“I can give you four hundred thousand Swiss francs,” he said at length. “Or, if you like, the equivalent in dollars, deposited at any bank in New York. That would be something over seventeen thousand dollars. It is a good price, in the circumstances.” He draped the necklace over his fingers and admired it again, then his shrewd dark eyes turned back to the Saint. “But it is not a lot of capital for you to start building a new fortune in America. Surely you have some other things to offer me?”
Simon Templar took an infinitesimal moment to reply. And in that apocalyptic instant he realized that he had found a foothold again with a suddenness that literally jarred the breath out of him.
It was all so simple, so obvious that in retrospect he wondered how it could ever have baffled him. Filippo Ravenna had been going to America to live and to make a fresh start. Ravenna was rich, but he would not be allowed to transfer all his assets across the Atlantic just by asking for a bank draft. Like many another European, he had nothing but money which was not translatable through ordinary channels. But someone had told him about Paul Galen. So Ravenna had bought things. Things whose only connecting characteristics were that they were relatively small, relatively light in weight, relatively easy to smuggle, and very valuable; things moreover which a man in his position could acquire without attracting undue attention. And he had brought them to Switzerland to convert back into hard money — with an introduction to Paul Galen, who had made an international business out of cooperating in such evasions, whose reputation in such tricky-minded circles was doubtless a guarantee of comparatively fair dealing and absolute discretion.
All that part of it was dazzlingly clear, and the other part was starting to grow clearer — some of it, at least.
The Saint found himself saying, almost absent-mindedly, “I left the other things at the hotel. You understand, I thought we should get acquainted first.”
Somewhere outside the room he was aware of indistinct voices, but it was a rather subconscious impression which he only recalled afterwards, for at the moment it did not seem that they could concern him.
“I hope I have made a good impression,” Galen said with lively good humor. “What else did you bring?”
“I have a small Botticelli,” said the Saint slowly. He was stalling for time really, while his mind raced ahead from the knowledge it now had to fit together the pieces that still had to tie in. “It is a museum piece. And a first edition of Boccaccio, in perfect condition—”
The door behind him burst open as if a tornado had struck it, and that was when he actually remembered the premonitory sounds of argument that he had heard.
It was the Signora Ravenna, with her nubile bosom heaving and her black eyes blazing with dark fire. Behind her followed the funereal manservant, looking apologetically helpless.