Leslie Charteris - Vendetta for the Saint

Simon lighted his remaining cigarette, crumpled the empty pack, and made himself as comfortable as possible. The phone was beginning to numb his ear, and he changed to the other side.

There was more of the ominous crunching, periodically varying in timbre and volume, and after a long while the second operator’s voice struggled back to the surface.

“I am sorry, I have not been able to reach Naples. Would you like to cancel the call?”

“I would not like to cancel the call,” Simon said relentlessly. “I can think of no reason why you should not reach Naples. It was there this morning, and it must be there now, unless there has been another eruption of Mount Vesuvius.”

“I do not know about that. But all the lines to Naples are engaged.”

“Try again,” said the Saint encouragingly. “While we are talking someone may have hung up or dropped dead. Persevere.”

The operator mumbled something indistinguishable, which Simon felt he was probably better off for not hearing, and the background of crashings and inhuman groanings returned again. But after another interminable wait, persistence was rewarded by a new voice saying “ Napoli.”

Reaching Capri from Naples was no worse than anything that had gone before, and it was with a justifiable thrill of achievement that Simon at last heard the ringing of Destamio’s phone through the overtones of din. Eventually someone answered it, and Simon shouted his quarry’s name at the top of his voice.

“Il Signore is busy,” came the answer. “He cannot be disturbed. You must call again in the morning.”

After all he had been through, the Saint was not going to be stopped there.

“I do not care how busy he is,” he said coldly. “You will tell him that this call is from Sicily, and I have news that he will want to hear.”

There was an explosive crackle as if the entire instrument at the other end had been shattered on a marble slab, and for a while Simon thought the servant had summarily disposed of the problem by hanging up; but he held on, and presently another voice spoke, with grating tones that even the telephone’s distortions could not completely disguise.

“Parla, ascolto!”

The Saint stubbed out the remains of his last cigarette and finally relaxed.

“Alessandro, my dear old chum, I knew you’d be glad to hear from me, even at this hour.”

“Who’s-a dat?”

“This is Simon Templar, Al, you fat gob of overcooked macaroni. Just calling to tell you that your comic-opera assassins have flunked again — and that I don’t want them trying any more. I want you to call them off, chum.”

“I dunno what ya talkin’ about, Saint.” There was a growing note of distress in the harsh voice as it assimilated the identity of the caller. “Maybe you drink too much wine tonight. Where you calling from?”

“From my hotel in Palermo, which I’m sure you can easily find. But don’t send any more of your stooges here to annoy me. The firework they planted in my car while Donna Maria was being so hospitable didn’t go off. But I found out a lot of interesting things during my visit, to add on to what I knew before. And I wanted to tell you that I’ve just put all this information on paper and deposited it in a place from which it will be forwarded to a much less accommodating quarter than your tame maresciallo here, if anything happens to me. So tell your goons to lay off, Al.”

“I don’t understand! Are you nuts?” blustered Destamio, almost hysterically. “What you tryin’ to do to me?”

“You’ll find out,” said the Saint helpfully. “And I hope your bank account can stand it. Meanwhile, pleasant dreams...”

He replaced the receiver delicately in its bracket, and then dropped the entire contraption into the wastebasket, where it whirred and buzzed furiously and finally expired.

As if on cue, there followed a light tapping on the door.

The Saint took his precautions about opening it. There was still the possibility that some of Destamio’s henchmen might be working on general instructions to scrub him — it would certainly take time for countermanding orders to circulate, even if the Mafia had also penetrated the telephone service. Until the word had had time to get around, he was playing it safe.

Marco Ponti entered, and eyed with mild surprise the gun that was levelled at his abdomen. Then he calmly kicked the door shut behind him.

“That is a little inhospitable,” he remarked. “And illegal too, unless you have an Italian license for that weapon.”

“I was going to ask you how to get one, the next time I saw you,” said the Saint innocently, and caused the weapon to vanish and be forgotten. “But I was not expecting you to call at such an hour as this, amico.”

“I am not being social. I wanted to hear how your visit turned out. And I have learned something that may be of value to you.”

“I would like one of your cigarettes while you give me your news. It may have some bearing on what I can tell you.”

“I hardly expect that,” Ponti said, throwing his pack of Nazionali on the table. “It is only that you gave me a name, and like a good policeman I have checked the records. Though you may sneer — and I sometimes sneer myself at the middenheaps of records we keep — occasionally we find a nugget in the slag. I searched for the name you gave me, the murdered bank clerk, Dino Cartelli. I found nothing about him except the facts of his death. But I also found the record of another Cartelli, his elder brother, Ernesto, who was killed by the Fascisti.”

Simon frowned.

“Now I’m out of my depth. Why should that be worth knowing?”

“In his early days, Il Duce had a campaign to wipe out the Mafia — perhaps on the theory that there was only room for one gang of crooks in the country, and he wanted it to be his gang. So for a while he shot some of the small fry and hung others up in cages for people to laugh at. Later on, of course, the Mafia joined forces with him, they were birds of a feather — but that is another story. At any rate, in one of the early raids, Ernesto Cartelli shot it out with the Blackshirts, who proved to be better shots.”

“Do you mean,” Simon ventured slowly, “that since Ernesto was a mafioso, his brother Dino may have been one too?”

“It is almost certain — though of course it cannot be proved. But the Mafia is a closed society, very hard to enter, and when anyone is a member it usually means that his other close male relatives are members too.”

The Saint’s eyes narrowed in thought as he inhaled abstractedly and deeply from the strong Italian cigarette — an indiscretion which he instantly regretted.

“So the Mafia keeps coming back into the picture,” he said. “Al Destamio is in it, now it seems that Dino Cartelli was probably in it, whether or not they are the same person; and they have me at the top of their list of people to be dispensed with. I knew you would be glad to hear that they tried again tonight to put me out of the way.”

“Not: at the Destamio house?”

“Just outside it. If they had succeeded, it might even have broken some windows.”

Simon told the story of his macabre evening, and the fortunate discovery that had not quite ended it.

“And there are some wonderful fingerprints in the plastic, which is still intact,” he concluded.

“That is splendid news,” Ponti said delightedly. “These Mafia scum can usually get out of anything by producing armies of false witnesses, but it is another matter to witness away fingerprints. At least this will tell us who placed the bomb, and he may lead us to someone else.”

“I was sure you would be happy about my narrow escape from death,” said the Saint ironically.