The Saint in Persuit Read Online Free PDF Page B

perched on his pointed beak walked stiffly across the tiled floor to meet them. Against the background of bars and barrel-vaulted stone ceiling he looked very appropriately like some gnomish custodian of long-interred wealth.
    “Senhorita,” he said as Vicky stepped towards him. “I am Valdez, Assistant Manager. May I help you? I am told it is a matter which goes back many years, and I am most qualified on such matters.”
    If he smiled, the event was obscured by a hanging garden of white moustache which covered his mouth entirely except for a bit of central lower lip.
    “I’ve come to ask about a safe deposit box my father rented here in 1945,” Vicky told him. “His name was Kin-ian—Major Robert Kinian.”
    Assistant Manager Valdez squinted briefly and shook his head.
    “I do not remember him myself, senhorita, but it is easy to look him up. Come into my office, please.”
    He led the way with a stiff-legged brisk gait to a private office rich in waxed wood and leather. Vicky gave more details. Shortly Valdez sat at his massive desk and opened a bound volume of records with the date 1945-46 on its spine. As he was going over one of the pages with a magnifying glass Freda made a sotto voce comment to Vicky, who was sitting next to her in a huge wooden chair.
    “If George Washington ever banked here, I bet this place would still have his checks.”
    “Senhorita,” said Valdez unexpectedly without looking up from his magnifying glass, “this bank still holds an unpaid note signed by Christopher Columbus.”
    Again, if the Assistant Manager’s drollery was accompanied by any trace of a smile, he was the only one who could have known it, and Vicky and Freda glanced at one another like two schoolgirls trying to stifle giggles.
    “Ah!” said Valdez suddenly, “here is the name Kinian, with a special notation. The box was taken by Robert Kin-ian on February 8, 1945, and the rent paid in advance for thirty years.
    When he looked up from the minuscule pen scratches of his ledger Vicky was leaning forward so tensely that he paused and blinked.
    “Do not fear, senhorita, the box is certain to be here, quite secure. The vault is even safe against earthquakes. We have learned from unhappy experience.”
    “I wasn’t worried about that,” Vicky assured him. “I’m just anxious to see the box.”
    Valdez stood up.
    “Good,” he said briskly. “All that is needed from you is some identification.”
    Vicky opened her purse.
    “Here’s my passport.”
    “Very good.” Valdez took the green booklet and inspected its first pages. “‘Victoria Eileen Kinian.’ Yes, that is correct. I am authorized to give you a key to this box. Now, if you will follow me, please …”
    They went with him out of the office, across the main floor again, and into a crypt-like stone chamber behind one of the counters. Armed with a ring of jangling keys, Valdez left the girls, shuffled off down a tunnel, and returned after an almost unbearable delay carrying a large metal box in his arms. He put the box on a table in the center of the room, handed Vicky a key, and held a chair for her and then for Freda.
    “Regard the box as your own now, senhorita,” he said. “I shall leave you alone.”
    “Our own private dungeon,” Freda said with a shiver when he had gone, gazing around at the forbidding walls of the room. “Solid granite three feet thick. Open that thing and let’s get out of here. What are you waiting for?”
    Vicky was sitting with the key in her hand, hesitating to use it. Freda’s question broke the spell, and she inserted the key carefully into the lock at the end of the box.
    “I don’t know,” she confessed. “For some reason, this is all giving me the creeps. I feel a little like—who was that girl in the old story who opened a box and discovered too late what she’d let out?” She turned the key. “Pandora,” she remembered aloud. “Pandora.”
    The only sound in the bank’s inner sanctum was the