The Saint Sees it Through (The Saint Series) Page 10

  “You mean the restaurant has to let other people in? We could fix that. Come over here, and I’ll make an omelette.”

  “I’d like that much better. But it wouldn’t work. I’ve still got a date. And you’re going to keep it with me. We’re having lunch with Zellermann.”

  “Did you call him?”

  “He called me again, and I didn’t see how I could get out of it. As a matter of fact, I decided I didn’t want to. So much persistence is starting to intrigue me. And I do want to know more about him. And I don’t think he can do much to me in 21.”

  “Is that where we’re going?”

  “Yes. I’ll pick you up at twelve o’clock.”

  “I’ll put on my silliest hat.”

  “If you do,” said the Saint, “I’ll be called away in the middle of lunch and leave you with him.”

  They were on time to the minute, but when Simon asked for the table he was told that Zellermann was already waiting for them.

  The doctor stood up as they threaded a way between tables to his. Simon noted with some satisfaction that Zellermann’s lips were still considerably swollen, although the fact would not have been so obvious to anyone who was not acquainted with the medicine man’s mouth in its normal state.

  He looked very much the Park Avenue psychiatrist—tall, leonine, carelessly but faultlessly dressed, with one of those fat smiles that somehow reminded the Saint of fresh shrimps.

  “My dear Mr Templar. And Miss Dexter. So glad you could manage the time. Won’t you sit down?”

  They did, and he did.

  Dr Zellermann displayed as much charm as a bee tree has honey.

  “Miss Dexter, I feel that I must apologise for the other night. I am inclined to forget that universal adjustment to my psychological patterns has not yet been made.”

  “Don’t let it worry you,” Avalon said. “You paid for it.”

  A slight flush tinted the doctor’s face as he looked at the Saint.

  “My apologies to you, too, sir.”

  Simon grinned.

  “I didn’t feel a thing.”

  Dr Zellermann flushed deeper, then smiled.

  “But that’s all forgotten. We can be friendly together, and have a pleasant lunch. I like to eat here. The cuisine is excellent, the service—”

  There was more of this. Considerably more. The Saint let his eyes rove over the dining-room which clattered discreetly with glass and silverware. Waiters went unobtrusively from table to table. Those with trays held the Saint’s eyes.

  Dr Zellermann finished his eulogy of the restaurant, followed Simon’s gaze.

  “Oh, a drink, a drink by all means. Waiter!”

  The waiter, so completely different from those sampled by the Saint in Cookie’s the day before, came to their table as if he had crawled four miles over broken glass.

  “May I serve you, sir?”

  “Martinis, Manhattans?” the doctor inquired.

  The Saint and Avalon ordered double Manhattans, the doctor a Martini, and the waiter genuflected away.

  “So nice of you to invite us,” the Saint said across the table. “A free lunch, as my drunken uncle used to say, is a free lunch.”

  Dr Zellermann smiled.

  “I somehow feel that you haven’t quite had your share of free lunches, Mr Templar. I feel that you have quite a few coming to you.”

  “Ah?” Simon queried.

  He looked at Avalon immediately after he’d tossed the monosyllabic interrogation at the doctor. She sat quietly, with her gold-brown hair immaculate, her brown eyes wide, her small but definite chin pushed forward in a questing motion. At that moment, the Saint would have wagered anything he ever hoped to have that this green-clad, trim, slim, smartly turned out girl knew nothing about the problem that was taking up most of his time.

  “In my work as a psychiatrist,” the snowy-maned doctor explained, “I have learned a number of things. One of the main factors I take into consideration in the evaluation of a personality is whether that person is behind in the receipt of rewards. Each individual, as far as I have been able to discover, has put more into life than he ever gets out.”

  “Not according to what I was taught,” Avalon said. “You get what you pay for. You get out of life, or a job, or a pail, or any damned thing, what you put into it, and no more. Otherwise, it’s perpetual motion.”

  “Ah, no,” Dr Zellermann said. “If that were true, the sum total of all human effort would produce energies equal only to the sum total of all human effort. That would make change impossible. Yet we progress. The human race lives better, eats better, drinks better, each year. This indicates something. Those who are trying to cause the race to better itself—and they are less than the sum total of human beings, if not a minority—must be putting in more than they ever get out. If the law of equatorial returns is true, then it is quite obvious that a number of persons are dying before their time.”

  “I don’t get you,” Avalon said.

  “Let’s put it simply,” the doctor replied. He broke off for the waiter to distribute their drinks. “If the energy you expend on living gives you only that amount of life, then your living conditions will never improve. Correct?”

  “Umm.”

  “But your living conditions do improve. You have more and better food than your great-great-grandmother, or your grandfather thirty-eight times removed. Much better. Somebody, therefore, has put more into life than he has taken out, as long as the general living level of the human race continues to improve.”

  “And so?”

  “And so,” Dr Zellermann said, “if the theory that we get no more out of life than we put into it is true, somebody is in the red. A lot of somebodies. Because the human race keeps progressing. And if each individual got no more out of what he put into it, life on the whole would remain the way it is.”

  “Umm.”

  “Are ideas energy?” the Saint asked.

  “There you have it,” Dr Zellermann said. “Are ideas energy.” It wasn’t a question. “Are they? I don’t know. A certain amount of energy must go into the process of producing ideas which may be translated into practical benefits to the race. What that amount of energy is, or whether it can be measured, is a point to be discussed in future years by scientists who are equipped with instruments we have never heard of.”

  “But have we heard of the Orient?” asked the Saint.

  “I don’t follow you,” Dr Zellermann said.

  Simon paused while their drinks were delivered, and while he waited it crossed his mind that the trouble with all the creeps he had met so far in this business was that they responded to a leading question about as actively as a dead mouse would to a slab of Camembert. It also crossed his mind that a great deal of aimless chatter was being cast upon the chaste air of that burnished beanery.

  Was there some dark and undefined purpose in the doctor’s Hegelian calisthenics? Did that turgid bouillabaisse of unsemantic verbiage have significance, or was it only stalling for time? Surely the distinguished salver of psyches hadn’t asked Simon and Avalon here to philosophise with them?

  Well, the ulterior motives, if any, would be revealed in due course. Meanwhile, it seemed as if the vocal merry-go-round, if it had to keep rolling, could spin to more profitable purpose.

  So Simon Templar, in that completely unexpected fashion of his which could be so disconnecting, turned the channels of the conversation toward another direction of his own choosing.

  “In the Orient,” he said, “the standard of living remains a fairly deplorable constant. Millions of those people put an astounding amount of energy into the process of survival, and what do they get?” His shrug answered the question.

  Dr Zellermann made a small motion with one hand. He took his fingers from the stem of his Martini glass and moved them. The Saint, who happened to be looking at the hand, marvelled that so much could be expressed in a gesture. The small, graceful, yet definite motion said as clearly as if the thought were expressed in b
oxcar letters, “But, my dear Mr Templar!”

  “What do they get?” Dr Zellermann asked, looking somewhat like an equine bishop granting an indulgence. He answered his own question. “Life, my dear Mr Templar—the only actually free gift in the universe. What they do with it is not only their business, but the end product is not open to censure or sympathy.”

  “Still the old free-will enthusiast?”

  “That’s all we have. What we do with it is our own fault.”

  “I can be president, eh, or dog catcher?”

  ‘That’s up to you,” Zellermann said.

  “A moment, old boy. Suppose we consider Chang.”

  The doctor’s eyebrows said, “Chang?”

  “As a guinea-pig,” the Saint explained. “Chang, once upon a time, chanced to smoke a pipe of opium. It was free, and anything for a laugh, that’s our Chang. Then he had another pipe, later. And another. Not free, now. Oh, no. There are dealers who have to make a living, and behind the dealers there are interested governments. So Chang becomes an addict. He lets his family, his home, everything, go hang. Where is the free will, Doctor, when he’s driven by that really insatiable desire?”

  “It was his decision to smoke the first pipe.”

  “Not entirely,” the Saint pointed out. “Someone was interested in making it available. You can’t tell me that it wouldn’t be possible to restrict the production of opium to established medical requirements if the principal world governments were really interested. Yet India alone produces more opium than the whole world could use legitimately. Very profitable. So profitable that governments have come out fighting to keep the market open. Do you happen to remember the so-called Boxer Rebellion?”

  “Vaguely,” Zellermann said in bored tones.

  “All the wretched Chinese wanted was their own country back,” said the Saint. “But the…ah, Powers, made a great pitch about rescuing their missionaries, and so put down the rebellion and so saved the market.”

  “Isn’t this rather non sequitur?” asked the doctor.

  “Is it?” Simon asked. “If you’re tired of Chang, throw him away—in his millions. He means no more personally than a treeful of yaks, because we have no contact with his daily so-called living. But take Joe Doakes in Brooklyn.”

  “Really, Mr Templar, your train of thought is confusing.”

  “It shouldn’t be, dear boy. Just translate Chang into Joe, and consider the identical operation in New York. Even America the Beautiful, let us face it, contains certain citizens who don’t much care how they make a million dollars so long as they make it. And particularly don’t care who gets hurt in the process. So now Joe’s the boy we’re after. He’s like Chang, in the low income group, not averse to a bit of petty thievery, possibly ready for a pipe after a hard day’s pocket-picking.”

  “Who,” Zellermann inquired, “are ‘we’?”

  “We here at the table,” the Saint said expansively, “for purposes of hypothetical discussion.”

  “Not me,” Avalon interpolated. “I got troubles of my own, without including pipes.”

  “Let’s say you are ‘we,’ Doctor. Your problem is twofold. You must transport the stuff, and then sell it. If you solve the transportation problem, you have to find Joe. The first problem is fairly elemental. Who goes to the Orient these days? Sailors. They can bring in the stuff. Finding Joe is easy, too. Go into the nearest pool hall and turn to your right.”

  “This leads us where, Mr Templar?” Dr Zellermann asked. “Though I admit your conversation has its scintillating aspects, I fail to see—”

  He let it hang.

  “To this point, Comrade. A group of men putting drugs into the hands—mouths—of persons rendered irresponsible by economic circumstance are creating tools. Governments learned that a long time ago. Beat a man down enough, and he’ll come to think that’s the normal way to be. But private groups—shall we say rings—who are foolish enough to think they can get away with it couldn’t be expected to do anything but follow an established lead.”

  The Saint watched for any reaction from the doctor. He would have settled for a tapping finger, but the Park Avenue psychiatrist would have made the Great Stone Face look like Danny Kaye.

  Simon shrugged.

  He looked at Avalon and winked.

  “In other words, your theory—‘Faites ce que voudras’ if I may borrow from an older philosopher—is jake so long as you and I are the guys who are doing what they damn please. So far I only know one of your forms of self-indulgence, and you only know one of mine. I have others.”

  Avalon smiled, and the Saint marvelled that all those people who were so busy clattering their silverware, churning the air with inanities, and trying to impress a lot of people who were only interested in impressing them, shouldn’t feel the radiance of that smile and halt in the middle of whatever they were doing. They should feel that smile, and pause. And think of things lost, of beauties remembered, and recapture rapture again.

  But they didn’t. The bebosomed Helen Hokinson woman at the nearest table giggled at the young man opposite her; the promoter type over there went right on citing figures, no doubt, blowing a bugle of prosperity; the Hollywood actress went on ogling the Broadway producer, who went on ogling her, being just as happy to get her in his highly speculative play as she was to have the chance of reviving a career which had failed to quite keep up with her press agent.

  The Saint sighed.

  He turned his attention back to Dr Zellermann, waiting for a hint of the point that must be shown sometime.

  “Another drink?” asked the doctor.

  They had another drink, and then Zellermann said, with a thread of connection which was so strained that it sang, “I imagine one of the things you would like is forming theories about current crimes as the newspapers report them. That Foley murder in Brooklyn, for instance, rather intrigues me.”

  The Saint took a deep pull on his cigarette, and a little pulse began to beat way inside him as he realised that this, at last, whatever it was, was it.

  His own decision was made in a split second. If that was how Zellermann wanted it, okay. And if Zellermann favoured the shock technique, Simon was ready to bounce it right back without batting an eyelid and see what happened.

  “Yes,” he said, “even in these days of flowing lucre, it must be sad to lose a good patient.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of the money,” Dr Zellermann began. He broke off suddenly, leaving the remainder of the thought unexpressed. “How did you know he was a patient of mine?”

  The Saint sipped at his Manhattan.

  “I saw his name on your secretary’s appointment pad,” he said calmly.

  “But look here, Templar. When were you in my office?”

  “Oh, I thought you knew,” Simon said with a touch of surprise. “I broke in on Thursday night.”

  3

  This brought motionless silence to Dr Zellermann. He eyed the Saint coldly for a long moment. Then he said, “Are you in the habit of breaking and entering?”

  “I wouldn’t say it’s a habit, old boy. The word habit has connotations of dullness. As a matter of fact, I should say I have no habits whatever, as such, unless you classify breathing as a habit. That is one to which I cling with—on occasion—an almost psychotic firmness. There have been times, I admit, when certain persons, now among the dear departed, have tried to persuade me to give up breathing. I am glad to say that their wiles had no effect on my determination.”

  The doctor shook his head irritably.

  “You know you committed a felony?”

  “By going on breathing?”

  Dr Zellermann raised his voice slightly.

  “By breaking into my office.”

  “Technically, I suppose I did,” Simon confessed. “But I was sure you’d understand. After all, I was only applying your own pet philosophy. I felt like doing it, so I did.”

  “As the victim,” Zellermann said, “I’m surely entitled to hear your reason.”


  The Saint grinned.

  “Like the bear that came over the mountain, to see what I could see. Very interesting it was, too. Did Ferdinand Pairfield do your decorating?”

  Dr Zellermann’s face was impassive.

  “A philosophy, Mr Templar, is one thing. Until the world adopts that philosophy, the law is something else. And under the present laws you are guilty of a crime.”

  “Aren’t you sort of rubbing it in a bit, Ernst?” Simon protested mildly.

  “Only to be sure that you understand your position.”

  “All right then. So I committed a crime. I burgled your office. For that matter, I burgled the late Mr Foley’s apartment too—and his murder intrigues me just as much as you. So what?”

  Dr Zellermann turned his head and glanced across the room. He made an imperious gesture with a crooking finger.

  The Saint followed his gaze and saw two men in inconspicuous blue suits at a far table detach themselves from the handles of coffee cups. One of them pushed something small and black under the table. Both rose and came toward Dr Zellermann’s table. They had that deadpan, slightly bored expression which has become an occupational characteristic of plain-clothes men.

  There was no need for them to show their badges to convince the Saint, but they did.

  “You heard everything?” Dr Zellermann asked.

  The shorter of the two, who had a diagonal scar on his square chin, nodded.

  Simon ducked his head and looked under the table. He saw a small microphone from which a wire ran down the inside of one of the legs of the table and disappeared under the rug. The Saint straightened and wagged an admiring head.

  “That, my dear doctor, is most amusing. Here I thought that I was talking privately, and it would be your word against mine in any consequent legal name-calling. It simply didn’t occur to me that you’d…er…holler copper.”

  Dr Zellermann paid no attention to Simon. He spoke to Scar-chin.

  “You know this man is the Saint, a notorious criminal, wanted in various parts of the world for such things as murder, blackmail, kidnapping, and so forth?”

  “Not wanted for, chum,” the Saint corrected him amiably. “Merely suspected of.”