Leslie Charteris - The Saint Sees it Through

The Saint looked significantly at the flat backs of the animal cages. "What time," he asked Spaniel Eyes, "do you have to be back in?"

"Shaddup."

"This," the Saint said conversationally to Scar-chin, "has been most illuminating. I suppose I shouldn't ever have taken this drive otherwise. Very restful. The lake full of rowboats, the rowboats full of afternoon romance, the — oh, the je ne sais quoi, like kids with ice creamed noses."

Scar-chin yawned.

Simon lighted another cigarette and brooded over the routine. He considered his chances of getting a lawyer with a writ of habeas corpus before things went too far. Or was it the scheme of Scar-chin and Spaniel-Eyes to spirit him away to some obscure precinct station and hold him incommunicado? Such things had been done before. And at that stage of the game the Saint knew he could not afford to disappear even for twenty-four hours.

Spaniel Eyes looked at his watch as they neared the exit at Fiftyninth Street and Fifth Avenue.

"Okay," he called to the cab driver.

The driver nodded and drove to — of all places — the Algonquin. Scar-chin came back to life.

"Awright," he said. "Go on up to your room."

"And then what?"

"You'll see."

Simon nodded pleasantly, and went up to his room. The telephone was ringing.

"Hamilton," said the voice at the other end. "I wish you'd be more careful. Do you think I haven't anything else to do with my men except send them to pull you out of jams?"

For a considerable time after the Saint had left, there was a nominal silence in the dining room of 21. Nominal, because of course there was never any actual silence in that much-publicised pub except when it was closed for the night. The chatter of crocks, cutlery, concubines and creeps went on without interruption or change of tempo, a formless obbligato like the fiddling of insects in a tropic night which could only be heard by forced attention. It washed up against the table where Zellermann and Avalon sat, and still left them isolated in a pool of stillness.

Of Avalon one could only have said that she was thinking. Her face was intent and abstracted but without mood. If it suggested any tension, it was only by its unnatural repose.

Dr. Zellermann avoided that suggestion by just enough play with cocktail glass and cigarette, with idle glances around the room, to convey a disinterested expectation that this hiatus was purely transitory, and that he was merely respecting it with polite acceptance.

He turned to Avalon at last with a sympathetic smile.

"I'm so sorry," he said in his best tableside manner.

She shrugged.

"Sorry? For what?"

"It is not my desire, Miss Dexter, to cause you anguish or heartache."

"I've been watching out for myself for some time, Doctor."

"That, my dear, is your chief attraction. One would expect a girl who is as beautiful as you to be dependent. You have a magnificent — er — contempt for the conventional behavior of beautiful women. If I may say so."

"You have, Doctor. Which all leads up to an exit line. Goodbye."

He raised a soft white hand.

"Don't go. You haven't had your lunch."

"I'm not hungry."

"Then please listen. I have information that may be to your advantage to know."

She settled back, but did not relax. She had the appearance of a motionless cat, not tense, yet ready to leap. Her dark eyes were alert, wide and bright.

"About Mr. Templar," the psychiatrist began. "Although I am glad to confess a personal interest in your welfare, what I am about to say is of an academic nature."

Avalon smiled with one side of her mouth.

"Anyone will grant that he is a romantic figure, Miss Dexter. He must have a tremendous attraction for women, especially young and beautiful girls who are trying to carve out a career. He represents all they strive for — poise, charm, fame and respect from many psychological types. But he is not a stable person, Miss Dexter."

Avalon smiled with both sides of her mouth. It was a tender smile, with secret undertones.

"His path through life," said Zellermann — "and I don't mean to sound like a text book — is inevitably beset with adventure, crime, and personal danger. I happen to know that many who have allied themselves with him have died. Somehow, he has come through all his adventures. But the day will come, my dear Miss Dexter, when Lady Luck will frown on her favorite protege."

Avalon rose abruptly.

"And so on and so on," she said. "Let's skip the soul analysis. You heard him fling me to the wolves. I informed on him, he said. I told you about what he's been doing. I don't think I'm in danger of being hurt — or even being near him, for that matter. So long."

She walked out of the hotel, straight and tall and lovely. When she was on the sidewalk, three cab drivers rushed up to claim her for a fare. She chose one.

"The Tombs," she said; and the man blinked.

"Caught up with th' boy friend, hey? 'Stoo bad, lady."

"My grandmother," Avalon said icily, "is in jail for matricide. I'm taking her a hacksaw. Will you hurry?"

All the way to the gloomy pile of stone, the cab driver shook his head. When Avalon paid him off, he looked at her with troubled eyes.

" 'Scuse me, lady, but why would the old dame steal a mattress? It don't make sense."

"She got tired of sleeping on the ground," Avalon told him. "Some people just can't take it."

She went inside and was directed to the desk sergeant. He was a large man, and the lines in his face had not been acquired by thinking up ways to help his fellow man. He was busy at the moment she arrived before him, studying some printed matter on his desk. He didn't look up.

"Excuse me," Avalon said.

The sergeant paid no attention. He continued his study of the papers before him. He held a pencil in one huge fist, and made a check mark now and then.

"I beg your pardon," Avalon said.

Still there was no evidence that the sergeant had heard her. He continued to peruse his mysterious papers. Avalon, like those who also serve, stood and waited. Presently the sergeant made a check mark after the name Sir Walter in the fourth at Pimlico and looked up.

His eyes were without expression. They roved over the convolutions of beauty as if they had been inspecting a prize farm animal. They penetrated, yes, and Avalon could feel her clothes falling off her; but there was no lust, no desire, in the sergeant's eyes — only boredom.

"Yeh?" he said.

"I want to see a prisoner you have here," she said. "His name is Templar." She spelled it.

The sergeant's eyes said "Dames!" as he reached for a heavily bound ledger. He scanned it.

"When did he get here?"

"An hour ago, or less."

"Nobody's been here in the last hour."

"Where would he be, then?"

"What's the rap?"

"Oh, he hasn't even been tried. No charge has been made."

The sergeant's eyes groaned, rolled skyward.

"Lady, he'll be booked at Centre Street headquarters. He won't come here till he's been convicted."

"Oh. I didn't know. Where is it?"

He told her. She flagged a cab, and went there.

As she mounted the wide flight of stairs, she was joined by Kay Natello and Ferdinand Pairfield.

Ferdinand was resplendent in purple scarf, gray plaid jacket, dove-gray trousers, gray suede shoes and lemon-colored socks. His hands were white butterflies emerging from cocoons.

"Darling!" he cried, like bells from Lakmé.

Kay Natello might as well have been dressed in a fire hose for all the blue cotton dress did for her gaunt frame. She said nothing, and Avalon was grateful for being spared that.

"Myrmidons," Avalon murmured. "What's the rap?"

Ferdinand put butterflies on her arm and she shivered. "Quaint girl," he purred. "We were down to see a lawyer on Wall Street, and we were just passing in a cab — with the most brutal driver, my dear, simply delicious — and Kay said, 'There's Avalon!' And since we'd been looking all over for you—" His shrug was as graceful as feathers on a little wind.