Read Online The Saint Abroad: The Art Collectors/ the Persistent Patriots by Leslie Charteris - Free Book Online Page B

please. Put them in the back of
the car.”
    “What?” Annabella cried, coming to life like a lighted rocket. “What are you talking about?”
    “I am taking these pictures into police
custody,” Mathieu said with official dignity.
    “But they’re mine!”
    “I am afraid they are not,
Mademoiselle. You sold them, remember?”
    “Not to you,” the woman said.
“There is no reason for this.”
    “A murder has been committed for these
paintings,” Mathieu said. “There are unanswered questions. I
will give you a receipt. You can discuss who is to reclaim the
paintings when the time comes. But for the moment you can comfort yourself
that they will be absolutely safe at the S û ret é .”
    “My God, this is too much!”
Annabella exclaimed, turning her back and raising her hands to the heavens in a
pantomime of utter despair.
    “Into the car,” Mathieu said to his
associate. “Cover them well with the car rug.”
    “They are very large,” Bernard
responded, “Can they be taken out of their frames?”
    “Out of their frames?” Annabella
cried almost incoherently. “Here? My paintings?”
    “They are very large,” shrugged
Bernard. “We do not need the frames.”
    “So nice of you to leave me
something,” Annabella said with livid sarcasm.
    “Very well, we shall leave the
frames,” Mathieu said callously. He gestured toward the storage
room at the rear of the house. “After you, Bernard.”
    Hans was blocking the door which led to the
storage room, clutching the painting he held as tightly as he could.
    “Fr ä ulein?” he
asked desperately.
    “Let them go,” Annabella said with
a weary wave of her hand. “The paintings are not ours any longer—and these
are the noble police, after all. They go where they please.”
    “Your pardon, mademoiselle,”
Mathieu said. “I shall help Bernard if you will excuse me.” ;
    “I believe that I can exist in my living
room without you,” Annabella said.
    She waited, pacing the floor and occasionally
coming to rest briefly on a chair, drumming her fingers on a polished
table top. She
could hear the tapping of hammers in the back of her house and the rear door opening and closing several times, but she could not see the men carrying the
de-framed paint ings into their car
since it was parked out of the field of view of the living room window. Wild schemes whirled through her head like
tornadoes dipping down from the clouds and then rising up again and disappearing, coming to nothing. She could do nothing but wait.
    After fifteen minutes Mathieu, Bernard, and Hans, who had been hovering helplessly around the other two
men like a toothless watchdog, came
emptyhanded into the living room.
    “All done?” Annabella asked
sweetly. “Would you like the furniture now?”
    “There is no point in feeling offended,
mademoiselle,” Mathieu said. “No one is doing anything to you or
accusing you of anything.”
    His tone implied that she just might find
herself accused of something if the police decided to get nasty.
    “I’m not offended,” she said
icily. “I am disgusted with this whole affair. The sooner I see the end
of this business the happier I’ll be.”
    Au revoir, then,” said
Mathieu with a slight bow.
    “My receipt,” she reminded him.
    “Oh, yes, of course.”
    Mathieu felt in his jacket pockets, and
apparently found nothing usable after a lengthy search. Annabella finally
pro duced a pen from her purse.
    “Very efficient, you police,” she
said as she handed it to him.
    “Thank you, mademoiselle,” Mathieu
said, “and now … have you any paper?”
    Annabella sighed and sat down.
    “Would you find them some paper, Hans?
They are so busy protecting citizen’s property by carrying it away
with them that they rarely have time for writing.”
    Hans got the paper and Mathieu found a seat at
a table. He wrote and handed the result to Annabella.
    “From Mademoiselle Lambrini,
paintings,” she read. “H, Mathieu, Inspector.”
    She threw