Read The Saint Bids Diamonds for Free Online

and bright like sapphires. “Does anything strike you about that?”
    She pushed her fingers through her disordered hair.
    “My God,” she said, “how can I think?”
    “Well, doesn’t anything strike you? They may have wanted to put Joris away because he knew too much. But there may have been another reason. If he was running about loose after they’d pinched his ticket, he might make a fuss about it. It wouldn’t be easy, but I suppose he could make a fuss. People don’t buy a whole two-thousand-peseta Navidad ticket all to themselves so often, especially in a place like this, that the shop wouldn’t be likely to remember him. If he was dead, anybody could say they bought it off him; but if he was alive and raising hell —”
    “How could he? He couldn’t go near the police —”
    “That’s a matter of opinion. Admittedly he’d be getting himself into trouble at the same time; but anyone who turns state’s evidence can usually count on a good deal of leniency, and Joris has a lot less to lose than the others have. Just looking at it theoretically, when a bloke is in Joris’ position, and a miracle has tossed him up within a finger’s length of getting everything he wants most in the world, and then somebody snatches it away from him at the last moment and shoves him back again, it’s liable to make him crazy enough to do anything for revenge. I don’t know what sort of a psychologist Reuben Graner is, but I’d be inclined to look at it that way if I were in his place. What do you think, Hoppy?”
    The unornamental features of Mr Uniatz marshalled themselves into an expression of reproachful anguish. Even in their moments of most undisturbed serenity, they tended to resemble something which an amateur sculptor had beaten out of a lump of clay with a large hammer, in the vain hope that his most polite friends would profess to recognise it as a human face; but when twisted out of repose they looked even more like an unfortunate essay in ultrafuturistic art, and could probably have commanded a high price from an advanced museum. Mr Uniatz, however, was not concerned about his beauty. A man of naive and elemental tastes, there was something about the mere sound of the word “think” which made him wince.
    “What-me?” he said painfully.
    “Yes, you.”
    Mr Uniatz bit another piece off the end of his cigar and swallowed it absent-mindedly.
    “I dunno, boss,” he began weakly; and then, with the Saint’s clear and accusing blue eye fixed on him, he returned manfully to his torment. “Dis guy Graner,” he said. “Is he de guy wit’ de oughday?”
    “We were hoping he had some.”
    “De guy wit’ de ice?”
    “That’s right.”
    “De guy ya tell me about in Madrid?”
    “Exactly.”
    “De guy we come here to take?”
    “The same.”
    “De lottery guy?” said Hoppy, leaving no stone unturned in his anxiety to make sure of his ground before committing himself.
    Simon nodded approvingly.
    “You seem to have grasped some of it, anyway,” he said. “I suppose you could call Graner the lottery guy for the present. Anyway, he’s got the ticket. So the question is-what happens next?”
    “Dat looks like a cinch,” said Mr Uniatz airily; and the Saint subsided limply into a chair.
    “One of two things has happened to you for the first time in your life,” he said sternly. “Either the whiskey has had some effect, or an idea has got into your head.”
    Mr Uniatz blinked.
    “Sure, it’s a cinch, boss. All we gotta do is, we go to dis guy an’ say ‘Lookit, mug; eider you split wit’ us on your racket, or we toin ya in to de cops.’ Sure, he comes t’ru. It’s a pipe,” said Mr Uniatz, driving home his point.
    The Saint gazed at him pityingly.
    “You poor fathead,” he said. “It isn’t a racket. This is the Spanish official lottery. It’s perfectly legal. Graner isn’t running it. He’s simply got the ticket that won it.”
    Mr Uniatz looked unhappy. The Spanish government,