The Saint Sees It Through

me into—into a lot of poison ivy!'

In that immortal moment, before anyone else could say any­thing, Patrick Hogan strode through the window like a vic­torious hooligan, beaming across every inch of his irresponsible pug-nosed face.

'Shure, an' I was just waitin' for the chance,' he said joyfully. He lurched over to the bar, still with the same broad grin, and put his left hand on the Saint's shoulder and turned him a little. 'But as for you, Tom me boy, ye're no pal o' mine to have sent him afther me, bad cess to ye; an' if that's your idea of a joke, here's something that oughta tickle ye——'

Without the slightest additional warning, and while he was still grinning and stirring the Saint's shoulder with his other hand, his right fist rammed upwards at the Saint's jaw. Simon Templar was caught where he sat, flat back and relaxed and utterly off his guard. There was an evanescent splash of multi­coloured flares in the centre of his head, and then a restful blackness in which sleep seemed the most natural occupation.

5.

How Ferdinand Pairfield was Surprised,

and Simon Templar left Him.

He woke up in a very gradual and laborious way that was like dragging his mind out of a quagmire, so that although he knew in advance that he had been knocked out there was a lot of other history to struggle through before he got to thinking about that. He remembered everything that he had been through since the beginning of the story—Cookie's Cellar and Sutton Place South, the Algonquin and a cheap secondhand clothing store, Cookie's Canteen and a drive out to Southampton. He remembered people—Cookie, Natello, Pairfield, a melancholy waiter, even Wolcott Gibbs. And a girl called Avalon. And a hostess in Cookie's Canteen, and Patrick Hogan who had so much breezy fun and carried a gun on his hip—and who had Socked him. And Dr. Ernst Zellermann with his clean white hair and ascetic features and persuasive voice, betraying himself with his long ponderous words and the incurable cumbersome Teutonic groping for far-fetched philosophical generalisations which belonged so obviously in a germanic institute of Geopo­litik. Zellermann, who was a phony refugee and a genuine master of the most painstakingly efficient technique that the same germanic thoroughness had ever evolved. Zellermann, who was the prime reason why the Saint had ever entered that circle at all. . . .

That was how Simon had to build it back, filling in the cer­tainties where there had been questions before, in a dull plod­ding climb out of the fog.

He didn't open his eyes at once because there was a sort of ache between his temples which made him screw up his brows in protest, or as a counter-irritant; and that made opening the eyes an independent operation to be plotted and toiled over. It came to him out of this that he had been knocked out before, seldom with a bare fist, but several times with divers blunt instruments; but the return to consciousness had never been so lagging and sluggish as this. He had been drugged before, and this was more like that.

After that stage, and deriving from it, there was a period of great quiet, in which he reviewed other things. He tested his sensations for the drag or the pressure of a gun anywhere on him, and remembered that he had held so strictly to his created character that he had set out unarmed. Still without moving, he let his skin give him tactile confirmation of the clothes in which he had left the Algonquin. The only doubt he had about his make-up concerned the gray of his hair and eyebrows, which was provided by talcum powder and could have been brushed out. His face coloring was a dye and not a grease paint, and his straggly moustache had been put on hair by hair with water­ proof gum—both of them were secure against ordinary risks.

Then after a while he knew why he was thinking along these lines. Because somebody was washing his face. Or dabbing it with a cold wet cloth. Somebody was also shaking him by the shoulder and calling a name that he knew perfectly well.

'Tom! . . . Tom!'

A curiously low voice, for anyone who was trying to call him. But a voice that he knew, too. And a faint fragrance in the air that had been in his nostrils before, some other time when he had heard the voice.

He decided to try opening his eyes, and finally he made it. But there was no difference. Only blackness swimming around him. And he knew that his eyes were open.

He wondered whether he had gone blind.

His head hurt very much, and the shaking at his shoulder made him dizzy. He wished it would all go away.

'Tom! Wake up!'

A voice that filled out words like a cello; a voice and a frag­rance that would be in his memory always.

'Avalon darling,' he murmured sleepily, 'I love you very much, but can't you do anything about your insomnia?'

Then everything was utterly still, except for the far faint lulling whisper of the sea.

It seemed like a good time to go to sleep again.

Then there was a face soft against his cheek, moving; and a dampness that was not the wet cloth, but warmer; and the fragrance sweeter and stronger in his senses; and arms and hands clinging and pressing; and the same voice talking and making sounds that merged with the slow soft roll of the sea, and breaking strangely where there were no waves breaking, and speaking and stirring, and this was something that happened a million years ago but had only been waiting a million years to happen, and he had to do something about it even if it meant smashing his way out of an iron vise that was holding him in that absurd and intolerable suspension, and there was the sweetness and the voice saying: 'Simon, darling . . . Oh, darling, my darling . . . Simon, wake up, Simon!'

And the voice saying: 'I didn't know—I'm such a dope, but I should have . . . Simon, darling, wake up! ... Simon, wake up. . . .'

And then he was awake.

A moment of clarity drifted towards him like a child's bal­loon, and he caught it and held on to it and everything was quite clear again while he held it.

He said very carefully: 'Avalon, I left a message for you that I'd see you tomorrow. Well, this is tomorrow. Only I can't see you. That's silly, isn't it?'

She said: 'I had to put the light out again because I didn't want it to show under the door. . . . Simon, dear, wake up! Don't go to sleep again!'

He said: 'Why did you come here anyway?'

'Because that creep I was with knew Cookie, and she'd apologised, and she was being as nice as she can be, and I have to work and Hollywood came into the picture, and it seemed like the only graceful thing to do, and I can't fight the whole night club racket, and . . . Simon, you must stay awake!'

'I am awake,' he said. 'Tell me what happened.'

'After Pat hit you, Cookie said that it wasn't your fault that Ferdy went after him—he went by himself, or she sent him, or something. And he was broken-hearted. So we all put you to bed, and everything broke up. Zellermann said that you'd sleep it off——'

'I bet he did. But I never had to sleep off a crack on the jaw before.'

'Pat's a strong guy. He carried you upstairs all by himself.'

'I've been slugged by strong guys before. Believe it or not. But it never felt like this afterwards. I feel as if I'd been drugged.'

'You could have been. You were drinking.'

'I was cheat-drinking. I poured the last one myself. But Zel­lermann could have slipped something into my glass.'

'I suppose he could have, in the commotion . . . Stay awake, Simon. You must!'

'I'm still awake. That's how I know. If I'd had it all, you wouldn't have been able to rouse me now. Hogan stopped that by slugging me. But Zellermann still thought I'd sleep it off. I would have, too, if you hadn't worked on me.'

'Simon, are you making sense now?'

'I'm- doing everything in the wide world I can.' It was still an unforgettable effort to speak concisely and intelligibly. 'Give me a chance, baby. I'm working at it. I never was drunk to­night. I sound like it now, but I wasn't.'