The Saint Steps In

heard before answered.

'Miss Gray? She isn't here.'

'This is Simon Templar,' he said.

The voice said: 'Oh.'

There was a longish pause, and then her voice came on the line—a little sleepy and breathless, but perfectly natural and unforced.

'I just wanted to be sure you were all right,' he said.

'Of course I am. Has anything happened?'

'Nothing worth telling, I'm afraid. Have you had any news?'

'No.'

'Are you being well looked after?'

'Oh, yes. Mr. Wayvern left the nicest man here—he's as big as a house and his hobby is collecting butterflies.'

'Good. Tell him to be sure and stay awake so he can go on adding to his collection.'

She hesitated a moment.

'Why ... are you—expecting anything?'

'I'm always expecting things. But don't worry. I just want to be sure he's taking his job seriously.'

'Are you staying in New York tonight?'

'I guess I'll have to. It's probably a bit late for a train. Anyhow, remember the story I've been giving out is that you're in New York, so it'll look more convincing if I stay here. By the way, I'm at the Savoy. I hope they're cursing the joint already, wishing they could find out what name I've got you registered under.'

There was another brief pause.

'Simon—do you think this'll go on very long?'

'No,' he said, with an easy confidence that didn't have to match the expression she couldn't see. 'Not very long. I think there'll be plenty of things moving tomorrow. And I'll keep in touch with you. Now go back to bed and try to forget it until breakfast.'

He opened a fresh pack of cigarettes after he had hung up, and paced the room as he had done hours before.

He was still in the dark, and he could only try to get some slim consolation out of the hope that the Ungodly were equally benighted. He wished he felt more assured about stay­ing away from Stamford. But if he had really been hiding Madeline Gray in New York, the Ungodly would naturally ex­pect him to stay close to her. In fact, they might have been watching him from any point in the evening in the hope that he would lead them to her. That might have been what Andrea Quennel was worried about. Or had she been worried? Had she staged a terrific performance to try and drive him into sus­picion and from that into a false move? And how would the Ungodly think? If he had hurried off to Stamford, would they have credited him with trying most cunningly to lead them off on a false scent, and thereby have been convinced that Made­line Gray actually was in New York? Would they think that he would never be so reckless as to leave Madeline Gray in such an exposed position as Stamford; or would they think that that was precisely what he wanted them to think? ... It was a game of solitaire played with chameleon cards.

And yet with all that, as he always remembered, he never thought of the real danger.

He went to bed and slept eventually, since there was noth­ing else to do. It was ten o'clock when he woke up, and he knew that he had been tired from the night before. He show­ered and began to dress; and he was debating whether to get a shave before breakfast or have breakfast before the shave when his door trembled with an unnecessarily vigorous knocking.

He went and opened it, and raised his eyebrows involun­tarily at a familiar face that he had not seen for some time.

'Why, Henry!' he exclaimed. 'Fancy your finding me here.'

The familiar figure filled the doorway with its shoulders.

'Fancy my not finding you here,' retorted Inspector John Henry Fernack harshly. 'Come out and tell me what you had against Imberline.'  

3

It all fell together in the Saint's brain like an exact measure of peanuts dropping into an envelope from an automatic pack­aging machine. It was so neat and final that he felt weirdly calm about it, not even dallying for a moment over the mecha­nism that made it happen.

He said on one emotionless note: 'He's dead, is he?'

'You should ask me,' Fernack replied sarcastically.

The Saint nodded.

'I shouldn't. You wouldn't be here if he was beefing about somebody stealing one of his cigars.'

Fernack glowered at him implacably. There was a lot of history behind that glower. Aside from being part of a routine which has made this chronicler so popular with tax collectors everywhere, it was rooted in a long series of conflicts and collisions that all flooded back into Fernack's mind at such times as this. It was a hard life for him, as we must admit after all these years. Personally, he liked the Saint; in a peculiar way, he respected him; as an honest man, he had to admit that in a complete perspective the Saint had done far more for him than he had undone; and yet as a salaried custodian of the Law it seemed to Fernack that the Saint's appearance in any crime was a doomful guarantee of more strain and woe than any policeman should have been legitimately asked to bear. Be­sides which, even if he had never succeeded in compiling the mundane legal evidence, he knew to his own satisfaction that the Saint's methods had a light-hearted and even lethal disre­gard for lawful processes which it was always going to be his duty to try and prove: it would be a bitter triumph for him when he achieved it, and yet his consistent failure was no less galling. It was, inevitably, a dilemma that couldn't help hav­ing the most corrosive effects on any conscientious police­man's equanimity.

He said, with almost reflex bluster: 'Maybe you'd like to have another look at him and see what sort of a job you did?'

'I would,' said the Saint.

Along the corridor, two uniformed men were holding back a bunch of impatient reporters. An assistant manager, torn between retaining the goodwill of the press and avoiding un­desirable publicity, twittered unhappily to and fro. One of the reporters yelled: 'Hey, Fernack, d'you want a special edition all to yourself?' Another of them said: 'Who's that guy with him?'

1013 seemed to be stocked full of busy toilers in plain clothes. A police photographer was packing up his equipment. Other specialists were working over the furniture with brushes and powder, wrapping exhibits, opening drawers and closets, picking up things and putting them down. It was a scene of prescribed antlike activity that the Saint seemed to have seen rather a lot of lately.

The body was on the bed, an amorphous mound suggestive of human shape under a sheet, like the first rough lumping of a clay model.

Fernack pulled the sheet back, Imberline looked as if he might have been asleep with his mouth open. But his eyes were half open too, showing only the whites. There was a folded towel under his head that showed red stains on it.

'What did he die of?' Simon asked.

'He fell down in the 'bathroom and beat his brains out on the floor,' Fernack said. 'Don't you remember?'

'Old age does things to your memory,' Simon apologised. 'Tell me all about it.'

Fernack replaced the sheet.

'Imberline left a call for seven-thirty this morning. That was about twelve-thirty last night. His telephone didn't an­swer. They sent a housekeeper to check up. She looked in, didn't see him, and sent a maid in to