How Kane Luker spoke his mind,
and Hoppy Uniatz did the best he could with his
1
"I like this place," said Lady Valerie Woodchester, looking smugly around her. "It's one of the few places in London where civilized people can eat civilized food."
The Saint nodded. They had worked their way through three quarters of a menu selected with Simon Templar's own impeccable gastronomic artistry and served with the deference which waiters always instinctively gave him; and he had watched her personality expand and ripen like an exotic flower coming into bloom. Undoubtedly she did the setting no less justice than it did her. Her flawless shoulders and deliciously modelled head rose out of a plain but daringly cut evening gown like an orchid rising from a dark stem, with a startling loveliness that turned many envious eyes towards her; she knew it, and she was delighted, like a child who has been taken out on a special treat. A brighter sparkle had crept gradually into her eyes and a faint flush into her cheeks. It was fun, you felt, to be eating a good dinner, and to be in one of the best places among the best people, and to be with a man who was tall and dark and handsome and who could make waiters fuss about obsequiously. Her dazzling flow of gay, senseless prattle had given the Saint no need to make trivial conversation while they ate; but now he hardened his heart.
"Yes," he agreed. "The food is good and the atmosphere is right. Also a stitch in time saves embarrassing exposure, and the horse is the noblest of animals. Now you've earned your bread and butter, and you can stop entertaining me. Let's be serious for a minute. Have you seen any of our friends today?"
She didn't answer at once. She was looking down at her plate, drawing idle patterns with her fork. Her expression had become abstracted; her thoughts seemed to be very far away.
"Yes, I've seen them," she said vaguely.
"And how are they making out?"
She looked him suddenly straight in the eyes.
"You remember what Luker said at the Golden Fleece? Well, I suppose if I'd got any sense I'd think the same, seeing what a reputation you've got. I suppose you could have got into the house somehow and killed Johnny, and locked his bedroom door, and started the fire, and got out again, and then come back and pretended to try and rescue him. And then of course you could easily have gone to London and shot Ralph Windlay."
"Easily," said the Saint. "But you don't believe I did, do you? Or do you?"
"I suppose not," she said. "In a way, I wish you had."
She pushed away her plate, and he offered his cigarette case.
"Why do you wish I'd killed them? I didn't have any reason to."
"Well, it would have made everything so much easier. Of course I suppose they'd have had to hang you, but everybody knows you're a criminal so that would have been all right. But then you went and upset it all at the inquest, and you made it sound frightfully convincing to me whatever anybody else thought, only it didn't seem quite real then. I mean, you know, it was all rather like something out of a book. Blazing Mansion Mystery, and all that sort of thing. I was terribly sorry about it all in a way because I was quite fond of Johnny, but I wasn't going to be brokenhearted about it or anything like that. And then when Ralph was killed it wouldn't have made much difference, because he was a nice, well-meaning boy but I never thought very much of him. After all, life's too short for one to be getting brokenhearted all the time, isn't it, and I'm sure it gives you circles under your eyes."
"You were too close up against it then to realize it properly," said the Saint shrewdly. "Now you've got away from it, your nerves are going back on you. I'm afraid I sympathize with you. What you need is another drink."
She pushed her glass forward.
"That's exactly what I do need," she said.
He poured out the last of the wine, and she sipped it and put the glass down again.
"It's not really my nerves," she said, talking very quickly. "We modern girls have nerves of iron, you know, and we only swoon when we think a man needs a little encouragement. The point is, if I'd heard that Johnny had been killed in a railway accident I should have been terribly sorry whenever I thought about it, but I don't suppose I should have thought about it terribly often. You see, that would have been just one of those things that happen, and it would have been all over, and it wouldn't really have been anything to do with me."
"But you invited him down to Whiteways, and that makes it different."
She nodded feverishly.
"Of course, I told you that, didn't I?"
"The idea was that you were to get a fur coat if Johnny could be persuaded to keep his mouth shut," Simon pursued her ruthlessly. "He has been persuaded to keep his mouth shut. Do you get your fur coat?"
Her fingers tightened on the stem of her wineglass. Her face had gone very pale, but her eyes were burning.
"That's a filthy thing to say."
"Murder is a moderately filthy subject," answered the Saint brutally. "You can't play with it and keep your little girlie ribbons clean. Haven't you realized that yet?"
"Yes," she said.
She picked up her glass and drained it at one gulp. Then she sat back and laughed at him with a kind of brittle giddiness.
"Well?" he insisted.
"I'm a nice girl, aren't I?" she chattered. "I do the odd spot of gold digging here and there, and in my spare time I lure men to their deaths. What would the dear vicar say if he knew?"
"I expect he'd say plenty. But that doesn't seem to matter so much as what you say. Do you enjoy luring men to their deaths?"
"I love it!"
"Then of course you'll be wanting another job soon. Why don't you advertise? There must be plenty of openings if you can produce proof of previous experience."
She sat looking at him, and two scalding tears brimmed in her eyes.
"You swine!" she whispered.
"I'm sorry," he said cynically.
"What have you got to talk about, anyway? I mean, you think Johnny was murdered. Well, why should you care? You've killed dozens of people yourself, haven't you?"
"Only people who really needed it. You know, there are some people who are vastly improved by death."
"If somebody murdered Johnny, perhaps they thought he needed it," she said. "I daresay the people you killed were pretty poisonous one way or another, but then who isn't? I mean, look at me, for instance. Supposing somebody murdered me. I suppose you'd think that was a damned good job."
"I should think it was a great pity," he said with surprising gentleness. "You see, you poor little idiot, I happen to like you."
"Isn't that thrilling?" she said; and then she suddenly put her face in her hands.
The Saint lighted a cigarette and watched her. She sat quite still, without sobbing. He knew that this was what he had been working for, the success of his relentless drive to break her down; and yet he felt sorry for her. An impulse of tenderness moved him that it was not easy to fight down. But he knew that on this moment might hang things too momentous to be thought about. His brain had to be cold, accurate, making no mistakes, even if he wanted to be kind.
"All right," she said huskily. "Damn you."
She put her hands down abruptly and looked at him, dry-eyed.
"But what's the use?" she said. "It's done now, isn't it? I did it. Well, that's all about it. If I were the right sort of girl I suppose I'd go and jump in the river, but I'm not the right sort of girl."
"That wouldn't help anybody very much." His voice was quiet now, understanding, not taunting. "It's done, but we can still do things about it. You can help me. We can go on with what Johnny was doing. But we've got to find out what it was all about. You've got to think. You've got to think back — think very hard. Try to remember what Johnny told you about Luker and Fairweather and Sangore. Try to remember what he'd got that was going to upset them all. You must remember something."
He tried to hammer his words into her brain with all the urgency that was in him, to awaken her with the warmth of his own intense sincerity. She must tell him now if she was to help him at all.
Her eyes stayed on him and her hands opened and closed again.
She shook her head.
"I don't," she replied. "Really. But…"
She stopped, frowning. He held his breath.
"But what?" he prompted.
"Nothing," she said.
Simon turned the ash from his cigarette on to the edge of a plate with infinite restraint. The reaction had emptied him so that he had to make the movement with a deliberate effort.
A waiter bustled up to the table and asked if they wanted coffee.
Simon felt as if a fire in him had been put out. He felt as if he had been led blindfold to the top of a mountain and then turned back and sent down again without being given a glimpse of the view. While he mechanically gave the order he wondered, in an insanely cold-blooded sort of way, what would happen if he stood up and shot the waiter through the middle of his crisp, complacent shirt front. Probably it had made no ultimate difference, but it seemed as if that crowning clash of the banal had inscribed an irrevocable epilogue of frustration. The mood that might have meant so much was gone. Nothing would bring it back.
He sat without moving while coffee and balloon glasses were set before them.
Lady Valerie Woodchester stubbed out a half-smoked cigarette and lighted another. She tasted her brandy.
"It's a hard life," she observed moodily. "I suppose if one can't get exactly what one wants the next best thing is to have bags of money. That's what I'm going to do."
"Who are you going to blackmail?" Simon inquired steadily.
Her eyes widened.
"What do you mean?" she asked in astonishment.
"Just that," he said.
She laughed. Her laughter sounded a trifle false.
She emptied her coffee cup and finished her brandy. She began to be very busy collecting her accoutrements and dabbing powder on her nose.
"You do say the weirdest things," she remarked. "I'm afraid I must go now. Thanks so much for the dinner. It's been a lovely evening — most of it."
"This is rather early for your bedtime, isn't it?" said the Saint slowly. "Don't you feel well, or are you a little bit scared?"
"I'm scared of getting wrinkles," she said. "I always do when I stay up late. And then I have to spend a small fortune to have them taken out, and that doesn't help a bit, what with one thing and another. But a girl's got to keep her looks even if she can't keep anything else, hasn't she?"
She stood up.
The Saint's hands rested on the arms of his chair. A dozen mad and utterly impossible urges coursed through his mind, but he knew that they were all futile. The whole atmosphere of the place, which had brought her once to a brief fascinating ripeness, was arraigned against him.
A lynx-eyed waiter ceremoniously laid a plate with a folded check on it in front of him.
Simon rose to his feet with unalterable grace and spilled money on to it. He followed her out of the room and out of the hotel, and waited while the commissionaire produced a taxi and placed it before them with the regal gesture of a magician performing a unique and exclusive miracle.
"It's all right," she said. "You needn't bother to see me home."
Through the window of the cab, with the vestige of a sardonic bow, he handed her a sealed envelope.
"You forgot something," he murmured. "That isn't like you, I'm sure."
"Oh yes," she said. "That."
She took the envelope, glanced at it and put it in her bag. It didn't seem to interest her particularly.
She put out her hand again. He held it.
"If—" she began, and broke off raggedly.
"If what?" he asked.
She bit her lip.
"No," she said. "It wouldn't be any good. There's always the But."
"I'll buy it," said the Saint patiently. "What's the answer?"
She smiled at him rather wistfully.
"There isn't any answer. One just thinks, ' If something or other,' and then one thinks, 'But something else,' which makes it impossible," she explained lucidly. "As a matter of fact, I was thinking that you and I would make a marvellous combination."
"And why not?"
She made a little grimace. At that moment, even more inescapably than at any other, she looked as if she was on the point of bursting into tears.
"Oh, go to hell!" she said.
Her hand slipped through his fingers and she sank back into the corner of the cab. It moved away.
Simon Templar stood and watched it until the stream of traffic swallowed it up. And then he said "Hell and damnation!" with a meticulous clarity which caused the commissionaire to unbend in a glance of entirely misdirected sympathy before he resumed his thaumaturgical production of taxis.