“You are not leaving!” she exclaimed.
“I didn’t know I was invited to stay,” he said, with the most feather-light touch of challenge.
“Oh, please do! Don’t leave us here alone tonight — the last night before I finally get these paintings off my hands. Hans isn’t feeling well, and I—”
“I feel good,” Hans said. “I am not longer ill.”
“I don’t think Hans trusts me,” murmured the Saint.
Annabella Lambrini smiled indulgently. They were moving slowly back up the front steps of the house.
“Hans is just overprotective. He’s a worrier, aren’t you, Hans?”
“I don’t know why,” Simon said. “Working for a girl with such a nice uncomplicated life as yours.”
Hans turned to the Saint as they entered the hall.
“It is no personal, ah, feeling against you, Sir,” he said stiffly. “The lady iss not safe, und only I am here to protect her. No father, no family. Und I am not young und not strong. Ve must be foresighted... dot is...”
“Careful?” Simon offered.
“Ja, careful. You understand?”
“I understand. In fact, I think your attitude is more sensible than the lady’s.” He watched her wryly as he was speaking. “Here I am, one of the most notorious pirates on the face of the earth, and she’s offering to take me under her roof for her own protection.”
She looked him in the eye.
“I trust you are an honorable man... Simon.”
The way she pronounced his first name, for the first time, would have been enough to send warm tremors up and down the spinal ganglia of a less controlled man. As it was, the Saint held himself detached from the more obvious effects of that sensuous voice and merely decided that becoming Miss Lambrini’s personal cavalier might have more rewards than he had anticipated.
“If you trust that I’m honorable, you’re very trusting,” he remarked.
“I have reason to trust you... and without you I seem quite certain to lose not only my paintings but possibly my life.”
They were in the living room now, and Hans Kraus turned on the lights. The sun was already below the horizon, and the molten glow of the sky was cooling to darkness. Annabella Lambrini drew the curtains over the large window.
“Have you any idea who these characters might be?” Simon asked her. “The ones who are so anxious to get their hands on you and your property?”
“No. Not the slightest.”
“Or how they might have found out about the paintings?”
“No.” She looked at Kraus, who was standing near the door as if waiting for orders. “Go rest now. Monsieur Templar will be staying — won’t you, Simon?”
“My fate seems to be sealed,” he said resignedly. “I will be staying.”
“Good,” the chauffeur said. “I make it certain that all is locked.”
“Are there any outside lights?” the Saint asked. “If there are, I suggest you leave them on all night. With a million and a half dollars you can afford to run up an electric bill.”
The chauffeur bowed briefly and went out.
“I am grateful, Simon,” Annabella said warmly. “I realize that it is not very... conventional to ask this of you, but the fact is, I am not a very conventional female. I have led my life as it pleased me, not wanting to be tied — at least not until I had enjoyed myself. And I knew, from my father, that I would have money coming, though I was not sure until after he died just where it was expected to come from. But I have always been independent, perhaps partly because of the idea that I would have a great deal of money some day. My relationships with men have not had to be on the careful practical basis that most women worry about. In a word, I haven’t learned to give a damn what people think of me. You are shocked?”
“I’m favorably impressed,” Simon said. “It doesn’t sound like a typically Italian attitude.”
“I am not typically Italian.” She waved him toward a chair. “Sit down, please. My father was from the Italian Tyrol, and my mother was from Munich. I was sent to Sweden when I was a little child, during the war. My mother was killed in an air raid in Munich. My father was in the Italian army on the Russian front. He disappeared completely, like so many others, as the Russians moved on Europe, but he survived as a prisoner until he was released and found me years later. I was fifteen years old by then... and yet I still remembered him.”
The Saint nodded as she paused.
“And then you came to live in France?” he said. “You’ve led quite a cosmopolitan life.”
“I’ve never really lived here for long,” she said. “I suffer from Wanderlust, you might say. In fact I have every intention of taking my money when I’ve sold these paintings and going to California and building myself a gorgeous house and living like a movie star... and marrying for love.”
“Like a movie star?” said the Saint cynically.
She smiled and went to the door.
“Would you care for some sherry before dinner? It’s all we have. The supply of alcohol is rather limited. It’s a strange feeling, living on nothing but appearances one day and expecting millions the next.”
Simon said he would like the sherry. When his hostess came back with it, after a delay caused by starting a leg of lamb roasting in the oven, she found him inspecting the sliding bookcase — which was not sliding, but still in place.
“Clever,” he said. “I assume you press one of the shelves to open it?”
Annabella handed him a bottle of Dry Sack, and put down the two glasses she carried.
“You are interested in carpentry?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.
“Was it one of your father’s hobbies?” the Saint countered, uncorking the bottle and pouring for both of them.
He left the shelves and sat down near the woman on the sofa. She looked beautiful and he liked her — and for those reasons among others he had no intention of swiping her paintings and keeping all the loot for himself, although of course he did anticipate a reasonable material reward for the troubles he had already gone through as well as those he probably still had in store.
“I don’t know who built it,” she said. “I know very little about my father, really.”
“And the paintings?”
“Even less. My father was from an aristocratic family. Before the war they were rich and owned property in many countries. This house, for example, had been in the family for several generations. During the war, things fell apart. These paintings, as I understand it, had been in the family for a long time. To my father, they were not an investment — a way of making money. They were a trust. He made certain they were hidden before he went to fight the Communists. Then he told me as he saw the war was going to be lost, he was afraid that the Communists very possibly would take over Austria and Italy, and of course would confiscate private property. He sent instructions for the paintings to be taken out through the Alps to Switzerland by his sister. Then, as I told you, he was captured by the Russians and held for years. When he came back, his sister was dead. He didn’t tell me the details, but somehow he located the paintings. He did not want to sell them, but when he died this year he told me they were all he had to leave me, that I would find them here in this house, and that I should sell them with no publicity to a reputable dealer.”
The Saint sipped his sherry meditatively. Annabella Lambrini seemed genuinely moved as she told the end of her story. She had lowered her eyes, and now she sat without speaking.
“Don’t feel you’re smashing up the family tradition,” he said. “Three Leonardos and a Titian or two thrown in are quite a bit for any woman to live with. I think LeGrand is your best bet, unless you can afford a mansion and a small private army.”