The Saint Goes West s-23

by Leslie Charteris

  The Saint clipped his own gun back in its holster, and dropped Lissa's automatic into his side pocket. It had all been so fast that he hadn't even had time to get a hair of his head disarranged.

  "I'm afraid you don't have a very nice husband," he said.

  He stepped to the communicating door and dragged the drooping figure of Freddie Pellman the rest of the way into the room and pushed it into a chair.

  9

  "HE'LL LIVE, if you want him," said the Saint casually. "I only broke his arm."

  He picked up the revolver that Freddie had dropped, spilled the shells out, and laid it with the other exhibits on the dresser while Freddie clutched at his reddening sleeve and whimpered. It seemed as if the whole thing took so little time that Lissa was still recovering her balance when he turned and looked at her again.

  "The only trouble was," he said, "that you married him too soon. Or didn't you know about the will then?"

  She stared at him, white-faced, without speaking.

  "Was he drunk when you did it?" Simon asked.

  After a while she said: "Yes."

  "One of those parties?"

  "Yes. We were both pretty high. But I didn't know he was that high."

  "Of course not. And you didn't realise that he wouldn't mind framing you into a coffin to keep his gay playboy inнtegrity."

  She looked at the collection of exhibits on her dresser, at Freddie, and at the Saint. She didn't seem to be able to get everything coordinated quickly. Simon himself showed her the marriage certificate again.

  "This is what I wasn't supposed to find," he said. "In fact I don't think Freddie even imagined you'd have it around. But it made quite a difference. How much were you going to shake him down for, Lissa?"

  "I only asked him for two hundred thousand," she said. "I'd never have said anything. I just didn't want to be like some of the others-thrown out on my ear to be a tramp for the rest of my life."

  "But you wanted too much," said the Saint. "Or he just didn't trust you, and he thought you'd always be coming back for more. Anyhow, he figured this would be a better way to pay off."

  His cigarette hadn't even gone out. He picked it up and brightened it in a long peaceful draw that expressed all the final settling down of his mind.

  "The mistake that all of us made," he said, "was not figurнing Freddie for a moderately clever guy. Because he was a bore, we figured he was moderately stupid. Which is a rather dangerous mistake. A bore isn't necessarily stupid. He doesn't necessarily overrate his own intelligence. He just underrates everyone else. That makes him tedious, but it doesn't make him dumb. Freddie isn't dumb. He just sounds dumb because he's talking down to how dumb he thinks the rest of us are. As a matter of fact, he's quite a lively lad. He put a lot of gray matter into this little scheme. As soon as he heard that I'd arrived in town, he had the inspiration that he'd been waiting for. And he didn't waste a day in getting it started. He wrote himself the famous threatening letter at once-it was quite a coincidence, of course, that there was that last Christнmas party to hang it on, but if there hadn't been that he'd certainly have thought of something else almost as good. He only had to establish that he was being menaced, and get me into the house to protect him. Then he had to put you in the middle of the first situation, in a set-up that would look swell in the beginning but would get shakier and shakier as things went on. That wasn't difficult either."

  The only sound when he paused was Freddie Pellman's heavy sobbing breathing.

  "After that, he improvised. He only had to stage a series of incidents that would give everyone else in turn an absoнlutely ironclad alibi that would satisfy me. It wasn't hard to do-it was just a matter of being ready with a few props to take advantage of the opportunities that were bound to arise. Perhaps he was a bit lucky in having so many chances in such a short space of time, but I don't know. He couldn't go wrong anyway. Everything had to work in for him, once the primary idea was planted. Even an accident like Angelo picking up the knife was just a break for him-there weren't any fingerнprints on it, of course, and it just helped the mystery a litнtle ... And this evening he was able to finish up in style with the snake routine. It wasn't exactly his fault that the routine fitted in just as well with another pattern that was gradually penetrating into my poor benighted brain. That's just one of the natural troubles with trying to create artificial mysteries -when you're too busy towing around a lot of red herrings, you don't realise that you may be getting a fishy smell on your own fingers ... That was what Freddie did. He was being very clever about letting it work out that your alibi was the only flimsy one; but he forgot that when I had to start questioning alibis it might occur to me that there was one other person whose alibis were flimsier still. And that was him."

  Simon drew on his cigarette again.

  "Funnily enough, I was just leading up to telling him that when he made his first major mistake. You see, I had an idea what was going on, but I was going nuts trying to figure out why. There didn't seem to be any point to the whole perнformance, except as a terrific and ponderous practical joke. And I couldn't see Freddie with that sort of humor. So I was just going to come out flatly and face him with it and see what happened. It's a shock technique that works pretty well someнtimes. And then he took all the wind out of my sails by insistнing on helping me to see how it all pointed to you. That's what I mean about him underrating other people's intelliнgence. He was just a little too anxious to make quite sure that I hadn't missed any of the points that I was supposed to get. But it had just the opposite effect, because I happened to know that your alibi must have been genuine. So then I knew that the whole plot didn't point to you-it was pointed at you. And when Freddie went a little further and helped me to think of the idea of staying behind tonight and searching your room, I began to guess that the climax would be someнthing like this. I suppose he got hold of you privately and told you he'd started to get suspicious of what I was up to- maybe I was planning to plant some evidence and frame one of you?"

  "Yes."

  "So he suggested that the two of you sneak off and see if you could catch me at it?"

  She nodded.

  "Then," said the Saint, "you peeked in through the window and saw me with the exhibits on the dressing-table, and he said 'What did I tell you?' . . . And then he said something like: 'Let's really get the goods on him now. You take this gun and walk in on him and keep him talking. If he thinks you're alone he'll probably say enough to hang himself. I'll be listening, and I'll be a witness to everything he says.' Something like that?"

  "Something like that," she said huskily.

  "And then the stage was all set. He only had to wait a minute or two, and shoot you. I was supposed to have susнpected you already. I'd found a lot of incriminating evidence in your room. And then you'd walked in on me with a gun . .. While of course his story would have been that he was suspicious when you sneaked off, that he followed you home, and found you holding me up, and you were just about to give me the works when he popped his pistol and saved my life. Everyone would have said that 'of course' you must have been Smoke Johnny's moll at some time, and nobody would ever have been likely to find the record of that marriage in Yuma unless they were looking for it-and why should they look for it? So you were out of the way, and he was in the clear, and I'd personally be his best, solid, hundred-per-cent witness that it was justifiable homicide. It would have made one of the neatest jobs that I ever heard of-if it had worked. Only it didn't work. Because just as I knew you had a good alibi all the time, I knew that all this junk in your drawer had been planted there, and so I knew that I still had someнthing else to look for-the real motive for all these things that were going on. Maybe I was lucky to find it so quickly. But even so, from the moment when you walked in, something exciting was waiting to happen . . . Well, it all worked out all right-or don't you think so, Freddie?"

  "You've got to get me a doctor," Freddie said hoarsely.

  "Do I have all the right answers?" Simon
asked relentнlessly.

  Freddie Pellman moaned and clutched his arm tighter and raised a wild haggard face.

  "You've got to get me a doctor," he pleaded in a rising shout. "Get me a doctor!"

  "Tell us first," insisted the Saint soothingly. "Do we know all the answers?"

  Pellman tossed his head, and suddenly everything seemed to disintegrate inside him.

  "Yes!" he almost screamed. "Yes, damn you! I was going to fix that little bitch. I'll do it again if I ever have the chance. And you, too! . . . Now get me a doctor. Get me a doctor, d'y hear? D'you want me to bleed to death?"

  The Saint drew a long deep breath, and put out the stub of his cigarette. He took a pack from his pocket and lighted anнother. And with that symbolic action he had put one more episode behind him, and the life of adventure went on.

  "I don't really know," he said carelessly. "I don't think there'd be any great injustice done if we let you die. Or we might keep you alive and continue with the shakedown. It's really up to Lissa."

  He glanced at the girl again curiously.

  She was staring at Freddie in a way that Simon hoped no woman would ever look at him, and she seemed to have to make an effort to bring herself back to the immediate present. And even then she seemed to be a little behind.

  She said: "I just don't get one thing. How did you know all that stuff had been planted in my drawer? And why were you so sure that my flimsy alibi was good?"

  He smiled.

  "That was the easiest thing of all. Aren't you the detective-story fan? You might have gotten good ideas from some of your mysteries, but you could hardly have picked up such bad ones. At least you'd know better than to keep a lot of unnecessary incriminating evidence tucked away where anyнone with a little spare time could find it. And you'd never have had the nerve to pull an alibi like that first attack on yourself if it was a phony, because you'd have known that anyнone else who'd ever read a mystery too would have spotted it for a phony all the time. About the only thing wrong with Freddie is that he had bright ideas, but he didn't read the right books."

  "For Christ's sake," Freddie implored shrilly, "aren't you going to get me a doctor?"

  "What would they do in a Saint story?" Lissa asked.

  Simon Templar sighed.

  "I imagine they'd let him call his own doctor, and tell the old story about how he was cleaning a gun and he didn't know it was loaded. And I suppose we'd go back to the Coral Room and look for Ginny and Esther, because they must be getting hungry, and I know I still am. And I expect Freddie would still pay off in the end, if we all helped him to build up a good story ..."

  Lissa tucked her arm under his.

  "But what are the rest of us going to do tonight?"

  "The Hays Office angle on that bothers the hell out of me," said the Saint

  II: HOLLYWOOD

  1

  IT WAS NOT to be expected that Simon Templar could have stayed in Hollywood in an ordinary way. Nothing that ever happened to him was really ordinary-it was as if from the beginning he had had some kind of fourth-dimensional magnetism that attracted adventure and strange happenings, or else it may have been because nothing to him was entirely commonplace or unworthy of expectant curiosity that he had a gift of uncovering adventure where duller people would have passed it by without ever knowing that it had been within reach. But as the saga of perilous light-hearted buccaneerнing lengthened behind him past inevitable milestones of newspaper headlines, it became even more inescapable that adventure would never let him alone, for unordinary people went out of their way to drag him into their unordinary affairs. In the most platitudinous and yet exciting and fateful way, one thing simply led to another, and he was riding a tide that only slackened enough to let him catch his breath before it was off on another irresistible lunge.

  It was like that in Hollywood, where he was eating his first breakfast of that visit when the telephone rang in his apartнment at the Chтteau Marmont, which he had chosen preнcisely because he thought that he might attract less attention there than he would have at one of the large fashionable hoнtels with a publicity agent hungrily scrutinising every guest for possible copy.

  "Mr. Simon Templar?" said a girl's voice.

  It was a businesslike and efficient voice, but it had a nice quality of sound, a freshness and a natural feeling of friendliнness that made him feel interested in talking to it some more. So he admitted hopefully that he was Simon Templar.

  "Just a moment," she said. "Mr. Ufferlitz is calling."

  Simon was not quite sure whether he caught the name right, but it didn't sound like any name among his acquaintнances. In any case, he had arrived late the night before, and hadn't yet told anyone he knew that he was in town. Of course, it was possible that some shining light of the local Police Department was already leaping on to his trail, afire with notions of importance and glory-that was an almost monotonous habit of shining lights of local Police Departнments, even in much more out-of-the-way places, whenever Simon Templar paused in his travels, although none of them had ever achieved the importance and glory to which their zeal would have entitled them in a world less hidebound by the oldfashioned rules of evidence. But Simon also felt sure that no Police Department employed telephone girls with such friendly voices. It would have disrupted the whole system...

  "Hullo, Mr. Templar," said the telephone. "This is Byron Ufferlitz."

  "Baron who?" Simon queried.

  "Byron," said the new voice. "Byron Ufferlitz."

  This voice was not fresh and provocative, although it was apparently trying to be friendly. It sounded as if it was rather overweight and wore a diamond ring and had a cigar in its mouth. It also appeared to think that its name should be recognised immediately and inspire awe in the hearer.

  "Have we ever met?" Simon asked.

  "Not yet," said the voice jovially. "But I want to put that right. Will you have lunch with me?"

  There were times when Simon's directness left the Emily Post School of Social Niceties out of the cosmos.

  "What for?" he inquired, with the utmost detachment.

  "I'm going to give you a job."

  "Thank you. What is it?"

  "I'll tell you all about it at lunch."

  "Did anyone tell you I was looking for a job?"

  "Oh, I know all about you," said Mr. Ufferlitz confidently. "Been watching you for a long time. That was a great thing you did in Arizona. And that funny business in Palm Springs -I read all about it. So I know what you cost. You asked Pellman for a thousand dollars a day, didn't you? Well, I'll pay you the same. Only I don't want a bodyguard."

  "How do you know I can do what you want?"

  "Look," said Mr. Ufferlitz, "you're Simon Templar, aren't you?"

  "Yes."

  "You're the fellow they call the Saint."

  Something like the faintest whisper of distant music seemed to touch the Saint's eardrums with no more substance than the slipstream of a passing butterfly.

  "Well," he admitted cautiously, "I've heard the name."

  "You're what they call the Robin Hood of modern crime. You're the greatest crook that ever lived, and you've put more crooks away than all the detectives who keep trying to hang something on you. You're always on the side of the guy who's up against it, and you're always busting up some graft or dirty work, and all the gals are nuts about you, and you can jump through windows like Doug Fairbanks used to and knock guys cold like Joe Louis and shoot like Annie Oakley and figure things out like Sherlock Holmes and-and--"

  "Catch airplanes in my teeth like Superman?" Simon sugнgested.

  "No kidding," said Mr. Ufferlitz. "You're the greatest propнosition that ever hit this town. I've got all the angles worked out. Tell you all about it at lunch. Let's say the Vine Street Derby at one o'clock. Okay?"

  "Okay," said the Saint tolerantly.

  Which was exactly why and because he was Simon Tempнlar, the Saint, and things always happened to him. The last few sentences of Mr. Ufferl
itz had given him a sudden and fairly clear idea of what sort of proposition Mr. Ufferlitz would consider "great", and what kind of angles Mr. Ufferlitz would have worked out-even before he turned to the teleнphone directory and found an entry under UFFERLITZ PRODUCTIONS, Inc. Anyway, he had nothing else to do and no other plans for lunch, and Mr. Ufferlitz could alнways provide comic relief.

  He was right about that; but he also had no inkling whatнever of a number of quite unfunny things that were destined to cross his path as a direct result of his amused acceptance of that invitation.

  During the morning he called a friend of his, an agent; and after they had exchanged a suitable amount of nonнsense he inquired further about Mr. Ufferlitz.

  "Byron Ufferlitz?" repeated Dick Halliday. "He's quite an up-and-coming producer these days. A sort of cross between Sammy Glick and Al Capone. I don't suppose you'd know about it, but he bobbed up only a little over a year ago with some wildcat Studio Employees Union that he'd invented, and somehow he got so many studio employees to join it and made such a nuisance of himself with a few well-timed strikes that finally they had to buy him off."

  "By suddenly discovering that he was a production genius?"

  "Something like that. The Government tried to get him for extortion, but the witnesses called it off, and he was supposed to be wanted in New Orleans on some old charge of sticking up a bank, but nothing came of that either. Now he's quite the white-haired boy. He brought in a picture for about fifty thousand dollars, and surprisingly enough it wasn't bad. What does he want you to do-sell him your life story or bump somebody off?"

  "I'm going to find out," said the Saint, and went to his apнpointment with even a shade more optimism.