18 The Saint Bids Diamonds (Thieves' Picnic)

was a new day; and the Saint was pre­pared to be hopeful about it. He went along to the bathroom, where he found and borrowed somebody else's razor; and he had just finished dressing when Lauber came in again.

'I'll show you the dining room.'

'Is the weather always like this?' Simon asked as they went down the stairs.

Lauber's only response to the conversational opening was a vague mumble; and Simon wondered whether his sulky humour was solely due to the sore head from which he must have been suffering or whether it had some other contributory cause.

Graner was already in the dining room, sitting up in his prim old-maidish way behind the coffee pot and reading a book. He looked up and said good morning to the Saint, and returned at once to his reading. Palermo and Aliston were not visible.

Since there was no obvious encouragement to idle chatter, Simon picked up a newspaper that was lying on the table and glanced over it while he tried un­satisfactorily to break his fast with the insipid ration of rolls and butter which the Latin countries seem to consider sufficient foundation for a morning's work, reflecting that that was probably why they never man­aged to do a morning's work.

Almost as soon as he took up the sheet the headlines leapt to his eye. The press of Tenerife is accustomed to devote three or four columns inside the paper to the inexplicable gyrations of Spanish politicians; a European war can count on two or three paragraphs in the 'Information from Abroad'; the front page leads are invariably devoted to a solemn discussion of the military defence of the Canary Islands, which every good Canarian is convinced that other nations are only waiting for an opportunity to seize; and the local red-hot news, the sizzling sensation of the day, rates half a column under the standard heading of 'The Event of Last Night'-there never having been more than one event in a day, and that usually being something like the earth-shaking revelation that a couple of citizens started a fight in some tavern and were thrown out. But for once the military defence of the Canary Islands and the prospects of luring more misguided tourists to Tenerife had been ousted from their customary place of honour.

Under the headings of 'The Shocking Outrage of Last Night' and 'Unprecedented Outbreak of Gangsterismo in Tenerife' a thrilling story was unfolded. It appeared that a pareja of guardias de asalto had been patrolling the outskirts of Santa Cruz the previous night when they heard the sound of shooting. Hastening towards the nearest telephone to give the alarm, they happened to come upon two sinister individuals who were assisting a third, who appeared to be unconscious, into a car. The circumstances seeming suspicious, the guardias called on them to stop, whereupon the criminals opened fire. One of the guardias, Arturo Solona, of the Calle de la Libertad, whose father is Pedro Solona, the popular proprietor of the butcher shop in the Calle Ortega, whose younger daughter, as everyone will remember, was recently married to Don Luis Hernandez y Perez, whose brother, Don Francisco Hernandez y Perez is the manager of the sewage works, fell to the ground cry­ing, 'They have killed me!' (Anyone who is shot in a Spanish newspaper nearly always falls to the ground crying, 'They have killed me,' just for luck; but this one was right, they had killed him.) The other guardia, Baldomero Gil, who is the nephew of Ramon Jalan, who won the first prize at the recent horticul­tural exhibition with his three-kilo banana, advanced courageously towards a pile of stones which were a little way behind him, from which he continued to ex­change shots with the fugitives, emptying his magazine twice, but apparently without hitting any of them.

At the same time, a pareja of guardias civiles, Jose Benitez and Guillermo Diaz, having heard the shoot­ing, were on their way to headquarters to report the occurrence when they also chanced to encounter the criminals, who were driving off. They also fired many shots, apparently without effect; but at an answering volley from the gangsters, Benitez fell to the ground, endeavouring to uphold the reputation of his unit for lightning diagnosis by crying as he fell, 'They have wounded me!' He had indeed got a bullet through his ear, and the paper took pains to point out that only a miracle could have saved his life, because the bullet had clearly been travelling in the direction of his head.

Unfortunately a miracle hadn't saved his life; because in the stop press it was revealed that he had subsequently died in the small hours of the morning, leaving Arturo Solona unquestionably supreme in the field of prophecy, after which the doctors had discovered that he had another bullet in his stomach which nobody had noticed until then. The bandits meanwhile had been swallowed up by the night, and the police were still searching for them.

'You understand Spanish, Mr Tombs?'

Graner's thin voice broke into the Saint's thoughts; and Simon looked up from the paper and saw that Graner's eyes were fixed on him.

'I learnt about six words on the boat coming down here,' he said casually. 'But I can't make head or tail of this. I suppose I'll have to learn a bit if I'm going to stay here.'

'That will not be necessary --'

Graner might have been going to say more, but the shrill call of the telephone bell interrupted him. He got up, folded his napkin neatly and went out into the hall. Simon could hear him speaking outside.

'Yes. . . . No? . . . You have made enquiries?' There was a longish pause. 'I see. Well, you had better come back here.' A briefer pause; then a curt, 'All right.'

The instrument rattled back on its hook, and Graner returned. The Saint saw Lauber look up at him curi­ously, and tried ineffectually to interpret the glance. There was nothing in what he had overheard, not even a change in the inflection of Graner's voice, that might have given him a clue; and he tried in vain to fathom the subtle tenseness which he seemed to feel in Lau­ber's questioning silence.

Graner himself said nothing, and his yellow face was as uncommunicative as a mummy's. He sat down again in his place and caressed the lace tablecloth me­chanically with his thin fingers, gazing straight ahead of him without a trace of expression in his beady eyes.

Presently he turned to the Saint.

'When you're ready,' he said, 'I will show you your workroom.'

'Any time you like,' said the Saint.

He finished his cup of the bitter brown fluid mixed with boiled milk which the Canary Islanders fondly believe to be coffee, and got to his feet as Graner rose from the table.

They went up the stairs to the veranda above the patio, and halfway around that they came to another flight of stairs that ran up to the top floor of the house. At the top of these stairs there was a narrow landing with a door on each side. Graner unlocked one of the doors, and they went in.

The room was hardly more than an attic; and the Saint realised at once that it was lighted by one of those small barred windows which he had seen high up in the outside wall of the house. A heavy safe stood in one corner,