and along one wall was a wooden bench littered with curious tools. At one end was what looked like a small electric furnace; and at the other end was a glistening machine unlike anything else that the Saint had encountered, which he took to be the principal instrument for cutting or polishing stones.
He ran his eye over the bench with what he hoped was a glance of professional approval.
'You will find everything here that you need,' Graner was saying. 'Everything was provided exactly as your predecessor wanted it. I will show you what you have to do.'
He went over to the safe; and as he bent down and touched the combination Simon heard a faint moan something like an American police siren rising from somewhere in the house.
Graner's body concealed his movements as he turned the combination back and forth. Then he straightened up and turned the handle; and as he did so the moan of the siren, which had held evenly on its note until then, rose suddenly to a piercing scream that filled the air for fully thirty seconds. Then it stopped just as suddenly, leaving the air quivering with the abrupt contrast; and at that moment Simon knew its explanation. The same warning would sound the instant anyone touched the combination, and if he was still left undisturbed for long enough to get the safe open, the mere act of turning the handle would send the alarm whining up to that final crescendo of urgency.
Graner left the inference to make its own impression. It was not until the door was wide open that he turned round.
'Your predecessor did most of the work that we had in hand,' he said. 'But in a few days there will be a good deal more for you.'
Simon Templar looked past him into the safe and almost gasped. From top to bottom it was divided into horizontal partitions by velvet-lined trays; and on the trays the light glittered and flamed from tier upon tier of lambent jewels, carefully sorted according to colour and species. One shelf shone with the blood-red lustre of rubies, another burned with the cold green fire of emeralds, others scintillated with the hard white brilliance and pale blue and violet half-lights of diamonds. In that amazing hoard the hues of the rainbow danced and clashed and blended in one dazzling flood of living color. It made the elaborate precautions which Reuben Graner took to guard his house suddenly seem very natural and ordinary. There was enough wealth in that safe to make any burglar think he had picked the locks on the gates of heaven.
3 Simon glanced over the tray that Graner held out to him, and fingered one or two of the stones.
'It's excellent work,' he said, when he had recovered his voice.
'It was done by one of the best men in the business,' Graner said complacently. 'But we are hoping that you will be able to equal it.'
He put the tray back again and took out a wooden box from the bottom of the safe. It held twenty or thirty diamonds, none of which could have weighed less than ten carats, and all of them perfectly matched.
'These are to be altered,' he said. 'It is a pity to have to break them up, but they belonged to a set which was once rather well-known.'
He handed the box to the Saint, and Simon took it over to the workbench and put it down. Graner closed the door of the safe and spun the combination. He took out an ornate leather case and fitted a long cigar into an amber holder. He seemed to be in no hurry.
Simon turned over some of the implements on the bench and began to sort them out into what looked like their various categories, although he hadn't the faintest idea what any of them were.
He did as much as he could think of in that line, and then he hesitated. Graner was strutting slowly up and down the room, with his hands clasped behind his back.
'Don't pay any attention to me,' he said. 'I'm interested to see how you work.'
Simon turned the implements over again. He felt as if a strap was being tightened about his chest.
'There isn't a chucker,' he said.
Graner stopped strutting and looked at him.
'What is that?'
'It's the best tool there is for making the first cuts,' said the Saint, who had just invented it. 'We always cut stones with a chucker.'
'Your predecessor didn't seem to find it necessary.'
Simon looked surprised.
'He didn't use a chucker? How long had he been out of a job when you took him up?'
'He had been working for me for about four years,' said Graner; and the Saint nodded understandingly.
'Of course-that explains it. They only came in about three years ago, but now everybody uses them. They save a tremendous amount of waste.'
Graner took the cigar out of his mouth, trimmed the ash on his thumbnail, and put it back.
'We will send to England for a chucker by the next mail,' he said. 'But if you have been in the trade for fourteen years you will doubtless be able to use the older tools for the time being.'
The Saint picked up one of the diamonds and held it to the light, peering at it from various angles. And at the same time he measured up Graner's position in the room. He knew that Graner carried a gun, and he had already seen how quickly he could draw it; he himself had nothing but his knife-but that had won split-second contests with guns before, when the Saint had been ready and waiting for them. Even so, it left the rest of the house and the outer fortifications . . .
The base of the cutting or polishing machine, whatever it was, consisted of a copper cup in which the diamond under operation was presumably supposed to rest. Simon took the stone he was holding along to it and began to fiddle with trying to fix it in place.
'By the way,' he said, 'what about my luggage?'
