To Bunny

Judith

Introduction

This story is a sentimental piece to me because (1) it was the first short story I ever sold to a smooth-paper American magazine, (2) I got paid more for it, many times more, than I had ever received for a short story until then, and (3) this was the first sale I made after I landed in the United States in 1932, with about fifty dollars in my pocket and nothing but an unshakable faith in my own destiny to support me beyond that. You may well ask why such an ancient manuscript should crop up so late in not even the First , but actually the Second Saint Omnibus. The reason turns out to be very simple. A writer writes short stories and sells them at intervals to magazines. Presently he has enough to make a collection suitable for publishing in volume form. And if he wants to milk his work for the last golden drop, he does just that. I went a little further. Long ago I had the idea for the title Saint Errant , which would be a book of short stories primarily involving dames. This story, “Judith,” would be the first. Now it is only a matter of record that fifteen years went by before that imagined collection was complete. I wrote other stories in between, and even whole books. But Saint Errant did not complete itself until 1947. And in the Omnibus we are dipping into the books in the order in which they were published, without regard to the order of first publication, or even conception, of their ingredients. I hope this explanation will satisfy the most fanatical of my self-appointed bibliographers, who have picked the hell of a subject to give themselves ulcers about. And while we are at it, one more amplification seems to be called for. I said in the foreword to this monument that I had not tried to revise any of the stories, or bring them up to date. And a glance at this story makes me realize that that was only a half-truth. I have not changed anything between the source volumes and this one. But the story originally began in Paris, and ended with the Saint on his way to Stuttgart. When Saint Errant was finally being readied for the printers, that kind of movement would have invalidated a plot point for contemporary-minded readers. So I simply switched the geography across a few thousand miles of ocean. There was nothing to it, really. Any other writer could have done the same, with a mere wave of his magic ball-point pen. — Leslie Charteris

Simon Templar had to admit that the photograph of himself which adorned the front page of the copy of the New York Daily Gazette on his knee left nothing to be desired.

Taken only a couple of years ago, at the studio of an ambitious photographer who had clearly seen the potentialities of future revenue from an authentic likeness of such a disreputable character, it brought out to perfection the rakish curve of his jaw, the careless backward curl of black hair, the mocking challenge of a gay filibuster’s mouth. Even the eyes, by some trick of lighting in the original which had been miraculously preserved through the processes of reproduction, glinted back at him from under the bantering lines of eyebrow with all the vivid dangerous dance of humor that was in his own.

The story illustrated by the picture occupied two columns of the front page and was continued somewhere in the interior. One gathered from it that that elusive and distressingly picturesque outlaw, the Saint, had set the Law by the ears again with a new climax of audacities: his name and nom de guerre waltzed through the bald paragraphs of the narrative like a debonair will-o’-the-wisp, carrying with it a breath of buccaneering glamour, a magnificently medieval lawlessness, that shone with a strange luminance through the dull chronicles of an age of dreary news. “The Robin Hood of Modern Crime” they called him, and with that phrase the Saint himself had least fault of all to find.

At the next table on his left a fair-haired girl was struggling to explain the secret of successful Rumhattan mixing to an unsympathetic waiter. At other tables, other guests of the Windsor Hotel’s Peacock Alley read their evening papers, sipped cocktails, chattered, argued, and gazed incuriously at fellow birds in that pleasantly gilded cage. Outside, but inaudible in that discreetly expensive sanctuary, flowed the common traffic of Montreal, the last outpost of Old France in the New World.

In those surroundings anyone but a Simon Templar might have been embarrassed by the knowledge that a lifelike portrait of himself, accompanied by an account of his latest misdeeds and a summary of several earlier ones, was at the disposal of any citizen who cared to buy a newspaper. The Saint was never embarrassed, except by warrants for his arrest, and in those days he was most careful to leave no legal grounds for one of those.

He folded his paper and lighted a cigarette with the comforting assurance that any casual glancer at his classic features would be far less likely to suspect him of a hideous past than to suspect the eminent politician or the debutante victim of a motor accident whose portraits, in smaller frames, had flanked his own on either side. Certainly he saw no reason to creep into a corner and hide.

At the next table the girl’s gray eyes wavered in humorous despair toward him, meeting his own for an instant, which to a Simon Templar was sufficient invitation.

“ Ecoute, toi! ” The Saint’s voice lanced through the air with a sudden quiet command, the edge of a blade so sweetly keen that it seemed to caress even while it cut, sapping the waiter’s wandering eyes around like a magnet dropped within an inch of twin compass needles. “Mademoiselle desires that one mix three parts of Ron Rey with one part of sweet vermouth and a dash of Angostura. After that, one will squeeze into it a very thin piece of lemon peel. It is quite simple.”

The waiter nodded and moved away in a slight daze. In his philosophy, foreigners were not expected to speak his own patois better than he did himself, nor to cut short his studied obtuseness with a cool self-possession that addressed him in the familiar second person singular. In the doorway he paused to explain that at length to a fellow waiter. “ Sâles Américains, ” he said, and spat. Simon Templar was not meant to hear, but the Saint’s ears were abnormally sensitive.

He smiled. It would never have occurred to him to report the waiter to the management, even though he was sure they would have been grateful to be warned about such a saboteur of goodwill. To the Saint any city was an oyster for his opening, a world for conquest; anything was an adventure, even the slaying of an insolent waiter and the rescue of a damsel in distress about nothing more serious than a cocktail.

He let his cigarette smolder in absolute contentment. The Rumhattan arrived. The girl tasted it and grimaced ruefully — he decided that she had a mouth that couldn’t look anything but pretty even when it tried.

“It’s a good idea, but it needs co-operation,” he said.

“I wish I could speak the language like you do,” she said. “I’d have something to tell that waiter.”

“I’ve spent more time in Paris than any respectable man should,” said the Saint cheerfully. “I used to be the concierge of a home for inebriate art students in the Rue des Deux Paires de Chaussettes de M. Alexandre Dumas. We all lived on absinthe and wore velvet next the skin. It went very well until someone discovered that half the inmates were wearing false beards and reading Ellery Queen in secret.”

The gray eyes laughed.

“But do you know your way about here?”

“Montreal is yours,” said the Saint with a gesture. “What would you like? Respectable night clubs? Disreputable saloons? Historic monuments?”

She seemed to be thinking of something else. And then she turned towards him again in a pose very like his own. The deep friendly eyes had a queer wistfulness.

“Tell me, stranger — where do you think a girl should go on a great occasion? Suppose she had something rather desperate to do, and if it went wrong she mightn’t be able to choose where she went anymore.”

The Saint’s very clear blue eyes rested on her thoughtfully. He had always been mad, always hoped to be.

“I think,” he said, “I should take her out St Lawrence Boulevard to a quiet little restaurant I know where they make the best omelets in North America. We should absorb vitamins and talk about life. And after that we might know some more.”

“I should like to go there,” she said.

Simon flicked a twenty-dollar bill across his table and beckoned the waiter. The waiter counted out change laboriously from a well-filled wallet.

“Shall we?” said the Saint.

The girl gathered up her gloves and bag. Simon stood up quickly to pull the table away from in front of her. He trod heavily on the waiter’s toes, overbalanced him backwards, and caught him again dexterously as he was on the point of descending, like Newton’s apple, on the bald head of a customer in the next row. Somewhere in the course of the acrobatics the well-filled wallet traveled from the waiter’s pocket to the Saint’s own.

“ Mille pardons,” murmured the Saint, patting the anguished man soothingly on the shoulder, and sauntered after the girl.

There was a taxi crawling by, and they climbed in.

“I’m free till twelve, stranger,” said the girl.

She pulled off her hat and leaned far back on the cushions, with one slim silken leg stretched out to rest a toe on the folding seat in front. The passing lights picked up her face in almost breathless perfection, and let it sink back reluctantly into shadow.

“And then do you have to hurry home before the clock strikes, and only leave a glass slipper for a souvenir?”

“No,” she said, “I have to burgle a house.”

There was an omelet. She had never dreamed of anything so delicate, wrapped in a gossamer skin, so richly red-gold inside, so different in every way from the dry coagulation of half-scrambled eggs which passes under the same name in so many places.

“There’s a trick in it,” she said with a sigh, when it was finished.

“Of course there is,” said the Saint. “It’s one of the higher mysteries of life, only to be revealed to the pure in heart after many ordeals and battles and much traveling.”

She accepted a cigarette from his case, dipped it in the flame of his lighter. Across the table the gray eyes looked into his with the serene intimacy which must come with the sharing of any sensuous pleasure, even eating. She said, “I’m glad I met you, stranger. You take things very calmly, and you don’t ask awkward questions.”

In the course of his career the Saint had taken a good many things calmly enough, but he could not remember having heard it accounted unto him for righteousness before.

He perceived that he had fallen into the error of attaching himself too much to the viewpoint of his bereaved victims.

“The questions may come later,” he said. “We burglars aren’t easily startled.”

She let a trail of smoke rise and disintegrate towards the ceiling.

“I’m going to talk to you, stranger,” she said quietly. “A girl likes to talk, and nothing about this evening is real. We never met before and we shan’t meet again. This is an interlude that doesn’t count, except for remembrance.”

“Is there a dragon in it?”

“There’s a Robber Baron. Have you ever heard of Burt Northwade?”

Simon had. His knowledge of unlovable characters, in and out of prison, was very nearly unique.

He knew Northwade for one of the more unpleasant products of World War I, a man who had successfully conceived the notion of selling inferior bootlaces to the Allied armies for three times their cost, and had gained for himself much wealth by that patriotic service. The Northwade business, subsequently built up to almost monopolistic proportions, was still welding together the uppers of half the world, but Northwade himself had retired a couple of years ago to his native Canada and a mansion in Westmount, leaving the female part of his family to pursue its strenuous climb through the social gradings of New York.

“Yes, I’ve heard of Northwade. One of these monuments of other people’s industry, isn’t he?”

“He’s also my uncle,” said the girl. “I’m Judith Northwade.” Simon Templar hadn’t blushed since he was eight years old. Also he considered that his remark was very nearly a compliment compared with what he would probably have said to Burt Northwade’s face, had that undesirable industrialist been present.

“You have our sympathy,” he said coolly.

“My father’s a professor of engineering at Toronto,” said the girl. “You’ve probably never heard of him. You couldn’t have two brothers who were more different. They’ve always been like that. Northwade only wanted to make money. My father never wanted it. He’s just a quiet, kind, completely ordinary man — almost a child outside his work. They both started at the bottom, and they both got what they wanted. Northwade made the money; my father worked his way through school, went on to Toronto University on a scholarship, and got to where he is now. The thing that came between them was my mother. Northwade wanted her, too, but she just happened to prefer Dad.” The Saint nodded.

“It wasn’t Dad’s fault,” she said, “but Uncle Burt never forgave him. I don’t think he was really jealous — maybe he wasn’t really in love at all — but he’d come on something that money and success alone couldn’t buy, and his vanity never got over it. Oh, he didn’t say anything outright; he’s always been friendly — too friendly — but Dad, who wouldn’t suspect a cannibal who was weighing him, never thought anything of it. I could see. I tried to tell him, but he wouldn’t believe me. He even helped Uncle Burt to make more money — he’s a clever inventor, too, and during the war he designed a machine that would put tags on laces twice as quickly as the old way, or something like that. I think Uncle Burt gave him fifty dollars for it.” She smiled a little. “It’s beginning to sound like a detective story, isn’t it?”

“It has begun,” said the Saint, “but I like those stories.”

She finished her glass of Château Olivier.

“It’s going to sound more like that, but it’s just one of those stories that are happening every day. For the last eighteen months or so Dad’s been working on an infinitely variable gear for automobiles. Do you know what that means? It means that you’ll just drive your car on the accelerator and brake, and whatever it’s doing, up hills or down, or in traffic or anywhere, without even an automatic gear change, the engine’ll always be working at its maximum efficiency — that sounds rather technical, but I’m so used to hearing Dad talk that I’ve got that way myself. Anyway, it’s far in advance of anything that’s been done in that line so far. There’s a fortune in it already, but it wasn’t good enough for Dad. He wanted to be sure that it was beyond any improvement. Three months ago he’d spent every penny he’d saved on his experiments. Then he went to Uncle Burt for help.”

The Saint’s mind moved in certain channels with the speed and precision of infinite experience. He took up his cigarette again and regarded her steadily over it.

“Northwade helped him, of course,” he said.

“Uncle Burt lent him five thousand dollars. On a nominal security — purely nominal. And with a few legal documents — just as a matter of form. I expect you can guess what that means.”

“I could try.”

“The plans of the gear are in Uncle Burt’s safe, over in Westmount — all the results of Dad’s work up till now. And there’s a paper with them which says that all rights in them belong to Burt Northwade — with no time limit specified. It was supposed to be until the loan was repaid, but the contract doesn’t say so. Dad hasn’t any mind for legal trickeries, and he signed the papers while I was away. I didn’t know about it till it was too late.”

“One gathers,” said the Saint composedly, “that this is the house you propose to burgle.”

She gazed at him without flinching, gray eyes frank and resolute, even with that strain of wistful loneliness in them.

“Listen, stranger,” she said softly. “This is still the game of Let’s Pretend, isn’t it? Pretending that this evening is right outside the world. Because that’s the only reason why I’m telling you all this. I’m going to burgle Uncle Burt’s house, if I can. I’m going to try and get hold of his keys and open his safe and take those papers away, including the contract Dad signed. Dad hasn’t any hope of paying back that five thousand dollars. And Uncle Burt knows it. He’s practically completed arrangements to sell the gear to Ford. There’s no legal way of stopping him. It’s one of those cases where possession is nine points of the law. If we had that contract back, as well as the plans, Uncle Burt would never have the face to go into a court and publish the terms of it, which he’d have to do if he wanted to make any claim. Do you think I’m quite mad?”

“Only a little.”

She turned the stem of her wineglass between her fingers, looking at him quietly.

“Maybe I am. But have you ever heard of the Saint?”

“The Robin Hood of Modern Crime?” murmured Simon, with only the faintest lift of an eyebrow for expression.

“I think it’s the sort of thing he’d do,” she said. “It’s justice, even if it’s against the law. I wish I could meet him. He’d understand. I think he’d say it was worth taking a chance on. You’re very understanding, too, stranger. You’ve listened to me awfully patiently, and it’s helped a lot. And now you shall talk about anything else you like, and will you please forget it all?”

Simon Templar smiled.

He poured out the last of the wine, and took up his glass. Over the rim of it his clear blue eyes raked the girl with a cavalier challenge that matched his devil-may-care smile and the mocking slant of his brows. His face was alight suddenly.

“I don’t propose to forget, Judith,” he said. “I am the Saint, and the safe hasn’t been made that I can’t open. Nor has anything else been thought of that I can’t do. We’ll go to Westmount together!”

“This is the place,” said the girl.

Simon switched off the engine and let the car coast to a stop under the lee of the hedge. It was her car — she had been prepared for that. She had telephoned from the restaurant and it had been fueled and waiting for them at the garage.

Burt Northwade’s home, an unwieldy mansion in the Napoleonic style, stood on a slight rise of ground some distance back from the road, in the center of its extensive and pleasant grounds.

Rising to sit on the door of the convertible, with one foot on the seat, Simon could see the solid rectangle of its upper part painted in dull black on a smudged gray-blue sky. He felt that he knew every corner of it as if he had lived there for years, from the descriptions she had given him and the rough plans she had drawn on the back of the menu, familiarizing him with the configurations of rooms and corridors while their coffee grew cold and neither of them cared. That had been a time of delight shared in adventure which he would always like to remember, but now it was over, and the adventure went on.

It was a night without moon or stars, and yet not utterly dark; perfect for the purpose. She saw the clean-cut lines of his face, recklessly etched in the burst of light as he kindled a cigarette.

“I still don’t know why you should do this for me,” she said.

“Because it’s a game after my own heart,” he answered. “Northwade is a bird I’ve had ideas of my own about for some time. And as for our present object — well, no one could have thought of a story that would have been more likely to fetch me a thousand miles to see it through.”

“I feel I ought to be coming with you.”

He drew smoke into his lungs, and with it the sweet smell of green leaves.

“This sort of thing is my job, and I’ve had more practice than you.”

“But suppose Uncle Burt wakes up.”

“I shall immediately hypnotize him so that he falls into a deep sleep again.”

“Or suppose the servants catch you.”

“I shall tie them up in bundles of three and heave them into the outer darkness.”

“But suppose you are caught?”

He laughed.

“It’ll be a sign that the end of the world is at hand. But don’t worry. Even if that happens it’ll cause a certain amount of commotion, and if you hear it I shall expect you to drive rapidly away and await the end in some other province. I shall tell them I came out here on roller skates. It’s not your burglary any more — it’s mine.”

He swung his immaculately tailored legs over the side and dropped lightly to the road, and without another word he was gone, melting into the obscurity like a ghost.

He walked up the turf path beside the drive with the quick confidence of a cat. No lights showed in any of the front windows as he approached, but he made a careful circle of the house for complete certainty. His eyes adjusted themselves to the gloom with the ease of long habit, and he moved without rustling a blade of grass under his feet.

The ground floor was a rugged facade of raised arches and pilasters broken by tall gaunt windows, with a pair of carved oak doors in the middle that would have given way to nothing short of a battering-ram, but it is an axiom of housebreaking that those buildings whose fronts look most like fortresses are most likely to defend their postern gates with a card saying “No Admittance.” In this case, there was an open pantry window six feet above the ground. Simon squeezed up through the aperture, and lowered himself gently over the shelves of viands on the inside.

He passed through into the kitchen. With the help of a tiny pocket flashlight he located the main switchboard and removed all the fuses, burying them in a sack of potatoes. If by any chance there should be an accident, the garrison of the house would be more handicapped by a lack of lights than he would. Then he made his way down the main hall and unbarred, unbolted, unchained, and unlocked the great oak portals. Simon Templar owed much of his freedom to a trained eye for emergency exits, and he carried on the good work by opening a pair of windows in the library before he gave a thought to the safe.

The girl had described its location accurately. It was built into one wall, behind a small bookcase which opened away from it like a door, and Simon held his flashlight on it for just three seconds before he decided that it was one of those situations in which neither a bent hairpin nor a can opener would be adequate.

He slid cheerfully back into the hall and stepped soundlessly up the broad staircase. A large selection of burglarious tools was not part of his usual traveling equipment, but that shortcoming had rarely troubled him. It was another axiom of his philosophy that non-combination safes have keys, that most keys are in the possession of the owners of the safes, and, therefore, that the plodding felon who finds it necessary to pack nitroglycerin and oxyacetylene blowpipes in his overnight bag is usually deficient in strategic genius. Burt Northwade was sleeping soundly enough, with his mouth open, and a reassuring drone issuing from the region of his adenoids, but even if he had been awake it is doubtful whether he would have heard the opening of his bedroom door, or sensed one movement of the sensitive hands that lifted a bunch of keys from his dressing table and detached an even more probable one from the chain around his neck.

Simon went down the stairs again like a ghost. It was the key from the chain which turned the lock, and the heavy steel door swung back at a touch with the smooth acquiescence that even Simon Templar could never feel without a thrill. He propped his flashlight over one instep so that its light filled the interior of the safe, and went to work with quick white-gloved hands. Once he heard a board crack overhead and froze into seconds of granite immobility, but he knew that he had made no noise, and presently he went on.

The plans were dissected into a thick roll of sheets tied up with tape; the specifications were packed in a long fat envelope with “Pegasus Variable Gear” roughly scrawled on it — that, he had been told, was the name which had been provisionally given to the invention — and a short epic on legal paper was enclosed with them. There were also some letters from various automobile manufacturers.

The Saint was so busily engaged for the next ten minutes, and so absorbed in his labors, that he missed certain faint sounds which might otherwise have reached his ears. The first hint of danger came just as he had finished, in the shape of a cautious scuffle of feet on the terrace outside, and a hoarse whisper which was so unexpected that he raised his head almost incredulously.

Then his eyes dropped half instinctively to the safe which he had just closed. He saw something that he had not noticed before — a flat leaden tube which rose a bare inch from the floor and disappeared into the crack under the lowest hinge, an obvious conduit for alarm wires. The girl had told him that there were no alarms, but that was one which Northwade had probably preferred to keep secret, and it had taken the Saint off his guard.

The narrow beam of the flashlight snapped out like a silent explosion. Simon leapt through the blackness to the windows, slammed them together, and secured the catch. He was knotting a handkerchief over the lower part of his face as he crossed the room again. In the darkness his hand closed on the doorknob, turned it stealthily; at the same time his fingers stretched downwards, and could feel no key in the lock. It looked as if it might be a tight corner, a crisp and merry getaway while it lasted, but those were the moments when the Saint’s brain worked at its swiftest.

He opened the door with a quick jerk and took one step into the hall. On his right, covering the retreat to the back of the house, stood an outsize butler in a nightshirt with a rolling pin clutched in one hand. On his left, barring the way to the front door, was a wiry youth in trousers and undershirt. A little way up the stairs stood Burt Northwade himself, with a candle in one hand and a young cannon of a revolver in the other. The Saint’s most reckless fighting smile touched his lips under the concealing handkerchief.

“ Bon soir, messieurs, ” he murmured politely. “It appears that you were not expecting me. I am accustomed to being received in formal dress. I regret that I cannot accept you in this attire.”

He stepped back rapidly through the door, closing it after him. The butler and the wiry youth took a few seconds to recover, then they made a concerted dash for the door. They burst in together, followed by Burt Northwade with the candle. The spectacle of a completely deserted library was the last thing they were expecting, and it pulled them up short with bulging eyes.

In an abruptly contrasting silence, the night shirted butler returned to life. He tiptoed gingerly forward, and peered with a majestic air behind and under a large settee in a far corner of the room. The wiry youth, inspired by his example, made a dash to the nearest window curtains and pulled them wide apart, disclosing a large area of glass with the round goggling faces of two other servants pressed against it from the outside, like startled fish in an aquarium. Burt Northwade discreetly remained a scant yard inside the doorway with his sputtering candle held helpfully aloft.

On the top of a massive ladder of bookshelves beside the door, Simon Templar rose like a panther from his prone position and dropped downwards. He fell squarely behind Northwade, easing his fall with a hand applied to the crown of Northwade’s head, which drew from the tycoon a sudden squeal of terror. The same hand pushed Northwade violently forward, and the candle which supplied the only illumination of the scene flickered and went out.

In the darkness the door banged.

“We might even get back in time to have a dance somewhere,” said the Saint.

He materialized out of the gloom beside her like a wraith, and she gasped.

“Did you have to scare me?” she asked, when she had got her breath.

He chuckled. Back towards the Northwade mansion there were sounds of muffled disturbance, floating down to his ears like the music of hounds to an old fox. He slipped into the driving seat and touched the starter. The engine purred unprotestingly.

“Did something go wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing that wasn’t taken care of.”

The car gathered speed into the blaze of its own headlights. Simon felt for a cigarette and lighted it from the dashboard gadget.

“Did you get everything?” she asked.

“I am the miracle man who never fails, Judith,” he said reproachfully. “Hadn’t I explained that?”

“But that noise—”

“There seems to have been some sort of alarm that goes off when the safe is opened, which you didn’t know about. Not that it mattered a lot. The ungodly were fatally slow in assembling, and if you’d seen their waist measurements you wouldn’t have been surprised.”

She caught his arm excitedly.

“Oh, I can’t quite believe it!..Everything’s all right now. And I’ve actually been on a raid with the Saint himself! Do you mind if I give way a bit?”

She reached across him to the button in the middle of the steering wheel. The horn blared a rhythmic peal of triumph and defiance into the night: “ Taaa ta-ta, taaa ta-ta, taaa ta-ta! ” Like a jubilant trumpet. Simon smiled. Nothing could have fitted better into the essential rightness of everything that had happened that evening. It was true that there had been a telephone in the library, and if there was an extension upstairs there might be gendarmes already watching the road, but they would be an interesting complication that could be dealt with in its proper turn.

Then he coaxed the car around a sharp bend and saw a row of red lights spring up across the road. He dropped his hand thoughtfully to the brake.

“This wasn’t here when we came by first,” he said, and realized that the girl had gone tense and still.

“What do you think it is?” she whispered.

The Saint shrugged. He brought the car to a standstill with its bumper three yards from the red lights, which appeared to be attached to a long plank rigged squarely across his path — he could not see what was beyond the plank.

Then he felt a hard cold jab of metal in the side of his head, and turned quickly. He looked down the barrel of a gun in the hand of an overcoated man who stood beside the car.

“Take it easy,” advised the man with grim calmness.

The Saint heard a rustle of movement beside him, and glanced around. The girl was getting out. She closed the door after her, and stood on the running board.

“This is as far as I ride, stranger,” she said.

“I see,” said the Saint gently.

The man with the gun jabbed again.

“Let’s have those papers,” he ordered.

Simon took them from his breast pocket. The girl received them, and turned on the dashboard light to squint down the roll of plans and read the inscription on the long envelope. Her golden-yellow hair stirred like a shifting halo in the slight breeze.

“Burt Northwade hasn’t got a brother who’s a professor at Toronto,” she explained, “and I’m no relative of the family. Apart from that, most of what I told you was true. Northwade bought this invention from a young Rumanian inventor — I don’t know what sort of a price he gave for it, but he bought it. Actually there’s no patent on it, so the biggest value to a manufacturer is in keeping it secret till he can come out with it ahead of the others. He was going to sell it to Ford, as I told you.”

“What are you going to do with it?” inquired the Saint curiously.

“We’ve got an unwritten offer from Henry Kaiser.”

She went forward and swung back the plank with the red lights, so that the road was clear again. Then she came back. The gray eyes were as frank and friendly as before.

“We’ve been planning this job for a week, and we should have done the job ourselves tonight if I hadn’t seen your photograph in the paper and recognized you at the Windsor. The rest of it was an inspiration. There’s nothing like having the greatest expert in the profession to work for you.”

“What paper do you read?” asked the Saint.

“I saw you in La Presse. Why?”

“I bought an imported New York paper,” said the Saint, conversationally.

She laughed quietly, a friendly ripple tinged with a trace of regret.

“I’m sorry, stranger. I liked you so much.”

“I’m rather sorry too — Judith,” said the Saint.

She was still for an instant. Then she leaned over and kissed him quickly on the lips.

The gun jabbed again.

“Drive on,” ordered the man. “And keep driving.”

“Won’t you be wanting your car?” murmured the Saint.

A harsher chuckle came from the depths of the dark overcoat.

“We’ve got our own. I rented that one and left it at a garage for you when I had a phone call to say you were hooked. Get moving.”

Simon engaged the gears, and let in the clutch. The girl jumped down from the running board. “Good-bye, stranger!” she cried, and Simon raised one hand in salute, without looking back.

He drove fast. Whoever the girl was, whatever she was, he knew that he had enjoyed meeting her far more than he could ever have enjoyed meeting the real Judith Northwade, whose unfortunate motor accident had been featured, with portrait, on the front page of the New York Daily Gazette, alongside his own two columns. She could never have looked anything but a hag. Whereas he still thought that her impostor was very beautiful. He hated to think what she would say when she delved deeper into the duplicate envelope and dummy roll of plans which he had so rapidly prepared for her in Burt Northwade’s library. But he still drove fast, because those sad things were a part of the game and it was a longish way to Willow Run.

Iris

Of Simon Templar it could truly be said that to him all the world was a stage, and all the men and women merely players in an endless comedy drama designed for his especial entertainment and incidentally his cut at the box office.

To Mr Stratford Keane, all the world was also a stage, with the difference that he was the principal player and all the other men and women merely audience. This attitude persisted in spite of the fact that it was many years since the public had last shown any great desire to see him behind the footlights, and his thespian activities had been largely restricted to giving readings from Shakespeare to women’s clubs and conducting classes in The Drama in the more obscure summer-theater colonies. In spite of these slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, however, he still maintained the fur-collared overcoats, the flowing ties, the long white locks, and the sweeping gestures of his departed day, and wherever he might be, the fruity resonance of his voice was still pitched to the second balcony in rounded periods from which every traditional caricature of a Shakespearean ham might have been taken.

Simon saw him advancing through the Pump Room, not in a perfectly straight line, for one of the causes of Mr Keane’s eclipse was a weakness for the stuff that maketh glad the heart of man, but nevertheless with an unmistakable destination, and the attractions of Chicago fell under a slight cloud.

“Don’t look now,” he said to Patricia Holm, “but we are on the brink of another recital.”

The main attraction of Chicago at the moment glanced up.

“Poor old Stratford,” she said. “He’s a good-hearted old bore. And not such a fool as you think, or why do you think he got the job of directing this new production of Macbeth?”

“Probably it was the only way they could get rid of him,” Simon suggested. “So long as he’s locked up in a theater in rehearsal he can’t be out boring people anywhere else.”

“You and your big heart,” Patricia said. “It’s a wonderful break for him, and he must have needed it badly.”

“I’m thrilled to death at Stratford Keane getting a break,” Simon assured her. “And I should be almost ecstatic if you’d never introduced him to me.”

It was a little late to dream along those lines, for Mr Keane was already upon them and fully determined to make the most of their acquaintance. He held a half-filled glass over his heart and bowed deeply.

“Ah, Miss Holm! And Mr Templar,” he boomed, causing people several tables away to look up and try to locate the loudspeaker. “Well met, well met!”

Patricia smiled.

“How are you this evening, Mr Keane? — Won’t you sit down?” she added hastily, as Mr Keane leaned rather heavily on the table and shook a few drops out of their cocktails.

“A pleasure,” Mr Keane sat down, and heaved a vast and doleful sigh. “Ah, this is indeed a haven in a world where every man must play a part — and mine a sad one...”

“Why, what’s the matter?”

“I have just returned from the theater,” stated Mr Keane tragically, as if he were announcing the end of the world. “We went through one of our final rehearsals.”

“Was that bad?” Simon asked.

Stratford Keane surveyed him pityingly.

“Young man,” he said, “to use the word ‘bad’ in that connection is to scorn all the resources of the English tongue. As a masterpiece of understatement, however, it might have some merit.”

“You mean you won’t be able to open on schedule?” Patricia asked sympathetically.

“On the contrary,” said Mr Keane. “I’m afraid we shall.”

Simon raised his eyebrows. “Afraid?”

“My dear boy,” said Mr Keane heavily, “the success of Shakespeare in the emasculated theater of today is uncertain even with the most brilliant of performers, but when the lines of the Bard are assaulted by a gang of bellowing buffoons and dizzy doxies such as have been thrust upon me, the greatest play of all time would be doomed before the curtain rose.”

“But isn’t Iris Freeman a good actress?” Patricia asked.

“As a soubrette, yes. But as Lady Macbeth—” Mr Keane made an expressive gesture which swept an ash tray off the table. “Still, I could almost bear with her if only she would not insist on putting all her friends in the cast regardless of their incompetence — and most especially that tailor’s dummy, Mark Belden, whom she picked as her leading man.”

“I never heard of him,” Simon admitted.

“Would that I shared your happy ignorance. Unfortunately, I have been condemned to get to know Mr Belden so well that his voice will ring in my ears until they sink into the merciful silence of the grave. A vaudeville hoofer who murders Shakespeare with every breath he takes!”

“But aren’t you the director?” Patricia put in. “Don’t you have anything to say about the cast?”

Stratford Keane glowered at her despondently. “My dear, your innocence is equaled by nothing but your beauty. The only voice which has anything to say about the cast is the voice of the money which is backing the production, which happens to belong to Miss Freeman.”

“Shouldn’t you have said that it belonged to Rick Lansing?” Simon put in shrewdly.

Patricia turned to him with a tiny wrinkle forming between her brows.

“Miss Freeman’s latest husband,” Simon answered. “Better known to his business associates as Rick the Barber. Only it probably wouldn’t be tactful to mention that when she’s around.” He shifted his eyes. “Which means starting about now.”

He had seen enough advance publicity pictures of Iris Freeman to recognize her as she came towards the table. It would have been impossible in any event not to notice her, for the furs and jewels which trimmed a face and figure that could have attracted quite enough attention without any artificial adornment at all were obviously worn for the secondary function of practically forcing the observer to ask who they belonged to. And the unhesitating way in which her path was headed for Stratford Keane established a connection between them that was almost enough clue by itself.

“Stratford, darling!” she cried. “I was just betting Mark that we’d find you here as usual.”

“A feat of unparalleled perspicacity on your part,” said Keane. He struggled halfway to his feet, rocking the table dangerously. “May I present two dear friends of mine — Miss Patricia Holm and Mr Simon Templar. This is Miss Iris Freeman, whom I was just telling you about. And — er” — he winced slightly at the exquisitely tailored male who appeared from behind Miss Freeman’s patina—“Mr Belden.”

Iris Freeman’s beautiful dark eyes found Simon and grew wide and worshipful.

“Simon Templar?” she repeated. “You don’t mean — the Saint?”

Simon nodded resignedly. It was not always convenient to be identified so readily with the paradoxical alias under which his identity had once upon a time been concealed, but those days were pretty far in the past, and few people who read newspapers were unaware of the almost legendary career of brigandage which his name stood for. He was getting more used to it all the time, and certainly there was nothing much else to do except make the best of it. Which was not always so bad, either, especially when the vague associations of his name made beautiful women look at him in that excited and expectant way.

He smiled.

“That was the name,” he said, “before I saw the error of my ways.”

Belden said, “This is wonderful. You know, Iris is one of your most devoted fans, Mr Templar. She’s crazy about you.”

Simon restrained an impulse to empty the remains of a Martini over him, and said, “I think that’s a wonderful way to be crazy. But of course I’m prejudiced.”

“I was just telling Mark the other day that the only person in the whole world whose autograph I’d really like to have was the Saint,” Iris Freeman said.

“Isn’t that sort of turning the tables on your public, Miss Freeman?” murmured Patricia sweetly.

The actress laughed gaily, with every note beautifully modulated for imaginary microphones.

“Hardly a habit of mine. But we all have our weaknesses, don’t we? And the Saint’s also one of mine, darling... Mark, do you have a piece of paper?”

Belden fumbled in his pockets and produced a folded sheet.

“Here you are.”

“I suppose if I had more practice I could take these situations in my stride,” said the Saint.

“You’ll do all right,” said Patricia. “Sign the paper and satisfy your adoring public.”

Simon took out a pen and scribbled his name.

“And you must draw the Saint figure,” Iris Freeman insisted. “It wouldn’t be complete without that.”

The Saint patiently sketched his trademark — the straight-line skeleton figure crowned with the conventional halo which had once been enough to give the most hardened citizens an uneasy qualm at the pit of their stomachs — and reflected that a lot of things had changed. Or had they?

“That’s simply wonderful,” Iris Freeman gushed. “You’ll never believe what a thrill this is for me. I only wish I could stay and talk to you for hours, but Mark and I have to run. How would you like to come to our rehearsal tomorrow?”

“He’d love to,” Patricia said firmly. “But I’m afraid he has another engagement.”

“Oh... I see.” The actress bit her lip. “Well, I’ll be sure and send you some tickets for the opening, Saint. And you must come to the party afterwards, I’ll manage to get you off to myself somehow — Come along, Mark.”

“Yes, dear.” Belden gave Simon one of those unnecessarily hearty handshakes. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Templar. And you, Miss Holm. So long, Stratford. Don’t let it get you down.”

They made an exit which should have had an orchestral background, and Stratford Keane stared after them rudely.

“The only party after the opening,” he said, “should be a wake, with those two as the guests of honor.”

“I don’t think Simon agrees with you,” Patricia said. “He’s discovered that there are things in Iris’s favor which you never mentioned in your description.”

Simon reached for her glass and finished her drink for her.

“You’re very unfair to the wench,” he said. “If it’s a crime to be fascinated by me, what are you doing here?”

He produced folding money and handed it to a hopeful waiter.

“Buy Mr Keane another drink,” he said. “And a taxi afterwards, if he needs it.” He stood up. “I’m sorry we have to rush off, but I have to buy Pat some dinner. She doesn’t talk back so much with her mouth full.”

Mr Keane nodded broodingly.

“Good night,” he said. “I shall see thee — at Philippi.”

They made their escape, Simon hoped, before Mr Keane was reminded that the Pump Room was also in the business of serving food.

The encounter was typical of many similar incidents in the Saint’s life — coincidental, casual, and apparently pointless, and yet destined to lead into unsuspected complications. Adventure, for him, moved in a mysterious way. Nothing ever seemed to happen to him that was completely unimportant, or that led nowhere. He had come to accept it as part of an inscrutable fate, like the people who are known to insurance companies as “accident prone”: regardless of whether he took the initiative or not, something was always happening to him. He seldom thought about it much anymore, except that it may have subconsciously contributed to a pleasantly persistent euphoria, an almost imperceptible but continuous excitement which made the colors of his world just a little brighter than anyone else’s.

For several hours he certainly didn’t think much more about any of the three people who had just met at his table, or attach any immediate significance to the meeting — not even when he brought Patricia into his suite at the Ambassador for a nightcap, and switched on the lights and found himself looking down the barrel of a gun in the hand of an unexpected guest who had beat them to it without an invitation.

Simon Templar had looked down the barrels of guns before, and it had ceased to be a surprising experience for him. The turbulent course of his career had left enough survivors to constitute a sizable roster of characters whose principal ambition would always be to view the Saint again from behind the percentage end of a small piece of ordnance. The only remarkable thing about it was that Simon couldn’t at the moment think of any particular person in the vicinity who had reason to be trying to fulfill such a whim at that time.

“Well, well, well,” he murmured. “Look what people are doing now to get a hotel room.”

“Shut the door, bub,” said the man. “But don’t put your hat down. You ain’t staying long.”

He had blue-black hair and a blue chin, and his suit was cut just about the way you would expect a suit behind a gun to be cut. Something about him was vaguely familiar, but Simon couldn’t place it for the moment.

“That’s one way to bring an invitation, anyhow,” said the Saint. “Where is this party we’re going to?”

“You’ll find out when we get there,” said the man. “Just wait till I fix the girl friend so she don’t make a fuss about losing you.”

He took a roll of adhesive tape from his pocket.

“I think I’m going to faint,” said Patricia.

She slumped back against the wall by the door, exactly where the light switch was. As her knees buckled she caught one arm on the switch and the lights clicked out.

The gunman started to move to one side, peering blindly into the dark. He bumped into a standard lamp and set it rattling.

That was the only sound he heard before an arm slid around his neck from behind and a row of steel fingers clamped on his right hand and bent it inwards to within a millimeter of breaking his wrist. His hand opened involuntarily and the gun dropped on the carpet. Simon located it with his toe and put his foot on it.

“Okay, Pat,” he said. “I’ve got him.”

The lights went on again.

“Nice work,” said the Saint. “You read all the right stories.”

He released his pressure on the gunman’s larynx before suffocation had seriously set in, pushed the man away, and picked up the gun.

“Now, chum,” he said, “where did you say we were going?”

The man rubbed his wrists tenderly and glanced at him without answering.

The first vague impression of familiarity that Simon had felt began to come into focus.

“On second thoughts, you needn’t bother,” said the Saint. “I know where I’ve seen you before. At the Blue Paradise. You’re one of Rick Lansing’s boys.”

“I ain’t talking,” said the man.

“Then we’re going to find your company rather dull,” said the Saint. “Why don’t you beat it before you bore the hell out of us?”

The gunman seemed to have difficulty co-ordinating his ideas and his ears.

“Scram, bum,” said the Saint.

The man gulped, opened the door, and departed hastily.

“Nice work yourself,” said Patricia. “Why on earth did you let him go?”

“I didn’t feel excited about having him live with us,” Simon told her. “I might have killed him, but the management wouldn’t like us to keep his body in the room, and if we threw it out of the window it might have hurt somebody.”

“But aren’t you a bit curious about what he was doing here?”

“I already know, darling. He was sent here to fetch me to Rick the Barber, that was obvious as soon as I placed him.”

“But what does Rick Lansing want with you?”

“That,” said the Saint, “is a question that Rick will have to answer himself.”

Patricia picked up her wraps.

“Wait till I powder my nose,” she said.

“Oh no,” said the Saint. “From the type of escort Rick sent with the invitation, I’m afraid he may not be on his strictly Emily Post behavior, and even if he has hitched his wagon to a Broadway star he doesn’t seem to have sworn off his old business methods. You stay here with the Old Curio and don’t open the door to any strange men.”

He kissed her lightly and closed the door on her argument.

The Blue Paradise was one of the gaudier cabarets in the Loop. It was not a rendezvous for the social-register set, but it did a roaring and frequently even howling trade in tourists and tired businessmen, both local and traveling. The specialty dancers specialized mainly in undressing to slow music, and the drinks were thoughtfully diluted just enough to allow the patrons to get an adequate lift without becoming unconscious before they had spent a great deal of money. Simon knew that it was one of Rick Lansing’s operations, and also that there was an office in the back which was the headquarters for Lansing’s other business interests, which were many and various.

Rick the Barber might have left his original vocation far behind, but he was still one of its best customers. He had dark wavy hair that glistened with oil and brushing. The skin over his tough square features was smooth and glowing from many facials. His hands were shinily manicured. He looked far more like a toughened chorus boy than what he was.

He sat behind his desk and listened impassively to the alibi of his ambassador.

“I tell ya, Rick, I couldn’t do anything about it. The Saint musta been tipped off. He had four guys with him, and they was all heeled.”

“I don’t believe you,” Lansing said contemptuously. “But even if it’s the truth, what did you come straight back here for? How do you know one of ’em didn’t tail you?”

“Honest, Rick, I shook ’em clean.”

This was when Simon Templar quietly opened the door and stepped into the room.

“That’s right, Rick,” he corroborated gravely. “He shook all of ’em except me... Just don’t do anything reckless, boys, and I won’t hurt you either.”

The position of his left hand in the side pocket of his coat made his proposition especially persuasive.

Lansing kept his hands on top of the desk and considered the situation without a change of expression.

“Good evening, Mr Templar,” he said at length.

“Good evening, Rick,” said the Saint amiably. “I believe you wanted to see me. So here I am. You didn’t need to make a production of it. I’m only too anxious to hear what’s on your mind. Shall we talk it over in private, or does Sonny Boy here make you feel safer?”

Lansing sat still for a moment, and then made a slight movement of his hand.

“Beat it, Joe.”

“That’s better,” said the Saint. “Now he can collect the rest of the mob outside the door, which will make you feel really comfortable, but they know I’ve got you here, so I haven’t a thing to worry about. We can let our hair down and enjoy it.”

Lansing suddenly smiled, displaying a wide row of perfect white teeth.

“And I thought you were supposed to be smart,” he said. “You’re wasting yourself, Saint. Listen, with your talents you’re just the guy I need for a partner. Petty blackmail isn’t big enough for you. And what if you do tell the D.A. that Jake Hardy didn’t commit suicide? You couldn’t prove a thing.”

A slight frown touched the Saint’s brow.

“Jake Hardy?” he repeated. “You mean your last partner?”

“Go on — kid me.”

The Saint’s memory, which missed very little of the underworld news that reached the papers or circulated through the grapevine, responded again. Jake Hardy, for reasons unknown, had plunged from a penthouse window to his death several months before, leaving Rick Lansing in sole control of a cartel which, while it was not rated by Dun & Bradstreet and had little standing with the Better Business Bureau, was one of the richest enterprises of the Windy City.

“Let me make a guess,” said the Saint slowly. “Do I gather that someone claiming to be me is trying to shake you down for a certain amount of moola on account of they know that Jake’s high dive wasn’t Jake’s own idea?”

“Look,” Lansing said impatiently. “The comedy belongs outside with the floor show. Why, even if you hadn’t given your name on the phone, I can recognize your voice.”

“My voice?”

“Yes, your voice.”

“And that’s why you sent Sonny Boy to bring me in?”

Lansing made a clipped gesture.

“I was upset. So now I’m sorry. No hard feelings, Saint. Believe me, a partnership with me will pay you a lot more than the lousy ten grand you’re asking for hush money. It wouldn’t be just this joint. I could give you a cut in everything, all over town — sports areas, bookies, numbers — the works.”

Simon fished out a cigarette with his right hand and arched an eyebrow over his lighter.

“Even in the Shakespearean drama too?”

The other man blinked.

“Huh? Oh — that.” He smiled again, deprecatingly, with the corners of his mouth turned down. “Just a present for my wife. If she wants to play Shakespeare she can play Shakespeare. I can afford it. It might even make money. There aren’t many things I can’t afford, and most of ’em make money sometime. I can afford you, and make money for both of us. The two of us together could really clean up.”

“I appreciate the compliment,” said the Saint. “But there’s one hitch.”

“What’s that?”

“I wasn’t the guy who tried to blackmail you.”

A slight scowl settled over Lansing’s black eyes.

“I told you before — the comedy belongs outside.”

“I don’t doubt the show could use it,” said the Saint. “Only whether you like it or not, the comedy is right here. Because I give you my word that I’ve never spoken to you on the phone in my life, and I don’t have the least idea how to start proving that Jake was helped out of his window.”

Lansing stared at him for several seconds.

“Is that on the level?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then who is this guy who’s pretending to be you?”

“That,” said the Saint, “is what I’d like to know. I’ll have to try and find out.” He took the hand out of his left side pocket. “Now that we understand each other, I guess you won’t mind if I leave.”

Rick the Barber stood up and came around the desk. He opened the door.

The first gunman, reinforced by two others, stood watchfully in the corridor outside.