'I hope so,' said the Saint. 'The guy's name is Nick Vaschetti.' He spelt it out. 'He says he won't talk to anybody but me; but maybe the jail doesn't have to know me. See what you can do, and I'll call you back in about an hour.'
He sat on the bed in thought for a minute or two, and then he picked up the telephone again and asked for 'Washington. He hardly had to wait at all, for although the hotel operator didn't know it the number he asked for was its own automatic priority through all long distance exchanges.
'Hamilton,' said the phone. 'I hear you're a newspaper man now.'
'In self-defense,' said the Saint. 'If you don't like it, I can pack up. I never asked for this job, anyway.'
'I only hope you're getting a good salary to credit against your expense account.'
The Saint grinned.
'On the contrary, you'll probably be stuck for my union dues. . . . Listen, Ham: I'd rather lay it in your lap, but I think I'd better bother you. These three men----'
'Blatt, Weinbach, and Maris?'
'Your carrier pigeons travel fast.'
'They have to. Is there anything else on them?'
Simon gave him the two rough descriptions.
'There's a good chance,' he said, 'that they may have cor on from Chicago. But that's almost a guess. Anyway, try it.'
'You never want much, do you?'
'I don't like you to feel left out.'
'You're not leaving out the beautiful swooning siren, of course.'
'In this case, she's a blonde.'
'You must like variety,' Hamilton sighed. 'How much longer are you expecting to take?'
'Depending on what you can dig up about the Three Neros, and what breaks tonight,' said the Saint, 'maybe not long. Don't go to bed too early, anyhow.'
Which left him laughing inwardly at the breath-taking dimensions of his own bravado. And yet it has already been recorded in many of these chronicles that some of the Saint's tensest climaxes had often been brewing when those almost prophetic undercurrents of swashbuckling extravagance danced in his arteries. . . .
Olga Ivanovitch was waiting in the lobby when he came downstairs again.
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'There was a letter I had to answer.'
'Nitcbevo,' she said in her low warm memorable voice. 'I was late myself, and we have plenty of time.'
He admitted to himself after he saw her that he had had some belated misgivings about the rendezvous. The lighting in the lobby of the Alamo House was a different proposition from the blue dimness of the Blue Goose: she might have looked tired and coarsened, or she might have been overdressed and overpainted into a cheap travesty of charm. But she was none of those things. Her skin was so clear and fresh that she actually looked younger than he remembered her. She wore a long dress; but the decol-ietage was chastely pinned together, and she wore an inappropriate light camelhair polo coat over it that gave her a kind of carelessly apologetic swagger. She looked like a woman that any grown man would be a little excited to take anywhere.
'I've got a car,' he said. 'We can take it if you can direct me.'
'Let me drive you, and I'll promise you a good dinner.'
He let her drive, and sat beside her in alert relaxation. This could have been the simplest kind of trap; but if it was, it was what he had asked for, and he was ready for it. He had checked the gun in his shoulder holster once more before he last left his room, and the slim two-edged knife in the sheath strapped to his right calf was almost as deadly a weapon in his hands--and even less easy to detect. It nested down under his sock with hardly a bulge, but it was accessible from any sitting or reclining position by the most innocent motion of hitching up his trouser cuff to scratch the side of his knee.
Simon Templar was even inclined to feel cheated when the drive ended without incident.
She steered him into a darkened bistro near the Gulf shore with bare wooden booths and marble-topped tables and sawdust on the floor.
'You have eaten bouillabaisse in Marseille,' she said, 'and perhaps in New Orleans. Now you will try this, and you will not be too disappointed.'
The place was bleakly bright inside, and it was busy with people who looked ordinary but sober and harmless. Simon decided that it would be as safe as anything in his life ever could be to loosen up for the length of dinner.
'What made you call me?' he asked bluntly.
He had always felt her simple candor as the most cryptic of complexities.
''Why shouldn't I?' she returned. 'I wanted to see you. And you turn out to be such an unusual kind of traveling salesman.'
'There are so few things you can sell these days, a guy has to have a side line.'
'You write very cleverly. I enjoyed your story. But when you were asking me questions, you weren't being honest with me.'
'I told you everything I could.'
'And I still told you everything I knew. Why do you think I was--what do you call it?--holding out on you?'
'I told you everything I knew, tovarich. Even if you did place me for a salesman.'
'You didn't ask me about Blatt, Weinbach, and Maris.'
'Only about Blatt.'
He had to say that, but she could still make him feel wrong. Her air of straightforwardness was so unwavering that it turned the interrogator into the suspect. He had tried every device and approach in a rather fabulous repertoire the night before, and hadn't even scratched the surface of her. He knew exactly why even Lieutenant Kinglake might have left her alone, without any political pressure. Take her into court, and she could have made any public prosecutor feel that he was the prisoner who was being tried. It was the most flawlessly consistent stonewall act that Simon Templar had ever seen.
'You could have asked me about the others,' she said. 'If I could have told you anything, I would have. I'd like to help you.'
'What could you have told me?'
'Nothing.'
At least she had told him the truth about the bouillabaise. He gave himself up to that consolation with fearful restraint.
It was half an hour later when he made one more attempt to drag the conversation back from the delightful flights of nothingness into which she was able to lead it so adroitly.
'Aside from my beautiful profile and my great literary gifts,' he said, 'I'd still like to know what made you want to see me again.'
'I wanted you to pay for my dinner,' she said seriously. 'And I do like you--very much.'
He remembered the way she had kissed him at her door, and forced himself to consider that if he had gone for that he would probably have been going for something as calculated as her simplicity.
'It couldn't have been, by any chance, because you wanted to find out if I knew any more?'
'But why should I? I am not a detective. Do I keep asking you questions?' She was wide open and disarming. 'No, I am just guilty of liking you. If you wanted to tell me things, I would listen. You see, my dear, I have that Russian feeling which you would think stupid or--corny: that a woman should be the slave of a man she admires. I am fascinated by you. So, I must be interested in what you are doing. That is all.'
The Saint's teeth gripped together while he smiled.
'Then, sweetheart, you'll be interested to know that I'm going to make an important phone call, if you'll excuse me a minute.'
He went to a coin phone at the rear of the restaurant and called the Times-Tribune again.
'It's all set,' said the flat voice of the city editor. 'Any time you want to pick me up.'
'I'm just finishing dinner,' said the Saint grimly. 'If nothing happens on the way, I'll pick you up within thirty minutes.'
He went back to the table, and found Olga placidly powdering her perfect nose.
