As they strolled across the lobby, he said: “Will you think me impertinent if I ask another question?”
“No,” she said. “I want your help.”
“When your husband went out last night — did he say where he was going?”
She answered mechanically, so that he knew she was reciting something she had said before.
“I was tired, and he wanted to look for a cafe where he had heard there were Tyrolean singers, so he went alone.”
“Didn’t you think it strange that he should take his briefcase?”
“I didn’t see him take it.”
Simon handed her into a taxi without another word.
He walked slowly toward the Schweizerhof. At the corner of the Alpenstrasse he bought a selection of morning papers, and sat down at the nearest cafe over a cup of chocolate to read through all the headlines.
He had just finished when a shadow fell across the table, and a familiar voice said: “Looking to see whether you are a hero, Mr. Tombs?”
It was Oscar Kleinhaus, and the disarming smile on his cherubic face made his remark innocent of offense. The Saint smiled back, no less disarmingly.
“I was rather curious to see what the newspapers said about it,” he admitted. “But they don’t seem to have the story yet.”
“No, I didn’t notice it either. I’m afraid our press is a little slow, by American standards. We think that if a story would be good in the morning, it will be just as interesting in the evening.”
“Would you care to join me?”
Kleinhaus shook, his head.
“Unfortunately I have a business appointment. I hope I’ll have another opportunity. How long are you staying here?”
“I haven’t made any plans. I thought the police would want to know that, but no one’s been near me.”
“If they caught anyone for you to identify, they would want you. Until then, I expect they think it more considerate not to trouble you. But if you asked for your bill at the hotel, I’m sure they would be informed.” The round face was completely bland and friendly. “I must go now. But we shall run into each other again. Lucerne is a small town.”
He raised his collegiate hat with the same formal courtesy as the night before, and ambled away.
Simon watched him very thoughtfully until he was out of sight. Then he hailed a cab and gave the address which he had found in the briefcase.
The road turned off the Alpenstrasse above the ancient ramparts of the old town and wound up the hillside into a residential district of neat doll-house chalets. The house where the taxi stopped was high up, perched out on a jutting crag.
Simon paid off the driver and was confirming the number on the door, with his finger poised over the bell, before he really acknowledged to himself that he had already had two opportunities to speak about the briefcase to interested parties since he had found it, and that he had studiously ignored both of them — not to mention that he had made no move whatever to report his discovery to the police. But now he could no longer pretend to be unaware of what he was doing, and the realization gave him a lift of exhilaration which the crisp mountain air could never have achieved alone.
The door opened, and a manservant with a seamed gray face, dressed in somber black, looked him over impersonally.
“Is Monsieur Galen here?” Simon inquired.
“De la part de qui, m’sieur?”
“I am Filippo Ravenna,” said the Saint.
4
The room into which he was ushered was large and sunny, furnished with the kind of antiques that look priceless and yet comfortable to live with. The walls on either side of the fireplace were lined with bookshelves; on two others were paintings and a tapestry; in the fourth French windows opened onto a terrace overlooking the town and the mountains and the lake. The carpet underfoot was Aubusson. It was the living room of a man of wealth and cheerful good taste, and the manservant looked like an undertaker in it, but he withdrew as soon as he had shown the Saint in.
The man who advanced to greet Simon was altogether different. He had a muscular build rounded with good living, a full crop of black hair becomingly flecked with silver, and strong fleshy features. White teeth gleamed around a cigar.
“Buon giorno, Signor! Sono felicissimo di vederla.”
“We can speak French if you prefer,” said the Saint cautiously. It was safer than trying to speak Italian as a native tongue.
“As you wish. Or German, or English even. I struggle with all of them. I want my clients to feel comfortable, and they come from so many places.” He waved Simon to a couch facing the windows. “You have a letter, perhaps?”
Simon handed him the introduction. Galen glanced at it and put it in his pocket, and sat down.
“I knew you were coming,” he said apologetically, “but it is necessary to be careful.”
“Of course.”
“Sometimes my clients are so preoccupied with evading their own export restrictions that they forget we have Swiss import regulations too. That is their own affair, but naturally I want no trouble with the authorities here.”
“I understand your position,” said the Saint, understanding very little.
“Worse still,” Galen said, “there are people who try to offer me stolen things. That is why it is so pleasant to meet someone who is recommended, like yourself. Aside from the risk involved with stolen property, it is so much trouble to sell, and the prices are bound to be miserable. It is not worth it.”
Simon nodded sympathetically. So the eccentric assortment of treasures in Ravenna’s briefcase was supposed to be his own legitimate property, which finally disposed of one theory but at the same time cut away one possible piece of solid ground. Why, then, all the secrecy and mystery?
The Saint said conversationally: “So your clients come from all over Europe, do they?”
“From everywhere between the Iron Curtain and Portugal — every country where there are these annoying restrictions on foreign exchange and the free movement of wealth. What a pity there have to be so many barriers in this primitive civilization! However, I have a nice central location, and Swiss money is good anywhere in the world.
“Also, I am very discreet. There is no law against my buying anything I choose, and not a word about our transaction will get back to Italy from me. Other people’s problems are my business opportunity, but I prefer to think of myself as a kind of liberator.” He laughed genially. “Now, what do you have to sell?”
Simon gave him the chamois bag.
Galen took out the pink pearl necklace and held it up to the light.
“It is beautiful,” he said admiringly.
He studied it more closely, and then pondered for several seconds while he carefully evened the ash on his cigar.
“I can give you four hundred thousand Swiss francs,” he said at length. “Or, if you like, the equivalent in dollars, deposited at any bank in New York. That would be something over seventeen thousand dollars. It is a good price, in the circumstances.” He draped the necklace over his fingers and admired it again; then his shrewd dark eyes turned back to the Saint. “But it is not a lot of capital for you to start building a new fortune in America. Surely you have some other things to offer me?”
Simon Templar nodded — and in that instant the realization that he had found a foothold again struck him with a suddenness that literally jarred the breath out of him.
It was all so simple, so obvious that in retrospect he wondered how it could ever have baffled him. Filippo Ravenna had been going to America to live and to make a fresh start. Ravenna was rich, but he would not be allowed to transfer all his assets across the Atlantic just by asking for a bank draft. Like many another European, he had nothing but money which was not translatable through ordinary channels.