18 The Saint Bids Diamonds (Thieves' Picnic)

She rubbed her eyes stupidly.

'My head's splitting. . . .'

'We can fix that in no time.'

He went to his suitcase and found another bottle, from which he tipped a spoonful of powder into a glass of water.

'I keep this for when Hoppy starts complaining about what a good time he had the night before,' he explained. 'But it's just as good for what you've got.'

She looked at the glass without moving.

'There's nothing wrong with it,' he said. 'If I'd wanted to keep you under I'd have given you some­thing stronger in the first place.'

The girl shrugged.

'It doesn't seem to matter,' she said. 'I'd rather be asleep again than have this head.'

He took the glass away from her after she had finished the draught, and put it down. She lay back and closed her eyes again with a grimace, and the Saint lighted a cigarette and left her alone. With the drink he had just given her, the muzziness and the headache would pass off quickly enough.

'I was a fool to drink that whiskey,' she muttered. 'But you wait till I feel a bit stronger. I'll make a noise then-if you haven't put me to sleep again.'

'But you're feeling better already.'

'Maybe I'm not going to die, if that's what you mean.'

'Then just wait till you're quite sure about it, and we'll go on talking. You can still scream the roof off if you get tired of listening.'

'That's what you said before.'

'But Reuben was here then.'

Her eyes opened, and she looked quickly round the room. Her breath came a little faster.

'Yes-he was here. . . . Where is he?'

'I sent him home.'

'Did he have the same sort of drink that I had?'

The Saint shook his head.

'I wouldn't give you the sort of drink I should mix for Reuben if I had a free hand,' he said. 'No-I just told him to push off and he pushed off. Like a lamb. He's really quite docile when you know how to handle him. Weren't you watching me all the time before you went to sleep?'

She struggled up on her elbow.

'But he'll be back-he'll come back with the others --'

'No, I don't think so. Not just yet, anyway. We parted like brothers. I even gave him back his gun.'

She brushed the copper-gold hair back off her face, her brows knitted with the effort to grasp his meaning.

'Let's begin at the beginning,' he said. 'After I left you last night I went out to put the car away. Once I was in the car, I found that the damn thing was taking me up to Graner's. I couldn't help it. It's that sort of car. Crazy. Maybe it caught the disease from me-I don't know. Anyway, once I got to the house I figured I might as well have a look round. I looked round. They certainly do make it difficult for a bloke to climb over their wall.'

'I could have told you --'

'But you didn't. Never mind. I found out for myself. So, since I couldn't get over the wall, I had one of my strokes of genius. After having tooled all the way out there, it seemed pretty silly to come home again without doing anything. So I rang the bell. Did you ever hear of anything brighter?'

'I think you must have been crazy.'

'That's what I thought. Anyway, Graner let me in. And just as we were going into the house I heard Lauber in the middle of an argument with the other two. He was saying-I can tell you his very words- 'I never had the blasted ticket. I was hunting through Joris' pockets for it when that swine jumped on me. If anybody's got it, he has.' '

'You heard Lauber say that?' she stammered incredulously. 'But you know --'

He nodded.

'Of course I know. But that was Lauber's story, and from what I've heard he's sticking to it. Didn't you hear Graner say that he'd put a man to watch the shop where the ticket came from, in case anybody tried to cash it?'

Talking about Graner reminded the Saint that he had put Graner's drink down when he went out to Hoppy's room. He fetched it and returned to the bed.

'What else did they say about it?' she asked.

'Nothing. The subject was dropped when I walked in. Reuben asked me a lot of questions, and ended up by telling me that I wasn't to come back here. I don't think he suspected me, but he just didn't want me knocking around Santa Cruz where I might hear too much or talk too much. I argued about it, but I had to stay.'

He told her about his other experiences the night before, about the story he had read in the newspaper at breakfast, and about the introduction to his duties which had followed, talking in the same crisp, vivid phrases that smacked home every vital detail like bul­lets; until he reached the point where he had walked into the room with Graner and found her there.