“All right,” he said. “You can tell them it’s ready to go.”
Hans nodded and went into the house. Simon knew and had counted on the fact that the station wagon was not visible from the front room where Annabella and her customer were completing their transaction. Without a wasted motion the Saint jumped into the station wagon, closed the rear door behind him, and jerked the hammer from his pocket. In a few seconds he had loosened the end cover from the crate. He pulled it away and bent and flattened the bared nail points into the pinewood of the cover. Then he climbed into the crate himself, kneeling on the books, and tapped a pair of nails into the inner side of the cover so that he could use them as handles to pull the cover snugly into place. It was a simple matter then to secure the cover with another couple of nails driven lightly at an angle from inside.
Enough light came through minor crevices of the box to enable the Saint to see his own hands as his eyes adjusted themselves. He had had to work blindly while fixing the cover in place. Now he settled back in comfort in a sitting position, leaning his back against the rough inner wood of the container with his long legs only moderately cramped.
He waited and listened, and in a very few minutes he heard voices approaching the station wagon.
“I really don’t know,” Annabella was saying. “Hans said he was out here.”
“Well, if you don’t mind, I must be on my way without saying goodbye to him,” Professor Clarneau said. “LeGrand will be waiting anxiously for me.”
The rest of the conversational interchange was largely drowned by the opening and closing of the car door and the starting of the engine. As the station wagon pulled away Simon heard only one phrase shouted merrily by the driver:
“Don’t drink too much champagne before lunch!”
The station wagon lurched out of the driveway and on to the road, but it did not turn toward the main Paris road. It turned right instead. The Saint could tell that much by centrifugal pressures even though he could see almost nothing through the tiny crevices in the crate. But presently instead of continuing in its original direction the station wagon made another right turn. It seemed to Simon that it was heading toward Paris all right, but by a devious route.
He relaxed. The noontime sun sent slivers of light across his hands folded on his knees. The vibrating wooden box, shaking rhythmically now and then, had a soporific effect that made him as drowsy as if he had been at home in bed. Up in the front seat of the station wagon the driver was whistling, and the off-key strains of Funiculi Funicula blended with the rush of warm air blowing back through the open windows.
The ride was not a short one. The Saint calculated that he must be in the southern outskirts of Paris proper before the station wagon slowed almost to a halt, made a gingerly bumpy turn, and honked its horn.
Simon heard a large door scrape across concrete, and the wagon moved ahead again for a short distance.
“You got them?” somebody shouted in Austrian-accented German.
The driver answered in foreigner’s German which might have had somewhat garlicky Neapolitan flavor:
“Of course! It went like clockwork. Where is the trunk?”
“Upstairs.”
The driver got out of the station wagon and slammed the door hard.
“Then let’s get it down here, shall we?” he said impatiently.
Simon heard the two pairs of footsteps moving away. After a few seconds he took his hammer and pulled out the two nails which held the end of the wooden crate in place. In a moment he had pushed it open far enough to allow him to look at his surroundings.
He was inside some sort of garage or small warehouse which had no windows. Next to the station wagon was an old Volkswagen bus. There was assorted automotive junk scattered around the place, none of it worth noticing twice. The Saint rolled quickly out of the crate and replaced its cover, tacking it into place with four efficient blows of his hammer. He was just getting out of the back of the station wagon when he heard someone coming down a flight of stairs at the rear of the garage. Simon ducked and waited, peering around the corner of the wagon until he had ascertained that the intruder was alone. The man was, in fact, so preoccupied with not dropping a tray he was carrying that he would not have noticed the Saint if he had been standing bolt upright. Simon recognized him as one of the two characters who had put Hans Kraus to sleep and tried to kidnap Annabella Lambrini outside LeGrand’s gallery the day before.
The man with the tray opened a door on the left side of the garage, beyond the Volkswagen bus, and kicked it shut behind him. Simon followed stealthily, crossing the greasy floor of the garage, after a backward glance to make certain he had left the station wagon closed, and gently opened the door which the man ahead of him had entered. It led down a short passage, at the end of which was another door, much stouter than the first. It was half open, and the Saint could hear a low-pitched voice speaking bad French.
“Here is to eat.”
It was Marcel LeGrand’s voice which answered.
“We don’t want food! When are you going to let us out of here?”
Another male voice, unknown to Simon, joined in.
“This is an outrage! You can’t get away with this!”
“Be quiet! I untie only your hands so you eat.”
The Saint slipped quietly through the door into the small dank room. The man who had been carrying the tray was bending over Marcel LeGrand, who was tied in a straight chair. Next to him, bound in another chair, was a thin white-haired man who would undoubtedly turn out to be the real Professor Clarneau.
LeGrand’s startled expression betrayed Simon’s entrance. The captor turned and met the edge of the Saint’s hand. The chop descended with the force of an axe, and sent its victim sprawling unconscious on the stone floor.
“Monsieur Templar!” LeGrand cried. “Wonderful! How...”
“Quietly!” Simon cautioned him, untying his hands. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, but how did you know we were here? This is my friend Clarneau. They stopped his car. They made me sign a check...”
“I can imagine,” the Saint said. “We can talk later. For now, get out of here through the window in the passageway between here and the garage. Hurry!”
Professor Clarneau, who looked like a large white rat in an old-fashioned black suit, was opening and closing his mouth without making any noise. For that hysterical silence Simon was grateful.
“I want you to get the police. Tell them to come grab these boys as fast as they can.”
He and LeGrand hoisted Clarneau, who was still opening and closing his mouth, out of the passageway window. The Saint then had to boost LeGrand’s ample bulk out unaided, and it was fortunate that he had the muscle for the job.
“Aren’t you coming?” LeGrand asked Simon from outside.
“No. I have some work to finish up here. Go get the police, then go straight home and stay there. I’ll see you there tonight — and have your check book ready if you still want to become the world’s most envied art dealer.”
7
Simon waited until he could no longer hear them moving away, and then went very quietly back to the door which led into the garage. It was half open, and through the opening he could see two men just arriving at the bottom of the stairs carrying a large trunk. One was the driver of the station wagon who had impersonated Clarneau, and the other was recognizable as the second member of the previous day’s unsuccessful kidnap team — it seemed to Simon that if they were going to keep coming back into the action he would need to think of them in some less cumbersome way, and decided to call them Tweedledum and Tweedledee.