Saint Steps In (22 page)

“And yet,” said the Saint, “I happened to meet his
stooge,
Walter Devan, in Washington; and Devan told me
that Calvin
Gray’s formula looked very
promising, but just didn’t happen
to
be in their line. Not that it was fraud.”

“Devan isn’t a chemist.”

“Neither is Quennel, except that he once worked in his
father’s drug store.”

“He
has the best advice that money can buy. Devan must
have been misinformed.”

“Why would Quennel misinform Devan?”

Imberline waved a
large hand.

“I
am not impertinent enough to pry into Mr. Quennel’s private affairs. Doubtless
he had his reasons. It could have
been no concern of Devan’s anyway. The cobbler should stick
to his last.”

“Devan said that in front of Madeline Gray. And it’s much
easier to believe that he was trying to cover up Quenco’s
inter
est in suppressing Gray’s
discovery.”

“Nonsense.
Of course he was trying to spare Miss Gray’s
feelings.”

“Pollyanna,”
said the Saint bluntly, “why the hell won’t
you see that Quennel is playing you for a
sucker?”

He had said the
wrong thing, and he knew it immediately. Imberline bridled and bulged again,
his heavy face darkening. He stood up and boomed.

“Young man, that is not only an impudent suggestion—it’s
scandalous. Mr. Quennel is the head of a great corporation.
A
man of his standing has a duty to the
public almost like that
of a
trustee. A great deal of harm has been done by cheap and
irresponsible
attempts to discredit some of our outstanding in
dustrial leaders. But there is still a thing as business ethics;
and
thank God, sir, while there are still men of the caliber that
has made America what it is today——
”

“Spare me the speech,” said the Saint mildly. “I seem to
have
read it before
somewhere.”

“If you expect to impress me with these wild and scurrilous
innuendoes——
”

“All I’d like to know,” Simon said patiently, “is what
you propose to do about it.”

“Do?” brayed Imberline.

He seemed to have a defensive repugnance to the suggestion
that it was up to him to do something.

“Yes.”
Simon left one swallow in his glass, and stood up
also. He kept the stout satrap spitted on a gaze of
coldly chal
lenging sapphire.
“Don’t forget that you could be made to
look rather funny yourself on the basis I mentioned a little
while ago.”

Imberline’s eyes narrowed down into beady stubbornness.

“I shall verify your statements, naturally. As a Public Serv
ant, I am obliged to do that. If they
have any truth in them— and I still haven’t discarded the idea that the whole
thing may
be a fabrication of your
own—there will of course be a thorough investigation. But I’m quite sure that
there is some per
fectly
simple explanation.”

“I’m quite sure there is,” said the Saint. “Only you
haven’t
seen it yet.”

“Now will you get the hell out of here again? I have an engagement
in a few minutes.”

Simon
nodded, and glanced at his watch. He emptied his
glass and set it down.

“So have I, brother. So just remember what I’m going to
do.”

“Next time, you can make a proper appointment for it.”

“I’m
going to make an appointment,” said the Saint. “With
the FBI. Tomorrow. In the course of
which I shall mention
your name in connection with that Madeline Gray business,
and your dropping of Calvin Gray on
Hobart Quennel’s say-so.
So if you haven’t taken some steps by that time, the Proper Au
thorities will want to know why.”
He dragged the last value
out
of his cigarette and crushed it out in the nearest ashtray.
“I hope you will all have a
bouncing reunion.”

He
closed the door very silently behind him; and as the ele
vator took him down he was cheered by
the thought that he
had been
able to insert at least one lively bluebottle in the
balm of the Ungodly. Frank Imberline might be the
nearest
thing to a well-schooled
moron; he might fume and boom and cling dogmatically to all his platitudes; but
a seed had been
planted
in his approximation of a mind, and if it ever got a root in there it would be
as immovable as all his bigotries.
The fatuous honesty, or honest fatuousness, which had made
him such a perfect tool might
boomerang in a most diverting
way.

Simon
Templar rolled the rare bouquet of the idea through
his mind. He had certainly hoped to have something
sensa
tional out of Hamilton’s
reports to confront Imberline with;
but this might be even better.

It
was nearly eight o’clock, and he was hurried and pre
occupied enough to stride past a couple of men who were
entering the lobby without recognising one of them until his step was taking
him past them. He almost stopped, and then went
straight on out of the street, without looking round
or being
quite sure whether he had
been recognised himself. But the
monkey-wrench he had flipped into the machinery clattered
more musically in his ears as he
hailed a taxi. He knew that
it
would produce some disorder even sooner than he had
hoped, and he thought he knew a little more about
Hobart
Quennel’s business
conference that night; for the man he had
belatedly identified was Walter Devan.

5. How Andrea Quennel tried Everything,

and
Inspector
Fernack also Did his Best.

Andrea Quennel cherished a crystal balloon of the last sur
viving cognac of Jules Robin, and said:
“Where do we go from
here?”

“That
could be lots of places,” said the Saint.

He
felt durably sustained with two more cocktails, a bowl
of the lobster bisque which only Louis and Armand
make just
that way, and a brochette
of veal kidneys exuding just the
right
amount of plasma from the pores. He was icily sober,
and yet he was recklessly ready for whatever was
coming out
of this.

“We
might take in a good movie,” he suggested through a
drift of cigarette smoke.

“What—and
catch one of those Falcon pictures with some
body giving a bargain-basement imitation of
you?”

He chuckled.

“All
right. You call it. What’s your favorite night club?”

“I’m
sick to death of night clubs. Remember? I was Miss
Glamor Girl of Nineteen-Something.” Her generous
mouth
sulked. “Leave it to
me, then. I know where we’ll go.”

The
green convertible circled back to Fifth Avenue and
purred north. The wind stirred in her ash blonde
hair, and
her hands were as light as
the wind on the wheel. She looked
pleased with herself in a private way.

Simon
Templar was equally contented. He would have paid
a regal fee for the privilege of listening to the
business conference between Walter Devan and Frank Imberline, with the
chance of having Hobart Quennel thrown
in for good measure,
and he wished he had had the forethought to appropriate the
late Mr. Angert’s ingenious aid to
eavesdropping when the
opportunity was there. But he hadn’t; and the Savoy Plaza had
not been considerate enough to
architect itself with a con
venient system of balconies for listening outside windows, as
any hotel which had known it was going
to be sued in a story
of
this kind would assuredly have done. The Saint had to be
philosophical about it. He couldn’t be
in two places at once
either, and he could imagine much duller places than where
he was now. He cupped his hands around
the lighting of an
other
cigarette and leaned back to enjoy the air and the ride.
To him, there had always been a kind of
simple excitement in
the mere motion of driving through New York in an open car
at night, the car like a speedboat
skimming through the tall
angular
canyons, dwarfed even by limousines like sedate
yachts, and buses like behemoths towering and roaring
clumsily along the stream. It was an atavistic fantasy, like defying the
elements in a flimsy tent; and it matched a mood that was
no less primitive, and a duel that was
no less real for all its
lightness.

The
Park fell open on their left, and they drifted along its
banks for a few blocks before Andrea
turned off into one of
the eastern tributaries. She pulled up outside a house with
an open door and a dimly lighted
hallway.

“Well?” she said. “Want to come in?”

“I
don’t remember hearing about this club.”

“It’s rather
exclusive.”

He
got out of the car, and she came around and took his
left arm. She pressed close to him as they went up the steps, in
an easy and spontaneous intimacy; and he felt the
gun in his
holster hard against his
side.

“You are careful, aren’t you?” she said with the faintest
mockery.

He looked very
innocent.

“Why?”

“Carrying a gun when you go out on a date with a girl.”

“I never know who else I might meet.”

She laughed, and pressed buttons in the self-service elevator.
He smiled with her; and he was very careful, keeping his
right hand free and clear and his coat open.

They
stopped at the fifth floor, and stepped out on to an
empty landing with the same subdued lighting as the hall. She
went to a door with a letter on it, and opened it
with a key
from her bag.

“Will you walk into my parlor?” she said.

He
walked in. It was one of those things that had to be
done, like leaving a front-line trench in an advance,
and he
could only do it with his
shooting hand loose and ready and
his muscles alert and all her nerves and senses tuned to
the
last sensitive turn. It
was an absurdly melodramatic feeling,
like the time when he had let her into his suite in
Washington; but there was no alternative to unchanging vigilance, and the
good earth had provided innumerable
graveyards for adven
turers who had drowsed at the wrong time.

They were in an apartment, he saw as she found switches
and turned on lights.

“This is quite a club,” he remarked.

It
was a nice and ordinarily furnished place. He strolled
around on the most casual tour of inspection, but he
managed
to open all the doors and
glance into all the closets that might
have harbored unfriendly hosts.

“Like it?” she said.

“Very
much,” he replied. “I miss some of the dear old
bloated Café Society faces, but not
too badly.”

“I keep it for when I have to stay in town. That phonograph
thing over there has a bar in it, and
there ought to be some
good brandy. Take
care of us, darling.”