Leslie Charteris - The Saint Abroad

Annabella firmly caught Simon’s arm and held him close beside her.

“He can protect my interests quite well enough by staying here,” she said. “Just hurry, please, and send your friend along as soon as possible.”

“A votre service!” LeGrand said, with mock humility. His car’s wheels threw up gravel. “And don’t let Monsieur Templar dream up any ghosts to steal our paintings before Clarneau comes to take them!”

Twenty-five minutes after Marcel LeGrand had driven away, an American station wagon of venerable vintage crunched up the drive and stopped at the front door. Simon and Annabella went outside, and the driver of the car all but ran to meet them. He was a small elderly man, but powerfully knobby, with the look of one who ate little and trotted two miles every day before breakfast.

“I am so sorry, mademoiselle, monsieur!” he cried. “The gods would of course do such a thing to me on this day!”

Simon shook his hand and Annabella protested that automobile trouble was nobody’s fault.

“She is old but usually dependable,” the man said. “In my work I need the space for carrying paintings and statues from place to place.” He suddenly stopped himself. “But I have not even introduced myself! I am Professor Paul Clarneau.”

“We guessed,” the Saint said.

“Do come in,” Annabella Lambrini urged him. “The paintings are only a few minutes older, after all.”

“Of course!”

Simon followed them into the front room and watched as Clarneau went into similar ecstacies to those of LeGrand.

“I assure you they are genuine,” Annabella said. “But you are welcome to make whatever tests you have to do in order to check.”

“I would not for a moment doubt your word,” Professor Clarneau replied gallantly. “If you don’t mind, though, I shall look more closely...”

He waited with eyebrows raised, until Annabella had given him her go-ahead. Then, blinking rapidly, as if the blink were an essential part of his investigatory technique, the little man began to crawl around on the floor peering at parts of the canvases through a magnifying glass, studying the surface of the paint at various angles, and inspecting the backs of the frames. After a few minutes, during which Annabella was speechless with suspense, he scrambled back to his feet.

“Voila,” he said happily. “It is done. They are beautiful — beautifully genuine!”

Annabella broke into a broad smile and then tried to maintain it as the Saint put in a comment.

“I thought you had to use X-rays and chemical analysis and all that sort of thing.”

Clarneau answered indulgently.

“Only when my own opinion is doubtful,” he said. “In this case I am quite satisfied. A person who has devoted his life to art develops an instinct for true masterpieces. Chemicals have been wrong. When my eye is convinced, it has never been mistaken.”

“I’m very happy for both of you then,” Simon said to him and Annabella. “Shall we start the celebration?”

“After I have something to celebrate,” Annabella answered.

Clarneau looked blank. Then his face brightened.

“Oh, yes! The money.” He reached into his coat pocket. “I have here a check for the amount you agreed on with LeGrand. He has already signed it, and I shall countersign it as soon as you have signed the bill of sale. You will want to read it, of course. It’s rather long, but it simply says that for the amount we pay you, you agree to assign us all rights to the paintings. LeGrand and I have already put our names at the proper place.”

He handed Annabella a long and closely printed piece of paper.

“While I read it I’ll have Hans pack the paintings for you,” she told him.

“You have crates?” he asked.

“I have a large container that holds all five,” she said.

“I’ll help Hans,” Simon suggested.

“Wonderful. He knows where the crate is. He’ll be in back — through that door — somewhere.”

Simon carefully picked up one of the paintings and carried it away toward the back of the house. As Annabella read the bill of sale he and Hans appeared at intervals until all five of the paintings had been removed. Then Simon came back once more into the living room.

“Would you like to look at the crate before we put the cover on, Professor?” he asked.

Clarneau shrugged as if to say it was not necessary, but followed the Saint to the rear of the house anyway. The wooden crate was in a storage room which otherwise contained only a large cupboard, and the mysterious assortment of old boxes, cartons, battered trunks and valises, and all the other aging junk which irresistibly accumulates in such limbos. The crate was about four feet high, the same in width, and three feet deep — large enough for what the Saint had in mind.

Clarneau looked at it, satisfied himself that the five paintings had been slipped properly into their slots, where they were held by padded channels at the top and bottom, and said he was well pleased.

“Good,” Simon said as the Professor went back to the living room. “Let’s get this end nailed on, then, Hans.”

“I had a hammer here,” the chauffeur said. “I am sure I did.”

“I haven’t seen it,” the Saint told him, untruthfully, having surreptitiously spirited it into his own hip pocket.

“Strange. I have another in the garage. I come back in a moment.”

Hans left the room and the Saint immediately slid every painting out of the packing crate and into the cupboard by the wall. He worked quickly but efficiently, not making a sound as he listened for approaching footsteps. The cupboard door creaked slightly as he closed it, but not loudly enough to be heard in the front part of the house. With the paintings out of sight he dumped books from one of the dusty boxes into the crate until it held the approximate equivalent in weight of the paintings.

When Hans Kraus came back into the storage room with a hammer, Simon was just fitting the end cover on to the packing case.

“I’ll hold,” he said. “You hammer.”

Hans began banging away.

“Not too many nails — and not too hard,” Simon said. “You don’t want to jar the paint off the canvases.”

Hans looked concerned and finished the job with a nail at each corner.

“Gut?” he said with satisfaction.

“Sehr gut,” Simon agreed. “Let’s get it into the station wagon.”

Hans put down the hammer and took one end of the crate; Simon picked up the other.

“Heave,” he said, and they carried the crate out of a back door, around the house, and to the front door.

“Shall we put it in?” Hans asked.

“By all means. Let’s give the customer his money’s worth,” the Saint said.

He opened the back of the station wagon and helped Hans shove the crate inside.

“All right,” he said. “You can tell them it’s ready to go.”

Hans nodded and went into the house. Simon knew and had counted on the fact that the station wagon was not visible from the front room where Annabella and her customer were completing their transaction. Without a wasted motion the Saint jumped into the station wagon, closed the rear door behind him, and jerked the hammer from his pocket. In a few seconds he had loosened the end cover from the crate. He pulled it away and bent and flattened the bared nail points into the pinewood of the cover. Then he climbed into the crate himself, kneeling on the books, and tapped a pair of nails into the inner side of the cover so that he could use them as handles to pull the cover snugly into place. It was a simple matter then to secure the cover with another couple of nails driven lightly at an angle from inside.