhaps overly sensitive and fastidious in him recoiled instinctively from their mildly alcoholic exuberance and the laughter was just a shade too loud and shallow for his tranquil mood. It was not because he was afraid of being recognized. Any one of them would probably have reacted to his name, or at least to his still better-known sobriquet, the Saint, but none would have been likely to identify his face. The features of the mocking buccaneer whose long and simultaneous vendettas with the underworld and the law had become legendary in his own lifetime were known to few — a fact which the Saint had often found to his advantage.
But at that moment he was not even thinking of the advantages of anonymity. He was simply indulging a personal distaste for boisterous holiday-makers. He was still trying to take a holiday himself. He wanted nothing from them except to be left alone, and they had nothing to fear from him.
Presently they were gone, and the esplanade was deserted again. He dropped his cigarette and stood like a statue, absorbed in the serene beauty of shimmering water and sentinel mountains.
From the direction of the Hotel National, off to his left, came a single set of footsteps. They were solid, purposeful, a little hurried. Simon turned only his head, and saw the man who made them as he came nearer — a stoutish man of middle height, wearing a dark suit and a dark homburg, carrying a bulky briefcase, the whole effect combined with his intent and urgent gait giving him an incongruously brisk and business-like appearance in the peaceful Alpine night. Simon caught a glimpse of his face as he passed under one of the street lamps that stood along the waterfront; it had a sallow and unmistakably Latin cast that was accentuated by a small pointed black beard.
Then, hardly a moment later, Simon realized that he was not watching one man, but three.
The other two came from somewhere out of the shadows — one tall and gaunt, the other short and powerful. They wore snap-brim hats pulled down over their eyes and kept their hands in their pockets. They too moved quickly and purposefully — more quickly even than the man with the beard, so that their distance behind him was dwindling rapidly. But the difference was that their feet made no sound...
It was so much like watching a conventional scene from a movie that for what seemed afterwards like an unforgivable length of time, but was probably no more than a number of seconds, the Saint observed it as passively as if he had been sitting in a theater. Perhaps it was so obvious and implausible in that setting that his rational mind resisted accepting it at its face value. It was only as the two pursuers closed the last yard between them and the bearded man, and the lamplight flashed on steel in the gaunt one’s hand, that Simon Templar understood that his immobility under the tree had let them think that they were unobserved, and that this was all for real. And by then there was no time left to forestall the climax of the act.
The two followers moved like a well-coordinated team. The gaunt one’s right hand snaked over their quarry’s right shoulder and clamped over his mouth; the steel in his left hand disappeared where it touched the bearded man’s back. At the same moment, like a horrible extension of the same creature, the stocky one snatched the briefcase out of unprotesting fingers. Then, in the same continuous flow of movement, the bearded man was falling bonelessly, like a rag doll, and the two attackers were running back towards the alley between the Casino gardens and the gardens of the Hotel National.
The tingle of belated comprehension was still crawling up the Saint’s spine as he raced to intercept them. He did not call out, for it was too late now to warn the victim, and he saw no one else close enough to be any help. He ran as silently as the two footpads, and faster.
He met them at the corner of the alley. The gaunt one was nearer, and saw him first, and swung to meet him. The Saint saw a cruel bony face twisting in a vicious snarl, but he had the advantage of surprise. Before any of its transparently unfriendly intentions could materialize, his fist slammed into it, and the gaunt man sat down suddenly.
Either the stocky one was over-confident of his partner’s ability to cope with the intrusion, or loyalty to a comrade was not in him, for he did not wait to lend his aid. He swerved and kept on running. And because he still carried the briefcase which appeared to be the prize in the affray, Simon ran after him.
The stocky one had an unexpected turn of speed for a man of his build. Reluctantly, because he was not dressed for it, the Saint launched himself in a flying tackle that just reached one of the stocky man’s pistoning legs. The man fell lightly, like a wrestler, but Simon kept his grip on one ankle. Then, as they rolled over at the edge of a clump of rhododendrons, the man’s other foot thumped into the side of the Saint’s head. Colored lights danced across Simon’s eyes, and his hold loosened. He must have been half stunned for a moment; then, as his head cleared, he was holding nothing.
A heavy rustling in the bushes, hoarse shouts, and the sound of more running feet mingled confusedly in his brain as he sat up.
A man bent over him, only dimly visible in the gloom, and the Saint instinctively gathered himself to fight back before he realized that this was a newcomer. The height was about the same as that of the stocky man, but the silhouette, round and roly-poly, was different. The voice that came with it, in excellent English, with a curious mixture of Continental accent and Oxford vowels, was reassuring. “Are you all right?”
Simon picked himself up, felt his face tenderly, and brushed off his clothes. “I think so. Did you see my playmate?”
“He ran away. I’m not built for running — or football tackles. What was it about?”
There were more hurrying footsteps, and the beam of a flashlight stabbed at them. In the reflected glow behind it Simon saw the outlines of a uniform.
“Here’s someone who’s going to be professionally interested in the answer to that,” he said grimly.
The policeman spoke in the atrocious guttural dialect of the region. It was well out of the Saint’s considerable linguistic range, but he needed no interpreter to translate it as some variant of the standard gambit of law officers in such situations anywhere: “What goes on here?”
The roly-poly man answered in the same patois. His face in the light was round and soft and childish, with rimless glasses over rather prominent blue eyes. He wore a tweed coat and a round soft pork-pie hat. He talked volubly, with graphic gestures, so that Simon easily understood that he was describing the Saint’s encounter with the stocky thug, which he must have witnessed. The policeman asked another question, and the round man handed him a card from a small leather folder.
The policeman turned to the Saint.
“ Vous parlez français? ”
“ Mais oui,” said the Saint easily. “This gentleman saw me trying to catch one man. There was another. Over there.”
They walked to where Simon had dropped the gaunt man. But there was no one there.
“He seems to have got away too,” he said ruefully. Then he pointed across the promenade. “But there’s the man they robbed.”
The gaunt man had taken back his knife, but it had done its work well. The man with the little black beard must have died almost instantly. His face was almost shockingly composed and disinterested when they turned him over.
“The briefcase which you say they took from him,” said the policeman, in French. “What happened to it?”
Simon shrugged.
“I suppose the fellow I tackled got away with it.”
“And so we shall not know the motive for the attack,” observed the round man thoughtfully.
“Without wanting to play Sherlock Holmes,” said the Saint, with a trace of sarcasm, “I should guess that it might have been robbery.”
The policeman was searching the pockets of the body. With a light touch on the arm, the moon-faced man drew the Saint a little aside.
“Restrain yourself, my friend. The police don’t like to be teased. May I introduce myself? My name is Oscar Kleinhaus. I’m fairly well known here. I’ll try to see that you have no trouble.”
“Thank you,” said the Saint curiously.
The policeman was holding an Italian passport. “Filippo Ravenna,” he read from it. “Of Venice. Married. Fifty-one years old. Director of companies.”
“Was he a friend of yours?” Kleinhaus asked.
I never saw him before in my life,” said the Saint.
The policeman thumbed over the pages of the passport, and pointed at one of them.
“What is this?”
Simon looked over his shoulder.
“It’s an immigrant’s visa to the United States... issued a week ago. Apparently it has not yet been used.”
“But you say you did not know him.”
“I forget how many thousands of immigrants enter the United States every year,” said the Saint, “but I assure you they are not all friends of mine.”
Again he felt a warning tug at his sleeve.
The rotund Mr Kleinhaus addressed the policeman again in his own dialect. He appeared to be arguing that the Saint was merely an innocent bystander who had tried to catch a couple of criminals, that he should not be treated like a suspect, that the policeman would do better to concentrate on the crime. The policeman seemed to be grudgingly impressed. He turned back to the Saint less aggressively.
“Your name, please?”
Simon had grown a little wary lately of the hazards of his reputation. In Switzerland, the traditional land of peace and neutrality, he had decided to make an attempt to reduce those risks when he registered at his hotel.
‘Tombs,” he said. “Sebastian Tombs.”
“Where are you staying here?”
“At the National.”
The policeman wrote down the information in a notebook.
For the first time, now, there were more people walking towards them along the quai. It was late, but presently there would be the inevitable crowd.
Kleinhaus said something else to the policeman, and the policeman seemed to agree. Kleinhaus took Simon by the arm and steered him away.
“We’ll phone the station to send him some help,” he said. “We can do it from your hotel. Could you identify those two thugs?”
“After a fashion,” Simon described them as best he could, as they walked through the gardens to the back entrance of the hotel. “I suppose the detectives will want to know that, for what it’s worth.”
“I’ll pass it on to them when I telephone.” They were in the lobby. “It’ll be easier for me, speaking the lingo. And you don’t want to get mixed up in it, and spoil your vacation. I’ll take care of everything.”
Simon looked at him pensively.
“You’re very kind,” he said. “Is that just Swiss hospitality?”
“I don’t like visitors to have bad experiences in my country,” said Mr Kleinhaus. “Go to bed. Perhaps we shall meet again.”
He raised his round hat courteously as Simon entered the elevator.
2
The Saint never stayed awake to ask himself questions to which he could only give himself imaginary answers. He slept as if nothing had happened, as if there were no loose ends in his mind, secure in the confidence that if the incident of that night was destined to be only a beginning it would reveal the rest of itself in its own good time. Life was like that for him. He did not have to seek adventure: his problem would have been to shake off its relentless pursuit.
He had just finished breakfast in his room when there was a knock on his door.
For anyone else, he reflected as he opened the door, it would probably have been only a waiter to take away the tray. For him, it had to be a woman. She was no more than thirty, beautiful in a dark classical way, like a Florentine painting, with a full figure that nullified the discretion of an expensive black dress. The deep shadows under her eyes were not out of a jar.
She said, with very little accent, “Mr Tombs — may I talk to you? I am Mrs Ravenna.”
“Of course.”
She came in and sat down. Simon poured himself another cup of coffee and offered her a cigarette. She shook her head, and he lighted it for himself.
“I feel terribly guilty about your husband,” he said. “I might have saved him. I just wasn’t thinking fast enough.”
“At least you tried to catch the men who killed him. The police told me. I wanted to thank you.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t more successful. But if the police catch them, I may be able to identify them. I suppose you haven’t any ideas about them?”
“I have none. Filippo was a good man. I didn’t think he had any enemies. No. Never.”
“Did he have business rivals?”
“I can’t think of any. We were quite rich, but he was successful without hurting anyone. In any case, he had got rid of his interests.”
“What were they?”
“He manufactured shoes. It was a good business. But Europe today is an uncertain place. There is always fear — of war, of inflations, of unstable governments. So, we were going to America. Our quota number had just come through.”
“I know. And he was going to start a new business there?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” said the Saint, “the police think it was just an ordinary robbery, don’t they?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you?”
She twisted her fingers nervously together.
“I don’t know what to think.”
The Saint stared at a plume of smoke drifting towards the ceiling. He tried half-heartedly not to recognize that his blood was suddenly running faster, in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with the young woman’s appealing beauty. But it was no use. He knew, only too well, the symptoms of the almost psychic reflex that told him that he was in it again — up to the ears...
“I’m thinking,” he said slowly, “these muggers didn’t just pick your husband by accident. They knew what they were after. They didn’t even try to look in his pockets. They just grabbed his briefcase and ran. Therefore, they knew what was in it. What was that?”
“Some business papers, perhaps?”
“A shoe manufacturer would hardly be likely to have any trade secrets that would be worth going to those lengths to steal.”
“You talk like a detective.”
“Heaven forbid,” said the Saint piously. “I’m only curious. What did he have in that briefcase?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“It must have been something very valuable. And yet you know nothing about it?”
“No.”
She was lying, it was as obvious as the Alps, but he tried not to make it so obvious that he saw it.
“Why did you come here,” he asked, “when you were just getting ready to move to America?”
“There were a few places we wanted to see before we left, because we didn’t know if we would ever come back.”
“And yet, on a simple vacation trip like that, your husband brought along something so valuable that he could be murdered for it — and never even mentioned it to you?”
Her black eyes flashed suddenly hard like jet. “You ask more questions than the police! Are you insulting me?”
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I was only trying to help. If we knew what was in that briefcase, we might have a clue to the people who stole it.”
She looked down at the twisting of her hands, and made a visible effort to hold them still.
“Forgive me,” she said in a lowered voice. “I am on edge. It has been such a shock... You are right. The briefcase is important. And that’s really what I wanted to talk to you about. Those men — they did get it, didn’t they?”
“Why, yes. I was chasing the man who had it. I brought him down, but he kicked me in the face and got away.”
“I thought, perhaps, he might have dropped it.”
“I didn’t see it again.”
“Did the police search for it?”
“I don’t think anyone would have. Even if the man dropped it, he had plenty of time to pick it up again while I was knocked half silly. Anyway, it wasn’t around. And if the police had found it, they’d certainly have returned it to you.”
Her eyes examined him uncertainly.
“If anyone found it... anyone... I would pay a large reward.”
“If I knew where to lay my hands on it,” said the Saint, a little frigidly, “you wouldn’t have to ask for it back, or pay any reward.”
She nodded.
“Of course. I’m being stupid. It was a foolish hope. Excuse me.” She stood up abruptly. “Thank you for letting me talk to you — and again for what you tried to do. I must not bother you anymore.”
She held out her hand, and was gone. Simon Templar stood where she had left him and slowly lighted another cigarette. Then he walked to the window. From the balcony outside he was offered a superb panorama of mountains rolling down to the sparkling blue foreground of the lake, where an excursion steamer swam like a toy trailing a brown veil of smoke, but irresistibly his eye was drawn downwards and to the right, towards the corner outside the gardens where he had tackled the stocky man.
He could have persuaded himself that it was only an illusion that he could see something from where he stood, but the echoes of the false notes that the Signora Ravenna had struck were less easy to dismiss.
He put on his jacket and went downstairs. After only a short search in the bushes near where he had tangled with the stocky man, he found the briefcase.
3
He figured it out as he took it upstairs to his room. The briefcase had indeed flown out of the stocky man’s grasp when the Saint tackled him. It had fallen in among the rhododendrons. Then Kleinhaus had come along, shouting. The stocky man had been too scared to stop and look for it. He had scrammed the hell out of there. The police hadn’t looked for it, because they assumed it was gone. And the stocky man hadn’t come back to look, either because he was afraid to, or because he assumed the police would have found it.
And now the Saint had it.
He stood and looked at it for quite a while, behind his locked door. He only had to pick up the telephone — he presumed that Signora Ravenna was staying in the same hotel — and tell her to come and get it. Or perhaps the more correct procedure would be to call the police. But either of those moves called for a man devoid of curiosity, a pillar of convention, a paragon of deafness to the siren voices of intrigue — which the Saint was not. He opened it.
It required no instruments or violence. Just a steady pull on a zipper. It opened flat, exposing its contents in one dramatic revelation, as if they had been spread out on a tray.
Simon enumerated them as dispassionately as a catalog, while another part of his mind fumbled woozily over trying to add them into an intelligible total.
Item: one chamois pouch containing a necklace of pink pearls, perfectly graduated. Item: one hotel envelope containing eight diamonds and six emeralds, cut but unset, none less than two carats, each wrapped in a fold of tissue paper. Item: a cellophane envelope containing ten assorted postage stamps, of an age which suggested that they might be rare and valuable. Item: a book in an antique binding, which from the title pages appeared to be a first edition of Boccaccio’s Amorosa Visione, published in Milan in 1521. Item: a small oil painting on canvas without a frame, folded in the middle to fit the briefcase but apparently protected from creasing by the bulk of the book, signed with the name of Botticelli. Item: a folded sheet of plain notepaper on which was typed, in French:
M PAUL GALEN 137 WENDENWEG LUCERNE Dear Monsieur Galen, The bearer, Signor Filippo Ravenna, can be trusted, and his merchandise is most reliable. With best regards,
The signature was distinctive but undecipherable.
“And a fascinating line of merchandise it is,” brooded the Saint. “For a shoemaker, Filippo must have been quite an interesting soul — or was he a heel?... A connoisseur and collector of very varied tastes? But then why would he bring his prize treasures with him on a trip like this?... A sort of Italian Raffles, leading a double life? But a successful business man shouldn’t need to steal. And if he did, his instincts would lead him to fancy bookkeeping rather than burglary... A receiver of stolen goods? But then he wouldn’t need a formal introduction to someone else who sounds as if he might be in that line of business... And what a strange assortment of loot! There has to be a clue there, if I could find it...”
But for ten minutes the significance eluded him. And at that point he gave up impatiently.
There was another clue, more positive, more direct, in the letter to the mysterious Paul Galen, and it was one which should not be too difficult to run down.
He put the jewels, the stamps, and the letter in different pockets of his coat. The book and the painting, too bulky to carry inconspicuously, he put back in the briefcase and zippered it up again. He hid it, not too seriously, under the mattress at the head of the bed. Then, with a new lightness in his step, he went out and rang for the elevator.
It took him down one floor, and stopped again. Signora Ravenna got in.
For the space of one skipped heartbeat he wondered whether her room too might have a balcony from which she might have watched him retrieve the briefcase from the bushes below, but he met her eyes with iron coolness and only a slight pleasant nod to acknowledge their acquaintance, and his pulse resumed smoothly when she gave back only a small perfunctory smile.
She had put on a small black hat and carried a purse.
“The police have asked me to go and talk to them again,” she volunteered. “They have thought of more questions, I suppose. Did they send for you too?”
“I haven’t heard from them since last night,” he said. “But I expect they’ll get around to me eventually.”
It occurred to him that it was a little odd that he had not been asked to repeat the descriptions which Oscar Kleinhaus had promised to relay, but he was too busy with other thoughts to speculate much about the reasons for it. He was grateful enough to have been dropped out of the investigation.
As they strolled across the lobby, he said, “Will you think me impertinent if I ask another question?”
“No,” she said. “I want your help.”
“When your husband went out last night — did he say where he was going?”
She answered mechanically, so that he knew she was reciting something that she had said before.
“I was tired, and he wanted to look for a cafe where he had heard there were Tyrolean singers, so he went alone.”
“Didn’t you think it strange that he should take his briefcase?”
“I didn’t see him take it.”
Simon handed her into a taxi without another word.
He walked slowly towards the Schweizerhof. At the corner of the Alpenstrasse he bought a selection of morning papers, and sat down at the nearest cafe over a cup of chocolate to read methodically through all the headlines.
He had just finished when a shadow fell across the table, and a familiar voice said, “Looking to see whether you are a hero, Mr Tombs?”
It was Oscar Kleinhaus, and the disarming smile on his cherubic face made his remark innocent of offense. The Saint smiled back, no less disarmingly.
“I was rather curious to see what the newspapers said about it,” he admitted. “But they don’t seem to have the story yet.”
“No, I didn’t notice it either. I’m afraid our press is a little slow, by American standards. We think that if a story would be good in the morning, it will be just as interesting in the evening.”
“Would you care to join me?”
Kleinhaus shook his head.
“Unfortunately I have a business appointment. I hope I’ll have another opportunity. How long are you staying here?”
“I haven’t made any plans. I thought the police would want to know that, but no one’s been near me.”
“If they caught anyone for you to identify, they would want you. Until then, I expect they think it more considerate not to trouble you. But if you asked for your bill at the hotel, I’m sure they would be informed.” The round face was completely bland and friendly. “I must go now. But we shall run into each other again. Lucerne is a small town.”
He raised his collegiate hat with the same formal courtesy as the night before, and ambled away.
Simon watched him very thoughtfully until he was out of sight. Then he hailed a cab and gave the address which he had found in the briefcase.
The road turned off the Alpenstrasse above the ancient ramparts of the old town and wound up the hillside with ever widening vistas of the lake into a residential district of neat doll-house chalets. The house where the taxi stopped was high up, perched out on a jutting crag, and Simon had paid off the driver and was confirming the number on the door, with his finger poised over the bell, before he really acknowledged to himself that he had already had two wide-open and obvious opportunities to speak about the briefcase to more or less interested parties since he had found it, and that he had studiously ignored both of them — not to mention that he had made no move whatever to report his discovery to the police. But now he could no longer pretend to be unaware of what he was doing. And it is this chronicler’s shocking duty to record that the full and final realization gave him a lift of impenitent exhilaration which the crisp mountain air could never have achieved alone.
The door opened, and a manservant with a seamed gray face, dressed in somber black, looked him over impersonally.
“Is Monsieur Galen here?” Simon inquired.
“ De la part de qui, m’sieur? ”
“I am Filippo Ravenna,” said the Saint.
4
The room into which he was ushered was large and sunny, furnished with the kind of antiques that look priceless and yet comfortable to live with. The walls on either side of the fireplace were lined with bookshelves, on two others were paintings and a tapestry, in the fourth French windows opened on to a terrace overlooking the town and the mountains and the lake. The carpet underfoot was Aubusson. It was the living room of a man of wealth and cheerful good taste, and the manservant looked like an undertaker in it, but he withdrew as soon as he had shown the Saint in.
The man who advanced to greet Simon was altogether different. He had a muscular build rounded with good living, a full crop of black hair becomingly flecked with silver, and strong fleshy features. White teeth gleamed around a cigar.
“ Buon giorno, Signor! Sono felicissimo di vederla. ”
“We can speak French if you prefer,” said the Saint cautiously. It was safer than trying to speak Italian as a native tongue.
“As you wish. Or German, or English even. I struggle with all of them. I want my clients to feel comfortable, and they come from so many places.” He waved Simon to a couch facing the windows. “You have a letter, perhaps?”
Simon handed him the introduction. Galen glanced at it and put it in his pocket, and sat down.
“I knew you were coming,” he said apologetically, “but it is necessary to be careful.”
“Of course.”
“Sometimes my clients are so preoccupied with evading their own export restrictions that they forget we have Swiss import regulations too. That is their own affair, but naturally I want no trouble with the authorities here.”
“I understand your position,” said the Saint, understanding very little.
“Worse still,” Galen said talkatively, “there are people who try to offer me stolen things. That is why it is so pleasant to meet someone who is recommended like yourself. Aside from the risk involved with stolen property, it is so much trouble to sell, and the prices are bound to be miserable. It is not worth it.”
Simon nodded sympathetically, while his brain seemed to flounder in an intangible quicksand. So the eccentric assortment of treasures in Ravenna’s briefcase were supposed to be his own legitimate property, which finally disposed of one theory but at the same time cut away one possible piece of solid ground. Why, then, all the secrecy and mystery?
The Saint said conversationally, “So your clients come from all over Europe, do they?”
“From everywhere between the Iron Curtain and Portugal — every country where there are these annoying restrictions on foreign exchange and the free movement of wealth. What a pity there have to be so many barriers in this primitive civilization! However I have a nice central location, and Swiss money is good anywhere in the world. Also, I am very discreet. There is no law here against me buying anything I choose, and not a word about our transaction will get back to Italy from me. Other people’s problems are my business opportunity, but I prefer to think of myself as a kind of liberator.” He laughed genially. “Now, what do you have to sell?”
Simon gave him the chamois bag.
Galen took out the pink pearl necklace and held it up to the light.
“It is beautiful,” he said admiringly.
He studied it more closely, and then pondered for several seconds while he carefully evened the ash on his cigar.
“I can give you four hundred thousand Swiss francs,” he said at length. “Or, if you like, the equivalent in dollars, deposited at any bank in New York. That would be something over seventeen thousand dollars. It is a good price, in the circumstances.” He draped the necklace over his fingers and admired it again, then his shrewd dark eyes turned back to the Saint. “But it is not a lot of capital for you to start building a new fortune in America. Surely you have some other things to offer me?”
Simon Templar took an infinitesimal moment to reply. And in that apocalyptic instant he realized that he had found a foothold again with a suddenness that literally jarred the breath out of him.
It was all so simple, so obvious that in retrospect he wondered how it could ever have baffled him. Filippo Ravenna had been going to America to live and to make a fresh start. Ravenna was rich, but he would not be allowed to transfer all his assets across the Atlantic just by asking for a bank draft. Like many another European, he had nothing but money which was not translatable through ordinary channels. But someone had told him about Paul Galen. So Ravenna had bought things. Things whose only connecting characteristics were that they were relatively small, relatively light in weight, relatively easy to smuggle, and very valuable; things moreover which a man in his position could acquire without attracting undue attention. And he had brought them to Switzerland to convert back into hard money — with an introduction to Paul Galen, who had made an international business out of cooperating in such evasions, whose reputation in such tricky-minded circles was doubtless a guarantee of comparatively fair dealing and absolute discretion.
All that part of it was dazzlingly clear, and the other part was starting to grow clearer — some of it, at least.
The Saint found himself saying, almost absent-mindedly, “I left the other things at the hotel. You understand, I thought we should get acquainted first.”
Somewhere outside the room he was aware of indistinct voices, but it was a rather subconscious impression which he only recalled afterwards, for at the moment it did not seem that they could concern him.
“I hope I have made a good impression,” Galen said with lively good humor. “What else did you bring?”
“I have a small Botticelli,” said the Saint slowly. He was stalling for time really, while his mind raced ahead from the knowledge it now had to fit together the pieces that still had to tie in. “It is a museum piece. And a first edition of Boccaccio, in perfect condition—”
The door behind him burst open as if a tornado had struck it, and that was when he actually remembered the premonitory sounds of argument that he had heard.
It was the Signora Ravenna, with her nubile bosom heaving and her black eyes blazing with dark fire. Behind her followed the funereal manservant, looking apologetically helpless.
“Go on,” she said. “What else was there?”
Galen was on his feet as quickly as a big dog. He glanced at the Saint with quizzical wariness as Simon stood up more leisurely.
“Do you know this lady?”
“Certainly,” said the Saint calmly. “She is Signora Ravenna.”
Galen almost relaxed.
“A thousand pardons. You should have told me your wife—”
“I am not his wife,” the young woman cut him short passionately. “My husband was murdered last night, by robbers who stole his briefcase with the things he brought to sell. This impostor is an American who calls himself Tombs — he is probably the employer of the men who killed my husband!”
Galen moved easily around the couch, without apparent haste or agitation.
That is quite an extraordinary statement,” he remarked temperately. “But no doubt one of you can at least prove your identity.”
“I can,” said Signora Ravenna. She fumbled in her handbag. “I can show you my passport. Ask him to show you his!”
“I’ll save you the trouble,” said the Saint amiably, in English. “I concede that this is Signora Ravenna, and it’s true she’s been a widow for about twelve hours.”
“Then your explanation had better be worth listening to,” Galen said in the same language.
It was produced so smoothly and casually that Simon never knew where it came from, but now there was an automatic in Galen’s hand, the muzzle lined up with Simon’s midriff. The melancholy manservant remained in the doorway, and somehow he no longer looked apologetic.
Simon’s gaze slid languidly over the barrel of the gun and up to Galen’s coldly questioning face. It was no performance that he scarcely seemed to notice the weapon. He was too happy with the way the other fragments of the puzzle were falling into place to care.
“I happened to see Signor Ravenna jumped on last night by the two thugs who stole his briefcase,” he said. “I imagine he was on his way to see you then. I tried to catch them, but I didn’t do so good. There’s an independent witness, a local citizen, who saw me try, and he’s on record with the police... This morning Signora Ravenna came to my room and asked me about the briefcase. She said she had no idea what was in it and couldn’t imagine why anyone would attack her husband. I told her that so far as I knew the thieves had gotten away with it.”
“A bluff, to try and make it look as if they weren’t working for you,” Signora Ravenna said vehemently. “You had it all the time!”
“I didn’t,” said the Saint steadily. “But after you left, I went on thinking. It occurred to me that there was just an outside chance that the fellow I nearly caught had dropped it, and then nobody had thought of looking for it — everybody taking it for granted that somebody else had got it. I went back to the spot and looked. Sure enough, there it was in the bushes. I took it back to my room.”
“You see, he admits it! I saw him again after that, and he didn’t say anything about finding it. He meant to steal it all the time. The only thing he doesn’t confess is that the whole thing was planned!”
“While Signora Ravenna was asking me questions,” Simon continued imperturbably, “I also asked her a few. And I knew damn well she was lying. That made me curious. So I opened the briefcase. I found the painting, the book, the necklace which you have — and, of course, that letter of introduction to you. It was just too much for my inquisitive nature. So I came here, using Ravenna’s name, to try and find out what was going on. You’ve been kind enough to explain the background to me. I now know that Ravenna was simply trying to turn his assets into American money which he could use when he emigrated — which, you’ve explained to me, isn’t a crime here, whatever they think of it in Italy. So now I’m satisfied about that — but not about why Signora Ravenna told me so many lies.”
“I leave that to you, Monsieur Galen,” said the woman with a triumphant shrug. “I would not even tell the police, still less a perfect stranger.”
Galen’s dispassionate eyes rested immovably on the Saint’s face.
“And what is your business, Mr Tombs?”
“Just think of me,” said the Saint, “as a guy with a weakness for puzzles, and an incorrigible asker of questions. I have a few more.” He looked at Signora Ravenna again. “Are you positive your husband couldn’t have discussed this deal with anyone?”
“Only with his best friend, who gave him the introduction to Monsieur Galen.”
“And you’re sure you never mentioned it to anybody?”
“Of course not.”
“But as I said this morning, the jokers who waylaid your husband knew he was carrying something valuable, and even knew it was in his briefcase. How do you account for that?”
“I don’t know how crooks like you find out these things,” she flared. “Why don’t you tell us?”
Simon shook his head.
“I suggest,” he said rather forensically, “that those crooks could only have known because you told them — because you hired them to get rid of your husband and bring you back his most negotiable property.”
The servant in the doorway was pushed suddenly aside, and a short spherical man elbowed his way unceremoniously past him into the room.
“I am Inspector Kleinhaus, of the police,” he said, “and I should also like to hear the answer to that.”
5
“You see,” he explained diffidently, “we had a friendly tip from Italy that two known Italian criminals had bought tickets to Switzerland. It was my job to keep an eye on them. I’m afraid they gave me the slip last night, for long enough to attack and rob Signor Ravenna. When I met you at the scene of the crime, Mr Tombs, I didn’t know if you might be associated with them, so I didn’t introduce myself completely. But we kept watch on you. We saw you find the briefcase and take it to your room — incidentally, we recovered it as soon as you went out, with its interesting contents.”
Galen put the automatic in his pocket and took out the necklace.
“Except this,” he said conscientiously.
“Thank you,” said Kleinhaus. “Meanwhile, Mr Tombs, we went on keeping an eye on you, to see where you’d lead us. I still didn’t know how deeply you were involved in the affair, and I was as puzzled as you seem to have been by the things Ravenna was carrying and by the motive for the robbery. Most of that has now been cleared up. One of my men followed you here, and I followed Signora Ravenna myself after I talked to her at the police station a little while ago. Her answers seemed as suspicious to me as they apparently did to you.”
“How long have you been listening?” Simon asked.
“Monsieur Galen’s servant was too agitated by the way Signora Ravenna behaved when he told her her husband was already here to remember to shut the front door, so I’ve been in the hall all the time. It was very illuminating.” The detective’s bright blue eyes shifted again. “Now, Signora Ravenna, I still want to hear what you were going to say.”
Her face was a white mask.
“I have nothing to say! You can’t be serious about such an accusation — and from such a person! Can you believe I would have my own husband murdered?”
“Such things have happened,” Kleinhaus said sadly. “However, we can check in another way. I’m glad to be able to tell you now that the two men have already been caught. Mr Tombs will be able to identify them. Then you can confront them, and we’ll see what they say when they realize there’s only one way to save their own skins.”
It was pitiful to see the false indignation drain out of her face, and the features turn ugly and formless with terror. She moistened her lips, and her throat moved, but no sound came. And then, as if she understood that in that silence she had already betrayed her own guilt for all to see, she gave an inarticulate little cry and ran past Galen, shoving him out of the way with a hysterical violence that sent him staggering, and ran out through the French windows, out on to the sunlit terrace that went to the edge of the cliff where the house perched, and kept on running...
Inspector Kleinhaus, presently, was the first to turn from looking down over the edge. With a conclusive gesture he replaced his absurdly juvenile hat.
“Perhaps that saves a lot of unpleasantness,” he remarked. “Well, I must still ask you to identify the two men, Mr Tombs — your name really is Tombs, is it?”
“It sounds sort of ominous, doesn’t it?” said the Saint easily.
He still had eight diamonds, six emeralds, and ten valuable stamps in his pockets which no one was left to ask embarrassing questions about, and at such a time it would have been very foolish to draw any more attention to himself.