Leslie Charteris - The Saint in Europe

“I know. And you just couldn’t wait to meet me.”

“I could of waited for ever to meet you. But now it’s different. All on account of this place.” Unciello took the cigar out again to wave it comprehensively at the surroundings. “It’s quite a layout, like you said. And comfortable, like I said. You ain’t seen a half of it. I could hole up here for years, and live just like the Ritz. Only there’s nobody supposed to know about it who don’t belong to me, body and soul. And then you come along, and you don’t belong to me, but it gives out that you know how to find me.”

“Why, what gave you that idea?”

“That’s what you said.”

“I’d bought a newspaper just before your reception committee picked me up,” Simon remarked thoughtfully, “but it didn’t have that story. How did you hear it so quickly? Direct from the police, maybe?”

“You catch on fast,” Unciello said. “Sure, Inspector Buono’s one of my boys. He should of kept you locked up when he had you, and saved me this trouble.”

Simon nodded. He was not greatly surprised.

“I figured him for a bad egg,” he said. “But it’s nice to have you confirm it.”

“Buono’s a good boy,” Unciello said. “He knows where I am. That’s okay. But with you it’s different.” He leaned forward a little. His manner was very patient and earnest. “I like this place. Spent a lot of dough fixing it up. I’d hate that to be all wasted. But when a fellow like you says he could find it, it bothers me. I gotta know how you got it figured. So if maybe somebody slipped up somewhere, it can be taken care of. See what I mean?”

“You couldn’t be more lucid, Tony,” Simon reassured him. “And what do you think this information would be worth?”

Unciello chuckled, a soundless quaking of his wide belly. “Why, to you it’s worth plenty. You tell me all about it, and everything’s nice and friendly. But you don’t tell me, and the boys have to go to work on you. They do a mean job. You hold out for an hour, a day, two days — depending how tough you are. But in the end you talk, just the same, only you been hurt plenty first. To a fellow with your brains, that don’t make sense. So you tell me now, and we don’t have no nastiness.”

Simon appeared to consider this briefly, but the conclusion was obvious.

“You make everything delightfully simple,” he said. “So I’ll try to do the same. I said I could find you, and this proves it. I’m here now.”

“Only because my boys brought you here.”

“Which I figured you’d have them do as soon as you heard I was claiming to know how to find you.”

Unciello’s eyes did not blink so much as deliberately close and open again, like the eyes of a lizard.

“You’re a smart fellow. Now you’re here. What’s your angle?”

“Will one of these goons behind me start shooting if I go for a cigarette?”

“Not if it’s just a cigarette.”

Simon took one from the pack in his breast pocket, moving slowly and carefully to avoid causing any alarm. In the same way he took out his lighter and kindled it.

“I’m acting as Mr Inverest’s strictly unofficial representative,” he said. “As you very well know, he can’t officially make any deal with you. In fact, for public consumption he’s got to say loudly that nobody can blackmail him, even with his daughter’s life — or else he’d probably be out of a job and have no influence at all. But as a man, of course, you’ve got him over a barrel. He’s ready to trade.”

“He’s a smart fellow, too.”

“It’ll have to be very discreetly handled, so that it looks kosher. They’ll have to arrange to dig up some startling new evidence, to give grounds for a re-trial and an acquittal.”

“That’s his worry, I don’t care how he does it, just so Mick gets out.”

“But before he starts to work, he’s got to be sure that you’ve really got his daughter and that she hasn’t been harmed.”

“The gal’s okay.”

Simon looked at him steadily.

“I have to see her myself. Then I’ll write him a note, which you can have delivered. I’ll tell you right now that it’ll have a code word in it, which is to prove that I really wrote it and that nobody was twisting my arm to make me say the right things.”

Unciello contemplated him with the immobility of a Buddha. Then his eyes switched to a point over the Saint’s head.

“ Mena la giovane ,” he said.

The hoodlum who never spoke came around from behind the Saint’s chair and crossed the big room to disappear through one of the doors at the other end. Unciello smoked his cigar impassively. There was no idle conversation.

Presently the man who had left came back, and with him he brought Sue Inverest.

She was so exactly like Simon had seen her last, and as he remembered her, that for a moment it felt as if they were back in the Colosseum. Only in a strange dislocation of time they now seemed to belong rather with the expendables who had once stood on the floor of the arena, while a modern but no less vicious Nero squatted like a toad on his brocaded throne and held their lives in his hands. But the girl still carried her curly fair head high, and Simon smiled into her shocked gray eyes.

“Your father sent me to see if you were all right, Sue,” he said gently. “Have they hurt you?”

She shook her head.

“No, not yet. Are they going to let me go?”

“Quite soon, I hope.”

“Write that letter,” Unciello said.

The taciturn thug brought a pad and pencil from a side table and thrust them at the Saint.

Simon balanced the pad on his knee and wrote, taking his time:

Dear Mr Inverest,

I’ve seen Sue, and she’s still as good as new. So you’d better hurry up and meet Tony’s terms, even if it isn’t exactly “for the public good.” Perhaps that would sound better to you in Latin, but it all comes to the homo sequendum. Will report again as arranged.

He held out the pad. The man who had brought it carried it across to Unciello.

Unciello read it through slowly, and looked up again at the Saint.

“What’s that homo sequendum deal?” he demanded.

“ Homo means ‘same,’ as in ‘homosexual,’ ” Simon explained patiently. “ Sequendum is the same root as our words ‘sequel’ or ‘consequences.’ It just means ‘the same result.’ Inverest goes for that Latin stuff.”

Unciello’s eyes swiveled up to the girl.

“That’s right,” she said in a low voice. “He does.”

“Guys like you with your education give me a pain,” Unciello said. His cold stare was on the Saint again. “And what’s that about reporting again?”

“I’m not stupid enough to expect you to turn me loose now,” Simon said. “And anyhow, Inverest is going to want another report on Sue — authenticated with our password — from me, before they finally let your brother go.”

The gang chieftain held out the pad towards his errand-boy.

“Have somebody downstairs send it,” he ordered.

He continued to study the Saint emotionlessly, but with deep curiosity.

“You’re a real smart fellow,” he said. “But you’re taking a lot of chances. What’s in it for you?”

Simon raised his eyebrows a fraction.

“Hudson Inverest is a rich man in his own right,” he said. “He’s offered a reward of a hundred thousand dollars to anyone who helps get his daughter back. Didn’t your pal Buono tell you that? Even he looked interested!”

The messenger returned and resumed his position behind the Saint’s chair, but Unciello did not even appear to notice him for several seconds. He remained sunk in an implacable and frightening immobility of meditation. And then at last his saurian eyes flicked up.