Leslie Charteris - Call for the Saint

“It’s a job.”

“I suppose so.” He ventured another lead, making himself querulous again. “Why did you lock me in? I wanted to go to the bathroom—”

“There’s a thing under the bed. We lock everybody in. It isn’t only men who come here. You have to keep a place like this respectable. Women sleep here too.”

For no good reason, an electric tingle squirmed up the Saint’s spine. There was nothing he could directly trace it to, and yet it was unmistakable, a fleeting draught from the flutter of psychic wings. Without time to analyse it, without knowing why, he deadened every response except that of his mind, exactly as he had controlled his awakening when she walked in, and turned the instinctive quiver into a bitter chuckle.

“You wouldn’t expect them to give people like me any trouble, would you?”

“You never can tell.” Big Hazel moved closer, her hands dropping into the pockets of her voluminous skirt. Her voice was still brisk and businesslike as she went on: “I’ll make out your registration tomorrow, and you can put a cross on it or whatever you do.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Would you like a drink?”

The Saint stirred a little on the bedside, as if in mild embarrassment, as the same reflex prickle retraced its voyage over his ganglions. But he still kept his face expressionless behind the blank windows of his smoked glasses.

“Thank you, ma’am, but I don’t drink anything. Not being able to see, it sort of makes me a bit dizzy.”

“You won’t mind if I do?”

Without encouraging an answer, she pulled a pint bottle of a cheap blend out of the folds of her skirt and attacked the screw cap. She held the bottle and the cap in pleats of her clothing for a better purchase, but even her massive paws seemed to make no impression on their union.

The Saint paid only incidental attention to her heavy breathing until she said, “The damn thing’s stuck. Can you open it?”

He found the bottle in his hands, and unscrewed the cap with a brief effort of steel fingers.

“Thanks, Mr Smith.”

She took a quick gulp from the bottle, and guided his groping hand to replace the cap.

“Well, have a good night,” she said.

She went out, and the door closed behind her. And once again he heard the lock click.

Simon lay back on the hard bed, remembering vividly that she had never touched the bottle except through the cloth of her skirt pocket. He rested all night in the same vigilant twilight between sleep and waking, revolving a hundred speculations and surmises, but nothing else disturbed him except his own goading thoughts.

It was surprisingly easy to get out — almost too easy. In the early morning feet crept past the door again, and the lock clicked stealthily. “When he tried the door, after a while, it opened without obstruction. He tapped his way downstairs, and the thin meek man at the desk scarcely looked up as he went by. Big Hazel was nowhere to be seen.

In the role of a blind man it would have been difficult to shake off any possible shadowers, but that seemed an unnecessary precaution. If he was suspected at all, everything would be known about him anyway, if not, he would not be shadowed. But he thought he knew which it was.

He showered and shaved at his own hotel, and he was finishing a man-sized breakfast of bacon and eggs when the telephone rang.

“Listen, Mr Templar,” Lieutenant Kearney said. “You’re not figuring on leaving town, are you?”

“My plans are nearly completed,” Simon informed him. “At the stroke of midnight a small blimp, camouflaged as a certain well-known Congressman, will drop a flexible steel ladder to the roof of this hotel. I shall mount it like a squirrel and flee southward, while the sun sinks behind beautiful Lake Michigan. It all depends on the sun,” he added reflectively. “If I can only induce it to put off sinking until midnight, and do it in the east for a change, the plan will go without a hitch.”

“Listen—” Kearney said, and sighed. “Oh, well. So you know the Commissioner. So I’ve got to give you a break. Just the same—” His tone changed. “I’ve been getting some information around Chicago.”

“Fine,” Simon approved. “If you run across a good floating crap game, by all means tell me. I need a stake before I make my getaway.”

Kearney went on doggedly, “This stiff we got in the morgue — we found out who he was. His name’s Cleve Friend. He’s a grifter from Frisco.”

“You ought to make a song out of that,” Simon told him.

“Yeah. Well, anyhow, what was the idea saying you didn’t know him?”

“Did I say that?” Simon asked blandly.

“You implied it,” Kearney snapped. “And that don’t check with what I’ve been hearing.”

Simon paused.

“Just what have you been hearing?” he asked.

“Things from people. People around town. Not in your social circle, of course.” Kearney’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. “Bums, poolroom touts, beggars.”

“Beggars?”

“We ran Friend’s picture in the paper today,” Kearney said. “The photographer retouched it a little — that hole in his head, you know. And some people came in to look at him. They recognised him. He’s a grifter, or I mean he was, and quite a few people have seen him around Chicago the last month or so. Some of them saw you, too. Some of them even saw you both together.”

“Those chatter-boxes knew me by name, of course?”

“Listen,” Kearney said, “don’t kid yourself. The Saint’s picture has been in the papers too, a lot of times. What was it you were seeing Friend about lately.”

“I can’t tell you,” Simon said.

“You won’t?”

“I can’t. I’m too shy.”

“God damn it,” Kearney roared. “Maybe you can tell me why the autopsy on Friend showed he’d been shot full of scopolamine, then!”

Simon’s eyes changed. “Scopolamine? That wasn’t what killed him?”

“You know damn well what killed him. You saw the bullet hole. I’m not doing any more talking to you. Not yet. I will later. I don’t care if you know the Commissioner or the Mayor or the President of the United States! Just don’t leave town, understand?”

“Yes,” Simon said. “I get it. All right, Alvin. I’ll string along. In fact—” He hesitated. “I’ll even tell you why I was seeing Cleve Friend.”

Kearney said suspiciously, “Yeah? Another gag?”

“No. You might as well know, I suppose. I can’t keep it quiet for ever.”

“Okay,” Kearney snapped. “Spill it.” He could not quite keep the eagerness out of his voice.

The Saint said mildly, “We were plotting his murder. Goodbye, Alvin.”

He hung up, leaving the detective gibbering inarticulately, and poured himself another cup of coffee.

“This is what is known as a cumulative frame,” he remarked to Hoppy, who was starting his morning target practice. “I wonder how thorough it’s going to be.”

Mr Uniatz bounded a BB accurately off the coffee-pot.

“I don’t get it, boss,” he said automatically.

“It works backwards,” Simon explained. “First an unidentified body is found, and the only connection between it and me was a deed of gift. Now some people have recognised the body and say that I’ve been seen foregathering with Junior, hereinafter referred to as the unlamented Mr Cleve Friend, a grifter from Frisco. It’s significant that some of these witnesses are beggars. Later, perhaps, a witness to the murder will pop up. By sheer accident, he happened to be passing when I bumped off Friend.”

“But ya didn’t bump him off,” Hoppy said. “Did ya?”

“No, Hoppy, I didn’t.”