'In a way that is true.' Graner's delayed response cut into a momentary hiatus in the din. 'When he ran away, Joris also took with him a lottery ticket which we had all subscribed to buy --'
'That's a lie!'
Christine flung the accusation at him while he was still speaking; and Graner's gaze turned to her with an icy malignance.
'My dear girl --'
The locomotive, coming nearer, let out another eldritch screech which might have come from a soul in torment that was being tormented conveniently close to a powerful microphone. The Saint covered his ears.
Graner was saying: 'The ticket won quite a small prize, but naturally we had no wish to lose it --'
'He's lying --'
'My dear Christine, I should advise you to be more careful of your tongue --'
'He's lying, he's lying!' The girl was shaking Simon's shoulder. 'You mustn't believe him. It won the first prize- it won fifteen million pesetas --'
The engine seemed to be almost under the window; and the engineer, warming to his work, was letting out a series of toots with scarcely a second between them. If the makers of the whistle had set out to create a synthetic reproduction of the nerve racking squeak of a knife blade on a plate amplified fifty thousand times, they couldn't have succeeded more brilliantly. It was a screaming, torturing, agonising, indescribably fiendish cacophony that seemed to tear the flesh and drive stabbing needles through the eardrums. Perhaps it was just loud enough to attract the attention of a Canary Islander and induce him to move out of the way.
'Don't all talk at once,' said the Saint. 'I can't hear the music.'
'He's lying!' Christine's voice was broken and incoherent. 'Oh God-can't you see it? He'd lie to anybody!'
The Saint opened both eyes.
'Are you lying, Graner?' he asked quietly.
'The exact amount of the prize isn't material --'
'In other words, you are lying.'
Graner licked his lips.
'Certainly not. Why should I be? I should think it was more obvious that this girl is lying to try and win your sympathy.'
Simon sat up. The locomotive was puffing away down the mole, its ear-splitting squeals growing mercifully fainter as they receded into the distance.
'I'll tell you what I think,' he said. 'I heard on the boat coming down here that the Christmas lottery had been won in Tenerife, and when I was knocking about the town yesterday somebody told me that no one had been able to find out who had got it. That makes Christine's story sound more likely than yours-not to mention that I can't see why everybody should be in such a stew about this ticket if it wasn't worth much. In this room, about the first thing you wanted to ask her was where the ticket was. You didn't seem half so excited about the stones that this predecessor of mine is supposed to have knocked off. Lauber wasn't worried about them, either-all he was talking about last night was the ticket. And the others must have been pretty worked up about it, too, or he wouldn't have been talking about it to them in that tone of voice. In fact, you want to tell me that this ticket that everybody's turning handsprings about is really just chicken feed. Which just smells like good ripe sausage to me. So that makes you a part of a liar, anyway.'
Graner stared at him malevolently, but there was no answer that he could make. The Saint's relentless logic had nailed him up in a corner from which there simply wasn't a back exit. And Simon Templar knew it.
'Well?'
The Saint's crisp monosyllable drove in another nail that made Graner's head jerk back.
'I may have minimised the value of the ticket a little --'
'Or in plain language, you're just a God-damn liar! So now we know where we are. That's the first point. . . . Point two: this predecessor of mine-what did you call him-Joris?-this guy Joris has got the ticket. I can believe that, from the way all of you have been behaving. And it doesn't seem to matter very much to me who it originally belonged to. Having once been pinched, it becomes anybody's boodle; because somebody's got to pinch it back before they can get any profit out of it. That's what you and your precious gang were trying to do. And you were trying to cut me out!'
2 Graner's hand went to his breast pocket and took out his perfumed handkerchief.
'You didn't contribute to buying the ticket.'
'I haven't seen any proof yet that you did, either,' retorted the Saint. 'But I've told you that that isn't the point. That ticket is out on the loose now, and you'd have a job to prove that it didn't belong to anybody who'd got it. The point is that you and your boys are looking for it, and you wanted to save my share.'
'It has no connection with your work.'
'Nor has opening safes. But Felson told me I came in for a share of everything you did, and I want to know why you were being so smart and cagey about this.'
It was a shot in the dark that Simon had to take, although it was a fairly safe one. And it didn't make Graner blink.
'This is something that happened before you joined us,' he said.
'But getting hold of the ticket again isn't,' said the Saint. 'It hasn't happened yet.'
Graner went up and down on his toes. The vicious lines around his mouth had deepened; and if his eyes had possessed any lethal power the Saint would have been burned to a cinder by that time.
