The Saint Sees It Through

3.

How Mr. Prather said little, and

Dr. Zellermann said even less

The Saint had never considered himself to be psychic. He had learned that by adding the factors of a situation he could fore­cast the probable moment when Death would leer at him over a gunsight, or ride the business end of a club, or sing through the air on the point of a knife. He had learned that, when he sub­consciously placed such factors in their proper alignment and came up with a subconscious answer, his adrenal glands went quickly into action with a suddenness that brought a tingling to the back of his neck and the tips of his fingers.

He did not regard this sensation as the result of a psychic gander into the immediate future, nor as the brushing of the back of his neck by an ectoplasmic hand once belonging to the goose-over-a-grave school of premonitory shuddering. The tin­gle he felt when James Prather followed his bulging eyes across the deserted floor of Cookie's Cellar was, he knew, the result of his adrenals sitting up and taking notice.

For Simon had added the factors, and their sum total was danger. Not that he expected explosive action at the moment. He could have written the dialogue to come almost word for word. These characters weren't certain where and how the Saint fitted into the picture. Their motivation at the moment was the desire for such knowledge, and they would go about satisfying that desire in a fashion designed to be subtle and offhand.

Nobody would say, yet: 'Just what the hell are you doing here?'

The Saint said under his breath to Avalon: 'Get a table. Yonder bucko would have words with me. I'll join you.'

She sandwiched herself between Sam and Joe and piloted them to the far wall, which had been pleasantly blank before Ferdinand Pairfield had agonized upon it in pastel, and the Saint waited for Prather.

'Just what the hell are you doing here?' Prather demanded.

The Saint did not allow so much as the quiver of an eyelash to acknowledge his downfall as a prophet. His lazy smile and mocking blue eyes only indicated amusement at the gauche ap­proach. Prather flushed under the steady gaze, and his lobster-like eyes shifted away and back. In their shifting away, they touched on Joe Hyman and Sam Jeffries but showed no trace of recognition.

'Comrade,' the Saint said, 'far back in the history of this country certain gentlemen flung powder and shot about in the cause of freedom. Such points as they won have been tradition­ally passed down through the years, and one of those points is the untrammelled right to visit such places as this, with its steel-trap economy, its bad air and worse drinks. Just why anyone in his right mind should like to exercise his right to such dubi­ous pleasure is beyond me, but there it is.'

'There's something fishy about this,' Prather said in a sort of bewildered whine. 'First, you come to my place with a song and dance about research. Then you follow me here. Why? I know who you are. You're the Saint. But I can't see why you followed me.'

'Follow you? Dear boy, I wouldn't follow you into the flossiest bagnio this side of Paradise. But now that you seem to have made such a lightning trip here, I'm happy to see you. Won't you join my party? I'm still gathering material.'

Prather regarded the table where Avalon parried verbs with Sam Jeffries with the concentration of a man sucking a piece of popcorn out of a cavity.

'Thank you,' he said with a grimness that was rather sur­prising. 'I'll be glad to.'

Sam was on his life story, apparently having begun at the present, and was working backward.

'. . . and there was this guy we had to see in Shanghai. Joe wanted to get drunk right off, but I says no we gotta see this guy before ...'

He broke off, looked up. No flicker of recognition moved his brown face as he glanced incuriously at Prather. To the Saint, Sam said: 'I was just tellin' Miss Dexter about our last trip.'

Something happened, but the Saint didn't catch it. It could have been a glance, a shake of the head, a kick in the ankle, from James Prather. For Sam suddenly froze. He didn't look at Prather, he didn't look at anybody, but you could see his thoughts and amiable chatter roll themselves up like armadillos and become impregnable and lifeless. All the warm lights went out of his eyes, and his smile became a fixed liability.

His social immobility somehow conveyed itself to Joe, who underwent little change to achieve Sam's frozen state. Both young men rose to shake hands as the Saint performed intro­ductions, but, like Mudville on the night of Casey's disaster, there was no joy in them. Sam remained standing, long, lean, and brown.

'Guess we better shove off, huh, Joe?'

'Yeah,' Joe said, meeting nobody's eye. 'Guess so.'

'Don't run away, boys,' Avalon said. But she said it per­functorily. She knew they were going. Her tone was a polite­ness, not an urging.

'When the party's just starting?' said the Saint, He, too, knew they were going. A kick, a frown, a shake of the head. These had made the boys jittery.

'Well, Saint,' Sam said. 'You know how it is. Just back from a long trip. We were kinda thinkin' of girls of our own. Course, I'll have to get one for Joe, here, but still——' He nodded at Avalon. 'Thought we had something there—uh, Miss. But seems she's staked out. So we'll blow.'

More handshakes, and they were gone.

Kay Natello came over to greet them, and in that voice like a nutmeg grater on tin cans, asked, 'What'll it be?'

She didn't seem to be anxious to cut up old touches with Simon, so he played it her way.

'Old Foresters all around. Doubles,' he added, remembering the strength of drinks at Cookie's.

'Now,' the Saint said when Kay had gone. 'Tell me about Dr. Zellermann.'

'What is there to tell?'

Prather didn't seem uncomfortable. There was, in his mind, nothing to tell. At least, he gave that impression.

'He's a psychiatrist,' he went on. 'A good one, maybe. Any rate, he gets good prices.'

'Well,' the Saint said. 'Maybe we'd better drop him. Let's just have fun, kids.'

Avalon looked several volumes of unprintable material at the Saint and asked: 'How do you propose to do that?'

'By displaying my erudition, darling.' The Saint smiled gently at her, and then bent attentive eyes on Prather as he said: 'For instance. Do you know the word 'cougak'?'

This brought no response. Simon sighed inwardly. Might as well get it out into the open, he thought. 'It's the term applied to the bloom of a certain plant known as Pavarer somniferum. It's cultivated chiefly in Asia. After the poppy flowers, and the leaves fall off, the remaining pod develops a bloom, easily rubbed off with the fingers, called cougak. Then it is time to make the incision.'

'What are you talking about?' Avalon demanded.

'Mr. Prather, I think,' said the Saint.

Prather blinked his overblue eyes at Simon.

'I'm sorry, but I don't know what you mean.'

'It really doesn't matter,' the Saint said. 'Let's talk about something else.'

He noted that Kay Natello, who had been hovering in the middle distance, took her departure at this point and vanished through the archway at the back. Had there been a signal? If so, he hadn't caught it.

'Mr. Prather,' he said, 'you must find life quite exhilarating. Contact with the major ports of the world, and all that.'

Prather stared, his eyes more lobster-like than usual.

'What are you talking about?'

There was no mistaking the honest bewilderment in the prominent blue eyes, and this gave the Saint pause. According to his ideas on the organization he was bucking, Prather would be one of the key men. Sam Jeffries had substantiated this no­tion, in his interrupted story to Avalon: '. . . and there was this guy we had to see in Shanghai.'

That fitted in with the whole theory of 'Benny sent me.' A contact was made here, instructions given,