“A travel agent?” Simon asked with unhappy surprise. “She is leaving, then?”
“She is leaving the hotel this afternoon, senhor. She wishes to fly to Switzerland. If you wished to begin a friendship with her, senhor, I am afraid you have not had enough time.”
“Perhaps I shall have to follow her to Switzerland,” Simon said jokingly. “You don’t know which flight she’s taking?”
The clerk shook his head and glanced at another customer who was waiting his turn.
“I am sorry I cannot tell you more. Perhaps at the agency just around the corner...”
“Fine.” The Saint hesitated before leaving. “The sightseeing she mentioned — do you know...”
“She wanted to know how she could see the most places in a short time, and I suggested to her the bus which makes a tour of the city in three hours.” The clerk glanced at his wristwatch. “It stops in front of the hotel here to take on passengers at eleven.”
“Is it one of those tours that herds the sheep from church to church and gallery to gallery and allows them fifteen seconds to gawk at each masterpiece?”
The clerk smiled deferentially.
“I am afraid so, senhor.”
“I think Miss Kinian will be very occupied, then, and well taken care of without any help from me,” Simon reflected aloud. “Maybe I shall have better luck later.”
He had just thanked his informant and turned from the reception counter when the clerk called him back from the switchboard with which he also had to divide his attention.
“Senhor! Please, a call for you. Would you like to take it in your room or here?”
“In my room, I think. Have them hold the line for just a minute.”
As Simon climbed the stairs he considered the relative advantages and disadvantages of joining Vicky Kinian on her sightseeing tour. It seemed probable that she was motivated by a real desire to see some of the sights of Lisbon before leaving. With only a few hours left before she flew to Switzerland, she would want to fill in the time as touristically as she could. After all, she might be zeroing in on a fortune, but while she was in the process she was just a thrifty Iowa girl bedazzled by her first glimpse of Europe. If she expected to pocket her bonanza in Lisbon, she wasn’t likely to choose to do it in the company of forty other rubbernecks.
The Saint unlocked the door to his room, locked it again behind him, and picked up his telephone.
“Hello, Mother,” he said brightly.
“It’s Wade again,” replied a disconcerted, low-pitched voice.
“Just thought I’d fool any wiretappers, but now you’ve given the game away. What’s up?”
“The girl, she’s made reservations to—”
“Fly to Switzerland?” Simon suggested.
“How did you know?”
“A pal of mine decided to sing for his vinho. But I didn’t get the hour of departure.”
“She’s leaving on the Air Europe flight at four-thirty, for Geneva. I just got a call from our contact at one of the travel agencies. She seems to be travelling with that man you mentioned — Curt Jaeger. He bought a ticket on the same flight. Know anything more about him?”
“I’m afraid not,” Simon answered. “I’m counting on your organization for that. In the meantime, our gal is booked on a sightseeing bus tour which leaves here at eleven. Do you think your watchdog on the spot could trail along? She’s liable to drop the whole idea if I show up and try to hold her hand, but I’d like to feel that somebody was protecting her.”
“Affirmative,” said the colonel efficiently. “Will do. What’s your next move?”
“I’ll try to catch a plane earlier in the day and pick up my gorgeous little prey and her friend again at the Geneva airport. Ill give you a ring from there to be sure nothing catastrophic happened after I left.”
“Sounds like the best program,” Colonel Wade agreed. “If nothing else happens, I’ll hear from you from Switzerland. I’m afraid you’ll have to be on your own there until I can arrange...”
“I’d prefer it that way,” Simon said. “Don’t arrange anything. Just see that Vicky gets on her plane safely. I’ll take care of the rest at the other end of the line.”
3
The Saint landed at the Geneva airport at five-twenty in the afternoon — by which time Vicky Kinian would have taken off from Lisbon in another plane headed for the same destination. As soon as he had cleared Customs he found a telephone booth and rang up Colonel Wade back in Portugal.
“The girl left on schedule,” the intelligence officer told him over the crackling fine. “This Jaeger character was with her. From what my man could overhear on the sightseeing bus they’re just friends — and not very close ones at that. Jaeger’s a respectable businessman as far as we can find out up till now. Sales manager of some kind of Swiss watch export company, which explains why he’s going to Geneva.”
“But not why Vicky is,” said the Saint. “I’ll be waiting under the Welcome mat when they light here. You’ll be hearing from me.”
“Good luck, Saint!”
The first thing that impressed Simon when he emerged from finishing his business was the crisp freshness of the Swiss air as contrasted with the humid sea level atmosphere he had left behind. The second phenomenon that impressed him was a stout, bald, rather scholarly looking man whose facial topography was somewhat concealed between a Vandyke beard and a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles. He left the telephone booth which shared a common wall with the one Simon had used, and stayed in the same area of the lobby. When the Saint paused to glance over the magazines displayed at the newsstand, the white-bearded man took an interest in a display of chocolates a few feet away. When the Saint moved on to study the arrival-and-departure boards, the stout man concerned himself with the purchase of a newspaper.
Simon felt certain he had seen the man — without paying any particular attention to him — on the same plane he had taken from Lisbon. Why should he hang around the terminal building and, by chance or design, not let any great expanse of waxed rubber tile get between him and the Saint?
Simon deliberately walked off at a brisk pace towards the far end of the lobby. The other man did not follow, although it was possible that his eyes tracked Simon’s changing position from behind his thin-framed glasses. A short while later, as the building became more crowded with passengers and their friends, the bearded man turned, tucked his paper under his arm, and strode out of one of the doors towards the taxi stand as if whatever mysterious business he had had in the lobby had suddenly been consummated.
Simon relaxed more completely and tried to decide whether the episode had really been an episode or whether it had been no more than a suspicion in an alert and uncharitable mind. If Grandpa Trotsky did not reappear, well and good. If he ever materialized as an innocent lurker again, it would be time to consider countermeasures.
There was a U-Drive car rental kiosk in the lobby not far from where the Saint was standing when his bewhiskered friend left the scene. Simon went over to it and spoke to the gray-uniformed brunette behind the counter.
“Salutations, Lieutenant,” he said cheerily. “I wonder if you have anything in the motor pool that would suit me.”
The girl touched her pert forage cap self-consciously and gave him a smile that seemed to say, “If you’d like to see me in something more glamorous, just ask...” But as is usual with girls in real life, what she actually said was less exciting.