The Saint Sees It Through (17 page)

“Technically, I suppose I did,”
Simon confessed. “But I was sure you’d understand. After all, I was only
applying your own
pet philosophy. I felt like doing it, so I did.”

“As the victim,” Zellermann said,
“I’m surely entitled to hear
your reason.”

The Saint
grinned.

“Like the bear that came over the
mountain, to see what I
could see. Very interesting it was, too. Did
Ferdinand Pair
field do your decorating?”

Dr.
Zellermann’s face was impassive.

“A philosophy, Mr. Templar, is one
thing. Until the world
adopts that philosophy, the law is something
else. And under
the present laws you are guilty of a crime.”

“Aren’t you sort of rubbing it in a bit,
Ernst?” Simon
protested
mildly.

“Only
to be sure that you understand your position.”

“All right then. So I committed a crime.
I burgled your
office. For that matter, I burgled the late Mr. Foley’s
apartment
too—and his murder intrigues me just as much as you. So
what?”

Dr. Zellermann turned his head and glanced
across the room.
He made an imperious gesture with a crooking finger.

The Saint followed his gaze and saw two men in
incon
spicuous blue suits at a far table detach themselves from the
handles of
coffee cups. One of them pushed something small
and black under the
table. Both rose and came towards Dr. Zellermann’s table. They had that
deadpan, slightly bored ex
pression which has become an occupational
characteristic of
plainclothes men.

There was no need for them to show their
badges to convince
the
Saint, but they did.

“You heard
everything?” Dr. Zellermann asked.

The shorter of the two, who had a diagonal
scar on his
square chin, nodded.

Simon ducked his head and looked under the
table. He saw
a small microphone from which a wire ran down the inside
of one
of
the legs of the table and disappeared under the rug.
The Saint straightened
and wagged an admiring head.

“That, my dear doctor, is most amusing.
Here I thought that
I was talking privately, and it would be your word
against mine in any consequent legal name-calling. It simply didn’t occur to
me that
you’d—er—holler copper.”

Dr. Zellermann paid no attention to Simon. He
spoke to
Scar-chin.

“You know this man is the Saint, a
notorious criminal,
wanted in various parts of the world for such things as
mur
der, blackmail, kidnaping, and so forth?”

“Not wanted for, chum,” the Saint
corrected him amiably. “Merely suspected of.”

Scar-chin looked at his partner, a man with
sad spaniel
eyes. “Guess we better go.”

Spaniel
Eyes laid a hand on the Saint’s arm.

“One moment,” Simon said. This was
said quietly, but
there was the sound of bugles in the command. Spaniel
Eyes
withdrew his arm. The Saint looked at Zellermann. “Your
information
came from somewhere. You didn’t deduce this by
yourself and so lay a
trap. Did Avalon tip you off
?”

“Oh,
Simon!” she cried. “No, darling, no!”

Her voice was brimming with anguish and
outrage. Real or
simulated, the Saint couldn’t tell. He didn’t look at her.
He
held the doctor’s eyes with his own.

Dr. Zellermann showed no expression whatever.
He looked
at the Saint woodenly, with a supreme disinterest. He
might
have been watching a fly he was about to swat.

“Once one
understands a certain type of mind,” Dr. Zeller
mann said almost
contemptuously, “predictions of action patterns are elementary——
”

“My
dear Watson,” the Saint supplied.

“You visited Mrs. Gerald Meldon and James Prather,” Zeller
mann
continued. “Theirs were two of the three names on my appointment pad. It
follows that you also visited Foley. It was
obviously you who
telephoned the police—the phrasing of the message fits your psychological
pattern exactly. Foley was dead
when you left. The police are looking for a
murderer. I knew
that my office had been entered, of course, because
someone
answered the telephone when no one should have been there.
I
suspected that that ‘someone’ was you; and the rest followed.
It was
only necessary to have you confirm my deductions your
self.”

The
Saint’s smile held a wholly irrational delight.

“I see,” he said softly. “You
know, Ernst, my esteem for you
has raised itself by its mouldy bootstraps. I bow to you. From
now on, life will have a keener edge.”

“Life, if any, Templar. In spite of what
you read in the
papers, murderers frequently do go to the chair.”

“Not
this one, dear old wizard.” The Saint turned to Spaniel-Eyes. “Shall
we begin our invasion of Sing Sing?”

“Yerk,
yerk,” Spaniel Eyes said.

As the Saint got to his feet, Avalon stood
beside him. He
looked into her dark eyes deeply and ironically. Her gaze
didn’t
waver.

“I
didn’t,” she whispered. “I didn’t.”

Simon
kissed her lightly.

“Be a
good girl. Don’t forget to eat your vitamins.”

“But you’re not going like a lamb,”
she cried. “Aren’t you
even going to try to do something?”

That gay and careless smile flashed across
his face. “My dear
old Aunt Harriet always said that as long as there’s life there’s
life. Thanks for the drinks, Doctor.”

He was gone, walking straight as a magician’s
wand between
Scar-chin
and Spaniel-Eyes. Their passage between the tables
was leisurely and attracted no notice, aside from a bold and
admiring glance now and then from women lunchers.
They might have been three executives headed back to their marts, or three
friends popping off to green and manicured pastures
to chase a pellet of gutta percha from one hole to
another.
Certainly no one would have suspected that the Saint was a
prisoner—in fact, any speculations would have
tended to reverse
their roles.

But under his calm exterior, thought processes moved at
incredible speed, toying with this idea,
discarding that. He
didn’t put it
beyond himself to stage a spectacular escape as
soon as they were outside but on the other hand it would be
no help to him to become a fugitive. He even
wondered whether Dr. Zellermann’s system of psychological projection had antici
pated an attempt to escape and was even now
listening with
one ear for the rattle
of shots which would mean that the
shadow
of the Saint’s interference had perhaps been lifted
permanently.

Simon saw too many arguments against obliging
him. His
best bet at the moment seemed to be discretion, watchful
waiting, and the hope that the cell they gave him to try on for size
would have southern exposure.

Spaniel-Eyes hailed a cab. Scar-chin climbed
in first, followed
by the Saint, and Spaniel-Eyes gave short inaudible
directions
to the driver.

“Well,” the Saint said after a few moments of riding,
“how
about a swift game of gin
rummy?”

“Shaddup,”
Spaniel-Eyes said, and looked, at his watch.

“By the way,” Simon asked, “what are visiting hours
in the
local calaboza?”

“Shaddup,” Spaniel
Eyes said.

They rode some more. They wound through
Central Park,
entering at Columbus Circle, curving and twisting along
the west side of that great haven for nurses, sailors, nurses and
sailors,
up around the bottleneck end of the lake, south past
the zoo.

The Saint looked significantly at the flat
backs of the animal
cages. “What time,” he asked Spaniel Eyes,
“do you have to be back in?”

“Shaddup.”

“This,” the Saint said
conversationally to Scar-chin, “has
been most
illuminating. I suppose I shouldn’t ever have taken this drive otherwise. Very
restful. The lake full of rowboats,
the rowboats full of afternoon
romance, the—oh, the
je ne sais
quoi,
like kids
with ice creamed noses.”

Scar-chin
yawned.

Simon lighted another cigarette and brooded
over the routine.
He
considered his chances of getting a lawyer with a writ of habeas corpus before
things went too far. Or was it the scheme
of
Scar-chin and Spaniel-Eyes to spirit him away to some
obscure precinct station and hold him
incommunicado? Such
things had been done before. And at that stage of
the game the
Saint knew he could not afford
to disappear even for twenty-four hours.

Spaniel Eyes looked at his watch as they
neared the exit at
Fiftyninth Street and Fifth Avenue.

“Okay,”
he called to the cab driver.

The driver nodded and drove to—of all
places—the Algon
quin.
Scar-chin came back to life.

“Awright,”
he said. “Go on up to your room.”

“And
then what?”

“You’ll
see.”

Simon nodded pleasantly, and went up to his
room. The tele
phone
was ringing.

“Hamilton,” said the voice at the
other end. “I wish you’d
be more careful. Do you think I haven’t
anything else to do with my men except send them to pull you out of jams?”

4

For a
considerable time after the Saint had left, there was a
nominal silence in the dining room of 21. Nominal, because
of
course there was never any actual silence in that much-publicised pub except
when it was closed for the night. The
chatter
of crocks, cutlery, concubines and creeps went on with
out interruption
or change of tempo, a formless obbligato like
the
fiddling of insects in a tropic night which could only be
heard by
forced attention. It washed up against the table where
Zellermann and Avalon sat, and still left them isolated in a
pool
of stillness.

Of Avalon one could only have said that she
was thinking. Her face was intent and abstracted but without mood. If it
suggested
any tension, it was only by its unnatural repose.

Dr. Zellermann avoided that suggestion by
just enough play with cocktail glass and cigarette, with idle glances around
the
room, to convey a disinterested expectation that this hiatus was
purely
transitory, and that he was merely respecting it with
polite acceptance.

He turned
to Avalon at last with a sympathetic smile.

“I’m
so sorry,” he said in his best tableside manner.

She
shrugged.

“Sorry?
For what?”

“It is not my desire, Miss Dexter, to
cause you anguish or
heartache.”

“I’ve
been watching out for myself for some time, Doctor.”

“That, my dear, is your chief
attraction. One would expect a girl who is as beautiful as you to be dependent.
You have a
magnificent—er—contempt for the conventional behavior of
beautiful
women. If I may say so.”

“You have, Doctor. Which all leads up to
an exit line.
Goodbye.”

He raised
a soft white hand.

“Don’t
go. You haven’t had your lunch.”

“I’m
not hungry.”

“Then please listen. I have information
that may be to your
advantage to know.”

She settled back, but did not relax. She had
the appearance
of a motionless cat, not tense, yet ready to leap. Her
dark eyes
were alert, wide and bright.

“About Mr. Templar,” the
psychiatrist began. “Although
I am glad to confess a personal
interest in your welfare, what I am about to say is of an academic
nature.”

Avalon
smiled with one side of her mouth.

“Anyone will grant that he is a romantic
figure, Miss Dexter.
He must have a tremendous attraction for
women, especially
young and beautiful girls who are trying to carve out a
career.
He represents all they strive for—poise, charm, fame and
respect
from many psychological types. But he is not a stable
person, Miss
Dexter.”