He put the thought firmly out of his mind again. If they suspected him, they suspected him. But if it had been more than suspicion, he doubted whether he would have been sent to bed so peacefully. And if there was any suspicion, a lot of things could happen before it became certainty.
Meanwhile there were more urgent things to think about. Joris and Christine Vanlinden were still at the hotel, and he could do nothing about them. The only help they had was Hoppy Uniatz, and the Saint smiled a little wryly as he computed how much help Mr Uniatz was likely to be.
He undressed himself slowly, visualising every other angle of the situation that he could think of.
He was about ready for bed when he heard the noise of a car that sounded as if it stopped very close to the house, and he went to the window again and looked out. But he was on the side of the house farthest from the road, and he could see nothing. The sound of a door slamming certainly came from within the grounds. He stood there listening, and presently the car started up again. It came slowly round the corner of the house and passed underneath his window on its way to the garage; but although he waited for several minutes longer he could discover nothing else. The voices went on downstairs, and they were still talking when he fell asleep.
His problems were still unsolved when he was awakened by his door opening. Lauber put an unshaven face into the room.
"Time to get up," he said shortly, and went out again.
The sky outside, which had apparently not been informed of what the guidebooks were saying about it, was leaden and overcast, and there was a damp chill in the air that smelt like impending rain. Still, with all its defects, it was a new day; and the Saint was prepared to be hopeful about it. He went along to the bathroom, where he found and borrowed somebody else's razor; and he had just finished dressing when Lauber came in again.
"I'll show you the dining room."
"Is the weather always like this?" Simon asked as they went down the stairs.
Lauber's only response to the conversational opening was a vague mumble; and Simon wondered whether his sulky humour was solely due to the sore head from which he must have been suffering or whether it had some other contributory cause.
Graner was already in the dining room, sitting up in his prim old-maidish way behind the coffee pot and reading a book. He looked up and said good morning to the Saint, and returned at once to his reading. Palermo and Aliston were not visible.
Since there was no obvious encouragement to idle chatter, Simon picked up a newspaper that was lying on the table and glanced over it while he tried unsatisfactorily to break his fast with the insipid ration of rolls and butter which the Latin countries seem to consider sufficient foundation for a morning's work, reflecting that that was probably why they never managed to do a morning's work.
Almost as soon as he took up the sheet the headlines leapt to his eye. The press of Tenerife is accustomed to devote three or four columns inside the paper to the inexplicable gyrations of Spanish politicians; a European war can count on two or three paragraphs in the "Information from Abroad"; the front page leads are invariably devoted to a solemn discussion of the military defence of the Canary Islands, which every good Canarian is convinced that other nations are only waiting for an opportunity to seize; and the local red-hot news, the sizzling sensation of the day, rates half a column under the standard heading of "The Event of Last Night"-there never having been more than one event in a day, and that usually being something like the earth-shaking revelation that a couple of citizens started a fight in some tavern and were thrown out. But for once the military defence of the Canary Islands and the prospects of luring more misguided tourists to Tenerife had been ousted from their customary place of honour.
Under the headings of "The Shocking Outrage of Last Night" and "Unprecedented Outbreak of Gangsterismo in Tenerife" a thrilling story was unfolded. It appeared that a pareja of guardias de asalto had been patrolling the outskirts of Santa Cruz the previous night when they heard the sound of shooting. Hastening towards the nearest telephone to give the alarm, they happened to come upon two sinister individuals who were assisting a third, who appeared to be unconscious, into a car. The circumstances seeming suspicious, the guardias called on them to stop, whereupon the criminals opened fire. One of the guardias, Arturo Solona, of the Calle de la Libertad, whose father is Pedro Solona, the popular proprietor of the butcher shop in the Calle Ortega, whose younger daughter, as everyone will remember, was recently married to Don Luis Hernándéz y Perez, whose brother, Don Francisco Hernándéz y Perez is the manager of the sewage works, fell to the ground crying, "They have killed me!" (Anyone who is shot in a Spanish newspaper nearly always falls to the ground crying, "They have killed me," just for luck; but this one was right, they had killed him.) The other guardia, Baldomero Gil, who is the nephew of Ramon Jalan, who won the first prize at the recent horticultural exhibition with his three-kilo banana, advanced courageously towards a pile of stones which were a little way behind him, from which he continued to exchange shots with the fugitives, emptying his magazine twice, but apparently without hitting any of them.
At the same time, a pareja of guardias civiles, Jose Benitez and Guillermo Diaz, having heard the shooting, were on their way to headquarters to report the occurrence when they also chanced to encounter the criminals, who were driving off. They also fired many shots, apparently without effect; but at an answering volley from the gangsters, Benitez fell to the ground, endeavouring to uphold the reputation of his unit for lightning diagnosis by crying as he fell, "They have wounded me!" He had indeed got a bullet through his ear, and the paper took pains to point out that only a miracle could have saved his life, because the bullet had clearly been travelling in the direction of his head.
Unfortunately a miracle hadn't saved his life; because in the stop press it was revealed that he had subsequently died in the small hours of the morning, leaving Arturo Solona unquestionably supreme in the field of prophecy, after which the doctors had discovered that he had another bullet in his stomach which nobody had noticed until then. The bandits meanwhile had been swallowed up by the night, and the police were still searching for them.
"You understand Spanish, Mr Tombs?"
Graner's thin voice broke into the Saint's thoughts; and Simon looked up from the paper and saw that Graner's eyes were fixed on him.
"I learnt about six words on the boat coming down here," he said casually. "But I can't make head or tail of this. I suppose I'll have to learn a bit if I'm going to stay here."
"That will not be necessary --"
Graner might have been going to say more, but the shrill call of the telephone bell interrupted him. He got up, folded his napkin neatly and went out into the hall. Simon could hear him speaking outside.
"Yes. . . . No? . . . You have made enquiries?" There was a longish pause. "I see. Well, you had better come back here." A briefer pause; then a curt, "All right."
The instrument rattled back on its hook, and Graner returned. The Saint saw Lauber look up at him curiously, and tried ineffectually to interpret the glance. There was nothing in what he had overheard, not even a change in the inflection of Graner's voice, that might have given him a clue; and he tried in vain to fathom the subtle tenseness which he seemed to feel in Lauber's questioning silence.
Graner himself said nothing, and his yellow face was as uncommunicative as a mummy's. He sat down again in his place and caressed the lace tablecloth mechanically with his thin fingers, gazing straight ahead of him without a trace of expression in his beady eyes.