The Saint Steps In s-24

by Leslie Charteris

  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 wa
s 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.