Leslie Charteris - Catch the Saint

“Hire the handicapped, huh? I thought the casting director had done an off-beat job including Hamlin in that group. Still, he must have a fair set of brains. Embellishing books can be a fine art.”

“Oh, I don’t think he’s dumb,” Carole said. “I just don’t trust him.”

“Why?” he asked with new interest.

But her dislike of Hamlin turned out to be based more on instinctive prejudice and unconscious snobbery (and perhaps a little jealousy of the secretary’s close and confidential relationship with her father) than on facts. It was a prejudice that many a wife has indulged — and usually denied — against the other woman in her husband’s office.

“Helping a lame dog over a stile is supposed to be good boy-scout Christianity,” Simon remarked judiciously. “Although personally I’ve always thought it was one of the silliest precepts ever coined. Did you ever look at a stile? I never saw one yet that a lame dog couldn’t wriggle over much faster than you could lift him over it.”

“Are you being symbolic or just smart?”

“Could be either.”

“I suppose you don’t believe in women’s intuition.”

“I pass.”

She caught Simon glancing at his watch.

“Am I boring you?” she enquired with some acidity.

“No, you’re not, but if you’ve finished your coffee I’d like to get out of here.”

Her reply was to push her empty cup away and pick up her bag from the seat beside her. As he walked with her to the door, Simon noted that the same groups were round the pool tables, and that the seal and the football tackle watched him as he left the bar.

Carole slumped disconsolately as he drove her back towards the New Sylvania.

“We were having such a good time,” she pouted. “What’s wrong? Did I say something? Are you just upset because you thought that man back there was somebody you knew?”

Seeing her stripped of her protective irony, admitting that her relationship with him meant enough to depress her, Simon felt that he owed her an honest answer.

“All right,” he” said. “I’ll tell you. It has nothing to do with you, and I don’t think you could bore me if you recited the telephone directory. I’m still kicking myself because of that imbecilic thing I did back in that bar.”

“What’s imbecilic about mistaken identity?” she demanded. “I’m surprised a man like you would worry about a thing like that. Male vanity?”

“It wasn’t a case of mistaken identity,” said the Saint. “It was a case of the mouth outrunning the brain. That man I spoke to really is named Brad Ryner. At least he was a couple of years ago when I met him out in California. And since he had a wife named Doris Ryner, and three kids with the same surname, I don’t think I need his birth certificate to prove the point.”

“Then why did he say his name was Joe?”

“Because Brad Ryner is a cop. A detective. Figure it out for yourself.”

Carole pondered, then said: “I think it would be faster if you explained it to me.”

The muscles of his face were tense.

“I’m afraid that Brad Ryner is involved in some kind of under-cover job, using a phoney name, Joe Something, and I just walked in and possibly blew the whole thing for him.”

“You mean he’s collecting information or something for the police?”

“Yes, and because I spilled the beans he may end up collecting bullets in the back.”

“Well,” Carole said, “I wouldn’t necessarily call it spilling the beans. Even if he was infiltrating a gang, or whatever he’s doing, how would the crooks know that somebody named Brad Ryner was a detective?”

“I’m hoping they won’t,” Simon said. “Ryner had a routine job in a fairly small town on the other side of the continent. There’s no reason anybody in Philadelphia should ever have heard his name.”

Carole put a hand on Simon’s shoulder and smiled.

“Then it wasn’t quite like walking in and saying, ‘Well, Sherlock Holmes, as I live and breathe!’ “

“Not quite,” he admitted. “But I’m worried that I might have done just enough to rouse somebody’s suspicions, and make them start checking out the name Ryner. Eventually that could mean real trouble.”

“At least he’s warned,” she said. “I mean, before anybody can find out that Brad Ryner is a cop he can get out of the picture.”

“And that’s my contribution to law and order,” said the Saint grimly.

“I’ll bet nobody thought a thing about it after we went and sat down,” Carole asserted. “They’ve forgotten the whole thing by now.”

“I hope so.”

She sensed his lack of conviction, but did not pursue it.

“We’re almost there,” she said. “Would you like to came up for a nightcap?”

“I’d enjoy it, but we’ve had a pretty full evening.” His concern for Brad Ryner showed clearly in his face and his voice. “Maybe another time.”

“I won’t chain myself to your bumper if you’ll promise to see me tomorrow. Here’s my private phone number.”

As Simon pulled his car to a halt in the garage, Carole scribbled the number on a scrap of paper from her handbag and gave it to him. Simon went with her as far as the elevator.

“Well?” she said.

“Well?” Simon echoed.

Carole leaned against the wall next to the elevator buttons.

“Well, are you going to go out with me tomorrow, and well, are you going to kiss me good night?”

“Keep it up and you’ll make drill sergeant.”

“Would you rather I used womanly wiles? I’m just telling you what I want. You don’t have to do either one.”

Simon’s mind jumped forward over the next couple of days. He had no binding plans.

“I think I’ll do both,” he said.

He bent down and softly kissed her parted lips.

“I’ll have to phone you tomorrow about getting together,” he told her.

She was looking into his eyes with such melting adoration that he felt uncomfortable about having kissed her. She had asked for it, but apparently there was a very susceptible, childlike female just below that bold and mischievous surface. The elevator doors slid soundlessly open, and Simon shepherded her gently into the mahogany and brass of the cabin.

“Why aren’t you riding up too?” she asked.

“I didn’t park the car very tidily,” he said.

She seemed to come back to earth suddenly.

“You’re not going back to that bar, are you?”

“I’d much rather go to bed,” he said deviously. “Thanks for a wonderful evening.”

She felt an urge to reach for his hand and keep him there, to protect him from the danger she sensed was waiting for him out in the night, but he had stepped back from the elevator, and the doors moved between them. She was alone in a costly cocoon, as she had been during so much of her life, and then she was rising smoothly by virtue of some unseen mechanism to a roost high above the noise and grime of city streets.

She found her father in the living-room of the penthouse, relaxing in purple silk pajamas and dressing gown as he sipped a brandy. His white hair was neatly brushed as always, but his eyes were weary.

Carole kissed him on the cheek.

“I’ll bet you’re waiting up for me. You’re really incorrigible.”

“I don’t like you going off with strangers,” he said, gently rather than critically. “Especially late at night.”

“Simon isn’t a stranger,” she replied dreamily. “I feel as if I’d known him all my life. And if you really don’t trust him, I can tell you that I gave him all sorts of chances to kidnap me... hoping he would... but he didn’t.”

Hyram Angelworth smiled and shook his head. “I’m afraid you’re the one who’s incorrigible.”