The Saint Steps In

'You killed it then and there.'

'In a manner of speaking.'

'And then talked yourself into believing that it had been thoroughly investigated by your tame experts——'

'Mr. Templar,' said Imberline crushingly, 'my information in this case came from an expert whom my Department would be proud to employ if we could afford him. A self-made man, of course, but the most important figure in his field today.'

'And what is his name? inquired the Saint, with a little pulse beating behind his temples—'Joe Palooka?'

'Mr. Hobart Quennel, the President of Quenco.'

Imberline said it somewhat as if he had been the toastmaster at a diplomatic banquet, and Quenco was a South American republic which recently decided to become a Good Neighbor.

The Saint's glass traveled very leisurely to his mouth again, and his cigarette visited there after it, while his amiably sar­donic blue eyes surveyed the dollar-a-year deacon with un­subdued delight.

Another piece had clicked into its niche, and the threads were sorting out. Calvin Gray had been a shrewder diagnosti­cian than Simon had given him credit for. In fact, Simon had to face the realisation that a great deal of the tangle had been woven out of his own refusal to accept the obvious. Too de­terminedly on the alert for tortuous scheming, he had only succeeded in snarling his own skein. Now he was finally cured, he hoped, and this —this lovely and luminous simplicity—could chart a straight course between way stations to the end.

'So Hobart Quennel was your authority,' said the Saint dreamily. 'And Quenco has two million dollars invested al­ready in a plant that's laid out to use the old butadiene proc­ess.'

Imberline snorted at him.

'Mr. Quennel is one of the most prominent industrialists in the country. I may not approve of his perpetual squabbles with some other Government departments, but in my own dealings with him he has always been most pleasant and co-operative. The mere suggestion that a man in his position would be prejudiced ——'

'And yet,' said the Saint, 'I happened to meet his stooge, Walter Devan, in Washington; and Devan told me that Calvin Gray's formula looked very promising, but just didn't happen to be in their line. Not that it was fraud.'

'Devan isn't a chemist.'

'Neither is Quennel, except that he once worked in his father's drug store.'

'He has the best advice that money can buy. Devan must have been misinformed.'

'Why would Quennel misinform Devan?'

Imberline waved a large hand.

'I am not impertinent enough to pry into Mr. Quennel's private affairs. Doubtless he had his reasons. It could have been no concern of Devan's anyway. The cobbler should stick to his last.'

'Devan said that in front of Madeline Gray. And it's much easier to believe that he was trying to cover up Quenco's inter­est in suppressing Gray's discovery.'

'Nonsense. Of course he was trying to spare Miss Gray's feelings.'

'Pollyanna,' said the Saint bluntly, 'why the hell won't you see that Quennel is playing you for a sucker?'

He had said the wrong thing, and he knew it immediately. Imberline bridled and bulged again, his heavy face darkening. He stood up and boomed.

'Young man, that is not only an impudent suggestion—it's scandalous. Mr. Quennel is the head of a great corporation. A man of his standing has a duty to the public almost like that of a trustee. A great deal of harm has been done by cheap and irresponsible attempts to discredit some of our outstanding industrial leaders. But there is still a thing as business ethics; and thank God, sir, while there are still men of the caliber that has made America what it is today——'

'Spare me the speech,' said the Saint mildly. 'I seem to have read it before somewhere.'

'If you expect to impress me with these wild and scurrilous innuendoes——'

'All I'd like to know,' Simon said patiently, 'is what you propose to do about it.'

'Do?' brayed Imberline.

He seemed to have a defensive repugnance to the suggestion that it was up to him to do something.

'Yes.' Simon left one swallow in his glass, and stood up also. He kept the stout satrap spitted on a gaze of coldly challenging sapphire. 'Don't forget that you could be made to look rather funny yourself on the basis I mentioned a little while ago.'

Imberline's eyes narrowed down into beady stubbornness.

'I shall verify your statements, naturally. As a Public Serv­ant, I am obliged to do that. If they have any truth in them— and I still haven't discarded the idea that the whole thing may be a fabrication of your own— there will of course be a thor­ough investigation. But I'm quite sure that there is some per­fectly simple explanation.'

'I'm quite sure there is,' said the Saint. 'Only you haven't seen it yet.'

'Now will you get the hell out of here again? I have an en­gagement in a few minutes.'

Simon nodded, and glanced at his watch. He emptied his glass and set it down.

'So have I, brother. So just remember what I'm going to do.'

'Next time, you can make a proper appointment for it.'

'I'm going to make an appointment,' said the Saint. 'With the FBI. Tomorrow. In the course of which I shall mention your name in connection with that Madeline Gray business, and your dropping of Calvin Gray on Hobart Quennel's say-so. So if you haven't taken some steps by that time, the Proper Au­thorities will want to know why.' He dragged the last value out of his cigarette and crushed it out in the nearest ashtray. 'I hope you will all have a bouncing reunion.'

He closed the door very silently behind him; and as the ele­vator took him down he was cheered by the thought that he had been able to insert at least one lively bluebottle in the balm of the Ungodly. Frank Imberline might be the nearest thing to a well-schooled moron; he might fume and boom and cling dogmatically to all his platitudes; but a seed had been planted in his approximation of a mind, and if it ever got a root in there it would be as immovable as all his bigotries. The fatuous honesty, or honest fatuousness, which had made him such a perfect tool might boomerang in a most diverting way.

Simon Templar rolled the rare bouquet of the idea through his mind. He had certainly hoped to have something sensa­tional out of Hamilton's reports to confront Imberline with; but this might be even better.

It was nearly eight o'clock, and he was hurried and pre­occupied enough to stride past a couple of men who were en­tering the lobby without recognising one of them until his step was taking him past them. He almost stopped, and then went straight on out of the street, without looking round or being quite sure whether he had been recognised himself. But the monkey-wrench he had flipped into the machinery clattered more musically in his ears as he hailed a taxi. He knew that it would produce some disorder even sooner than he had hoped, and he thought he knew a little more about Hobart Quennel's business conference that night; for the man he had belatedly identified was Walter Devan.

5. How Andrea Quennel tried Everything,

and Inspector Fernack also Did his Best.