Leslie Charteris - The Saint 49 Count On The Saint

“Sit down, Mr. Dankin,” he said with a brief smile. “A man in my position has to be careful.”

The Prof returned the smile as he resumed his seat.

“We all have to be careful, Mr. Grondheim,” he agreed. “Now perhaps we can talk business.”

“Sure. What are you offering?”

“There are a number of items available to someone like yourself at the moment, Mr. Grondheim, but none, I think, which quite matches this.”

Dankin took a small black and white photograph from the inside pocket of his coat and held it out.

“If you are interested I could of course arrange an actual examination,” he continued, but the Saint barely heard him.

What he did hear as he gazed at the snapshot of the chalice was the whirring of imaginary gears as the wire was tripped and the trap began to close.

Simon appeared to study the photograph closely for half a minute before speaking.

“Middle eighteenth century... Evidence of Florentine influence, but the detail appears somewhat crude and heavy. Could be Portuguese but more probably Spanish,” he pronounced, and handed back the picture.

The Prof nodded approvingly.

“I see you know your antiques, Mr. Grondheim.”

“I know my job,” Simon responded, allowing a new curtness into his voice.

In its own way it was the truest statement he had made that morning. During a lifetime of wide-ranging piracy he had been obliged to learn to evaluate many exotic forms of plunder.

“You would like to view?” enquired the Prof, as he slipped the photograph back into his pocket.

“I would like to view,” the Saint said, and paused momentarily before adding:

“When would you like to bring it here?”

Mr. Dankin seemed slightly shocked by the suggestion. “To the hotel? Come now, Mr. Grondheim, I’m surprised you should even ask such a question.”

The Saint’s sigh carried just the right pitch of professional resignation.

“It’s only that I’m a little tired of midnight meetings in back rooms.”

He had not expected Dankin to agree, but it had been worth asking on the off chance. He knew the formalities that had to be observed on such occasions. The pattern dictated that they would haggle over the price; that a price would be agreed; that he would be taken to see the chalice, and that he would hand over the cash. Thus ran the conventional scenario. But the Saint had never considered himself bound by any scenario, and he had his own notion of the way in which the rules of the game might eventually be interpreted. For the present, however, there was nothing he could do but tag along with whatever arrangements the Prof felt like making.

“Your price?” Simon asked.

The Prof thought for a few seconds.

“Let us say thirty thousand pounds,” he suggested, with the air of a man anxious to be helpful even at cost to himself.

The Saint smiled thinly.

“Let’s say fifteen.”

The Prof appeared startled, as if he had been suddenly and unexpectedly insulted.

The bartering continued along well-worn grooves until they compromised on twenty-four thousand pounds, a figure both men knew to be about the chalice’s actual value on a high-class thieves’ market.

“Do you want pounds, dollars, or Swiss francs?” Simon asked when the figure had been agreed on.

“Sterling will be quite acceptable, thank you,” said the Prof primly, and stood up. “I will telephone this afternoon, when you will have had time to obtain the cash. I’m sure we can get our business concluded well before midnight.”

The Saint returned the smile with a grin equally lacking in warmth.

“Yes,” he agreed softly as he heard the outer door of the suite close behind the fence. “Yes, I’m sure we can.”

After a boringly lazy day spent mostly within the confines of the hotel he received the promised call shortly after five. The instructions were simple and direct. If Mr. Grondheim was in the middle of Waterloo Bridge, on the east side, with the money, at ten, he would be taken to see the chalice.

The choice of location showed a professionalism that Simon Templar appreciated. Cars do not normally park on bridges, therefore any that were would immediately arouse the suspicions of whoever arrived to collect him. Therefore the chances of his arranging to be followed were greatly reduced.

He was duly on the said bridge at the appointed time, with a briefcase in hand, and when a car pulled into the kerb beside him he spared it only one searching glance before climbing in beside the driver.

It was a black production-line saloon, indistinguishable from a thousand others traversing the streets of London that night, except that the acceleration of their departure showed that the engine had been made capable of a degree of performance far beyond the advertised claims of the manufacturer.

To the uninitiated the action of Mr. Grondheim in getting into a strange car in a strange city while carrying a considerable amount of instantly spendable currency might have appeared more than a little foolhardy. But then the uninitiated, by definition, do not know the protocol of such transactions. That Mr. Grondheim might easily have been forced to part with his money without ever getting a glimpse of the object it was to be spent on is true, but it is equally certain that had that happened the Prof would never have sold another stolen artifact, because a leper would have been treated as an honoured guest compared to the reception he would have received among his peers. It was also probable that some very large men would have been knocking at his door very shortly afterwards.

By the same token, Mr. Grondheim might have relieved the Prof of the chalice and refused to hand over the money. But Mr. Grondheim would be aware that his chances of leaving the country, or even London, with his money, the chalice, and himself intact would have been equal to the survival rating of a three-legged mouse in a cattery.

It was not honour among thieves. It was simply an understanding based on a mutual instinct for survival.

The only danger lay in the unlikely event of Mr. Grondheim not really being an accepted member of the brotherhood, which was why the Saint got into the car with only a tiny tremor of unease.

The driver was the only other occupant of the car. Simon’s chatty “Where to?” as they shot away received no reply, and other efforts to enliven the conversation during the drive were equally unsuccessful.

The man was in his mid-thirties and powerfully proportioned, but with a degree of intelligence in his features which indicated that he was not solely employed for his physical prowess. In the lexicon of the underworld, he was a “minder” — a cross between a bodyguard, a chauffeur, and an aide-de-camp.

Had the Saint really been a visiting American and not a native of the city with a knowledge of its byways that would have shamed a taxi driver, he would most certainly have been lost within the first half mile.

They headed south and toured the back streets around the Elephant and Castle before recrossing the river via Victoria Bridge. A meander through Belgravia followed until they hit Kensington, and the driver, finally convinced that they were not being shadowed, swung the car through the gates of Hyde Park. Their journey ended in the car park behind the restaurant near the Serpentine. The tarmac expanse was bare except for a Rolls-Royce in the far corner. They parked a few yards from it.

The driver half turned in his seat and jerked his head to indicate that his passenger should alight. As the Saint swung himself onto the ground the driver also got out and came around the car. He kept one hand in his coat pocket as his other patted the Saint’s clothes. Satisfied as to the absence of artillery, he nodded towards the Rolls and fell into step, a pace to the rear, as the Saint walked towards it.