Saint Steps In (4 page)

As
Simon stepped towards him he said: “Damn, I’m sorry.
I must have picked the wrong side. I
was just driving by——
”

“You’ve got a car?” Simon snapped.

“Yes. I just got out——
”

Simon
caught the girl’s hand and raced to the street. There
was a convertible parked just beyond the alley, but it
was
headed in the opposite
direction from the way the escaping car had turned. And the other car itself
was already out of si
ght.

The Saint shrugged and searched for a consoling cigarette.

“I’m
really terribly sorry.” The other man came up with
them, still holding his stomach and
trying to straighten him
self. “I
just saw the fight going on, and it looked as if someone
was in trouble, and naturally I thought the man on
the ground
was the victim. Until Miss
Gray started beating me up
…
I’m afraid I helped them get away.”

“You know each other, do you?” asked the Saint.

She was staring puzzledly.

“I’ve seen you somewhere, but——
”

“Walter Devan,” said the man. “It was in Mr. Quennel’s
office. You were with your
father.”

Simon
put a match to his cigarette. With the help of that
better light, he shared with her a better view of the
man’s face.
It was square-jawed and
powerful, with the craggy leathery
look of a prizefighter.

“Oh yes!” She turned to the Saint. “Mr. Devan—Mr. Tem
plar.”

Simon put out his hand.

“That’s
quite a flying tackle you have,” he said, and Devan grinned.

“It
should be—I played professional football when I was a
lot younger. You’re a pretty good
kicker yourself.”

“We are a
lot of wasted talent,” said the Saint.

“Perhaps it’s all for the best,” Devan said. “Anyway, we
got
rid of those hoodlums, and
some of them can be very ugly
There have been a lot of hold-ups and housebreakings around
here lately. The bad boys hide in the
park and come out after
dark.”

Simon
thought of mentioning the fact that these particular bad boys had had a car,
but decided that for the moment the
point
wasn’t worth making. Before the girl could make any
comment, he said: “Maybe you wouldn’t mind giving us a lift
out
of the danger zone.”

“Be glad to. Anywhere.”

They got in, Madeline Gray in the middle, and Simon
looked at her as Devan pressed the
starter, and said: “I think
we ought to go back to the Shoreham and have another drink.”

“But I’ve
still got to see Mr. Imberline.”

“Mr. Imberline isn’t home, darling. I was there first. I missed
you on the way. Then I started back to look for you.”

“But I had an appointment.”

“You mean
Frank Imberline?” Devan put in.

She said: “Yes.”

“Mr.
Templar’s right. He’s not home. I happen to know that
because Mr. Quennel’s been trying to get in touch
with him
himself.”

“Just
how did you get this appointment?” Simon asked.

“I’d been trying to see him at his office,” she said,
“but I
hadn’t gotten anywhere. I’d
left my name and address, and they were supposed to get in touch with me. Then
I got a
phone call this afternoon
to go to his house.”

“Someone was pulling your leg,” said the Saint quietly.

She looked at him with wide startled eyes.

Simon’s
arm lay along the back of the seat behind her. His
left hand moved on her shoulder with a firm
significant pressure. Until he knew much more about everything, now, he was
in no hurry to talk before any
strangers.

Especially this man who called himself Walter Devan.

Because, unless he was very much mistaken, Devan had
been the round stocky man who had
jostled him in the Shoreham cocktail lounge. And the eyes of the taller of the
two
self-asserted FBI agents
looked very much like those of one of
the group that had followed Frank Imberline into the dining
room later—when he had
received his second jostling.

3

Devan seemed quite unconscious of any suppression. He said
conversationally: “By the way, Miss Gray, how is your father
getting on with his new synthetic
process?”

“The
process is fine,” she said frankly, “but we’re still trying
to put it over.”

Devan shook his head sympathetically.

“These
things take a lot of time. Imberline may be able to
help you,” he said. “It’s too bad our
company couldn’t do any
thing
about it.” He turned towards Simon and added in ex
planation: “Mr. Gray has a very
promising angle on the syn
thetic
rubber problem. He brought it to Mr. Quennel, but unfortunately it wasn’t in
our line.”

“I
suppose,” said the Saint, “I should know—but what ex
actly is our line?”

“Quennel
Chemical Corporation. Quenco Products. You’ve probably seen the name somewhere.
It’s rather a well-known name.”

His voice reflected quiet pride. Yes, Simon had seen the name, right
enough. When he had first heard it mentioned it
had sounded familiar, but he hadn’t been able to
place it.

“What do you think of Mr. Gray’s formula?” he asked.

“I’m
afraid I’m not a chemist,” Devan said apologetically.
“I’m just the personnel manager.
It sounds very hopeful, from
what I’ve heard of it. But Quennel already has an enormous
contract with the Government for buna,
and we’ve already
invested
more than two million dollars in a plant that’s being
built now, so our hands are tied. That’s probably our
bad
luck.”

The Saint dragged at his cigarette thoughtfully.

“But if Mr.
Gray’s invention is successful and put into pro
duction, it would mean his method would be in competition
with yours, wouldn’t it?” he asked.

Devan gave a short laugh.

“I suppose it would be, theoretically,” he admitted.
“But
with the world howling for
rubber, all the rubber it can get, it
would be hard to call it competition. Rather, it would be
like two firms turning out different makes of life preservers—
there’d be no pick and choose involved when a drowning man
was being thrown one.”

The Saint
finished his cigarette in silence, with thoughtful
leisuredness. There was, after all, some justice in the world. That
violent and accidental meeting had its own unexpected
compensation for the loss of two possibly
unimportant mus
cle men. If he still needed it, he had the clinching
confirmation
that the story which had sounded
so preposterous was true—
that after
all Madeline Gray was not just a silly sensation-
hunter and
celebrity-nuisance, but that the invention of Calvin
Gray might indeed be one of those rare fuses from which could
explode a fiesta of fun and games of the real
original vintage
that he loved. He
felt a little foolish now for some of his facile
incredulity; and yet, glancing again at the profile of the girl beside
him, he couldn’t feel very deeply sorry. It was worth
much more than a little transient egotism for her
to be
real …

They were at the
Shoreham, and Walter Devan said: “I hope
I’ll
see you again.”

“I’m staying
here,” said the Saint.

“So am I,” said the girl.

The Saint looked at her and began to raise a quizzical eye
brow at himself, and she laughed and
said: “I suppose I’d
do
better if I could act more like a starving inventor’s daugh
ter, but the trouble is we just aren’t
starving yet.”

He looked at the Scottish tweed suit that covered her per
fection, at the hat that just missed ridiculousness, and
silently
estimated their cost. No, Madeline
Gray looked as though she
was far
removed from starvation.

“Let
me know if I can help,” said Devan. “I might be able
to do something for you. Maybe Mr.
Quennel can reach Imberline
and fix some kind of a conference. I’m at the Raleigh
if you should want to reach me for any reason.”

He
drove off after a brief word to Templar. Simon gazed
after the ruby tail light for a moment, and then took
the girl’s
arm, steering her into the
lobby. She started to turn towards
the
cocktail lounge, but he guided her towards the elevators.

“Let’s go to
my apartment,” he said. “Funny things seem to
happen in cocktail lounges and dining rooms.”

He felt her eyes switch to him quickly, but his face was as
impersonal as the way he had spoken.
She stepped into the
elevator without speaking, and was silent until they were in
his living room.

At a time when a closet and a blanket could be rented in
Washington as a fairly luxurious
bedroom, it was still only
natural
that Simon Templar should have achieved a commo
dious suite all to himself. He had a profound
appreciation of
the more
expensive refinements of living when he could get
them, and he had ways of getting them that would have
been
quite incomprehensible to
less enterprising men. He took off
his coat and went to a side table to pour Peter Dawson into
two tall glasses, and
added ice from a thermos bucket.

“Now,”
she said, “will you tell me exactly what you mean
by funny things happen in cocktail lounges and dining rooms?”

He gave her one of the drinks he had mixed, and then with
his freed hand he showed her the note
he had found in his
pocket.

“I
found it just after you’d left,” he explained. “That’s why
I went after you. I’m sorry. I take it
all back. I was stupid
enough to think you were stupid. I’ve tried to make up for a
little. Now can we start again?”

She smiled at him
with a straightforward friendliness that he
should
have been able to expect. Yet it was still good to see it.

“Of
course,” she said. “Will you really help me with Imberline
when I get in touch with him?”

He
sipped his drink casually and looked at her over the rim
of his glass. When he took down the
drink, he asked:

“Have you
ever met this phantom Imberline who everybody seems to be trying to get in
touch with?”

She nodded.

“I’ve seen him a couple of times,” she said briefly.

“What’s he
like, and what does he do?”

She waved her hands expressively.

“He’s—oh, he’s a Babbitty sort of person, nice but dull and
I suspect not too brilliant. Honest,
politically ambitious perhaps
, a joiner, likes to make friends——
”

“Just what is his position?” asked the Saint.

“He’s
with the WPB, as I told you. A dollar-a-year man in
the synthetic rubber branch. Not the biggest man in
that
branch, but still fairly
important. He has quite a bit of say
about what money is going to be spent for the development
of
which processes.”

The ice in
Simon’s glass tinkled as he drank again.

“And what did he do before he became a dollar-a-year man?”
he asked.

Her eyes widened a trifle as she gazed back at him.

“Surely, you
must have heard of Frank Imberline!” she ex
claimed. “Imberline, of Consolidated Rubber. Of course, it
was his father who built up the rubber combine, but
at least
this Imberline hasn’t done anything
to weaken that combine.
There are hints, rumors——”

She broke off
abruptly and gnawed her lip.

“Go on,” said Simon pleasantly. “I’m interested in the
saga
of The Imberline.”

She moved her hands again.

“Oh, it’s
just rubber trade talk,” she said. “Something you
couldn’t possibly be interested in.”

“Suppose I
hear it and decide for myself.”