Saint on Guard (20 page)

He let the official authority behind him make the noise for him, and said with impeccable control: “I hear you were getting around quite a bit last night.”

“I tried to,” said the Saint amiably. “After all, you remember that survey I told you about. If the Blue Goose meant things to you, you should have tipped me off. You could have saved me a lot of dollars and a slight hangover.”

“I didn’t think it was any of your business,” Kinglake said. “And I still want to know why it was.”

“Just curiosity,” said the Saint. “In spite of anything you may have read, it isn’t every day that I pick up a lump of talking charcoal on the highway. So when it says things to me, I can’t just forget them.”

“And you didn’t forget Ivanovitch, either.”

“Of course not. She was mentioned too. I’m sure I told you.”

“According to Yard, you came home last night with lipstick on you.”

“Some people are born gossips. But I think he’s just jealous.”

Lieutenant Kinglake picked up a pencil from his desk and fondled it as if the idea of breaking it in half intrigued him. Perhaps as an act of symbolism. But he still didn’t raise his voice.

“I’m told,” he said, “that you asked a lot of questions about this Henry Stephens—only you knew that his name was Matson. And you were asking about him all over town under that name. Now you can explain that to me, or you can take your chance as a material witness.”

Simon rounded a cigarette with his forefingers and thumbs.

“You want to ask me questions. Do you mind if I ask a couple? For my own satisfaction. Being as I’m so curious.”

Kinglake’s chilled gimlet eyes took another exploratory twist into him.

“What are they?”

“What did Quantry get out of his autopsy?”

“No traces of poison or violence—nothing that came through the fire, anyway. The guy burned to death.”

“What about the newspaper and the matches?”

“Just a piece of a local paper, which anybody could have bought or picked up. No fingerprints.”

“And where did you get the idea that I was a salesman?”

“I didn’t give out anything about you. If some reporter got that idea, he got it. I’m not paid to be your press agent.” Kinglake was at the full extension of his precarious control. “Now you answer my question before we go any further.”

The Saint lighted his cigarette and used it to mark off a paragraph.

“The deceased’s name,” he said, “was Henry Stephen Matson. Until recently, he was a foreman at the Quenco plant near St Louis. You may remember that Hobart Quennel got into a lot of trouble a while ago, on account of some fancy finagling with synthetic rubber—and mostly because of me. But that hasn’t anything to do with it. The Quenco plants are now being run by the Government, and the one outside St Louis is now making a lot of soups that go bang and annoy the enemy. Matson pulled out a while ago, and came here. He used his real name at the Ascot, because he’d applied for a passport to Mexico and he wanted to get it. But in his social life he called himself Henry Stephens, because he didn’t want to die.”

“How do you know all this?” Kinglake rapped at him. “And why didn’t you–-“

“I didn’t tell you yesterday, because I didn’t know,” said the Saint tiredly. “The thing I found on the road said it was Henry Stephens, and it was all too obvious to bother me. So I was too smart to be sensible. It wasn’t until I started hunting for Matson that it dawned on me that coincidences are still possible.”

“Well, why were you hunting for Matson?”

The Saint pondered about that one.

“Because,” he said, “a Kiwanis convention just picked him as Mr Atlantic Monthly of 1944. So in the interests of this survey of mine I wanted to get his reaction to the Galveston standards of strip-teasing. Now, the grade of G-string at the Blue Goose …”

There had to be a breaking-point to Detective Yard’s self-control, and it was bound to be lower than Kinglake’s. Besides, Mr Yard’s feet had endured more.

He leaned down weightily on the Saint’s shoulder.

“Listen, funny man,” he said unoriginally, “how would you like to get poked right in the kisser?”

“Pipe down,” Kinglake snarled; and it was an order.

But he went on glaring at the Saint, and for the first time his nervous impatience seemed to be more nervous than impatient. Simon was irresistibly reminded of his own efforts to cover confusion with a poker pan, only the night before.

“Let me tell you something, Templar,” Kinglake said dogmatically. “We’ve made our own investigations; and no matter what you think, our opinion is that Stephens, or Matson, committed suicide by pouring gasoline on himself and setting himself alight.”

It took a great deal to shatter the Saint’s composure, but that was great enough. Simon stared at the Lieutenant in a state of sheer incredulity that even took his mind off the crude conventional ponderance of Detective Yard.

“Let me get this straight,” he said slowly. “Are you going try and work off Henry as a suicide?”

Lieutenant Kinglake’s hard face, if anything, grew harder.

“On all the evidence, that’s what it looks like. And I’m not going to make a monkey out of myself to get you some headlines. I told you, I don’t want any trouble in this town.”

“So what’re you gonna do about it?” demanded Detective Yard, with an aptness which he must have learned from the movies.

Simon didn’t even notice him.

“Evidence my back door,” he said derisively. “So this guy who was so reckless with his gas ration was careful enough to swallow the flask he carried it in so it could eventually be recovered for the scrap drive.”

“We just didn’t happen to find the container yesterday. But if we search again, we may find it.”

“Probably the coke bottle that Scotland Yard takes out with him to keep his brain watered.”

“One more crack like that outa you,” Yard said truculently, “an’ I’ll–-“

“You might just tell me this, Kinglake,” said the Saint bitingly. “Is this your idea of a brilliant trick to trap the killers, or are you just a hick cop after all? The only thing you’ve left out is the standard suicide note. Or have you got that up your sleeve too?”

The Lieutenant’s thin lips tightened, and his battleship jaw stuck out another half inch. He had all the chip-on-the-shoulder characteristics of a man in the wrong who wouldn’t admit it while there was a punch left in him; yet he met the Saint’s half jeering and half furious gaze so steadily as to almost stare Simon out of countenance.

“Get this, Templar,” Kinglake said coldly. “We think Stephens committed suicide–-“

“In the most painful way he could think of–-“

“He must have been nuts. But I’ve met nuts before.”

“And even while he was dying he tried to make up a story–-“

“He was out of his mind. He must have been, after a burning like that. You haven’t been burned yet, so you use your head. And if you want to keep your nose clean, you will forget the whole thing—or you may find yourself with your can in the can. Do I make myself clear?”

The Saint met his eyes lengthily.

“If you were rolled flat, you could rent yourself out as a window,” he said. “Instead of which, you have the colossal crust to sit there and spew that pap at me even after I’ve told you that I know more about Matson than you did.”

“Yes,” was all Kinglake replied.

“You aren’t even going to make an issue out of the Blue Goose and my going there.”

“No,” Kinglake said curtly.

For once in his life, Simon Templar was frankly flabbergasted. He searched the shreds of his brain for a better word, and couldn’t find one. Theories whirled through his head; but they were too fast and fantastic to be coordinated while he had to think on his feet.

Which was where he was thinking, since Kinglake’s impenetrable stonewall had brought him up there, shrugging off Detective Yard’s clumsy physical obstruction as if it had been a feather which had accidentally drifted down on to him out of a cloud.

“I’ve met an astonishing variety of cops in my time,” he remarked absorbently; “but you, chum, are an entirely new species. You don’t even attempt to give me the guileless runaround or the genteel brushoff… . Have you said your last word on the subject?”

“Yes,” snapped the Lieutenant. “Now will you kindly get the hell out of here and go on with the survey you were talking about?”

“I will,” retorted the Saint. “And don’t blame me if you find G-men in your G-string.”

He stalked out of there with another unique feeling which was the precise antithesis of the sensation he had had when a certain log moved on the shore road. His blood had run cold then. Now it was boiling.

He had had to cope with local politics and obstruction before, in different guises and for different reasons. But this game was something else. And in that swift invigorating anger, the Saint knew just what he was going to do about it.

Kinglake had taunted him about publicity. Well, the Saint didn’t need to hire any press agents… . He had seen himself waiting and hoping for a lead; but he could always ask for one. He had used newspapers before, in sundry ways, when he wanted to lead with his chin and invite the ungodly to step up and introduce themselves while they looked at it.

Almost literally without looking to left or right, he followed Center Street towards the waterfront on the north or channel side of the city. He walked into the building that housed the Times-Tribune, and worked his way doggedly through the trained interference until he stood in front of the city editor’s desk.

“My name is Simon Templar,” he said for about the fourteenth time. “If you spelt me right, I’d be the traveling salesman who found that botched biscuit on the shore road yesterday. I want to cover that case for you; and all I want out of you is a by-line.”

The editor scrutinised him quite clinically.

“Our police reporter must have messed up his spelling,” he said. “It’s funny—the name started to ring a bell when I read it. … So you’re the Saint. But what are you selling?”

“I’m selling you your lead story for the afternoon edition,” said the Saint. “I may be nuts, but I’m still news. Now shall we play gin rummy, or will you lend me a typewriter and stop the press?”

5 If only to be different in one more way from most typical men of action, Simon Templar was perfectly happy with words and paper. He could play just as fluently on the legitimate or L C Smith form of typewriter as he could on the well-known Thompson variety, and he handled both of them in much the same way. The keys rattled under his fingers like gunfire, and his choice of words had the impact of bullets. He worked at white heat, while his wrath still had all its initial impetus.

He told his own full story of the finding of “Henry Stephens”, and every word that the dying man had said, together with a general summary of the other facts as he knew them, in a fusillade of hardboiled sinewy prose that would have qualified him for a job on the toughest tabloid in the country. Then he squared off to a fresh sheet of paper and went into his second movement. He wrote:

It now grieves me to have to break it to all you nice people that thes? sensitive nostrils, which long ago became extraordinarily appreciative of certain characteristic smells, have caught wind of the grand inspiration that this guy committed suicide, which Lieutenant Kinglake was feeling out this morning.

Now I am in here with quite a different story, and it has got to be known that Bulldog Templar does not brush off that easy.

I am remembering a legend, true or not, that once when S S Van Dine happened to be close to the scene of another murder, it was suggested by some newspaper that he might cooperate with the gendarmerie and help run the villain to earth in the best Philo Vance manner; whereupon Mr Van Dine placed himself in the center of four wheels and trod on the loud pedal so rapidly that his shadow had to be sent after him by express.

We Templars are made of sterner stuff. Just give us a chance to stick our neck out, and a giraffe is not even in our league.

So we are going to sign our name to this invitation to all of you voting citizens to take a good long look at the suicidal Mr Stephens.

He was, we observe, the stern and melancholy type which can get along without life anyway. He proved that by the way he spent his last days here, drinking all night in speakeasies and dancing with the girls. He didn’t go much for fun of any kind, which is said to soften people up. He was strictly an ascetic; and when he knocked himself off he was still going to be tough. He wouldn’t jump out of a window, or take an overdose of sleeping tablets, or put a gun in his ear and listen to see if it was loaded. He deliberately picked the most painful way that a man can die.

He figured he had some suffering coming to him. After all, he wasn’t broke, for instance, which has been known to make some people so . unhappy that they have let air into their tonsils with a sharp knife. He seems to have had plenty of spending money. So he was going to have his hard times on his deathbed instead of before.

He even went 20 miles out of town to do it, walking all the way, since the street cars don’t go there, so that he’d have lots of time to look forward to it and enjoy the prospect.

He was a consistent guy, too. He didn’t mean to be selfish about his suffering. He wanted somebody else to have some of it too. So after he’d taken his gasoline shower, and before he struck the match, he carefully chewed up and ate the bottle he’d brought it in, so that Lieutenant Kinglake could have something to worry about. Not knowing, of course, that Lieutenant Kinglake wouldn’t worry about a little thing like that at all.

It always gives us Templars a great respect for the benignness of Providence to observe how frequently a hard-pressed police department, facing a nervous breakdown before the task of breaking a really difficult case, has been saved in the nick of time by discovering that there never was a murder after all. It makes us feel pretty good to think that cops are practically people, and God takes care of them as well as Pearl White.

The Saint was beginning to enjoy himself by then. He lighted a cigarette and gazed at the ceiling for a while, balancing his ideas for the finale. Then he went on when he was ready.