The Saint Steps In

1

Andrea Quennel cherished a crystal balloon of the last surviving cognac of Jules Robin, and said: "Where do we go from here?"

"That could be lots of places," said the Saint.

He felt durably sustained with two more cocktails, a bowl of the lobster bisque which only Louis and Armand make just that way, and a brochette of veal kidneys exuding just the right amount of plasma from the pores. He was icily sober, and yet he was recklessly ready for whatever was coming out of this.

"We might take in a good movie," he suggested through a drift of cigarette smoke.

"What — and catch one of those Falcon pictures with some body giving a bargain-basement imitation of you?"

He chuckled.

"All right. You call it. What's your favorite night club?"

"I'm sick to death of night clubs. Remember? I was Miss Glamor Girl of Nineteen-Something." Her generous mouth sulked. "Leave it to me, then. I know where we'll go."

The green convertible circled back to Fifth Avenue and purred north. The wind stirred in her ash blonde hair, and her hands were as light as the wind on the wheel. She looked pleased with herself in a private way.

Simon Templar was equally contented. He would have paid a regal fee for the privilege of listening to the business conference between Walter Devan and Frank Imberline, with the chance of having Hobart Quennel thrown in for good measure, and he wished he had had the forethought to appropriate the late Mr. Angert's ingenious aid to eavesdropping when the opportunity was there. But he hadn't; and the Savoy Plaza had not been considerate enough to architect itself with a convenient system of balconies for listening outside windows, as any hotel which had known it was going to be sued in a story of this kind would assuredly have done. The Saint had to be philosophical about it. He couldn't be in two places at once either, and he could imagine much duller places than where he was now. He cupped his hands around the lighting of another cigarette and leaned back to enjoy the air and the ride. To him, there had always been a kind of simple excitement in the mere motion of driving through New York in an open car at night, the car like a speedboat skimming through the tall angular canyons, dwarfed even by limousines like sedate yachts, and buses like behemoths towering and roaring clumsily along the stream. It was an atavistic fantasy, like defying the elements in a flimsy tent; and it matched a mood that was no less primitive, and a duel that was no less real for all its lightness.

The Park fell open on their left, and they drifted along its banks for a few blocks before Andrea turned off into one of the eastern tributaries. She pulled up outside a house with an open door and a dimly lighted hallway.

"Well?" she said. "Want to come in?"

"I don't remember hearing about this club."

"It's rather exclusive."

He got out of the car, and she came around and took his left arm. She pressed close to him as they went up the steps, in an easy and spontaneous intimacy; and he felt the gun in his holster hard against his side.

"You are careful, aren't you?" she said with the faintest mockery.

He looked very innocent.

"Why?"

"Carrying a gun when you go out on a date with a girl."

"I never know who else I might meet."

She laughed, and pressed buttons in the self-service elevator. He smiled with her; and he was very careful, keeping his right hand free and clear and his coat open.

They stopped at the fifth floor, and stepped out on to an empty landing with the same subdued lighting as the hall. She went to a door with a letter on it, and opened it with a key from her bag.

"Will you walk into my parlor?" she said.

He walked in. It was one of those things that had to be done, like leaving a front-line trench in an advance, and he could only do it with his shooting hand loose and ready and his muscles alert and all her nerves and senses tuned to the last sensitive turn. It was an absurdly melodramatic feeling, like the time when he had let her into his suite in Washington; but there was no alternative to unchanging vigilance, and the good earth had provided innumerable graveyards for adventurers who had drowsed at the wrong time.

They were in an apartment, he saw as she found switches and turned on lights.

"This is quite a club," he remarked.

It was a nice and ordinarily furnished place. He strolled around on the most casual tour of inspection, but he managed to open all the doors and glance into all the closets that might have harbored unfriendly hosts.

"Like it?" she said.

"Very much," he replied. "I miss some of the dear old bloated Café Society faces, but not too badly."

"I keep it for when I have to stay in town. That phonograph thing over there has a bar in it, and there ought to be some good brandy. Take care of us, darling."

He opened the cabinet and brought over a bottle and two glasses, and poured for them both. She sat with her long shapely legs tucked under her on a divan behind the low table. He took an armchair facing her, and sniffed his glass guardedly. It had a fine aroma, but he only sipped it.

They gazed at each other thoughtfully.

"Did I forget to tell you about my etchings?" she asked.

His mouth stirred slightly.

"Maybe you did."

"You don't approve of the way I lured you up here."

"I think it was charming."

"Then why do you have to stay miles over there?"

"I was just waiting for your father to come bursting in with a shotgun and insist on your making an honest man out of me."

"You are careful, aren't you?" she said again.

"It's a bad habit I got into," he said.

She emptied her glass and pushed it towards him. He refilled it expressionlessly and set it back in front of her. She stared at him sullenly, nipping one thumbnail between her white front teeth. She looked very young, very spoiled, and distractingly accessible.

"Why do you hate me so much?" she demanded.

"I don't," he said pleasantly.

"I think I could hate you."

"I'm sorry."

"Damn it, I do hate you! What am I doing this for? I never run after men. They run after me. And I let them run and run. I'm not a bit interested in you, really. I can't even think why I let you talk me into having dinner with you tonight."

"Could it be for the same reason that I let you talk me into taking you out?"

Her eyes were big with the pale blank look that he had seen in them before.

"Now you're even making me shout at you," she complained. "Come over here, for Christ's sake. I won't bite you much."

She patted the divan next to her with an imperious hand. He shrugged, more with his lips and eyes than with his shoulders, and moved peaceably around the table.

She picked up the second taster of brandy, still watching him across the brim, and drained it with one quick decisive tilt.

Then suddenly her face was leaning into his face, and her mouth was searching for his, and it was a kiss that began and clung and demanded. He was still under it for a moment, but he couldn't always be still, and this was what he was there for anyway, and he took what it was, and his arms slipped around her, and he wanted it to be as good as it could be; but his mind stood aside and watched. And perhaps it didn't stand so far aside, because her lips were soft and yielding and taking and her breath was warm and sweet in his nostrils and her hair in his eyes and all the richness of her pressed against him and moulding hungrily against him; and he wasn't made out of wood even if he knew that he must be.

So after a long time he let her go, and he was much too sure that his pulses were running faster no matter what his mind did.

She looked smug and angry at the same time.

"You've exciting, too, and you know it, which makes it four times worse," she said petulantly.

"I'm sorry," he murmured. "I always seem to be apologizing, but it isn't my fault, really."

"I hate you," she said broodingly.

She picked up the bottle, poured herself some more brandy, and put the bottle down again after an accusing glance at his glass.

"You aren't even polite enough to drown it in drink."

"I'm afraid you took my mind off that."

He absorbed half the glass while she finished hers.

"All you're concerned with is your damned mysteries," she said. "I think you're the most exciting thing that ever happened, but I can't make a mystery out of that. So you're all set to turn me down before we start. I suppose if I were some stupid little ingénue like Madeline Gray I wouldn't be able to fight you off."

He raised satirical eyebrows.

"Darling, you couldn't be jealous, could you?"

"Jealous? I'm just mad. I don't like being turned down. I must have done something wrong, and I want to know what it is. Damn it, I'm not going to fall for you."

"Now I am going to be careful."

"You won't even let me help you with this job you're working on. You told me once I might be able to do something for you one day, but you still haven't asked me. You won't even tell me anything."

"I can't tell you what I don't know."

"You know more than you've told me. But you keep me at arm's length all the time. Anyone would think you still thought I was an Axis agent, or whatever you said."

His pulses were all quiet again. This was what he was there for, too; and it couldn't wait forever. It was like fencing on a tightrope in the dark, with nothing to guide him but intuition and audacity and a sense of timing that had to balance on knife edges.

He said: "What about that German baron?"

"That frozen pain in the neck? He wasn't a Nazi. At least, I don't think so. But that was before the war anyway." Then her eyes turned back to him curiously. "How did you know about him?"

"I asked a few questions."

"What else did you find out about me?"

"I found out that you were quite often interested in people that your father has been interested in."

"Why shouldn't I be?"

"I didn't mean that kind of interest."

She poured herself another drink, but this time she only drank half of it at the first try. She put the glass down and gazed at it somberly.

"I help Daddy out sometimes," she said. "It's the least a girl can do, isn't it? And I have a lot of fun. I go to nice places and I hear some intelligent conversation. I can't live with young squirts and playboys all the time."

"After all," he agreed, "there are the Better Things in Life."

"You're still sneering at me. At least Daddy doesn't think I'm too dumb to help him."

He nodded.

"The one thing I've been wondering about is — doesn't he think you're too dumb, or does he think you're just dumb enough?"

Her eyes dwelt on him with that bafflingly vacant candor.

"I don't ask all those questions. What I don't know won't do me any harm, will it? And it isn't any of my business, especially if I have a good time. I don't want to be a genius. I just want you to pay some attention to me."

"Like you wanted me to pay some attention to you when your father sent you to talk to me at the Shoreham?"

"There wasn't any harm in that. He only wanted to know more about you and find out what you'd been doing."

"And what did he want you to find out tonight?" asked the Saint amiably.

His voice didn't have a point in it anywhere; it was the same gentle and faintly bantering sound that it had been all the time; but he was waiting.

She didn't try to escape his innocuous half-smiling glance. Her stare was blue and blind and limpid and babyishly sad.

"I told him all about our running into each other, of course, and what we talked about; and I said I was going to meet you for dinner. But this was all my own idea. I wish I did know what there was between you and Daddy. I don't think you like him any more than you like me."

"I've never met him, if you remember."

"If you had, you wouldn't be so suspicious. He said the nicest things about you."

"I love my public."

"You're impossible."

She took up her glass again and finished it, and made a grimace.

She said: "I don't know why I'm wasting my time. You aren't worth it. But you can't get away with this. You stink. And I'm going to get stinking. Make me some more brandy. I have to Go," she said abruptly.

She got up and went.

The Saint sat where he was and lighted a cigarette. He sat with it smouldering between his fingers. After a little while he lifted the brandy bottle and topped up her glass.

He faced it, that he didn't know whether he was getting everywhere or nowhere. There were factors that still didn't tie in. And he had to be as light with his foil as if he had been combing cobwebs. He could still be so irremediably wrong. He had been wrong about Imberline. He still didn't know whether one of his later passes had found any crevice. She could be dumb. How much would Quennel tell her? Or she could be brightly dumb, as she had said, asking no questions because they might only create problems. He didn't know how much the brandy would speak for her either. He was only sure that it could be a weapon on his side, if it was on any side.

He heard water running in the bathroom, and then a door opening, and then she was in the bedroom.

She was moving about in there for what seemed like a long time. He didn't turn his head. He took a very light sip from his glass. But there were no frightening effects. He had been making it last, cautiously; but he could be positive by now that there was nothing illegal creeping up from it.

He smoked meditatively. She didn't come back.

Then her voice reached him peevishly: "What about my drink?"

"Did you want it?"

"What do you think?"

He stood up, garnered the glass he had filled for her, and sauntered into the bedroom.

She lay in the big bed, her white shoulders clear of the covers, looking pleased with herself like a naughty child who is getting away with something. There was a dress and stockings and lacy intimacies scattered about the room, but he didn't have to total them up to deduce how naked she was. She had a naked expression on her beautifully empty face that had far more impact than the mere fact of nudity. It matched the mindless acquiescence of her big cornflower eyes — he had a name for that impenetrable enigma at last. He didn't have a name quite so facile for the disturbance that she was always on the verge of driving through all his casualness.

He knew that this was a deadline, and in an odd way he was afraid of it, but he didn't let any of that escape from his control.

"I see you like to be comfortable," he drawled.

He carried her drink over to her. She took it out of his hand, and raised herself so that the sheets hung perilously from the galvanizing surge of her breasts. He sat on the side of the bed without staring at her.

"Tell me something," she insisted.

He waited while she put half an ounce of brandy away, drawing placidly on his cigarette and flicking ash on to the carpet. Then he said, without any change of tone: "A friend of mine gave me a ride in from Stamford today. Name of Schindler. We were talking about you."

2

He must have been expecting more than he got.

She said: "Schindler? Oh, yes. The detective."

"He had a man watching Madeline Gray. Name of Angert. On some fairy-tale about her being blackmailed."

"That's right."

"Because you hired him."

After that it reached her. She sat up so that the covers were called on for a miracle that they were scarcely equal to.

"How did you know that?"

"I told you that I'd been asking questions," he said. "I was getting quite attached to Comrade Angert, so, naturally I was interested. The description of Miss Diana Barry could have fitted a lot of people in the world, but out of the people I knew were likely it could only have been you."

"You're frightfully clever, aren't you?" she said admiringly. "You're so perfectly like the Saint, it isn't fair."

He kept his gaze on her eyes.

"Did your father ask you to do that job for him?"

"Of course he did. Was that wrong of me? I mean, I didn't even know you then, so how could I know it would have anything to do with you?"

"Why did you call yourself Diana Barry?"

"I couldn't give my own name, could I? He'd probably have told Winchell or Walker or Sobol or somebody. Besides, Daddy likes to do things quietly."

"Quietly enough to cook up that phony blackmail story, apparently."

"We had to give some reason, stupid. Daddy was just interested in these tiresome Gray people, and he wanted to know more about them. Just like he wanted to know more about you. He's awfully interested in all kinds of people." She drank some more brandy and scowled momentarily at the glass. "Now I suppose you're going to be sore because I didn't tell you all about it. Well, why should I tell you? I wouldn't even tell anyone else in the world that much. It's just what you do to me."

He thought it was time to take a little more of his drink.

"Well," he observed mildly, "I'm afraid Comrade Angert won't be much use to you any more."

"I suppose not, now that you know all about him. So why can't we talk about something more amusing?"

She wriggled a little, like a kitten asking to be stroked, and made a half-hearted attempt to pull the sheets around her bare satin back. The sheets were having a wonderful time.

Simon flipped some more ash on the floor and put his cigarette back to his mouth.

"I take it you haven't been back to that accommodation address for any Schindler reports lately."

"No. As a matter of fact, Daddy told me this evening that I shouldn't bother any more. He's found out all he wanted some other way, or something. So that's the end of it, isn't it?"

"I don't know," he said inflexibly. "But if you had been there this afternoon you wouldn't be here now."

"Why not?"

"Because you'd have been too busy talking to a lot of rude policemen."

Nothing could have been more naïve and unfrightened than her wide blue eyes.

"What for?"

"On account of Comrade Angert is now very busy snooping on angels," he said.

She had her glass at her lips when he said it, and she left it cleaned of the last drop when she lowered it. She held it on her knees without a tremor, and her reasons must have been different from his. Or were they?… That was the instant when he had to miss nothing; but there was nothing there. Nothing in her eyes or her face or her response. It was like punching a feather pillow. She had to be better than he was. Or he had to be wrong again — as wrong as he had been before. And he couldn't afford any more mistakes. He was fighting something that only gave way around him like a mire.

It went through his brain, like a comet, that the whole pointless death of Angert could still have no point.

Just an unfortunate error; one of those tripwires on which the best plans went agley, wherever that was. Karl Morgen probably hadn't intended to kill Angert anyhow. He had just hit too hard. He wasn't the psychic type. He had simply been on his way to the laboratory to see what he could find, and Sylvester Angert had been skulking in the bushes. Therefore Sylvester Angert had been neutralized. There had been no reason for Morgen to have recognized Angert. You could look for all kinds of complex explanations, but it could be as simple as that. Nothing but a collision between the cogs of too much efficiency. Just one of those things.

And that could be why Hobart Quennel had told Andrea not to bother about Schindler any more — because Morgen's report, through Devan, had already made the round trip, and he knew that that was dangerous ground.

The Saint was making everything very easy for himself. And he didn't know whether it was really easy, or whether it was tougher and more elusive than anything he had thought of before.

And his eyes were still on Andrea Quennel's face.

"What are you getting at?" she asked.

"Comrade Angert got himself bumped off."

She turned the glass in her hand, and rather deliberately dropped it over the edge of the bed on to the carpet. It was more like her way of putting it down.

"And so you think Daddy had something to do with that," she said from a lost void.

The Saint didn't move.

"Andrea," he said, "if you want to make any changes, this is the time to do it."

Her eyes swam on him. And then she lay back and covered them with her hands. The sheets gave up the effort of keeping in touch with her.

Simon looked at her for a while, thinking how dispassionate he was. Then he reached over to the bedside table to put his glass down and stub out his fragment of cigarette in the ashtray.

Then, like before, he was close to her, her arms were around his neck, and her lips were seeking for his and claiming them; and this was worse than before. But he had beaten it before, and he knew the strength of it, and now he was even more sure that he had to beat it. He tried being perfectly lifeless and still; but that didn't stop her, and it was too hard to go on with. He put his hands on her shoulders and held her down while he pushed himself away until he broke the circle of her arms.

"It's no use, Andrea," he said in a voice that he steadied almost to kindness. "You're only cheating yourself."

She stared up at him with that big blank hurt and hunger.

"I didn't have anything to do with that man being killed, if he was killed. It isn't my fault. And I'm sure it wasn't Daddy's fault, either."

"I'm not so sure. And you belong to him."

"I want to belong to you."

"You can't do both."

"I can't be against him. He's my father."

"That's why I'm saying goodnight." The Saint couldn't hold all that kindness. "You've told me what I wanted to know, and I that's what I came here for."

She didn't recoil from that.

She said: "I think you're making all that up to scare me. I don't believe it. I can't."

"That's your choice."

"And now I suppose you're going to tell it all to the police."

"Eventually, and if it seems like a good idea — yes."

"Well, I didn't tell you anything. I won't admit a word of it. I made it all up, too. Just to keep you talking. They'll laugh at you—"

"I've been laughed at before."

"Simon," she whispered, "couldn't you just lie down and talk to me about it?"

He picked out another cigarette and lighted it with a hand that was perfectly steady now.

"No," he answered judiciously. "I couldn't. So this is goodnight."

"Where are you going?"

"Back to the hotel, probably, for a start."

"No," she said. "Please."

For the first time he had really caught her. Her face had a strained frightened look as she lifted herself on one elbow. He stood at the foot of the bed and thrust ruthlessly at the faltering of her guard.

"Why not?" he asked. "Is that another job you had to do for your father? — to keep me here when I ought to be somewhere else?"

"No," she said again. "This is just me. Please."

"I'm sorry," he said.

He started to turn away.

She said helplessly: "I happened to hear them talking…

He turned again, and his eyes were level and remorseless.

"Who are 'they,' and what were 'they' talking about?"

"I don't know what it was about. I don't know! It was just something I happened to overhear. But I was afraid for you. I know you shouldn't go back to the hotel. That's why I wanted you here. I don't want you to go away. It isn't safe for you!"

"That's too bad," he said curtly. "But it doesn't work."

He started towards the door.

There was silence behind him for a moment, and then a wild flurry. He heard her bare feet on the rug; and then she was all around him, shameless and clinging and striving, pressing herself desperately against him with all her wanton temptations, her face reaching up to him and moist from her eyes.

"No, please, you mustn't — don't go!"

"Why?"

"I can't tell you. I don't know. I don't know anything. I just know you shouldn't. Darling, I love you. You've got me. You can stay here. Stay here all night. Stay with me. I'll tell Daddy I'm not going to drive him home. He can get a train. He won't mind. I won't say you're with me. I don't care. I want you here. Darling, darling."

He stood without moving, like a statue, keeping his hands away from her.

"And then," she was babbling, "in the morning, I'll fix breakfast for you, whatever you like best; and if you still want to go back to Connecticut you can drive up with me, the trains are horrible anyhow; and you can have dinner with us tomorrow night and really meet Daddy, and I know you'll get along as soon as you talk to him, you've got so much in common, and—"

It came over him like a wave, like a tide turning back, swamping and stifling him and dragging him down, and he had to strike out and fight it and be clear. He put his hands up and seized her wrists and tore them away from around his neck. He was spurred with an anger that blended his own uncertainty and her stupidity, or the reverse of both; and it was more than he could channel into the requisites of scheming and play. He threw her off him so roughly that the bed caught her behind the knees and she sat down foolishly, her liquid eyes still fastened on him and her hair a disordered cloud of spun honey around her face.

"Goodnight," he said, "and give Daddy my regards."

He went out, crossing the living-room quickly, and closing the door behind him on the landing.

He went down the stairs, not wanting to wait for the elevator, and out to the street. A taxi came by just as he emerged, and he caught it thankfully. They crawled past the green convertible as he said "The Savoy Plaza." It was like an escape.

It was an escape.

He had a momentary vision of her again, her face and her eyes, and the lovely symmetry and infinite promise of her; and he blotted it out in a sharp cloud of smoke.

The point was what he was escaping to.

No one had called him or asked for him at the hotel. He took his key and went up to the tenth floor, and approached his door with a queer tingling in his spine. His imagination whirled out wild pictures of booby traps, infernal machines with intricate wiring that fired guns when a key was put in the lock or started time fuses to mature when he was well into the room. But he couldn't immobilize himself with nightmares like that. He opened the door and went in, feeling a little suicidal and mildly surprised when he continued to live. Nothing happened suddenly with a loud noise. He examined his dubious refuge inch by inch. Everything was as he had left it, except that the night maid had been in and turned down the bed. The emptiness of the bathroom gave him his first smile. At least he didn't have to concern himself with such exotic refinements as cyanide in the tooth powder or curare on the edge of a razor blade. But it was much too easy to be killed, if anyone wanted it badly enough — as he knew only too well from both sides.

He set the night latch on the door and went back to peer out of the windows. The bare flat walls of the building extended safely around his outlook. There were none of those balconies that he had wished for before, and no thoughtfully planted fire escapes. Of course, a hook ladder could get up or a rope could get down; but either of those expedients would be risking an upward glance from the street. The Saint drew his head back from the rising grumble of traffic, lowered the sash to within a few inches of the sill, and balanced a glass and a couple of ashtrays precariously on top of it, which would give ample warning of any uninvited guests from that direction.

He went back to the table and mixed himself a highball. The ice in the pitcher had melted, but the water was still cold. He sipped the drink at his leisure. It tasted refreshing after the heavy brandy; The atmosphere was refreshing too, even with its thin keen bite of suspense, after the febrile maelstrom that he had just salvaged himself from.

He forced that recollection out of his head again.

If there was nothing here, where else wouldn't either Andrea or the Ungodly want him to be. The only place he could think of was Stamford. Late as it was, he made a phone call there. A male voice that he hadn't heard before answered.

"Miss Gray? She isn't here."

"This is Simon Templar," he said.

The voice said: "Oh."

There was a longish pause, and then her voice came on the line — a little sleepy and breathless, but perfectly natural and unforced.

"I just wanted to be sure you were all right," he said.

"Of course I am. Has anything happened?"

"Nothing worth telling, I'm afraid. Have you had any news?"

"No."

"Are you being well looked after?"

"Oh, yes. Mr. Wayvern left the nicest man here — he's as big as a house and his hobby is collecting butterflies."

"Good. Tell him to be sure and stay awake so he can go on adding to his collection."

She hesitated a moment.

"Why… are you — expecting anything?"

"I'm always expecting things. But don't worry. I just want to be sure he's taking his job seriously."

"Are you staying in New York tonight?"

"I guess I'll have to. It's probably a bit late for a train. Anyhow, remember the story I've been giving out is that you're in New York, so it'll look more convincing if I stay here. By the way, I'm at the Savoy. I hope they're cursing the joint already, wishing they could find out what name I've got you registered under."

There was another brief pause.

"Simon — do you think this'll go on very long?"

"No," he said, with an easy confidence that didn't have to match the expression she couldn't see. "Not very long. I think there'll be plenty of things moving tomorrow. And I'll keep in touch with you. Now go back to bed and try to forget it until breakfast."

He opened a fresh pack of cigarettes after he had hung up, and paced the room as he had done hours before.

He was still in the dark, and he could only try to get some slim consolation out of the hope that the Ungodly were equally benighted. He wished he felt more assured about staying away from Stamford. But if he had really been hiding Madeline Gray in New York, the Ungodly would naturally expect him to stay close to her. In fact, they might have been watching him from any point in the evening in the hope that he would lead them to her. That might have been what Andrea Quennel was worried about. Or had she been worried? Had she staged a terrific performance to try and drive him into suspicion and from that into a false move? And how would the Ungodly think? If he had hurried off to Stamford, would they have credited him with trying most cunningly to lead them off on a false scent, and thereby have been convinced that Madeline Gray actually was in New York? Would they think that he would never be so reckless as to leave Madeline Gray in such an exposed position as Stamford; or would they think that that was precisely what he wanted them to think?… It was a game of solitaire played with chameleon cards.

And yet with all that, as he always remembered, he never thought of the real danger.

He went to bed and slept eventually, since there was nothing else to do. It was ten o'clock when he woke up, and he knew that he had been tired from the night before. He showered and began to dress; and he was debating whether to get a shave before breakfast or have breakfast before the shave when his door trembled with an unnecessarily vigorous knocking.

He went and opened it, and raised his eyebrows involuntarily at a familiar face that he had not seen for some time.

"Why, Henry!" he exclaimed. "Fancy your finding me here."

The familiar figure filled the doorway with its shoulders.

"Fancy my not finding you here," retorted Inspector John Henry Fernack harshly. "Come out and tell me what you had against Imberline."

3

It all fell together in the Saint's brain like an exact measure of peanuts dropping into an envelope from an automatic packaging machine. It was so neat and final that he felt weirdly calm about it, not even dallying for a moment over the mechanism that made it happen.

He said on one emotionless note: "He's dead, is he?"

"You should ask me," Fernack replied sarcastically.

The Saint nodded.

"I shouldn't. You wouldn't be here if he was beefing about somebody stealing one of his cigars."

Fernack glowered at him implacably. There was a lot of history behind that glower. Aside from being part of a routine which has made this chronicler so popular with tax collectors everywhere, it was rooted in a long series of conflicts and collisions that all flooded back into Fernack's mind at such times as this. It was a hard life for him, as we must admit after all these years. Personally, he liked the Saint; in a peculiar way, he respected him; as an honest man, he had to admit that in a complete perspective the Saint had done far more for him than he had undone; and yet as a salaried custodian of the Law it seemed to Fernack that the Saint's appearance in any crime was a doomful guarantee of more strain and woe than any policeman should have been legitimately asked to bear. Besides which, even if he had never succeeded in compiling the mundane legal evidence, he knew to his own satisfaction that the Saint's methods had a light-hearted and even lethal disregard for lawful processes which it was always going to be his duty to try and prove: it would be a bitter triumph for him when he achieved it, and yet his consistent failure was no less galling. It was, inevitably, a dilemma that couldn't help having the most corrosive effects on any conscientious policeman's equanimity.

He said, with almost reflex bluster: "Maybe you'd like to have another look at him and see what sort of a job you did?"

"I would," said the Saint.

Along the corridor, two uniformed men were holding back a bunch of impatient reporters. An assistant manager, torn between retaining the goodwill of the press and avoiding undesirable publicity, twittered unhappily to and fro. One of the reporters yelled: "Hey, Fernack, d'you want a special edition all to yourself?" Another of them said: "Who's that guy with him?"

1013 seemed to be stocked full of busy toilers in plain clothes. A police photographer was packing up his equipment. Other specialists were working over the furniture with brushes and powder, wrapping exhibits, opening drawers and closets, picking up things and putting them down. It was a scene of prescribed antlike activity that the Saint seemed to have seen rather a lot of lately.

The body was on the bed, an amorphous mound suggestive of human shape under a sheet, like the first rough lumping of a clay model.

Fernack pulled the sheet back, Imberline looked as if he might have been asleep with his mouth open. But his eyes were half open too, showing only the whites. There was a folded towel under his head that showed red stains on it.

"What did he die of?" Simon asked.

"He fell down in the "bathroom and beat his brains out on the floor," Fernack said. "Don't you remember?"

"Old age does things to your memory," Simon apologised. "Tell me all about it."

Fernack replaced the sheet.

"Imberline left a call for seven-thirty this morning. That was about twelve-thirty last night. His telephone didn't answer. They sent a housekeeper to check up. She looked in, didn't see him, and sent a maid in to do the room. The maid found him. His bed hadn't been slept in. He was in the bathroom, wearing everything except his coat, with his tie loosened and his collar unbuttoned — and dead."

The Saint had a picture of Imberline as he had seen him last, in what was apparently Imberline's home-life costume.

"So he fell down in the bathroom and broke his head," he said.

"Yeah. The back of his head was flattened to a pulp, and there was plenty of blood on the tiles. If you can fall down hard enough from where you stand to do that much damage to yourself, I'd like to see it."

"I'm afraid you would, Henry," said the Saint sadly. "How long has he been dead?"

"You know we can't say that in minutes. But it was since last night. And he left his call after you came in. The telephone operator remembers that it was while you were still on your call to Stamford."

"So of course I did it, since I was in the building. Was there anything else?"

"He'd been entertaining someone since he was out to dinner. There was part of a bottle of Scotch and a couple of dirty glasses; but one of them was wiped so there were no fingerprints on it. There were ashes and cigarette and cigar ends."

"When did he come in?"

"About ten-thirty, as well as the desk clerk remembers."

"Was he alone?"

"The elevator girl says he didn't seem to be with anyone."

"So naturally he was with me, since you remember my old trick of becoming invisible."

Fernack turned a broad back on him and prowled, glaring at his subordinates. They were finishing their jobs and becoming a little vague. Fernack drove them out and shut the door on them. Simon lighted a cigarette and strolled around placidly.

Fernack faced him again with his rocky jaw set and his eyes hard and uncompromising.

"Now," he said heavily, "perhaps you'll tell me a few things."

"I'd be glad to," said the Saint obligingly.

"When I came to your room, you weren't at all surprised when I asked you about Imberline."

"I'm so used to you asking me extraordinary questions."

"You didn't even ask who he was."

"Why should I? I read the papers."

"You even knew that he'd been staying here."

"I didn't say so. But I wasn't going to fall over backwards if he was. It's a good place to stay. I even use it myself."

"And you knew that he smoked cigars."

"Several people do. I've heard that it's getting quite common."

The detective kept his hands down with a heroic effort.

"And on top of all that," he said, "you knew he was dead before I told you."

"You did tell me," said the Saint. "There's a special tone of voice you have that fairly screams homicide — particularly when you're hoping to send me to the chair for it. I've heard it so often that I can pick it out like a siren."

Fernack drew a deep labored breath.

"Now let me tell you what I think," he said crunchingly. "I think you know a hell of a lot too much about this. I think you're in plenty of trouble again—"

Simon blew an impudent smoke-ring straight at him.

"Henry," he said reasonably, "doesn't this dialogue remind you of something we've been through before?"

The detective swallowed.

"You're damn right it does! But this time—"

"This time it's going to be bigger and better. This time it's going to stick. This time you've got me. We've played that scene before too, but I don't like to bring that up. A guy has been rubbed out, and so I did it. Because everyone knows that I have an exclusive concession to do all the rubbing out that's done in New York."

"All you've got is a lot of smart answers—"

"To a lot of moronic questions. Imberline gets himself murdered here, and I'm handy, so why not convict me?"

"When it turned out to be a murder," Fernack said ponderously, "I had to check up on the other guests in the hotel. I came to your name, and there you were — practically next door. Now be smart about that!"

The Saint took a long draught of smoke and smiled at him with tolerant affection. He cast around for a chair and sat down with a ghost of a sigh.

"Henry," he said, "I'm just not smart any more. I wanted to murder Imberline, and I found out he was staying here and what room he was in, and I made quite a little fuss about getting a room as close to him as I could. I wasn't smart enough to just ride up in the elevator and give him the works and go away again. I had to move in on the job. I didn't want you to have a mystery on your hands—"

"Where were you last night?"

"Oh, I was out to dinner with a babe and then over at her apartment looking at her etchings, and whatever time the night clerk says I came in is probably about right. I didn't notice it exactly myself. I just wasn't smart enough to bother about an alibi. I bashed Imberline's head in; and even then I wasn't bright enough to get the hell out. I went to bed and went to sleep and waited for you to find me." Simon flipped over his hole card with a silent thanksgiving for the unconsidered decision that had dealt it into his hand. "I knew that wouldn't take you long, because I'd registered in my own name to make sure you wouldn't be put off by any aliases. I'm just not smart any more, Henry — that's all there is to it."

Fernack gloomed at him waveringly. It seemed that this also was part of a familiar scene. He was convinced that there was something wrong with it, as he always had been; but the trouble was that he could never put a finger on it. He only had an infuriating and dismal foreboding that he was going to find himself on the same lugubrious merry-go-round again.

"You're just too smart," he said suspiciously. "You're trying to sell me the same bill of goods—"

"I'm trying to show you what your evidence would sound like to a jury."'

The detective rubbed his suffering gray hairs.

"Then what the hell do you know about this?" he demanded almost pleadingly.

"Now you're being rational, dear old bloodhound. So I'll let you into a secret. I did know Imberline was here, and I did come here to see him — among other things."

Fernack jerked as if a hot needle had penetrated his gluteus maximus. The smouldering embers flared up in his eyes.

"Then you are trying to make a goat out of me!" he bawled. "You're giving me the same old baloney—"

The Saint groaned.

"You ought to take sedative pills," he said. "Your stomach must have ulcers like the craters on the moon. I'm trying to set you on the right track. I did come here to talk to Imberline; that's all. I didn't make much of a secret of it, either — long before you ever thought you'd be interested. So for anyone who wanted to ease him into his next transmigration, it could have been almost irresistible. I thought of everything else, and I was too dumb to think of that. Maybe I ought to go to the chair for it, but there's no law that says so." The Saint's face was like stone. "It would have been perfectly easy to do. Your murderer could even have come into the hotel with Imberline. They just didn't ride up in the same elevator. The guy suddenly leaves him in the lobby and says he wants to buy a paper or say hullo to a friend or something, and he'll be right up. He takes the next car, chats for a while, waits till Imberline goes to the can, follows him, and flattens his skull on the floor. Then he waits and watches for me to come in, and when he's sure that I'm parked for the night he picks up the phone and leaves the morning call, just to prove that Imberline was alive then and try to make sure he'd be found before I was up. He had a very sound idea of the way a policeman would think, with all due respect, Henry."

The Saint's voice was light and soothing, but the detachment of his gaze was not part of any clairvoyant trance. He was only hanging words on to something that had long ago become concrete in his subconscious. He was thinking about very different things — that this must have been the trap that Andrea Quennel had tried too hard to keep him away from, and that she had looked like a sculpture in alabaster even when she toppled so foolishly on the bed, and that one day he would really be as clever as he tried to be.

Fernack was still clamping his jaw and struggling morosely to stare him down.

"That's all very fine," he persisted obstinately. "But coming from you—"

"Some of it might even be in evidence," said the Saint. "If Imberline made that morning call, his fingerprints would be on the telephone. Unless the telephone was wiped. The murderer wouldn't wipe the telephone unless he'd used it. Unless there were any other calls from this room after that — or are you ahead of me?"

Simon knew from the detective's face that he had rung a bell.

"I had thought of that," Fernack prevaricated valiantly. "But in that case, who did kill Imberline?"

"Probably some disgruntled manufacturer of coil-spring corsets who objected to having rubber released for making girdles."

Inspector Fernack's sensitive scrutiny started to become congested again.

"If you're amusing yourself, I'd rather go and laugh at a good funeral. Imberline was one of these Government men. I'm going to have all of Washington riding me as well as the Mayor. If you don't know anything, get the hell out of here."

"I might be able to put you in touch with the right people if you were more polite. But I'll have to make a call to New Haven."

"Go ahead."

Simon reached for the telephone.

He had no doubt that Fernack followed all the steps of his threading through Information and the FBI to Jetterick; and he didn't try to rush the machinery.

After a few minutes he had Jetterick on the wire.

"This is the Templar Corpse-Finding and Marching Club," he said. "How are things with you?… Much the same. I haven't been up long enough to check with Stamford yet — you haven't had any bad news from there?… Good. Nothing on Morgen yet, I suppose?… Mmm. One of those uncooperative bastards. I didn't really think he'd have a record — he wouldn't have been so much use if he had… Well, what I called you for was to find out whether a bureau bigwig by the name of Frank Imberline tracked you down last night to find out if there was any truth in what I'd told him about some of the ramifications of our country picnic yesterday… Oh, he did, did he?… That must have been fun… No, I don't think I'd better tell you why. I'm going to turn you over to Inspector John Henry Fernack of the woodcraft constabulary down here — a maestro of mystery who wants to put me in a striped zoot suit. Tell him whatever you think would be safe for his little pink ears."

He handed the phone over to Fernack and strolled with his cigarette to the window, floating evanescent blue wreaths against the pane and contemplating the dubious rewards of unswerving but unsophisticated righteousness.

4

He didn't know what story Jetterick would be telling, and he didn't pay much attention. He imagined it would be pretty complete as Jetterick knew it. The one lead that Jetterick didn't have, aside from the later developments of the day before, was the one that ran to Andrea Quennel and through her to Hobart Quennel and Walter Devan — Simon felt sure that Walter Devan himself was the actual killer in this case. He couldn't see the introduction of any more outside talent, and he couldn't see Hobart Quennel personally engaged in mayhem either. If Morgen had been traced to Devan, Jetterick would have had a pointer in that direction from another angle; but even that hadn't happened. And the Saint had practically discounted Morgen altogether by then, except as an accessory: the man's Nazi affiliations might be another story, but they were not this one.

Simon Templar had met property dragons before, often enough to feel almost sentimental about the smell of paint and papier-mâché that came with them; but now he had a pellucid and vertiginous certainty that his quarry was darker and deadlier than any of those hackneyed horrors.

He couldn't have explained very succinctly why he kept the whole trail of Quenco to himself. He knew that that wasn't in line with the most earnest pleas of the Department of Justice — but Simon Templar had always had an indecorous disdain for such appeals. It might have been an incorrigible reversion to his old lawless habits, overriding the new rôle into which the fortunes of another war had conscripted him. It still wasn't because of Andrea's long rounded legs. It might have been because he knew in cold logic how flimsy his own evidence was, even flimsier than the gauze he had just made out of Fernack's case against him; because he knew that there were no statutory weapons to pierce that statutory armor of a man in Hobart Quennel's position, because in spite of his challenge to Andrea he knew how Fernack and even Jetterick would have laughed at him, because he was afraid of the morass of red tape that could tie him up until his own phantom sword was blunt… He didn't know, and he didn't think about it much.

He waited until Fernack's mostly monosyllabic conversation was finished. It took an unconscionable time, and he wondered whether it would be included in the bill charged to the late Frank Imberline's estate. He couldn't see much to worry about in that, when he reviewed it; and his brow was serene and unfurrowed when he turned to look at the detective again.

Fernack's brow was a little damp, obviously from overwork, and he was starting to puzzle over the pages he had scrawled over in his notebook. But his manner was reluctantly different under its brittle shell.

He cleared his throat.

"There's just one thing nobody knows yet," he said. "Why did you come to New York today?"

"To get some dope on certain characters," said the Saint honestly. "The girl was one of those things — she drifted in later."

Fernack didn't even respond to that. It gave the Saint's rudimentary conscience a nice clean feeling.

"Why did you want to see Imberline?"

"I didn't know, when I checked in here. It depended on what I found out about him. When his record looked clear — as you'll find out when you get it — I thought I'd just beard him in his den and see if I could make sense with him. I couldn't make much at the time, but it seems he was at least impressed enough to verify me. Which may have been just too bad for him. Like me, he wasn't smart enough. He wasn't smart enough to keep his mouth shut."

"And you don't know who would have shut his mouth for him?"

"I don't know anything I'd want to have quoted now," said the Saint, as frankly as he could.

Fernack closed his book and put it away. Simon felt sorry for him.

"Well," said the detective dourly, "I expect you were going somewhere. Go there."

"It's getting late for my breakfast. What about some lunch?"

"I'm going to have to say something to those goddamn reporters."

"Next time, then."

"I hope that won't be for another fifty years."

"It's too bad, Henry," said the Saint with almost genuine sympathy. "This is going to be a hell of a case for you — what with the complications of the FBI and another link in the next state. But that's what the Proper Authorities have badges for."

He went back to his own room.

He finished dressing with his tie and coat, picked up the remains of his ruminative bottle of Peter Dawson, and started back towards the elevators. Inevitably, a loitering cub, detailed to guard the flank, intercepted him before he got there.

"Mr. Templar, may I ask you a question?"

"Ask me anything you like," said the Saint liberally. "I'm just a perambulating ouija board."

"Are you helping the police in this case, or are they trying to pin something on you?"

Simon deposited the bottle carefully in his hands.

"The whole solution of the mystery," he said, "is probably contained in this sample of the saliva of a dromedary which was found eating the stuffing out of Imberline's mattress. And if you want the truth," he added hollowly, "Naval Intelligence has a theory that Fernack himself poisoned both of them."

The assistant manager twittering still more anxiously, created enough diversion for the Saint to catch a descending car and make a solitary exit.

Simon regulated his bill at the desk with sublime sangfroid, since it was a most ethical hermitage, and he might want to use it again, and it was no fault of the management if careless guests asked to be slaughtered in its upper regions, and left its portals without a smudge on his credit rating or any visible objection to the cloud of sleuths who might have been following him like a smokescreen of bees on the scent of the last wilting clover blossom of the season.

He went to Grand Central, enjoyed a shave at the Terminal Barber Shop, and was driven from there by the pangs of purely prosaic hunger to the Oyster Bar, where he took his time over the massacre of several inoffensive molluscs. It was after lunch that he became highly inconsiderate of the convenience of possible shadows. His method, which need not be followed in detail, involved some tricky work around subway turnstiles, some fast zigzagging in the Commodore Hotel, and a short excursion through a corner drug store; and when he re-entered Grand Central through the Biltmore tunnel he was quite sure that he would have shaken off anyone who wasn't attached to him with a rope. He found a train leaving for Stamford in five minutes, stopped to buy a newspaper, and settled in with it.

The paper called itself an Extra, but the only thing extra about it was the size of the headlines. They said RUBBER DIRECTOR MURDERED, and that was approximately what the story consisted of. The city editor had done his best to give it a big lead with a lot of "Mystery surrounds" and "It is suspecteds," but his reporter had been able to put very few bones into it at that point. A prefabricated sketch of Frank Imberline's life and career ran alongside under a double-column head and tried to make the story look good.

Simon glanced through the war news, the comics, and the baseball scores, and put the paper down.

He wondered what story Fernack would give out when they cornered him. He wondered whether he should have asked Jetterick to ask Fernack to keep any connection with the Angert murder and the Gray kidnaping out of it, or whether Jetterick would have done that on his own. He decided that this was probably unnecessary wondering. There wasn't any real need to bring those links in, except to give a bigger splash to the case; and Fernack wasn't the type of officer who went in for that.

He opened the paper again, on a second thought, and went through it item by item to find out whether anything about Angert and/or Gray had been printed and pushed into obscurity by the big local break; but there wasn't a word. Jetterick and Wayvern had been able to achieve that much anyhow. But how much longer they would be able to keep it up was extremely problematical.

Then he decided that that wouldn't matter much longer. The Ungodly might have been misled for a while; but sooner or later, if they were as efficient as he thought they were, they would investigate Stamford again, just for luck. But he might have gained several hours, which had made his trip to New York easier; and now he was on his way back to Madeline. Now they could find her there, and he would be looking forward to it.

He checked the new disposition again in his mind.

The Ungodly would know now that the heat was on for keeps. They would have been afraid of it from Morgen's story, and even more perturbed when Andrea Quennel reported that the Saint was staying at the Savoy Plaza — where Imberline was. They would have had no more doubt after they spoke to Imberline. That was how Imberline earned his obituary. But they had hoped to break out of the web by throwing suspicion on to the Saint with the inviting circumstances which must have seemed ready-made for them. Now, very soon now, through a newspaper or otherwise, they would learn that Simon Templar had been questioned by the police and released. They would know that something had gone wrong again. And they would know that they had very little time.

Then it was all a balance of imponderables again.

How much would they think the Saint had told? How much, for that matter, did they believe the Saint knew?

Simon couldn't hazard the second question. It depended a little, perhaps not too much, on Andrea's version of the previous night. And that was something that it was impossible to guess, for many reasons.

But they would be afraid that the Saint knew something And he hoped that they would be good enough psychologists to figure that he would keep the best of it to himself. He thought they would. He was gambling more than he cared to measure on that.

They had to argue that if he knew too much he knew that they had Calvin Gray. Therefore his object would be to recover that hostage. He, on the other hand, had Madeline Gray, who was just as important. Each of them held one trump at par. It was a deadlock. The only difference was that they could threaten to do vicious things to Calvin Gray, and be wholly unmoved even if the Saint fantastically threatened reprisals on Madeline. But they could well doubt whether in the last extremity even the Saint would let himself be intimidated by that. Therefore, before the game could end, one side would have to hold both trumps. The difference there was that the Saint could wait; he had a minuscule advantage in time. They hadn't.

Simon hoped that was how it was.

He had nothing to do but play chords on that until the train stopped at Stamford.

He secured a taxi in company with a young sergeant on furlough and a stout woman with three Siamese cats in a wicker basket who must ineluctably have been some hapless individual's visiting aunt, and began to fume inwardly for the first time while they were dropped off at nearer destinations. After that, it seemed almost like another superfluous delay when he recognized Wayvern and another man in a dark sedan that met and passed them out on Long Ridge Road. But Wayvern recognized him at the same time, so the Saint stopped his driver, and the two cars slowed down a few yards past each other and backed up until they could talk.

"What goes?" Simon asked.

"I was just taking my man home," Wayvern told him. "Jerterick phoned me and said it was all clear now."

"And about time," said the collector of butterflies, yawning. "I ain't had a night's sleep since Christmas."

The Saint didn't know why the earth seemed to stand still.

"Where've you been?" Wayvern asked him.

"On a train coming back from New York."

"Then I guess he couldn't get in touch with you. Better phone him." Wayvern put his car in gear again and stirred the engine. "He said he might be coming over. If I see him first, I'll tell him you're back."

Simon nodded, and told his driver to go on.

He could give no reason for it, and certainly there was nothing he could have said to Wayvern, but his premonition was so sure that it was like extrasensory knowledge. It sat just below his ribs with a leaden dullness that made the plodding taxi seem even slower. He insulted himself in a quiet monotonous way; but that did no good except to pass the time. What had happened couldn't be altered. And he knew what had happened, so positively, so inevitably, that when he went into the house and called Madeline, and she didn't answer, it wasn't a shock or an impact at all, but only a sort of draining at his diaphragm, as if he had been hit in the solar plexus without feeling the actual blow.

It was Mrs. Cook who came out of the kitchen while he was calling, and said: "I think Miss Gray went out."

"What do you mean, you think she went out?" Simon asked with icy impassivity.

"Well, after Mr. Wayvern took his man away, I heard her saying goodbye to them, and presently there was another car drove up and I think she went out. I'd heard them saying that everything was all right, and she was very excited. I thought perhaps you'd come back for her."

"You didn't see this other car, or anyone else who came here?"

"No, sir." He had gathered that morning that she was an optimistic creature with a happily vacant mind, but even she must have felt something in his stillness and the coldness of his voice. "Why — is anything wrong?"

There was nothing that Simon could see any use in discussing with her.

"No."

He turned on his heel and went into the living-room, and for some minutes he stood rigidly there before he began to pace. He had exactly the same feeling, differently polarized, that an amateur criminal must have who has committed his first defalcation and then realized that he has made a fatal slip and that he must be found out and that it will only be a matter of time before they come for him, that he has changed the whole course of his life in a blithe moment and now the machinery has got him and there is nothing he can do about it. It wasn't like that for the Saint, but it felt the same.

He didn't even bother about calling Jetterick for a double check. He didn't need that melancholy confirmation. He knew.

As for calling Jetterick or Wayvern to make them do something — that was just dreamy thinking. That would mean starting all over again. And there was nothing more to start with than there had been before, when Calvin Gray vanished. You could have all the microscopes and all the organization on earth, but you couldn't do much If nobody had seen anyone and nothing was left behind and there was nothing to start with. Not for a long time, anyway. And that might be much too long.

And under the handicaps of democratic justice, you couldn't make inspirational forays in all directions in the hope of blasting out something that would justify them. You couldn't take the bare word and extravagant theories even of a Saint as a sound basis for hurling reckless charges against a man with the power and prominence of Hobart Quennel. Because if you were pulling a boner it would be just too damn bad about you.

Unless your name happened to be Simon Templar, the Saint, and you never had given a damn.

Simon thought all that out, and hammered the shape of it into his mind.

The Ungodly had thought it out, too. Just as he'd hoped they would. But sooner.

And now he was an outlaw again, nothing else; and any riposte he made could only be in his own way.

It was five o'clock when he called Westport.

He wondered if she would be there. But she was. Her voice answered the ring, as if she had been expecting it. She might have been expecting it, too. He could take that in his stride, now, with everything else. He was on his own now, regardless of Hamilton or anyone. And all the hell-for-leather brigand lilt of the old days was rousing in his voice and edging into the piratical hardening of his blue eyes as he greeted her.

"Andrea," he said. "Thanks. For everything. And I decided to take you up on that invitation. I'll be over for dinner."