The Saint Sees it Through (The Saint Series) Page 11

  Scar-chin looked at his partner, a man with sad spaniel eyes.

  “Guess we better go.”

  Spaniel Eyes laid a hand on the Saint’s arm.

  “One moment,” Simon said. This was said quietly, but there was the sound of bugles in the command. Spaniel Eyes withdrew his arm. The Saint looked at Zellermann.

  “Your information came from somewhere. You didn’t deduce this by yourself and so lay a trap. Did Avalon tip you off?”

  “Oh, Simon!” she cried. “No, darling, no!”

  Her voice was brimming with anguish and outrage. Real or simulated, the Saint couldn’t tell. He didn’t look at her. He held the doctor’s eyes with his own.

  Dr Zellermann showed no expression whatever. He looked at the Saint woodenly, with a supreme disinterest. He might have been watching a fly he was about to swat.

  “Once one understands a certain type of mind,” Dr Zellermann said almost contemptuously, “predictions of action patterns are elementary—”

  “My dear Watson,” the Saint supplied.

  “You visited Mrs Gerald Meldon and James Prather,” Zellermann continued. “Theirs were two of the three names on my appointment pad. It follows that you also visited Foley. It was obviously you who telephoned the police—the phrasing of the message fits your psychological pattern exactly. Foley was dead when you left. The police are looking for a murderer. I knew that my office had been entered, of course, because someone answered the telephone when no one should have been there. I suspected that that ‘someone’ was you, and the rest followed. It was only necessary to have you confirm my deductions yourself.”

  The Saint’s smile held a wholly irrational delight.

  “I see,” he said softly. “You know, Ernst, my esteem for you has raised itself by its mouldy bootstraps. I bow to you. From now on, life will have a keener edge.”

  “Life, if any, Templar. In spite of what you read in the papers, murderers frequently do go to the chair.”

  “Not this one, dear old wizard.” The Saint turned to Spaniel Eyes. “Shall we begin our invasion of Sing Sing?”

  “Yerk, yerk,” Spaniel Eyes said.

  As the Saint got to his feet, Avalon stood beside him. He looked into her dark eyes deeply and ironically. Her gaze didn’t waver.

  “I didn’t,” she whispered. “I didn’t.”

  Simon kissed her lightly.

  “Be a good girl. Don’t forget to eat your vitamins.”

  “But you’re not going like a lamb,” she cried. “Aren’t you even going to try to do something?”

  That gay and careless smile flashed across his face.

  “My dear old Aunt Harriet always said that as long as there’s life, there’s life. Thanks for the drinks, Doctor.”

  He was gone, walking straight as a magician’s wand between Scar-chin and Spaniel Eyes. Their passage between the tables was leisurely and attracted no notice, aside from a bold and admiring glance now and then from women lunchers. They might have been three executives headed back to their marts, or three friends popping off to green and manicured pastures to chase a pellet of gutta-percha from one hole to another. Certainly no one would have suspected that the Saint was a prisoner—in fact, any speculations would have tended to reverse their roles.

  But under his calm exterior, thought processes moved at incredible speed, toying with this idea, discarding that. He didn’t put it beyond himself to stage a spectacular escape as soon as they were outside, but on the other hand it would be no help to him to become a fugitive. He even wondered whether Dr Zellermann’s system of psychological projection had anticipated an attempt to escape and was even now listening with one ear for the rattle of shots which would mean that the shadow of the Saint’s interference had perhaps been lifted permanently.

  Simon saw too many arguments against obliging him. His best bet at the moment seemed to be discretion, watchful waiting, and the hope that the cell they gave him to try on for size would have southern exposure.

  Spaniel Eyes hailed a cab. Scar-chin climbed in first, followed by the Saint, and Spaniel Eyes gave short inaudible directions to the driver.

  “Well,” the Saint said after a few moments of riding, “how about a swift game of gin rummy?”

  “Shaddup,” Spaniel Eyes said, and looked at his watch.

  “By the way,” Simon asked, “what are visiting hours in the local calaboza?”

  “Shaddup,” Spaniel Eyes said.

  They rode some more. They wound through Central Park, entering at Columbus Circle, curving and twisting along the west side of that great haven for nurses and sailors, up around the bottleneck end of the lake, south past the zoo.

  The Saint looked significantly at the flat backs of the animal cages.

  “What time,” he asked Spaniel Eyes, “do you have to be back in?”

  “Shaddup.”

  “This,” the Saint said conversationally to Scar-chin, “has been most illuminating. I suppose I shouldn’t ever have taken this drive otherwise. Very restful. The lake full of row-boats, the row-boats full of afternoon romance, the—oh, the je ne sais quoi, like kids with ice-creamed noses.”

  Scar-chin yawned.

  Simon lighted another cigarette and brooded over the routine. He considered his chances of getting a lawyer with a writ of habeas corpus before things went too far. Or was it the scheme of Scar-chin and Spaniel Eyes to spirit him away to some obscure precinct station and hold him incommunicado? Such things had been done before. And at that stage of the game the Saint knew he could not afford to disappear even for twenty-four hours.

  Spaniel Eyes looked at his watch as they neared the exit at Fifty-ninth Street and Fifth Avenue.

  “Okay,” he called to the cab driver.

  The driver nodded and drove to—of all places—the Algonquin. Scar-chin came back to life.

  “Awright,” he said. “Go on up to your room.”

  “And then what?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Simon nodded pleasantly, and went up to his room. The telephone was ringing.

  “Hamilton,” said the voice at the other end. “I wish you’d be more careful. Do you think I haven’t anything else to do with my men except send them to pull you out of jams?”

  4

  For a considerable time after the Saint had left, there was a nominal silence in the dining-room of 21. Nominal, because of course there was never any actual silence in that much-publicised pub except when it was closed for the night. The chatter of crocks, cutlery, concubines, and creeps went on without interruption or change of tempo, a formless obbligato like the fiddling of insects in a tropic night which could only be heard by forced attention. It washed up against the table where Zellermann and Avalon sat, and still left them isolated in a pool of stillness.

  Of Avalon one could only have said that she was thinking. Her face was intent and abstracted but without mood. If it suggested any tension, it was only by its unnatural repose.

  Dr Zellermann avoided that suggestion by just enough play with cocktail glass and cigarette, with idle glances around the room, to convey a disinterested expectation that this hiatus was purely transitory, and that he was merely respecting it with polite acceptance.

  He turned to Avalon at last with a sympathetic smile.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said in his best tableside manner.

  She shrugged.

  “Sorry? For what?”

  “It is not my desire, Miss Dexter, to cause you anguish or heartache.”

  “I’ve been watching out for myself for some time, Doctor.”

  “That, my dear, is your chief attraction. One would expect a girl who is as beautiful as you to be dependent. You have a magnificent…er…contempt for the conventional behaviour of beautiful women. If I may say so.”

  “You have, Doctor. Which all leads up to an exit line. Good-bye.”

  He raised a soft white hand.

  “Don’t go. You haven’t had your lunch.”

  “I’m not hungry
.”

  “Then please listen. I have information that may be to your advantage to know.”

  She settled back, but did not relax. She had the appearance of a motionless cat, not tense, yet ready to leap. Her dark eyes were alert, wide, and bright.

  “About Mr Templar,” the psychiatrist began. “Although I am glad to confess a personal interest in your welfare, what I am about to say is of an academic nature.”

  Avalon smiled with one side of her mouth.

  “Anyone will grant that he is a romantic figure, Miss Dexter. He must have a tremendous attraction for women, especially young and beautiful girls who are trying to carve out a career. He represents all they strive for—poise, charm, fame, and respect from many psychological types. But he is not a stable person, Miss Dexter.”

  Avalon smiled with both sides of her mouth. It was a tender smile, with secret undertones.

  “His path through life,” said Zellermann, “and I don’t mean to sound like a text-book—is inevitably beset with adventure, crime, and personal danger. I happen to know that many who have allied themselves with him have died. Somehow, he has come through all his adventures. But the day will come, my dear Miss Dexter, when Lady Luck will frown on her favourite protégé.”

  Avalon rose abruptly.

  “And so on and so on,” she said. “Let’s skip the soul analysis. You heard him fling me to the wolves. I informed on him, he said. I told you about what he’s been doing. I don’t think I’m in danger of being hurt—or even being near him, for that matter. So long.”

  She walked out of the hotel, straight and tall and lovely. When she was on the sidewalk, three cab drivers rushed up to claim her for a fare. She chose one.

  “The Tombs,” she said, and the man blinked.

  “Caught up with th’ boyfriend, hey? ‘Stoo bad, lady.”

  “My grandmother,” Avalon said icily, “is in jail for matricide. I’m taking her a hacksaw. Will you hurry?”

  All the way to the gloomy pile of stone, the cab driver shook his head. When Avalon paid him off, he looked at her with troubled eyes.

  “’Scuse me, lady, but why would the old dame steal a mattress? It don’t make sense.”

  “She got tired of sleeping on the ground,” Avalon told him. “Some people just can’t take it.”

  She went inside and was directed to the desk sergeant. He was a large man, and the lines in his face had not been acquired by thinking up ways to help his fellow-man. He was busy at the moment she arrived before him studying some printed matter on his desk. He didn’t look up.

  “Excuse me,” Avalon said.

  The sergeant paid no attention. He continued his study of the papers before him. He held a pencil in one huge fist, and made a check mark now and then.

  “I beg your pardon,” Avalon said.

  Still there was no evidence that the sergeant had heard her. He continued to peruse his mysterious papers. Avalon, like those who also serve, stood and waited. Presently the sergeant made a check mark after the name Sir Walter in the fourth at Pimlico and looked up.

  His eyes were without expression. They roved over the convolutions of beauty as if they had been inspecting a prize farm animal. They penetrated, yes, and Avalon could feel her clothes falling off her, but there was no lust, no desire, in the sergeant’s eyes—only boredom.

  “Yep?” he said.

  “I want to see a prisoner you have here,” she said. “His name is Templar.”

  She spelled it.

  The sergeant’s eyes said “Dames!” as he reached for a heavily bound ledger. He scanned it.

  “When did he get here?”

  “An hour ago, or less.”

  “Nobody’s been here in the last hour.”

  “Where would he be, then?”

  “What’s the rap?”

  “Oh, he hasn’t even been tried. No charge has been made.”

  The sergeant’s eyes groaned, rolled skyward.

  “Lady, he’ll be booked at Centre Street headquarters. He won’t come here till he’s been convicted.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know. Where is it?”

  He told her. She flagged a cab, and went there.

  As she mounted the wide flight of stairs, she was joined by Kay Natello and Ferdinand Pairfield.

  Ferdinand was resplendent in purple scarf, grey plaid jacket, dove-grey trousers, grey suède shoes, and lemon-coloured socks. His hands were white butterflies emerging from cocoons.

  “Darling!” he cried, like bells from Lakmé.

  Kay Natello might as well have been dressed in a fire-hose, for all the blue cotton dress did for her gaunt frame. She said nothing, and Avalon was grateful for being spared that.

  “Myrmidons,” Avalon murmured. “What’s the rap?”

  Ferdinand put butterflies on her arm and she shivered.

  “Quaint girl,” he purred. “We were down to see a lawyer on Wall Street, and we were just passing in a cab—with the most brutal driver, my dear, simply delicious—and Kay said ‘There’s Avalon!’ And since we’d been looking all over for you—”

  His shrug was as graceful as feathers on a little wind.

  “Looking for me?”

  “Yes, come on,” Kay Natello said, in the voice which was so like an overstrained buzz-saw.

  “The most marvellous thing, darling,” Ferdinand burbled. “Magnamount’s going to do a picture around Cookie’s Canteen. We’ll all be in it. And you’re to have a good role. So come along. Cookie wants to be sure you’ll play before she signs up with Mr Pfeffer.”

  “Mr Pfeffer being—?!”

  “The producer, dear girl. He’s very quaint.”

  Avalon stood in indecision for a moment. She seemed to find nothing to say. But at last she said, “Okay. You two run along. I’ll join you shortly. At Cookie’s?”

  “But you can’t possibly,” Ferdinand objected. “And surely you haven’t anything to do in this dismal place. You couldn’t be interested in any of the sordid characters who find their way in here. What are you doing here anyway?”

  “I lost a gold compact and a pair of ear-rings out of my purse in a taxi,” she said. “I thought this would be the place to report it. Not that I expect it’ll do much good.”

  “It probably won’t,” Ferdinand said. “But I’ll help you talk to these dreadful barbarians, and then we can all ride back up-town together.”

  CHAPTER FOUR:

  HOW SIMON TEMPLAR DRESSED UP, AND DULY WENT TO A PARTY

  1

  The two young men who rang James Prather’s doorbell might have been well-dressed haberdasher’s assistants, shoe salesmen, or stockbrokers. They told the goggle-eyed Mr Prather that they were attached to the Treasury Department and had credentials to prove it. One of them, a calm blond boyish young man, said his name was Harrison. He introduced the other, who was red-headed and freckled, as Smith.

  Prather’s pale hands fluttered in the direction of the divan.

  “Sit down, will you? What’s the matter? Income-tax trouble?”

  Smith placed his blue felt hat on his well-pressed knee and said nothing. He seemed intensely interested in the hat. Harrison pushed his own hat back on his tow-hair and seemed to develop a curiosity about the ceiling. Nobody said anything. Prather remained standing, not quite twisting his hands together, and his lobster-like eyes moved from Harrison to Smith and back.

  Harrison broke the silence lazily, “You know a man named Sam Jeffries, I believe?”

  Prather frowned.

  “Jeffries? Jeffries? No, I think not.”

  “He said he was here to see you. He was quite definite about the location.”

  Prather frowned again.

  “Oh…Yes. Yes, I think I remember who you mean. Yes. He was here, all right. What about him?”

  Smith raised his freckled face.

  “How’s Shanghai these days?”

  Prather blinked.

  Harrison said, “Specifically, 903 Bubbling Well Road.”

  Prathe
r blinked again. The effect was rather like raising and lowering a curtain rapidly over thickly curved lenses.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, of course.”

  “Ah?” Smith said.

  “Oh?” Harrison said.

  “And I don’t understand why the Treasury Department should be interested in me.”

  Harrison leaned back and looked at the far corner of the room.

  “I believe Sam Jeffries brought you a package—or packages?”

  ‘Yes. He picked up a piece of carving for me in Shanghai—an old Chinese monk carrying a basket of fish. Very pretty.”

  “Where is it?” Smith asked.

  “I…uh…I gave it to a—well, you know how it is—a girl.”

  “Umm,” Smith said.

  “Hmm,” Harrison said. “Where did you meet this Jeffries?”

  “Oh…uh…you know…around…I don’t remember.”

  Smith pushed a hand through his red hair and looked directly at Prather.

  “According to the information that we have,” he said, like a class valedictorian reciting, “you met Sam Jeffries for the first time in a place known as Cookie’s Canteen on August 18 last year. At that time you entered into some kind of an agreement with him, which required a handshake to seal it, and he went on his way. On November 30, Sam Jeffries met you here in this apartment and brought with him his friend, Joe Hyman. Why? What agreement did you enter into with the two of them?”

  “If you two guys would give me some idea of what you’re trying to find out,” Prather said, “I might be able to help you. So far you haven’t made any sense at all.”

  Harrison moved his eyes, giving the impression of a Government Man on an important job.

  “Suppose you answer a few questions for a change, Mr Prather. We could take you down-town with us and make quite a business of this, you know.”

  “What goes? All you’ve done so far is make innuendoes. You haven’t accused me of anything specific, and—well—hell! I don’t like it!”

  Smith turned his freckled face directly on Prather.

  “What is 903 Bubbling Well Road to you? What did you say to Sam Jeffries? Who’s the guy above you? How do you think you’re going to get out of all this? There, my friend, are some specific questions.”