Leslie Charteris - The Saint Goes West

They went into the crepuscular discretion of the bar, where a sizeable clientele was now dispersed through shadowy corners, and Simon beckoned the bartender over.

“Will you tell Mr Condor what happened this afternoon?”

The bartender looked surprised to see the Saint again so soon, and along with his surprise there was a habitual wariness.

“About what?” he said innocently.

“About Flane,” said the Saint.

“It’s all right,” Condor put in soothingly. “There’s no beef. Mr Templar just wanted me to hear it.” The bartender wiped his hands on his apron.

“I guess Mr Flane had just had one too many,” he said.

“He was talking to this gentleman, and I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Then it looked as if Mr Flane was getting tough — he does that sometimes, when he’s had a drink — or I should say he used to do it—”

“Go on,” Condor said.

“Well, I tried to hear something then, but I couldn’t hear anything, and then he must have slugged Mr Whatyoucalledhim, because he fell off his stool, and Mr Flane beat it out of here, an’ I got the gentleman up again an’ bought him a drink an’ he went out. That’s all I know.”

“Thank you,” said Condor.

Then they were outside again.

“After that,” said the Saint, “I went back to the studio to see if you were still there, but you’d left. We can walk over and you can check that. If the same gatekeeper isn’t on now, he’ll know where we can find the guy I spoke to.”

Condor gazed moodily across the street, like a dyspeptic crocodile on a river bank watching succulent game cavorting on the other side.

“I’ll believe you,” he said. “You wouldn’t want me to check it if I wouldn’t get the right answers. But why didn’t you call me at Headquarters?”

“I meant to,” said the Saint. “But I... well, I had a date. You know how it is. And I got drinking, and sort of put it off. Then I heard the news on the radio. Then I was just scared to stick my neck out. I figured the case was washed up anyhow. I’d as good as told Flane he was sunk, and he’d bumped himself off. So — justice was done, even if nobody got any medals.”

Condor massaged his long melancholy nose.

“You want me to believe a helluva lot,” he said. “And a guy in my job eats medals.”

“Don’t believe any more than you want to,” Simon said nonchalantly. “Just convince yourself. Flane had it in for Ufferlitz. He’d threatened him before—”

“He had?”

“Right in that bar. The first time I ever saw him. He was drunk, and he was shooting off his mouth about how Ufferlitz couldn’t do things to him and he was going to show him where he got off. The bartender was trying to calm him down. Go back and ask him.”

The detective shook his head.

“If you had that bartender primed with one story, you’d have him rehearsed in all of ’em,” he said unenthusiastically. “Who else heard Flane say he’d get Ufferlitz?”

The Saint thought, and a picture came into his mind.

“Ufferlitz’s secretary heard him — Ufferlitz threw him out of his office yesterday, and Flane said then that he’d fix him. Didn’t she tell you?”

“No.”

“She should have. She was there.”

Condor hunched his shoulders.

“We’ll see if she’s home,” he said.

So they were in the Saint’s car again, heading north across Hollywood Boulevard to an address that they looked up in the phone book in the corner drug store. The prowl car followed behind them like a shadow.

But the Saint was hardly aware of it any more. Certainly it had no more sinister implications. Condor was sold, even though he hadn’t admitted it aloud. It was only a question of a little more time and some routine verifications. The detective’s mournful passivity and the dejected downward angle of the toothpick in his mouth were their own acknowledgments. In the end it had been as simple as that. And Simon was only wondering why he had never thought of that scene before, when Flane had come hurtling out of Ufferlitz’s office and the Saint had picked him up and steadied him while he made his threat — the scene that Peggy Warden had omitted to tell Condor about. Simon thought he had been very slow about that. But it was all taken care of now...

And they were in Peggy Warden’s apartment, and she was a little frightened and wide-eyed, but she said, “Yes, Mr Flane did say that, but—”

And Condor said, “Do you remember his words?”

“It was something like—” She wrinkled her brow. “Something like ‘When I fix you, you’re going to stay fixed.’ ”

“That was it,” said the Saint.

She said, “But he was drunk — he didn’t really know what he was saying—”

Condor turned away from her with a movement of glum separation whose superficial rudeness had less to do with any deliberate intention than with his congenital inability to loosen his official armor.

His bright black eyes circled down on to the Saint like tired dead crows.

“Okay, Saint,” he said. “You’re good. I don’t know how good yet, but good.”

“Then what happens?”

“I can’t say. I just work for a living. It’ll all have to go to the DA. Probably the Big Shots’ll go to work on him to push it away without any scandal. Another Hollywood mystery dies a natural death. That’s my guess. I’m only a cop.”

“But you’re satisfied?”

“I’m going to have to be. I’ll do some more checking up, but if you’re as good as you sound it won’t make any difference.” His mouth turned down one-sidedly. “If you’re not worried any more, you don’t need to be.”

The Saint sat down in the nearest chair and prepared himself a cigarette with unwontedly deliberate fingers.

“I think,” he remarked judicially, “that I could use a drink.”

“I’ve got some Scotch,” said the girl.

“With ice,” said the Saint, “and plain water.”

“What about you, Lieutenant?”

Condor shook his head.

“Thanks, miss. I’ve got to worry about my report. I won’t take any more of your time.” He looked at the Saint. “You’ve got your car, so I’ll be on my way.”

He pulled the toothpick out of his teeth, inspected it, and thrust it back. He didn’t seem to be able to make a good exit. His eyes were still watchful, as they always would be, as they would always be searching and challenging, but without the conscience-created menace behind them they were just awkward and lonely and disillusioned. He was just a guy who’d been trying to do a job. And when the job wasn’t there any more he was no more frightening or perhaps just as frightening as a man who had rung the bell to try and sell a vacuum cleaner and been told that there were no customers for vacuum cleaners. He said at last: “Well, next time don’t forget that some of us need medals.”

“I won’t,” said the Saint.

He sat and watched the door close, and drew slowly and introspectively at his cigarette, and waited while Peggy Warden brought him a highball and put it into his hand. He smiled his thanks at her and oscillated the glass gently so that the liquid circulated coolingly around the ice cubes.

She had a drink herself. She sat down opposite him, and he admired her again in his mind, the fresh clean trimness of her, so fearless and clean-cut, and quietly lovely too, with the natural golden brown of her hair and the steady gray of her eyes. It was a face that one would never remember vividly for any unique lines, and yet it had something independent of conformation that would puzzle the memory and yet always be haunting — as it was haunting him now.

“I’ve been very stupid, Peggy,” he said. “But the case is closed now, as you heard Condor say, and it’s all right the way it is. I just lose sleep over loose ends. Tell me why you killed Byron Ufferlitz.”