“And Hans?” the Saint asked.
“He has always been with my family. He knows the truth about the paintings.”
Simon felt there was no more time to spend hashing the background history. He motioned Hans to stay in the car and then took his companion by her hand and led her down the street and around the corner.
“Do you mind if I keep calling you Annabella?” he asked. “I’m used to it.”
“Please do. And now...”
“And now look through this hedge. You see that Volkswagen bus?”
“Yes.”
“It belongs to the men who kidnapped LeGrand this morning,” he said softly. “Keep your eye on it. If it should leave while I’m at the house, have Hans drive my car and follow it.”
“What are you going to do?” she whispered.
“What I can. Keep out of sight!”
He disappeared from her view and made his way through the cover of hedges and the deep shadow of trees until he had re-entered LeGrand’s grounds and reached the side of his house. A thin blade of yellow light shone between two curtains in a side window. Putting one eye against the glass of the window, Simon could see LeGrand, a dark-haired woman who had to be LeGrand’s wife, and two of the men whom he had left locked in the garage that morning before Mathieu had interfered, otherwise known as Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Tweedledum was holding a gun on LeGrand and the woman.
“Yes,” he was saying in labored French. “I was with her father when he took them. It can’t be denied that I, who took risks in smuggling them through Russian lines, deserve a share. And now, congratulations on your performance, Monsieur LeGrand. If your wife will join us now we will go.”
LeGrand looked stunned.
“My wife?”
“A security precaution,” the man with the gun said. “So that you do not call for help. She will be released when we cross the border. In the meantime, keep silent. The paintings, Gunter? Are they in the car?”
“Yes. Gino has taken them out and will lock them in the steamer trunk.”
“Alone?” Tweedledum grumbled. “I don’t trust him or anybody else at this stage. Bring her along, and hurry!”
Simon congratulated himself on leaving Annabella behind to watch the Volkswagen bus. There had been no one in sight in its vicinity when he and she had looked at it through the bushes. Apparently the man with the paintings had been going from the house to the bus by one route while the Saint had been going from the bus to the house by another way. He would just have to hope that Annabella could take care of any contingency in her sector while he tried to turn the tables here.
Through the slit between the curtains he saw glimpses of Marcel LeGrand’s distraught face as his wife was led from the room at gunpoint. Simon stepped back from the window and hurried along the side of the house to the front, where he had just time to slip into the dark shelter of the shrubbery next to the steps before the door opened.
Madame LeGrand came out first, followed closely by Tweedledee, who was gripping her arm tightly from behind. As Tweedledum emerged from the house he turned back to speak to an invisible LeGrand.
“Stay in there and do not cause any trouble and your wife will be telephoning you in a few hours.”
LeGrand’s wife and Tweedledee had stopped to wait before going on down the steps to the lawn. Simon steadied himself, muscles tensed, like a cobra ready to strike. Suddenly he sprang forward, grabbing both the ankles of Madame LeGrand’s guard and sweeping the man’s feet out from under him. The woman half fell as the man tried to cling to her as he crashed full length on to the steps. Simon, in a continuation of the same movement that had brought the man low, yanked him by his feet entirely off the ground like a long bag of grain and banged his head forcefully against the stone treads.
Tweedledum whirled, but before he could fully realize what was happening his comrade was a crumpled casualty sprawled half in the bushes, and the Saint was launching a new attack in the form of a leap on to the steps and a fist in the tender center of the gunman’s solar plexus. LeGrand joined in at the same time, hurling himself at the man’s back from inside the house. His attack was unorthodox but effective: he had jumped entirely off the ground, hooked his legs around the man’s waist, and was riding him with the clinging desperation of a boy on a bucking bronco.
After the Saint’s blow to the stomach, however, the bronco did not have much buck left. Simon stood back and watched as the bizarre equestrian act lurched down the steps and collapsed on the ground, the would-be kidnapper emitting a bellows-like gust of breath as LeGrand’s weight sandwiched him heavily against the earth.
Simon took the man’s pistol, held it on him, and helped LeGrand to his feet.
“Mon dieu, I am grateful!” the art dealer gasped to the Saint. “How can I ever thank you enough?”
Then another voice, one which should not have been there to chime in, spoke up with quiet irony.
“And how can I?” Then the tone of the voice sharpened suddenly. “Drop the gun, Monsieur Templar!”
Simon reluctantly let the pistol slip from his fingers to the grass. He and LeGrand turned to see the man who called himself Inspector Mathieu, together with his companion Bernard, facing the group with drawn guns from the shadow of a tree ten feet away.
“So we meet the forces of law and order once again,” Simon said, with exaggerated reverence in his voice.
“For the last time,” Mathieu said confidently. “You have saved us a great deal of trouble by taking the fight out of these pests.” He indicated the two half-conscious men on the ground with a wave of his automatic. “And now you can retire from the battle yourself. Where are—”
He was interrupted by an excited and innocently happy female cry.
“Oh, Simon, you’ve got them!”
The cry was Annabella’s. She had just come ginning around the house without noticing Mathieu and Bernard. Now she stopped with a change of expression which would have been wonderfully comical in less catastrophic circumstances, as Mathieu stepped into the light.
“Don’t move, mademoiselle,” he ordered.
He turned again to the Saint.
“Monsieur,” he said harshly, “there are too many women here for you to risk trifling with us. But just to salve your conscience, I shall explain that we are not thieves. I am an investigator for an agency in Milan which is seeking to recover art which disappeared from Italy during the war.”
“Those are my father’s paintings!” Annabella interrupted fiercely.
“He looted them,” Mathieu said.
“He did not!”
“Never mind; they are going back where they belong.”
“Assuming you’re telling the truth,” Simon said, “don’t you think Mademoiselle Lambrini deserves something? The paintings have been in her family for almost a generation.”
“That does not legalize her possession,” Mathieu snapped. “But I do not have time to waste on quibbles! Tell me where the paintings are, one of you, or we shall have to twist the information out of these ladies!”
He nodded toward Annabella, and Bernard grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her toward him with one arm caught up behind her. Annabella’s eyes went wide with fear, while LeGrand turned pale. The dealer cast an agonized look at his wife, and then at the Saint
“Shouldn’t we... tell?” he asked weakly.
“We do not want to hurt the girl,” Mathieu urged. “One of you will tell us shortly anyway!”
Annabella gave a hopeless sigh.
“It’s my arm he’ll break,” she said. “If nobody else tells, I will.”
LeGrand accepted the invitation to appeasement with relief. His nerves were obviously at breaking point.
“The paintings are locked in the false bottom of a trunk,” he blurted.