'You have him?' asked Mr. Naccaro, dancing about deliriously as Simon climbed stiffly down.
'I have,' said the Saint. 'You'd better get him inside quickly—I'm afraid your pals didn't dope him up as well as they thought they had, and from the way he was behaving just now I shouldn't be surprised if he was going to have-a da baby, too.'
He stripped off his helmet and goggles, and watched the unloading of his cargo with interest. Signor Giuseppe Rolfieri had recovered considerably from the effects of the drug under whose influence he had been embarked; but the hangover, combined with some bumpy weather on the last part of the journey, restrained him hardly less effectively from much resistance. Simon had never known before that the human skin could really turn green; but the epidermis of Signor Rolfieri had literally achieved that remarkable tint.
The Saint stayed behind to help the other half of the reception committee—introduced as Mr. Naccaro's brother— wheel the faithful Avro into the shelter of a barn; and then he strolled back to the farmhouse. As he reached it the door opened, and Naccaro appeared.
'Ha!' he cried, clasping the Saint's shoulders. 'Meester Templar—you have already been-a so kind—I cannot ask it —but you have-a da car—will you go out again?'
Simon raised his eyebrows.
'Can't I watch the wedding?' he protested. 'I might be able to help.'
'Afterwards, yes,' said Naccaro. 'But we are not-a ready. Ecco, we are so hurry, so excited, when we come here we forget-a da mos' important tings. We forget-a da soap!'
Simon blinked.
'Soap?' he repeated. 'Can't you marry him off without washing him?'
'No, no, no!' spluttered Naccaro. 'You don't understand. Da soap, she is not-a to wash. She is to persuade. I show you myself, afterwards. It is my own idea. But-a da soap we mus' have. You will go, please, please,
The Saint frowned at him blankly for a moment; and then he shrugged.
'Okay, brother,' he murmured. 'I'd do more than that to find out how you persuade a bloke to get married with a cake of soap.'
He stuffed his helmet and goggles into the pocket of his flying coat, and went round to the barn where he had parked his car before he took off for San Remo. He had heard of several strange instruments of persuasion in his time, but it was the first time he had ever met common or household soap in the guise of an implement of torture or moral coercion. He wondered whether the clan Naccaro had such a prejudiced opinion of Rolfieri's personal cleanliness that they thought the mere threat of washing him would terrify him into meeting his just obligations, or whether the victim was first smeared with ink and then bribed with the soap, or whether he was made to eat it; and he was so fascinated by these provocative speculations that he had driven nearly half a mile before he remembered that he was not provided with the wherewithal to buy it.
Simon Templar was not stingy. He would have stood any necessitous person a cake of soap, any day. In return for a solution of the mystery which was perplexing him at that moment, he would cheerfully have stood Mr. Naccaro a whole truckload of it. But the money was not in his pocket. In a moment of absent-mindedness he had set out on his trip with a very small allowance of ready cash; and all he had left of it then was two Italian lire, the change out of the last meal he had enjoyed in San Remo.
He stopped the car and scowled thoughtfully for a second. There was no place visible ahead where he could turn it, and he had no natural desire to back half a mile down that narrow lane; but the road had led him consistently to the left since he set out, and he stood up to survey the landscape in the hope that the farmhouse might only lie a short distance across the fields as the crow flies or he could walk, And it was by doing this that he saw a curious sight.
Another car, of whose existence nobody had said anything, stood in front of the farmhouse; and into it Mr. Naccaro and his brother were hastily loading the body of the unfortunate Signor Rolfieri, now
