Annabella Lambrini smiled indulgently. They were moving slowly back up the front steps of the house.
“Hans is just overprotective. He’s a worrier, aren’t you, Hans?”
“I don’t know why,” Simon said. “Working for a girl with such a nice uncomplicated life as yours.”
Hans turned to the Saint as they entered the hall.
“It is no personal, ah, feeling against you, Sir,” he said stiffly. “The lady iss not safe, und only I am here to protect her. No father, no family. Und I am not young und not strong. Ve must be foresighted…dot is…”
“Careful?” Simon offered.
“Ja, careful. You understand?”
“I understand. In fact, I think your attitude is more sensible than the lady’s.” He watched her wryly as he was speaking. “Here I am, one of the most notorious pirates on the face of the earth, and she’s offering to take me under her roof for her own protection.”
She looked him in the eye.
“I trust you are an honorable man…Simon.”
The way she pronounced his first name, for the first time, would have been enough to send warm tremors up and down the spinal ganglia of a less controlled man. As it was, the Saint held himself detached from the more obvious effects of that sensuous voice and merely decided that becoming Miss Lambrini’s personal cavalier might have more rewards than he had anticipated.
“If you trust that I’m honorable, you’re very trusting,” he remarked.
“I have reason to trust you…and without you I seem quite certain to lose not only my paintings but possibly my life.”
They were in the living room now, and Hans Kraus turned on the lights. The sun was already below the horizon, and the molten glow of the sky was cooling to darkness. Annabella Lambrini drew the curtains over the large window.
“Have you any idea who these characters might be?” Simon asked her. “The ones who are so anxious to get their hands on you and your property?”
“No. Not the slightest.”
“Or how they might have found out about the paintings?”
“No.” She looked at Kraus, who was standing near the door as if waiting for orders. “Go rest now. Monsieur Templar will be staying—won’t you, Simon?”
“My fate seems to be sealed,” he said resignedly. “I will be staying.”
“Good,” the chauffeur said. “I make it certain that all is locked.”
“Are there any outside lights?” the Saint asked. “If there are, I suggest you leave them on all night. With a million and a half dollars you can afford to run up an electric bill.”
The chauffeur bowed briefly and went out.
“I am grateful, Simon,” Annabella said warmly. “I realize that it is not very…conventional to ask this of you, but the fact is, I am not a very conventional female. I have led my life as it pleased me, not wanting to be tied—at least not until I had enjoyed myself. And I knew, from my father, that I would have money coming, though I was not sure until after he died just where it was expected to come from. But I have always been independent, perhaps partly because of the idea that I would have a great deal of money some day. My relationships with men have not had to be on the careful practical basis that most women worry about. In a word, I haven’t learned to give a damn what people think of me. You are shocked?”
“I’m favorably impressed,” Simon said. “It doesn’t sound like a typically Italian attitude.”
“I am not typically Italian.” She waved him toward a chair. “Sit down, please. My father was from the Italian Tyrol, and my mother was from Munich. I was sent to Sweden when I was a little child, during the war. My mother was killed in an air raid in Munich. My father was in the Italian army on the Russian front. He disappeared completely, like so many others, as the Russians moved on Europe, but he survived as a prisoner until he was released and found me years later. I was fifteen years old by then…and yet I still remembered him.”
The Saint nodded as she paused.
“And then you came to live in France?” he said. “You’ve led quite a cosmopolitan life.”
“I’ve never really lived here for long,” she said. “I suffer from Wanderlust, you might say. In fact I have every intention of taking my money when I’ve sold these paintings and going to California and building myself a gorgeous house and living like a movie star…and marrying for love.”
“Like a movie star?” said the Saint cynically.
She smiled and went to the door.
“Would you care for some sherry before dinner? It’s all we have. The supply of alcohol is rather limited. It’s a strange feeling, living on nothing but appearances one day and expecting millions the next.”
Simon said he would like the sherry. When his hostess came back with it, after a delay caused by starting a leg of lamb roasting in the oven, she found him inspecting the sliding bookcase—which was not sliding, but still in place.
“Clever,” he said. “I assume you press one of the shelves to open it?”
Annabella handed him a bottle of Dry Sack, and put down the two glasses she carried.
“You are interested in carpentry?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.
“Was it one of your father’s hobbies?” the Saint countered, uncorking the bottle and pouring for both of them.
He left the shelves and sat down near the woman on the sofa. She looked beautiful and he liked her—and for those reasons among others he had no intention of swiping her paintings and keeping all the loot for himself, although of course he did anticipate a reasonable material reward for the troubles he had already gone through as well as those he probably still had in store.
“I don’t know who built it,” she said. “I know very little about my father, really.”
“And the paintings?”
“Even less. My father was from an aristocratic family. Before the war they were rich and owned property in many countries. This house, for example, had been in the family for several generations. During the war, things fell apart. These paintings, as I understand it, had been in the family for a long time. To my father, they were not an investment—a way of making money. They were a trust. He made certain they were hidden before he went to fight the Communists. Then he told me as he saw the war was going to be lost, he was afraid that the Communists very possibly would take over Austria and Italy, and of course would confiscate private property. He sent instructions for the paintings to be taken out through the Alps to Switzerland by his sister. Then, as I told you, he was captured by the Russians and held for years. When he came back, his sister was dead. He didn’t tell me the details, but somehow he located the paintings. He did not want to sell them, but when he died this year he told me they were all he had to leave me, that I would find them here in this house, and that I should sell them with no publicity to a reputable dealer.”
The Saint sipped his sherry meditatively. Annabella Lambrini seemed genuinely moved as she told the end of her story. She had lowered her eyes, and now she sat without speaking.
“Don’t feel you’re smashing up the family tradition,” he said. “Three Leonardos and a Titian or two thrown in are quite a bit for any woman to live with. I think LeGrand is your best bet, unless you can afford a mansion and a small private army.”
She raised her eyes and looked at him with a new expression.
“I think you are the only army I need, or want,” she said.
“And I’ve never had a pleasanter job of guard duty,” the Saint replied.
He raised his glass, and she raised hers, and the crystal bubbles touched with the sound of tiny bells, and Simon wondered if he believed a single word of what she had told him.
5
There were no disturbances that night. Whoever was after Annabella Lambrini’s little cache of masterpieces had apparently given up trying to take them by storm, at least for the time being. By nine-thirty in the morning the Lambrini household was a picture of commonplace and cozy normality. A completely recovered Hans Kraus was
out in the gravel driveway washing the Mercedes with hose and chamois, and Simon and Annabella were polishing off the last of eggs, rolls, jam, and coffee in the bright dining room. The Saint looked out through the large window at the chauffeur moving around the streaming black car and released a contented sigh.
“I must have been born with royal blood in my veins,” he said. “There’s nothing that gives me a greater sense of well-being than sitting at a late breakfast with a beautiful woman and watching other people work.”
Annabella smiled. She was not only visibly excited about the fortune the day was supposed to bring her, she seemed absolutely radiant compared with the tense tired state she had been in the evening before.
“After this morning I won’t let Hans work,” she said happily. “He deserves to retire.”
“Are you sure he wants to? Some people thrive on hard labor.”
“I can’t imagine it.”
The Saint chuckled.
“Neither can I. It makes me think of a prison sentence.” He looked at his watch. “When is it you’re going to legally raid the banks of France?”
“LeGrand said he would be here with his friend at ten-thirty. Maybe we should put the paintings out for him to see.”
“They are still there, aren’t they?”
She laughed.
“I’ve checked three times already. They’re quite safe.”
Before Simon heard or saw a car approaching the house he noticed through the window that Hans Kraus had paused in his polishing and was peering down the driveway toward the road.
“I think he’s here,” he said, getting up from the table. “Or somebody.”
Annabella was fidgeting like a schoolgirl before her first dance.
“Don’t tease me. Or somebody, indeed! It will be him. It has to be him!”
It was LeGrand. The Saint recognized his dark-bearded head as a frog-nosed blue Citroën crunched to a halt near the Mercedes. There was no one else with him in the car. Annabella Lambrini almost ran for the front door. Outside, Hans Kraus, looking fiercely protective, had taken up a position by the front steps as if preparing to repel boarders.
Still making his way at a fairly leisurely rate toward the entrance hall, Simon heard Annabella exclaiming in French as she opened the door to LeGrand.
“Oh, I am so glad to see you, Monsieur! Come in, please. Did you have trouble finding my house?”
“Blind intuition would have led me here, I am sure,” LeGrand said elegantly. “What a great day this is for both of us, n’est-ce pas?”
“Vraiment, Monsieur, vraiment!”
Simon joined the enthusiastic pair in the hallway, greeted LeGrand and shook hands with him.
“What a surprise!” LeGrand blurted. Then he covered his surprise smoothly. “I had no idea that you two charming people would have become friends…so…”
“So early in the morning?” Annabella said archly.
Marcel LeGrand only shrugged and smiled.
“If it were not for Monsieur Templar I would probably not be here this morning to meet you,” Annabella told him. “And neither would my paintings.”
LeGrand looked shocked, and the woman gave him a detailed account of what had happened after she had left his gallery the afternoon before.
“These men: you have seen nothing more of them since yesterday evening?” LeGrand asked nervously.
“No,” she answered, darting a fond look at the Saint. “I think that when they discovered I was not alone here with my chauffeur—who is no longer strong enough at his age to be much protection—they gave up their ideas of robbing me.”
LeGrand was stroking his beard thoughtfully. “Assuming their object was robbery,” he said.
The three of them were standing in the big front living room now, and Annabella offered them chairs. LeGrand sat down along with the Saint and his hostess and then bobbed up again and began to pace the floor after her next question.
“What other object could they have?” she asked.
“I can think only of the police,” LeGrand answered. “This Inspector Mathieu who called on me so inopportunely yesterday. Perhaps he and his fellow bureaucratic bloodhounds are going to desperate lengths to pry into your business. Such things have been known to happen—unofficially.”
“Even if that were believable,” Annabella said, “why?”
LeGrand turned from his pacing and faced her, his stubby legs apart. It was a way of standing which suggested that he needed to assure a firm support for a torso that clearly showed the cumulative result of several decades of rich cooking.
“Do we need to be surprised at anything a government does?” he asked with sudden passion. “Is there any privacy left anywhere today? When we move from our beds they take an interest!”
The Saint had relaxed totally in his softly upholstered chair. He brought the long fingers of both his hands together against his lips as LeGrand spoke, and then lowered them.
“But still,” he intervened politely, “wouldn’t these be rather peculiar cops? Your deal with Mademoiselle Lambrini has to be legal. A man of your reputation can’t afford under-the-counter games. You pay your taxes, I’m sure—or enough of them, at least. And Mademoiselle Lambrini tells me that the paintings have been in her family’s hands—legally—for many years. That hardly seems to call for special investigations.”
“Maybe they do not have your trusting nature,” Annabella said.
LeGrand, still standing at the center of the room, suddenly clapped his hands together and rubbed them briskly.
“What use is it to speculate about this?” he said. “We have more important things to do.”
“Certainly, Monsieur,” Annabella replied eagerly. “It is time for the unveiling.”
She got to her feet and went to the bookshelf beside the fireplace.
“Clever,” LeGrand said with a giggle of pure nervous anticipation when she pressed the release mechanism and opened the secret compartment in the wall.
Then he froze, his eyes glittering, biting his furry underlip as he waited for Simon and Annabella to uncover the paintings. They removed the cloth covering and stepped back to show the first Leonardo da Vinci.
The art dealer’s first audible reaction was a prolonged, awed, “Ahhh…” He hurried forward and fell down on his knees in front of the painting, gazing at it with hungrily darting eyes from two or three feet away.
“Oh, exquisite. Magnificent. It is not only real, real Leonardo, but good Leonardo. Great Leonardo.”
He heaved himself back onto his feet and looked at Annabella, who was smiling joyously.
“You are rich, Mademoiselle. This alone will bring…well, I don’t know how much!”
It amused Simon to see how quickly a cloud of practicality veiled the sun of LeGrand’s spontaneous enthusiasm.
“Of course,” the dealer said, “things never bring what they are worth. And then there is the interest I must pay on loans, and the problem of…”
“Later, Monsieur, later,” Annabella interrupted good-naturedly. “We can bargain later…if you are interested. Would you like to see the others?”
“Would I like to see the others!” LeGrand burbled. “That is the same as asking me if I would like to be twenty-five again! Show me, please. Show me.”
His next word was “Incroyable!” as with Annabella he brought the second masterpiece from its one-time hiding place into the clear morning light of the room. The ritual and the exclamations and ecstatic comments were repeated until all five of the paintings had been admired.
“This takes my breath away,” LeGrand said. “What can I say?”
“Say—ten million francs?” Annabella suggested.
LeGrand looked at her stoically.
“We may bargain, Mademoiselle, but I do not think we shall quarrel.”
“Well, shall I leave you to haggle?” Simon asked. “I’ll take a stroll in the garden.”
“Whatever you please, M’sieur,” LeGrand said.
“Stay if
you like,” Annabella said simultaneously.
Their responses to his question were entirely automatic. Their consciousnesses were almost exclusively focused on the paintings and the deal to be made, and the Saint felt about as much a part of things as the bride’s brother along on a honeymoon. When he left the room they were already so absorbed in financial discussion that they did not even notice his departure.
He went out the front door of the house and sauntered across the drive to the Mercedes, where Kraus was engrossed in putting a final burnish on the mirror-like black shell.
“Wie geht’s, Hans?” he enquired sociably.
“Ganz gut, danke, mein Herr. And you?”
The chauffeur straightened his shoulders as he turned to answer. He wiped his moist forehead with the back of the hand which held the polishing cloth.
“Very well too,” Simon said.
“And there?” Hans Kraus asked in a quieter voice, with a tilt of his head toward the house.
He seemed to have become much friendlier to the Saint now that both the paintings and their owner had come through the night unscathed.
“They’re talking price.”
“He won’t cheat her?”
“Hans, you’re an incorrigibly suspicious man I’m afraid. LeGrand will drive a hard bargain, but he’s honest.”
The chauffeur’s face became ashamedly apologetic.
“You understand…how could I know these things?” he said. “She is only a young woman, with a great responsibility, and I cannot be of much help. I worry. I cannot help it.”
“Well, you won’t have to worry much longer,” Simon told him. “Once LeGrand has the paintings and your Fräulein has her money, the Lambrini household can relax indefinitely.”
“Will she have it soon?” Kraus asked. “It is all she has thought about for months. There has been almost no sleeping.”
“I think she’ll have it soon,” Simon assured him. “LeGrand was very impressed.”
“Let us fervently hope so,” Kraus said.
Simon left him and started to stroll across the lawn, wondering just how long the other parties who had been showing such an interest in Annabella’s art hoard were going to remain inactive. Then Annabella’s own voice called his name and he turned back to the house. She and LeGrand were standing at the front door.
The Saint Abroad Page 4