The Saint Steps In s-24 Read online

  The Saint Steps In

  ( Saint - 24 )

  Leslie Charteris

  In Washington, D.C., a young woman whose father has invented a new form of synthetic rubber requests Simon Templar's aid when she receives a threatening note. Before long, The Saint is drawn into a web of war-related intrigue involving what appear to be gangsters, but soon turns out to be groups with differing opinions as to what it takes to be patriotic. The book reveals that, instead of enlisting to fight in the war, Templar has instead been working behind the scenes, carrying out quiet missions against enemy agents and, unusually for the character, his efforts in this case are actually supported by law enforcement.

  Mysterious notes that turned up in smart cocktail lounges or the pocket of Simon Tem­plar's suit. . .

  A secret formula that produced a vital substance from waste materials. . .

  An organization of killers who would stop at noth­ing to fulfill their dream of power. . .

  These are parts of a deadly jig-saw puzzle that led to torture and murder, with a great war hanging in the balance—while. the world waits for the results of the battle against international es­pionage that occurs when THE SAINT STEPS IN.

  It was a note drawn in crudely blocked letters, and it had fallen from the handbag of the beautiful woman sitting across the table from Simon Templar, the Saint.

  And from the way he reacted to the ex­pression of terror on her face, the Saint knew he was on his way to new adventure —an adventure in espionage that was to help settle a deadly conflict!

  By LESLIE CHARTERIS

  FICTION PUBLISHING COMPANY NEW YORK

  Copyright, 1942,1943, by Leslie Charteris.

  Published by arrangement with Doubleday & Company, Inc. Printed in U.S.A.

  1. How Simon Templar dined in Washington,

  and Sylvester Angert spoke of his Nervousness.

  She was young and slender, and she had smiling brown eyes and hair the color of old mahogany. With a lithe grace, she squeezed in beside Simon Templar at the small table in the cocktail room of the Shoreham and said :"You're the Saint."

  Simon smiled back, because she was easy to smile at; but not all of the smile went into his very clear blue eyes that always had a faint glint of mockery away behind them, like an amused spectator sitting far back in a respectful audience.

  He said: "Am I?"

  "I recognised you," she said.

  He sighed. The days of happy anonymity that once upon a time had made his lawless career relatively simple seemed suddenly as far away as his last diapers. Not that even today he was as fatefully recognisable as Clark Gable: there were still several million people on earth to whom his face, if not his name, would have meant nothing at all: but he was recognised often enough for it to be what he sometimes called an occu­pational hazard.

  "I'm afraid there's no prize," he said. "There isn't even a re­ward out at the moment, so far as I know."

  It hadn't always been that way. There had been a time, ac­tually not so very long ago, when half the police departments of the world carried a dossier on the Saint in their active and urgent file, when hardly a month went by without some news­paper headlining a new story on the amazing brigand whom they had christened the Robin Hood of modern crime, and when any stranger accosting the Saint by name would have seen that lean tanned reckless face settle into new lines of piratical impudence, and the long sinewy frame become lazy and supple like the crouch of a jungle cat. Those days might come back again at any time, and probably would; but just now he was almost drearily respectable. The war had changed a lot of things.

  "I wanted to talk to you," she said.

  "You seem to be making out all right." He looked into his empty glass. "Would you like a drink?"

  "Dry Sack."

  He managed to get the attention of one of the harried wait­ers in the crowded place, with an ease that made the perfor­mance seem ridiculously simple. He ignored the glowerings of several finger-snapping congressmen, as well as the dark looks of some young lieutenants and ensigns who, because they fought the "Battle of Constitution Avenue" without flinching, thought they deserved a priority on service, Washington's scarcest commodity. Simon ordered the Dry Sack, and had an­other Peter Dawson for himself.

  "What shall we talk about?" he asked. "I can't tell you the story of my life, because one third of it is unprintable, one third is too incriminating, and the rest of it you wouldn't be­lieve anyhow."

  The girl's eyes flashed around the crowded noisy smoky place, and Simon felt the whirring of gears somewhere within him; the gears which instinctively sprang into action when he sensed the possiblity of excitement in the offing. And the girl's behavior was just like the beginning of an adventure story.

  Her voice was so low that he barely caught her words, when she said: "I was going to ask you to help me."

  "Were you?" He looked at her and saw her eyes dart about the cocktail lounge again as if she were momentarily expecting to see someone whose appearance would be decidedly unwel­come. She felt his gaze on her and made an effort to ease the tautness of her face. Her voice was almost conversational when next she spoke.

  "I don't know why," she said, "but I'd sort of imagined you in a uniform."

  Simon didn't look tired, because he had heard the same dia­logue before. He had various answers to it, all of them in­accurate. The plain truth was that most of the things he did best were not done in uniforms—such as the interesting epi­sode which had reached its soul-satisfying finale only twelve hours ago, and which was the reason why he was still in Wash­ington, relaxing over a drink for the first time in seven very strenuous days. But things like that couldn't be talked about for a while.

  "I got fired, and my uniform happened to fit the new door­man," he said. He waited until the waiter placed the two drinks on the table. "How do you think I could help you?"

  "I suppose you'll think I'm stupid," she said, "but I'm just a little bit frightened."

  The slight lift of his right eyebrow was noncommittal.

  "Sometimes it's stupid not to be frightened," he said. "It all depends. Excuse the platitudes, but I just want to find out what you mean."

  "Do you think anything could happen to anyone in Wash­ington?"

  "Anything," said the Saint with conviction, "could happen to anyone in Washington. And most of the time it does. That's why so many people here have ulcers."

  "Could anyone be killed here?"

  He shrugged.

  "There was a man named Stavisky," he offered, "but of course that was officially labeled a suicide. But I could imagine somebody being killed here. Is that the proposition, and whom do you want bumped off?"

  She turned the stem of her glass between her fingers, her head bent, not looking at him.

  "I'm sorry," she Said. "I didn't think you'd be like that."

  "I'm sorry too," he said coolly. "But after all, you make the most unusual openings. I only read about these things in magazines. You seem to know something about me. I don't know anything about you, except that I'd rather look at you than a fat senator. Let's begin with the introduction. I don't even know your name.

  "Madeline Gray."

  "It's a nice name. Should it ring bells?"

  "No."

  "You aren't working for a newspaper, by any chance?"

  "No."

  "And you're not a particularly unsophisticated Mata Hari?"

  "I—no, of course not." '

  "You just have an academic interest in whether I think it would be practical to ease a guy off in this village."

  "It isn't exactly academic," she said.

  He took a cigarette from the pack in front of him on the table.

  "I'm sorry, again," he said. "But
you sounded so very cheerful and chatty about it—"

  "Cheerful and chatty," she interrupted as the tautness re­turned to her face, "because I don't want anyone who's watching me to know everything I'm talking to you about. I thought you'd be quick enough to get that. And I didn't have in mind any guy who might be eased off, as you put it."

  The Saint put a match to his cigarette. Everything inside him was suddenly very quiet and still, like the stillness after the stopping of a clock which had never been noticed until after it left an abrupt intensity of silence.

  "Meaning yourself?" he asked easily.

  She was spilling things out of her handbag, searching for a lipstick. She found it. The same movement of her hand that picked it up slid a piece of paper out of the junk pile in his direction. Shoulder to shoulder with her as he was, it lay right under his eyes. In crudely blocked capitals, it said:

  DON'T TRY TO SEE IMBERLINE

  "I never wanted to see him," said the Saint.

  "You don't have to. But I've got an appointment with him at eight o'clock."

  "Just who is Imberline?"

  "He's in the WPB."

  The name began to sound faintly familiar; although Simon Templar had very little more general knowledge of the multi­tudinous personnel of the various Washington bureaus than any average citizen.

  He said: "Hasn't he heard about making the world safe for the forty-hour week?"

  "Maybe not."

  "And somebody doesn't want you to put him wise."

  "I don't know, exactly. All I know is that the note you're looking at was tossed into my lap about twenty minutes ago." , Simon glanced at the paper again. It was wrinkled and crumpled as it should have been, if it had been made into a ball, as the girl implied. He said: "You didn't see where it came from?"

  "Of course not."

  He admitted that. It could easily have been done. And just as readily he admitted the cold spectral fingers that slid caress­ingly up his spine. It was right and inevitable, it always had been, that adventure should overtake him like that, just as naturally and just as automatically, as soon as he was "at li­berty" again. But when it was too easy and too automatic, also, it could have other angles . . . He was precisely as relaxed and receptive as a seasoned guerilla entering a peaceful valley.

  "As a matter of interest," he murmured, "is this the first you've heard about this conspiracy to keep Imberline away from your dazzling beauty?"

  "Oh, no," she said. She had regained her composure now and her voice was almost bland. "I had a phone call this morn­ing that was much more explicit. In fact, the man said that if I wanted to live to be a grandmother I'd better start working at it now—and he meant by going home and staying there."

  "It sounds like rather a dull method," said the Saint.

  "That's why I spoke to you," she said.

  The turn of his lips was frankly humorous.

  "As a potential grandfather?"

  "Because I thought you might be able to get me to see Im­berline in one piece."

  Simon turned in his chair and looked around the room.

  He saw an average section of Official Washington at cocktail time—senators, representatives, bureaucrats, brass hats, men with strings to pull and men with things to see. Out of the bab­ble of conversation, official secrets reverberated through the air in deafening sotto voces that would have gladdened the hearts of a whole army of fifth columnists and spies, and probably did. But all of them shared the sleek solid look of men in authority and security, bravely bearing up under the worry of wondering where their next hundred grand was com­ing from. None of them had the traditional appearance of men who could spend their spare time carving pretty girls into small sections.

  The dialogue would have sounded perfect in a vacuum; but somehow, from where the Saint sat, none of it sounded right. He turned back to Madeline Gray.

  "This may sound a bit out of line," he remarked, "but I like to know things in advance. You don't happen to have a heart interest in this Imberline that his spouse or current girl friend might object to?"

  She shook her head decisively.

  "Heavens, no!"

  "Then what do you have to see him about?" he asked, and tried not to seem perfunctory.

  "I don't know whether I should tell you that."

  The Saint was still very patient. And then he began to laugh inside, it was still fun, and she was really interesting to look at, and after all you couldn't have everything.

  A round stocky man who must once have been a door-to-door salesman crowded heavily past the table to a vacant seat nearby and began shouting obstreperously at the nearest waiter. Simon eyed him, decided that he was unusually objec­tionable, and consulted his watch.

  "You've still got more than an hour to spare," he said. "Let's have some food and talk it over."

  They had food. He ordered lobster Cardinal and a bottle of Chateau Olivier. And they talked about everything else under the sun. It passed the time surprisingly quickly. She was fun to talk to, although nothing was said that either of them would ever remember. He enjoyed it much more than the soli­tary meal he had expected. And he was almost sorry when they were at their coffee, and for the sake of the record he had to call a showdown.

  He said: "Darling, I've enjoyed every minute of this, and I'll forgive you anything, but if you really wanted me to help you it must have occurred to you that I'd want to have some idea what I was helping. So let's finish the story about Imberline and the mysterious tosser of notes. Since you've told me that Romance hasn't reared its lovely head, that you're not a news­paper gal nor a spy, I'm a bit at a loss."

  Her dark eyes studied him quietly for several seconds.

  Then she searched through her purse again

  "A filing system," Simon murmured, "would be indicated."

  The girl's hand came up with something about six inches long, like a thick piece of tape, and a sort of shiny pale trans­lucent orange in color. She passed it across the table.

  Simon took it and fingered it experimentally. It was soft but resistant, tough against the pressure of a thumbnail, flexible and—elastic. He stretched it and snapped it back a couple of times, and then his gaze was cool and estimating on her.

  "Rubber?" he asked.

  "Synthetic."

  His eyebrows hardly moved.

  "What kind?"

  "Something quite new. It's made mostly of sawdust, vinegar, milk—plus, of course, two or three other important things. But it isn't derived from butadiene."

  "That must be a load off its mind," he remarked. "What in the world is butadiene?"

  Her unaffected solemnity could have been comic if it had not seemed so completely natural.

  "I thought everybody knew that," she said. "Butadiene is something you make out of petroleum, or grain alcohol. It's the base of the buna synthetic rubbers. Of course, that might be a bit technical for you."

  "It might," he admitted. He wondered whether she had been taken in by his wide-eyed wonderment or not. He rather thought not.

  "The thing that matters," she said, "is that the production of buna is still pretty experimental, and in any case it involves a fairly elaborate and expensive plant. This stuff can be mixed in a bathtub, practically. My father invented it. His name is Calvin Gray. You've probably never heard of him, but he's rated one of the top research chemists in the country."

  "And you're here to get Imberline interested in this—to get his WPB sanction?"

  She nodded.

  "You make it sound frightfully easy. But it hasn't been so far. . . My father started working on this idea years ago, but then natural rubber was so cheap that it didn't seem worth going on with. When the war started and the Japs began mov­ing in on Thailand, he saw what was coming and started work­ing again."

  "He must have hundreds of people rooting for him."

  "Is that what you think? After he published his first results, his laboratory was burned out once, and blown up twice. Accidents, of course. But he knows, and I kn
ow, that they were accidents that had been—arranged. And then, when he had his process perfected, and he came here to try to give it to the Government—you should have seen the runaround they gave him."

  "I can imagine it."

  "Of course, part of the brush-off he got here might have been his fault. He's quite an individualist, and he hasn't read those books about winning friends and influencing people. At the same time, pardoxically, he's rather easily discouraged. He ended up by damning everybody and going home."

  "And so?"

  "I came back here for him."

  Simon handed the sample back to her with a tinge of regret. It was a lovely performance, and he didn't believe a word of it. He wished that some day some impressionable and person­able young piece of loveliness would have the outrageous honesty to come up to him and simply say "I think you're marvelous and I'd give anything to see you in action", without trying to feed him an inferior plot to work on. He felt really sorry about it, because she seemed like nice people and he could have liked her.

  "If you think you're on the spot, you ought to talk to the FBI," he said. "Or if you're just getting the old runaround, squawk to one of the papers. If you pick the right one, they'll pour their hearts into a story like that."

  She stood up so suddenly that some of his coffee spilled in the saucer. She looked rather fine doing that, and the waste of it hurt him.

  "I'm sorry," she said huskily. "It was a silly idea, wasn't it? But it was nice to have dinner with you, just the same."

  He sat there quite sympathetically while she walked away.

  The dining room seemed unusually dull after she had dis­appeared. Perhaps, he thought, he had been rather uncouthly hasty. After all, he had been enjoying himself. He could have gone along with the gag.

  But then, life was so short, and there were so many impor­tant things.