"Okay."
Simon replaced the telephone with a slight shrug. He was not much further on than he had been before. If Graner's share in the dialogue could be taken on trust, neither Lauber nor the chauffeur had yet been in touch with him. If any reliance could be placed on his tone of voice, Graner's suspicions were still at rest. It was flimsy enough material on which to build vital decisions, but it was all there was. And even if it was tentatively accepted as sound, it still left Lauber's next move to be prophesied.
Mechanically the Saint took out his cigarette case for the indispensable auxiliary to thought. The case was empty.
"Damn," he said, and got up off the bed. "Have you got a cigarette, Hoppy?"
"I got a zepp," said Mr Uniatz generously.
Simon looked at the cigar and shook his head tactfully.
"I'll go out and buy some," he said, and remembered something else he could do at the same time.
"Maybe we could get a drink de same place," assented Mr Uniatz, brightening.
A firm veto to that sociable idea was on the tip of the Saint's tongue when another angle on it crossed his mind. He peeped through the communicating door again. Joris was still sleeping the relaxed and utterly forgetful sleep of a child.
Simon closed the door silently.
"You can get a drink," he said. "But we can't be seen drinking together. Give me a couple of minutes, and go out on your own. You'd better go to the German Bar-it's just over the other side of the square, where you see the awning. I'll come in there myself in-let's see-in an hour and a half at the very outside. If I don't pay any attention to you, don't come and talk with me. And if I haven't shown up by half past six, come back here and hold the fort. Have you got that, or shall I say it again?"
"I got it, boss," said Mr Uniatz intelligently. "But do I bop de nex' guy who comes in or don't I?"
"I suppose you bop him," said the Saint fatalistically.
On his way down the stairs he became more convinced of the soundness of his plan. Soon enough, whatever else developed out of the situation, some one or other would be investigating the report that Joris was back at the hotel; and anything that would confuse them and add to their difficulties would be an advantage on the side of righteousness and Saintly living. It was rather like using Hoppy for live bait, but at the same time it probably made very little actual addition to the danger he was already in.
The wavy-haired boy looked up with a pleased and optimistic smile as Simon approached the desk. He was beginning to regard those approaches as a continually recurring miracle.
Simon glanced around him before he spoke, but there was nobody in the lounge.
"You remember the old man who came in with my friend a little while ago?"
"Sí, seńor."
"Has anyone been enquiring for him?"
"No, seńor. Nadie me ha preguntado."
"Good. Now listen. In a few minutes my friend will go out again-alone. But if anyone inquires for the old man, you will say that he went out with him. If they want to know what room he was in, you will give them the number of one of your empty rooms on the second floor. But you will be quite definite that he has left the hotel. You will also say that I have not been back here. Is that understood?"
"Sí, seńor," said the boy expectantly.
He was not disappointed. Another hundred-peseta note unfurled itself under his eyes. If this went on for a few more days, he thought, he would be able to give up his job as conserje and purchase the banana plantation which, is every good Canary Islander's dream of independence and prosperity.
"And if you go off duty, see that the night man has the same orders," were the Saint's parting instructions.
He was on his way out when the boy remembered something and ran after him.
"Ha llegado una carta para usted."
Simon took the letter and examined it with a puzzled frown-he could think of no one in England who knew where he was just then. And then the postmarks gave him the explanation. It was a letter which had been addressed to him by air mail when he was in Tenerife on his last brief visit a little more than two months previously, which the unfathomable bowels of the Spanish postal system had finally decided to disgorge, having triumphantly demonstrated their ability to rise supreme over the efforts of Progress to speed up communications.
"Thank you," said the Saint, when he had recovered a little from his emotion. "There was a parcel sent to me about the same time; but that was by ordinary mail. It should be getting here any week now. Will you look out for it?"
He stuffed the letter into his pocket as he crossed the square, and made for Camacho's tourist office. The tourist trade not being what it was, the agency drummed up extra business with cigarettes and magazines.
"Holá, Jorge," he murmured, as he strolled in; and the round face of the fat Portuguese assistant opened in a broad beam as he recognised the Saint.
"ĄHolá, senhor! żcomo 'sta 'ste? ż'Te ha vuelt' a Tenerif?"
"Yes, George, I came back. And now I want to go away again. Give me some cigarettes and then tell me what boats you've got."
"ż'Te quiere march' se ahora?" said George incredulously. "Ą'Te tiene que lev' much' mas tiemp' aquí!"
The Saint shook his head with a smile.
"I've already been here too long," he said.
George handed him a packet of cigarettes and pored for a while over the collection of shipping folders.With the vista of innumerable mańanas looming in his mind, he announced presently, in his execrable mixture of Spanish and Portuguese: "Hay un bare' que sal' de aquí el dío quins --"
"What, the fifteenth? Of next month? I tell you I want something at once."
"ż 'Te quiere salir ahora mismo?"
''The sooner the better."
"Hay un bare' que sal' pasao mańan'"
"What about tonight?"
"ĄAy-ay-ay! Ą'Te ten demasiao pris'!"
George turned back to his sailing lists with a deep sigh; and while he was at it the Saint picked up a copy of the Tarde which was lying on the counter.
Apart from its own outbursts of indignation at the advent of gangsterismo in Tenerife, and amplifications of the original episode by means of interviews with every inhabitant of the town who had been within two miles of the shooting, the newspaper told of further developments which had been too late for the morning editions. It seemed that in the small hours of the morning, on the strength of the alarm which had gone round, a sentry on duty at the gasworks had started shooting at something, for no reason which anybody could discover. All the guards had turned out to join the party, all letting off their guns as fast as they could pull the trigger; it was not known what damage had been done to the nameless menace that they were shooting at, but they had successfully riddled a taxi which was passing in a neighbouring street, killing the driver and wounding the two passengers, who were returning from a merry evening at some cabaret. The only other known casualty consisted of half of another brace of guardias who were hurrying towards the sounds of firing: it appeared that he had been so impatient to get into action that he hadn't waited to draw his gun from its holster before he started shooting, with the result that he had shot himself neatly through the bottom.
Properly alarmed by these deplorable breaches of the peace, the civil governor had issued a ringing manifesto in the same edition, in which he proclaimed his firm intention of stamping out the aforesaid gangsterismo. With this object, he declared a state of emergency, and ordained (1) that all cafés, bars, cabarets, cinemas and other places of amusement should be closed by midnight until further notice; (2) that all private citizens must be in their homes by 12.30 A.M., and that anybody who was out after that hour would be liable to be shot without warning; (3) that in any case he would not be responsible for the lives of any persons who were out in the streets after dark; (4) that owing to the peril of their work the police would not be allowed to patrol in parejas, as heretofore, but would go out in squads of six; and (5) that it would be a criminal offence for any driver to let his car backfire.