The Saint Steps In

of the things I've read about you—you should be able to wangle an appointment with Imberline in a few days at the outside.'

The Saint's fingers combed through his hair. The piratical chiseling of his face looked suddenly quite old in a sardonic and careless way.

'I know, darling,' he said. 'That isn't the problem. The job that's going to keep me busy is trying to make sure that you and your father are allowed to live that long.'

2. How Simon Templar interviewed Mr. Imber­line,

and was Interviewed in his Turn.

A change of expression flickered over her face, that started with a half smile and ended with half a frown; but under the half-frown her brown eyes were level and steady.

'Now are you giving me what you thought I was asking for, or do you mean that?'

'Think it out for yourself,' he said patiently. 'Somebody was interested enough to make your father a present of two explosions and a fire—according to what you told me. Some­body followed you long enough to know you'd been trying to see Imberline. Somebody thought it was worth while calling you and making a phony appointment, and then sending you a threatening note to see how easily you'd scare off. Somebody even thought it was worth while trying another note on me, after they'd seen us talking.'

'You don't know how it got into your pocket?'

'No more than you know how yours fell into your lap. But I was bumped into rather heavily on two occasions, so it was on one of those occasions that the note was planted. The face of Walter Devan and the tall man who had been in Imberline's entourage passed through the Saint's memory. 'Anyway, since you didn't scare, there was an ambush waiting for you on the way. If you'd taken a cab it doubtless would have been run off the road.'

She was neither frightened nor foolish now. She simply watched his face estimatingly.

'What do you think they meant to do?'

'Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe they were just told to rough you up a bit to discourage you. Maybe it was to be a straight kidnaping. Maybe they thought you could be used to keep your father quiet. Or maybe they thought you might be able to tell them his process if they persuaded you enough. By the way, could you?'

She nodded.

'It's very simple, once you know it; and I've been helping Father in his laboratory ever since he started working on it again.'

'Then you don't need to ask me questions about what they might have had in mind.'

She glanced at her drink.

'It's silly, isn't it? I hadn't thought of it that way.'

'You'd better start thinking now. In times like these, any­body who can pour a lot of sawdust, old shoelaces, tomato ketchup, and hair tonic into a bathtub and make rubber is hotter than tobasco. The only thing I can't understand is why the FBI didn't have you both in a fireproof vault long ago.'

'I can answer that,' she said wearily. 'Have you any idea how many new synthetic rubber inventors are pestering peo­ple in Washington every day? Only about a dozen.'

'But if your father's reputation is as good as you  say it is ——'

'All sorts of crackpots have some kind of reputation too. And to the average dollar-a-year man, any scientist is liable to be a bit of a crackpot.'

'Well, they can test this stuff of yours, can't they?'

'Yes. But that takes a lot of time and red tape. And it wouldn't necessarily prove anything.'

'Why not?'

'The specimen might be any other kind of worked-over or reclaimed rubber.'

'Surely it could be detected.'

'How?'

'Analyse it.'

She laughed a little.

'You're not a chemist. Any organic or semi-organic concoction—like this is—is almost impossible to analyse. How can I explain that? Look, for instance, you could grind up the ashes of a human arm, and analyse them, and find a lot of ingredients, but that wouldn't prove whether you'd started with a man or not. That's putting it very clumsily, I know, but——'

'I get the idea.'

He lighted a cigarette and tightened his lips on it. These were ramifications that he hadn't had time to think out. But they made sense within the limits of his knowledge.

He went back to the concrete approach that he understood better.

'Has your father patented his formula?'

'No. That would have meant discussing it with attorneys and petty officials and all kinds of people. And I tell you, it's so simple that if one wrong person knew it, all the wrong people could know it. And after all—we are in the middle of a war.'

'He didn't want any commercial protection?'

'I told you that once, and I meant it. He doesn't need money; doesn't want it. Really, we're horribly comfortable. My grandfather bought a gold mine in California for two old mules and a can of corned beef. All Father is trying to do is to give his process to the right people. But he's been soured by his experiences here in Washington, and of course he can't just write a letter or fill out a form, and tell all about it, be­cause then it would be sure to leak out to the wrong people.'

'Something seems to have leaked out already,' Simon ob­served.

'Maybe some people have more imagination than others.'

'You haven't anyone special in mind?'

She moved her hands helplessly.

'The Nazis?' she suggested. 'But I don't know how they'd have heard of it . . . Or the Japs. Or anyone . . .'

'Anyone,' said the Saint, 'is a fair guess. They don't neces­sarily have to be clanking around with swastikas embroidered on their underwear and sealed orders from the Gestapo up their sleeves. Anyone who isn't as big-hearted as your father, but who believes in him, might be glad to get hold of this rec­ipe—just for the money. Which would make the field a good bet on any mutuel.' He smiled and added: 'Even including that human also-ran, Mr. Sylvester Angert—the funny little man.'

He put down his glass and strolled around the room, his hands in his pockets and his eyes crinkled against the smoke of the cigarette slanted between his lips.

It began to look like a nice little situation. The FBI wouldn't have any jurisdiction unless somebody Higher Up—such as Frank Imberline, perhaps—brought it to Mr. Hoover's atten­tion that the protection of Calvin Gray and his daughter was a matter of national importance. Imberline might do just that, doubtless adding something like: 'A stitch in time saves nine.' But would he? Would the dollar-a-year man who had been the head of Consolidated Rubber go to any great lengths to protect the life of an inventor of a process which could make synthetic rubber out of old bits of nothing much? Might not Imberline, like too many others in Washington, be looking beyond the end of the war? Walter Devan had said something pat about life preservers, but wasn't it a fact, still, that when the war was over, the old battle might start again; the battle between the old and the war-born