18 The Saint Bids Diamonds (Thieves' Picnic)

thoroughfare vibrating with the scurry of bustling feet, had taken on an even sadder and emptier appearance. Simon looked warily up and down it. About a block and a half away one lone man was shuffling in the opposite direction, too loyal to his national traditions to bustle even before the prospect of a soaking; apart from him there was no other soul in sight except Aliston, who had become visible at the wheel of the car.

'Forget it,' said Palermo, reading his thoughts. 'You haven't a hope.'

Simon was not quite so sure-there are popular superstitions about the speed with which triggers can be pulled which the Saint was too experienced to share, and he had gambled cheerfully on those split-second exaggerations before then. But there were other thoughts coming into his mind which he did not let Mr Palermo read.

'What's the idea?' he demanded indignantly.

'You needn't worry about that. Come and get into the car.'

The drizzle was swelling methodically to a downpour, and the one shuffling pedestrian turned the next corner and vanished. There was nothing to stop Palermo using his gun; but that was not the factor which settled the Saint's decision. Palermo and Aliston had taken Hoppy and Joris-somewhere. It seemed to the Saint that he was being offered an open invitation to find out where. He could make an accurate estimate of the chance he would be taking by accepting that escort, but the thought only amused him. Besides, he was getting wet.

He continued to look suspicious and indignant.

'Why should I get in the car?'

'Because you'll get hurt if you don't. We're just going for a little ride.'

'It sounds like the good old days,' said the Saint.

He crossed the street and got into the car, with Palermo's automatic still boring into his back. Aliston glanced round from the driver's seat.

'Two sixty-seven,' he said cryptically, in his Oxford drawl. 'A seven.'

'Good. We'll find him afterwards. Let's go.'

Palermo settled back as the car started off. He oc­cupied himself with preening his natty little moustache, but the gun in his pocket remained levelled at the Saint. Simon went on frowning at him.

'Look here, Palermo,' he protested. 'Where are we going?'

'Call me Art,' said Mr Palermo generously.

'Where are we going?'

'We're going where we can have a talk.'

'What's wrong with the hotel?'

'Too many people,' said Palermo blandly.

The Saint scowled.

'Did Graner send you?' he demanded, with rising fury.

Palermo's greenish eyes studied him thoughtfully while he considered his answer. Aliston decided it for him. He spoke without turning his head. 'Shut up asking so many questions. You'll find out soon enough.'

The Saint shrugged and relaxed in his corner. If he couldn't talk, he could at least take advantage of the time to settle some of his own deductions.

Graner had gone back to the house and conferred with the others-that was the obvious starting point. What the face value result of the conference had been was yet to be hinted at; but Simon could guess some of the results which the individual members would wisely have refrained from making public. Graner's good news, if that was how he had presented it, would have given Lauber and Palermo and Aliston three separate and personal sinking feelings in their stomachs which must have cost them a heroic effort to conceal. To Palermo and Aliston, the capture of Christine would mean that she might know something and say something that would blow the secret of their abduction of Joris sky-high. To Lauber it would mean that she might somehow be able to convince a questioner that the lottery ticket had really been stolen the night before, which would inevitably bring the suspicion against himself back to fever heat. To all of them it would be a staggering blow to the security of their private plans that would blaze chaotic danger signals across their reeling horizons; to all of them it would scream a call for urgent action that must have made them feel as if their chairs were turning red-hot under them while they had to sit there talking. And Simon had an idea that the arrival of Palermo and Aliston was prompted by one of those desperate reactions.

The car was twisting and turning through the sordid narrow streets of what is euphemistically known as the French Quarter. Presently it stopped in one of them, at the door of a gloomy-looking two-storied house crowded among half-a-dozen other identically squalid buildings; and Palermo's gun prodded the Saint's ribs again.

'Come on. And don't make any fuss.'

Simon got out of the car. This street, like the first one, had been emptied by the rain; and the Saint knew better than to waste his energy on making a fuss. Be­sides, his other plans were developing very satisfac­torily.

Aliston opened the door, and they went into a small dark hall redolent with the mingled smells of new and ancient cooking and mildew and stale humanity. They stumbled up the dim stairs and emerged on a bare stone landing. A shaft of greyish light fell pitilessly across it and showed up the soiled peeling scales of what had once been whitewash as Aliston opened another door.

'In here.'

Simon went into the room and summarised its topography with one glance. On the right was a small window, hermetically sealed in the Spanish fashion, and almost opaque with the accumulated grime of ages. On the left was a closed door which presumably led to the bedroom. In front of him and to the left was another door, which was open; and a girl with an apron tied round her came out of it as they entered. Behind her Simon saw the symptoms of a kitchenette in which odd­ments of feminine washing were strung on a line like flags. The girl had brass- coloured hair which was growing out black at the roots; she was pretty in an ordinary sort of way, though her complexion was coarse and unhealthy under the crude caked make-up. She had the broad hips and rounded stomach and big loose breasts which the national taste demands.