The Saint Sees it Through

1

The Saint had never considered himself to be psychic. He had learned that by adding the factors of a situation he could forecast the probable moment when Death would leer at him over a gunsight, or ride the business end of a club, or sing through the air on the point of a knife. He had learned that, when he subconsciously placed such factors in their proper alignment and came up with a subconscious answer, his adrenal glands went quickly into action with a suddenness that brought a tingling to the back of his neck and the tips of his fingers.

He did not regard this sensation as the result of a psychic gander into the immediate future, nor as the brushing of the back of his neck by an ectoplasmic hand once belonging to the goose-over-a-grave school of premonitory shuddering. The tingle he felt when James Prather followed his bulging eyes across the deserted floor of Cookie's Cellar was, he knew, the result of his adrenals sitting up and taking notice.

For Simon had added the factors, and their sum total was danger. Not that he expected explosive action at the moment. He could have written the dialogue to come almost word for word. These characters weren't certain where and how the Saint fitted into the picture. Their motivation at the moment was the desire for such knowledge, and they would go about satisfying that desire in a fashion designed to be subtle and offhand.

Nobody would say, yet: "Just what the hell are you doing here?"

The Saint said under his breath to Avalon: "Get a table. Yonder bucko would have words with me. I'll join you."

She sandwiched herself between Sam and Joe and piloted them to the far wall, which had been pleasantly blank before Ferdinand Pairfield had agonized upon it in pastel, and the Saint waited for Prather.

"Just what the hell are you doing here?" Prather demanded.

The Saint did not allow so much as the quiver of an eyelash to acknowledge his downfall as a prophet. His lazy smile and mocking blue eyes only indicated amusement at the gauche approach. Prather flushed under the steady gaze, and his lobster-like eyes shifted away and back. In their shifting away, they touched on Joe Hyman and Sam Jeffries but showed no trace of recognition.

"Comrade," the Saint said, "far back in the history of this country certain gentlemen flung powder and shot about in the cause of freedom. Such points as they won have been traditionally passed down through the years, and one of those points is the untrammelled right to visit such places as this, with its steel-trap economy, its bad air and worse drinks. Just why anyone in his right mind should like to exercise his right to such dubious pleasure is beyond me, but there it is."

"There's something fishy about this," Prather said in a sort of bewildered whine. "First, you come to my place with a song and dance about research. Then you follow me here. Why? I know who you are. You're the Saint. But I can't see why you followed me."

"Follow you? Dear boy, I wouldn't follow you into the flossiest bagnio this side of Paradise. But now that you seem to have made such a lightning trip here, I'm happy to see you. Won't you join my party? I'm still gathering material."

Prather regarded the table where Avalon parried verbs with Sam Jeffries with the concentration of a man sucking a piece of popcorn out of a cavity.

"Thank you," he said with a grimness that was rather surprising. "I'll be glad to."

Sam was on his life story, apparently having begun at the present, and was working backward.

"... and there was this guy we had to see in Shanghai. Joe wanted to get drunk right off, but I says no we gotta see this guy before..."

He broke off, looked up. No flicker of recognition moved his brown face as he glanced incuriously at Prather. To the Saint, Sam said: "I was just tellin' Miss Dexter about our last trip."

Something happened, but the Saint didn't catch it. It could have been a glance, a shake of the head, a kick in the ankle, from James Prather. For Sam suddenly froze. He didn't look at Prather, he didn't look at anybody, but you could see his thoughts and amiable chatter roll themselves up like armadillos and become impregnable and lifeless. All the warm lights went out of his eyes, and his smile became a fixed liability.

His social immobility somehow conveyed itself to Joe, who underwent little change to achieve Sam's frozen state. Both young men rose to shake hands as the Saint performed introductions, but, like Mudville on the night of Casey's disaster, there was no joy in them. Sam remained standing, long, lean, and brown.

"Guess we better shove off, huh, Joe?"

"Yeah," Joe said, meeting nobody's eye. "Guess so."

"Don't run away, boys," Avalon said. But she said it perfunctorily. She knew they were going. Her tone was a politeness, not an urging.

"When the party's just starting?" said the Saint, He, too, knew they were going. A kick, a frown, a shake of the head. These had made the boys jittery.

"Well, Saint," Sam said. "You know how it is. Just back from a long trip. We were kinda thinkin' of girls of our own. Course, I'll have to get one for Joe, here, but still—" He nodded at Avalon. "Thought we had something there — uh, Miss. But seems she's staked out. So we'll blow."

More handshakes, and they were gone.

Kay Natello came over to greet them, and in that voice like a nutmeg grater on tin cans, asked, "What'll it be?"

She didn't seem to be anxious to cut up old touchés with Simon, so he played it her way.

"Old Foresters all around. Doubles," he added, remembering the strength of drinks at Cookie's.

"Now," the Saint said when Kay had gone. "Tell me about Dr. Zellermann."

"What is there to tell?"

Prather didn't seem uncomfortable. There was, in his mind, nothing to tell. At least, he gave that impression.

"He's a psychiatrist," he went on. "A good one, maybe. Any rate, he gets good prices."

"Well," the Saint said. "Maybe we'd better drop him. Let's just have fun, kids."

Avalon looked several volumes of unprintable material at the Saint and asked: "How do you propose to do that?"

"By displaying my erudition, darling." The Saint smiled gently at her, and then bent attentive eyes on Prather as he said: "For instance. Do you know the word 'cougak'?"

This brought no response. Simon sighed inwardly. Might as well get it out into the open, he thought. "It's the term applied to the bloom of a certain plant known as Pavarer somniferum. It's cultivated chiefly in Asia. After the poppy flowers, and the leaves fall off, the remaining pod develops a bloom, easily rubbed off with the fingers, called cougak. Then it is time to make the incision."

"What are you talking about?" Avalon demanded.

"Mr. Prather, I think," said the Saint.

Prather blinked his overblue eyes at Simon.

"I'm sorry, but I don't know what you mean."

"It really doesn't matter," the Saint said. "Let's talk about something else."

He noted that Kay Natello, who had been hovering in the middle distance, took her departure at this point and vanished through the archway at the back. Had there been a signal? If so, he hadn't caught it.

"Mr. Prather," he said, "you must find life quite exhilarating. Contact with the major ports of the world, and all that."

Prather stared, his eyes more lobster-like than usual.

"What are you talking about?"

There was no mistaking the honest bewilderment in the prominent blue eyes, and this gave the Saint pause. According to his ideas on the organization he was bucking, Prather would be one of the key men. Sam Jeffries had substantiated this notion, in his interrupted story to Avalon: "... and there was this guy we had to see in Shanghai."

That fitted in with the whole theory of "Benny sent me." A contact was made here, instructions given, perhaps an advance made. Then the delivery of a package in the Orient or the Near East, which was returned to New York and duly turned over to James Prather or a prototype. All this made sense, made a pattern.

But here was James Prather, obviously bewildered by the plainest kind of a lead. Was the man cleverer than he seemed? Was he putting on an act that could mislead that expert act-detector, the Saint? Or was he honestly in the dark about the Saint's meaning? And if he was, why was he here immediately after a visit from two sailors freshly back from the Orient?

Mr. James Prather, it seemed, was in this picture somewhere, and it behooved the Saint to find out where.

"Well," Simon said, "no matter. We have more important things to do, such as demolishing our— But we have no drinks." He motioned to an aproned individual, who came to the table and assumed an attitude of servility. "Three more of the same. Old Forester."

The waiter took the empty glasses and went away. The Saint turned his most winning smile on Prather.

"I wasn't really shooting in the dark," he said. "But I guess my remarks weren't down the right alley."

"Whatever you say," Prather replied, "I like. You have a good quality of voice. Though I don't see why you should spend any time with me."

"Remember?" Simon asked. "I'm still doing research on Dr. Zellermann."

Prather laughed. "I'd forgotten. Ah, here come our drinks."

The waiter, an individual, like the village blacksmith, with brawny arms, came across the empty dance floor with a tray flattened on one upturned palm. It was obvious to the Saint's practiced eye that the man's whole mental attitude had changed. He had gone away trailing a fretful desire to please; he approached with new-found independence.

He was a stocky individual, broad of shoulder, lean of hip, heavy in the legs. His face was an eccentric oval, bejewelled with small turquoise eyes, crowned with an imposing nose that overhung a mouth of rather magnificent proportions. His chin was a thing of angles, on which you could hang a lantern.

But the principal factor in his changed aspect was his independence. He carried the tray of drinks as though the nearest thing to his heart was the opportunity and reason to toss them into the face of a customer. Not only that, but each of the three glasses was that type known as "old fashioned."

Each glass was short, wide of mouth, broad of base. And in each drink was a slice of orange and a cherry impaled on a toothpick.

"Sorry," said the Saint as the waiter distributed the glasses, "but I ordered highballs, not Old Fashioneds."

"Yeah?" said the waiter. "You trying to make trouble?"

"No. I'm merely trying to get a drink."

"Well, ya act like to me you're tryin' to make trouble. Ya order Old Fashioneds, 'n then ya yell about highballs. What's comin' off here?"

"Nothing," Simon said patiently, "is coming off here. I'm simply trying to get what I ordered."

"Ya realize I'll hafta pay for this, don't ya?" the waiter demanded.

"I'll pay for them," Simon said in the same gentle voice. "If you made a mistake, it won't cost you anything. Just bring us three Old Foresters — highballs."

"And what's gonna happen to these drinks?"

"That," the Saint said, "I don't know. You may rub them into the bartender's hair, for all of me."

The waiter lifted his lip.

"Lissen, the bartender's my brother-in-law."

The Saint's lips tightened.

"Then rub them into his back. Will you get our drinks?"

The waiter stared sullenly for a moment.

"Well, all right. But no more cracks about my brother-in-law, see?"

He went away. The Saint watched him for a moment, decided against any action. His attention drifted from the waiter to the Pairfield murals.

"It's an odd mind," he remarked, "that can contrive such unattractive innovations in the female form divine." He indicated a large sprawling figure on the far wall. "Take Gertie over there. Even if her hips did have Alemite lubrication points all over them, is it quite fair to let the whole world in on her secret?"

"What I like," Avalon said, "is the hedge for hair. That penthouse effect throws me."

"I'm sorry," James Prather said, "but I feel a little uncomfortable looking at those designs. This one over here, with each lock of hair ending in a hangman's knot. I—"

He broke off, with an ineffectual gesture with his pale hands.

"The poor man's Dali," murmured the Saint. "Here come our — what are those drinks?"

They were pale green, in tall flared glasses, each with a twist of lime peel floating near the top.

The Saint repeated his question to the sullen waiter.

"Lissen," that character said. "I got no time to be runnin' back and forth for you. These here are Queen Georgianas, 'n if you don't want 'em, run 'em in your — " He glanced at Avalon, colored. " — well, rub 'em."

"But I ordered," the Saint said very patiently, "Old Foresters. Highballs."

" 'N if you're gonna be fussy," the waiter said, "you're lucky to get anything. Wait a minute. Here comes the manager."

The manager was thin, dapper, and dark, like George Raft in his halcyon days. He strode up to the table, took in the situation with an expressionless look of his dark eyes, and turned them on the Saint.

"Yes?" he said.

"Whom do you have to know here?" Simon inquired. "I've been trying to get some bourbon for about thirty minutes."

"Why don't you ask for it then?" suggested the manager.

"Look," Simon said. "I don't mind buying your watered drinks at about three times the normal prices. All I want is the right flavor in the water. I do not want Queen Georgian as, or Old Fashioneds. I want Old Forester. It's a simple thing. All the waiter does is remember the order until he gets back to the bar. I'll write it out for him if he has a defective memory."

"Nothin's wrong with my memory," the waiter growled. "Maybe you'd like these drinks in your puss, smart guy. You asked for Queen Georgianas, and you're gonna take 'em."

Simon clenched his hands under the rim of the table.

"Believe me," he said earnestly, "the last desire I have is to cause difficulty. If I must take these obscenities, I'll take them. But will you please, please get us a round of bourbon highballs?"

"Why don't you go away, if the service doesn't please you?" asked the George Raft manager.

"The service," the Saint said, "leaves nothing to be desired, except everything."

"Then why don't you just go away?" asked the manager.

The Saint decided to be stubborn.

"Why?"

"No reason," the manager said. "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. Our sign says so."

He indicated a sign above the bar.

"And you are refusing me service?"

"No. Not if you don't cause trouble."

"And?"

The manager nodded to the waiter. "Get him his drinks."

"I'm not gonna serve him," the waiter said.

The manager stamped a gleaming shoe. "Did you hear me?"

The waiter went away.

"Now," the Saint said, "where were we? Oh, yes, we were discussing," he said to the manager, "the more obscure aspects of suicide in American night clubs. Would you have anything to add to our data soon?"

The manager smiled a crooked smile and departed. The Saint caught the eye of James Prather and formed a question: "Now that we've gone through the preliminary moves, shall we get down to business?"

Prather goggled rather like a fish in an aquarium tank, but before the Saint could begin to explain he caught sight of the waiter returning with a tray of pink concoctions in champagne glasses.

"I," Simon announced, "am beginning to become annoyed. Avec knobs on."

The waiter slammed the tray on the table and distributed the drinks. The Saint eyed his.

It was definitely not a Pink Lady. Nor was it pink champagne. There was grenadine in it, judging from the viscosity apparent to the eye. There might be gin, or even water. He raised his eyes.

"What — is — this?"

The waiter's eyes were like small blue marbles. "They're bourbon and sodas, see?"

"Pink bourbon?"

"Ja ever see any other kind?" the waiter snarled.

"I believe," Simon said gently, "that I have been patient. Compared to the way I've conducted myself, burros are subjects for straitjackets. You have brought four rounds of liquid abortions that no self-respecting canned-heat hound would dip a finger in. While this went on, I have kept my temper. Job himself would stack up beside me like a nervous cat. I have taken all your insults with a smile. But I warn you, if you don't bring the right order on your next trip, you are going to wish your mother had spanked the bad manners out of you before I had to."

"So you wanta make trouble, huh?" The waiter signalled. "Hey, Jake!"

The bartender, who seemed to be Jake, stopped shaking a whiskey sour at the top of the motion, looking something like a circus giant caught in a ballet pose. He was pushing six feet and a half with shoulders perhaps not so wide as a door, but wide enough. He had a face like the butt end of a redwood log, and hands like great brown clamps on the shaker.

His customers turned to regard the tableau across the big room according to the stages of inebriety they'd reached. A middle-aged man with a brief moustache twirled it at Avalon. A lady of uncertain balance lifted one side of a bright mouth at the Saint. A young couple stared, and turned back to their private discussion, which, to judge from their expression, was going to wind up in the nearest bedroom.

Jake then set down the shaker, and walked around the end of the bar. At the same moment a third man, large and aproned, came out of the archway and joined him. They marched together across the dance floor, side by side, and advanced upon the Saint. It was obvious that he was their objective.

The Saint didn't move. He watched the approach of the brawny gents with the bright-eyed interest of a small boy at his first circus. He noted the width of Jake's shoulders, the practiced walk bespeaking sessions in a prize ring, and the shamble of his companion. He weighed them, mentally, and calculated the swiftness of their reflexes. He smiled.

He could see Avalon's clenched fists, just below the rim of the table, and from the corner of his eye he noted Prather's bug-eyed interest.

Jake directed a calm, steady, brown-eyed gaze at Simon Templar.

"Get out of here. Now."

Simon didn't seem to push his chair back. He seemed only to come to an astonished attention. But in that straightening motion, his chair was somehow a good three inches back from the edge of the table and he could come to his feet without being hampered.

"Yes?" he drawled with hopeful interest. "How jolly. Ask your boss to come out and explain."

"The boss don't need to explain," said the spokesman. "We'll do all the explainin' necessary."

"Then suppose you do, my lad."

"What is this all about, Jake?" Avalon asked.

"The boss don't want him here, that's all. And we'll throw him out if he don't scram." Jake turned back to the Saint. "Look, chum, we ain't anxious to spread your pretty face all around like gravy. But we can, and will, if'n you don't beat it. And don't come back."

The Saint gestured at the table.

"You can see I haven't finished my drink. Nor has my lady friend."

"She can stay. It's just you that's goin'."

The Saint smiled mockingly. "It is always a mystery to me how human beings can become so misguided as to assume impossibilities. I should think anybody would know I'm not going out of here without Miss Dexter. She has an inflexible rule; namely, 'I'm gonna leave with the guy what brung me.' Namely, yours truly."

"Can the gab," Jake said. "You goin' out on your feet, or would you rather pick up teeth as you crawl out?"

Jake didn't seem to be angry, or impatient. He was merely giving the Saint a choice. Like: do you want your nails filed round or pointed?

Simon got lazily to his feet.

"Sorry, Mr. Prather," he said. "I was just getting interested — in our conversation. Be with you in a moment. The children, you know. They get annoying at times and have to be cut back to size... Jake, you shouldn't be such a naughty boy, really you shouldn't. Papa's told you before about interrupting your elders. Run along and play now, and you won't be chastised."

Jake nodded at his cohorts, and they moved at once. The Saint's first lightning move was to remove one from the fray with a short right jab that travelled no more than three inches but carried 180 pounds of muscled steel in motion behind it.

The aproned bruiser folded his bulk against the wall between the widespread feet of one of Ferdinand Pairfield's figures and sat there with a vacuous mouth and eyes which, had they been stained, could have served as church windows.

In this move, however, Simon's attention was distracted for the fraction of a second from Jake, and that was enough. Jake made a flying leap over one corner of the table and clasped the Saint around his waist with a fervor that would have reduced Jake's girl friend to panting acquiescence.

This threw the Saint slightly off balance, and the waiter tried to take advantage of this by kicking Simon in the groin.

The Saint twisted, caught the man's ankle with his free hand, wrenched his other hand loose and began to unscrew the man's leg from the knee joint. Several welkins split asunder as the victim howled like a wounded wolf. Presently, within the space of time required to bat an eye, there was a most satisfying crack as the leg came unjointed at the hip, and the Saint turned his full attention to the leech-like Jake.

He went about that worthy's demolishment with a detached and unhurried calm. A left to the chin to straighten him up, a right to the stomach to bend him in the middle, another left, another right, and Jake gave the appearance of a polite man with the stomach ache bowing to a friend.

One devastating right to the button, and Jake slid across the stamp-sized dance floor on his back. He came to a gentle stop and lay gazing empty-eyed at the ceiling.

Sounds came from the back, sounds indicating a gathering of fresh forces. The Saint turned to Avalon.

"Shall we go, darling?" he drawled.

2

Which was all highly entertaining, not to say invigorating and healthful, Simon reflected later; but it added very little progress towards the main objective.

Certainly he had been given evidence that his attention was unwelcome to sundry members of the Ungodly; but that was hardly a novel phenomenon in his interfering life. Once the Saint had exhibited any definite interest in their affairs, and had been identified, the Ungodly could invariably be relied on to experience some misgivings, which might lead rather logically to mayhem. Certainly the proffered mayhem had recoiled, as it usually did, upon the initiators, who would doubtless approach this form of exercise more circumspectly next time; but that could hardly be called progress. It just meant that the Saint himself would have to be more careful.

He had failed to learn any more about Mr. Prather's precise place in the picture, or the relationship of the other characters who flitted in and out of the convolutions of the impalpable organization which he was trying to unravel — or, for that matter, about Avalon's real place in the whole crooked cosmogony.

Simon forced himself ruthlessly to remember that... With all their intimacy, their swift and complete companionship, he still knew nothing. Nothing but what he felt; and better men than he had come to disaster from not drawing the distinction between belief and knowledge. The Saint had many vanities, but one of them had never been the arrogant confidence that sometime, somewhere, there could not be among the ranks of the Ungodly a man or a woman who would have the ability to make a sucker out of him. He had waited for that all his life; and he was still waiting, with the same cold and tormenting vigilance.

And yet, when he called Avalon the next morning, there was nothing cold in his mind when her voice answered.

"Good morning," he said.

"Good morning, darling," she said, and her voice woke up with it. "How are you today?"

"Excited."

"What about?"

"Because I've got a date for lunch."

"Oh." The voice died again.

He laughed.

"With a beautiful girl... named Avalon."

"Oh." Such a different inflection. As if the sun came out again. "You're a beast. I've a good mind not to be there."

"There are arguments against it," he admitted. "For one thing, we can't be alone."

"You mean the restaurant has to let other people in? We could fix that. Come over here, and I'll make an omelette."

"I'd like that much better. But it wouldn't work. I've still got a date. And you're going to keep it with me. We're having lunch with Zellermann."

"Did you call him?"

"He called me again, and I didn't see how I could get out of it. As a matter of fact, I decided I didn't want to. So much persistence is starting to intrigue me. And I do want to know more about him. And I don't think he can do much to me in 21."

"Is that where we're going?"

"Yes. I'll pick you up at twelve o'clock."

"I'll put on my silliest hat."

"If you do," said the Saint, "I'll be called away in the middle of lunch and leave you with him."

They were on time to the minute, but when Simon asked for the table he was told that Zellermann was already waiting for them.

The doctor stood up as they threaded a way between tables to his. Simon noted with some satisfaction that Zellermann's lips were still considerably swollen, although the fact would not have been so obvious to anyone who was not acquainted with the medicine man's mouth in its normal state.

He looked very much the Park Avenue psychiatrist — tall, leonine, carelessly but faultlessly dressed, with one of those fat smiles that somehow reminded the Saint of fresh shrimps.

"My dear Mr. Templar. And Miss Dexter. So glad you could manage the time. Won't you sit down?"

They did, and he did.

Dr. Zellermann displayed as much charm as a bee tree has honey.

"Miss Dexter, I feel that I must apologise for the other night. I am inclined to forget that universal adjustment to my psychological patterns has not yet been made."

"Don't let it worry you," Avalon said. "You paid for it."

A slight flush tinted the doctor's face as he looked at the Saint.

"My apologies to you, too, sir."

Simon grinned. "I didn't feel a thing."

Dr. Zellermann flushed deeper, then smiled,

"But that's all forgotten. We can be friendly together, and have a pleasant lunch. I like to eat here. The cuisine is excellent, the service—"

There was more of this. Considerably more. The Saint let his eyes rove over the dining room which clattered discreetly with glass and silverware. Waiters went unobtrusively from table to table. Those with trays held the Saint's eyes.

Dr. Zellermann finished his eulogy of the restaurant, followed Simon's gaze.

"Oh, a drink, a drink by all means. Waiter!"

The waiter, so completely different from those sampled by the Saint in Cookie's the day before, came to their table as if he had crawled four miles over broken glass.

"May I serve you, sir?"

"Martinis, Manhattans?" the doctor inquired.

The Saint and Avalon ordered double Manhattans, the doctor a Martini, and the waiter genuflected away.

"So nice of you to invite us," the Saint said across the table. "A free lunch, as my drunken uncle used to say, is a free lunch."

Dr. Zellermann smiled.

"I somehow feel that you haven't quite had your share of free lunches, Mr. Templar. I feel that you have quite a few coming to you."

"Ah?" Simon queried.

He looked at Avalon immediately after he'd tossed the monosyllabic interrogation at the doctor. She sat quietly, with her gold-brown hair immaculate, her brown eyes wide, her small but definite chin pushed forward in a questing motion. At that moment, the Saint would have wagered anything he ever hoped to have that this green-clad, trim, slim, smartly turned out girl knew nothing about the problem that was taking up most of his time.

"In my work as a psychiatrist," the snowy-maned doctor explained, "I have learned a number of things. One of the main factors I take into consideration in the evaluation of a personality is whether that person is behind in the receipt of rewards. Each individual, as far as I have been able to discover, has put more into life than he ever gets out."

"Not according to what I was taught," Avalon said. "You get what you pay for. You get out of life, or a job, or a pail, or any damned thing, what you put into it, and no more. Otherwise, it's perpetual motion."

"Ah, no," Dr. Zellermann said. "If that were true, the sum total of all human effort would produce energies equal only to the sum total of all human effort. That would make change, impossible. Yet we progress. The human race lives better, eats better, drinks better, each year. This indicates something. Those who are trying to cause the race to better itself — and they are less than the sum total of human beings, if not a minority — must be putting in more than they ever get out. If the law of equational returns is true, then it is quite obvious that a number of persons are dying before their time."

"I don't get you," Avalon said.

"Let's put it simply," the doctor replied. He broke off for the waiter to distribute their drinks. "If the energy you expend on living gives you only that amount of life, then your living conditions will never improve. Correct?"

"Umm."

"But your living conditions do improve. You have more and better food than your great-great grandmother, or your grandfather thirty-eight times removed. Much better. Somebody, therefore, has put more into life than he has taken out, as long as the general living level of the human race continues to improve."

"And so?"

"And so," Dr. Zellermann said, "if the theory that we get no more out of life than we put into it is true, somebody is in the red. A lot of somebodys. Because the human race keeps progressing. And if each individual got no more out of what he put into it, life on the whole would remain the way it is."

"Umm."

"Are ideas energy?" the Saint asked.

"There you have it," Dr. Zellermann said. "Are ideas energy." It wasn't a question. "Are they? I don't know. A certain amount of energy must go into the process of producing ideas which may be translated into practical benefits to the race. What that amount of energy is, or whether it can be measured, is a point to be discussed in future years by scientists who are equipped with instruments we have never heard of."

"But have we heard of the Orient?" asked the Saint.

"I don't follow you," Dr. Zellermann said.

Simon paused while their drinks were delivered; and while he waited it crossed his mind that the trouble with all the creeps he had met so far in this business was that they responded to a leading question about as actively as a dead mouse would to a slab of Camembert. It also crossed his mind that a great deal of aimless chatter was being cast upon the chaste air of that burnished beanery.

Was there some dark and undefined purpose in the doctor's Hegelian calisthenics? Did that turgid bouillabaisse of un-semantic verbiage have significance, or was it only stalling for time? Surely the distinguished salver of psyches hadn't asked Simon and Avalon here to philosophise with them?

Well, the ulterior motives, if any, would be revealed in due course. Meanwhile, it seemed as if the vocal merry-go-round, if it had to keep rolling, could spin to more profitable purpose.

So Simon Templar, in that completely unexpected fashion of his which could be so disconcerting, turned the channels of the conversation towards another direction of his own choosing.

"In the Orient," he said, "the standard of living remains a fairly deplorable constant. Millions of those people put an astounding amount of energy into the process of survival, and what do they get?" His shrug answered the question.

Dr. Zellermann made a small motion with one hand. He took his fingers from the stem of his Martini glass and moved them. The Saint, who happened to be looking at the hand, marvelled that so much could be expressed in a gesture. The small, graceful, yet definite motion said as clearly as if the thought were expressed in boxcar letters: "But, my dear Mr. Templar!"

"What do they get?" Dr. Zellermann asked, looking somewhat like an equine bishop granting an indulgence. He answered his own question. "Life, my dear Mr. Templar — the only actually free gift in the universe. What they do with it is not only their business, but the end product is not open to censure or sympathy."

"Still the old free-will enthusiast?"

"That's all we have. What we do with it is our own fault."

"I can be president, eh, or dog catcher?"

"That's up to you," Zellermann said.

"A moment, old boy. Suppose we consider Chang."

The doctor's eyebrows said: "Chang?"

"As a guinea pig," the Saint explained. "Chang, once upon a time, chanced to smoke a pipe of opium. It was free, and anything for a laugh, that's our Chang. Then he had another pipe, later. And another. Not free, now. Oh, no. There are dealers who have to make a living; and behind the dealers there are interested governments. So Chang becomes an addict. He lets his family, his home, everything, go hang. Where is the free will, Doctor, when he's driven by that really insatiable desire?"

"It was his decision to smoke the first pipe."

"Not entirely," the Saint pointed out. "Someone was interested in making it available. You can't tell me that it wouldn't be possible to restrict the production of opium to established medical requirements if the principal world governments were really interested. Yet India alone produces more opium than the whole world could use legitimately. Very profitable. So profitable that governments have come out fighting to keep the market open. Do you happen to remember the so-called Boxer Rebellion?"

"Vaguely," Zellermann said in bored tones.

"All the wretched Chinese wanted was their own country back," said the Saint. "But the — ah, Powers, made a great pitch about rescuing their missionaries, and so put down the rebellion and so saved the market."

"Isn't this rather non sequitur?" asked the doctor.

"Is it?" Simon asked. "If you're tired of Chang, throw him, away — in his millions. He means no more personally than a treeful of yaks, because we have no contact with his daily so-called living. But take Joe Doakes in Brooklyn."

"Really, Mr. Templar, your train of thought is confusing."

"It shouldn't be, dear boy. Just translate Chang into Joe, and consider the identical operation in New York. Even America the Beautiful, leave us face it, contains certain citizens who don't much care how they make a million dollars so long as they make it. And particularly don't care who gets hurt in the process. So now Joe's the boy we're after. He's like Chang, in the low income group, not averse to a bit of petty thievery, possibly ready for a pipe after a hard day's pocket-picking."

"Who," Zellermann inquired, "are 'we'?"

"We here at the table," the Saint said expansively, "for purposes of hypothetical discussion."

"Not me," Avalon interpolated. "I got troubles of my own, without including pipes."

"Let's say you are 'we,' Doctor. Your problem is twofold. You must transport the stuff, and then sell it. If you solve the transportation problem, you have to find Joe. The first problem is fairly elemental. Who goes to the Orient these days? Sailors. They can bring in the stuff. Finding Joe is easy, too. Go into the nearest pool hall and turn to your right."

"This leads us where, Mr. Templar?" Dr. Zellermann asked. "Though I admit your conversation has its scintillating aspects, I fail to see—" He let it hang.

"To this point, comrade. A group of men putting drugs into the hands — mouths — of persons rendered irresponsible by economic circumstance are creating tools. Governments learned that a long time ago. Beat a man down enough, and he'll come to think that's the normal way to be. But private groups — shall we say rings — who are foolish enough to think they can get away with it couldn't be expected to do anything but follow an established lead."

The Saint watched for any reaction from the doctor. He would have settled for a tapping ringer, but the Park Avenue psychiatrist would have made the Great Stone Face look like Danny Kaye.

Simon shrugged.

He looked at Avalon and winked.

"In other words, your theory — 'Faites ce que voudras,' if I may borrow from an older philosopher — is jake so long as you and I are the guys who are doing what they damn please. So far I only know one of your forms of self-indulgence, and you only know one of mine. I have others."

Avalon smiled; and the Saint marvelled that all those people who were so busy clattering their silverware, churning the air with inanities, and trying to impress a lot of people who were only interested in impressing them, shouldn't feel the radiance of that smile and halt in the middle of whatever they were doing. They should feel that smile, and pause. And think of things lost, of beauties remembered, and recapture rapture again.

But they didn't. The bebosomed Helen Hokinson woman at the nearest table giggled at the young man opposite her; the promoter type over there went right on citing figures, no doubt, blowing a bugle of prosperity; the Hollywood actress went on ogling the Broadway producer, who went on ogling her, being just as happy to get her in his highly speculative play as she was to have the chance of reviving a career which had failed to quite keep up with her press agent.

The Saint sighed.

He turned his attention back to Dr. Zellermann, waiting for a hint of the point that must be shown sometime.

"Another drink?" asked the doctor.

They had another drink; and then Zellermann said, with a thread of connection which was so strained that it sang: "I imagine one of the things you would like is forming theories about current crimes as the newspapers report them. That Foley murder in Brooklyn, for instance, rather intrigues me."

The Saint took a deep pull on his cigarette; and a little pulse began to beat way inside him as he realised that this, at last, whatever it was, was it.

His own decision was made in a split second. If that was how Zellermann wanted it, okay. And if Zellermann favored the shock technique, Simon was ready to bounce it right back without batting an eyelid and see what happened.

"Yes," he said, "even in these days of flowing lucre, it must be sad to lose a good patient."

"I wasn't thinking of the money," Dr. Zellermann began. He broke off suddenly, leaving the remainder of the thought unexpressed. "How did you know he was a patient of mine?"

The Saint sipped at his Manhattan.

"I saw his name on your secretary's appointment pad," he said calmly.

"But look here, Templar. When were you in my office?"

"Oh, I thought you knew," Simon said with a touch of surprise. "I broke in on Thursday night."

3

This brought motionless silence to Dr. Zellermann. He eyed the Saint coldly for a long moment. Then he said: "Are you in the habit of breaking and entering?"

"I wouldn't say it's a habit, old boy. The word habit has connotations of dullness. As a matter of fact, I should say I have no habits whatever, as such, unless you classify breathing as a habit. That is one to which I cling with — on occasion — an almost psychotic firmness. There have been times, I admit, when certain persons, now among the dear departed, have tried to persuade me to give up breathing. I am glad to say that their wiles had no effect on my determination."

The doctor shook his head irritably.

"You know you committed a felony?"

"By going on breathing?"

Dr. Zellermann raised his voice slightly. "By breaking into my office."

"Technically, I suppose I did," Simon confessed. "But I was sure you'd understand. After all, I was only applying your own pet philosophy. I felt like doing it, so I did."

"As the victim," Zellermann said, "I'm surely entitled to hear your reason."

The Saint grinned.

"Like the bear that came over the mountain, to see what I could see. Very interesting it was, too. Did Ferdinand Pairfield do your decorating?"

Dr. Zellermann's face was impassive.

"A philosophy, Mr. Templar, is one thing. Until the world adopts that philosophy, the law is something else. And under the present laws you are guilty of a crime."

"Aren't you sort of rubbing it in a bit, Ernst?" Simon protested mildly.

"Only to be sure that you understand your position."

"All right then. So I committed a crime. I burgled your office. For that matter, I burgled the late Mr. Foley's apartment too — and his murder intrigues me just as much as you. So what?"

Dr. Zellermann turned his head and glanced across the room. He made an imperious gesture with a crooking finger.

The Saint followed his gaze and saw two men in inconspicuous blue suits at a far table detach themselves from the handles of coffee cups. One of them pushed something small and black under the table. Both rose and came towards Dr. Zellermann's table. They had that deadpan, slightly bored expression which has become an occupational characteristic of plainclothes men.

There was no need for them to show their badges to convince the Saint, but they did.

"You heard everything?" Dr. Zellermann asked.

The shorter of the two, who had a diagonal scar on his square chin, nodded.

Simon ducked his head and looked under the table. He saw a small microphone from which a wire ran down the inside of one of the legs of the table and disappeared under the rug. The Saint straightened and wagged an admiring head.

"That, my dear doctor, is most amusing. Here I thought that I was talking privately, and it would be your word against mine in any consequent legal name-calling. It simply didn't occur to me that you'd — er — holler copper."

Dr. Zellermann paid no attention to Simon. He spoke to Scar-chin.

"You know this man is the Saint, a notorious criminal, wanted in various parts of the world for such things as murder, blackmail, kidnaping, and so forth?"

"Not wanted for, chum," the Saint corrected him amiably. "Merely suspected of."

Scar-chin looked at his partner, a man with sad spaniel eyes. "Guess we better go."

Spaniel Eyes laid a hand on the Saint's arm.

"One moment," Simon said. This was said quietly, but there was the sound of bugles in the command. Spaniel Eyes withdrew his arm. The Saint looked at Zellermann. "Your information came from somewhere. You didn't deduce this by yourself and so lay a trap. Did Avalon tip you off?"

"Oh, Simon!" she cried. "No, darling, no!"

Her voice was brimming with anguish and outrage. Real or simulated, the Saint couldn't tell. He didn't look at her. He held the doctor's eyes with his own.

Dr. Zellermann showed no expression whatever. He looked at the Saint woodenly, with a supreme disinterest. He might have been watching a fly he was about to swat.

"Once one understands a certain type of mind," Dr. Zellermann said almost contemptuously, "predictions of action patterns are elementary—"

"My dear Watson," the Saint supplied.

"You visited Mrs. Gerald Meldon and James Prather," Zellermann continued. "Theirs were two of the three names on my appointment pad. It follows that you also visited Foley. It was obviously you who telephoned the police — the phrasing of the message fits your psychological pattern exactly. Foley was dead when you left. The police are looking for a murderer. I knew that my office had been entered, of course, because someone answered the telephone when no one should have been there. I suspected that that 'someone' was you; and the rest followed. It was only necessary to have you confirm my deductions yourself."

The Saint's smile held a wholly irrational delight.

"I see," he said softly. "You know, Ernst, my esteem for you has raised itself by its mouldy bootstraps. I bow to you. From now on, life will have a keener edge."

"Life, if any, Templar. In spite of what you read in the papers, murderers frequently do go to the chair."

"Not this one, dear old wizard." The Saint turned to Spaniel-Eyes. "Shall we begin our invasion of Sing Sing?"

"Yerk, yerk," Spaniel Eyes said.

As the Saint got to his feet, Avalon stood beside him. He looked into her dark eyes deeply and ironically. Her gaze didn't waver.

"I didn't," she whispered. "I didn't."

Simon kissed her lightly.

"Be a good girl. Don't forget to eat your vitamins."

"But you're not going like a lamb," she cried. "Aren't you even going to try to do something?"

That gay and careless smile flashed across his face. "My dear old Aunt Harriet always said that as long as there's life there's life. Thanks for the drinks, Doctor."

He was gone, walking straight as a magician's wand between Scar-chin and Spaniel-Eyes. Their passage between the tables was leisurely and attracted no notice, aside from a bold and admiring glance now and then from women lunchers. They might have been three executives headed back to their marts, or three friends popping off to green and manicured pastures to chase a pellet of gutta percha from one hole to another. Certainly no one would have suspected that the Saint was a prisoner — in fact, any speculations would have tended to reverse their roles.

But under his calm exterior, thought processes moved at incredible speed, toying with this idea, discarding that. He didn't put it beyond himself to stage a spectacular escape as soon as they were outside but on the other hand it would be no help to him to become a fugitive. He even wondered whether Dr. Zellermann's system of psychological projection had anticipated an attempt to escape and was even now listening with one ear for the rattle of shots which would mean that the shadow of the Saint's interference had perhaps been lifted permanently.

Simon saw too many arguments against obliging him. His best bet at the moment seemed to be discretion, watchful waiting, and the hope that the cell they gave him to try on for size would have southern exposure.

Spaniel-Eyes hailed a cab. Scar-chin climbed in first, followed by the Saint, and Spaniel-Eyes gave short inaudible directions to the driver.

"Well," the Saint said after a few moments of riding, "how about a swift game of gin rummy?"

"Shaddup," Spaniel-Eyes said, and looked, at his watch.

"By the way," Simon asked, "what are visiting hours in the local calaboza?"

"Shaddup," Spaniel Eyes said.

They rode some more. They wound through Central Park, entering at Columbus Circle, curving and twisting along the west side of that great haven for nurses, sailors, nurses and sailors, up around the bottleneck end of the lake, south past the zoo.

The Saint looked significantly at the flat backs of the animal cages. "What time," he asked Spaniel Eyes, "do you have to be back in?"

"Shaddup."

"This," the Saint said conversationally to Scar-chin, "has been most illuminating. I suppose I shouldn't ever have taken this drive otherwise. Very restful. The lake full of rowboats, the rowboats full of afternoon romance, the — oh, the je ne sais quoi, like kids with ice creamed noses."

Scar-chin yawned.

Simon lighted another cigarette and brooded over the routine. He considered his chances of getting a lawyer with a writ of habeas corpus before things went too far. Or was it the scheme of Scar-chin and Spaniel-Eyes to spirit him away to some obscure precinct station and hold him incommunicado? Such things had been done before. And at that stage of the game the Saint knew he could not afford to disappear even for twenty-four hours.

Spaniel Eyes looked at his watch as they neared the exit at Fiftyninth Street and Fifth Avenue.

"Okay," he called to the cab driver.

The driver nodded and drove to — of all places — the Algonquin. Scar-chin came back to life.

"Awright," he said. "Go on up to your room."

"And then what?"

"You'll see."

Simon nodded pleasantly, and went up to his room. The telephone was ringing.

"Hamilton," said the voice at the other end. "I wish you'd be more careful. Do you think I haven't anything else to do with my men except send them to pull you out of jams?"

4

For a considerable time after the Saint had left, there was a nominal silence in the dining room of 21. Nominal, because of course there was never any actual silence in that much-publicised pub except when it was closed for the night. The chatter of crocks, cutlery, concubines and creeps went on without interruption or change of tempo, a formless obbligato like the fiddling of insects in a tropic night which could only be heard by forced attention. It washed up against the table where Zellermann and Avalon sat, and still left them isolated in a pool of stillness.

Of Avalon one could only have said that she was thinking. Her face was intent and abstracted but without mood. If it suggested any tension, it was only by its unnatural repose.

Dr. Zellermann avoided that suggestion by just enough play with cocktail glass and cigarette, with idle glances around the room, to convey a disinterested expectation that this hiatus was purely transitory, and that he was merely respecting it with polite acceptance.

He turned to Avalon at last with a sympathetic smile.

"I'm so sorry," he said in his best tableside manner.

She shrugged.

"Sorry? For what?"

"It is not my desire, Miss Dexter, to cause you anguish or heartache."

"I've been watching out for myself for some time, Doctor."

"That, my dear, is your chief attraction. One would expect a girl who is as beautiful as you to be dependent. You have a magnificent — er — contempt for the conventional behavior of beautiful women. If I may say so."

"You have, Doctor. Which all leads up to an exit line. Goodbye."

He raised a soft white hand.

"Don't go. You haven't had your lunch."

"I'm not hungry."

"Then please listen. I have information that may be to your advantage to know."

She settled back, but did not relax. She had the appearance of a motionless cat, not tense, yet ready to leap. Her dark eyes were alert, wide and bright.

"About Mr. Templar," the psychiatrist began. "Although I am glad to confess a personal interest in your welfare, what I am about to say is of an academic nature."

Avalon smiled with one side of her mouth.

"Anyone will grant that he is a romantic figure, Miss Dexter. He must have a tremendous attraction for women, especially young and beautiful girls who are trying to carve out a career. He represents all they strive for — poise, charm, fame and respect from many psychological types. But he is not a stable person, Miss Dexter."

Avalon smiled with both sides of her mouth. It was a tender smile, with secret undertones.

"His path through life," said Zellermann — "and I don't mean to sound like a text book — is inevitably beset with adventure, crime, and personal danger. I happen to know that many who have allied themselves with him have died. Somehow, he has come through all his adventures. But the day will come, my dear Miss Dexter, when Lady Luck will frown on her favorite protege."

Avalon rose abruptly.

"And so on and so on," she said. "Let's skip the soul analysis. You heard him fling me to the wolves. I informed on him, he said. I told you about what he's been doing. I don't think I'm in danger of being hurt — or even being near him, for that matter. So long."

She walked out of the hotel, straight and tall and lovely. When she was on the sidewalk, three cab drivers rushed up to claim her for a fare. She chose one.

"The Tombs," she said; and the man blinked.

"Caught up with th' boy friend, hey? 'Stoo bad, lady."

"My grandmother," Avalon said icily, "is in jail for matricide. I'm taking her a hacksaw. Will you hurry?"

All the way to the gloomy pile of stone, the cab driver shook his head. When Avalon paid him off, he looked at her with troubled eyes.

" 'Scuse me, lady, but why would the old dame steal a mattress? It don't make sense."

"She got tired of sleeping on the ground," Avalon told him. "Some people just can't take it."

She went inside and was directed to the desk sergeant. He was a large man, and the lines in his face had not been acquired by thinking up ways to help his fellow man. He was busy at the moment she arrived before him, studying some printed matter on his desk. He didn't look up.

"Excuse me," Avalon said.

The sergeant paid no attention. He continued his study of the papers before him. He held a pencil in one huge fist, and made a check mark now and then.

"I beg your pardon," Avalon said.

Still there was no evidence that the sergeant had heard her. He continued to peruse his mysterious papers. Avalon, like those who also serve, stood and waited. Presently the sergeant made a check mark after the name Sir Walter in the fourth at Pimlico and looked up.

His eyes were without expression. They roved over the convolutions of beauty as if they had been inspecting a prize farm animal. They penetrated, yes, and Avalon could feel her clothes falling off her; but there was no lust, no desire, in the sergeant's eyes — only boredom.

"Yeh?" he said.

"I want to see a prisoner you have here," she said. "His name is Templar." She spelled it.

The sergeant's eyes said "Dames!" as he reached for a heavily bound ledger. He scanned it.

"When did he get here?"

"An hour ago, or less."

"Nobody's been here in the last hour."

"Where would he be, then?"

"What's the rap?"

"Oh, he hasn't even been tried. No charge has been made."

The sergeant's eyes groaned, rolled skyward.

"Lady, he'll be booked at Centre Street headquarters. He won't come here till he's been convicted."

"Oh. I didn't know. Where is it?"

He told her. She flagged a cab, and went there.

As she mounted the wide flight of stairs, she was joined by Kay Natello and Ferdinand Pairfield.

Ferdinand was resplendent in purple scarf, gray plaid jacket, dove-gray trousers, gray suede shoes and lemon-colored socks. His hands were white butterflies emerging from cocoons.

"Darling!" he cried, like bells from Lakmé.

Kay Natello might as well have been dressed in a fire hose for all the blue cotton dress did for her gaunt frame. She said nothing, and Avalon was grateful for being spared that.

"Myrmidons," Avalon murmured. "What's the rap?"

Ferdinand put butterflies on her arm and she shivered. "Quaint girl," he purred. "We were down to see a lawyer on Wall Street, and we were just passing in a cab — with the most brutal driver, my dear, simply delicious — and Kay said, 'There's Avalon!' And since we'd been looking all over for you—" His shrug was as graceful as feathers on a little wind.

"Looking for me?"

"Yes, come on," Kay Natello said, in the voice which was so like an overstrained buzz-saw.

"The most marvellous thing, darling," Ferdinand burbled. "Magnamount's going to do a picture around Cookie's Canteen. We'll all be in it. And you're to have a good role. So come along. Cookie wants to be sure you'll play before she signs up with Mr. Pfeffer."

"Mr. Pfeffer being—?"

"The producer, dear girl. He's very quaint."

Avalon stood in indecision for a moment. She seemed to find nothing to say. But at last she said: "Okay. You two run along. I'll join you shortly. At Cookie's?"

"But you can't possibly," Ferdinand objected. "And surely you haven't anything to do in this dismal place. You couldn't be interested in any of the sordid characters who find their way in here. What are you doing here anyway?"

"I lost a gold compact and a pair of earrings out of my purse in a taxi," she said. "I thought this would be the place to report it. Not that I expect it'll do much good."

"It probably won't," Ferdinand said. "But I'll help you talk to these dreadful barbarians, and then we can all ride back up town together."