M PAUL GALEN
137 WENDENWEG
LUCERNE
Dear Monsieur Galen,
The bearer, Signor Filippo Ravenna, can be trusted, and his merchandise is most reliable.
With best regards,
The signature was distinctive but undecipherable.
“And a fascinating line of merchandise it is,” brooded the Saint. “For a shoemaker, Filippo must have been quite an interesting soul — or was he a heel?... A connoisseur and collector of very varied tastes? But then why would he bring his prize treasures with him on a trip like this?... A sort of Italian Raffles, leading a double life? But a successful business man shouldn’t need to steal. And if he did, his instincts would lead him to fancy bookkeeping rather than burglary... A receiver of stolen goods? But then he wouldn’t need a formal introduction to someone else who sounds as if he might be in that line of business... And what a strange assortment of loot! There has to be a clue there, if I could find it...”
But for ten minutes the significance eluded him. And at that point he gave up impatiently.
There was another clue, more positive, more direct, in the letter to the mysterious Paul Galen, and it was one which should not be too difficult to run down.
He put the jewels, the stamps, and the letter in different pockets of his coat. The book and the painting, too bulky to carry inconspicuously, he put back in the briefcase and zippered it up again. He hid it, not too seriously, under the mattress at the head of the bed. Then, with a new lightness in his step, he went out and rang for the elevator.
It took him down one floor, and stopped again. Signora Ravenna got in.
For the space of one skipped heartbeat he wondered whether her room too might have a balcony from which she might have watched him retrieve the briefcase from the bushes below, but he met her eyes with iron coolness and only a slight pleasant nod to acknowledge their acquaintance, and his pulse resumed smoothly when she gave back only a small perfunctory smile.
She had put on a small black hat and carried a purse.
“The police have asked me to go and talk to them again,” she volunteered. “They have thought of more questions, I suppose. Did they send for you too?”
“I haven’t heard from them since last night,” he said. “But I expect they’ll get around to me eventually.”
It occurred to him that it was a little odd that he had not been asked to repeat the descriptions which Oscar Kleinhaus had promised to relay, but he was too busy with other thoughts to speculate much about the reasons for it. He was grateful enough to have been dropped out of the investigation.
As they strolled across the lobby, he said, “Will you think me impertinent if I ask another question?”
“No,” she said. “I want your help.”
“When your husband went out last night — did he say where he was going?”
She answered mechanically, so that he knew she was reciting something that she had said before.
“I was tired, and he wanted to look for a cafe where he had heard there were Tyrolean singers, so he went alone.”
“Didn’t you think it strange that he should take his briefcase?”
“I didn’t see him take it.”
Simon handed her into a taxi without another word.
He walked slowly towards the Schweizerhof. At the corner of the Alpenstrasse he bought a selection of morning papers, and sat down at the nearest cafe over a cup of chocolate to read methodically through all the headlines.
He had just finished when a shadow fell across the table, and a familiar voice said, “Looking to see whether you are a hero, Mr Tombs?”
It was Oscar Kleinhaus, and the disarming smile on his cherubic face made his remark innocent of offense. The Saint smiled back, no less disarmingly.
“I was rather curious to see what the newspapers said about it,” he admitted. “But they don’t seem to have the story yet.”
“No, I didn’t notice it either. I’m afraid our press is a little slow, by American standards. We think that if a story would be good in the morning, it will be just as interesting in the evening.”
“Would you care to join me?”
Kleinhaus shook his head.
“Unfortunately I have a business appointment. I hope I’ll have another opportunity. How long are you staying here?”
“I haven’t made any plans. I thought the police would want to know that, but no one’s been near me.”
“If they caught anyone for you to identify, they would want you. Until then, I expect they think it more considerate not to trouble you. But if you asked for your bill at the hotel, I’m sure they would be informed.” The round face was completely bland and friendly. “I must go now. But we shall run into each other again. Lucerne is a small town.”
He raised his collegiate hat with the same formal courtesy as the night before, and ambled away.
Simon watched him very thoughtfully until he was out of sight. Then he hailed a cab and gave the address which he had found in the briefcase.
The road turned off the Alpenstrasse above the ancient ramparts of the old town and wound up the hillside with ever widening vistas of the lake into a residential district of neat doll-house chalets. The house where the taxi stopped was high up, perched out on a jutting crag, and Simon had paid off the driver and was confirming the number on the door, with his finger poised over the bell, before he really acknowledged to himself that he had already had two wide-open and obvious opportunities to speak about the briefcase to more or less interested parties since he had found it, and that he had studiously ignored both of them — not to mention that he had made no move whatever to report his discovery to the police. But now he could no longer pretend to be unaware of what he was doing. And it is this chronicler’s shocking duty to record that the full and final realization gave him a lift of impenitent exhilaration which the crisp mountain air could never have achieved alone.
The door opened, and a manservant with a seamed gray face, dressed in somber black, looked him over impersonally.
“Is Monsieur Galen here?” Simon inquired.
“De la part de qui, m’sieur?”
“I am Filippo Ravenna,” said the Saint.
4
The room into which he was ushered was large and sunny, furnished with the kind of antiques that look priceless and yet comfortable to live with. The walls on either side of the fireplace were lined with bookshelves, on two others were paintings and a tapestry, in the fourth French windows opened on to a terrace overlooking the town and the mountains and the lake. The carpet underfoot was Aubusson. It was the living room of a man of wealth and cheerful good taste, and the manservant looked like an undertaker in it, but he withdrew as soon as he had shown the Saint in.
The man who advanced to greet Simon was altogether different. He had a muscular build rounded with good living, a full crop of black hair becomingly flecked with silver, and strong fleshy features. White teeth gleamed around a cigar.