18 The Saint Bids Diamonds (Thieves' Picnic)

'You have a room,' he pointed out.

'I know,' said the Saint patiently. 'I've seen it. Now I want another. Haven't you got a list of the rooms occupied, so that you know how many people you have to check in before you lock up?'

'There is the list,' admitted the porter cautiously.

'Well, where is it?'

The man rummaged behind his desk and finally pro­duced a soiled sheet of paper. Simon looked at it.

'Now,' he said, 'does it occur to you that the rooms which are not on this list will be empty?'

'No,' said the porter, 'because they do not always put all the numbers on the list.'

Simon drew a deep breath.

'Are you waiting for anybody else to come in?'

'Only number fifty-one,' said the man, who apparently had his own clairvoyant method of checking the homing guests.

'Then the other keys in those boxes belong to empty rooms,' persisted the Saint, whose association with Hoppy Uniatz had made him more than ordinarily skilful at making his points with pellucid clarity.

The porter sullenly acknowledged that this was probably true.

'Then I'll have one of them,' said the Saint.

He reached over and helped himself to the key which hung in the box numbered forty-nine, which was the next number to his own. Then he opened the doors of the automatic elevator and got in. He pressed the button for the top floor. Nothing happened.

'No funciona,' said the porter, with a certain morose satisfaction; and Simon heard him snoring again before he had climbed the first flight of stairs.

He recovered his good humour on the way back, partly because his mind was too taken up with other things to brood for long over the deficiencies of the Canary Island character. He had more things to think about than he really wanted, and already he began to feel the beginnings of a curious dread of the time which must come when certain questions could no longer be postponed. . . .

'You ought to stay here and settle down, Hoppy,' he remarked, as he re-entered the bedroom. 'Compared with the natives, you'd look such a genius that they'd probably make you mayor. All the same, I got a room,'

He went over to the bed and felt Vanlinden's pulse again.

'Do you think you could walk a little way?' he said.

'I'll try.'

Simon helped him up and kept an arm round him.

'Give me five minutes to get him undressed and into bed,' he said to Christine, 'and then Hoppy can bring you along.'

Hoppy's room was two doors along the passage, with the room Simon had taken for Christine in between. Nearly all Vanlinden's emaciated weight hung on the Saint's strong arm.

'Don't you think I could look after myself?' he said when they got there; and the Saint dubiously let him go for a moment.

The old man started to take off his coat. He got one arm out of its sleeve; and then he stood still, and a queerly childish perplexity crinkled over his face, 'Perhaps I'm not very well,' he said huskily, and sat down suddenly on the bed.

Simon undressed him. Stripped naked, the old man was not much more than skin and bones. Where the skin was not raw or starting to turn black and blue, it was very white and almost transparent, with characteristic soft creases round the neck and shoulders that told their own story. Simon examined him again and treated his more obvious injuries with deft and amaz­ingly gentle fingers. Then he wrapped him up in a suit of Mr Uniatz' eye- paralysing silk pajamas, and had just tucked him up when Hoppy and Christine ar­rived. Simon went back to his own room then returned to the bedside with a couple of tiny white tablets and a glass of water.

'Will you take these?' he said. 'They'll help you to rest.'

He supported the old man's head while he drank the water, and laid him gently back. Vanlinden looked up at him.

'You've been kind,' he said. 'And I am tired.'

'Tomorrow you'll be crowing like a fighting cock,' said the Saint.

He took Hoppy by the arm and drew him out of the room; but as soon as he turned away from the bed, the cheerfulness went out of his face. There was no doubt that Joris Vanlinden was an old man, old not only in body but also in mind; and Simon knew that, in that subtle process which is called growing old, the hopelessness of the last four years must have played more than their full part. What would be the effect of that night's beating on the old man's ebbing vitality? And how much more would the crowning blow of the stolen ticket drain from his failing strength?

Simon sat on the rail of the veranda and smoked down half an inch of his cigarette, quietly considering the questions. They were still unanswered when he forced his mind away from them. He pointed to the room.

'When you go back in there, Hoppy,' he said, 'lock the door and put the key in your pocket and keep it there. Don't let anybody in or out till I come round in the morning-not even yourself, unless you have to call me during the night.'

'Okay, boss.'

Mr Uniatz struck a match and relighted as much of his cigar as he had not yet eaten. He looked at the Saint with an expression which in anyone else might have been called reflective.