The Rodriguez Affair (1970) Read Online Free Page A

that they were carrying, but he said nothing. They managed to get out of the room without mishap.
    “Did Mr. Banner say anything about being followed from Venezuela?” Alletson asked.
    Cade glanced at him in surprise. “Why should he have been followed?”
    “I don’t know why. But it seems probable that he was.”
    “I don’t see it.”
    “He’d hardly been back in this country long enough to make enemies.”
    “What makes you think he was killed by enemies? The motive could have been simple robbery.”
    “His wallet was still in his pocket. There was money in it, does that look like a simple robbery to you?”
    Cade was silent.
    Alletson was regarding him keenly. “They could, of course, have been looking for something else, something more valuable perhaps. I suppose you couldn’t make any suggestion as to what that something else might have been?”
    “No,” Cade said. “I couldn’t.”
    “This going away that he proposed—you don’t think it was to avoid someone? You don’t think he might have been going into hiding for a time?”
    “It’s a possibility,” Cade admitted. “But from what I remember of Harry in the old days, he was not the kind of man to be easily scared.”
    “Nor a man to give away information under pressure?”
    “It would be like opening a clam.”
    Alletson drummed with his fingers on the window-sill. “I wonder whether they got what they came for?”
    “That’s anybody’s guess,” Cade said.
    Alletson nodded. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I suppose it is.”
     
    Cade made his own way back to the flat. Alletson had offered him transport but he had refused.
    “I think I’ll take a walk. I could do with some fresh air to clear my head.”
    “If you think of anything that might help while you’re walking, let me know.”
    “Like what?”
    “You tell me, Mr. Cade. Here’s the phone number.”
    Cade’s flat was on the third floor of a red-brick building that had been erected in the 1930s. The lift was having one of its frequent spells out of order and he had to go up by the stairs. He let himself in with his key and closed the door behind him, and he knew at once that he had had visitors. The odour of cigar smoke told him so. He never smoked cigars.
    They had made a thorough search, and if the parcel had been there they would undoubtedly have found it. Cade guessed that they had kept watch on the flat and had waited until he had left in the police car before breaking in. The lock on the door was the kind that could be forced with a strip of celluloid; it would not have bothered them much.
    Cade was glad that he had had the foresight to takethe parcel with him. Prescott would not have protected it; Prescott was lying on the floor with a lot of other books. Cade did not think the visitors had been reading about the Conquest of Mexico.
    He decided that the time had come to find out just what it was that Harry Banner had died for. He pulled the parcel out of his pocket, picked up a pair of scissors and cut the wrapping. Under the wrapping was a small wooden box that had once contained cigars. There were no cigars in it now; instead there was a small chamois leather bag fastened with a string. In the bag were a number of very fine diamonds.

THREE
TAIL
    C ADE LOOKED at the diamonds and wondered just how Banner had managed to get them into the country. It was a question that was never likely to be answered now and it was not really important anyway. The important fact was that he had done so. And much good it had done him.
    But there were other questions that needed answers. How, for example, had Banner got possession of the diamonds in the first place, and had he had any right to them? And the men who had killed him—had they any right to them either? One thing was certain about those characters: they were prepared to go to a considerable amount of trouble to gain, or regain, possession of them. Which was not altogether surprising, for they were large stones, and there