Vendetta for the Saint. by Leslie Charteris Read Free Book Online Page A

porter had only been able to direct him after his memory was
re freshed by a reasonable
honorarium. In fact it was such
a modest building, evidently maintained prin cipally as a convenience for touring
clients, that there was
barely room for its impressive name to spread across the frontage.
    A dark-haired girl with Botticelli eyes
smiled up at him from behind the counter and asked what she could do for him, and it required some
discipline not to give her
a truthful answer.
    “I’m trying to contact one of your
employees,” he said.
“It’s several years since he worked here, so he may have been transferred.”
    “And his
name?”
    “Dino
Cartelli.”
    “Madre mia!” the girl gasped, rolling her doe eyes and turning pale. “One
moment—”
    She went over and spoke to a man working at another desk, who dropped his pen without
even noticing the
splotch of ink it made on his ledger. He gave Simon a startled suspicious look, and hur ried behind a partition at the rear of the
office. In another minute
he came back to the Saint.
    “Would you
like to speak to the manager, sir?”
    Simon wanted nothing more. He followed the
clerk to the inner sanctum, where he was left to repeat his question, feeling
rather like the man in the
Parisian story who has a note in French that no one will read to him. This time the reaction
was less exaggerated,
except for the altitude to which it raised the manager’s eyebrows.
    “Did
you know Dino Cartelli well, sir?”
    “I never even met him,” Simon
admitted cheerfully.
“An old friend of his, James Euston, whom you might remember, told me to look him
up when I was in Sicily.”
    “Ah,
Yes. Mr. Euston. Perhaps that explains it.”
    The
manager stared gloomily at his hands folded on the desk. He was a very old man, with
wispy gray hair and a
face that had almost abdicated in favor of his skull.
    “That was so long ago,” he said.
“He couldn’t have known.”
    “What couldn’t who have known?” Simon
demanded, feeling more and more like the man with the mysterious note.
    “Dino Cartelli is dead. Heroically
dead,” said the
manager, in the professionally hushed voice of an undertaker.
    “How
did he do that?”
    “It happened one night in the winter of
1949. A tragic night I
shall never forget. Dino was alone in the bank, working late, getting his books in order for the following day. The bank inspectors
were coming then,
and everything had to be brought up to date. He was a very conscientious chap. And he died for the bank, even though it was to no
avail.”
    “Do
you mean he died from overwork?”
    “No,
no. He was murdered.”
    “Would you mind telling me exactly what
hap pened?” Simon asked
patiently.
    The manager lowered his head for a moment of silence.
    “No one will ever know exactly. He was
dead when I found him in the morning, with ghastly wounds on his hands and face. I shall never
forget the sight. And
the vault was blown open, and everything
of value gone. The way the police re constructed it, he must have been surprised by the thieves. He knew the combination to the
vault, but he did not
give it to them. Instead, he must have tried to grab their gun—a shotgun—and that
was when his hands
were blown to shreds. But even that
didn’t stop poor Dino. He must have gone on struggling with them, until they shot him in
the face and he died.”
    “And
how much did they get?”
    “New and used lira notes, to the value of about a hundred thousand pounds, as well as some nego tiable bonds and other things. Some of it has turned up since then, but most of it was never traced. And the criminals have never been
caught.”
    Simon asked a few more questions, but
elicited nothing more
that was important or relevant. As soon as he found that he had exhausted all the useful information that
that source could give him, he thanked
the manager and excused himself.
    “Please give Euston my regards,”
the manager said. “I’m
afraid he will be shocked to hear the story.