Simon frowned.
“Now I’m out of my depth. Why should that be worth knowing?”
“In his early days, Il Duce had a campaign to wipe out the Mafia — perhaps on the theory that there was only room for one gang of crooks in the country, and he wanted it to be his gang. So for a while he shot some of the small fry and hung others up in cages for people to laugh at. Later on, of course, the Mafia joined forces with him, they were birds of a feather — but that is another story. At any rate, in one of the early raids, Ernesto Cartelli shot it out with the Blackshirts, who proved to be better shots.”
“Do you mean,” Simon ventured slowly, “that since Ernesto was a mafioso, his brother Dino may have been one too?”
“It is almost certain — though of course it cannot be proved. But the Mafia is a closed society, very hard to enter, and when anyone is a member it usually means that his other close male relatives are members too.”
The Saint’s eyes narrowed in thought as he inhaled abstractedly and deeply from the strong Italian cigarette — an indiscretion which he instantly regretted.
“So the Mafia keeps coming back into the picture,” he said. “Al Destamio is in it, now it seems that Dino Cartelli was probably in it, whether or not they are the same person; and they have me at the top of their list of people to be dispensed with. I knew you would be glad to hear that they tried again tonight to put me out of the way.”
“Not: at the Destamio house?”
“Just outside it. If they had succeeded, it might even have broken some windows.”
Simon told the story of his macabre evening, and the fortunate discovery that had not quite ended it.
“And there are some wonderful fingerprints in the plastic, which is still intact,” he concluded.
“That is splendid news,” Ponti said delightedly. “These Mafia scum can usually get out of anything by producing armies of false witnesses, but it is another matter to witness away fingerprints. At least this will tell us who placed the bomb, and he may lead us to someone else.”
“I was sure you would be happy about my narrow escape from death,” said the Saint ironically.
“My dear friend, I am overjoyed. May you have many more such close scrapes, and each time bring back evidence like that. You did bring it back, of course?”
Simon grinned, and tossed him the car keys.
“You will find it in the trunk. Leave the keys under the front seat, they will be safe enough there. I think Alessandro will take time to think out his next move.”
“I hope he does not take too long,” said the detective. “But whenever you want to get in touch with me again, I will give you a number to call.” He scribbled on a page from his notebook, tore it out, and handed it to Simon. “This is not the questura, but a place which can be trusted with any messages you leave, and which can always find me very quickly.” He turned and opened the door, with unconcealed impatience to get to the garage and the evidence there. “Goodnight, and good luck.”
“The same to you,” said the Saint.
He locked and bolted the door again, just on general principles, but he went to sleep as peacefully as a child. It had been a full and merry day, and the morrow was likely to be even livelier. Which only sustained his contented conviction that the world was a beautiful place to have fun in.
IV
How the Saint went to a graveyard
and Don Pasquale made a proposal
1
Promptly at ten the next morning Simon announced his arrival outside the walls of the Destamio estate with a brazen call on the Bugatti’s horn which rebounded satisfactorily from the neighboring hills, incidentally triggering the responsive barking of dogs and a rattle of wings as a startled flock of pigeons whirled overhead, before he confirmed the announcement of his arrival more conventionally with a tug on the bell-pull at the entrance.
He did not think there was much danger that Destamio would have prepared to sacrifice his own parental portals with another charge of explosive tied to the bell, but aside from that he had no idea what he expected. Would there be another more personalized elimination squad waiting to lay on the welcome to end all welcomes, or would Destamio have refused to believe that the Saint would have the nerve to come back and claim his date with Gina? Would Donna Maria at this moment be frantically telephoning to ask what she should do now, while Gina was being hastily incarcerated in whatever version of a medieval dungeon could be found in the establishment? Or would the house simply remain inscrutably deaf and blind to him as to an unwelcome salesman until he gave up and went away? There had been only one way to find out, and that was to go there and ring the bell and see what happened.
What happened was that the gate opened and Gina came out into the sunlight with her graceful step that was like dancing, and Simon smiled with sudden joy as he held the car door for her.
Whatever might be coming next, at least the adventure was not going to wallow to a soggy halt.
“This is much more than I seriously expected,” he said, once she had settled into the leather seat and the great car had made its thunderous take-off.
“Why?” she asked.
“I was afraid your aunt would have changed her mind about letting you go on this expedition, or talked you out of it.”
“Why should she do that? There’s nothing wrong with my seeing you, is there?”
She forced a small smile as she said it, but a slight halting note in her voice told him with piercing clarity not only that she was playing a part but also that she was not relishing it. The falseness was as transpicuous as her sincerity had been the day before. But for the moment he was not ready to let her know that her effort was already wasted.
“How could there be,” he replied blandly, “if neither of us has any wickedness in mind?”
He deliberately refrained from emphasizing that studied ambiguity by glancing at her to observe its effect, but her silence told him that she must be thinking it over. The piquancy of waiting for her next approach added to the pleasure of what promised to be a most entertaining day.
“Sicily, fair Sicily!” he declaimed, before the pause could become uncomfortable. He waved one hand to embrace the sundrenched splendor of orchards and hills: “The crossroads of the Mediterranean, where Greek fought Phoenician, and Roman fought Greek; where the light of Christendom was shadowed by the menace of Vandal, Goth, Byzantine, and Arab... You see, I’ve already boned up on the brochures.”
“Is your name really Simon Templar?” she asked abruptly.
“It is. Let me guess why you ask. Head filled with history, your thoughts have leapt to the Knights Templar, a dubiously noble band not unknown in these parts. You’re wondering whether I’m one of their lineal descendants. I think that depends where you draw the line. I’ve never looked too closely into all the birds’ nests in my family tree, but—”
“Are you the Saint?”
Simon sighed.
“So you’ve discovered my guilty secret. I hoped to hide it from you, letting you believe that I was a simple salesman, a country-to-country drummer selling ball-point pens that only write under butter. Little did I dream that my shadier reputation would have penetrated the cloisters of your Alpine convent.”
“I wasn’t as cut off from the world as all that,” she snapped, with a touch of exasperation. “I’ve always read newspapers, but I just didn’t connect you at first. What are you doing here?”