18 The Saint Bids Diamonds (Thieves' Picnic)

by Leslie Charteris

  "You understand Spanish, Mr Tombs?"

  Graner's thin voice broke into the Saint's thoughts; and Simon looked up from the paper and saw that Graner's eyes were fixed on him.

  "I learnt about six words on the boat coming down here," he said casually. "But I can't make head or tail of this. I suppose I'll have to learn a bit if I'm going to stay here."

  "That will not be necessary --"

  Graner might have been going to say more, but the shrill call of the telephone bell interrupted him. He got up, folded his napkin neatly and went out into the hall. Simon could hear him speaking outside.

  "Yes. . . . No? . . . You have made enquiries?" There was a longish pause. "I see. Well, you had better come back here." A briefer pause; then a curt, "All right."

  The instrument rattled back on its hook, and Graner returned. The Saint saw Lauber look up at him curi­ously, and tried ineffectually to interpret the glance. There was nothing in what he had overheard, not even a change in the inflection of Graner's voice, that might have given him a clue; and he tried in vain to fathom the subtle tenseness which he seemed to feel in Lau­ber's questioning silence.

  Graner himself said nothing, and his yellow face was as uncommunicative as a mummy's. He sat down again in his place and caressed the lace tablecloth me­chanically with his thin fingers, gazing straight ahead of him without a trace of expression in his beady eyes.

  Presently he turned to the Saint.

  "When you're ready," he said, "I will show you your workroom."

  "Any time you like," said the Saint.

  He finished his cup of the bitter brown fluid mixed with boiled milk which the Canary Islanders fondly believe to be coffee, and got to his feet as Graner rose from the table.

  They went up the stairs to the veranda above the patio, and halfway around that they came to another flight of stairs that ran up to the top floor of the house. At the top of these stairs there was a narrow landing with a door on each side. Graner unlocked one of the doors, and they went in.

  The room was hardly more than an attic; and the Saint realised at once that it was lighted by one of those small barred windows which he had seen high up in the outside wall of the house. A heavy safe stood in one corner, and along one wall was a wooden bench littered with curious tools. At one end was what looked like a small electric furnace; and at the other end was a glistening machine unlike anything else that the Saint had encountered, which he took to be the principal instrument for cutting or polishing stones.

  He ran his eye over the bench with what he hoped was a glance of professional approval.

  "You will find everything here that you need," Graner was saying. "Everything was provided exactly as your predecessor wanted it. I will show you what you have to do."

  He went over to the safe; and as he bent down and touched the combination Simon heard a faint moan something like an American police siren rising from somewhere in the house.

  Graner's body concealed his movements as he turned the combination back and forth. Then he straightened up and turned the handle; and as he did so the moan of the siren, which had held evenly on its note until then, rose suddenly to a piercing scream that filled the air for fully thirty seconds. Then it stopped just as suddenly, leaving the air quivering with the abrupt contrast; and at that moment Simon knew its explanation. The same warning would sound the instant anyone touched the combination, and if he was still left undisturbed for long enough to get the safe open, the mere act of turning the handle would send the alarm whining up to that final crescendo of urgency.

  Graner left the inference to make its own impression. It was not until the door was wide open that he turned round.

  "Your predecessor did most of the work that we had in hand," he said. "But in a few days there will be a good deal more for you."

  Simon Templar looked past him into the safe and almost gasped. From top to bottom it was divided into horizontal partitions by velvet-lined trays; and on the trays the light glittered and flamed from tier upon tier of lambent jewels, carefully sorted according to colour and species. One shelf shone with the blood-red lustre of rubies, another burned with the cold green fire of emeralds, others scintillated with the hard white bril­liance and pale blue and violet half-lights of diamonds. In that amazing hoard the hues of the rainbow danced and clashed and blended in one dazzling flood of liv­ing color. It made the elaborate precautions which Reuben Graner took to guard his house suddenly seem very natural and ordinary. There was enough wealth in that safe to make any burglar think he had picked the locks on the gates of heaven.

  3 Simon glanced over the tray that Graner held out to him, and fingered one or two of the stones.

  "It's excellent work," he said, when he had recovered his voice.

  "It was done by one of the best men in the business," Graner said complacently. "But we are hoping that you will be able to equal it."

  He put the tray back again and took out a wooden box from the bottom of the safe. It held twenty or thirty diamonds, none of which could have weighed less than ten carats, and all of them perfectly matched.

  "These are to be altered," he said. "It is a pity to have to break them up, but they belonged to a set which was once rather well-known."

  He handed the box to the Saint, and Simon took it over to the workbench and put it down. Graner closed the door of the safe and spun the combination. He took out an ornate leather case and fitted a long cigar into an amber holder. He seemed to be in no hurry.

  Simon turned over some of the implements on the bench and began to sort them out into what looked like their various categories, although he hadn't the faintest idea what any of them were.

  He did as much as he could think of in that line, and then he hesitated. Graner was strutting slowly up and down the room, with his hands clasped behind his back.

  "Don't pay any attention to me," he said. "I'm interested to see how you work."

  Simon turned the implements over again. He felt as if a strap was being tightened about his chest.

  "There isn't a chucker," he said.

  Graner stopped strutting and looked at him.

  "What is that?"

  "It's the best tool there is for making the first cuts," said the Saint, who had just invented it. "We always cut stones with a chucker."

  "Your predecessor didn't seem to find it necessary."

  Simon looked surprised.

  "He didn't use a chucker? How long had he been out of a job when you took him up?"

  "He had been working for me for about four years," said Graner; and the Saint nodded understandingly.

  "Of course-that explains it. They only came in about three years ago, but now everybody uses them. They save a tremendous amount of waste."

  Graner took the cigar out of his mouth, trimmed the ash on his thumbnail, and put it back.

  "We will send to England for a chucker by the next mail," he said. "But if you have been in the trade for fourteen years you will doubtless be able to use the older tools for the time being."

  The Saint picked up one of the diamonds and held it to the light, peering at it from various angles. And at the same time he measured up Graner's position in the room. He knew that Graner carried a gun, and he had already seen how quickly he could draw it; he himself had nothing but his knife-but that had won split-second contests with guns before, when the Saint had been ready and waiting for them. Even so, it left the rest of the house and the outer fortifications . . .

  The base of the cutting or polishing machine, whatever it was, consisted of a copper cup in which the diamond under operation was presumably supposed to rest. Simon took the stone he was holding along to it and began to fiddle with trying to fix it in place.

  "By the way," he said, "what about my luggage?"

  There was no immediate answer, and after a moment the Saint looked up. Graner was standing at the window with his back to him, looking out.

  Simon felt under his left sleeve for the hilt of his little knife. His nerves were quit
e cool now: he knew exactly what a chance he would be taking, and how much he had to lose. But there might be no other remedy.

  And then he realised why Graner was standing there. There was the sound of a car manœuvring outside, and Graner must have been watching it. All at once the hum of the engine rose and died again rap­idly, and Simon knew that it had entered the grounds.

  Graner turned away from the window and stepped towards the door.

  "Go on with your work," he said. "I shall be back in a few minutes."

  The door closed behind him, and Simon Templar sagged back on the bench and wiped his forehead.

  A few seconds later, with the irrepressible grin which was the crystallisation of all his philosophy, he took out his cigarette case and lighted a cigarette.

  With the smoke going gratefully down into his lungs, he took another look at his position. And the longer he looked at it the less he liked it. The Saint was immune to panic, but he had an unflinching grasp on realities. The reality in this case was that, if one adopted the most optimistic of the two possible theories, Reuben Graner wasn't a bloke who left very much to chance. At the moment his attention was di­vided by the disappearance of Joris Vanlinden and his lottery ticket, and the mysterious comings and goings in the household which were undoubtedly connected with it; but that wouldn't distract him forever. In fact, from the way things had progressed by that early hour of the day, it wasn't likely to be more than a few hours before Graner's investigation of his newly acquired Mr Tombs found the spare half-hour which would be about all the time it needed.

  Simon gazed morosely at the closed safe and won­dered if it would relieve his emotions to weep tenderly over it for awhile. The occasion seemed to call for something of the sort. Within its unresponsive steel sides there was enough boodle to satisfy the most am­bitious buccaneer, a collection of concentrated loot that deserved to be ranked with Vanlinden's lottery ticket; but for all the good it seemed likely to do him it might just as well have been a collection of empty beer bottles.

  He went to the window and examined it. The bars were set solidly into the concrete of the walls-it might be possible to dig them out, but it would cer­tainly take a good deal of time. And in any case he knew already that there was a sheer drop of thirty feet underneath it. Still, the road ran below. ... It was the first ray of hope he had seen since he entered the house. When he had been in Tenerife before he had made a number of incidental friends who might be useful; although if he met any of them when he was with Graner they might prove more dangerous than helpful. But that would have to be faced when the time came. . . .

  He took a piece of paper from his pocket and tore it in half. On one piece he wrote rapidly, in English: Come and stand under the window of Las Mari­posas on the La Laguna road at four o'clock. I will drop a message to you out of the window. If I'm un­able to do this within half an hour, go away and come back at seven. Wait the same time. If nothing happens then, come back at nine-thirty and wait till you hear from me. This is a matter of life and death. Say noth­ing to anyone.

  He read the message over again and grinned ruefully. It certainly read like something out of a melodrama; but that couldn't be helped. Maybe it was something out of a melodrama - his stay in Tenerife was beginning to look like that.

  He signed his name to it; and on the second scrap of paper he wrote a translation in Spanish. He folded each piece of paper inside a twenty-five-peseta note and put the notes in separate pockets; he had just finished when he heard Graner's footstep again on the stairs.

  Graner hardly glanced at his attempts to adjust the diamond in the copper cup under the machine.

  "You can leave that for now," he said. "We will go down and collect your luggage."

  His voice was sharper than it had been before, and Simon wondered what else had happened to put that grating timbre into it. There were things going on all the time that he knew nothing about, and the strain of trying to make sense of them took half the relief out of this second reprieve. Graner said nothing as they went downstairs; and all that the Saint could deduce of his state of mind had to be more intuitive than logical, which was not much satisfaction.

  Through the door of the living room he had a glimpse of Aliston's boneless back while Graner stood in front of the mirror fitting on his purple hat like a woman. Presumably Aliston, and probably the natty Mr Palermo as well, had been out in the car that had returned a little while ago. Possibly it had been one or the other of them who had telephoned Graner during breakfast. It was a fairly obvious deduction that they had been scouring the town for a trace of Joris Vanlinden; and in that case the meaning of what he had overheard of the telephone conversation, and Graner's agitation, became easier to understand. But the Saint still had a queer feeling that there were gaps in the theory somewhere, a feeling that came from some kind of sixth sense for which he could not intelli­gently account, which told him that although the pieces of the jigsaw appeared to fit together so neatly there was something not quite right about the complete picture that they made up.

  "Tombs!"

  Graner's acrid voice jerked him out of the brown study, and they went outside to where the car was waiting. The chauffeur who stood beside it was unmistakably Spanish, and part of his villainous aspect might have been due to the fact that it was still only Saturday morning and the traditions of his country required him to shave only on Saturday afternoons; but the Saint doubted it. He wondered how many more of Graner's menagerie he had still to meet.

  "What hotel did you go to?"

  "The Orotava," answered Simon; and Graner's passionless black eyes rested on him a second or two longer before he passed the order on to the driver.

  It was another of those puzzling rough edges in the smooth outline of the Saint's theory.

  Simon pulled himself together with an abrupt effort. He told himself that his nerves must have been getting the better of him-he was beginning to imagine threats and suspicions in every trivial incident. After all, there were only about three hotels in Santa Cruz that could be called at all inviting, and the Orotava was the nearest to the harbour and the easiest choice for a man looking vaguely around for some place to stay. Why should the mention of it make any particular impression?

  He knew that there could be only one reason, and felt as though a cold wind lapped his spine for a moment before he insisted to himself that it was absurd.

  There was still a brace of guardias de asalto and a brace of guardias civiles mounting guard over the scene of the previous night's outbreak of gangsterismo, although they did not stop the car; and the Saint's mind switched back to the newspaper story he had read. That had at least explained a good many things to him without introducing any new riddles. It explained the way he had been stopped on the road when he was driving up to Graner's, and incidentally also explained the scattered volley which he had heard in the distance sometime earlier when he was driving away with Joris Vanlinden. What else it might lead to he had still to decide; but the humorous thought crossed his mind that he was probably even then riding in the very car for which the whole detective genius of Santa Cruz was at that moment searching. Only, of course, they were considerably handicapped by none of the guardias having remembered the number. . . .

  The car stopped at the hotel, and they got out. As they went up to the desk, which was now in charge of a beautiful boy with the sweetest wave in his hair, Graner turned to the Saint.

  "You will remember to cancel your luncheon engagement," he said.

  "Of course," said the Saint, who had never forgotten it since they left the house. "Would you ask the Fairy Queen to see if he can get me room fifty?-I don't think he speaks English."

  Graner interpreted; and Simon lounged quietly against the counter while the youth went to the telephone switchboard.

  His pulses were ticking over like clockwork. Now, if only by some miracle he could make Hoppy grasp the idea . . . He would be able to say nothing that Reuben Graner didn't overhear, and Mr Uniatz' alertness to subtlety and innu
endo was approximately as quick-witted as that of a slightly imbecile frog. It was a flimsy enough chance, but it was a chance. He wished he could have called Christine, but he dared not take the risk of drawing attention to a room so close to his own. . . . The youth seemed to be taking a long time. . . .

  He came back at last, and what he said made the Saint feel as though he had been jolted under the chin.

  "No contestan."

  Simon didn't move. With every trace of emotion schooled out of his face, he looked enquiringly at Graner.

  "They don't answer," Graner translated.

  The Saint placed his cigarette between his lips and drew at it steadily. He knew that Graner was watching him, but for once he wasn't worried about his own reaction. He knew that he couldn't be giving anything away, for the simple reason that he had nothing to give. A dull haze seemed to have filled his brain, through which one or two futile questions could only rise blurrily into his consciousness. Could it only have been that Hoppy was sleeping his usual loglike sleep? But the boy must have been ringing the room for a long time. Besides, there was Joris Vanlinden; and there could hardly be two people in the world who slept as heavily as Hoppy Uniatz. What else could have happened? Graner had been agitated before, but none of it had looked for an instant like the kind of agitation that springs from an excess of rejoicing. Besides which, he hadn't batted an eyelid when the Saint mentioned the number of the room, which he would certainly have done if ... Besides which, there wasn't even a flickering indication of triumph in his attitude now. Besides which, there was the telephone call at breakfast time. Besides which . . .

  "You had better write them a note," Graner was saying.

  Simon nodded and walked through the lounge like an automaton to one of the writing desks. His mind was reeling under such a disordered inrush of ques­tions that none of them made any individual impres­sion. Presently he would be able to restore some sort of order and tackle them one by one, but that first in­sane confusion left him in a daze.