Saint Steps In (12 page)

It got to be later.

He took their bags upstairs, and put hers in her room and
chose himself a guest room opposite, with a door directly
fac
ing hers across the corridor. He opened
his own bag before he
came down again
and fixed drinks for both of them. Into her
drink he put a couple of drops from a phial that he brought
down with him.

Very quickly the hot bright strain went out of her eyes, and she began
yawning. In a little while she was fast asleep. He
carried her upstairs and put her in her bed, and then
he went
across to his own room
and took off most of his clothes and lay
down on the bed with his automatic tucked under the
edge
of the mattress close to
his right hand, and switched off the
lights. He didn’t think it was at all likely that the
Ungodly
could get around to organising
another routine so soon, but
he
always preferred to overrate the opposition rather than
underrate them. He was awake for a
long time; and when he
finally let himself sink into a light doze the first pallor of dawn
was creeping into the room, and he knew
that he had been wrong about the bush-league skullduggery and that Calvin
Gray was not coming home unless
somebody fetched him.

3. How Madeline Gray was Persuaded to Eat,

and
Mr. Angert gave it Up.

It was half-past
eight when Simon Templar woke up. He lay in
bed
for a few minutes, watching fleecy white clouds drift across
the blue sky outside the windows, and reviving the
thoughts
on which he had fallen
asleep. They didn’t look any different
now.

He got up and put on a robe and went out into the corridor.
It was nothing but a kind of last-ditch
wishfulness that made
him
go quietly into Calvin Gray’s bedroom. But the bed
hadn’t been slept in, and the room was exactly as he
had last
seen it. He knew all the
time that it would be like that, of
course. If
Calvin Gray had come home with the milkman, the
Saint was sure that he would have heard him—he. had been
alert all night, even in his sleep, for much
stealthier sounds
than that would have been. But at least, he reflected
wryly, he
had forestalled a self-made charge
of jumping to conclusions.

He went back to his own room, shaved, showered, and
dressed, and went downstairs.

The table was laid with one place for breakfast in the din
ing room, and there were sounds of
movement in the kitchen.

Simon pushed
through the swing door, and stopped. A rosy-
cheeked
young woman with dark curly hair and an apron
looked up at him with
slightly startled eyes as he came in. She was small and nicely plump, in a way
that would obviously be
come stout and
matronly exactly when you would expect.

“Hullo,”
he said pleasantly. “Don’t be scared. My name’s
Templar, and I came up from Washington with Miss Gray
last
night.”

“Oh,”
she said. “I’m Mrs. Cook. I just work here. You did
scare me for a minute, though.”

He realised that
since they had failed to talk to Calvin Gray
there
was no reason for anyone to expect them there. In fact, no one knew of their
movement except Hamilton and the taxi
driver
who had brought them in from the airport. The driver
might or might not talk or think anything of it.
But at least it
would take the Ungodly
a little while to pick up the scent,
which
would be no disadvantage.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “What are the chances for
breakfast?”

“I’ll set some more places.”

“Miss Gray
was pretty tired out last night. I’m hoping she’ll
sleep late.”

“The
Professor’s usually up before this,” she said. “He must have been
working late.”

The
Saint had a friendly and engaging ease, whenever he
wanted to use it, which made it seem the most natural
thing in the world for anyone to keep on talking to him. He used
that effortless receptiveness now, as a
happy substitute for
more tiresome and
elaborate methods.

He said quite
conversationally: “The Professor wasn’t in last
night.”

“Wasn’t he?
He’s nearly always in.”

“We tried to
phone him from Washington to say we were on
our
way, but the number didn’t answer.”

“Was that very
late? I was here until about nine o’clock.”

“It
was later than that.”

“I gave him his dinner at seven-thirty, and then I had to
wash up. He was in the living-room,
reading, when I went
home.”

“He didn’t say anything about going out?”

“No.
But I didn’t ask him.”

“He didn’t
have any visitors?”

“Not while I
was here.”

“Maybe
he’s been going out a bit while Miss Gray’s been
away.”

“Oh, no, sir. The Professor’s never been one for going
out——”

It was only then that she began to be dimly aware of what
his innocent questions were leading to. A trace of
puzzlement
crept into her eyes.

“Anyway,” she said, almost defiantly, “he’s sure to be
down
soon.”

The Saint shook
his head.

“I’m
afraid he isn’t, Mrs. Cook,” he said quietly. “He didn’t
come in at all last night. His bed
hasn’t been slept in. And he’s
not in the house
now.”

She stopped on her way into the dining room with a handful
of knives and forks and spoon, and stared at him blankly.

“You mean he
isn’t here at all?”

“That’s right.”

“Wasn’t he
expecting you?”

“No. I told you, we tried to phone, but we couldn’t get him.”

“Didn’t he leave a note or anything?”

“No.”

Her eyes began to get very wide.

“You don’t think anything’s happened to him, do you?”

“I don’t know,” said the Saint frankly. “It does look a
little
peculiar, doesn’t it? The man just walks out of
the house with
out a word or a message to
anyone, and doesn’t come back.
Some
people do things like that all the time, but you say he
wasn’t that type.”

“Is Miss Gray worried about him?—I expect she is.”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

She
began mechanically setting other places at the table,
more as if she was going through a routine of habitual move
ments than as if she was thinking about what she
was doing.
“I expect somebody called him and had him go into New
York
on business after I’d left, and he was
kept late and had to stay
over,”
she said, seeming to reassure herself as much as her au
dience. “He’ll probably be home before
lunch-time, and if he
isn’t he’ll
phone. He wouldn’t stay away without letting me
know he wouldn’t be back for dinner.”

“Do you know where he usually stayed in New York?”

“He
always stopped at the Algonquin. But he might have
stayed with whoever he was with.”

In a little while this mythical character would be as satis
factory as a real person.

“Maybe,”
said the Saint adaptively. “I’ll have some eggs and
bacon as soon as they’re ready.’

He went out and found the telephone in the living room,
and called New York. The Algonquin Hotel informed him that
nobody of the name of Calvin Gray had registered
there the
night before.

He lighted a
cigarette and strolled out of the house. Sunlight made crazy fretwork patterns
through the leaves of the sur
rounding
trees, and flowers in well-kept beds splashed daubs
of gay color against the white of the house and
the green of
square-trimmed hedges. The landscape fulfilled all the
promise
of the flashlight glimpses he had
had the night before. The air was still cool, and there were clean and slightly
damp sweet
smells in it. It was a very pleasant place—a place that had
been
created for and that still nursed its
memories of a gracious way of living that the paranoia of an unsuccessful
house-
painter was trying to destroy.

It seemed a long way from there to the thunder and flame of
slaughter and destruction that ringed the world. And yet
while that war went on Simon Templar could only acknowledge the
peace and beauty around him with his mind. He had
no ease
in his heart to give to the
enjoyment of the things he loved
like
fhat. No man had, or could have, until the guns were si
lent and the droning wings soared on the errands
of life in
stead of death …

And
perhaps even the tranquil scene in which he stood was part of a battlefield
that the history books would never men
tion, but where uncountable decisions in Europe and
the
Orient might be lost or won.

He walked slowly around the house, his hands in his pockets and his
eyes ranging over the ground. He would have missed
nothing that could have told him a story, but it was
a fruit
less trip. The gravel drive
registered no tire prints; there were no footprints in flower beds, no
conveniently dropped hand
kerchiefs or hats
or wallets. Not even a
button. The only con
solation was that he wasn’t disappointed. He hadn’t hopefully
expected
anything. It would have been dangerously like a trite
detective story if he had found anything. But he had made the
effort.

And it left him with nothing but the comfortless certainty
that he had no material clues of any
kind at all.

He went back into the house, and entered the dining room
just as Mrs. Cook was putting a plate
of sturdy eggs and crisp
aromatic bacon on
the table.

“That
looks wonderful,” he said. “It might even put a spark
of life into my dilapidated
brain.”

It was typical of him that he started on the meal with as
much zest as if he had nothing more
important than a day’s golf on his mind. He knew that he would solve no
problems
by starving himself; but unlike most men, he
found that ele
mentary argument quite
sufficient to let him eat with un
alloyed
enjoyment.

He was halfway through when Madeline Gray came in.

She wore a simple cotton dress that made her look very
young and tempting, but her face was pale and her eyes were
bright with strain.

“Hullo,”
he said, so naturally that there might have been
nothing else to say. “How did you sleep?”

“Like a log.” She stood looking at him awkwardly. “Did
you
put something in that
nightcap?”

“Yes,”
he said directly. “You’d never have gone to sleep
without it.”

“I know. It certainly worked. But it’s left me an awful
head.”

“Take
an aspirin.”

“I have.”

“Then
you’ll feel fine in a few minutes. You should have
turned over and gone to sleep again.”

“I couldn’t.”

Mrs. Cook came in from the kitchen and said with excessive
cheeriness: “Good morning, Miss
Gray. And what would you
like for breakfast?”