'The other producers ganged up on them and charged them with unfair trade practices. The Government ordered them to go back to serving the same old dead food as all the other studios, and very soon they were quite normal and in reнceivership again.'
'You've learnt a lot in a little while.'
Simon finished his drink and picked up his knife and fork.
'How long have you been in this racket?' he asked.
'Only about six months.'
'Where were you before?'
'In a real estate office in New York.'
'You didn't know when you were well off.'
'I thought I'd come out here and get educated.'
'Were you with Byron all that time?'
'No. I started in the stenographic department at MGM. Then an agent took me out of there. Then Mr. Ufferlitz took me away from the agent. Now I may have to go on relief with you. I expect Mr. Braunberg will tell me.'
The Saint nibbled a fried potato.
'My life with Byron was certainly short and sweet,' he remarked. 'What sort of a guy was he really?'
She finished a mouthful carefully before she said: 'You must have heard something about him.'
'A few things.'
'Then you must have your own ideas.'
'Not very good ones,' said the Saint.
She shrugged.
'He was just his own kind of Hollywood producer.'
'He went further than most of them, though, didn't he?' said the Saint. 'I mean, he was a rather special kind. That is, if there's anything in the rumors.'
'There's something in most rumors-even in Hollywood.'
'I've been wondering,' Simon said, carving himself anнother wedge of sirloin, 'what Orlando Flane had on his mind yesterday. You know-during that happy homey interнlude when Byron called him a drunken bum and bounced him off the carpet into my arms. Flane said he could remember as far back as Byron could. Was he referring to some other rumor, or were they just boys together?'
'It could have been both,' she said cautiously.
He waited.
After a while she said, reluctantly, as if she would rather have changed the subject if she could have seen herself doing it gracefully: 'You've probably heard another rumor that Mr. Ufferlitz is supposed to have been in trouble with the police in New Orleans.'
'Yes.'
'Orlando Flane comes from New Orleans.'
'I see.'
'He won one of those publicity department contests three or four years ago-for somebody to be the New Rudolph Valenнtino, with a touch of George Raft. The story is that he was much more of a real-life George Raft type before he became a glamor boy.'
'Is he really a drunken bum?'
'I think he's been drinking rather a lot lately. He's supнposed to have been slipping at the box office, so there may be an excuse for him. But it just made the producers cool off faster. He hadn't had a decent part for nearly a year until Mr. Ufferlitz offered him a break just a few weeks ago.' Simon raised his eyebrows.
'Then what on earth had Flane got to beef about?'
'Flane was going to star in this picture-it was called Salute to Adventure then. Mr. Ufferlitz fired him when he decided to change the story and hire you.'
The Saint concentrated on applying mustard to a piece of steak with the infinite care of a painter of miniatures. His face was impassive, but the series of obvious implications tripped through bis head with the dainty footsteps of a troupe of charging elephants.
Orlando Flane had good and recent cause to hate Mr. Byron Ufferlitz. Orlando Flane had openly threatened Mr. Ufferlitz with permanent evidence of his dislike. Orlando Flane had a background which in spite of his slightly effeminate facial beauty might have qualified him as a cool tough hombre. And Orlando Flane had a reason to resent Simon Templar enough to be willing to round out his revenge by trying to stage it so that the Saint would take the rap for it.
Simon looked at Peggy Warden again and said: 'Do you think Flane could have killed Byron?'
She stared at him as though the idea stunned her.
'Flane?' she repeated.
'Yes.'
'But-he's an actor,' she said weakly.
He chuckled.
'Most murderers have some other spare-time job, darling. Comrade Condor seems to think it could easily have been somebody from the studio. You must have heard our converнsation. If it could have been a writer, a director, or me, it could have been an actor. Byron is dead. Somebody killed him.'
She nodded in a bewildered way.
'Yes. I suppose so. It just doesn't seem real. I mean-I can't imagine Orlando Flane as a real murderer.'
'He had the best motive I've come to yet.'
'But a lot of other people didn't like Mr. Ufferlitz.'
Simon nodded. It was true, of course.
'I hear that Jack Groom didn't like him either. Do you know why that was?'
She shook her head.
'I haven't any idea.'
'Was it on account of April Quest, by any chance?'
'I don't know.' The girl studied him shrewdly. 'Are you rather interested in that?'
'Very much,' said the Saint calmly. 'It's the only other angle that doesn't seem to have been gone into yet, and it's a good traditional motive. What sort of a guy was Ufferlitz with women?'
She hesitated for a few seconds before she met his eye, but then her gaze was steady and direct.
'I believe he was quite a swine,' she said.
'Who with?'
'I wouldn't know that. I didn't have anything to do with his private life.'
'He didn't ever take a shot at you?'
Her face chilled for barely an instant, and then she laughed a little without smiling.
'I'm a good secretary,' she said, 'and that's harder to find.'
Simon conceded that. But on second thought he added to himself that she might also not have been Mr. Ufferlitz's type. His guess was that Byron Ufferlitz's quarry would have been either ingenuous and trusting or tough and cynical. The dumb innocents could be swept off their feet by Mr. Ufferlitz's self-created grandeur and overwhelmed with the old line of what he could do for them in pictures, and the hard-boiled mercenaries could be talked to in their own language and handled as they expected to be, thereby reducing the shooting schedule. But to a man of that type Peggy Warden's natural honesty and clear-eyed composure would be highly disconнcerting. She could so obviously deflate baloney or bullying with equally devastating simplicity.
Simon liked her for those same qualities. It occurred to him with a sort of rueful inward humor that he really met quite a remarkable number of girls he liked. He must have posнsessed an inexhaustible human sympathy; or else he was very lucky. In twenty-four hours, to have drawn two out of the bag like Peggy Warden and April Quest...
He frowned. April Quest-there was someone that Byron Ufferlitz might easily have seen as a good prospect. And the Saint remembered that she had made no secret of what she expected Mr. Ufferlitz's intentions to be and what she thought of him.
He was getting nowhere at an impressively steady pace.
'Do you get headaches?' Peggy Warden asked, several minutes later.
