Leslie Charteris - Vendetta for the Saint

Ponti’s ready smile returned as he retrieved Simon’s passport and handed it to him.

“I’m sorry we have kept you so long,” he said. “It must be already past your accustomed lunch hour. I hope it will only improve your appetite for our Sicilian cooking.”

“Where would you recommend me to try it?” Simon asked.

“The Caprice is near by, and they have the first eggplant of the season. You should not leave Palermo without trying their caponata di melanzane. And a bottle of Ciclope dell’Etna.”

“I can taste it already,” Simon said. They shook hands again, and one of the stoical carabinieri opened the door for him.

After the suffocating atmosphere of the police station the fresh air was revivifying, even as redolent as it was of the rich effluvia of Palermo. The Caprice, which Simon found without much difficulty, was a cool cavern of refuge from the cascade of glare and heat outside, and he entered its depths gratefully, selecting a strategically located table with a wall behind and an unobstructed vista in front.

“The signore would like an aperitivo?” queried the nonagenarian waiter.

“Campari-soda. With plenty of ice and a twist of lemon.”

“And afterwards?”

“I will order presently. I am waiting for a friend.”

The Saint was as sure of this as he could be of anything. He could not imagine for a moment that Investigator Marco Ponti had taken the trouble to recommend this restaurant for no reason but pure gastronomic enthusiasm. And as he sipped the astringent coolness of his drink, he hoped that this private meeting would throw some light on the knife attack and the peculiar antipathy of the maresciallo.

Very shortly the street door opened again; but it was not the expected form of the detective that stepped in. This, however, proved to be no disappointment to the Saint at all.

It was a girl... if the writer may perpetrate one of the most inadequate statements in contemporary literature.

There seems to be a balance of nature in Italy which compensates in advance with extraordinary youthful beauty for the excessive deterioration which awaits most of her women in later years. Long before middle age, most of them have succumbed to superabundant flesh expanded in the dropsical mould that follows uncontrolled motherhood, and for which their tent-like black dresses are perhaps the only decent covering; and their faces tend to develop hirsute adornments which would be envied by many a junior Guards officer. But the perfection of face and form which a compassionate fate may grant them before that has been observed by most modern movie-goers. And this specimen was astounding proof that the nets of pandering producers had by no means scooped all the cream of the crop.

Her hair was stygian midnight, a shining metallic black that wreathed a delicate oval face with the texture of magnolias, full-lipped and kohl-eyed. The simple silk confection that she wore offered more emphasis than concealment to the form it covered but could scarcely contain. It was obvious that no trickery of supporting garments was needed or was used to exploit the burgeoning figure, rounded almost to excess in the breasts above and the flanks below, yet bisected by a waist of wasp-like delicacy. To complete the entrancing inventory, Simon allowed his gaze to slide down the sweet length of leg to the small sandalled feet and drift appreciatively back up again.

Whereupon he received a glance of withering disdain of the kind that had obviously had much practice in shrivelling the presumptuous and freezing the extremities of the lecherous, and which made it depressingly apparent that like many other beautiful Italian girls she was also impregnably respectable. Only the Saint’s unjustified faith in the purity of his admiration enabled him to meet the snub with a smile of seraphic impenitence until it was she who looked away.

The cashier nodded to her in beaming recognition, and after a brief exchange of words picked up the telephone. Simon realized with regret that the girl had not come in to eat, but to ask for a taxi to be called — a common enough method in those parts where the quest for a public phone can be a major project.

After another word of thanks she started out again, and an entering customer stood aside and held the door for her. She swept past him, accepting the service as if it were hers by divine right, and he had to content himself for reward with the pleasure of watching her all the way into the cab, which providentially was an old-fashioned one with a high step. It was only after Simon had shared this treat with him, and the man finally let the door close and came towards him, that the Saint noticed who it was.

“Marco Ponti — what a surprise,” he murmured, with no visible sign of that reaction. “Will you join me in a mess of eggplant? Although I can’t compete as an attraction with what you were just leering at.”

Ponti made the classic gesture, hands spread at shoulder level, palms up, with which an Italian can say practically anything — in this case, combined with a slight upward roll of the eyes, it signified “Who wouldn’t leer at something like that? But what a waste of time” — and sat down.

“I fear the Swiss convent where she has been receiving her final polish has chilled her southern blood for a while,” he said. “But one day it will be warmed again. I have been hoping to make her acquaintance since she returned, but Gina Destamio and I do not rotate in the same social circles.”

“ What did you call her?” Simon asked with unconcealed astonishment.

“The name means something to you?”

“Only if she is related to a certain Al Destamio, whose dubious hospitality I enjoyed on Capri yesterday.”

The detective’s smile was mask-like again, but behind it Simon could sense a stony grimness.

“She is his niece,” Ponti said.

The Saint had received so many shocks lately that he was becoming habituated to absorbing them without expression.

“After all, it’s a small country,” he remarked. He looked down into the rhodamine effervescence of his aperitif, and beckoned the waiter. “Would you like one of these before we eat?”

“With your permission, I will have a brandy. Buton Vecchio, since that is their most expensive — as an underpaid public servant I have few opportunities to enjoy such extravagance.” Ponti waited until the waiter had shuffled off before he said: “What was your business with Destamio?”

The question was asked in the same casual tone, but his eyes bored into the Saint unblinkingly.

“I’ve been wondering about that myself,” Simon replied coolly. “We met completely by chance the other day, and we seem to have rather quickly developed some differences of opinion. So radical, in fact, that I wouldn’t be surprised if he was responsible for Tonio’s attack on me this morning.”

The other considered this carefully, before his smile flashed on again.

“I have heard many stories about you, Saint, some undoubtedly false and perhaps some of them true. But in all of them I have heard nothing to suggest that your relations with these people would be likely to be cordial. But it would have been interesting to hear precisely what the differences were that you refer to.”

At this moment the waiter tottered back with the brandy. Before he could escape again, Simon seized the opportunity to order their lunch, or rather to let Ponti order it, for he was quite content to follow the lead of the counsellor who had directed him here.

By the time the waiter had retired again out of earshot, the Saint was conveniently able to forget the last implied question and resume the conversation with one of his own.