The Saint in Europe (4 page)

“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 St. 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 inscripнtion.”

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 torнtured 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. Everyнone 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 exнperience 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 catchнing 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 halfway 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, “we 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, Monнsieur 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 guide book 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 hapнpened, 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 disнappeared 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.

II. AMSTERDAM:

The Angel’s Eye

The Hollandia is one of the best hotels in Amsterdam. The best hotels everywhere exercise a proper discretion over the guests whom they admit to their distinguished accommodations. The clerk at the Hollandia read the name that Simon Templar had filled in on the form in front of him, and his brow wrinkled as he looked up.

“Mr Templar,” he said. “Are you by any chance the Saint?”

Simon sighed imperceptibly. He knew that look. As a man who had rather a weakness for the best hotels, it was sometimes a little tiresome to him.

“You guessed it,” he said.

The clerk smiled with the utmost courtesy.

“I do not know if we have a room that would suit you.”

“I’m not too hard to please.”

“Excuse me,” said the clerk.

He retired to an inner office. In a few minutes he came back, accompanied by an older and more authoritative personage.

“Good afternoon, Mr Templar,” said the personage corнdially. “I am the manager. It is nice of you to come to us. But you do not have a reservation.”

“No,” said the Saint patiently. “But I wasn’t expecting any trouble. I’m still not expecting any. Not any at all. I’m on vacation.”

“Of course.”

“As a matter of fact, I only came this way to say hullo to an old friend of mine, one of your eminent citizens. You probably know him-Pieter Liefman. He makes some of the best beer in these parts. But he’s out of town, and won’t be back till tomorrow or the next day. I just want to wait over and see him.”

“You are a friend of Mr Liefman?”

“We are what you might call brothers under the suds.”

The manager studied him frankly for a while, and found it hard to see anything that threatened the peace and good name of the hotel. The Saint wore his clothes with the careнless ease of a man accustomed to the best of everything, and with the confidence of one who did not have to think twice about paying for it. And at that moment the keen corsair’s face was in repose, and the imps of devilment stilled in the clear blue eyes-it was a trick of camouflage that sometimes served the Saint better than a disguise, and on those occaнsions almost made him seem to fit his incongruous nickнname.

“I think we can find you a room,” said the manager.

So that minor problem was overcome, but not without starting a slight stir of curiosity that spread like an active virus through all levels of the human beings within the hotel, who were, after all, only human. Simon knew it when he came downstairs again, after a shower and a change, by the studiously veiled interest of the staff, the elaborately imperнsonal glances and politely inaudible whisperings of the other guests in the lobby. The years had given him an extraнsensory perception of the subtle symptoms of recognition; but in the same time he had developed a protective tolerнance for it. Let the speculations buzz: they could not emнbarrass him when he had nothing to hide.

For what he had told the manager was the simple truth. He had made the detour to Amsterdam in the course of an already aimless European vacation for no reason but the impulse to renew an old acquaintance and sample the prodнucts of the famous Liefman brouwerei at the source, and he had no thought of avenging any iniquities, robbing any robbers, or doing any of the other entertaining and lawless things which had made his name a nightmare to the police of four continents and given him the reputation which caused even tourists to stare furtively from behind their guidebooks.