'You're not still going on being a detective, are you?'
'I am.'
'I wonder what you're like when you relax?'
'You could find out.'
'A dialogue writer,' she said.
'Where are you going to be later?'
'Where are you going to be?'
'I don't know right now. Can I call you?'
'I'll be at home. Probably washing my last pair of silk stockings. The number's in the book.'
'I don't read very well,' said the Saint, 'but I'll try and get someone to look it up for me.'
He walked around to the parking lot and retrieved his car, and drove north towards the hills that look down across the subdivided prairie between Sunset Boulevard and the sea. Lazaroff and Kendricks lived up there, not Orlando Flane; and yet suddenly the pursuit of Orlando Flane was not so imнportant. Flane could be found later, if he wanted to be found at all-if he didn't, he wouldn't be sitting at home. But other patterns were taking a shape from which Flane was cuнriously lacking. It was like stalking a circus horse in the beнlief that it was real, and finding it capable of separating into two identities with cloths over them . ..
The house was perched on a sharp buttress of rock high above the Strip-that strange No Man's Land of county in the middle of a city whose limits traditionally extend to the Jerнsey side of the Holland Tunnel. There were cars in the open garage, Simon noticed as he parked; and he rang the bell with the peaceful confidence that the wheels were meshing at last and nothing could stop them.
Kendricks himself flung the door open, looking more than ever like one of the earnest ambassadors of the House of Fuller, as if their positions ought to have been reversed and he should have been on the outside trying to get in. The sight of the Saint only took him aback for a moment, and then his face broke into a hospitable grin.
'Surprise, surprise,' he said. 'Superman has a nose like a bloodhound, on top of everything else. We were just starting to celebrate. Come in and help us.'
'I didn't get your invitation,' said the Saint genially, 'so I didn't know what time to come.'
'Somebody has to be first,' Kendricks said.
He led the way into the Tudor bar which appeared to subнstitute for a living-room, and Vic Lazaroff raised bis shaggy gray head from some intricate labors over a cocktail shaker.
'Welcome,' he said. 'You are going to study genius in its cups. We shall reciprocate by studying you in yours.'
'It's a great event,' Simon said.
'You bet it is. Once again the uncrowned kings of Hollywood are on the throne--'
'That's quite definite, is it?'
'Everything but the signatures, which we shall write toнmorrow if we can still hold a pen.'
Simon settled on the arm of a chair.
'Goldwyn must think a lot of you.'
'Why shouldn't he? Look at all the publicity he can get out of us.'
'But it does seem like going a bit far.'
'What does?'
'Murdering Ufferlitz,' said the Saint, 'so he could get you back.'
Neither of them spoke at once. Kendricks stood still in the middle of the room. Lazaroff carefully put down the bottle from which he had been pouring. The silence was quite noнticeable.
'It's a deep gag,' Kendricks said finally.
'Of course,' said the Saint imperturbably, 'if it wasn't so obvious that Sam Goldwyn must have bumped him off so he could get his two favorite writers back, some people might think the writers had done it to get free again.'
'Very deep,' said Lazaroff.
'The only thing I don't get,' Simon said, 'is why you thought it would be clever to hang it on me.'
'We what?'
'Why you sent me that note and phoned the police about a prowler, pretending that you were Ufferlitz, so that I'd be caught in the house with his body and very probably sent to jail for a week or two for killing him.'
This silence was even deeper than the last one. It grew up until Simon was conscious of making an effort to hold the implacable stillness of his face and force them to make the first movement.
At last Lazaroff made it.
He stretched up a little, as though he were lifting a weight with his hands.
'Better tell him, Bob,' he said.
Kendricks stirred, and the Saint looked at him.
'I guess so,' he said. 'We did send you that note.'
'Why?'
'For a laugh.' Kendricks was like a schoolboy on the carнpet. 'One of those crazy things we're always doing. You could have made the front pages all day, too. Banners when you were arrested, and a double column when they found out it was all a mistake.'
'And how were they going to find that out?'
'I tell you, when we planned it we didn't know Ufferlitz was going to get killed.'
'So you only thought of that afterwards.'
Lazaroff dragged his fingers through his hair and said: 'Good God, we didn't kill him.'
'You were just playing rough, and he couldn't take it.'
'We never saw him.'
'Then why didn't you say anything? You expected me to be there, and get caught by the police. If you were surprised to hear Ufferlitz had been murdered, weren't you surprised that I wasn't in jail?'
'We were,' said Kendricks. 'When I saw you in the office this afternoon I nearly fell over backwards.'
'But you never said anything.'
'We sort of hinted-to try and find out where you stood.'
'But you didn't care whether I was in a jam.'
'We didn't know. You mightn't have fallen for that note. Anything might have happened. You mightn't have gotten home at all last night--'
'But you knew I'd received the note and fallen for it,' said the Saint coldly. 'You saw me drop April Quest and go home. Your car drove by when we were saying goodnight.' It was another fragment of the jigsaw that fitted accurately into place now. 'After that you saw me arrive at Ufferlitz's. That was when you phoned the police. But you still didn't think I was in a jam.'
Kendricks made a helpless movement.
'You're getting me tied up,' he said. 'Just like a lawyer. The whole truth is that we didn't know what had happened to you. You've got a great reputation for getting out of jams -you might have dodged that one. We didn't know. But we couldn't come out and say anything, because if the cops knew we'd framed you like that they'd naturally think what you thought-that we'd murdered Ufferlitz and tried to make it look like it was you. We were in the hell of a jam ourselves. It was a gag that fate took a hand in, or something. And we were stuck with it. We just had to shut up and hope someнthing would happen.'
'But you weren't in the house yourselves.'
'Not once.'
'Then how,' Simon asked very placidly, 'did you know, when you wrote that note, that the front door would be unнlocked?'
There was stillness a third time, a stillness that had the explosive quality of a frenzied struggle gripped in immovable chains. Lazaroff finally made a frustrated gesture, as if his hand had turned into lead.
'It sounds worse and worse; but we just happened to know.'
'How?'
'I heard Ufferlitz telling his secretary about working there last night. He said 'The door'll be open as usual.' She said 'Don't you ever lock your door?' and he said 'I haven't locked my house up for years. I always lose keys; and what the hell, if anybody's going to get in they'll get in anyway and leave me a busted window on top of it.' I
