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content himself for reward with the pleasure of watching her
all the way into the cab, which
providentially was an old-fashioned one with a high step. It was only after Simon had shared this treat with him,
and the man finally let the
door close and came towards him, that the Saint noticed who it was.
    “Marco Ponti—what a surprise,” he
murmured, with no
visible sign of that reaction. “Will you join me in a mess of eggplant? Although I can’t
com pete as an attraction with
what you were just leer ing
at.”
    Ponti made the classic gesture, hands spread
at shoulder level, palms up,
with which an Italian can say
practically anything—in this case, combined with a slight upward roll of the eyes, it
signified “Who wouldn’t leer at something
like that? But what a waste of
time”—and sat down.
    “I fear the Swiss convent where she has
been re ceiving her
final polish has chilled her southern blood for a while,” he said. “But one day it will be warmed again.
I have been hoping to make her ac quaintance
since she returned, but Gina Destamio and I do not rotate in the same social circles.”
    ” What did you call her?”
Simon asked with un concealed
astonishment.
    “The name
means something to you?”
    “Only if she is related to a certain Al
Destamio, whose dubious hospitality I enjoyed on Capri yes terday.”
    The
detective’s smile was mask-like again, but behind it Simon could sense a stony
grimness.
    “She is his
niece,” Ponti said.   
    4
    The
Saint had received so many shocks lately that he was becoming habituated to absorbing them
without expression.
    “After all, it’s a small country,”
he remarked. He looked down
into the rhodamine effervescence of his aperitif,
and beckoned the waiter. “Would you like one of these before we eat?”
    “With your permission, I will have a
brandy. Buton Vecchio,
since that is their most expensive— as an underpaid public servant I have few op portunities to enjoy such extravagance.”
Ponti waited until
the waiter had shuffled off before he said:
“What was your business with Destamio?”
    The question was asked in the same casual
tone, but his eyes bored into the Saint
unblinkingly.
    “I’ve been wondering about that
myself,” Simon replied
coolly. “We met completely by chance the other day, and we seem to have rather
quickly de veloped some
differences of opinion. So radical, in fact, that I wouldn’t be surprised if he was
respon sible for
Tonio’s attack on me this morning.”
    The other considered this carefully, before
his smile flashed on again.
    “I have heard many stories about you,
Saint, some
undoubtedly false and perhaps some of them true. But in all of them I have heard
nothing to suggest that
your relations with these people would be likely to be cordial. But it would have
been in teresting to
hear precisely what the differences were that you refer to.”
    At this moment the waiter tottered back with
the brandy. Before
he could escape again, Simon seized
the opportunity to order their lunch, or rath er to let Ponti order it, for he was quite
content to follow the lead
of the counsellor who had directed him here.
    By the time the waiter had retired again out
of earshot, the Saint was
conveniently able to forget the
last implied question and resume the conversa tion with one of his own.
    “Would you mind telling me just what you meant by ‘ these people’?” he
asked.
    “The
Mafia,” Ponti said calmly.
    This
time, Simon allowed himself to blink.
    “You
mean Tonio was hired from them?”
    “That cretino is one of them, of
course. A small one. But I
am sure that Al Destamio is a big one, though I cannot prove it.”
    “That,” said the Saint,
“makes it really interest ing.”
    Ponti sipped his
brandy.
    “Do
you know anything about the Mafia?”
    “Only what I’ve read in the papers,
like everyone else. And some
more fanciful enlargements in pa perback
novels. But on the factual side, I don’t even know what mafia