Vendetta for the Saint. (11 page)

How
Simon Templar hired a Museum

Piece,
and Gina Destamio became

Available

His
decision made, Simon Templar intended to pay
his call on the Destamio manor with the
least possible delay—figuring that the faster he kept mov
ing, the more he would keep Destamio off
balance,
and thus gain
the more advantage for himself. But
to make himself suitably presentable, his slashed
jacket first had to be repaired.

The cashier directed him to the nearest
sartoria,
where the
proprietor was just unlocking after the
three-hour midday break. After much energetic
and colorful discussion, a
price was agreed on that
made
allowance for the unseemly speed demanded,
yet was still a little less than the cost of
a new coat. Half an hour was finally set as the time for comple
tion; and the Saint, knowing that he would be
lucky to get it in three
times that period, proceeded
in search of his
next requisite.

The tailor directed him around the next
corner
to where a
welcoming sign announced
Servizio Eccellento
di Autonoleggio.
But for once in the history
of advertising, the auto rental service may
truly
have been so
excellent that all its cars had been
taken. At
any rate, perhaps with some help from
the
sheer numbers of seasonal tourists, the entire
fleet of vehicles seemed to be gone. The only one
left in sight was an antique and battered Fiat 500
that had been largely dismembered by
the single
mechanic who crawled from
its oily entrails and
wiped his hands
on a piece of cotton waste as
Simon
approached.

“You
have cars to rent?” said the Saint.

“Sissignore.”
The man’s sapient eye took in his
patently un-Italian appearance. “I guess
mebbe
you like-a rent-a one?”

“I guess I would,” said the Saint,
patiently re
signing himself
to haggling down a price that
would
be automatically doubled now that the en
trepreneur had identified him as a visiting
for
eigner.

“We got-a plenty cars, but all-a rent-a now, gahdam, except-a
dis sonovabitch.”

It was evident that the mechanic’s English
had
been acquired
from the ubiquitous font of
linguistic
elegance, the enlisted ranks of the Ameri
can armed services.

“You mean that’s your very last
machine?” Si
mon asked, nodding at the
disembowelled Fiat.

“Sissignore.
Cute-a little turista, she built like a
brick-a
gabinetto.
I
‘ave ‘er all-a ready dis eve
ning.”

“I wouldn’t want her, even if you do get
her put together again. Not that I want to hurt her feelings,
but she just wasn’t built to fit me. So could
you
perhaps tell
me where I might find something my
size?”

“Mebbe
you like-a drive-a da rich car, Alfa-
Romeo or mebbe Ferrari?”

There was a trace of a sneer in the question
which Simon chose to ignore in the hope of
saving
time in his
search.

“I have driven them. Also Bentleys,
Lagondas,
Jaguars, and in
the good old days a Hirondel.”

“You drive-a da Hirondel, eh? How she
go,
gahdam?”

“Like a sonovabitch,” said the
Saint gravely.
“But
that has nothing to do with the present prob
lem. I still need a car.”

“You like-a see sumping gahdam especial,
make-a you forget Hirondel?”

“That
I would like to see.”

“Come-a
wid me.”

The man led the way to a door at the rear of
the
garage, and out
into the dusty yard behind. Apart
from the piles of rusty parts and old threadbare
tires, there was a large amorphous object
shrouded
in a
tarpaulin. With an air of reverence more usual
ly reserved for the lifting of a bride’s veil pre
paratory to the nuptial kiss, he untied the
binding cords and gently drew back the canvas. Sunlight struck upon blood-red
coachwork and chromed
fittings; and
the Saint permitted himself the un
common
luxury of a surprised whistle.

“Is
that what I think it is?” he said.

“It gahdam-a sure is,” the mechanic
replied,
with his eyes
half closed in ecstatic contemplation.
“You’re-a look at a Bugatti!”

“And
if I’m not mistaken, a type 41 Royale.”

“Say,
professore,
you know all
about-a dese
bastards,”
said the man, giving Simon the title of
respect due to his erudition.

There was
 
once a body of
aficionados
who
looked upon motoring as a sport, and not an
air-
conditioned
power-assisted mechanical aid to
bringing
home the groceries, and among their ever-
dwindling survivors there are still some
purists who
maintain that
only in the golden years between
1919
and 1930 were any real automobiles con
structed, and who dismiss all cars before or
after
that era as
contemptible rubbish. The Saint was
not quite such a fanatic, but he had an artist’s re
spect for the masterpieces of that great decade.

He was now looking at one of the best of
them.
The name of
Ettore Bugatti has the same magic to
the motoring enthusiast as do those of Annie
Besant or Karl Marx to other circles of
believers.
Bugatti was an
eccentric genius who designed cars
to suit himself and paid no attention to what other
designers were doing. In 1911, when all
racing cars
were lumbering
behemoths, a gigantic Fiat snorted
to victory
in the Grand Prix. This was expected;
but
what was totally unexpected was the second-
placing of Bugatti’s first racer, looking like a
mouse beside an elephant, with an engine only
one-
eighth the size of the monstrous
winner. Bugatti
continued to pull
mechanical miracles like that.
Then,
in 1927, when everyone else was building
small cars, he brought out the juggernaut on which
Simon was now feasting his eyes.

“Dey build only seven,” the owner
crooned,
carefully
flicking a speck of dust from the glisten
ing fender. “Bugatti ‘imself bust-a one
up in a
wreck, and now
dey only six sonovabitch in ‘ole
gahdam-a
world.”

Immense is an ineffective word for such a
car.
Over a
wheel-base of more than fourteen feet, the
rounded box of the coupe-de-ville shrank in
per
spective when seen along
the unobstructed length
of
the brobdingnagian hood. The front fenders
rose high, then swept far back to form a
running-
board.

“And-a
look-a dis—”

The mechanic was manipulating the intricate
locks and handles that secured the hood, and with
no small effort he threw it open. He pointed with
uncontainable pride to the spotless engine, which
resembled the power plant of a locomotive rather
than that of an automobile. It must have been
more than five feet long.

“I have heard,” Simon said, “that if a Bugatti
starts at all, it will start with just one pull
on the
crank.”

“Dat’s-a-right.
Sono raffinate
—what
you call,
‘igh-strung
like-a race ‘orse—but when she fix-a
right, she always start. I show you!”

The man turned on the ignition, adjusted the
hand throttle and the spark, and slipped the
gleam
ing brass crank-handle into its
socket. Then he waved the Saint to it with an operatic gesture.

“You
try it yourself,
professore!”

Simon stepped up, grasped the handle and en
gaged it carefully, and with a single
coordinated effort gave it a crisp turn through a half-circle. Without a cough
or a choke, the engine burst into
responsive life, with a roar which did not entirely drown out a
strangely pleasing metallic trill not un
like a battery of sewing machines in full
stitch.

“That,” said the Saint, raising his
voice slightly,
“would
give me a lot of fun for a few days.”

“No, no,” protested the owner.
“Dat
sonovabitch
not-a for rent. Much-a too valuable,
should-a be in museum. I only show you . . “

His voice ran down as he stared at the
currency
which the
Saint was peeling off the roll in his hand.
The sum at which Simon stopped was perhaps
wantonly extravagant, but to the Saint it
did not
seem too high
to pay for the fun of having such a historic toy to play with. And after all,
he reflected,
it was only Al Destamio’s money.

Thus, in due course, having gone back to
collect
his jacket
while the rental paper-work was being
prepared, after signing the necessary forms and
being checked out on the controls, the Saint
seated
himself at the
wheel, engaged first gear, and let up
gently on the clutch. With a tremor of joy the
mighty monster gathered itself and sprang
through the open gates into the alley behind while its owner
waved a dramatic and emotional farewell.

For a motorist of refined perceptions,
driving a
Bugatti is an
experience like hearing the definitive performance of a classical symphony.
Dynamic ef
ficiency and
supreme road-holding were the qualities
that Bugatti wanted before anything else; and
since
he was a man
incapable of compromise, that was
what he obtained. The steering wheel vibrated deli
cately in the Saint’s fingers, like a live
member, sen
sitive to his
lightest touch; guidance was like cut
ting butter with a hot knife. There was a little more
difficulty with slowing up, since Bugatti
always in
tended his cars
to go rather than stop, but this
could
be overcome by adroit down-shifting and ex
tra assistance from the hand brake. Simon
happily
sounded the horn, which gave out a
rich tuneful
note like a trombone, as he
passed groups of cheering urchins and gaping adults on his way out of the
town. The engine boomed with delight, and the
great length of the red hood surged forth into
the
countryside.

Only too quickly the details of Ponti’s
sketch
map spun by
until at a last turning he saw the
Destamio manse before him. With some reluctance
he turned off the pavement and parked under
the
shade of a tree.

A
high wall, topped with an unfriendly crest of
broken bottles and shards of tile,
surrounded the
grounds and hid all of the
house except the roof.
He pressed a button
beside a pair of massive iron-bound wooden doors, and waited patiently until at
long last a medieval lock grated open
and a smaller
door set in one of the
vast ones creaked open. A
short
swarthy woman in a maid’s apron peered out
suspiciously.

“Buona sera,”
he said pleasantly. “My name is
Templar, to see Donna Maria.”

He stepped forward confidently, and the maid
let him pass through. His first strategy was
to give
the impression
that he was expected, and to go as
far as he could on that momentum, but this was
not enough to get him into the house. On the
balustraded terrace which
ran across the full width
of
the building, the maid waved him towards a group of porch furniture.

“Wait here, if you please,
signore.
I
will tell Don
na Maria. What
was the name?”

Simon repeated it, and remained standing
while he surveyed the house, a typically forbidding and
cumbersome box-like structure of chipped and
fading pink plaster with shutters that badly needed re
painting, a shabby contrast with the
well-kept and
ordered
brilliance of the garden. He had trans
ferred his attention to that more agreeable scene
when he heard a measured and heavy tread
behind
him, and turned
again.