But in this case it made no difference. He was able to track down the villa without too much trouble, but il padrone had not yet arrived. No doubt he was still skimming the cream of the expense-account crop in the Thames Valley. And good luck to him — but Simon wished only gastritis on the beneficiaries.
He lunched regally on zuppa di pesce and calamaretti, laved with a bottle of Antinori Classico, on the terrace of La Minervetta overlooking the blinding blue sea, and later swam off the rocks below in the same translucent element, and finally drove back to Naples refreshed and recharged but no wiser than he had been when he left.
Thanks to the recommendation of a well-meaning friend, the Saint had made his reservation at a more modest hotel than the Excelsior, a short distance farther along the sea front on the Via Partenope. It had turned out to be considerably less luxurious than the class of hostelry which Simon Templar usually chose at that period of his life; but it had been late at night when he arrived, and his room looked clean and comfortable enough, and it had not seemed worth the trouble to go searching for other accommodation for the two or three days which were all he had planned to stay. Its only vital disadvantage as against the more populous and busily serviced competition was one which had not occurred to him at the time and might never have been brought home to him if he had not impulsively befriended the late Mr. Euston.
He helped himself to his key from behind the all-purpose desk which was tended at various hours by the manageress, the porter, the floor waiter, or any chambermaid who was not otherwise occupied, and in between their shifts by a bell with a mechanical button which could be thumped for eventual attention, and took the self-service elevator to his floor. He had just stepped out when a man came running down the corridor in a frantic sprint to catch a ride before the conveyance went down again; and the Saint turned and stared at him with instant curiosity.
Readers of this chronicle who wonder why a man running for a lift should be such an arresting spectacle are only betraying their own limited horizons. If they had taken advantage of the eight-country, twenty-two city, fifteen-day excursion rates offered by the philanthropic airlines, they would know that on the Mediterranean littoral, in summer, nobody, but nobody, runs for an elevator or anything else. Wherefore the Saint took extra note of the pointed face, the rodent teeth, the pencil-line mustache, the awning-striped suit, and a wealth of other trivia not worth recording, before the febrile eccentric squeezed into the lazy-box and disappeared from view.
It had all taken perhaps three seconds, and it was over before a possible significance to the incident could penetrate through his first superficial astonishment. And by the time Simon reached his room, further speculation became unnecessary.
The door was not quite shut, and he only used his key to push it open.
To say that the room had been searched would be rather like describing a hurricane as a stiff breeze; and in fact a hurricane could have gone through it without doing much more damage. Whoever had been there — and Simon no longer had any doubt that it had been the rat-faced man in a hurry — had efficiently and enthusiastically taken it to pieces. Not content with spilling everything from drawers and suitcases, the intruder had hacked open the shoulders and split the seams of some of the finest tailoring of Savile Row. The same blade had slit the linings of valises and playfully pried the heels from shoes, besides exposing the stuffing of the mattress.
Only a person who knew the Saint’s fastidious habits would have appreciated the calm with which he surveyed the wreckage and flicked the dead ash from his cigarette on to the midden heap before him.
“Che cosa fa?” gasped a voice behind him, and he turned and saw a gaping chambermaid staring in from the corridor.
“If someone stayed on the job downstairs, it might not have happened,” he said coldly. “Please get it cleaned up. The clothes that are worth repairing you can give to your husband, or your lover, wherever they will do the most good. And if the manager has any comments, he can find me in the bar.”
Fortunately there was Peter Dawson in that dispensary, and a double measure with plenty of ice and just a little water helped to soothe the most savage edge of his anger as well as slaking the thirst which he had incubated on the drive back.
The vandalizing of his wardrobe was only a temporary inconvenience, after alclass="underline" a telegram to London would have replacements under way at once, and meanwhile there were excellent tailors in Italy and some of the world’s best shoemakers. On the plus side, the last vestige of possibility that Euston’s death was coincidental had been removed. And Cartelli, or Destamio, had been concerned enough about Simon Templar’s intervention to have ordered a complete check-up on him and a search which could only have had the object of discovering any concealed official — or criminal — association.
A revelation that might have daunted anyone but the Saint was the speed and apparent ease with which he had been found, which indicated an organization of impressive size and competence. He seriously doubted whether even the local police, with all their authority and facilities, could have done as well. But a sober respect for the opposition and the odds had never done anything to Simon Templar except to make the game seem more exciting.
The manager, or the husband of the manageress, eventually made an appearance. He dutifully wrung his hands over the catastrophe, and then said: “You are worried, of course, about the damage done to the bed. Do not think any more about it. I have put in a new bed, and we will just charge it in the bill.”
“How nice of you,” said the Saint. “I hate to sound ungracious, but as a matter of fact I was more worried about the damage to my belongings, which happened because you make it so easy for robbers to get into the rooms.”
The manager’s hands, shoulders, and eyebrows spread out simultaneously in a graphic explosion of incredulity, indignation, reproach, and dismay.
“But, signore, I am not responsible if you have friends who perhaps do such things for a bad joke!”
“You have an argument there,” Simon conceded. “So it might be simpler not to give me a bill at all. Otherwise I might recommend some other playful friends to come here, and they might do the same things in all your rooms.” He turned over the bar check, “Oh, and thanks for the drink.”
He felt better for the rest of the evening; though he was careful to dine at a corner table and to examine his wine bottle carefully before it was uncorked. The fact that some back-stage Borgia might have spiked anything he ate was a risk he had to take; but in calculating it he had noted that for some abstruse reason poison had never been an accepted weapon of the fraternity of which Al Destamio was such a distinguished member. Simon had often wondered why. It would have seemed so much easier and slicker than the technique of the gun. He had never been able to decide whether the answer was in some code of twisted chivalry, calling for the actual confrontation of the enemy before his extinction, or merely because a spectacular artillery mow-down made more awesome headlines with which to keep other hesitants in line.
But nothing even mildly disturbing happened to him that night, and when the next move came in the morning it was totally different from anything he had anticipated.
When he came downstairs after breakfast and handed his key over the desk, a slight saturnine man in chauffeur’s uniform who had been standing near by approached him with a deferential bow.