The Saint Steps In (The Saint Series) Page 3

  The woolly white head moved negatively. “Ain’t nobody called here, suh,” the butler said.

  “Then I must have the dates mixed up.”

  He turned away from the door, saying things silently to himself. He addressed himself with a searing minuteness of detail which would almost certainly have been a cue for mayhem if it had been done by anybody else.

  There was still no other cab in sight.

  He turned south on 23rd Street, and he had reached the intersection of Q Street before he began to wonder where he was going or what good it was likely to do. He paused uncertainly on the corner, looking towards the bridge over Rock Creek Park. A dozen alternatives chased through his mind, and so many of them must be wrong and so few of them offered anything to pin much to.

  And then he saw her coming around the curve of the bridge, walking with her young steady stride, and everything he had imagined seemed foolish again—for about five or six seconds.

  A car came crawling up from behind her, passed her, stopped, and backed up into an alley that branched diagonally off from the north side of the street. He had instinctively stood still and merged himself into the shadow of a tree when he saw her, so the two men who came out of the alley a moment later must have thought the block was deserted except for themselves and the girl. They wore handkerchiefs tied over the lower part of their faces, and they closed in on her, one on each side, very professionally, and he was too far away to hear whatever they said, but he saw them, turn her into the alley as he started running soundlessly towards them.

  He came up on them in such a swift cat-like silence that it must have seemed to all of them as if a shadow materialised before their eyes.

  “Hullo, Madeline,” he drawled. “I was afraid I’d missed you, darling.”

  Her face looked pale and vague in the gloom.

  The masked man on her left spoke in muffled accents. He was tall and wide-shouldered, and he seemed to be of the type that never lost a fist fight when he was a schoolboy.

  “Better stay out of this, bud, if you don’t want to get into trouble.”

  His voice was a deep hollow rasp, behind the mask. He looked like a man who could provide trouble or cope with it. The man on the other side had much the same air. He weighed a little more, but he was inches shorter and carried it chunkily.

  “I like trouble,” Simon said breezily. “What kind have you got?”

  “FBI trouble,” said the tall man flatly. “This girl’s…uh…being detained for questioning. Run along.”

  “Detained?” asked the Saint. “Just why?”

  “Beat it,” growled the chunky one. “Or we might think of taking you along with us.”

  “You,” said the Saint calmly, “are the first FBI operatives I’ve ever met who wore handkerchiefs over their noses and so far forgot their polish that they’d say anything like ‘beat it’ or call anybody ‘bud.’ If you’re posing as G-men, you’re making a horrible mess of it. So, if you show your credentials I’ll be happy to go along with the young lady. But I don’t think you will, or can.”

  He was ready for the swing the tall man launched at him, and he swayed back just the essential six inches and let the wind of it fan his chin. Then he shifted his weight forwards again and stepped in with his right forearm pistoning at waist level. The jar of the contact ran all the way up to his shoulders. The tall man grunted and leaned over from the middle, and the Saint’s left ripped up in a short smash to the mufflered jaw that would have dropped the average citizen in his tracks. The tall man was somewhat tougher than the average. He went pedalling back in a slightly ludicrous race with his own centre of gravity, but he still had nothing but his feet on the ground when a large part of his companion’s weight descended on the Saint’s neck and shoulders.

  Simon’s eyes were blurred for an instant in a pyrotechnic burst of lights, and his knees began to bend; then he got his hands locked behind the chunky man’s head, and let his knees sag even lower before he heaved up again. The chunky man came somersaulting over his shoulder and hit the ground with a thud that a deaf man could have felt several feet away. He rolled over in a wild flurry and wound his arms around the Saint’s shins, binding Simon’s legs together from ankle to knee.

  In a clutch like that, Simon knew that he had no more chance of staying upright than an inverted pyramid. He tried to come down as vertically as possible, so as to stay on top of the chunky man, trying to land on him with his weight on his knees and aiming a downward left at him at the same time.

  Neither of those schemes connected. Simon afterwards had a dim impression of running feet, of Madeline Gray crying out something incoherent; then a very considerable weight hit him in the middle and sent him spinning.

  Half winded, he grappled blindly for a hold while the man who had tackled him swarmed over him with the same intention. He had had very little leisure for thinking, and so it was a moment or two before he realised that this was not the come-back of the tall bony partner. This man’s outlines and architecture were different again. And then even before Simon could puzzle any more about it the girl was clawing at his antagonist, beating ineffectually on his broad back with her fists, but it was enough of an interruption to nullify the Saint’s temporary disadvantage, and he got first a knee into the man’s stomach, and then one foot in what was more of a shove than a kick, and then he was free and up again and looking swiftly around to see who had to be next.

  He was just in time to catch a glimpse of the chunky man’s rear elevation as it fell into the parked car a few yards away. The tall bony one had already disappeared, and presumably he was at the wheel, for the engine roared up even before the door slammed, and the car leapt away with a grind of spinning tyres that would have made any normal war-time motorist wince. It screamed out of the alley as Simon turned again to look for the third member of the opposition.

  The third member was holding one hand over his diaphragm and making jerky little bows over it, and saying in a painful and puzzled voice, “Good lord…You’re Miss Gray, aren’t you?”

  As Simon stepped towards him he said, “Damn, I’m sorry. I must have picked the wrong side. I was just driving by—”

  “You’ve got a car?” Simon snapped.

  “Yes. I just got out—”

  Simon caught the girl’s hand and raced to the street.

  There was a convertible parked just beyond the alley, but it was headed in the opposite direction from the way the escaping car had turned. And the other car itself was already out of sight.

  The Saint shrugged and searched for a consoling cigarette.

  “I’m really terribly sorry.” The other man came up with them, still holding his stomach and trying to straighten himself. “I just saw the fight going on, and it looked as if someone was in trouble, and naturally I thought the man on the ground was the victim. Until Miss Gray started beating me up…I’m afraid I helped them get away.”

  “You know each other, do you?” asked the Saint.

  She was staring puzzledly.

  “I’ve seen you somewhere, but—”

  “Walter Devan,” said the man. “It was in Mr Quennel’s office. You were with your father.”

  Simon put a match to his cigarette. With the help of that better light, he shared with her a better view of the man’s face. It was square-jawed and powerful, with the craggy leathery look of a prize-fighter.

  “Oh yes!” She turned to the Saint. “Mr Devan—Mr Templar.”

  Simon put out his hand.

  “That’s quite a flying tackle you have,” he said, and Devan grinned.

  “It should be—I played professional football when I was a lot younger. You’re a pretty good kicker yourself.”

  “We are a lot of wasted talent,” said the Saint.

  “Perhaps it’s all for the best,” Devan said. “Anyway, we got rid of those hoodlums, and some of them can be very ugly. There have been a lot of hold-ups and house-breakings around here lately. The bad boys hide in the park and come out after d
ark.”

  Simon thought of mentioning the fact that these particular bad boys had had a car, but decided that for the moment the point wasn’t worth making. Before the girl could make any comment, he said, “Maybe you wouldn’t mind giving us a lift out of the danger zone.”

  “Be glad to. Anywhere.”

  They got in. Madeline Gray in the middle, and Simon looked at her as Devan pressed the starter, and said, “I think we ought to go back to the Shoreham and have another drink.”

  “But I’ve still got to see Mr Imberline.”

  “Mr Imberline isn’t home, darling. I was there first. I missed you on the way. Then I started back to look for you.”

  “But I had an appointment.”

  “You mean Frank Imberline?” Devan put in.

  She said, “Yes.”

  “Mr Templar’s right. He’s not home. I happen to know that because Mr Quennel’s been trying to get in touch with him himself.”

  “Just how did you get this appointment?” Simon asked.

  “I’d been trying to see him at his office,” she said, “but I hadn’t gotten anywhere. I’d left my name and address, and they were supposed to get in touch with me. Then I got a phone call this afternoon to go to his house.”

  “Someone was pulling your leg,” said the Saint quietly. She looked at him with wide startled eyes.

  Simon’s arm lay along the back of the seat behind her. His left hand moved on her shoulder with a firm significant pressure. Until he knew much more about everything, now, he was in no hurry to talk before any strangers.

  Especially this man who called himself Walter Devan.

  Because, unless he was very much mistaken, Devan had been the round stocky man who had jostled him in the Shoreham cocktail lounge. And the eyes of the taller of the two self-asserted FBI agents looked very much like those of one of the group that had followed Frank Imberline into the dining-room later—when he had received his second jostling.

  3

  Devan seemed quite unconscious of any suppression. He said conversationally, “By the way, Miss Gray, how is your father getting on with his new synthetic process?”

  “The process is fine,” she said frankly, “but we’re still trying to put it over.”

  Devan shook his head sympathetically.

  “These things take a lot of time. Imberline may be able to help you,” he said. “It’s too bad our company couldn’t do anything about it.”

  He turned towards Simon and added in explanation, “Mr Gray has a very promising angle on the synthetic rubber problem. He brought it to Mr Quennel, but unfortunately it wasn’t in our line.”

  “I suppose,” said the Saint, “I should know—but what exactly is our line?”

  “Quennel Chemical Corporation. Quenco Products. You’ve probably seen the name somewhere. It’s rather a well-known name.”

  His voice reflected quiet pride. Yes, Simon had seen the name, right enough. When he had first heard it mentioned it had sounded familiar, but he hadn’t been able to place it.

  “What do you think of Mr Gray’s formula?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid I’m not a chemist,” Devan said apologetically. “I’m just the personnel manager. It sounds very hopeful, from what I’ve heard of it. But Quennel already has an enormous contract with the Government for buna, and we’ve already invested more than two million dollars in a plant that’s being built now, so our hands are tied. That’s probably our bad luck.”

  The Saint dragged at his cigarette thoughtfully.

  “But if Mr Gray’s invention is successful and put into production, it would mean his method would be in competition with yours, wouldn’t it?” he asked.

  Devan gave a short laugh.

  “I suppose it would be, theoretically,” he admitted. “But with the world howling for rubber, all the rubber it can get, it would be hard to call it competition. Rather, it would be like two firms turning out different makes of life preservers—there’d be no pick and choose involved when a drowning man was being thrown one.”

  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 happening 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 it 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 whom 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, like
s 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, rumours—”

  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 is. 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 run-around, 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.”