Nevertheless, Simon reminded himself, it was no honorable kingdom of which he was supreme ruler, but a ruthless secret society for which no crime was too sordid if it showed sufficient profit. Viewed in that light, the regal-cathedral atmosphere of the gathering was too incongruous for the Saint’s basic irreverence. He moved up to the foot of the bed, as he was told, but with a lazy trace of swagger that made it seem as if his hands were clasped behind his back of his own choice instead of being tied there, and a smile of brazen mockery curled his lips.
“Ciao, Pasquale,” he said cheerfully, as one buddy to another.
He could feel the chieftains on either side of him wince and stiffen incredulously at this lèse-majesté, but the man propped up on the pillows did not even seem to notice it, perhaps because he could not fully believe that he had heard it, or because in his assured supremacy it meant no more to him than an urchin thumbing its nose.
“So you are the one they call the Saint. You have given us trouble before.”
“I am pleased that it was enough for you to notice,” Simon said. “But I don’t remember the occasion. What were you doing at the time?”
Since Don Pasquale had addressed him with the familiar “tu”, which is used only to inferiors or intimates, Simon saw no reason not to respond in the same manner.
“You interfered with some plans of Unciello, who was one of us. And we had a useful man in the police in Rome, an Inspector Buono, whom we lost because of you.”
“Now it comes back to me,” said the Saint. “I have an unfortunate knack of crossing up crooked cops. What ever happened to the poor grafter?”
“He got in trouble in jail. A knife fight. He is dead.”
Don Pasquale still had the memory of a computer. All the threads of a world-wide network of crime led back to him, and he controlled it because he knew the exact length and strength of every single one. More than ten years had passed since that incident in Rome, but he had not forgotten any of the details.
“What has the Saint done now, Alessandro?”
“He is trying to make trouble for me,” Destamio said. “He has followed me, spied on me, gone to my family and questioned them, threatened to blackmail me. I have to find out what he knows, and who else knows it, and then get rid of him.”
“That may be; but why bring him here?”
“I thought it was the safest place, and besides I did not want to be away myself at this time—”
“What information could the Saint have that he could possibly blackmail Alessandro with?”
It was a new voice that broke in, and Destamio started visibly at the sound of it. It came from the man with the majestic proboscis whom Simon had already intuitively assessed as the most dynamic of the council.
“Nothing, Cirano, nothing at all,” Destamio replied, his voice sounding a trifle hoarser than usual. “But I want to know why he thinks he can give me trouble, who he is working with, so that I can take care of everything.”
The man called Cirano — probably a nickname rather than a fortunate choice by his parents — turned his fascinating beak towards Destamio and actually sniffed, as if all his powers of perception were brought to focus in that incredible olfactory organ.
“If he cannot be dangerous, what are you afraid of, Alessandro?” he persisted mercilessly. “What is there to take care of?”
“Basta!” Don Pasquale interrupted Destamio’s retort before it even came to voice. “You can wait to fight with each other after I am dead. Until then, I make the decisions.”
His lips barely moved when he talked, and there was no sign of animation or emotion on the pallid face. Only the eyes were indomitably alive, and they fastened on the Saint again with a concentration which could almost be physically felt.
“I have long wanted to see you, Simon Templar,” he said, still in the clear correct Italian which seemed to be used as a neutral language to bridge the differences of dialect that must have existed between some of those present, and which can make a Sicilian just as unintelligible to a Calabrian as to any foreigner. “Nobody who defies the Mafia lives so long afterwards as you have. You should have been eliminated before you left Rome, after you crossed Unciello. Yet here you are crossing us again. I should be telling Alessandro to waste no more time in putting you out of the way. But in the meantime I have heard and learned much more about you. I am not sure that you must inevitably be our enemy. With our power behind you, you could have become many times richer than you are. With your cleverness and your daring, we might have become even greater.”
The room was deathly silent. Even at the end of his reign, Don Pasquale remained the unchallenged autocrat by sheer force of will-power and tradition. The satraps around him were still only his lieutenants, and would remain subservient until his extinction unleashed the new battle for supremacy.
“Do you mean,” Simon asked slowly, “that after all that, you would offer me a chance to join you?”
“It is not impossible,” Don Pasquale said. “Such things happen in the world. Even great nations which have been bitter enemies become allies.”
The Saint hesitated for an instant, while a score of possibilities flashed back and forth across his mind like bolts of lightning, speculating on what use he could make of such a fantastic offer and how far he might play it along.
But for once the bronze mask of his face was no more defense than a shell of clear glass against the searching stare that dwelt on it.
“But no,” Don Pasquale said, before he could even formulate a response. “You are thinking only of how you might turn it to your advantage, to escape from the position you are now in. That is why I had to see you, to have your answer myself. L’ udienza e finita.”
Without affectation, he used the same words to declare the audience finished that would have come from a king or a pope.
Al Destamio grabbed the Saint and hustled him to the door with what might have seemed like almost inordinate zeal, and Don Pasquale spoke again.
“Wait here one moment, Alessandro.”
Destamio gave the Saint a push which sent him stumbling up against the messenger who waited outside, and snapped: “Take him back downstairs and lock him in.”
The massive door slammed shut; and the guide grasped Simon’s arm at the elbow and propelled him forcefully across the ante-room, along the gallery, and down the magnificent stairway with such brutal vigor that it took all the Saint’s agility to keep his footing and save himself from being hurled down the steps on his face.
In the same bullying manner, he was marched through the kitchen, down the back stairs, and along the basement corridor to the room from which he had been brought. But at that especial moment he almost welcomed the sadistic treatment, for under cover of a natural resistance to it he was able to wrestle more vigorously and concentratedly with the rope that held his wrists.
A last brutal kick with his escort’s knee sent him flying into the little cell. The door banged behind him, and the key grated in the lock.
He was alone again, for the doctor had not waited; but he knew it would not be for long. Whatever business the dying Don Pasquale wanted to conclude with Destamio could not take more than a short while, and then Destamio would be in even more haste to complete his own project.
But alone and unobserved, the Saint could writhe and struggle without restraint; and he already had a good start. .
In less than three more minutes he dragged one hand free, and the cord was slack on his other wrist.