The Saint Sees It Through (8 page)

Within its hand-sewn compartments was a
collection of docu
ments in blank which represented the cream of many years
of
research. On its selection of letterheads could be written
letters
purporting to emanate from almost any institution be
tween the Dozey Dairy
Company of Kansas City and the
Dominican Embassy in Ankara. An assortment of
visiting
cards in two or three crowded pockets was prepared to
identify
anybody from the Mayor of Jericho to Sam Schiletti,
outside
plumbing contractor, of Exterior Falls, Oregon. There were passports with
the watermarks of a dozen governments—driv
ing licenses, pilot’s
licences, ration books, credit cards, birth
certificates,
warrants, identification cards, passes, permits,
memberships, and
authorisations enough to establish anyone
in any role from a
Bulgarian tight-rope walker to a wholesale
fish merchant from
Grimsby. And along with them there was
a unique symposium of
portraits of the Saint, flattering and unflattering, striking and nondescript,
natural and disguised—
together with a miscellany of stamps, seals,
dies, and stickers
which any properly conditioned bureaucrat would have
drooled
with ecstasy to behold. It was an outfit that would have been
worth a
fortune to any modern brigand, and it had been worth
exactly that much to
the Saint before.

He sat down at the desk and worked for an
unhurried hour,
at the end of which time he had all the necessary
documents
to authenticate an entirely imaginary seaman by the name
of
Tom Simons, of the British Merchant Marine. He folded and
refolded
them several times, rubbed the edges with a nail file,
smeared them with
cigarette ash, sprinkled them with water
and a couple of drops
of coffee, and walked over them several
times until they were
convincingly soiled and worn.

Then he finished dressing and went out. He
took a Fifth
Avenue bus to Washington Square, and walked from there
down
through the gray shabby streets of the lower east side
until he found the
kind of store he was looking for.

He couldn’t help the natural elegance of his normal appear
ance, but the proprietor eyed him curiously when
he announced
himself as a buyer and
not a seller.

“I’ve got a character part in a
play,” he explained, “and this
was the only way I
could think of to get the right kind of
clothes.”

That story increased his expenses by at least a hundred per
cent; but he came out at the end of an hour with an
untidy
parcel containing a complete
outfit of well-worn apparel that
would establish the character of Tom
Simons against any kind
of scrutiny.

He took a taxi back to the Algonquin.

There were two telephone messages.

Miss Dexter phoned, and would call again about
seven
o’clock.

Miss Natello phoned.

Simon arched his brows over the second
message, and smiled
a
little thinly before he tore it up. The ungodly were certainly
working. Fundamentally he didn’t mind that, but the
per
sistence of the coverage took up
the slack in his nerves. And it wasn’t because he was thinking about himself.

He called Avalon’s number, but there was no
answer.

There are meaningless gulfs of time in real
life which never
occur in well-constructed stories—hours in which nothing
is
happening, nothing is about to happen, nothing is likely to
happen,
and nothing does happen. The difference is that in a
story they can be so
brightly and lightly skimmed over, simply
by starting a fresh paragraph with some
such inspired sentence
as “Simon Templar
went downstairs again for a drink, and Wolcott Gibbs waved to him across the
lobby, and they spent
a couple of
congenial hours lamenting the sad standards of
the current season on Broadway.”

Simon Templar went downstairs again for a
drink, and
Wolcott Gibbs waved to him across the lobby, and they
spent
a couple of congenial hours lamenting the sad standards of the
current
season on Broadway; and all the time Simon was watch
ing the clock and
wondering what held back the hands. •

It was fifteen hours, or minutes, after seven
when the call
came.

“Merry Christmas,” she said.

“And a happy new year to you,” he
said. “What goes?”

“Darling,” she said, “I forgot
that I had a date with my arranger to go over some new songs. So I had to rush
out. What are you doing?”

“Having too many drinks with Wolcott Gibbs.”

“Give him my love.”

“I will.”

“Darling,” she said, “there’s
a hotel man from Chicago in
town—he used to come and hear me bellow when
I was at the
Pump Room—and he wants me to go to dinner. And I’ve got
to find
myself another job.”

He felt empty inside, and unreasonably
resentful, and angry
because he knew it was unreasonable.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“So am I. I do want to see you,
really.”

“Have you met this creep before?”

“Oh, yes. Lots of times. He’s quite
harmless—just a bit dreary. But he might have a job for me, and I’ve got to
earn
an honest living somehow. Don’t worry—I haven’t forgotten
what you
told me about being careful. By the way, you’ll be
glad to hear Cookie
called me.”

“She did?”

“Yes. Very apologetic, and begging me to
drop in and see
her.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I hate the joint and I
hate her, but she knows
everybody in town and she isn’t a good enemy
to have. I’ll see
what happens tonight… . What are you going to be
doing
later?”

“Probably carousing in some gilded
cesspool, surrounded by
concubines and champagne.”

“I ought to be able to get rid of this
creep at a sensible hour,
and I would like to see you.”

“Why don’t you call me when you get through? I’ll probably
be home. If I’m not, leave a number.”

“I will.” Her voice was wistful.
“Don’t be too gay with those
concubines.”

Simon went back to his table. He felt even
emptier inside.
It had been such a beautiful dream. He didn’t know whether
to feel foolish, or cynical, or just careless. But he didn’t want
to feel any
of those things. It was a persistent irritation, like
a piece of gravel in a
shoe.

“What are you doing this evening?”
Gibbs asked him.

“Having another drink.”

“I’ve got to get some dinner before I go
to that opening.
Why don’t you join me?”

“I’d like to.” Simon drained his
glass. He said casually: “Avalon Dexter sent you her love.”

“Oh, do you know her? She’s a grand gal.
A swell person. One of the few honest-to-God people in that racket.”

There was no doubt about the spontaneous
warmth of Wolcott’s
voice. And measured against his professional exposure
to all the
chatter and gossip of the show world, it wasn’t a comment that could be easily
dismissed. The back of Simon’s brain
went on puzzling.
 

2

The Saint watched Mr. Gibbs depart, and gently
tested the
air around his tonsils. It felt dry. He moved to the cusp
of the
bar and proceeded to contemplate his nebulous dissatisfactions.
He ordered
more of the insidious product of the house of
Dawson and meditated
upon the subject of Dr. Ernst Zeller
mann, that white-maned, black-browed
high priest of the unconscious mind.

Why, Simon asked himself, should a man
apologise for
sticking his face in the way of a fast travelling fist?
Why should
Dr. Z wish to further his acquaintance of the Saint, who
had not only knocked him tail over teakettle but had taken his
charming
companion home? How, for that matter, did Dr. Z
know that Avalon
Dexter might have the telephone number
of Simon Templar?

Beyond the faintest shadow of pale doubt,
Brother Zellermann
was mixed up in this situation. And since the situation
was
now the object of the Saint’s eagle eyeing, the type-case psy
chiatrist
should come in for his share of scrutiny. And there
was nothing to do but
scrutinize… .

Simon tossed off everything in his glass but a tired ice cube
and went out into the night. The doorman flicked
one glance
at the debonair figure
who walked as if he never touched the
ground,
and almost dislocated three vertebrae as he snapped to attention.

“Taxi, sir?”

“Thanks,” said the Saint, and a
piece of silver changed
hands. The doorman earned this by crooking a
finger at a
waiting cab driver. And in another moment Simon Templar
was on his way to the Park
Avenue address of Dr. Zellermann.

It was one of those impulsive moves of unplanned explora
tion that the Saint loved best. It had all the
fascination of
potential surprises, all the intriguing vistas of an
advance into
new untrodden country, all the
uncertainty of dipping the
first fork
into a plate of roadside eating stew. You went out into the wide world and made
your plans as you went along
and hoped
the gods of adventure would be good to you.

Simon relaxed hopefully all the way uptown
until the taxi decanted him in front of the windowed monolith wherein Dr.
Ernst Zellermann laved the
libido.

A light burned on the twelfth floor, and that
was entree
even
though the lobby roster placed Dr. Zellermann on the
eighteenth floor. Simon entered the elevator, signed “John
Paul Jones” on the form for nocturnal
visitors, said “Twelve” to the ancient lackey, and was levitated on
greased runners.

He walked toward the lighted doorway, an
emporium of
Swedish masseurs, but wheeled on silent feet as soon as
the
elevator doors closed and went up six flights as swiftly and as
silently as
the elevator had ascended. The lock on Zellermann’s
door gave him little
trouble, snicking open to reveal a waiting
room of considerable
proportions.

The pencil beam of his flashlight told him
that the man who
decorated this restful room knew the value of the pause
that relaxes. “This is your home,” the room said. “Welcome. You
like this
chair? It was made for you. The prints? Nice, aren’t
they? Nothing like
the country. And isn’t that soft green of the walls pleasant to the eye? Lean
back and relax. The doctor will
see you presently, as a friend. What else, in
these surroundings?”

The Saint tipped his mental hat and looked
around for more
informative detail. This wasn’t much. The receptionist’s
desk
gave up nothing but some paper and pencils, a half pack of
cigarettes,
a lipstick, and a copy of
Trembling Romances.
Three
names were
written on an appointment pad on the desk top.

He went into the consultation room, which was
severely
furnished with plain furniture. A couch lay against one
wall,
the large desk was backed against an opaque window, and
the walls
were free of pictorial distractions.

Yet this, too, was a restful room. The green
of the reception
room walls had been continued here, and despite the
almost
monastic simplicity of the
decor,
this room invited you to
relax.
Simon had no doubt that a patient lying on the couch,
with Dr. Zellermann
discreetly in the background gloom, would
drag from the
censored files of memory much early minutiae, the stuff of which human beings
are made.

But where were the files? The office safe?

Surely it was necessary to keep records, and
surely the records
of ordinary daily business need not be hidden. The
secretary
must need a card file of patients, notations, statements
of
accounts, and what not.