18 The Saint Bids Diamonds (Thieves' Picnic)

take the car out. Graner watches everything you do. When that girl rang up I tried to make him let me come here alone, but he had to come as well. I could have got the ticket back if he'd sent me to the house with Palermo, but you didn't help me and I couldn't go on arguing.'

The Saint remembered his cigarette and inhaled with a quiet concentration which he achieved with difficulty. He didn't by any means share Lauber's convic­tion that anyone who had found the ticket would have talked about it-the competition in double-crossing and double-double-crossing was getting too intense on every side for anything to be certain.

'Palermo and Aliston had some other old car when they picked me up,' he said. 'Which car did they use this morning when they came down to look for Joris?'

'I don't know.'

Simon didn't remember either. He was trying to recall if anything had happened which might have given him a clue. But whichever car they had used, they would have gone to the garage; and it might have occurred to them to make a hurried search.

'Which car did the chauffeur use when he went out again last night?'

'I think that was the Buick.'

Still there was nothing definite enough to found an assumption on, either way. Even Graner himself . . .

'Where did you hide the ticket?' Simon asked.

Lauber was getting control of himself again. He might even have been starting to regret having said so much. A glitter of cunning twisted across his eyes.

'That's my business. You find a way to get at the car, and I'll find the ticket.'

'Couldn't you have found it while you were putting Palermo in?'

'Would I have left it there if I could?'

Simon considered him dispassionately. It seemed un­likely, but he didn't care to leave anything to chance.

'We'll just look you over, and make sure,' he said.

'You'd better not try,' replied Lauber belligerently.

His hand went to the pocket where he had put away his gun, and a comical expression of disbelief and dis­may warped itself over his face when his hand came out empty again. His gaze returned furiously to the Saint: Simon was lazily twiddling the gun around by the trigger guard, and he was smiling.

'I forgot to tell you I used to be a pickpocket,' he apologised solemnly. 'Put your hands up and be a good boy while I run you over.'

Lauber had no useful argument to offer. He stood scowling churlishly while the Saint's practised hands worked over him with an efficiency that wouldn't have left even a postage stamp undiscovered. If Lauber had had the ticket on him, Simon would have found it; but it wasn't there. When the Saint stepped back from his examination he was assured of it.

'D'you want your toy back?' he asked carelessly when he had finished, and held out the automatic.

Lauber took it gingerly, as if he half expected it to sting him. The brazen impudence of the gesture left him nonplussed, as it had left Graner.

But the Saint wasn't even paying any attention to Lauber's reception of it. All the mental energy he possessed was taken up with this new angle on the ticket. But there was no process of logic by which the angle could be defined-or if there was, he couldn't find it. The only certain fact was that Lauber hadn't got the ticket. None of the other possibilities could be ruled out. Palermo might have it. Or Aliston might have it. Or Manoel might have it. Or Graner might have it, or find it at any moment, if he suspected enough to make him search for it and decided to join in the popular movement and paddle his own canoe in the buccaneers' regatta. Or it might still be in the car and stay there-a possibility which made the Saint's hair stand on end when he thought how completely and catastrophically the problem might be solved if Graner had an accident on the way home and the car caught fire.

'Well, what are you going to do about it?' Lauber demanded.

The Saint shrugged.

'Palermo and Graner have gone back to the house, anyway. So's the car. We've got to get Aliston and the chauffeur back there. Then when we've got them all rounded up together --'

He broke off abruptly, listening. They had not closed the door completely when they re-entered the room; and the Saint's keen ears caught the first sound of someone walking into the hall below. Lauber listened also in the silence which followed and they both heard footsteps coming up the stairs.

The Saint smiled again and stepped noiselessly round the table. He gripped Lauber by the arm and pushed him into the centre of the room, where he would be seen first by anyone coming through the door.

'Stay there,' he breathed. 'I'll get behind him.'

Before Lauber could protest against this doubtful honour it was too late for him to move. The Saint had retired with the some soundless speed; and when the door was pushed open he was behind it.

A moment later he emerged again, for the man who came in was Graner's chauffeur. Simon recognized him even from his back view with the assistance of the odour of garlic and perspiration that came in with him.

'Don Reuben sent me,' he explained.

'What for?' growled Lauber, with his voice edged by the reaction.

'I have been watching the Hotel Orotava. A little while ago the Senor Vanlinden and another man came there. The Senor Vanlinden stayed inside, but soon afterwards the other man came out. He got in a taxi to go to San Francisco 80. I heard the driver repeat the address.'

'What else?'