The Saint Sees It Through (18 page)

Avalon smiled with both sides of her mouth. It
was a tender
smile, with secret undertones.

“His path through life,” said
Zellermann—“and I don’t
mean to sound like a text book—is inevitably
beset with adven
ture, crime, and personal danger. I happen to know that
many who have allied themselves with him have died. Somehow, he
has come
through all his adventures. But the day will come, my dear Miss Dexter, when
Lady Luck will frown on her
favorite protege.”

Avalon rose
abruptly.

“And so on and so on,” she said.
“Let’s skip the soul
analysis. You heard him fling me to the
wolves. I informed on
him, he said. I told you about what he’s been
doing. I don’t
think I’m in danger of being hurt—or even being near him,
for that matter. So long.”

She walked out of the hotel, straight and
tall and lovely.
When she was on the sidewalk, three cab drivers rushed up
to claim her for a fare. She chose one.

“The
Tombs,” she said; and the man blinked.

“Caught
up with th’ boy friend, hey? ‘Stoo bad, lady.”

“My grandmother,” Avalon said
icily, “is in jail for matri
cide. I’m taking her a hacksaw. Will
you hurry?”

All the way to the gloomy pile of stone, the
cab driver shook
his head. When Avalon paid him off, he looked at her with
troubled eyes.

” ‘Scuse me, lady, but why would the old
dame steal a mat
tress? It don’t make sense.”

“She got tired of sleeping on the
ground,” Avalon told him.
“Some people just can’t take it.”

She went inside and was directed to the desk
sergeant. He
was a large man, and the lines in his face had not been
acquired
by thinking up ways to help his fellow man. He was busy at
the moment she arrived before him, studying some printed m
atter on
his desk. He didn’t look up.

“Excuse
me,” Avalon said.

The sergeant paid no attention. He continued
his study of
the papers before him. He held a pencil in one huge fist,
and
made a check mark now and then.

“I beg
your pardon,” Avalon said.

Still there was no evidence that the sergeant
had heard her.
He continued to peruse his mysterious papers. Avalon, like
those who also serve, stood and waited. Presently the sergeant
made a
check mark after the name Sir Walter in the fourth at
Pimlico and looked
up.

His eyes were without expression. They roved
over the convolutions of beauty as if they had been inspecting a prize farm
animal. They penetrated, yes, and Avalon could feel her clothes
falling
off
 
her; but there was no lust,
no desire, in the sergeant’s
eyes—only boredom.

“Yeh?”
he said.

“I want to see a prisoner you have
here,” she said. “His name
is Templar.” She spelled it.

The sergeant’s eyes said “Dames!”
as he reached for a heavily
bound ledger. He scanned it.

“When
did he get here?”

“An
hour ago, or less.”

“Nobody’s
been here in the last hour.”

“Where
would he be, then?”

“What’s
the rap?”

“Oh,
he hasn’t even been tried. No charge has been made.”

The sergeant’s eyes groaned,
rolled skyward.

“Lady, he’ll be booked at Centre Street
headquarters. He
won’t
come here till he’s been convicted.”

“Oh. I
didn’t know. Where is it?”

He told
her. She flagged a cab, and went there.

As she mounted the wideflight of stairs, she
was joined by
Kay Natello and Ferdinand Pairfield.

Ferdinand was resplendent in purple scarf, gray plaid jacket,
dove-gray
trousers, gray suede shoes and lemon-colored socks.
His hands were white
butterflies emerging from cocoons.

“Darling!” he cried, like bells from
Lakm
é
.

Kay Natello might as well have been dressed in a fire hose for all the
blue cotton dress did for her gaunt frame. She said
nothing, and Avalon
was grateful for being spared that.

“Myrmidons,” Avalon murmured. “What’s the rap?”

Ferdinand put butterflies on her arm and she shivered.
“Quaint
girl,” he purred. “We were down to see a lawyer
on Wall
Street, and we were just passing in a cab—with the
most brutal driver,
my dear, simply delicious—and Kay said,
‘There’s Avalon!’ And
since we’d been looking all over for
you—” His shrug was as graceful
as feathers on a little wind.

“Looking for me?”

“Yes, come on,” Kay Natello said,
in the voice which was
so like an overstrained buzz-saw.

“The most marvellous thing,
darling,” Ferdinand burbled.
“Magnamount’s going to do a
picture around Cookie’s Canteen.
We’ll all be in it. And you’re to have a good
role. So come along.
Cookie wants to be sure you’ll play before she
signs up with
Mr. Pfeffer.”

“Mr. Pfeffer being
——
?”

“The producer, dear girl. He’s very quaint.”

Avalon stood in indecision for a moment. She seemed to
find nothing to say. But at last she said: “Okay. You two run along.
I’ll join
you shortly. At Cookie’s?”
    

“But you can’t possibly,” Ferdinand
objected. “And surely you haven’t anything to do in this dismal place. You
couldn’t
be interested in any of the sordid characters who find
their way
in here. What are you doing here anyway?”

“I lost a gold compact and a pair of
earrings out of my purse in a taxi,” she said. “I thought this would
be the place to report
it. Not that I expect it’ll do much
good.”

“It probably won’t,” Ferdinand
said. “But I’ll help you talk
to these dreadful barbarians, and then
we can all ride back up
town together.”

4
.

How Simon Templar dressed up,

and duly went to a party.

The two young men who rang James Prather’s
doorbell might
have been well-dressed haberdasher’s assistants, shoe
salesmen,
or stockbrokers. They told the goggle-eyed Mr. Prather
that
they were attached to the Treasury Department and had credentials to
prove it. One of them, a calm blond boyish young man,
said his name was
Harrison. He introduced the other, who
was red-headed and
freckled, as Smith.

Prather’s pale hands fluttered in the
direction of the divan.

“Sit down, will you? What’s the matter?
Income Tax
trouble?”

Smith placed his blue felt hat on his
well-pressed knee and said nothing. He seemed intensely interested in the hat.
Har
rison pushed his own hat back on his tow hair and seemed to develop a
curiosity about the ceiling. Nobody said anything.
Prather remained
standing, not quite twisting his hands to
gether; and his
lobster-like eyes moved from Harrison to Smith
and back.

Harrison broke the silence lazily: “You
know a man named Sam Jeffries, I believe?”

Prather frowned.

“Jeffries? Jeffries? No, I think
not.”

“He said he was here to see you. He was
quite definite about
the location.”

Prather frowned again.

“Oh … Yes, Yes, I think I remember
who you mean. Yes.
He was here, all right. What about him?”

Smith raised his freckled face.

“How’s Shanghai these days?”

Prather blinked.

Harrison said: “Specifically, 903
Bubbling Well Road.”

Prather blinked again. The effect was rather
like raising and lowering a curtain rapidly over thickly curved lenses.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,
of course.”

“Ah?” Smith said.

“Oh?” Harrison said.

“And I don’t understand why the Treasury
Department
should be interested in me.”

Harrison leaned back and looked at the far
corner of the
room. “I believe Sam Jeffries brought you a
package—or pack
ages?”

“Yes. He picked up a piece of carving for
me in Shanghai—
an old Chinese monk carrying a basket of fish. Very
pretty.”

“Where is it?” Smith asked.

“I—uh—I gave it to a—well, you know how
it is—a girl.”

“U’mm,” Smith said.

“H’mm,” Harrison said. “Where
did you meet this Jeffries?”

“Oh—uh—you know—around—I don’t
remember.”

Smith pushed a hand through his red hair and
looked directly
at Prather.

“According to the information that we
have,” he said, like
a class valedictorian reciting, “you met
Sam Jeffries for the
first time in a place known as Cookie’s
Canteen on August 18, last year. At that time you entered into some kind of an
agree
ment with him, which required a handshake to seal it, and
he went on
his way. On November 30, Sam Jeffries met you here in this apartment and
brought with him his friend, Joe
Hyman. Why? What agreement did you enter into
with the
two of them?”

“If you two guys would give me some idea
of what you’re
trying to find out,” Prather said, “I might be able
to help you.
So far you haven’t made any sense at all.”

Harrison moved his eyes, giving the
impression of a Govern
ment Man on an important job.

“Suppose you answer a few questions for a
change, Mr.
Prather. We could take you downtown with us and make
quite a business of this, you know.”

“What goes? AH you’ve done so far is
make innuendoes.
You haven’t accused me of anything specific,
and—well—hell!
I don’t like it!”

Smith turned his freckled face directly on
Prather.

“What is 903 Bubbling Well Road to you?
What did you
say to Sam Jeffries? Who’s the guy above you? How do you
think
you’re going to get out of all this? There, my friend,
are some specific questions.”

James Prather’s cock-lobster eyes regarded Mr.
Smith with
a sort
of frantic intensity.

“But—but—but——
”

Harrison said: “I see. Maybe you’d better
come along with
us, Mr. Prather.”

Prather, it was quite obvious, searched his
conscience, his
capabilities, and appraised his ingenuity. He looked at
Harrison.
He looked at Smith, and his thoughts retreated into the
inside
of his own mind. From somewhere he gathered a certain
nervous
courage, and he set his mouth in a quivering line.

“I don’t know what you’re after, but I
do know one thing.
I
can stand on my constitutional rights. Unless you have any
formal charges to bring against me, I don’t have
to say anything
to you. Good day,
gentlemen.”

“Well,” Harrison said.

“Ho-hum,” Smith said.

The two young men got lazily to their feet and
eyed the
jittering
Prather without expression for a long time. Then they
went away. Prather was also on his way as soon as he could
get into a jacket and grab a hat. He flagged a taxi
in front of
the apartment house, and
directed the driver to Dr. Zellermann’s
Park Avenue offices.

Zellermann was not happy to see him. His long face would
have made ice-cubes seem like firecrackers. He
chose his words
carefully, as if he
were picking each one out of a hat.

“And so you led them directly to me. Mr.
Prather, I con
sider
this a very ill-advised move on your part.”