It was an inspiring statement, which should have made the heart of any Tinerfeńo swell with pride in contemplation of the resolute and capable hands to which he had entrusted his government. To Simon Templar, an intruder from the outer darkness of the civilised world, its train of thought seemed somewhat obscure; but he could form some idea of its consequences and implications. The friendly little thieves' picnic into which he had introduced himself was clearly developing a satellite public picnic of its own. For the time being their orbits were parallel; but at any moment they might start to converge, and when that happened the fun was likely to become a trifle breathless. It was just another factor that made a rapid ending seem even more important; and the Saint considered it seriously for several minutes.
"Hay un barc' que sal' esta noch' a las diez," George informed him at last, in a rather awed voice, as if the idea of a ship leaving as early as ten o'clock that night made him feel nervous; and the Saint regarded him admiringly.
"You ought to go to America, George," he said. "You've got too much natural hustle for this place. . . . Fix me two single cabins on that boat, and two more on the boat the day after tomorrow."
He wrote down the names-the two passages for that night for Joris and Christine Vanlinden, and the two on Monday to be left open-and waited while George telephoned the agents of the line and made the arrangements.
It took some time to overcome the native prejudice against such speedy action, and even longer to get the action really acting. The tickets themselves had to be sent down from the shipping offices while George was making out bills and receipts. Simon paid in cash, which involved further delays. The fares didn't total to an even number of hundreds of pesetas, Simon was short of small change, and finding change for a hundred pesetas in Tenerife is rather more difficult than looking for brown-shirted Jews in Munich, for anybody who collects as much as twenty pesetas rushes off very quickly to put it in the bank before it melts. All the neighbouring shops had to be pressed into the search; and by the time everything had been settled and Simon had the tickets in his pocket nearly an hour had gone.
It meant that he was long overdue to return to the house where he had left Lauber, if he intended to obey Graner's instructions; but that could be covered by some story of having followed the man he was supposed to be watching. The same excuse might serve to explain his absence if Graner had tried to telephone him meanwhile at the number he had given. For some reason it never occurred to the Saint not to go back to Maria's apartment-he had decided that that was a risk that must be taken if he was going to try and learn something about what Lauber had done. There was also the possibility that Aliston might have left Christine somewhere else and gone back there before Lauber left.
With these reasonings going through his mind, but without any conscious volition, the Saint found himself threading his way through the streets which he had seen only twice before, and then without studying the route very closely. There were some minutes when he was afraid he had lost himself, for the brief tropical twilight was darkening as if curtains were being drawn in quick succession over the sky, and with the change of light the dingy alleys were softening like the faces of old women by the fireside at dusk. But presently, almost to his surprise, he found himself at the right door.
There was a little more life in the street now--a few straggling pedestrians, a few faces peering eerily put of open ground-floor windows in the age-old Spanish pastime of watching life go by, a few upper windows lighted up. But the window of Maria's apartment was not lighted, and Simon saw nobody loafing near the door as he reached it.
He pushed the door experimentally, and found it unlocked. The gloomy hall was almost in complete darkness now, and the Saint took a slim pencil flashlight from his pocket to find his way to the stairs. He moved upwards with the supple noiselessness of a cat, and switched his torch off again as he reached the upper landing.
For some time he stood motionless outside the door of the apartment, as if every nerve in his body was enlisted in the one intense concentration of listening for the slightest sound of movement inside the room which might have given him warning of a trap. He believed that he would have caught even the rustle of a sleeve if a man waiting inside had cautiously moved a cramped arm; but the utter stillness remained unbroken until he felt that he had given it a fair trial. Any further investigations would have to be made by opening the door.
Simon's hand moved instinctively to his pocket before he remembered that he had no gun, and his lips tightened with a momentary mocking grimness. So he would have to do without that asset. . . . He slid his knife out of its sheath and held it by the tip of the blade in his right hand, ready for use. His left hand turned the doorknob, slowly and without a rattle. As soon as he felt the latch clear of its socket, he flung the door wide open.
Nothing happened. Nothing moved in the grey gloom of the room. There was no sound after the door banged wide against the wall.
On the floor between him and the table he saw a shape that looked like a man but that didn't move or speak. The attitude in which it lay offered no promise of speech or movement. Simon went into the room and flashed his torch on its face. It was Manoel, the chauffeur; and there was no doubt that he was extremely dead.
3 The bullet had made a neat round hole where it had entered near the middle of his forehead, but the back of his head was not so neat. Simon touched the man's face: it still held some warmth, and his flashlight showed that the blood on the floor was still wet.
Before he did anything else he went through and searched the bedroom, but there was no one there.
He came back and turned on the lights in the living room. With their help, he made another search that covered every inch of the room, but he found nothing to indicate who had been there. The table was exactly as he had left it, with the remains of food congealing on the plates. The overturned chair that he had been tied in was still overturned. The accumulation of cigarette ends in the ash trays and on the floor yielded nothing, although Simon picked up every one of them separately and examined it. He recognised his own brand, and another equally common-that was all. If there had been a third, it might have been useful; but Palermo had smoked only his cigar, and he did not know what Lauber and Aliston used. There was hardly any doubt that one or the other of them had fired the shot which had ensured that the chauffeur would chauffe no more: Simon had his own firm conviction about which of them it was, but he would have been glad to remove the faint element of uncertainty.
There was no means of doing that except by fingerprints, and he had no apparatus for that. But he remembered that his own prints would be among those present, and he went back to the bedroom for one of the gag cloths and carefully wiped everything that he had touched, including the whiskey bottle and the glass from which he had given Joris a drink, and everything that Hoppy might have touched in the kitchenette during his quest for liquor. The other things he left as they were. If the detective force of Santa Cruz had ever heard of fingerprints they could have a jolly time playing with them, and Graner's gang could do its own worrying.
It wasn't so quiet now. . . .
Simon became aware of the fact almost subconsciously; and then suddenly he was wide awake. He stopped motionless for a second, without breathing, while he sought for an exact definition of the sound which had crept warningly into his brain while he was thinking about other things. In another instant he knew what it was.
Something was happening in the street outside. The symptoms of it, as they reached him through the closed windows, were almost imperceptible; and yet the sixth sense of the outlaw had distinguished them with unerring instinct. As his memory reached back he realised that a car had stopped outside with its engine running, but the other mutters went on-a faint increase in the volume of sound outside, a subtle alteration in the pitch and tempo of the normal noises of the street. Nothing that an ordinary man might have noticed before it was too late, but as unmistakable to the Saint as if the alarm had been sounded with bugles.