“I thank you for her,” said the driver earnestly. “She would certainly be crazy for an Americano like you. It is a great pity your heart is not just a little stronger. She can be most gentle, too.”
“It would be a privilege to die in her arms,” Simon said gravely, “but it might be embarrassing for you both.”
The three remaining bottles, replaced alongside and overlapping the briefcase, adequately concealed it and left the straw bag bulging just about the same as before.
“I will wait for you,” said the driver, as Simon got out in front of the hotel.
“Not this time,” Simon told him firmly. “I may not go out again today at all.”
He let the distillery basket be snatched by a determined bellhop, and followed it up the steps to the lobby after paying off the cab.
“What room, sir?”
“Can you keep it down here for me till I check out?” Simon asked, and added for the conclusive benefit of anyone who might be listening, “I don’t want to start drinking it up before I get home.”
The bellhop took the bag to the little store room behind the bell captain’s desk, and gave him the stub of a tag. Simon gave him a quarter in exchange and strolled casually away towards the elevators; but as he reached the elevator alcove he swung briskly to his left around a group of visiting firemen and turned off again down the little-used passage to the side entrance on the Prado. But it was not too little used for there to be a taxi waiting outside, and Simon was in it before the driver had time to deliver more than the first four words of his sales talk.
“The Toledo,” Simon said.
“If you want a real good restaurant,” said the driver, “let me take you to—”
“I have to meet someone at the Toledo — and,” Simon continued rapidly, to forestall any further suggestions, “she happens to be a young and beautiful girl.”
This was the purest fiction, but he had nevertheless picked the Toledo for a reason. He had eaten well enough there once before, and knew it to be a small quiet place that made relatively little effort to invite the tourist trade. He thought that he might have done a fair job of throwing any possible followers off his scent for a while, and he did not want to show himself in any of the places where the bloodhounds would most naturally go sniffing first if they were trying to get back on his trail. At least he would like a chance to enjoy his lunch, and a breathing spell in which to sit still and think.
He ordered a dish of Moro crab, that big-clawed delicacy who manages somehow to be just a little more succulent down there than his brother the stone crab of the Florida Keys, and a paella Valenciana, and said, “One other thing — do you think you can find a newspaper lying around anywhere?”
“I will see,” said the waiter.
Simon lighted a cigarette and sipped a glass of manzanilla, and began to take a few things apart in his mind.
Just as positively as the two men he had seen at the Comodoro were of the police, the man he had called Pancho was not. Simon had yet to meet any kind of police, even Secret Police, who threatened people with knives. And if the short man had had any kind of authority, the Saint would never have got away with punching him in the nose. Simon had made no effort to disappear that night, and it wouldn’t have taken a determined search very long to locate him among Havana’s relatively few hotels.
But by the same token it wouldn’t have taken Pancho’s mob much longer to do the same thing, if they had any sort of organization.
Simon had assumed that Pancho was under orders of Venino. Had Mrs Carrington’s argument, then, finally convinced Venino that the Saint meant no danger to him, and had Venino called Pancho off?
That was what Venino might well be hoping that the Saint would believe. But the Saint didn’t believe it for one moment. To believe it, he would have had to accept two or three much greater improbabilities that he simply could not buy.
There had to be some other explanation, that would tie everything together, and whatever it was, it could only be as illegitimate as a cardinal’s daughter.
The waiter brought the Moro crab claws, and with them a slightly rumpled copy of Informacion.
“Lo siento, it is all we have. But if you like I can send out for a Miami paper.”
“No, this is what I wanted.” Simon looked at him with a lift of the eyebrows that was as expressive as it was calculated. “But do you mean to say that you can get Miami papers here?”
The waiter’s surprise was manifestly unfeigned.
“Yes, why not?”
“Even if they say rude things about the President?”
The waiter shrugged.
“What President is not criticized somewhere, señor?”
“Do you ever criticize him?” Simon asked.
“I do not argue about politics,” said the other cheerfully. “It is like religion. It is easy to offend someone and very hard to convert anyone.”
“But you aren’t afraid that if you said what you thought you might land in the juzgado.”
The waiter looked honestly puzzled.
“What would the President care what a poor waiter said?”
“Then you aren’t looking forward to a revolution,” Simon said.
The waiter laughed.
“I hope not. Revolutions are bad for business.”
The Saint let him go to attend to another table, and proceeded to read the newspaper with unusual assiduousness while he ate.
For once he was uninterested in any international events, but he read every line that had any reference to local affairs. And although he did not skip any political items, he was most hopeful of finding the missing link that he needed under much more sensational headlines. A major jewel robbery would have suited him very well — or, as a supreme refinement of plot constructions it would have been almost deliriously intoxicating to read that some ingenious sportsman had actually contrived to steal from the Capitol the diamond across which he had first set eyes on Beryl Carrington and Ramón Venino. But nothing as poetic as that rewarded him — in fact, the only important larceny he found mentioned was an armoured carload of bullion which seemed to have recently vanished somehow between the Banco Insular and the Treasury, which the police were still looking for. And even if some Underground of self-convinced patriots had pulled that caper, it certainly was not hidden in an alligator briefcase.
Suddenly the Saint realized that it no longer made sense to be so coy about that briefcase.
He watched the waiter place beside his coffee cup the complimentary glass of coffee liqueur topped with cream which is the custom of the country, and said, “You have converted me, amigo. I have decided against the revolution. My bill, please.”
“Sí, señor.”
Fifteen minutes later he was at the Prado entrance of the Sevilla-Biltmore again, this time on his way in. He turned immediately towards the elevators, and caught one that was just about to start up. Out of an ingrained habit of preparedness he had his key in his pocket and had not needed to go to the desk for it, and there was nobody lurking around his landing that he could see as he let himself into his room. He went straight to the telephone and called the bell captain.
“Have the goodness to send up the bag of rum which I left down there,” he said, and gave the number of his claim check.
He hung up, and as he did so he heard the sound behind him, though it was no more than the faintest scuff of fabric or the catch of an over-restrained breath. But it made the difference that he was turning as the blanket fell over his head, and the man who threw it did not clamp him quite solidly in the bear-hug that was meant to pinion it over his arms. Another pair of arms clutched him around the knees in the next instant, and he was lifted off his feet and being carried swiftly across the room; he could feel the direction and an involuntary chill went through him, but he went on squirming and lifting his elbows outwards and freed his arms enough to drive one fist after another into something that sobbed and yielded. The grip around his shoulders weakened, and he brought his knees up towards his chest and kicked out again savagely and felt his heels crunch satisfyingly against flesh and bone, and then he was free and falling only a little way to the floor.