Vendetta for the Saint. (37 page)

At first impression, it might have seemed an
im
possible task, to locate
the hideout of Al Destamio
and
his buddies among all those barred and silent
buildings. But actually it was by no means a
search
without clues.
In the first place, by far the greater
part of the village, through which Simon had
had
the limousine
in sight, could be ruled out. Second
ly, his quarry’s choice of that particular town had
not been dictated by its cultural amenities or pic
turesque charm, nor would it have been picked on
the spur of the moment: the Ungodly must have
known exactly what refuge they were going to dive
into when they hopped out of their
car, without
trusting that blind luck
would let them blunder
into
something suitable. Nor would this merely be the home of some known
sympathizer, since this
would have
involved an impossible delay for bang
ing
on the door to rouse him and waiting for him to
open up. It had to be a place that they could get
into at once; and since the telephone lines to the
chateau had been cut long before
their flight, they
could not have
called ahead to announce their arrival and prepare anyone to receive them.
There
fore it would have to be a
place to which they had
a key, or where they knew that some door was
always unlocked. Therefore it was most probably
the home of one of them. And to qualify as the domicile of such an exalted
member of the Mafia, it would have to be perceptibly more pretentious
than the average of its neighbors. So that again
a
greater part of the remaining theoretical possi
bilities could be eliminated.

Satisfied now that he was not being
observed, Simon Templar eased himself out of the doorway
and made his way back up the side street as
sound
lessly as the
cat.

The hideout was almost certainly beyond the
second turning at the end of the block, since
that
would have
given the fugitives more time to disappear before the Bugatti could come in
sight of them
again, and
somewhere within the fifty-yard stretch
that had separated him from the limousine
when he
saw it again.
The Saint moved more slowly from the
corner, staying in the deepest shadows and
assessing the buildings on each side, his
eyes and ears straining to pick up any glimmer of light or
whisper of sound that would betray a
suspiciously
early
wakefulness within.

The houses were ranged shoulder to shoulder,
but not in an even line, some having chosen to set
farther back from the road than others. Simon
prowled past two, then three, a small shop with
living quarters above, another tall narrow
building,
none of them giving any
sign of life. Then there was
something
only about two meters high which
pushed
out closer to the road than any of its neigh
bors, and in a moment Simon realized that it was
not the
projection of a ground floor but simply of
a
wall enclosing the front garden of a building
which was itself set back quite a distance from the street.

And as he drifted wraith-like towards the
angle, he heard from beyond it a soft scuff of footsteps, and his pulse beat a
fraction faster at the virtual
certainty
that this must be the place where
Destamio & Co had holed up.

As he flattened himself against the side
wall,
with his head
turned to allow only one eye to peep
around the corner, a black shape took one step out
from a gateway in the front and stood to
glance up
and down the
road. The firefly glow of a cigarette-
end brightened to reveal the coarse cruel face of a typical subordinate
goon, and to glint on the barrel
of
what looked like a shotgun tucked under his
arm.

That was the obliging clincher. A large
house,
behind a walled
garden—and an armed guard at
the
gate. Any skeptic who insisted on more proof would probably have refused to
believe that an H-
bomb had
hit him until his dust had been tested
with a Geiger counter.

So now all that Simon had to do was to
withdraw as softly as he had come, meet Ponti
and
the soldiers
outside the town, and lead them to the
spot.

Except
that such relatively passive participation
had never been the Saint’s favorite role. And it
would certainly have been an anticlimactic denoue
ment to the enterprise which had brought him that
far. Besides which, he had already been pushed
around too much by the
Mafia to complacently
leave others to
administer their comeuppance. Ma
jor
Olivetti and his
bersaglieri
had been fine for a
frontal attack on the castle fortress, the boom
of
mortar shells and the flicker of
tracer bullets had
made it a
stirring production number worthy of
wide-screen
photography; but Simon felt that
something
more intimate was called for in his per
sonal settlement with Al
Destamio.

He waited motionless, with infinite patience,
un
til finally the bored
sentinel turned and went back
into
the garden.

With the fluid silence of a stalking tiger
the Saint
followed
behind him, and sprang.

The first intimation of disaster that the
sentry
had was when
an arm snaked over his shoulder and
the braced thumb-joint of its circling fist thumped into his larynx.
Paralyzed, he could neither breathe nor yell, and he never noticed the second
blow on
the side of his
neck that rendered him mercifully unconscious.

The Saint caught the shotgun as it dropped,
and
with his other
hand clutched the man’s clothing
and
eased his fall to the ground into a mere rustling
collapse. Then he picked the limp form off
the
driveway and
carried it to the shadow of a clump of
bushes and rolled it under.

The driveway led straight to the doors of a
ga
rage, a status symbol
which had obviously been cut
into
one corner of the ground floor of an edifice
much older than the horseless carriage, and a
flagged path branched from
it to three steps which
mounted
to the front door. Simon tiptoed up the
steps, and the door yielded to his touch—which
was no more than he expected, for the Ungodly
would hardly have been old-maidishly ap
prehensive enough to have locked the guard out
side. The hallway inside was dark; but light came
from a crack under a door at the back, and a deep
murmur of male voices. With the shotgun in one
hand, Simon inched towards the light with hyper-
sensory alertness for any invisible obstacle that
might catastrophically trip him.

The
voices came through the door distinctively enough for him to recognize the
hoarse rasp of
Destamio’s;
but the conversation was mostly in Sicilian dialect, mangled and machine-gun
fast,
which made it
almost impossible for him to follow.
Occasionally someone would slip into ordinary
Italian, which was more tantalizing than
helpful,
since the responses instantly became
as unintelligible
as the context. There
seemed to be a de
bate as to whether
they should lie low there, or leave
together
in a car which appeared to be available, or disperse; the argument seemed to
hinge on whether their assembly should be considered to have com
pleted its business for the present, or to have
only been adjourned. The controversy flowed back and
forth, with Destamio’s voice becoming
increasingly
louder and more
forceful: he seemed to be well on
the
way to dominating the opposition. But the next
most persistent if quieter voice cut in with some
proposal which seemed to find unanimous accep
tance: the general mutter of approval merged into
a scraping of chairs and a scuffle of
feet, the incho
ate clatter of men
rising from a council table and
preparing
to fly the coop.

Which was precisely the move that Simon
Templar had undertaken to deter.

He had no time to make any plan, he would
have
to play it
entirely by ear, but at least he could give himself the priceless advantage of
the initiative, of
throwing
them off balance and forcing them to
react, while
giving them the impression that he
knew exactly
where he was going.

Before anyone else could do it, he flung
open the
door and stood
squarely in the opening, the shotgun levelled from his hip.

“Were
you looking for me?” he inquired mildly.

Pure shock froze them in odd attitudes like a
frame from a movie film stopped in mid-action, a
ludicrous tableau of gaping mouths and bulging
eyes. The apparition on the very threshold of
their
secret conclave of the man they
had been trying to dispose of in one way or another for a day and two nights,
who must have been responsible for their
recent rout before the armed forces of justice, and
who they had every right to believe had at least
temporarily been shaken off, would have been
enough to immobilize them for a while even
without
the menace of his weapon.

There were four of them: nearest the Saint, a
stocky man with a porcine face and a scar, and a
taller cadaverous one with thick lips which made
him look like a rather negroid death’s-head, both
of
whom Simon had seen at the bedside
of Don Pasquale
, and behind them Al
Destamio and the man called Cirano with the nose to match it. They had
been sitting around a circular dining table on
which were glasses and a bottle of
grappa,
under
a
single light bulb with a wide
conical brass shade
over it. Cigarette
and cigar ashes and butts soiled a
gilt-edged plate that had been used
as an ashtray.

Destamio
was the first to recover his wits.

“It’s a bluff,” he croaked. “He
only has two
shots with
that thing. He dare not use it because he knows that even if he gets two of us
the other two
will get
him.”

He said this in plain Italian, for the
Saint’s bene
fit.

Simon
smiled.

“So which two of you would like to be
the he
roes, and
sacrifice yourselves for the other two?”

There was no
immediate rush of volunteers.

“Then move back a bit,” ordered the
Saint, swinging the shotgun. “You’re not going any
where.”

Scarface and Skullface gave ground, not
unwillingly; but Destamio kept behind Skullface, whose
bulk was not quite sufficient to mask the pro
trusion of Destamio’s elbow as his right hand
crept
up his side.
Simon’s restless eyes caught the move
ment, and his voice sliced through the smoky air
like a sword.

“Stop him, Cirano! Or you may never find
out
why he is a bad security risk.”

“I would like to know about that,”
Cirano said,
and widened
his mouth in a tight grin that made double pothooks on each side of his
majestic nose.

He did more than talk; he caught hold of
Destamio’s right wrist, arresting its stealthy
crawl
towards the hip. Their muscles
conflicted for a sec
ond before Destamio
must have realized that even
the
slightest struggle would nullify any advantage
he might have sneaked,
and hatred replaced move
ment as an almost
equally palpable link between
them.

“You would listen to anyone if he was
against
me,
non
è
vero?”
Destamio snarled. “Even to
this—”

“A good leader listens to everything before he
makes up his mind, Alessandro,” Cirano said
equably.
“You can be the first to sacrifice yourself
when he has spoken, if you like, but there can be no
harm in hearing what he has to say. You have
nothing to cover up, have you?”