Authors: Leslie Charteris
In a few
seconds he had picked up the saloon again;
and very shortly
afterwards he jammed on his brakes and
brought the Hirondel
to a sudden halt.
The car in
front had stopped before a lonely cottage whose
thatched roof was
clearly visible. In a flash the Saint was
out of his own seat
and walking silently up the lane towards
it. When the next
turn would have brought him within sight
of the car, he slipped
through a gap in the hedge and
sprinted for the back of the house. In broad
daylight, there
was no chance of further concealment; and it was neck or
nothing
at that point. But his luck held; and so far as he could
tell he gained the lee of his
objective unobserved. And once
there, an
invitingly open kitchen window was merely another
link in the chain of
chance which had stayed with him so
benevolently
throughout that adventure.
Rolfieri
and the Naccaro team were already inside. He could
hear the muffled
mutter of their voices as he tiptoed down
the dark passage
towards the front of the house; and pres
ently he stood
outside the door of the room where they were.
Through the keyhole
he was able to take in the scene. Rol
fieri, still safely trussed, was
sitting in a chair, and the Naccaro brothers were standing over him. The girl
Maria
was curled up on the settee, smoking a cigarette and displaying a
remarkable length of stocking for a betrayed virgin whose
honour was
at stake. The conversation was in Italian, which was only one language out of
the Saint’s comprehensive
repertoire; and it was illuminating.
“You
cannot make me pay,” Rolfieri was saying; but his
stubbornness could
have been more convincing.
“That
is true,” Naccaro agreed. “I can only point out the
disadvantages of not paying.
You are in England, where the
police would
be very glad to see you. Your confederates have
already been tried and sentenced, and it would be a mere
formality for you to join them. The lightest
sentence that
any of them received was
five years, and they could hardly
give
you less. If we left you here, and informed the police
where to find you, it would not be long before you
were in
prison yourself. Surely
twenty-five thousand pounds is a very
small
price to pay to avoid that.”
Rolfieri
stared sullenly at the floor for a while; and then
he said: “I will
give you ten thousand.”
“It
will be twenty-five thousand or nothing,” said Naccaro.
“Come,
now—I see you are prepared to be reasonable. Let
us have what we ask,
and you will be able to leave England
again before dark. We will tell that
fool Templar that you
agreed to our terms without the persuasion of
the soap, and that we hurried you to the church before you changed your
mind. He
will fly you back to San Remo at once, and you
will have nothing more
to fear.”
“I
have nothing to fear now,” said Rolfieri, as if he was
trying to
hearten himself. “It would do you no good to hand
me over to the police.”
“It
would punish you for wasting so much of our time
and some of our
money,” put in the girl, in a tone which left
no room for doubt that
that revenge would be taken in the
last resort.
Rolfieri
licked his lips and squirmed in the tight ropes
which bound him—he was
a fat man, and they had a lot to
bind. Perhaps the glimpse of his well-fed
corporation which
that movement gave him made him realise some of the ines
capable
discomforts of penal servitude to the amateur of
good living, for his
voice was even more half-hearted when
he spoke again.
“I
have not so much money in England,” he said.
“You
have a lot more than that in England,” answered
the other Naccaro
harshly. “It is deposited in the City and
Continental Bank under
the name of Pierre Fontanne; and
we have a cheque on that bank made out ready
for you. All
we require is your signature and a letter in your own
hand
instructing the bank to pay cash. Be quick and make up your
mind,
now—we are losing patience.”
It was
inevitable that there should be further argument on
the subject, but the
outcome was a foregone conclusion.
The cheque
was signed and the letter was written; and
Domenick Naccaro
handed them over to his brother.
“Now you will let me
go,” said Rolfieri.
“We
will let you go when Alessandro returns with the
money,” said
Domenick Naccaro. “Until then, you stay here.
Maria will look after
you while I go back to the farm and
detain Templar.”
The Saint
did not need to hear any more. He went back to
the kitchen with
soundless speed, and let himself out of the
window by which he had
entered. But before he left he
picked up a trophy from a shelf over the sink.
Domenick
Naccaro reached the farmhouse shortly after him, and found the Saint reading a
newspaper.
“Rolfieri
has-a marry Maria,” he announced triumphantly,
and kissed the Saint
on both cheeks. “So after all I keep-a
da secret of my leedle trick wis-a da
soap. But everyting we
owe to you, my
friend!”
“I
guess you do,” Simon admitted. “Where are the happy
couple?”
“Ha!
That is-a da romance. It seems that Signor Rolfieri
was always fond of
Maria, and when he hear that she have-a
da baby, and he see
her again—
presto!
he is in love wis her.
So now they go to
London to get-a da clothes, queeck, so
she can go wis him
for da honeymoon. So I tink we drink-a
da wine till they come back.”
They spent
a convivial morning, which Simon Templar would have enjoyed more if caution had
not compelled him
to tip all his drinks down the back of his chair.
It was
half-past one when a car drew up outside, and a
somewhat haggard Rolfieri,
a jubilant Alessandro Naccaro,
and a quietly smiling Maria came in. Domenick
jumped up.
“Everything
is all right?” he asked.
“Pairfect,” beamed
Alessandro.
That was
as much as the Saint was waiting to hear. He un
coiled himself from
his chair and smiled at them all.
“In
that case, boys and girls,” he drawled, “would you all
put up
your hands and keep very quiet?”
There was
an automatic in his hand; and six eyes stared at
it mutely. And then
Domenick Naccaro smiled a wavering
and watery smile.
“I tink you make-a da
joke, no?” he said.
“Sure,”
murmured the Saint amiably. “I make-a da joke.
Just try and get
obstreperous, and watch me laugh.”
He brought
the glowering Alessandro towards him and
searched his
pockets. There was no real question of anybody
getting obstreperous,
but the temptation to do so must have
been very near when he brought out a
sheaf of new banknotes
and transferred them one-handed to his own
wallet.
“This
must seem rather hard-hearted of me,” Simon remarked, “but I have to
do it. You’re a very talented family—
if you really are a family—and you
must console yourselves
with the thought that you fooled me for a
whole ten days.
When I think how easily you might have fooled me for the
rest of
the way, it sends cold shivers up and down my spine.
Really boys, it was a rather brilliant
scheme, and I wish I’d
thought of it
myself.”
“You
wait till I see you da next time, you pig,” said
Domenick churlishly.
“I’ll
wait,” Simon promised him.
He backed
discreetly out of the room and out of the house
to his car; and they
clustered in the doorway to watch him.
It was not until he
pressed the starter that the fullest realisa
tion dawned upon
Signor Rolfieri.
“But
what happens to me?” he screamed. “How do I go back to San
Remo?”
“I
really don’t know, Comrade,” answered the Saint callous
ly.
“Perhaps Domenick will help you again if you give him
some more
money. Twenty five thousand quid instead of
five years’ penal
servitude was rather a bargain price, anyway.”
He let in
the clutch gently, and the big car moved forward.
But in a yard or two
he stopped it again, and felt in one of
his pockets. He
brought out his souvenir of a certain fortu
nate kitchen, and
lobbed it towards the empurpled Domenick.
“Sorry, brother,” he
called back over his shoulder. “I for-
get-a
da soap!”
X
The Loving
Brothers
“You
never saw a couple of brothers like ‘em,” said the
garrulous
Mr. Penwick. “They get enough pleasure out of
doing anybody down,
but if one of ‘em can cheat the other
out of anything it’s a red-letter
day.”
Dissension
between brothers is unhappily nothing new in
the world’s history.
Jacob and Esau, Cain and Abel, dis
agreed in a modest way, according to the limitations of
their
day. Walter and Willie Kinsall, living
in times when a mess
of pottage has no
great bargaining value, disagreed on a
much
more lavish scale.
Naturally
this lavishness of discord was a thing which grew
up through the years.
It was not achieved at one stroke. When
Walter, aged four,
realised that Willie, aged two months,
was commanding the
larger share of his parents’ time and
attention, and endeavored to brain
him with a toy tomahawk,
their mutual jealousy was merely embryonic.
When Willie,
aged seven, discovered that by lying awake at night until
after Walter, aged eleven, had gone to sleep, he was able to
rifle
Walter’s pockets of a judicious share of their current
collection of sweets,
pennies, pieces of string, and elastic
bands, his ideas of
retaliation were only passing through the
experimental stage.
But when Walter, aged twenty, found
that he was able to imitate the
handwriting of Willie, aged
sixteen, so well that he succeeded in drawing
out of Willie’s
savings
bank account a quantity of money whose disappear
ance was ever afterwards a mystery, it might be said that their
feud was at least within sight of the peaks to
which it was
destined later to rise.
The crude
deceptions of youth, of course, gave place to
subtler and less
overtly illegal stratagems as the passing years gave experience and greater
guile. Even their personal rela
tionship was glossed over with a veneer of
specious affability
which deceived neither.
“How
about running down to my place for the week-end?”
suggested Willie,
aged twenty-seven.
Walter ran
down; and at dead of night descended to the
study and perused all
of Willie’s private correspondence that he could find, obtaining an insight
into his brother’s affairs which enabled him to snap up the bankrupt shoe
repairing business which Willie was preparing to take over at a give
away
price.
“Come
and have lunch one day,” invited Walter, aged
thirty-five.
Willie
came at a time when Walter was out, and beguiled
a misguided
secretary into letting him wait in Walter’s private
office. From letters
which were lying on the desk he gained the information through which he
subsequently sneaked a
mining concession in Portuguese East Africa
from under
Walter’s very nose.
The garrulous Mr. Penwick had
several other anecdotes on
the same lines to
tell, the point of which was to establish
beyond dispute the fraternal affection of the Bros. Kinsall.