After which perfunctory raising of the mental hat, he passed rapidly on to consider the next move. And nothing was more obvious than that it would have to be made quickly.
Graner’s recovery was having a restorative effect on the others. Simon could feel their relaxation in the diminishing tension of the atmosphere. Aliston was regaining control of his jittered nerves. Palermo was pulling again at his unsavoury cigar, and the red lights in his one good eye were burning hotter. Only Lauber was still hunched stiffly over his gun, as though he could not quite convince himself that the alarming situation was well in hand.
“Perhaps you would like to sit down, Mr Templar,” Graner said softly.
“That’s quite an idea, Reuben, since we’re booked for a conference. This position does get a bit tiring—”
“You can quit that line of talk, see?”
Palermo jumped out of his chair, with one clenched fist raised. Graner checked him.
“Wait a minute.”
“I’ll knock that grin off his face—”
“I said wait a minute. There will be plenty of time for that.”
“That’s right, Art,” said the Saint kindly. “Sit down and save what’s left of your nasty little face. It’s the only one you’ve got, and if you hit me I shall certainly hit you again.”
“If you try to hit anyone,” grated Lauber, “I’ll—”
“You’ll put your gun away and hope for the best. You’re not going to shoot me if you can possibly help it, because you still want to ask me too many questions.”
Graner drew up a chair.
“I should not advise you to rely too much on that,” he remarked sleekly. “If you attempt to fight anybody you will certainly be shot.”
Palermo subsided slowly into his chair. He was still shaking with passion. The Saint opened his cigarette case on the table and continued to smile at him.
“That’s something for you to look forward to, Art. And believe me, it does the heart good to see you so full of virtue and esprit de corps again.” He glanced back at Graner. “In a way, you disappoint me, Reuben. I told you I thought you’d be a mug to swallow all the tales these birds have been telling you, and I’m still thinking it.”
“Seems to me that this proves we did the right thing,” Aliston contradicted him aggressively.
Graner giggled—a queerly incongruous sound that was not at all comic to listen to.
“I think you are still wasting your time, Templar,” he said.
The Saint shook his head reproachfully, although inwardly he was nodding. If you looked at it that way, the revelation of his identity did seem to have thinned away the chances of picking holes in Aliston’s story. In fact, it must almost have made Aliston seem entitled to a medal of his own, but the Saint wasn’t going to award it.
“You jump to too many conclusions, brother. Certainly I’ve been interfering with all of you. But I didn’t start it. You were all so busy double-crossing each other that the obvious thing seemed to be to join in. Just because you’ve discovered that I wasn’t the one dumb innocent in the party doesn’t make the rest of you into a lot of little mothers’ darlings. Now suppose you look at each other—if you can stand the strain for a few minutes—”
“Suppose you let me do the talking,” Graner put in acidly.
Simon spread out his hands.
“But my dear soul, I know it all so well. I’ve listened to it so many times that I’ve lost count of them. You’re going to say that you want to ask me some questions.”
“Which you are going to answer.”
“Which I’m not going to answer if I don’t feel like it. Then you look at me with an evil leer and say, ‘Ha-ha, me proud beauty, but I have ways of making people feel like it!’ The audience goes into a cold sweat and waits for you to bring on the trained cobras.”
“I expect you will find our methods effective enough.”
“I doubt it, Reuben. I take an awful lot of persuading. Besides, what are ‘our’ methods? Are you speaking as royalty, or who else is ‘we’?”
“You can see us,” snapped Aliston.
The Saint nodded without shifting his benign and patient smile. He was playing his last cards and he meant to make the most of them. With all of them united against him, he hadn’t a chance, but he knew on what fragile foundations their newly recovered unity was based. He had to break them up again, quickly and finally, and hope that a loophole would open for himself in the break-up.
“I know, darling,” he said nicely. “I can see all of you. And very beautiful you are. But four people have to have some good reason for calling themselves ‘we.’ And the question is, have you got it? Are you four minds with but a single thought, four hearts that beat as one?…We’ve already spoken about you, Cecil. Now suppose we speak reverently for a moment about Comrade Palermo. There he is, with his beautiful piebald face—”
Palermo started up again.
“You son of a—”
“Bishop is the word you want,” said the Saint helpfully. “But you ought to have known my grandmother. She was a female archdeacon, and could she deac!”
“When I get at you,” Palermo said lividly, “you’re going to wish you hadn’t been so funny.”
“Sit down, Art.” Simon’s voice was coldly tranquil. “Uncle Reuben will spank you if you don’t behave. We’ll leave you alone for a while if you’re so sensitive—you go under the same heading as Aliston, anyway. Let’s talk about Comrade Lauber instead.”
“I wouldn’t,” Lauber advised him grimly.
The Saint sighed.
“You see?” he said. “If you didn’t have any secrets from each other, if you were just a happy band of brothers, you wouldn’t be nearly so scared. But you aren’t. Even Uncle Reuben made me a proposition—”
“Only for one reason,” Graner said stolidly.
“I know. But it was a proposition. And you put it over so earnestly that I can’t help feeling you rather liked it, even if it was just supposed to be a stall. If things had gone differently—”
Graner rapped his knuckles on the table.
“I think you’ve talked long enough,” he said. “You will now listen to what I have to say.”
There was an audible tightness in his throat which had not been there before—it was hardly noticeable enough to define, but it told the Saint that his last shot had gone very near the mark. And other indications were reaching him at the same time from the surrounding atmosphere, like electrical vibrations impinging on a sensitive instrument. The tension which had started to relax was coming back. The other three, Aliston and Palermo and Lauber, were leaning unconsciously towards him, sitting stiffly from the tautness of their muscles, watching him as if they were watching a smouldering fuse that might explode a charge of dynamite at any instant.
The Saint shrugged contentedly.
“By all manner of means, Reuben,” he said obligingly. “But who’s going to listen?”
“We’ll all listen,” snarled Lauber.
“And will you all be quite sure that it’s safe for the rest of you to hear? I’m not promising anything, but you might get some valuable information out of me, and then one of you might use it for himself.”
Graner put the tips of his fingers together in his old-maidish way.
“That will not concern you,” he said ironically.
“But I think it concerns all of us,” said the Saint. “Get your senses together and look at it. We’ve all been dashing about in different directions, trying to cut each other’s throats. Now we seem to have got joined up again. Let’s stay that way. You’ve got Christine. I’ve still got the other two. Let’s put our cards on the table and see how the hand plays out.”
Aliston’s sharp falsetto laugh twittered across the room.
“You must think we’re a lot of fools,” he said scornfully.
“Would you be a bigger fool to trust me than to trust a little punk like Palermo? Would Graner be a bigger fool to trust me than to trust a thick-hea
ded windbag like Lauber? You, Art—after the way Aliston ratted on you when he thought things were getting too hot—d’you still feel he’s your soul mate? Have you forgotten that clout Lauber gave you on the kisser? Lauber—do you remember how Palermo and Aliston wanted to kiss you and put you to bed the first night I came here? And Graner—what has he done—”
“That is enough!”
The shrillness in Graner’s voice had gone up a note or two. He stood up, as if in that position he felt it would be easier to re-establish the dominance that was slipping away from him.
“All right!” The Saint’s voice also rose, intentionally, as he played into the rising tempo of the situation. “Then you do the talking. And you take the consequences. I don’t care much if you all double-cross each other to death. I’ll help you!”
“Are you going to answer my questions?”
“Anything you like. But don’t blame me if the answers don’t please everybody.”
“Where’s Joris?”
“When I last saw him he was at the hotel.”
“And the other man?”
“I told you I lost him at the Casino.”
“Was that the truth?”
“No, Reuben. It wasn’t.”
“Where is he?”
“I haven’t the foggiest idea. He might be roaming around anywhere. He may be at the hotel too.”
“When are you supposed to meet them?”
“I’m not. I’ve done all the meeting I have to do.”
“What do you know about the ticket?”
“Nearly everything,” said the Saint quietly.
Lauber’s chair grated on the floor as he pushed it back. He got up like a whale rising to the surface.
“Let me talk to him,” he said, and the Saint laughed at him.
“I’ll bet you’d like to! But I warned you my answers wouldn’t please everybody. You all asked for it. Now you can have it.”
“You—”
Graner swung round.
“Be quiet, Lauber. I am doing the questioning.” He turned back to the Saint, with his eyes hard and glittering behind his glasses. “You can go on answering me, Templar. Where is the ticket?”
“So far as I know, it’s where Lauber put it.”
“You god-damn liar!” Lauber roared savagely.
The Saint’s cool blue eyes rested on him unruffledly, and the whole of the Saint’s mind was at peace with the prevision of triumph. He could feel the volcanic pressure in the air, the clash of antagonised minds locked in a silent struggle with themselves and each other.
“Naturally you’d say that,” he murmured. “I think you said much the same thing to Aliston and Palermo last night, but it didn’t seem to upset them. They didn’t think it was such a fool idea then.”
“Graner!” Lauber faced thunderously across the table. “Are you going to let this—”
“There should be no harm in hearing his answer.” Graner’s voice had gone cold again, but the nervous tightness was still thinning its sarcastic nasal accents. “Perhaps you can justify your statement, Templar. It should be easy to verify. Where do you think Lauber put the ticket?”
“In the car.”
“Which car?”
“The Buick. That’s the car they chased Joris in last night, isn’t it?”
“If it is there, it’s because he put it there,” said Lauber furiously. “The whole story’s a plant.” He turned to the others. “Don’t you see what he’s trying to do? He’s trying to set us against each other—”
“I don’t have to do that,” said the Saint mildly. “You did that yourselves. But why argue about it? The car’s outside. Why doesn’t one of you go and have a look? If there is one of you that the others’ll trust that far. You’ll find the ticket where Lauber put it, after he’d taken it from Joris, when he woke up in the car coming back here—”
“You mean where you put it!”
Simon looked him in the eye.
“I mean where you put it,” he said steadily, and turned his eyes towards Aliston. “Cecil, where did Lauber ride last night?”
Aliston swallowed.
“In the back,” he answered hesitantly.
“And that’s where Lauber hid the ticket when he thought of double-crossing the lot of you. Somewhere in the back—I don’t know where. Under the cushions, or under the floor mat, or in the side pocket. But it won’t take long to find it.”
“Let him find it!” shouted Lauber. “He knows where he hid it.”
Simon raised his eyebrows.
“In the back?” he repeated gently. His gaze swung through a half circle. “You tell him, Reuben. After all, you were with me. Could I have reached the back of the car to hide anything there when we were driving up here? Was I ever alone with the car? I was beside you all the time. You stayed at the wheel when I opened the gates. We came into the house together. Did I have a chance to hide the ticket where you’re going to find it?”
The eyes of Aliston and Palermo turned onto Graner. They seemed to slide forward onto the edges of their chairs as they waited breathlessly for the answer.
Graner stared at the Saint for a long moment, and Simon felt that he could read Graner’s mind as if it were moving in front of him like a picture on a television screen. Unless the Saint had lost every last gift he had ever had for divining the thoughts of his opponents, Graner was wishing that after all he had kept the bargain he had proposed at the German Bar.
At last Graner’s lips shaped their answer.
“No.”
The monosyllable dropped into the quivering silence like the plop of a dropped stone reaching the bottom of a well. And after it, like an echo, came the reflex catch of Aliston’s and Palermo’s breath…Palermo’s sleeve rasped the edge of the table with a faint scuff as he jerked his hand back towards his pocket.
Lauber was quicker—he had an advantage, because his gun had been out all the time.
“Stop that!” he yelled.
He flung himself round the table, past Aliston, and Palermo stopped moving suddenly. Lauber’s automatic was no longer trained on the Saint alone—it was swivelling from side to side in an arc that embraced everyone else in the room.
Out of the whole gathering, Simon Templar was the only one who remained at ease. Since he had carefully organised the development, it was presumably up to him to enjoy it, and he did his best, lounging round with one elbow on the table and the other arm looped over the back of his chair, and watching with kindly interest as Lauber backed slowly towards the door, covering them all with his gun.
There was nothing else for Lauber to do, and Lauber had been quick enough to see it. If he had gone on denying all knowledge of the whereabouts of the ticket, the others would still have searched where the Saint told them, and Lauber couldn’t help knowing how much his life would have been worth if it had been proved that the Saint was telling the truth. And even if he had contrived to save his own skin, everything that he had gambled for would have been lost. Whatever happened, Lauber had to stop a deputation of the others going out to search the car. It would certainly shift the proceedings onto a totally different plane, but if the process of disrupting the newly found unity of the ungodly could be continued…
“All right, damn you!” Lauber’s heels had reached the door to the hall, and his dark face was flushed with fierce defiance. “I did put the ticket in the car. I’m just a smart double-crosser like the rest of you—only I got more out of it than you will. And I’m keeping what I’ve got! The first one of you who sticks his face outside the house will get what I’m giving the Saint—”
Simon flung himself sideways as Lauber’s gun banged, and heard the plonk of the bullet lodging in the polished table as he spilled over, taking the chair with him. As he rolled over he heard the slam of the door.
Aliston took two steps forward before wisdom stopped him, but Graner reached the door. He grabbed the handle, but the door stayed closed. Graner took out his gun, and a bullet crashed into the lock.
“Don’t do it!” screamed Aliston. “He knows where you’re coming from, and we don’t know where he is!”
Graner grinned back at him, and his drawn yellow face was like a death’s-head mask.
“You don’t understand,” he said.
As Simon drew his legs stealthily up under him, he saw Graner bolting across the hall, straight in line with the open door. Graner’s manicured forefinger stabbed at the switch in the opposite wall, and Graner stood there, with that diabolical grin frozen on his face…
The muffled crack of a single shot came from outside, and then there was a dull bellow that rose into a shrill wail of terror and then died. There was no other sound, and Simon remembered that the dogs hunted in silence…
It was the last thing he did remember. Aliston was a couple of yards away, with his back turned and his gun dangling in one uncertain hand…As the Saint braced his toes into the pile of the carpet for a spring, something smacked into the back of his head…There was an instant of vivid brain-splitting agony, a sprinkle of jagged lightning across his eyeballs, and then darkness.
The Saint Bids Diamonds (The Saint Series) Page 22