Simon put a match to a cigarette and regarded him with unconcealable awe.
"Incredible" was the adjective which he had spontaneously tacked on Imberline in the Shoreham, without knowing anything about him or having heard more than two sentences of his dialogue. He couldn't improve on it now.
"You ought to be in a glass case," he said.
The pattern snapped into place. And once there, it was immovable. His ruthless eyes had held Imberline under a microscope for every instant of the interview, and they wouldn't have missed even the cobwebby shred of a frayed edge. Even less than in their first conversation, when he had been completely baffled. But there had been no such thing. The précis he had studied hadn't lied—as he should have known it couldn't. He had jabbed Imberline calculatingly with facts, information, insinuations, names and knowledge, without rattling him for a split second on any score except his own sonorous self-esteem. No cornered conspirator could ever have been that brilliant. Not even the dean of all professional hypocrites could have been so unpuncturable. Histrionic masterpieces like that were performed daily in detective stories; never in real life. And this was very much a time for realism, no matter what pet postulates went down in the crash.
"Frankie," said the Saint carefully, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to shake your foundations a bit. I'm beginning to wonder if you haven't been too much an open book for your own good."
"Honesty is the best policy—the only policy," insisted Imberline, putting a fine ring into his new coinage. Then suddenly he was a rather helpless and flabby man staring wistfully at a bottle and a syphon on the bureau. "I was going to have a drink when you came in," he said, as if he had been cheated.
"Fix me one while you're up," said the Saint congenially.
He let Imberline muddle through the mechanics of bartending, without moving until a glass was put into his hand.
Then he said, trying to walk the tight wire between candor and offense, between toughness and tact: "Let's face it. You are an honest man. But everyone you meet in this evil world may not be such an idealist as you are. You may have been a sucker for some people who needed a front man whose life was an open book."
"My associates," stated Imberline, "are business men of the highest standing——"
"And Sing Sing," drawled the Saint, "has several alumni and post-graduate students who got used to hearing the same things said about them."
"You're letting your imagination run away with you. This dreadful coincidence—suppose I accept your statement that there has been foul play——"
"Let me ask you a couple of questions."
"What about?"
Simon absorbed from his drink and then from his cigarette.
"You said last night that Calvin Gray was a nut. Why?"
"That was on the basis of my information."
"You said that his invention had been investigated."
"It has been."
"Who by?"
"I told you—there is an established procedure. You probably haven't had much to do with modern business methods, but I can assure you that the best brains in the country have evolved a system of——"
"I just asked you: Who? What is the guy's name, where did you dig him up, and which side does he dress on?"
Imberline blinked, and then rubbed his rectangular wattled chin.
"If it's of any importance," he said, "I don't think Gray's case went through the regular channels. I'm trying to remember. No, perhaps it didn't. I think I was quite impressed with him at first, and the very same day I was in a position to mention Gray's claims to someone else who is one of the biggest men in that field. This expert told me that Professor Gray had already tried to sell him the same formula, and he had made exhaustive tests and established beyond any doubt that the whole thing was a fraud. So naturally, in order not to place any unnecessary burdens on our system of investigation——"
"You killed it then and there."
"In a manner of speaking."
"And then talked yourself into believing that it had been thoroughly investigated by your tame experts——"
"Mr. Templar," said Imberline crushingly, "my information in this case came from an expert whom my Department would be proud to employ if we could afford him. A self-made man, of course, but the most important figure in his field today."
"And what is his name? inquired the Saint, with a little pulse beating behind his temples—"Joe Palooka?"
"Mr. Hobart Quennel, the President of Quenco."
Imberline said it somewhat as if he had been the toastmaster at a diplomatic banquet, and Quenco was a South American republic which recently decided to become a Good Neighbor.
The Saint's glass traveled very leisurely to his mouth again, and his cigarette visited there after it, while his amiably sardonic blue eyes surveyed the dollar-a-year deacon with unsubdued delight.
Another piece had clicked into its niche, and the threads were sorting out. Calvin Gray had been a shrewder diagnostician than Simon had given him credit for. In fact, Simon had to face the realisation that a great deal of the tangle had been woven out of his own refusal to accept the obvious. Too determinedly on the alert for tortuous scheming, he had only succeeded in snarling his own skein. Now he was finally cured, he hoped, and this—this lovely and luminous simplicity—could chart a straight course between way stations to the end.
"So Hobart Quennel was your authority," said the Saint dreamily. "And Quenco has two million dollars invested already in a plant that's laid out to use the old butadiene process."
Imberline snorted at him.
"Mr. Quennel is one of the most prominent industrialists in the country. I may not approve of his perpetual squabbles with some other Government departments, but in my own dealings with him he has always been most pleasant and co-operative. The mere suggestion that a man in his position would be prejudiced——"
"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 interest 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 industrial 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 challenging 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 Servant, 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 perfectly 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 Authorities 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 elevator 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 sensational 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 preoccupied 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 surviving 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 convenient 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 another 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 adventurers 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."
He opened the cabinet and brought over a bottle and two glasses, and poured for them both. She sat with her long shapely legs tucked under her on a divan behind the low table. He took an armchair facing her, and sniffed his glass guardedly. It had a fine aroma, but he only sipped it.
They gazed at each oth
er thoughtfully.
"Did I forget to tell you about my etchings?" she asked.
His mouth stirred slightly.
"Maybe you did."
"You don't approve of the way I lured you up here."
"I think it was charming."
"Then why do you have to stay miles over there?"
"I was just waiting for your father to come bursting in with a shotgun and insist on your making an honest man out of me."
"You are careful, aren't you?" she said again.
"It's a bad habit I got into," he said.
She emptied her glass and pushed it towards him. He refilled it expressionlessly and set it back in front of her. She stared at him sullenly, nipping one thumbnail between her white front teeth. She looked very young, very spoiled, and distractingly accessible.
"Why do you hate me so much?" she demanded.
"I don't," he said pleasantly.
"I think I could hate you."
"I'm sorry."
"Damn it, I do hate you! What am I doing this for? I never run after men. They run after me. And I let them run and run. I'm not a bit interested in you, really. I can't even think why I let you talk me into having dinner with you tonight."
"Could it be for the same reason that I let you talk me into taking you out?"
Her eyes were big with the pale blank look that he had seen in them before.
"Now you're even making me shout at you," she complained. "Come over here, for Christ's sake. I won't bite you much."
She patted the divan next to her with an imperious hand. He shrugged, more with his lips and eyes than with his shoulders, and moved peaceably around the table.
She picked up the second taster of brandy, still watching him across the brim, and drained it with one quick decisive tilt.
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