The Saint Bids Diamonds Read Online Free PDF Page B

time, Simon had let him do it. Whereupon Mr Uniatz had attached himself with a blind and unshakable allegiance from which, short of physical violence, it was impossible to pry him loose for more than a few weeks at a time. Left to himself, Hoppy would wander moodily about the earth, a spiritual Ishmael, until he could place his destiny once again in the hands of this superman, this invincible genius, who could find his way with such apparent ease through the terrifying and tormenting labyrinths of Thought. Whatever the problem in hand might be, then or at any other time, Hoppy Uniatz knew that the Saint would solve it.
    He leaned forward and tapped Christine on the shoulder.
    “It’s okay, miss,” he said encouragingly. “De boss ‘ll fix it. Wit’ a nut like his, he could of bin a big shot in de States.”
    “I was a big shot,” Simon retorted. “But there are limits.”
    He was beginning to get the finer details of the situation sorted out into a certain amount of order, but without making much difference to the dizzy turmoil into which his mind had been whirled. The more he thought about it, the more fantastic it became.
    For a Spanish lottery ticket is a documento del portador, a bearer bond of the most comprehensive and undiscriminating kind in the world. Short of the most elaborate and irrefutable evidence to the contrary, combined with warrants and court orders and God knows how many other formalities, the ticket itself is the only legal claim under heaven to any prize which it may draw. There are not even any counterfoils to be retained by the original seller; so that, without that law, the administration of the lottery would be impossible. In other words, the piece of paper which Joris Vanlinden had lost, a folded sheet no more than seven inches long by four inches wide, with the thickness of the twenty sections into which a Navidad ticket is divided, was the strongest existing claim to a payment of fifteen million pesetas, two million dollars or four hundred thousand pounds at the most conservative rate of exchange-more than seven hundred pounds or thirty-five hundred dollars per square inch if you opened it out-one of the most compact and negotiable and untraceable concentrations of wealth that the world can ever have seen. The Saint had known boodle in almost every shape and form under the sun, had handled what everybody except himself would have called more than his fair share of it, but there was something about this new and hitherto tmconsidered species of it that took his breath away.
    He stopped walking and looked at Vanlinden again. The old man, shivering with nervous reaction and clinging pathetically to his daughter’s hand, had sunk back exhausted on to the pillow. His weak, tired eyes stared mutely up at the Saint; but even he must have been convinced that Simon knew nothing, for the fire had died out of them and left only the anguish.
    Simon turned to the girl.
    “If Graner’s idea was what you say it was, why did he let you go at all?”
    “He didn’t. He said he was going to, but I never, believed him. Every day I was terrified that something -something would happen to Joris. When I knew that the official lists were supposed to arrive tonight, I was … I was sure they … they would see that something happened to Joris before he woke up tomorrow.”
    “So you decided to make a dash for it.”
    She nodded.
    “We said we were going to bed early and we got out of a window. Graner hadn’t let the dogs out then… .”
    “There are dogs, are there?”
    He heard her catch her breath.
    “Yes. But they weren’t out… . We got away, and we ran. But they must have missed us. They came after us and caught us on the road. That was when you arrived.”
    The Saint blew two smoke rings, very carefully putting the second through the middle of the first.
    “So they took the ticket,” he said. “But they didn’t have to kill Joris. Or did they?” His eyes pinned her again, very clear and level