“Then you can be still smarter and go there prepared to begin following — and at once! What if Templar has already left the hotel? You may never pick him up again. And the girl...”
“Do not worry,” said Mischa. “I am on my way.”
“The thought that you are on your way is most unlikely to relieve my worry. Hurry, and report back when you have something worthwhile to tell me!”
The phone connection clicked abruptly dead, and Mischa turned sulkily from the kiosk and ambled with deliberate slowness out to the airport’s public parking area, then panicked at the thought of possible failure in his assignment and exceeded the speed limit all the way to the Hotel Portal. There, to his immense relief, he saw Simon Templar sitting by the curb in his rented Volkswagen reading a newspaper.
Smugness returned. Mischa parked his car at a safe distance behind the Saint’s and began his own share of what he correctly assumed to be the wait for Vicky Kinian.
It was almost half an hour later when she came out of the hotel and had the doorman call her a taxi. The Saint’s car spat smoke for an instant as its engine caught. Mischa turned the key in his own ignition. The procession set off along some of the less-travelled streets of Geneva, away from the central city.
Mischa, who knew the town well, speculated with each new turn about their ultimate destination. Even so, he was completely surprised when the rear lights of the Saint’s car flashed red as he approached the entrance gate of the International Cemetery. The cab carrying Vicky Kinian pulled over to the curb. The Volkswagen’s brake-lights went off and it whipped on past. For an instant Mischa was undecided, but his orders gave priority to following Simon Templar. As he zipped past the taxi, Vicky Kinian was getting out and walking towards a flower vendor beside the cemetery gate.
The Saint’s car moved on beyond the graveyard, made a U-turn, and stopped just out of sight of the entrance gate. Mischa’s car flew past, made a U-turn, and stopped just out of sight of the Volkswagen’s occupant.
The cemetery was set in a locale which permitted such automotive acrobatics to take place without much danger either of smashups or police intervention. The road was almost unused, and the countryside immediately around the graveyard’s perimeter was a preserve of rocky slopes and evergreens which might have been fifty miles into the Alps instead of on the outskirts of a bustling city.
The cemetery itself was an uncrowded community of quiet stone whose streets were deserted pebbled walks and whose houses were marble sepulchres. Scattered yew trees and ranks of solemn monuments cast long shadows across the grass in the red light of the sinking sun. Following on foot behind the Saint, Mischa could see Vicky Kinian walking uneasily among those shadows, a spray of white flowers clutched like a protective talisman in one of her hands.
She seemed unsure of her course, but after each hesitation she would start out with an air of fresh confidence, as if she had satisfied herself that she was heading in the right direction. It was easy for Mischa to saunter, hands clasped behind him, in the distant background, appearing to admire the herbaceous borders which lined the footpaths. It was obviously less easy for the Saint to make himself inconspicuous, since he, unlike Mischa, was known to the girl. He kept well away from her, using trees and the massive walls of mausoleums as cover for his apparently innocent movements.
Suddenly the girl stopped and then walked forward rapidly until she came to a very large monument set back in a semicircle of shrubs and trees. Mischa, from his faraway vantage point, could not make out the letters carved into the stone above Vicky Kinian’s head, but he could tell that the monument was no ordinary one. It was like a semicircular wall of granite ten feet high and twenty feet or so wide, topped by a great stone eagle with wide drooping wings. The concave front of the structure was faced with a bronze-framed glass door behind which there seemed to be several shelves.
Mischa could observe nothing more from where he had to wait his turn for a closer view. Vicky Kinian stood close against the glass door and studied whatever lay behind it for almost twenty minutes. Several times she looked around to make sure nobody was watching her, and she seemed to be having trouble making some sort of decision. Finally she hastily stooped and dropped her bouquet on to the semicircular stone step that formed a low platform in front of the monument. Then she turned and walked away through the cemetery at a much faster pace than she had used when she had come in.
The Saint did not follow her, so Mischa waited, now moving closer to the big monument, concealing himself behind a conventional tombstone more notable for lavishness of proportion than good taste. Simon Templar, once the girl was completely out of sight, went and stood in front of the glass-fronted memorial himself. In less than two minutes he turned away and strode back toward the cemetery’s gate.
Now Mischa could have his own turn at the Cimetière Internationale’s suddenly most popular landmark. He hurried up to the curved granite structure, gazed dolefully at the doleful face of the carved eagle, and read the lettering which the bird protected with outspread wings.
The words translated themselves automatically in Micha’s mind: Here rest the ashes of free Germans to whom fate denied a return to their Fatherland.
Behind the glass door, which was locked flush against the granite, were four shelves, each bearing a row of ten small metal caskets.
Mischa had no time for meditation on the meaning of it all. He turned again, and by walking fast managed to bring the Saint within his purview near the cemetery gate. There followed another tripartite procession back to the Hotel Portal, where Vicky Kinian and Simon Templar got out of their respective vehicles and went separately into the lobby. Mischa walked to the bar across the street from the Portal and telephoned his supervisor, his voice betraying unmitigated self-approbation.
“I have interesting news,” he said.
“Useful as well as interesting, I hope,” snarled the man at the other end of the line. “Has he been anywhere? Have you lost him?”
“Of course I haven’t lost him!” Mischa said indignantly. “He has just come back to the hotel, and I can see the entrance from where I am. He seemed to tell the doorman that he would be inside only a few minutes.”
“You are a mindreader as well as a hunting dog. Tell me everything Templar did while he was out.”
Mischa described his processional tour of the graveyard.
“This gravestone that they were both looking at,” his bearded superior said with great interest. “Tell me more about it.”
“That is all I know. It was a monument to Germans who died in Switzerland during the war. It is full of ashes.”
“And of what else? Something much more intriguing than ashes, I have no doubt. The girl or Templar will go back for whatever is hidden there as soon as they think it is safe. But you must see that they do not get it.”
“I shall take tools and go as soon as it is dark,” Mischa said.
“Go now!” the other man responded impatiently. “What if somebody should get there before you?”
“I go,” said Mischa with dignity. “But what about the Saint? I cannot watch him also.”
“You concern yourself with whatever is in that shrine,” was the reply. “I shall occupy myself with Mr Templar!”
IV: How Curt Jaeger failed to levitate, and Mischa’s efforts were rewarded.
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