The Saint Steps In

She lay in the big bed, her white shoulders clear of the cov­ers, looking pleased with herself like a naughty child who is getting away with something. There was a dress and stockings and lacy intimacies scattered about the room, but he didn't have to total them up to deduce how naked she was. She had a naked expression on her beautifully empty face that had far more impact than the mere fact of nudity. It matched the mindless acquiescence of her big cornflower eyes—he had a name for that impenetrable enigma at last. He didn't have a name quite so facile for the disturbance that she was always on the verge of driving through all his casualness.

He knew that this was a deadline, and in an odd way he was afraid of it, but he didn't let any of that escape from his con­trol.

'I see you like to be comfortable,' he drawled.

He carried her drink over to her. She took it out of his hand, and raised herself so that the sheets hung perilously from the galvanizing surge of her breasts. He sat on the side of the bed without staring at her.

'Tell me something,' she insisted.

He waited while she put half an ounce of brandy away, drawing placidly on his cigarette and flicking ash on to the carpet. Then he said, without any change of tone: 'A friend of mine gave me a ride in from Stamford today. Name of Schindler. We were talking about you.'  

2

He must have been expecting more than he got.

She said: 'Schindler? Oh, yes. The detective.'

'He had a man watching Madeline Gray. Name of Angert. On some fairy-tale about her being blackmailed.'

'That's right.'

'Because you hired him.'

After that it reached her. She sat up so that the covers were called on for a miracle that they were scarcely equal to.

'How did you know that?'

'I told you that I'd been asking questions,' he said. 'I was getting quite attached to Comrade Angert, so, naturally I was interested. The description of Miss Diana Barry could have fitted a lot of people in the world, but out of the people I knew were likely it could only have been you.'

'You're frightfully clever, aren't you?' she said admiringly. 'You're so perfectly like the Saint, it isn't fair.'

He kept his gaze on her eyes.

'Did your father ask you to do that job for him?'

'Of course he did. Was that wrong of me? I mean, I didn't even know you then, so how could I know it would have any­thing to do with you?'

'Why did you call yourself Diana Barry?'

'I couldn't give my own name, could I? He'd probably have told Winchell or Walker or Sobol or somebody. Besides, Daddy likes to do things quietly.'

'Quietly enough to cook up that phony blackmail story, apparently.'

'We had to give some reason, stupid. Daddy was just in­terested in these tiresome Gray people, and he wanted to know more about them. Just like he wanted to know more about you. He's awfully interested in all kinds of people.' She drank some more brandy and scowled momentarily at the glass. 'Now I suppose you're going to be sore because I didn't tell you all about it. Well, why should I tell you? I wouldn't even tell anyone else in the world that much. It's just what you do to me.'

He thought it was time to take a little more of his drink.

'Well,' he observed mildly, 'I'm afraid Comrade Angert won't be much use to you any more.'

'I suppose not, now that you know all about him. So why can't we talk about something more amusing?'

She wriggled a little, like a kitten asking to be stroked, and made a half-hearted attempt to pull the sheets around her bare satin back. The sheets were having a wonderful time.

Simon flipped some more ash on the floor and put his ciga­rette back to his mouth.

'I take it you haven't been back to that accommodation address for any Schindler reports lately.'

'No. As a matter of fact, Daddy told me this evening that I shouldn't bother any more. He's found out all he wanted some other way, or something. So that's the end of it, isn't it?'

'I don't know,' he said inflexibly. 'But if you had been there this afternoon you wouldn't be here now.'

'Why not?' 

'Because you'd have been too busy talking to a lot of rude policemen.'

Nothing could have been more naive and unfrightened than her wide blue eyes.

'What for?'

'On account of Comrade Angert is now very busy snooping on angels,' he said.

She had her glass at her lips when he said it, and she left it cleaned of the last drop when she lowered it. She held it on her knees without a tremor, and her reasons must have been different from his. Or were they? . . . That was the instant when he had to miss nothing; but there was nothing there. Nothing in her eyes or her face or her response. It was like punching a feather pillow. She had to be better than he was. Or he had to be wrong again—as wrong as he had been before. And he couldn't afford any more mistakes. He was fighting something that only gave way around him like a mire.

It went through his brain, like a comet, that the whole point­less death of Angert could still have no point.

Just an unfortunate error; one of those tripwires on which the best plans went agley, wherever that was. Karl Morgen probably hadn't intended to kill Angert anyhow. He had just hit too hard. He wasn't the psychic type. He had simply been on his way to the laboratory to see what he could find, and Sylvester Angert had been skulking in the bushes. Therefore Sylvester Angert had been neutralized. There had been no reason for Morgen to have recognized Angert. You could look for all kinds of complex explanations, but it could be as sim­ple as that. Nothing but a collision between the cogs of too much efficiency. Just one of those things.

And that could be why Hobart Quennel had told Andrea not to bother about Schindler any more— because Morgen's report, through Devan, had already made the round trip, and he knew that that was dangerous ground.

The Saint was making everything very easy for himself. And he didn't know whether it was really easy, or whether it was tougher and more elusive than anything he had thought of before.

And his eyes were still on Andrea Quennel's face.

'What are you getting at?' she asked.

'Comrade Angert got himself bumped off.'

She turned the glass in her hand, and rather deliberately dropped it over the edge of the bed on to the carpet. It was more like her way of putting it down.

'And so you think Daddy had something to do with that,' she said from a lost void.

The Saint didn't move.

'Andrea,' he said, 'if you want to make any changes, this is the time to do it.'

Her eyes swam on him. And then she lay back and covered them with her hands. The sheets gave up the effort of keeping in touch with her.

Simon looked at her for a while, thinking how dispassionate he was. Then he reached over to the bedside table to put his glass down and stub out his fragment of cigarette in the ash­tray.

Then, like before, he was close to her, her arms were around his neck, and her lips were seeking for his and claiming them; and this was worse than before. But he had beaten it before, and he knew the strength of it,