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 these 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.
But let's pretend that we don't have the clear and penetrating vision of Lieutenant Kinglake. Let's just pretend that we are too dumb to believe that a man in the dying agonies of third degree burns cooked up that wonderful story about three men who did it to him, just because he was too modest to want to take the credit. Let's pretend there might really have been three other men.
Men with names. Blatt, Weinbach, Maris. A nice trio of Herrenvolk.
Then we might go along with the gag and say, suppose Henry Stephen Matson was a traitor. Suppose he'd gotten into some sabotage organisation, and he'd been given a job to do in this explosives plant in Missouri. Suppose he'd even drawn payment in advance — just to account for what he was using for dough in Galveston.
Then suppose he welshed on the job — either from an attack of cold feet or a relapse of patriotism. He knew that the heat was on. He couldn't stay in this country, because they might have turned him in to the FBI. If they didn't do anything worse. He took it on the lain for here, hoping to get a passport, and hoping he'd shaken off his pals. But they were too good for him. They tracked him down, struck up an acquaintance with him, and gave him what he had coming. In a very nasty way, just to discourage imitators.
That's my fairy-tale. And I like it.
Blatt, Weinbach, Maris. I have a description of two of those men, and I've got my own good ideas about the third. And I am hereby announcing that I shall now have to get them for you myself, since we must not disturb Lieutenant Kinglake in bis august meditations.
The city editor read it all through without a change of expression. Then he tapped the last page with his forefinger and said; "It's an ingenious theory, but what's your basis for it?"
"Nothing but logic, which is all you can say for any theory. The, facts are there. If you can do better with them, you can join King-lake's club."
"This last statement of yours, about the three men — is that fact?"
"Some of it. But the main point of it is that that's what you pay me with. If I can make them believe that I know more than I do, I may scare them into making some serious mistakes. That's why I'm making you a present of all the rest of that luscious literature."
The editor pulled at his under lip. He was a pear-shaped man with a long forbidding face that never smiled even when his eyes twinkled.
"It's good copy, anyway, so I'll print it," he said. "But don't blame me if you're the next human torch. Or if Kinglake has you brought in again and beats hell out of you."
"On the contrary, you're my insurance against that," said the Saint. "Going my own way, I might have had a lot more trouble with Kinglake at any moment. Now, he won't dare to do anything funny, because it would look as if he was scared of me."
"Kinglake's a good officer. He wouldn't do a thing like this unless there was a lot of pressure on him."
Simon recalled the Lieutenant's tight-lipped curtness, his harried and almost defensive belligerence.
"Maybe there was," he said. "But whose was it?"
The editor put his fingertips together.
"Galveston," he said, "has what is now called the commission form of government. Commissioner Number One — what other cities would call the mayor — is coming up for re-election soon. He appoints the Chief of Police. The Chief controls such men as Lieutenant Kinglake. Nobody wants any blemish on the record of the police department at this time. I'm quite confident that neither the Commissioner nor the Chief of Police is mixed up in inything crooked. It's just best for everybody concerned to let sleeping dogs — in this case, dead dogs — lie."
"And that is perfectly jake with you."
"The Times-Tribune, Mr Templar, unlike yourself, is not addicted to sticking its neck out. We are not a political organ; and if we did start a crusade, it would not be on the basis of this one sensational but insignificant killing. But we do try to print the whole truth, as you'll see by the fact that I'm ready to use your article."
"Then you still haven't told me where the pressure would come from."
The city editor's long equine face grew even more absorbed in the contemplation of his matched fingers.
"As a stranger in town, Mr Templar, it may surprise you to know that some of our most influential citizens sometimes go to the Blue Goose for their — er — relaxation. The Blue Goose is one of the leads in this story as you have it. So while none of these people, from the Commissioner down, might want to be a party to hushing up a crime, you can see that they might not be keen on too comprehensive an investigation of the Blue Goose. So that the management of the Blue Goose, which naturally doesn't want the spot involved in a murder mystery, might find a lot of sympathetic ears if they were pointing out the advantages of forgetting the whole thing. I shall not allow you to print that in your next article, but it might help you personally."
"It might," said the Saint. "And thank you."
He spent several hours after that on a conscientious job of verifying his background material that would have amazed some people who thought of him as a sort of intuitive comet, blazing with pyrotechnic violence and brilliance to ends and solutions that were only indicated to him by a guardian angel with a lot of spare time.and an incurable weakness for piloting irresponsible characters. His research involved visits to various public places, and ingenuous conversations with a large number of total strangers, each of them a cameo of personality projection that would have left Dale Carnegie egg-bound with awe. But the net yield was negatively and concisely nothing.
The Commissioner appeared to be a bona fide native of Galveston who had made his money in sulfur and still controlled an important business. There seemed to be no particularly musty bones in his family skeleton. He came of Texas stock from away back, and he was set solid with business and family ties.
The Sheriff of the county came out with the same sort of background and clean bill of health. Nobody seemed to know much about the type of deputies in his office, but there had never been any scandal about his administration. He was frankly a member of the same political machine as the Commissioner.
Nor were there any crevices in the armor of the Chief of Police. Kinglake was not too popular, very likely because of his personality; but his record was good. Quantry was negligible.
Which meant that the Times-Tribune editor's analysis stood unshaken, and there was no evidence to brand the official eagerness to turn a blind eye on a murder as anything but a local issue of political expediency.
Except for the one thin thread that curled into a question mark and asked who it was at the Blue Goose who had turned the heat on even a complaisant political machine.
Olga Ivanovitch?
The Saint knew she was beautiful, he thought she was clever, and he suspected that she was dangerous. But how clever and how dangerous? He could learn nothing about her that sounded at all important. If she had any political connections, they weren't common gossip. But he knew that she had a definite place in the picture.
He made another call at the Ascot Hotel; but Mr Baker hadn't remembered any more overnight, and could add nothing to his information about Blatt or Black.
"But I'm sure, Mr Titwillow, he wasn't a local man. I've been here so long that I think I know all the important people in Galveston by sight."
Blatt, Weinbach, Maris.
The names made no impression on anyone to whom he mentioned them. But he did find some representatives of their clans in the telephone directory, and studiously checked on each of them. Each of them had the kind of unimpeachable clearance that it would have been simply a waste of time to investigate any further.
It was a long and strenuous day, and dusk was creeping over the city as Simon headed back towards the Alamo House. He bought an evening paper and a bottle of Peter Dawson on the way.
The Times-Tribune carried his article on the front page, unabridged and unexpurgated, but with a box that gave a brief explanation of the Saint's background for the benefit of the ignorant, and stated that Mr Templar's theories were his own and did not necessarily represent the editorial opinion of the Times-Tribune.
There was special justification for that in a short column which ran alongside his, which reported succinctly that at an inquest held that afternoon the coroner's jury had brought in a verdict of suicide.
Simon Templar crushed the newspaper in his hand with a grip that almost reverted it to its original pulp, and said several things which even our freedom of the press will not allow us to print.
So Kinglake hadn't backed down. He had gone right out from their interview and helped to railroad that fantastic verdict through. Maybe he had a wife and children and just wanted to go on feeding them; but he had done it.
In his room at the Alamo House, Simon sent for ice and opened his bottle, and tried to simmer down again over a highball.
He only had one other clue to think about, and that was in another snatch of words that the dying man had managed to get out. He could hear them just as clearly now as when they had been dragged hoarsely through the charred tortured lips.
"Ostrich-skin — leather case — in gladstone lining… Get case — and send… send… "
Send where?
And why?
And anyhow, Black or Blatt had the gladstone now.
One of three practical killers, probably strangers to Galveston themselves, possibly from Chicago (he remembered the 606 Club match booklet) who had trailed Matson on their mission of vengeance, carried out the assignment, and vanished.
He had another drink, and didn't get any further on that one.
It was later still when the telephone rang.
He had an electric moment as he went to answer it. He knew that the call had to have some bearing on the case, since he had no personal friends in Galveston; but the exquisite suspense was in wondering — who? A soft-pedaling politician? A raging King-lake? Or the first nibble at his bait?
It was a voice that he knew, even if he had not known it long — a deep musical voice with appealing foreign inflections.
"You aren't only handsome, but you have talent," she said. "Why didn't you tell me you were a writer too?"
"My union doesn't allow it."
"Am I going to see you again? I'd like to very much."
He reached for a cigarette.
"I'm flattered. But I've only just paid one installment on the Blue Goose."
"I don't have to be there till ten. What are you doing for dinner?"
"Eating with you," he said with abrupt decision. "I'll meet you in the lobby here at eight o'clock."
He hung up, and still wondered which category that belonged in. But anything would be better than waiting in idleness.
He washed and freshened himself and changed his shirt, and went downstairs a little before eight. There was a note in his box when he turned in his key.
"It was delivered by hand just a few minutes ago," said the clerk.
Simon slit open the envelope. The letter inside was written in pencil on a cheap lined paper of an uncommon but typical pattern. There was no address; but Simon knew what that would be even without the clues in the context.
Dear Mr Templar, I just read your piece in the paper, and I can tell you you sure have got it over these dumb bastards. I am getting a chap to take this out for me. I can tell you a lot more about this case and I will tell you if you can fix it to talk to me alone. You are right all the way and I can prove it, but I will not talk to anyone except you. After that you can do what you like with what I tell you but I will not give these dumb cops anything. Yours truly, Nick Vaschetti.
Simon looked up from the note because someone was practically leaning on him and breathing in his face.
"Got a love-letter?" asked Detective Yard. "Or is it fan mail?"
Simon put the letter in his pocket.
"Yes," he said. "But not for you. In fact, I hate to tell you, but my admirer calls you a dumb bastard."
The detective's face swelled as if he were being strangled.
"Listen, you," he got out. "One of these days—"
"You're going to forget your orders and be unkind to me," said the Saint. "So I'll be kind to you while I can. In a few minutes I'll be going out to dinner. I'll try to pick a restaurant where they'll let you in. And if I start to leave before you've finished, just yell at me and I'll wait for you."
Simon thought afterwards that it was criminal negligence on his part that he was so seduced by the frustration of Detective Yard that he didn't even notice the thin gray-blond man and the fat red-haired man who occupied chairs in the farther reaches of the lobby. But there was an excuse for him; because while he had heard their names and heard their sketchy descriptions, he had never before laid eyes on Johan Blatt and Fritzie Weinbach.