The Saint Steps In s-24 Page 3

  The Saint finished his cigarette in silence, with thoughtful leisuredness. There was, after all, some justice in the world. That violent and accidental meeting had its own unexpected compensation for the loss of two possibly unimportant mus­cle men. If he still needed it, he had the clinching confirmation that the story which had sounded so preposterous was true— that after all Madeline Gray was not just a silly sensation-hunter and celebrity-nuisance, but that the invention of Calvin Gray might indeed be one of those rare fuses from which could explode a fiesta of fun and games of the real original vintage that he loved. He felt a little foolish now for some of his facile incredulity; and yet, glancing again at the profile of the girl beside him, he couldn't feel very deeply sorry. It was worth much more than a little transient egotism for her to be real . . .

  They were at the Shoreham, and Walter Devan said: "I hope I'll see you again."

  "I'm staying here," said the Saint.

  "So am I," said the girl.

  The Saint looked at her and began to raise a quizzical eye­brow at himself, and she laughed and said: "I suppose I'd do better if I could act more like a starving inventor's daugh­ter, but the trouble is we just aren't starving yet."

  He looked at the Scottish tweed suit that covered her per­fection, at the hat that just missed ridiculousness, and silently estimated their cost. No, Madeline Gray looked as though she was far removed from starvation.

  "Let me know if I can help," said Devan. "I might be able to do something for you. Maybe Mr. Quennel can reach Im­berline and fix some kind of a conference. I'm at the Raleigh if you should want to reach me for any reason."

  He drove off after a brief word to Templar. Simon gazed after the ruby tail light for a moment, and then took the girl's arm, steering her into the lobby. She started to turn towards the cocktail lounge, but he guided her towards the elevators.

  "Let's go to my apartment," he said. "Funny things seem to happen in cocktail lounges and dining rooms."

  He felt her eyes switch to him quickly, but his face was as impersonal as the way he had spoken. She stepped into the elevator without speaking, and was silent until they were in his living room.

  At a time when a closet and a blanket could be rented in Washington as a fairly luxurious bedroom, it was still only natural that Simon Templar should have achieved a commo­dious suite all to himself. He had a profound appreciation of the more expensive refinements of living when he could get them, and he had ways of getting them that would have been quite incomprehensible to less enterprising men. He took off his coat and went to a side table to pour Peter Dawson into two tall glasses, and added ice from a thermos bucket.

  "Now," she said, "will you tell me exactly what you mean by funny things happen in cocktail lounges and dining rooms?"

  He gave her one of the drinks he had mixed, and then with his freed hand he showed her the note he had found in his pocket.

  "I found it just after you'd left," he explained. "That's why I went after you. I'm sorry. I take it all back. I was stupid enough to think you were stupid. I've tried to make up for a little. Now can we start again?"

  She smiled at him with a straightforward friendliness that he should have been able to expect. Yet it was still good to see it.

  "Of course," she said. "Will you really help me with Imber­line when I get in touch with him?"

  He sipped his drink casually and looked at her over the rim of his glass. When he took down the drink, he asked:

  "Have you ever met this phantom Imberline who everybody seems to be trying to get in touch with?"

  She nodded.

  "I've seen him a couple of times," she said briefly.

  "What's he like, and what does he do?"

  She waved her hands expressively.

  "He's—oh, he's a Babbitty sort of person, nice but dull and I suspect not too brilliant. Honest, politically ambitious perhaps, a joiner, likes to make friends——"

  "Just what is his position?" asked the Saint.

  "He's with the WPB, as I told you. A dollar-a-year man in the synthetic rubber branch. Not the biggest man in that branch, but still fairly important. He has quite a bit of say about what money is going to be spent for the development of which processes."

  The ice in Simon's glass tinkled as he drank again.

  "And what did he do before he became a dollar-a-year man?" he asked.

  Her eyes widened a trifle as she gazed back at him.

  "Surely, you must have heard of Frank Imberline!" she exclaimed. "Imberline, of Consolidated Rubber. Of course, it was his father who built up the rubber combine, but at least this Imberline hasn't done anything to weaken that combine. There are hints, rumors——"

  She broke off abruptly and gnawed her lip.

  "Go on," said Simon pleasantly. "I'm interested in the saga of The Imberline."

  She moved her hands again.

  "Oh, it's just rubber trade talk," she said. "Something you couldn't possibly be interested in."

  "Suppose I hear it and decide for myself."

  "Well—Father doesn't like Imberline, and he may be pre­judiced—probably as. But he maintains Imberline is nothing more than a straw man for a syndicate of unscrupulous men who wangled his WPB appointment in order to further their own ends. I told you that Father's an individualist. I suppose that's a nice way of hinting that he's a near-eccentric. Some in­ventors are. He's frightfully bitter against the people in Wash­ington who gave him the runaround, and he insists that cer­tain interests are trying to smother his process in order to build up their own business during the war and, more selfishly, after the war."

  "And your father, I take it, has only the good of the people at heart."

  She looked down at her drink and he spoke swiftly.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "A few days of Washington and I find myself afflicted with cynicism."

  "It's all right," she said in a low voice. "It was a logical question, after all."

  She raised her eyes to his and met them squarely.

  "Yes," she said stoutly. "He does have the good of the peo­ple at heart. He offered his invention to the Government, free and clear, but his offer never got to the men he wanted to give it to. Instead, he was interviewed by strangers whom he didn't like or trust. When he refused to give them his formula, when he insisted on being taken to the top man, the mysteri­ous accidents began to happen."

  "Does Imberline know of all this?"

  She shrugged.

  "Who knows? I've told you that he's not exactly the heavy intellectual. It might be that he's of the popular conviction that all inventors are pathological specimens who just want to waste his time. Heaven knows he must meet plenty of that type, too. Or it might be that somebody in his office does work for some other interests, as Father insists, and never lets him see anything or anybody they don't want him to see."

  She leaned forward eagerly.

  "But I'm sure that if I could get to him. I could make him listen, get him interested." She colored slightly. "Frank Imber­line, you see, is one of those I'm-old-enough-to-be-your-father persons. I—I think he'll at least give me a hearing."

  Simon eyed the girl soberly. Her face blazed suddenly.

  "I know what you're thinking," she said. "But I can put up with that if it would help Father and—yes—help the war ef­fort. It sounds corny, I know, but I really mean it."

  Her eyes were beseeching.

  "Couldn't you help me to see Imberline?" she pleaded.

  He gazed at her soberly. She was not stupid in the way he had thought, but it appeared that there were certain of the facts of life that had not yet completely entered her aware­ness.

  "Of course I will," he said kindly. "But it might take some time to get an audience with the pontiff. I'm not so well up In the routines for getting into the inner sanctum of a Washing­ton panjandrum ..."

  The Saint had a faculty of hearing things without listening for them, and of correlating them with the instantaneous effi­ciency of a sorting machine, so that th
ey were sharply classified in his mind almost before the mechanical part of his sense of hearing had finished processing them.

  This particular sound was no more than the shyest ghost of a tap. But it told him, quite simply and clearly, that some­thing had touched the door behind him.

  He moved towards It on soundless feet, while his voice went on without the slightest change of pace or inflection.

  "... I believe if you take a folding cot and a camp stove and park in his outer office for a few days you can sometimes get in a word with his secretary's secretary's secretary . . ."

  Simon's hand touched the doorknob and whipped the door open in one movement of lightning suddenness. And with an­other movement that followed the first with the precision of a reciprocating engine, he shot out another hand to grasp the collar of the man who crouched outside with an article like a small old-fashioned ear-trumpet at his ear.

  "Come in, chum," he said cordially. "Come in and intro­duce yourself. Are you the house detective, or were you just feeling lonely?"

  The eavesdropper found himself whirled into the room, clutching wildly at the air in a vain effort to regain his balance.

  Before he could recover himself, one of his arms was hauled up painfully behind his back, and he found himself helpless.

  "Don't scream, darling," Simon said to the girl. "It's just a surprise visit from somebody who wanted to make certain he wasn't intruding before he knocked."

  His free hand moved swiftly over his captive's clothes, but discovered no gun. Simon twisted the eavesdropper around and stared into his face. Then he relaxed his hold on the stranger's arm. The man cautiously stretched the twisted member and began rubbing it, half whimpering as he did.

  "Know him?" asked the Saint of the girl.

  Wordlessly, Madeline Gray shook her head.

  "Not exactly the type," Simon remarked, cocking his head on one side. "He looks more like the typical bookkeeper who's due to get pensioned off with a nice gold watch for fifty years of uninterrupted service, and never a vacation or a day off for sickness."

  The little man continued rubbing his arm, squeaking. He looked something like a careworn mouse in ill-fitting clothes, with shoe-button eyes and two rodent teeth that protruded over his lower lip. As the pain in his arm subsided, he worked hard to present a picture of outraged innocence.

  "Sir!" he began.

  "Even talks like a mouse," observed the Saint coolly.

  "I'll have satisfaction for this," said the eavesdropper. "This is—this is scandalous! When a man is attacked in the hallway of a prominent hotel by a hoodlum who practically breaks his arm, it's time—"

  "All right, Junior," the Saint said pleasantly. "We can do without all that. Just who are you and who do you work for?"

  The little man drew himself up to his full height of about five feet three.

  "I might ask you the same question," he retorted. "Who are you that you think you can attack——"

  "Look," said the Saint. "I haven't much time, and although I'm usually an exceedingly patient sort of bloke, I'm slightly allergic to people who listen at my door with patent listening gadgets. Who sent you here and what did you expect to find out?"

  "My name," squeaked the little man, "is Sylvester Angert. And I was not listening at your door. I was trying to find my own room. I thought this was it. I was about to try my key in the lock when you assaulted me."

  "I see," said the Saint thoughtfully. "Of course, you didn't check the number of my room with the number on your key before you—er—prepared to try the lock. And you always have a good reason to listen to what might be going on inside your room before you enter. Is that it?"

  The little man's eyes held Simon's firmly for a second and then slid away.

  "If you must know," he said, with a spark of defiance, "that's exactly what I do. Listen, I mean. I've done that ever since I had an unpleasant experience in Milwaukee. I walked into my room, and I was held up by two thugs who were wait­ing for me there. I procured this little instrument to safeguard myself against just that sort of thing."

  "Oh, Lord," said the Saint faintly. "Now I've heard every­thing."

  "Believe it or not," said Sylvester Angert, "that's the truth."

  "Suppose you show me your key," Simon suggested.

  Mr. Angert probed his pockets and came up with the tabbed key and offered it to the Saint. Simon checked the number and frowned thoughtfully. Its last two digits corresponded with the number of Simon's room. Mr. Angert, it appeared, oc­cupied the suite immediately above the Saint's.

  Simon returned the key and smiled easily.

  "Everything checks beautifully, doesn't it?" he asked. "Sup­pose you have a seat, Sylvester, and toy with a drink while we talk this over."

  Reluctantly the little man took a chair across the room from the door. Simon splashed liquor into a glass and fizzed the soda syphon. He nodded in the direction of the girl.

  "I suppose introductions are in order," he said. "Mr. An­gert, this is Miss Millie Van Ess. Miss Van Ess, Mr. Angert."

  His eyes were bland but they would not have missed the minutest change in Angert's expression, if there had been any reaction to the alias he had inflicted on Madeline Gray. But he saw no reaction at all.

  The little man nodded stiffly to the girl and murmured something that might have been "How do you do." He took the glass from Simon and sipped the highball daintily.

  Simon's long brown fingers reached for a cigarette.

  "Now, Mr. Angert," he said. "I'm sure you'll agree that ex­planations are in order—on both sides, possibly. Just what is your business, Comrade?"

  The liquor seemed to give the little man courage, or perhaps it was the realisation that he was not going to be stretched on a rack—at least not immediately. Over the rim of his glass, he said: "I don't know your name, sir."

  "So sorry. It's Templar, Simon Templar."

  Angert's voice was quite calm as he said: "I believe I've heard of you. Aren't you the one they call the Saint, or some such name?"

  Simon bowed modestly.

  "My wife, that's Mrs. Angert, takes a great interest in the crime news in the papers, and I've heard her mention your name. I, personally, don't pay much attention to that sort of thing." He looked up apologetically. "Not," he added, "that I have anything against crime news, but——"

  Simon held up a hand.

  "No apologies, please," he said. "I much prefer the funnies and the produce market reports, myself. But what do you do, brother, besides not read crime news?"

  The little man delved into a vest pocket and brought out a card. Simon read that Sylvester was sales manager of the Choctaw Pipe and Tube Company of Cleveland.

  "I'm in Washington, trying to get to see somebody about a subcontract, but, oh dear, I just haven't been able to do any­thing! They all keep sending me from one office to the other and then back to the place I contacted first."

  Simon casually slipped the card into his pocket and dragged at his cigarette.

  "I take it you make pipes and tubes," he said.

  "We did, up until the war," explained Sylvester. "Then we converted to more direct war products. Naturally, I can't ex­plain just what we're turning out now, but it's important Yessiree, very important, if I may say so."

  "I'm sure you may," Simon murmured.

  Then he shot his next question in a rapier-like tone that cut away the smug complacency Sylvester seemed to be building up as thoroughly as a sharp knife would rip away cheesecloth.

  "Does your plant have anything to do with rubber?" he de­manded.

  This time Mr. Angert's eyes bounced a bit. He had been prepared for the other questions, but this one had come out of nowhere and there was a split second's interval before he recovered.

  "Rubber? Oh no. We're a metal production outfit No, we have nothing to do with rubber at all."

  Simon half turned away to freshen his drink.

  "Naturally not," he said. "That was rather a silly question."

  Sylve
ster Angert finished his drink and got out of his chair. He laughed rather uncertainly.

  "I'm sorry I was so—so harsh when I first—er—arrived here, but the surprise ... I guess I do owe you an apology at that. Perhaps we could get together for a drink tomorrow."

  "Perhaps," said the Saint noncommittally.

  "And now I'd better be getting up to my room. It's getting late and I've had a hard day. Goodnight Miss Van Ess, Mr. Templar."

  He ducked his head and scuttled out of the room.

  Madeline giggled.

  "A funny little man," she said.

  "Very. Will you excuse me for a second? I've got a couple of calls to make."

  He went into the bedroom, closing the door behind him. He called a local number which was not in any directory, and talked briefly with a man named Hamilton, whom very few people knew. Then he called the desk and exchanged a few words with Information. He returned to the living room, smil­ing in his satisfaction.

  "A funny little man indeed," he said. "There is no such ani­mal as the Choctaw Pipe and Tube Company of Cleveland. And the suite above this is occupied by a senator who's been living there ever since his misguided constituents banded to­gether in a conspiracy to get him out of his home state."

  "Then——"

  "Oh, he's harmless," the Saint assured her. "I don't think he'll bother us again. It will be somebody very different from little Sylvester who'll probably get the next assignment.

  "But who's he working for?"

  "The same people, my dear, who seem to be determined that your father's invention is going to blush unseen. I only hope for your sake that hereafter they limit their activities to such things as visits by Sylvester Angert. But I'm afraid they won't."

  "What difference does it make?" she protested. "If you'll really help me—and if you're really like any of the things I've read about you—you should be able to wangle an appointment with Imberline in a few days at the outside."

  The Saint's fingers combed through his hair. The piratical chiseling of his face looked suddenly quite old in a sardonic and careless way.