The Saint Steps In

1

She was young and slender, and she had smiling brown eyes and hair the color of old mahogany. With a lithe grace, she squeezed in beside Simon Templar at the small table in the cocktail room of the Shoreham and said:

"You're the Saint."

Simon smiled back, because she was easy to smile at; but not all of the smile went into his very clear blue eyes that always had a faint glint of mockery away behind them, like an amused spectator sitting far back in a respectful audience.

He said: "Am I?"

"I recognised you," she said.

He sighed. The days of happy anonymity that once upon a time had made his lawless career relatively simple seemed suddenly as far away as his last diapers. Not that even today he was as fatefully recognisable as Clark Gable: there were still several million people on earth to whom his face, if not his name, would have meant nothing at all: but he was recognised often enough for it to be what he sometimes called an occupational hazard.

"I'm afraid there's no prize," he said. "There isn't even a reward out at the moment, so far as I know."

It hadn't always been that way. There had been a time, actually not so very long ago, when half the police departments of the world carried a dossier on the Saint in their active and urgent file, when hardly a month went by without some newspaper headlining a new story on the amazing brigand whom they had christened the Robin Hood of modern crime, and when any stranger accosting the Saint by name would have seen that lean tanned reckless face settle into new lines of piratical impudence, and the long sinewy frame become lazy and supple like the crouch of a jungle cat. Those days might come back again at any time, and probably would; but just now he was almost drearily respectable. The war had changed a lot of things.

"I wanted to talk to you," she said.

"You seem to be making out all right." He looked into his empty glass. "Would you like a drink?"

"Dry Sack."

He managed to get the attention of one of the harried waiters in the crowded place, with an ease that made the performance seem ridiculously simple. He ignored the glowerings of several finger-snapping congressmen, as well as the dark looks of some young lieutenants and ensigns who, because they fought the "Battle of Constitution Avenue" without flinching, thought they deserved a priority on service, Washington's scarcest commodity. Simon ordered the Dry Sack, and had another Peter Dawson for himself.

"What shall we talk about?" he asked. "I can't tell you the story of my life, because one third of it is unprintable, one third is too incriminating, and the rest of it you wouldn't believe anyhow."

The girl's eyes flashed around the crowded noisy smoky place, and Simon felt the whirring of gears somewhere within him; the gears which instinctively sprang into action when he sensed the possiblity of excitement in the offing. And the girl's behavior was just like the beginning of an adventure story.

Her voice was so low that he barely caught her words, when she said: "I was going to ask you to help me."

"Were you?" He looked at her and saw her eyes dart about the cocktail lounge again as if she were momentarily expecting to see someone whose appearance would be decidedly unwelcome. She felt his gaze on her and made an effort to ease the tautness of her face. Her voice was almost conversational when next she spoke.

"I don't know why," she said, "but I'd sort of imagined you in a uniform."

Simon didn't look tired, because he had heard the same dialogue before. He had various answers to it, all of them inaccurate. The plain truth was that most of the things he did best were not done in uniforms — such as the interesting episode which had reached its soul-satisfying finale only twelve hours ago, and which was the reason why he was still in Washington, relaxing over a drink for the first time in seven very strenuous days. But things like that couldn't be talked about for a while.

"I got fired, and my uniform happened to fit the new doorman," he said. He waited until the waiter placed the two drinks on the table. "How do you think I could help you?"

"I suppose you'll think I'm stupid," she said, "but I'm just a little bit frightened."

The slight lift of his right eyebrow was noncommittal.

"Sometimes it's stupid not to be frightened," he said. "It all depends. Excuse the platitudes, but I just want to find out what you mean."

"Do you think anything could happen to anyone in Washington?"

"Anything," said the Saint with conviction, "could happen to anyone in Washington. And most of the time it does. That's why so many people here have ulcers."

"Could anyone be killed here?"

He shrugged.

"There was a man named Stavisky," he offered, "but of course that was officially labeled a suicide. But I could imagine somebody being killed here. Is that the proposition, and whom do you want bumped off?"

She turned the stem of her glass between her fingers, her head bent, not looking at him.

"I'm sorry," she Said. "I didn't think you'd be like that."

"I'm sorry too," he said coolly. "But after all, you make the most unusual openings. I only read about these things in magazines. You seem to know something about me. I don't know anything about you, except that I'd rather look at you than a fat senator. Let's begin with the introduction. I don't even know your name.

"Madeline Gray."

"It's a nice name. Should it ring bells?"

"No."

"You aren't working for a newspaper, by any chance?"

"No."

"And you're not a particularly unsophisticated Mata Hari?"

"I — no, of course not." '

"You just have an academic interest in whether I think it would be practical to ease a guy off in this village."

"It isn't exactly academic," she said.

He took a cigarette from the pack in front of him on the table.

"I'm sorry, again," he said. "But you sounded so very cheerful and chatty about it—"

"Cheerful and chatty," she interrupted as the tautness returned to her face, "because I don't want anyone who's watching me to know everything I'm talking to you about. I thought you'd be quick enough to get that. And I didn't have in mind any guy who might be eased off, as you put it."

The Saint put a match to his cigarette. Everything inside him was suddenly very quiet and still, like the stillness after the stopping of a clock which had never been noticed until after it left an abrupt intensity of silence.

"Meaning yourself?" he asked easily.

She was spilling things out of her handbag, searching for a lipstick. She found it. The same movement of her hand that picked it up slid a piece of paper out of the junk pile in his direction. Shoulder to shoulder with her as he was, it lay right under his eyes. In crudely blocked capitals, it said:

"I never wanted to see him," said the Saint.

"You don't have to. But I've got an appointment with him at eight o'clock."

"Just who is Imberline?"

"He's in the WPB."

The name began to sound faintly familiar; although Simon Templar had very little more general knowledge of the multitudinous personnel of the various Washington bureaus than any average citizen.

He said: "Hasn't he heard about making the world safe for the forty-hour week?"

"Maybe not."

"And somebody doesn't want you to put him wise."

"I don't know, exactly. All I know is that the note you're looking at was tossed into my lap about twenty minutes ago.", Simon glanced at the paper again. It was wrinkled and crumpled as it should have been, if it had been made into a ball, as the girl implied. He said: "You didn't see where it came from?"

"Of course not."

He admitted that. It could easily have been done. And just as readily he admitted the cold spectral fingers that slid caressingly up his spine. It was right and inevitable, it always had been, that adventure should overtake him like that, just as naturally and just as automatically, as soon as he was "at liberty" again. But when it was too easy and too automatic, also, it could have other angles… He was precisely as relaxed and receptive as a seasoned guerilla entering a peaceful valley.

"As a matter of interest," he murmured, "is this the first you've heard about this conspiracy to keep Imberline away from your dazzling beauty?"

"Oh, no," she said. She had regained her composure now and her voice was almost bland. "I had a phone call this morning that was much more explicit. In fact, the man said that if I wanted to live to be a grandmother I'd better start working at it now — and he meant by going home and staying there."

"It sounds like rather a dull method," said the Saint.

"That's why I spoke to you," she said.

The turn of his lips was frankly humorous.

"As a potential grandfather?"

"Because I thought you might be able to get me to see Imberline in one piece."

Simon turned in his chair and looked around the room.

He saw an average section of Official Washington at cocktail time — senators, representatives, bureaucrats, brass hats, men with strings to pull and men with things to see. Out of the babble of conversation, official secrets reverberated through the air in deafening sotto voces that would have gladdened the hearts of a whole army of fifth columnists and spies, and probably did. But all of them shared the sleek solid look of men in authority and security, bravely bearing up under the worry of wondering where their next hundred grand was coming from. None of them had the traditional appearance of men who could spend their spare time carving pretty girls into small sections.

The dialogue would have sounded perfect in a vacuum; but somehow, from where the Saint sat, none of it sounded right. He turned back to Madeline Gray.

"This may sound a bit out of line," he remarked, "but I like to know things in advance. You don't happen to have a heart interest in this Imberline that his spouse or current girl friend might object to?"

She shook her head decisively.

"Heavens, no!"

"Then what do you have to see him about?" he asked, and tried not to seem perfunctory.

"I don't know whether I should tell you that."

The Saint was still very patient. And then he began to laugh inside, it was still fun, and she was really interesting to look at, and after all you couldn't have everything.

A round stocky man who must once have been a door-to-door salesman crowded heavily past the table to a vacant seat nearby and began shouting obstreperously at the nearest waiter. Simon eyed him, decided that he was unusually objectionable, and consulted his watch.

"You've still got more than an hour to spare," he said. "Let's have some food and talk it over."

They had food. He ordered lobster Cardinal and a bottle of Chateau Olivier. And they talked about everything else under the sun. It passed the time surprisingly quickly. She was fun to talk to, although nothing was said that either of them would ever remember. He enjoyed it much more than the solitary meal he had expected. And he was almost sorry when they were at their coffee, and for the sake of the record he had to call a showdown.

He said: "Darling, I've enjoyed every minute of this, and I'll forgive you anything, but if you really wanted me to help you it must have occurred to you that I'd want to have some idea what I was helping. So let's finish the story about Imberline and the mysterious tosser of notes. Since you've told me that Romance hasn't reared its lovely head, that you're not a newspaper gal nor a spy, I'm a bit at a loss."

Her dark eyes studied him quietly for several seconds.

Then she searched through her purse again

"A filing system," Simon murmured, "would be indicated."

The girl's hand came up with something about six inches long, like a thick piece of tape, and a sort of shiny pale translucent orange in color. She passed it across the table.

Simon took it and fingered it experimentally. It was soft but resistant, tough against the pressure of a thumbnail, flexible and — elastic. He stretched it and snapped it back a couple of times, and then his gaze was cool and estimating on her.

"Rubber?" he asked.

"Synthetic."

His eyebrows hardly moved.

"What kind?"

"Something quite new. It's made mostly of sawdust, vinegar, milk — plus, of course, two or three other important things. But it isn't derived from butadiene."

"That must be a load off its mind," he remarked. "What in the world is butadiene?"

Her unaffected solemnity could have been comic if it had not seemed so completely natural.

"I thought everybody knew that," she said. "Butadiene is something you make out of petroleum, or grain alcohol. It's the base of the buna synthetic rubbers. Of course, that might be a bit technical for you."

"It might," he admitted. He wondered whether she had been taken in by his wide-eyed wonderment or not. He rather thought not.

"The thing that matters," she said, "is that the production of buna is still pretty experimental, and in any case it involves a fairly elaborate and expensive plant. This stuff can be mixed in a bathtub, practically. My father invented it. His name is Calvin Gray. You've probably never heard of him, but he's rated one of the top research chemists in the country."

"And you're here to get Imberline interested in this — to get his WPB sanction?"

She nodded.

"You make it sound frightfully easy. But it hasn't been so far… My father started working on this idea years ago, but then natural rubber was so cheap that it didn't seem worth going on with. When the war started and the Japs began moving in on Thailand, he saw what was coming and started working again."

"He must have hundreds of people rooting for him."

"Is that what you think? After he published his first results, his laboratory was burned out once, and blown up twice. Accidents, of course. But he knows, and I know, that they were accidents that had been — arranged. And then, when he had his process perfected, and he came here to try to give it to the Government — you should have seen the runaround they gave him."

"I can imagine it."

"Of course, part of the brush-off he got here might have been his fault. He's quite an individualist, and he hasn't read those books about winning friends and influencing people. At the same time, pardoxically, he's rather easily discouraged. He ended up by damning everybody and going home."

"And so?"

"I came back here for him."

Simon handed the sample back to her with a tinge of regret. It was a lovely performance, and he didn't believe a word of it. He wished that some day some impressionable and personable young piece of loveliness would have the outrageous honesty to come up to him and simply say "I think you're marvelous and I'd give anything to see you in action", without trying to feed him an inferior plot to work on. He felt really sorry about it, because she seemed like nice people and he could have liked her.

"If you think you're on the spot, you ought to talk to the FBI," he said. "Or if you're just getting the old runaround, squawk to one of the papers. If you pick the right one, they'll pour their hearts into a story like that."

She stood up so suddenly that some of his coffee spilled in the saucer. She looked rather fine doing that, and the waste of it hurt him.

"I'm sorry," she said huskily. "It was a silly idea, wasn't it? But it was nice to have dinner with you, just the same."

He sat there quite sympathetically while she walked away.

The dining room seemed unusually dull after she had disappeared. Perhaps, he thought, he had been rather uncouthly hasty. After all, he had been enjoying himself. He could have gone along with the gag.

But then, life was so short, and there were so many important things.

He was sitting there, pondering over the more important things, when a group of men bore down on him, crowding their way through the too-narrow aisles between the tables. In the van of the group was a large person with a domineering air, and Simon knew that he was almost certain to be jostled, as he had been jostled in the cocktail lounge.

He was getting tired of being bumped and shoved by individuals who seemed to get the idea that the "DC" after Washington meant "disregard courtesy". He prepared himself for the inevitable encounter.

The big man did not disappoint him. Simon felt the pressure on the back of his chair, and a coat sleeve ruffled the hair on the back of his head. He shoved back his chair quickly and beamed inwardly as he heard the involuntary "oof" that the big man gave as the chairback dug into his stomach. Templar stretched his lean length upright and turned to the man he had effectively body-checked with his chair.

"Terribly sorry," he said very politely.

The big man looked at him. He had the crimson-mottled face of a person who enjoyed good food, good liquor, and good cigars, and had had too many of each. His little eyes regarded Simon speculatively for a moment, and there might have been a flare behind them, or there might not have been, before he wreathed his face in a beaming smile.

"It's all right," he said. "Accidents will happen, you know."

"Yes, indeed," Simon murmured.

The others in the party, were waiting respectfully, almost reverently, for the big man to proceed. The man whom Simon had prodded with the chair gave the Saint another enigmatic glance and then turned away. His disciples followed.

"But Mr. Imberline," one of them cried in a voice that approached a wail. "Think of the inconvenience that this program will mean to certain parties."

"As the fellow says," announced the prow of the group, majestically. "This is war, arid it's up to every one of us to put our shoulders to the wheel. Waste not, want not, is my motto, and this is a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth."

"Incredible," the Saint told himself, gazing after the group as it barged its way to the long table that had been reserved at the further end of the room. "That must be the great Imberline himself."

He put a cigarette between his lips, and felt in his coat pocket for a match.

He didn't find the match, but his fingers encountered something else that he knew at once didn't belong there. It was a folded piece of paper which he knew quite certainly he had never put in that pocket. He took it out and opened it.

It was the same clumsy style of block capitals that he had seen very recently, and it said:

He had a curious feeling in looking at it, like walking out of a rowdy stifling honky-tonk into a silent snow night. Because all the time they had been in the cocktail lounge, Madeline Gray had been on his left, and he had been half turned towards her, so that his right-hand pocket was almost against the table, and it was impossible that she could have put that paper into his pocket while they were there. And, aside from the fact that he had been surrounded by Imberline satellites a few seconds earlier, there had definitely been no chance since…

2

The doorman said: "Yes, she went that way. She was walking." He put away the dollar bill that Simon handed him, and added: "She asked me the way to Scott Circle."

Simon turned back into the lobby and found a telephone booth. The directory gave him the address of Frank Imberline. It was one of the low numbers on Scott Circle.

Simon Templar frowned thoughtfully.

From the address, it was evident that Mr. Imberline might indeed be a gentleman of some importance, for Scott Circle is the center of one of the best residential sections of Washington, and the list of householders there reads like a snob hostess's dream.

Madeline Gray had told him that she had an appointment with Imberline at eight. He checked his strap watch and saw that it was close to eight now. Still, Imberline — or at least an Imberline had just entered the hotel dining room, obviously bent on food. For a fairly prominent bureaucrat to ignore an appointment was not unheard of in Washington, and that might be the answer. Or Frank Imberline might have a brother or a cousin or a namesake who possessed some Government job and its accompanying entourage.

Still… Simon wished that he had questioned Madeline about the appointment, and how she had arranged it. For a Government official to arrange an appointment at his home, in the evening, sounded a little strange.

He left the hotel again and acquired a taxi by the subtle expedient of paying an extortionate bribe to a driver who maintained that he was waiting for a customer who had just stepped into the hotel for a moment. With the taxi in motion, Simon sat forward and watched the road all the time with an accelerating impatience that turned into an odd feeling of emptiness as he began to realize that the time was approaching and passing when they should have overtaken the girl. Unless she had taken a different route, or picked up a taxi on the way, or…

Or.

Then they were entering Scott Circle, and stopping at the number he had given the driver. He didn't see another taxi at the door, or anywhere in the vicinity.

He got out and paid his fare. The front of the house seemed very dark, except for a light shining through the transom above the door. That was explainable, he told himself, if this really was a romantic tryst, if there was another Imberline besides the one in the hotel dining room, but it seemed to the Saint to be an odd set of circumstances under which a bureaucrat would carry on a conference concerning synthetic rubber.

To the Saint, direct action was always better than dim speculation. He rang the bell.

The butler said: "No, suh. Mr. Imberline ain't to home."

"He is to me," said the Saint cheerfully. "I've got an appointment with him. The name is Gray."

"Ah'm sorry, suh, but Mr. Imberline ain't here. He ain't been back since he left this mawnin', an' he told the cook he was eatin' out."

Simon pursed his lips wryly.

"I guess he forgot his appointment," he said. "I guess, being such a busy man, he forgets a lot of them."

"No suh!" said the butler loyally. "Not Mr. Imberline, suh! He makes a date to be somewheres an' he gits there. Mebbe you got the wrong evenin', suh. Mebbe it's tomorrer you's supposed to have your 'pointment."

"Perhaps," the Saint said easily. "I may have mixed up my times. Tell me, did a young lady named Gray call here this evening? I rather expected to meet her here."

The woolly white head moved negatively.

"Ain't nobody called here, suh," the butler said.

"Then I must have the dates mixed up."

He turned away from the door, saying things silently to himself. He addressed himself with a searing minuteness of detail which would almost certainly have been a cue for mayhem if it had been done by anybody else.

There was still no other cab in sight.

He turned south on 23rd Street, and he had reached the intersection of Q Street before he began to wonder where he was going or what good it was likely to do. He paused uncertainly on the corner, looking towards the bridge over Rock Creek Park. A dozen alternatives chased through his mind, and so many of them must be wrong and so few of them offered anything to pin much to.

And then he saw her coming around the curve of the bridge, walking with her young steady stride, and everything he had imagined seemed foolish again. For about five or six seconds.

A car came crawling up from behind her, passed her, stopped, and backed up into an alley that branched diagonally off from the north side of the street. He had instinctively stood still and merged himself into the shadow of a tree when he saw her, so the two men who came out of the alley a moment later must have thought the block was deserted except for themselves and the girl. They wore handkerchiefs tied over the lower part of their faces, and they closed in on her, one on each side, very professionally, and he was too far away to hear whatever they said, but he saw them turn her into the alley as he started running soundlessly towards them.

He came up on them in such a swift catlike silence that it must have seemed to all of them as if a shadow materialised before their eyes.

"Hullo, Madeline," he drawled. "I was afraid I'd missed you, darling."

Her face looked pale and vague in the gloom.

The masked man on her left spoke in muffled accents. He was tall and wide-shouldered, and he seemed to be of the type that never lost a fist fight when he was a schoolboy.

"Better stay out of this, bud, if you don't want to get into trouble."

His voice was a deep hollow rasp, behind the mask. He looked like a man who could provide trouble or cope with it. The man on the other side had much the same air. He weighed a little more, but he was inches shorter and carried it chunkily.

"I like trouble," Simon said breezily. "What kind have you got?"

"FBI trouble," said the tall man flatly. "This girl's — uh — being detained for questioning, Run along."

"Detained?" asked the Saint. "Just why?"

"Beat it," growled the chunky one. "Or we might think of taking you along with us."

"You," said the Saint calmly, "are the first FBI operatives I've ever met who wore handkerchiefs over your noses and so far forgot their polish that they'd say anything like 'beat it', or call anybody 'bud'. If you're posing as G-men, you're making a horrible mess of it. So, if you show your credentials, I'll be happy to go along with the young lady. But I don't think you will, or can."

He was ready for the swing the tall man launched at him, and he swayed back just the essential six inches and let the wind of it fan his chin. Then he shifted his weight forwards again and stepped in with his right forearm pistoning at waist level. The jar of the contact ran all the way up to his shoulders. The tall man grunted and leaned over from the middle and the Saint's left ripped up in a short smash to the mufflered jaw that would have dropped the average citizen in his tracks. The tall man was somewhat tougher than the average. He went pedaling back in a slightly ludicrous race with his own center of gravity, but he still had nothing but his feet on the ground when a large part of his companion's weight descended on the Saint's neck and shoulders.

Simon's eyes were blurred for an instant in a pyrotechnic burst of lights, and his knees began to bend; then he got his hands locked behind the chunky man's head, and let his knees sag even lower before he heaved up again. The chunky man came somersaulting over his shoulder and hit the ground with a thud that a deaf man could have felt several feet away. He rolled over in a wild flurry and wound his arms around the Saint's shins, binding Simon's legs together from ankle to knee.

In a clutch like that, Simon knew that he had no more chance of staying upright than an inverted pyramid. He tried to come down as vertically as possible, so as to stay on top of the chunky man, trying to land on him with his weight on his knees and aiming a downward left at him at the same time.

Neither of those schemes connected. Simon afterwards had a dim impression of running feet, of Madeline Gray crying out something incoherent; then a very considerable weight hit him in the middle and sent him spinning.

Half winded, he grappled blindly for a hold while the man who had tackled him swarmed over him with the same intention. He had had very little leisure for thinking, and so it was a moment or two before he realised that this was not the comeback of the tall bony partner. This man's outlines and architecture were different again. And then even before Simon could puzzle any more about it the girl was clawing at his antagonist, beating ineffectually on his broad back with her fists; but it was enough of an interruption to nullify the Saint's temporary disadvantage, and he got first a knee into the man's stomach, and then one foot in what was more of a shove than a kick, and then he was free and up again and looking swiftly around to see who had to be next.

He was just in time to catch a glimpse of the chunky man's rear elevation as it fell into the parked car a few yards away. The tall bony one had already disappeared, and presumbly he was at the wheel, for the engine roared up even before the door slammed, and the car leapt away with a grind of spinning tires that would have made any normal war-time motorist wince. It screamed out of the alley as Simon turned again to look for the third member of the opposition.

The third member was holding one hand over his diaphragm and making jerky little bows over it, and saying in a painful and puzzled voice: "My God… You're Miss Gray, aren't you?"

As Simon stepped towards him he said: "Damn, I'm sorry. I must have picked the wrong side. I was just driving by—"

"You've got a car?" Simon snapped.

"Yes. I just got out—"

Simon caught the girl's hand and raced to the street. There was a convertible parked just beyond the alley, but it was headed in the opposite direction from the way the escaping car had turned. And the other car itself was already out of sight.

The Saint shrugged and searched for a consoling cigarette.

"I'm really terribly sorry." The other man came up with them, still holding his stomach and trying to straighten himself. "I just saw the fight going on, and it looked as if someone was in trouble, and naturally I thought the man on the ground was the victim. Until Miss Gray started beating me up… I'm afraid I helped them get away."

"You know each other, do you?" asked the Saint.

She was staring puzzledly.

"I've seen you somewhere, but—"

"Walter Devan," said the man. "It was in Mr. Quennel's office. You were with your father."

Simon put a match to his cigarette. With the help of that better light, he shared with her a better view of the man's face. It was square-jawed and powerful, with the craggy leathery look of a prizefighter.

"Oh yes!" She turned to the Saint. "Mr. Devan — Mr. Templar."

Simon put out his hand.

"That's quite a flying tackle you have," he said, and Devan grinned.

"It should be — I played professional football when I was a lot younger. You're a pretty good kicker yourself."

"We are a lot of wasted talent," said the Saint.

"Perhaps it's all for the best," Devan said. "Anyway, we got rid of those hoodlums, and some of them can be very ugly There have been a lot of hold-ups and housebreakings around here lately. The bad boys hide in the park and come out after dark."

Simon thought of mentioning the fact that these particular bad boys had had a car, but decided that for the moment the point wasn't worth making. Before the girl could make any comment, he said: "Maybe you wouldn't mind giving us a lift out of the danger zone."

"Be glad to. Anywhere."

They got in, Madeline Gray in the middle, and Simon looked at her as Devan pressed the starter, and said: "I think we ought to go back to the Shoreham and have another drink."

"But I've still got to see Mr. Imberline."

"Mr. Imberline isn't home, darling. I was there first. I missed you on the way. Then I started back to look for you."

"But I had an appointment."

"You mean Frank Imberline?" Devan put in.

She said: "Yes."

"Mr. Templar's right. He's not home. I happen to know that because Mr. Quennel's been trying to get in touch with him himself."

"Just how did you get this appointment?" Simon asked.

"I'd been trying to see him at his office," she said, "but I hadn't gotten anywhere. I'd left my name and address, and they were supposed to get in touch with me. Then I got a phone call this afternoon to go to his house."

"Someone was pulling your leg," said the Saint quietly.

She looked at him with wide startled eyes.

Simon's arm lay along the back of the seat behind her. His left hand moved on her shoulder with a firm significant pressure. Until he knew much more about everything, now, he was in no hurry to talk before any strangers.

Especially this man who called himself Walter Devan.

Because, unless he was very much mistaken, Devan had been the round stocky man who had jostled him in the Shoreham cocktail lounge. And the eyes of the taller of the two self-asserted FBI agents looked very much like those of one of the group that had followed Frank Imberline into the dining room later — when he had received his second jostling.

3

Devan seemed quite unconscious of any suppression. He said conversationally: "By the way, Miss Gray, how is your father getting on with his new synthetic process?"

"The process is fine," she said frankly, "but we're still trying to put it over."

Devan shook his head sympathetically.

"These things take a lot of time. Imberline may be able to help you," he said. "It's too bad our company couldn't do anything about it." He turned towards Simon and added in explanation: "Mr. Gray has a very promising angle on the synthetic rubber problem. He brought it to Mr. Quennel, but unfortunately it wasn't in our line."

"I suppose," said the Saint, "I should know — but what exactly is our line?"

"Quennel Chemical Corporation. Quenco Products. You've probably seen the name somewhere. It's rather a well-known name."

His voice reflected quiet pride. Yes, Simon had seen the name, right enough. When he had first heard it mentioned it had sounded familiar, but he hadn't been able to place it.

"What do you think of Mr. Gray's formula?" he asked.

"I'm afraid I'm not a chemist," Devan said apologetically. "I'm just the personnel manager. It sounds very hopeful, from what I've heard of it. But Quennel already has an enormous contract with the Government for buna, and we've already invested more than two million dollars in a plant that's being built now, so our hands are tied. That's probably our bad luck."

The Saint dragged at his cigarette thoughtfully.

"But if Mr. Gray's invention is successful and put into production, it would mean his method would be in competition with yours, wouldn't it?" he asked.

Devan gave a short laugh.

"I suppose it would be, theoretically," he admitted. "But with the world howling for rubber, all the rubber it can get, it would be hard to call it competition. Rather, it would be like two firms turning out different makes of life preservers — there'd be no pick and choose involved when a drowning man was being thrown one."

The Saint finished his cigarette in silence, with thoughtful leisuredness. There was, after all, some justice in the world. That violent and accidental meeting had its own unexpected compensation for the loss of two possibly unimportant muscle men. If he still needed it, he had the clinching confirmation that the story which had sounded so preposterous was true — that after all Madeline Gray was not just a silly sensation-hunter and celebrity-nuisance, but that the invention of Calvin Gray might indeed be one of those rare fuses from which could explode a fiesta of fun and games of the real original vintage that he loved. He felt a little foolish now for some of his facile incredulity; and yet, glancing again at the profile of the girl beside him, he couldn't feel very deeply sorry. It was worth much more than a little transient egotism for her to be real…

They were at the Shoreham, and Walter Devan said: "I hope I'll see you again."

"I'm staying here," said the Saint.

"So am I," said the girl.

The Saint looked at her and began to raise a quizzical eyebrow at himself, and she laughed and said: "I suppose I'd do better if I could act more like a starving inventor's daughter, but the trouble is we just aren't starving yet."

He looked at the Scottish tweed suit that covered her perfection, at the hat that just missed ridiculousness, and silently estimated their cost. No, Madeline Gray looked as though she was far removed from starvation.

"Let me know if I can help," said Devan. "I might be able to do something for you. Maybe Mr. Quennel can reach Imberline and fix some kind of a conference. I'm at the Raleigh if you should want to reach me for any reason."

He drove off after a brief word to Templar. Simon gazed after the ruby tail light for a moment, and then took the girl's arm, steering her into the lobby. She started to turn towards the cocktail lounge, but he guided her towards the elevators.

"Let's go to my apartment," he said. "Funny things seem to happen in cocktail lounges and dining rooms."

He felt her eyes switch to him quickly, but his face was as impersonal as the way he had spoken. She stepped into the elevator without speaking, and was silent until they were in his living room.

At a time when a closet and a blanket could be rented in Washington as a fairly luxurious bedroom, it was still only natural that Simon Templar should have achieved a commodious suite all to himself. He had a profound appreciation of the more expensive refinements of living when he could get them, and he had ways of getting them that would have been quite incomprehensible to less enterprising men. He took off his coat and went to a side table to pour Peter Dawson into two tall glasses, and added ice from a thermos bucket.

"Now," she said, "will you tell me exactly what you mean by funny things happen in cocktail lounges and dining rooms?"

He gave her one of the drinks he had mixed, and then with his freed hand he showed her the note he had found in his pocket.

"I found it just after you'd left," he explained. "That's why I went after you. I'm sorry. I take it all back. I was stupid enough to think you were stupid. I've tried to make up for a little. Now can we start again?"

She smiled at him with a straightforward friendliness that he should have been able to expect. Yet it was still good to see it.

"Of course," she said. "Will you really help me with Imberline when I get in touch with him?"

He sipped his drink casually and looked at her over the rim of his glass. When he took down the drink, he asked:

"Have you ever met this phantom Imberline who everybody seems to be trying to get in touch with?"

She nodded.

"I've seen him a couple of times," she said briefly.

"What's he like, and what does he do?"

She waved her hands expressively.

"He's — oh, he's a Babbitty sort of person, nice but dull and I suspect not too brilliant. Honest, politically ambitious perhaps, a joiner, likes to make friends—"

"Just what is his position?" asked the Saint.

"He's with the WPB, as I told you. A dollar-a-year man in the synthetic rubber branch. Not the biggest man in that branch, but still fairly important. He has quite a bit of say about what money is going to be spent for the development of which processes."

The ice in Simon's glass tinkled as he drank again.

"And what did he do before he became a dollar-a-year man?" he asked.

Her eyes widened a trifle as she gazed back at him.

"Surely, you must have heard of Frank Imberline!" she exclaimed. "Imberline, of Consolidated Rubber. Of course, it was his father who built up the rubber combine, but at least this Imberline hasn't done anything to weaken that combine. There are hints, rumors—"

She broke off abruptly and gnawed her lip.

"Go on," said Simon pleasantly. "I'm interested in the saga of The Imberline."

She moved her hands again.

"Oh, it's just rubber trade talk," she said. "Something you couldn't possibly be interested in."

"Suppose I hear it and decide for myself."

"Well — Father doesn't like Imberline, and he may be prejudiced — probably as. But he maintains Imberline is nothing more than a straw man for a syndicate of unscrupulous men who wangled his WPB appointment in order to further their own ends. I told you that Father's an individualist. I suppose that's a nice way of hinting that he's a near-eccentric. Some inventors are. He's frightfully bitter against the people in Washington who gave him the runaround, and he insists that certain interests are trying to smother his process in order to build up their own business during the war and, more selfishly, after the war."

"And your father, I take it, has only the good of the people at heart."

She looked down at her drink and he spoke swiftly.

"I'm sorry," he said. "A few days of Washington and I find myself afflicted with cynicism."

"It's all right," she said in a low voice. "It was a logical question, after all."

She raised her eyes to his and met them squarely.

"Yes," she said stoutly. "He does have the good of the people at heart. He offered his invention to the Government, free and clear, but his offer never got to the men he wanted to give it to. Instead, he was interviewed by strangers whom he didn't like or trust. When he refused to give them his formula, when he insisted on being taken to the top man, the mysterious accidents began to happen."

"Does Imberline know of all this?"

She shrugged.

"Who knows? I've told you that he's not exactly the heavy intellectual. It might be that he's of the popular conviction that all inventors are pathological specimens who just want to waste his time. Heaven knows he must meet plenty of that type, too. Or it might be that somebody in his office does work for some other interests, as Father insists, and never lets him see anything or anybody they don't want him to see."

She leaned forward eagerly.

"But I'm sure that if I could get to him. I could make him listen, get him interested." She colored slightly. "Frank Imberline, you see, is one of those I'm-old-enough-to-be-your-father persons. I–I think he'll at least give me a hearing."

Simon eyed the girl soberly. Her face blazed suddenly.

"I know what you're thinking," she said. "But I can put up with that if it would help Father and — yes — help the war effort. It sounds corny, I know, but I really mean it."

Her eyes were beseeching.

"Couldn't you help me to see Imberline?" she pleaded.

He gazed at her soberly. She was not stupid in the way he had thought, but it appeared that there were certain of the facts of life that had not yet completely entered her awareness.

"Of course I will," he said kindly. "But it might take some time to get an audience with the pontiff. I'm not so well up In the routines for getting into the inner sanctum of a Washington panjandrum…"

The Saint had a faculty of hearing things without listening for them, and of correlating them with the instantaneous efficiency of a sorting machine, so that they were sharply classified in his mind almost before the mechanical part of his sense of hearing had finished processing them.

This particular sound was no more than the shyest ghost of a tap. But it told him, quite simply and clearly, that something had touched the door behind him.

He moved towards It on soundless feet, while his voice went on without the slightest change of pace or inflection.

"… I believe if you take a folding cot and a camp stove and park in his outer office for a few days you can sometimes get in a word with his secretary's secretary's secretary…"

Simon's hand touched the doorknob and whipped the door open in one movement of lightning suddenness. And with another movement that followed the first with the precision of a reciprocating engine, he shot out another hand to grasp the collar of the man who crouched outside with an article like a small old-fashioned ear-trumpet at his ear.

"Come in, chum," he said cordially. "Come in and introduce yourself. Are you the house detective, or were you just feeling lonely?"

The eavesdropper found himself whirled into the room, clutching wildly at the air in a vain effort to regain his balance.

Before he could recover himself, one of his arms was hauled up painfully behind his back, and he found himself helpless.

"Don't scream, darling," Simon said to the girl. "It's just a surprise visit from somebody who wanted to make certain he wasn't intruding before he knocked."

His free hand moved swiftly over his captive's clothes, but discovered no gun. Simon twisted the eavesdropper around and stared into his face. Then he relaxed his hold on the stranger's arm. The man cautiously stretched the twisted member and began rubbing it, half whimpering as he did.

"Know him?" asked the Saint of the girl.

Wordlessly, Madeline Gray shook her head.

"Not exactly the type," Simon remarked, cocking his head on one side. "He looks more like the typical bookkeeper who's due to get pensioned off with a nice gold watch for fifty years of uninterrupted service, and never a vacation or a day off for sickness."

The little man continued rubbing his arm, squeaking. He looked something like a careworn mouse in ill-fitting clothes, with shoe-button eyes and two rodent teeth that protruded over his lower lip. As the pain in his arm subsided, he worked hard to present a picture of outraged innocence.

"Sir!" he began.

"Even talks like a mouse," observed the Saint coolly.

"I'll have satisfaction for this," said the eavesdropper. "This is — this is scandalous! When a man is attacked in the hallway of a prominent hotel by a hoodlum who practically breaks his arm, it's time—"

"All right, Junior," the Saint said pleasantly. "We can do without all that. Just who are you and who do you work for?"

The little man drew himself up to his full height of about five feet three.

"I might ask you the same question," he retorted. "Who are you that you think you can attack—"

"Look," said the Saint. "I haven't much time, and although I'm usually an exceedingly patient sort of bloke, I'm slightly allergic to people who listen at my door with patent listening gadgets. Who sent you here and what did you expect to find out?"

"My name," squeaked the little man, "is Sylvester Angert. And I was not listening at your door. I was trying to find my own room. I thought this was it. I was about to try my key in the lock when you assaulted me."

"I see," said the Saint thoughtfully. "Of course, you didn't check the number of my room with the number on your key before you — er — prepared to try the lock. And you always have a good reason to listen to what might be going on inside your room before you enter. Is that it?"

The little man's eyes held Simon's firmly for a second and then slid away.

"If you must know," he said, with a spark of defiance, "that's exactly what I do. Listen, I mean. I've done that ever since I had an unpleasant experience in Milwaukee. I walked into my room, and I was held up by two thugs who were waiting for me there. I procured this little instrument to safeguard myself against just that sort of thing."

"Oh, Lord," said the Saint faintly. "Now I've heard everything."

"Believe it or not," said Sylvester Angert, "that's the truth."

"Suppose you show me your key," Simon suggested.

Mr. Angert probed his pockets and came up with the tabbed key and offered it to the Saint. Simon checked the number and frowned thoughtfully. Its last two digits corresponded with the number of Simon's room. Mr. Angert, it appeared, occupied the suite immediately above the Saint's.

Simon returned the key and smiled easily.

"Everything checks beautifully, doesn't it?" he asked. "Suppose you have a seat, Sylvester, and toy with a drink while we talk this over."

Reluctantly the little man took a chair across the room from the door. Simon splashed liquor into a glass and fizzed the soda syphon. He nodded in the direction of the girl.

"I suppose introductions are in order," he said. "Mr. Angert, this is Miss Millie Van Ess. Miss Van Ess, Mr. Angert."

His eyes were bland but they would not have missed the minutest change in Angert's expression, if there had been any reaction to the alias he had inflicted on Madeline Gray. But he saw no reaction at all.

The little man nodded stiffly to the girl and murmured something that might have been "How do you do." He took the glass from Simon and sipped the highball daintily.

Simon's long brown fingers reached for a cigarette.

"Now, Mr. Angert," he said. "I'm sure you'll agree that explanations are in order — on both sides, possibly. Just what is your business, Comrade?"

The liquor seemed to give the little man courage, or perhaps it was the realisation that he was not going to be stretched on a rack — at least not immediately. Over the rim of his glass, he said: "I don't know your name, sir."

"So sorry. It's Templar, Simon Templar."

Angert's voice was quite calm as he said: "I believe I've heard of you. Aren't you the one they call the Saint, or some such name?"

Simon bowed modestly.

"My wife, that's Mrs. Angert, takes a great interest in the crime news in the papers, and I've heard her mention your name. I, personally, don't pay much attention to that sort of thing." He looked up apologetically. "Not," he added, "that I have anything against crime news, but—"

Simon held up a hand.

"No apologies, please," he said. "I much prefer the funnies and the produce market reports, myself. But what do you do, brother, besides not read crime news?"

The little man delved into a vest pocket and brought out a card. Simon read that Sylvester was sales manager of the Choctaw Pipe and Tube Company of Cleveland.

"I'm in Washington, trying to get to see somebody about a subcontract, but, oh dear, I just haven't been able to do anything! They all keep sending me from one office to the other and then back to the place I contacted first."

Simon casually slipped the card into his pocket and dragged at his cigarette.

"I take it you make pipes and tubes," he said.

"We did, up until the war," explained Sylvester. "Then we converted to more direct war products. Naturally, I can't explain just what we're turning out now, but it's important Yessiree, very important, if I may say so."

"I'm sure you may," Simon murmured.

Then he shot his next question in a rapier-like tone that cut away the smug complacency Sylvester seemed to be building up as thoroughly as a sharp knife would rip away cheesecloth.

"Does your plant have anything to do with rubber?" he demanded.

This time Mr. Angert's eyes bounced a bit. He had been prepared for the other questions, but this one had come out of nowhere and there was a split second's interval before he recovered.

"Rubber? Oh no. We're a metal production outfit No, we have nothing to do with rubber at all."

Simon half turned away to freshen his drink.

"Naturally not," he said. "That was rather a silly question."

Sylvester Angert finished his drink and got out of his chair. He laughed rather uncertainly.

"I'm sorry I was so — so harsh when I first — er — arrived here, but the surprise… I guess I do owe you an apology at that. Perhaps we could get together for a drink tomorrow."

"Perhaps," said the Saint noncommittally.

"And now I'd better be getting up to my room. It's getting late and I've had a hard day. Goodnight Miss Van Ess, Mr. Templar."

He ducked his head and scuttled out of the room.

Madeline giggled.

"A funny little man," she said.

"Very. Will you excuse me for a second? I've got a couple of calls to make."

He went into the bedroom, closing the door behind him. He called a local number which was not in any directory, and talked briefly with a man named Hamilton, whom very few people knew. Then he called the desk and exchanged a few words with Information. He returned to the living room, smiling in his satisfaction.

"A funny little man indeed," he said. "There is no such animal as the Choctaw Pipe and Tube Company of Cleveland. And the suite above this is occupied by a senator who's been living there ever since his misguided constituents banded together in a conspiracy to get him out of his home state."

"Then—"

"Oh, he's harmless," the Saint assured her. "I don't think he'll bother us again. It will be somebody very different from little Sylvester who'll probably get the next assignment.

"But who's he working for?"

"The same people, my dear, who seem to be determined that your father's invention is going to blush unseen. I only hope for your sake that hereafter they limit their activities to such things as visits by Sylvester Angert. But I'm afraid they won't."

"What difference does it make?" she protested. "If you'll really help me — and if you're really like any of the things I've read about you — you should be able to wangle an appointment with Imberline in a few days at the outside."

The Saint's fingers combed through his hair. The piratical chiseling of his face looked suddenly quite old in a sardonic and careless way.

"I know, darling," he said. "That isn't the problem. The job that's going to keep me busy is trying to make sure that you and your father are allowed to live that long."