The Saint Goes West s-23

by Leslie Charteris

  "You're okay."

  "Thanks."

  "Shake."

  "Sure."

  "Less have a drink."

  They had a drink. Flane stared heavily at his glass.

  "So here we are," he said. "Neither of us got a job."

  "It's sad, isn't it?"

  "My pal. You gotta get a job. I'll find you a job. Talk to my agent about you."

  "I wouldn't bother. I didn't really want to be in this racket to start with. It just looked like fun and a bit of dough."

  "Yeah. Dough. That's all I'm in for. I never thought I'd be in this racket either."

  "What racket were you in before?"

  "Lotsa things. You don't think I'm tough, do you?"

  "I don't know."

  "Most people don't."

  "I suppose not."

  "But I am tough, see? I've been around. I know what it's all about."

  "Like Ufferlitz?"

  "That son of a bitch."

  "Was he really?"

  "Threw me out of the picture. Threw me outa his office when I was drunk an' couldn't give him what he had coming."

  "Yes, I was there."

  "That dirty bastard."

  "But you fixed him, didn't you?" Simon asked gently.

  Flane stared at him dimly.

  "Whatsat?"

  "You said you were going to fix him."

  "Yeah. So he'd stay fixed."

  "You certainly did."

  'Too late now," Flane said gloomily.

  Simon looked at him over his glass with a slight frown.

  "What d'you mean-too late?"

  "Too late to fix him. He's been fixed."

  "But you did it, didn't you?"

  Flane steadied himself, and a smudgily truculent rigidity came over his face.

  "Are you nuts?"

  "No. But you said you'd fix him--"

  "Are you trying to hang something on me?"

  "No. It was just a natural thing to think."

  "Well quit thinking."

  "I might," said the Saint, "but I don't know whether the police will. After all, you were heard to threaten him."

  "To hell with the police."

  "Hasn't Condor talked to you yet?"

  "Who?"

  "Lieutenant Condor-the guy who's in charge of the case."

  "Christ, no! Why should he? Annew know something? You know what I'd do if any cop came near me?"

  "What would you do?"

  "I'd poke him right in the eye!"

  "Let's have another drink," said the Saint.

  Flane picked up his drink when it came and focused on it with intense deliberation. He held it rather like a binnacle holds a ship's compass, rocking under and around it but holding it in miraculously isolated suspension.

  "That son of a bitch," he said. "I coulda fixed him."

  "How?"

  "I coulda put him right in the can."

  "What for?"

  "For quail!"

  Simon lighted a cigarette as if it were fragile. It was curious how coincidences always had to be repeated, and when your luck was coming in you just had to let it alone.

  "You mean Trilby Andrews," he said calmly.

  "Yeah. She was under age. He ditched her an' she took a sleep."

  "That's just gossip."

  "That's what you think. But I coulda proved it."

  "Only you didn't," Simon said carefully, "because he had something even better on you."

  He had a picture already of the methods and associations of the late Mr. Ufferlitz which made that kind of shot in the dark look almost as good as the chance of hitting a wall from inside a room, but he was not quite prepared for the response that he got this time.

  Flane put down an empty glass and turned and took hold of him by the lapels of his coat. The alcoholic slackness was crushed down in his face as if with a great effort of will, and his eyes were cold even through the obvious bleariness of his vision. For the first time since Simon had set eyes on him he really looked as if he could have been tough. He didn't raise his voice.

  "Who told you that?" he said.

  Simon had played this kind of poker all his life. Now he had to be good. He didn't move. The bartender was down at the far end of the bar, polishing glasses while he looked over a magazine, and he didn't seem to have been paying any atнtention for some time.

  The Saint met Flane's straining gaze with utter confidence. He dropped his own voice even lower, and said: "Ufferlitz's attorney."

  "What did he know?"

  "Everything."

  "Keep talking."

  "You see, Ufferlitz didn't trust you. And he wasn't dumb. He took precautions. He left a letter to be opened if anything happened to him. He had quite a story about your early life."

  "In New Orleans?"

  "Yes."

  Flane fought against the compulsion of his clouded inнstincts. Simon could see him doing it, and see him losing his way in the struggle.

  "About the girl who got knocked off-who was a witness-"

  "Yes," said the Saint, with absolute intuitive certainty now. "When you were a talent scout for a rather less glamorous business."

  Flane steadied himself against Simon's lapels.

  "How many other people did he tell?"

  "Quite a lot. More than you could take care of now . . . You're all washed up, brother. If Condor hasn't found you yet, you'd better get ready for him. You're going to make the best headlines of your career."

  "Yeah?... My pal!"

  "Not your pal," said the Saint, "since you tried to hang the rap on me by sending me that note."

  Flane blinked at him.

  "What note?"

  "The note you sent to put me on the spot."

  "I didn't send you any note."

  "Your memory needs a lot of reminding, doesn't it? But you're not helping yourself a bit. You had it all--"

  The Saint's voice loosened off uncertainly. It wasn't from anything that Flane had said or done. It was from something that came up within himself: a recollection, an idea- two ideas-something that was trying to form itself in his mind against the train of his thought, that suddenly softened his own assurance and his attention at the same time.

  At that instant Flane pushed lurchingly against him, and the bar stool started to topple. Off balance, the Saint made a wild attempt to get at least one foot on the ground and get a foundation from which he could hit. It was too much of a conнtortion even for him. Flane's fist smashed against his jaw- not shatteringly, but hard enough to put new acceleration into his fall. As he went down, the next stool hit him on the back of the head, and then for an uncertain interval there was nothing but a thunderous blackness through which large engines drove round and round ...

  8

  HE WOKE UP in a surprising lucidity, as if he had only dozed for a moment-except for a throbbing ache that swelled up in waves from the base of his brain. He woke up so clearly that he could lay still for a moment and take full advantage of the wet towel that the bartender was swabbing over his face.

  "Thanks," he said. "Do I look as stupid as I feel?"

  "You're okay," said the bartender, and added without inнtention: "How d'ya feel?"

  "Fine."

  The Saint stood up. For a second he thought his head was going to fall off; then it righted itself.

  "What happened?" asked the bartender.

  "I slipped."

  "He gets ugly sometimes, when he's been drinking."

  "So do a lot of guys. Where did he go?"

  "Out. He scrammed outa here like a bat outa hell. Maybe he was scared what you'd do to him when you got up."

  "Maybe," said the Saint, appreciating the sympathy. "How long a start has he got?"

  "Long enough. Now look, take it easy. Better have a drink and cool off. On the house."

  "Anyway that's an idea," said the Saint.

  He had a drink, which might or might not have helped the pain in his head to subside a little, and then went back across the bouleva
rd and interviewed the studio gatekeeper.

  "Lieutenant Condor? No, sir. He left right after you did. He didn't say where he was going."

  Simon picked up the desk phone and dialled Peggy Warden.

  "So you're still there," he said. "Didn't they fire you too?"

  "I expect I'll be here till the end of the week, clearing some things up for Mr. Braunberg."

  "That's good."

  "You left in an awful hurry."

  "My feet started travelling. I had to run to catch up with them."

  "You've got to give me an address where we can send your check."

  "I'll be seeing you before that."

  "You're not still going on being a detective, are you?"

  "I am."

  "I wonder what you're like when you relax?"

  "You could find out."

  "A dialogue writer," she said.

  "Where are you going to be later?"

  "Where are you going to be?"

  "I don't know right now. Can I call you?"

  "I'll be at home. Probably washing my last pair of silk stockings. The number's in the book."

  "I don't read very well," said the Saint, "but I'll try and get someone to look it up for me."

  He walked around to the parking lot and retrieved his car, and drove north towards the hills that look down across the subdivided prairie between Sunset Boulevard and the sea. Lazaroff and Kendricks lived up there, not Orlando Flane; and yet suddenly the pursuit of Orlando Flane was not so imнportant. Flane could be found later, if he wanted to be found at all-if he didn't, he wouldn't be sitting at home. But other patterns were taking a shape from which Flane was cuнriously lacking. It was like stalking a circus horse in the beнlief that it was real, and finding it capable of separating into two identities with cloths over them . ..

  The house was perched on a sharp buttress of rock high above the Strip-that strange No Man's Land of county in the middle of a city whose limits traditionally extend to the Jerнsey side of the Holland Tunnel. There were cars in the open garage, Simon noticed as he parked; and he rang the bell with the peaceful confidence that the wheels were meshing at last and nothing could stop them.

  Kendricks himself flung the door open, looking more than ever like one of the earnest ambassadors of the House of Fuller, as if their positions ought to have been reversed and he should have been on the outside trying to get in. The sight of the Saint only took him aback for a moment, and then his face broke into a hospitable grin.

  "Surprise, surprise," he said. "Superman has a nose like a bloodhound, on top of everything else. We were just starting to celebrate. Come in and help us."

  "I didn't get your invitation," said the Saint genially, "so I didn't know what time to come."

  "Somebody has to be first," Kendricks said.

  He led the way into the Tudor bar which appeared to subнstitute for a living-room, and Vic Lazaroff raised bis shaggy gray head from some intricate labors over a cocktail shaker.

  "Welcome," he said. "You are going to study genius in its cups. We shall reciprocate by studying you in yours."

  "It's a great event," Simon said.

  "You bet it is. Once again the uncrowned kings of Hollywood are on the throne--"

  "That's quite definite, is it?"

  "Everything but the signatures, which we shall write toнmorrow if we can still hold a pen."

  Simon settled on the arm of a chair.

  "Goldwyn must think a lot of you."

  "Why shouldn't he? Look at all the publicity he can get out of us."

  "But it does seem like going a bit far."

  "What does?"

  "Murdering Ufferlitz," said the Saint, "so he could get you back."

  Neither of them spoke at once. Kendricks stood still in the middle of the room. Lazaroff carefully put down the bottle from which he had been pouring. The silence was quite noнticeable.

  "It's a deep gag," Kendricks said finally.

  "Of course," said the Saint imperturbably, "if it wasn't so obvious that Sam Goldwyn must have bumped him off so he could get his two favorite writers back, some people might think the writers had done it to get free again."

  "Very deep," said Lazaroff.

  "The only thing I don't get," Simon said, "is why you thought it would be clever to hang it on me."

  "We what?"

  "Why you sent me that note and phoned the police about a prowler, pretending that you were Ufferlitz, so that I'd be caught in the house with his body and very probably sent to jail for a week or two for killing him."

  This silence was even deeper than the last one. It grew up until Simon was conscious of making an effort to hold the implacable stillness of his face and force them to make the first movement.

  At last Lazaroff made it.

  He stretched up a little, as though he were lifting a weight with his hands.

  "Better tell him, Bob," he said.

  Kendricks stirred, and the Saint looked at him.

  "I guess so," he said. "We did send you that note."

  "Why?"

  "For a laugh." Kendricks was like a schoolboy on the carнpet. "One of those crazy things we're always doing. You could have made the front pages all day, too. Banners when you were arrested, and a double column when they found out it was all a mistake."

  "And how were they going to find that out?"

  "I tell you, when we planned it we didn't know Ufferlitz was going to get killed."

  "So you only thought of that afterwards."

  Lazaroff dragged his fingers through his hair and said: "Good God, we didn't kill him."

  "You were just playing rough, and he couldn't take it."

  "We never saw him."

  "Then why didn't you say anything? You expected me to be there, and get caught by the police. If you were surprised to hear Ufferlitz had been murdered, weren't you surprised that I wasn't in jail?"

  "We were," said Kendricks. "When I saw you in the office this afternoon I nearly fell over backwards."

  "But you never said anything."

  "We sort of hinted-to try and find out where you stood."

  "But you didn't care whether I was in a jam."

  "We didn't know. You mightn't have fallen for that note. Anything might have happened. You mightn't have gotten home at all last night--"

  "But you knew I'd received the note and fallen for it," said the Saint coldly. "You saw me drop April Quest and go home. Your car drove by when we were saying goodnight." It was another fragment of the jigsaw that fitted accurately into place now. "After that you saw me arrive at Ufferlitz's. That was when you phoned the police. But you still didn't think I was in a jam."

  Kendricks made a helpless movement.

  "You're getting me tied up," he said. "Just like a lawyer. The whole truth is that we didn't know what had happened to you. You've got a great reputation for getting out of jams -you might have dodged that one. We didn't know. But we couldn't come out and say anything, because if the cops knew we'd framed you like that they'd naturally think what you thought-that we'd murdered Ufferlitz and tried to make it look like it was you. We were in the hell of a jam ourselves. It was a gag that fate took a hand in, or something. And we were stuck with it. We just had to shut up and hope someнthing would happen."

  "But you weren't in the house yourselves."

  "Not once."

  "Then how," Simon asked very placidly, "did you know, when you wrote that note, that the front door would be unнlocked?"

  There was stillness a third time, a stillness that had the explosive quality of a frenzied struggle gripped in immovable chains. Lazaroff finally made a frustrated gesture, as if his hand had turned into lead.

  "It sounds worse and worse; but we just happened to know."

  "How?"

  "I heard Ufferlitz telling his secretary about working there last night. He said 'The door'll be open as usual.' She said 'Don't you ever lock your door?' and he said 'I haven't locked my house up for years. I always lose keys; and what t
he hell, if anybody's going to get in they'll get in anyway and leave me a busted window on top of it.' I don't suppose you'll beнlieve that, but you can check on it."

  Simon held his eyes and moved to another seat by the teleнphone. He picked up the directory, and found Peggy Warнden's number. He put the telephone on his knee and dialled it.

  Lazaroff went on looking at him steadily.

  "Hullo," she said.

  "This is Lieutenant Condor," said the Saint, and his voice was a perfect imitation of the detective's soured and dismal accent. "There's one thing I forgot to check with you. When you left Mr. Ufferlitz's house last night, did you leave the door unlocked?"

  "Why, yes. It was unlocked when I got there. He never locked it."

  "Never?"

  "No. He said he always lost his keys, and if a burglar really wanted to get in he'd just break a window or something."

  "When did he tell you that?"

  "It was only yesterday, as a matter of fact. But the door was unlocked the last time I went there, to bring him some letters."

  "Had you been there often-of course, I mean on business?"

  "Only once before. I just took him some letters one Sunday morning, and he signed them and I took them away with me."

  "Did anyone else know about him never locking the door?"

  "I don't really know, Lieutenant."

  "Could anyone have heard him telling you?"

  "I suppose so." She hesitated. "Those two writers had been in the office-yes, Mr. Lazaroff was still there. But --"

  "But what?"

  "You don't really think they could have had anything to do with it, do you?"

  "I can't make guesses, miss," he said. "I'm trying to get facts. Thanks for your information."

  He hung up. Lazaroff and Kendricks were watching him.

  "Well," he said, "she confirms your story."

  "It's true," said Kendricks.

  "But it only proves that you knew the door would be open- so you could be sure of putting your scheme through."

  "Look, for Christ's sake. We aren't dopes. We've kicked plots around. If we'd really wanted to frame you, we could have done more than that. We could have put you in a much worse spot. We could have left your trademark drawing on Ufferlitz, if we'd killed him, so you'd really have had someнthing to explain. Now don't do another of those lawyer tricks and ask how we know there wasn't a drawing. I'll bet there wasn't, or Condor would certainly have had you in the cooler."

  It was true there had been no drawing; and it was a point. Simon took out a cigarette.