Spinelli moved toward the door. “I’ve gotta shove, now, before the cops get here. It’d sort of complicate things if they saw me the way I look.”
Hanley tried to speak, but there were no words in him.
“It’s always tough the first time, Hanley,” Spinelli said. “First love is tough for anybody. But don’t worry about little Clare getting the hot seat, because that baby ain’t for frying. They’ll put her away long enough so that age will cure most of what ails her, but with a build and looks like hers, there’s no electric chair made that will ever cook her. Not even on one side.”
He opened the door and was gone. The door slammed behind him.
From somewhere across the city came the keening wail of a siren. Hanley listened to the sound for several seconds, and then he picked up the gun and tossed it onto the bed near Mark Ibberson. Then he walked slowly back to the living room and slumped into a chair. He sat without moving, his pale eyes staring at nothing, waiting for the police.
He was very sick.
The Loaded Tourist
by Leslie Charteris
Why was a shoe manufacturer carrying rare paintings, jewels, books, stamps? The Saint considered it very curious.
1
The lights of Lucerne were twinkling on the lake as Simon Templar strolled out towards it through the Casino gardens, and above them the craggy head of old Pilatus loomed blackly against a sky full of stars. At a jetty across the Nationalquai a tourist launch was unloading a boisterous crowd of holiday-makers, and the clear Swiss air was filled with the alien accents of Lancashire and London.
Simon stood under a tree, enjoying a cigarette. He disliked noisy mobs, and did not want to walk in the middle of one even the short distance to his hotel. Any one of the crowd would probably have reacted to his name, or at least to his still better known sobriquet, the Saint; but none would have been likely to identify his face. The features of the man whose feuds with the underworld and the law had become legendary in his own lifetime were known to few — a fact which the Saint had often found to his advantage.
But at that moment Simon was simply avoiding a boisterous group of holiday-makers. He was still trying to take a holiday himself. He wanted nothing from them except to be left alone.
Presently they were gone, and the esplanade was deserted again. He dropped his cigarette and stood like a statue, absorbed in the serene beauty of shimmering water and sentinel mountains.
From the direction of the Hotel National, off to his left, came a single set of footsteps. They were solid, purposeful, a little hurried. Simon turned only his head, and saw the man who made them as he came nearer — a stoutish man of medium height, wearing a dark suit and a dark Homburg and carrying a bulky briefcase. Simon caught a glimpse of his face as he passed under one of the street lamps that stood along the waterfront: it had a sallow and unmistakably Latin cast.
Then, hardly a moment later, Simon realized that he was not watching one man, but three.
The other two came from somewhere out of the shadows — one tall and gaunt, the other short and powerful. They wore snap-brim hats pulled down over their eyes and kept their hands in their pockets. They too moved quickly and purposefully — more quickly even than the man carrying the briefcase, so that the distance behind him was dwindling rapidly. But the difference was that their feet made no sound...
It was so much like watching a scene from a movie that for several seconds the Saint observed it almost as passively as if he had been sitting in a theater. It was only as the two pursuers closed the last yard between themselves and the man with the briefcase, and the lamplight flashed on steel in the gaunt one’s hand, that Simon Templar realized that his immobility under the tree had let them think they were unobserved. And by then there was no time left to forestall the climax of their act.
The two followers moved like a well-coordinated team. The gaunt one’s right hand snaked over their quarry’s right shoulder and clamped over his mouth; the steel in his left hand disappeared where it touched the man’s back. At the same moment, like a horrible extension of the same creature, the stocky one snatched the briefcase. Then, in the same continuous flow of movement, the knifed man was falling bone-lessly, like a rag doll, and the two attackers were running back towards the alley between the Casino gardens and the gardens of the Hotel National.
The tingle of belated comprehension was still crawling up the Saint’s spine as he raced to intercept them. He did not call out, for it was too late now to warn the victim, and he saw no one else close enough to be any help. He ran as silently as the two footpads, and faster.
He met them at the corner of the alley. The gaunt one was nearer, and saw him first, and swung to meet him. The Saint saw a cruel bony face twisting in a vicious snarl, but he had the advantage of surprise. His fist slammed into the face, and the gaunt man sat down suddenly.
The stocky one swerved and kept on running. And because he still carried the briefcase which appeared to be the prize in the affray, Simon ran after him.
The stocky man had an unexpected turn of speed for a man of his build. Reluctantly, because he was not dressed for it, the Saint launched himself in a flying tackle that just reached one of the stocky man’s pistoning legs. The man fell lightly, like a wrestler, but Simon kept his grip on one ankle. Then, as they rolled over at the edge of a clump of bushes, the man’s other foot thumped into the side of the Saint’s head. Colored lights danced across Simon’s eyes, and his hold loosened. He must have been half stunned for a moment; then, as his head cleared, he was holding nothing.
A heavy rustling in the bushes, hoarse shouts, and the sound of more running feet mingled confusedly in his brain as he sat up.
A man bent over him, only dimly visible in the gloom; and the Saint instinctively gathered himself to fight back before he realized that this was a newcomer. The height was about the same as that of the stocky man; but the silhouette, round and roly-poly, was different. The voice that came with it, in excellent English, with a curious mixture of Continental accent and Oxford vowels, was reassuring.
“Are you all right?”
Simon picked himself up, felt his face tenderly, and brushed off his clothes which were now dusty.
“I think so. Did you see my playmate?”
“He ran away. I’m not built for running — or football tackles. What was it about?”
There were more hurrying footsteps, and the beam of a flashlight stabbed at them. In the reflected glow behind it Simon saw the outlines of a uniform.
“Here’s someone who’s going to be professionally interested in the answer to that,” he said grimly.
The policeman spoke in the guttural dialect of the region. It was well out of the Saint’s considerable linguistic range, but he needed no interpreter to translate it as some variant of the standard gambit of law officers in such situations anywhere: “What goes on here?”
The roly-poly man answered in the same dialect. His face in the light was round and soft and childish, with rimless glasses over rather prominent blue eyes. He wore a tweed coat and a round soft pork-pie hat. He talked volubly, with graphic gestures, so that Simon easily understood that he was describing the Saint’s encounter with the stocky thug, which he must have witnessed. The policeman asked another question, and the round man handed him a card from a small leather folder.
The policeman turned to the Saint.
“Vous parlez français?”
“Mais oui,” said the Saint easily. “This gentleman saw me trying to catch one man. There was another. Over there.”