Saint on Guard (14 page)

Allen Uttershaw was easy to understand. He was a business man who should have been a dilettante. He was a good business man but his only interest in business was the ultimate goal of being able to get out of it and live the vague and graceful life that his peculiar dramatisation of himself required. If he had inherited a million dollars twenty years ago he would have been a timeless and contented flaneur in a world of sleek penthouses, velvet smoking jackets, first editions, vintage wines, silk dressing gowns, and the conversation of connoisseurs. He would have sauntered with faultless charm and savoir faire through his elegantly lepi-dopteral existence, quoting his snatches of poetry with that dis-arming half-smile up his sleeve that always made you wonder if it was worth laughing at him because he had probably just finished laughing at himself; and such contrastingly clamorous subjects as Ourleys and Saints would never have clattered through his peaceful and platonic ken… .

So the newsreel ran through the Saint’s mind and finished, and the projection room was dark and silent again.

And he was still looking at Barbara Sinclair, lifting the ciga-rette to his mouth again, with his eyes very blue and quiet and unchanging.

He was very sorry, more sorry than it was easily endurable to he, and it was all so stupid and wasteful; but that was how things really happened, and sometimes you had to know it.

The clock in his head went on all the time.

And it was no damn good giving her a second thought, because you couldn’t change anything.

Because life was like that, and sometimes you were stuck with it.

And stories just didn’t end that way, because there was always a miracle at the last moment; but this wasn’t a story.

And that was that.

He said: “It doesn’t make very much difference, because I know already.”

“What do you know?” she asked, looking at him with empty eyes.

He strolled across the room and sat down again in an armchair beside the bookcase that was crowned with the bouquet of chrysanthemums. He felt curiously tired; but it was a tiredness of the spirit and nothing to do with his mind or body.

“I know practically everything,” he said. “Including the name of the master mind you’re trying to protect. Suppose I tell you all about it.”

14 ““We begin,” said the Saint, after a little pause, “with the stealing of a three hundred thousand dollar shipment of iridium at Nashville, Tennessee, not so long ago, and our first two murders—Comrades Smith and Gobbovitch, or whatever their names were, who got a load of lead in their lunch baskets.”

“I know all that,” she said, with a gesture of her slender hands that might have been an effort to brush away the vision that came behind his words.

“I expect you do,” said the Saint. “But we ought to begin at the beginning. Because this robbery really opened the way for the black market. It actually created a sudden and very serious shortage. And then the manufacturers who use the stuff, who were suddenly caught short like that, were informed that they could still get supplies—at a price. Some of them were in a spot where they were glad enough to get it at almost any price.”

He glanced again into the jet-black eyes that were fastened on him; and he was still sorry, but he was only more sure.

“The black market salesman, no doubt, had inside information about who was most badly in need of his merchandise. Two of these guys were the late Mr Linnet, and Mr Milton Ourley There may have been others, but I don’t happen to know about them. I know that Linnet had some misgivings about selling out his country for the benefit of your private angel, but the Ourley Magneto Company was not so fussy.”

He looked at his watch and checked it by the other clock in his mind.

“Meanwhile, I had decided to stick my delicate nose in. I made a statement to the newspapers that I was going to clean up this black market, and I said I already knew plenty that would make it unhappy for the operators.” It was a ––- lie. I didn’t know a thing. But I figured that it might scare the operators into trying to cool me off, which might give me a chance to get a line on them; or it might encourage somebody to come and sing to me a little for any one of various reasons. It isn’t the newest trick in the world, but it often works. This worked. It brought me a little bird named Titania Ourley. Maybe you know her.”

Barbara Sinclair licked her lips.

“I’ve met her.”

“Titania sang me a little song about her husband, whom she said she had overheard talking to Gabriel Linnet about their dealings with the black market. She seemed to think I ought to investigate him. A most unwifely idea, but that wasn’t my busi-ness. At her suggestion, I went out to Oyster Bay to meet and talk to Milton. Unfortunately, it became rather rapidly clear that Milion and I were not destined to form a great and beautiful friendship. And he didn’t want to talk to me at all. In fact, he practically threw me out on my ear.”

Simon leaned his head back and looked at the ceiling, as if he could see pictures there.

“I made one rather tragic mistake first, though. I dropped an unfinished quotation that somebody must have finished after I left. Because anyone who heard it finished would have known that I expected Linnet to sing—if he hadn’t started singing al-ready. And they would have had a good idea that I was on my way to see Linnet then. Which was very tragic indeed for Gabriel.” He blew a carefully constructed smoke-ring. “I did go to ! innet’s, of course; and there I met you. And in due course you gave me a very attractive invitation.”

She bowed her head over her hands clenched together between her knees.

“Soon after this,” he added, “Fernack was called by some mys-terrious amateur sleuth who reported that I’d been seen breaking into Linnet’s place. There was also some mention of noises like a fight going on inside.”

“I didn’t phone anybody except the boy I had a date with. I told you I had to break a date.”

“You couldn’t have called anybody else by mistake, could you? You couldn’t have called your treacherous friend to report that I was duly hooked and under control, so the rest of the plot could go into production as scheduled.”

She made no reply except to look up at him again. Tears glistened under her long lashes.

“Anyway,” he said, “I came to my senses almost in time, left you with the check for a souvenir, and beat it back to Linnet’s dearly fast enough to be in at the death. Quite an unpleasant death, too. They tied a rope around his neck, and his eyeballs were popping and his tongue sticking out. You should have seen him. It would have made you proud of your team.”

He stood up and stretched himself a little.

“Well, I was duly arrested by the doughty Inspector Fernack, and it took me until this morning to get out of his clutches. I went to your apartment, and there I met Humpty and Dumpty and a certain piece of luggage. And, of course, we had our reunion. I suppose I should have been able to solve the whole story then, but I guess you still had me slightly dazzled. Because there were two lovely clues, and they were completely contradictory. First, the pajamas in your closet–-“

“You told me–-“

“I know. They didn’t have initials on them. But I could tell things by just looking at them… . And then there was that precious portmanteau of iridium.”

“I told you how that got there.”

“But you didn’t tell me about the initials. You saw how the combination lock worked out when I opened it, didn’t you?”

“No.”

“Three very important letters, and you didn’t notice them,” he said reprovingly.

“I wasn’t looking.”

“You were hanging over my shoulder and watching everything I did. You couldn’t have missed seeing them.”

“I wasn’t looking at that.”

“Besides which, I asked you if the initials O S M meant anything to you.”

“They don’t.”

The Saint took out another cigarette and lighted it from the butt of the last.

“M S O,” he said, “in reverse. A subtle touch. But nothing to make a reasonably bright guy rupture a brain cell. In other words, our dear mutual friend.”

There was a silence.

The Saint wandered towards the window. It was getting darker, and the skyscraper silhouettes around them were losing their sharpness against the velvet off-blue of the sky. He stood there for a moment or two, looking out.

“M S O,” he repeated. “Milton S Ourley. So nice and simple … And I still had to put it together. You ought to have saved me all that trouble.”

“I told you–-“

‘I know. You’d tell me when you felt like it. But it’s too late for that now. Maybe it was always too late… . But there was a time when the suspects were very vague. I even wasted a few minutes suspecting you. Oh, not as an active killer—I couldn’t really visualise you garrotting Gabriel with your own strong hands, and besides a police surgeon decided soon afterwards that Gabriel was getting the tourniquet on his tonsils at about the time when you would have been trying to persuade an unfriendly head waiter that it wasn’t your fault if your host sneaked out without paying for dinner. And also I’d collided with Cokey in the rneantime. But somebody sent Cokey; and somebody sent Varetti—at least, I’m guessing that it was that fugitive from a tango tournament who rescued Cokey after I’d tied him up. It could conceivably have been you who was the master mind; but after some profound meditation I decided that you just didn’t have that much brain.”

Her eyes smouldered like tar pits as she glared at him, and he realised that things happened to her beauty under stress.

He had a fleeting instant of wondering whether it was right for him to destroy so much loveliness piece by piece as he was dolng, even to achieve what he had to achieve.

Then he thought about nameless men dying in foxholes or plunging out of the sky in naming fortresses, and knew that it was still all right.

He said: “Believe it or not, I thought about Titania too. She makes sillier noises than you do, but she’s a lot shrewder and tougher. I could see Milton with a mistress as ornamental as you, and I could see him going to all these lengths to get back a little of his own life. But I could just as well see Titania taking the last colossal step to get rid of Milton, whom she hates and despises, and at the same time make herself even richer and stronger than before. But what was wrong with that was that if she’d had the real master-mind cunning she wouldn’t have stuck her neck out so far. She wouldn’t have been so specific, and she wouldn’t have dragged Linnet in. She wouldn’t have made it so easy for the suspicion to be transferred to herself. So that was something else that didn’t connect. I could see her as a phenomenally vicious and nasty woman with a great hate and jealousy in her complicated brain; but she wasn’t subtle enough… . All that’s just a lot of wordage now, of course, because I know all the answers.”

“You’re just talking,” she said.

His lean face was untouched and impassive.

“I know the answers, and I can practically prove them. The police will put the rest of it together. There’s only one person who could have done all these things. Who stole Uttershaw’si iridium, and created the shortage at the same time as he set up his own black market with inside information. Who had Gabriel Linnet killed, because I was too damn smart and couldn’t keep my stupid mouth shut. Who fixed you up for me, to make sure I wouldn’t have an alibi for that murder. Who left that suitcase at your apartment, and who sent Varetti and Walsh with a key to pick it up, and who let them out of your closet a little while ago and sent them off to the Algonquin to pick it up again.”

He smiled pleasantly at her, sipping his cigarette again while he measured her for his penultimate thrust.

“And,” he said, “I know who’s been planning to kill you at any convenient moment now, besides killing me.”

He would never have believed that a face like hers could have looked so bleached and frozen.

“Now I know you must be insane,” she breathed.

He shook his head sadly.

“No, dear. Not any more insane than your beloved, who is very sane indeed. Sane enough to know that this is too hot now to take any more chances on you, because you know too much anyhow and you might still change your mind.” The Saint’s voice was utterly passionless and level, and his mind felt as if it were standing alone in the middle of a great empty hall. “Your life is run-ning out while you’re stalling, darling. And it doesn’t make a bit of difference, because I did see those pajamas.”

“I wore those pajamas,” she said, “and I think your insinua-tions–-“

“Why not save it? I can see where you might need all those his-trionics. You’ll need plenty of them for the most dead-pan audience you ever saw—the jury who’ll decide whether to give you the electric cure or burden the taxpayers with the cost of your gray uniforms and oatmeal for twenty years. Which will be quite a change from Saks Fifth Avenue and coq au vin.”

“You–-“

“I am no gentleman,” said the Saint regretfully. “Because I know that even if you did wear those pajamas, you didn’t buy them—at least not for yourself. They would have been too big for you. They might have fitted Titania, but she would never go lor any tomboy styles—she would be strictly for lace and chiffon, ind lots of it. But they were also very obviously too long for Milton. Which confused me more than somewhat for quite a little while; but eventually it made sense. So the showdown is right now, and this is the very last time I can ask you which side you’re on.”

Her lips were wooden.

“Presently.” He nodded.

“Yes. That’s what you said before.”

“Then why don’t you go away now?”

“Because I want to be finished with this. And I think this is a perfect time to finish.”

He moved towards the center table, to the ashtray which had been his first landmark of all with its litter of crumpled butts. He stirred the mess with his fingers, and picked out one stub to hold up.

His eyes picked her up again like blued points of steel.

“When I came in here,” he said, “I happened to notice that there was one cigarette in this ashtray that didn’t have any lipstick on it. So I was quite sure that your boy friend was herealready, and I’ve been talking to him as much as to you. Now thatyou’ve made your choice, and he’s listened so patiently to whatI’ve got on him, we can stop playing hide-and-seek. I’m quite certain that he’s just inside the bedroom door, and I think it would be much more sociable if he came out and joined us.”