The Saint Steps In s-24

by Leslie Charteris

  "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 ele­vator, and out to the street. A taxi came by just as he emerged, and he caught it thankfully. They crawled past the green con­vertible 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 night­mares 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.

  He set the night latch on the door and went back to peer out of the windows. The bare flat walls of the building ex­tended safely around his outlook. There were none of those balconies that he had wished for before, and no thoughtfully planted fire escapes. Of course, a hook ladder could get up or a rope could get down; but either of those expedients would be risking an upward glance from the street. The Saint drew his head back from the rising grumble of traffic, lowered the sash to within a few inches of the sill, and balanced a glass and a couple of ashtrays precariously on top of it, which would give ample warning of any uninvited guests from that direction.

  He went back to the table and mixed himself a highball. The ice in the pitcher had melted, but the water was still cold. He sipped the drink at his leisure. It tasted refreshing after the heavy brandy; The atmosphere was refreshing too, even with its thin keen bite of suspense, after the febrile maelstrom that he had just salvaged himself from.

  He forced that recollection out of his head again.

  If there was nothing here, where else wouldn't either Andrea or the Ungodly want him to be. The only place he could think of was Stamford. Late as it was, he made a phone call there. A male voice that he hadn't heard before answered.

  "Miss Gray? She isn't here."

  "This is Simon Templar," he said.

  The voice said: "Oh."

  There was a longish pause, and then her voice came on the line—a little sleepy and breathless, but perfectly natural and unforced.

  "I just wanted to be sure you were all right," he said.

  "Of course I am. Has anything happened?"

  "Nothing worth telling, I'm afraid. Have you had any news?"

  "No."

  "Are you being well looked after?"

  "Oh, yes. Mr. Wayvern left the nicest man here—he's as big as a house and his hobby is collecting butterflies."

  "Good. Tell him to be sure and stay awake so he can go on adding to his collection."

  She hesitated a moment.

  "Why ... are you—expecting anything?"

  "I'm always expecting things. But don't worry. I just want to be sure he's taking his job seriously."

  "Are you staying in New York tonight?"

  "I guess I'll have to. It's probably a bit late for a train. Anyhow, remember the story I've been giving out is that you're in New York, so it'll look more convincing if I stay here. By the way, I'm at the Savoy. I hope they're cursing the joint already, wishing they could find out what name I've got you registered under."

  There was another brief pause.

  "Simon—do you think this'll go on very long?"

  "No," he said, with an easy confidence that didn't have to match the expression she couldn't see. "Not very long. I think there'll be plenty of things moving tomorrow. And I'll keep in touch with you. Now go back to bed and try to forget it until breakfast."

  He opened a fresh pack of cigarettes after he had hung up, and paced the room as he had done hours before.

  He was still in the dark, and he could only try to get some slim consolation out of the hope that the Ungodly were equally benighted. He wished he felt more assured about stay­ing away from Stamford. But if he had really been hiding Madeline Gray in New York, the Ungodly would naturally ex­pect him to stay close to her. In fact, they might have been watching him from any point in the evening in the hope that he would lead them to her. That might have been what Andrea Quennel was worried about. Or had she been worried? Had she staged a terrific performance to try and drive him into sus­picion and from that into a false move? And how would the Ungodly think? If he had hurried off to Stamford, would they have credited him with trying most cunningly to lead them off on a false scent, and thereby have been convinced that Made­line Gray actually was in New York? Would they think that he would never be so reckless as to leave Madeline Gray in such an exposed position as Stamford; or would they think that that was precisely what he wanted them to think? ... It was a game of solitaire played with chameleon cards.

  And yet with all that, as he always remembered, he never thought of the real danger.

  He went to bed and slept eventually, since there was noth­ing else to do. It was ten o'clock when he woke up, and he knew that he had been tired from the night before. He show­ered and began to dress; and he was debating whether to get a shave before breakfast or have breakfast before the shave when his door trembled with an unnecessarily vigorous knocking.

  He went and opened it, and raised his eyebrows involun­tarily at a familiar face that he had not seen for some time.

  "Why, Henry!" he exclaimed. "Fancy your finding me here."

  The familiar figure filled the doorway with its shoulders.

  "Fancy my not finding you here," retorted Inspector John Henry Fernack harshly. "Come out and tell me what you had against Imberline."

  3

  It all fell together in the Saint's brain like an exact measure of peanuts dropping into an envelope from an automatic pack­aging machine. It was so neat and final that he felt weirdly calm about it, not even dallying for a moment over the mecha­nism that made it happen.

  He said on one emotionless note: "He's dead, is he?"

  "You should ask me," Fernack replied sarcastically.

  The Saint nodded.

  "I shouldn't. You wouldn't be here if he was beefing about somebody stealing one of his cigars."

  Fernack glowered at him implacably. There was a lot of history behind that glower. Aside from being part of a routine which has made this chronicler so popular with tax collectors everywhere, it was rooted in a long series of conflicts and collisions that all flooded back into Fernack's mind at such times as this. It was a hard life for him, as we must admit after all these years. Personally, he liked the Saint; in a peculiar way, he respected him; as an honest man, he had to admit that in a complete perspective the Saint had done far more for him than he had undone; and yet as a salaried custodian of the Law it seemed to Fernack that the Saint's appearance in any crime was a doomful guarantee of more strain and woe than any policeman should have been legitimately asked to bear. Be­sides which, even if he had never succeeded in compiling the mundane legal evidence, he knew to his own satisfaction that the Saint's methods had a light-hearted and even lethal disre­gard for lawful processes which it was always going to be his duty to try and prove: it would be a bitter triumph for him when he achieved it, and yet his consistent failure
was no less galling. It was, inevitably, a dilemma that couldn't help hav­ing the most corrosive effects on any conscientious police­man's equanimity.

  He said, with almost reflex bluster: "Maybe you'd like to have another look at him and see what sort of a job you did?"

  "I would," said the Saint.

  Along the corridor, two uniformed men were holding back a bunch of impatient reporters. An assistant manager, torn between retaining the goodwill of the press and avoiding un­desirable publicity, twittered unhappily to and fro. One of the reporters yelled: "Hey, Fernack, d'you want a special edition all to yourself?" Another of them said: "Who's that guy with him?"

  1013 seemed to be stocked full of busy toilers in plain clothes. A police photographer was packing up his equipment. Other specialists were working over the furniture with brushes and powder, wrapping exhibits, opening drawers and closets, picking up things and putting them down. It was a scene of prescribed antlike activity that the Saint seemed to have seen rather a lot of lately.

  The body was on the bed, an amorphous mound suggestive of human shape under a sheet, like the first rough lumping of a clay model.

  Fernack pulled the sheet back, Imberline looked as if he might have been asleep with his mouth open. But his eyes were half open too, showing only the whites. There was a folded towel under his head that showed red stains on it.

  "What did he die of?" Simon asked.

  "He fell down in the "bathroom and beat his brains out on the floor," Fernack said. "Don't you remember?"

  "Old age does things to your memory," Simon apologised. "Tell me all about it."

  Fernack replaced the sheet.

  "Imberline left a call for seven-thirty this morning. That was about twelve-thirty last night. His telephone didn't an­swer. They sent a housekeeper to check up. She looked in, didn't see him, and sent a maid in to do the room. The maid found him. His bed hadn't been slept in. He was in the bath­room, wearing everything except his coat, with his tie loosened and his collar unbuttoned—and dead."

  The Saint had a picture of Imberline as he had seen him last, in what was apparently Imberline's home-life costume.

  "So he fell down in the bathroom and broke his head," he said.

  "Yeah. The back of his head was flattened to a pulp, and there was plenty of blood on the tiles. If you can fall down hard enough from where you stand to do that much damage to yourself, I'd like to see it."

  "I'm afraid you would, Henry," said the Saint sadly. "How long has he been dead?"

  "You know we can't say that in minutes. But it was since last night. And he left his call after you came in. The telephone operator remembers that it was while you were still on your call to Stamford."

  "So of course I did it, since I was in the building. Was there anything else?"

  "He'd been entertaining someone since he was out to din­ner. There was part of a bottle of Scotch and a couple of dirty glasses; but one of them was wiped so there were no finger­prints on it. There were ashes and cigarette and cigar ends."

  "When did he come in?"

  "About ten-thirty, as well as the desk clerk remembers."

  "Was he alone?"

  "The elevator girl says he didn't seem to be with anyone."

  "So naturally he was with me, since you remember my old trick of becoming invisible."

  Fernack turned a broad back on him and prowled, glaring at his subordinates. They were finishing their jobs and becom­ing a little vague. Fernack drove them out and shut the door on them. Simon lighted a cigarette and strolled around plac­idly.

  Fernack faced him again with his rocky jaw set and his eyes hard and uncompromising.

  "Now," he said heavily, "perhaps you'll tell me a few things."

  "I'd be glad to," said the Saint obligingly.

  "When I came to your room, you weren't at all surprised when I asked you about Imberline."

  "I'm so used to you asking me extraordinary questions."

  "You didn't even ask who he was."

  "Why should I? I read the papers."

  "You even knew that he'd been staying here."

  "I didn't say so. But I wasn't going to fall over backwards if he was. It's a good place to stay. I even use it myself."

  "And you knew that he smoked cigars."

  "Several people do. I've heard that it's getting quite com­mon."

  The detective kept his hands down with a heroic effort.

  "And on top of all that," he said, "you knew he was dead before I told you."

  "You did tell me," said the Saint. "There's a special tone of voice you have that fairly screams homicide—particularly when you're hoping to send me to the chair for it. I've heard it so often that I can pick it out like a siren."

  Fernack drew a deep labored breath.

  "Now let me tell you what I think," he said crunchingly. "I think you know a hell of a lot too much about this. I think you're in plenty of trouble again——"

  Simon blew an impudent smoke-ring straight at him.

  "Henry," he said reasonably, "doesn't this dialogue remind you of something we've been through before?"

  The detective swallowed.

  "You're damn right it does! But this time——"

  "This time it's going to be bigger and better. This time it's going to stick. This time you've got me. We've played that scene before too, but I don't like to bring that up. A guy has been rubbed out, and so I did it. Because everyone knows that I have an exclusive concession to do all the rubbing out that's done in New York."

  "All you've got is a lot of smart answers——"

  "To a lot of moronic questions. Imberline gets himself mur­dered here, and I'm handy, so why not convict me?"

  "When it turned out to be a murder," Fernack said ponder­ously, "I had to check up on the other guests in the hotel. I came to your name, and there you were—practically next door. Now be smart about that!"

  The Saint took a long draught of smoke and smiled at him with tolerant affection. He cast around for a chair and sat down with a ghost of a sigh.

  "Henry," he said, "I'm just not smart any more. I wanted to murder Imberline, and I found out he was staying here and what room he was in, and I made quite a little fuss about getting a room as close to him as I could. I wasn't smart enough to just ride up in the elevator and give him the works and go away again. I had to move in on the job. I didn't want you to have a mystery on your hands——"

  "Where were you last night?"

  "Oh, I was out to dinner with a babe and then over at her apartment looking at her etchings, and whatever time the night clerk says I came in is probably about right. I didn't notice it exactly myself. I just wasn't smart enough to bother about an alibi. I bashed Imberline's head in; and even then I wasn't bright enough to get the hell out. I went to bed and went to sleep and waited for you to find me." Simon flipped over his hole card with a silent thanksgiving for the unconsidered decision that had dealt it into his hand. "I knew that wouldn't take you long, because I'd registered in my own name to make sure you wouldn't be put off by any aliases. I'm just not smart any more, Henry—that's all there is to it."

  Fernack gloomed at him waveringly. It seemed that this also was part of a familiar scene. He was convinced that there was something wrong with it, as he always had been; but the trou­ble was that he could never put a finger on it. He only had an infuriating and dismal foreboding that he was going to find himself on the same lugubrious merry-go-round again.

  "You're just too smart," he said suspiciously. "You're trying to sell me the same bill of goods——"

  "I'm trying to show you what your evidence would sound like to a jury."'

  The detective rubbed his suffering gray hairs.

  "Then what the hell do you know about this?" he demanded almost pleadingly.

  "Now you're being rational, dear old bloodhound. So I'll let you into a secret. I did know Imberline was here, and I did come here to see him—among other things."

  Fernack jerked as if a hot needle had pe
netrated his gluteus maximus. The smouldering embers flared up in his eyes.

  "Then you are trying to make a goat out of me!" he bawled. "You're giving me the same old baloney——"

  The Saint groaned.

  "You ought to take sedative pills," he said. "Your stomach must have ulcers like the craters on the moon. I'm trying to set you on the right track. I did come here to talk to Imber­line; that's all. I didn't make much of a secret of it, either— long before you ever thought you'd be interested. So for any­one who wanted to ease him into his next transmigration, it could have been almost irresistible. I thought of everything else, and I was too dumb to think of that. Maybe I ought to go to the chair for it, but there's no law that says so." The Saint's face was like stone. "It would have been perfectly easy to do. Your murderer could even have come into the hotel with Im­berline. They just didn't ride up in the same elevator. The guy suddenly leaves him in the lobby and says he wants to buy a paper or say hullo to a friend or something, and he'll be right up. He takes the next car, chats for a while, waits till Imber­line goes to the can, follows him, and flattens his skull on the floor. Then he waits and watches for me to come in, and when he's sure that I'm parked for the night he picks up the phone and leaves the morning call, just to prove that Imberline was alive then and try to make sure he'd be found before I was up. He had a very sound idea of the way a policeman would think, with all due respect, Henry."

  The Saint's voice was light and soothing, but the detachment of his gaze was not part of any clairvoyant trance. He was only hanging words on to something that had long ago become concrete in his subconscious. He was thinking about very dif­ferent things—that this must have been the trap that Andrea Quennel had tried too hard to keep him away from, and that she had looked like a sculpture in alabaster even when she toppled so foolishly on the bed, and that one day he would really be as clever as he tried to be.