“Don’t ask me how I know these back ways,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you without incriminating myself. As far as you’re concerned, it’s good enough to fool anyone who’s naturally expecting you to use the hotel lobby.”
He found a chambermaid to open the door for them with a pass key. Inside, Valerie fetched up short with an exclamation, so abruptly that he trod on her heels.
The room was a shambles. Her two suitcases were open, the contents strewn all over the bed, the other furniture, and the floor. But he was not seriously surprised.
“Did you try to unpack in a hurry when you ran up before lunch?” he inquired calmly.
“Of course not! Who would unpack like this? There’s been a burglar here!”
She ran aimlessly about, rummaging among her disordered effects.
“Don’t get excited,” he murmured. “I don’t think there’s any harm done that a little ironing won’t fix. If you’d been here yourself, it might have been very different.”
“I haven’t got much jewelry,” she protested, “but—”
“I expect it’s all there,” he said. “The one valuable piece was safe all the time.”
He held out the Saint Christopher medal.
She took it, and stared at him.
“You’ve got to talk now,” she said. “If you don’t, I’ll go crazy — or do something I may be sorry for.”
“I’m ready now,” he said. “Turn that medal over.”
“Yes.”
“You see that little square impression in the back?”
“Yes.”
“I put it under a microscope this afternoon. There’s fine engraving in it. Here’s a copy that you can read.”
He gave her the scrap of paper on which he had written down the inscription and its translation. While she looked at it, he cleared a space on the bed, and sat down and lighted a cigarette. He felt very placid now.
She read:
I, Eli Rosepierre, bequeath to the bearer, of whom this shall be sufficient identification, one half of the $50,000 which I have on deposit at the Chase National Bank, New York.
“You see,” he said, “you’re moderately rich. Your father was lucky enough to have some assets that the krauts couldn’t reach.”
Her face was a study.
“Then Charles’s medal—”
“Must have been a duplicate of that one, leaving him the other half.”
She sank unsteadily into the nearest chair, ignoring the clothes which she crushed underneath her.
Simon laughed, and got up again to give her a cigarette.
After a full minute, she said, “Where is the other medal now?”
“I expect your brother’s murderer has it. But he hasn’t had time to do anything with it. Besides, he won’t be satisfied until he has both of them.”
“Why hasn’t he done anything until now?”
“Because he couldn’t. Your father confided at least part of his secret to a friend whom he trusted, named Georges Orival. But Orival turned collaborationist, and after the war he was tried and imprisoned. He only recently got out, and he hasn’t wasted much time. He introduced himself to you as Georges Olivant.”
“Olivant!”
“Apart from his obvious phoniness,” said the Saint, “I know I had something when I shook hands with him. He looks like one of the idle rich, but he has corns on his hands like a laborer. He didn’t get them from pottering about in his garden. He’s been doing several years at hard labor.”
The girl’s hand shook a little as she drew at the cigarette.
“And he’s waiting for me downstairs!”
“I’m sure it would take a lot to keep him away.”
“We must tell the police!”
“Not yet. We still haven’t got enough evidence for a murder charge against him. And we still want that other medal. So we’re going to meet him just as if you didn’t expect a thing.”
“I couldn’t!”
Simon Templar gazed down at her with level blue eyes in which the steel was barely discernible.
“You must, Valerie. And you must go along with anything I say, no matter how absurd it sounds. You said you’d let me help you. I haven’t done badly so far, have I? You’ve got to let me finish the job.”
7
M Georges Olivant folded the evening paper he had been reading and tucked it into his pocket.
“Eet say ’ere,” he said, “ze police ’ave learn nozzing new about ze tragedy of your brozzer. But do not fear. Zey are very pairseestent. Soon, I am sure, zey will ’ave ze clue.”
“They know more than they’re saying for publication,” Simon remarked. “They told me so.”
He wanted to draw Olivant’s attention to himself, not only to turn it away from Valerie North’s pale stillness.
“So, you ’ave talk wiz zem?”
“And I’ve got a few leads of my own.”
“I ’ave read American stories,” Olivant said, “where ze reporter is always a better detective zan ze police. You are per’aps one of zose?”
“Sometimes I try to be. Anyway, at least the motive for the murder is known.”
“Eet is?”
Simon took a leisured taste of his cocktail.
“Miss North’s father — and the father of Charles Rosepierre — had a nice piece of change stashed away in a New York bank. He made a will leaving it equally between them. A rather unique kind of will. It was engraved in microscopic letters on the backs of two Saint Christopher medals, one of which he gave to each of the children. Miss North’s medal has already been deciphered. Here’s a copy of the inscription.”
He gave Olivant the scrap of paper, and tasted his drink again while the man read it.
The girl’s knee touched his, inadvertently, under the crowded table, and he felt it tremble. He tried to quiet her with a comforting pressure of his own.
He had to admit that Olivant was good. The man’s face did not change color, and the dilation of his eyes could be explained on perfectly legitimate grounds.
“Eet is amazing!” Olivant ejaculated. “Eet must be, as you say, unique... So, of course, poor Charles was killed to steal ’is copy!”
“You’d make a good detective yourself.”
“But eet still does not say by ’oo!”
“I’ve got ideas of my own on that score.”
Olivant’s eyebrows rose in arches towards his well-oiled hair.
“What ees zat?”
“I’ve been talking to a fellow I met who used to be a big shot in the underground. We’ve got a hunch that there’s some connection with somebody that Rosepierre trusted, who went wrong and went the Nazi way — who may even have betrayed Rosepierre to the Gestapo. But if they tortured him, he must have died before he’d write them a check on that New York bank!”
For the first time Simon saw the crawl of fear beneath Olivant’s sleek surface. It was no more than an infinitesimal twitch, instantly smothered, but it was all that he needed.
“Eet is too ’orrible to sink about,” Olivant said. He turned to the girl. “Your fahzer was such a wonderful man. Everyone love ’im.”
“You can’t think of anyone who might have turned on him?” she managed to ask.
“I could not think of anyone ’oo would be so bad!”
“My Resistance friend thinks he can,” said the Saint. “Anyway, he’s making inquiries.”
Olivant picked up his glass and drained it, and wiped his mouth.
“I ’ope wiz all my ’eart zat ’e succeed,” he said. “But we make Miss North upset again wiz zis talk. I see it. Instead to remind ’er of ’er poor fahzer and ’er poor brozzer, we should try to make ’er forget a leetle... Now, I ’ave ze idea. I ’ave my car. Tonight it would be nice to drive out to St Cloud, to my ’ouse, where we ’ave a nice dinner, and per’aps ’elp ourselves to feel better.”