“A bluff, to try and make it look as if they weren’t working for you,” Signora Ravenna said vehemently. “You had it all the time!”
“I didn’t,” said the Saint steadily. “But after you left, I went on thinking. It occurred to me that there was just an outside chance that the fellow I nearly caught had dropped it, and then nobody had thought of looking for it — everybody taking it for granted that somebody else had got it. I went back to the spot and looked. Sure enough, there it was in the bushes. I took it back to my room.”
“You see, he admits it! I saw him again after that, and he didn’t say anything about finding it. He meant to steal it all the time. The only thing he doesn’t confess is that the whole thing was planned!”
“While Signora Ravenna was asking me questions,” Simon continued imperturbably, “I also asked her a few. And I knew damn well she was lying. That made me curious. So I opened the briefcase. I found the painting, the book, the necklace which you have — and, of course, that letter of introduction to you. It was just too much for my inquisitive nature. So I came here, using Ravenna’s name, to try and find out what was going on. You’ve been kind enough to explain the background to me. I now know that Ravenna was simply trying to turn his assets into American money which he could use when he emigrated — which, you’ve explained to me, isn’t a crime here, whatever they think of it in Italy. So now I’m satisfied about that — but not about why Signora Ravenna told me so many lies.”
“I leave that to you, Monsieur Galen,” said the woman with a triumphant shrug. “I would not even tell the police, still less a perfect stranger.”
Galen’s dispassionate eyes rested immovably on the Saint’s face.
“And what is your business, Mr Tombs?”
“Just think of me,” said the Saint, “as a guy with a weakness for puzzles, and an incorrigible asker of questions. I have a few more.” He looked at Signora Ravenna again. “Are you positive your husband couldn’t have discussed this deal with anyone?”
“Only with his best friend, who gave him the introduction to Monsieur Galen.”
“And you’re sure you never mentioned it to anybody?”
“Of course not.”
“But as I said this morning, the jokers who waylaid your husband knew he was carrying something valuable, and even knew it was in his briefcase. How do you account for that?”
“I don’t know how crooks like you find out these things,” she flared. “Why don’t you tell us?”
Simon shook his head.
“I suggest,” he said rather forensically, “that those crooks could only have known because you told them — because you hired them to get rid of your husband and bring you back his most negotiable property.”
The servant in the doorway was pushed suddenly aside, and a short spherical man elbowed his way unceremoniously past him into the room.
“I am Inspector Kleinhaus, of the police,” he said, “and I should also like to hear the answer to that.”
5
“You see,” he explained diffidently, “we had a friendly tip from Italy that two known Italian criminals had bought tickets to Switzerland. It was my job to keep an eye on them. I’m afraid they gave me the slip last night, for long enough to attack and rob Signor Ravenna. When I met you at the scene of the crime, Mr Tombs, I didn’t know if you might be associated with them, so I didn’t introduce myself completely. But we kept watch on you. We saw you find the briefcase and take it to your room — incidentally, we recovered it as soon as you went out, with its interesting contents.”
Galen put the automatic in his pocket and took out the necklace.
“Except this,” he said conscientiously.
“Thank you,” said Kleinhaus. “Meanwhile, Mr Tombs, we went on keeping an eye on you, to see where you’d lead us. I still didn’t know how deeply you were involved in the affair, and I was as puzzled as you seem to have been by the things Ravenna was carrying and by the motive for the robbery. Most of that has now been cleared up. One of my men followed you here, and I followed Signora Ravenna myself after I talked to her at the police station a little while ago. Her answers seemed as suspicious to me as they apparently did to you.”
“How long have you been listening?” Simon asked.
“Monsieur Galen’s servant was too agitated by the way Signora Ravenna behaved when he told her her husband was already here to remember to shut the front door, so I’ve been in the hall all the time. It was very illuminating.” The detective’s bright blue eyes shifted again. “Now, Signora Ravenna, I still want to hear what you were going to say.”
Her face was a white mask.
“I have nothing to say! You can’t be serious about such an accusation — and from such a person! Can you believe I would have my own husband murdered?”
“Such things have happened,” Kleinhaus said sadly. “However, we can check in another way. I’m glad to be able to tell you now that the two men have already been caught. Mr Tombs will be able to identify them. Then you can confront them, and we’ll see what they say when they realize there’s only one way to save their own skins.”
It was pitiful to see the false indignation drain out of her face, and the features turn ugly and formless with terror. She moistened her lips, and her throat moved, but no sound came. And then, as if she understood that in that silence she had already betrayed her own guilt for all to see, she gave an inarticulate little cry and ran past Galen, shoving him out of the way with a hysterical violence that sent him staggering, and ran out through the French windows, out on to the sunlit terrace that went to the edge of the cliff where the house perched, and kept on running...
Inspector Kleinhaus, presently, was the first to turn from looking down over the edge. With a conclusive gesture he replaced his absurdly juvenile hat.
“Perhaps that saves a lot of unpleasantness,” he remarked. “Well, I must still ask you to identify the two men, Mr Tombs — your name really is Tombs, is it?”
“It sounds sort of ominous, doesn’t it?” said the Saint easily.
He still had eight diamonds, six emeralds, and ten valuable stamps in his pockets which no one was left to ask embarrassing questions about, and at such a time it would have been very foolish to draw any more attention to himself.
Juan-les-Pins: The Spanish Cow
Introduction
There are just a few stories which I genuinely regret losing, which were lost by force of circumstance and which I can do nothing about. They were all original Saint stories too, and I was thinking of them while working on a new collection of shorter pieces which I am now trying to finish up.
Also there was a story about the Saint’s vengeance on an absconding company promoter, readable but not particularly distinguished, and a story called “The Spanish Cow,” the only recorded instance where the Saint deliberately played gigolo with a covetous eye on a fat old woman’s jewels, but with a most unpredictable denouement. The manuscripts of these I have lost somewhere: nobody else could find them except me, and I don’t seem to be able to. Nor do I have the heart to try and write them again from memory. There is nothing so dead to me as a story that has been written once and left behind. These are like children that died young: it’s too bad we can’t have them with us today, but there would be something zombie-like about their resurrection, and so we can only write them off and devote ourselves to the more positively entertaining business of making new ones.
— Leslie Charteris (1947)