Leslie Charteris - The Saint Bids Diamonds

He took her hand and rushed her down the stairs. At the bottom he checked her again, before they turned the corner on to the veranda. Beyond the corner someone else was moving, and he saw a dim flicker of light.

He left Christine under cover, and turned the corner alone.

From the range of a yard he looked into the gaping popeyed face of the servant whom he had seen at breakfast, made even more ghoulish by the upward lighting of the candle which the man held in one hand. Simon smiled at him in the friendliest way.

"Buenas noches," he remarked, remembering the example of dignified politeness which had been shown to him in another place not long before.

The servant was not so ready to take the hint. He let out a bronchial wheeze and turned to run. Simon's foot shot out and tapped the man's heels together, sending him down in a sprawling slide. The candle spilled over and went out. Simon switched on his torch and hit the man twice on the back of the head with Palermo's gun, very hard…

He grasped the man under the arms and hauled him up again, holding him in front of his own body as a shield. As the beam of his flashlight swerved upwards with the movement, it flashed over the figure of Aliston, rising head and shoulders over the other flight of stairs at the end of the veranda.

"Don't shoot," advised the Saint considerately, "or you'll have to fix your own breakfast tomorrow."

It is possible that Aliston was too flustered to grasp the hint; or perhaps the light of the torch on his face was too dazzling for him to be able to appreciate the situation. For a second or two he stood frozen in open — mouthed bewilderment, while the Saint advanced quickly towards him, with the servant locked in front of him by the encircling strength of one arm. Then Aliston yelled and began to shoot. Once, twice… four times he snatched at the trigger, and Simon could hear the bullets buzzing around him like angry hornets. He kept moving forward. At the fifth shot it felt as though the man he was holding had collided with a brick wall. Simon hitched him up and pushed on. A sixth and a seventh shot went wide as Aliston's aim became wilder; then Aliston's gun was empty. He looked at it stupidly for an instant, and then flung it hysterically at the steadily advancing light in the Saint's hand. The gun clattered along the veranda, and Aliston turned to bolt down the stairs. Simon felt a warm dampness on his left hand where it was clutched around the servant's waist.

"Hey!" he called out. "Look what you've done, Cecil. I warned you!"

Aliston did not stay to look; and Simon pressed the trigger of his own gun for the first time.

The hammer clicked on a faulty cartridge.

The Saint's smile brightened recklessly. He dropped the automatic and gripped the body of the servant with both hands. He was at the head of the stairs now; and halfway down, Aliston in his headlong flight had become entangled with Graner, who was halfway up. They were clutching each other in a frantic effort to regain their balance; and Simon lifted his burden well off the ground.

"After all, it's your breakfast, boys," he said, and hurled his human cannonball downwards at them.

Then he hitched himself on to the banisters and slid downwards himself after the flailing welter of arms and legs and bodies. It seemed to him that he heard another shot, further away than it should have been to have come from Graner's gun, but in the excitement he scarcely noticed it. He reached the ground level just after the tumbling tangle of humanity hit it with a corporate thud, and he seized Graner by the scruff of the neck and lifted him out of the mess like a kitten. The Saint's smile glinted like sunshine before Graner's blazing eyes.

"You slapped me once," said the Saint reminiscently.

He slapped Graner on the left cheek, then on the right; and then he drew back his fist and punched him on the nose. He thought that he heard the bone splinter, and the jar of the blow ran exquisitely up his arm.

Graner reeled back as if he had been flung from a catapult, until he smacked into the opposite wall and slithered downwards. The Saint sprang after him joyfully; and as he did. so Aliston's hand grabbed at his ankle.

Simon's arms windmilled desperately, but the impetus of his own leap was too great. He went over in a heap, bruising his shoulder agonisingly as he fell, and kicked out furiously to free himself. But Aliston's hand kept its grip with the strength of a drowning man. Simon rolled over, with his other heel scraping savagely at Aliston's knuckles; but against the far wall, well beyond his reach, he saw Graner lifting his gun again.

The blood from Graner's flattened nose streamed down over his long upper lip and painted crimson into the thin lips drawn back snarling from his teeth. Simon Templar saw death reaching out for him, and smiled at it with all his old sardonic mockery. It had still been a grand last fight…

Crack!.. Crack!

He felt nothing, nothing at all, no pain, not even the impact of the bullets. He was aware of no change in himself, and his thoughts went on uninterrupted. The only difference was that the clutch on his ankle seemed to have gone — but that was probably because his soul could not feel such material things. It occurred to him that if death was like that, it was a very simple process.

And then he saw that Graner's hand, with the gun still grasped in it, had sagged down until it rested on the floor. Graner's chin had sunk forward on his chest; his eyes were open, but the dark flame had died out of them. While Simon watched him, Graner's head slipped sideways… His body went down with it, grotesquely slowly, as if it was crumpling under the weight, going down sideways to the ground…

The Saint looked up.

Framed in the front doorway stood a solid and bull — necked figure, beaming like a gargoyle, with its Betsy raised in one bearlike paw. As Simon stared at it in speechless gratitude, the happy beam faded gradually into a look of gloomy apprehension.

"Did I bop de wrong guys again, boss?" asked Mr Uniatz anxiously.

The siren of the Alicante Star boomed its last warning over the harbour. A steward walked round the deck, beating the last "All Ashore" on his little gong. The last belated tourists panted up the gangway, laden down with their last purchases of junk, and looking as ridiculous and repulsive as tourists always look, no more and no less. The last Hindu merchants waved their lace tablecloths and shawls on the wharf and bawled the praises of their expensive last-minute bargains. The last guardia at the head of the gangway settled his belt and gazed arrogantly around him, and the last rich snort and gurgle and splash with which he economised on the laundry bills of his pocket handkerchiefs resounded juicily over the mingled sound effects.

The Saint shifted himself unwillingly off the rail.

"I'll have to be on my way," he said.

"You're not staying here?" Christine said falteringly.

He smiled.

"I shouldn't have time to get the car on board. And besides, Hoppy and I are booked for a boat on Monday. I've promised to go and see a young godson tomorrow."

"You won't be safe — the police will be looking for you—"

"My dear, they've been looking for me for years. I've been chased by bigger and better cops than they'll ever grow on this island, and it never did me much harm."

She could believe it. He was invincible. She had watched him in battle for twenty-four hours, and it made all the legends about him simple to understand.

"But what's going to happen to us — to Joris and me?"

"Nothing," said the Saint. "I'll send a cable tonight to a friend of mine in London to fly out and meet you at Lisbon with a couple of brand — new passports ready to fill up in any names you like. You get off the boat at Lisbon, when everybody else gets off for an excursion, and you just forget to get on again. Then you travel overland to the Riviera, or wherever you want to settle down, and so long as you behave yourselves no one will ever bother you. The hunt for Joris has probably got tired of itself by this time, anyhow. And any bank will collect your lottery prize for you. It hasn't any name on it, and there's nobody left to make a fuss. By the way, I nearly forgot to give you the ticket."