'I owe you an apology, Freddie,' said the Saint, with the utmost candor. 'I didn't think you had all that brain.'
8 HE WAS alone in the house. Freddie Pellman had taken the girls off to the Coral Room for dinner, and Simon's stall was that he had to wait for a long-distance phone call. He would join them as soon as the call had come through.
'You'll have the place to yourself,' Freddie had said when he suggested the arrangement, still glowing from his recent accolade. 'You can search all you want. You're bound to find something. And then we'll have her.'
Simon finished glancing through a copy of Life, and strolled out on the front terrace. Everything on the hillside was very still. He lighted a cigarette, and gazed out over the thin spread of sparkling lights that was Palm Springs at night. Down below, on the road that led east from the foot of the drive, a rapidly dwindling speck of red might have been the tail light of Freddie's car.
The Saint went back into the living-room after a little while and poured himself a long lasting drink of Peter Dawson. He carried it with him as he worked methodically through Esther's and Ginny's rooms.
He wasn't expecting to find anything in either of them, and he didn't. But it was a gesture that he felt should be made.
So after that he came to Lissa's room.
He worked unhurriedly through the closet and the chest of drawers, finding nothing but the articles of clothing and perнsonal trinkets that he had found in the other rooms. After that he sat down at the dresser. The center drawer conнtained only the laboratory of creams, lotions, powders, paints, and perfumes without which even a modern goddess believes that she has shed her divinity. The top right-hand drawer contained an assortment of handkerchiefs, scarves, ribbons, clips, and pins. It was in the next drawer down that he found what he had been waiting to find.
It was quite a simple discovery, lying under a soft pink froth of miscellaneous underwear. It consisted of a .32 autoнmatic pistol, a small blue pharmacist's bottle labeled 'Prussic Acid-POISON', and an old issue of Life. He didn't really need to open the magazine to know what there would be inside, but he did it. He found the mutilated page, and knew from the other pictures in the layout that the picture which had headed the letter that Freddie had shown him at their first meeting would fit exactly into the space that had been scissored out of the copy in front of him.
He laid the evidence out on the dresser top and considered it while he kindled another cigarette.
Probably any other man would have felt that the search ended there; but the Saint was not any other man. And the strange clairvoyant conviction grew in his mind that that was where the search really began.
He went on with it more quickly, with even more assurance, although he had less idea than before what he was looking for. He only had that intuitive certainty that there should be something-something that would tie the last loose ends of the tangle together and make complete sense of it. And he did find it, after quite a short while.
It was only a shabby envelope tucked into the back of a folding photo frame that contained a nicely glamorised porнtrait of Freddie. Inside the envelope were a savings bank pass book that showed a total of nearly five thousand dollars, and a folded slip of paper. It was when he unfolded the slip of paper that he knew that the search was actually over and all the questions answered, for he had in his hands a certificate of marriage issued in Yuma ten months before ...
'Are you having fun?' Lissa asked.
She had been as quiet as a cat, for he hadn't heard her come in, and she was right behind him. And yet he wasn't surнprised. His mind was filling with a great calm and quietness as all the conflict of contradictions settled down and he knew that the last act had been reached.
He turned quite slowly, and even the small shining gun in her hand, aimed squarely at his chest, didn't surprise or disturb him.
'How did you know?' he drawled.
'I'm not so dumb. I should have seen it before I went out if I'd been really smart.'
'You should.' He felt very detached and unrealistically balanced. 'How did you get back, by the way?'
'I just took the car.'
'I see.'
He turned and stood up to face her, being careful not to make any abrupt movement, and keeping his hands raised a little; but she still backed away a quick step.
'Don't come any closer,' she said sharply.
He was just over an arm's length from her then. He measured it accurately with his eye. And he was still utterly cool and removed from it all. The new stress that was building up in him was different from anything before. He knew now, beyond speculation, that murder was only a few seconds away, and it was one murder that he particularly wanted to prevent. But every one of his senses and reflexes would have to be sharper and surer than they had ever been before to see it coming and to forestall it ... Every nerve in his body felt like a violin string that had been tuned to within an eyelash weight of breaking ...
And when it came, the warning was a sound so slight that at any other time he might never have heard it-so faint and indeterminate that he was never absolutely sure what it actually was, if it was the rustle of a sleeve or a mere slither of skin against metal or nothing but an unconsciously tightened breath.
It was enough that he heard it, and that it exploded him into action too fast for the eye to follow-too fast even for his own deliberate mental processes to trace. But in one fantastic flow of movement it seemed that his left hand plunged at the gun that Lissa was holding, twisted it aside as it went off, and wrenched it out of her hand and threw her wide and stumнbling while another shot from elsewhere chimed into the tight pile-up of sound effects; while at the same time, quite independently, his right hand leapt to his armpit holster in a lightning draw that brought his own gun out to bark a deeper note that practically merged with the other two . . . And that was just about all there was to it.
The Saint clipped his own gun back in its holster, and dropped Lissa's automatic into his side pocket. It had all been so fast that he hadn't even had time to get a hair of his head disarranged.
'I'm afraid you don't have a very nice husband,' he said.
He stepped to the communicating door and dragged the drooping figure of Freddie Pellman the rest of the way into the room and pushed it into a chair.
9
'HE'LL LIVE, if you want him,' said the Saint casually. 'I only broke his arm.'
He picked up the revolver that Freddie had dropped, spilled the shells out, and laid it with the other exhibits on the dresser while Freddie clutched at his reddening sleeve and whimpered. It seemed as if the whole thing took so little time that Lissa was still recovering her balance when he turned and looked at her again.
'The only trouble was,' he said, 'that you married him too soon. Or didn't you know about the will then?'
She stared at him, white-faced, without speaking.
'Was he drunk when you did it?' Simon asked.
After a while she said: 'Yes.'
'One of those parties?'
'Yes. We were both pretty high. But I didn't know he was that high.'
'Of course not. And you didn't realise that he wouldn't mind framing you into a coffin to keep his gay playboy inнtegrity.'
She looked at the collection of exhibits on her dresser, at Freddie, and at the Saint. She didn't seem to be able to get everything coordinated quickly. Simon himself showed her the marriage certificate again.
'This is what I wasn't supposed to find,' he said. 'In fact I don't think Freddie even imagined you'd have it around. But it made quite a difference. How much were you going to shake him down for, Lissa?'
'I only asked him for two hundred thousand,' she said. 'I'd never have said anything. I just didn't want to be like some of the others-thrown out on my ear to be a tramp for the rest of my life.'
'But you wanted too much,' said the Saint. 'Or he just didn't trust you, and he thought you'd always be coming back for more. Anyhow, he figured this would be a better way to pay off.'
His cigarette hadn't even gone out. He picked it up and brightened it in a long peaceful draw that expressed all the final settling down of his mind.
