Three or four zigzagging blocks later he knew that Al Destamio and his personal goon squad would only pick up his trail again by accident. But that didn’t mean he was home safe by any means. Unless they had all been knocked cold in the collision, which was unlikely, the Mafia knew now that he was in Cefalù, and the size of the town would not make it any less of a death trap than the last mountain village.
The only remedy was to leave it again as soon as possible.
He noted the names of the cross streets at the next intersection, then bought a guide book with a map of the town at a convenient newsstand. He quickly oriented himself and headed for the railroad station, hoping that he might catch a train there before the Ungodly reorganized and bethought them of the same move.
The station was swarming with a colorful and international jumble of tourists, besides the normal complement of more stolid population statistics going about their mundane business, and Simon merged himself with a boisterous group of French students who were heading for the platform entrance gates and a train that was just loading. He did not know its destination, but that was of secondary importance. It could only be Messina or Palermo, and either would do as long as he boarded unobserved. Fortune still seemed to be smoothing his way: the students were dressed very much like he was, and if necessary he could pass for French himself. Anyone who was not too suspicious could pass him over as their tutor or guide. Only a handful of mafiosi actually knew him by sight, and a mere verbal description would hardly be enough to single him out of the group he had joined. And the odds were encouragingly reasonable against the station being staked out by one of Destamio’s hoods who had personally seen him before.
He had figured all that out to his own satisfaction just before he saw Lily standing by the barrier, at the same moment as she saw him.
2
In the fragment of a second between one step and the next, he marshalled and evaluated every possibility that could tie into her presence there, and went on to adumbrate what could follow or be filched from it. Coincidence he ruled out. Everything in her stance and positioning marked her as watching for somebody, and it was too great a stretch to imagine that that could be someone else. Although the Saint had been thinking automatically in terms of masculine malevolence, she was one of the very few in Destamio’s immediate entourage who had been qualified to pick him out of any mob. But the sketchiest calculation showed that she could not possibly have been sent there since he abandoned the bus. She could only be part of the general net that had been spread around the area; but because she could positively identify him, she had been given one of the most strategic spots.
Simon Templar put down his other foot with a chilling respect for the murderous efficiency re-demonstrated by the opposition, but knowing precisely how the score totalled at the instant that was tearing towards him, and what alternatives he could try to throw at it.
He continued to walk steadily towards her, as if they had even had a rendezvous, with a smile that not only did not falter but broadened as he came nearer.
“Well, well, well,” he murmured, with the lilt in his voice which was always gayest when everything around was most grim. “How long can it be since we met? It seems like a million years!”
He took her firmly by both hands and gazed fondly into the gigantic opaque sunglasses trimmed with plastic flowers. He wondered what her eyes would be like when and if he ever saw them. Maybe she didn’t have any. But at least the full red mouth was concealed only by lipstick. He kissed it for the second time, and it still tasted like warm paint.
“Don’t scream, or try to pretend I’m insulting you,” he said, without a change in his affectionate smile, “because if I had to I could break your nose and knock all your front teeth out before anyone could possibly come to your rescue. And it’d be a shame for a pretty face like yours to be bashed in like the wings of an old jalopy.”
He kept hold of her hands, just in case, but the resistance he felt was light and only momentary.
“Why?” she asked, in that voice that throbbed monosyllables like organ notes, and with as little individual expression.
“You mean you weren’t waiting for me here?”
“Why should I?”
“Because Al sent you.”
“Why?”
It was a perfect defense — in terms of the Maginot Line. He laughed.
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the last message I asked you to give him. You did deliver it, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you know how Al is about these things. He’s been trying to get even ever since. Didn’t he tell you why he wanted you to put the finger on me?”
“No.”
“You tripped, Lily,” said the Saint quietly. “So you are here to point me out to the mob, and not just to see who else you could pick up in your new clothes.”
In deference to the conventions of an ordinary Italian town, she was wearing a full wraparound skirt that hid half the length of her sensational legs, but her upper structure was clearly limned by a sleeveless sweater that would have been barred at the doors of the Vatican.
“Where are the boys?” he asked, with an insistence that was outwardly emphasized only in the invisible tightening of his grip.
Her head moved a little as if she glanced around, but it was only an impression which could not be verified through those ornately floriferous blinders.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
Without letting go of her, as if it were only an unconscious waltz step in a lovers’ tryst, he had edged around to reverse their positions, so that his back was to the railings; but he saw no indication of any mafiosi closing in or watching for a cue to do so. And he was becoming increasingly fascinated by the fact that she still made no attempt to scream for help, legitimate or illegitimate. His threat might have checked her in the beginning — long enough to let him improve his strategic position and maneuver her obstructively into the line of fire — but by now she should have been thinking of some counter to that. Unless her mind was as completely barren as her dialog...
If there were any guns around, they must have been of very low caliber. But the wild idea grew stronger that there might not even be any. The railroad station at Cefalù was a way-out shot, a vague chance, the kind of improbable possibility that a doll might have been sent to cover, just for luck, but without giving her any heavy backing. It would be figured that if by some remote fluke he did show up there, she would be capable of latching on to him, overtly or covertly, until—