Catch the Saint (24 page)

He was checking the night
latch on his door when his phone
rang. Maybe this would be it, his mysterious
opponent’s next
move.

“Simon!” Carole
cried. “Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick. Are you all right?
Didn’t you get my messages?”

“About five minutes ago, when I came
in,” Simon said. “But
I thought
it was too late to call you. Why aren’t you asleep?”

“Asleep?” Carole
said incredulously. “How on earth could I
sleep?
What happened to you?”

Simon chose his words
carefully.

“I was detained.
Unavoidably detained. Circumstances beyond
my
control. I’m just sorry you got upset.”

“Upset isn’t the word
for it. I even had Daddy calling the po
lice
about you. Did they find you?”

“No. I found myself. Wasn’t that a little
alarmist? What did
you think had happened
to me? You’re the potential kidnap vic
tim,
remember. Nobody would pay any ransom for me.”

“I didn’t know what
had happened, but I was going crazy.
What was it
‘detained’ you?”

“I’ll tell you all
about it tomorrow. Now you can call off the constabulary and we can all get
some sleep.”

Her voice dropped with
disappointment.

“Can’t you come up
and tell me now?”

“I don’t think your
papa would approve. Not at this hour of the
morning.
And I’m not feeling too bright right now. Some of
these
business conferences leave you with a thick head.”

“You’re mad at
me,” she sulked.

“No. I’ll meet you
for lunch tomorrow. How about that?”

She had to agree. They
made the arrangements, but she was re
luctant to hang up.

Her lingering gave Simon a
chance to ask a question that was suddenly hammering for release.

“Your father really
called the police?”

“Yes; I begged him
to do it. He has a lot of friends there. He’s
done
a lot for them.”

“Who was it he
called?”

“I don’t know,”
Carole said. “I wasn’t in the room. Does it
matter?”

“No,” he
answered softly. “It doesn’t matter. Good night
now.”

“Good night,”
she said. “I love you.”

Simon settled the
telephone slowly into its cradle and sat for a
long
time without moving. In his stomach there was a sinking,
almost sick feeling.

Nobody knew that he had
been missing last night, except the
back-room boys at
The Pear Tree … and Carole Angelworth.
Therefore,
nobody outside the Angelworth household could have
ordered,
or induced the Supremo to order his release. Therefore
the
Supremo had to be actually in the Police Department,
or
…

Angelworth. Even the name
was too good to be true, just like its charitable possessor. Simon had tended
to assume until now
that the Supremo was a secluded
figure, personally remote from
publicity, working through front men. But the
Supremo could
just as well be a man known in
public life, a man whose popular
image was in sharp contrast to the
secret sources of his power
…
a man like Hyram Angelworth.

Man
…
Of course he was
consciously, even forcibly, confin
ing his
speculations to the conventional gender. Beautiful young girls didn’t lead
secret double lives as the rulers of criminal em
pires,
except in the. most extravagant kinds of fiction.

A likelier possibility
flickered across the screen of the Saint’s
imagination:
Richard Hamlin, as Angelworth’s confidential secretary or whatever he was,
would be in a unique position to exploit and manipulate Angelworth’s financial
power and political influence. This might be a case of a power behind the
throne…
unknown even to the occupant of the
throne? And Hamlin al
ready had a criminal
record. A lot of writers would go for that.

And just as many would
trail him round as a red herring.

Certainly Hamlin wouldn’t
be blinded by any romantic in
fatuation like Carole’s.
Could he have some complicated idea of
trading
on that infatuation to ingratiate himself? That would also be one for the
books; but people sometimes had strange weak
nesses.

All right—what purely
practical motive could the Supremo
have had for
letting the Saint go?

The only explanation that
Simon could come up with along
that line was that the
Supremo, overruling The Pear Tree
quorum, had
decided that West Coast Kelly’s supposed proposi
tion
should at least be given a hearing, and without the prejudi
cial factor of a maltreated ambassador. Which meant that
West Coast Kelly had not yet disowned the Saint—or that the accredi
tation would take longer to obtain. Meanwhile the situation
would be left in the suspended animation of
“don’t-call-us-we’ll-
call-you.”

With a corollary that the
Saint, unlike the Supremo, could
only be the loser in that
kind of waiting game.

But even the fascination
of those mental jigsaw puzzles could not keep him from sleep much longer.

CHAPTER 9

When Simon Templar got
out of bed a little later that morning,
he
had added one more theory to his entanglement of teasers. It
was almost as bizarre as the others, and yet he found it
the hardest to eliminate.

What his conscious mind
had not been able to accept the
night before, his subconscious had relentlessly
and imperson
ally crystallised while he
slept. His surface thinking had been
blurred
and distorted by what he wished to be true. It had trod
den gingerly, picking its way like a mountain
climber crossing a
snowfield. But in
the relaxed transition back to wakefulness he
had felt the white glaze give way beneath his feet, and he had plunged
into the crevasse.

It was a little before
ten o’clock when he walked into Lieu
tenant Stacey’s
office, after reaching one of the toughest decisions
he
had ever had to make, and his expression darkly reflected his
feelings. He could easily have put a cheerful mask on his
face, but
candour served his purposes at this
point.

Stacey reacted to the Saint’s appearance with
something as
close to alarm as his cool,
almost scholarly face could manage.
The
freckles stood out more vividly in contrast to his pale skin.
Some people have a problem with blushing;
Lieutenant Stacey was embarrassed by the fact that he turned extremely white un
der pressure.

“What’s wrong?”
he asked.

“What’s wrong?”
Simon said emotionally, and sat down. “I’ll
tell
you what’s wrong. I almost got killed last night.”

Without waiting for any
more questions, he told the story of
his visit to The
Pear Tree, his captivity, and his release.

Stacey blinked.

“I’d say you were
very lucky,” he managed. “I was afraid
something
like that would happen. What could one man do
against a bunch like
that? The only thing that beats me is that
they
let you go.”

“It wasn’t exactly
what I’d expected either,” the Saint re
joined.
“How do you explain it?”

Stacey held a freshly
sharpened yellow pencil upright between
his
thumb and forefinger and stared at it.

“I don’t,” he
admitted after a moment, and let the pencil fall
over
on to his desk top. “That organisation can swallow men up like quicksand.
One foot in, and that’s the last you hear of them. How do
you
explain
the special treatment?”

“My innocent boyish
charm?” Simon suggested. “Or maybe they’d run out of bullets and
couldn’t find a knife at that hour of
the night.
Whatever it is, I’m not giving them a second chance, I
‘m
out.”

He stood up abruptly.
Stacey, in surprise, automatically rose
from
his own chair.

“I don’t get
you,” he said. “What are you doing next?”

“Minding my own
business,” said the Saint. “And staying alive
if possible. If anybody asks about me, say I’m in
Tahiti.”

“Is that what you
want me to tell Brad Ryner?” Stacey asked.
There
was the faintest trace of accusation in his tone.

“You can tell Brad
the truth,” Simon said. “Tell him I just
can’t
go on, now that I’ve got a good idea what I’m up against.”

And like a failure in
battle who did not want to face his comrades, the Saint turned round and
stalked out of the office.

He went straight back to
the New Sylvania and began to pack.
With that done, he
would be able to leave immediately after lunch, and the last thing he wanted
was to hang round under
that roof. But having
nothing else to hurry for before noon, his
suitcase
was still half empty on the bed when his telephone rang.

“This is Brad
Ryner,” the voice on the line said. “Stacey told
me what happened. I’ve gotta see you.”

“Is it really
necessary? Didn’t you hear? I chickened out.”

The detective summed up in one elegant syllable
what he
thought of that.

“Yeah, it’s necessary,” he went on.
“You can at least talk to
me for five
minutes can’t you?”

“If you say so. I’ll
come over to the hospital-—”

“I’ll come to your
place,” Ryner interrupted. “I’m not at the
hospital.
I just snuck out the back way and I’m in a phone booth.
I’ll be over there in a couple minutes.”

He did not give Simon a
chance to protest. He had also conveniently underestimated the time it would
take him to get to the
hotel, no doubt to be sure Simon had no excuse
for leaving. It
was twenty minutes later
when he knocked at the door.

When Simon turned the
knob he was confronted by a mummy
in a raincoat. Most
of Brad Ryner’s face was still swathed in
bandages.
In one hand he carried a briefcase and with the other
hand
he supported himself against the doorjamb. Simon helped him into the room.

“Watch my ribs,”
Ryner groaned. “I’ve got more fractures
than
San Francisco after the earthquake.”

“And you crawled out
of that hospital bed and dragged your
self over here? You must have more
cracks in your skull than
you do in your
ribs.”

“Never mind about
me,” Ryner said as soon as he had been
carefully
deposited on one of the sofas. “What about you? What’s
all this stuff about you being scared? You’ve never been
scared in
your life!”

“Everybody gets
smart sometime,” Simon said grimly. “I’m sorry. That’s all I can
say.”

“You can say more
than that,” Ryner growled with painful ef
fort. “You are not
scared. I know that! You are not scared, and
so
there’s some other reason why you’re backing out. What is it?”

“The fortunetelling
machine’s downstairs on the sidewalk,”
Simon
said. “I don’t answer questions when you put a penny
in.”

“Then I’ll put a
boot in, right where it hurts,” Ryner retorted
angrily.

“For a man who can
hardly stand up you’re talking mighty
big,” Simon
said with rigid control.

“Yeah, well I don’t
mean that. I mean this.” Ryner beat his
fingers
against his closely held briefcase. “I think you found out
something last night that made you back off. You wouldn’t
go
over to the other side. If somebody threatened you,
it’d just make
you madder. I know you’re after a fast
buck, but you wouldn’t
let nobody buy you off. So what is it? The way
I figure it, it’s
gotta be one of two
things: You’re a businessman. Maybe you
found out you could make a bigger killing if you took another
route. And the other thing is, which I believe is
the truth, the
other thing is that
you’re covering for somebody. Maybe some
body they can get at that you can’t protect. Or maybe you found
out some friend of yours is mixed up with
‘em.”