Condor's inquisitive gaze switched back again.
The Saint shrugged.
'You're too clever,' he said. 'I don't know. Naturally. If a lot of people knew, there wouldn't have been any point in playing ball with Ufferlitz to keep him quiet. And there wouldn't have been any point in killing him to make it perнmanent.'
The director appealed to Condor with another helpless movement of his hands.
'What on earth can I say to an insinuation like that? I took this job with Ufferlitz because I needed it quite badly, and I thought it might do me some good. I didn't have to like him especially. But now he must have been blackmailing me, and if nobody knows what I was being blackmailed with I must have murdered him.'
'This girl you quarrelled about,' Condor said. 'Was that recently?'
'No. It was months ago-nearly a year.'
'What was her name and where does she live?'
'She doesn't,' said Groom.
The detective cocked his head sharply.
'What's that?'
'She died soon after. Too many sleeping tablets.' Groom's voice had an almost ghoulish flatness. 'She was pregnant. She was trying to get into pictures, but I guess she never got any further than the casting couch.'
'Is that on record?'
'No-it's just more gossip. Ufferlitz went out with her quite a lot. However, Mr. Templar will probably tell you that I murdered her too.'
'What was her name?' asked the Saint.
'Trilby Andrews.'
Something smooth and magnificent like a great wave rolled up over Simon Templar's head; and when it had passed he was outside the studio, alone, and the conversaнtion had broken up and petered out in the frustrated inefнfectual way that had perhaps always been doomed for it, but that didn't seem to matter any more. It had ended with Groom sulky and sneering, and Condor turning his long predнatory nose from one to the other of them like the beak of a suspicious bird; but there was nothing much more that he could do, it was only talk and suggestion and leads that he could remember to follow later, but Simon hardly even noнticed how the scene ended. Clear as a cameo in his mind now he had a name, a name that had been written on a photoнgraph of a face which in some faint disturbing way had seemed as if it should have been familiar and yet was not; and now the wave rolled over and left him with a serenity of knowledge that out of all the cold threads that he had been trying to weave into patterns he had at last touched one that had a warmth and life of its own...
He found himself crossing the boulevard to think it over with the mild encouragement of a few drops of Peter Dawson. The interior of the Front Office was dim and soothing after the bold light outside, and he had been there for several minutes with a drink in front of him before he was aware that he was not the only customer ahead of the five o'clock stampede.
'H'lo,' said the heart-shaking voice of Orlando Flane, now somewhat thickened and slurred with alcohol. 'The great deнtective himself, in person!'
He unwound himself from the obscurity of a booth and steered a painstaking course to the bar, only tripping over his own feet once.
'Hullo,' said the Saint coolly.
'The great actor, too. Going to be a big star. Have your name in lights. Women chasing you. Cheering crowds, an' everything.'
'Not any more.'
'Whaddaya mean?'
'My job was with Ufferlitz. No more Ufferlitz-no more job. So I have to go back to detecting, and the crowds can cheer you again.'
Flane shook his head.
'Too bad.'
'Isn't it?'
'Too bad, after you did such a swell job chiselling me out.'
'I didn't chisel you out'
'No. You just took my part away from me. That was nice to do. Real Robin Hood stuff.'
'Listen, dope,' said the Saint temperately. 'I never took anything away from you. You were out anyway. Ufferlitz dragged me in. When he made a deal with me I didn't know you'd ever been involved. How the hell should I?'
Flane thought it over with the soggy concentration of drunkenness.
'Thass right,' he announced at last 'I'm glad you can see it.'
'You're okay.'
'Thanks.'
'Shake.'
'Sure.'
'Less have a drink.'
They had a drink. Flane stared heavily at his glass.
'So here we are,' he said. 'Neither of us got a job.'
'It's sad, isn't it?'
'My pal. You gotta get a job. I'll find you a job. Talk to my agent about you.'
'I wouldn't bother. I didn't really want to be in this racket to start with. It just looked like fun and a bit of dough.'
'Yeah. Dough. That's all I'm in for. I never thought I'd be in this racket either.'
'What racket were you in before?'
'Lotsa things. You don't think I'm tough, do you?'
'I don't know.'
'Most people don't.'
'I suppose not.'
'But I am tough, see? I've been around. I know what it's all about.'
'Like Ufferlitz?'
'That son of a bitch.'
'Was he really?'
'Threw me out of the picture. Threw me outa his office when I was drunk an' couldn't give him what he had coming.'
'Yes, I was there.'
'That dirty bastard.'
'But you fixed him, didn't you?' Simon asked gently.
Flane stared at him dimly.
'Whatsat?'
'You said you were going to fix him.'
'Yeah. So he'd stay fixed.'
'You certainly did.'
'Too late now,' Flane said gloomily.
Simon looked at him over his glass with a slight frown.
'What d'you mean-too late?'
'Too late to fix him. He's been fixed.'
'But you did it, didn't you?'
Flane steadied himself, and a smudgily truculent rigidity came over his face.
'Are you nuts?'
'No. But you said you'd fix him--'
'Are you trying to hang something on me?'
'No. It was just a natural thing to think.'
