"She said you had had a fight with Palermo."
"That's right," said the Saint coolly. "I beat the hell out of him too. Come upstairs and I'll show you."
He turned and started up the stairs so confidently that he heard the other two following him without protest.
Mr Palermo still slept. The Saint turned him over and raised him by his collar to examine him. Palermo's head lolled back limply. The new bruise on his chin was coming along nicely. He moaned in his sleep as though he might be wondering whether it was time to wake up. Simon let him flop down so that the back of his head cracked heavily on the tiles, and hoped that that would discourage the idea for a while.
Graner and Lauber kept their guns in their hands while they studied Palermo in his slumber. Graner was the first to turn back to the Saint.
"What is this about?" he demanded in his aloof sneering way.
"I told the girl to give you a message."
"She rang up for Aliston and gave the message for him."
"For sheer half-wittedness give me a spick any day. I told her to tell you that Aliston was in it, in case you knew where he was!"
"Was this in Spanish?"
Simon shook his head and inwardly promised himself a kick in the pants at the first convenient opportunity. That made two bricks he had nearly dropped on the same dynamite; although there are few deceptions so difficult as to pretend ignorance of a familiar language.
"Maybe that was the trouble," he said. "But she said she understood. How much else did she get wrong?"
"She said you had finished with Palermo and you were going to take away the two men who were here."
Simon nodded.
"That's almost right, although I said I wanted you to take them away."
"What was she talking about?"
"Vanlinden and his pal."
"They were here?"
"Sure. This is where Aliston and Palermo brought them after they grabbed them in the hotel this morning!"
It was as if invisible nooses had been looped around the necks of his audience and suddenly tightened. Their eyes seemed to swell in their sockets, and their mouths opened as if their lungs had been unexpectedly deprived of air. Lauber's heavy, sullen features darkened, and Graner's brows drew together in an incredulous frown. Simon could see the shock he had sprung on them thump into the pits of their stomachs like a physical blow, so violent that it even robbed them of the ability to gasp.
Again Graner was the quicker to recover-although Simon reflected that this might have been partly accounted for by the fact that the announcement must have given Lauber a few extra things to think over on his own.
"How did you know?"
"Christine told me first," said the Saint. "Then Palermo and Aliston admitted it. I thought there was something fishy about their story that Joris and the other guy had cleared off on their own, when we knew they'd left Christine behind; but I didn't like to say so at the time."
"How did Christine know where they were?"
"She didn't. Aliston and Palermo brought me here."
"Why?"
The Saint rested himself sidesaddle on the edge of the table. He knew that he had his audience on a string now-whatever they might be thinking, they would drink in every word he had to say on the subject, even if they formed their own conclusions afterwards-and he saw no reason why he shouldn't make the most of his limelight while Hoppy and Joris removed themselves as far as possible from the vicinity.
"I'd better begin at the beginning," he said. "In the first place, I talked to Christine as soon as she awakened-told her the tale exactly as we arranged. She fell for it-well, like I fell down those blasted stairs. Bang! I made her believe I was serious about the proposition I was working up to when I put her to sleep, and we closed the deal on it. She told me plenty."
He paused to light a cigarette, while the other two waited impatiently. Their guns had drooped down until they were pointing at the floor, as if the two men had almost forgotten that they were still holding them.
"As far as this Joris business is concerned," he went on, "Christine told me she had a room on the floor below. She was just coming out of the bathroom when she heard Aliston's voice, and she ducked back in. She didn't dare to come out for about an hour. She stood there with the door open a crack, scared stiff and wondering what was going to happen. There were some heavy trunks brought downstairs while she was there-we can guess what they had in them. Then Palermo and Aliston came down - she could hear them talking. They went on after the trunks, and as soon as she could pull herself together she rushed up to Joris' room. He'd gone, and so had the other bloke. Once again, we can guess why and where and how. But she couldn't. She almost had a fit. Then she heard someone coming up the stairs, and she was afraid it might be Palermo or Aliston coming back. She just rushed into the nearest room, which happened to be mine. I gather that she had some sort of idea that she'd fall into the arms of anyone who was there and make him look after her. Since there wasn't anyone, she just stayed, having hysterics on and off. She didn't dare to go back to her own room, because she thought Palermo and Aliston would still be looking for her; in fact, she didn't dare to move at all. So that's how we found her."
It was a lovely story to reel off on the spur of the moment, thought the Saint, and wondered if he had really mistaken his vocation in life. One way and another, the complications of that fantastic game of beggar-my-neighbour in which he had got himself tied up were developing him into a master of the art of applied fiction beside whom Ananias would have looked like a barker outside a flea circus.
"But why did Palermo and Aliston bring you here?" Graner prompted him tensely.
"I'm getting to that. First of all, I shifted Christine. After what she told me, I guessed Palermo and Aliston might be beetling along as soon as they could after they heard your news, in case I found out they were double-crossing you. I moved her out of the hotel --"
"I told Manoel to follow you if you went out."
"I know that," said the Saint blandly. "I saw him standing on the other side of the square after you'd gone. He was frightfully decorative. But I'd already told you my terms of business, and I wasn't changing them. I took her out the back way."
"Aliston and Palermo were going to watch that."
"They were watching it-when I came back. That's how they caught me. They stuck a gun in my ribs and lugged me along here. They told me they were double-crossing you, and offered me a third share if I'd come in with them and throw Christine in the kitty."
Graner looked down at Palermo again for a moment, and in the pause that followed the Saint could hear Lauber's stertorous breathing.
"What did you tell them?" asked Graner.
"I told them what they could do with their third share," answered the Saint righteously. "Then they decided to make me tell them where Christine was with a hot spoon-or Palermo did. Aliston didn't seem to have a strong stomach, so he pushed off."
Simon turned his head and pointed to the blister on his cheek, and then down at the spoon which Palermo had dropped. Graner stepped forward and moved it with his foot. The scrap of carpet on which it had fallen was charred black.
The Saint could see those pieces of circumstantial evidence registering themselves on Graner's face.
"You didn't tell him?"
"He didn't get far enough with the treatment. He'd forgotten to have my feet tied, and I managed to kick him about a bit." Simon moved his cigarette significantly to indicate the evidence for the accuracy of that statement. "Then I promised the girl-she was here all the time, by the way, so 1 take it this is where Palermo keeps her-I promised her some money if she'd cut me loose, so she did. Then I sent her off to phone you, and looked around for Joris."
"He's here?"
The Saint moved his head slowly from left to right and back again.
"He was."