The Saint Sees It Through (27 page)

But for Simon Templar it was a symbol too; and more than
that it was a trial and evidence and verdict, and
a sentence that only waited for an execution that would be a pride and
a
clean pleasure to remember with the ugliness that began it.

He walked into the room empty-handed, with the
carving
knife in his sleeve held by the pressure of his bent left arm.

Zellermann held his cigarette with the ash
unbroken in his
left hand, and his right hand dropped into the side
pocket
of his beautifully tailored coat. Aside from the lightning switch
of his bleached gray eyes, that
was his only movement. But it
was quite
adequate for what it meant.

The Saint didn’t even seem to. notice it.

He was Tom Simons again, perfectly and
entirely, for the few steps that he had to take. They seemed to stretch out for
an infinity of distance and an eternity of time; but no one who
watched him
could have seen how every cell and fibre of him
was wrung out in the
achievement of that convincing unconsciousness of their importance. He lurched
quite clumsily in his
walk, and his stare trying to hold Zellermann
was blank and
glazed—and those were the easiest tricks in his act.

” ‘Ullo, Doc,” he mouthed.
“Wot abaht one fer the road?”

He was in a dream where every second seemed to
take a week to crawl by, and you could stop overnight to analyse
every
inching flicker of event.

He saw Zellermann relax fractionally, even
embark on the mental prologue to an elaborate clinical evaluation of drug
reactions. He saw Cookie and Kay Natello rising and turning
towards
him with a mixture of uncertainty and fear and hope.
He saw everything,
without looking directly at any of it.

“You must be made out of iron, Tom,”
Zellermann said
admiringly, and as if he had learned the formula from a
book.
“You just about put us all under the table. We were going
to
bed.”

The Saint staggered closer to him.

“I bin to bed once,” he said.
“But I’m thirsty. Honestergawd
. Coudden I ‘ave just one more drop
before closing time?”

Then his wandering gaze seemed to catch sight
of Hogan for the first time.

“Swelp me,” he said, “that’s
‘im! The bugger ‘oo ‘it me! All
tied up shipshake so ‘e ‘as ter be’yve. Just
lemme ‘ave one crack
at’ im—”

“Patrick just had too much to
drink,” Zellermann said.
“We’re trying to get him to bed…”

He actually moved closer, suavely and with
almost contemptu
ous skill, interposing himself between Simon and the
uglier
details of his specialized treatment for intoxication.

The Saint blinked at him blearily, swaying
another step and
two steps nearer.

It looked fine and perfect until the doctor’s
glance suddenly
switched and hardened on a point beyond the Saint’s
shoulder,
and the
whole calm patronising balance of his body hardened
with it as if it
had been nipped in an interstellar frost.

And even then, only one precise unit of him
moved—the
hand that still rested in his coat pocket. But that
movement
was still as adequate and eloquent as it had been the
first time.

Simon didn’t need any manuals or blueprints to work it out.
He knew, with that endless impersonality of
comprehension,
that Avalon Dexter had
started to follow him into the room,
and that Zellermann had seen her,
and that the shining wheels
that ran in
Zellermann’s brain had spun an instantaneous web
together, and that rightly or wrongly the web had enough
tensile strength in Zellermann’s mind for
Zellermann to walk on it.

The Saint’s own movement actually followed
and resulted
from
Zellermann’s; and yet it was like the clicking of a switch
and the awakening of a light, so that it was
almost simultaneous.

He heard the splitting blast of Zellermann’s
gun in the same quantum as he was aware of stumbling sideways and straightening
his left arm so that the bone handle of the carving knife
dropped
into the curved fingers of his waiting left hand, and
then he was aware of
a searing pang in his left arm and a
shocking blow that spun him half
around, but he had his bal
ance again in the same transposition, and his
right hand took
the haft of the knife as it dropped and drew it clear of
the
sleeve and turned it and drove it straight with the same con
tinued
gesture into Zellermann’s chest, just a little to one side
of the
breastbone and a hand’s breadth below the carnation in
his buttonhole.

Then he left the knife there where it stuck
and took Zellermann’s automatic away as the doctor’s fingers loosened on it,
ripping it
clear of the pocket at about the moment when
Zellermann’s
shoulders rolled on the floor, and fired again and again while he was still
rising and Cookie was starting towards
him with her broad
muscular hands reaching out and Natello
was still swinging
back the hot curling-iron that she had been playing with.

They were the first women that Simon Templar
had ever
killed, and he did it rather carefully and
conscientiously, in the
pellucid knowledge of what they were and what
they had done,
and to his own absolute judicial satisfaction, shooting
Kay
Natello three inches above her hollow navel and Cookie in the
same
umbilical bullseye, as closely as he could estimate it
through her adipose
camouflage.

4

Hamilton said almost plaintively:
“Couldn’t you arrange to
leave more than one prisoner, just once in a
while?”

“Could you arrange to have people stop
attacking me?”
asked the Saint. “Self-defense is so tempting.
Besides, think
how much I save the country on trials and attorneys. I
ought
to get a rebate on my income tax for it.”

“I’ll speak to the President about it
right away.”

“Anyway, I left you the kingpin—and I
think he’s got the
kind of imagination that’ll do some real suffering while
he’s
waiting for his turn in the death house. I feel rather happy
about
that—which is why I left him.”

“Before your tender heart gets you into
any more trouble,”
Hamilton said, “you’d better get out of
there if you can. I’ll
talk to you again in New York. I’ve got
another job for you.”

“You always have,” said the Saint.
“I’ll get out. Hogan can
hold the fort long enough.”

He cradled the telephone and looked at the
federal man
again. He said: “It’s all yours, Patrick. Washington
wants me
out of the limelight. As usual. … By the way, is the
name
really Hogan?”

The other nodded. Simon had done all that he
could for
him: he would be able to hold the fort. And other forts
again.
His face was still pale and drawn and shiny, but there was no
uncertainty
in it. It was a good face, moulded on real founda
tions, and durable.

“Sure,” he said. “Hogan’s the
name. But I was born in New
Jersey, and I have to work like hell on the
brogue.” He was
studying the Saint while he talked, quite
frankly and openly,
but with a quiet respect that was a natural part of his
reversion
from the
character part he had been playing, sitting very laxly
but squarely in an armchair with the glass of brandy that Simon
had poured for him, conserving and gathering his
strength.
He said: “You had me
fooled. Your cockney’s a lot better. And
that make-up—it is a make-up, isn’t it?”

“I hope so,” said the Saint with a
smile. “I’d hate to look like
this for the rest of my life.”

“I didn’t expect anything like this when
I left my badge in
your pocket. I was just clutching at a straw. I figured
it was a
thousand to one it wouldn’t do me any good. I thought you
were just another drunken sailor—in fact, I let you pick me up just for
that, so I could watch what this gang would do
with you.”

The Saint laughed a little.

Avalon Dexter finished binding up his arm with
torn strips
of another of Cookie’s expensive sheets. She was very
cool and
efficient about it. He moved his arm and tested the
bandage approvingly; then he began to wriggle into his jacket again.
Zellermann’s
one shot had missed the bone: the bullet had
passed clean
through, and the flesh wound would take care of
itself.

He said: “Thanks, darling.”

She helped him with his coat.

He said: “Go on quoting me as just
another drunken sailor,
Pat. You don’t even have to bring me into this
finale. The
witnesses won’t talk. So Tom Simons woke up, and was
drunk
and sore and
scared, and scrammed the hell out. He went back
to his ship, and nobody cares about him anyway. Let him go. Because I am
going anyway, while you take the phone and start
calling your squads to take care of the bodies.”

“What about Miss Dexter?” Hogan
asked practically.

“She was scared too, and she scrammed
independently. You
know about her and how they were trying to use her. Leave
her out of it if you can; but if you need her we’ve got her
address in
New York. I’ll steal one of the cars and take her
back with me.
Hamilton will okay it. The police in New York
were warned long ago,
it seems—when Zellermann tried to
frame me at 21, they went through a
performance to make
Zellermann think he’d gotten me out of the way, but they
turned me
loose at once.”

“Okay, Saint. When you call that
Imperative exchange in
Washington, I say Uncle anyhow. But I can
look after this.
And—thank you.”

They shook hands around. Hogan stayed seated in his chair.
He could keep going. He was still full of
questions, but he was
too well trained
to ask them.

“Let’s get together one day,” said
the Saint, and meant it just like that.

He went out with Avalon.

They talked very ordinarily and quietly on the
drive back,
as if they had known each other for a long while, which
they
had, while the dawn lightened slowly around them and drew
out the
cool sweetness of the dew on the peaceful fields. The
red-gold casque of
her hair was pillowed on his shoulder as
they slipped into the
rousing murmur of Manhattan in the
bright sunlight of another day.

WATCH FOR
THE SIGN OF THE SAINT.
HE WILL BE BACK.