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:
MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS
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 feel-ing 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 Steps In s-24 Page 2
