He used the Volkswagen bus as cover to slip through the doorway and get nearer. In his hand was a gun he had taken from the pocket of Tweedledum in the room behind him.
“We’ll have to remove the frames in order to fit the things into this false bottom,” said the Clarneau impostor, as they put down the trunk at the rear of the station wagon. “But it is worth the trouble, I assure you. No customs man would think of looking.”
“And no policeman, I hope.”
“Don’t worry. By the time the police know anything about this we’ll be over the border and halfway home.”
They began to drag the wooden crate from the back of the station wagon.
“Where is that dunce, Gunter?” the substitute Clarneau wondered aloud. “Feeding LeGrand with a silver spoon?”
“This doesn’t weigh much, does it?” said Tweedledee.
“Canvas is light. And yet it’s worth a hundred times more than solid gold.”
There was a creak of nails being tugged from wood, and then stunned silence.
“Disappointing, isn’t it?”
The two men whirled to face the voice. It belonged to the Saint, who was standing behind them on the safe side of a black automatic. Tweedledee made a sudden move, and Simon sent a shot through the edge of his coat sleeve. There were no more movements, sudden or otherwise.
“I know it’s disappointing,” he murmured. “You expected a Madonna or two, but you’ll just have to make do with one Saint.”
He relieved Tweedledee of another pistol, checked the fake Clarneau, and backed away again.
“How... did you get here?” the smaller man asked him.
“I was breathing down your neck all the way. Now why don’t you tell me how and why you got here?”
“We tell you nothing.”
“Well then,” Simon said, “lead the way to the dungeon, please.”
He indicated the way with the nose of his gun and followed them down the passage to the room where they had held LeGrand and the real Clarneau prisoner. Tweedledum was still on the floor.
“He’s killed Gunter!” the fake Clarneau cried in a panic.
“Not quite, I think,” said the Saint. “But that can always be remedied. I do sometimes get homicidal when people try to keep secrets from me. Now just wait here and think what I might do to you if you don’t come up with a good honest chunk of autobiography in the next forty seconds. I’ll be right back.”
He backed into the passageway and locked the door of the small room. Then he froze. Coming through from the garage were two more men. One of them, tall and black-haired, was the detective who had visited LeGrand’s gallery the day before. He was smiling.
“You remember me, Monsieur Templar? Inspector Mathieu.”
“I do remember,” Simon said without relaxing his ready grip on the automatic.
Inspector Mathieu continued to smile as he nodded at the gun.
“Taking the law into your own hands?”
“Nobody else seemed to be taking care of it,” the Saint said mildly.
“We have been watching this building,” Mathieu said. “Your friend LeGrand and another fellow came running out in a state of shock and told us you were in here.”
The Saint’s muscles untensed slightly. But his main reaction to Mathieu, which must have been subconsciously developing since the first time he met him, was one of spontaneous and unaccountable distrust.
“Where’s LeGrand now?” he asked.
“We sent him home. He was shaking like jelly. And where is the man who impersonated Clarneau?”
“Right through that door. And since I’m being so cooperative, maybe you’d tell me exactly what kind of mischief this cast of thousands is up to.”
Mathieu shrugged.
“A simple case of thieves falling out.”
“I hadn’t noticed any falling out,” Simon responded.
“The girl on one side, these people on the other.”
Mathieu stepped forward with a business-like air toward the door behind which the Saint’s three captives were locked. The key was already in Simon’s pocket. The automatic was still in his hand. With the most subtle kind of movement he placed himself in the passage in just such a way that Inspector Mathieu could not get by.
“You’re including Annabella Lambrini among the thieves,” Simon said questioningly.
His piercing, dangerous blue eyes met Mathieu’s dark ones, which gave way and pretended to glance around the bare corridor with official interest.
“She is not Annabella Lambrini, for a start,” Mathieu said. “She’s no more Italian than I am...” He hesitated and nervously indicated the locked doorway behind the Saint. “You’re sure those men are in there — securely? I don’t want to stand here talking while half the gang gets away.”
“They’re as harmless as three blind mice,” the Saint assured him. “Tell me more.”
“This so-called Annabella Lambrini is really Austrian,” Mathieu said. “Her name is Anna Lenscher, and she is responsible for...”
Mathieu suddenly stopped again. His expression had switched from the complacency of superior knowledge to worry.
“Yes?” Simon prompted.
“Where are the paintings?” Mathieu asked. “We saw an empty crate out there as we came in.”
“There’s a trunk with a false bottom near it,” the Saint told him.
“Ah, a false bottom,” Mathieu said. “Clever. Shall we go and have a look?”
He pushed past his unintroduced and unspeaking assistant and led the way back into the garage. Simon followed both of them to the door through which the passage led into the garage.
“But the paintings aren’t in there either,” he said.
Mathieu turned from the trunk, looking plainly irritated.
“Alors, m’sieur, you will be so kind as to tell me where they are.”
Simon shook his head pleasantly.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.”
Mathieu, for the first time, seemed to be losing his self-possession.
“You don’t know?” he demanded.
“I didn’t say I didn’t know,” Simon answered. “I said I couldn’t tell you. But maybe we could trade stories. You tell me more about Annabella, and I’ll consider telling you about the paintings — if I know anything.”
“Mr Templar! You are being difficult!”
The Saint would never have suffered the indignity of being taken off guard if his captives had not chosen that moment to set up a loud banging on the door of their cell. In the first second of the noise Simon’s attention was divided among Mathieu, his assistant who was standing nearby on his right, and the noise at the other end of the passageway. In that instant of time the Saint, thinking in three directions at once, was as nearly vulnerable as he was ever likely to be.
Mathieu’s assistant leaped forward, and Simon — who even at that crucial point had time to reflect that it might be unwise to kill a policeman, if Mathieu’s assistant really was a policeman — half whirled to snap off a shot at the man’s leg. He sensed rather than saw Mathieu hurl something at him as his head was turned. His skull was jarred as the flying object hit him, and darkness, like rising black water, filled his vision.
8
Annabella Lambrini — or Anna Lenscher, depending on whose story the reader chooses to accept — was at the least highly puzzled when she realized that her protector and overnight guest, Simon Templar, had vanished from her house simultaneously with the removal of her paintings.
Any strictly materialistic worries she might have had about the crated masterpieces were assuaged by her possession of a check for a very large amount of money signed by Marcel LeGrand and his expert friend Professor Clarneau. If the Saint, piratical character that he was reputed to be, chivalrously chose to steal the paintings from Messieurs LeGrand and Clarneau rather than from a lady, she could only be grateful for such old-world consideration. But her feminine pride was hurt that he could have walked out and left her — for whatever mysterious reason — without even saying goodbye.