“Where?” Mathieu asked.
“In... in the car of those men,” LeGrand said, pointing to the dazed forms on the ground. “I don’t know where it is.”
“Where?” Mathieu demanded of the group in general.
“Through there — on a side road,” Annabella said. “It’s a Volkswagen bus.”
She looked at Simon with a wretched expression of shame at her capitulation and then dropped her gaze to the ground. Mathieu noted her look with satisfaction.
“Go, Bernard,” he said. “Hurry. Get them!”
His assistant ran away across the lawn into the darkness. “We may be excused now, I take it?” Simon asked politely.
“You may not,” Mathieu replied. “Not until I know that you have told the truth.”
There was almost a full minute of silence before Bernard came running back across the grass into the light.
“They’re gone!” he panted. “I found the trunk broken open and a man knocked out on the ground. Somebody had hit him with a rock, I think.”
Mathieu expelled breath furiously. He cursed the group in front of him and then he cursed the world in general. Annabella did not look ashamed any longer, nor the least bit surprised. She looked glowingly pleased.
“If you would like to have the paintings,” she said to Mathieu in a sweet voice, “you can bid against Monsieur LeGrand for them.”
“You have them?” Mathieu exploded.
“My chauffeur has them, and he won’t be where you can find him,” she answered calmly.
LeGrand sat down on the front steps of his house and cupped his chin in his hands with his elbows resting on his knees.
“I am not bidding on anything,” he muttered heavily. “I am finished with this whole affair.”
As his voice trailed off, Annabella took his check from her purse and handed it to him.
“This is no good anyway, I suppose,” she said. Then she turned to the Italian. “Monsieur Mathieu,” she said brightly, “do you want the paintings or do I look for another customer?”
“But you... you are a thief!” Mathieu sputtered self-righteously.
“A defect of character most of us here share,” said the Saint. “Why don’t you pay mademoiselle half the paintings’ market value as established by Monsieur LeGrand? That takes into account the obvious fact that neither of you can really believe a word the other says, and that both of you will be lucky to get out of this without ending up in jail.”
Mathieu pressed his lips together grimly as he thought over the situation. He looked piercingly at Annabella, who presented a front as smooth and uncommunicative as polished crystal. He looked at Bernard, who squirmed like a vaguely guilty puppy.
“Twenty-five percent?” Mathieu growled.
“Forty percent,” Annabella said firmly.
“Thirty-five,” Mathieu sighed with resignation.
“It’s not enough,” said Annabella.
“All right!” snapped Mathieu. “Forty! When? I want to get this over with.”
“The sooner the better,” Annabella said delightedly. “Tonight?”
“But don’t call us, we’ll call you,” Simon put in. “Give us a telephone number we can reach and we’ll tell you when and where to come.”
“Bon,” Mathieu said with resignation. He indicated Tweedledum and Tweedledee on the ground. “And these creatures?”
“Have you any insecticide?” Simon asked.
Marcel LeGrand stood up in alarm.
“You can’t kill them here!” he moaned.
“No one is going to kill them,” Mathieu said. “We shall lock them somewhere in your house, Monsieur LeGrand, and we shall wait here until we have the telephone call from Monsieur Templar and Mademoiselle Lambrini. Rather, I shall wait here. Bernard will go for the money. Does that suit everyone?”
“Can you get it tonight?” Simon asked.
“You will take lire?” Mathieu asked.
“I’ll take anything as long as I can spend it,” Annabella replied.
“We can pay then. We can go to... We have sources.”
“Fine,” said the Saint. “We’ll be in touch.”
“I have the VW key,” Annabella said. “Let’s take it.”
“All right.” He walked a few yards with her and then looked back. “And if anybody follows us, the deal is off — permanently.”
They hurried away through the shadows.
“He’s really letting us go!” Annabella said unbelievingly.
“He’s got no choice,” Simon replied, taking her hand and helping her through a hedge. “Are we telling him the truth this time or is there another layer to the cake?”
“We’re telling him the truth,” Annabella said. “Isn’t it grand? I hid and watched the Volkswagen the way you said, and two men came and put the trunk in it. When one of them was standing there alone I just walked up behind him...”
“And walloped him with a large chunk of native limestone?” Simon asked.
“Exactly!” Annabella beamed.
They had come to the Volkswagen bus. Annabella pointed into the bushes, where a man lay gagged and trussed.
“Did you tie him?” Simon asked.
“Hans did.”
“And the paintings?”
“Hans took them in your car. I told him to go and wait for us at a park about a mile from here.”
“Great work,” Simon said. “Unless, of course, Hans is half way to the Himalayas by now.”
“Hans would never betray me,” Annabella said confidently. “Let’s go.”
And she was right. When Simon, following her directions, had driven along the requisite streets, he saw his car next to a small park across from a school building. Hans got out of the driver’s seat only after the Saint and Annabella had stepped out of the Volkswagen and could be clearly identified by the light of a street lamp.
“Everything is good?” he enquired.
“Everything is good if you have the paintings,” Simon answered.
“Aber natürlich! They are here, in the back seat.”
Simon took out each of the paintings in turn and quickly inspected them in the lamplight. They were all there and in perfect condition.
“Hans,” he said, “you’re a gem. Let’s call Mathieu and get this deal over with.”
“There’s a telephone kiosk on the corner,” Annabella said eagerly. “I’ll do it.”
She ran away like a happy schoolgirl and Hans shook his head admiringly.
“She is a vunderful lady,” he said. “Like her father. As you say, she is a chop off the old block.”
“Sometimes we say a chip off the old joint,” Simon murmured.
Hans wanted to know all that had happened back at Marcel LeGrand’s house, so the Saint filled him in while Annabella was in the phone box. She returned to the car, where the men were standing, with a contented smile on her face.
“They’ll be coming right away,” she announced. “Mathieu has already sent Bernard for the money. I told them we’d wait here in the car.”
“Good,” said Simon. “Hans and I were discussing old English sayings while you were gone, and this situation brings to mind another one... about not putting all one’s eggs in the same automobile.”
“What do you mean?” Annabella asked.
“I mean I think I’ll wait over there across the road in the shadows in case Mathieu decides that he’d prefer spending a couple of cheap bullets rather than a lot of expensive money.”
“You think he doesn’t intend to go through with this even now?” Annabella asked in dismay.
“I think he does,” the Saint replied, “if he has to. But it won’t hurt to give the ethical side of his nature a little encouragement.”
He opened the door and let her into the front passenger seat of the car. Hans, at his indication, took the driver’s seat.