Leslie Charteris - The Saint in Europe

“What brings you back, mon cher ami ?” Louvois asked. “We shall have much to talk about.”

“Another time, Antoine. This afternoon I am in a hurry.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“That is why I came.”

Louvois relaxed into instant attention. As if not a day had passed, with a sobering of expression too subtle to define, he was again the sharp-witted, cold-blooded, efficient duellist of the last war’s most dangerous game.

“ Je suis toujours à ta disposition, mon vieux. ”

“Was there, in the Resistance, a man named Georges Olivant?”

“What is he like?”

Simon described him.

“There were so many,” Louvois said, “and under so many names. I do not recall him myself. I can make inquiries.”

“On the other hand, he may just as well have been a traitor.”

“There were many of them, also, and many of them also have thought it wise to change their names. But that might be a little easier to trace.”

Simon put down the envelope which he still carried, into which he had put the guidebook with the conveniently shiny cover which Olivant had handled.

“On the cover of this book,” he said, “are the fingerprints of this man. But cut off the top left-hand corner, which has my own prints.”

“That will make it very easy, if his prints are on record.”

“You still have friends at the Prefecture?”

“Naturally.”

“I do not want this to become known to Inspector Quercy, of the Police Judiciaire.”

“He is a good man.”

“There is a personal reason.”

“ Entendu . He will know nothing about it.”

“It is urgent.”

“I will close the shop and take the book over at once myself. I will have a report for you within two hours.”

The Saint fingered the medallion in his pocket.

“There is one other thing I can do while you are gone,” he said. “Do you have an accommodating friend who is a doctor, who would have a microscope that I can use for a few minutes?”

“I can find one. Let me telephone first.”

Louvois retired to the back of the shop and returned in a few minutes with a name and address written on a slip of paper.

“It is all arranged. He is expecting you.”

“Thank you, Antoine. I will come back and wait for you. À tout à l’heure .”

“ À tout à l’heure. ”

Simon walked to the address which was only a few blocks away. The doctor, a taciturn man with an old-fashioned spade beard, showed him directly into a small laboratory and left him there, asking no questions except whether the Saint knew how to operate the microscope and whether he required anything else.

The Saint placed the Saint Christopher medal face down on the platform, centered the square indentation on the back under the objective, and aimed the light on it.

As he adjusted the focus, the pattern of almost invisible scratches sprang to his eye as legibly as a page of print.

He read the words so painstakingly engraved there, and then he lighted a cigarette and sat back on the stool, and knew the answers to many questions, while pictures formed for him in the drifting smoke.

He saw old Eli Rosepierre in his workshop, knowing that the Germans were coming, and too proud or too disheartened to run away, it didn’t matter what his reason was, but wanting to save his children. And knowing that it was hopeless to trust them with such jewels and gold as he could lay his hands on, even though they would be lost to him anyway, but wanting to give them something that the invaders could not touch, for the future. And knowing that the children were too young to be relied upon to understand or to remember anything he might tell them about the modest wealth that was still secure. And faced with the problem of giving them the key to it in a form which they might understand someday, but which would be least likely for a child to destroy.

Anything on paper, of course, was out of the question. It was too easy to mutilate or deface, or lose, or a finder could read and take advantage of it. A tattoo might have done, but Rosepierre was not a tattooer. He was a jeweler.

And he had found a jeweler’s solution.

Simon saw the old man working through the night, with aching eyes, carving the most important achievement of his engraver’s art. The etching of the Lord’s prayer on the head of a pin was a mere abstract diversion by comparison. This was his testament. On a medallion, because it was most indestructible; of silver only, because it would be least likely to attract a thief; of Saint Christopher, because it might disarm racial persecutors, and because it might be treasured more carefully — as indeed it had been...

The Saint took out the slip of paper with the doctor’s address and copied down the words from the medal on the other side.

Then, more for idle physical distraction than anything, he wrote underneath the English translation.

There was only one weakness in Eli Rosepierre’s ingenious ideas. Why would his children ever have been likely to discover the minute engraving on the backs of their good-luck medals?

And in the next flash, Simon knew the answer to that one, too. There must have been someone whom Eli Rosepierre trusted, to whom Rosepierre had given an inkling of his scheme, whom Robespierre had charged to find the children again, if it were ever possible, and tell them what to look for.

Olivant.

Simon thanked the doctor, who still asked no questions, and went back to Louvois’s little papeterie . He paced up and down the street and almost wore himself out before the old guerrilla fighter returned. But the springy gait of the retired maquisard gave him his answer even before Louvois spoke. “We have success, mon cher !”

Louvois insisted on unlocking the door and entering the shop before he would say any more.

“The fingerprints are those of one Georges Orival, mon cher Saint . He was a collaborationist, and for that he was sentenced to fifteen years in prison.”

“He has escaped, or more probably been released,” said the Saint. “And he is looking very prosperous, under the name of Georges Olivant.”

“No doubt the sale type had plenty of blood money hidden away before they caught him.”

“He is now preparing to collect a lot more.”

Louvois stroked his chin meditatively.

“Perhaps that can be prevented. There are still many of us who do not think that imprisonment was enough.”

“ Ne t’en fais pas ,” said the Saint. “His goose is practically cooked already. I personally guarantee it. I must go now and take care of him, but as soon as this is finished we must have our reunion.”

To his relief, although he had consciously tried to reassure himself that he had nothing to worry about, Valerie North was waiting at the bar of the Carrere, as he had instructed her. He ordered a Martini to keep her company while she finished hers, and paid the tab, but he would not talk even though the bar was deserted at that hour.

“All the bartenders in this area speak English,” he said, “and I don’t want to risk even a chance of future complications. Our caravanserai is just around the corner, but I didn’t want you to go there alone.”

As soon as they had finished, he steered her down the street to the Avenue Georges V, and turned her quickly into the Georges V Apartments, just before the hotel entrance. They rode up to her floor in the elevator of the apartment wing, and he piloted her expertly through the connecting passage to the hotel section.

“Don’t ask me how I know these back ways,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you without incriminating myself. As far as you’re concerned, it’s good enough to fool anyone who’s naturally expecting you to use the hotel lobby.”