The Saint Sees It Through s-26

by Leslie Charteris

  "What's this all about?" she demanded, using what began to sound like the house formula.

  "This insolent swine," Zellermann said, gathering his words with a vicious precision that made them come out as if he were spitting bullets, "attacked me for no reason at all——"

  "Or only one little reason," said the Saint easily. "Because I saw you grab Miss Dexter's arm, and I thought you were getting much too rough."

  "Because she slapped me!"

  "For a very good reason, chum. I saw it."

  Cookie's wet marble eyes flicked from face to face with the alertness of a crouched cat surrounded by sparrows. Now she turned on the girl.

  "I see," she rasped. "What have you been drinking, Avalon?"

  Simon admired the blushless pot-and-kettle majesty of that, for at close quarters Cookie was enveloped in a rich aroma of whisky which probably contributed some of the beady glaze to her malevolent stare.

  "Really, Cookie," he said earnestly, "anyone who wanted to get tight on the drinks you serve here would have to have been working on it since breakfast."

  "Nobody asked you to come here," Cookie threw at him, and went on to Avalon: "I'd like to know what the hell makes you think you've got a right to insult my customers ——"

  It was not a pretty scene, even though the Saint's aversion to that kind of limelight was greatly tempered by the happy memory of his knuckles crushing Dr. Zellermann's lips against his teeth. But he felt much more embarrassed for Avalon. The puzzling hint of a smile had left her lips altogether, and something else was coming into her eyes that Cookie should have been smart enough to recognise even if she was too alcoholic for ordinary discretion.

  He said quietly: "The customer insulted her, Cookie——"

  "You dirty liar!" shouted Zellermann.

  "—and he had it coming to him," Simon went on in the same tone. "I saw it all happen. Why not just throw him out and let's go on with the fun?"

  "You mind your own goddam business!" Cookie blazed at him purply. Again she turned to the girl. "You drunken slut— I've had just about enough of your airs and graces and bull——"

  That was it. Avalon's lips came together for an instant, and the suppressed blaze flashed like dynamite in her eyes.

  "That's fine," she said. "Because I've had just about enough of you and your creep joint. And as far as I'm concerned you can take your joint and your job and stuff them both."

  She whirled away; and then after only one step she turned back, just as abruptly, her skirts and her hair swooping around her. And as she turned she was really smiling.

  "That is," she added sweetly, "if the Saint doesn't do it for you."

  Then she was gone, sidling quickly between the tables; and there was a new stillness in the immediate vicinity.

  In the local silence, the Saint put a match to his neglected cigarette.

  Now he understood the paradoxical ingredient in Avalon's expression when she first saw him. And her revelation flared him into an equally paradoxical mixture of wariness and high amusement. But the barest lift of one eyebrow was the only response that could be seen in his face.

  Cookie's stare had come back to him, and stayed there. When she spoke to him again her voice had no more geniality than before, and yet there was still a different note in it.

  "What's your name?"

  "Simon Templar," he said, with no more pointedness than if he had said "John Smith."

  The effect, however, was a little different.

  The muscular captain took a step back from him, and said with unconscious solemnity: "Jesus!"

  Dr. Ernst Zellermann stopped mopping his mouth with a reddening handkerchief, and kept still like a pointer.

  Cookie kept still too, with her gross face frozen in the last expression it had worn, and her eyes so anchored that they looked almost rigid.

  The Saint said peaceably: "It's nice to have met you all, but if somebody would give me my check I'd like to get some fresh air."

  The melancholy waiter was at his side like a lugubrious genie, holding up the check by the time he had finished his sentence.

  "Now, just a minute, Mr. Templar." Cookie's voice came through again with the sticky transparency of honey poured over a file. "These little things do happen in night clubs, and we all understand them. I didn't mean to be rude to you—I was just upset. Won't you sit down and have a drink with me?"

  "No, thank you," said the Saint calmly. "I've already had several of your drinks, and I want to get my tummy pumped out before goldfish start breeding in it."

  He peeled a bill off his roll and handed it to the waiter with a gesture which dismissed the change.

  "Of course you thought you were doing the right thing," Cookie persisted. "But if you only knew the trouble I've had with that little tramp, I'm sure——"

  "I'm quite sure," said the Saint, with the utmost charm, "that I'd take Avalon's suggestion—and throw Dr. Zeller­mann in for a bonus."

  He turned on his heel and sauntered away—he seemed tired of the whole thing and full of time to spare, but that effect was an illusion. He wanted very much indeed to catch Avalon Dexter before he lost her, and his long lazy stride took him to the door without a wasted movement.

  The check-room girl was helping him into his coat when Ferdinand Pairfield, on his way to the gents' room, edged past him at a nervous distance that was not without a certain coy concupiscence. The Saint reached out and took his hand.

  "Don't you think that nail polish is a bit on the garish side, Ferdy?" he asked gravely. "Something with a tinge of violet in it would look much cuter on you."

  Mr. Pairfield giggled, and disengaged his fingers as shyly and reluctantly as a debutante.

  "Oh, you!" he carolled.

  Slightly shaken, Simon let himself out and went up the short flight of steps to the street.

  Avalon Dexter was on the sidewalk, talking to the doorman as he held the door of a taxi for her. Even with her back to him, the Saint couldn't have mistaken the long bronze hair that hung over the shoulders of her light wolf coat. She got into the cab as he reached the street level; and before the doorman could close the door Simon took two steps across the pavement, ducked under the man's startled nose, and sat down beside her.

  He held out a quarter, and the door closed.

  She gazed at him in silence.

  He gazed at her, smiling.

  "Good morning," she said. "This is cosy."

  "I thought I might buy you a drink somewhere," he said, "and wash the taste of that dump out of our mouths."

  "Thanks," she said. "But I've had all I can stand of creep joints for one night."

  "Then may I see you home?"

  Her candid eyes considered him for a bare moment.

  "Why not?"

  She gave the driver an address on Sutton Place South.

  "Do you make all that money?" Simon asked interestedly, as they moved off.

  "The place I've got isn't so expensive. And I work pretty regularly. At least," she added, "I used to."

  "I hope I didn't louse everything up for you."

  "Oh, no. I'll get something else. I was due for a change anyway. I couldn't have taken much more of Cookie without going completely nuts. And I can't think of any happier finale than tonight."

  Simon stretched out to rest his heels on the folding seat opposite him, and drew another eighth of an inch off his cigarette.

  He said idly: "That was quite an exit line of yours."

  "They got the idea, did they?"

  "Very definitely. You could have heard a pin drop. I heard one."

  "I'd give a lot to have seen Cookie's face."

  "She looked rather like a frog that was being goosed by an electric eel."

  The girl laughed quickly; and then she stopped laughing.

  "I hope I didn't louse everything up for you.''

  "Oh, no." He doubled her tone exactly as she had doubled his. "But it was just a little unexpected."

  "For a great detective, you've certainly got
an awful memory."

  He arched an eyebrow at her.

  "Have I?"

  "Do you remember the first crossing of the Hindenburg— the year before it blew up?" She was looking straight ahead, and he saw her profile intermittently as the dimmed street lights touched it. "You were on board—I saw your picture in a newsreel when you arrived. Of course, I'd seen pictures of you before, but that reminded me. And then a couple of nights later you were in a place called the Bali, opposite El Morocco. Jim Moriarty had it—before he had the Barberry Room. I was bellowing with the band there, and you came in and sat at the bar." She shrugged, and laughed again. "I must have made a tremendous impression."

  He didn't remember. He never did remember, and he never ceased to regret it. But it was one of those things.

  He said lamely: "I'm sorry—that was a lot of years ago, and I was crashing all over town and seeing so many people, and I can't have been noticing much."

  "Oh, well," she said, with a stage sigh. "Dexter the For­gotten Girl. What a life! . . . And I thought you came to my rescue tonight because you remembered. But all the time you were taken up with so many people that you never even saw me."

  "I'm sorry," he said again. "I must have been taken up with too many people. And I'll never forgive any of them."

  She looked at him, and her smile was teasing and gay, and her eyes were straight and friendly with it, so that it was all only chatter and she was not even trying to sell him anything; and he could only smile back and think how much better it could have been if he remembered.

  "Maybe you don't know how lucky you were," she said.

  "Maybe I don't," he said.

  And it was a curious thing that he only half understood what he was saying, or only half meant what he said; it was only a throwaway line until after it was spoken, and then it was something that could never be thrown away.

  This was something that had never been in his mind at all when he abandoned himself to the simple enjoyment of smack­ing Dr. Ernst Zellermann in the smooch.

  He lighted another cigarette with no less care than he had devoted to the other operation, and said nothing more until the taxi drew up outside a black and white painted brick building on the river side of Sutton Place South. He got out and helped her out, and she said: "Come in for a minute and let me fix you a real drink."

  "That's just what I needed," he said, and paid off the taxi, and strolled up beside her as casually as if they had known, each other for a hundred years, and it was just like that, and that was how it was.

  4

  The living-room was at the back. It was big and quiet and comfortable. There was a phonoradio and a record cabinet, and a big bookcase, and another tier of shelves stacked with sheet music, and a baby piano. The far end of it was solid with tall windows.

  "There's a sort of garden outside," she said. "And the other end of it falls straight down on to East River Drive, and there's nothing beyond that but the river, so it's almost rustic. It only took me about three years to find it."

  He nodded.

  "It looks like three well-spent years."

  He felt at home there, and easily relaxed. Even the endless undertones of traffic were almost lost there, so that the city they had just left might have been a hundred miles away.

  He strolled by the bookcase, scanning the titles. They were a patchwork mixture, ranging from The African Queen to The Wind in the Willows, from Robert Nathan to Emil Lud­wig, from Each to the Other to Innocent Merriment. But they made a pattern, and in a little while he found it.

  He said: "You like some nice reading."

  "I have to do something with my feeble brain every so often. I may be just another night-club singer, but I did go to Smith College and I did graduate from University of California, so I can't help it if I want to take my mind off creep joints some­times. It's really a great handicap."

  He smiled.

  "I know what you mean."

  He prowled on, came to the piano, set his drink on it, and sat down. His fingers rippled over the keys, idly and aimlessly, and then crept into the refrain of September Song.

  She sat on the couch, looking at him, with her own glass in her hand.

  He finished abruptly, picked up his drink again, and crossed the room to sit down beside her.

  "What do you know about Zellermann?" he asked.

  "Nothing much. He's one of these Park Avenue medicine­men. I think he's supposed to be a refugee from Vienna—he got out just before the Nazis moved in. But he didn't lose much. As a matter of fact, he made quite a big hit around here. I haven't been to his office, but I'm told it looks like something off a Hollywood set. His appointment book looks like a page out of the Social Register, and there's a beautifully carved blonde nurse-receptionist who'd probably give most of his male patients a complex if they didn't have any to start with. He's got a private sanitarium in Connecticut, too, which is supposed to be quite a place. The inmates get rid of their inhibitions by doing exactly what they please and then paying for any special damage."

  "You mean if they have a secret craving to tear the clothes off a nurse or throw a plate of soup at a waiter, they can be accommodated—at a fancy tariff."

  "Something like that, I guess. Dr. Zellermann says that all mental troubles come from people being thwarted by some convention that doesn't agree with their particular personality. So the cure is to take the restriction away—like taking a tight shoe off a corn. He says that everyone ought to do just what their instincts and impulses tell them, and then everything would be lovely.

  "I notice he wasn't repressing any of his impulses," Simon remarked.

  The girl shrugged.

  "You're always meeting that sort of creep in this sort of business. I ought to have been able to handle him. But what the hell. It just wasn't my night to be tactful."

  "You'd met him before, of course."

  "Oh, yes. He's always hanging around the joint. Cookie introduced him the other night. He's one of her pets."

  "So I gathered. Is it Love, or is he treating her? I should think a little deep digging into her mind would really be something."

  "You said it, brother. I wouldn't want to go in there without an armored diving suit."

  He cocked a quiet eye at her.

  "She's a bitch, isn't she?"

  "She is."

  "Everybody's backslapper and good egg, with a heart of garbage and scrap iron."

  "That's about it. But people like her."

  "They would." He sipped his drink. "She gave me rather a funny feeling. It sounds so melodramatic, but she's the first woman I ever saw who made me feel that she was completely and frighteningly evil. It's a sort of psychic feeling, and I got it all by myself."

  "You're not kidding. She can be frightening."

  "I can see her carrying a whip in a white-slave trading post, or running a baby farm and strangling the little bastards and burying them in the back yard."

  Avalon laughed.

  "You mightn't be so far wrong. She's been around town for years, but nobody seems to know much about her back­ground before that. She may have done all those things before she found a safer way of making the same money."

  Simon brooded for a little while.

  "And yet," he said, "the waiter was telling me about all the public-spirited work she does for the sailors."

  "You mean Cookie's Canteen? . . . Yes, she makes great character with that."

  "Is it one of those Seamen's Missions?"

  "No, it's all her own. She hands out coffee and coke and sandwiches, and there's a juke box and hostesses and enter­tainment."

  "You've been there, I suppose."

  "I've sung there two or three times. It's on Fiftieth Street near Ninth Avenue—not exactly a ritzy neighbourhood, but the boys go there."

  He put a frown and a smile together, and said: "You mean she doesn't make anything out of it? Has she got a weakness for philanthropy between poisonings, or does it pay off in publicity, or does she just dote on those fine
virile uninhibited sailor boys?"

  "It could be all of those. Or perhaps she's got one last leathery little piece of conscience tucked away somewhere, and it takes care of that and makes her feel really fine. Or am I being a wee bit romantic? I don't know. And what's more, I don't have to care any more, thank God."

  "You're quite happy about it?"

  "I'm happy anyway. I met you. Build me another drink."

  He took their glasses over to the side table where the supplies were, and poured and mixed. He felt more than ever that the evening had been illumined by a lucky star. He could put casual questions and be casually flippant about everything, but he had learned quite a lot in a few hours. And Cookie's Canteen loomed in his thoughts like a great big milestone. Before he was finished with it he would want more serious answers about that irreconcilable benevolence. He would know much more about it and it would have to make sense to him. And he had a soft and exciting feeling that he had already taken more than the first step on the unmarked trail that he was trying to find.

  He brought the drinks back to the couch, and sat down again, taking his time over the finding and preparation of a cigarette.

  "I'm still wondering," she said, "what anyone like you would be doing in a joint like that."

  "I have to see how the other half lives. I'd been out with some dull people, and I'd just gotten rid of them, and I felt like having a drink, and I happened to be passing by, so I just stopped in."

  None of it was true, but it was good enough.

  "Then," he said, "I heard you sing."

  "How did you like it?"

  "Very much."

  "I saw you before I went on," she said. "I was singing for you."

  He struck a match, and went on looking at her between glances at the flame and his kindling cigarette.

  He said lightly: "I never knew I was so fascinating."

  "I'm afraid you are. And I expect you've been told all about it before."

  "You wouldn't like me if you knew me."

  "Why not?"

  "My glamour would dwindle. I brush my teeth just like anyone else; and sometimes I burp."

  "You haven't seen me without my make-up."

  He inspected her again critically.

  "I might survive it."

  "And I'm lazy and untidy and I have expensive tastes."