The Saint Steps In (The Saint Series)

by Leslie Charteris

  “Does this look all right too?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He surveyed the details as meaninglessly as any other layman would have surveyed a chemical laboratory. If you were going to produce any brilliant observation in a setting like that, you had to be a master chemist too. And he wasn’t. He wondered if any detective really ever knew everything, so that he could immediately start finding incongruities in any kind of technical set-up, like super sleuths always could in stories.

  “You could make rubber here?” he said.

  “Of course.”

  There must have been more doubt in his face than he meant to have there, or else he just looked blank because he was thinking along other lines, or else she also wanted to keep her mind busy along other lines.

  “I could show you now,” she said.

  It didn’t seem important, but it was another escape.

  “Show me,” he said.

  She went and fetched bottles from the shelves. Some of them were unlabelled. She measured things in beakers and test tubes. She carried mixtures to a table where an elaborate train of processing gear was already set up. She poured a quantity of sawdust from an old coffee can into a glass bowl, lighted a burner under it, and began to blend it with various fluids. She looked as prosaic and efficient and at home as a seasoned cook mixing pancakes.

  The Saint hitched one hip on to another bench and watched. It was no use his trying to look wise and intelligent about it. He had more than the average background of ordinary chemistry, as he had of a hundred other unlikely subjects, but things went on in this production line that were utterly out of his depth. He saw fluids moving through tubes and coils and bubbling in flasks, changing colour and condensing and precipitating, and finally flowing into a small peculiar encased engine that looked as if it might house some kind of turbine, from which came a low smooth hum and a sense of dull heat. At the other end of this engine projected a long narrow troughed belt running over an external pulley, and over this belt began to creep a ribbon of the same shiny pale translucent orange-tinted stuff that she had shown him in the dining-room of the Shoreham. She took off the strip when there was about a couple of feet of it, and gave it to him, and he felt it between his fingers and stretched it as he had done before. It was still warm, and smelled a little like wet leather and scorched wool.

  “It seems like a wonderful thing,” he said. “But it looks a little more complicated than the bathtub proposition you were talking about.”

  She was methodically stopping the machinery and turning off burners.

  “Not really,” she said. “In terms of a big industrial plant, it’s almost so simple that a village plumber could put it together.”

  “But even a simple plant on a large scale costs a lot of money. Does your father want the WPB to go into production on their own, or is he rich enough to start off by himself?”

  “We aren’t quite as rich as that. But if the Government went into it they’d give us a loan, and it wouldn’t be any problem to raise the private capital. In fact, we’d probably have to hire guards to keep the investors away.” She smiled at him wanly. “It’s too bad I didn’t meet you before, isn’t it? You could have come in on the ground floor and made a fortune.”

  “I can just see myself at any board meeting,” he said.

  Then they were really looking at each other again, and the fear was back in her eyes and he was afraid to laugh at it any more.

  “What do you think has happened?” she asked, and he straightened up and trod on the butt of his cigarette.

  “Let’s go back to the house,” he said roughly.

  They went out, putting out the lights and closing the door after them.

  As they went through the tall arched tunnel of leaves again her hand slid into the crook of his elbow, and he pressed it a little against his side from sympathy, but he was still thinking coldly and from quite a distance. He said, “Did you lock the door?”

  “I don’t have the key.”

  “When we got to the house, how did you let yourself in?”

  “I just went in. The door wasn’t locked.”

  “Isn’t it ever locked?”

  “Hardly ever. Daddy can’t be bothered with keys—he’s always losing them. Besides, why should we lock up? We haven’t anything worth stealing, and who’d be prowling around here?”

  “You said things had happened to the laboratory before.”

  “Yes, but it’s got so many windows that anybody could break in if they really wanted to.”

  “So anybody could have walked in on your father at any time tonight.”

  “Yes.”

  There wasn’t any more to say. They went back into the house, and into the comfortable living-room with the cold pipe in the ashtray, and passed the time. He strummed the piano, and parodied a song or two very quietly, and she sat in one chair after another and watched him. And all the time he knew that there wasn’t anything to do. Or to say, at that moment.

  It got to be later.

  He took their bags upstairs, and put hers in her room and chose himself a guest room opposite, with a door directly facing hers across the corridor. He opened his own bag before he came down again and fixed drinks for both of them. Into her drink he put a couple of drops from a phial that he brought down with him.

  Very quickly the hot bright strain went out of her eyes, and she began yawning. In a little while she was fast asleep. He carried her upstairs and put her in her bed, and then he went across to his own room and took off most of his clothes and lay down on the bed with his automatic tucked under the edge of the mattress close to his right hand, and switched off the lights. He didn’t think it was at all likely that the Ungodly could get around to organising another routine so soon, but he always preferred to overrate the opposition rather than underrate them. He was awake for a long time, and when he finally let himself sink into a light doze the first pallor of dawn was creeping into the room, and he knew that he had been wrong about the bush-league skullduggery and that Calvin Gray was not coming home unless somebody fetched him.

  CHAPTER THREE:

  HOW MADELINE GRAY WAS PERSUADED TO EAT, AND MR ANGERT GAVE IT UP

  1

  It was half-past eight when Simon Templar woke up. He lay in bed for a few minutes, watching fleecy white clouds drift across the blue sky outside the windows, and reviving the thoughts on which he had fallen asleep. They didn’t look any different now.

  He got up and put on a robe and went out into the corridor. It was nothing but a kind of last-ditch wishfulness that made him go quietly into Calvin Gray’s bedroom. But the bed hadn’t been slept in, and the room was exactly as he had last seen it. He knew all the time that it would be like that, of course. If Calvin Gray had come home with the milkman, the Saint was sure that he would have heard him—he had been alert all night, even in his sleep, for much stealthier sounds than that would have been. But at least, he reflected wryly, he had forestalled a self-made charge of jumping to conclusions.

  He went back to his own room, shaved, showered, and dressed, and went downstairs.

  The table was laid with one place for breakfast in the dining-room, and there were sounds of movement in the kitchen.

  Simon pushed through the swing door, and stopped. A rosy-cheeked young woman with dark curly hair and an apron looked up at him with slightly startled eyes as he came in. She was small and nicely plump, in a way that would obviously become stout and matronly exactly when you would expect.

  “Hullo,” he said pleasantly. “Don’t be scared. My name’s Templar, and I came up from Washington with Miss Gray last night.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I’m Mrs Cook. I just work here. You did scare me for a minute, though.”

  He realised that since they had failed to talk to Calvin Gray there was no reason for anyone to expect them there. In fact, no one knew of their movement except Hamilton and the taxi-driver who had brought them in from the airport. The driver might or might not talk or think anyt
hing of it. But at least it would take the Ungodly a little while to pick up the scent, which would be no disadvantage.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “What are the chances for breakfast?”

  “I’ll set some more places.”

  “Miss Gray was pretty tired out last night. I’m hoping she’ll sleep late.”

  “The Professor’s usually up before this,” she said. “He must have been working late.”

  The Saint had a friendly and engaging ease, whenever he wanted to use it, which made it seem the most natural thing in the world for anyone to keep on talking to him. He used that effortless receptiveness now, as a happy substitute for more tiresome and elaborate methods.

  He said quite conversationally, “The Professor wasn’t in last night.”

  “Wasn’t he? He’s nearly always in.”

  “We tried to phone him from Washington to say we were on our way, but the number didn’t answer.”

  “Was that very late? I was here until about nine o’clock.”

  “It was later than that.”

  “I gave him his dinner at seven-thirty, and then I had to wash up. He was in the living-room, reading, when I went home.”

  “He didn’t say anything about going out?”

  “No. But I didn’t ask him.”

  “He didn’t have any visitors?”

  “Not while I was here.”

  “Maybe he’s been going out a bit while Miss Gray’s been away.”

  “Oh, no, sir. The Professor’s never been one for going out—”

  It was only then that she began to be dimly aware of what his innocent questions were leading to. A trace of puzzlement crept into her eyes.

  “Anyway,” she said, almost defiantly, “he’s sure to be down soon.”

  The Saint shook his head.

  “I’m afraid he isn’t, Mrs Cook,” he said quietly. “He didn’t come in at all last night. His bed hasn’t been slept in. And he’s not in the house now.”

  She stopped on her way into the dining-room with a handful of knives and forks and spoons, and stared at him blankly.

  “You mean he isn’t here at all?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Wasn’t he expecting you?”

  “No. I told you, we tried to phone, but we couldn’t get him.”

  “Didn’t he leave a note or anything?”

  “No.”

  Her eyes began to get very wide.

  “You don’t think anything’s happened to him, do you?”

  “I don’t know,” said the Saint frankly. “It does look a little peculiar, doesn’t it? The man just walks out of the house without a word or a message to anyone, and doesn’t come back. Some people do things like that all the time, but you say he wasn’t that type.”

  “Is Miss Gray worried about him?—I expect she is.”

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  She began mechanically setting other places at the table, more as if she was going through a routine of habitual movements than as if she was thinking about what she was doing.

  “I expect somebody called him and had him go into New York on business after I’d left, and he was kept late and had to stay over,” she said, seeming to reassure herself as much as her audience. “He’ll probably be home before lunch-time, and if he isn’t he’ll phone. He wouldn’t stay away without letting me know he wouldn’t be back for dinner.”

  “Do you know where he usually stayed in New York?”

  “He always stopped at the Algonquin. But he might have stayed with whoever he was with.”

  In a little while this mythical character would be as satisfactory as a real person.

  “Maybe,” said the Saint adaptively. “I’ll have some eggs and bacon as soon as they’re ready.”

  He went out and found the telephone in the living-room, and called New York. The Algonquin Hotel informed him that nobody of the name of Calvin Gray had registered there the night before.

  He lighted a cigarette and strolled out of the house. Sunlight made crazy fretwork patterns through the leaves of the surrounding trees, and flowers in well-kept beds splashed daubs of gay colour against the white of the house and the green of square-trimmed hedges. The landscape fulfilled all the promise of the flashlight glimpses he had had the night before. The air was still cool, and there were clean and slightly damp sweet smells in it. It was a very pleasant place—a place that had been created for and that still nursed its memories of a gracious way of living that the paranoia of an unsuccessful house-painter was trying to destroy.

  It seemed a long way from there to the thunder and flame of slaughter and destruction that ringed the world. And yet while that war went on Simon Templar could only acknowledge the peace and beauty around him with his mind. He had no ease in his heart to give to the enjoyment of the thing he loved like that. No man had, or could have, until the guns were silent and the droning wings soared on the errands of life instead of death…

  And perhaps even the tranquil scene in which he stood was part of a battlefield that the history books would never mention, but where uncountable decisions in Europe and the Orient might be lost or won.

  He walked slowly around the house, his hands in his pockets and his eyes ranging over the ground. He would have missed nothing that could have told him a story, but it was a fruitless trip. The gravel path registered no tyre prints; there were no footprints in flower-beds, no conveniently dropped handkerchiefs or hats or wallets. Not even a button. The only consolation was that he wasn’t disappointed. He hadn’t hopefully expected anything. It would have been dangerously like a trite detective story if he had found anything. But he had made the effort.

  And it left him with nothing but the comfortless certainty that he had no material clues of any kind at all.

  He went back into the house, and entered the dining-room just as Mrs Cook was putting a plate of sturdy eggs and crisp aromatic bacon on the table.

  “That looks wonderful,” he said. “It might even put a spark of life into my dilapidated brain.”

  It was typical of him that he started on the meal with as much zest as if he had nothing more important than a day’s golf on his mind. He knew that he would solve no problems by starving himself, but unlike most men, he found that elementary argument quite sufficient to let him eat with unalloyed enjoyment.

  He was half-way through when Madeline Gray came in.

  She wore a simple cotton dress that made her look very young and attractive, but her face was pale and her eyes were bright with strain.

  “Hullo,” he said, so naturally that there might have been nothing else to say. “How did you sleep?”

  “Like a log.” She stood looking at him awkwardly. “Did you put something in that nightcap?”

  “Yes,” he said directly. “You’d never have gone to sleep without it.”

  “I know. It certainly worked. But it’s left me an awful head.”

  “Take an aspirin.”

  “I have.”

  “Then you’ll feel fine in a few minutes. You should have turned over and gone to sleep again.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  Mrs Cook came in from the kitchen and said with excessive cheeriness, “Good morning, Miss Gray. And what would you like for breakfast?”

  “I don’t feel like anything, thanks.”

  “You eat something,” said the Saint firmly. “There are going to be things to do, and even you can’t keep going on air and good intentions. Bring her a nice light omelette, Mrs Cook. Then I’ll hold her mouth open and you can slide it in.”

  Madeline Gray sat down at the table, and her eyes clung to the Saint with a kind of hopeless tenacity, as if he were the only thing that could hold her mind up to the verge of normality.

  “My father didn’t come home,” she said flatly.

  “No.” The Saint was deliberately as quiet and impersonal as a doctor reporting on a case. “And you might as well have the rest of it now and get it over with. I called the Algonquin, which is where Mr
s Cook said he always stayed, and he wasn’t there last night either.”

  “He must have stayed with his friend,” Mrs Cook said. “Whoever he went to see. Any minute now he’ll be calling and—”

  The telephone rang while she was saying it.

  Madeline ran.

  And in a few moments she was back again, with the light out of her eyes.

  “It’s for you,” she said tonelessly. “From Washington.”

  Simon went into the living-room.

  “Hamilton,” said the phone. “I wondered if I’d find you there. About those dossiers you asked for. I happen to have a man flying to New York this afternoon. If you’re in a hurry for them, you can meet him there and get them this evening.”

  “When will he be there?”

  “He should get in before five.”

  “I’ll meet him at five o’clock in the men’s bar of the Roosevelt.”

  “All right. He’ll find you.”

  “There are a couple of other things, while you’re talking,” said the Saint. “You can add a little bit to his luggage. I want one more dossier. On Frank Imberline.”

  “That’s easy. I’m a magician. All I have to do is wave a wand.”

  “Imberline left for New York and points west this morning—or so he told me. You can check on that. And if he’s stopping over in New York, find out where he can be located.”

  “There aren’t any other little jobs you want done, by any chance?”

  “Yes. Get me okayed right away with the nearest FBI office to Stamford. I’ll find out where it is. I think I’m going to have to talk to them.”

  “You aren’t telling me you’ve got more on your hands than you can hold?”

  “I’m having so much fun being almost legal,” said the Saint. “It’s a new experience. You’ll be hearing from me.”