Leslie Charteris - The Saint Sees it Through

"I didn't tell them anything. They seemed to know more than you could possibly expect them to. When their questions reached a certain point I did what I had to do, and that was to clam up."

"What exactly did they seem to know about?"

"They mentioned Jeffries and Hyman. They knew that they'd visited me and brought me something from Shanghai. And they asked me if I knew 903 Bubbling Well Road."

"Which of course you denied."

"Naturally. But how would they know about Jeffries and Hyman?"

Zellermann spread his hands.

"Who can tell? Seamen with money get drunk, sometimes they get into trouble. There are all kinds of situations in which they might talk. Luckily, however, they have nothing to talk about — except yourself. And you would never be indiscreet."

Prather swallowed.

"Of course not. I know I'm worried. But if you don't let me down—"

Dr. Zellermann nodded.

"I knew we could depend upon you, Mr. Prather."

And then silence fell. Dr. Zellermann seemed to have said all that he wished to say and James Prather was afraid to say anything more. They sat quietly, not meeting each other's eye. They sat like this for an undeterminable time, and their tableau was disturbed by Dr. Zellermann's blond secretary, with the sleeked-back hair, who stuck her head into the office and said:

"Mr. Carpenter to see you with two friends."

"Show them in."

The trio who entered the office were large hard-eyed men, pushing middle-age. They had one characteristic in common: they were ready to take orders and carry them out.

"Mr. Carpenter, Mr. Prather."

The two men shook hands. Prather was nervous, Carpenter matter of fact.

"Mr. Prather," Dr. Zellermann continued, "has unfortunately attracted some undesirable attention. It's up to us to see that he comes to no harm in the hands of the authorities. Mr. Carpenter, you know what to do."

Prather stood up.

"Dr. Zellermann, I can't thank you enough. I—"

Dr. Zellermann waved away his protestations of good will.

"Nonsense. One looks out for one's own."

James Prather twiddled his thumbs nervously as the long black car wound through traffic for an hour or more and left behind the city limits of New York. At long intervals farmhouses appeared on each side, and it may be presumed that birds sang in the trees nearby. Prather had no ear for our feathered friends and no eyes for rustic architecture. He sat rigidly in the back seat between the two nameless companions of Mr. Carpenter, while that gentleman drove expertly and swiftly to their unrevealed destination. The others initiated no trivial conversation, and Mr. Prather was in no mood to start any himself.

When they had travelled another hour, Carpenter swung down a narrow sideroad, whose pavement gave way presently to a sandy surface. Another turning brought them into a lane which was distinguished by car tracks and overhanging maples. After a half-mile's travel along this road, Carpenter stopped the car. He got out.

"This way," he said.

Prather, not without inner misgivings, followed the big man through a barbed-wire fence, across a pasture, and deep into a green orchard of apple trees.

"Where are you taking me?" Prather asked in a small voice.

Carpenter turned to face him.

"No place," he said. "You're here."

He took an automatic from under his left arm and pointed it at Prather's chest. The first shot would have been enough; but Carpenter, a conscientious man, gave him a second bullet to make certain.

The man who went down the back stairs of the Algonquin Hotel and slipped quickly and inconspicuously through the lobby from the service door could never have been mistaken for the debonair and immaculate Mr, Templar who had lately become accepted as one of the brighter landmarks of that possessive caravanserai. He wore heavy black shoes that were cracked and stained and down at heel, heavy black wool socks drooping untidily over his ankles, dark blue trousers with baggy knees and a shiny seat, a soiled white shirt with a dark tie knotted and twisted like an old rope, a dark blue reefer jacket that was wrinkled across the shoulders, patched in one elbow, and threadbare at the cuffs, and a vaguely nautical peaked cap without insignia that looked as if it was used to combining the functions of head-gear and brass polisher. His shoulders sagged and his chest slouched, so that he didn't seem very tall. His complexion was ruddy and weather-beaten. What could be seen of his hair was a drab gray that matched his bushy eyebrows and straggly moustache and the close-cropped fringe of beard around his chin.

He was out of the hotel so quickly that nobody really noticed him, but he was not bothered about being seen. If any leg men of the Ungodly were watching for him in the lobby, he was quite sure that they would patiently continue to sit and watch. The man who had become Tom Simons right down to his grimy fingernails was prepared to submit his creation to any ocular inspection — including that of the doorkeeper at Cookie's Canteen.

The doorkeeper, who was a woman with dyed red hair and a face like a dyspeptic camel, examined his identification papers and gave him a stock smile which displayed many large teeth tastefully mounted in gold.

"Glad to have you with us, Mr. Simons," she said. "Go right in and make yourself at home."

The Saint went in.

He found himself in a big barren room which had probably once been a restaurant, for one side of it was still broken up into upholstered booths. The rest of the furnishings were less ornamental, consisting of plain bare wooden tables and chairs, all of them scarred from much service. On the side opposite the booths there was a low dais with little more than enough room for the grand piano that stood on it. The walls were plastered with posters of female nubility and cartoons from Esquire. Near the entrance there was a rack of tattered popular magazines. At the back of the room there was a service bar from behind which two very wavy-haired young men in their shirtsleeves were dispensing sandwiches and bottles of non-alcoholic throat irrigation. A juke box blared inexorably through the hit parade.

The room was crowded with men of all ages, some in ordinary civilian clothes, some in costumes that tried nebulously to look like a sort of seafaring uniform. Some of the parties at the tables were engrossed in games of cards or checkers. Other men danced with the hostesses in a clear space in front of the piano, clumsily or stiffly or flashily according to type. The hostesses were mostly young and pert and passably good-looking. They wore aprons with star-dotted borders and Cookie's Canteen embroidered across them. A few other smooth-skinned young men in identical aprons moved among the tables picking up empty bottles and dirty plates.

Aside from the rather noticeably sleek fragility of the male helpers, the place was fairly typical of the numerous oases that had mushroomed across the country during the war to offer chaste and sheltered recreation to men of the services, in line with the current concept of tea and parlor games as the great spiritual need of a warrior between battles. But whereas practically all the prototypical estaminets were sponsored and protected by public organisations, Cookie's Canteen was a strictly freelance and unofficial and unendorsed post-war benevolence. And in all of that there were questions to which the Saint wanted many answers...

He edged his way through the tables to the service bar and asked for a coke. With the bottle in his hand, he turned back towards the room, scanning the crowd through the thick fog of smoke that hung under the low ceiling and wondering what his move should be.

A girl in an apron stopped in front of him.

"Hello," she said. "You got everything you want?" '