Leslie Charteris - Saint Errant

The Saint surveyed the grouping of the dramatis personae, through Mr Samuel Taggart’s eyeglasses, with an impresario’s appreciation, noting that to anyone in the living room only he and the lightly clad Luella would be visible through the open door.

A second flash bulb’s blinding glare knifed through his reflections.

“At last!” thundered Matthew Joyson, with the glibness of many past performances. “My lawyer will know how to use—”

Then his voice trailed away, and he stared at the other members of the tableau with the expression of a gaffed fish. Tod Kermein, with the camera, gulped audibly and offered a rather similar impersonation, concentrating most of it on Patricia’s lens-bearing companion, and reminding the Saint of a goldfish which had just discovered itself in a mirror.

“And then there were six,” Simon murmured. “Busiest bedroom scene I ever saw.”

“What the hell—”

Mr Joyson tried again, and again stopped on a note almost of panic.

Luella did her best.

“Honest to God, Matt,” she began. “I swear there’s nothing—”

Matthew Joyson may have lacked many sterling qualities, but presence of mind was not one of them. As a matter of fact, he had a professional pride in his ability to ad-lib, which had stood him in good stead during his days on the road, when at certain matinees an overindulgence on the night before had dulled his recollection of the script. He realized now that something drastic had gone wrong, that by some incredible coincidence his big scene had been blown up by a rival team who were actually playing it straight, and that the one safe course was to drop the curtain as fast as possible and consider the other angles later.

He turned to Patricia.

“Madam,” he said in his most magisterial style, “am I to understand that we are here on the same errand?”

“The brute!” Patricia choked. “The bru-hu-hute! And after all I’ve done for him. The best years of my life—”

Mr Joyson took command of the situation, so regally that only a captious critic would have noted the undertones of desperation in his behavior.

“Stand back, Kermein,” he commanded. “We don’t need any more detective work here.” He snatched the dress from Simon’s unresisting fingers. “By your leave, sir!” He strode over to the still petrified Luella. “May I trouble you to cover yourself?” he grated. “To think that my wife, my own wife...“ His voice broke for a moment, but he recovered it bravely. He turned to Patricia again, adjusting his mien to something between an undertaker and a floorwalker, if anything can be imagined that would fit into such a narrow gap. “Madam, accept my heartfelt sympathy. I know too well what your feelings must be. I only wish you could have been spared the same betrayal. What a dingy ending to it all!”

“Cedar Rapids Repertory Theatre, 1911,” commented the Saint, but he said it to himself, and outwardly maintained a properly hangdog visage.

Patricia regarded Mr Joyson with brimming blue eyes.

“You’re so kind... But to think that we should have to meet like this!” She dabbed a handkerchief at her tear-stained face. “If only I could have spared you any connection with my tragedy—”

“What had to be, had to be,” said Mr Joyson sagely, and edged hastily towards the door. “Don’t you bother your pret — er, don’t bother about a thing. Just leave all the details to me. I’ll see my lawyer in the morning, and we’ll discuss what steps to take, and you can get in touch with me at my home at — er—” He dug in his pockets. “I seem to have lost my card-case. The address is 7522 South Hooper — East Los Angeles. No phone. Now you just contact me, say, tomorrow afternoon. I’ll do anything I can to help. Come, Kermein.”

He completed his exit with almost indecent haste, but was able to refrain from mopping his brow till he was outside. Tod Kermein fell in step with him on the street, and their steps turned automatically in the direction of the nearest bar.

Kermein, who knew his place, preserved a discreet but sympathetic silence until they had been served, when he permitted himself to say, “Jeez, what a lousy break.”

“What a goddam stinking break!” Joyson exploded. “This pigeon was the vice-president of a bank, no less, and carrying a roll you could paper a house with, according to Luella. Whoever’d think his wife’d beat us to it?”

“I guess after all it must happen that way sometimes,” Kermein said, awed with a great discovery. “You know, I never thought of that.”

Matt Joyson scarcely heard him. The bracing draughts of Kentucky Nectar which he had absorbed were quieting his jangled nerves without impairing his mental processes. And something, something on the instinctive levels of his mind, now that the first blackout curtain of panic began to lift, was irking his consciousness with jagged little edges. He began to wish he had made a less precipitate withdrawal.

“It was too neat,” he muttered foggily. “Too pat.”

His eyes were murky with unformed suspicion.

Tod Kermein tried to console him.

“You’re always seeing somebody under the bed, Matt.”

“Once, there was,” Joyson reminded him. “Remember that go with the college president in Dallas?”

Kermein grimaced.

From the juke box at one end of the room seeped the voice of a scat singer who longed for some Shoo Fly Pie. At one of the low tables a pretty girl, like the melody, did some mild rhythmic writhing. The bartender, a jovial gent in a toupee, set a fresh drink in front of an aging debutante at the far end of the bar.

“I can’t nail it down,” Joyson said. “Something smells, and I don’t know what it is.”

“Because the guy’s wife gets there the same time we do? You heard her. She’s been followin’ the old jerk a long time, she nabs him. at exactly the right minute, which is just our time, too. Bad luck, that’s all. One chance in a million.”

“One thing’s sure.” Joyson struck the bar a light blow with a clenched fist. “Somewhere in town right now there’s a negative with Luella on it. It’s gonna be used by that dame in her divorce action. If one of our old suckers sees it, and we try to go back to him for more—”

He left the sentence unfinished.

“If that blonde really is after a divorce,” he enunciated softly. “If she’s his wife...” He swung off the bar stool. “We’re going back to the apartment. I want to talk to Lu about this guy.”

They walked along the echoing sidewalk toward the apartment house. Fifty yards from it, Kermein grabbed his companion’s arm. With his free hand he pointed.

In the lee of a potted shrub beside the entrance, a man lurked. A camera case was slung over his shoulder, and even in the dark the two men could recognize the photographer who had accompanied Patricia. He was not looking in their direction at the moment, but an elephant could not have lurked more obviously.

Like a sister act, Joyson and Kermein pivoted and walked briskly back to the bar they had just left. There was no more uncertainty in Joyson’s mind as they stepped inside.

“But — but what the hell’s he doin’ there?” mumbled Kermein. “The job was finished when he got his picture. You think the old goat’s got another dame in the place?”

“Shut up!” Joyson’s tone silenced him. “I don’t know and I don’t care. It smells. Gimme a nickel.”

He went to the phone booth. When Luella’s throaty voice answered, he wasted no words.

“Did you get rid of everyone?”

“Yes, Matt. I did the best I could. But I want to know—”

“So do I. But I don’t want to wait to find out. Something’s screwy. That photographer the dame had with her is still hanging around the front of the building.”