Saint Steps In (17 page)

He was impatient for the convoy that he was expecting to arrive. Even
though he would be equally impatient with the
routines that would have to be gone through, they
would give
a temporary air of
positive action which he needed.

It was a long half-hour before the first car crunched into
the driveway and Ray Schindler hauled
his not inconsiderable
bulk out of it. He had sparse white hair and mephistophelian
black eyebrows and an amused
inquisitive nose which gave
him
an absurdly appropriate resemblance to the late Edgar
Wallace.

Simon
went out to meet him, and they shook hands as an
other car drove in and disgorged a big ruddy man in
loose
tweeds with an ancient
fedora tilted on the back of his head.
Schindler introduced them.

“This
is Chief Wayvern—Mr. Templar.”

“Well,” Wayvern said impersonally, “what’s this all
about?”

Simon told the complete story as briefly as he could, leaving
out all speculation, while they walked
to the place where the
funny little man had so abruptly ceased to be funny. They
stood and looked down at him in his
final foolishness.

“That’s
Angert all right,” Schindler said grimly.

Wayvern
moved carefully to the body and made a super
ficial examination without disturbing it. Then he
stepped back
and turned to the two
satellites who had trailed him with a
load of equipment. -

“Get
started, boys,” he said. “But don’t move him until the doctor’s seen
him. He said he’d be here in a few minutes.”

One
of his men began to set up a camera, and Wayvern
took a cigar out of his vest pocket and tilted his
hat even fur
ther back.

“You say this man was working for you, Ray, keeping an eye on
Madeline Gray?”

“That’s
right. He went to Washington the night before last
to pick her up. But I didn’t know about any of these
other
things that Simon has told
you. This client who came to me
said
that Miss Gray had said that she was being blackmailed,
and they wanted to help her. But Miss
Gray had made this per
son
promise not to tell the police. Coming to me was a dodge
to get around that. At least, that was
the story. I was commis
sioned to put a man on to watch Miss Gray and get a report
on everyone who came in contact with
her.”

“Who was
this client?” Simon asked.

“I called my office in New York to make sure of the name
and address. Here it is.”

Schindler
took a piece of paper from his pocket and handed
it to Wayvern.

“Miss Diana Barry,” Wayvern said, reading off the paper.

“What did she look like?” asked the Saint.

“A big tall girl—beautiful figure—blonde—blue eyes—very
well dressed and well spoken——
”

Simon
kept his face studiously blank, but he had been won
dering how long it would be before Andrea Quennel
crossed
bis path again.

4. How Simon Templar studied Biography,

and
Walter Devan
came Visiting.

The FBI man from New Haven, whose name was Jetterick,
said: “This Mrs. Cook says she
served Mr. Gray’s dinner at
seven-thirty, and then she washed up and went home about
nine. At that time he was reading a
book in the living-room.”

“He didn’t say anything about going out,” Madeline put in.

“No.”

“Was there
any reason why he should?” asked the Saint.

There
wasn’t any answer to that.

Simon
had told his story two or three times over—the last time, for it to be
laboriously taken down as a statement. Both
of them had answered innumerable questions.

Madeline
Gray had said: “I don’t know anyone called Diana
Barry, and I don’t know anyone who fits that
description.
And I’m not being
blackmailed.”

Jetterick had phoned the description and address through
to New York for investigation. A
police doctor had seen Angert
,
confirmed the Saint’s diagnosis subject to a postmortem,
and gone away again. The remains of
Sylvester Angert had
gone away too,
riding in a closed van which arrived later. Photo
graphs had been taken, and fingerprints. The laboratory had been gone
over with powders and magnifying glasses. Even
then, men were working meticulously through the rest of the
house.

“You’re
quite sure about Mrs. Cook?” Wayvern asked.

“Absolutely,” Madeline said. “We’ve known her for years
and years, and I don’t think she’s ever
been out of Stamford.
It won’t take you a minute to find out all about her.”

Jetterick
rubbed his clean hard chin and said: “There
haven’t been any threats before, Miss Gray?”

“No.
Only the notes in Washington, that we told you about.”

“You
said that your father was pretty well off, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“But
so far there hasn’t been any demand for ransom.”

“Kidnaping
for ransom,” Simon mentioned, “doesn’t tie in
with two or three attempts to sabotage
a laboratory.”

“Was
the sabotage proved? Were the local police told about it?”

“Of
course,” said the girl. “But they didn’t find anything.”

“We did what we could,” Wayvern said.

“Accidents
do happen in chemical laboratories, don’t they?”

“Sometimes. But——
”

“Didn’t your father ever stay out at night, Miss Gray?
You understand, I have to be very
practical about this. Accord
ing
to you, he was under fifty. That isn’t so old, in these days. I
don’t want to suggest anything that
might offend you, but he
hasn’t
been gone very long. Why shouldn’t he have gone to
New York—met some friends—decided to stay over in
town——”

“You
know as much as we do,” said the Saint. “I’ve told you the whole
story as I have it. You still have to account for the
attempt to kidnap Miss Gray in Washington, the shot
that was
fired at me in the
Shoreham, Karl Morgen prancing in and
out of the picture, and the very dead Mr. Angert. But you
take it your own way from here.”

Jetterick looked at him with philosophical detachment.
“If it were anyone else but
you,” he said, “I’d have given
you more trouble than I have. I admit you make it
sound like
a case. But I have to think
of everything. I’m understaffed
and overworked anyway. However, we are covering everything
we can. We’ve got Morgen’s description,
and we’ll get some
of his
fingerprints from the laboratory. We’ve got the gun you
took from him to check on. We’ll keep
working on every clue
there is.”

“Isn’t there anything I can do?” Madeline asked.

“Get me a photograph and give me a description of your
father. We’ll notify him as missing. If
you do receive any com
munication about him, that’ll give us something more to work
on. Until then, I- can’t make any
promises. There’s a lot of
space
on this continent, and if a man is deliberately being hidden he can take a lot
of finding.”

The FBI man didn’t mean to be unkind. He was just stick
ing to his job, and his textbooks
hadn’t encouraged the emo
tional approach to criminology. But Simon could see the girl
stiffen herself to take it, and liked
the way she did it.
She
hadn’t just been making talk; she was all right now.

“I’ll
get you a picture,” she said very evenly, and went out
of the room.

Jetterick
leafed over the notes he had taken.
Wayvern made another examination of Angert’s wallet,
which Simon had turned over. He picked
out the snapshot of
the
young man in uniform, and shifted the long-dead stump of
his cigar to the corner of his mouth.
“Know anything about this,
Ray?”

“Yes,”
Schindler said. “That’s his son. Or was, rather. He
was killed in the Solomons.”

“No chance of Angert having had any queer sympathies,
then?” Jetterick suggested.

“Not
in a million years,” Schindler said with conviction. “He was crazy
about that boy. Besides that, Angert worked
for me on and off over a period of ten years, and I’d
vouch for
him anywhere. He was just
caught in the middle, the same as
I was.”

“That’s
what it seems like,” admitted Jetterick. “But 1 still
don’t get it. If Morgen was working
for the same outfit as this woman who hired you, what would he kill Angert
for?”

The
same riddle had been distracting the Saint’s attention for a long time; but he
still kept silent about his ace in the
hole. No doubt it was most reprehensible of him, but
he had
always been rather weak on the ethics of such
matters. He had
called in the FBI for their
obvious usefulness, and the local
police
out of necessity; but he had no idea at all of retiring
into the background of the case. On the contrary,
he felt that
his own activity was only
just beginning. And Andrea Quennel
was an angle to which he felt he had a special kind of pro
prietary
claim.

Madeline
Gray came back and said to the other three:
“You’d better have some lunch with us while your
men are
finishing up.”

They were drinking coffee when there was a phone call for
Jetterick from New York. When he
returned to the table his
pleasantly commonplace face was stoical.

“They’re checked on that address,” he said. “It’s just
one of
those accommodation
places. The girl’s description fits.But she
didn’t leave any forwarding address. She said she’d
call in for
messages.”

“I
could have guessed that,” Schindler said, “as soon as I
heard the rest of the story.”

“We’re watching the place, of course. If she goes there, we’ll
pick her up.”

Simon drew on his
cigarette.

“If
she hears that Sylvester was cooled off,” he remarked,
“she isn’t likely to go
there.”

“That’s true. But we can try.”

“Does she have to hear about it?” Schindler asked.

Jetterick shrugged.

“I
don’t have to say anything. How about you, Chief?”

“I’ll do what I can to keep it quiet,” Wayvern answered.
“But I don’t promise more than twenty-four hours. These
things always leak out somehow. Then
the reporters are on my neck, and I have to talk.”

“Twenty-four
hours are better than nothing,” said Jetterick.

“While
we’re keeping things quiet,” said the Saint, “I wish
we could pretend that Madeline hasn’t
been here. The Ungodly are still looking for her. But Morgen didn’t see her, so
far as I know; and I told him she was in New York. Madeline can ask
Mrs. Cook to stay overnight, and make
up some story for her
husband,
so that there’s no gossip around the town. The more
we can keep Madeline hidden, the less likely we are
to lose
her.”