The Saint Steps In

'You don't have to,' said the Saint quietly. 'If you want to confirm it, call the FBI in New Haven. They'll probably admit it to you if you identify yourself. Tell them you're interested on behalf of the WPB.'

'Who was murdered?'

'A man named Angert, employed by Schindler, who was employed by some party unknown to trail Calvin Gray's daughter.'

'I never heard of him.'

'I'm afraid that doesn't make him any less dead.'

Imberline glared at him with unreasonable indignation.

'This is a civilised country,' he proclaimed. 'We don't expect our system to be disrupted by violence and gangsterism. If there has been any official negligence——'

'Something ought to be done about it,' Simon assented tiredly. 'I know. Personally, I'm going to write to the Presi­dent. What are you going to do?'

'What am I going to do?'

'Yes. You.'

'What do you expect me to do? If your story is true, the proper authorities——'

'Of course, I'd forgotten the dear old Proper Authorities. But you were a Proper Authority who was supposed to find out what Calvin Gray had on the ball. And apparently some Im­proper Authority thinks a lot more of him than you did—so much that they're prepared to go to most violent and gang­ster lengths to put him on ice.'

Imberline fumbled a handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and mopped his heavy face. He went over to another chair and made it groan with his weight.

'This is terrible,' he said. 'It's—it's shocking.'

'It's all of that,' said the Saint. 'And it stinks for you.'

'What do you mean?'

Simon slung one leg over the arm of his chair and settled deeper into it. He was no longer worried about being thrown out.

'Madeline Gray had an appointment with you last night,' he said. 'You'll remember I asked you about it. You said you didn't make it. But she thought she had it. And she was on her way to your house when there was an attempt to kidnap her— which I happened to louse up. But it was rather obvious that the appointment, phony or not, was planned to put her on the spot for kidnaping. If anyone wanted to jump to conclusions, they could make your position look slightly odd.'

The other stiffened as if he had been goosed, and a tint of maroon crept into his complexion.

'Are you daring to insinuate——'

'I'm not insinuating anything, Frankie. I'm just telling you what any dumb cop would think of. Especially after you'd been so bull-headed about dodging Gray and his daughter. Almost as if you didn't want them to get a hearing.'

'I told you, there is an established procedure—a well-planned system——'

'And there is Consolidated Rubber, which I hear was rather late in climbing on the synthetic bandwagon.'

Imberline drew himself up.

'Young man,' he said, with indomitable dignity, 'I have never made any secret of my views on the subject of synthetic rubber. If Nature had intended us to have synthetic rubber, she would have created it in the first place. But only God can make a tree. However,' he conceded magnanimously, 'in the present Emergency I have not been influenced by my personal opinions. My life has always been an open book. I am pre­pared to match my principles with any man's. If anyone wishes to impugn my honesty, I cannot prevent him, but I can assure you that he will live to eat his words.'

Simon put a match to a cigarette and regarded him with unconcealable awe.

'Incredible' was the adjective which he had spontaneously tacked on Imberline in the Shoreham, without knowing any­thing about him or having heard more than two sentences of his dialogue. He couldn't improve on it now.

'You ought to be in a glass case,' he said.

The pattern snapped into place. And once there, it was im­movable. His ruthless eyes had held Imberline under a micro­scope for every instant of the interview, and they wouldn't have missed even the cobwebby shred of a frayed edge. Even less than in their first conversation, when he had been com­pletely baffled. But there had been no such thing. The precis he had studied hadn't lied—as he should have known it couldn't. He had jabbed Imberline calculatingly with facts, information, insinuations, names and knowledge, without rat­tling him for a split second on any score except his own sonor­ous self-esteem. No cornered conspirator could ever have been that brilliant. Not even the dean of all professional hypocrites could have been so unpuncturable. Histrionic masterpieces like that were performed daily in detective stories; never in real life. And this was very much a time for realism, no matter what pet postulates went down in the crash.

'Frankie,' said the Saint carefully, 'I'm afraid I'm going to have to shake your foundations a bit. I'm beginning to wonder if you haven't been too much an open book for your own good.'

'Honesty is the best policy—the only policy,' insisted Im­berline, putting a fine ring into his new coinage. Then sud­denly he was a rather helpless and flabby man staring wistfully at a bottle and a syphon on the bureau. 'I was going to have a drink when you came in,' he said, as if he had been cheated.

'Fix me one while you're up,' said the Saint congenially.

He let Imberline muddle through the mechanics of bar­tending, without moving until a glass was put into his hand.

Then he said, trying to walk the tight wire between candor and offense, between toughness and tact: 'Let's face it. You are an honest man. But everyone you meet in this evil world may not be such an idealist as you are. You may have been a sucker for some people who needed a front man whose life was an open book.'

'My associates,' stated Imberline, 'are business men of the highest standing——'

'And Sing Sing,' drawled the Saint, 'has several alumni and post-graduate students who got used to hearing the same things said about them.'

'You're letting your imagination run away with you. This dreadful coincidence—suppose I accept your statement that there has been foul play——'

'Let me ask you a couple of questions.'

'What about?'

Simon absorbed from his drink and then from his cigarette.

'You said last night that Calvin Gray was a nut. Why?'

'That was on the basis of my information.'

'You said that his invention had been investigated.'

'It has been.'

'Who by?'

'I told you—there is an established procedure. You probably haven't had much to do with modern business methods, but I can assure you that the best brains in the country have evolved a system of ——'

'I just asked you: Who? What is the guy's name, where did you dig him up, and which side does he dress on?'

Imberline blinked, and then rubbed his rectangular wattled chin.

'If it's of any importance,' he said, 'I don't think Gray's case went through the regular channels. I'm trying to remember. No, perhaps it didn't. I think I was quite impressed with him at first, and the very same day I was in a position to mention Gray's claims to someone else who is one of the biggest men in that field. This expert told me that Professor Gray had already tried to sell him the same formula, and he had made exhaustive tests and established beyond any doubt that the whole thing was a fraud. So naturally, in order not to place any unnecessary burdens on our system of investigation——'