The Saint Sees It Through (16 page)

“I
don’t get you,” Avalon said.

“Let’s put it simply,” the doctor
replied. He broke off for
the waiter to distribute their drinks. “If the energy you
expend
on living gives you only that amount
of life, then your living
conditions
will never improve. Correct?”

“Umm.”

“But your living conditions do improve.
You have more
and better food than your great-great grandmother, or
your
grandfather thirty-eight times removed. Much better. Some
body,
therefore, has put more into life than he has taken out,
as long as the general living
level of the human race continues
to
improve.”

“And
so?”

“And so,” Dr. Zellermann said, “if the theory that we get
no
more out of life than we put into it is true, somebody is in
the red. A
lot of somebodys. Because the human race keeps
progressing. And if
each individual got no more out of what
he put into it, life
on the whole would remain the way it is.”

“Umm.”

“Are
ideas energy?” the Saint asked.

“There you have it,” Dr. Zellermann
said. “Are ideas en
ergy.” It wasn’t a question. “Are they? I don’t know. A
certain
amount of energy must go into the
process of producing ideas
which may
be translated into practical benefits to the race.
What that amount of
energy is, or whether it can be measured,
is
a point to be discussed in future years by scientists who are
equipped with instruments we have never heard
of.”

“But
have we heard of the Orient?” asked the Saint.

“I
don’t follow you,” Dr. Zellermann said.

Simon paused while their drinks were
delivered; and while
he waited it crossed his mind that the
trouble with all the
creeps he had met so far in this business was
that they re
sponded to a leading question about as actively as a
dead mouse
would
to a slab of Camembert. It also crossed his mind that a
great deal of aimless chatter was being cast upon the chaste
air of that burnished beanery.

Was there some dark and undefined purpose in
the doctor’s
Hegelian calisthenics? Did that turgid bouillabaisse of
un-
semantic verbiage have significance, or was it only stalling for
time?
Surely the distinguished salver of psyches hadn’t asked
Simon and
Avalon here to philosophise with them?

Well, the ulterior motives, if any, would be
revealed in due
course. Meanwhile, it seemed as if the vocal
merry-go-round,
if
it had to keep rolling, could spin to more profitable purpose.

So Simon Templar, in that completely
unexpected fashion
of
his which could be so disconcerting, turned the channels of
the conversation towards another direction of his
own choosing.

“In the Orient,” he said, “the
standard of living remains a
fairly deplorable constant. Millions of those people put an
astounding amount of energy into the process of
survival, and
what do they get?”
His shrug answered the question.

Dr. Zellermann made a small motion with one hand. He
took his
fingers from the stem of his Martini glass and moved
them. The Saint, who
happened to be looking at the hand,
marvelled that so much could be expressed in a gesture. The
small, graceful, yet definite motion said as
clearly as if the
thought were
expressed in boxcar letters: “But, my dear Mr.
Templar!”

“What do they get?” Dr. Zellermann asked, looking some
what like an equine bishop granting an indulgence.
He an
swered his own question.
“Life, my dear Mr. Templar—the
only
actually free gift in the universe. What they do with it is
not only their business, but the end product is
not open to
censure or
sympathy.”

“Still
the old free-will enthusiast?”

“That’s
all we have. What we do with it is our own fault.”

“I
can be president, eh, or dog catcher?”

“That’s
up to you,” Zellermann said.

“A
moment, old boy. Suppose we consider Chang.”

The doctor’s eyebrows said:
“Chang?”

“As a guinea pig,” the Saint
explained. “Chang, once upon
a time, chanced to smoke a pipe of
opium. It was free, and
anything for a laugh, that’s our Chang. Then
he had another
pipe, later. And another. Not free, now. Oh, no. There
are dealers who have to make a living; and behind the dealers
there are
interested governments. So Chang becomes an addict.
He lets his family,
his home, everything, go hang. Where is the
free will, Doctor,
when he’s driven by that really insatiable
desire?”

“It
was his decision to smoke the first pipe.”

“Not entirely,” the Saint pointed
out. “Someone was interested in making it available. You can’t tell me
that it wouldn’t
be possible to restrict the production of opium to
established
medical requirements if the principal world governments
were
really interested. Yet India alone produces more opium than
the whole
world could use legitimately. Very profitable. So
profitable that
governments have come out fighting to keep
the market open. Do
you happen to remember the so-called
Boxer Rebellion?”

“Vaguely,”
Zellermann said in bored tones.

“All the wretched Chinese wanted was
their own country
back,” said the Saint. “But the—ah, Powers,
made a great pitch about rescuing their missionaries, and so put down the
rebellion
and so saved the market.”

“Isn’t
this rather non sequitur?” asked the doctor.

“Is it?” Simon asked. “If you’re
tired of Chang, throw him, away—in his millions. He means no more personally
than a
treeful of yaks, because we have no contact with his daily so-
called
living. But take Joe Doakes in Brooklyn.”

“Really,
Mr. Templar, your train of thought is confusing.”

“It shouldn’t be
,
dear boy. Just
translate Chang into Joe, and consider the identical operation in New York.
Even
America the Beautiful, leave us face it, contains certain citizens
who don’t
much care how they make a million dollars so long
as they make it. And
particularly don’t care who gets hurt in
the process. So now
Joe’s the boy we’re after. He’s like Chang,
in the low income
group, not averse to a bit of petty thievery,
possibly ready for a
pipe after a hard day’s pocket-picking.”

“Who,”
Zellermann inquired, “are ‘we’?”

“We here at the table,” the Saint
said expansively, “for
purposes of hypothetical discussion.”

“Not me,” Avalon interpolated.
“I got troubles of my own,
without including pipes.”

“Let’s say you are ‘we,’ Doctor. Your
problem is twofold.
You must transport the stuff, and then sell it. If you
solve
the transportation problem, you have to find Joe. The first
problem is
fairly elemental. Who goes to the Orient these days?
Sailors. They can
bring in the stuff. Finding Joe is easy, too.
Go into the nearest
pool hall and turn to your right.”

“This leads us
where, Mr. Templar?” Dr. Zellermann asked.
“Though I admit
your conversation has its scintillating aspects,
I fail to see——
” He
let it hang.

“To this point, comrade. A group of men
putting drugs into
the hands—mouths—of persons rendered irresponsible by
economic
circumstance are creating tools. Governments learned
that a long time ago.
Beat a man down enough, and he’ll come
to think that’s the
normal way to be. But private groups—shall
we say rings—who are
foolish enough to think they can get
away with it couldn’t be expected to do
anything but follow
an established lead.”

The Saint watched for any reaction from the
doctor. He
would have settled for a tapping ringer, but the Park
Avenue psychiatrist would have made the Great Stone Face look like
Danny
Kaye.

Simon
shrugged.

He looked
at Avalon and winked.

“In other words, your theory—
‘Faites
ce que voudras,’
if I
may borrow from an older philosopher—is jake
so long as you
and I are the guys who are doing what they damn please.
So
far I only know one of your forms of self-indulgence, and you
only know
one of mine. I have others.”

Avalon smiled; and the Saint marvelled that
all those people
who were so busy clattering their silverware, churning the
air with inanities, and trying to impress a lot of people who were only
interested in impressing them, shouldn’t feel the radiance
of that
smile and halt in the middle of whatever they were
doing. They should
feel that smile, and pause. And think of
things lost, of
beauties remembered, and recapture rapture
again.

But they didn’t. The bebosomed Helen Hokinson
woman
at the nearest table giggled at the young man opposite her;
the
promoter type over there went right on citing figures, no
doubt,
blowing a bugle of prosperity; the Hollywood actress
went on ogling the
Broadway producer, who went on ogling
her, being just as happy to get her in
his highly speculative
play as she was to have the chance of reviving
a career which
had failed to quite keep up with her press agent.

The Saint
sighed.

He turned his attention back to Dr.
Zellermann, waiting for
a hint of the point that must be shown
sometime.

“Another
drink?” asked the doctor.

They had another drink; and then Zellermann
said, with a
thread of connection which was so strained that it sang:
“I
imagine one of the things you would like is forming theories
about
current crimes as the newspapers report them. That Foley
murder in
Brooklyn, for instance, rather intrigues me.”

The Saint took a deep pull on his cigarette;
and a little pulse
began to beat way inside him as he realised that this, at
last, whatever it was, was it.

His own decision was made in a split second.
If that was
how Zellermann wanted it, okay. And if Zellermann favored
the shock
technique, Simon was ready to bounce it right back
without batting an
eyelid and see what happened.

“Yes,” he said, “even in these
days of flowing lucre, it must
be sad to lose a good patient.”

“I wasn’t thinking of the money,”
Dr. Zellermann began.
He broke off suddenly, leaving the remainder
of the thought
unexpressed. “How did you know he was a patient of
mine?”

The Saint
sipped at his Manhattan.

“I saw his name on your secretary’s
appointment pad,” he
said calmly.

“But
look here, Templar. When were you in my office?”

“Oh, I thought you knew,” Simon said
with a touch of sur
prise. “I broke in on Thursday night.”

3

This brought motionless silence to Dr. Zellermann. He eyed
the Saint
coldly for a long moment. Then he said: “Are you
in the habit of
breaking and entering?”

“I wouldn’t say it’s a habit, old boy.
The word habit has
connotations of dullness. As a matter of fact, I should
say I
have no habits whatever, as such, unless you classify breathing
as a
habit. That is one to which I cling with—on occasion—an
almost
psychotic firmness. There have been times, I admit,
when certain persons,
now among the dear departed, have tried
to persuade me to
give up breathing. I am glad to say that
their wiles had no
effect on my determination.”

The doctor shook his head irritably.

“You
know you committed a felony?”

“By
going on breathing?”

Dr. Zellermann raised his voice slightly.
“By breaking into
my office.”