Condor stared at him for a while with unblinking intentness, and then the barest vestige of a smile moved in under his long drooping features. It literally did that, as if the surнface of his face was too stiffly set in its cast of abject melanнcholy to relax perceptibly, and the smile had to crawl about under the skin.
'That,' he said, 'is the first thing you've said that sounds like some of the stuff I've heard about you.'
'So far,' murmured the Saint, 'you've seemed to want me for a suspect more than a collaborator.'
'I gotta suspect everybody.'
'But be reasonable. Ufferlitz just gave me a job for a thouнsand dollars a day. I don't know now whether I've got a job any more. Why would I kill that sort of meal ticket? Besides, I never met him before lunch-time yesterday. I'd have to have hated him in an awful hurry to work up to shooting point by last night'
Condor wrinkled his nose.
'It seems to me,' he said, 'I've heard you're supposed to 've killed a few people that you didn't have any particular personal feelings about. Something about being your own judge, jury, and hangman. Not that it wasn't all quite legal and accidental, of course,' he added, 'or it came to look that way in the end; but that's what they say. Well, from what I've heard about Ufferlitz, he's got some things in his record that might save you the trouble of hating him by yourself.'
The Saint sank lower in his chair and for the first time venнtured to look slightly bored.
'Here we go again,' he drawled. 'Are you trying to hang something on me or not? Make up your mind.'
'Well...' Condor drew his chin back so that the toothpick drooped from his upper teeth. 'I guess I do sound sort of anнtagonistic sometimes. Gets to be second nature. You'll have to excuse me. But I've heard plenty of complimentary things about you too. Maybe you could help me a lot, at that. You've given me one good idea already. I wouldn't like to be a nuisance, but if you wanted to give me any more I'd be honored.'
He was as disarming as a drowsing crocodile. You felt ashamed of yourself for having misunderstood him and put him into a position where he had to defend himself. Your heart warmed with the consciousness of having put him back where he belonged, nevertheless. You felt pretty loosened up altogether. Unless you were Simon Templar.
'I'm afraid it's a little bit out of my line,' said the Saint. 'As a matter of fact, I go a little bit nuts over these split-second timetables. They're too confusing. And I don't believe in them, anyway. They're too much like the super-solemn kind of detective story. Nobody outside of a book is ever watchнing the time from minute to minute. And even if they were, their watches wouldn't be synchronised. And as soon as there's any chance of any error, you might as well give up. On top of which there are too many ways of faking, if you've read any mysteries.'
'That's how I feel,' Condor agreed sadly. 'Personally, I'll settle for anyone who could have been there between twelve-thirty and about two-fifteen, when the patrol found him.'
'What about the other people you've talked to?'
'You mean have they got alibis too?'
'Yes.'
'Lazaroff and Kendricks were working on a script until about two-thirty. They share an apartment. They have a cleaning woman, but she doesn't sleep there, so there's no one to back them up. But they alibi each other.'
'And Groom?'
'He was with a dame. He left her at half-past one and stopped in at the Mocambo for a couple drinks. He told me three or four people he spoke to, so he probably did.'
'He could have telephoned, too,' Simon observed.
Condor brooded silently, poking his toothpick about in his bicuspids.
'There's one thing I'm puzzled about,' Simon said presнently. 'Ufferlitz must have known quite a few people outнside. Why does it have to be someone from this unit?'
'It just seems a good place to start. The cook says he never had anybody home except people he was mixed up in business with, except sometimes a girl he was trying to proнmote. Besides, from what I hear nobody else was crazy about visiting him anyway. Then, when he came home to dinner yesterday evening, he said he wasn't in to anyone unless it was from the studio.'
'What about the business he was in before this?'
'He cut himself off from all those mugs when he got to be a producer. We keep tabs on some of 'em, so I know that. But I don't know any of 'em who 're sore with him.'
'He played square with the racket while he was in it, did he?'
'He knew what was good for him. You can't chisel those kind of guys and keep healthy. You can only do that with high-class suckers.' The detective seemed to derive some morbid satisfaction from the thought. 'No-he still sees some of the mob, but he don't ask 'em home. Some of 'em think it's a big laugh, his going high-hat. But they aren't sore. Or I haven't heard about it ... None of it's conclusive, of course, but this still looked like a good place to begin. I've found with most murders you don't have to look awful far. It's usually somebody who's been around pretty close,'
Simon lighted another cigarette and drew at it for a while. Condor didn't seem to have anything more to say. He began pulling open drawers and browsing through the papers he found in them. Presently Simon got up.
'Well, I'd better leave you to it,' he said. 'If I get any more brilliant ideas I'll let you know.'
'Do that,' said Condor earnestly. 'I'll be seeing you around.'
The Saint strolled out and met Peggy Warden's tentaнtive half-apologetic smile with unruffled cheerfulness. 'Quite a business, isn't it?' he said. She nodded.
'I felt mean about not telling you. But Lieutenant Condor told me not to say anything. I'm glad it didn't get you into trouble.'
'I never get into trouble,' said the Saint virtuously. 'But I seem to live an awfully precarious life. Have I got a job now, or do I go back on relief?'
Her eyes strayed to some papers on her desk. 'I don't really know,' she confessed. 'Mr. Braunberg brought your contract back yesterday evening, and Mr. Ufferlitz signed it before he left the office, but you didn't sign anything yourself so I don't know what the position is.'
'Braunberg-he was the attorney, wasn't he?'
'Yes. I've already spoken to him on the phone, of course, and he said he'd be in this afternoon. I'm sure he'll be able to tell you how you stand legally.'
Simon picked up the contract. It was a standard printed form, about the size of a centenarian's autobiography, covнering every possible contingency from telepathy and revoнlutions to bankruptcy and habitual drunkenness, with a couple of pages of special clauses which invalidated most of it. Simon only glanced through it casually, and turned to the sigнnature.
He had a microphotographic eye for certain kinds of detail, and he had no need to compare it with the note that was in his pocket to know that the note was a forgery-a passable amateur job, but a long way from being expert.
Unfortunately it would be a great deal harder if not imposнsible to discover who had done it. He was practically resigned to discarding the Hollywood Reporter as a clue. Almost everyнbody in the movie business was a subscriber; and in addition it could be bought at any newsstand within a radius of twenty miles. It was far too much to hope that the sender of the note would be considerate enough to have kept in his possession the mutilated copy into which the Saint's torn fragment could be fitted.
The decease of Mr. Ufferlitz was a mystery that looked less encouraging every time Simon Templar turned to it.
He said: 'Don't forget, Peggy, you've got a date with me for lunch.'
6
'No,' she said. 'No more cocktails. I've still got to look as if I wanted to keep a job.'
The Front Office offered a choice of steaks, chops, or hamнburger. They had steaks. She sniffed hers ecstatically.
'Mmm! This was a good idea, I'd almost forgotten what a real lunch could taste like.'
'I heard of a studio once where they had good food in the commissary,' said the Saint. 'So everybody felt fine and happy every afternoon. Agents came in and sold them everyнthing they had at enormous prices, actors broke down and begged for salary cuts, assistant directors went about their work with a smile, and writers told producers their ideas stank and they ought to go back to peddling trusses.'
'What happened?'
