Saint Steps In (24 page)

“How did you
know that?”

“I told you that I’d been asking questions,” he said. “I
was getting quite attached to Comrade Angert, so, naturally I was
interested. The description of Miss
Diana Barry could have
fitted
a lot of people in the world, but out of the people I
knew were likely it could only have been you.”

“You’re
frightfully clever, aren’t you?” she said admiringly. “You’re so
perfectly like the Saint, it isn’t fair.”

He kept his gaze on her eyes.

“Did your
father ask you to do that job for him?”

“Of
course he did. Was that wrong of me? I mean, I didn’t
even know you then, so how could I know it would have
anything
to do with you?”

“Why did you call yourself Diana Barry?”

“I couldn’t
give my own name, could I? He’d probably have
told
Winchell or Walker or Sobol or somebody. Besides, Daddy
likes to do
things quietly.”

“Quietly
enough to cook up that phony blackmail story,
apparently.”

“We
had to give some reason, stupid. Daddy was just interested
in these tiresome Gray people, and he wanted to know
more about them. Just like he wanted to know more
about
you. He’s awfully interested in all kinds of people.” She
drank some more brandy and scowled momentarily at the glass. “Now
I suppose you’re going to be sore because I didn’t
tell you all
about it. Well, why
should I tell you? I wouldn’t even tell
anyone else in the world that much. It’s just what you do to
me.”

He thought it was
time to take a little more of his drink.

“Well,” he observed mildly, “I’m afraid Comrade Angert
won’t be much use to you any
more.”

“I
suppose not, now that you know all about him. So why
can’t we talk about something more amusing?”

She wriggled a
little, like a kitten asking to be stroked, and
made a half-hearted attempt to pull the sheets around her
bare satin back. The sheets were having a
wonderful time.

Simon flipped
some more ash on the floor and put his cigarette back to his mouth.

“I
take it you haven’t been back to that accommodation
address for any Schindler reports lately.”

“No. As a matter of fact, Daddy told me this evening that I
shouldn’t bother any more. He’s found out all he wanted
some other way, or something. So
that’s the end of it, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” he said inflexibly. “But if you had been
there this afternoon you wouldn’t be here
now.”

“Why not?”
 

“Because you’d have been too busy talking to a lot of rude
policemen.”

Nothing could
have been more na
ï
ve and unfrightened
than
her wide blue eyes.

“What
for?”

“On account of Comrade Angert is now very busy snooping
on angels,” he said.

She had her glass at her lips when he said it, and she left it
cleaned of the last drop when she
lowered it. She held it on
her knees without a tremor, and her reasons must have been
different from his. Or were they? . .
. That was the instant
when he had to miss nothing; but there was nothing there.
Nothing in her eyes or her face or her
response. It was like
punching
a feather pillow. She had to be better than he was.
Or he had to be wrong again—as wrong as he had been
before.
And he couldn’t afford any more mistakes. He
was fighting something that only gave way around him like a mire.

It went through
his brain, like a comet, that the whole pointless death of Angert could still
have no point.

Just
an unfortunate error; one of those tripwires on which
the best plans went agley, wherever that was. Karl
Morgen
probably hadn’t intended to
kill Angert anyhow. He had just
hit too hard. He wasn’t the psychic type. He had simply been
on his way to the laboratory to see
what he could find, and
Sylvester Angert had been skulking in the bushes. Therefore
Sylvester Angert had been neutralized.
There had been no
reason for Morgen to have
recognized Angert. You could look
for all
kinds of complex explanations, but it could be as sim
ple as that. Nothing but a collision between the
cogs of too
much efficiency. Just one
of those things.

And
that could be why Hobart Quennel had told Andrea
not to bother about Schindler any more—because
Morgen’s
report, through Devan, had
already made the round trip, and
he knew that that
was dangerous ground.

The Saint was
making everything very easy for himself. And he didn’t know whether it was
really easy, or whether it was
tougher and
more elusive than anything he had thought of
before.

And his eyes were still on Andrea Quennel’s face.

“What are you getting at?” she asked.

“Comrade Angert got himself bumped off.”

She
turned the glass in her hand, and rather deliberately
dropped it over the edge of the bed on to the carpet.
It was
more like her way of putting it down.

“And so you think Daddy had something to do with that,” s
he said from a lost void.

The
Saint didn’t move.

“Andrea,”
he said, “if you want to make any changes, this
is the time to do it.”

Her eyes swam on
him. And then she lay back and covered
them
with her hands. The sheets gave up the effort of keeping
in touch with her.

Simon looked at
her for a while, thinking how dispassionate
he
was. Then he reached over to the bedside table to put his
glass down and stub out his fragment of cigarette
in the ash
tray.

Then, like
before, he was close to her, her arms were around his neck, and her lips were
seeking for his and claiming them;
and this
was worse than before. But he had beaten it before,
and he knew the strength of it, and now he was
even more sure that he had to beat it. He tried being perfectly lifeless
and still; but that didn’t stop her, and it was too
hard to go
on with. He put his hands
on her shoulders and held her down while he pushed himself away until he broke
the circle of her
arms.

“It’s
no use, Andrea,” he said in a voice that he steadied
almost to kindness. “You’re only
cheating yourself.”

She stared up at him with that big blank hurt and hunger.

“I didn’t have anything to do with that man being killed, if he
was killed. It isn’t my fault. And I’m sure it wasn’t
Daddy’s fault, either.”

“I’m not so
sure. And you belong to him.”

“I want to belong to you.”

“You can’t
do both.”

“I can’t be against him. He’s my father.”

“That’s why I’m saying goodnight.” The Saint couldn’t hold
all that kindness. “You’ve told me
what I wanted to know, and
I that’s what I came here for.”

She didn’t recoil from that.

She
said: “I think you’re making all that up to scare me. I
don’t believe it. I can’t.”

“That’s your
choice.”

“And
now I suppose you’re going to tell it all to the police.”

“Eventually, and if it seems like a good idea—yes.”

“Well, I didn’t tell you anything. I won’t admit a word of
it. I made it all up, too. Just to
keep you talking. They’ll laugh
at you——
”

“I’ve been laughed at before.”

“Simon,” she whispered, “couldn’t you just lie down and
talk to me about it?”

He picked out another cigarette and lighted it with a hand
that was perfectly steady now.

“No,”
he answered judiciously. “I couldn’t. So this is good
night.”

“Where are you going?”

“Back to the
hotel, probably, for a start.”

“No,” she said. “Please.”

For the first time he had really caught her. Her face had a
strained frightened look as she lifted herself on one
elbow. He
stood at the foot of the bed and
thrust ruthlessly at the falter
ing
of her guard.

“Why
not?” he asked. “Is
that another job you had to do
for your father?—to keep me here when
I ought to be some
where
else?”

“No,” she said again. “This is just me. Please.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

He started to turn away.

She said helplessly: “I happened to hear them talking …

He
turned again, and his eyes were level and remorseless.

“Who are ‘they,’ and what were ‘they’ talking about?”

“I don’t
know what it was about. I don’t know! It was just
something I happened to overhear. But I was afraid for you.
I know you shouldn’t go back to the hotel. That’s
why I
wanted you here. I don’t want
you to go away. It isn’t safe for
you!”

“That’s too bad,” he said curtly. “But it doesn’t
work.”

He started
towards the door.

There was silence
behind him for a moment, and then a wild
flurry.
He heard her bare feet on the rug; and then she was
all around him,
shameless and clinging and striving, pressing
herself
desperately against him with all her wanton tempta
tions, her face reaching up to him and moist from
her eyes.

“No, please,
you mustn’t—don’t go!”

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you. I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I
just know you shouldn’t. Darling, I
love you. You’ve got me.
You can stay here. Stay here all night. Stay with me. I’ll tell
Daddy I’m not going to drive him home.
He can get a train.
He won’t
mind. I won’t say you’re with me. I don’t care. I
want you here. Darling, darling.”

He
stood without moving, like a statue, keeping his hands
away from her.

“And
then,” she was babbling, “in the morning, I’ll fix
breakfast for you, whatever you like
best; and if you still
want to go back
to Connecticut you can drive up with me, the
trains
are horrible anyhow; and you can have dinner with us
tomorrow night and really meet Daddy, and I know you’ll
get along as soon as you talk to him, you’ve got so much in com
mon, and——
”

It
came over him like a wave, like a tide turning back,
swamping and stifling him and dragging him down, and he had
to strike out and fight it and be clear. He put his
hands up
and seized her wrists and
tore them away from around his
neck.
He was spurred with an anger that blended his own un
certainty and her stupidity, or the reverse of
both; and it was
more than he could
channel into the requisites of scheming
and play. He threw her off him so roughly that the bed caught
her behind the knees and she sat down foolishly,
her liquid
eyes still fastened on him
and her hair a disordered cloud of
spun honey around her face.

“Goodnight,” he said, “and give Daddy my regards.”

He
went out, crossing the living-room quickly, and closing the door behind him on
the landing.

He went down the stairs, not wanting to wait for the ele
vator, and out to the street. A taxi
came by just as he emerged,
and
he caught it thankfully. They crawled past the green con
vertible as he said “The Savoy
Plaza.” It was like an escape.

It was an escape.

He had a momentary vision of her again, her face and her
eyes, and the lovely symmetry and
infinite promise of her;
and he blotted it
out in a sharp cloud of smoke.

The point was what he was escaping to.

No one had called him or asked for him at the hotel. He
took his key and went up to the tenth
floor, and approached
his
door with a queer tingling in his spine. His imagination
whirled out wild pictures of booby
traps, infernal machines
with intricate wiring that fired guns when a key was put in
the lock or started time fuses to
mature when he was well
into the room.
But he couldn’t immobilize himself with night
mares
like that. He opened the door and went in, feeling a
little suicidal and
mildly surprised when he continued to live.
Nothing
happened suddenly with a loud noise. He examined
his dubious refuge inch by inch. Everything was as he had left
it, except that the night maid had been in and turned
down
the bed. The emptiness of the
bathroom gave him his first
smile. At
least he didn’t have to concern himself with such
exotic refinements as cyanide in the tooth powder
or curare
on the edge of a razor
blade. But it was much too easy to be
killed,
if anyone wanted it badly enough—as he knew only too
well from both sides.