The Saint Sees It Through s-26 Page 9

  Prather goggled rather like a fish in an aquarium tank, but before the Saint could begin to explain he caught sight of the waiter returning with a tray of pink concoctions in champagne glasses.

  "I," Simon announced, "am beginning to become annoyed. Avec knobs on."

  The waiter slammed the tray on the table and distributed the drinks. The Saint eyed his.

  It was definitely not a Pink Lady. Nor was it pink cham­pagne. There was grenadine in it, judging from the viscosity apparent to the eye. There might be gin, or even water. He raised his eyes.

  "What—is—this?"

  The waiter's eyes were like small blue marbles. "They're bourbon and sodas, see?"

  "Pink bourbon?"

  "Ja ever see any other kind?" the waiter snarled.

  "I believe," Simon said gently, "that I have been patient. Compared to the way I've conducted myself, burros are subjects for straitjackets. You have brought four rounds of liquid abor­tions that no self-respecting canned-heat hound would dip a finger in. While this went on, I have kept my temper. Job him­self would stack up beside me like a nervous cat. I have taken all your insults with a smile. But I warn you, if you don't bring the right order on your next trip, you are going to wish your mother had spanked the bad manners out of you before I had to."

  "So you wanta make trouble, huh?" The waiter signalled. "Hey, Jake!"

  The bartender, who seemed to be Jake, stopped shaking a whiskey sour at the top of the motion, looking something like a circus giant caught in a ballet pose. He was pushing six feet and a half with shoulders perhaps not so wide as a door, but wide enough. He had a face like the butt end of a redwood log, and hands like great brown clamps on the shaker.

  His customers turned to regard the tableau across the big room according to the stages of inebriety they'd reached. A middle-aged man with a brief moustache twirled it at Avalon. A lady of uncertain balance lifted one side of a bright mouth at the Saint. A young couple stared, and turned back to their private discussion, which, to judge from their expression, was going to wind up in the nearest bedroom.

  Jake then set down the shaker, and walked around the end of the bar. At the same moment a third man, large and aproned, came out of the archway and joined him. They marched to­gether across the dance floor, side by side, and advanced upon the Saint. It was obvious that he was their objective.

  The Saint didn't move. He watched the approach of the brawny gents with the bright-eyed interest of a small boy at his first circus. He noted the width of Jake's shoulders, the practiced walk bespeaking sessions in a prize ring, and the shamble of his companion. He weighed them, mentally, and calculated the swiftness of their reflexes. He smiled.

  He could see Avalon's clenched fists, just below the rim of the table, and from the corner of his eye he noted Prather's bug-eyed interest.

  Jake directed a calm, steady, brown-eyed gaze at Simon Templar.

  "Get out of here. Now."

  Simon didn't seem to push his chair back. He seemed only to come to an astonished attention. But in that straightening mo­tion, his chair was somehow a good three inches back from the edge of the table and he could come to his feet without being hampered.

  "Yes?" he drawled with hopeful interest. "How jolly. Ask your boss to come out and explain."

  "The boss don't need to explain," said the spokesman. "We'll do all the explainin' necessary."

  "Then suppose you do, my lad."

  "What is this all about, Jake?" Avalon asked.

  "The boss don't want him here, that's all. And we'll throw him out if he don't scram." Jake turned back to the Saint. "Look, chum, we ain't anxious to spread your pretty face all around like gravy. But we can, and will, if'n you don't beat it. And don't come back."

  The Saint gestured at the table.

  "You can see I haven't finished my drink. Nor has my lady friend."

  "She can stay. It's just you that's goin'."

  The Saint smiled mockingly. "It is always a mystery to me how human beings can become so misguided as to assume im­possibilities. I should think anybody would know I'm not going out of here without Miss Dexter. She has an inflexible rule; namely, 'I'm gonna leave with the guy what brung me.' Name­ly, yours truly."

  "Can the gab," Jake said. "You goin' out on your feet, or would you rather pick up teeth as you crawl out?"

  Jake didn't seem to be angry, or impatient. He was merely giving the Saint a choice. Like: do you want your nails filed round or pointed?

  Simon got lazily to his feet.

  "Sorry, Mr. Prather," he said. "I was just getting interested -in our conversation. Be with you in a moment. The children, you know. They get annoying at times and have to be cut back to size. . . . Jake, you shouldn't be such a naughty boy, really you shouldn't. Papa's told you before about interrupting your elders. Run along and play now, and you won't be chastised."

  Jake nodded at his cohorts, and they moved at once. The Saint's first lightning move was to remove one from the fray with a short right jab that travelled no more than three inches but carried 180 pounds of muscled steel in motion behind it.

  The aproned bruiser folded his bulk against the wall between the widespread feet of one of Ferdinand Pairfield's figures and sat there with a vacuous mouth and eyes which, had they been stained, could have served as church windows.

  In this move, however, Simon's attention was distracted for the fraction of a second from Jake, and that was enough. Jake made a flying leap over one corner of the table and clasped the Saint around his waist with a fervor that would have reduced Jake's girl friend to panting acquiescence.

  This threw the Saint slightly off balance, and the waiter tried to take advantage of this by kicking Simon in the groin.

  The Saint twisted, caught the man's ankle with his free hand, wrenched his other hand loose and began to unscrew the man's leg from the knee joint. Several welkins split asunder as the victim howled like a wounded wolf. Presently, within the space of time required to bat an eye, there was a most satisfying crack as the leg came unjointed at the hip, and the Saint turned his full attention to the leech-like Jake.

  He went about that worthy's demolishment with a detached and unhurried calm. A left to the chin to straighten him up, a right to the stomach to bend him in the middle, another left, another right, and Jake gave the appearance of a polite man with the stomach ache bowing to a friend.

  One devastating right to the button, and Jake slid across the stamp-sized dance floor on his back. He came to a gentle stop and lay gazing empty-eyed at the ceiling.

  Sounds came from the back, sounds indicating a gathering of fresh forces. The Saint turned to Avalon.

  "Shall we go, darling?" he drawled.

  2

  Which was all highly entertaining, not to say invigorating and healthful, Simon reflected later; but it added very little progress towards the main objective.

  Certainly he had been given evidence that his attention was unwelcome to sundry members of the Ungodly; but that was hardly a novel phenomenon in his interfering life. Once the Saint had exhibited any definite interest in their affairs, and had been identified, the Ungodly could invariably be relied on to experience some misgivings, which might lead rather logically to mayhem. Certainly the proffered mayhem had recoiled, as it usually did, upon the initiators, who would doubtless ap­proach this form of exercise more circumspectly next time; but that could hardly be called progress. It just meant that the Saint himself would have to be more careful.

  He had failed to learn any more about Mr. Prather's precise place in the picture, or the relationship of the other characters who flitted in and out of the convolutions of the impalpable organization which he was trying to unravel—or, for that matter, about Avalon's real place in the whole crooked cos­mogony.

  Simon forced himself ruthlessly to remember that. . . . With all their intimacy, their swift and complete companionship, he still knew nothing. Nothing but what he felt; and better men than he had come to disaster from not drawing the disti
nction between belief and knowledge. The Saint had many vanities, but one of them had never been the arrogant confidence that sometime, somewhere, there could not be among the ranks of the Ungodly a man or a woman who would have the ability to make a sucker out of him. He had waited for that all his life; and he was still waiting, with the same cold and tormenting vigilance.

  And yet, when he called Avalon the next morning, there was nothing cold in his mind when her voice answered.

  "Good morning," he said.

  "Good morning, darling," she said, and her voice woke up with it. "How are you today?"

  "Excited."

  "What about?"

  "Because I've got a date for lunch."

  "Oh." The voice died again.

  He laughed.

  "With a beautiful girl . . . named Avalon."

  "Oh." Such a different inflection. As if the sun came out again. "You're a beast. I've a good mind not to be there."

  "There are arguments against it," he admitted. "For one thing, we can't be alone."

  "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 euology 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 equational 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 somebodys. 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 un-semantic 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 disconcerting, turned the channels of the conversation towards 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 boxcar 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?"