1
“I hope, Monsieur Templar,” said Inspector Archimède Quercy, of the Paris Police Judiciaire, in passable English, “that you will not think this meeting is unfriendly.”
“Nevertheless,” Simon replied, in perfect French, “to be summoned here on my very first day in Paris seems at least an unusual distinction.”
“The Saint is an unusual personage,” said Inspector Quercy, reverting gratefully to his native tongue.
He was a long thin man with a long thin nose, and even with rather long thin hair. He had a solemn anxious face and wistful eyes like a questioning spaniel. Simon knew that that appearance was deceptive. It was the Saint’s business, in the cause of outlawry, to know the reputations of many police officers in many places, and he knew that on the record Inspector Quercy’s instincts, if the canine parallel must be continued, leaned more towards those of the bloodhound, the retriever, and the bulldog.
“If you come here as a simple tourist,” Quercy said, “France welcomes you. We have, as you well know, a beautiful country, good food, good wine, and pretty girls. They are all at your disposal — for you, no doubt, have plenty of those good American dollars which France so badly needs. But as the Saint — that would be altogether different.”
“Monsieur the Inspector is, perhaps, anti-clerical?” Simon suggested gravely.
“I refer, Monsieur, to the nom de guerre under which you are so widely known. I have not, it is true, been informed of any charges pending against you anywhere, nor have the police of any other country requested me to arrest you for extradition, but I have read about your exploits. Your motives are popularly believed to be idealistic, in a peculiar way. That is not for me to judge. I only tell you that we want none of them here.”
“What, no ideals — in the Palais de Justice?”
Quercy sighed. He gazed across his littered desk into the dancing blue eyes under quizzically tilted brows, and for a moment the lugubriousness in his own gaze was very deep and real. The sight of the tall broad-shouldered figure sprawled with such impudent grace in his shabby armchair made a mockery of the conventional stiffness of the room, just as the casual elegance of its clothing affronted the hard-worn dilapidation of the furniture; the warm bronze of the preposterously handsome face seemed to bring its own sun into the dingy room, whispering outlandish heresies of open skies and wide places where the wind blew, and because of this man the office seemed more cramped and drab and dustier than ever, and the gloom of it touched the soul of its proper occupant. It was a sensation that many other policemen had had when they came face to face with that last amazing heir to the mantle of Robin Hood, when they knew it was their turn to try to tame him and realized the immensity of the task...
“I mean,” said Inspector Quercy patiently, “that there are servants of the Republic, of whom I am one, employed here to concern themselves with crime. If you, as an individual, acquire knowledge of any crime or criminals, we shall be glad to receive your information, but we do not allow private persons to take over the duties of the police. Still less do we permit anyone to administer his own interpretation of justice, as I hear you have sometimes claimed to do. Furthermore I must warn you that here, under the Code Napoleon, you would not have the same advantage that you have enjoyed in England and America. There, you are legally innocent until you are proved guilty; here, with sufficient grounds, you may be placed on trial and required to prove yourself innocent.”
The Saint smiled.
“I appreciate the warning,” he murmured. “But the truth is, I did come here for the food, the wine, and the pretty girls. I hadn’t thought of giving you any trouble.” The devil in him couldn’t resist adding, “So far.”
“Let it remain that way, Monsieur. A vacation does everyone good.”
Simon offered a cigarette, and struck a light for them both.
“Now that I know how you feel about me,” he remarked, “I suppose I ought to thank you for not trying to pin that Rosepierre murder on me. It must have taken great restraint not to grab such a readymade scapegoat.”
He had been reading the story in a newspaper at breakfast. The body of a young man identified as Charles Rosepierre had been found murdered in the Bois de Boulogne, the spacious park adjacent to the most fashionable residential quarter of Paris. There appeared to be no clue to the murderer, or even to the motive, for he was a respectable clerk in a shipping office, vouched for by his employers as honest and hard-working and by his friends and associates as being sober and amiable and impossible to connect with any shady acquaintances. He carried very little money, but he had not been robbed. He had left the office at the usual time on the day he died, apparently with no apprehensions, and it was understood that he was going to have dinner and call later on the girl he was courting, but he had not been seen since until his body was found a few yards from one of the roads through the park. There was no hint of a jealous rival, nor did anything in his open commonplace life give any grounds to believe in a crime of passion, yet a passion of some weird kind must have been involved. For what lent the crime the eerie touch of horror that justified the space allotted to it in the press was the fact that although he had died almost instantly from a knife stab in the heart, his head had been severed from his body after he was dead, and was found where it had presumably rolled a few feet away.
“I might have thought of you,” Quercy said, without the ghost of a smile, “if Rosepierre’s body had not been found two hours before your plane landed at Orly. When he was killed and his head was being cut off, there is no doubt that you were half-way over the Atlantic.”
“It was clever of me to arrive with a cast-iron alibi. You really have no ideas about how I could have faked it?”
“I am satisfied, Monsieur, that that would be beyond even your powers.”
“One day I must figure out how it could be done,” said the Saint, and in some incredible way he made it sound possible.
The Inspector grunted.
“You have not, perhaps, any more constructive suggestions about the mystery?”
“I read a detective story once with a decapitated body in it, in which the head was actually taken from an entirely different body, the object being to confuse the police and no doubt the readers too.”
“The medical examination, in this case, proves positively that the head which was found did indeed belong to the body.”
“A big part of your problem, then, seems to be to find an answer to why anyone who had already killed someone, for whatever reason, should afterwards take the trouble to cut off his head. It was not done to prevent identification, because the head was left there.”
“Exactly.”
Simon gazed at the ceiling.
“Perhaps,” he said slowly, “the name of the victim is a clue. Is it possible that you have in Paris some demented aristocrat who is still nursing a grudge for the treatment given to his ancestors during the Revolution? He has made a vow to track down and take vengeance on the lineal descendants of the revolutionary leaders who gave his forebears the radical haircut. Mistaking the name of this unfortunate young man for Robespierre, and having no guillotine handy, he—”
There came, perhaps providentially, a knock on the door, and an agent entered.
“ Mademoiselle North est ici, Monsieur l’Inspecteur.”
“Good. I will see her at once. It is the sister of the murdered man,” he explained to the Saint.
“Then why is her name North?”
“She was adopted as a child by an American family. It is quite a story.” Quercy stood up. “But I must not detain you any longer.” He held out his hand. “Amuse yourself well, Monsieur Templar, and remember what I have told you.”
“I will do my best,” said the Saint, and wondered even to himself just what he meant.
2
He took a long look at the girl who was entering as he went out. She was American, obviously, in every outward particular, stamped unmistakably with all the details of dress and grooming that label the American product to a sophisticated glance anywhere. And since a pretty face is a pretty face in any country within the same broad ethnic limits, there was nothing about her features to mark her as conspicuously French by birth. She had softly waved black hair and clear brown eyes and a wide mouth which in happier circumstances, the Saint’s instinct told him, could be generous in many ways.
Simon carried the image of her vividly in his mind as he retraced his way through the musty labyrinth of the upper floors and down the ancient winding stairway to the street. He stood at the gates of the courtyard for a few moments, indulging himself in indecision, and knowing all the time that his decision was already made. There was a sidewalk cafe on the other side of the boulevard. He crossed it and sat down at a table from which he could watch the entrance of the building he had just left.
And so, he reflected cheerfully, it was going to happen to him again.
It was true, as he had told Quercy, that he hadn’t come to Paris with any intention of getting into trouble. But trouble had that disastrous propensity for getting into him. It was, of course, originally Quercy’s fault for ordering him to report at the Prefecture. The summons had been most courteously phrased, but it had been an order, just the same. The Saint had an unpardonably rebellious attitude towards all orders, especially police orders. That had prepared the ground. And then, the Inspector had rashly proceeded to plant a seed. It was not that Simon could legitimately resent his warning, which had been most discreetly and even benevolently phrased, but nevertheless it had the ingredients of a challenge. The Saint had never found it easy to leave a challenge alone. And unfortunately, there was an intriguing murder mystery immediately to hand for fertilizer. Even so, he might have been able to resist, but then he had seen the girl. It was harder still for him to leave a pretty girl alone. And hadn’t Quercy himself invited him to enjoy the pretty girls? And so upon fertilizer and seed and cultivated ground, to conclude the metaphor, had fallen the warm rain of her presence, and the result was inevitable, as it had always been...
The Saint ordered a Suze, paid for it at once so that he could leave at any moment, and waited.
An hour passed before she came out, and he got up and threaded his way nonchalantly through the traffic. She stood outside the Palais, looking hopefully up and down the street for a taxi, and Simon timed his crossing so that he arrived beside her as one came by, and their hands met on the door handle.
They looked at each other with the surprise, confusion, and incipient hostility normal to any two people caught in such a deadlock, the Saint playing his part exactly as if the accident was none of his making, and then he smiled.
“A photo finish,” he said. “Shall we flip for it, or are we lucky enough to be going the same way?”
She smiled back — he had counted on the sound of a familiar accent to earn that.
“I’m going to my hotel — the Georges Cinq.”
“Mine too,” said the Saint, truthfully, although his answer would have been the same whatever she had said.
As the cab turned along the Quais des Grands Augustins he knew that she was looking at him more closely.
“Didn’t I just see you in that detective’s office?” she asked.
“I didn’t think you noticed,” he said. “But I saw you.”
“Are you a reporter?”
He considered the possibilities of the role for an instant.
“No.”
“Are you connected with the police?”
Intuition, which had been whispering to him, raised its voice to a sure command. At this moment, in this situation, with this girl, the truth would gain him more than any fiction.
“My name is Simon Templar.”
“The Saint.”
She was one of those people whom he met all too seldom, who could hear his name and recognize its connotation without gasping, swooning, or recoiling, and at first, he was glad to see, she received it even without fear. “The Saint,” she said, looking at him with no more than ordinary curiosity, and then the fear barely began to stir in her eyes.
“No, darling,” he said quickly. “I didn’t kill your brother. Even Quercy will vouch for that. He knows I was in an airplane over the Atlantic at the time.”
“Do you suspect me?”
“Did you do it?”
“I was on the Atlantic, too. On a boat. I landed at Cherbourg this morning. A policeman was waiting for me at the Georges Cinq.”
“Don’t let anyone tell you these cops aren’t efficient. They sent for me almost as quickly.”
Simon lighted a cigarette and gave his hunch one last retrospective survey, for the duration of a long inhalation. His mind was made up.
He said, “This is on the level. Quercy had me in his office, giving me a solemn warning to keep my nose clean while I’m here. So I just naturally have an unholy desire to make a monkey out of him. I like you. And your brother’s case is the hottest thing on Quercy’s blotter right now. If I could break it and hand him the pieces on a platter, it’d be a magnificent moment. And I’m sure you want the case solved, whoever does it. So will you let me help — if I can?”
Her straightforward dark eyes studied him for many seconds.
She said, “Thank you. I like you, too. But what can you do?”
“I may think of something. First, I’ve got to know everything you can tell me. May I take you to lunch?”
“Yes. But I’ve got to stop at the hotel first. They didn’t even give me time to see my room.”
3
In the lobby, while she was asking for her key, a man stepped up beside her at the desk, removed a rich black homburg with a slight flourish, and said, “Pardon, Miss North.” He extended a card. Looking over her shoulder, Simon saw that it said “M Georges Olivant” with an address in St Cloud.
“I ’ave waited for you all zis morning,” Olivant said. “I am an old friend of your fahzer. I would ’ave met you at ze boat, but I was unable to leave Paris because of business.”
He was a stout man with a face that was unfortunately reminiscent of a well-fed rat, although the only fur on it was a carefully trimmed black moustache, the rest of the skin having that glossy pink patina which can only be produced by the best barbers. From the points of his polished shoes, up through his studiously tailored blue suit and studiously manicured fingernails, to the top of his pomaded head, he exuded an aroma of cologne and solid prosperity. He spoke English in an aggressive way which somehow gave the impression that he was extremely proud of his accent, which was atrocious. And just as the Saint had liked Valerie North at first glance, from the first glance he disliked M Olivant.
“This is quite a surprise,” the girl was saying politely. “How did you know about me, and how did you find me so quickly?”
“I read about your trip in ze newspapers,” Olivant said, “so of course I am waiting for you. Eet was not difficult. Zere are not so many ’otel in Paris where ze Americans descend.”
She seemed to take the reference to a newspaper story on her trip so matter-of-factly that a tiny line creased between the Saint’s brows. Her name had meant nothing to him, and he thought he was aware of most celebrities.
“Then you must have known my brother,” the girl said.
“Alas, no. I am in Belgium, on business, when I read ze newspaper. It is ze first I ’ear of you bose since ze war. I mean to look for ’im, of course. But as soon as I return, before I can look, I read in ze newspaper about ’im again, and ’e is dead.” Olivant allowed an expression of grief to dwell on his face for a measured period of time, and then bravely set it aside. “’Owever, I come to place myself at your service. For finding ze murderers, we can only ’ope ze police ’ave success. But anysing else I can do... You will, per’aps, ’ave lunch wiz me?”
The girl’s eyes went to the Saint, and Simon made a faint negative movement with his head.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I’ve already promised... May I introduce Mr—”
“Tombs,” said the Saint promptly, holding out his hand.
The same kind of impulse that had made him introduce himself with complete candor to Valerie North now made him duck behind the alias which often afforded him a morbid private amusement, but this time his inward smile vanished abruptly as Olivant shook hands. From a man who looked like Olivant, he had expected a fleshy and probably moist and limp contact, but the palm that touched his own was hard and rough like a laborer’s.
Deep in the Saint’s brain a little premonitory pulse began to beat, like the signal of some psychic Geiger counter, but his face was a mask of conventional amiability.
“Mr Tombs,” Olivant repeated, like a man who made a practise of memorizing names. “Zen per’aps bose of you—”
“I don’t want to be rude,” said the Saint firmly, “but my job depends on this exclusive interview. You know how newspapers are.”
M Olivant made a visible effort to look like a man who knew how newspapers are.
“I am desolate.” He turned back to the girl. “For cocktails, zen, per’aps? I ’ave look forward so much to zis meeting—”
“Excuse me,” said the Saint.
He strolled across the lobby to the little newsstand and glanced quickly over its wares. A guidebook with a shiny stiff paper cover caught his eye, and he bought it, and wiped the cover briskly with his handkerchief while he waited for his change. He walked back, holding the book by one corner, to where M Olivant was taking his talkative leave of Valerie North.
“I come ’ere, zen, at five o’clock. I ’ave so much to tell you about your poor fahzer, and what ’e does for us in ze Resistance before ze Gestapo take ’im... To sink I ’ave not see you since you were such a leetle girl!”
“I’ll look forward to it,” said the girl, self-consciously letting her hand be kissed, and looked at the Saint. “May I run upstairs just for a minute and see my room before we go?”
“Sure.”
As she left, Simon showed M Olivant his book, holding it in such a way that the other was practically forced to take it.
“M Olivant, would you say this was any good?”
Olivant took the book and thumbed perfunctorily through a few pages.
“Eet is probably quite ’elpful, Mr Tombs. So you don’t work ’ere all ze time?”
“No, this is a special assignment”
“Ah. I ’ope you make a good story.”
“At least it’s a chance to travel,” said the Saint conversationally. “But I don’t suppose that means much to you. From what you were saying, it sounds as if you spent most of your time doing it. What sort of business are you in?”
“I ’ave many affairs,” Olivant said impressively, and seemed to think that was an adequate answer.
He held out the book, and Simon took it back again by the corner.
“Maybe you’d let me talk to you later, Monsieur Olivant. You should have some interesting things to tell about Miss North’s family.”
“Ah, yes, eet is a most interesting story.” Olivant seemed curiously uninterested. He extended his hand briskly. “Now, I ’ave anozzer appointment. Eet ’as been a pleasure to meet you. Au revoir, Mr Tombs.”
The Saint watched him go, with the sensation of that inappropriately calloused hand lingering on his fingers, and then he turned to the concierge and asked for a large envelope, into which he slid his newly acquired guidebook, being careful not to touch the book again except by the one corner he was holding it by.
4
“Tell me,” said the Saint, “as the most ignorant reporter in this town, what put you in the news. I mean, even before anything happened to your brother.”
They sat in opposite armchairs across a table in the tiny downstairs room of the Restaurant Châtaignier, sniffing the savory bouquet of its incomparable homard au beurre blanc rising from the plates in front of them, while the chef and proprietor himself uncorked a bottle of cool rosé.
“It sounds silly,” said Valerie North, “but I was on one of those radio quiz programs. I happened to know the answer to who was the painter of the Mona Lisa, and the prize I won was a free trip to Europe. They asked me what I planned to do with it and I said it’d give me the chance I’ve always hoped for to get to know my brother.”
“It does sound a little unusual,” Simon admitted. “Hadn’t you ever met?”
“Not since we were kids. We were born and lived here, till 1940, when the Germans were advancing on Paris. I was too young to remember much about it, but everyone was very frightened, and my father said we must go away. He wouldn’t go himself, but he sent us with the wife of a neighbor — my mother died when we were very young. Somewhere on the road we were strafed by a plane, and the woman was killed. Charles and I went on alone.”
“Was he older or younger than you?”
“Two years older. But we were both children. Somehow, presently we got separated. I just went on, helplessly I guess, with the stream of refugees who were trudging away to the southwest. Somewhere, after that — it all seems so far away and confused — I was picked up by an American couple who’d also been caught in the blitz. They took me to Bordeaux, and then afterwards to America. They were sweet people — they still are — and they hadn’t any children, and they treated me like their own. Later on, they were able to find out somehow that my father had died in a concentration camp. They adopted me legally, and I took their name.”
“So for all practical purposes, you really are an American.”
“I went to school in Chicago — Mr North is an accountant there — and now I’m a secretary in a mail-order house. And the only French I know is from high school.”
“Who was your father?”
“All I know about him is his name, Eli Rosepierre. And he was some sort of working jeweler.”
The Saint paused with his wine-glass half-way to his lips.
“Was he Jewish?”
“I think so.”
“I told Quercy there might be something in the name,” he observed. “Of course, the name Eli fixes it. Now I get the Rosepierre. A literal translation of Rosenstein. I wonder... He must have been very brave or very foolish to stay here, with the Nazis coming.”
“Perhaps he was only too optimistic,” she said. “You know, I’d never thought of that, about the name.”
“Was he rich?”
“I don’t think so. He worked very hard. But he may have been thrifty. I don’t really know. As far as I can remember we lived in an ordinary decent way, not poverty-stricken and not specially luxurious.”
“But it’s at least a possibility.”
“What difference does it make? Whatever he had the Nazis must have confiscated.”
“If they could find it.”
“I suppose,” she said, “you’re looking for a motive.”
“There must be one. And I’ve got to find it.”
She watched him subdividing the last succulent pieces of lobster with loving regret.
“When did you locate your brother again?” be asked.
“Only a few months ago. The Norths had tried from time to time, without any luck. Last winter, I thought I’d try just once more, on my own. I had an advertisement translated into French, and sent it to all the Paris newspapers. Of course, for all I knew, he might have been anywhere else in France, if he was alive at all. But just by a miracle, he saw it. We exchanged letters and snapshots. He’d thought I was probably dead, too. And then, when I won that prize on the radio, it seemed as if everything was set for a real Hollywood ending.”
“I can see why that story would get a play in the papers,” said the Saint thoughtfully. “And the correspondents of the French news agencies would naturally pick it up and send it back here.”
“They did. Charles’s last letter said he was quite embarrassed about the publicity he was getting.”
“So after that, anyone with any interest in the Rosepierre family, whether they read advertisements or not, would know a good deal about both of you.”
“I suppose so.”
Simon shamelessly used a piece of bread to mop up the last delectable traces of the ambrosial sauce.
“Are you reasonably sure that this Charles Rosepierre was your brother?”
Valerie stared at him.
“He must have been!.. I mean, he seemed to remember the same things that I did. And people here knew him by that name, didn’t they? And there’s quite a resemblance — look!”
She took out her wallet and extracted a photograph which she passed to him. It showed a dark, rather delicate-featured young man with an engaging smile. Simon dispassionately compared it, detail by detail, with the face of the girl opposite him.
“There’s a great likeness,” he conceded finally. “It’s probably true. I was only groping in the dark.”
“Here’s another thing.” She was fumbling in her purse again, and she came out with a small round piece of silver like a coin. “My father gave it to me just before he sent us away. It’s one of those things that stand out in this disjointed kind of childhood memory. He gave both Charles and me one. And Charles mentioned it in his first letter answering my advertisement. He said he still had his, and he wondered if I still had mine.”
“That’s pretty convincing.”
Simon took the piece of silver and looked at it, and a slight frown of puzzlement began to wrinkle his forehead.
“But if he was Jewish,” he said, “why a Saint Christopher medal?”
She shrugged.
“Maybe he’d been converted. Or maybe he hoped it would bluff the Gestapo, if they caught us.”
“Or maybe,” said the Saint, in a faraway voice, “it was just the handiest thing he had in the shop.”
She gazed at him blankly, while he examined the medal more closely and turned it over, half hoping to find some inscription on the back. But on the back was only a little quarter-inch indented square, much like a hallmark, except that the indentation was filled only with what looked like a cuneiform pattern of microscopic scratches which conveyed nothing to the keenest naked eye, if they had any significance at all.
And yet, for the first time, the darkness in which he had been groping did not seem so dark. There were vital pieces missing in the jigsaw which he was trying to put together, but at last he was beginning to perceive the outlines into which they would have to fit.
He was very silent while they finished the meal and the wine, so that by the time he called for the check the girl was fidgeting with understandable impatience.
“May I keep this just for a few hours?” he said at last, and dropped the medallion into his pocket without waiting for her permission.
“Have you thought of anything?” she asked.
He stood up.
“A lot of things. I’m not tantalizing you just to be mysterious, but they’ll take the rest of the afternoon to check on, and I don’t want to raise any false excitement until I’ve got facts to go on.”
He walked with her to the Boulevard Raspail, the nearest thoroughfare where they would be likely to find taxis, and only his quiet air of being so absolutely certain of what he was doing somehow forced her to control her exasperation.
“I’m telling the driver to take you to the Place Vendôme,” he said, as he opened the door of the first cab. “You’ll find dozens of fascinating shops in all directions from there, which will keep you amused until your feet hurt. At five o’clock, wherever you are, grab another taxi and tell him to take you to a restaurant called Carrere, in the Rue Pierre Charron. Will you repeat that?” She did so. “I’ll meet you there at the bar. Until then, you must not on any account go back to the Georges Cinq.”
“But why not?”
“Because as long as you’re wandering around the town, the killer isn’t likely to bump into you. At the hotel, he knows where to find you. And I like your head where it is. I don’t want it cut off.”
Her eyes grew big and round.
“You don’t think it could happen to me?”
“I’ll answer that when I know why it happened to your brother. Meanwhile, don’t take any chances.”
“But remember, I promised to meet that Mr Olivant at five-thirty.”
“I want to be around when you do it. That’s what I’m talking about.”
Her breath broke in a gasp of incredulity.
“You mean you suspect him?”
“Darling,” said the Saint, “this isn’t one of those storybook mysteries, with half a dozen convenient suspects. I’ve known ever since friend Olivant showed up that he had to be a good bet. The only problem still is to find the motive and prove it on him.”
He closed the door gently after her, and turned towards the next cab.
5
On a narrow street near the Odeon he found, unchanged as if the German occupation had only ended yesterday, a little stationery and book shop which in those days would have earned a spot promotion for any Gestapo officer who had uncovered its secrets. Simon Templar went in and stood browsing over the titles on the shelves, while the jangling of the vociferous little bell hung on the door he had opened died away into silence. He heard a shuffle of footsteps at the back of the shop, and a voice that he recognized said courteously, “ Bonjour, m’sieu.”
Without turning, the Saint said, in French, “Do you have, by chance, a copy of the poems of François Villon?”
There was an instant’s pause, and the dry voice said mechanically, “I regret, but today there is so little demand for those old books.”
“ ‘But where are the snows of yesteryear?’ ” Simon quoted sorrowfully.
Suddenly his elbow was seized in a wiry grip, and he was spun around to face the proprietor’s sparkling eyes.
“ Mon cher Saint! ”
“ Mon cher Antoine! ”
They fell into an embrace.
“It is so many years, my dear friend, since I have heard that password!”
“But you remembered.”
“Who of us will ever forget?”
They held each other off at arm’s length, and the years fell away between them. And as Simon laughed in the face of Antoine Louvois it was heart-warming for him to remember that this frail-looking gray man had been the redoubtable Colonel Eglantine of the maquis, whose exploits had perforated the intestinal tracts of Himmler’s minions with even more ulcers than bullets, and he thought again that only a French hero would have had the sense of humor to hide his identity behind the name of a delicate flower. Those days, when the Saint’s commission from Washington had been as tenuously legal as anything in his career, seemed very far away now, but it was good to still have such a friend.
“What brings you back, mon cher ami?” Louvois asked. “We shall have much to talk about.”
“Another time, Antoine. This afternoon I am in a hurry.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“That is why I came.”
Louvois relaxed into instant attention. As if not a day had passed, with a sobering of expression too subtle to define, he was again the sharp-witted, cold-blooded, efficient duellist of the last war’s most dangerous game.
“ Je suis toujours à ta disposition, mon vieux. ”
“Was there, in the Resistance, a man named Georges Olivant?”
“What is he like?”
Simon described him.
“There were so many,” Louvois said, “and under so many names. I do not recall him myself. I can make inquiries.”
“On the other hand, he may just as well have been a traitor.”
“There were many of them, also, and many of them also have thought it wise to change their names. But that might be a little easier to trace.”
Simon put down the envelope which he still carried, into which he had put the guidebook with the conveniently shiny cover which Olivant had handled.
“On the cover of this book,” he said, “are the fingerprints of this man. But cut off the top left-hand corner, which has my own prints.”
“That will make it very easy, if his prints are on record.”
“You still have friends at the Prefecture?”
“Naturally.”
“I do not want this to become known to Inspector Quercy, of the Police Judiciaire.”
“He is a good man.”
“There is a personal reason.”
“ Entendu. He will know nothing about it.”
“It is urgent.”
“I will close the shop and take the book over at once myself. I will have a report for you within two hours.”
The Saint fingered the medallion in his pocket.
“There is one other thing I can do while you are gone,” he said. “Do you have an accommodating friend who is a doctor, who would have a microscope that I can use for a few minutes?”
“I can find one. Let me telephone first.”
Louvois retired to the back of the shop and returned in a few minutes with a name and address written on a slip of paper.
“It is all arranged. He is expecting you.”
“Thank you, Antoine. I will come back and wait for you. À tout à l’heure.”
“ À tout à l’heure. ”
Simon walked to the address which was only a few blocks away. The doctor, a taciturn man with an old-fashioned spade beard, showed him directly into a small laboratory and left him there, asking no questions except whether the Saint knew how to operate the microscope and whether he required anything else.
The Saint placed the Saint Christopher medal face down on the platform, centered the square indentation on the back under the objective, and aimed the light on it.
As he adjusted the focus, the pattern of almost invisible scratches sprang to his eye as legibly as a page of print.
He read the words so painstakingly engraved there, and then he lighted a cigarette and sat back on the stool, and knew the answers to many questions, while pictures formed for him in the drifting smoke.
He saw old Eli Rosepierre in his workshop, knowing that the Germans were coming, and too proud or too disheartened to run away, it didn’t matter what his reason was, but wanting to save his children. And knowing that it was hopeless to trust them with such jewels and gold as he could lay his hands on, even though they would be lost to him anyway, but wanting to give them something that the invaders could not touch, for the future. And knowing that the children were too young to be relied upon to understand or to remember anything he might tell them about the modest wealth that was still secure. And faced with the problem of giving them the key to it in a form which they might understand someday, but which would be least likely for a child to destroy.
Anything on paper, of course, was out of the question. It was too easy to mutilate or deface, or lose, or a finder could read and take advantage of it. A tattoo might have done, but Rosepierre was not a tattooer. He was a jeweler.
And he had found a jeweler’s solution.
Simon saw the old man working through the night, with aching eyes, carving the most important achievement of his engraver’s art. The etching of the Lord’s prayer on the head of a pin was a mere abstract diversion by comparison. This was his testament. On a medallion, because it was most indestructible; of silver only, because it would be least likely to attract a thief; of Saint Christopher, because it might disarm racial persecutors, and because it might be treasured more carefully — as indeed it had been...
The Saint took out the slip of paper with the doctor’s address and copied down the words from the medal on the other side.
Then, more for idle physical distraction than anything, he wrote underneath the English translation.
There was only one weakness in Eli Rosepierre’s ingenious ideas. Why would his children ever have been likely to discover the minute engraving on the backs of their good-luck medals?
And in the next flash, Simon knew the answer to that one, too. There must have been someone whom Eli Rosepierre trusted, to whom Rosepierre had given an inkling of his scheme, whom Robespierre had charged to find the children again, if it were ever possible, and tell them what to look for.
Olivant.
Simon thanked the doctor, who still asked no questions, and went back to Louvois’s little papeterie. He paced up and down the street and almost wore himself out before the old guerrilla fighter returned. But the springy gait of the retired maquisard gave him his answer even before Louvois spoke. “We have success, mon cher!”
Louvois insisted on unlocking the door and entering the shop before he would say any more.
“The fingerprints are those of one Georges Orival, mon cher Saint. He was a collaborationist, and for that he was sentenced to fifteen years in prison.”
“He has escaped, or more probably been released,” said the Saint. “And he is looking very prosperous, under the name of Georges Olivant.”
“No doubt the sale type had plenty of blood money hidden away before they caught him.”
“He is now preparing to collect a lot more.”
Louvois stroked his chin meditatively.
“Perhaps that can be prevented. There are still many of us who do not think that imprisonment was enough.”
“ Ne t’en fais pas,” said the Saint. “His goose is practically cooked already. I personally guarantee it. I must go now and take care of him, but as soon as this is finished we must have our reunion.”
6
To his relief, although he had consciously tried to reassure himself that he had nothing to worry about, Valerie North was waiting at the bar of the Carrere, as he had instructed her. He ordered a Martini to keep her company while she finished hers, and paid the tab, but he would not talk even though the bar was deserted at that hour.
“All the bartenders in this area speak English,” he said, “and I don’t want to risk even a chance of future complications. Our caravanserai is just around the corner, but I didn’t want you to go there alone.”
As soon as they had finished, he steered her down the street to the Avenue Georges V, and turned her quickly into the Georges V Apartments, just before the hotel entrance. They rode up to her floor in the elevator of the apartment wing, and he piloted her expertly through the connecting passage to the hotel section.
“Don’t ask me how I know these back ways,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you without incriminating myself. As far as you’re concerned, it’s good enough to fool anyone who’s naturally expecting you to use the hotel lobby.”
He found a chambermaid to open the door for them with a pass key. Inside, Valerie fetched up short with an exclamation, so abruptly that he trod on her heels.
The room was a shambles. Her two suitcases were open, the contents strewn all over the bed, the other furniture, and the floor. But he was not seriously surprised.
“Did you try to unpack in a hurry when you ran up before lunch?” he inquired calmly.
“Of course not! Who would unpack like this? There’s been a burglar here!”
She ran aimlessly about, rummaging among her disordered effects.
“Don’t get excited,” he murmured. “I don’t think there’s any harm done that a little ironing won’t fix. If you’d been here yourself, it might have been very different.”
“I haven’t got much jewelry,” she protested, “but—”
“I expect it’s all there,” he said. “The one valuable piece was safe all the time.”
He held out the Saint Christopher medal.
She took it, and stared at him.
“You’ve got to talk now,” she said. “If you don’t, I’ll go crazy — or do something I may be sorry for.”
“I’m ready now,” he said. “Turn that medal over.”
“Yes.”
“You see that little square impression in the back?”
“Yes.”
“I put it under a microscope this afternoon. There’s fine engraving in it. Here’s a copy that you can read.”
He gave her the scrap of paper on which he had written down the inscription and its translation. While she looked at it, he cleared a space on the bed, and sat down and lighted a cigarette. He felt very placid now.
She read:
I, Eli Rosepierre, bequeath to the bearer, of whom this shall be sufficient identification, one half of the $50,000 which I have on deposit at the Chase National Bank, New York. Eli Rosepierre.
“You see,” he said, “you’re moderately rich. Your father was lucky enough to have some assets that the krauts couldn’t reach.”
Her face was a study.
“Then Charles’s medal—”
“Must have been a duplicate of that one, leaving him the other half.”
She sank unsteadily into the nearest chair, ignoring the clothes which she crushed underneath her.
Simon laughed, and got up again to give her a cigarette.
After a full minute, she said, “Where is the other medal now?”
“I expect your brother’s murderer has it. But he hasn’t had time to do anything with it. Besides, he won’t be satisfied until he has both of them.”
“Why hasn’t he done anything until now?”
“Because he couldn’t. Your father confided at least part of his secret to a friend whom he trusted, named Georges Orival. But Orival turned collaborationist, and after the war he was tried and imprisoned. He only recently got out, and he hasn’t wasted much time. He introduced himself to you as Georges Olivant.”
“Olivant!”
“Apart from his obvious phoniness,” said the Saint, “I know I had something when I shook hands with him. He looks like one of the idle rich, but he has corns on his hands like a laborer. He didn’t get them from pottering about in his garden. He’s been doing several years at hard labor.”
The girl’s hand shook a little as she drew at the cigarette.
“And he’s waiting for me downstairs!”
“I’m sure it would take a lot to keep him away.”
“We must tell the police!”
“Not yet. We still haven’t got enough evidence for a murder charge against him. And we still want that other medal. So we’re going to meet him just as if you didn’t expect a thing.”
“I couldn’t!”
Simon Templar gazed down at her with level blue eyes in which the steel was barely discernible.
“You must, Valerie. And you must go along with anything I say, no matter how absurd it sounds. You said you’d let me help you. I haven’t done badly so far, have I? You’ve got to let me finish the job.”
7
M Georges Olivant folded the evening paper he had been reading and tucked it into his pocket.
“Eet say ’ere,” he said, “ze police ’ave learn nozzing new about ze tragedy of your brozzer. But do not fear. Zey are very pairseestent. Soon, I am sure, zey will ’ave ze clue.”
“They know more than they’re saying for publication,” Simon remarked. “They told me so.”
He wanted to draw Olivant’s attention to himself, not only to turn it away from Valerie North’s pale stillness.
“So, you ’ave talk wiz zem?”
“And I’ve got a few leads of my own.”
“I ’ave read American stories,” Olivant said, “where ze reporter is always a better detective zan ze police. You are per’aps one of zose?”
“Sometimes I try to be. Anyway, at least the motive for the murder is known.”
“Eet is?”
Simon took a leisured taste of his cocktail.
“Miss North’s father — and the father of Charles Rosepierre — had a nice piece of change stashed away in a New York bank. He made a will leaving it equally between them. A rather unique kind of will. It was engraved in microscopic letters on the backs of two Saint Christopher medals, one of which he gave to each of the children. Miss North’s medal has already been deciphered. Here’s a copy of the inscription.”
He gave Olivant the scrap of paper, and tasted his drink again while the man read it.
The girl’s knee touched his, inadvertently, under the crowded table, and he felt it tremble. He tried to quiet her with a comforting pressure of his own.
He had to admit that Olivant was good. The man’s face did not change color, and the dilation of his eyes could be explained on perfectly legitimate grounds.
“Eet is amazing!” Olivant ejaculated. “Eet must be, as you say, unique... So, of course, poor Charles was killed to steal ’is copy!”
“You’d make a good detective yourself.”
“But eet still does not say by ’oo!”
“I’ve got ideas of my own on that score.”
Olivant’s eyebrows rose in arches towards his well-oiled hair.
“What ees zat?”
“I’ve been talking to a fellow I met who used to be a big shot in the underground. We’ve got a hunch that there’s some connection with somebody that Rosepierre trusted, who went wrong and went the Nazi way — who may even have betrayed Rosepierre to the Gestapo. But if they tortured him, he must have died before he’d write them a check on that New York bank!”
For the first time Simon saw the crawl of fear beneath Olivant’s sleek surface. It was no more than an infinitesimal twitch, instantly smothered, but it was all that he needed.
“Eet is too ’orrible to sink about,” Olivant said. He turned to the girl. “Your fahzer was such a wonderful man. Everyone love ’im.”
“You can’t think of anyone who might have turned on him?” she managed to ask.
“I could not think of anyone ’oo would be so bad!”
“My Resistance friend thinks he can,” said the Saint. “Anyway, he’s making inquiries.”
Olivant picked up his glass and drained it, and wiped his mouth.
“I ’ope wiz all my ’eart zat ’e succeed,” he said. “But we make Miss North upset again wiz zis talk. I see it. Instead to remind ’er of ’er poor fahzer and ’er poor brozzer, we should try to make ’er forget a leetle... Now, I ’ave ze idea. I ’ave my car. Tonight it would be nice to drive out to St Cloud, to my ’ouse, where we ’ave a nice dinner, and per’aps ’elp ourselves to feel better.”
Valerie looked at the Saint desperately, but Olivant might have been anticipating the glance.
“Of course,” he said, “if Mr Tombs is not engage, I am most ’appy if ’e come also.”
It was precisely what the Saint would have predicted, and the sheer cosmic inevitability of it gave him the same feeling of Olympian omnipotence that a master dramatist must experience as he sees the last loose ends of his play falling into place with flawless accuracy in the third act.
“I think that’s a swell idea,” he said.
He was afraid even then that Valerie would rebel, but terror seemed to have built up in her until she was gripped in a kind of trance that left her without volition.
They drove with Olivant at the wheel of a glistening new car, all three of them pressed together in the front seat, so that Simon could feel the rigidity of her body against him shaken by an occasional shiver, and knew that Olivant must have felt it too, though the man chattered incessantly about nothing and Simon did his best to help keep the empty conversational ball rolling.
Once, while they were still passing through the Bois de Boulogne, Olivant broke off in the middle of a sentence and said, “Are you nervous, Miss North? Believe me, I drive most careful.”
“I guess I’m just over-tired,” she said. “Or else I’m catching a chill.”
“I know, you ’ave ’ad a shocking day.”
She turned to the Saint, leaning closer to him.
“Where are we?”
He hadn’t wanted to refer to it, but he had to.
“The Bois de Boulogne,” she repeated after him. “Where Charles was—”
“Please,” Olivant said quickly. “For a leetle while, try not to sink of un’appy sings.”
“Now that it’s come up,” said the Saint, in a very even tone that tried unobtrusively to transmit some of his strength to her, “I must ask you one more question. About those medals, Valerie, that your father gave you and your brother. He didn’t just give them to you to put in your pockets, did he? How were you supposed to wear them?”
They were on silver chains,” she said expressionlessly. “He must have riveted them, or welded them, or something. At least, I know that mine had no catch that you could undo, and it was too small to come off over my head. I wore it day and night for years. Finally when I got older I had to have the chain cut, because I had other necklaces I wanted to wear, and I couldn’t wear that one all the time.”
Simon drew a deep breath.
“That’s the last answer,” he said softly. “That explains everything. Of course, he had to take the least possible risk of your losing them. And because your brother didn’t have to be bothered about other necklaces, he never had his chain cut. He was still wearing it when he was killed. And all the murderer had was a knife. People don’t normally carry wire-cutters, or a hacksaw, or a file, when they set out to commit a straightforward murder. It hadn’t occurred to him that the chain wouldn’t unfasten. And it was too strong for him to break with his hands, and too small to take off over the head. So the only way he could take it, on the spot, was to—”
“No!” the girl cried out shudderingly, and buried her face in her hands.
The car seemed to swerve a trifle.
“I am ashame for you,” Olivant said harshly. “’Ow you can ’urt Miss North like zis?”
“I’m sorry,” said the Saint.
But he wasn’t, for the answer to that last question, the mystery of why Charles Rosepierre’s head had been hacked off after he was dead, had to be known. And he knew now, and there were no more questions. With certainty there came a lowering kind of peace.
Olivant’s house was not large, but it stood well in what appeared to be moderately spacious grounds, which looked overgrown and unkempt, about half-way up the hill from the river. The interior was somber and smelled damp, as if it had lacked the warmth of human occupancy for a long time. Simon was sure that it had.
Olivant ushered them into the heavily furnished drawing-room and turned, rubbing his hands. He seemed to have recovered his overpowering confidence, and his smile was fat and expansive.
“Now,” he said, “Ve are going to be ’appy. What will you ’ave? A cocktail? Sherry? I make you a drink, and zen I make dinner. I ’ave no servant tonight, but I am very good chef.”
“Living alone and liking it, eh?” said the Saint mildly.
‘“Yes. Tonight eet is just ourselves.”
Simon put out his cigarette. He could enjoy the full flavor of a situation as well as anyone, but he knew that there were occasions when to prolong the enjoyment for epicurean reasons alone could complicate it with unnecessary and unjustifiable risks.
He put a hand into his coat pocket as if reaching for another pack of cigarettes, but it came out with a stubby blue-black automatic.
“In that case, we won’t put you to a lot of trouble, Monsieur Orival,” he said pleasantly. “Besides which we prefer not to be drugged or poisoned, whichever you had in mind. All we want is Charles Rosepierre’s medallion.”
“Are you crazy, Templar?”
The Saint smiled.
“I see you know my real name,” he murmured. “I thought you would. You only had to ask a few questions at the hotel. It was a little harder for me to get yours, but your fingerprints on that guidebook were a big help.”
The man’s face had turned red at first, but now the blood was draining out of it, leaving it gray.
“My name ees Olivant. Zis is an outrage!”
“It’s going to be a worse one,” said the Saint cheerfully, “if we don’t get that medal. I’m sure it’s either in your pocket or in this house somewhere. Now, will you hand it over, or shall I shoot you in the stomach and look for it myself?”
Orival licked his lips.
“Eet is in my safe,” he said at last “Be’ind zat picture.”
“Go and get it.”
Orival dragged his steps to the painting and lifted it off the wall. Behind it was a small steel door. He manipulated the dial, and the door opened. He reached in.
He should not have been so conventional as to turn around with a gun in his hand. Simon was expecting it, and ducked. Orival’s one shot went wild, but the Saint’s did not.
Then the French windows burst open, and Inspector Quercy walked in.
8
“ Enfin,” Quercy said stolidly, when the facts that he did not know had been told to him, “Miss North has both the medals, and she should be able to claim the inheritance without too much difficulty. And we have this canaille, but not in the condition that the State would have preferred.” He prodded the body of Orival, alias Olivant, with his foot, and signed to the two uniformed men who had followed him in. “Remove it.”
“The State ought to thank me,” said the Saint, “for saving you the expense of a trial and execution.”
“It is lucky for you,” Quercy said, “that I saw what happened, and know that you fired in self-defense. We have, of course, been following Miss North all day, to see if the murderer might approach her. You see, we are not quite so stupid and useless as you would like to make us.”
Valerie North said, “I hope you won’t hold it against him. He’s done so much for me. I’m afraid he’d never let me pay him, but at least I don’t want him to get in trouble.”
“He has an irresistible advocate in you, Mademoiselle,” Quercy said gallantly.
Simon glanced surreptitiously at the open safe, and then at the windows through which the two agents had just disappeared with their unlamented burden.
“By the way,” he said, “just to complete the record, I think Orival still had the murder knife in his pocket.”
“Yes, we shall need that for the police museum.”
Quercy hurried out after his men. He was back in a few minutes, shaking his head.
“For once you were mistaken, Monsieur le Saint. It is not on him.”
Simon shrugged.
“Well, I guess he got rid of it.”
“It is not very important.”
Simon Templar agreed. What was important, to him, was that in those few minutes he had been able to transfer the negotiable contents of the late Georges Orival’s safe to his own pockets. He caught the girl’s eye, but she said nothing, and he knew that her sense of humor was coming back.