Free The Saint Bids Diamonds by Leslie Charteris

can make your excuses.”
    “But —”
    “You will stay here tonight.”
    Graner’s tone was flat and expressionless, and yet it had a smug insolence that brought the blood to the Saint’s head. He stood up, and Graner stood up also.
    “That’s all very well, dear old bird,” Simon said gently. “But what is this-a job or a prison? Even with your beauty —”
    Without the flicker of an eyelash, Graner brought up his left hand and slapped the Saint sharply across the face. Almost in the same movement a gun appeared in his right, levelled quite steadily at the centre of the Saint’s chest.
    Simon felt as if a sudden torrent of liquid fire poured along his veins, and every muscle in his body went tense. The fingernails cut into his palms with the violent contraction of his fists. How he ever managed to hold himself in check was a miracle beyond his understanding.
    “There are one or two things you had better make up your mind to understand, Tombs,” Graner was saying, in the same flatly arrogant tone. “In the first place, I dislike flippancy-and familiarity.”
    He made a slight movement with the automatic.
    “Also-apart from this-it is impossible for anybody to leave this house without my permission.”
    His gaze did not shift from the Saint’s face, where the marks of his fingers were printed in dark red on the tanned skin.
    “If you intend to work for me, you will accept any orders I give-without question.”
    Simon looked down at the gun. Without knowing how quick the other was with the trigger, he estimated that he had a sporting chance of knocking the gun aside and landing an iron, fist where it would obliterate the last traces of any beauty that Graner might ever have had, before anyone else could move. But there were still the other three men who were behind him now-besides the dogs outside, and however many more discouraging gadgets there might be outside the house.
    That moment’s swift and instinctive reckoning of his chances was probably what helped to save him. And in that time he also forced himself to realise that the fleeting pleasure of pushing Graner’s front teeth through the back of his neck would ring down the curtain on his only hope of doing what he had come there to do.
    The liquid fire cooled down in his veins-cooled down below normal until it was like liquid ice. The red mist cleared from before his eyes and was absorbed invisibily but indelibly by the deepest wellsprings of his will. Reuben Graner would live long enough to be dealt with. The Saint could wait; and the waiting would only make the reckoning more enjoyable when the time came.
    “If you put it like that,” he said, with as much sheepishness as he could infuse into his voice, “I guess you’re probably right.”
    Slowly the tension that had crept into the room relaxed. Simon almost fancied he could hear the other three draw the first breaths they had taken since the incident started. Only Graner did not need to relax, because he had never been gripped in the same tension. He put the gun away and fanned himself again with his scented handkerchief, as if nothing had happened, with his cold, unblinking eyes still fixed on the Saint.
    “I will show you to your room,” he said. “In the morning I will drive you down to the hotel to collect your luggage.”
    2
Which, looked at upwards or downwards or sideways, was just about as jolly a complication as one could imagine, Simon Templar reflected when he was left alone.
    He sat on the side of the bed and lighted another cigarette, considering the situation.
    After all, he had asked for it. If he had waited a little longer to think what his impulse might lead to, he might have realised that it was open for something like that to happen. He could see Graner’s point of view with the greatest clarity. To leave a new and untried recruit to go wandering about Santa Cruz, talking to anyone he might pick up, was a fairly obvious error to avoid. And thinking it over, the Saint