bear to die without knowing that.”
Graner stared down at him without expression.
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“I was born that way,” said the Saint regretfully.
“If you intend to go on like this,” Graner said curtly, “we had better consider our arrangement at an end.”
The Saint closed his eyes.
“Okay, Reuben. But leave the damsel here when you go out. I could use her.”
Graner put the gun back in his pocket. The yellow cane twirled between his fingers for a few seconds’ deathly silence. His eyes glistened like moist marbles behind the lenses of his spectacles.
“I am not accustomed to answering impertinent questions,” he said grittily, “but on this occasion I will make an exception to save unnecessary trouble. I told you last night that your predecessor had been foolish. I might have explained that the others had been unsuccessful in bringing him back. He still has some property of ours, and we are still looking for him. This girl is his daughter, and she may help us to find him. That is the whole explanation.”
“Yeah?” drawled the Saint. “And how much is this ticket worth?”
A new silence blanketed the room, so complete that with his hands clasped behind his head the Saint could hear the ticking of his watch, at the same time as he could hear the girl breathing and the faint rustle of Graner’s fingers sliding over his cane. Simon lay still and let the silence spread itself around and have its fun. He might have been asleep.
“What ticket?”
Graner’s voice jarred gratingly into the quiet; and Simon opened one eye at him.
“I don’t know. But you mentioned it just now.”
“That is quite a different matter. It really has nothing to do with what I was telling you.”
“It seemed to be pretty important when Lauber was talking about it last night!”
The silence fell back again, almost substantial in its intenseness, as though the room were filled with some deadening material through which a few slight and insignificant sounds penetrated from a great distance. And then, as if to give the lie to the illusion, it was horribly shattered-not by any noise from inside the room, but by the ear-piercing shriek of the locomotive which runs through Santa Cruz between the quarries and the mole, dragging rocks to a breakwater that never gets any nearer to completion.
“In a way that is true.” Graner’s delayed response cut into a momentary hiatus in the din. “When he ran away, Joris also took with him a lottery ticket which we had all subscribed to buy —”
“That’s a lie!”
Christine flung the accusation at him while he was still speaking; and Graner’s gaze turned to her with an icy malignance.
“My dear girl —”
The locomotive, coming nearer, let out another eldritch screech which might have come from a soul in torment that was being tormented conveniently close to a powerful microphone. The Saint covered his ears.
Graner was saying: “The ticket won quite a small prize, but naturally we had no wish to lose it —”
“He’s lying —”
“My dear Christine, I should advise you to be more careful of your tongue —”
“He’s lying, he’s lying!” The girl was shaking Simon’s shoulder. “You mustn’t believe him. It won the first prize-it won fifteen million pesetas —”
The engine seemed to be almost under the window; and the engineer, warming to his work, was letting out a series of toots with scarcely a second between them. If the makers of the whistle had set out to create a synthetic reproduction of the nerve racking squeak of a knife blade on a plate amplified fifty thousand times, they couldn’t have succeeded more brilliantly. It was a screaming, torturing, agonising, indescribably fiendish cacophony that seemed to tear the flesh and drive stabbing needles through the eardrums. Perhaps it was just loud enough to attract the attention of a Canary Islander and induce him to move out of the way.
“Don’t all talk at once,” said
Graner stared down at him without expression.
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“I was born that way,” said the Saint regretfully.
“If you intend to go on like this,” Graner said curtly, “we had better consider our arrangement at an end.”
The Saint closed his eyes.
“Okay, Reuben. But leave the damsel here when you go out. I could use her.”
Graner put the gun back in his pocket. The yellow cane twirled between his fingers for a few seconds’ deathly silence. His eyes glistened like moist marbles behind the lenses of his spectacles.
“I am not accustomed to answering impertinent questions,” he said grittily, “but on this occasion I will make an exception to save unnecessary trouble. I told you last night that your predecessor had been foolish. I might have explained that the others had been unsuccessful in bringing him back. He still has some property of ours, and we are still looking for him. This girl is his daughter, and she may help us to find him. That is the whole explanation.”
“Yeah?” drawled the Saint. “And how much is this ticket worth?”
A new silence blanketed the room, so complete that with his hands clasped behind his head the Saint could hear the ticking of his watch, at the same time as he could hear the girl breathing and the faint rustle of Graner’s fingers sliding over his cane. Simon lay still and let the silence spread itself around and have its fun. He might have been asleep.
“What ticket?”
Graner’s voice jarred gratingly into the quiet; and Simon opened one eye at him.
“I don’t know. But you mentioned it just now.”
“That is quite a different matter. It really has nothing to do with what I was telling you.”
“It seemed to be pretty important when Lauber was talking about it last night!”
The silence fell back again, almost substantial in its intenseness, as though the room were filled with some deadening material through which a few slight and insignificant sounds penetrated from a great distance. And then, as if to give the lie to the illusion, it was horribly shattered-not by any noise from inside the room, but by the ear-piercing shriek of the locomotive which runs through Santa Cruz between the quarries and the mole, dragging rocks to a breakwater that never gets any nearer to completion.
“In a way that is true.” Graner’s delayed response cut into a momentary hiatus in the din. “When he ran away, Joris also took with him a lottery ticket which we had all subscribed to buy —”
“That’s a lie!”
Christine flung the accusation at him while he was still speaking; and Graner’s gaze turned to her with an icy malignance.
“My dear girl —”
The locomotive, coming nearer, let out another eldritch screech which might have come from a soul in torment that was being tormented conveniently close to a powerful microphone. The Saint covered his ears.
Graner was saying: “The ticket won quite a small prize, but naturally we had no wish to lose it —”
“He’s lying —”
“My dear Christine, I should advise you to be more careful of your tongue —”
“He’s lying, he’s lying!” The girl was shaking Simon’s shoulder. “You mustn’t believe him. It won the first prize-it won fifteen million pesetas —”
The engine seemed to be almost under the window; and the engineer, warming to his work, was letting out a series of toots with scarcely a second between them. If the makers of the whistle had set out to create a synthetic reproduction of the nerve racking squeak of a knife blade on a plate amplified fifty thousand times, they couldn’t have succeeded more brilliantly. It was a screaming, torturing, agonising, indescribably fiendish cacophony that seemed to tear the flesh and drive stabbing needles through the eardrums. Perhaps it was just loud enough to attract the attention of a Canary Islander and induce him to move out of the way.
“Don’t all talk at once,” said
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