Vendetta for the Saint. (4 page)

He lunched regally on
zuppa di pesce
and
calamaretti,
laved with a bottle of Antinori Classico, on the terrace of La
Minervetta overlooking the
blinding blue sea, and later swam off the
rocks
below in the same translucent element,
and finally
drove back to Naples
refreshed and recharged but
no wiser than he had been when he left.

Thanks to the recommendation of a well-mean
ing friend, the Saint had made his
reservation at a more modest hotel than the Excelsior, a short dis
tance farther along the sea front on the Via
Partenope. It had turned out to be
considerably
less luxurious
than the class of hostelry which Si
mon Templar usually chose at that period of his
life; but it had been late at night when he
arrived,
and his room
looked clean and comfortable
enough,
and it had not seemed worth the trouble to go searching for other accommodation
for the two
or three days
which were all he had planned to
stay.
Its only vital disadvantage as against the more populous and busily serviced
competition was one
which had
not occurred to him at the time and
might never have been brought home to him if he
had not impulsively befriended the late Mr.
Euston.

He helped himself to his key from behind the
all-
purpose desk
which was tended at various hours by
the manageress, the porter, the floor waiter, or any
chambermaid who was not otherwise occupied,
and in between their shifts by a bell with a
mechan
ical button
which could be thumped for eventual
attention, and took the self-service elevator to his floor. He had just
stepped out when a man came
running
down the corridor in a frantic sprint to catch a ride before the conveyance
went down
again; and the
Saint turned and stared at him with
instant
curiosity.

Readers of this chronicle who wonder why a
man running for a lift should be such an
arresting
spectacle are
only betraying their own limited
horizons.
If they had taken advantage of the eight-
country, twenty-two city, fifteen-day excursion rates offered by
the philanthropic airlines, they
would know
that on the Mediterranean littoral, in
summer,
nobody, but nobody, runs for an elevator
or anything else. Wherefore the Saint took extra
note of the
pointed face, the rodent teeth, the
pencil-line
mustache, the awning-striped suit, and a
wealth of other trivia not
worth recording, before
the febrile eccentric
squeezed into the lazy-box and
disappeared
from view.

It had all taken perhaps three seconds, and
it was
over before a
possible significance to the incident
could penetrate through his first superficial aston
ishment. And by the time Simon reached his
room,
further
speculation became unnecessary.

The door was not quite shut, and he only used
his key to push it open.

To say that the room had been searched would
be rather like describing a
hurricane as a stiff
breeze;
and in fact a hurricane could have gone
through it without doing much more damage.
Whoever had been there—and Simon no longer
had any doubt that it had been the rat-faced man in a hurry—had
efficiently and enthusiastically taken
it
to pieces. Not content with spilling everything
from drawers and suitcases, the intruder had
hacked open the shoulders and split the seams of
some
of the finest tailoring of Savile Row. The
same
blade had slit the linings of valises and play
fully pried the heels from shoes, besides exposing
the stuffing
of the mattress.

Only a person who knew the Saint’s fastidious
habits would have
appreciated the calm with which he surveyed the wreckage and flicked the dead
ash
from his cigarette on to the midden
heap before
him.

“Che cosa fa?”
gasped a voice behind him, and
he turned and saw a gaping chambermaid staring
in from the corridor.

“If someone stayed on the job
downstairs, it
might not
have happened,” he said coldly. “Please
get it cleaned up. The clothes that are worth
repair
ing you can give
to your husband, or your lover,
wherever
they will do the most good. And if the
manager has any comments, he can find me in
the
bar.”

Fortunately there was Peter Dawson in that
dis
pensary, and a double
measure with plenty of ice
and
just a little water helped to soothe the most
savage edge of his anger as well as slaking
the thirst
which he had
incubated on the drive back.

The vandalizing of his wardrobe was only a
tem
porary inconvenience, after
all: a telegram to Lon
don
would have replacements under way at once,
and meanwhile there were excellent tailors in
Italy
and some of
the world’s best shoemakers. On the
plus side, the last vestige of possibility that E
uston’s death was coincidental had been re
moved. And Cartelli, or Destamio, had been
con
cerned enough about Simon
Templar’s interven
tion to
have ordered a complete check-up on him
and a search which could only have had the
object of discovering any concealed official—or criminal —association.

A revelation that might have daunted anyone
but the Saint was the speed and apparent ease
with
which he had
been found, which indicated an or
ganization
of impressive size and competence. He
seriously doubted whether even the local police,
with all their authority and facilities,
could have
done as well.
But a sober respect for the opposition
and the odds had never done anything to
Simon
Templar except
to make the game seem more excit
ing.

The manager, or the husband of the
manageress,
eventually made
an appearance. He dutifully
wrung
his hands over the catastrophe, and then
said: “You are worried, of course,
about the damage done to the bed. Do not think any more about
it. I have put in a new bed, and we will just
charge
it in the bill.”

“How nice of you,” said the Saint.
“I hate to sound ungracious, but as a matter of fact I was
more worried about the damage to my
belongings, which happened because you make it so easy for
robbers to get into the rooms.”

The manager’s hands, shoulders, and eyebrows
spread out simultaneously in a graphic
explosion of incredulity, indignation, reproach, and dismay.

“But,
signore,
I am not
responsible if you have
friends
who perhaps do such things for a bad
joke!”

“You have an argument there,” Simon
con
ceded. “So it might be
simpler not to give me a bill
at
all. Otherwise I might recommend some other
playful friends to come here, and they might
do the
same things in
all your rooms.” He turned over the
bar check, “Oh, and thanks for the
drink.”

He felt better for the rest of the evening;
though
he was careful
to dine at a corner table and to ex
amine his wine bottle carefully before it was un
corked. The fact that some back-stage Borgia
might have spiked anything he ate was a risk he
had to take; but in calculating it he had noted
that
for some abstruse reason poison
had never been an
accepted weapon of
the fraternity of which Al
Destamio
was such a distinguished member. Simon had often wondered why. It would have
seemed so
much easier and slicker
than the technique of the
gun. He had
never been able to decide whether the answer was in some code of twisted
chivalry, call
ing for the actual
confrontation of the enemy
before his
extinction, or merely because a spec
tacular
artillery mow-down made more awesome
headlines
with which to keep other hesitants in
line.

But nothing even mildly disturbing happened
to
him that night, and when the next move came in
the morning it was totally different from anything
he had anticipated.

When he came downstairs after breakfast and
handed his key over the desk, a slight
saturnine
man in
chauffeur’s uniform who had been standing
near by approached him with a deferential bow.

“Excuse me sir,” he said in passable English. “Mr.
Destamio would like to meet you, and sent
me
with his car. He did not want to risk waking
you up by telephoning, so I was told to wait here
until you came down.”

The
Saint regarded him expressionlessly.

“And suppose I had some other
plans?” he said.
“Such
as going shopping for some new clothes, for
instance?”

“Mr. Destamio hoped you would talk to him
before you do anything else,” said the
chauffeur, with equal inscrutability. “He told me to promise
you will not be sorry. The car is outside. Will
you
come?”

A latinate flip of the hand repeated both the
in
vitation and the
direction; and yet no threat was
implied
by gesture, intonation, or innuendo. Hav
ing delivered his message, the chauffeur
waited
without a sign
of impatience for Simon to make his
own decision.

Well, Simon thought, some day he would almost
inevitably have to guess
wrong, fatally wrong. But
he
didn’t think this was the day. And anyhow, the opportunity of making a proper
acquaintance with
such a
personage as Mr. Destamio was too great a
temptation to resist.

“Okay,” he said recklessly.
“I’ll take a chance.”

He did not have to look around for the car.
There was a Cadillac berthed in the street
outside
which was the
only conceivable vehicle, even
before the
chauffeur opened the door with a certain possessive pride. It was black,
high-finned, gigantic, polished to the brilliance of a jewel, and com
pletely out of place in the constricted antiquity
of the street. Without hesitation Simon climbed into
the cavernous interior, and was not surprised to
find
himself alone. Whatever Destamio might have
in
mind for the future, he would hardly be so idi
otic as to have the Saint
killed in his own car in the center of Naples. The windows were closed and an
air conditioner whispered softly. Simon settled
back into the deep upholstery and prepared to en
joy the ride.

4

It
was not a very long journey, but it was im
pressive enough. Under the driver’s skillful
touch, the car slid into the traffic like a leviathan into the
deep. On all sides rushed schools of tiny
cars, battl
ing and honking
through swarms of slow-moving pedestrians, small children, and animals. The din
that arose from all this came to Simon only as the gentlest of murmurs through
the thick glass and
padded metal. Cool breezes
laved him and wafted
away his cigarette
smoke even as he exhaled it.

Leviathan ploughed a majestic path through
the
small fry and
rushed towards the bay. Without
slowing,
they swept through the gates of the port,
and the guards saluted respectfully. The
Saint
looked out at
the portholed flanks of the ships—
only liners here, the smaller ferries were outside the
fence in the public port—and had momentary
qualms of a shanghaiing, until the car came to
a smooth halt next to a modernistic concrete structure something like a
giant’s pool table on spindly
legs.
It had been built since his last visit to the city,
and for a few seconds it puzzled him. Then he
heard the roar of rotors overhead, and the
pieces clicked into place.

“Ischia or Capri?” he asked the
chauffeur, as he
stepped
reluctantly out into the steam-bath of un
treated atmosphere.

“Capri,
sir. This way, please.”