As she spoke her sharp heels continued their staccato on the pavement. Simon needed only his most casual walking speed to keep abreast of her.
“I won’t try to match your subtle wit,” he answered with the faintest trace of sarcasm. “I’ll just ask if you would care to join me for a drink.”
She stopped beneath the awning of a jewelry shop.
“Monsieur Templar, I am not certain just what your connection with Monsieur LeGrand and his interest in my paintings is. Perhaps you are a rich American who is going to put up the money for all five, or perhaps you are a spy of his hoping to find out something which will give him an advantage in our bargaining. In either case, or whatever the case may be, I do not stand to benefit from your company.”
She moved on, and Simon continued unruffled beside her.
“Maybe I’m just lonely,” he said. “Don’t you have a soft spot in your heart for visiting art lovers?”
“There are girls in bars for that sort of thing,” she said drily. “I’ll leave you now. There is my automobile.”
They were at the entrance of a narrow one-way street. Illegally parked there was a single black Mercedes facing away from the Saint and Mademoiselle Lambrini. Through the rear window Simon could make out the peaked cap of a chauffeur.
“Well,” he said to her, “at least we have something in common: neither of us finds the other one very pleasant.”
For a moment he thought she was going to smile, but then she nodded, said “Bon jour,” and walked away toward the Mercedes.
“Au revoir,” the Saint said.
He watched her until she had reached the car, and then he started back toward LeGrand’s salon. He had scarcely taken the first step when he heard a short sharp scream. It was almost lost in the traffic noise, and the passersby near him did not seem even to notice it. He spun around in time to see Mademoiselle Lambrini being pulled into the black Mercedes. The automobile’s door was half open, and the woman’s struggles had succeeded in keeping one of her arms and one of her legs outside the car.
Simon ran toward the car. The only other witness to the scene was an old woman, her arms full of parcels, standing and gaping as dumbly as if she had been watching the whole thing on television.
The Saint reached the black car just before Mademoiselle Lambrini could be hauled inside clear of the door. He threw himself between the open door and the side of the car, so that the door could not be closed. There were two men immediately visible — one the man in the chauffeur’s cap and the other the man trying to restrain Mademoiselle Lambrini. The latter had to give up the hold of one of his hands on the woman in order to aim a punch at the Saint’s midriff. Simon evaded the jab, caught the man’s forearm, and yanked him by his outstretched arm straight out of the door, banging the kidnapper’s head and shoulder against the doorframe in the process.
Mademoiselle Lambrini swung her purse at the head of the driver as he started to throw the Mercedes into gear. The automobile lurched forward with the door still open, the Saint clinging to the outside, and its comely owner bashing its driver with a large alligator purse.
It was a short trip — not more than half a dozen yards. The driver slammed on the brake, flung open his own door, and jumped out before the car had stopped moving. In the meanwhile, his comrade had scrambled to his feet and was disappearing past the gaping old woman with the parcels. The Saint might have caught the escaping driver if the Mercedes, in coming to an abrupt halt as its wheels bumped into the curb, had not given such a jerk that he was thrown momentarily off balance. He half fell, and saw that Mademoiselle Lambrini had been thrown forward against the dashboard. Clutching her head with one hand, she slumped half out of the still rumbling car, and the Saint had to catch her in his arms and raise her back to a sitting position in the front seat. By the time he could look up both of the men were out of sight.
Simon gently took Mademoiselle Lambrini’s hand and moved it away from her forehead.
“Cut?” he asked.
“No,” she said weakly. “I am all right.”
“I thought so,” he continued with confident good cheer. “Somebody was telling me just a few minutes ago that you are the sort of girl who doesn’t need protection, and now it’s perfectly obvious that that’s true.” He straightened up and nodded. “I’ll be running along then, and...”
She let out a dismayed gasp and caught his arm.
“No! Please. Don’t leave me. I–I thought you were one of them.”
“One of them?”
“I’ll explain if you won’t leave me...”
From his standing position the Saint saw something on the floor behind the front seat of the Mercedes. He also noticed the old woman of the parcels creeping tentatively nearer, one hesitant step at a time, as several other pedestrians gathered at the end of the narrow street to look at and discuss the situation.
“I won’t leave you, then — yet,” Simon said. “But we’d better leave here. For one thing, there seems to be a body in the back scat of your car.”
3
“A body?”
Mademoiselle Lambrini turned to peer over into the back of the Mercedes as Simon opened the rear door. A middle-aged man in a black suit lay unconscious on the floor, face up, his arms sprawled awkwardly as they had fallen when he was dumped there.
“Hans!” she cried, in shocked recognition.
“One of ours?” Simon asked.
“My chauffeur,” she answered in a voice that was genuinely shaken with concern. “Have they hurt him? What...”
The Saint could see that the man was breathing deeply. There was a faint smell of chloroform on the air.
“I think they just doped him. Let’s see how his pulse is doing.”
When he had lifted the man up on to the back seat, he realized that the audience of pedestrians which had started to collect at a distance a few moments before was gathering closer around the car. At any minute some alert member of the Parisian police would stumble on the scene and begin asking questions.
“Let’s either sell tickets or pull out of here,” Simon said. “If you’d like to drive I’ll tend to your friend here.”
“I can’t,” Mademoiselle Lambrini said. Then she noticed that the half dozen people around the car were cocking their ears to listen. Her next words were in excellently pronounced English. “I can’t drive. Will you, please? If I could trouble you...”
“Of course,” the Saint said, also in English. “Would you like to get back here with Otto?”
She was already sliding on to the seat next to the limp man. He was about sixty-five with close-cropped gray hair.
“Hans is his name,” she said. “Please, let’s hurry.”
The Saint nodded pleasantly to the little group of gawkers, got into the driver’s seat, and started the automobile’s engine.
“Where to?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Would you mind... would it be too much trouble to ask you to drive me home?”
“I don’t know whether it’s too much trouble for you to ask me or not, but it won’t be too much trouble for me to do it.”
She flushed.
“You are making a joke about my English.”
Simon backed the car a few inches from the curb, shifted it into forward gear, and felt the powerful engine move it smoothly away from the group of onlookers.
“I shouldn’t have made a joke,” he said. “You speak very good English... and I’d guess about ten other languages, judging from the fact that I can’t place your accent.”
He was turning the Mercedes into a main street. She met his eyes in the rear-view mirror for an instant and then suddenly bent over her chauffeur.