13 The Saint Intervenes (Boodle)

Mr. Naccaro's proposition was more practical than most.

He and his friends, apparently, had gone into the problem of avenging the wickedness of Giuseppe Rolfieri with the conspiratorial instinct of professional vendettists. One of them had become Mr. Rolfieri's butler in the villa at San Remo. Others, outside, had arranged the abduction down to a precise time-table. Mr. Naccaro himself had acquired an old farm­house in Kent at which Rolfieri was to be held prisoner, with a large field adjoining it at which an aeroplane could land. The aeroplane itself had been bought, and was ready for use at Brooklands Aerodrome. The only unit lacking was a man qualified to fly it.

Once Rolfieri had been taken to the farmhouse, how would they force him through the necessary marriage?

'We make-a him,' was all that Naccaro would say, but he said it with grim conviction.

When the Saint finally agreed to take the job, there was another scene of operatic gratitude which surpassed all pre­vious demonstrations. Money was offered; but Simon had al­ready decided that in this case the entertainment was its own reward. He felt pardonably exhausted when at last Domenick Naccaro, bowing and scraping and yammering in­coherently, shepherded his daughter, his illegitimate grand­child, and his own curling whiskers out of the apartment.

The preparations for his share in the abduction occupied Simon Templar's time for most of the following week. He drove down to Brooklands and tested the aeroplane which the syndicate had purchased—it was an ancient Avro which must have secured its certificate of airworthiness by the skin of its ailerons, but he thought it would complete the double journey, given luck and good weather. Then there was a halfway refuelling base to be established somewhere in France—a practical necessity which had not occurred to the elemental Mr. Naccaro. Friday had arrived before he was able to report that he was ready to make the trip; and there was another scene of embarrassing gratitude.

'I send-a da telegram to take Rolfieri on Sunday night,' was the essence of Mr. Naccaro's share in the conversation; but his blessings upon the Saint, the bones of his ancestors, and the heads of his unborn descendants for generations, took up much more time.

Simon had to admit, however, that the practical contribu­tion of the Naccaro clan was performed with an efficiency which he himself could scarcely have improved upon. He stood beside the museum Avro on the aerodrome of San Remo at dusk on the Sunday evening, and watched the kid­napping cortege coming towards him across the field with genuine admiration. The principal character was an appar­ently mummified figure rolled in blankets, which occupied an invalid chair wheeled by the unfortunate Maria in the uni­form of a nurse. Her pale lovely face was set in an expression of beatific solicitude at which Simon, having some idea of the fate which awaited Signor Rolfieri in England, could have hooted aloud. Beside the invalid chair stalked a sedate spectacled man whose role was obviously that of the devoted physician. The airport officials, who had already checked the papers of pilot and passengers, lounged boredly in the far background, without a single disturbing suspicion of the classic getaway that was being pulled off under their noses.

Between them, Simon and the 'doctor' tenderly lifted the mummified figure into the machine.

'He will not wake before you arrive, signor,' whispered the man confidently, stooping to arrange the blankets affec­tionately round the body of his patient.

The Saint grinned gently, and stepped back to help the 'nurse' into her place. He had no idea how the first stage of the abduction had been carried out, and he was not moved to inquire. He had performed similar feats himself, no less slickly, without losing the power to stand back and impersonally admire the technique of others in the same field. With a sigh of satisfaction he swung himself up into his own cockpit, signalled to the mechanic who stood waiting by the propeller of the warmed-up engine, and sent the ship roaring into the wind through the deepening dusk.

The flight north was consistently uneventful. With a south wind following to help him on, he sighted the three red lights which marked his fuelling station at about half-past two, and landed by the three flares that were kindled for him when he blinked his navigating lights. The two men procured from somewhere by Mr. Naccaro replenished his tank while he smoked a cigarette and stretched his legs, and in twenty minutes he was off again. He passed over Folkestone in the early daylight, and hedge-hopped for some miles before he reached his destination so that no inquisitive yokel should see exactly where he landed.