“If they could find it.”
“I suppose,” she said, “you’re looking for a motive.”
“There must be one. And I’ve got to find it.”
She watched him subdividing the last succulent pieces of lobster with loving regret.
“When did you locate your brother again?” be asked.
“Only a few months ago. The Norths had tried from time to time, without any luck. Last winter, I thought I’d try just once more, on my own. I had an advertisement translated into French, and sent it to all the Paris newspapers. Of course, for all I knew, he might have been anywhere else in France, if he was alive at all. But just by a miracle, he saw it. We exchanged letters and snapshots. He’d thought I was probably dead, too. And then, when I won that prize on the radio, it seemed as if everything was set for a real Hollywood ending.”
“I can see why that story would get a play in the papers,” said the Saint thoughtfully. “And the correspondents of the French news agencies would naturally pick it up and send it back here.”
“They did. Charles’s last letter said he was quite embarrassed about the publicity he was getting.”
“So after that, anyone with any interest in the Rosepierre family, whether they read advertisements or not, would know a good deal about both of you.”
“I suppose so.”
Simon shamelessly used a piece of bread to mop up the last delectable traces of the ambrosial sauce.
“Are you reasonably sure that this Charles Rosepierre was your brother?”
Valerie stared at him.
“He must have been!.. I mean, he seemed to remember the same things that I did. And people here knew him by that name, didn’t they? And there’s quite a resemblance — look!”
She took out her wallet and extracted a photograph which she passed to him. It showed a dark, rather delicate-featured young man with an engaging smile. Simon dispassionately compared it, detail by detail, with the face of the girl opposite him.
“There’s a great likeness,” he conceded finally. “It’s probably true. I was only groping in the dark.”
“Here’s another thing.” She was fumbling in her purse again, and she came out with a small round piece of silver like a coin. “My father gave it to me just before he sent us away. It’s one of those things that stand out in this disjointed kind of childhood memory. He gave both Charles and me one. And Charles mentioned it in his first letter answering my advertisement. He said he still had his, and he wondered if I still had mine.”
“That’s pretty convincing.”
Simon took the piece of silver and looked at it, and a slight frown of puzzlement began to wrinkle his forehead.
“But if he was Jewish,” he said, “why a Saint Christopher medal?”
She shrugged.
“Maybe he’d been converted. Or maybe he hoped it would bluff the Gestapo, if they caught us.”
“Or maybe,” said the Saint, in a faraway voice, “it was just the handiest thing he had in the shop.”
She gazed at him blankly, while he examined the medal more closely and turned it over, half hoping to find some inscription on the back. But on the back was only a little quarter-inch indented square, much like a hallmark, except that the indentation was filled only with what looked like a cuneiform pattern of microscopic scratches which conveyed nothing to the keenest naked eye, if they had any significance at all.
And yet, for the first time, the darkness in which he had been groping did not seem so dark. There were vital pieces missing in the jigsaw which he was trying to put together, but at last he was beginning to perceive the outlines into which they would have to fit.
He was very silent while they finished the meal and the wine, so that by the time he called for the check the girl was fidgeting with understandable impatience.
“May I keep this just for a few hours?” he said at last, and dropped the medallion into his pocket without waiting for her permission.
“Have you thought of anything?” she asked.
He stood up.
“A lot of things. I’m not tantalizing you just to be mysterious, but they’ll take the rest of the afternoon to check on, and I don’t want to raise any false excitement until I’ve got facts to go on.”
He walked with her to the Boulevard Raspail, the nearest thoroughfare where they would be likely to find taxis, and only his quiet air of being so absolutely certain of what he was doing somehow forced her to control her exasperation.
“I’m telling the driver to take you to the Place Vendôme,” he said, as he opened the door of the first cab. “You’ll find dozens of fascinating shops in all directions from there, which will keep you amused until your feet hurt. At five o’clock, wherever you are, grab another taxi and tell him to take you to a restaurant called Carrere, in the Rue Pierre Charron. Will you repeat that?” She did so. “I’ll meet you there at the bar. Until then, you must not on any account go back to the Georges Cinq.”
“But why not?”
“Because as long as you’re wandering around the town, the killer isn’t likely to bump into you. At the hotel, he knows where to find you. And I like your head where it is. I don’t want it cut off.”
Her eyes grew big and round.
“You don’t think it could happen to me?”
“I’ll answer that when I know why it happened to your brother. Meanwhile, don’t take any chances.”
“But remember, I promised to meet that Mr Olivant at five-thirty.”
“I want to be around when you do it. That’s what I’m talking about.”
Her breath broke in a gasp of incredulity.
“You mean you suspect him?”
“Darling,” said the Saint, “this isn’t one of those storybook mysteries, with half a dozen convenient suspects. I’ve known ever since friend Olivant showed up that he had to be a good bet. The only problem still is to find the motive and prove it on him.”
He closed the door gently after her, and turned towards the next cab.
5
On a narrow street near the Odeon he found, unchanged as if the German occupation had only ended yesterday, a little stationery and book shop which in those days would have earned a spot promotion for any Gestapo officer who had uncovered its secrets. Simon Templar went in and stood browsing over the titles on the shelves, while the jangling of the vociferous little bell hung on the door he had opened died away into silence. He heard a shuffle of footsteps at the back of the shop, and a voice that he recognized said courteously, “Bonjour, m’sieu.”
Without turning, the Saint said, in French, “Do you have, by chance, a copy of the poems of François Villon?”
There was an instant’s pause, and the dry voice said mechanically, “I regret, but today there is so little demand for those old books.”
“ ‘But where are the snows of yesteryear?’ ” Simon quoted sorrowfully.
Suddenly his elbow was seized in a wiry grip, and he was spun around to face the proprietor’s sparkling eyes.
“Mon cher Saint!”
“Mon cher Antoine!”
They fell into an embrace.
“It is so many years, my dear friend, since I have heard that password!”
“But you remembered.”
“Who of us will ever forget?”
They held each other off at arm’s length, and the years fell away between them. And as Simon laughed in the face of Antoine Louvois it was heart-warming for him to remember that this frail-looking gray man had been the redoubtable Colonel Eglantine of the maquis, whose exploits had perforated the intestinal tracts of Himmler’s minions with even more ulcers than bullets, and he thought again that only a French hero would have had the sense of humor to hide his identity behind the name of a delicate flower. Those days, when the Saint’s commission from Washington had been as tenuously legal as anything in his career, seemed very far away now, but it was good to still have such a friend.