'Trae la comida,' said Palermo, throwing his hat into a corner; and she went out again without speaking.
Simon put a hand in his pocket for his cigarette case, but Aliston caught him.
'Wait a minute.'
While Palermo kept him covered, Aliston searched him carefully; but it still didn't occur to him to search the Saint's left sleeve. He was looking for something which was likely to be found in certain definite places, and when he failed to find it he scratched his head.
'Must be crazy,' he said. 'He hasn't got anything.'
'Why should I have anything?' asked the Saint ingenuously. 'I admit the place looks pretty insanitary, but I haven't been here very long.'
Palermo took his hand out of his gun pocket for the first time since their encounter outside the hotel. He waved the Saint round the table to the side farthest from the door through which they had come in.
'Sit down.'
Simon made himself as comfortable as he could on the plain wooden chair and opened his cigarette case.
'When do I know what the hell this is all about?' he enquired politely.
Palermo unwrapped the Cellophane from a local cigar, bit off the end and lighted it. It smelt like burning straw.
The girl came back and laid an extra place at the table; and Palermo and Aliston sat down. Aliston twiddled one of his coat buttons and looked at the floor, the ceiling, the different walls, his feet and his fingernails. Palermo seemed as absorbed in his foul Cigar as if he hadn't heard the Saint's question.
'I suppose you know there 'll be hell to pay when Graner hears that the girl's been left at the hotel all this time alone,' said the Saint presently.
'She isn't at the hotel,' Aliston said sharply.
Simon raised his eyebrows.
'Well, where is she?'
'That's what we're hoping to hear from you,' said Palermo.
The Saint placed his cigarette in his mouth and inhaled from it without changing his expression. The girl returned again with a pan of paella and put it down in front of Palermo. Simon noticed that she went back and fetched two more plates and stood looking at him doubtfully. Palermo glared at her silently, and she left the plates and sat down; but the Saint had learnt all that he had to learn. He knew now that Joris Vanlinden and Hoppy were in the room with the closed door on his right.
He gave no sign of having observed anything, but the sweet exhilaration of the fight began to creep into his nerves again. A well-aimed fist in Mr Palermo's other eye, he was musing, would produce an agreeably symmetrical effect. Or should one be guided by a less monotonous style of composition and work diagonally downwards through the nose? It was a nice problem in practical aesthetics, and he didn't want to decide it too hastily. He helped himself from the dish when it was passed to him, and picked up his fork.
'Why should you ask me that?' he said calmly.
Palermo kept his cigar in his left hand and ate with his right, without once getting the two mixed up. Simon could not quite determine whether he ate to suppress the taste of the cigar or whether he smoked to disguise the flavour of the food.
'Because you took her away,' he said bluntly.
'I did?'
Palermo nodded. He grabbed a mouthful of rice, a mouthful of smoke and another mouthful of rice.
'I saw you in a taxi when we were driving down- we were in a one-way street and we couldn't turn round in time, or we'd have stopped you. I told Graner there was probably a back way out of the hotel. How's your chicken?'
'I expect it led a very useful life until it stopped laying,' said the Saint guardedly.
'They never kill them here before that,' said Palermo affably. 'Have some more.'
He fished about in the pan and loaded the Saint's plate with a piece of gizzard, a section of neck and a few pieces of bone whose anatomical status it was impossible to ascertain because of the fact that the Spanish race has never learned how to carve a bird. They simply chop it up into small fragments with an axe, and you can work it out for yourself. The Saint sighed. It was only his fourth meal in Santa Cruz, but he remembered his previous visit as well; and already he was beginning to suffer from the luscious hallucinations of a starving man.
'It seems as if I did the right thing, anyway,' he said brazenly.
'Why?'
Simon looked straight at him.
'I told Graner your outfit is a swell bunch of double-crossers. And it seems as if you've still got plenty of it left in you. I was thinking of that when I put Christine out of the way.'
'Sure.' Palermo shovelled some more food into his mouth and drank some wine. 'You ever do any double- crossing?'
Aliston's fork clattered on to his plate.
'For heaven's sake, Art,' he snapped. 'We haven't got all day to waste.'
'Take it easy, take it easy,' said Palermo soothingly. 'Tombs and me are just getting along fine. Tombs is a good fellow. He just doesn't understand us properly yet. Isn't that right, Tombs?'
