Saint Steps In (16 page)

He
dialed the operator and asked for information, and af
ter a few minutes he was through to New Haven.

“I
want to talk to whoever’s in charge there,” he said. “The name is
Simon Templar.”

After a moment another voice said: “Yes, Mr. Templar?”

“Did
you get a call from Washington about me?”

“Yes. Anything we can do?”

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to Tun down to
Stamford. This is a kidnaping. And
incidentally there’s an
other guy murdered, if that makes it sound better.”

There was a brief digestive pause.

“Okay,”
said the voice matter-of-factly. “I can be there in
about an hour. Where are you?”

Simon
got the address from Madeline, repeated it, and hung
up.

He
lighted a cigarette, took out his automatic, and replen
ished the clip with a couple of loose shells from his
pocket.

“So,”
she said, “it was Karl.”

“It
was. And he was also one of our playmates of last night.
And he may have been the man who put
that note in my
pocket. I
did get a few answers out of him, for what they’re
worth, before he foxed me.”

He
gave her a complete story of what had happened.

“I
haven’t any doubt that Karl is a Nazi,” he said. “But somehow I don’t
think he’s a big one. I don’t know how big
the Nazi angle is. It still doesn’t look big—or else
it’s too big
to see. But I’d be
inclined to say that Karl was just put in here
originally as a routine assignment, a sort of leg
man, to find
out what your father was up
to. Did he have any chance to
learn
this formula?”

“No.
Daddy never told anyone the real secret except me.”

“I didn’t think so. If Karl had known it, they wouldn’t have
needed to kidnap your father—which he
admitted, by the way,
when he was getting under my guard by pretending to break
down—and Karl wouldn’t have needed to
come back here. I
imagine
he was sent back to see if he couldn’t find some notes
or clues.”

“What else
did he say?”

“He said he wasn’t working for Imberline—yet. But I don’t know
whether I believe that or not.”

“Could
Imberline be a Nazi?”

“Anything
is possible, in this goddam war. And yet, if he is
a very brilliant and cunning guy, he certainly does
an amaz
ing job of hiding it
…
I don’t know
…
At any rate, I’m
sure that Karl is working for somebody else besides Schicklgr
ü
ber
, even if it’s only to cover his real boss and help him get
into the places where he wants to be.”

“Then
who is it?”

“If I could tell you that, darling, I wouldn’t be getting much
of a headache. The new fun that we have
to cope with is that the Ungodly don’t all seem to be in one camp. Hence the
sad
fact that Comrade Angert’s
head will never ache again.”

She winced at that.

“And
we don’t know anything about him at all,” she said.

“No. But we may find out something now.”

The
Saint had his trophies on the table beside him. He
turned to them to see if they were going to be any
help, and
the girl came over to sit
on the arm of his chair and look over
his shoulder.

He took the paper
first. It was a plain quarto sheet, folded
four
times in one direction, the way many reporters use for taking notes. The
jottings, after a little study, became much
more intelligible than they had looked at first. There were the
initials MG, the name Simon Templar written in
full once,
and the initials ST
afterwards; there were places, figures which could be resolved into times, and
an occasional item like “Cab,
85c.”

“As we guessed anyway,” said the Saint, “Sylvester was
on
your tail. And mine, too,
after we met. He seems to have picked
you up yesterday morning—at least, there are no notes
before
that.”

He picked up the
wallet next. It contained fifty-five dollars
in
bills, a deposit book from the Bowery Savings Bank with a record of fairly
regular deposits and a final balance of $3127.48,
a driving license, a
couple of Western Union blanks, four air
mail
stamps, a 4-H draft card, a New York firearms permit, a
snapshot of a young man in Air Corps uniform, a
life insurance receipt, a diary with nothing but a few names and ad
dresses written in it, and a selection of visiting
cards. The visit
ing cards were
professionally interesting—Simon had a similar
but even more extensive collection himself. They were designed
to associate Mr. Angert with an assortment of
enterprises that
ranged from the Choctaw Pipe and Tube Company to the
advertising department of Standard Magazines.

There were three cards, however, that the Saint stopped
at. They said:

—————————————————————

VAnderbilt 6-3850

SCHINDLER BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

7 East 44th Street

New York, N. Y.

Mr. Sylvester Angert
          

—————————————————————

“This,” said the Saint, “I can find out about.”

“What’s different about it?”

“It happens to be a real agency. One of the best. You remem
ber I told you in Washington that I
could hire you some
guards
if you wanted them? If you’d taken me up on it, I’d
have passed you on to Ray Schindler
…
By God, Ray has a
summer place near here, and there’s just a chance——
”

He was reaching for the telephone again without finishing
the sentence.

He
had that one stroke of luck, at least. He knew the voice
that answered his ring without asking.

“Ray,”
he said, “this is Simon Templar.”

“Well, well.
Long time no see. How ‘ve you been?”

“Good
enough. Listen, Ray, this is business. Do you hap
pen to know a bird by the name of Sylvester
Angert?”

There
was a fractional pause.

“Yes. I know him.”

“Does he work for you?”

“Sometimes.”

“You’re going to have to replace him,” said the Saint cold
bloodedly. “Sylvester has gone to
the Happy Sleuthing
Grounds.”

The wire hummed
voicelessly for a second.

“What happened?”

“Somebody
used his head for a drum and broke it.”

“Where was this?”

“At Calvin Gray’s place, just a little while ago. I found the
body. He was following Madeline Gray, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“And me too.”

“I
didn’t know about that. If I’d known you knew her——
”

Schindler didn’t go on. He said: “Have you called the
police?”

“No.
But I’ve got an FBI man coming down. There’s more
to this than just a murder.”

“Just the same, if there’s been a murder we’ll have to notify
the police.”

“I
suppose so. I’ll call them.”

“Better
let me do it. I know the Chief. And I’ll be right
over.”

“You know
the place?”

“Yes. I’ll
see you in a few minutes.”

Simon hung up.

“I’m
afraid you’re going to be hostess to a real convention
of detectives,” he said. “You’d better put a
blue light outside
and get
out the cuspidors.”

“You know this man Schindler,” said the girl.

“I’ve known him for years. And whatever dirty work is going
on, he isn’t part of it. But anybody
could have hired him to
check up on you, on some pretext or other. I’m just hoping
this will give us another lead. We’ll
see. Meanwhile—don’t
you
think a drink would do you a bit of good?”

He
went into the kitchen to organize a cocktail, and the girl followed him in
there and watched him.

Presently she said: “You’ve been very sweet, trying to take
everything out of my hands. But now,
I’ve got to know. Do
you think there’s any chance of finding Daddy?”

“There’s always a chance of anything,” he replied, stirring
his mixture methodically. “But
this won’t be easy. This is an
awful
quiet neck of the woods. Two or three men could easily
come here, and pull a job, and get away again without
ever
being seen by anyone
within miles of here.”

Her eyes were
stony and searching.

“If you’re keeping anything back, I’ve got a right to know
it. What do you think the truth
is?”

He
put down the shaker and faced her bluntly, and yet as
kindly as he could.

“I think that I’m entirely responsible for whatever has hap
pened to your father. I still don’t
know what makes it tick.
But
there’s a pattern. Look. You’ve had incidental sabotage
and threats. They didn’t stop you. Last
night. I began to think
that kidnaping your father, and the attempt to kidnap you,
were a sort of co-ordinated
maneuver—they could have been
timed
to happen about the same time, and you’d both have
disappeared the same night, only in different places.
But that doesn’t work.”

“Why?”

“The note you got in the Shoreham.
‘Don’t try to see Im
berline.’
Your appointment with Imberline was a phony, a
plant to take you to a place where you
could be kidnaped. Therefore, why try to stop you keeping the appointment? Only
for one reason. The Ungodly
were still trying to weasel on
their ungodliness. They still didn’t want to go right in up to
their ears. But you weren’t scared off.
You spoke to me. They
told
me to mind my own business, but they must have
guessed even then that I wouldn’t. They still might
have
thought they could put on
some act and scare you off, but
when I crashed on to the battlefield even that last hope was
shot. At last they had to start really
playing for keeps. You did
all that when you dragged me in, and now it remains to be
seen whether I can make it worth
while.” His lips set in a sar
donic fighting line. “I’m sorry, kid, but at the
moment that’s
how I think it is.”

He
was taking more blame than he need have, for it was obvious that a kidnaping
of Calvin Gray could not have followed
so quickly unless the plans had been laid in advance
and there
had been men waiting in the
vicinity of Stamford who only
needed a telephone call to set them in motion; but it made
him feel better to take all the
responsibility he could inflict on himself. It helped to build up a strength of
cold anger that was
some
antidote to a groping helplessness which was not his
fault.

But the girl didn’t break. She said steadily: “Then you think
they meant to leave me——”

“So
that you’d play ball for fear of what might happen to
your father. They weren’t actually ready to tie you
both up
and work on you with hot
irons. The threat and the war of
nerves
might have done the trick. Which is another thing that
doesn’t quite seem to fit the Nazi angle. And good
heel heiler
like Karl would have seen
it the more straightforward way.
But
now—I don’t know.”

“Whatever
it comes to,” she said, “I’ll be as tough as I can.
I’m all right now. I promise.”

He grinned, with one of his sudden carefree flashes of un-
reserving comradeship that could make
people feel as if they
had
been elected to a unique and exclusive fraternity; and his hand rested briefly
and lightly on her shoulder.

“You
always were all right, Madeline,” he said. “You just wanted a little
time to find your feet in this racket.”