The Saint Steps In

'If you find you can get away,' she said, 'you've only got to call us. We don't dine till eight, and any time up till then . . . Will you do that?'

'Sure,' he said, with just the right amount of politely mean­ingless promise.

'Let me give you our number in Westport.'

He wrote it down.

'Your father isn't going home till late?' he said idly.

'No. He's got one of those awful business conferences. I'd have waited for him if I had anything to do.' She pouted at her empty glass. 'Why don't you get me another drink, sweetie?'

'I'm sorry.'

He gave the order; and she sat back and reflected his gaze with blue eyes as pale and vacant as a clear spring sky.

'Are you staying in town tonight?' she asked.

'Yes.'

'Where?'

'Here.'

He had only just decided that, but it struck him as a con­venient step with a multitude of enticing possibilities.

She brightened her cigarette with a deep fretful inhalation.

'Why do you have to play so hard to get?' she demanded abruptly.

'I suppose I must be anti-social.'

'I think you're wonderful.'

'So do I. But maybe I have eccentric tastes.'

'You.don't like me.'

'I don't really know you.'

'You could do something about that.'

It was quite plain to him that he could. It had been just as plain at their first meeting; but he hadn't given it any serious thought. Now he knew exactly why he had kept Andrea Quen­nel for his own special assignment, and what he had to do about it, because this was the part he had been cast for with­out even asking for it. Perhaps in a way he had known for sev­eral hours that it would come to this, without thinking about it, so that there was no shock when he had to realise that the time was there.

Two more dry Martinis arrived, and he raised his glass to the level of his mouth again; but this time he knew that it was a sword.

'Here's to crime,' he said, and she smiled back.

'That sounds more like you.'

Deliberately he let his eyes survey her again, and they did not stop at the neck. There wasn't a blush in her. She gave him back glance for glance, her red lips moist and parted. He let about half the calculated reserve soften out of his face.

'I told you I'd been a bit slow,' he murmured. 'Maybe I've been missing something.'

'Want to reform?'

'It seems as if it might be more fun to degenerate.'

'I could have fun watching you degenerate.'

Then she pouted again.

'But,' she said, 'you're so frightfully busy . . .'

He knew just where he was going now, and he had no scruples about it. He was even going to enjoy it if he could.

'I've got some things that I must do,' he said. 'I can't get out of that. But I could get through a lot of them by eight o'clock. If you'd like to meet me then, we could nibble a ham­burger and spend a few hours making up some lost time. Would that tempt you?'

'My resistance has been low ever since I met you,' she said, and touched his hand with her fingers.

His mind was totally dispassionate, but there were human responses over which the mind held very nominal control. He was very much aware of the way her breathing lifted the round­ness under her clinging sweater, and the eagerness that went out to him from her face. And he had a disturbing intuition, against all cynical argument, that her part in the game was no harder for her to play than his was for him.

Which was a good idea to forget quickly.

He said: 'I'll have to get started if I'm not going to keep you waiting at eight o'clock. Let's meet at Louis-and-Armand's. We can fight out the rest of it over dinner.'

'We won't fight,' she said. 'I'll chase around and see if I can find Daddy and tell him I'm not going straight home: And I'll see you at eight.'

'I always seem to be giving you a sort of bum's rush,' he remarked, 'and here it is again.'

She shook her head. She was suddenly very gay.

'Tonight is different, darling. Do you think it was Fate that made me see you outside the Roosevelt?'

'It could have been.'

They drained their glasses while he waited for the check, and presently he took her outside and opened the door of her car for her. She got in and adjusted her skirt without any particu­lar haste.

'I'll wait for you,' she said. 'You wouldn't stand me up, would you?'

'Not tonight, for a dictator's ransom,' he answered lightly, and watched her drive away with the lines around his mouth smoothed in sober introspection.

He went back into the lobby, found a writing table, and enclosed a postcard announcing the forthcoming appearance of Larry Adler in an envelope which he addressed to Mr. Frank Imberline. He took the envelope over to the desk and put it down there, moving away at once and unnoticed behind the ample cover of the woman to whom the room clerk was talk­ing. From the other side of the lobby he watched until the woman billowed off, and the clerk found the envelope, glanced at the name, time-stamped it, and put it in one of the pigeon­holes behind him.

The Saint strolled back to the desk without taking his eyes off the pigeonhole until he could read the number on it. The number was 1013.

'Can you find me a room for tonight?' he asked. 'Some­thing about the tenth floor—I like to be fairly high up, but not too high.'

He was about to register in the name of Sebastian Tombs, from nothing but automatic caution, when he remembered that Andrea Quennel might call him. He wrote his own name instead, and never guessed how he was to remember that de­cision.

After some discussion he settled for 1017, which seemed al­most like divine intervention.

Having no luggage, he made a cash deposit, and went up­stairs at once. He sent for ice and a bottle of Peter Dawson. By the time it came he already had his coat and tie off, and he was stretched out comfortably with his feet up, poring over the contents of Hamilton's envelope.

3

He took the report on Calvin Gray first, since it was the shortest. And it only amplified with dates and places the kind of picture which he had sketched by then for himself.

Old New England family. Graduated from Harvard, magna cum laude. Member of the faculty of Middleburg College, five years. Married; one daughter, Madeline, later B. Sc. at Co­lumbia. Wife died in childbirth. Member of the faculty of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, nine years. Then a pro­fessorship at Harvard for six years. Inherited California gold mine at death of father. Check, check, and check. Retired, and devoted himself to private research. Author of one book, Molecular Principles of