back at him steadily, neither denying it nor encouraging him.
He said, in the same sensible and persuasive way: 'I was wondering whether you'd noticed them being particularly friendly before the accident—as if there was any kind of attachment between them.'
He saw that the eyes of both Forrest and Dr Quintus turned towards the girl, as if they both had an unexpectedly intense interest in her answer. But she looked at neither of them.
'I can't be sure,' she answered, as though choosing her words carefully. 'Their work brought them together all the time, of course. Mr Tamblin was really father's private secretary and almost his other self, and when Nora came to us she worked for Mr Tamblin nearly as much as father. I thought sometimes that Mr Tamblin was—well, quite keen on her—but I don't know whether she responded. Of course I didn't ask her.'
'You don't happen to have a picture of Tamblin, do you ?'
'I think there's a snapshot somewhere——'
She stood up and went over to an inlaid writing-table and rummaged in the drawer. It might have seemed fantastic that she should do that, obeying the Saint's suggestion as if he had hypnotized her; but Simon knew just how deftly he had gathered up the threads of his broken dominance and woven them into a new pattern. If the scene had to be played in that key, it suited him as well as any other. And with that key established, such an ordinary and natural request as he had made could not be refused. But he noticed that Dr Quintus followed her with his hollow black eyes all the way across the room.
'Here.'
She gave Simon a commonplace Kodak print that showed two men standing on the steps of a house. One of them was apparently of medium height, a little flabby, grey-haired in the small areas of his head where he was not bald. The other was a trifle shorter and leaner, with thick smooth black hair and metal-rimmed glasses.
The Saint touched his forefinger on the picture of the older man.
'Your father?'
'Yes.'
It was a face without any outstanding features, creased in a tolerant if somewhat calculating smile. But Simon knew how deceptive a face could be, particularly in that kind of reproduction.
And the first thought that was thrusting itself forward in his mind was that there were two people dead, not only one —two people who had held similar and closely associated jobs, who from the very nature of their employment must have shared a good deal of Marvin Chase's confidence and known practically everything about his affairs, two people who must have known more about the intricate details of his business life than anyone else around him. One question clanged in the Saint's head like a deep jarring bell: Was Nora Prescott's killing the first murder to which that unknown swindle had led, or only the second ?
All through dinner his brain echoed the complex repercussions of that explosive idea, under the screen of superficial conversation which lasted through the meal. It gave that part of the evening a macabre spookiness. Hoppy Uniatz, hurt and frustrated, toyed halfheartedly with his food, which is to say that he did not ask for more than two helpings of any one dish. From time to time he washed down a mouthful with a gulp from the bottle which he had brought in with him, and put it down again to leer at it malevolently, as if it had personally welshed on him; Simon watched him anxiously when he seemed to lean perilously close to the candles which lighted the table, thinking that it would not take much to cause his breath to ignite and burn with a blue flame. Forrest had. given up his efforts to protest at the whole procedure. He ate most of the time in sulky silence, and when he spoke at all he made a point of turning as much of his back to the Saint as his place at the table allowed: plainly he had made up his mind that Simon Templar was a cad on whom good manners would be wasted. Rosemary Chase talked very little, but she spoke to the Saint when she spoke at all, and she was watching him all the time with enigmatic intentness. Dr Quintus was the only one who helped to shoulder the burden of maintaining an exchange of urbane trivialities. His reverberant basso bumbled obligingly into every conversational opening, and said nothing that was worth remembering. His eyes were like pools of basalt at the bottom of dry caverns, never altering their expression, and yet always moving, slowly, in a way that seemed to keep everyone under ceaseless surveillance.
