Leslie Charteris - The Saint Bids Diamonds

At the risk of bursting a blood vessel, the Saint kept his face perfectly straight.

"You'd like us to give them a dose of their own medicine," he said.

"That is what I propose to do," said Graner. "There appears to be no other remedy. They have completely lost their heads over this lottery ticket, and when anything like that happens an organisation like mine is finished. I propose that you and I should make a fresh start — it seems obvious to me that you have been wasting your time as a diamond cutter. Perhaps you have never realised your own abilities. In combination, we should be invincible."

Graner's manner was deferential, almost ingratiating although the change was not much of an improvement. Simon felt that he was rather less objectionable when he was being his ordinary repulsive self than when he was bending over backwards in the unaccustomed exercise of making himself agreeable. But that only enriched the heroic and majestic fruitiness of the joke.

"In other words, we get what we can out of these birds and then ditch them?" suggested the Saint.

Graner inclined his head hopefully.

"I think you will agree that they deserve it."

"It seems fair enough to me. But what have you told them?"

"I pretended to believe Aliston and Palermo, I locked Christine up and left them while I went to my own room to think. It was a long time before I could make up my mind."

"When did I ring you up?"

"That was just before I had finished talking to them. I still hadn't decided what was the best thing for me to do, even though I was sure they were lying to me. Then Lauber arrived with his story."

"And you pretended to believe him."

"I felt that that was the wisest course. So long as they all believed they were successfully taking me in, I had a certain advantage. I left them all together and told them I would go out and see if I could bring you back. I told them that you would be less suspicious of me than you would be of any of them."

"That would still be a smart move, anyway," said the Saint shrewdly.

Graner nodded frankly.

"I appreciate your point of view. But I am not trying to induce you to do anything. If you accept my proposition, you would have a free hand to take whatever action you think best."

The Saint smoked for a little while in thoughtful silence. He wanted to leave nothing overlooked.

"How did Aliston get hold of Christine?" he asked.

"He told her — I am only quoting his own story — that Joris and the other man and yourself had all been captured. He said that we knew where she was, which was proved by his visit, and that we were on our way to take her. He also said that he had quarrelled with us, and that we were looking for him at the same time. He was able to convince her that she had no one left to help her, and that he himself was in terror of bur vengeance, and that their only hope was for them to join forces — I might mention that Aliston was on the stage before he made a slip which brought him to me. You might not think it, but he is a brilliant actor when he exerts himself."

"But when he wanted to take her to the house—"

"He said that he was taking her somewhere else, He drove her out on to the road to San Andres, which is very lonely, and there he was able to overpower her without much difficulty."

Simon could believe that Aliston had exerted himself in his acting. He was inclined to revise his own earlier theory about that abduction. It now seemed more likely that after Aliston had located Keena's apartment he had gone back to tell Palermo, and that it was then that he had seen Graner's car and realised that everything had blown up. Quite probably his offer to Christine had had the persuasive advantage of obvious sincerity; it was only when Aliston had realised that he had nowhere else to go, and that he was not equipped to fight a singlehanded feud of that kind, that he had panicked and done what he had done… Not that a detail like that mattered very much.

"And Joris?" said the Saint.

"I left the others to discuss the best way to get hold of him again. We can attend to that ourselves when we have settled with them. I think you are in the best position to arrange that."

"And the other man?"

"I know nothing more about him. But doubtless he will be getting in touch with you as you arranged."

Simon filled his lungs with a sense of deep and dizzy contentment. So the tangle had all worked out, the various pieces in the jigsaw had all shaken down into their final and perfect combination, all the permutations and combinations had been tried, all the explanations made and all the moves accounted for. Now at last the Saint felt that all the threads were in his hands, and it only remained to wind them up and tie the conclusive knot. Joris was on the boat. Hoppy, by that time, was certainly back at the hotel. It only left Christine — and the ticket…

Graner was watching him with an anxiety over which his habitual pose of inscrutable dominance was wearing very thin. And the Saint smiled at him beatifically.

"It sounds fine to me," he said. "Let's go."

"Do you know what you intend to do?"

Simon beckoned the waiter and counted coins to pay for their drinks.

"I guess we go up to the house," he said. "That's where all the other vultures are roosting, isn't it? After all, they're expecting you to bring me back, and I'd hate to disappoint them."

"They will be waiting to hold you up."

"Good. Let 'em. But they won't interfere with you just yet, because they're still divided among themselves. And neither side is sure enough of the other for them to act together against you. So they'll keep on pretending to play in with you. You can play their game and pretend to help them hold me up. All I want you to do is to see that I have a chance to grab your gun at the right moment; and don't get the wind up if I point it at you for the sake of appearances. Just see that I get it when I want it, and you can leave the rest to me. Now let's get moving before they have a chance to organise any new combinations between themselves."

He pocketed his change and stood up decisively; and Graner followed his lead without question. The reversal was complete — even more so than when the Saint had turned him upside down in the hotel that morning. If he had had time to think about it, the Saint would have suffered the agonies of another bottled-up internal explosion at the supreme climax of Graner's submission.

The Saint led the way out of the bar with a spring in his step and an impudent swagger in the set of his shoulders. He was on his way to the great moment which he had been living for for nearly twenty-four hours, the time when he could sweep the board clear of all niggling chicaneries and complex deceptions and sail into battle as a buccaneer should sail, with the Jolly Roger nailed to the mast and the trumpets of outlawry sounding in his ears. It was for things like this that the Saint had lived all his life.

And as they crossed the road to where Graner's car was parked, he saw that it was the Buick.

It was the one thing needed to complete his ecstasy. The one lurking doubt in his mind had been what Lauber might be doing up at the house while Graner was away. If for any reason Graner had used the other car… But Graner. hadn't. And Lauber would be fuming and sweating, roaming the house like a caged lion in a frenzy of impotent rage. Meanwhile a great many of the inhabitants of Santa Cruz had been ambling innocently around what had probably been the most valuable car in the history of automobile engineering, untroubled by the thought that they could have stretched out their hands and helped themselves to wealth beyond their wildest dreams.

The idea filled the Saint's whole horizon as Graner started the car and drove it round to speed up the square. Was the ticket still in the same place?