been a great success.'
She laughed rather hysterically, a sharp and some how jarring contrast to the panic that he had seen in her face a few moments before.
'So I needn't try to keep up my party manners any more.'
She shook her head and rubbed a hand over her eyes with a sort of gasp; and then all at once she was serious again, desperately serious, with that queer sort of sob in her voice. 'But it's not true! It isn't true! Joris didn't get anything out of it. He wasn't one of them, whatever they say.'
'That doesn't sound like very good management.'
'He-he wasn't one of them. Yes, he helped them. He told them what they wanted to know. He was hard up. He lost all his savings in the stock market-and more money that he couldn't pay. And there was me. . . . They offered him a share, and he knew that Troschman's insurance was all right. But they cheated him. . . . They took him away when they thought he'd break down if he was arrested. Besides, they could use him. They brought him out here. But they never gave him his share. There was always some excuse. The stones would take a long time to get rid of, or they couldn't find a buyer, or something. And all the time he had to go on working for them.'
'That was Graner, I suppose?'
He was still holding her hand, and he could feel her trembling.
'Do you know him?'
'Not personally.'
'Yes, that was Reuben Graner.' She shuddered. 'But if you don't know him you couldn't understand.
24THIEVES' PICNIC He's -- I can't tell you. Sometimes I don't think he's human. . . . But how did you know?'
Simon took out his cigarette case and offered it to her. Her hand was still shaking, so that she could hardly keep the cigarette in the flame when he gave her a light. He smiled and steadied her hand with cool, strong fingers.
'Reuben isn't here now, anyway,' he said quietly. 'And if he does walk in, Hoppy and I will beat him firmly over the head with the wardrobe. So let's take things calmly for a bit.'
'But how did you know?'
'More or less by accident. You see, I came here from Madrid.' He saw the awakening of understanding in her eyes and nodded. 'Rodney Felson and George Holby were there.'
'Do you know them?'
'Not to talk to. But I know lots of people that I don't talk to. I just happened to see them. You know Chicote's Bar?'
'I've never been to Madrid.'
'If you ever go there, look in and give Pedro my love. Chicote's is one of the great bars of the world. Everybody in Madrid goes there. So did Rodney and George. Rodney had a telegram. He talked it over with George-I wasn't near enough to hear what they were saying, but in the end they screwed it up and dropped it under the table. Which was careless of them, because when they went out I picked it up.'
'You picked it up ?'
He grinned shamelessly.
'I told you I was in the business myself. There may be honour among thieves, but I never saw very much. I knew that Rodney and George were one of the six cleverest pairs of jewel thieves at present operating in Europe, so I just naturally thought that anything they were interested in might interest me. It did.'
He took out the telegram again and gave it to her. He watched her as she read it through, and saw a trace of colour burn for a moment in her cheeks-burn till it burnt itself out and left them white again.
'He sent it as soon as he heard,' she whispered. 'I thought it would be like that. I could feel it. He never meant to let Joris and me go away. Oh, I knew!'
He would have guessed her age at barely twenty-one; but when she raised her eyes again there was an age of weariness in them that tied a strange knot in his throat. He took the telegram from her and put it away again.
'Did you want to go away?' he asked gently.
She nodded without speaking.
'Joris was working at his old job, I suppose,' he said.
'Yes. They made him work for them. He cut and polished all the stones that came from Troschman's. Sometimes they went out and stole more, and when they brought them back he had to re-cut them so that they couldn't be identified. He had to do what they told him, because they could always have sent him back to the police. And there was me-but I told him that that didn't matter, only he wouldn't believe me.'
'And now they want to replace him.'
She nodded again.
'That's what Graner called it. We thought we might go away, somewhere like South America, where nobody would know us and we could live and be happy. But I knew we couldn't. Graner never meant us to. So long as Joris was working for them, it was all right. But they couldn't let him go with all that he knew. He'd never have said anything, but they couldn't be sure of that. I knew they'd never let him go alive. They meant to kill him. . . . Oh, Joris!'
Her arms tightened convulsively about the old man's frail shoulders, and the Saint saw her eyes shining again.
'Is that what they were trying to do when I butted in?' he asked doubtfully. 'It didn't look quite like that to me.
