“About four weeks sooner would have suited me,” said Lazaroff. “When I think of all the cooperation we put in on that lousy script—”
“Never mind,” said the Saint. “You can just change it around some more and sell it to Columbia for a new Blondie.”
Lazaroff went through the mechanical gesture of smoothing his unsmoothable hair.
“Seriously, I suppose a guy like you takes a murder like this in his stride. But I’d still like to know how you got away with it.”
“With what?” Simon asked a little incredulously.
“With just being anywhere around when it happened. I should think the cops would grab a guy like you without even asking questions, and start beating you up to see what they got.”
“There was a certain suspiciousness at first,” Simon admitted. “But I was able to talk myself out of it. For the time being, anyway. You see, as a matter of fact I wasn’t around.”
“Well, you’d just come into the studio and signed up with Byron.”
“But God!” said Kendricks, “if you’d been at Byron’s house when it happened, or if you’d found the body—”
The Saint smiled.
“It would have been distinctly awkward,” he said candidly.
At which point Peggy Warden came out and said, “Will you all go on in?”
They filed in and chose their chairs and lighted cigarettes, and there was a rather self-conscious silence. Then the door opened again and April Quest came in, with Jack Groom following her. She had a friendly smile for everyone, and if the smile that she gave the Saint had a personal and curious quality it was not to be noticed by anyone else, and even Simon might have imagined it. She sat in a chair that Lazaroff gave up, and Jack Groom sat on the arm and gave an impression of covering her with his wing.
Mr Braunberg shuffled a sheaf of papers, zipped and unzipped his briefcase, adjusted his rimless glasses, and cleared his throat. Having thus obtained the awed attention of the gathering, he put his fingertips together and launched very briskly into his speech.
“You are all naturally anxious to know how Mr Ufferlitz’s death will affect you. I can tell you this very quickly.”
He picked up a pencil and tapped his sheaf of papers.
“Your contracts with Mr Ufferlitz were all personal contracts with him. In his releasing contract with Paramount he merely undertakes to provide a certain number of pictures of a certain length on certain terms; all the details of cast and production were in his hands, and therefore your individual contracts with him were not included in any kind of assignment. His arrangements with his financial backers were of the same nature, so that your contracts do not revert to them either. Normally, therefore, they would pass to his heirs. Mr Ufferlitz, however, has no heirs. His will directs that the residue of his estate, if any, shall be expended on an…er…open house party which anyone and everyone employed in the motion picture industry may attend, so long as the refreshments last. I believe that it would be impossible to hold that such a party could inherit, enforce, discharge, or in any sense administer these contractual obligations. Legally, therefore, you are all free persons, subject of course to technical confirmation when Mr Ufferlitz’s will is probated. I think you can safely regard that as a mere formality.”
Lazaroff went over to Kendricks, who stood up. They shook hands, gravely emitted three shrill irreverent yips, bowed to each other and to Mr Braunberg, and sat down again.
Mr Braunberg frowned.
“Your salaries will be paid up to and including yesterday, on which date the estate will hold that all obligations were mutually terminated. The only difficulty arises with Mr Templar.”
“Who is neither here nor there,” murmured the Saint.
“Your position is a little ambiguous,” Mr Braunberg conceded. “However, in the circumstances I don’t think we’ll need to fight over it. As Mr Ufferlitz’s executor, I’m willing to offer you, say, three thousand dollars, or half a week’s salary, in full settlement. That would save us both the expense of going to court over it and also a long delay in winding up the estate, and I don’t think the…er…party will suffer very much from it. Mr Ufferlitz’s assets, I believe, will be sufficient to take care of everything on this basis. If that’s satisfactory to you?”
“Fair enough,” said the Saint, who was a philosopher when there was no useful alternative.
Jack Groom leaned forward over his lantern jaw.
“You said that Mr Ufferlitz had no heirs, Mr Braunberg. Suppose some obscure relative should turn up and contest the will?”
“He’d be taken care of with the usual formula. There’s a standard clause in the will which provides that everyone not specifically named is specifically excluded and if they want to argue about it the estate can settle with them for one dollar.” The attorney put his fingertips together again. “Are there any further questions?”
There didn’t seem to be any.
“Very well, then. It may be a week or two before I can get your checks out, but I’ll take care of it as soon as I can. Thank you very much.”
He stood up and began to shovel the papers into his briefcase, an efficient business man with a lot of other things to attend to. With true professional discretion, he had not even said a word about the circumstances of Mr Ufferlitz’s departure from the ranks of mushroom Hollywood magnates. From his point of view as the executor of a will, the question was not involved. And Simon felt an inward quirk of sardonic amusement as he considered how rapidly and methodically a man’s material affairs could be wound up, the ideas and intrigues and ephemeral importances to which he had seemed so essential…
The telephone began to ring then in the outer office.
Kendricks and Lazaroff had a few words with Jack Groom on their way out, and Simon caught April Quest’s eye again and was moving towards her when Peggy Warden intercepted him.
“A Mr Halliday’s calling you.”
Simon went into the outer office and took the telephone.
“A fine thing,” said Dick Halliday. “Don’t you ever take a holiday?”
“I don’t seem to have much chance,” said the Saint.
“Now I suppose you’re out of a job again.”
“It looks like it. We’ve all just had a speech from a legal gent named Braunberg, and we’re all out. But being treated right.”
“That’s quite a break for Lazaroff and Kendricks,” Dick said. “I hear that Goldwyn has been offering all kinds of money to get them back.”
A formation of butterflies looped and rolled in the Saint’s stomach.
“But I thought he’d sworn they were never going to get another job in Hollywood.”
“I know. But you know what this town is like. It seems that Goldwyn read a story about how Zanuck hired a man who kicked his behind and told him he was a lousy producer, so now he wants to have a sense of humor too. Besides, the last job they did for him is a terrific success right now. So he wants to forgive them and double their salary.”
7
The congregation had dispersed as easily as a puff of smoke. Simon glanced up and down an empty corridor, and went rapidly on to the stairs which led him out into the stucco-reflected glare of Avenue A. He just caught a glimpse of what looked like the thin stooped back of Jack Groom vanishing into the doorway of the entrance lobby, and lengthened his stride in pursuit.
It was Groom, but April Quest had already disappeared when Simon saw him. Instead of her, Lieutenant Condor was talking to him. The detective moved slothfully out in an effective blocking movement that would have made it impossible for the Saint to pass by with a nod.
“Well, Mr Templar, what did you think of the will?”
“Interesting and original,” drawled the Saint. “It should be quite a party. I suppose you knew about it already.”
“Yeah—I had a preview.”
“It’s too bad there weren’t a lot of heirs and legatees, isn’t it?” Simon remarked. “It would have made everything so nice and complicat
ed.”
Condor nodded, with his toothpick wagging from his incisors.
“I guess the freed slaves will be all moved out from here tomorrow. You weren’t thinking of leaving town, were you?”
“No, I think I’ll stick around for a bit.”
Groom had been gazing at the Saint in aloof and somber silence.
“You shaved this morning,” he said at last, with an air of tired and pained discovery.
“I often do,” Simon admitted.
“I thought I asked you to start a moustache for this picture.”
“I know. I remember. But since there ain’t gonna be no picture—”
Condor moved his large feet.
“When you shaved this morning,” he said suddenly, “how did you know there wasn’t going to be a picture?”
No earthquake actually took place at that moment, but Simon Templar had the same feeling in his limbs as if the ground had started to shiver under him. He felt rather like a master duellist whose flawless guard has been thrown wide by a bludgeon wielded by an unconsidered spectator. But he was only stopped for an instant. He was lighting a cigarette, and he brought the job to an unruffled completion while his reflexes used the pause to settle back into balance.
“I didn’t know,” he said lightly. “I was just trying to make Mr Groom see that it doesn’t really matter now. As a matter of fact I still wasn’t sold on the idea, and I was going to argue about it some more.”
“The Saint would wear a moustache,” Mr Groom insisted moodily.
His pale emaciated face seemed to be without triumph or maliciousness: he might have been quite unaware of having set a trap and caught a stumble.
“I hate to see you still worrying,” said the Saint. “Didn’t you hear Braunberg say that we were through with the picture?”
“He didn’t say that,” Groom corrected him. “He said that we were through with Mr Ufferlitz. There are still Mr Ufferlitz’s backers. They’ve got a certain amount of money invested, and they might want to go on. It’d be a different set-up, of course.”
Condor’s bright black eyes were still fixed on the Saint, and Simon knew it, but he was careful not to glance that way. He said to Groom, “Would that mean that you’d still be the director and you might step into Ufferlitz’s job as well?”
“I don’t know. It’s possible,” Groom said vaguely.
“So this murder could be quite a break for you.”
The detective’s eyes had changed their objective. Simon knew that, still without looking.
“What are you getting at?” said Groom.
“I’m just wondering how much this new set-up might be worth to you.”
“Isn’t that rather insulting?”
The Saint’s smile was charming.
“Maybe,” he said. “But you can’t find a murderer without insulting somebody. You hated Ufferlitz, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You hated his guts,” said the Saint.
The director combed his fingers through his dank forelock and turned to Condor with a baffled gesture.
“I don’t know what he’s trying to make out, but he must want to put me in a bad light. He’s making a mountain out of a molehill.”
“What was there between you and Ufferlitz?” Condor asked casually.
“If you don’t want to do it,” said the Saint relentlessly, “I don’t mind telling him for you.”
After which he held his breath.
Groom said, “It just shows what silly gossip will do. Ufferlitz and I had a bit of a fight once at the Trocadero. I got into conversation with a girl at the bar, and apparently he had a date to meet her there. He’d been drinking. He got mad and made a scene.”
“And of course you beat the bejesus out of him,” Simon said gently.
Two faint red spots burned on Groom’s pallid cheekbones.
“It was just one of those night-club brawls. He apologised later. It was just one of those things. That ought to be obvious. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been working for him afterwards.”
“Do you know what I think?” asked the Saint, with such complete deliberation that the effrontery of what he was saying was almost too bland to grasp. “I think you were on the make for his girl, and you were out of luck. I think he pushed your face in in front of everyone who was there. I think you’ve been nursing your humiliation ever since—”
“Then why did I go to work for him?” asked Groom, with surprising self-possession.
Simon knew that he was on a tightrope. He was bluffing his head off to get information, and it had worked up to a point, but he could be knocked off his precarious elevation with a feather. But once he had started, he couldn’t stop.
“What did Ufferlitz have on you?” he retorted.
“You must be crazy.”
“Are you sure?”
“All right. You tell the Lieutenant this time.”
Condor’s inquisitive gaze switched back again.
The Saint shrugged.
“You’re too clever,” he said. “I don’t know. Naturally. If a lot of people knew, there wouldn’t have been any point in playing ball with Ufferlitz to keep him quiet. And there wouldn’t have been any point in killing him to make it permanent.”
The director appealed to Condor with another helpless movement of his hands.
“What on earth can I say to an insinuation like that? I took this job with Ufferlitz because I needed it quite badly, and I thought it might do me some good. I didn’t have to like him especially. But now he must have been blackmailing me, and if nobody knows what I was being blackmailed with I must have murdered him.”
“This girl you quarrelled about,” Condor said. “Was that recently?”
“No. It was months ago—nearly a year.”
“What was her name and where does she live?”
“She doesn’t,” said Groom.
The detective cocked his head sharply.
“What’s that?”
“She died soon after. Too many sleeping tablets.” Groom’s voice had an almost ghoulish flatness. “She was pregnant. She was trying to get into pictures, but I guess she never got any further than the casting couch.”
“Is that on record?”
“No—it’s just more gossip. Ufferlitz went out with her quite a lot. However, Mr Templar will probably tell you that I murdered her too.”
“What was her name?” asked the Saint.
“Trilby Andrews.”
Something smooth and magnificent like a great wave rolled up over Simon Templar’s head, and when it had passed he was outside the studio, alone, and the conversation had broken up and petered out in the frustrated ineffectual way that had perhaps always been doomed for it, but that didn’t seem to matter anymore. It had ended with Groom sulky and sneering, and Condor turning his long predatory nose from one to the other of them like the beak of a suspicious bird; there was nothing much more that he could do, it was only talk and suggestion and leads that he could remember to follow later, but Simon hardly even noticed how the scene ended. Clear as a cameo in his mind now he had a name, a name that had been written on a photograph of a face which in some faint disturbing way had seemed as if it should have been familiar and yet was not, and now the wave rolled over and left him with a serenity of knowledge that out of all the cold threads that he had been trying to weave into patterns he had at last touched one that had a warmth and life of its own…
He found himself crossing the boulevard to think it over with the mild encouragement of a few drops of Peter Dawson. The interior of the Front Office was dim and soothing after the bold light outside, and he had been there for several minutes with a drink in front of him before he was aware that he was not the only customer ahead of the five o’clock stampede.
“H’lo,” said the heart-shaking voice of Orlando Flane, now somewhat thickened and slurred with alcohol. “The great detective himself, in person!”
He unwound himself fr
om the obscurity of a booth and steered a painstaking course to the bar, only tripping over his own feet once.
“Hullo,” said the Saint coolly.
“The great actor, too. Going to be a big star. Have your name in lights. Women chasing you. Cheering crowds, an’ everything.”
“Not any more.”
“Whaddaya mean?”
“My job was with Ufferlitz. No more Ufferlitz—no more job. So I have to go back to detecting, and the crowds can cheer you again.”
Flane shook his head.
“Too bad.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Too bad, after you did such a swell job chiselling me out.”
“I didn’t chisel you out.”
“No. You just took my part away from me. That was nice to do. Real Robin Hood stuff.”
“Listen, dope,” said the Saint temperately. “I never took anything away from you. You were out anyway. Ufferlitz dragged me in. When he made a deal with me I didn’t know you’d ever been involved. How the hell should I?”
Flane thought it over with the soggy concentration of drunkenness.
“Thass right,” he announced at last.
“I’m glad you can see it.”
“You’re okay.”
“Thanks.”
“Shake.”
“Sure.”
“Less have a drink.”
They had a drink. Flane stared heavily at his glass.
“So here we are,” he said. “Neither of us got a job.”
“It’s sad, isn’t it?”
“My pal. You gotta get a job. I’ll find you a job. Talk to my agent about you.”
“I wouldn’t bother, I didn’t really want to be in this racket to start with. It just looked like fun and a bit of dough.”
“Yeah. Dough. That’s all I’m in for. I never thought I’d be in this racket either.”
“What racket were you in before?”
“Lotsa things. You don’t think I’m tough, do you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Most people don’t.”
The Saint Goes West (The Saint Series) Page 21
