The Saint Steps In

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Imberline was an unknown quantity, then, which left only the local gendarmerie to appeal to. Simon knew nothing at all about them; but even if they were extremely efficient, he sur­mised that they were also liable to be very busy. He didn't know for how long they would be likely to detach three able-bodied officers for the sole job of providing a full-time personal bodyguard for Madeline Gray. And in any case, they couldn't stay with her if she left the city.

'Where is your father now?' he asked.

'At home—in Connecticut.'

'Where?'

'Near Stamford.'

The DC police couldn't do anything about that. And the Stamford cops would be even less likely to have men to spare for an indefinite vigil.

'Maybe you ought to hire some guards from a detective agency,' he said. 'I gather you could afford it.'

She looked him in the eyes.

'Yes. We could afford it.'

He had made a reasonable suggestion and she had considered it in the same reasonable way. Even that steady glance of hers didn't accuse him of trying to evade anything. It would have had no right to, anyway, he told himself. It was his own con­science. He didn't owe her anything. He had plenty of other things to think about. There certainly must be some proper legal authority for her to take her troubles to—he just hadn't been able to think what it was. And anyhow, what real basis did he have for deciding that Calvin Gray's invention was practical and important? There were highly trained ex­perts in Government offices who were much more competent to judge such matters than he was.

And just the same he knew that he was still evading, and he felt exasperated with himself.

He asked: 'What was your idea when you did see Imber­line?'

'Get him to come to the laboratory himself, or send some­one who was absolutely reliable. They could watch us make as much rubber as they'd need for their tests, and then they could be sure it was a genuine synthetic.'

'But eventually other people would have to be in on it—if it were going to be manufactured in any quantity.'

'Father has that all worked out. You could have a dozen different ingredients shipped to the plant and stored in tanks. Three of them would be the vital part of the formula. The other nine would mean nothing. But they'd all be piped down through a mixing room that only one man need go into. The unnecessary ingredients would be destroyed by acids and run down the drain, so that no checkup would be possible. The real formula would be piped from the mixing room direct to the vats. One man could control a whole plant by just working two or three hours a day. I could control one myself. But even if anyone on the outside knew every chemical that was brought in and used, it would take them years to try out every combina­tion and proportion and treatment until they might hit on the right one.' -

It was a sound answer. But it had the tinge of being a pat answer, too. As if it had been rehearsed carefully to reply to embarrassing questions.

Or maybe he still had a hangover of his own first skepticism.

He made a decision with characteristic abruptness.

'Suppose,' he suggested, 'you go to your room. Lock and night-lock the door and don't open it to anyone, except me.'

He went to the desk, scrawled a word on a slip of paper, folded it and handed it to her. She looked at it and nodded. He took the paper back and touched a match to it. As the ashes crumbled, they took into nothingness the word he had written, the word he was to say when he called her.

He was taking no chances that Mr. Sylvester Angert's cousin might be looking for his room in the hall outside, complete with a little tube that heard through doors.

'Will you be long?' she asked.

'I hope not. I'll take you to your room, if you don't mind.'

'I'd appreciate it.'

He escorted her to the elevators, rode up five floors, and saw her safely to her door. He waited until the night latch clicked and then returned to the elevators. He rode to the main lobby and spent a few minutes looking into the dining room. It was virtually deserted—for Washington—and the man he was looking for wasn't there.

Simon left the hotel and bought a taxi driver for the second time that night.

He leaned back on the cracked-leather upholstery and reached for a cigarette.

'Take me to a street that enters into Scott Circle,' he directed. 'One that hits the circle near the low numbers.'

'You got any special number in mind, Chief?'

'Yeah, bud. I got me a number in mind, but just do like I told you, see?'

'Okay, okay. I just wanted to know.'

He lit his cigarette, wondering if his tough-guy talk would convince a radio casting director, in a pinch. He decided that it wouldn't. He hadn't used it for quite a while, and he was out of practice. He made a mental note to polish up on it.

The cab drifted to a street corner on the rim of the circle, and the hackman turned.

'How's this, Cap?' he asked.

'This is swell.'

He paid off the driver, waited until the cab drove away, and waited a few minutes more to make certain that the cabbie was not too curious. He surveyed the dimned-out houses on the circle and picked out the mansion which he had already visited once this evening.

There was a light in the downstairs hallway and lights in a second-floor room that must be a bedroom. As he watched, Simon saw a bulky shadow pass the drawn shade. The shadow was of proportions that hardly could have belonged to anyone else but Frank Imberline.

The downstairs light went out. The Saint moved along the sidewalk enough to see a tiny window in the back of the house go on. That meant that the colored butler must be going to bed.

Walking in the deep shadows, Simon Templar made his way to the front door of the house that surely must have been built as an ambassadorial dwelling. He worked on the lock for about a minute with an instrument from his pocket, and it ceased to be an obstruction.

'Now,' he told himself, 'if there's no burglar alarm, and if there's no bolt, we might get to see Comrade Imberline in person.'

There was neither alarm nor bolt. Simon let himself noise­lessly into the front hall and closed the door gently behind him. A circular staircase wound its way up toward the second floor, and there was no creak of a loose joist as the Saint made his way aloft. A crack of light under a door told him that Frank Imberline was still awake.

Simon pushed open the door and calmly walked into the great man's bedroom.

Imberline was seated at a desk, scanning a sheaf of papers. He was clad in maroon and gold pajamas that made the Saint blink for a moment. As Simon stepped into the room, the rub­ber tycoon swung his heavy head in his direction and popped his eyes, the unhealthy ruddiness slowly ebbing from his face.

'Who are you?' he croaked.

'Don't be alarmed, Mr. Imberline,' said the Saint sooth­ingly. 'I'm not a hold-up man, and I'm not an indignant tax­payer proposing to beat you up.'

'Then who the devil are you, and what do you want?'

'My name is Simon Templar, and I just wanted to talk to you.'

'How did you get in here?'

'I walked in,' said the Saint, 'through the front door.'