The Saint Sees It Through (7 page)

“Then,” she said,
“you didn’t just happen to be at Cookie’s tonight by accident.”

“Maybe
not,” he said.

“For Heaven’s sake, sit down,” she said. “What is
this—a
jitterbug contest? You and Kay ought
to get married. You
could have so
much fun.”

He smiled at her again, and left one final
swallow in his
glass.

“I’ve got to be running along. But I’m
not fooling. I really
wish to hell that nobody who had any connection with Cookie
had seen me here. And now, to use your own words,
you’re
stuck with it.”

She looked at him with all the superficial
vivacity thrown
off,
seriously, from steady footholds of maturity. And like
everything else she did that was unexpected, after she had done
it
it was impossible to have expected anything else.

“You
mean it might be—unhealthy?”

“I
don’t want to sound scary, but … yes.”

“I’m not scared. But don’t you think you
might tell me
why?”

He shook
his head.

“I can’t, right now. I’ve told you more
than I should have
already, as a matter of fact. But I had to warn you.
Beyond
that, the less you know, the safer you’ll be. And I may. be
exaggerating.
You can probably brush it off. You recognised
me from a picture you
saw once, and you were good and mad,
so you threw out that parting crack
just to make trouble. Then
I picked you up outside, and you thought I’d
been nice, so you
just bought me a drink. That’s the only connection we
have.”

“Well, so it is. But if this is
something exciting, like the
things I fell in love with you for, why can’t
I be in on it?”

“Because you sing much too nicely, and
the ungodly are
awful
unmusical.”

“Oh,
fish,” she said.

He grinned,
and finished his drink, and put down the glass.

“Throw me out, Avalon,” he said.
“In another minute dawn
is going to be breaking, and I’m going to
shudder when I hear
the crash.”

And this was it, this was the impossible and
inevitable, and
he knew all at once now that it could never have been any
other way.

She said:
“Don’t go.”

2.

How Dr. Zellermann used the Telephone

and Simon Templar went visiting.

Simon woke up with the squeal of the
telephone bell splitting
his eardrums. He reached out a blind hand for
it and said: “Hullo.”

“Hullo,” it said. “Mr.
Templar?”

The voice was quite familiar, although its
inflection was
totally different from the way he had heard it last. It
was still excessively precise and perfectionist; but whereas before it had
had the
precision of a spray of machine-gun slugs, now it had
the mellifluous authority of a mechanical
unit in a production
tine.

“Speaking,” said the Saint.

“I hope I didn’t wake you up.”

“Oh, no.”

Simon glanced at his wrist watch. It was just
after twelve.

“This is Dr. Ernst Zellermann,” said
the telephone.

“So I gathered,” said the Saint.
“How are you?”

“Mr. Templar, I owe you an apology. I had
too much to
drink last night. I’m usually a good drinker, and I have
no idea
why it should have affected me that way. But my behavior
was
inexcusable. My language—I would prefer to forget. I de
served just what happened to
me. In your place, I would have
done exactly
what you did.”

The voice was rich and crisp with candor. It
was the kind
of voice that knew what it was talking about, and
automatically
inspired respect. The professional voice. It was a voice
which
naturally invited you to bring it your troubles, on which it was
naturally comfortable to lean.

Simon extracted a cigarette from the pack on
the bedside
table.

“I knew you wouldn’t mind,” he said
amiably. “After all,
I was only carrying out your own principles.
You did what
your instincts told you—and I let my instincts talk to
me.”

“Exactly. You are perfectly adjusted. I
congratulate you for
it. And I can only say I am sorry that our
acquaintance should
have begun like that.”

“Think nothing of it, dear wart. Any other time you feel
instinctive we’ll try it out again.”

“Mr. Templar, I’m more sorry than I can
tell you. Because
I have a confession to make. I happen to be one of your
greatest
admirers. I have read a great deal about you, and I’ve
always
thought of you as the ideal exponent of those principles you
were referring to. The man who
never hesitated to defy con
vention when he
knew he was right. I am as detached about my own encounter with you as if I
were a chemist who had
been blown up
while he was experimenting with an explosive.
Even at my own expense, I have proved myself right. That is the
scientific attitude.”

“There should be more of it,” said
the Saint gravely.

“Mr. Templar, if you could take that
attitude yourself, I
wish you would give me the privilege of
meeting you in more
normal circumstances.”

The Saint exhaled a long streamer of smoke
towards the
ceiling.

“I’m kind of busy,” he said.

“Of course, you would be. Let me see.
This is Thursday.
You are probably going away for the weekend.”

“I might be.”

“Of course, your plans would be
indefinite. Why don’t we
leave it like this? My number is in the telephone book. If by
chance you are still in town on Saturday, would
you be gener
ous enough to call me? If
you are not too busy, we might have
lunch
together. How is that?”

Simon thought for a moment, and knew that
there was only
one answer.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll call
you.”

“I shall be at your disposal.”

“And by the way,” Simon said
gently, “how did you know
my phone number?”

“Miss Dexter was kind enough to tell me
where you were
staying,” said the clipped persuasive voice. “I
called her first,
of course, to apologise to her… . Mr. Templar, I shall
enjoy
resuming our acquaintance.”

“I hope you will,” said the Saint.

He put the handpiece back, and lay stretched
out on his back
for a while with his hands clasped behind his head and
his
cigarette cocked between his lips, staring uncritically at the
opposite
cornice.

He had several things to think about, and it
was a queer way
to be reminded of them—or some of them—item by item, while
he was waking himself up and trying to focus his mind on something else.

He remembered everything about Cookie’s
Cellar, and
Cookie, and Dr. Ernst Zellermann, and everything else that
he
had to remember; but beyond that there was Avalon Dexter,
and with
her the memory went into a strange separateness like
a remembered dream,
unreal and incredible and yet sharper than reality and belief. A tawny mane and
straight eyes and
soft lips. A voice singing. And a voice saying: “I
was singing
for you … the things I fell in love with you for…”

And saying: “Don’t go… .”

No, that was the dream, and that hadn’t
happened.

He dragged the telephone book out from under
the bedside
table, and thumbed through it for a number.

The hotel operator said: “Thank you,
sir.”

He listened to the burr of dialling.

Avalon Dexter said: “Hullo.”

“This is me,” he said.

“How nice for you.” Her voice was
sleepy, but the warm laughter was still there. “This is me, too,”

“I dreamed about you,” he said.

“What happened?”

“I woke up.”

“Why don’t you go back to sleep?”

“I wish I could.”

“So do I. I dreamed about you, too.”

“No,” he said. “We were both
dreaming.”

“I’d still like to go back to sleep.
But creeps keep calling me
up.”

“Like Zellermann, for instance?”

“Yes. Did he call you?”

“Sure. Very apologetic. He wants me to
have lunch with
him.”

“He wants
us
to have lunch with
him.”

“On those terms, I’ll play.”

“So will I. But then, why do we have to
have him along?”

“Because he might pick up the
check.”

“You’re ridiculous,” she said.

He heard her yawn. She sounded very snug. He
could almost
see her long hair spread out on the pillow.

“I’ll buy you a cocktail in a few
hours,” he said, “and
prove it.”

“I love you,” she said.

“But I wasn’t fooling about anything
else I said last night.
Don’t accept any other invitations. Don’t go
to any strange
places.
Don’t believe anything you’re told. After you got your
self thought about with me last night, anything could happen.
So please be careful.”

“I will.”

“I’ll call you back.”

“If you don’t,” she said, “I’ll
haunt you.”

He hung up.

But it had happened. And the dream was real,
and it~was
all true, and it was good that way. He worked with his
cigarette
for a while.

Then he took the telephone again, and called
room service.
He ordered corned beef hash and eggs, toast and marmalade
and
coffee. He felt good. Then he revived the operator and
said: “After
that you can get me a call to Washington. Impera
tive five, five hundred. Extension five.
Take your time.”

He was towelling himself after a swift
stinging shower when
the bell rang.

“Hamilton,” said the receiver
dryly. “I hope you aren’t
getting me up.”

“This was your idea,” said the
Saint. “I have cased the joint,
as we used to say in the soap operas. I
have inspected your
creeps.
I’m busy.”

“What else?”

“I met the most wonderful girl in the
world.”

“You do that every week.”

“This is a different week.”

“This is a priority, line. You can tell
me about your love life in a letter.”

“Her name is Avalon Dexter, and she’s in
the directory.
She’s a singer, and until the small hours of this morning
she
was working for Cookie.”

“Which side is she on?”

“I only just met her,” said the
Saint, with unreal imper
sonality. “But they saw her with me.
Will you remember that,
if anything funny happens to me—or to her ? .
. . I met Zellermann
, too. Rather violently, I’m afraid. But
he’s a sweet and
forgiving soul. He wants to buy me a lunch.”

“What did you buy last night?”
Hamilton asked suspiciously.

“You’ll see it on my expense account—I
don’t think it’ll
mean raising the income tax rate more than five per
cent,” said
the Saint, and hung up.

He ate his brunch at leisure, and saved his
coffee to go with
a definitive cigarette.

He had a lot of things to think about, and he
only began
trying to co-ordinate them when the coffee was clean and
nutty on his palate, and the smoke was crisp on his tongue and drift
ing in
aromatic clouds before his face.

Now there was Cookie’s Canteen to think
about. And that might be something else again.

Now the dreaming was over, and this was
another day.

He went to the closet, hauled out a suitcase,
and threw it
on the bed. Out of the suitcase he took a bulging
briefcase.
The briefcase was a particularly distinguished piece of
luggage,
for into its contents had gone an amount of ingenuity, cor
ruption,
deception, seduction, and simple larceny which in itself could have supplied
the backgrounds for a couple of
dozen stories.