The Saint to the Rescue (4 page)

By the time they had moved on he was wide
awake and
knew that he had no hope of feeling drowsy again that morn
ing. But as
he lay still stretched out with his eyes closed
the entire Fennick
episode unrolled again in his memory,
and the earlier mood of exasperation
crept back. Only in
stead of being a petulant flash of anger, it was now a
con
sidered and solid resentment that could not be dismissed.

He tried to dismiss it while he got up and
showered and
shaved and went down to the coffee shop for breakfast, but
it refused to go away.

“You’ve got every excuse to duck
this,” he had to tell him
self finally, “except one that’ll let
you forget it.”

If Mr. Fennick consented to pay blackmail, it
could well be
maintained that that was Mr. Fennick’s own private
business,
and the hell with him. But if a blackmailer got away with
blackmail, that had always been the Saint’s self-appointed
business,
as had any kind of unpunished evil. And it was doubly so when the circumstances
ruled out any possibility of legal retribution.

Simon finished his second cup of coffee and
went back
through the lobby, where a totally different staff had
taken
over. This time he had no difficulty in getting Mr. Fennick’s
room
number, which was 607; but the switchboard operator
told him that the Do
Not Disturb was still on the phone. For a moment he contemplated going up and
banging on
the door; but then he reflected that Mr. Fennick, in the
shattered condition in which the sweetmeat sachem must have
regained
his room, had probably taken a sleeping pill and
would not exactly
scintillate if he were prematurely aroused.

Meanwhile, the Saint had in his pocket the
card which the
uncooperative bartender had given him. It might not be
much,
but it was something. And at least it might help to pass the
time
constructively.

Scoden Street was a narrow turning off one of
the drabber stretches of Geary, given over to a few small dispirited neigh
borhood
shops jumbled among other nondescript buildings
of which some had been
converted into the dingier type of
offices and some still offered
lodgings of dubious desirability.
Number 685 seemed to combine the two
latter types, for a
window on the street level was lettered with the words V
ERE
B
ALTON
S
TUDIOS
on the
glass, behind which an assortment of -
arty enlargements were attached to a
velvet backdrop, while
on the entrance door was tacked a large
printed card with
the legend apartment for rent.

The door was open, though only a couple of
inches.

Simon pushed it with his toe and went in.

He found himself in a small dark hallway, at
the rear of
which a flight of worn wooden stairs started upwards,
doubt
less to the vacant apartment. Immediately on his right was
a door,
also ajar, with a shingle projecting from the lintel on
which the V
ERE
B
ALTON
S
TUDIOS
sign was
repeated. He went
through into a sort of reception room formed by the space
between the shoulder-height backdrop of the front window
and a set
of full-length drapes which shut off the rest of the
premises. It
contained a shabby desk and three equally shabby
chairs, but none of
them was occupied.

“Hi,” said the Saint, raising his
voice. “Anybody home?”

There was no reply, or even any sound of
movement. But
the long drapes were not fully drawn, and through the
aper
ture he could see a yellowness of artificial light.

He went to the opening and looked into a small
studio
equipped with a dais, a tripod camera, and the usual clutter
of lamps,
screens, and props to sit on or lean against. But
nobody was utilizing
the props, and the only lamp alight was a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling.

Simon stepped on through the curtains. The
near corner
inside had been partitioned off with Beaverboard into a
cubicle which from the sinks and shelves of bottles that could be
seen
through its wide open door was obviously used as a
darkroom; but no one
was using it. At the opposite end of
the studio was another door, half open.

“Anybody home?” Simon repeated.

Nobody acknowledged it.

He crossed the studio quietly, cutting a
zigzag
course be
tween the paraphernalia, and his second tack put him at an
angle from which he could see the body that lay on the floor
of the
back room.

It belonged to a fat man of medium height
with dirty gray
hair and a rather porcine face to which death had not
added
any dignity. There were three bullet holes in the front of his
patchily
reddened white shirt, loosely grouped around the
VB
monogram
placed like a target over his heart, and two of
them were ringed with
the powder burn and stain of almost
contact range.

Simon bent and touched the back of his hand to
one of
the flabby cheeks—not to verify the fact of death, which was
unnecessary,
but to determine if it was very recent. The skin
was cold.

The room was an office, furnished with an
antique roll-top
desk, a hardly less antique typewriter, and a bank of un
matched
filing cabinets. Nude color-calendar photos were
pinned up on much of
the wall space, interspersed with glossy
monochromes of
similar esthetic subjects. The desk was lit
tered with a
hodgepodge of correspondence, bills, prints, and
negatives; and about
half the filing drawers were open to
varying extents, many of them with
folders partly raised out of them. Nevertheless, the general impression,
strengthened
by the film of dust that could be observed on many
surfaces,
was not so much that of a recent ransacking as of an
ancient
and incurable disorder.

But why should there have, been any ransacking?
With his
rolled-up sleeves and his coat over the back of a chair,
Vere
Balton hadn’t surprised any intruder—he had been surprised.
And with a
gun in his chest, he would have been glad to pro
duce whatever the
intruder wanted in exchange for his life,
hoping he would not be
cheated… .

All this went through the Saint’s mind in a
consecutive
rush, like a cascade through a sieve. But before it had
fin
ished draining through, one scrap of flotsam was caught.

Mr. Otis Q. Fennick was entangled, consciously
or not, with something bigger than a candid shot of himself in the
hay with a
buxom brunette whose name was not on his
marriage license.

Simon backed out of the office on tiptoe, and
retraced his
steps even more circumspectly between the obstacles and
over
the coiling cables of the studio lights, being careful to leave
no clumsy
traces of his visit. But in the anteroom in front he
stopped by the desk
on which he had seen the telephone.
That was the logical place to look for
one item of informa
tion that he had come for, and he found it in the first
drawer
he opened with a handkerchief wrapped around his fingers.
There was
an address book, precisely where one would expect it to be kept, and he turned
the pages with the same precaution against leaving fingerprints, scanning each
one swiftly but completely.

He had to go nearly all the way through the
book before
he came to a Norma, and not much farther to be positive
that there
were no others. He turned back and memorized the
entry with a second
glance:

Norma Uplitz

5 De Boer Lane—Apt. 2

AG 2-9044

Not the most likely name for the sexily
constructed siren
that Mr. Fennick had indicated, but a lot of Hollywood
queens
had started life even less glamorously baptized.

He had not touched either of the entrance
doors with his hands when he came in, he recalled, and he went out without
touching them. He did pull the front door almost shut,
before he put his
handkerchief away, leaving it as nearly
as possible in the
same position as he had found it. Let the
police have the
benefit of any clues that might be latent in
the set-up: the
Saint’s only concern was not to interpolate any
new ones which might
point misleadingly to himself.

The greatest risk seemed to be that someone
might remem
ber seeing him going in or coming out. That was a hazard
which he
shared with the real killer. But the ultimate danger
to himself was much
less, for if that hypothetical witness took
any note of the time,
it would prove that the Saint had been there several hours after the autopsy
would show that Vere
Balton had died. So he took his departure
boldly and unhur
riedly, making no special effort to avoid being observed—
which was
perhaps the best of all guarantees against being
noticed.

He walked back to the Mercurio and took the
elevator
directly to the sixth floor, without wasting any time on
the
house phone. He did not have to hesitate over the route to
Room 607,
for the number told him that it must be next door
to the same relative
location as his own room.

There was no Do Not Disturb card hung on the
door knob,
but it would not have moderated his peremptory knock if
there had
been.

The door opened almost instantly; and for one
of the few
times in his life Simon Templar felt that only the
sang-froid
of a sphinx saved him from falling over backwards.

It was not Otis Q. Fennick who opened the
door. It was
a blonde. And no part of her configuration remotely resem
bled that
of the creator of Crackpops.

It was, however, strikingly reminiscent of
the general impression that Mr. Fennick had haltingly conveyed of his un
authorized
cot companion. But one specification that Simon
was unshakably clear
about was that Mr. Fennick’s surprise
package had been distinctly described
as a brunette.

This blonde had not been manufactured in the
past few
hours. She might have owed something to tints and rinses,
but the
foundation was genetic. The Saint could tell. And as
other minutiae
gradually registered on him, they declined
unanimously to fit
into the reconstruction of a frill who hustled
photos in a joint like
the Rowdy Room and would blow more than a flash bulb for a fast bill. This
one’s dress had the un
mistakable cachet of expensive exclusiveness,
and any one of
the small ornaments she wore would have outvalued Norma
Uplitz’s
whole treasure chest of jewels. This one might be
available too, for
the right proposition, but the price tag would
be liable to sift the
boys by their tax brackets.

“I beg your pardon,” said the Saint,
with a sensation of
laboriously cranking his chin up off his necktie. “I
was
looking for Mr. Fennick.”

“He isn’t here.”

“But this is his room?”

“Yes. He just happens to be out.”

“Oh.”

“It’s perfectly respectable,” said
the blonde. “I’m his wife.”

“His… .”

“Wife. You must have heard the
expression. Are you feeling
all right? You look rather glassy-eyed.”

Simon strove valiantly to unglaze. It required
an abnormal
effort, but the multiplication of shocks was proceeding a
trifle
rapidly even for him. And the day had scarcely begun.

“I was a bit startled,” he
admitted. “I understood you were
in New York.”

“I was—yesterday. But these new jets are
so sudden. Do you
have some business with him, or are you a friend?”

“To tell you the truth, I only met him
last night. But we
became quite chummy.”