The Saint Sees It Through

The Saint said nothing. He wanted to watch.

'I think he appreciates them,' Avalon murmured. 'Don't you, dear?'

Simon smiled.

'So many don't,' Mrs. Meldon said. 'You can pour yourself into a sheer tube of a dress, like mine, and a husband will look at you, glance at his watch, and give you hell for being thirty minutes late. My God, how do men expect us to make ourselves——Oh, here are the drinks. Name your poison.'

When they had drinks, Mrs. Meldon gave the Saint a slow smile.

'Well, Mr. Researcher, what now?'

'I have been assigned to find out what I can about Dr. Ernst Zellermann. We're going to pick a Doc of the Year. No slow­poke, medicine, you know.'

Mrs. Meldon stared at him.

'My God, you talk in that style! Don't you find it nauseat­ing?'

'I quit,' Simon said. 'But could I ask you a few questions, Mrs. Meldon? We've picked some possible subjects from the professional standpoint, and it's my job to find out what their patients think of. them.'

'Why pick on me?'

'You're a patient of Dr. Zellermann's?'.

'Well—uh, yes.'

The Saint filed her hesitation away for future reference.

'How do you like him?' he asked.

'He's rather colossal, in a nauseating way.'

'So? I should think a feeling of that sort would hamper the —er—rapport between doctor and patient.'

'Oh, it does,' she said, 'no end. He wishes I'd like him. A phony, he.'

'Really ? I thought he was quite reputable.'

'What is reputable?' Mrs. Meldon countered. 'Is it what empty-headed bitches say, who are suckers for a patriarchal look and soft hands? Is it what some jerk says—'Five hundred dol­lars I paid, for a single interview'— after he's stung? He has an M.D., so what? I know an abortionist who has one.'

'It helps,' said the Saint.

'What do you want to know about him?' Mrs. Meldon asked. 'When he was three years old in Vienna, a butcher slapped his hands because he reached for a sausage. As a result he puts his nurse in a blue smock. He won't have a white uni­form around him. He doesn't know this, of course. He has no idea that the butcher's white apron caused a psychic trauma. He says he insists on blue uniforms because they gladden the eye.'

'He begins to sound like not our kind of man,' the Saint put in.

'Oh, go ahead and pick him,' said the Egyptian princess. 'Who the hell cares? He wouldn't be the first mass of psychic trauma picked as an outstanding jerk. No inhibitions, says he. It's a little tough on somebody who's put inhibitions by the board lo these many moons to go to him as a patient. Shooting fish down a barrel, I calls it. Another drink? Of course. Mix it yourself.'

She crossed her lovely legs in such a fashion that a good por­tion of thigh was visible. She didn't bother to pull down her dress. She seemed tired of the discussion, even a trifle embit­tered, and a pattern began to form in the Saint's mind. He put early conclusions aside in the interest of conviviality and mixed drinks.

'Tell me,' he said, 'how you expect to get psychiatric help from a man you hold in such disregard?'

She straightened up.

'Disregard? Nothing of the sort. He knows the patter, he has the desk-side manner. He can make you tell things about yourself you wouldn't tell yourself. Maybe it helps, I don't know. Yes, I must admit it does. It helped me to understand myself, whatever small consolation that may be. I don't want to under­stand myself. But Gerry insisted. He wants to keep up with things. Like mink coats on dogs.'

'You would say, then, that your relations with Dr. Zeller­mann have been pleasant?'

She looked at him steadily as he handed her a drink. 'Pleas­ant? What's that? Sometimes you get caught up in an emotion. Emotion is a driving power you can't ignore. When you get caught up in it, whatever you do seems pleasant at the time. Even if you curse yourself afterwards, and even if you don't dare talk about it.'

'Do you mean, then, he isn't ethical?'

She twisted a smile.

'What's ethical? Is being human ethical? You're born human, you know. You can't help certain impulses. See Freud. Or Krafft-Ebing. To err is human.'

'And he errs?'

'Of course he does. Even if he is a so-called witch doctor of the mind. Even if he has studied Adler and Brill and Jung and Jones. You don't change a character. All the things that went into making him what he is are unalterable. They've happened. Maybe some of his professors, or fellow psychiatrists, have helped him to evaluate those factors in their proper perspective, but he's still homo sapiens and subject to the ills they're heir to.'

The Saint drank his drink, set the empty glass on the elabo­rate portable bar.

'We've taken enough of your time. Thanks for being so helpful.'

Mrs. Meldon rose to her full and lovely height. 'I'm no cross section on the man. Many more think he's wonderful than not. And in some ways,' she said thoughtfully, 'he's quite a guy, I guess.'

The Saint did not ask what those ways were. He took himself and Avalon away, and hailed a taxi. When they were in it, and he had given the address of James Prather to the driver, he let himself consider Mrs. Meldon.

'Blackmail,' he said finally.

'Ah, beg pardon?' Avalon murmured. 'Understanding not.'

'It's in the picture somewhere,' he insisted. 'I don't care how free from inhibition she may be, she wouldn't be as bitter as she was unless he's bleeding her in some fashion. How, is the question.'

'I don't expect to be of any help,' Avalon said meekly, 'but I suspect the lady has played fast and loose at one time or another with the doctor—or others.'

'Could be,' Simon answered. 'And you are a help, you know, just by being.'

That line of thought occupied them shamelessly during the remainder of the ride.

James Prather they found to occupy an expensive flat in an expensive neighborhood. He gave them a rather nervous welcome, bade them be seated, and did not offer a drink. James Prather paced the floor in house slippers, smoking jacket, and fawn-colored slacks. He was a man middling thirty, with great blue eyes that reminded you of a lobster. His chin was a hue, neither pale nor blue.

He twisted the question out between writhing fingers.

'Yes? What is it?'

The Saint represented himself again as a Time magazine man, and named the subject of his research.

'Yes, yes,' Prather said. 'What about Dr. Zellermann? What kind of a man, or what kind of a doctor?'

'Both,' said the Saint.

'Ah, well——' The telephone rang. 'Excuse me.' Prather answered, listened intently for a moment. Then he shot a glance at the Saint. 'Yes,' he said. 'Yes. I see. Goodbye.'

He turned to Simon. 'Will you please get out of here?'

The Saint watched Mr. Prather at first with a mild disdain, as if he were watching a caterpillar in somebody else's salad; then with mild amusement, as if he had discovered the owner of the salad to be his dipsomaniac Uncle Lemuel; then with concern, as if he had remembered that Uncle Lem was without issue, and might leave that handpainted cufflink to his only nephew; then with resignation, as if it were suddenly too late to rescue Uncle—or the caterpillar.

Simon motioned Avalon to a tasteful divan, and seated him­self. His eyes were now mocking and gay, with blue lights. His smile was as carefree and light as a lark at dawn. He took a gold pencil and a pad from his pocket.

'You were saying,' he prompted, 'about Dr. Zellermann?'

James Prather's fingers were like intertwined pallid snakes, writhing in agony.

'Please,' he begged. 'You must go at once. I have no time for you now. Come back tomorrow, or next week. An important appointment, unexpected. Sorry, but——'

He went to the door, and held it open.

The Saint considered, and after due and deliberate considera­tion rose and helped Avalon to her feet.