Saint Goes West (13 page)

“Ay tank we go home,” he murmured, and turned rapidly back.

He didn’t hesitate for a moment over the idea of flinging the door open and congratulating them on their prompt arrival. If the police were already preparing to take an inнterest in the premises, they must have already received a hint that there was something there to merit their profesнsional attention; and with the Saint’s unfortunate reputation there were inclined to be certain technical complications about being caught in strange houses with dead bodies spillнing their brains over the furniture. The Saint knew better than anyone how sceptical policemen could be in circumнstances like that, and he had no great faith now that the note which he might have produced from his pocket to substantiate part of his story would stand up to unfriendly scrutiny.

He wrapped a handkerchief round his right hand again as he went back through the study, where he had already noticed a glazed door to the garden. It was bolted on the inside- another partial confirmation of his theory that the murderer had not crept in on Mr. Ufferlitz unseen. Simon opened it, and stepped out into a paved patio, closing the door silently again behind him. A wooden gate in the wall to his left let him out on to a lawn with a swimming pool in the center. The wall around this lawn was six feet high, with no gates. Even more like a prowling cat, Simon swung himself to the top of the wall without an effort and dropped like a feather on to the lawn of the house next door. This was the corner house. He turned to the right, where the grounds were bordered by a high thick hedge. A well aged and artistically planted elm exнtended a massive branch at just the right height and angle for him to catch with his hands and jackknife his long legs over the hedge. This time he landed on concrete, in the black shadow of the big tree, and found that he was at the side of the house around the corner, in the drive leading to the gaнrages at the back.

As he came to the corner of the building he walked into a babble of cheerful voices that ended with a chorus of good-nights. A door closed; and he saw two couples straggling away in search of their cars. Without hesitation he set off in a brisk curve that carried him first towards them and then away from them, as though he had left the party at the same time and branched off towards his own car.

A flashlight sweeping over from some yards away touched on him as he reached the pavement.

Simon squinted at it, and turned away to call a loud “Goodнnight” after the other departing guests. Then without a pause he opened the door of his car and ducked in. An automatic answering “Goodnight!” echoed back to him as he did it. And with that pleasant exchange of courtesies he drove away.

As he turned on to Sunset he had an abrupt distinct recolнlection of a previous goodnight, and a car that had driven slowly by while he was outside April Quest’s. That could have been a coincidence, and the recent timely arrival of the police could have been another; but when they were put toнgether it began to look as if somebody was quite anxious to make sure that Hollywood wouldn’t be dull for him.

5

SIMON WALKED inno Mr. Ufferlitz’s outer office at eleven o’clock in the morning and said: “Hullo, Peggy.”

“Hullo.” Peggy Warden’s smile was a little vague, and her voice didn’t sound quite certain. “How are you today?”

“Fine.”

“Did you have a good time last night?”

“Mm-hm.” The Saint nodded. “But I still want a date with you.”

“Well —”

“What about lunch?”

“I don’t know—”

Her face was paler than it had been yesterday, but he gave no sign of noticing it.

“It’s a date,” he said, and glanced towards the communiнcating door. It was half open. He had seen that when he came in. “Has the Great Man arrived yet?”

“Will you go right in?”

Simon nodded, and strolled through.

A new face sat behind Mr. Ufferlitz’s desk. It was a lined face of indeterminate age, with a yellowish kind of tan as if it had once had a bronze which was wearing off. It had close-cropped gray-black hair and heavy black brows over a long curved nose like a scimitar. Its whole sculpture had an air of passive despondency that was a curious contrast to its bright black eyes.

“Hullo,” murmured Simon amiably. “Do you work here too?”

“Condor’s the name,” said the face pessimistically. “Ed Condor. Yours?”

“Templar. Simon Templar.”

The face moved a toothpick from one side of its mouth to the other.

“Mr. Ufferlitz won’t be in today,” it said.

“Oh.”

“In fact, Mr. Ufferlitz won’t be around here any more.”

“No?”

“Mr. Ufferlitz is dead.”

Simon allowed the faint frown of perplexity which had beнgun to gather on his brow to tighten up.

“What?”

“He’s dead.”

“Is this a gag?”

“Nope. He died last night. You won’t see him any more unнless you go to the morgue.”

The Saint lighted a cigarette slowly, glancing back at the door through which he had just entered with the same puzzled frown deepening on his face.

It was a masterpiece of tuning and restrained suggestion. If Condor was disappointed because he didn’t draw one of the conventional gaffes of the “Who shot him?” variety, he didn’t show it. He said: “I told her not to say anything. Wanted to see how you took it.”

“I may be dumb,” said the Saint, “but I think I’m missing something. Are you an undercover man for a Gallup Poll, or what is this?”

Condor flipped his lapel.

“Police,” he said gloomily. “Sit down, Mr. Templar.”

The Saint sank into a deep leather armchair and exhaled a long drift of smoke.

“Well I’m damned,” he said. “What did he die of?”

“Murder.”

Simon blinked.

“Good God-how?”

“Shot through the head. From behind. In his study, at his house.” Condor seemed to resign himself to the conviction that he wasn’t going to catch any revelations of premature knowledge, and opened up a bit. “Sometime around half-past one. The cook thought she heard a noise about that time, but she didn’t wake up properly and figured it was probably a car backfiring outside. Miss Warden was working there until about midnight, when he came in, and she says he was all right when she left about half an hour later.”

Simon nodded.

“I saw him at Ciro’s before that”

“What time did he leave there?”

“I wouldn’t know. It was probably around eight-thirty when I saw him, but I don’t know how much longer he stayed. I wasn’t paying much attention.”

“You with anyone?”

“April Quest.”

“How did Ufferlitz seem?”

“Perfectly normal… Are there any clues?”

“We haven’t found any yet. The killer seems to have been good and careful. Even emptied the ashtrays.”

Simon drew at his cigarette again and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He found an ashtray on the small table at his right elbow and tapped his cigarette over it. The rest of the table was littered with a pile of back numbers of the Hollywood Reporter and Variety. Right on top of the pile was a Reporter of yesterday. So Byron Ufferlitz hadn’t had it with him to scribble that note on; and if he had written it in his office before leaving he wouldn’t have used the Reporter for paper. Of course he could have picked up another copy, but —
“The only thing is,” said Condor, “Ufferlitz knew the guy who killed him. The servants didn’t let anyone in, except Miss Warden, so Ufferlitz must have done it himself.”

“Suppose the guy let himself in?”

“Then he couldn’t have gone into the study until not more than an hour before he shot Ufferlitz. But he still smoked enough to have to empty three ashtrays. So Ufferlitz knew him well enough to keep talking to him.”

Simon nodded again. It was his own old deduction, but it indicated that Ed Condor was at least not totally blind and incompetent. The Saint wondered how much more he had on the ball. Certainly he was not a man to be careless with.

“I see,” Simon said. “So you sit here waiting for people who knew him to drop in.”

“Yeah. I’ve seen two writers and the director-Groom. Now you.”

“Have you had any good reactions?” Simon asked with superb audacity.

Condor nibbled his toothpick with the corners of his mouth drawn down unhappily.

“Nope. Not yet. It hasn’t been anybody’s morning to pull boners.” He went on without any transition: “What time did you go home last night?”

“I took Miss Quest home about one o’clock.”

“When were you home?”

“We talked for a while. I didn’t notice the time, but I guess I was home in about half an hour …”

Condor’s black eyes that missed nothing were fixed on him steadily, and Simon knew almost telepathically that the night elevator operator at the Chтteau Marmont had already been consulted. But he had had several hours to remember that that would have been an inevitable routine, eventually, anyнway.

“… the first time, that is,” he continued easily. “Then I went out again. I didn’t have any liquor in the apartнment, and I wanted another drink. I went to a joint on Hollyнwood Boulevard and had a drink at the bar, and went home at closing time.”

“What joint was that?”

Simon told him the name of a night spot which did a roaring if not exactly exclusive trade, where he knew that nobody would be able to say positively whether he had been in or not.

“See anyone you knew there?” Condor asked nevertheless.

“No. In fact, if you want a cast-iron alibi,” Simon admitted with an air of disarming candor, “I’m afraid I can’t give it to you. Do I need one?”

“I dunno,” Condor said glumly. “How long would it take you to drive from your apartment to Ufferlitz’s?”

“I haven’t the least idea,” said the Saint innocently. “Where does he live?”

The detective sighed. In any other circumstances Simon could almost have felt sorry for him. He was certainly a trier, and it just wasn’t doing him any good.

He said: “On Claymore, in Beverly Hills. You could drive there in ten minutes easy, even missing a few lights.”

“But I thought Ufferlitz was shot at one-thirty. I was home just about then.”

“You aren’t sure. And the cook isn’t sure either. She only thinks it was about one-thirty. She could be five minutes wrong. So could you. That makes enough difference for you to have been there. Maybe the shot wasn’t at one-thirty anyway. Maybe she did hear a car backfiring, and the shooting was some other time. Like when you say you were out having a drink.”

“What do the doctors say?”

“They can’t fix it as close as that. You ought to know.”

“I suppose not,” said the Saint. “Still, you make it a bit tough for a guy. You want me to have an alibi, but you don’t know what time I’m supposed to have an alibi for.”

Condor removed his toothpick, inspected it profoundly, and put it back.

“I got another time,” he announced finally.

“What’s that?”

“Ufferlitz called the Beverly Hills police station and said he thought someone was prowling around his house, and asked for a patrol-car to come by. That call was received at exactly eight minutes of two.”

A subcutaneous tingle pin-pointed up between the Saint’s shoulder-blades-even though he had always been sure that that patrol car had never arrived by accident. But his face showed nothing more than a rather exasperated bafflement.

“For Pete’s sake,” he said, “how many more times have you got to cover?”

“Just that one.”

“But that makes the other time all haywire.”

“Could be. I said, maybe the cook never heard the shot. She went to sleep again.”

Simon consumed his cigarette meditatively for a few seconds. Then he looked at Condor again with a slight lift of one eyebrow.

“On the other hand,” he remarked, “can anyone swear that Ufferlitz made that call? Maybe the murderer made it himнself, just to confuse you. Maybe you ought to be very susнpicious of anybody who has got a perfect alibi for eight minutes of two.”

Condor stared at him for a while with unblinking intentness, and then the barest vestige of a smile moved in under his long drooping features. It literally did that, as if the surнface of his face was too stiffly set in its cast of abject melanнcholy to relax perceptibly, and the smile had to crawl about under the skin.

“That,” he said, “is the first thing you’ve said that sounds like some of the stuff I’ve heard about you.”

“So far,” murmured the Saint, “you’ve seemed to want me for a suspect more than a collaborator.”

“I gotta suspect everybody.”

“But be reasonable. Ufferlitz just gave me a job for a thouнsand dollars a day. I don’t know now whether I’ve got a job any more. Why would I kill that sort of meal ticket? Besides, I never met him before lunch-time yesterday. I’d have to have hated him in an awful hurry to work up to shooting point by last night”

Condor wrinkled his nose.

“It seems to me,” he said, “I’ve heard you’re supposed to ‘ve killed a few people that you didn’t have any particular personal feelings about. Something about being your own judge, jury, and hangman. Not that it wasn’t all quite legal and accidental, of course,” he added, “or it came to look that way in the end; but that’s what they say. Well, from what I’ve heard about Ufferlitz, he’s got some things in his record that might save you the trouble of hating him by yourself.”

The Saint sank lower in his chair and for the first time venнtured to look slightly bored.

“Here we go again,” he drawled. “Are you trying to hang something on me or not? Make up your mind.”

“Well…” Condor drew his chin back so that the toothpick drooped from his upper teeth. “I guess I do sound sort of anнtagonistic sometimes. Gets to be second nature. You’ll have to excuse me. But I’ve heard plenty of complimentary things about you too. Maybe you could help me a lot, at that. You’ve given me one good idea already. I wouldn’t like to be a nuisance, but if you wanted to give me any more I’d be honored.”

He was as disarming as a drowsing crocodile. You felt ashamed of yourself for having misunderstood him and put him into a position where he had to defend himself. Your heart warmed with the consciousness of having put him back where he belonged, nevertheless. You felt pretty loosened up altogether. Unless you were Simon Templar.