The Saint Steps In

to buy a paper or say hullo to a friend or something, and he'll be right up. He takes the next car, chats for a while, waits till Imber­line goes to the can, follows him, and flattens his skull on the floor. Then he waits and watches for me to come in, and when he's sure that I'm parked for the night he picks up the phone and leaves the morning call, just to prove that Imberline was alive then and try to make sure he'd be found before I was up. He had a very sound idea of the way a policeman would think, with all due respect, Henry.'

The Saint's voice was light and soothing, but the detachment of his gaze was not part of any clairvoyant trance. He was only hanging words on to something that had long ago become concrete in his subconscious. He was thinking about very dif­ferent things—that this must have been the trap that Andrea Quennel had tried too hard to keep him away from, and that she had looked like a sculpture in alabaster even when she toppled so foolishly on the bed, and that one day he would really be as clever as he tried to be.

Fernack was still clamping his jaw and struggling morosely to stare him down.

'That's all very fine,' he persisted obstinately. 'But coming from you——'

'Some of it might even be in evidence,' said the Saint. 'If Imberline made that morning call, his fingerprints would be on the telephone. Unless the telephone was wiped. The mur­derer wouldn't wipe the telephone unless he'd used it. Unless there were any other calls from this room after that—or are you ahead of me?'

Simon knew from the detective's face that he had rung a bell.

'I had thought of that,' Fernack prevaricated valiantly. 'But in that case, who did kill Imberline?'

'Probably some disgruntled manufacturer of coil-spring cor­sets who objected to having rubber released for making gir­dles.'

Inspector Fernack's sensitive scrutiny started to become con­gested again.

'If you're amusing yourself, I'd rather go and laugh at a good funeral. Imberline was one of these Government men. I'm going to have all of Washington riding me as well as the Mayor. If you don't know anything, get the hell out of here.'

'I might be able to put you in touch with the right people if you were more polite. But I'll have to make a call to New Haven.'

'Go ahead.'

Simon reached for the telephone.

He had no doubt that Fernack followed all the steps of his threading through Information and the FBI to Jetterick; and he didn't try to rush the machinery.

After a few minutes he had Jetterick on the wire.

'This is the Templar Corpse-Finding and Marching Club,' he said. 'How are things with you? . . . Much the same. I haven't been up long enough to check with Stamford yet— you haven't had any bad news from there? . . . Good. Noth­ing on Morgen yet, I suppose? . . . Mmm. One of those unco­operative bastards. I didn't really think he'd have a record— he wouldn't have been so much use if he had . . . Well, what I called you for was to find out whether a bureau bigwig by the name of Frank Imberline tracked you down last night to find out if there was any truth in what I'd told him about some of the ramifications of our country picnic yesterday . . . Oh, he did, did he? . . . That must have been fun . . . No, I don't think I'd better tell you why. I'm going to turn you over to Inspector John Henry Fernack of the woodcraft con­stabulary down here—a maestro of mystery who wants to put me in a striped zoot suit. Tell him whatever you think would be safe for his little pink ears.'

He handed the phone over to Fernack and strolled with his cigarette to the window, floating evanescent blue wreaths against the pane and contemplating the dubious rewards of unswerving but unsophisticated righteousness.  

4

He didn't know what story Jetterick would be telling, and he didn't pay much attention. He imagined it would be pretty complete as Jetterick knew it. The one lead that Jetterick didn't have, aside from the later developments of the day be­fore, was the one that ran to Andrea Quennel and through her to Hobart Quennel and Walter Devan—Simon felt sure that Walter Devan himself was the actual killer in this case. He couldn't see the introduction of any more outside talent, and he couldn't see Hobart Quennel personally engaged in may­hem either. If Morgen had been traced to Devan, Jetterick would have had a pointer in that direction from another an­gle; but even that hadn't happened. And the Saint had prac­tically discounted Morgen altogether by then, except as an accessory: the man's Nazi affiliations might be another story, but they were not this one.

Simon Templar had met property dragons before, often enough to feel almost sentimental about the smell of paint and papier-mache that came with them; but now he had a pellucid and vertiginous certainty that his quarry was darker and dead­lier than any of those hackneyed horrors.

He couldn't have explained very succinctly why he kept the whole trail of Quenco to himself. He knew that that wasn't in line with the most earnest pleas of the Department of Justice—but Simon Templar had always had an indecorous disdain for such appeals. It might have been an incorrigible reversion to his old lawless habits, overriding the new role into which the fortunes of another war had conscripted him. It still wasn't because of Andrea's long rounded legs. It might have been because he knew in cold logic how flimsy his own evidence was, even flimsier than the gauze he had just made out of Fernack's case against him; because he knew that there were no statutory weapons to pierce that statutory armor of a man in Hobart Quennel's position, because in spite of his challenge to Andrea he knew how Fernack and even Jetterick would have laughed at him, because he was afraid of the morass of red tape that could tie him up until his own phan­tom sword was blunt . . . He didn't know, and he didn't think about it much.

He waited until Fernack's mostly monosyllabic conversation was finished. It took an unconscionable time, and he wondered whether it would be included in the bill charged to the late Frank Imberline's estate. He couldn't see much to worry about in that, when he reviewed it; and his brow was serene and unfurrowed when he turned to look at the detective again.

Fernack's brow was a little damp, obviously from overwork, and he was starting to puzzle over the pages he had scrawled over in his notebook. But his manner was reluctantly different under its brittle shell.

He cleared his throat.

'There's just one thing nobody knows yet,' he said. 'Why did you come to New York today?'

'To get some dope on certain characters,' said the Saint hon­estly. 'The girl was one of those things—she drifted in later.'

Fernack didn't even respond to that. It gave the Saint's rudi­mentary conscience a nice clean feeling.

'Why did you want to see Imberline?'

'I didn't know, when I checked in here. It depended on what I found out about him. When his record looked clear— as you'll find out when you get it—I thought I'd just beard him in his den and see if I could make sense with him. I couldn't make much at the time, but it seems he was at least impressed enough to verify me. Which may have been just too bad for him. Like me, he wasn't smart enough. He wasn't smart enough to keep his mouth shut.'

'And you don't know who would have shut his mouth for him?'

'I don't know anything I'd want to have quoted now,' said the Saint, as frankly as he could.

Fernack closed his book and put it away. Simon felt sorry for him.

'Well,' said the detective dourly, 'I expect you were going somewhere. Go there.'

'It's getting late for my breakfast. What about some lunch?'

'I'm going to have to say something to those goddamn re­porters.'

'Next time, then.'

'I hope that won't be for another fifty years.'

'It's too bad, Henry,' said the Saint with almost genuine sympathy. 'This is going to be a hell of a case for you—what with the complications of the FBI and another link in the next state. But that's what the Proper Authorities have badges for.'