Leslie Charteris - The Saint Bids Diamonds

Christine's breath came more quickly as the irregular faint ticking of the lock pecked dustily away at the roots of her nerves like erratically falling drops of water in a refined Chinese torture. There was no other sound to relieve the fearful silence of the room — only that bafflingly syncopated tick — tick-tick of the lock, the rhythm of her own breathing and the pounding of her own heart, and the occasional rustle of the Saint's clothes as he changed his position. The minutes dragged on and on, an interminable rosary of remorseless time…

After a while the ache of nervous tension numbed her into a kind of stupor, from which she roused again to a sharper sense of intolerable torment.

She caught at his arm.

"Please!" she implored him incoherently. "Please… please…"

He laughed.

"I'm doing my best, sweetheart. Give me a chance."

"You must have been half an hour already."

"Sixteen minutes by my watch," he said cheerfully, "Hold on for a little longer and it'll all be over. You ought to be enjoying yourself. This is a demonstration of painless safe — opening by the greatest expert in the world, and I know dozens of people who'd give their back teeth to be sitting where you are."

His voice was gay and unruffled, with a magnetic confidence in it that somehow made the ordeal seem trivial. It made her feel as if she could almost see his face again in the dark, the face that was like no other face that she had ever seen in her life, which she could never have forgotten even if she had never seen it again after that first time when he took off his hat in the Plaza de la Republica to let her see it. The vision was as clear now as if she were looking at it. She could see it with the blithe cavalier lines poised on the outer brink of seriousness, the blue eyes intent, the keen lips absent — mindedly playing with a smile; and again she felt the strange spell which he had the power to cast.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Don't worry. Just think what fun Reuben and the rest of them are having hunting for candles."

"Do you think they've got the ticket?"

"I should think so — unless the dogs chewed it along with Lauber. Be quiet again, darling — I think something's going to happen."

Perhaps another five minutes went by. They might have been five hours, for the time they seemed to take out of her life.

And then the Saint sighed with profound delight; and she heard a more ponderous and solid noise from where he was working beside her.

"Got it!" he said, and his voice was sparkling with exultation. "Stand clear of the gates, madam — we're opening the lucky dip!"

The heavy steel door brushed against her as he pushed it back.

He felt in his pocket and found his pencil flashlight. Its bright slender beam stabbed into the open safe, stroked over the laden shelves, kindled tiny flashes of coloured lightning from the carpets of blazing gems on its stepped terraces, as if the bar of light was a magic wand wakening the jewels to life…

"Was it worth waiting for?" said the Saint rapturously.

She was gasping.

"I didn't know… Joris said it was full of jewels, but I couldn't imagine it."

The Saint glanced at his watch again.

"Twenty-three minutes exactly. I'm not going to try and work out what rate of pay that averages per minute, because it might put ideas into your head. But let's help ourselves. Hold the glim, will you?"

She found herself with the flashlight in her hand, watching him scoop up the jewels in handfuls and pour, them into his pockets. It was like seeing a pantomime come to life, watching somebody empty an Aladdin's cave and yet knowing that the fabulous collection of jewels was not merely a few quarts of pieces of coloured glass. Simon went on until every shelf was bare and his pockets were heavy and swollen. At the last he picked up a lone emerald the size of a bantam's egg.

"Here — you have this for a souvenir. I'll keep the rest, because you'll be able to buy all you want with the Spanish government's money—"

He stopped speaking abruptly, and she saw the grim fighting steel creep back into his averted eyes. An instant later he had taken the torch out of her hand and switched it off. The last thing she saw was that he was smiling again.

Then the darkness was back again, seeming doubly black after the temporary light; and in the darkness she heard what the Saint had heard a few seconds earlier — the sound of soft footsteps on the stairs outside.

Instinct made her stretch out her hand again for the comforting human contact of the Saint's body; but he was not where he had been when she last saw him. Her hand met nothing but the air.

The Saint was halfway across the room by then.

With hardly a check in his swift silent passing, he lowered himself for a moment to see what light there was under the door. By the brilliance and steady swing of it, he learned that it was not a candle… and he went on, with only that minor item of information to prepare him for what might be coming. At any rate, the blow-up was coming now, whichever of the ungodly had been deputed to come and investigate the attic. The men downstairs had had time enough to decide that the prolonged failure of the electrical system might be due to something more than natural causes — the Saint knew that he was lucky to have been left so long. And the one question in his mind was concerned with how much longer a margin would have to be allowed for Hoppy Uniatz to receive his message and act upon it.

The footsteps had stopped outside the door — he couldn't be sure yet whether they belonged to one man or more. But somebody was out there, listening.

"I wish they'd hurry up and do something about these lights," said the Saint, clearly and conversationally; and as if the sound of his voice had reassured the man outside, the handle rattled and the door was flung open.

The searchlight beam of a big torch blazed into the room, covering the open and empty safe before it jerked slightly to the side to catch Christine Vanlinden full in the centre of its light. The Saint was near the door, almost at right angles to the direct beam; and enough of the light was reflected back from the walls and ceiling to show him the shape of the man who held it. It was Palermo; and Simon saw the silhouette of the automatic rising in his hand.

Palermo's guttural exclamation practically coincided with the Saint's spring; and because there was about six feet between them Simon launched his knife ahead of him.

The knife was meant for the wrist behind Palermo's gun, and it flew towards its mark as straight as an arrow. It was unfortunate that the mark moved. Palermo had started to turn, his torch pivoting round, probably with the idea of locating the Saint — but concerning Mr Palermo's mental reactions at that time the historian must remain conscientiously agnostic. The only person who could speak of them with authority would be Mr Palermo himself, and this is not a spiritualistic seance. The only thing we are sure about is that Palermo started to move as the knife left the Saint's hand. He gave a queer little cough; and then Simon's flying tackle caught him around the thighs and brought him down with a thump. Palermo's gun went off at about the same time, like a clap of thunder, and in a flash Simon was grappling for it. He had got hold of the barrel when he realised that Palermo was not fighting, that Palermo was lying quite still and not resisting at all. Simon took the gun away, and held Palermo down with a knee in his stomach while he picked up the torch. He turned the light downwards and understood…

He looked up to see Christine staring at the same thing, reaching the same understanding.

"Is he… is he dead?"

"Let's say he has been taken from us," said the Saint piously. He recovered his knife and wiped it quickly and neatly on the late Mr Palermo's shirt before he returned it to its sheath. "And let's keep moving, because hell will now start to pop."