The Saint Steps In s-24

by Leslie Charteris

Then suddenly her face was leaning into his face, and her mouth was searching for his, and it was a kiss that began and clung and demanded. He was still under it for a moment, but he couldn't always be still, and this was what he was there for anyway, and he took what it was, and his arms slipped around her, and he wanted it to be as good as it could be; but his mind stood aside and watched. And perhaps it didn't stand so far aside, because her lips were soft and yielding and taking and her breath was warm and sweet in his nostrils and her hair in his eyes and all the richness of her pressed against him and moulding hungrily against him; and he wasn't made out of wood even if he knew that he must be.

  So after a long time he let her go, and he was much too sure that his pulses were running faster no matter what his mind did.

  She looked smug and angry at the same time.

  "You've exciting, too, and you know it, which makes it four times worse," she said petulantly.

  "I'm sorry," he murmured. "I always seem to be apologizing, but it isn't my fault, really."

  "I hate you," she said broodingly.

  She picked up the bottle, poured herself some more brandy, and put the bottle down again after an accusing glance at his glass.

  "You aren't even polite enough to drown it in drink."

  "I'm afraid you took my mind off that."

  He absorbed half the glass while she finished hers.

  "All you're concerned with is your damned mysteries," she said. "I think you're the most exciting thing that ever hap­pened, but I can't make a mystery out of that. So you're all set to turn me down before we start. I suppose if I were some stupid little ingénue like Madeline Gray I wouldn't be able to fight you off."

  He raised satirical eyebrows.

  "Darling, you couldn't be jealous, could you?"

  "Jealous? I'm just mad. I don't like being turned down. I must have done something wrong, and I want to know what it is. Damn it, I'm not going to fall for you."

  "Now I am going to be careful."

  "You won't even let me help you with this job you're work­ing on. You told me once I might be able to do something for you one day, but you still haven't asked me. You won't even tell me anything."

  "I can't tell you what I don't know."

  "You know more than you've told me. But you keep me at arm's length all the time. Anyone would think you still thought I was an Axis agent, or whatever you said."

  His pulses were all quiet again. This was what he was there for, too; and it couldn't wait forever. It was like fencing on a tightrope in the dark, with nothing to guide him but intui­tion and audacity and a sense of timing that had to balance on knife edges.

  He said: "What about that German baron?"

  "That frozen pain in the neck? He wasn't a Nazi. At least, I don't think so. But that was before the war anyway." Then her eyes turned back to him curiously. "How did you know about him?"

  "I asked a few questions."

  "What else did you find out about me?"

  "I found out that you were quite often interested in people that your father has been interested in."

  "Why shouldn't I be?"

  "I didn't mean that kind of interest."

  She poured herself another drink, but this time she only drank half of it at the first try. She put the glass down and gazed at it somberly.

  "I help Daddy out sometimes," she said. "It's the least a girl can do, isn't it? And I have a lot of fun. I go to nice places and I hear some intelligent conversation. I can't live with young squirts and playboys all the time."

  "After all," he agreed, "there are the Better Things in Life."

  "You're still sneering at me. At least Daddy doesn't think I'm too dumb to help him."

  He nodded.

  "The one thing I've been wondering about is—doesn't he think you're too dumb, or does he think you're just dumb enough?"

  Her eyes dwelt on him with that bafflingly vacant candor.

  "I don't ask all those questions. What I don't know won't do me any harm, will it? And it isn't any of my business, espe­cially if I have a good time. I don't want to be a genius. I just want you to pay some attention to me."

  "Like you wanted me to pay some attention to you when your father sent you to talk to me at the Shoreham?"

  "There wasn't any harm in that. He only wanted to know more about you and find out what you'd been doing."

  "And what did he want you to find out tonight?" asked the Saint amiably.

  His voice didn't have a point in it anywhere; it was the same gentle and faintly bantering sound that it had been all the time; but he was waiting.

  She didn't try to escape his innocuous half-smiling glance. Her stare was blue and blind and limpid and babyishly sad.

  "I told him all about our running into each other, of course, and what we talked about; and I said I was going to meet you for dinner. But this was all my own idea. I wish I did know what there was between you and Daddy. I don't think you like him any more than you like me."

  "I've never met him, if you remember."

  "If you had, you wouldn't be so suspicious. He said the nic­est things about you."

  "I love my public."

  "You're impossible."

  She took up her glass again and finished it, and made a grimace.

  She said: "I don't know why I'm wasting my time. You aren't worth it. But you can't get away with this. You stink. And I'm going to get stinking. Make me some more brandy. I have to Go," she said abruptly.

  She got up and went.

  The Saint sat where he was and lighted a cigarette. He sat with it smouldering between his fingers. After a little while he lifted the brandy bottle and topped up her glass.

  He faced it, that he didn't know whether he was getting everywhere or nowhere. There were factors that still didn't tie in. And he had to be as light with his foil as if he had been combing cobwebs. He could still be so irremediably wrong. He had been wrong about Imberline. He still didn't know whether one of his later passes had found any crevice. She could be dumb. How much would Quennel tell her? Or she could be brightly dumb, as she had said, asking no questions because they might only create problems. He didn't know how much the brandy would speak for her either. He was only sure that it could be a weapon on his side, if it was on any side.

  He heard water running in the bathroom, and then a door opening, and then she was in the bedroom.

  She was moving about in there for what seemed like a long time. He didn't turn his head. He took a very light sip from his glass. But there were no frightening effects. He had been making it last, cautiously; but he could be positive by now that there was nothing illegal creeping up from it.

  He smoked meditatively. She didn't come back.

  Then her voice reached him peevishly: "What about my drink?"

  "Did you want it?"

  "What do you think?"

  He stood up, garnered the glass he had filled for her, and sauntered into the bedroom.

  She lay in the big bed, her white shoulders clear of the cov­ers, looking pleased with herself like a naughty child who is getting away with something. There was a dress and stockings and lacy intimacies scattered about the room, but he didn't have to total them up to deduce how naked she was. She had a naked expression on her beautifully empty face that had far more impact than the mere fact of nudity. It matched the mindless acquiescence of her big cornflower eyes—he had a name for that impenetrable enigma at last. He didn't have a name quite so facile for the disturbance that she was always on the verge of driving through all his casualness.

  He knew that this was a deadline, and in an odd way he was afraid of it, but he didn't let any of that escape from his con­trol.

  "I see you like to be comfortable," he drawled.

  He carried her drink over to her. She took it out of his hand, and raised herself so that the sheets hung perilously from the galvanizing surge of her breasts. He sat on the side of the bed without staring at her.

  "Tell me something," she insisted.

&
nbsp; He waited while she put half an ounce of brandy away, drawing placidly on his cigarette and flicking ash on to the carpet. Then he said, without any change of tone: "A friend of mine gave me a ride in from Stamford today. Name of Schindler. We were talking about you."

  2

  He must have been expecting more than he got.

  She said: "Schindler? Oh, yes. The detective."

  "He had a man watching Madeline Gray. Name of Angert. On some fairy-tale about her being blackmailed."

  "That's right."

  "Because you hired him."

  After that it reached her. She sat up so that the covers were called on for a miracle that they were scarcely equal to.

  "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 naïve 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 sim­ple 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," she 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 ash­tray.

  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 good­night."

  "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 a
nd thrust ruthlessly at the falter­ing 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 some­where 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 tempta­tions, 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 common, 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 un­certainty 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.