phone call. So I lugged him out. Then he woke up, so we made a night of it.'
'What about you, Lissa?'
'I was just reading a book in a drug store in New York last May. Freddie came in for some Bromo-Seltzer, and we just got talking.'
'In other words,' said the Saint, 'any one of you could have been a girl friend of Johnny's, and promoted yourselves in here after he was killed.'
Nobody said anything.
'Okay,' Freddie said at last. 'Well, we've got fingerprints, haven't we? How about the fingerprints on that knife.'
'We can find out if there are any,' said the Saint.
He took it out of the pocket of his robe, where he had kept it with him still wrapped in his handkerchief. He unwrapped it very carefully, without touching any of the surfaces, and laid it on the table. But he didn't look at it particularly. He was much more interested in watching the other faces that looked at it.
'Aren't you going to save it for the police?' asked Lissa.
'Not till I've finished with it,' said the Saint. 'I can make all the tests they'd use, and maybe I know one or two that they haven't heard of yet. I'll show you now, if you like.'
Angelo made his impassive appearance with two glasses of orange juice for Lissa and Esther, and a third effervescent glass for Freddie. He stood stoically by while Freddie drained it with a shudder.
'Anything else, Mr. Pellman?'
'Yes,' Freddie said firmly. 'Bring me a brandy and ginger ale. And some waffles.'
'Yes, sir,' said the Filipino; and paused, in the most natural and expressionless way, to gather up three or four plates, a couple of empty glasses, and, rather apologetiнcally, as if he had no idea how it could have arrived there, the kitchen knife that lay in front of the Saint with everyone staring at it.
5
AND THAT, Simon reflected, was as smooth and timely a bit of business as he had ever seen. He sat loose- limbed on his horse and went on enjoying it even when the impact was more than two hours old.
It had a superb simplicity of perfection which appealed to his sardonic sense of humor. It was magnificent because it was so completely incalculable. You couldn't argue with it or estimate it. There was absolutely no percentage in claimнing, as Freddie Pellman had done, in a loud voice and at great length, that Angelo had done it on purpose. There wasn't a thing that could be proved one way or the other. Nobody had told Angelo anything. Nobody had asked Angelo to leave the knife alone, or spoken to him, about fingerprints. So he had simply seen it on the table, and figured that it had arrived there through some crude mistake, and he had discreetly picked it up to take it away. The fact that by the time it had been rescued from him, with all the attendant panic and excitement, any fingerprints that might have been on the handle would have been completely obscured or withнout significance, was purely a sad coincidence. And that was the literal and ineluctable truth. Angelo could have been as guilty as hell or as innocent as a newborn babe: the posнsibilities were exactly that, and if Sherlock Holmes had been resurrected- to take part in the argument his guess would have been worth no more than anyone else's.
So the Saint hooked one knee over the saddle horn and adнmired the pluperfect uselessness of the whole thing, while he lighted a cigarette and let his horse pick its own serpentine trail up the rocky slope towards Andreas Canyon.
The ride had been Freddie's idea. After two more brandies and ginger ale, an aspirin, and a waffle, Freddie Pellman had proclaimed that he wasn't going to be scared into a cellar by any goddam gangster's friends. He had hired the best godнdam bodyguard in the world, and so he ought to be able to do just what he wanted. And he wanted to ride. So they were going to ride.
'Not me,' Lissa had said. 'I'd rather have a gangster than a horse, any day. I'd rather lie out by the pool and read.'
'All right,' Freddie said sourly. 'You lie by the pool and read. That makes four of us, and that's just right. We'll take lunch and make a day of it. You can stay home and read.'
So there were four of them riding up towards the cleft where the gray-green tops of tall palm trees painted the desert sign of water. Simon was in the lead, because he had known the trail years before and it came back to him as if he had only ridden it yesterday. Freddie was close behind him. Suddenly they broke over the top of the ridge, and easing out on to the dirt road that had been constructed since the Saint was last there to make the canyon more accessible to pioneers in gasoline-powered armchairs. But bordering the creek beyond the road stood the same tall palms, skirted with the dry drooped fronds of many years, but with their heads still rising proudly green and the same stream racing and gurgling around their roots. To the Saint they were still ageless beauty, unchanged, a visual awakening that flashed him back with none of the clumsy encumbrances of time machines to other more leisured days and other people who had ridden the same trail with him; and he reined his horse and thought about them, and in particular about one straight slim girl whom he had taken there for one stolen hour, and they had never said a word that was not casual and unimportant, and they had never met again, and yet they had given all their minds into each other's hands, and he was utterly sure that if she ever came there again she would remember exactly as he was remembering ... So that it was like the shock of a cold plunge when Freddie Pellman spurred up beside him on the road and said noisily: 'Well, how's the mystery coming along?'
The Saint sighed inaudibly and tightened up, and said: 'What mystery?'
'Oh, go on,' Freddie insisted boisterously. 'You know what I'm talking about. The mystery.'
'So I gathered,' said the Saint. 'But I'm not so psychic after a night like last night. And if you want to know, I'm just where I was last night. I just wish you were more careнful about hiring servants.'
'They had good references.'
'So had everybody else who ever took that way in. But what else do you know about them?'
'What else do I know about them?' Freddie echoed, for the sake of greater clarity. 'Nothing much. Except that Angelo is the best houseboy and valet I ever had. The other Filipino-Al, he calls himself-is a pal of his. Angelo brought him.'
'You didn't ask if they'd ever worked for Smoke Johnny?'
'No.' Freddie was surprised. 'Why should I?'
'He could have been nice to them,' said the Saint. 'And Filipinos can be fanatically loyal. Still, that threatening letter seems a little bit literate for Angelo, I don't know. Another way of looking at it is that Johnny's friends could have hired them for the job . . . And then, did you know that your chef was an Italian?'
'I never thought about It. He's an Italian, is he? Louis? That's interesting.' Freddie looked anything but interested. 'But what's that got to do with it?'
'So was Implicato,' said the Saint. 'He might have had some Italian friends. Some Italians do.'
'Oh,' said Freddie.
They turned over the bridge across the stream, and there was a flurry of hoofs behind them as Ginny caught up at a galнlop. She rode well, and she knew it, and she wanted everyнone else to know. She reined her pony up to a rearing sliding stop, and patted its damp neck.
'What are you two being so exclusive about?' she deнmanded.
'Just talking,' said the Saint. 'How are you doing?'
'Fine.' She was fretting her pony with hands and heels, making it step nervously, showing off. 'Esther isn't so happy, though. Her horse is a bit frisky for her.'
'Don't worry about me,' Esther said, coming up. 'I'm doнing all right. I'm awful hot, though.'
'Fancy that,' said Ginny.
'Never mind,' said the Saint tactfully. 'We'll call a halt soon and have lunch.'
They were walking down towards a grove of great palms that rose like columns in the nave of a natural cathedral, their rich tufted heads arching over to meet above a cloister of deep whispering shade. They were the same palms that Simon had paused under once before, years ago; only now there were picnic tables at their feet, and at some of them a few hardy families who had driven out there in their automoнbiles were already grouped in strident fecundity, enjoying the unspoiled beauties of Nature from the midst of an enthusiнastic litter of baskets, boxes, tin cans, and paper bags.
'Is this where you meant we could have lunch?' Freddie asked rather limply.
'No. I thought we'd ride on over to Murray Canyon-if they haven't built a road in there since I saw it last, there's a place there that I think we still might have to ourselves.'
