Leslie Charteris - The Saint Sees it Through

He had failed to learn any more about Mr. Prather's precise place in the picture, or the relationship of the other characters who flitted in and out of the convolutions of the impalpable organization which he was trying to unravel — or, for that matter, about Avalon's real place in the whole crooked cosmogony.

Simon forced himself ruthlessly to remember that... With all their intimacy, their swift and complete companionship, he still knew nothing. Nothing but what he felt; and better men than he had come to disaster from not drawing the distinction between belief and knowledge. The Saint had many vanities, but one of them had never been the arrogant confidence that sometime, somewhere, there could not be among the ranks of the Ungodly a man or a woman who would have the ability to make a sucker out of him. He had waited for that all his life; and he was still waiting, with the same cold and tormenting vigilance.

And yet, when he called Avalon the next morning, there was nothing cold in his mind when her voice answered.

"Good morning," he said.

"Good morning, darling," she said, and her voice woke up with it. "How are you today?"

"Excited."

"What about?"

"Because I've got a date for lunch."

"Oh." The voice died again.

He laughed.

"With a beautiful girl... named Avalon."

"Oh." Such a different inflection. As if the sun came out again. "You're a beast. I've a good mind not to be there."

"There are arguments against it," he admitted. "For one thing, we can't be alone."

"You mean the restaurant has to let other people in? We could fix that. Come over here, and I'll make an omelette."

"I'd like that much better. But it wouldn't work. I've still got a date. And you're going to keep it with me. We're having lunch with Zellermann."

"Did you call him?"

"He called me again, and I didn't see how I could get out of it. As a matter of fact, I decided I didn't want to. So much persistence is starting to intrigue me. And I do want to know more about him. And I don't think he can do much to me in 21."

"Is that where we're going?"

"Yes. I'll pick you up at twelve o'clock."

"I'll put on my silliest hat."

"If you do," said the Saint, "I'll be called away in the middle of lunch and leave you with him."

They were on time to the minute, but when Simon asked for the table he was told that Zellermann was already waiting for them.

The doctor stood up as they threaded a way between tables to his. Simon noted with some satisfaction that Zellermann's lips were still considerably swollen, although the fact would not have been so obvious to anyone who was not acquainted with the medicine man's mouth in its normal state.

He looked very much the Park Avenue psychiatrist — tall, leonine, carelessly but faultlessly dressed, with one of those fat smiles that somehow reminded the Saint of fresh shrimps.

"My dear Mr. Templar. And Miss Dexter. So glad you could manage the time. Won't you sit down?"

They did, and he did.

Dr. Zellermann displayed as much charm as a bee tree has honey.

"Miss Dexter, I feel that I must apologise for the other night. I am inclined to forget that universal adjustment to my psychological patterns has not yet been made."

"Don't let it worry you," Avalon said. "You paid for it."

A slight flush tinted the doctor's face as he looked at the Saint.

"My apologies to you, too, sir."

Simon grinned. "I didn't feel a thing."

Dr. Zellermann flushed deeper, then smiled,

"But that's all forgotten. We can be friendly together, and have a pleasant lunch. I like to eat here. The cuisine is excellent, the service—"

There was more of this. Considerably more. The Saint let his eyes rove over the dining room which clattered discreetly with glass and silverware. Waiters went unobtrusively from table to table. Those with trays held the Saint's eyes.

Dr. Zellermann finished his eulogy of the restaurant, followed Simon's gaze.

"Oh, a drink, a drink by all means. Waiter!"

The waiter, so completely different from those sampled by the Saint in Cookie's the day before, came to their table as if he had crawled four miles over broken glass.

"May I serve you, sir?"

"Martinis, Manhattans?" the doctor inquired.

The Saint and Avalon ordered double Manhattans, the doctor a Martini, and the waiter genuflected away.

"So nice of you to invite us," the Saint said across the table. "A free lunch, as my drunken uncle used to say, is a free lunch."

Dr. Zellermann smiled.

"I somehow feel that you haven't quite had your share of free lunches, Mr. Templar. I feel that you have quite a few coming to you."

"Ah?" Simon queried.

He looked at Avalon immediately after he'd tossed the monosyllabic interrogation at the doctor. She sat quietly, with her gold-brown hair immaculate, her brown eyes wide, her small but definite chin pushed forward in a questing motion. At that moment, the Saint would have wagered anything he ever hoped to have that this green-clad, trim, slim, smartly turned out girl knew nothing about the problem that was taking up most of his time.

"In my work as a psychiatrist," the snowy-maned doctor explained, "I have learned a number of things. One of the main factors I take into consideration in the evaluation of a personality is whether that person is behind in the receipt of rewards. Each individual, as far as I have been able to discover, has put more into life than he ever gets out."

"Not according to what I was taught," Avalon said. "You get what you pay for. You get out of life, or a job, or a pail, or any damned thing, what you put into it, and no more. Otherwise, it's perpetual motion."

"Ah, no," Dr. Zellermann said. "If that were true, the sum total of all human effort would produce energies equal only to the sum total of all human effort. That would make change, impossible. Yet we progress. The human race lives better, eats better, drinks better, each year. This indicates something. Those who are trying to cause the race to better itself — and they are less than the sum total of human beings, if not a minority — must be putting in more than they ever get out. If the law of equational returns is true, then it is quite obvious that a number of persons are dying before their time."

"I don't get you," Avalon said.

"Let's put it simply," the doctor replied. He broke off for the waiter to distribute their drinks. "If the energy you expend on living gives you only that amount of life, then your living conditions will never improve. Correct?"

"Umm."

"But your living conditions do improve. You have more and better food than your great-great grandmother, or your grandfather thirty-eight times removed. Much better. Somebody, therefore, has put more into life than he has taken out, as long as the general living level of the human race continues to improve."

"And so?"

"And so," Dr. Zellermann said, "if the theory that we get no more out of life than we put into it is true, somebody is in the red. A lot of somebodys. Because the human race keeps progressing. And if each individual got no more out of what he put into it, life on the whole would remain the way it is."

"Umm."

"Are ideas energy?" the Saint asked.

"There you have it," Dr. Zellermann said. "Are ideas energy." It wasn't a question. "Are they? I don't know. A certain amount of energy must go into the process of producing ideas which may be translated into practical benefits to the race. What that amount of energy is, or whether it can be measured, is a point to be discussed in future years by scientists who are equipped with instruments we have never heard of."

"But have we heard of the Orient?" asked the Saint.

"I don't follow you," Dr. Zellermann said.

Simon paused while their drinks were delivered; and while he waited it crossed his mind that the trouble with all the creeps he had met so far in this business was that they responded to a leading question about as actively as a dead mouse would to a slab of Camembert. It also crossed his mind that a great deal of aimless chatter was being cast upon the chaste air of that burnished beanery.