The Saint Bids Diamonds Read Free Page B

“You’d better have the rest yourself-it ‘ll do you good.”
    She nodded, and he gave her the glass. There were tears in her eyes, and while he looked at her they welled over and ran down her cheeks. She drank quickly, without a grimace, and put the glass down before she turned back to the old man. She sat on the bed, holding him with his head pillowed on her breast and her arm round him, rocking a little as if she were cradling a child, wiping his grimed and battered face with the wet towel while the tears ran unheeded down her cheeks.
    “Joris,” she whispered. “Joris darling. Wake up, darling. It’s all right now… . You’re all right, aren’t you, Joris? Joris, my sweet …”
    The Saint was on his way back to the table to pour a drink for himself, and he stopped so suddenly that if she had been looking at him she must have noticed it. For a second or two he stood utterly motionless, as if he had been turned to stone; and once again that weird uncanny tingle laid its clammy touch on the base of his spine. Only this time it didn’t pass away almost as quickly as it had begun. It crept right up his back until the chill of it crawled over his scalp; and then it dropped abruptly into his stomach and left his heart thumping to make up for the time it had stood still.
    To the Saint it seemed as if a century went by while he stood there petrified; but actually it could have been hardly any time at all. And at last he moved again, stretching out his hand very slowly and deliberately for the bottle that he had been about to pick up. With infinite steadiness he measured a ration of whiskey into his glass, and unhurriedly splashed soda on top of it.
    “Joris,” he repeated, in a voice that miraculously managed to be his own. “That’s rather an unusual name… . Who is he?”
    The fear that flashed through her eyes was suppressed so swiftly this time that if he had not been watching her closely he would probably have missed it altogether.
    “He’s my father,” she said, almost defiantly. “But I’ve always called him Joris.”
    “Dutch name, isn’t it?” said the Saint easily. “Hullo -he seems to be coming round.”
    The old man was moving a little more, shaking his head mechanically from side to side and moaning like a man recovering from an anaesthetic. Simon returned to the bedside, but the girl waved him away.
    “Please-leave him with me for a minute.”
    The Saint nodded sympathetically and sauntered over to a chair. The first breath-taking shock was gone now, and once again his mind was running as cool and clear as an alpine stream. Only the high-strung tension of his awakened nerves, a pulse of vivid expectation too deeply pitched and infinitesimal in its vibration to be perceptible to any senses but his own, remained to testify to the thunderbolt of realisation that had flamed through his brain.
    He slipped a cigarette from his case, tapped it, set it between his lips without a tremor in his hands, and lighted it without haste. Then he opened his wallet and took out a folded piece of blue paper.
    It was a Spanish telegram form; and he read it through again for the twentieth time since it had come into his possession, though he already knew every word of it by heart. It had been sent from Santa Cruz on the twenty-second of December, and it was addressed to a certain Mr Rodney Felson at the Palace Hotel, Madrid. The message ran:
MUST REPLACE JORIS IMMEDIATELY CAN YOU SECURE SUBSTITUTE VERY URGENT
GRANER
Simon folded the sheet and put it carefully away again, but the words still danced before his eyes. He drew the smoke of his cigarette deep into his lungs and let it trickle out towards the ceiling,
“What’s the rest of the name?” he enquired, as if he was merely making idle conversation.
    A moment passed before she answered.
    “Vanlinden,” she said, in the same half-defiant way; and then the Saint knew that he had been right in the wild hunch that had come to him five nights ago in Madrid